Wanna be famous? Bash Islam!
Insulting Islam is how the mainstream media and the right-wing blogosphere defines bravery. Anyone who hates the faith and is outspoken about it has a much higher chance of getting air time than let’s say, an honest activist somewhere in Afghanistan or Iran who actually maintain their faith. Forget human rights activism from real Muslims. You can be a rich Arab living luxuriously in North America with nothing to lose and much fame to gain if only you would declare yourself an ex-Muslim who is actively trying to destroy the source of all our problems (Islam, apparently.) Many powerful people will love and praise you if only you would hatefully attack this faith while speaking from personal “experience.”
Let’s admit it; Ayaan Hirsi Ali wouldn’t be where she is today if it wasn’t for the fact that her target is the Islamic faith as opposed to corrupt leadership, military rule, extreme censorship, gender inequality and other politically motivated bullshit. Many others are struggling to be like her, tempted by the dirty fame that comes along with this. They take cases like Kareem Amer’s and completely twist it to serve their own interests.
The fact that this campaign is led by mostly Muslims turned many people off from linking to it or joining our efforts; they have used Kareem’s case to feed their hatred against Islam and sometimes the inevitable racism against Arabs that come with it. But we have made a powerful point when we started this campaign; we redefined our struggles in the Middle East and made many people realize that the enemy is not in fact Islam. We make a point of refuting claims by both right-wing and Islamic extremists. In my opinion this is what activism should be about: fighting sources of extremism and hatred in all its shapes and colors. Not singling out a faith or a group of people and blaming it for all our problems. That’s not activism, it’s ignorance and stupidity, and it should no longer be fed from corporate giants who control what the majority can hear in the mainstream.
Really, what is going on throughout the media and the international blogosphere is revolting me; this constant need for certain people to gang up on others for the sheer sake of fame and uninformed ideologies.
What about those honest activists elsewhere in restricted countries? Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia? Who cares? Just because they don’t serve anyone’s religious and political agendas they are unworthy of making news? Sure, let’s forget the fact that they are risking their lives on a daily basis just trying to be heard, for trying to spread the truth about what’s going on in their countries and for struggling towards causes that not enough people are a part of: illiteracy, poverty, health care, genocide, war, tribal disputes, the list is endless. There are millions of people fighting for many forms of human rights right now as I write this, their bravery is unmatchable. Many are doing it as proud Muslims too. But somehow, in what seems like a twisted world, an ex-Muslim migrant somewhere spreading hatred on his blog/site from the comfort of Europe or the USA is much more worthy to listen to. This is what the media calls brave and courageous behavior. Why?
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Yeah… Smth to think about.
Moderate Islam has also been raped, now “moderate” means people who reject the Quran like those loons from Muslims Against Sharia. Of course they get tons of exposure because they’re exactly what the right-wingers want. Sometimes we just have to force ourselves to fight back, no matter how many enemies we gain in the process.
Simply, it’s because good news never sells. Look at all the threads that go unread and uncommented on because there’s nothing tanatalizing or shocking. It’s like what I wrote to a good friend last night that it seems everybody wants to be in on a cause, a passion or a scene, but very few will take the time to actually do something because they are either lazy, scared or posers/fakes or something of all three.
If Muslims would massively protest the violence and demand that the heads of all eight schools of fiqh disavow violent jihad, there would be **NO** so-called right-wing blogs at all. We would be able to leave this problem in your hands and get to solving other problems that are urgent.
After all, what is hate?
Is it being angry that people who have the power to stop debased violence in the name of Allah (I do not even remotely think Allah approves)?
Or is it declaring war on people of other religions, beheading other Muslims who don’t agree, stoning women, amputating limbs of petty thieves, honoring killings, bombing markets full of women and children?
The sad thing is that Islam DESERVES to be saved as a religion. It is a beautiful religion in its core transcendental verses. It is one nasty religion when it’s run from its often-spurious hadith — largely invented by warlords to justify their own whims — and the Medinan verses, which should be taken in historical context, not used as an excuse for bloodlust and domination.
There is no generation of Muslims in history that has so failed Islam as this one. But if you decide to grow a spine and take care of the problem inside the religion instead of focusing on critics who have had to take up the problem because you will not, you will find that the criticism ceases immediately and that you win the respect of the world. At this point, however, you do not deserve the respect of the world. You don’t deserve Allah’s respect, either.
And I think if you look more closely you will find that the opposition to shari’a is coming from the fact it has been shaped to give maximum control to men and discriminates against minorities. That is not rape. That is an attempt to take Islam back to its roots (Allah and his Prophet), not leave it in the hands of power-mongers.
What is really happening is that anybody who tells the truth sees it branded “hate speech” or blasphemy. If the person is a Muslim, often an accusation of apostasy follows, and in some places that’s a death sentence.
The people destroying Islam (and it is being destroyed) are the people who are handing it over to cults that bear nearly no resemblance to original Islam and are basically foci of desert tribalist customs and “reformations” (Wahhabism and Talibanism) that developed VERY late in the history of islam.
Take it back. Rid yourselves of these people and let Islam shine its light again.
By the way, I can’t stand Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Ann Coulter, either. Just for the record, I think Hirsi Ali is reckless with others’ safety and inflammatory to be titilating. When I saw Submission I thought that if anybody ever made a film about Catholic suppression of women’s rights (and using them as baby factories) it would have been met with TOTAL outrage. The difference is that Catholics wouldn’t KILL anybody for having said it.
Ann Coulter is a mess. She made the statement (which Daniel Pipes deliberately made known he does NOT agree with) that Muslim leaders should be killed and the rest forcibly converted.
I believe that is a direct quote from a bin Laden lecture.
Look, this is a very sad thing. The first thing most Westerners ever knew about Islam was a terrorist attack. Started in the mid-70s and got worse for the next 30 year.
Then there was 9/11. Since 9/11 there have been (as of this morning) 9681 terrorists ATTACKS that have killed nearly 30,000 people, most of them Muslims.
During Ramadan alone — RAMADAN, the holiest time of the year — there were 282 attacks in 20 countries against the people of 5 religions. Those attacks killed more than 1,300 and critically injured more than 1,600 others.
I wish it had been different. I wish people had been able to know the good side of Islam before they learned the bad. But it just didn’t turn out that way. And now people want the violence stopped BEFORE they will be willing to listen to you about how good your religion is.
Expressing a concern for the violence and demanding an end to it BEFORE we get another article about “what my jihab means to me” is only natural. Nobody is going to care about that when day after day we watch a small, nasty batch of Muslims behead their way to power why American Muslims, the richest and freest and most powerful in the world, spend their time whining about so-called “Islamophobia”.
It is nothing of the kind. It is an unwillingness to give up the freedom of the world while the good Muslims — overwhelmingly the majority — cave in by doing nothing.
The opposite of love isn’t hate anyway. It’s apathy.
Yeshar koach Esra’a, I agree with every word you said. It’s sad that the right wing is constantly looking for Islamic “defectors” to justify their Islamophobic agenda. But I should say that this goes both ways. I and many other Jews feel that Jewish antisemites (Norman Finkelstein, Tony Judt, Ilan Pepe, etc.) are given way too much of a voice the Arab press, as if only to delegitimize the Zionist cause and support an anti-Israel political agenda. To me, both types of self-haters are discredited. What do you think?
Yeah, because the world doesn’t give us a chance to earn their respect. They shun and silence us and the world continues to fall under the illusion that good Muslims aren’t doing enough. They are doing a lot, much more than you think. Many died for their struggles. No one knows about it, no one cared enough to find out who these people were and what their efforts meant.
But I disagree with your remark that people are doing nothing. For the first time in history there is an active Muslim group in defense of Baha’i rights, led by our group right here. That is a huge step forward for us. And like I said Kareem’s huge campaign is led by Muslims. Also a very big step for us. There are many other Muslim groups condemning religiously-motivated crimes. How come people don’t focus on that?
Like Dawood said it’s because we consider it good news, and good news doesn’t sell. You only believe what you watch in the media and if we don’t make it past your media’s gatekeepers, guess what? We’re history.
You see, it’s not that people aren’t doing things. It’s just that we place this huge dependence on the media. If the mainstream doesn’t report it; it means it must not exist. I assure you these efforts are there and they’re real and what we are doing with our cyber activism doesn’t even come CLOSE to what many of our friends are doing in neighboring countries, not to mention in places within Afghanistan where they truly risk their lives doing this. They are unknown because you make no effort in getting to know them. We can’t blame them for doing nothing if we are the ones ignorant of their hard work.
It’s everyone’s responsibility to get involved in this. Not just ours and not just yours. We are doing what we can with little to no help. Can you blame us?
At times love seems very weak compared to the devastating ruin caused by hate. Yet all religions teach us that love is ultimately more powerful. And anyway, weak or powerful it’s the only way to go if we do not want to be infected with hate ourselves. Persevere.
Too damned right.
Is a person a “defector” if they simply have a different opinion than you do? This is just short of saying they’re an apostate.
Earlier this week at Tufts University Daniel Pipes spoke and took questions after. It was actually very mild as he is the major proponent of the theory that “Radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam (as it exists right now) is the solution.” The problem is … who has the tiller of this ship right now? Right now it’s the radicals who are steering Islam. We’d just like you to take your power back.
The Muslims in this crowd were VERY respectful and carried on a good dialogue. The Leftists were disruptive and rude (as per usual).
One fellow got up at the end, and he talked about the social repression even of men in Saudi Arabia, and then he talked about fighting slavery in Mauritania and how Islamic leaders there had supported it. You may not know, but Mauritania was the last nation on earth to outlaw slavery — in early September of THIS YEAR — and some of this man’s family had been taken as slaves. So, he said, he quite understood the why Americans were concerned about Islam — but at the same time he was very offput by some of the screed he hears. I was right with him on this. Some of it (Coulter, for example, again) is done, as was said above, to be shocking or get attention or is … in fact … hateful, and bearing the same religious supremacist thinking that we complain about with radical Islam. Either there is “no compulsion in religion” or there’s not, and that applies to everybody, not just Muslims.
He really transformed the whole hall. (I think somebody from Gracen Intelligence is going to write an article about this.) His honesty was striking, and coming from a man who had risked his life to end slavery of Muslim people in Mauritania, it was profoundly moving.
The seminar ended, and he was immediately mobbed by a group of Muslims excoriating him — absolutely SCATHING him — for saying anything “un-nice” about islam in front of non-Muslims. The principle culprit in this was a very haughty, snobbish, control-freak of an adolescent who acted as if he had the power of Khomeini and the authority, too. He was disgusting.
And this man calmly listened to him and simply refused to back down. And I grew even more respectful of him because he had refused to be ordered back into herd mentality by people interested more in what happens to their “look good” than what happens to Muslims all over the world who are being forced out of the freedom of conscience given to them by Islam, as in NO OTHER RELIGION IN THE WORLD, and squandered and thrown away by Muslims today in an act of face-time prissiness for the cameras.
When Muslims think that defending their religion is refusing to carrying a blind person in a cab because he has a seeing eye dog or calling people hateful when they express concern for what the WORST among Muslims are doing, then there may be a phenomenon going on here that is well known in forensic psychology.
It is the transference of the IDENTIFICATION of the enemy from the real bad guys to people that it is safer to fight. The simple truth is that the safest to be when there is a real vicious tyrant about is RIGHT NEXT TO THEM. Preferably a little behind them where they don’t look straight at you, but definitely, definitely not in any position you can be said to oppose them. Because if you do, you’re dead, and your family is dead.
The evening of 9/11 I went to what I’ll call “The Alexandria Market” in a city in the South. I hung out there all the time because the food was good and the tea was the best ever made in North America. I went there because I knew my friends were going to have a hard time dealing with it. In fact, by the time I got there they were variously angry or crying that some people said that Muslims had done it. They were in shock that anybody could think this was true.
Everybody had this opinion except for my old Egyptian friend Ahmed, who was crying in the back of the story, inconsolable. “This is what we came to America to get away from, and now it is here.” He was very clear about who this was and what they were about. He also knew that the other people in the shop had NO CLUE about what was going on and what was coming.
Within two weeks, the mosque next door had had a visit from a Wahhabi imam. Within two months the market had fired all its female employees, and all the women of the mosque had been forced into cover.
My Moroccan friend Rusia, a young mother of 22 with a husband in his 40s whom she loved incredibly deeply, took the veil, she said, because the Wahhabi imam had threatened her husband if she did not. The tension in the Muslim community was absolutely incredible. On one side they had an American population, largely unaware of them previously so quiet had they been, now seeing them as a potential enemies. It was so bad that the electicity company wouldn’t put in a new feed line and the county inspectors wouldn’t finish the inspection for the dining room. So I put on my 4-inch Prada pumps, a Michel Kors black suit, grabbed a brief case and went down to the County Commissioner and filed a complaint myself. Then I went to the inspectors’ office and demanded that the inspection be finished, which it was, by 5 p.m. the same afternoon. So I know all about how this happens and how shaming and angering it is. I was furious, and it wasn’t even my shop.
BUT … the other side of this is what’s reared its ugly head on this thread today. It’s the forcing of a herd mentality in which dissent is not allowed. And because the Wahhabis are monied and threatening the Islamic community is being driven more and more into silence about things they know they should change, and they are giving their power away more and more, while TRANSFERING the identification of the enemy to Americans they know will defend their freedoms even while they’re being blamed for what is going on.
Now, no question, Bush is an idiot and Cheney is practically the anti-Christ. But the truth is also that the Shi’a community in the United States lobbied the US government for 25 years to go into Iraq and take out Saddam, and they made all kinds of promises about how the Shi’a would be fair, about how there would be no retribution, about how there would be peace and gratitude. We weren’t there TWO WEEKS before Al Sadr branded us “occupiers”, a term that in Iraq means much more than it would elsewhere.
Add to that the Sunni invitation to Al Qaeda, which they are now sorry they did. Al Qaeda came in and immediately began marrying high into the tribal leadership in all the Sunni groups in Iraq. By the time anybody figured out what was going on, they owned most of the women of the powerful families of Sunni Iraq. The backlash came when an Al Qaeda strongman demanded the daughter of one of the tribal leaders. She pleaded her father NOT to marry her to this man (despite the fact she is supposed to rights of marriage in Islam, in fact she did not), and her father heard her. He refused to give her to this man, and this terrorist then killed him, the daughter, and every other member of her family. And he didn’t just kill them. There was rape of all the women, amputation of some of the children’s hands and feet before they died, castration of some of the men before they died. The victims were burned and stabbed and tortured to death as a message to other Iraqi Sunnis that Al Qaeda would take any woman they wanted. The obvious attempt here is for Al Qaeda operatives to marry into the top power levels of all the Sunni tribes. In fact, they were subjugating them, taking wealth and power from everyone.
The tribes revolted. Since then they have killed more than a dozen tribal leaders, including Sheikh Maawia Naji Jebara, the man who would have made a GREAT president of Iraq.
Now, are the Sunnis wrong anti-Islamic in criticizing Al Qaeda? No, they’re not. They are also not treasonous toward Islam for publicly doing so.
Brave Muslims who stand up are NOT anti-Islamic or doing something wrong. They are brave, and they are the ones who will save Islam.
Just a reminder: The Prophet clearly stated that the destruction of Islam would come out of the Nejd.
As one said above, SMTH to think about.
If you haven’t read Khaled Abou El Fadl’s “The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam From The Extremists,” you really should. He addresses many of these issues with historical and religious backing.
Esra …
Stop whining. My complaint is with American Muslims who sit on their fat behinds while the people overseas stand up at the risk of their lives to save the Sunni community in Iraq from Al Qaeda, the Baha’i in Iran from the mullahs, etc. The former Grand Mufti of Marseilles has been incredibly brave. The Islamic feminists like Konca Kuris, who was tortured (they filmed it) for 38 days before she was killed by Turkish Hibzollah, stand up.
But American Muslims argue about whether they can get special footbaths in some university and strike airport taxi stands if somebody gets in a cab with a sealed bottle of alcohol and threaten to sue if somebody comes through a Kmart checkstand with a sealed package of pork chops.
Meanwhile, when six imams trigger 87% of all the terrorist-alert functions on an aircraft and are ejected at the request of a MUSLIM PASSENGER WHO HEARS THEM TALKING ABOUT 9/11 IN GLOWING TERMS (ALLAHU AKBAR!), US Air, TSA, and the passengers on the plane get sued!
Self-pity won’t get it. But self-pity disappears when you begin to deal with real problems.
I have only the greatest admiration for Muslims in other parts of the world who stand their ground against this assault on their freedom and on their faith.
I have little sympathy with Muslims who prefer to claim they are being ever-so done wrong and discriminated against when they will NOT stand up against their real enemy, and instead brand as hate speech the concerns of those who are at once the STATED TARGETS OF RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS and yet provide a safe haven for Muslims fleeing terrorist states at a rate of a million a month.
At first I thought that the saving of Islam would come from American Muslims. Now I am not sure, as many Muslims scholars are not sure, that Islam will survive the 21st century. The great danger, of course, is that some terrorist will be successful in detonated a chemical, biological or nuclear device in a Western country. If, or rather when, that happens, Muslim immigration to the West will cease entirely, everybody who doesn’t have residency will be deported, and trade will stop with all countries that support or tolerate hate-preaching and incitement to violence in their mosques and medrassas.
And, of course, there is the growing impetus in the West toward the creation of new energy sources. The radioflame technology is the most promising. Sonoluminescence isn’t bad. Cold fusion is unlikely. But if, tomorrow, American cars became plug-ins rather than internal combustion engines, it would be all over for Saudi Arabia.
So, while people complain about Bush (me, too), know this: If he did to the Muslim world what he could do by destroying the oil industry, there would be a worldwide depression from which America would recover, but the Muslim world would not. And that is coming if Islam doesn’t get itself straightened out.
And we can’t do that for you. We’d do it if we could. But we can’t, because Islam can only be saved from inside itself. There IS no solution that can be imposed from without, despite the stupidity of some foreign policy wonks to believe there is.
And while you are there feeling sorry for yourself, know this: I have been fighting for Islam since the day of 9/11, and I had one friend say to me the other day: Why don’t you get sick of doing more for Islam than the Muslims do? And I said, “Because it is beautiful and it is worth saving.”
But it won’t get saved by me. I’m an American. I can’t save it.
But you can.
Meredith,
Stop making this about Americans. This is not about American Muslims who sit on their “fat” behinds doing nothing nor is it solely about America.
I am talking about the millions of Muslims worldwide who are doing amazing things, and people like you ignoring it. Get with the program.
And stop treating Islam like it’s the one that needs saving. The religion still exists and is practiced by more than 1 billion people. It doesn’t need yours or anybody else’s “saving.” This is not what this post is about.
Esra …
Yes, I’ve read it. There are plenty of examples of brave Muslims saving Islam. But they’re not the American Muslims who bitch about cabs and footbaths.
American Muslims are safe, free, strong, powerful and rich. And American Islam is the only Islam in the world other than Saudi Arabia which is 80% dominated by Wahhabi imams, a calcalation of the House of Saud.
You need to think about this: The age of oil will end. When it does it will not be safe for the House of Saud, which has bled the country of the most unimaginable wealth to fall into the hands of a small group of people in the history of the world.
They have been working to subsume the American Muslim community for at least 35 years so that they can COME HERE WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE and be safe and run the Islamic community in the United States when that happens.
Start with the mosques. Rid yourselves of the Pakistani and Saudi imams who tell you to stay quiet and “defend” Islam by opportunistically pressing for special treatment (a Jew who refused to check pork chops at KMart would be fired for it) and push Americans with screed about “hate speech” and fake “discrimination”. I’m right with you on the real stuff and will defend you until I drop dead. But don’t play games with it. ALWAYS in this country the people really discriminated against are blacks, and hate crimes against blacks are 280 times those against Jews, the next most discriminated-against group, and 320 times those against Muslims. The total number of REAL acts of discrimination against Muslims.
For 2005, the last year that records are available, the FBI figures are these. MOST of the hate crimes in this country are against blacks and have a racial basis. I’m just going to give the figures for religious basis here, however, since Islam is not a race (therefore claims are racism are just stupid and spurious).
SOURCE: FBI
Religious Bias
Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,314 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:
* 68.5 percent were anti-Jewish.
* 11.1 percent were anti-Islamic.
* 7.8 percent were anti-other (unspecified) religion.
* 4.6 percent were anti-Catholic.
* 4.4 percent were anti-Protestant.
* 3.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, (i.e., groups of individuals of varying religions).
* 0.4 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism.
Now, look closely. The total number of hate crimes for ALL categories is 1,314. Of those, 900 were against Jews. There were 146 against Muslims. This is in a country of 300 million people.
In Thailand last year, Muslims killed almost 1,000 Buddhists. In Baghdad last year, the death toll of all Iraqi citizens was 16,791. Of those, 16,566 were killed in Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
That Islamic terrorists could threaten Americans with death, the destruction of their culture, law suits, name-calling, and the loss of their civil rights — while American Muslims stay silent or use the situation to demand rights no Christian or Jew could POSSIBLY get — and there are just 146 crimes against Muslims that could classify as a hate crime (900 for Jews), I would have to say that Americans have bent over backwards trying to be fair.
However, being fair does not include giving up OUR free speech rights to talk about REAL problems, and it is disingenous and manipulation of Muslims to brand hate speech everything said in defense not only of our culture but of true Islamic culture worldwide. It’s ridiculous and insulting.
I know many, many non-Muslims who stood up for the good in Islam from the beginning. Many, many of them have left now. The ranks of non-Muslims willing to tolerate this crap is shrinking fast. They watch daily terrorist attacks worldwide — attacks that can’t even remotely be pinned on American foreign policy — attacks in Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Sudan, and against the citizens of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, and other Muslim countries — and they watch American Muslims play games instead of doing something about the problem.
All over the world Muslims are fleeing the fires of radicals that are burning down their religion and torturing and killing their poeple, and American Muslims file malicious lawsuits over their “civil rights” when their civil rights haven’t been violated by ANYBODY — and while the 146 hate crimes against Muslims in this country are DECRIED BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO STAND UP FOR MUSLIMS AND REFUSE TO HAVE THEM THREATENED OR HARMED OR EVEN TO HAVE THEIR FEELINGS HURT.
All the while knowing there are sleeper cells run right out of American mosques.
You need to a have thought for the goodness of the people who have taken you among them and have loved and defended you as their own, and will continue to do so.
What you really need to be focused on now is the that fact that your religion is dying from the cancer within it, and you guys won’t even go get homeopathy for it, much less the chemotherapy it’ll probably require.
I think Izetbegovic said it best: It will take 1,000 years for Islam to live down that it has done in the last 35. And that if you get busy now.
In fact, most of the Muslims in this world have long since stopped living according the violent dictates of the eight mahdhabs (the eight was created just 4 years ago), and have lived a peaceful Islam that is gently responsive to modernization in a way that is completely healthy and incredibly and beautifully spiritually done.
In fact, those people are living what Sinclair calls “The Ninth Mahdhab”. It is now the responsibility of Muslims to create that mahdhab to GIVE MUSLIMS SOME PLACE TO GO THAT REALLY REFLECTS THEIR BELIEFS.
I would suggest you all start with the former Mufti of Marseilles. Or Gulen. Or the many others who have given you the ideological framework from which to build the Islam that can become the most beautiful religion the people of Earth have ever known.
I love you. I will continue to support you. But I will never stop the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Allah bless and keep you.
I have never been to America before, and I am not familiar with any American Muslims. I’ve never worked with them and I don’t even know the percentage of their existence. Maybe that shows how little impact they have in our part of the world.
That’s why we don’t seek them out and ask for help. They are safe, rich and powerful, they simply don’t care. Many of them probably aren’t religious at all (at least here in the Arab world, the rich are rarely amongst the religious.)
Esra, I’m real low on herd mentality. You’re in no position to tell anybody to “get with the program.” See, this is the problem. If somebody talks about something you don’t want to talk about, they’re told to “get with the program.” This kind of restriction of what Muslims and those who love them talk about it is not good for the resolution of the problem.
But, I’ve clearly had a lot to say, and will leave it to you now. Thank you for listening. And what I DEEPLY appreciate is what I find on this forum 99.9% of the time. I think you guys are great, and you do NOT simply censor everything you don’t particularly like. I think you’re brave and beautiful.
Read Fouad Ajami’s The Arab Predicament.
Meredith, “get with the program” means “get relevant.” My post had nothing to do with American Muslims whom I know nothing about.
I already did and I reviewed it for this site.
Esra … you wrote:
That’s why we don’t seek them out and ask for help. They are safe, rich and powerful, they simply don’t care. Many of them probably aren’t religious at all (at least here in the Arab world, the rich are rarely amongst the religious.)
That makes me so sad. I apologize. I’ve gone off on my own tangent, and perhaps I shouldn’t have done that. You can’t possibly imagine how brave I think Muslims overseas standing up against this problem really are. I think knowing how brave they are and have been makes me all the more shocked that American Muslims have taken the self-centered tack they’ve taken. It just shocks me. So I will leave this discussion now and thank you for your responses and your time.
Thanks a lot for your comments. I found them good and insightful despite some possible miscommunication here.
Thank you, too, Esra’a.
I read you guys all the time, and I think you are AMAZING and FANTASTIC.
Esra’a I agree with you, but also with levylevthuglife who said it goes both ways. I think it is a more destructive force when it comes to Islam however because of its size, growth, power and internal conflicts. I wish to see the day when everyone would put their differences aside and fight extremism in one hand, as people who all want the same things.
Isra’a,
As an American Muslim, I am insulted at the fact that you would say “They simply do not care”. You have your rights as a majority in a Muslim country while we struggle with breaking stereotyping. I personally have been explaining Islam at schools, Churches, Synagogues, Hindu temples etc, for 20 years, way before 9/11 and since I was a young girl in school. What I find is that Americans, who you say love those who hate Islam, are open and are willing to listen and even change their minds. I am yet to get ONE, only ONE Imam who would allow a non Muslim to explain his/her faith at a Masjid.
One of the issues that non Muslims have a problem with is why is it that we welcome Muslims, allow them to live freely and worship freely and give in to their demands for sensitivity and give them the right to preach about their faith, but the Muslim world will arrest and even kill those who they even suspect of doing the same? For Americans, it is hypocrisy, no matter what the Muslims say.
Ya Isra’a even the crazy right wind administration that we have, had opened its doors to Muslims and Islam and made it illegal to attack a Muslim (verbally or physically) just because they are Muslims but I read the news and watch TV and also visit of course, the Arab world. You want to talk about hate and eradicating hate? The amount of hate that is state sanctioned in the Arab and Muslim world against others, especially Jews, is not only appalling, it is the direct reason for the death of so many Palestinians, including members of my family. Yet, stupid, cheap, disgusting BUT harmless speech done by a small minority of nuts, offends everyone. Have you looked in a mirror and asked yourself; “Can I say that I do not hate any nation/faith/country/people etc, before I can tell others that it is wrong to hate us? Have you really looked at Islam (the way it is presented and taught) and asked yourself, would I follow this if I was not born into it? Did you see the petition that was launched against the Islamo-fascism week and are you aware that it is a Jewish website? Even though the Jews were the ones who launched an actual defense against Islam hate, did you read some of the comments by Muslims, including a dua, asking Allah to destroy all Jews (which was not even the topic for that petition)?
As a bit of background, I come from a Palestinian family. My mother was Catholic Palestinian from the original people who’ve been there since Jesus and my father was a so called Muslim. Because he was a so called, he didn’t practice and we grew up knowing very little about Islam and treating it as a culture. All my siblings remain “so called” and rightfully, hate it because they judge it by the people who practice it (again, so called) and by the well below intelligent and educated imams who are replacing the words of Allah in their teaching. I couldn’t make sense of their teaching, felt that I’m insulting my own intelligence to read about others from Islamic books, had enough of the same exact things repeated by different authors and refused to let a human, imam or not, to tell me what he believes Allah wants me to feel. I studied Islam as a way to give me a reason to leave it and not look back, planning to write about how vicious, anti women and anti humanity it is. However, I found that these ARE true traits of people, Muslims who really and truly insulted Islam and destroyed it by their damaging action, vs. words of non Muslims which causes no real damage to Islam.
I found Islam to be almost the opposite of the accepted practices and the mathematical manner of approaching doing the right thing (you do this and earn this many 7asanat) and I found that if I just allowed my conscious to lead, Allah will guide me to feel the right thing. I embraced the Quranic Islam, proudly wore my hijab and my faith is fully based on understanding and respect not blind faith but my experience led me to shun any means of tribalism and herd mentality. It earned me lots of critics (and some fans) from the Muslim community but I absolutely refuse to repeat what everyone says or believe something that I do not read about search and have 100% of its authenticity, even if it means that I’ll speak against my own. Islam taught me that unless the truth is as clear as the sun in my eyes, I can’t say it as a fact because that is bearing false witness; Haram!
Hate, my dear sister Isra’a, is a very “modern day Islamist” concept. Read your books. Ironically, Islam and Islamic in its true form is innocent of that. Therefore, before speaking, weight the damage done by the so called Islamic teaching and less than human Imams (some of them anyway) vs. the damage done by others who criticize Islam. For that matter, try to stand outside of being a Muslim and tell me, how, with all the hate and killing and justifications of it, can we really convince anyone that Islam is a religion of peace? You see, people like me speak against the accepted Islamic teaching and do not stand on the “Islam is peace” while hiding our heads in the sand to the actions of Muslims. We admit that bad Muslims exist like terrorist, hate mongers which includes imams who give hate filled khutba and dua such as May Allah destroy the enemies of Islam and break their mother’s hearts, those who treat women as 127th class at best, bashers of other faiths and nations, worshipers and creators of conspiracy theories etc… But when we say that they are bad but do not represent and may not even understand Islam and that they are wrong, we are seen as Anti Islam or those “who hates the faith and is outspoken about” as you say. Sorry my dear, Muslims, are just ordinary humans, nothing special and just like any ordinary humans they can be evil, bad, stupid, malicious and they can be good, upstanding, intelligent, caring etc… but I and so do many others who are trying to work with the Muslim and non Muslims to revive the real Islam and bury the sorry excuse for it, we refuse to become herds and tribal and to kill our perfect faith that was given in a perfect form from our creator to seek approval of the created so they won’t accuse us of hating our faith. For that, we take risks from both sides but regardless of what you believe and think, we do care much more than you can ever imagine.
Regardless, I agree with Meredith, you are great people here and the first time I actually see a website that has such an open and respectful discussion.
Thanks you
Salma
Meredith, you expect us to condemn every single bad thing other Muslims do yet I never see Jews condemning Robert Goldstein or people in the right condemning Congressman Tom Tancredo for his “bomb Mecca” comments. Or what about Catholics for what the Phalangist scum did in Sabra and Shatila, or the evangelicals’ inability to condemn the Lord’s Resistance Army?
Here’s some food for thought on your need for us to condemn every single thing Muslims do: Myth of Muslim Condemnation
Keep a leash on your own animals before commenting on others.
And Meredith, here’s some American Muslim bloggers who do exactly the same fucking thing that you are excessively PMS’ing about:
Here’s a blog post on extremist Muslims attacking this Muslim blogger
Another African-American Muslim convert who often speaks out against radical Muslims
from my perception I find that muslims never care about the bad things that go on in islamic countries, especially if its happening to non-muslims. but became ABSOLUTELY INCENSED if anyone else points it out, or in any way questions, criticizes, or mocks their religion.
this is shallow crap. muslims asking for freedom for THEIR religion are hypocrites as long as 99% of islamic countries, nearly all of islamic history, all the schools of sharia specifically outlaw freedom of religion. islam is the #1 destroyer of human rights on the planet, but if you listen to a muslim tell it some crazy christian fundie in ohio is more to blame than all the rulings done in the name of islam.
Ah, after a fairly civilized conversation, we get Danial, with a foul mouth and obvious misogyny. So it’s PMS to suggest that American Muslims get off their butts and do something other than try to weasel one more TV interview and special consideration?
For your information, you will find me all over the internet taking out the likes of Tom Tancredo, absolutely scathing him for his comments. And at the time that the Phalanges attacked the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and killed hundreds — which happened when I was about 35 years old — I vigorously protested, sending letters of protest both to the Maronite hierarchy and the Vatican and speaking out against it in the churches which I attended. This lost me a great deal of business and many friends (I am Melkite Catholic), who said then what you are saying now: Don’t criticize us. Don’t ask us to do anything. Don’t say we have to stand against our own.
But that is exactly what I said: The only morality is standing against your own when they are doing wrong things.
And no, condemnation is not enough. It’s tissue in the wind. You have to take political and probably military action, and you will need to do that BEFORE you are completely overrun and destroyed. The West will not be taken. It will fight and it has the capacity to win. And it will slam the door on Muslims eventually. It’s only a matter of time. There will likely be civil war in Europe to settle the matter there, as there has been before.
My concern is not about the West. My concern is about whether Muslims continue to be free to make choices rather than have the most vicious, radical element rule them like they are slaves.
The point is that it is ALWAYS the case that the worst among us, whatever our religion, are the ones willing to do horrible things that the rest of us could never do. With regard to the radical Islamists, ask yourself this question:
If you expect me to condemn the Phalanges and stand up against them (two different actions), then I expect you to do the same.
And I did my part. I fought the Vatican about it, and I caught considerable hell about it.
Are you willing to fight the schools of figh that will NOT organize the mass of Muslims to reject it in home, mosque, medressa, and government?
And as far as PMS goes, I would remind you that whatever pain there is involved with that, the rate of crime worldwide is 97.8% men and 2.2% women. The state of anxiety or irrationality that women experience occasionally seems to be the status quo for men, who can’t wait to go to war. The nature of women is two-fold: they are basically very gentle, but they will not be quiet when they see wrong.
Please forward the name of the film you reference. I should very much like to promote it here as I am a television producer, among other things. Thank you.
Esra’a, you forgot that you do have one American Muslim here in the ME, and that’s me, and there are others here in Bahrain who choose to live here and discover true Islam one day at a time, one act of kindness and love at a time… the Islam of beauty and peace and coexistence. Too much has been said here already (wow, 23 comments in a new thread?).
BTW, Danial, I think the truth is we are going to have to work on both things at once — radical Islam and the unfairness of some.
My point here is that AMERICAN Muslims are way off track and really basically full of it. They do nothing but talk, don’t strongly back women’s rights, the end of slavery in African states, the disenfranchisement of women in African and Middle Eastern states, and the advancement of EXTREME shari’a all over the place. Instead, they play like they are ever-so, ever-so discriminated against, which is a despicable manipulation. See the facts above for that.
Interesting that you expect us to be perfect before we can say anything about you. You certainly aren’t perfect, but that doesn’t stop you from bringing up our faults.
You SHOULD bring up our faults. And we should bring up yours. After all, fair is fair. Right?
My problem with the way you guys act is that while you are playing silly little games, your religion is being destroyed from within. And we don’t have the means to stop that. Only you have those means, and you squander your resources and energies pretending you are the victims of us, when, in fact, we’re protecting you all over the place as well as holding in trust the freedoms you have in the West and are losing everywhere else.
Now, I think you should consider whether you would like my son to talk to YOUR mother as you have just talked to me.
In fact, my son spends most of his time defending Muslims and he would not think of telling some woman angry at the United States to go take some Midol. Days like this, I think my husband is lucky to have died before all this happened. Otherwise, he’d be so angry he’d have been just beside himself to see a woman spoken of in such a way.
Damn… this is really a crap-slinging fest. As a person who has been living here in the ME for three years now, I came here with some stereotypes, thanks to western media. On a daily basis from that point on, I have seen so much and have been a part of many things that one does not hear about in the west, and what I am talking about is daily life. Everybody I know here in Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudia, Kuwait and other regions of the ME have the same problems and concerns as any regular person in the west has. The west doesn’t see it because it is not news that sells. Everybody I know who is an expat or someone who was here for a short duration quickly comes to the same conclusions as I have- the western media has concocted a distorted view of the ME. As for Islam, the part you see in the west are the 1%’ers who have ruined our image with their own agendas covered with the false proclamation that what they are doing is for the good of Islam. They do not speak for the huge majority of us, and you are right in the fact that we, the Islamists, need to fix our own house. One of the characteristics of the average ME’er is one of no direct confrontation. This is a characteristic one can see in many different situations here, and yes, I get irritated by it, but it is something I cannot change. I can influence it, as I have on other issues, but I cannot eradicate it. In the west, notably America, issues that rile people up are confronted directly in a quick manner. If that is what the west is expecting from us, then one is in for a very long wait.
I was talking about the rich and powerful, not the average American Muslim, whom I hardly come across.
Bob,
That is absolutely incorrect, but it’s how we are portrayed in foreign media outlets, which pisses us off.
Most Muslim activists are active towards issues happening within their own countries especially if it’s religiously motivated. You will find many Muslims fighting for minority rights too. Like I said we even established the Muslim Network for Baha’i Rights, we defend Jewish and Christian minority rights through ME Faith and there are many Muslims who do much more than us as well.
It’s not our fault that your news doesn’t report them or make you aware of such efforts. You should never assume that they don’t exist just because you don’t hear about it. This is our biggest problem which my post revolves around. Assumptions based on ignorance is no longer inconvenient, it’s becoming dangerous, justifying things as big as war.
there are numerous muslim fluff stories here, but I do admit news is mostly bad, whether it be about mexicans or teachers or muslims; good news/human interest stories are decreasing in popularity. and I never said they don’t exist, absolutes like that are unnecessary. there are neo-nazi’s in america but I wouldn’t call america friendly to neo-nazi’s. just like I’m sure there are rights activists in the ME. but who stops those rights activists? islam. islam destroys the women’s shelters in afghanistan, islamic rulings declare the bahai heretics and slaughter them. islamic sharia courts in malaysia steal the children of apostates. you are fighting against this, but you are fighting against the ISLAMIC rulings.
I am very happy to know there are people against this. but from my perspective those ppl are fighting islam. and the more islamic a country gets, the more likely it is to slaughter human rights.
Well that is strictly a very personal opinion, an argument I profoundly disagree with but is too irrelevant to get into.
all my opinions are personal opinions. I was unaware there were other options. and you can disagree/discard it all you like. but a quick look at the justification used against human rights/womens rights/gay rights groups in any country that considers itself islamic is….wait for it….islam.
maybe this is uncomfortable for you that ppl scream allah ackbar while calling for the oppression of women, the stoning of gays and denial of religious freedom to minorities. but it is a pervasive reality of the world we live in.
Can you tell us how many Muslim countries stone gays?
May I remind you that gays are still strictly discriminated against in many parts of the Western world too? May I also remind you of the fact that many Muslims are discriminated against and stigmatized in the West by people who hold the similar stereotypical views that you do?
Stoning gays, denying religious rights and oppressing women is not common where I’m from. We have female ministers, a Jewish representative in government along with at least 2 Christian ones, and we also have 7 churches. We also have Hindu and Baha’i minorities. And yeah, I’m from a Muslim country. Take that for tolerance.
I hold no stereotypes against ppl. I do hold opinions against ideologies, conflating the two is disingenuous, and is one of the main reasons ppl are growing to hate muslims, because they can not hold an opinion about islam w/o muslims screaming at them.
I think what I’m running up again is the minority rule. are you denying the pervasive reality of islamic bigotry towards women and gays in the vast majority of muslim countries? or the denial of freedom of religion? most notably to apostates?
you want to argue from emotion, I want to argue from reality. reality is that islam is the #1 destroyer of human rights on the planet. its ideologies, its laws, its justifications are numero uno. and no pointing the blame at others, or talking about your exceptions changes that.
Esra’a …
Well, I need to jump in here again and say I do NOT, NOT, NOT agree with what bob says.
It is true that the way that sharia has been built BY IMAMS, not by ALLAH, entrenches bad laws against women, gays and non-Muslims. This is the result of abrogation, in which early religious “authorities” crafted an Islam that bore no resemblance to the transcendental religion found in the Meccan verses.
Worldwide, the VAST majority of Muslims do not subscribe to any sort of discrimination against any group, as evidenced by the Pancasila doctrine CRAFTED BY MUSLIMS, and now challenged by extremists. Pancasila treats the God concept as incorporating images from Islam, two forms of Christianity which are taken separately from each other, Hinduism and Buddhism. That’s Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation in the world and the having a population of Muslims equal to that of the Pakistan and India combined, and larger than the entire Middle East.
Be careful, bob. Islam has problem now, but the one it has it is no worse than the one we Christians had that was ALSO based on doctrinal distortion, the fiats of the Pope against the Knights Templar every bit as gruesome as anything Islamic now. And anybody who doesn’t think another religion can use twisted doctrine to make war on women has never read the Malleus Maleficarum, claimed by its Papal author as divinely given by God Almightly. This book details exactly how you torture a woman. It makes sadoporn pale in comparison.
Remember also that it was a Muslim Sultan of the Ottoman empire who saved 2 million Jews expelled from Christian Spain. The Sultan so jammed Cadiz harbor with ships come to take the Jews to seven UNWALLED enclaves built for them, completely with synagogues, trading centers, schools and housing, that Christopher Columbus had to set sail from Ponte de Frontera south of Cadiz on the Spanish Atlantic coast.
Have compassion. It is not easy to watch a religion go through this, but Islam today is no worse than the Christianity of the past. And as Danial pointed out, massacres by Christians in Lebanon (and also in Kosovo) are less than 25 years old in the first case and less than 15 in the second.
We can express our anger at being attacked, at the games played when the situation is so desperate, but Muslims deserve compassion as well as straight talk. But for the grace of God go we in the same place, because, in absolute truth, we’ve been there before, and the people who call for the nuking of Mecca and Medina are a hair’s bredth from the same mentality — a mentality NOT shared by the vast majority of Muslims.
Bob,
You did not answer my question.
List the number of Muslim countries that “stone gays.” I want to know, and most importantly I want to make sure you become aware of the dangerous fallacies you are throwing around.
Let’s argue the facts. If you cannot answer that question then you are clearly not knowledgeable enough about the faith to continue this discussion.
You say I argue from emotion; by presenting my country’s case with factual information? How is it that you speak from “reality”? What have you done here other than make uninformed claims about our societies?
I am not sure, now that I think about it I think iran merely hangs gays, though perhaps they stone them in some parts. I will concede to you the bigotry is varied. the more islamic places are worse, nigeria, iran, saudi arabia. while some more secular areas are better, but in the end it is still the islamic side calling for more bigotry and the non-islamic side pleading for more human rights.
one example is malaysia, once considered the shining beacon of muslim modernity now does its slow inexorable islamist march into more discrimination and more oppression. the sharia courts are granted more sway.
perhaps though you are not interested in the thrust of what I am saying, but interested in playing gotcha. and then “dismissing” me for some gotcha. again disingenuous, I am afraid you are slowly making it clear that you are being disingenuous in this whole discussion.
and btw meredith, I’m not christian.
Also, in Texas sodomy is illegal, and men have been tried for it and jailed for it. But not stoned, at least not legally. But I do remember the teenage boy who was lashed to a fence and tortured to death. You’ll remember that, no, bob?
True, in many non-Muslim countries there are not LAWS against homosexuality. But NOT ALL.
In India, it’s a LIFE SENTENCE. Trididad and Tobago, Aruba, Belize, etc., give people up to 25 years for being gay.
Don’t have time to do more on this, but the situation for women, gays, etc. is not good in many places.
Sure Bob, whatever blows your hair back. I’m not the one making baseless and uninformed claims here. Think twice before you publish your comments next time.
For a list of the laws re: homosexuality in the whole world and the sentences, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_laws_of_the_world
Bob, you know, rather than asking somebody else to provide information to them (making them your secretary cum research assistant) you could look it up yourself.
Esra’a re your last: Well said.
yes meredith, islam doesn’t have the patent on bigotry, its just leading the pack. obviously our christians here in america(where I’m from) mimic in kind if not extremeness many typicaly conservative “abrahamic” religious talking points. hating the gays being a popular one.
more generally as a liberal when I see islam the greatest threat I see isn’t from the terrorists. its from sharia law. sharia law is like the liberal anti-christ, it is the destruction of all we’ve fought for hundreds of years. its like communism vs capitalism. human rights vs sharia. the fight is on, it is IMO going to be one of the most important fights of the 21st century. and certainly the most important fight for human rights in the 21st century.
Meredith is absolutely correct. A great many Americans feel exactly that way but wouldn’t dare say it publicly for fear of the verbal bashing (and possible violence) that would follow.
Do you know what would make the West believe in and support the “moderate” Muslims? Action. Has there ever been a protest where people burned every copy of the “Elders of Zion” they could find, denouncing it as hate-promoting racism? Did the largest mosque in Sydney have its attendance drop to zero following the remarks of the “cat meat” Imam? Have there been protest rallies by the moderates of Lebanon demanding the return of the two Israeli soldiers? Have there been Fatwahs by American Imams that’s it’s okay to run a plastic wrapped package of bacon across the laser scanner in a supermarket, or to let a blind man’s dog into your cab?
Yes, there are many courageous individuals, including some authors on this site, but if the extremists are really only 0.1% of the Muslim population then the 99.9% ought go be able to drive them out. What the West wonders is: why is the huge moderate population so tolerant of those extremists they say are betraying Islam?
How many of you all understand Sharia Law? How many of you understand it to the point that you can call foul on a person who is professing Sharia Law? How many of you are just taking someone’s opinion of it and taking it as the truth? How many of you understand it enough to even form an opinion of it? How many of you even understand Islam? How many of you just form your opinions on Islam based on what you see on TV?
I invite those who have never even lived outside the USA or spent any real considerable time in a Muslim country to come out and experience it for yourself before making an assessment. Don’t rely on us who live here to give you an opinion. Just come out and experience it. I also invite you to visit a few mosques around you and talk openly with the imams and ask questions. I invite you to read the Quran, and if you come across something that does not agree with you, take that point up with the imams and get their interpretation. After that, go to a church and talk with the priest or pastor and ask them what do they know of Islam, the Quran and Sharia Law. As a person who was raised a Buddhist, who was a Christian and now a Muslim, I’ve done my reading and questioned the parts that did not sit well with me. The Quran requires study, just as any religious document does, for how can one be a good this or a good that if they don’t even know what their religion is based on or even if the faith one professes is even relevant to them? Would you follow a person who cannot answer the basic questions on all the faiths out there? With all this, again, I ask you how many of you understand Islam and the Quran? If you choose to not research Islam, study the Quran and compare it to the Bible, the Torah and to other religious writings, then you are in no way a person who can justifiably argue a point regarding Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Ba’hai or any religion, for that matter. All you are doing is basing your arguments on what you see on TV or read in the paper. How many of you have read a news article just to find that another medium of media presented that news article in a different light or even 180 degrees out? Believe me, it exists.
There are for too many posts for me to quote, so I’ll just make a big one.
Firstly, attacking Christianity or any other religion in defense of Islam is irresponsible. Their wrong does not make yours right. But for those insisting on bringing Christianity into this. 1. Crusades, Inquisitions, etc- none of these events can be justified through scripture. These atrocities were perpetrated by men with their own agenda, not God’s. And committed by the RCC who i believe are in many respects similar to Islam(but we will not get into that).2. All the verses quoted from the Bible trying to reveal it’s violent nature are all taken out of context. All of those verses from the Old testament pertained to a certain time, place, and territory(Canaan).
Now, for Islam. Yes, there are passages in the Qur’an that indicate a peaceful nature or a violent one. Passages in the Second surah for example seem to suggest war only if attacked first. While the ninth and fifth surahs speak of Muslims taking the offensive and killing infidels where they find them. So here is where a very important conecpt comes in- abrogation. Basically the newer verses override the conflicting prior verses. Chronologically the Fifth and ninth Surah were the very last revealed, therefore replacing the seemingly defensive verses with offensive ones.
Another key point is Islam’s history. Is wasn’t the Meccan’s who drew blood first, it was the Muslims. Right after they migrated to Medina they began raiding local Meccan caravans. Muhammad participated in 75 raids and battles, which of only two were defensive.
Dawoud …
It seems to me that to a certain degree we are all DOING what we are complaining about with each other.
For example, I have had Muslim friends from 19 countries for more than 35 years. I am a writer and producer and have spent extensive time in foreign countries, including three in the Middle East. I have read the Qur’an cover to cover four times, have a copy of the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq next to my bed all the time and read it before sleeping every evening, and have also read extensively on everything from Islamic poetry to interpretations and fatawa extending back to the Ottoman qada and previous to that to the times right after the Prophet’s death. My opinions are NOT crafted of television and newspapers.
The simple fact is that shari’a is the invention of scholars, not Prophets, and a great deal of desert tribalist cruelty from Arabia and Africa is absolutely threaded through it.
For example, FGM is NOT an Islamic tradition, but shafi’i Islam requires circumcism both of men and of women.
The Qur’an plainly state that there shall be compulsion in religion, but then surah 2.259 is abrogated according to classical Muslim interpretation. Surah 9.5, according to classical interpretion, abrogates no fewer than 124 peaceful, beautiful, purely spiritual verses of the Qur’an.
And *all of that* abrogation finds itself woven through the shari’a to the detriment of non-Muslims, women, and people of non-heterosexual orientation.
Yes, I quite understand that the Hanafi fiqh which is the most prevalent in the world does its dead-level best to get out of this abrogation disaster, but it, too, on balance fails. Not from a lack of trying, but because the heads of fiqh don’t want to mess with each other.
In fact, most Muslims in this world do NOT follow any of the classical schools of fiqh and have slipped out of province of such desert tribalist mores to go and live peacefully and happily all over the world.
And before you insult me again, Dawoud, maybe you ought to consult the women around you before you try to sell me the sharia.
I have many Muslim women friends, and 90% of the world’s leading Islamic feminists are personal friends of mine, and I KNOW what goes on, and I don’t need to hear it from YOU, who make completely unbased assumptions about what I do and do not know.
That said, I am happy that you have found peace and happiness in Islam. Truly, most people who follow the religion do find that peace and happiness, because despite the abrogation by warlords and others with a lust for power down across centuries of time, most Muslims have the good sense to follow the religion outlined in the original Meccan verses and to take the others in the historical context to which they belong. Long since have they stopped operating law according to the hadith, even of al-Muslim and al-Bukhari, because recent scholarship has shown them that the bases of those hadith are quite obvious of “Iraqi origin” in a time that the “memories” coming out of Baghdad were being transmitted under duress.
Those people I congratulate. May they win the day, the decade, the century and the future for the core of Islam as Allah and the Prophet intended it, not as the warlords and “scholars” who screwed it up made it.