Vatican rebuffs Muslim outreach:
Quran cited as the main obstacle
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Vatican has rebuffed a massive outreach effort by 138 Muslim religious leaders and scholars who sent a letter to Pope Benedict XVI in an attempt to improve Christian-Muslim relations.
The letter, titled "A Common Word Between Us and You," which is also addressed to Christianity's other most powerful leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the heads of the Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist churches, seeks to recognize similarities between Islam and Christianity as a way of fostering mutual understanding and respect between the two religions.
It compares texts from the Bible and the Koran to argue that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Both believe in "the primacy of total love and devotion to God," and both value love of neighbor and a peaceful world.
In a belated response to the Oct. 13 letter, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in the Roman Curia, told the French Catholic daily La Croix, on Friday (Oct. 26) that a real theological debate with Muslims was difficult as they saw the Quran as the literal word of God. "Muslims do not accept that one can discuss the Quran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an absolute interpretation, it is difficult to discuss the contents of faith."
Another reading of his comments suggests that the Vatican does not want a dialogue with Muslims unless they change their belief in Quran as a revealed book. Like most Christian theologians, the Muslims have to believe that sacred scriptures are the work of divinely inspired humans.
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran's comments echo Pope Benedict's statement. In the summer of 2005, Pope Benedict devoted an annual weekend of study with former graduate students to Islam. During the meeting he reportedly expressed skepticism about Islam's openness to change given the conviction that the Quran is the unchangeable word of God.
Vatican response to the Muslim outreach is significant because in his Regensburg, Germany , speech last year Pope Benedict implied that Islam was violent and irrational religion. His remarks sparked bloody protests in the Muslim world and prompted the Muslim scholars to unite to seek better inter-faith understanding.
Pope Benedict recently re-established an office for interfaith dialogue that he had shuttered, but the Roman Catholic Church has taken hard line stance towards Islam since the death of John Paul II in 2005, supporting diplomacy but not theological discussion. Pope John Paul met with Muslims more than 60 times over the course of his pontificate to build bridges. In May 1999, Pope John Paul II received a delegation of Iraqi Muslims who presented him Islam's holy book, the Quran. The Pope bowed to the Quran and he kissed it as a sign of respect.
However, as a cardinal in the Holy See, the Pope Benedict was known to be skeptical of his predecessor John Paul II's pursuit of conversation. One of his earliest decisions as pope was to move Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, one of the Catholic Church's leading experts on Islam, and head of its council on inter-religious dialogue, away from the centre of influence in Rome, and send him to Egypt as papal nuncio.
Benedict has spoken publicly of Christianity as the cornerstone of Europe and against the admission of Turkey into the European Council. He had said Turkey should seek its future in an association of Islamic nations, not with the EU, which has Christian roots. However, during his visit to Turkey in November 2006, Benedict softened of his opposition to Turkey's long-sought membership in the European Union.
According to Marco Politi, the Vatican expert for the Italian daily La Repubblica: "Certainly he closes the door to an idea which was very dear to John Paul II - the idea that Christians, Jews and Muslims have the same God and have to pray together to the same God." Recently Pope Benedict promoted the old Latin Mass, which contains references to the conversion of the Jews. The Latin mass, largely abandoned after Vatican II, has long been hated by Jews for its emphasis on the Jewish role in turning Jesus over to the Romans for crucifixion and for its call for Jews to come into the church.
Reverting to the 29-page letter that was welcomed by various leaders and institutions, including the Baptist World Alliance and the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader to the world's 17 million Anglicans. Rev. Williams said: 'The letter's understanding of the unity of God provides an opportunity for Christians and Muslims to explore together their distinctive understandings and the ways in which these mould and shape our lives.'
The Evangelical Alliance in Britain welcomed the letter's call for peace and understanding, but also pointed to differences between the two faiths. Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali said that the letter seems to undercut the role of Jesus by emphasizing a part of the Quran that urges non-Muslims not to "ascribe any partners unto" God. The two faiths' understanding of the oneness of God is not the same, he told the Times of London. "One partner cannot dictate the terms on which dialogue must be conducted," he said. "This document seems to be on the verge of doing that."
The letter offers interpretations of both the Quran and the Bible on the love of God, love of neighbor and other spiritual concepts that are similar in Christianity and Islam. It pointed out that finding common ground between Muslims and Christians is not simply a matter for polite ecumenical dialogue between selected religious leaders and added that: Christianity and Islam are the largest and second largest religions in the world and in history.
The two faiths account for more than half the world's population, the letter notes. "Christians and Muslims reportedly make up over a third and over a fifth of humanity respectively. Together they make up more than 55% of the world's population, making the relationship between these two religious communities the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world."
"If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace."
The letter is signed by no fewer than 19 current and former grand ayatollahs and grand muftis from countries as diverse as Egypt, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Iraq. Signatories include Shaykh Sevki Omarbasic, Grand Mufti of Croatia; Dr Abdul Hamid Othman, adviser to the Prime Minister of Malaysia and Dr Ali Ozak, head of the endowment for Islamic scientific studies in Istanbul, Turkey. They also include Shaykh Dr Nuh Ali Salman Al-Qudah, Grand Mufti of Jordan and Shaykh Dr Ikrima Said Sabri, former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Imam of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
J
ordan's Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in Amman has been working for more than three years to prepare this letter. The Royal Institute was also responsible for the widely read Open Letter to the Pope following his controversial speech last year, which was signed by 38 high-level Muslim leaders.
The Jordanian Institute is hopeful that this historic letter would provide a common ground for the many organizations and individuals who are currently busy in interfaith dialogue all over the world.
Read also: A common word between Muslims & Christians
www.amperspective.com/html/muslim_outre ... tians.html
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com email: asghazali@gmail.com
Perception of Islam
November 28, 2007
To Muslim Girls, Scouts Offer a Chance to Fit In
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
MINNEAPOLIS — Sometimes when Asma Haidara, a 12-year-old Somali immigrant, wants to shop at Target or ride the Minneapolis light-rail system, she puts her Girl Scout sash over her everyday clothes, which usually include a long skirt worn over pants as well as a swirling head scarf.
She has discovered that the trademark green sash — with its American flag, troop number (3009) and colorful merit badges — reduces the number of glowering looks she draws from people otherwise bothered by her traditional Muslim dress.
“When you say you are a girl scout, they say, ‘Oh, my daughter is a girl scout, too,’ and then they don’t think of you as a person from another planet,” said Asma, a slight, serious girl with a bright smile. “They are more comfortable about sitting next to me on the train.”
Scattered Muslim communities across the United States are forming Girl Scout troops as a sort of assimilation tool to help girls who often feel alienated from the mainstream culture, and to give Muslims a neighborly aura. Boy Scout troops are organized with the same inspiration, but often the leap for girls is greater because many come from conservative cultures that frown upon their participating in public physical activity.
By teaching girls to roast hot dogs or fix a flat bicycle tire, Farheen Hakeem, one troop leader here, strives to help them escape the perception of many non-Muslims that they are different.
Scouting is a way of celebrating being American without being any less Muslim, Ms. Hakeem said.
“I don’t want them to see themselves as Muslim girls doing this ‘Look at us, we are trying to be American,’ ” she said. “No, no, no, they are American. It is not an issue of trying.”
The exact number of Muslim girl scouts is unknown, especially since, organizers say, most Muslim scouts belong to predominantly non-Muslim troops. Minneapolis is something of an exception, because a few years ago the Girl Scout Council here surveyed its shrinking enrollment and established special outreach coordinators for various minorities. Some 280 Muslim girls have joined about 10 predominantly Muslim troops here, said Hodan Farah, who until September was the Scout coordinator for the Islamic community.
Nationally, the Boy Scouts of America count about 1,500 youths in 100 clubs of either Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts sponsored by Islamic organizations, said Gregg Shields, a spokesman for the organization.
The Girl Scouts’ national organization, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., has become flexible in recent years about the old trappings associated with suburban, white, middle-class Christian scouting. Many troops have done away with traditions like saying grace before dinner at camp, and even the Girl Scout Promise can be retooled as needed.
“On my honor I will try to serve Allah and my country, to help people and live by the Girl Scout law,” eight girls from predominantly Muslim Troop 3119 in Minneapolis recited on one recent rainy Sunday before setting off for a cookout in a local park.
Some differences were readily apparent, of course. At the cookout, Ms. Hakeem, a former Green Party candidate for mayor, negotiated briefly with one sixth grader, Asha Gardaad, who was fasting for the holy month of Ramadan.
“If you break your fast, will your mother get mad at me?” Ms. Hakeem asked. Asha shook her head emphatically no.
The troop leader distributed supplies: hot dogs followed by s’mores for dessert. All was halal — that is, in adherence with the dietary requirements of Islamic law — with the hot dogs made of beef rather than pork.
It was Asha’s first s’more. “It’s delicious!” she exclaimed, licking sticky goop off her fingers as thunder crashed outside the park shelter with its roaring fire. “It’s a good way to break my fast!”
Women trying to organize Girl Scout troops in Muslim communities often face resistance from parents, particularly immigrants from an Islamic culture like that of Somalia, where tradition dictates that girls do housework after school.
In Nashville, where Ellisha King of Catholic Charities helps run a Girl Scout troop on a shoestring to assist Somali children with acculturation, most parents vetoed a camping trip, for example. They figured years spent as refugees in tents was enough camping, Ms. King recalled.
But a more common concern among parents is that the Girl Scouts will somehow dilute Islamic traditions.
“They are afraid you are going to become a blue-eyed, blond-haired Barbie doll,” said Asma, the girl who at times makes her sash everyday attire. Asma noted that her mother had asked whether she was joining some Christian cabal. “She was afraid that if we hang out with Americans too much,” the young immigrant said, “it will change our culture or who we are.”
Troop leaders win over parents by explaining that various activities incorporate Muslim traditions. In Minneapolis, for instance, Ms. Hakeem helped develop the Khadija Club, named for the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, which exposes older girls to the history of prominent Muslim women.
Suboohi Khan, 10, won her Bismallah (in the name of God) ribbon by writing 4 of God’s 99 names in Arabic calligraphy and decorating them, as well as memorizing the Koran’s last verse, used for protection against gossips and goblins. Otherwise, she said, her favorite badge involved learning “how to make body glitter and to see which colors look good on us” and “how to clean up our nails.”
Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. does not issue religious badges, but endorses those established by independent groups. Gulafshan K. Alavi started one such group, the Islamic Committee on Girl Scouting, in Stamford, Conn., in 1990. The demand for information about Muslim badges, Mrs. Alavi said, has grown to the point where this year she had the pamphlet listing her club’s requirements printed rather than sending out a photocopied flier. She also shipped up to 400 patches awarded to girls who study Ramadan traditions, she said, the most ever.
Predominantly Muslim troops do accept non-Muslim members. In Minneapolis, Alexis Eastlund, 10, said other friends sometimes pestered her about belonging to a mostly Muslim troop, although she has known many of its members half her life.
“I never really thought of them as different,” Alexis said. “But other girls think that it is weird that I am Christian and hang out with a bunch of Muslim girls. I explain to them that they are the same except they have to wear a hijab on their heads.”
Ms. Farah, who served as an outreach coordinator in Minneapolis and remains active in the Scouts, said she used the organization as a platform to try to ease tensions in the community. Scraps between African-American and Somali girls prompted her to start a research project demonstrating to them that their ancestors all came from roughly the same place.
Ms. Hakeem, the troop leader, said she tried to find projects to improve the girls’ self-esteem, like going through the Eddie Bauer catalog to cut out long skirts and other items that adhere to Islamic dress codes.
All in all, scouting gives the girls a rare sense of belonging, troop leaders and members say.
“It is kind of cool to say that you are a girl scout,” Asma said. “It is good to have something to associate yourself with other Americans. I don’t want people to think that I am a hermit, that I live in a cave, isolated and afraid of change. I like to be part of society. I like being able to say that I am a girl scout just like any other normal girl.”
To Muslim Girls, Scouts Offer a Chance to Fit In
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
MINNEAPOLIS — Sometimes when Asma Haidara, a 12-year-old Somali immigrant, wants to shop at Target or ride the Minneapolis light-rail system, she puts her Girl Scout sash over her everyday clothes, which usually include a long skirt worn over pants as well as a swirling head scarf.
She has discovered that the trademark green sash — with its American flag, troop number (3009) and colorful merit badges — reduces the number of glowering looks she draws from people otherwise bothered by her traditional Muslim dress.
“When you say you are a girl scout, they say, ‘Oh, my daughter is a girl scout, too,’ and then they don’t think of you as a person from another planet,” said Asma, a slight, serious girl with a bright smile. “They are more comfortable about sitting next to me on the train.”
Scattered Muslim communities across the United States are forming Girl Scout troops as a sort of assimilation tool to help girls who often feel alienated from the mainstream culture, and to give Muslims a neighborly aura. Boy Scout troops are organized with the same inspiration, but often the leap for girls is greater because many come from conservative cultures that frown upon their participating in public physical activity.
By teaching girls to roast hot dogs or fix a flat bicycle tire, Farheen Hakeem, one troop leader here, strives to help them escape the perception of many non-Muslims that they are different.
Scouting is a way of celebrating being American without being any less Muslim, Ms. Hakeem said.
“I don’t want them to see themselves as Muslim girls doing this ‘Look at us, we are trying to be American,’ ” she said. “No, no, no, they are American. It is not an issue of trying.”
The exact number of Muslim girl scouts is unknown, especially since, organizers say, most Muslim scouts belong to predominantly non-Muslim troops. Minneapolis is something of an exception, because a few years ago the Girl Scout Council here surveyed its shrinking enrollment and established special outreach coordinators for various minorities. Some 280 Muslim girls have joined about 10 predominantly Muslim troops here, said Hodan Farah, who until September was the Scout coordinator for the Islamic community.
Nationally, the Boy Scouts of America count about 1,500 youths in 100 clubs of either Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts sponsored by Islamic organizations, said Gregg Shields, a spokesman for the organization.
The Girl Scouts’ national organization, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., has become flexible in recent years about the old trappings associated with suburban, white, middle-class Christian scouting. Many troops have done away with traditions like saying grace before dinner at camp, and even the Girl Scout Promise can be retooled as needed.
“On my honor I will try to serve Allah and my country, to help people and live by the Girl Scout law,” eight girls from predominantly Muslim Troop 3119 in Minneapolis recited on one recent rainy Sunday before setting off for a cookout in a local park.
Some differences were readily apparent, of course. At the cookout, Ms. Hakeem, a former Green Party candidate for mayor, negotiated briefly with one sixth grader, Asha Gardaad, who was fasting for the holy month of Ramadan.
“If you break your fast, will your mother get mad at me?” Ms. Hakeem asked. Asha shook her head emphatically no.
The troop leader distributed supplies: hot dogs followed by s’mores for dessert. All was halal — that is, in adherence with the dietary requirements of Islamic law — with the hot dogs made of beef rather than pork.
It was Asha’s first s’more. “It’s delicious!” she exclaimed, licking sticky goop off her fingers as thunder crashed outside the park shelter with its roaring fire. “It’s a good way to break my fast!”
Women trying to organize Girl Scout troops in Muslim communities often face resistance from parents, particularly immigrants from an Islamic culture like that of Somalia, where tradition dictates that girls do housework after school.
In Nashville, where Ellisha King of Catholic Charities helps run a Girl Scout troop on a shoestring to assist Somali children with acculturation, most parents vetoed a camping trip, for example. They figured years spent as refugees in tents was enough camping, Ms. King recalled.
But a more common concern among parents is that the Girl Scouts will somehow dilute Islamic traditions.
“They are afraid you are going to become a blue-eyed, blond-haired Barbie doll,” said Asma, the girl who at times makes her sash everyday attire. Asma noted that her mother had asked whether she was joining some Christian cabal. “She was afraid that if we hang out with Americans too much,” the young immigrant said, “it will change our culture or who we are.”
Troop leaders win over parents by explaining that various activities incorporate Muslim traditions. In Minneapolis, for instance, Ms. Hakeem helped develop the Khadija Club, named for the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, which exposes older girls to the history of prominent Muslim women.
Suboohi Khan, 10, won her Bismallah (in the name of God) ribbon by writing 4 of God’s 99 names in Arabic calligraphy and decorating them, as well as memorizing the Koran’s last verse, used for protection against gossips and goblins. Otherwise, she said, her favorite badge involved learning “how to make body glitter and to see which colors look good on us” and “how to clean up our nails.”
Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. does not issue religious badges, but endorses those established by independent groups. Gulafshan K. Alavi started one such group, the Islamic Committee on Girl Scouting, in Stamford, Conn., in 1990. The demand for information about Muslim badges, Mrs. Alavi said, has grown to the point where this year she had the pamphlet listing her club’s requirements printed rather than sending out a photocopied flier. She also shipped up to 400 patches awarded to girls who study Ramadan traditions, she said, the most ever.
Predominantly Muslim troops do accept non-Muslim members. In Minneapolis, Alexis Eastlund, 10, said other friends sometimes pestered her about belonging to a mostly Muslim troop, although she has known many of its members half her life.
“I never really thought of them as different,” Alexis said. “But other girls think that it is weird that I am Christian and hang out with a bunch of Muslim girls. I explain to them that they are the same except they have to wear a hijab on their heads.”
Ms. Farah, who served as an outreach coordinator in Minneapolis and remains active in the Scouts, said she used the organization as a platform to try to ease tensions in the community. Scraps between African-American and Somali girls prompted her to start a research project demonstrating to them that their ancestors all came from roughly the same place.
Ms. Hakeem, the troop leader, said she tried to find projects to improve the girls’ self-esteem, like going through the Eddie Bauer catalog to cut out long skirts and other items that adhere to Islamic dress codes.
All in all, scouting gives the girls a rare sense of belonging, troop leaders and members say.
“It is kind of cool to say that you are a girl scout,” Asma said. “It is good to have something to associate yourself with other Americans. I don’t want people to think that I am a hermit, that I live in a cave, isolated and afraid of change. I like to be part of society. I like being able to say that I am a girl scout just like any other normal girl.”
Reform of Islam is Not Bush’s or the Pope’s business
Interfaith Dialogue Should Focus on Man not God
The Pope Rejects Muslim Outreach
By: Ali Baghdadi, Speech given at Northeastern University, Chicago, Interfaith Dialogue Day, Nov 13, 2007)
I was invited to talk to you about Islam. After serious consideration I declined. I am the wrong person. My views about Islam are not the norm. They are controversial. A few weeks ago I received an email, an assassination threat, from an Indian Muslim who will be traveling to the United States to accomplish his “holy” mission. My co-religionist, who works for the Arab American oil company in Saudi Arabia, accused me of being a “murtad”, a renegade. He was angered by an article in which I stated that Moses, according to archeology, a science, is a myth. He actually never existed. Muslims respect Moses as a prophet. My Indian Muslim “friend”, Z. T. Minhas, an insane and a coward, has not arrived yet. The U.S. intelligence, which intercepts our electronic, particularly international mail, has not reacted. Muslims, killing one another, is consistent with U.S. policy.
I was born in Islam. Documents of old torn up paper that I inherited claim that my family descends from Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life in the shadow of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which according to the Quran, Islam’s holy book, Prophet Muhammad had journeyed to, and then ascended to heaven, and returned home to Mecca in Arabia, all in one night. Some influential Muslim scholars say that the journey was only a dream. Others, with the Dark Ages mentality, insist that it was physical.
For twenty-three years, without any interruption, I listened to al-Azan, the Muslim call for prayer, five times a day. Prior to starting public school at age 7, I attended a kuttab, a madrasa, a private religious school, at age 4. The elderly teacher, a sheikh, a former officer in the Ottoman army, dressed in a long black robe and a white turban, was occasionally paid with a few loaves of bread, or eggs, or a live chicken. My family couldn’t afford it. I rewarded my sheikh with a daily kiss of his hand, and a prayer, asking God to give him a comfortable and everlasting life in heaven. At age nine or ten I was able to recite most of the chapters of the Quran from memory. I studied the Quran, Islamic thought, Islamic history, Islamic culture and Arabic as language at all educational levels. I also attended lectures on political Islam given underground by some controversial scholars.
Things, however, have changed. My association with Islam throughout my adulthood has become political and not religious. I don’t go to a mosque. As you can tell, I don’t fast. I have no intention of ever performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. I suspended giving al-Zakat, charity, when Bush has designated almost all Muslim charitable organizations that aided the orphans and widows in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as terrorists, and forced them to close.
I am not concerned about Islam. Islam has survived all foreign invasions. Bush’s crusade will be no exception. I am, however, concerned about Muslims, as well as Christians, in the Muslim World, who are targeted by the West, particularly the United States government, which possesses the most savage and destructive war machinery in human history.
Usually, I don’t defend religion, but people. Religion is faith not science. I insist that every individual has the right to believe or not to believe. Each man or woman has the right to accept a religion or to reject it. A person has the right also to choose to be an atheist. People must be judged by their deeds, and contributions, not their faith. I stand for justice, freedom, equality, peace, and prosperity for all. I support women and gay and lesbian rights.
The question that you may ask is why I am here? What changed my mind? The answer is the Pope. Yes, the Pope.
I was greatly disturbed by the Pope, who, citing the Quran as an obstacle, rebuffed a massive outreach effort by Muslims. Coming at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, three weeks ago, a 29-page letter was sent to leaders of major Christian dominations by 138 high-level Muslim leaders and scholars, representing 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. The letter appeals to religious tolerance, dialogue and understanding. It calls on Christian and Muslim religious leaders to work in unison for world peace, cooperation and prosperity. It emphasizes the similarities between Christianity and Islam as monotheistic religions. It speaks of the affinity between the Bible and the Quran. Both religions worship one God and call for the love of one’s neighbor.
Fortunately, the letter titled “a Common Word between Us and You”, was welcomed by various Christian leaders and institutions. It was well received by the Baptist World Alliance and the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Britain.
However, Pope Benedictine’s reaction was negative, and arrogant. It is also insulting to Christian Arabs, who are culturally Muslims. He chose to close the door to an idea which was very dear to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who, when the Quran was presented to him, bowed and kissed it.
Benedictine’s hostility to Muslims is nothing new. In his speech in Germany, last year, he spoke of Islam as a violent and irrational religion. He quoted Emperor Manuel II of the Byzantine Empire, who said that Muhammad had brought only "evil and inhuman" things.
The office of interfaith dialogue established by John Paul II, was shut down, but later, under pressure, was reinstated.
Dr. Karen Armstrong of Oxford, a former nun, who is amongst the most renowned theologians and has written numerous bestsellers on the great religions and their founders, disagrees:
“Certainly not. There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. The Qur'an forbids aggressive warfare and permits war only in self-defense; the moment the enemy sues for peace, the Qur'an insists that Muslims must lay down their arms and accept whatever terms are offered, even if they are disadvantageous. Later, Muslim law forbade Muslims to attack a country where Muslims were permitted to practice their faith freely; the killing of civilians was prohibited, as were the destruction of property and the use of fire in warfare.”
The Vatican says: "Muslims do not accept that one can discuss the Quran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an absolute interpretation, it is difficult to discuss the contents of faith."
As a precondition for a dialogue, the Vatican demands that Muslims change their belief that the Quran is the word of God.
I say with a great certainty that the Pope’s action and conduct are not inspired by God, on whose behalf, “his holiness” speaks. It is dictated by politics, racism, ignorance and hatred. It is a part of the cruel crusade that George W. Bush, has declared against Muslims. Since his ascension to the papal throne, Benedictine, a former Hitler youth, has been putting the papacy, as well as Christianity, in the service of the U.S. empire.
Muslims are not asking for a theological dialogue. They are not trying to convince anyone that the Quran was dictated by God himself. Unlike Christians who are asking Jews to come to the Church, Muslims are not calling on Christians to come to the Mosque. Muslims are not demanding that Christians abandon the trinity and recognize Jesus only as a prophet. Though they don’t believe in the crucifixion and vindicate Jews from murdering Jesus, Muslims don’t see any reason for Christians to bring down the cross and raise up the crescent.
Muslims and non-Muslims ought to focus attention on common goals that are more important to humanity than theology, such as world peace, justice, freedom, equality, love, understanding, respect for one another, tolerance, cooperation, as well as mother earth and the environment.
In Muslim lands, Muslims, Christians and Jews have lived as neighbors for almost fifteen hundred years. They didn’t dialogue. They didn’t debate. They lived in peace and tranquility. The fact that Christianity and Judaism continued to exist alongside Muslims, who were and still are the majority, speaks of Muslim tolerance. The fact that Jews throughout the centuries fled Christian lands and took refuge in Muslim countries, demonstrates, beyond a doubt, Muslims’ respect of non-Muslims’ beliefs.
I do admit that the reform of Islam is urgently needed. But this is not the business of Jews or Christians. It is a Muslim problem. It requires a Muslim solution. It must be addressed and dealt with as a Muslim concern. Christians and Jews have their own enormous problems to acknowledge and resolve.
George W. Bush has been pushing for a new Islam that welcomes occupiers as liberators and labels oppression as democracy. He is promoting an Islam that requires his adherents to turn the other cheek to U.S. and Israeli soldiers, who are ordered to kill, maim, torture, burn, and destroy. He has been working hard to restrict Islam to spirituality, only to issues that deal with God but not man. No jihad! Jihad is not suicide, which is a great sin in Islam, but a struggle against injustice, oppression, occupation and aggression. Jihad is a legitimate resistance to daily murder of men, women and children. Bush’s Islam calls on Muslims to capitulate, kneel down in submission, not the Lord of the Universe, but to the satanic” god” who resides in the White House. Muslims’ answer came clear, brief and swift, “hell, no.”
Hitler, who proclaimed himself a “Christian” and a fighter for “his Lord and Savior”, didn’t claim to have spoken to God. George W. Bush did.
"God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”
However, God warned Bush, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." Here, Bush’s destructive god is right. “The mother of all battles” will continue until all foreign troops return home.
His “obedience” to his killer god has resulted in the murder of over a million Iraqis. Iraqi death due to war and economic sanctions are three and a half million. Iraqi orphans number five million and widows are three million. Six million people fled Iraq or were displaced. Museums, libraries and educational institutions were bombed and ransacked. Their contents were stolen or burned. Thousands of scholars and scientists were assassinated. Seven thousand years of human civilization is leveled to the ground. The only ministry building that was left standing is the Ministry of Oil. What a coincidence!
What about Western achievements the Pope attempts to protect? The Church cannot take credit for the awakening, enlightenment, progress, and freedoms men and women enjoy in the West today. On the contrary, the Church resisted and continues to resist reform and change until this very moment.
Muslim leaders who enjoy the support and blessing of the United States are the obstacle for social change and development. The Saudi dynasty continues to forbid women from driving, and deny Saudi citizens the right to vote.
However, Islamic reform is taking place slowly but steadily. Polygamy was outlawed in Tunisia. Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, a former head of the Sudanese National Assembly, one of the most influential thinkers that I had the honor to meet several times, issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, which gives the right to Muslim females to marry non-Muslims, and for women to lead Muslim prayers.
Revolutionary change is taking place in Iran, U.S. enemy number one. A divorced woman has the property right to a half of the wealth her husband amassed while being married. Sex change is legal. The surgery is paid for by the state.
I must remind you that four Muslim countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia had women as heads of state.
I regret that the Pope’s stand has forced me to end my public silence on issues pertaining to religion, and make comparison between faiths.
The Pope wants Muslims to tailor Islam to fit Judeo-Christians values. However, in terms of peace, universal brotherhood, equality, freedom, logic and simplicity, Islam is far more rational and progressive than Christianity and Judaism. No Vatican. No sainthood. No priesthood. No present day miracles. No spiritual healing of the sick. Those who may claim to have the power of healing, end in a mental institution or a jail. The Old Testament, an integral part of the Bible, as described by Christian and Jewish researchers and historians, is blood and sex. The God of Israel, Jehovah, orders his “Chosen People”, to destroy burn, kill, enslave, and rape virgins of the goyem, non-Jews.
Furthermore, Islam’s religious affairs are not a hierarchy for clerics. Islamic affairs are not confined to graduates from al-Azhar University or other Islamic institutions. As a matter of fact, the greatest Muslim scholars are intellectuals, such as writers, physicians, engineers, lawyers, and other professionals.
According to an interpretation the Old Testament, Noah's three sons were the founders of the populations of the three known continents, Japheth/Europe, Shem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem> /Asia, and Ham/Africa. Ham’s children had been "blackened" by sin and a curse. Ham made fun of his lying down, drunk and naked father. Noah’s two other sons who covered him were blessed. Their descendents were not black.
In Islam black is not a curse, but a beautiful color in the rainbow of the human race. Muhammad declared that all men are equal. The Quran says, “O mankind! We (God) created ye from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made ye into nations and tribes, that ye may know one another, (not that ye may despise each other). Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most Righteous of you.” Chapter 49, verse 13.
Islam has no confession and no intermediary. A man, a woman or a child has direct and private line of communication with God, free of charge, anytime and anywhere. In the Quran, God stresses that He is close to all. He responds if he is called.
In Islam, no one represents God on earth. No one is infallible. Muhammad, Jesus, Moses and all prophets are not divine, but humans.
All efforts and promises for a better life made by the Vatican and other Christian groups to convince Muslims throughout the world to convert have failed. What disturbs Christian missionaries is the fact that Islam today is the fastest growing religion. According to the Seattle Times, Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group. Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she's also been a Muslim.
To multiply the number of his constituents, Benedictine, in his visit to Latin America, last year, demanded from its poverty stricken natives not to use condoms. When it comes to sex, what or how, in the privacy of their bedroom, has always been the job of a married couple, not Muslim clergy.
The Quran reveres Bible prophets, not insults them. The Old Testament presents Abraham as a pimp. He gave his wife Sarah to the Pharaoh to sleep with and enjoy. In return, the Pharaoh granted him slaves, cattle, silver and gold. Abraham repeated the same trade with one of the kings of Jordan. What a bargain.
Read the Bible. I can go on and on and on.
Religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity which were written with fire and blood, have brought more evil and less good to humanity throughout history. Interfaith dialogue should not debate theology. It should work to end death, destruction and misery. Dialogue should concentrate on building bridges of good will and coexistence. It should put less emphasis on God and more on fellow man.
Muslims are condemned for their rejection to Western values. The question is why should they? They have their own values that were developed over seven thousand years of civilization. The decision to drop the two atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki took, according to President Truman, a snap of a finger. Non-whites’ life is worthless. A couple of weeks ago, in Israel, actually occupied Palestine, a young woman was savagely beaten by five of her fellow students of the Torah, because she refused to move to the back of the bus. Muslim men promptly evacuate their seats for women, anytime and anywhere. Muhammad assured his followers that Paradise is underneath the feet of mothers and entry is allowed only by their blessings and approval. Those values should remain.
Islamofascism, a new word coined by Norman Podhoretz, a former editor of Commentary Jewish magazine, the home of the neoconservatives. Bush loves the new word and sings it like a puppet, to drum up American support against Muslims, and to wage a new Zionist-white supremacist war against Iran, which insists on using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The October 22nd to 26th Islamofascism Awareness Week organized by the Jewish lobby and the neo conservatives, on 100 campuses, turned out to be a great disaster. Students protested and heckled the speakers. David Horowitz, author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... edirect=no> ), Jump to: navigation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unholy_All ... column-one> , search <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unholy_All ... earchInput>
Who received more than $15 million in handouts from ultra conservative foundations, was forced to flee. In the sixties, he was a Marxist and a member of the new left. His Jewish parents were long-standing members of the Communist Party. Horowitz later discovered that leftism doesn’t pay. The Zionist propagandist describes so-called Islam as the moral and historical equivalent of Nazism. Margaret Kimberley, a writer and a senior columnist, together with a group of influential anti-fascist activists, are calling for a counter-event: "Christian/Jewish Fascism Awareness Week."
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has replaced communism as an imaginary enemy, and thus justified the astronomical military spending in service of big business. It does not take a nuclear or a space scientist to conclude that the 911 tragedy was a home-made conspiracy. It is naïve to believe that a man with a turban on his head and a cane in his hand hiding eleven thousand miles away in the caves of Tora Boro is responsible for such an almost impossible mission. 51% of the American people question the official story. Evidence points a finger at Bush, Cheney, their lieutenants, the Israeli Mossad and certain segments in U.S. intelligence. We must demand the creation of an independent commission of scholars, scientists, engineers, and experts on demolition and intelligence to find the truth and bring the criminals to justice.
The watch list of suspected terrorists, compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has swelled to over 755,000. Certainly, if you oppose war and stand against genocide, regardless of your religion, or nationality, you can be sure that you are on this list. Ironically, it mainly contains scholars, academics, writers, journalists, artists, and anti-war activists.
What about Islamic “radicalism”?
Fifty years ago, in most Arab countries, one could seldom see a Muslim girl or a woman covering her hair. Today, one can rarely encounter a Muslim female without a headscarf. I must admit, all are beautiful, with or without a cover. However, I do hate the burqa, a veil, which covers the face. It is not a religious requirement. Those who impose it, as well as the women who accept it, bring shame and disgrace to the overwhelming majority of Muslims.
Muslims females wear the scarf mostly by choice. It is mainly a sign of political protest. It is a rejection to Western values, Western culture, Western domination, Western hypocrisy and Western occupation. It is a stand against theft of resources, ethnic cleansing, and genocide to which Muslims are subjected.
Muhammad said, “If you see evil, your duty is to stop it by your hand. If you cannot, you must oppose it by your mouth. But if you cannot, you should undo it in your heart.” In Muslim lands, Muslim fighters oppose U.S. and Israeli tanks and bombers with gun, and sometimes by an explosive belt. In the Quran, God says, “Think not that those who fall while resisting aggression will ever die. They are alive, in the company of their Lord.” Muslims believe that that is the highest form of martyrdom and the greatest honor.
Finally, I have been a U.S. citizen for over forty years. My country of origin, Palestine, is occupied, and my country men, women and children are killed daily. The United States has become my second home. I am grateful. Two of my children served in the U.S. military. Both took the oath to defend their country. Both were honorably discharged.
Regardless of my convictions and beliefs, Islam has formed my identity. It remains a source of my personal behavior and conduct. I will not abandon my heritage, my culture, my roots, or my people. The F.B.I. visited me twice, a year ago. I refuse to be intimidated. As long as the crusade against Muslims continues, as long as there is war on earth, and as long as there is hunger and disease, the least I must do is to not be in the silent majority.
Interfaith Dialogue Should Focus on Man not God
The Pope Rejects Muslim Outreach
By: Ali Baghdadi, Speech given at Northeastern University, Chicago, Interfaith Dialogue Day, Nov 13, 2007)
I was invited to talk to you about Islam. After serious consideration I declined. I am the wrong person. My views about Islam are not the norm. They are controversial. A few weeks ago I received an email, an assassination threat, from an Indian Muslim who will be traveling to the United States to accomplish his “holy” mission. My co-religionist, who works for the Arab American oil company in Saudi Arabia, accused me of being a “murtad”, a renegade. He was angered by an article in which I stated that Moses, according to archeology, a science, is a myth. He actually never existed. Muslims respect Moses as a prophet. My Indian Muslim “friend”, Z. T. Minhas, an insane and a coward, has not arrived yet. The U.S. intelligence, which intercepts our electronic, particularly international mail, has not reacted. Muslims, killing one another, is consistent with U.S. policy.
I was born in Islam. Documents of old torn up paper that I inherited claim that my family descends from Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life in the shadow of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which according to the Quran, Islam’s holy book, Prophet Muhammad had journeyed to, and then ascended to heaven, and returned home to Mecca in Arabia, all in one night. Some influential Muslim scholars say that the journey was only a dream. Others, with the Dark Ages mentality, insist that it was physical.
For twenty-three years, without any interruption, I listened to al-Azan, the Muslim call for prayer, five times a day. Prior to starting public school at age 7, I attended a kuttab, a madrasa, a private religious school, at age 4. The elderly teacher, a sheikh, a former officer in the Ottoman army, dressed in a long black robe and a white turban, was occasionally paid with a few loaves of bread, or eggs, or a live chicken. My family couldn’t afford it. I rewarded my sheikh with a daily kiss of his hand, and a prayer, asking God to give him a comfortable and everlasting life in heaven. At age nine or ten I was able to recite most of the chapters of the Quran from memory. I studied the Quran, Islamic thought, Islamic history, Islamic culture and Arabic as language at all educational levels. I also attended lectures on political Islam given underground by some controversial scholars.
Things, however, have changed. My association with Islam throughout my adulthood has become political and not religious. I don’t go to a mosque. As you can tell, I don’t fast. I have no intention of ever performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. I suspended giving al-Zakat, charity, when Bush has designated almost all Muslim charitable organizations that aided the orphans and widows in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as terrorists, and forced them to close.
I am not concerned about Islam. Islam has survived all foreign invasions. Bush’s crusade will be no exception. I am, however, concerned about Muslims, as well as Christians, in the Muslim World, who are targeted by the West, particularly the United States government, which possesses the most savage and destructive war machinery in human history.
Usually, I don’t defend religion, but people. Religion is faith not science. I insist that every individual has the right to believe or not to believe. Each man or woman has the right to accept a religion or to reject it. A person has the right also to choose to be an atheist. People must be judged by their deeds, and contributions, not their faith. I stand for justice, freedom, equality, peace, and prosperity for all. I support women and gay and lesbian rights.
The question that you may ask is why I am here? What changed my mind? The answer is the Pope. Yes, the Pope.
I was greatly disturbed by the Pope, who, citing the Quran as an obstacle, rebuffed a massive outreach effort by Muslims. Coming at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, three weeks ago, a 29-page letter was sent to leaders of major Christian dominations by 138 high-level Muslim leaders and scholars, representing 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. The letter appeals to religious tolerance, dialogue and understanding. It calls on Christian and Muslim religious leaders to work in unison for world peace, cooperation and prosperity. It emphasizes the similarities between Christianity and Islam as monotheistic religions. It speaks of the affinity between the Bible and the Quran. Both religions worship one God and call for the love of one’s neighbor.
Fortunately, the letter titled “a Common Word between Us and You”, was welcomed by various Christian leaders and institutions. It was well received by the Baptist World Alliance and the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Britain.
However, Pope Benedictine’s reaction was negative, and arrogant. It is also insulting to Christian Arabs, who are culturally Muslims. He chose to close the door to an idea which was very dear to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who, when the Quran was presented to him, bowed and kissed it.
Benedictine’s hostility to Muslims is nothing new. In his speech in Germany, last year, he spoke of Islam as a violent and irrational religion. He quoted Emperor Manuel II of the Byzantine Empire, who said that Muhammad had brought only "evil and inhuman" things.
The office of interfaith dialogue established by John Paul II, was shut down, but later, under pressure, was reinstated.
Dr. Karen Armstrong of Oxford, a former nun, who is amongst the most renowned theologians and has written numerous bestsellers on the great religions and their founders, disagrees:
“Certainly not. There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. The Qur'an forbids aggressive warfare and permits war only in self-defense; the moment the enemy sues for peace, the Qur'an insists that Muslims must lay down their arms and accept whatever terms are offered, even if they are disadvantageous. Later, Muslim law forbade Muslims to attack a country where Muslims were permitted to practice their faith freely; the killing of civilians was prohibited, as were the destruction of property and the use of fire in warfare.”
The Vatican says: "Muslims do not accept that one can discuss the Quran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an absolute interpretation, it is difficult to discuss the contents of faith."
As a precondition for a dialogue, the Vatican demands that Muslims change their belief that the Quran is the word of God.
I say with a great certainty that the Pope’s action and conduct are not inspired by God, on whose behalf, “his holiness” speaks. It is dictated by politics, racism, ignorance and hatred. It is a part of the cruel crusade that George W. Bush, has declared against Muslims. Since his ascension to the papal throne, Benedictine, a former Hitler youth, has been putting the papacy, as well as Christianity, in the service of the U.S. empire.
Muslims are not asking for a theological dialogue. They are not trying to convince anyone that the Quran was dictated by God himself. Unlike Christians who are asking Jews to come to the Church, Muslims are not calling on Christians to come to the Mosque. Muslims are not demanding that Christians abandon the trinity and recognize Jesus only as a prophet. Though they don’t believe in the crucifixion and vindicate Jews from murdering Jesus, Muslims don’t see any reason for Christians to bring down the cross and raise up the crescent.
Muslims and non-Muslims ought to focus attention on common goals that are more important to humanity than theology, such as world peace, justice, freedom, equality, love, understanding, respect for one another, tolerance, cooperation, as well as mother earth and the environment.
In Muslim lands, Muslims, Christians and Jews have lived as neighbors for almost fifteen hundred years. They didn’t dialogue. They didn’t debate. They lived in peace and tranquility. The fact that Christianity and Judaism continued to exist alongside Muslims, who were and still are the majority, speaks of Muslim tolerance. The fact that Jews throughout the centuries fled Christian lands and took refuge in Muslim countries, demonstrates, beyond a doubt, Muslims’ respect of non-Muslims’ beliefs.
I do admit that the reform of Islam is urgently needed. But this is not the business of Jews or Christians. It is a Muslim problem. It requires a Muslim solution. It must be addressed and dealt with as a Muslim concern. Christians and Jews have their own enormous problems to acknowledge and resolve.
George W. Bush has been pushing for a new Islam that welcomes occupiers as liberators and labels oppression as democracy. He is promoting an Islam that requires his adherents to turn the other cheek to U.S. and Israeli soldiers, who are ordered to kill, maim, torture, burn, and destroy. He has been working hard to restrict Islam to spirituality, only to issues that deal with God but not man. No jihad! Jihad is not suicide, which is a great sin in Islam, but a struggle against injustice, oppression, occupation and aggression. Jihad is a legitimate resistance to daily murder of men, women and children. Bush’s Islam calls on Muslims to capitulate, kneel down in submission, not the Lord of the Universe, but to the satanic” god” who resides in the White House. Muslims’ answer came clear, brief and swift, “hell, no.”
Hitler, who proclaimed himself a “Christian” and a fighter for “his Lord and Savior”, didn’t claim to have spoken to God. George W. Bush did.
"God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”
However, God warned Bush, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." Here, Bush’s destructive god is right. “The mother of all battles” will continue until all foreign troops return home.
His “obedience” to his killer god has resulted in the murder of over a million Iraqis. Iraqi death due to war and economic sanctions are three and a half million. Iraqi orphans number five million and widows are three million. Six million people fled Iraq or were displaced. Museums, libraries and educational institutions were bombed and ransacked. Their contents were stolen or burned. Thousands of scholars and scientists were assassinated. Seven thousand years of human civilization is leveled to the ground. The only ministry building that was left standing is the Ministry of Oil. What a coincidence!
What about Western achievements the Pope attempts to protect? The Church cannot take credit for the awakening, enlightenment, progress, and freedoms men and women enjoy in the West today. On the contrary, the Church resisted and continues to resist reform and change until this very moment.
Muslim leaders who enjoy the support and blessing of the United States are the obstacle for social change and development. The Saudi dynasty continues to forbid women from driving, and deny Saudi citizens the right to vote.
However, Islamic reform is taking place slowly but steadily. Polygamy was outlawed in Tunisia. Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, a former head of the Sudanese National Assembly, one of the most influential thinkers that I had the honor to meet several times, issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, which gives the right to Muslim females to marry non-Muslims, and for women to lead Muslim prayers.
Revolutionary change is taking place in Iran, U.S. enemy number one. A divorced woman has the property right to a half of the wealth her husband amassed while being married. Sex change is legal. The surgery is paid for by the state.
I must remind you that four Muslim countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia had women as heads of state.
I regret that the Pope’s stand has forced me to end my public silence on issues pertaining to religion, and make comparison between faiths.
The Pope wants Muslims to tailor Islam to fit Judeo-Christians values. However, in terms of peace, universal brotherhood, equality, freedom, logic and simplicity, Islam is far more rational and progressive than Christianity and Judaism. No Vatican. No sainthood. No priesthood. No present day miracles. No spiritual healing of the sick. Those who may claim to have the power of healing, end in a mental institution or a jail. The Old Testament, an integral part of the Bible, as described by Christian and Jewish researchers and historians, is blood and sex. The God of Israel, Jehovah, orders his “Chosen People”, to destroy burn, kill, enslave, and rape virgins of the goyem, non-Jews.
Furthermore, Islam’s religious affairs are not a hierarchy for clerics. Islamic affairs are not confined to graduates from al-Azhar University or other Islamic institutions. As a matter of fact, the greatest Muslim scholars are intellectuals, such as writers, physicians, engineers, lawyers, and other professionals.
According to an interpretation the Old Testament, Noah's three sons were the founders of the populations of the three known continents, Japheth/Europe, Shem <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem> /Asia, and Ham/Africa. Ham’s children had been "blackened" by sin and a curse. Ham made fun of his lying down, drunk and naked father. Noah’s two other sons who covered him were blessed. Their descendents were not black.
In Islam black is not a curse, but a beautiful color in the rainbow of the human race. Muhammad declared that all men are equal. The Quran says, “O mankind! We (God) created ye from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made ye into nations and tribes, that ye may know one another, (not that ye may despise each other). Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most Righteous of you.” Chapter 49, verse 13.
Islam has no confession and no intermediary. A man, a woman or a child has direct and private line of communication with God, free of charge, anytime and anywhere. In the Quran, God stresses that He is close to all. He responds if he is called.
In Islam, no one represents God on earth. No one is infallible. Muhammad, Jesus, Moses and all prophets are not divine, but humans.
All efforts and promises for a better life made by the Vatican and other Christian groups to convince Muslims throughout the world to convert have failed. What disturbs Christian missionaries is the fact that Islam today is the fastest growing religion. According to the Seattle Times, Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group. Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she's ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she's also been a Muslim.
To multiply the number of his constituents, Benedictine, in his visit to Latin America, last year, demanded from its poverty stricken natives not to use condoms. When it comes to sex, what or how, in the privacy of their bedroom, has always been the job of a married couple, not Muslim clergy.
The Quran reveres Bible prophets, not insults them. The Old Testament presents Abraham as a pimp. He gave his wife Sarah to the Pharaoh to sleep with and enjoy. In return, the Pharaoh granted him slaves, cattle, silver and gold. Abraham repeated the same trade with one of the kings of Jordan. What a bargain.
Read the Bible. I can go on and on and on.
Religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity which were written with fire and blood, have brought more evil and less good to humanity throughout history. Interfaith dialogue should not debate theology. It should work to end death, destruction and misery. Dialogue should concentrate on building bridges of good will and coexistence. It should put less emphasis on God and more on fellow man.
Muslims are condemned for their rejection to Western values. The question is why should they? They have their own values that were developed over seven thousand years of civilization. The decision to drop the two atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki took, according to President Truman, a snap of a finger. Non-whites’ life is worthless. A couple of weeks ago, in Israel, actually occupied Palestine, a young woman was savagely beaten by five of her fellow students of the Torah, because she refused to move to the back of the bus. Muslim men promptly evacuate their seats for women, anytime and anywhere. Muhammad assured his followers that Paradise is underneath the feet of mothers and entry is allowed only by their blessings and approval. Those values should remain.
Islamofascism, a new word coined by Norman Podhoretz, a former editor of Commentary Jewish magazine, the home of the neoconservatives. Bush loves the new word and sings it like a puppet, to drum up American support against Muslims, and to wage a new Zionist-white supremacist war against Iran, which insists on using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The October 22nd to 26th Islamofascism Awareness Week organized by the Jewish lobby and the neo conservatives, on 100 campuses, turned out to be a great disaster. Students protested and heckled the speakers. David Horowitz, author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... edirect=no> ), Jump to: navigation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unholy_All ... column-one> , search <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unholy_All ... earchInput>
Who received more than $15 million in handouts from ultra conservative foundations, was forced to flee. In the sixties, he was a Marxist and a member of the new left. His Jewish parents were long-standing members of the Communist Party. Horowitz later discovered that leftism doesn’t pay. The Zionist propagandist describes so-called Islam as the moral and historical equivalent of Nazism. Margaret Kimberley, a writer and a senior columnist, together with a group of influential anti-fascist activists, are calling for a counter-event: "Christian/Jewish Fascism Awareness Week."
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has replaced communism as an imaginary enemy, and thus justified the astronomical military spending in service of big business. It does not take a nuclear or a space scientist to conclude that the 911 tragedy was a home-made conspiracy. It is naïve to believe that a man with a turban on his head and a cane in his hand hiding eleven thousand miles away in the caves of Tora Boro is responsible for such an almost impossible mission. 51% of the American people question the official story. Evidence points a finger at Bush, Cheney, their lieutenants, the Israeli Mossad and certain segments in U.S. intelligence. We must demand the creation of an independent commission of scholars, scientists, engineers, and experts on demolition and intelligence to find the truth and bring the criminals to justice.
The watch list of suspected terrorists, compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has swelled to over 755,000. Certainly, if you oppose war and stand against genocide, regardless of your religion, or nationality, you can be sure that you are on this list. Ironically, it mainly contains scholars, academics, writers, journalists, artists, and anti-war activists.
What about Islamic “radicalism”?
Fifty years ago, in most Arab countries, one could seldom see a Muslim girl or a woman covering her hair. Today, one can rarely encounter a Muslim female without a headscarf. I must admit, all are beautiful, with or without a cover. However, I do hate the burqa, a veil, which covers the face. It is not a religious requirement. Those who impose it, as well as the women who accept it, bring shame and disgrace to the overwhelming majority of Muslims.
Muslims females wear the scarf mostly by choice. It is mainly a sign of political protest. It is a rejection to Western values, Western culture, Western domination, Western hypocrisy and Western occupation. It is a stand against theft of resources, ethnic cleansing, and genocide to which Muslims are subjected.
Muhammad said, “If you see evil, your duty is to stop it by your hand. If you cannot, you must oppose it by your mouth. But if you cannot, you should undo it in your heart.” In Muslim lands, Muslim fighters oppose U.S. and Israeli tanks and bombers with gun, and sometimes by an explosive belt. In the Quran, God says, “Think not that those who fall while resisting aggression will ever die. They are alive, in the company of their Lord.” Muslims believe that that is the highest form of martyrdom and the greatest honor.
Finally, I have been a U.S. citizen for over forty years. My country of origin, Palestine, is occupied, and my country men, women and children are killed daily. The United States has become my second home. I am grateful. Two of my children served in the U.S. military. Both took the oath to defend their country. Both were honorably discharged.
Regardless of my convictions and beliefs, Islam has formed my identity. It remains a source of my personal behavior and conduct. I will not abandon my heritage, my culture, my roots, or my people. The F.B.I. visited me twice, a year ago. I refuse to be intimidated. As long as the crusade against Muslims continues, as long as there is war on earth, and as long as there is hunger and disease, the least I must do is to not be in the silent majority.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Muslim Dirty Laundry
Eboo Patel
The Faith Divide
When I wrote an article for this website a few months ago called On
Muslim Antisemitism, a Muslim friend of mine remarked, "What you say is
true, but why do you have to air our dirty laundry?"
I stared at her in disbelief. Did she really think that the world was
unaware of our dirty laundry?
The sad truth is that too many people think it's the only kind of
laundry Muslims have.
And one of the reasons for this is because mainstream Muslims aren't
talking openly about the problem.
My wife was at a dinner party last week and someone asked about the
English woman in the Sudan who, at the urging of her Muslim students,
named the class teddy bear Muhammad and received jail time and death
threats for her efforts.
My wife's friend asked: "Does Islam really say that she should be
punished?"
"I don't want to talk about it," my wife responded.
I understand why my wife took a pass. Mainstream Muslims are tired of
being put on the defensive, of only being asked about their religion in
relation to violence or the oppression of women, as if that's all that
Islam has ever or could ever produce.
But her friend still wanted an answer to her question. And if my wife
wasn't going to provide one, then she would have to find someone who
would.
In this case, it was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote an OpEd in The New York
Times effectively stating that Islam requires Muslims to severely punish
teachers who name teddy bears Muhammad (Sudan), rape victims who are
accused of being in the presence of a man who is not a family member
(Saudi Arabia) and female writers who criticize Islam (India).
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is right on two important points. The first is that all
of these punishments are appalling and brutal. The second is that
moderate Muslims should be louder about these matters. There are some
things that are true even if Ayaan Hirsi Ali believes them.
And once moderate Muslims are louder, not in the form of angry
indignation but as eloquent articulators of the depth and meaning of
their faith, then people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali will suddenly find
themselves consigned to the place where they should have been all along:
the margins, where they can froth at the mouth all they want.
Hirsi Ali and people like her are widely-read because they offer a
theory of the problem: they tell the world a convincing story of why
Muslims keep popping up on the front pages of newspapers in negative
articles. Hirsi Ali's theory, and the theory of other Islamophobes, is
that Muslims have dirty laundry because the body and soul of Islam are
dirty.
Hirsi Ali ends her Times OpEd with a subtle but scathing indictment of
Islam - that it is a tradition opposed to conscience and compassion.
"When a "moderate" Muslim's sense of compassion and conscience collides
with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion," she
writes.
I wonder if my wife's dinner part friend thinks that's true. As far as I
know, it's the only theory that she's heard.
A lesson for mainstream Muslims: Whenever you don't offer a theory of
the problem, someone else will. When there is a vacuum of information
about a hot topic and you don't fill it, other people will aggressively
move in.
Too many mainstream Muslims believe they have only two options in the
face of the current discourse on Islam: angry indignation or stony
silence.
I believe there is a third way. It is what University of Michigan
Professor Sherman Jackson, one of America's leading scholars of Islam,
calls 'Islamic literacy'.
Here is how someone literate in Islam, Muslim or not, might have
responded to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's contention that Islam and compassionate
conscience are mutually exclusive. First, by saying that there should be
no excuses made for those who sought the punishments in any of the three
cases she named. They were indeed brutal, and as such, were in conflict
with the core ethos of Islam - compassion and mercy, which are enshrined
both in the Muslim tradition and in the human conscience.
Compassion and mercy are the two most repeated qualities of God in
Islam, best illustrated by the most common Muslim prayer, "Bismillah
Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim" - In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the
most Merciful. As they are qualities of God, they are attributes that
Muslims are required to emulate.
Compassion and mercy are also enshrined in the first lesson that
classical Muslim scholars would teach their students, what came to be
known as the Tradition of Primacy in Islam: "If you are merciful to
those on Earth, then He who is in Heaven will be merciful to you."
Islam, like other traditions, has internal contradictions. The Qur'an
and Muslim law say different things in different places. That is
precisely why compassion and mercy play such an important role in Muslim
interpretation and practice. When in doubt about how to deal with a
particular situation, a Muslim should always be guided by compassion and
mercy.
Compassion and mercy are given to human beings by God - they are the
content of our conscience. Dr. Umar Abdallah, the most senior scholar in
Western Islam, writes in one of the most important essays in
contemporary Islam that mercy is the central quality that God "stamped"
on His creation.
Fazlur Rahman, amongst the most widely-respected Muslim scholars of the
twentieth century (and Dr. Umar's intellectual mentor), wrote that the
single most important term in the Qur'an is "taqwa", which translates
roughly as "God-consciousness" or "inner torch" or "conscience."
Khaled Abou El Fadl, one of America's most important scholars of Islamic
thought and law, believes that people are required to bring their
God-given compassion to the reading of the text of the Qur'an. "The text
will morally enrich the reader, but only if the reader will morally
enrich the text.," he writes in a remarkable essay called The Place of
Tolerance in Islam.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, the most prominent Muslim scholar and preacher in
the West, wrote in a piece for this website, "Unfortunately, millions of
Muslims all over the globe are humiliated and betrayed by the ignorance
and lack of basic humanity that a small minority of Muslims too often
exhibits."
He continued, "True religion - as well as the highest secular values -
demands we ... attempt to understand each other, recognize our real
differences, and display mutual respect."
That is a statement of both liberation and guidance for mainstream
Muslims. Muslims who speak only of brutality and severity and punishment
are not just betraying mainstream Muslims, they are violating our
tradition. They do not speak for us. We are not required to defend them.
To mainstream Muslims everywhere: When we act and speak with compassion
and conviction and knowledge, even about our 'dirty laundry', we are
following the straight path of our faith, educating those with genuine
questions about Islam, marginalizing people with destructive agendas,
and doing our part to build a world based on understanding and respect.
Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth
Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that promotes interfaith
cooperation. His blog, The Faith Divide, explores what drives faiths
apart and what brings them together.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
------
The New York Times
December 7, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Islam's Silent Moderates
By AYAAN HIRSI ALI
The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of
them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a
matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day.
(Koran 24:2)
IN the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen
Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise
up in horror.
A 20-year-old woman from Qatif, Saudi Arabia, reported that she had been
abducted by several men and repeatedly raped. But judges found the
victim herself to be guilty. Her crime is called "mingling": when she
was abducted, she was in a car with a man not related to her by blood or
marriage, and in Saudi Arabia, that is illegal. Last month, she was
sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes with a bamboo cane.
Two hundred lashes are enough to kill a strong man. Women usually
receive no more than 30 lashes at a time, which means that for seven
weeks the "girl from Qatif," as she's usually described in news
articles, will dread her next session with Islamic justice. When she is
released, her life will certainly never return to normal: already there
have been reports that her brother has tried to kill her because her
"crime" has tarnished her family's honor.
We also saw Islamic justice in action in Sudan, when a 54-year-old
British teacher named Gillian Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in jail
before the government pardoned her this week; she could have faced 40
lashes. When she began a reading project with her class involving a
teddy bear, Ms. Gibbons suggested the children choose a name for it.
They chose Muhammad; she let them do it. This was deemed to be
blasphemy.
Then there's Taslima Nasreen, the 45-year-old Bangladeshi writer who
bravely defends women's rights in the Muslim world. Forced to flee
Bangladesh, she has been living in India. But Muslim groups there want
her expelled, and one has offered 500,000 rupees for her head. In August
she was assaulted by Muslim militants in Hyderabad, and in recent weeks
she has had to leave Calcutta and then Rajasthan. Taslima Nasreen's visa
expires next year, and she fears she will not be allowed to live in
India again.
It is often said that Islam has been "hijacked" by a small extremist
group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said
to be moderates.
But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the
terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing
to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this
manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted - and that no matter
who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said,
this should no longer be done?
Usually, Muslim groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference
are quick to defend any affront to the image of Islam. The organization,
which represents 57 Muslim states, sent four ambassadors to the leader
of my political party in the Netherlands asking him to expel me from
Parliament after I gave a newspaper interview in 2003 noting that by
Western standards some of the Prophet Muhammad's behavior would be
unconscionable. A few years later, Muslim ambassadors to Denmark
protested the cartoons of Muhammad and demanded that their perpetrators
be prosecuted.
But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India have done more
to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting
the Prophet Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the
hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now.
I wish there were more Islamic moderates. For example, I would welcome
some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq
Ramadan. But when there is true suffering, real cruelty in the name of
Islam, we hear, first, denial from all these organizations that are so
concerned about Islam's image. We hear that violence is not in the
Koran, that Islam means peace, that this is a hijacking by extremists
and a smear campaign and so on. But the evidence mounts up.
Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion
people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic
world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above:
more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command
that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah
above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim
in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.
If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the
girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate?
When a "moderate" Muslim's sense of compassion and conscience collides
with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless
that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful
thinking.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch Parliament and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of
"Infidel."
Eboo Patel
The Faith Divide
When I wrote an article for this website a few months ago called On
Muslim Antisemitism, a Muslim friend of mine remarked, "What you say is
true, but why do you have to air our dirty laundry?"
I stared at her in disbelief. Did she really think that the world was
unaware of our dirty laundry?
The sad truth is that too many people think it's the only kind of
laundry Muslims have.
And one of the reasons for this is because mainstream Muslims aren't
talking openly about the problem.
My wife was at a dinner party last week and someone asked about the
English woman in the Sudan who, at the urging of her Muslim students,
named the class teddy bear Muhammad and received jail time and death
threats for her efforts.
My wife's friend asked: "Does Islam really say that she should be
punished?"
"I don't want to talk about it," my wife responded.
I understand why my wife took a pass. Mainstream Muslims are tired of
being put on the defensive, of only being asked about their religion in
relation to violence or the oppression of women, as if that's all that
Islam has ever or could ever produce.
But her friend still wanted an answer to her question. And if my wife
wasn't going to provide one, then she would have to find someone who
would.
In this case, it was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who wrote an OpEd in The New York
Times effectively stating that Islam requires Muslims to severely punish
teachers who name teddy bears Muhammad (Sudan), rape victims who are
accused of being in the presence of a man who is not a family member
(Saudi Arabia) and female writers who criticize Islam (India).
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is right on two important points. The first is that all
of these punishments are appalling and brutal. The second is that
moderate Muslims should be louder about these matters. There are some
things that are true even if Ayaan Hirsi Ali believes them.
And once moderate Muslims are louder, not in the form of angry
indignation but as eloquent articulators of the depth and meaning of
their faith, then people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali will suddenly find
themselves consigned to the place where they should have been all along:
the margins, where they can froth at the mouth all they want.
Hirsi Ali and people like her are widely-read because they offer a
theory of the problem: they tell the world a convincing story of why
Muslims keep popping up on the front pages of newspapers in negative
articles. Hirsi Ali's theory, and the theory of other Islamophobes, is
that Muslims have dirty laundry because the body and soul of Islam are
dirty.
Hirsi Ali ends her Times OpEd with a subtle but scathing indictment of
Islam - that it is a tradition opposed to conscience and compassion.
"When a "moderate" Muslim's sense of compassion and conscience collides
with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion," she
writes.
I wonder if my wife's dinner part friend thinks that's true. As far as I
know, it's the only theory that she's heard.
A lesson for mainstream Muslims: Whenever you don't offer a theory of
the problem, someone else will. When there is a vacuum of information
about a hot topic and you don't fill it, other people will aggressively
move in.
Too many mainstream Muslims believe they have only two options in the
face of the current discourse on Islam: angry indignation or stony
silence.
I believe there is a third way. It is what University of Michigan
Professor Sherman Jackson, one of America's leading scholars of Islam,
calls 'Islamic literacy'.
Here is how someone literate in Islam, Muslim or not, might have
responded to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's contention that Islam and compassionate
conscience are mutually exclusive. First, by saying that there should be
no excuses made for those who sought the punishments in any of the three
cases she named. They were indeed brutal, and as such, were in conflict
with the core ethos of Islam - compassion and mercy, which are enshrined
both in the Muslim tradition and in the human conscience.
Compassion and mercy are the two most repeated qualities of God in
Islam, best illustrated by the most common Muslim prayer, "Bismillah
Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim" - In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the
most Merciful. As they are qualities of God, they are attributes that
Muslims are required to emulate.
Compassion and mercy are also enshrined in the first lesson that
classical Muslim scholars would teach their students, what came to be
known as the Tradition of Primacy in Islam: "If you are merciful to
those on Earth, then He who is in Heaven will be merciful to you."
Islam, like other traditions, has internal contradictions. The Qur'an
and Muslim law say different things in different places. That is
precisely why compassion and mercy play such an important role in Muslim
interpretation and practice. When in doubt about how to deal with a
particular situation, a Muslim should always be guided by compassion and
mercy.
Compassion and mercy are given to human beings by God - they are the
content of our conscience. Dr. Umar Abdallah, the most senior scholar in
Western Islam, writes in one of the most important essays in
contemporary Islam that mercy is the central quality that God "stamped"
on His creation.
Fazlur Rahman, amongst the most widely-respected Muslim scholars of the
twentieth century (and Dr. Umar's intellectual mentor), wrote that the
single most important term in the Qur'an is "taqwa", which translates
roughly as "God-consciousness" or "inner torch" or "conscience."
Khaled Abou El Fadl, one of America's most important scholars of Islamic
thought and law, believes that people are required to bring their
God-given compassion to the reading of the text of the Qur'an. "The text
will morally enrich the reader, but only if the reader will morally
enrich the text.," he writes in a remarkable essay called The Place of
Tolerance in Islam.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, the most prominent Muslim scholar and preacher in
the West, wrote in a piece for this website, "Unfortunately, millions of
Muslims all over the globe are humiliated and betrayed by the ignorance
and lack of basic humanity that a small minority of Muslims too often
exhibits."
He continued, "True religion - as well as the highest secular values -
demands we ... attempt to understand each other, recognize our real
differences, and display mutual respect."
That is a statement of both liberation and guidance for mainstream
Muslims. Muslims who speak only of brutality and severity and punishment
are not just betraying mainstream Muslims, they are violating our
tradition. They do not speak for us. We are not required to defend them.
To mainstream Muslims everywhere: When we act and speak with compassion
and conviction and knowledge, even about our 'dirty laundry', we are
following the straight path of our faith, educating those with genuine
questions about Islam, marginalizing people with destructive agendas,
and doing our part to build a world based on understanding and respect.
Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth
Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that promotes interfaith
cooperation. His blog, The Faith Divide, explores what drives faiths
apart and what brings them together.
----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------
------
The New York Times
December 7, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Islam's Silent Moderates
By AYAAN HIRSI ALI
The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication, flog each of
them with 100 stripes: Let no compassion move you in their case, in a
matter prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day.
(Koran 24:2)
IN the last few weeks, in three widely publicized episodes, we have seen
Islamic justice enacted in ways that should make Muslim moderates rise
up in horror.
A 20-year-old woman from Qatif, Saudi Arabia, reported that she had been
abducted by several men and repeatedly raped. But judges found the
victim herself to be guilty. Her crime is called "mingling": when she
was abducted, she was in a car with a man not related to her by blood or
marriage, and in Saudi Arabia, that is illegal. Last month, she was
sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes with a bamboo cane.
Two hundred lashes are enough to kill a strong man. Women usually
receive no more than 30 lashes at a time, which means that for seven
weeks the "girl from Qatif," as she's usually described in news
articles, will dread her next session with Islamic justice. When she is
released, her life will certainly never return to normal: already there
have been reports that her brother has tried to kill her because her
"crime" has tarnished her family's honor.
We also saw Islamic justice in action in Sudan, when a 54-year-old
British teacher named Gillian Gibbons was sentenced to 15 days in jail
before the government pardoned her this week; she could have faced 40
lashes. When she began a reading project with her class involving a
teddy bear, Ms. Gibbons suggested the children choose a name for it.
They chose Muhammad; she let them do it. This was deemed to be
blasphemy.
Then there's Taslima Nasreen, the 45-year-old Bangladeshi writer who
bravely defends women's rights in the Muslim world. Forced to flee
Bangladesh, she has been living in India. But Muslim groups there want
her expelled, and one has offered 500,000 rupees for her head. In August
she was assaulted by Muslim militants in Hyderabad, and in recent weeks
she has had to leave Calcutta and then Rajasthan. Taslima Nasreen's visa
expires next year, and she fears she will not be allowed to live in
India again.
It is often said that Islam has been "hijacked" by a small extremist
group of radical fundamentalists. The vast majority of Muslims are said
to be moderates.
But where are the moderates? Where are the Muslim voices raised over the
terrible injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing
to stand up and say, in the case of the girl from Qatif, that this
manner of justice is appalling, brutal and bigoted - and that no matter
who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said,
this should no longer be done?
Usually, Muslim groups like the Organization of the Islamic Conference
are quick to defend any affront to the image of Islam. The organization,
which represents 57 Muslim states, sent four ambassadors to the leader
of my political party in the Netherlands asking him to expel me from
Parliament after I gave a newspaper interview in 2003 noting that by
Western standards some of the Prophet Muhammad's behavior would be
unconscionable. A few years later, Muslim ambassadors to Denmark
protested the cartoons of Muhammad and demanded that their perpetrators
be prosecuted.
But while the incidents in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and India have done more
to damage the image of Islamic justice than a dozen cartoons depicting
the Prophet Muhammad, the organizations that lined up to protest the
hideous Danish offense to Islam are quiet now.
I wish there were more Islamic moderates. For example, I would welcome
some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq
Ramadan. But when there is true suffering, real cruelty in the name of
Islam, we hear, first, denial from all these organizations that are so
concerned about Islam's image. We hear that violence is not in the
Koran, that Islam means peace, that this is a hijacking by extremists
and a smear campaign and so on. But the evidence mounts up.
Islamic justice is a proud institution, one to which more than a billion
people subscribe, at least in theory, and in the heart of the Islamic
world it is the law of the land. But take a look at the verse above:
more compelling even than the order to flog adulterers is the command
that the believer show no compassion. It is this order to choose Allah
above his sense of conscience and compassion that imprisons the Muslim
in a mindset that is archaic and extreme.
If moderate Muslims believe there should be no compassion shown to the
girl from Qatif, then what exactly makes them so moderate?
When a "moderate" Muslim's sense of compassion and conscience collides
with matters prescribed by Allah, he should choose compassion. Unless
that happens much more widely, a moderate Islam will remain wishful
thinking.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch Parliament and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of
"Infidel."
Informed Reader
January 4, 2008; Page B6
GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Civilizations Clash, With or Without Religion FOREIGN POLICY -- JANUARY/FEBRUARY
What would the world be like without Islam? No clash of civilizations? No 9/11? No holy wars?
Actually, all of these events would likely have occurred, says Graham Fuller, a professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a former forecaster for the Central Intelligence Agency. Take away Islam, and the world would still be left with the main forces that drive today's conflicts, including colonialism, cross-national ideologies, ethnic conflicts and terrorism, Mr. Fuller says.
Mr. Fuller ponders a litany of history's major battles to drive home his message that while Islam might be a convenient culprit, global strife, past and present, can't be blamed on any one religion. Europeans would still have wanted the spoils of the Middle East and launched the Crusades, he says, albeit under a different banner. The West still would have tried to get control of oil-rich areas. The French would still have gone into Algeria for its farm lands. The creation of Israel still would have displaced Palestinians, no matter what their religion.
The inhabitants of the Middle East wouldn't be more comfortable with these events if they belonged to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the Middle East's predominant religion when Muhammad arrived. In fact, a religious fissure between Western Europe and the Middle East would probably still exist, says Mr. Fuller, noting that Eastern Orthodox Christianity has an anti-Western narrative of its own dating to the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
True, without Islam, the people of the Middle East would lack a powerful, crossborder unifying force that sometimes is co-opted by a small number of people inclined toward violence. But the Middle East would have access to similar forces, such as Marxism or ethnic nationalism, that have served that purpose in other parts of the world. In 2006, the crime-data clearing house Europol said, only one of the 498 terrorist acts in the European Union was Islamist. The rest were largely committed by separatist and left-wing groups.
January 4, 2008; Page B6
GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Civilizations Clash, With or Without Religion FOREIGN POLICY -- JANUARY/FEBRUARY
What would the world be like without Islam? No clash of civilizations? No 9/11? No holy wars?
Actually, all of these events would likely have occurred, says Graham Fuller, a professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and a former forecaster for the Central Intelligence Agency. Take away Islam, and the world would still be left with the main forces that drive today's conflicts, including colonialism, cross-national ideologies, ethnic conflicts and terrorism, Mr. Fuller says.
Mr. Fuller ponders a litany of history's major battles to drive home his message that while Islam might be a convenient culprit, global strife, past and present, can't be blamed on any one religion. Europeans would still have wanted the spoils of the Middle East and launched the Crusades, he says, albeit under a different banner. The West still would have tried to get control of oil-rich areas. The French would still have gone into Algeria for its farm lands. The creation of Israel still would have displaced Palestinians, no matter what their religion.
The inhabitants of the Middle East wouldn't be more comfortable with these events if they belonged to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the Middle East's predominant religion when Muhammad arrived. In fact, a religious fissure between Western Europe and the Middle East would probably still exist, says Mr. Fuller, noting that Eastern Orthodox Christianity has an anti-Western narrative of its own dating to the sack of Constantinople in 1204.
True, without Islam, the people of the Middle East would lack a powerful, crossborder unifying force that sometimes is co-opted by a small number of people inclined toward violence. But the Middle East would have access to similar forces, such as Marxism or ethnic nationalism, that have served that purpose in other parts of the world. In 2006, the crime-data clearing house Europol said, only one of the 498 terrorist acts in the European Union was Islamist. The rest were largely committed by separatist and left-wing groups.
Muslim nations can pursue knowledge and growth
By Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
The writer is Malaysia's prime minister
Published: January 14 2008 18:05 | Last updated: January 14 2008 18:05
On Tuesday, in Madrid, politicians, non-governmental organisations and civil society leaders from across the globe begin two days of dialogue aimed at addressing the growing polarisation between nations and cultures worldwide. The objective is not only to promote cross-cultural understanding, but also to create and develop partnerships and joint initiatives aimed at promoting an “Alliance of Civilisations�.
This is, in my view, an honourable objective, and one around which we should all unite. But in doing so we need to ensure that the voice of the weak and marginalised is heard. A striking characteristic of the modern era is the rapid diffusion of ideas and values from the centres of global power to the rest of humanity. Unfortunately, there is a tendency among the powerful to expect the rest to accept their world view without question. This is not always possible, nor is it desirable.
Non-western civilisations and cultures have their own unique history, traditions and theology, which often embody ideas and values that are fundamentally different from what the west has to offer. Nowhere is this divergence more apparent than on issues pertaining to religion.
Many in the west expect that as Muslim societies develop materially, they will separate religion from the public sphere, treating it as a purely private matter, as happened during the period in Europe termed the “Enlightenment�. However, as many Muslim societies urbanise and modernise, what we witness is a growing attachment to Islam. The reasons for this are complex; people often want to protect their identity from being subsumed by a global norm. In some cases, the attachment to religion is a reaction against the monolithic forces of globalisation, forces that sometimes clash with Islam’s own search for deeper meaning and purpose, and concern for the needy. For Muslims, then, religion can never be a purely private matter for, unlike other prophets, Mohammed steered a state and established principles of governance that embody these values.
This does not mean that Muslims are driven to create Taliban-like states everywhere. Nor does it mean that Islam is anathema to economic growth. The identification of Islam and the Muslim world with violence, instability, poverty, illiteracy, injustice and intolerance is highly misleading.
In spite of this, it cannot be denied that large parts of the Muslim world are indeed among the most backward and economically underdeveloped. In many cases, Muslim countries have fallen behind because they have rejected the pursuit of knowledge, a fundamental injunction of Islam. Some Muslims have closed their minds and allowed the weight of tradition and narrow religious interpretation to stifle inquiry and innovation. Limiting knowledge to religious matters and an overemphasis on rote learning extinguishes the spirit of discovery. This is a disservice to Islam.
Similarly, Muslims often forget that work is also a form of worship and that Islam calls for diligence and industry. If Muslims adhere to these values, then Islam presents itself as a progressive world view, one that in the modern day should be focused on the furthering of knowledge and the development of human capital. While many Muslim countries are rich in natural resources, our greatest resources will always be our people. The Muslim world will progress farthest when it unlocks and develops this potential, through quality education at all levels. Moreover, this will never be achieved if some Muslims continue to neglect the right to education and work for women. Women constitute half the Muslim world’s human capital and in marginalising women we only impoverish ourselves.
The teachings of Islam can be faulted neither for economic deprivation in the Muslim world nor the recent discord between it and the west. Moreover, the problems that persist in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine are the vestiges of earlier projections of world power. The resulting humiliation felt by Muslims continues to engender a loss of trust and confidence towards the west. But, whatever the cause, these strategic issues have now become interwoven and interdependent, and their resolution will require greater understanding and trust, as well as the creation of economic opportunities.
If, in the coming days, we are successful in taking the first steps towards an Alliance of Civilisations, both the Muslim world and the west have much to learn from one another, as well as much to gain.
The writer is Malaysia’s prime minister
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
The writer is Malaysia's prime minister
Published: January 14 2008 18:05 | Last updated: January 14 2008 18:05
On Tuesday, in Madrid, politicians, non-governmental organisations and civil society leaders from across the globe begin two days of dialogue aimed at addressing the growing polarisation between nations and cultures worldwide. The objective is not only to promote cross-cultural understanding, but also to create and develop partnerships and joint initiatives aimed at promoting an “Alliance of Civilisations�.
This is, in my view, an honourable objective, and one around which we should all unite. But in doing so we need to ensure that the voice of the weak and marginalised is heard. A striking characteristic of the modern era is the rapid diffusion of ideas and values from the centres of global power to the rest of humanity. Unfortunately, there is a tendency among the powerful to expect the rest to accept their world view without question. This is not always possible, nor is it desirable.
Non-western civilisations and cultures have their own unique history, traditions and theology, which often embody ideas and values that are fundamentally different from what the west has to offer. Nowhere is this divergence more apparent than on issues pertaining to religion.
Many in the west expect that as Muslim societies develop materially, they will separate religion from the public sphere, treating it as a purely private matter, as happened during the period in Europe termed the “Enlightenment�. However, as many Muslim societies urbanise and modernise, what we witness is a growing attachment to Islam. The reasons for this are complex; people often want to protect their identity from being subsumed by a global norm. In some cases, the attachment to religion is a reaction against the monolithic forces of globalisation, forces that sometimes clash with Islam’s own search for deeper meaning and purpose, and concern for the needy. For Muslims, then, religion can never be a purely private matter for, unlike other prophets, Mohammed steered a state and established principles of governance that embody these values.
This does not mean that Muslims are driven to create Taliban-like states everywhere. Nor does it mean that Islam is anathema to economic growth. The identification of Islam and the Muslim world with violence, instability, poverty, illiteracy, injustice and intolerance is highly misleading.
In spite of this, it cannot be denied that large parts of the Muslim world are indeed among the most backward and economically underdeveloped. In many cases, Muslim countries have fallen behind because they have rejected the pursuit of knowledge, a fundamental injunction of Islam. Some Muslims have closed their minds and allowed the weight of tradition and narrow religious interpretation to stifle inquiry and innovation. Limiting knowledge to religious matters and an overemphasis on rote learning extinguishes the spirit of discovery. This is a disservice to Islam.
Similarly, Muslims often forget that work is also a form of worship and that Islam calls for diligence and industry. If Muslims adhere to these values, then Islam presents itself as a progressive world view, one that in the modern day should be focused on the furthering of knowledge and the development of human capital. While many Muslim countries are rich in natural resources, our greatest resources will always be our people. The Muslim world will progress farthest when it unlocks and develops this potential, through quality education at all levels. Moreover, this will never be achieved if some Muslims continue to neglect the right to education and work for women. Women constitute half the Muslim world’s human capital and in marginalising women we only impoverish ourselves.
The teachings of Islam can be faulted neither for economic deprivation in the Muslim world nor the recent discord between it and the west. Moreover, the problems that persist in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine are the vestiges of earlier projections of world power. The resulting humiliation felt by Muslims continues to engender a loss of trust and confidence towards the west. But, whatever the cause, these strategic issues have now become interwoven and interdependent, and their resolution will require greater understanding and trust, as well as the creation of economic opportunities.
If, in the coming days, we are successful in taking the first steps towards an Alliance of Civilisations, both the Muslim world and the west have much to learn from one another, as well as much to gain.
The writer is Malaysia’s prime minister
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
In the CBC Man Alive interview 1986, MHI stated in response to the question: "Another image we have is of the Ayatollah and we associate Islam with terrorism. Is terrorism Islamic?":
A: It certainly isn't. Unfortunately it is a part of our modern life and in fact it is also part of our history. But it is prevelant in Western Europe, it is prevelant in South America. It takes religious expressions, it takes economic expressions. I don't think one should in all honesty look at terrorism as being an Islamic force. I don't think it is in any way an Islamic force. It is an expression of other forces which may seek at times to use Islam as one of the binding ingredients. Just as I think other terrorists forms in Western Eurooe for example do the same thing - the I.R.A. can hardly be expressive of the Catholic Ghurch and yet it calls itself a Catholic movement. So I think we have to be careful not to attach to the term terrorism a religion connotation "par excellence". That there are elements in those forces of terrorism which may seek legitimacy from a faith is something which is world wide not specific to the Islamic world.
The following article echoes the above sentiments.
Imagine A World Without Islam!
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
17 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org
Take away Islam, and the world would still be left with the main forces that drive today's conflicts, including colonialism, cross-national ideologies, ethnic conflicts and terrorism, says Graham Fuller, a former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA in charge of long-range strategic forecasting and currently a professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada).
In his article entitled A World Without Islam, published in Foreign Policy, Fuller believes that given our intense current focus on terrorism, war, and rampant anti-Americanism it's vital to understand the true sources of these crises. He poses a question, is Islam the source of the problem or does it tend to lie with other less obvious and deeper factors?
Fuller presents his thoughts on Islam in an extended game of "what if." What if Islam had never arisen in the Middle East? What if there had never been a Prophet Mohammed, no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa? Would there still be violent clashes between the West and that part of the world? Would the Middle East be more peaceful? How different might the character of East-West relations be?
Fuller ponders a litany of history's major battles and events to drive home his message that while Islam might be a convenient culprit, but global strife, past and present, can't be blamed on any one religion. Europeans would still have wanted the spoils of the Middle East and launched the Crusades albeit under a different banner. " After all, what were the Crusades if not a Western adventure driven primarily by political, social, and economic needs? The banner of Christianity was little more than a potent symbol, a rallying cry to bless the more secular urges of powerful Europeans.
In fact, the particular religion of the natives never figured highly in the West's imperial push across the globe. Europe may have spoken upliftingly about bringing "Christian values to the natives," but the patent goal was to establish colonial outposts as sources of wealth for the metropole and bases for Western power projection."
And so it's unlikely that Christian inhabitants of the Middle East would have welcomed the stream of European fleets and their merchants backed by Western guns, he says adding that Imperialism would have prospered in the region's complex ethnic mosaic--the raw materials for the old game of divide and rule. And Europeans still would have installed the same pliable local rulers to accommodate their needs. We doublespeak about promoting democracy in the Middle East as we back autocratic, despotic and undemocratic client regimes there.
On the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he says that it would not have been welcome by Iraqis even if they were Christian. Fuller points out that the United States did not overthrow Saddam Hussein, an intensely nationalist and secular leader, because he was Muslim and other Arab peoples would still have supported the Iraqi Arabs in their trauma of occupation. "Nowhere do people welcome foreign occupation and the killing of their citizens at the hands of foreign troops. Indeed, groups threatened by such outside forces invariably cast about for appropriate ideologies to justify and glorify their resistance struggle. Religion is one such ideology."
The West still would have tried various ways to get control of oil-rich areas, according to Fuller. But Middle Eastern Christians would not have welcomed imperial Western oil companies, backed by their European vice-regents, diplomats, intelligence agents, and armies, any more than Muslims did. Look at the long history of Latin American reactions to American domination of their oil, economics, and politics. The Middle East would have been equally keen to create nationalist anti-colonial movements to wrest control of their own soil, markets, sovereignty, and destiny from foreign grip--just like anti-colonial struggles in Hindu India, Confucian China, Buddhist Vietnam, and a Christian and animist Africa.
On the current Israeli-Palestinian problem, Fuller believes that Jews would have still sought a homeland outside Europe and the Zionist movement would still have emerged and sought a base in Palestine even if the Middle East was Christian. Why, because, he explains, it was Christians who shamelessly persecuted Jews for more than a millennium, culminating in the Holocaust. These horrific examples of anti-Semitism were firmly rooted in Western Christian lands and culture, he says.
"And the new Jewish state would still have dislodged the same 750,000 Arab natives of Palestine from their lands even if they had been Christian--and indeed some of them were. Would not these Arab Palestinians have fought to protect or regain their own land?"
The Israeli-Palestinian problem remains at heart a national, ethnic, and territorial conflict, only recently bolstered by religious slogans, Fuller said adding that we should not forget that Arab Christians played a major role in the early emergence of the whole Arab nationalist movement in the Middle East. He recalls that the ideological founder of the first pan-Arab Baath party, Michel Aflaq, was a Sorbonne-educated Syrian Christian.
On blaming Islam for current violence and terrorism, Fuller echoes Robert Pape's argument about the strategic, social and personal motivations work together to encourage suicide terrorism. Pape, in his book Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, argues that nationalism and religious difference between the rebels and a dominant democratic state are the main conditions under which the "alien" occupation of a community's homeland is likely to lead to a campaign of suicide terrorism. He finds that religion plays a smaller part than thought.
Fuller reminds that the West's memories are short when it focuses on terrorism in the name of Islam. He recalls: "Jewish guerrillas used terrorism against the British in Palestine. Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil "Tigers" invented the art of the suicide vest and for more than a decade led the world in the use of suicide bombings--including the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Greek terrorists carried out assassination operations against U.S. officials in Athens. Organized Sikh terrorism killed Indira Gandhi, spread havoc in India, established an overseas base in Canada , and brought down an Air India flight over the Atlantic. Macedonian terrorists were widely feared all across the Balkans on the eve of World War I. Dozens of major assassinations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were carried out by European and American "anarchists," sowing collective fear.
The Irish Republican Army employed brutally effective terrorism against the British for decades, as did communist guerrillas and terrorists in Vietnam against Americans, communist Malayans against British soldiers in the 1950s, Mau-Mau terrorists against British officers in Kenya --the list goes on. It doesn't take a Muslim to commit terrorism."
Fuller points out that even the recent history of terrorist activity doesn't look much different. "According to Europol, 498 terrorist attacks took place in the European Union in 2006. Of these, 424 were perpetrated by separatist groups, 55 by left-wing extremists, and 18 by various other terrorists. Only 1 was carried out by Islamists."
Fuller makes a compelling argument that conflict between East and West remains all about the grand historical and geopolitical issues of human history: ethnicity, nationalism, ambition, greed, resources, local leaders, turf, financial gain, power, interventions, and hatred of outsiders, invaders, and imperialists. Faced with timeless issues like these, how could the power of religion not be invoked, he asked.
He also reminds us that virtually every one of the principle horrors of the 20th century came almost exclusively from strictly secular regimes: Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. It was Europeans who visited their "world wars" twice upon the rest of the world—two devastating global conflicts with no remote parallels in Islamic history.
Some today might wish for a "world without Islam" in which these problems presumably had never come to be. But, in truth, the conflicts, rivalries, and crises of such a world might not look so vastly different than the ones we know today, Fuller concludes.
In short, Fuller has done a great job in spelling out the real root of the contemporary problems which lie in imperialism/colonialism, more than religion, although certainly religion is a part. His paradigm repudiates uninformed and biased pundits and neoconservatives who condemn Islam as the root of all conflict and see "Islamofascism" the sworn foe of the West in a looming "World War III."
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com E-mail: asghazali@gmail.com
A: It certainly isn't. Unfortunately it is a part of our modern life and in fact it is also part of our history. But it is prevelant in Western Europe, it is prevelant in South America. It takes religious expressions, it takes economic expressions. I don't think one should in all honesty look at terrorism as being an Islamic force. I don't think it is in any way an Islamic force. It is an expression of other forces which may seek at times to use Islam as one of the binding ingredients. Just as I think other terrorists forms in Western Eurooe for example do the same thing - the I.R.A. can hardly be expressive of the Catholic Ghurch and yet it calls itself a Catholic movement. So I think we have to be careful not to attach to the term terrorism a religion connotation "par excellence". That there are elements in those forces of terrorism which may seek legitimacy from a faith is something which is world wide not specific to the Islamic world.
The following article echoes the above sentiments.
Imagine A World Without Islam!
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
17 January, 2008
Countercurrents.org
Take away Islam, and the world would still be left with the main forces that drive today's conflicts, including colonialism, cross-national ideologies, ethnic conflicts and terrorism, says Graham Fuller, a former Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA in charge of long-range strategic forecasting and currently a professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada).
In his article entitled A World Without Islam, published in Foreign Policy, Fuller believes that given our intense current focus on terrorism, war, and rampant anti-Americanism it's vital to understand the true sources of these crises. He poses a question, is Islam the source of the problem or does it tend to lie with other less obvious and deeper factors?
Fuller presents his thoughts on Islam in an extended game of "what if." What if Islam had never arisen in the Middle East? What if there had never been a Prophet Mohammed, no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa? Would there still be violent clashes between the West and that part of the world? Would the Middle East be more peaceful? How different might the character of East-West relations be?
Fuller ponders a litany of history's major battles and events to drive home his message that while Islam might be a convenient culprit, but global strife, past and present, can't be blamed on any one religion. Europeans would still have wanted the spoils of the Middle East and launched the Crusades albeit under a different banner. " After all, what were the Crusades if not a Western adventure driven primarily by political, social, and economic needs? The banner of Christianity was little more than a potent symbol, a rallying cry to bless the more secular urges of powerful Europeans.
In fact, the particular religion of the natives never figured highly in the West's imperial push across the globe. Europe may have spoken upliftingly about bringing "Christian values to the natives," but the patent goal was to establish colonial outposts as sources of wealth for the metropole and bases for Western power projection."
And so it's unlikely that Christian inhabitants of the Middle East would have welcomed the stream of European fleets and their merchants backed by Western guns, he says adding that Imperialism would have prospered in the region's complex ethnic mosaic--the raw materials for the old game of divide and rule. And Europeans still would have installed the same pliable local rulers to accommodate their needs. We doublespeak about promoting democracy in the Middle East as we back autocratic, despotic and undemocratic client regimes there.
On the U.S. occupation of Iraq, he says that it would not have been welcome by Iraqis even if they were Christian. Fuller points out that the United States did not overthrow Saddam Hussein, an intensely nationalist and secular leader, because he was Muslim and other Arab peoples would still have supported the Iraqi Arabs in their trauma of occupation. "Nowhere do people welcome foreign occupation and the killing of their citizens at the hands of foreign troops. Indeed, groups threatened by such outside forces invariably cast about for appropriate ideologies to justify and glorify their resistance struggle. Religion is one such ideology."
The West still would have tried various ways to get control of oil-rich areas, according to Fuller. But Middle Eastern Christians would not have welcomed imperial Western oil companies, backed by their European vice-regents, diplomats, intelligence agents, and armies, any more than Muslims did. Look at the long history of Latin American reactions to American domination of their oil, economics, and politics. The Middle East would have been equally keen to create nationalist anti-colonial movements to wrest control of their own soil, markets, sovereignty, and destiny from foreign grip--just like anti-colonial struggles in Hindu India, Confucian China, Buddhist Vietnam, and a Christian and animist Africa.
On the current Israeli-Palestinian problem, Fuller believes that Jews would have still sought a homeland outside Europe and the Zionist movement would still have emerged and sought a base in Palestine even if the Middle East was Christian. Why, because, he explains, it was Christians who shamelessly persecuted Jews for more than a millennium, culminating in the Holocaust. These horrific examples of anti-Semitism were firmly rooted in Western Christian lands and culture, he says.
"And the new Jewish state would still have dislodged the same 750,000 Arab natives of Palestine from their lands even if they had been Christian--and indeed some of them were. Would not these Arab Palestinians have fought to protect or regain their own land?"
The Israeli-Palestinian problem remains at heart a national, ethnic, and territorial conflict, only recently bolstered by religious slogans, Fuller said adding that we should not forget that Arab Christians played a major role in the early emergence of the whole Arab nationalist movement in the Middle East. He recalls that the ideological founder of the first pan-Arab Baath party, Michel Aflaq, was a Sorbonne-educated Syrian Christian.
On blaming Islam for current violence and terrorism, Fuller echoes Robert Pape's argument about the strategic, social and personal motivations work together to encourage suicide terrorism. Pape, in his book Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, argues that nationalism and religious difference between the rebels and a dominant democratic state are the main conditions under which the "alien" occupation of a community's homeland is likely to lead to a campaign of suicide terrorism. He finds that religion plays a smaller part than thought.
Fuller reminds that the West's memories are short when it focuses on terrorism in the name of Islam. He recalls: "Jewish guerrillas used terrorism against the British in Palestine. Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil "Tigers" invented the art of the suicide vest and for more than a decade led the world in the use of suicide bombings--including the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Greek terrorists carried out assassination operations against U.S. officials in Athens. Organized Sikh terrorism killed Indira Gandhi, spread havoc in India, established an overseas base in Canada , and brought down an Air India flight over the Atlantic. Macedonian terrorists were widely feared all across the Balkans on the eve of World War I. Dozens of major assassinations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were carried out by European and American "anarchists," sowing collective fear.
The Irish Republican Army employed brutally effective terrorism against the British for decades, as did communist guerrillas and terrorists in Vietnam against Americans, communist Malayans against British soldiers in the 1950s, Mau-Mau terrorists against British officers in Kenya --the list goes on. It doesn't take a Muslim to commit terrorism."
Fuller points out that even the recent history of terrorist activity doesn't look much different. "According to Europol, 498 terrorist attacks took place in the European Union in 2006. Of these, 424 were perpetrated by separatist groups, 55 by left-wing extremists, and 18 by various other terrorists. Only 1 was carried out by Islamists."
Fuller makes a compelling argument that conflict between East and West remains all about the grand historical and geopolitical issues of human history: ethnicity, nationalism, ambition, greed, resources, local leaders, turf, financial gain, power, interventions, and hatred of outsiders, invaders, and imperialists. Faced with timeless issues like these, how could the power of religion not be invoked, he asked.
He also reminds us that virtually every one of the principle horrors of the 20th century came almost exclusively from strictly secular regimes: Leopold II of Belgium in the Congo, Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. It was Europeans who visited their "world wars" twice upon the rest of the world—two devastating global conflicts with no remote parallels in Islamic history.
Some today might wish for a "world without Islam" in which these problems presumably had never come to be. But, in truth, the conflicts, rivalries, and crises of such a world might not look so vastly different than the ones we know today, Fuller concludes.
In short, Fuller has done a great job in spelling out the real root of the contemporary problems which lie in imperialism/colonialism, more than religion, although certainly religion is a part. His paradigm repudiates uninformed and biased pundits and neoconservatives who condemn Islam as the root of all conflict and see "Islamofascism" the sworn foe of the West in a looming "World War III."
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com E-mail: asghazali@gmail.com
It has been alleged that violence, terrorism and fundamentalism are aspects of Islam. The video shows these tendencies in Christianity…
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=owCXbDVTLRE&NR=1
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=owCXbDVTLRE&NR=1
The Muslim World Beyond the Western Media
Not All Veils and Guns
By B. R. GOWANI
The influence of the western media, especially the US, can be gauged from its success in creating the image of Muslim men as gun-toting religious fanatics and that of Muslim women as veiled ignorant cows. From Australia to the United States this image is now permanently engraved on the minds of the majority of westerners, and on many others' who would like to see Muslims in that light because of their countries' disputes with neighboring Muslim countries. And yet there are others who would equate Muslim sympathy for the suffering of Palestine, Iraq, or Afghanistan, as "terrorism."
There are terrorists in all communities, including Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. On the other hand, like other religious communities, Islam also has artists, intellectuals, athletes, entertainers, and rebels.
If a terrorist incident happens in Sri Lanka (where the majority is Buddhist), which the electronic media finds it worthy to display, than Sri Lanka will be in the news once only -- unless the US is planning to wage a war against that nation, in which case the coverage will be 24/7.
There are over fifty countries where the majority of the population is Muslim. If the above criterion is applied to Muslim countries, than over fifty times those countries will be in the news. Now add the past animosities of the Crusades; the late 1940s creation of Israel on Palestinian land; Western greed for the Middle Eastern oil -- which is the US "national interest;" the total US control of Middle East oil in order to cut off its allies Europe and Japan's oil supplies, in case they show any trace of independent policies; its support of China's oil-rich neighbors (the Central Asian nations) with the aim of locking China's energy requirements when present relations deteriorate; its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; its planning of war against Iran; and its dragging of Pakistan into the "war on terror."
Reader can now imagine how many times the Muslim countries will be in the news?
After 2001's ghastly act on the US soil, no other terroristic incident has happened and yet the government and the news media never shy away from creating a fear mania.
Paranoia makes people, as well as nations, do all sorts of crazy things. However, the US has gone pathologically crazy. Two news items of last year will make it clear: The FBI went through the grocery stores' customers' data for the year 2005 and 2006 for the San Francisco area. Its aim was to check any rise in the sales of Middle Eastern food such as falafel, together with other information, and thus get to the Iranian agents in the area. However, it was discontinued after the operation's legality was questioned.
The Los Angeles Police Department's Deputy Chief, Michael P. Downing, ordered general mapping of Muslim areas "seeking to identify at-risk communities," because he is "looking for communities and enclaves based on risk factors that are likely to become isolated." The LAPD wants to "reach out to these communities," and for that it's necessary "to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are."
Five words sums up the LAPD plan: Keep an eye on Muslims.
Under heavy criticism the plan was shelved.
There are three million Muslims in the United States. Let's say that 1 per cent, or 30,000 of them, are terrorists and on average four of them join hands to carry on their nefarious activities. So now we have 7,500 terrorist groups and they all plan to destroy this country. However, out of those 7,500, only 1 per cent or 75 groups (or 300 "terrorists") succeed in their plan. Imagine the scale of devastation! If they attack the major highways, airports, sea ports, bridges, down towns, and rail tracks the US economy would come to a standstill and China would be at its doorstep asking back for its loaned money. (Not that the US is going to pay back. It would probably declare a war on China-a final nail in the coffin of US imperialism.)
(Encyclopedia Britannica, PBS, and many others give a figure of 5 to 7 million where as some Jewish groups go for half that number. May be they are right or perhaps it's their anti-Muslim bias. I have gone for the lower figure to make the Jewish Lobby happy. On the contrary, the Lobby in this example would, I am sure, prefer the higher figure.
The US State Department says that by 2010 the number of Muslims in the US will exceed that of Jews. Currently there are about two per cent Jews, or approximately 6 million.
In TV news, they frequently show how the reporters just slip in at the major airports without going through the security checks. So it is not an impossible task.
Like many non-Muslims, Muslims may feel hurt by the deaths and devastation visited upon Iraq and Afghanistan by the US. There may be many who would feel outraged and will think about avenging. But basically it is limited to that feeling only. Next day they may be going (as students, employees, or owners) to their offices, educational institutions, courts, liquor stores, gas stations, motels, hotels, and other working and business places.
But the image persists because the ordinary people are not given any respite from constant hateful bombardments from the mad media.
Another familiar sight on the TV news is the introductory footage to items about Muslim countries, which invariably shows Muslim men in various postures of prayer, as if they don't do anything else in life. One can only wonder as to how the Muslim population is on the rise (besides the new converts), or how the economy runs, or how the underpaid adults and children produce goods for the Western countries, or so many other things.
Not every Muslim man is brandishing a gun nor is every woman clad in a burka.
Many Muslims are not only proficient in their fields but several of them also create history. A tiny uneven sample related to few fields:
Leila Ahmed is a professor who teaches at the Harvard Divinity School and is the author of "Women and Gender in Islam" and her autobiography "A Border Passage: From Cairo to America, a Woman's Journey."
Halid Beslic is a famous Bosnian folk singer.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (previously Yasmin Damji) is a journalist who lives in London, England, and writes for London's Independent newspaper. Prior to that, she used to write for New Statesman. She frequently appears on BBC to debate on racialism and other issues.
Shamim Ara started out as an actress, a very fine and successful one, who later turned film producer and director. She is South Asia's most prolific and successful woman director.
Another actor turned producer/director of several films is Sangeeta.
Inul Daratista means "the girl with the breasts." (Ainul Rokhimah is the birth name of this Indonesian dancer.) The Islamists targeted her for her dengdut dancing (a mixture of Arabic, Indian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Malay) which has been termed as "drilling." With bended knees, Inul gyrates her derriere with such a speed that it seems like a "glittering piston," in the words of Time magazine reporters.
She counters her critics such as the Indonesian Ulemas Council in these words: "MUI should realize that Indonesia is not a Muslim country, it's a democratic country." Backers she has many too, including the former Presidents Ms. Megavati Soukarnoputri and Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of Nadhlatul Ulama, an Islamic organization.
Deeyah (since 1992, originally Deepika Thathaal) is a Norwegian born singer of Pakistani and Afghan parents. She is known as the "Muslim Madonna." She has received her music training from Ustad Bade Fateh Ali Khan and Ustad Sultan Khan. But when one of her video had her with a bare back, her troubles began, and then harassment and threats forced her to move to London, England.
There too she faced similar problems from her co-religionists for her dancing with a black man in a video "Plan of My Own." Another of her video "What Will It Be" made many Muslims furious. The video starts with her in a burqa (a tent-like head to toe covering which some Muslim women don), but once the burqa is removed the only thing she has on is a bikini set.
Waris Dirie of Somalia is a former fashion model and an activist who concentrates her energy to abolish the practice of FGM or female genital mutilation.
FGM, wrongly called "female circumcision," is a process which involves a partial or full cutting of the external female genitalia, in order to decrease a female's sexual desire so at the time of marriage she is virgin. It is an extremely painful, torturous, and inhumane custom.
This cruelty Dirie herself experienced when she was five. She has described it in one of her book, a novel, "The Desert Flower." In 1997, she was appointed the United Nation's Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation. She is cousin of another famous Somali-born model Iman Abdul Majid.
Sabina England is a deaf playwright of Indian origin who grew up in India, US, and England. She is currently living in the US.
Saghi Ghahraman is an Iranian/Canadian poet and lesbian who left Iran in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. In her recent interview to an Iranian newspaper "Shargh," she said that "sexual boundaries must be flexible... The immoral is imposed by culture on the body." The newspaper was shut down by the government.
Yasmeen Ghauri is a Canadian supermodel and has worked for Versace and Victoria's Secret. (Some people declined to be led in prayers by her father, who was then an imam in a mosque in Quebec, Canada, because of Yasmeen's work.)
Tissa Hami was born in Iran and raised in the US. She holds degrees in international relations and, besides her regular job, is a standup comic since 9/11. On stage she has tried to remove her black chador but the audience likes to see her covered.
Sabrina Houssami is Miss World Australia 2006 and Miss World Asia Pacific 2006.
Asma Jehangir is a lawyer, activist, and is associated with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She has successfully defended many victims (Christians, Hindus, and Muslims) of the draconian blasphemy (anything deemed insulting to Islam or Muhammad) laws and female victims of the Hudood Ordinance, introduced in 1979 and replaced by Rape Bill in 2006. Recently she was put under house arrest for opposing the baby martial law but was later released.
She and her family has been threatened and harassed several times. (In Yash Chopra's film "Veer Zara," Rani Mukherji's character is loosely based on her.)
Farah Khan is one of the most famous choreographers in India and is the director of a hit film "Mein Hoon Na" and the recently released "Om Shanti Om." She also choreographed Columbian/Lebanese singer Shakira in her video, "Hips Don't Lie," and the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical "Bombay Dreams."
Another great Indian choreographer is Saroj Khan.
Irene Zubeda Khan is the first Muslim woman (also the first woman and the first Asian, for that matter) to be the Secretary General of the London-based human rights organization the Amnesty International. She has been serving in that capacity since August 2001. In 2006 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.
Shahrukh Khan "is the biggest film star in the world" who commands an audience of more than 3.5 billion, according to BusinessWeek. With his wife Gauri (who is Hindu) he produces films. His wax statue has been placed at Madam Tussaud's wax museum in London and soon the Graven Museum in Paris is also going to have his wax statue. Actress Penelope Cruz has expressed her desire to work with him in a film. The "King Khan" as he is known has also hosted "Kaun Banega Crorepati," India's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."
Few of the other top actors in India who are Muslims are Amir Khan, Salman Khan, and Saif Ali Khan.
Sania Mirza is the tennis player who is ranked 31st in the world and has become inspiration for many South Asian girls.
For wearing clothes such as short skirts, shorts, and sleeveless tops, she was issued with a fatwa, a religious decree, by Sunni Ulema Board's cleric Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui because Islam doesn't permit those clothes:
"She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence on these young women, which we want to prevent."
Mirza has rightly ignored Siddiqui's fatwa.
Shazia Mirza is a British writer and stand-up comedian.
Three weeks after 9/11 she was back on stage:
"Hello, my name's Shazia Mirza, at least that's what it says on my pilot's license."
In 2003:
"Last year, I went to Mecca to repent my sins, and I had to walk around the black stone. All the women were dressed in black, you could only see their eyes. And I felt a hand touch my bottom. I ignored it. I thought, 'I'm in Mecca, it must be the hand of God.' But then it happened again. I didn't complain. Clearly, my prayers had been answered."
A couple of more:
"I got on the plane to Denmark dressed like this, and this woman refused to sit next to me. So I said to her, 'I'm going to sit on this plane and blow it up. And you think you're going to be safer three rows back?'"
"I am becoming increasingly worried that if I die a virgin, when I get to heaven I'll be one of the 72 virgins that have to sleep with one of the suicide bombers. I suspect they'd be a bit disappointed."
Mariyah Moten is known as "Pakistan's first Miss Bikini." The Houston-based girl came to be known as such after she contested the Miss Bikini Universe 2006 pageant held in China. Her "main aim is to project Pakistan to the world as a moderate place."
Aznil Nawawi is a Malaysian actor, director, and TV host who is credited with drastically changing the TV hosting. In 2005 he received the Best Talk Show Host award at the Asian Television Awards.
Asra Q. Nomani was born in India and raised in the US. An author and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, she was the main person in arranging the woman-led prayer in New York City in March 2005. (Amina Wadood led the prayer.)
A friend and colleague of Daniel Pearl, in the movie "Mighty Heart," based on Pearl's abduction and murder in Karachi, Pakistan, her character is played by Archie Punjabi.
Three manifestoes "The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom," "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque," and the "99 Precepts for opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World" are written by her.
Nighat Rizvi initiated aid's awareness in Pakistan and also staged Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologue" in that country. A very daring act on her and the artists' part who acted in it. Ensler and Nadia Jamil were some of the artists.
When it was performed in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, Hibaaq Osman, a Somali Muslim and the special representative for V-Day (i.e., the Vagina-Day), said that she was eager to see the play being performed in a Muslim country. "Vaginabad" is what she renamed Islamabad and said: "I know if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere."
(For a day Islamabad was "Vaginabad," no doubt. But otherwise, unfortunately, the country has been turned into a Dickistan of feudal lords, ruthless capitalists, military dictators, Saudi rulers, fanatic mullahs, US diplomats, CIA agents, arms merchants, foreign corporations, and corrupt politicians.)
"Vagina Monologue" has also been performed in other Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Nigeria.
Shahzad Roy is a Pakistani pop singer who once said: "I feel so sad when I see some child working, or on the streets, not going to school. The [Zindagi] Trust is my best effort to do something about that." His NGO (nongovernmental organization) offers Rupees 20 per day to a poor child who attends school and meets certain requirements.
Criticism has been levied against Roy which he is aware of: "Some people say its wrong to bribe children to be in school." Very rightly he shoots back: "But well-off kids are rewarded for their marks all the time. There is no reason poor children should not have the same support."
Salma (real name A. Rokkaiah) is an Indian poet and author who writes in Tamil on women-related issues. When she turned thirteen she was prohibited from attending school and had to stay home, but unknown to others she started writing.
Kolo Toure is a football player from Ivory Coast. He plays for Arsenal in England.
Chali 2na (real name Charlie Stewart) is a US rap singer and an emcee with the hip-hop group Jurassic 5. His music takes up political and social issues.
K'Naan Warsame is a Somali born poet and hip-hop artist residing in Canada. His poetry touches on turmoil in Somalia and race and colonialism related issues.
"With a sound that fuses Bob Marley, conscious American hip-hop, and brilliant protest poetry," according to Jim Welte, K'Naan was "the most promising artist at the 2006 Reggae on the River festival."
These are just a few names. The list can go on and on and on. Suffice it to say that the image of Muslim women and men in the western media is the product of Goebbels's progeny who control the propaganda machinery.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
Not All Veils and Guns
By B. R. GOWANI
The influence of the western media, especially the US, can be gauged from its success in creating the image of Muslim men as gun-toting religious fanatics and that of Muslim women as veiled ignorant cows. From Australia to the United States this image is now permanently engraved on the minds of the majority of westerners, and on many others' who would like to see Muslims in that light because of their countries' disputes with neighboring Muslim countries. And yet there are others who would equate Muslim sympathy for the suffering of Palestine, Iraq, or Afghanistan, as "terrorism."
There are terrorists in all communities, including Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. On the other hand, like other religious communities, Islam also has artists, intellectuals, athletes, entertainers, and rebels.
If a terrorist incident happens in Sri Lanka (where the majority is Buddhist), which the electronic media finds it worthy to display, than Sri Lanka will be in the news once only -- unless the US is planning to wage a war against that nation, in which case the coverage will be 24/7.
There are over fifty countries where the majority of the population is Muslim. If the above criterion is applied to Muslim countries, than over fifty times those countries will be in the news. Now add the past animosities of the Crusades; the late 1940s creation of Israel on Palestinian land; Western greed for the Middle Eastern oil -- which is the US "national interest;" the total US control of Middle East oil in order to cut off its allies Europe and Japan's oil supplies, in case they show any trace of independent policies; its support of China's oil-rich neighbors (the Central Asian nations) with the aim of locking China's energy requirements when present relations deteriorate; its occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; its planning of war against Iran; and its dragging of Pakistan into the "war on terror."
Reader can now imagine how many times the Muslim countries will be in the news?
After 2001's ghastly act on the US soil, no other terroristic incident has happened and yet the government and the news media never shy away from creating a fear mania.
Paranoia makes people, as well as nations, do all sorts of crazy things. However, the US has gone pathologically crazy. Two news items of last year will make it clear: The FBI went through the grocery stores' customers' data for the year 2005 and 2006 for the San Francisco area. Its aim was to check any rise in the sales of Middle Eastern food such as falafel, together with other information, and thus get to the Iranian agents in the area. However, it was discontinued after the operation's legality was questioned.
The Los Angeles Police Department's Deputy Chief, Michael P. Downing, ordered general mapping of Muslim areas "seeking to identify at-risk communities," because he is "looking for communities and enclaves based on risk factors that are likely to become isolated." The LAPD wants to "reach out to these communities," and for that it's necessary "to know where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are."
Five words sums up the LAPD plan: Keep an eye on Muslims.
Under heavy criticism the plan was shelved.
There are three million Muslims in the United States. Let's say that 1 per cent, or 30,000 of them, are terrorists and on average four of them join hands to carry on their nefarious activities. So now we have 7,500 terrorist groups and they all plan to destroy this country. However, out of those 7,500, only 1 per cent or 75 groups (or 300 "terrorists") succeed in their plan. Imagine the scale of devastation! If they attack the major highways, airports, sea ports, bridges, down towns, and rail tracks the US economy would come to a standstill and China would be at its doorstep asking back for its loaned money. (Not that the US is going to pay back. It would probably declare a war on China-a final nail in the coffin of US imperialism.)
(Encyclopedia Britannica, PBS, and many others give a figure of 5 to 7 million where as some Jewish groups go for half that number. May be they are right or perhaps it's their anti-Muslim bias. I have gone for the lower figure to make the Jewish Lobby happy. On the contrary, the Lobby in this example would, I am sure, prefer the higher figure.
The US State Department says that by 2010 the number of Muslims in the US will exceed that of Jews. Currently there are about two per cent Jews, or approximately 6 million.
In TV news, they frequently show how the reporters just slip in at the major airports without going through the security checks. So it is not an impossible task.
Like many non-Muslims, Muslims may feel hurt by the deaths and devastation visited upon Iraq and Afghanistan by the US. There may be many who would feel outraged and will think about avenging. But basically it is limited to that feeling only. Next day they may be going (as students, employees, or owners) to their offices, educational institutions, courts, liquor stores, gas stations, motels, hotels, and other working and business places.
But the image persists because the ordinary people are not given any respite from constant hateful bombardments from the mad media.
Another familiar sight on the TV news is the introductory footage to items about Muslim countries, which invariably shows Muslim men in various postures of prayer, as if they don't do anything else in life. One can only wonder as to how the Muslim population is on the rise (besides the new converts), or how the economy runs, or how the underpaid adults and children produce goods for the Western countries, or so many other things.
Not every Muslim man is brandishing a gun nor is every woman clad in a burka.
Many Muslims are not only proficient in their fields but several of them also create history. A tiny uneven sample related to few fields:
Leila Ahmed is a professor who teaches at the Harvard Divinity School and is the author of "Women and Gender in Islam" and her autobiography "A Border Passage: From Cairo to America, a Woman's Journey."
Halid Beslic is a famous Bosnian folk singer.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (previously Yasmin Damji) is a journalist who lives in London, England, and writes for London's Independent newspaper. Prior to that, she used to write for New Statesman. She frequently appears on BBC to debate on racialism and other issues.
Shamim Ara started out as an actress, a very fine and successful one, who later turned film producer and director. She is South Asia's most prolific and successful woman director.
Another actor turned producer/director of several films is Sangeeta.
Inul Daratista means "the girl with the breasts." (Ainul Rokhimah is the birth name of this Indonesian dancer.) The Islamists targeted her for her dengdut dancing (a mixture of Arabic, Indian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Malay) which has been termed as "drilling." With bended knees, Inul gyrates her derriere with such a speed that it seems like a "glittering piston," in the words of Time magazine reporters.
She counters her critics such as the Indonesian Ulemas Council in these words: "MUI should realize that Indonesia is not a Muslim country, it's a democratic country." Backers she has many too, including the former Presidents Ms. Megavati Soukarnoputri and Mr. Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of Nadhlatul Ulama, an Islamic organization.
Deeyah (since 1992, originally Deepika Thathaal) is a Norwegian born singer of Pakistani and Afghan parents. She is known as the "Muslim Madonna." She has received her music training from Ustad Bade Fateh Ali Khan and Ustad Sultan Khan. But when one of her video had her with a bare back, her troubles began, and then harassment and threats forced her to move to London, England.
There too she faced similar problems from her co-religionists for her dancing with a black man in a video "Plan of My Own." Another of her video "What Will It Be" made many Muslims furious. The video starts with her in a burqa (a tent-like head to toe covering which some Muslim women don), but once the burqa is removed the only thing she has on is a bikini set.
Waris Dirie of Somalia is a former fashion model and an activist who concentrates her energy to abolish the practice of FGM or female genital mutilation.
FGM, wrongly called "female circumcision," is a process which involves a partial or full cutting of the external female genitalia, in order to decrease a female's sexual desire so at the time of marriage she is virgin. It is an extremely painful, torturous, and inhumane custom.
This cruelty Dirie herself experienced when she was five. She has described it in one of her book, a novel, "The Desert Flower." In 1997, she was appointed the United Nation's Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation. She is cousin of another famous Somali-born model Iman Abdul Majid.
Sabina England is a deaf playwright of Indian origin who grew up in India, US, and England. She is currently living in the US.
Saghi Ghahraman is an Iranian/Canadian poet and lesbian who left Iran in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power. In her recent interview to an Iranian newspaper "Shargh," she said that "sexual boundaries must be flexible... The immoral is imposed by culture on the body." The newspaper was shut down by the government.
Yasmeen Ghauri is a Canadian supermodel and has worked for Versace and Victoria's Secret. (Some people declined to be led in prayers by her father, who was then an imam in a mosque in Quebec, Canada, because of Yasmeen's work.)
Tissa Hami was born in Iran and raised in the US. She holds degrees in international relations and, besides her regular job, is a standup comic since 9/11. On stage she has tried to remove her black chador but the audience likes to see her covered.
Sabrina Houssami is Miss World Australia 2006 and Miss World Asia Pacific 2006.
Asma Jehangir is a lawyer, activist, and is associated with the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. She has successfully defended many victims (Christians, Hindus, and Muslims) of the draconian blasphemy (anything deemed insulting to Islam or Muhammad) laws and female victims of the Hudood Ordinance, introduced in 1979 and replaced by Rape Bill in 2006. Recently she was put under house arrest for opposing the baby martial law but was later released.
She and her family has been threatened and harassed several times. (In Yash Chopra's film "Veer Zara," Rani Mukherji's character is loosely based on her.)
Farah Khan is one of the most famous choreographers in India and is the director of a hit film "Mein Hoon Na" and the recently released "Om Shanti Om." She also choreographed Columbian/Lebanese singer Shakira in her video, "Hips Don't Lie," and the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical "Bombay Dreams."
Another great Indian choreographer is Saroj Khan.
Irene Zubeda Khan is the first Muslim woman (also the first woman and the first Asian, for that matter) to be the Secretary General of the London-based human rights organization the Amnesty International. She has been serving in that capacity since August 2001. In 2006 she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.
Shahrukh Khan "is the biggest film star in the world" who commands an audience of more than 3.5 billion, according to BusinessWeek. With his wife Gauri (who is Hindu) he produces films. His wax statue has been placed at Madam Tussaud's wax museum in London and soon the Graven Museum in Paris is also going to have his wax statue. Actress Penelope Cruz has expressed her desire to work with him in a film. The "King Khan" as he is known has also hosted "Kaun Banega Crorepati," India's version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."
Few of the other top actors in India who are Muslims are Amir Khan, Salman Khan, and Saif Ali Khan.
Sania Mirza is the tennis player who is ranked 31st in the world and has become inspiration for many South Asian girls.
For wearing clothes such as short skirts, shorts, and sleeveless tops, she was issued with a fatwa, a religious decree, by Sunni Ulema Board's cleric Haseeb-ul-hasan Siddiqui because Islam doesn't permit those clothes:
"She will undoubtedly be a corrupting influence on these young women, which we want to prevent."
Mirza has rightly ignored Siddiqui's fatwa.
Shazia Mirza is a British writer and stand-up comedian.
Three weeks after 9/11 she was back on stage:
"Hello, my name's Shazia Mirza, at least that's what it says on my pilot's license."
In 2003:
"Last year, I went to Mecca to repent my sins, and I had to walk around the black stone. All the women were dressed in black, you could only see their eyes. And I felt a hand touch my bottom. I ignored it. I thought, 'I'm in Mecca, it must be the hand of God.' But then it happened again. I didn't complain. Clearly, my prayers had been answered."
A couple of more:
"I got on the plane to Denmark dressed like this, and this woman refused to sit next to me. So I said to her, 'I'm going to sit on this plane and blow it up. And you think you're going to be safer three rows back?'"
"I am becoming increasingly worried that if I die a virgin, when I get to heaven I'll be one of the 72 virgins that have to sleep with one of the suicide bombers. I suspect they'd be a bit disappointed."
Mariyah Moten is known as "Pakistan's first Miss Bikini." The Houston-based girl came to be known as such after she contested the Miss Bikini Universe 2006 pageant held in China. Her "main aim is to project Pakistan to the world as a moderate place."
Aznil Nawawi is a Malaysian actor, director, and TV host who is credited with drastically changing the TV hosting. In 2005 he received the Best Talk Show Host award at the Asian Television Awards.
Asra Q. Nomani was born in India and raised in the US. An author and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal, she was the main person in arranging the woman-led prayer in New York City in March 2005. (Amina Wadood led the prayer.)
A friend and colleague of Daniel Pearl, in the movie "Mighty Heart," based on Pearl's abduction and murder in Karachi, Pakistan, her character is played by Archie Punjabi.
Three manifestoes "The Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom," "Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Mosque," and the "99 Precepts for opening Hearts, Minds and Doors in the Muslim World" are written by her.
Nighat Rizvi initiated aid's awareness in Pakistan and also staged Eve Ensler's "Vagina Monologue" in that country. A very daring act on her and the artists' part who acted in it. Ensler and Nadia Jamil were some of the artists.
When it was performed in Pakistan's capital Islamabad, Hibaaq Osman, a Somali Muslim and the special representative for V-Day (i.e., the Vagina-Day), said that she was eager to see the play being performed in a Muslim country. "Vaginabad" is what she renamed Islamabad and said: "I know if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere."
(For a day Islamabad was "Vaginabad," no doubt. But otherwise, unfortunately, the country has been turned into a Dickistan of feudal lords, ruthless capitalists, military dictators, Saudi rulers, fanatic mullahs, US diplomats, CIA agents, arms merchants, foreign corporations, and corrupt politicians.)
"Vagina Monologue" has also been performed in other Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Lebanon, Palestine, and Nigeria.
Shahzad Roy is a Pakistani pop singer who once said: "I feel so sad when I see some child working, or on the streets, not going to school. The [Zindagi] Trust is my best effort to do something about that." His NGO (nongovernmental organization) offers Rupees 20 per day to a poor child who attends school and meets certain requirements.
Criticism has been levied against Roy which he is aware of: "Some people say its wrong to bribe children to be in school." Very rightly he shoots back: "But well-off kids are rewarded for their marks all the time. There is no reason poor children should not have the same support."
Salma (real name A. Rokkaiah) is an Indian poet and author who writes in Tamil on women-related issues. When she turned thirteen she was prohibited from attending school and had to stay home, but unknown to others she started writing.
Kolo Toure is a football player from Ivory Coast. He plays for Arsenal in England.
Chali 2na (real name Charlie Stewart) is a US rap singer and an emcee with the hip-hop group Jurassic 5. His music takes up political and social issues.
K'Naan Warsame is a Somali born poet and hip-hop artist residing in Canada. His poetry touches on turmoil in Somalia and race and colonialism related issues.
"With a sound that fuses Bob Marley, conscious American hip-hop, and brilliant protest poetry," according to Jim Welte, K'Naan was "the most promising artist at the 2006 Reggae on the River festival."
These are just a few names. The list can go on and on and on. Suffice it to say that the image of Muslim women and men in the western media is the product of Goebbels's progeny who control the propaganda machinery.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
In 2003:
"
I am surprised the women were dressed in black, normally they are all dressed in white and that is how they are expected to do so during Hajj. I went for Umra once, and I saw some women dressed in colors, but nobody in black.
Virgo2
"
These perverts who call themselves Muslims cannot even spare a holy place. Then they have the audacity to call others non-Muslims. In other words, those who do not share their mindset, are not Muslims!!!In 2003:
"Last year, I went to Mecca to repent my sins, and I had to walk around the black stone. All the women were dressed in black, you could only see their eyes. And I felt a hand touch my bottom. I ignored it. I thought, 'I'm in Mecca, it must be the hand of God.' But then it happened again. I didn't complain. Clearly, my prayers had been answered."
I am surprised the women were dressed in black, normally they are all dressed in white and that is how they are expected to do so during Hajj. I went for Umra once, and I saw some women dressed in colors, but nobody in black.
Virgo2
Pop preacher sings of a tolerant Islam
The Globe and Mail
Mark Mackinnon
February 21, 2008
CAIRO -- 'Here comes the story of the world today," sings the young man with the gentle voice, oblivious to the stares he earns from passing gaggles of tourists. "A world in which religion has learned to hate, a world in which justice has become a cliché."
The young man crooning in the lobby of Cairo's Marriott hotel is Moez Masoud, and he doesn't mind the attention. He wants as many people as possible to hear his message: that religion, specifically his own Muslim faith, is being dangerously abused in the modern world.
The lines Mr. Masoud sang were the lyrics of a song he penned about Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher jailed in November in Sudan after allowing her students to give a teddy bear the name Mohammed. To Mr. Masoud, the absurd case proved how far some interpretations of Islam have drifted from his own reading of what's in the Koran.
Though you might miss it if you were reading only the headlines out of the Middle East these days, Mr. Masoud's more tolerant version of Islam is on the rise. In addition to being an aspiring pop star, the 29-year-old Egyptian is one of a new wave of Muslim "televangelists" who are reaching wide audiences across the region, converting many to an interpretation of Islam that encourages social contacts between men and women, compassion toward gays and lesbians and a rejection of the anti-Western fundamentalism.
It's a message that's reaching millions of people via television shows broadcast on satellite channels across the Middle East, and many more through Mr. Masoud's slick website and a Facebook group that has more than 10,000 members.
Critics call his message "Islam lite," but Mr. Masoud sees himself as helping reclaim a religion that for too long has been controlled by angry fundamentalists, people he says preach in the name of Islam without following its basic precept of loving other human beings.
"These people have presented views that are just blatantly wrong about women, about homosexuals, about Jews, about jihad," he said, sipping at a cappuccino between fielding calls on his mobile phone. "There's been a misconstrual of some [Koranic] verses and a decontextualization of others."
Dressed in Western clothes and sporting a stylish goatee, Mr. Masoud hardly looks the part of an Islamic preacher. Nor does he have the traditional upbringing.
Raised in an affluent family and educated at the American University in Cairo, he said that as an adolescent, he drifted a long way from his current path. At university, he said, he distanced himself from his family, dated the wrong girls and "ingested too many substances."
It's those experiences, he said, that help him connect with young, Westernized Muslims who often are put off by what they see as Islam's strictures. "It's not about the rules, it's about the love. The rules are supposed to save you, not harm you."
That's something he said he learned the hard way. He rediscovered his religion only after a series of scares that included a friend's death in a car accident and a cancer scare. He woke late on the day of Jan. 1, 1996, not quite sure how he'd made it home after a night of heavy drinking at a New Year's Eve party, and decided he needed to change.
From that day, he observed the Koranic proscription against alcohol and made a point of praying five times a day. He memorized the Koran, discovering that reading its passages gave him the same high he once got from drinking and partying.
After graduating, he took a marketing job with an American pharmaceutical firm and moved to the United States. One day, he was invited to lead the prayers at a mosque in Rochester, N.Y. By the time he finished speaking, it was apparent to everyone in the room that Mr. Masoud had found his calling.
"I didn't preach, I shared my experiences," he recalled of that night. "There was something happening."
Someone made a videotape of the talk he gave, and soon afterward Mr. Masoud was contacted by a Saudi Arabia-based satellite channel about taping a series of shows. He agreed on the condition that he could do it his way.
His first series was called Parables of the Koran, a groundbreaking show because of its laid-back tone, in which a panel of young men and women chatted with Mr. Masoud about the issues of the day and the role of religion in the modern world. While some of the women on the show wore the Islamic hijab, others left their heads uncovered.
"Some people are afraid of new things. I'm not," Mr. Masoud shrugged. "There's no Islamic law barring [men and women] in the same place, though some people think there is. The only way to change things is to just do it."
Parables of the Koran was a hit around the world and a staple on some Canadian cable channels. At first his shows were all in English, as Mr. Masoud was trying to appeal to Muslims living in the West. He warmed up his audience by telling his life story and kept them engaged by mixing quotes from the Koran with Bryan Adams and Aerosmith lyrics. More recently, he's begun preaching in Arabic to get his message out to Muslims across the Middle East.
Abdallah Schleifer, a specialist in media and Islam at the American University in Cairo, said the new style adopted by Mr. Masoud and other Islamic televangelists like Amr Khaled is drawing the quasi-secular middle class - people put off by what he calls "nutty fundamentalism" - back to their faith. Many of today's youth, he said, feel like they live in "another world" from the old-style imams in their traditional garb. Mr. Masoud's style bridges a gap for them.
"We live in a world of television and lifestyle changes. Young people, young Muslims, want to be part of that world. Into that void have come people like Moez and Amr Khaled," Prof. Schleifer said. "The message of these guys is very different. Being decent and compassionate, and at the same time being faithful to the tenets of their religion."
Mr. Masoud personally rejects the "Islam-lite" label, insisting that he hasn't added or subtracted anything from the Prophet Mohammed's message. "All I'm doing is reading the faith in a contemporary way," he said. "I'm just removing the extra baggage that extremists have put in."
His message is a simple one: It's all right for a Muslim to have fun, to enjoy life, to appreciate art and members of the opposite sex. "Engage in art, appreciate beauty. Don't believe that if you commit to your faith, you're going to be a depressed person," he said. "If Islam says kill your neighbours, I don't want to be a Muslim."
It's a message Prof. Schleifer, himself a convert from Judaism to Islam, appreciates. "You could say the style is light, which it is in the way TV is light compared to a newspaper. But the content isn't. I certainly wasn't attracted to Islam because it had hard edges, quite the contrary."
The Globe and Mail
Mark Mackinnon
February 21, 2008
CAIRO -- 'Here comes the story of the world today," sings the young man with the gentle voice, oblivious to the stares he earns from passing gaggles of tourists. "A world in which religion has learned to hate, a world in which justice has become a cliché."
The young man crooning in the lobby of Cairo's Marriott hotel is Moez Masoud, and he doesn't mind the attention. He wants as many people as possible to hear his message: that religion, specifically his own Muslim faith, is being dangerously abused in the modern world.
The lines Mr. Masoud sang were the lyrics of a song he penned about Gillian Gibbons, the British schoolteacher jailed in November in Sudan after allowing her students to give a teddy bear the name Mohammed. To Mr. Masoud, the absurd case proved how far some interpretations of Islam have drifted from his own reading of what's in the Koran.
Though you might miss it if you were reading only the headlines out of the Middle East these days, Mr. Masoud's more tolerant version of Islam is on the rise. In addition to being an aspiring pop star, the 29-year-old Egyptian is one of a new wave of Muslim "televangelists" who are reaching wide audiences across the region, converting many to an interpretation of Islam that encourages social contacts between men and women, compassion toward gays and lesbians and a rejection of the anti-Western fundamentalism.
It's a message that's reaching millions of people via television shows broadcast on satellite channels across the Middle East, and many more through Mr. Masoud's slick website and a Facebook group that has more than 10,000 members.
Critics call his message "Islam lite," but Mr. Masoud sees himself as helping reclaim a religion that for too long has been controlled by angry fundamentalists, people he says preach in the name of Islam without following its basic precept of loving other human beings.
"These people have presented views that are just blatantly wrong about women, about homosexuals, about Jews, about jihad," he said, sipping at a cappuccino between fielding calls on his mobile phone. "There's been a misconstrual of some [Koranic] verses and a decontextualization of others."
Dressed in Western clothes and sporting a stylish goatee, Mr. Masoud hardly looks the part of an Islamic preacher. Nor does he have the traditional upbringing.
Raised in an affluent family and educated at the American University in Cairo, he said that as an adolescent, he drifted a long way from his current path. At university, he said, he distanced himself from his family, dated the wrong girls and "ingested too many substances."
It's those experiences, he said, that help him connect with young, Westernized Muslims who often are put off by what they see as Islam's strictures. "It's not about the rules, it's about the love. The rules are supposed to save you, not harm you."
That's something he said he learned the hard way. He rediscovered his religion only after a series of scares that included a friend's death in a car accident and a cancer scare. He woke late on the day of Jan. 1, 1996, not quite sure how he'd made it home after a night of heavy drinking at a New Year's Eve party, and decided he needed to change.
From that day, he observed the Koranic proscription against alcohol and made a point of praying five times a day. He memorized the Koran, discovering that reading its passages gave him the same high he once got from drinking and partying.
After graduating, he took a marketing job with an American pharmaceutical firm and moved to the United States. One day, he was invited to lead the prayers at a mosque in Rochester, N.Y. By the time he finished speaking, it was apparent to everyone in the room that Mr. Masoud had found his calling.
"I didn't preach, I shared my experiences," he recalled of that night. "There was something happening."
Someone made a videotape of the talk he gave, and soon afterward Mr. Masoud was contacted by a Saudi Arabia-based satellite channel about taping a series of shows. He agreed on the condition that he could do it his way.
His first series was called Parables of the Koran, a groundbreaking show because of its laid-back tone, in which a panel of young men and women chatted with Mr. Masoud about the issues of the day and the role of religion in the modern world. While some of the women on the show wore the Islamic hijab, others left their heads uncovered.
"Some people are afraid of new things. I'm not," Mr. Masoud shrugged. "There's no Islamic law barring [men and women] in the same place, though some people think there is. The only way to change things is to just do it."
Parables of the Koran was a hit around the world and a staple on some Canadian cable channels. At first his shows were all in English, as Mr. Masoud was trying to appeal to Muslims living in the West. He warmed up his audience by telling his life story and kept them engaged by mixing quotes from the Koran with Bryan Adams and Aerosmith lyrics. More recently, he's begun preaching in Arabic to get his message out to Muslims across the Middle East.
Abdallah Schleifer, a specialist in media and Islam at the American University in Cairo, said the new style adopted by Mr. Masoud and other Islamic televangelists like Amr Khaled is drawing the quasi-secular middle class - people put off by what he calls "nutty fundamentalism" - back to their faith. Many of today's youth, he said, feel like they live in "another world" from the old-style imams in their traditional garb. Mr. Masoud's style bridges a gap for them.
"We live in a world of television and lifestyle changes. Young people, young Muslims, want to be part of that world. Into that void have come people like Moez and Amr Khaled," Prof. Schleifer said. "The message of these guys is very different. Being decent and compassionate, and at the same time being faithful to the tenets of their religion."
Mr. Masoud personally rejects the "Islam-lite" label, insisting that he hasn't added or subtracted anything from the Prophet Mohammed's message. "All I'm doing is reading the faith in a contemporary way," he said. "I'm just removing the extra baggage that extremists have put in."
His message is a simple one: It's all right for a Muslim to have fun, to enjoy life, to appreciate art and members of the opposite sex. "Engage in art, appreciate beauty. Don't believe that if you commit to your faith, you're going to be a depressed person," he said. "If Islam says kill your neighbours, I don't want to be a Muslim."
It's a message Prof. Schleifer, himself a convert from Judaism to Islam, appreciates. "You could say the style is light, which it is in the way TV is light compared to a newspaper. But the content isn't. I certainly wasn't attracted to Islam because it had hard edges, quite the contrary."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080227/ts ... gionethics
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080227/ts ... gionethics
Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam
by Karin Zeitvogel1 hour, 40 minutes ago
A huge survey of the world's Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.
The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism.
It shows that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemned the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks, the authors of the study said in Washington.
"Samuel Harris said in the Washington Times (in 2004): 'It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam'," Dalia Mogahed, co-author of the book "Who Speaks for Islam" which grew out of the study, told a news conference here.
"The argument Mr Harris makes is that religion in the primary driver" of radicalism and violence, she said.
"Religion is an important part of life for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and if it were indeed the driver for radicalisation, this would be a serious issue."
But the study, which Gallup says surveyed a sample equivalent to 90 percent of the world's Muslims, showed that widespread religiosity "does not translate into widespread support for terrorism," said Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.
About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews.
In majority Muslim countries, overwhelming majorities said religion was a very important part of their lives -- 99 percent in Indonesia, 98 percent in Egypt, 95 percent in Pakistan.
But only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed -- the radicals -- condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.
Moderate Muslims interviewed for the poll condemned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington because innocent lives were lost and civilians killed.
"Some actually cited religious justifications for why they were against 9/11, going as far as to quote from the Koran -- for example, the verse that says taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity," she said.
Meanwhile, radical Muslims gave political, not religious, reasons for condoning the attacks, the poll showed.
The survey shows radicals to be neither more religious than their moderate counterparts, nor products of abject poverty or refugee camps.
"The radicals are better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims," John Esposito, who co-authored "Who Speaks for Islam", said.
"Ironically, they believe in democracy even more than many of the mainstream moderates do, but they're more cynical about whether they'll ever get it," said Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
Gallup launched the study following 9/11, after which US President George W. Bush asked in a speech, which is quoted in the book: "Why do they hate us?"
"They hate... a democratically elected government," Bush offered as a reason.
"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."
But the poll, which gives ordinary Muslims a voice in the global debate that they have been drawn into by 9/11, showed that most Muslims -- including radicals -- admire the West for its democracy, freedoms and technological prowess.
What they do not want is to have Western ways forced on them, it said.
"Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and -defined democracy. They don't want secularism or theocracy. What the majority wants is democracy with religious values," said Esposito.
The poll has given voice to Islam's silent majority, said Mogahed.
"A billion Muslims should be the ones that we look to, to understand what they believe, rather than a vocal minority," she told AFP.
Muslims in 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East were interviewed for the survey, which is part of Gallup's World Poll that aims to interview
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080227/ts ... gionethics
Major survey challenges Western perceptions of Islam
by Karin Zeitvogel1 hour, 40 minutes ago
A huge survey of the world's Muslims released Tuesday challenges Western notions that equate Islam with radicalism and violence.
The survey, conducted by the Gallup polling agency over six years and three continents, seeks to dispel the belief held by some in the West that Islam itself is the driving force of radicalism.
It shows that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemned the attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001 and other subsequent terrorist attacks, the authors of the study said in Washington.
"Samuel Harris said in the Washington Times (in 2004): 'It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are at war with Islam'," Dalia Mogahed, co-author of the book "Who Speaks for Islam" which grew out of the study, told a news conference here.
"The argument Mr Harris makes is that religion in the primary driver" of radicalism and violence, she said.
"Religion is an important part of life for the overwhelming majority of Muslims, and if it were indeed the driver for radicalisation, this would be a serious issue."
But the study, which Gallup says surveyed a sample equivalent to 90 percent of the world's Muslims, showed that widespread religiosity "does not translate into widespread support for terrorism," said Mogahed, director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies.
About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical, according to the poll, based on more than 50,000 interviews.
In majority Muslim countries, overwhelming majorities said religion was a very important part of their lives -- 99 percent in Indonesia, 98 percent in Egypt, 95 percent in Pakistan.
But only seven percent of the billion Muslims surveyed -- the radicals -- condoned the attacks on the United States in 2001, the poll showed.
Moderate Muslims interviewed for the poll condemned the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington because innocent lives were lost and civilians killed.
"Some actually cited religious justifications for why they were against 9/11, going as far as to quote from the Koran -- for example, the verse that says taking one innocent life is like killing all humanity," she said.
Meanwhile, radical Muslims gave political, not religious, reasons for condoning the attacks, the poll showed.
The survey shows radicals to be neither more religious than their moderate counterparts, nor products of abject poverty or refugee camps.
"The radicals are better educated, have better jobs, and are more hopeful with regard to the future than mainstream Muslims," John Esposito, who co-authored "Who Speaks for Islam", said.
"Ironically, they believe in democracy even more than many of the mainstream moderates do, but they're more cynical about whether they'll ever get it," said Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
Gallup launched the study following 9/11, after which US President George W. Bush asked in a speech, which is quoted in the book: "Why do they hate us?"
"They hate... a democratically elected government," Bush offered as a reason.
"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."
But the poll, which gives ordinary Muslims a voice in the global debate that they have been drawn into by 9/11, showed that most Muslims -- including radicals -- admire the West for its democracy, freedoms and technological prowess.
What they do not want is to have Western ways forced on them, it said.
"Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and -defined democracy. They don't want secularism or theocracy. What the majority wants is democracy with religious values," said Esposito.
The poll has given voice to Islam's silent majority, said Mogahed.
"A billion Muslims should be the ones that we look to, to understand what they believe, rather than a vocal minority," she told AFP.
Muslims in 40 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East were interviewed for the survey, which is part of Gallup's World Poll that aims to interview
A24 CALGARY HERALD Saturday, March 15,2008
Muslim leader calls for Islamic Renaissance'
Summit votes on new charter, attacks U.S., Taliban and al-Qaeda
COUMBASYLLA
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A summit of Muslim nations on Friday agreed on measures to give their group greater global clout, as the head of the world's most populous Muslim country Indonesia called for an "Islamic Renaissance."
The summit's final declaration attacked the United States, which has named a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, for passing sanctions against Syria.
It also condemned "pressure" being put on Iran over its nuclear program, but "strongly condemned" the Taliban militia and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The QIC summit adopted a new charter allowing faster decision-making and creating new institutions for the 57-nation body.
QIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the Dakar summit was "historic" because of the unanimous adoption of the new charter, replacing a 1972 version that he insisted was outdated. The new constitution streamlines the QIC's operations, allowing new states to join with just a majority vote instead of the usual unanimous agreement for which decisions are normally taken.
Agreement was reached after several days of intense talks and despite the absence of several prominent leaders — including Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf.
The QIC leaders used the summit to complain about Islamophobia in the West, complaining that Muslims were often unjustifiably treated as terrorists.
Many leaders called for stronger action by the QIC and western governments to stop "insults" such as cartoons published in Denmark which lampooned the Prophet Muhammad and the looming release of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch far-right MP.
In a speech to the summit, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yud-hoyono called for a jihad of peace, including greater democracy and efforts to empower Muslims to improve the religion's image and boost its influence.
"The possibility of an Islamic Renaissance lies before us," Yudhoyono told the summit, but first, he added: "We need to get our act together as an organization of Muslim nations.
"When the Islamic Renaissance comes, it will be the natural fruit of a peaceful and constructive 'jihad.'"
Yudhoyono said the OIC was "unique" because it covers three continents and "Muslim countries supply 70 per cent of the world's energy requirements and 40 per cent of its raw material exports."
But he said "protracted conflicts in Muslim societies bring shame" to the Muslim world and meant that "Islam has unjustly been associated with violence."
"We must disabuse the world of this terrible misconception," he said, calling for greater efforts against 'Islamophobia' in the West but also greater democracy in Muslim nations.
The summit's final declaration "condemned" the United States over its sanctions against Syria last year which the leaders called "blatant prejudice in Israel's favour."
The declaration attacked the "terrorist and criminal activities" of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, specifically highlighting the growing number of suicide attacks.
The next OIC summit will be held in Cairo in 2011.
Muslim leader calls for Islamic Renaissance'
Summit votes on new charter, attacks U.S., Taliban and al-Qaeda
COUMBASYLLA
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A summit of Muslim nations on Friday agreed on measures to give their group greater global clout, as the head of the world's most populous Muslim country Indonesia called for an "Islamic Renaissance."
The summit's final declaration attacked the United States, which has named a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, for passing sanctions against Syria.
It also condemned "pressure" being put on Iran over its nuclear program, but "strongly condemned" the Taliban militia and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The QIC summit adopted a new charter allowing faster decision-making and creating new institutions for the 57-nation body.
QIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the Dakar summit was "historic" because of the unanimous adoption of the new charter, replacing a 1972 version that he insisted was outdated. The new constitution streamlines the QIC's operations, allowing new states to join with just a majority vote instead of the usual unanimous agreement for which decisions are normally taken.
Agreement was reached after several days of intense talks and despite the absence of several prominent leaders — including Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf.
The QIC leaders used the summit to complain about Islamophobia in the West, complaining that Muslims were often unjustifiably treated as terrorists.
Many leaders called for stronger action by the QIC and western governments to stop "insults" such as cartoons published in Denmark which lampooned the Prophet Muhammad and the looming release of an anti-Islam film by a Dutch far-right MP.
In a speech to the summit, Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yud-hoyono called for a jihad of peace, including greater democracy and efforts to empower Muslims to improve the religion's image and boost its influence.
"The possibility of an Islamic Renaissance lies before us," Yudhoyono told the summit, but first, he added: "We need to get our act together as an organization of Muslim nations.
"When the Islamic Renaissance comes, it will be the natural fruit of a peaceful and constructive 'jihad.'"
Yudhoyono said the OIC was "unique" because it covers three continents and "Muslim countries supply 70 per cent of the world's energy requirements and 40 per cent of its raw material exports."
But he said "protracted conflicts in Muslim societies bring shame" to the Muslim world and meant that "Islam has unjustly been associated with violence."
"We must disabuse the world of this terrible misconception," he said, calling for greater efforts against 'Islamophobia' in the West but also greater democracy in Muslim nations.
The summit's final declaration "condemned" the United States over its sanctions against Syria last year which the leaders called "blatant prejudice in Israel's favour."
The declaration attacked the "terrorist and criminal activities" of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, specifically highlighting the growing number of suicide attacks.
The next OIC summit will be held in Cairo in 2011.
Sponsored By
Christian Rage and Muslim Moderation
Despite recent provocations against Islam in the West, many Muslims seem weary of the same old tit for tat.
Christopher Dickey
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 11:35 AM ET Mar 27, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI, an exiled Egyptian journalist, a bleach-blond Dutch parliamentarian and Danish cartoonists all have something in common with a Teddy bear named Mohammed. They have been at the center of that seething storm called Muslim rage in the last few months, and, with the exception of Mohammed T. Bear, they appear to be testing that anger to see if it will erupt … yet again.
If it does, the crisis could peak just as Benedict begins his visit to the United States in mid-April. As he preaches world peace before the United Nations, once more we'll witness scenes of books and flags and effigies burning in the world of Muslims. If precedent holds, rioters may die in Kabul, a nun could be murdered in Somalia, a priest might be gunned down in Turkey. All this is all too predictable, as provocateurs like the peroxide blond must certainly know.
And yet, this time the shockwaves may amount to nothing more than ripples. If the satellite networks allow their lenses to zoom back from the book burners, they may discover there's no raging crowd there, just the usual collection of unemployed malcontents on any street in Karachi. And what is most important, we may find that the Muslims of this world are just as weary of this sorry spectacle—maybe even more so—than the Christian, Jewish and secular publics in the West.
There are several signs of change, and not always from the usual suspects.
In Turkey, the once militantly secular government is now dominated by the AK Party, which has Islamic roots and recently passed a constitutional amendment that ended the ban on women wearing Muslim headscarves at state universities. Yet the same government is supporting theological scholarship intended to modernize—and moderate—traditional Islamic teachings. An initiative run out of the prime minister's office is re-examining interpretation of the Qur'an itself as well as the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet. Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey at Chatham House in London, recently told the BBC, "This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation. Not exactly the same, but if you think, it's changing the theological foundations."
In Lebanon, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah once was known as the spiritual leader of Hizbullah and of its suicidal shock troops, who blew up American Marines and diplomats in Beirut in the early 1980s. Today, instead of calling the faithful to arms in response to perceived Western insults, Fadlallah calls on Muslim intellectuals, elites and religious scholars to work through the media and political organizations as well as "legal, artistic and literary" channels.
Fadlallah tells the faithful that the goal of Westerners who commit "aggressions against the Muslim world's sacred symbols" is to create a rift between Muslims and Western societies—and to isolate those Muslims who live in Western societies. He decries those Muslims he calls takfiri who claim they are fighting heresy with violence. He says they play into the hands of Islam's enemies. He even calls for "a united Islamic-Christian spiritual and humanitarian front."
In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah was pushing an agenda of political and religious moderation even before he assumed full control of the country in 2005. The kingdom still holds to the ultraconservative Sunni religious dogmas known as Wahhabism, and the monarchy's legitimacy is tied to its custodianship of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam. That won't change. But Abdullah has fired 1,000 of the Muslim prayer leaders on the government payroll and decreed that the 40,000 who remain must be retrained to make sure they are not stoking radical violence.
Yes, there may be less here than meets the eye. When I talked to Hakura on the phone Wednesday morning, he cautioned that the Turkish rethink of Islam is rooted in national traditions and might be a hard sell in the Arab Middle East. Fadlallah may be enthusiastic about reconciliation with Christians, but on his Web site he still presents himself as an implacable foe of what he calls Israel's "Zionist project that is based on violence, arrogance and despise [sic] of other countries." A highly placed Saudi friend assured me the other day the so-called "retraining" of Saudi Arabia's retrograde imams really would be more like "a dialogue" to discuss the best ways to preach.
Islam, like any faith, has plenty of violent fools and fanatics. Certainly it is hard to credit the judgment or intelligence of anyone in Sudan connected with the arrest of British expatriate schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons a few months ago. You'll recall she made the nearly fatal mistake of letting her class of seven-year-olds in Khartoum name a Teddy bear Mohammed. To the kids, many of whom were named Mohammed themselves, the name just sounded friendly and cuddly. Sudanese authorities claimed Gibbons was inciting religious hatred and insulting the Prophet. Eventually she apologized and they released her—against the wishes of the mob calling for her death.
But even with many qualifications and reservations, in my view the conciliatory trends in Islam make an interesting contrast with renewed provocations coming out of Europe.
There's no use wasting much space on the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the dyed blond with ugly roots who is promoting a film he says will prove his belief that "Islamic ideology is a retarded, dangerous one." What to say about a politician reminiscent of Goldmember in an Austin Powers film who claims the Qur'an should be banned like Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf"? No Dutch television network will show his little movie, and it seems nobody has seen it, but Wilders promises he will put it on the Internet before the end of this month. I suggest he wait until April Fools'.
Danish cartoonists and editors previously unknown to the wider world garnered international attention when they published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that brought on bloody riots in several Muslim countries in 2006. Having sunk once again into obscurity, the editors decided to publish one of the cartoons again last month, reportedly after the arrest of an individual plotting to kill the cartoonist. Great idea. Take one man's alleged crime and respond with new insults to an entire faith.
The most problematic event of late, however, was Pope Benedict's decision to baptize the Egyptian journalist Magdi Allam in Saint Peter's on the night before Easter, thus converting a famously self-hating Muslim into a self-loving Christian in the most high-profile setting possible. Perhaps Benedict really thought, as the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano opined, that the baptism was just a papal "gesture" to emphasize "in a gentle and clear way religious freedom." But I am not prepared to believe for a second, as some around the Vatican have hinted this week, that the Holy Father did not know who Allam was or how provocative this act would appear to Muslim scholars, including and especially those who are trying to foster interfaith dialogue.
Ever since 2006, when Benedict cited a medieval Christian emperor talking about Islam as "evil and inhuman," and the usual Muslim rabble-rousers whipped up the usual Muslim riots, more responsible members of the world's Islamic community have hoped to restore calm and reason. And now this. "The whole spectacle, with its choreography, persona and messages provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope's advisers on Islam," said a statement issued by Aref Ali Nayed, a spokesman for 138 Muslim scholars who established the Catholic-Muslim Forum for dialogue with Rome earlier this month.
Bishop Paul Hinder, the Vatican's representative in Arabia, was reluctant to criticize the pope, of course, but when I reached him in Abu Dhabi Wednesday morning he clearly had reservations about the way Allam was received into the Church. He said that local Christians took him aside at Easter services and asked him "why it had to be done in such an extraordinary way on a special night." Hinder contrasted Allam's conversion to Catholicism with former British prime minister Tony Blair's, which "was done in a private chapel."
"What I cannot accept is if it is done in a triumphalistic way," said Hinder. That is, if Allam were not declaring only his personal beliefs but intentionally demeaning the faith of Muslims. Yet it is hard to read the spectacle of his conversion otherwise, because that's exactly the tone in which Allam writes. He has made his career portraying Islam as a religion that terrorizes. Allam says he has lived in hiding and in fear for years because of reaction to his columns in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, which regularly denounce excesses by Muslims and praise Israel. Allam converted to Catholicism, he says, as he turned away from "a past in which I imagined that there could be a moderate Islam." Speaking as if for the pope, Allam told one interviewer in Italy, "His Holiness has launched an explicit and revolutionary message to a church that, up to now, has been too prudent in converting Muslims."
Allam claims he is hoping his public embrace of Catholicism will help other converts to speak out in public. But that hardly seems likely. The more probable scenario is that others will feel even more vulnerable, while Allam's books, like many Muslim-bashing screeds that preceded them, climb the best-seller lists.
Unless—and this really would be news—the Muslim world just turns the page.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/129237
Christian Rage and Muslim Moderation
Despite recent provocations against Islam in the West, many Muslims seem weary of the same old tit for tat.
Christopher Dickey
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 11:35 AM ET Mar 27, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI, an exiled Egyptian journalist, a bleach-blond Dutch parliamentarian and Danish cartoonists all have something in common with a Teddy bear named Mohammed. They have been at the center of that seething storm called Muslim rage in the last few months, and, with the exception of Mohammed T. Bear, they appear to be testing that anger to see if it will erupt … yet again.
If it does, the crisis could peak just as Benedict begins his visit to the United States in mid-April. As he preaches world peace before the United Nations, once more we'll witness scenes of books and flags and effigies burning in the world of Muslims. If precedent holds, rioters may die in Kabul, a nun could be murdered in Somalia, a priest might be gunned down in Turkey. All this is all too predictable, as provocateurs like the peroxide blond must certainly know.
And yet, this time the shockwaves may amount to nothing more than ripples. If the satellite networks allow their lenses to zoom back from the book burners, they may discover there's no raging crowd there, just the usual collection of unemployed malcontents on any street in Karachi. And what is most important, we may find that the Muslims of this world are just as weary of this sorry spectacle—maybe even more so—than the Christian, Jewish and secular publics in the West.
There are several signs of change, and not always from the usual suspects.
In Turkey, the once militantly secular government is now dominated by the AK Party, which has Islamic roots and recently passed a constitutional amendment that ended the ban on women wearing Muslim headscarves at state universities. Yet the same government is supporting theological scholarship intended to modernize—and moderate—traditional Islamic teachings. An initiative run out of the prime minister's office is re-examining interpretation of the Qur'an itself as well as the Hadith, or sayings of the Prophet. Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey at Chatham House in London, recently told the BBC, "This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation. Not exactly the same, but if you think, it's changing the theological foundations."
In Lebanon, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah once was known as the spiritual leader of Hizbullah and of its suicidal shock troops, who blew up American Marines and diplomats in Beirut in the early 1980s. Today, instead of calling the faithful to arms in response to perceived Western insults, Fadlallah calls on Muslim intellectuals, elites and religious scholars to work through the media and political organizations as well as "legal, artistic and literary" channels.
Fadlallah tells the faithful that the goal of Westerners who commit "aggressions against the Muslim world's sacred symbols" is to create a rift between Muslims and Western societies—and to isolate those Muslims who live in Western societies. He decries those Muslims he calls takfiri who claim they are fighting heresy with violence. He says they play into the hands of Islam's enemies. He even calls for "a united Islamic-Christian spiritual and humanitarian front."
In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah was pushing an agenda of political and religious moderation even before he assumed full control of the country in 2005. The kingdom still holds to the ultraconservative Sunni religious dogmas known as Wahhabism, and the monarchy's legitimacy is tied to its custodianship of Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam. That won't change. But Abdullah has fired 1,000 of the Muslim prayer leaders on the government payroll and decreed that the 40,000 who remain must be retrained to make sure they are not stoking radical violence.
Yes, there may be less here than meets the eye. When I talked to Hakura on the phone Wednesday morning, he cautioned that the Turkish rethink of Islam is rooted in national traditions and might be a hard sell in the Arab Middle East. Fadlallah may be enthusiastic about reconciliation with Christians, but on his Web site he still presents himself as an implacable foe of what he calls Israel's "Zionist project that is based on violence, arrogance and despise [sic] of other countries." A highly placed Saudi friend assured me the other day the so-called "retraining" of Saudi Arabia's retrograde imams really would be more like "a dialogue" to discuss the best ways to preach.
Islam, like any faith, has plenty of violent fools and fanatics. Certainly it is hard to credit the judgment or intelligence of anyone in Sudan connected with the arrest of British expatriate schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons a few months ago. You'll recall she made the nearly fatal mistake of letting her class of seven-year-olds in Khartoum name a Teddy bear Mohammed. To the kids, many of whom were named Mohammed themselves, the name just sounded friendly and cuddly. Sudanese authorities claimed Gibbons was inciting religious hatred and insulting the Prophet. Eventually she apologized and they released her—against the wishes of the mob calling for her death.
But even with many qualifications and reservations, in my view the conciliatory trends in Islam make an interesting contrast with renewed provocations coming out of Europe.
There's no use wasting much space on the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the dyed blond with ugly roots who is promoting a film he says will prove his belief that "Islamic ideology is a retarded, dangerous one." What to say about a politician reminiscent of Goldmember in an Austin Powers film who claims the Qur'an should be banned like Adolph Hitler's "Mein Kampf"? No Dutch television network will show his little movie, and it seems nobody has seen it, but Wilders promises he will put it on the Internet before the end of this month. I suggest he wait until April Fools'.
Danish cartoonists and editors previously unknown to the wider world garnered international attention when they published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that brought on bloody riots in several Muslim countries in 2006. Having sunk once again into obscurity, the editors decided to publish one of the cartoons again last month, reportedly after the arrest of an individual plotting to kill the cartoonist. Great idea. Take one man's alleged crime and respond with new insults to an entire faith.
The most problematic event of late, however, was Pope Benedict's decision to baptize the Egyptian journalist Magdi Allam in Saint Peter's on the night before Easter, thus converting a famously self-hating Muslim into a self-loving Christian in the most high-profile setting possible. Perhaps Benedict really thought, as the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano opined, that the baptism was just a papal "gesture" to emphasize "in a gentle and clear way religious freedom." But I am not prepared to believe for a second, as some around the Vatican have hinted this week, that the Holy Father did not know who Allam was or how provocative this act would appear to Muslim scholars, including and especially those who are trying to foster interfaith dialogue.
Ever since 2006, when Benedict cited a medieval Christian emperor talking about Islam as "evil and inhuman," and the usual Muslim rabble-rousers whipped up the usual Muslim riots, more responsible members of the world's Islamic community have hoped to restore calm and reason. And now this. "The whole spectacle, with its choreography, persona and messages provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope's advisers on Islam," said a statement issued by Aref Ali Nayed, a spokesman for 138 Muslim scholars who established the Catholic-Muslim Forum for dialogue with Rome earlier this month.
Bishop Paul Hinder, the Vatican's representative in Arabia, was reluctant to criticize the pope, of course, but when I reached him in Abu Dhabi Wednesday morning he clearly had reservations about the way Allam was received into the Church. He said that local Christians took him aside at Easter services and asked him "why it had to be done in such an extraordinary way on a special night." Hinder contrasted Allam's conversion to Catholicism with former British prime minister Tony Blair's, which "was done in a private chapel."
"What I cannot accept is if it is done in a triumphalistic way," said Hinder. That is, if Allam were not declaring only his personal beliefs but intentionally demeaning the faith of Muslims. Yet it is hard to read the spectacle of his conversion otherwise, because that's exactly the tone in which Allam writes. He has made his career portraying Islam as a religion that terrorizes. Allam says he has lived in hiding and in fear for years because of reaction to his columns in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra, which regularly denounce excesses by Muslims and praise Israel. Allam converted to Catholicism, he says, as he turned away from "a past in which I imagined that there could be a moderate Islam." Speaking as if for the pope, Allam told one interviewer in Italy, "His Holiness has launched an explicit and revolutionary message to a church that, up to now, has been too prudent in converting Muslims."
Allam claims he is hoping his public embrace of Catholicism will help other converts to speak out in public. But that hardly seems likely. The more probable scenario is that others will feel even more vulnerable, while Allam's books, like many Muslim-bashing screeds that preceded them, climb the best-seller lists.
Unless—and this really would be news—the Muslim world just turns the page.
URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/129237
Commentary
For all its hype, the Dutch anti-Islam film falls flat
IRSHAD MANJI
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
April 1, 2008 at 6:07 AM EDT
Last week, the anti-immigrant Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, released on the Internet a 15-minute film intended to smear Muslims. But his movie, Fitna, is such a bore that it has only given freedom of expression a bad name.
Fitna, the Arabic word for "social strife," is being trumpeted as a provocative manifesto with the potential to create yet more strife in the cosmic confrontation between Islam and the West.
I have watched it. Others should too, not because it is compelling but because, in its utter predictability, the film reminds us why freedom of expression is worth defending. To remain powerful, freedom demands creativity - the very creativity that Fitna lacks.
It is a patchwork of scenes plucked straight from the stock image warehouse: news footage of 9/11 and the Madrid train bombings spliced with clips of hate-spewing imams, interrupted by headlines about Theo van Gogh's murder in the streets of Amsterdam, all juxtaposed to incendiary passages from the Koran.
To be sure, egregious events, preachers and scriptures exist, and should be put on the public record, in all their vileness.
(Just be sure to secure permission. Fitna features a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban-turned-bomb - one of many cartoons
published by a Danish newspaper in 2006. Ironically, affirming
expression is never completely free, the artist who sketched the
bomb-donning Prophet has said he will sue Mr. Wilders for violating
copyright.)
The politician's problems do not stop there. By stitching together one inflammatory visual after another, Mr. Wilders has achieved little more than a garden-variety harangue. This makes Fitna not only dull but, worse, easily dismissed by those who deserve to be held accountable for their silences about violence and human rights abuses committed under the banner of Islam. A more engaging approach would have been to pepper the film with positive verses from the Koran, thereby revealing that Muslims who expound hostility are actively choosing to ignore the better angels of Islam.
There are plenty of positive Koranic passages to highlight. The possibility for women's dignity is shown by one (3:195) that states God rewards "any worker among you, be you male or female - you are equal to one another." Imagine aligning that passage with the shot of a woman's body mutilated by an honour killing.
To shame the imams who cry death to non-Muslims, Mr. Wilders could
have followed their words with these (2:62): "Jews and Christians and Sabians, all who heed the One God and the Last Day, have nothing to fear or regret as long as they remain true to their scriptures."
Indeed, he could have hammered home this point with the simpler passage (109:6) that proclaims "unto you your religion, unto me my religion."
Above all, Mr. Wilders missed the opportunity to give Wahhabi sermonizers a real run for their oil money. He could have done so by cutting between their fevered warnings of hellfire on the one hand and, on the other, diverse Muslims reading the Koran (2:256): "There is no compulsion in religion." The resulting message is simple yet nuanced: If Saudi-inspired Muslims insist on literalism, then why not take literally the Koran's crystal-clear decree against compulsion?
None of this demands deleting or diluting reality. I believe Mr. Wilders has every right to publicize harsh verses from the Koran. He also has the right to make a painfully stale statement.
In so doing, however, he debases the value of free expression. As it stands, Fitna reduces liberty to banality. If that is the best a freedom fighter can do, then what is the big deal about having freedom at all?
It is, of course, a huge deal when cleverly exercised. Exposing the range of choices offered by the Koran, Fitna could have put the onus on Muslims to look deep within. Non-Muslims would have learned something new. And Mr. Wilders might have advanced a serious debate - to say nothing of a necessary one - that lives up to freedom's promise.
Irshad Manji, a scholar at New York University and the European Foundation of Democracy, is creator of the award-winning film "Faith Without Fear." She can be reached aat http://www.irshadmanji.com
For all its hype, the Dutch anti-Islam film falls flat
IRSHAD MANJI
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
April 1, 2008 at 6:07 AM EDT
Last week, the anti-immigrant Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, released on the Internet a 15-minute film intended to smear Muslims. But his movie, Fitna, is such a bore that it has only given freedom of expression a bad name.
Fitna, the Arabic word for "social strife," is being trumpeted as a provocative manifesto with the potential to create yet more strife in the cosmic confrontation between Islam and the West.
I have watched it. Others should too, not because it is compelling but because, in its utter predictability, the film reminds us why freedom of expression is worth defending. To remain powerful, freedom demands creativity - the very creativity that Fitna lacks.
It is a patchwork of scenes plucked straight from the stock image warehouse: news footage of 9/11 and the Madrid train bombings spliced with clips of hate-spewing imams, interrupted by headlines about Theo van Gogh's murder in the streets of Amsterdam, all juxtaposed to incendiary passages from the Koran.
To be sure, egregious events, preachers and scriptures exist, and should be put on the public record, in all their vileness.
(Just be sure to secure permission. Fitna features a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a turban-turned-bomb - one of many cartoons
published by a Danish newspaper in 2006. Ironically, affirming
expression is never completely free, the artist who sketched the
bomb-donning Prophet has said he will sue Mr. Wilders for violating
copyright.)
The politician's problems do not stop there. By stitching together one inflammatory visual after another, Mr. Wilders has achieved little more than a garden-variety harangue. This makes Fitna not only dull but, worse, easily dismissed by those who deserve to be held accountable for their silences about violence and human rights abuses committed under the banner of Islam. A more engaging approach would have been to pepper the film with positive verses from the Koran, thereby revealing that Muslims who expound hostility are actively choosing to ignore the better angels of Islam.
There are plenty of positive Koranic passages to highlight. The possibility for women's dignity is shown by one (3:195) that states God rewards "any worker among you, be you male or female - you are equal to one another." Imagine aligning that passage with the shot of a woman's body mutilated by an honour killing.
To shame the imams who cry death to non-Muslims, Mr. Wilders could
have followed their words with these (2:62): "Jews and Christians and Sabians, all who heed the One God and the Last Day, have nothing to fear or regret as long as they remain true to their scriptures."
Indeed, he could have hammered home this point with the simpler passage (109:6) that proclaims "unto you your religion, unto me my religion."
Above all, Mr. Wilders missed the opportunity to give Wahhabi sermonizers a real run for their oil money. He could have done so by cutting between their fevered warnings of hellfire on the one hand and, on the other, diverse Muslims reading the Koran (2:256): "There is no compulsion in religion." The resulting message is simple yet nuanced: If Saudi-inspired Muslims insist on literalism, then why not take literally the Koran's crystal-clear decree against compulsion?
None of this demands deleting or diluting reality. I believe Mr. Wilders has every right to publicize harsh verses from the Koran. He also has the right to make a painfully stale statement.
In so doing, however, he debases the value of free expression. As it stands, Fitna reduces liberty to banality. If that is the best a freedom fighter can do, then what is the big deal about having freedom at all?
It is, of course, a huge deal when cleverly exercised. Exposing the range of choices offered by the Koran, Fitna could have put the onus on Muslims to look deep within. Non-Muslims would have learned something new. And Mr. Wilders might have advanced a serious debate - to say nothing of a necessary one - that lives up to freedom's promise.
Irshad Manji, a scholar at New York University and the European Foundation of Democracy, is creator of the award-winning film "Faith Without Fear." She can be reached aat http://www.irshadmanji.com
http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=34691
Islam, Muslims and terrorism
Asghar Ali Engineer
Islam is being invariably associated with terrorism both in media as well as in political circles, especially in Western countries. When they hear it being condemned by Muslim theologians, it is celebrated as something unusual. It is strange irony of both misunderstanding and motivated propaganda that if a small band of Osama's followers give call for jihad, it is taken as authentic Islamic call and if it is condemned by mainstream Islamic theologians, it is accepted with mixed feelings of celebration and skepticism. The mainstream condemnation of terrorism is somehow not accepted with conviction.
When the Darul Ulum Deoband, a leading Islamic seminary in Asia, held an anti-terrorism conference the media spotlighted it and number of articles and editorials were written in mainstream media. There was underlying skepticism that how thousands of 'Ulamas and imams could gather together in such large numbers, to denounce terrorism. In fact when media unceasingly targeted Islam for terrorism, these 'Ulamas thought it necessary to do so to convince their non-Muslim friends that Islam does not stand for terrorism.
In fact it was hardly necessary to do so as all Muslim theologians know fully well that there is no link, whatsoever, between Islam and terrorism but due to such continuing attacks, Muslim theologians had to issue a declaration condemning terrorism. Let it be noted that not only Osama bin Laden but not a single leading member of Al-Qaida is a qualified theologian. They are all modern educated youth or politicians. Among Taliban too, there is no theologian of any credible standing. Some of them may be product of madrasas in North West Frontier province of Pakistan but they never went for higher Islamic studies. They never got beyond preliminary Islamic education. It was their political bosses who decided courses of action and formulated policies invoking 'jihad' to justify their acts of terrorism.
Never any major theologian ever justified acts of terrorism. None of the major Islamic thinkers and theologians from West Asia issued any fatwa approving of terrorism as jihad. Yusuf Qardawi, a well-known theologian and highly respected by orthodox Muslims, condemned terrorism and suicide bombing killing of innocent people. A conference of leading Muslim scholars also condemned suicide bombing as un-Islamic. Qur'an is so clear on the issue along with hadith literature that save on political grounds, no one can approve of the acts of terrorism.
There are in all forty-one verses in Qur'an on jihad and not a single verse uses it for war or violence. In early twentieth century when terrorism, like today, was not the issue, a noted scholar of Islam Maulavi Chiragh Ali wrote a scholarly book on Jihad and showed that not even once the word jihad has been used for war or violence in Qur'an. It is really a landmark work for those who want to understand meaning of jihad in Qur'an.
The prophet of Islam (PBUH) himself never fought any war of aggression; he fought battles only in defense. Most of the battles Prophet fought were in and around Madina where he had migrated to, to escape severe prosecution from his and Islam's enemies in Mecca. It is the opponents of Islam who attacked Madina and the Prophet fought back. He followed the injunction of the Qur'an, "And fight in the way of Allah those who fight against you but be not aggressive. Surely Allah does not love aggressors. (2:190)."
This Qur'anic verse is self-explanatory and does not need any elaboration. How prophet could have violated this injunction from high on in his own lifetime? The real problem is that one fails to distinguish what is theological and what is political. Many Muslims had their own political interests and they conveniently invoked doctrine of jihad for their political project as Osama bin Laden has been doing in our own times.
The invocation of jihad for political purposes is post-Qur'anic development. The Prophet would have never approved it. Those who kept away from political struggle for power like Sufis, gave jihad a very different meaning. According to Sufis love and peace is the basis of Islam and jihad is spiritual struggle to control ones desires. In other words real jihad is war against ones own desires, as it is selfish desires which require human beings to resort to violence.
In fact Sufis always kept themselves away from political power struggle and believed in leading peaceful life and emphasized doctrine of sulh-i-kul (total peace and peace with all). Since they never involved themselves in political power struggle they led simple life and busied themselves in suppressing their desires and tried to achieve what Qur'an calls nafs mutma'innah (i.e. peaceful and satisfied soul). This could be possible only if one controlled ones desires.
It was Sufi Islam, which was most popular among the masses, as Muslim masses also had nothing to do with wars for political domination. Sufis believed in controlling themselves rather than control others. One needs violence only when one wants to control others, other than oneself. Since Sufis controlled themselves they avoided violence and political desire to control others and hence justify the use of violence.
All empire builders use violence and then justify it in the name of religion or patriotism or security. America today uses violence on largest scale imaginable and causes havoc because it wants to control the whole word for its material resources. It attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam before, only to control oil and other resources. And as the Vietnamese were forced to fight in their own way, now Osama and his followers are doing likewise.
Of course there is a big difference between Vietnam's fight against American aggression and Osama bin Laden's use of violence. Vietnam was a country and it was defending itself and Osama is a fugitive from Saudi, represents no country and leads the "al-Qaida" group founded by him and uses hit and run tactics and involves innocent citizens in his attacks. Osama has not been authorized by any country, much less by any religious authority, to attack. All leading theologians always condemned him for his terrorism.
The problem with media is it never goes in depth. It has no time for that. Its news is related to events and particularly negative events. What we call investigative journalism is rare and again in-depth analysis appeals to intellectuals, not to average readers. Then add to this hostile attitude, political agenda of certain vested interests, Zionist lobby in USA and USA's own justification of war of aggression against Muslim countries and one can understand why western media projects Islam as a religion of jihad and terrorism.
There is great need to understand various parallel trends in the Islamic world today. Media reporting and statements of certain political leaders has developed a stereotype that Muslims are essentially jihadis and united in their fight against non-Muslims. When we are hostile to a community or a nation, we homogenize it and look for negative traits ignoring diversity and complexities.
It is no different when it comes to Islam and Muslims. Since theologians tend to speak of Islam and not Muslims, a message goes that there is one single understanding of Islam and all Muslims fall in line with this theological Islam. Sociological and cultural differences in understanding of Islam is totally ignored. Apart from Sufis there are several Muslim sects who do not approve of use of violence as integral part of Islam.
It would be of great interest to know that among all other Islamic sects Isma'ilis consider jihad as one of the seven pillars of Islam (generally Muslims believe in five pillars) as at one time in history Ismailis were involved in long struggle for power with Abbasids and yet today Ismaili communities throughout the world are most peaceful communities. This clearly shows that violence is political, not religious necessity.
Christians too, despite Biblical doctrine of love and presenting other cheek if slapped on one cheek, came out with the theory of 'Holy War' during crusades and the Geeta pronounced concept of dharmayuddha. We find so much violence in Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand. Thus it would be seen that all religions talk of love and peace and all religions permit use of violence in defense. But the followers often misuse the concept of defensive violence for aggressive purposes.
Media may have its own compulsions, politicians may have their own needs, but scholars should not buy their formulations. They must fight their own prejudices and go for in depth understanding of issues. Intellectuals and scholars should be committed to quest for truth as peace and non-violence is not possible without truth. Gandhiji insisted on truth and even said truth is God in order to promote peace and no-violence.
War needs propaganda for its justification and propaganda is based on half-truths and outright lies but peace needs truth and nothing but truth. It is quest for truth which brings peace of soul - nafs-i-mutma'innah or shanty. Desire for controlling others and political power creates unrest and violence. Today Middle East is a war torn zone as it sits over unlimited source of oil. It is control over oil which tempts America to attack Arab countries and people like Osama indulge in reactive violence. Terrorism is reactive violence whereas state violence is active violence. Thus terrorism is not all about jihad but reaction to American violence for its lust for oil.
By arrangement with Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai.
Islam, Muslims and terrorism
Asghar Ali Engineer
Islam is being invariably associated with terrorism both in media as well as in political circles, especially in Western countries. When they hear it being condemned by Muslim theologians, it is celebrated as something unusual. It is strange irony of both misunderstanding and motivated propaganda that if a small band of Osama's followers give call for jihad, it is taken as authentic Islamic call and if it is condemned by mainstream Islamic theologians, it is accepted with mixed feelings of celebration and skepticism. The mainstream condemnation of terrorism is somehow not accepted with conviction.
When the Darul Ulum Deoband, a leading Islamic seminary in Asia, held an anti-terrorism conference the media spotlighted it and number of articles and editorials were written in mainstream media. There was underlying skepticism that how thousands of 'Ulamas and imams could gather together in such large numbers, to denounce terrorism. In fact when media unceasingly targeted Islam for terrorism, these 'Ulamas thought it necessary to do so to convince their non-Muslim friends that Islam does not stand for terrorism.
In fact it was hardly necessary to do so as all Muslim theologians know fully well that there is no link, whatsoever, between Islam and terrorism but due to such continuing attacks, Muslim theologians had to issue a declaration condemning terrorism. Let it be noted that not only Osama bin Laden but not a single leading member of Al-Qaida is a qualified theologian. They are all modern educated youth or politicians. Among Taliban too, there is no theologian of any credible standing. Some of them may be product of madrasas in North West Frontier province of Pakistan but they never went for higher Islamic studies. They never got beyond preliminary Islamic education. It was their political bosses who decided courses of action and formulated policies invoking 'jihad' to justify their acts of terrorism.
Never any major theologian ever justified acts of terrorism. None of the major Islamic thinkers and theologians from West Asia issued any fatwa approving of terrorism as jihad. Yusuf Qardawi, a well-known theologian and highly respected by orthodox Muslims, condemned terrorism and suicide bombing killing of innocent people. A conference of leading Muslim scholars also condemned suicide bombing as un-Islamic. Qur'an is so clear on the issue along with hadith literature that save on political grounds, no one can approve of the acts of terrorism.
There are in all forty-one verses in Qur'an on jihad and not a single verse uses it for war or violence. In early twentieth century when terrorism, like today, was not the issue, a noted scholar of Islam Maulavi Chiragh Ali wrote a scholarly book on Jihad and showed that not even once the word jihad has been used for war or violence in Qur'an. It is really a landmark work for those who want to understand meaning of jihad in Qur'an.
The prophet of Islam (PBUH) himself never fought any war of aggression; he fought battles only in defense. Most of the battles Prophet fought were in and around Madina where he had migrated to, to escape severe prosecution from his and Islam's enemies in Mecca. It is the opponents of Islam who attacked Madina and the Prophet fought back. He followed the injunction of the Qur'an, "And fight in the way of Allah those who fight against you but be not aggressive. Surely Allah does not love aggressors. (2:190)."
This Qur'anic verse is self-explanatory and does not need any elaboration. How prophet could have violated this injunction from high on in his own lifetime? The real problem is that one fails to distinguish what is theological and what is political. Many Muslims had their own political interests and they conveniently invoked doctrine of jihad for their political project as Osama bin Laden has been doing in our own times.
The invocation of jihad for political purposes is post-Qur'anic development. The Prophet would have never approved it. Those who kept away from political struggle for power like Sufis, gave jihad a very different meaning. According to Sufis love and peace is the basis of Islam and jihad is spiritual struggle to control ones desires. In other words real jihad is war against ones own desires, as it is selfish desires which require human beings to resort to violence.
In fact Sufis always kept themselves away from political power struggle and believed in leading peaceful life and emphasized doctrine of sulh-i-kul (total peace and peace with all). Since they never involved themselves in political power struggle they led simple life and busied themselves in suppressing their desires and tried to achieve what Qur'an calls nafs mutma'innah (i.e. peaceful and satisfied soul). This could be possible only if one controlled ones desires.
It was Sufi Islam, which was most popular among the masses, as Muslim masses also had nothing to do with wars for political domination. Sufis believed in controlling themselves rather than control others. One needs violence only when one wants to control others, other than oneself. Since Sufis controlled themselves they avoided violence and political desire to control others and hence justify the use of violence.
All empire builders use violence and then justify it in the name of religion or patriotism or security. America today uses violence on largest scale imaginable and causes havoc because it wants to control the whole word for its material resources. It attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam before, only to control oil and other resources. And as the Vietnamese were forced to fight in their own way, now Osama and his followers are doing likewise.
Of course there is a big difference between Vietnam's fight against American aggression and Osama bin Laden's use of violence. Vietnam was a country and it was defending itself and Osama is a fugitive from Saudi, represents no country and leads the "al-Qaida" group founded by him and uses hit and run tactics and involves innocent citizens in his attacks. Osama has not been authorized by any country, much less by any religious authority, to attack. All leading theologians always condemned him for his terrorism.
The problem with media is it never goes in depth. It has no time for that. Its news is related to events and particularly negative events. What we call investigative journalism is rare and again in-depth analysis appeals to intellectuals, not to average readers. Then add to this hostile attitude, political agenda of certain vested interests, Zionist lobby in USA and USA's own justification of war of aggression against Muslim countries and one can understand why western media projects Islam as a religion of jihad and terrorism.
There is great need to understand various parallel trends in the Islamic world today. Media reporting and statements of certain political leaders has developed a stereotype that Muslims are essentially jihadis and united in their fight against non-Muslims. When we are hostile to a community or a nation, we homogenize it and look for negative traits ignoring diversity and complexities.
It is no different when it comes to Islam and Muslims. Since theologians tend to speak of Islam and not Muslims, a message goes that there is one single understanding of Islam and all Muslims fall in line with this theological Islam. Sociological and cultural differences in understanding of Islam is totally ignored. Apart from Sufis there are several Muslim sects who do not approve of use of violence as integral part of Islam.
It would be of great interest to know that among all other Islamic sects Isma'ilis consider jihad as one of the seven pillars of Islam (generally Muslims believe in five pillars) as at one time in history Ismailis were involved in long struggle for power with Abbasids and yet today Ismaili communities throughout the world are most peaceful communities. This clearly shows that violence is political, not religious necessity.
Christians too, despite Biblical doctrine of love and presenting other cheek if slapped on one cheek, came out with the theory of 'Holy War' during crusades and the Geeta pronounced concept of dharmayuddha. We find so much violence in Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand. Thus it would be seen that all religions talk of love and peace and all religions permit use of violence in defense. But the followers often misuse the concept of defensive violence for aggressive purposes.
Media may have its own compulsions, politicians may have their own needs, but scholars should not buy their formulations. They must fight their own prejudices and go for in depth understanding of issues. Intellectuals and scholars should be committed to quest for truth as peace and non-violence is not possible without truth. Gandhiji insisted on truth and even said truth is God in order to promote peace and no-violence.
War needs propaganda for its justification and propaganda is based on half-truths and outright lies but peace needs truth and nothing but truth. It is quest for truth which brings peace of soul - nafs-i-mutma'innah or shanty. Desire for controlling others and political power creates unrest and violence. Today Middle East is a war torn zone as it sits over unlimited source of oil. It is control over oil which tempts America to attack Arab countries and people like Osama indulge in reactive violence. Terrorism is reactive violence whereas state violence is active violence. Thus terrorism is not all about jihad but reaction to American violence for its lust for oil.
By arrangement with Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai.
Muslims on the West
The coauthor of a new Gallup analysis of public opinion in the Muslim world said that based on its findings, conflict between Muslims and the West is not inevitable.
"Most Muslims like and admire much about the West, from our democracy to our technology," said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and coauthor of a new Gallup book, "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
The book, which Mogahed wrote with John L. Esposito, professor of religion and Islamic studies at Georgetown University, is based on 50,000 interviews by Gallup in 40 countries with predominantly Muslim populations or significant Muslim minorities. The interviews were conducted between 2001 and 2007, and the book was published this spring.
In two recent Los Angeles appearances, Mogahed said the researchers wanted to give voice to ordinary Muslims. "So much has been said about 'why they hate us,' " she said. "We wanted to help illuminate what's really on their minds," she said.
Among the findings:
Muslims around the world do not view the West as monolithic.
Muslims are as likely as Americans to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified.
Muslims say the West can best improve relations with the Muslim world by respecting Islam.
****
"What do a billion Muslims really think?"
("The Christian Science Monitor", May 16, 2008)
Washington, USA - Since the momentous events of Sept. 11, 2001,
countless news stories, TV commentaries, and books have speculated on
the causes of terrorism, the attitudes of Muslims, and a purported clash
of civilizations between Islamic societies and the West.
What has not been available is any reliable measure of the viewpoints of
ordinary Muslims, who constitute 20 percent of the global population.
That is no longer the case. Through an ambitious six-year project that
involved hour-long, face-to-face interviews with residents in nearly 40
nations, Gallup has plumbed the perspectives of Muslim men and women -
urban and rural, educated and illiterate, young and old.
The Gallup Poll of the Muslim World surveyed a representative sample of
90 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, the most comprehensive
study ever done. The findings are explored in the new book "Who Speaks
for Islam?" by John Esposito, Islamic studies professor at Georgetown
University; and Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center
for Muslim Studies in Washington.
Here are some of the key results, which frequently counter conventional
wisdom:
Is Islam compatible with democracy?
*Large majorities cite the equal importance of democracy and Islam to
the quality of life and progress of the Muslim world. They see no
contradiction between democratic values and religious principles.
*Political freedoms are among the things they admire most about the
West.
*Substantial majorities in nearly all nations say that if drafting a new
constitution, they would guarantee freedom of speech (see chart, below).
*Most want neither theocracy nor secular democracy but a third model in
which religious principles and democratic values coexist. They want
their own democratic model that draws on Islamic law as a source.
*Significant majorities say religious leaders should play no direct role
in drafting a constitution, writing legislation, determining foreign
policy, or deciding how women dress in public.
How do Muslims view women's rights?
*Majorities in most countries believe that women should have the same
legal rights as men: They should have the right to vote, to hold any job
outside the home that they qualify for, and to hold leadership positions
at the cabinet and national council levels (see chart, below).
*Majorities of men in virtually every country (including 62 percent in
Saudi Arabia, 73 percent in Iran, and 81 percent in Indonesia) agree
that women should be able to work at any job they qualify for.
*In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote, 58 percent of men say women
should be able to vote.
*While Muslim women favor gender parity, they do not endorse wholesale
adoption of Western values.
What makes a radical?
Various studies of Muslim terrorists show that most are not graduates of
madrassahs but of private or public schools and universities; most are
from middle- and working-class backgrounds; some are devout and others
are not. This survey confirms these findings:
*Among the Muslims surveyed, 7 percent condoned the 9/11 attacks. The
study terms these the "politically radicalized."
*When asked why they supported the attacks, the radicals gave political
rather than religious reasons. They have a sense of political
frustration and feel humiliated and threatened by the West. Those who
opposed the attacks often gave religious reasons for doing so.
*The radicals, on average, are not the down-and-out people in society.
They are more educated than moderates, and two-thirds of radicals have
average or above-average income. Forty-seven percent supervise others at
work. They are more optimistic about their own lives than are moderates
(52 percent to 45 percent).
*Radicals are no more religious than the general population and do not
attend mosque more frequently.
*What distinguishes them is not their perception of Western culture or
freedoms, but their perception of US policies. Even radicals say they
support democracy. But 63 percent of radicals do not believe that the
United States will allow people in the region to fashion their own
political future without direct US influence.
How do Muslims view the West?
*When asked what they most admire about the West, Muslims pointed to (1)
technology, (2) a value system of hard work, self-responsibility, rule
of law, and cooperation, and (3) fair political systems, with respect
for human rights, democracy, and gender equality.
*What they dislike the most about the West includes: denigration of
Islam and Muslims, promiscuity, and ethical and moral corruption.
*What they admire least about their own Muslim societies includes: lack
of unity, economic and political corruption, and extremism.
*Most Muslims agree on what the West should do first to improve
relations: demonstrate more respect, show more understanding of Islam as
a religion, and not denigrate what it stands for. The issues that drive
radicals are also important to mainstream Muslims, but they differ in
their priorities and the degree of politicization and alienation.
Moderate Muslims next hope for Western policies that support economic
development. Radicals are more focused on the West discriminating less
against Muslims and refraining from interference in the internal affairs
of Muslim countries.
*As for the actions that Muslims themselves could take to improve
relations, those surveyed recommended: respect the West's optimism and
values of freedom of speech and religion, reduce and control extremism
and terrorism, and "modernize."
The coauthor of a new Gallup analysis of public opinion in the Muslim world said that based on its findings, conflict between Muslims and the West is not inevitable.
"Most Muslims like and admire much about the West, from our democracy to our technology," said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and coauthor of a new Gallup book, "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."
The book, which Mogahed wrote with John L. Esposito, professor of religion and Islamic studies at Georgetown University, is based on 50,000 interviews by Gallup in 40 countries with predominantly Muslim populations or significant Muslim minorities. The interviews were conducted between 2001 and 2007, and the book was published this spring.
In two recent Los Angeles appearances, Mogahed said the researchers wanted to give voice to ordinary Muslims. "So much has been said about 'why they hate us,' " she said. "We wanted to help illuminate what's really on their minds," she said.
Among the findings:
Muslims around the world do not view the West as monolithic.
Muslims are as likely as Americans to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustified.
Muslims say the West can best improve relations with the Muslim world by respecting Islam.
****
"What do a billion Muslims really think?"
("The Christian Science Monitor", May 16, 2008)
Washington, USA - Since the momentous events of Sept. 11, 2001,
countless news stories, TV commentaries, and books have speculated on
the causes of terrorism, the attitudes of Muslims, and a purported clash
of civilizations between Islamic societies and the West.
What has not been available is any reliable measure of the viewpoints of
ordinary Muslims, who constitute 20 percent of the global population.
That is no longer the case. Through an ambitious six-year project that
involved hour-long, face-to-face interviews with residents in nearly 40
nations, Gallup has plumbed the perspectives of Muslim men and women -
urban and rural, educated and illiterate, young and old.
The Gallup Poll of the Muslim World surveyed a representative sample of
90 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, the most comprehensive
study ever done. The findings are explored in the new book "Who Speaks
for Islam?" by John Esposito, Islamic studies professor at Georgetown
University; and Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center
for Muslim Studies in Washington.
Here are some of the key results, which frequently counter conventional
wisdom:
Is Islam compatible with democracy?
*Large majorities cite the equal importance of democracy and Islam to
the quality of life and progress of the Muslim world. They see no
contradiction between democratic values and religious principles.
*Political freedoms are among the things they admire most about the
West.
*Substantial majorities in nearly all nations say that if drafting a new
constitution, they would guarantee freedom of speech (see chart, below).
*Most want neither theocracy nor secular democracy but a third model in
which religious principles and democratic values coexist. They want
their own democratic model that draws on Islamic law as a source.
*Significant majorities say religious leaders should play no direct role
in drafting a constitution, writing legislation, determining foreign
policy, or deciding how women dress in public.
How do Muslims view women's rights?
*Majorities in most countries believe that women should have the same
legal rights as men: They should have the right to vote, to hold any job
outside the home that they qualify for, and to hold leadership positions
at the cabinet and national council levels (see chart, below).
*Majorities of men in virtually every country (including 62 percent in
Saudi Arabia, 73 percent in Iran, and 81 percent in Indonesia) agree
that women should be able to work at any job they qualify for.
*In Saudi Arabia, where women cannot vote, 58 percent of men say women
should be able to vote.
*While Muslim women favor gender parity, they do not endorse wholesale
adoption of Western values.
What makes a radical?
Various studies of Muslim terrorists show that most are not graduates of
madrassahs but of private or public schools and universities; most are
from middle- and working-class backgrounds; some are devout and others
are not. This survey confirms these findings:
*Among the Muslims surveyed, 7 percent condoned the 9/11 attacks. The
study terms these the "politically radicalized."
*When asked why they supported the attacks, the radicals gave political
rather than religious reasons. They have a sense of political
frustration and feel humiliated and threatened by the West. Those who
opposed the attacks often gave religious reasons for doing so.
*The radicals, on average, are not the down-and-out people in society.
They are more educated than moderates, and two-thirds of radicals have
average or above-average income. Forty-seven percent supervise others at
work. They are more optimistic about their own lives than are moderates
(52 percent to 45 percent).
*Radicals are no more religious than the general population and do not
attend mosque more frequently.
*What distinguishes them is not their perception of Western culture or
freedoms, but their perception of US policies. Even radicals say they
support democracy. But 63 percent of radicals do not believe that the
United States will allow people in the region to fashion their own
political future without direct US influence.
How do Muslims view the West?
*When asked what they most admire about the West, Muslims pointed to (1)
technology, (2) a value system of hard work, self-responsibility, rule
of law, and cooperation, and (3) fair political systems, with respect
for human rights, democracy, and gender equality.
*What they dislike the most about the West includes: denigration of
Islam and Muslims, promiscuity, and ethical and moral corruption.
*What they admire least about their own Muslim societies includes: lack
of unity, economic and political corruption, and extremism.
*Most Muslims agree on what the West should do first to improve
relations: demonstrate more respect, show more understanding of Islam as
a religion, and not denigrate what it stands for. The issues that drive
radicals are also important to mainstream Muslims, but they differ in
their priorities and the degree of politicization and alienation.
Moderate Muslims next hope for Western policies that support economic
development. Radicals are more focused on the West discriminating less
against Muslims and refraining from interference in the internal affairs
of Muslim countries.
*As for the actions that Muslims themselves could take to improve
relations, those surveyed recommended: respect the West's optimism and
values of freedom of speech and religion, reduce and control extremism
and terrorism, and "modernize."
Last edited by kmaherali on Tue May 20, 2008 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Khaleej Times Online >> News >> OPINION
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/index00.asp
Muslim deviance? Gimme a break
BY JONATHAN POWER (World View)
11 May 2008
ONCE again the CIA and MI6 are publishing dire warnings of the vitality of Al Qaeda. Once again the Islamic world as a whole is being tarnished by association. US presidential contender John McCain is saying that America needs a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”.
And the words still ring in our ears from Samuel Huntington’s treatise, “the Clash of Civilisations”, the book that in many ways triggered this paranoia that infects the politicians, the press and the public discourse. “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, IT IS ISLAM”, he wrote.
Few, if any, in the Western leadership seem to make the point that Al Qaeda is a deviant phenomenon within the Islamic world, just as Hitler was a deviant phenomenon within the Christian world (commentators seem to overlook Hitler’s early speeches calling on Catholic principles). But Islam has a much better record over the ages (despite its founder being far more warlike than the founder of Christianity) of dealing with its deviants who take violence to excess.
Islamic culture has never been tolerant of Nazism, fascism or communism. Christianity has spawned all three. Buddhism failed to resist Japanese militarism and Confucianism provided hospitable to Maoism. Yes, there was Saddam Hussein but he was an atheistic brute without an ideology.
Of course, there have been many incidents in the long history of Islam when there have been large-scale losses of life. The massacres and starvation of the Armenians in 1915 still stirs the waters of contemporary debate.
But Islam has never spawned anything comparable with Hitler’s systematic genocide of the Jews—indeed throughout its history Islam has been protective of the Jews, regarding them as “people of the book” to whom it had a special responsibility. Nor has it settled other parts of the world and systematically obliterated other civilisations as did Christian Spain with the Aztecs and Incas.
Nor have Islamic societies created anything equivalent to South Africa’s apartheid or the racist culture of the old American South. Unlike many Christian churches the mosque has never separated people by race. Even today Americans confess that nowhere is there more segregation in their society than at the Sunday noon hour.
Western memories are highly selective. When at Easter time the Greek peasants of the Peloponnese began to kill all the Muslims in the land there was silence. But fifty years later when there were mass killings of Christians in Bulgaria there was a great outpouring of moral outrage. Delacroix immortalised the massacre in his painting, “Massacre of Chaos”, with Christian women pursued by Turkish lancers and Gladstone wrote a best selling pamphlet in which he described the Ottomans as leaving “a broad line of blood marking the track behind them, and as far as their domination reached civilisation vanished from view”.
Almost forgotten today is that it was the Ottomans who gave refuge to the Jews when they were expelled from Iberia, as were fleeing German, French and Czech Protestants, but every cultivated Westerner knows Voltaire’s “Fanaticism or Mohammed the Prophet” or Dante’s absurd and unjust portrayal of the Prophet.
Christianity has always been led or dominated by people of European descent. But the leadership of the Muslim world has been much more fragmented—between AD 661 and 750 it was the Arab Umayyad dynasty. Between 750 and 1258 it was the multi ethnic Abbasid dynasty. And from 1453 to 1922, the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire. In India there was the separate Mughals and in Persia the Safavids. In sub-Saharan Africa there were the Muslim empires of Mali and Songhai.
Despite their relative poverty today, with great teaming cities like Cairo, Dacca and Jakarta, criminal violence is much, much lower than in Christian-influenced societies. Muslim countries, according to the UN’s annual Human Development report, have the world’s lowest murder and rape rates. In Teheran, the capital of Iran, and according to the CIA the most important single source of terrorism today, you can go out at 11 or 12pm at night and find families with children picnicking in city parks. When my daughters’ friends ask me where can they safely travel alone in an interesting Third World city I say Cairo. Certainly not Catholic Rio or Protestant Cape Town. Not only are murders and muggings comparatively rarer there is much less prostitution and hard drug use. Neither is there that much AIDS.
The Western debate about Islam is frankly infantile. Even Barack Obama, with his own personal experience to go off, either is ignorant or just scared of going into battle on these issues. I have not read one speech by one Western politician who seriously attempts to educate public opinion. We live in a slough of ignorance.
Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign policy analyst and commentator based in London
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/index00.asp
Muslim deviance? Gimme a break
BY JONATHAN POWER (World View)
11 May 2008
ONCE again the CIA and MI6 are publishing dire warnings of the vitality of Al Qaeda. Once again the Islamic world as a whole is being tarnished by association. US presidential contender John McCain is saying that America needs a leadership “to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: the threat of radical Islamic terrorism”.
And the words still ring in our ears from Samuel Huntington’s treatise, “the Clash of Civilisations”, the book that in many ways triggered this paranoia that infects the politicians, the press and the public discourse. “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, IT IS ISLAM”, he wrote.
Few, if any, in the Western leadership seem to make the point that Al Qaeda is a deviant phenomenon within the Islamic world, just as Hitler was a deviant phenomenon within the Christian world (commentators seem to overlook Hitler’s early speeches calling on Catholic principles). But Islam has a much better record over the ages (despite its founder being far more warlike than the founder of Christianity) of dealing with its deviants who take violence to excess.
Islamic culture has never been tolerant of Nazism, fascism or communism. Christianity has spawned all three. Buddhism failed to resist Japanese militarism and Confucianism provided hospitable to Maoism. Yes, there was Saddam Hussein but he was an atheistic brute without an ideology.
Of course, there have been many incidents in the long history of Islam when there have been large-scale losses of life. The massacres and starvation of the Armenians in 1915 still stirs the waters of contemporary debate.
But Islam has never spawned anything comparable with Hitler’s systematic genocide of the Jews—indeed throughout its history Islam has been protective of the Jews, regarding them as “people of the book” to whom it had a special responsibility. Nor has it settled other parts of the world and systematically obliterated other civilisations as did Christian Spain with the Aztecs and Incas.
Nor have Islamic societies created anything equivalent to South Africa’s apartheid or the racist culture of the old American South. Unlike many Christian churches the mosque has never separated people by race. Even today Americans confess that nowhere is there more segregation in their society than at the Sunday noon hour.
Western memories are highly selective. When at Easter time the Greek peasants of the Peloponnese began to kill all the Muslims in the land there was silence. But fifty years later when there were mass killings of Christians in Bulgaria there was a great outpouring of moral outrage. Delacroix immortalised the massacre in his painting, “Massacre of Chaos”, with Christian women pursued by Turkish lancers and Gladstone wrote a best selling pamphlet in which he described the Ottomans as leaving “a broad line of blood marking the track behind them, and as far as their domination reached civilisation vanished from view”.
Almost forgotten today is that it was the Ottomans who gave refuge to the Jews when they were expelled from Iberia, as were fleeing German, French and Czech Protestants, but every cultivated Westerner knows Voltaire’s “Fanaticism or Mohammed the Prophet” or Dante’s absurd and unjust portrayal of the Prophet.
Christianity has always been led or dominated by people of European descent. But the leadership of the Muslim world has been much more fragmented—between AD 661 and 750 it was the Arab Umayyad dynasty. Between 750 and 1258 it was the multi ethnic Abbasid dynasty. And from 1453 to 1922, the Turkish-dominated Ottoman Empire. In India there was the separate Mughals and in Persia the Safavids. In sub-Saharan Africa there were the Muslim empires of Mali and Songhai.
Despite their relative poverty today, with great teaming cities like Cairo, Dacca and Jakarta, criminal violence is much, much lower than in Christian-influenced societies. Muslim countries, according to the UN’s annual Human Development report, have the world’s lowest murder and rape rates. In Teheran, the capital of Iran, and according to the CIA the most important single source of terrorism today, you can go out at 11 or 12pm at night and find families with children picnicking in city parks. When my daughters’ friends ask me where can they safely travel alone in an interesting Third World city I say Cairo. Certainly not Catholic Rio or Protestant Cape Town. Not only are murders and muggings comparatively rarer there is much less prostitution and hard drug use. Neither is there that much AIDS.
The Western debate about Islam is frankly infantile. Even Barack Obama, with his own personal experience to go off, either is ignorant or just scared of going into battle on these issues. I have not read one speech by one Western politician who seriously attempts to educate public opinion. We live in a slough of ignorance.
Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign policy analyst and commentator based in London
June 2, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
What Do You Call a Terror(Jihad)ist?
By P. W. SINGER and ELINA NOOR
IMAGINE if Franklin D. Roosevelt had taken to calling Adolf Hitler the “leader of the National Socialist Aryan patriots” or dubbed Japanese soldiers fighting in World War II as the “defenders of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
To describe the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army in terms that incorporated their own propaganda would have been self-defeating. Unfortunately, that is what many American policymakers have been doing by calling terrorists “jihadists” or “jihadis.”
While the State Department recently circulated an internal memo advising foreign service officers to avoid such terms, President Bush, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and members of the news media continue to use them.
The word “jihad” means to “strive” or “struggle,” and in the Muslim world it has traditionally been used in tandem with “fi sabilillah” (“in the path of God”). The term has long been taken to mean either a quest to find one’s faith or an external fight for justice. It makes sense, then, for terrorists to associate themselves with a term that has positive connotations. For the United States to support them in that effort, however, is a fundamental strategic mistake.
First, to call a terrorist a “jihadist” or “jihadi” effectively puts any campaign against terrorism into the framework of an existential battle between the West and Islam. This feeds into the worldview propagated by Al Qaeda. It also serves to isolate the tens of millions of Muslims who condemn the violence that has been perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Second, these words locate the ideological battle exactly where the extremists want it to be. The terms of discussion are no longer about the murder of innocents in terrorist acts; they are about theology.
Third, when American leaders use this language it sends a confusing message to the Muslim world, showing ignorance on basic issues and possibly even raising doubts about American motives. Why, after all, would we call our enemy a “holy warrior”?
If we want to say what we mean, what terms better describe Qaeda members and other violent extremists? “Muharib” or the more colloquial “hirabi” or “hirabist” would be good places to start. “Hirabah,” the base word, is a term for barbarism or piracy. Unlike “jihad,” which grants honor, “hirabah” brings condemnation; it involves unlawful violence and disorder.
Of course, it’s probably best not to engage in these nuances at all. Which is why American leaders would do best to call terrorists by their rightful name: “terrorists.” The label may seem passé, but terrorism is an internationally recognized word for an internationally recognized crime. If we want to win a war of words, we would do well to choose the ones we use with greater care.
P. W. Singer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Elina Noor is an analyst at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia.
Op-Ed Contributors
What Do You Call a Terror(Jihad)ist?
By P. W. SINGER and ELINA NOOR
IMAGINE if Franklin D. Roosevelt had taken to calling Adolf Hitler the “leader of the National Socialist Aryan patriots” or dubbed Japanese soldiers fighting in World War II as the “defenders of Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.”
To describe the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army in terms that incorporated their own propaganda would have been self-defeating. Unfortunately, that is what many American policymakers have been doing by calling terrorists “jihadists” or “jihadis.”
While the State Department recently circulated an internal memo advising foreign service officers to avoid such terms, President Bush, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and members of the news media continue to use them.
The word “jihad” means to “strive” or “struggle,” and in the Muslim world it has traditionally been used in tandem with “fi sabilillah” (“in the path of God”). The term has long been taken to mean either a quest to find one’s faith or an external fight for justice. It makes sense, then, for terrorists to associate themselves with a term that has positive connotations. For the United States to support them in that effort, however, is a fundamental strategic mistake.
First, to call a terrorist a “jihadist” or “jihadi” effectively puts any campaign against terrorism into the framework of an existential battle between the West and Islam. This feeds into the worldview propagated by Al Qaeda. It also serves to isolate the tens of millions of Muslims who condemn the violence that has been perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Second, these words locate the ideological battle exactly where the extremists want it to be. The terms of discussion are no longer about the murder of innocents in terrorist acts; they are about theology.
Third, when American leaders use this language it sends a confusing message to the Muslim world, showing ignorance on basic issues and possibly even raising doubts about American motives. Why, after all, would we call our enemy a “holy warrior”?
If we want to say what we mean, what terms better describe Qaeda members and other violent extremists? “Muharib” or the more colloquial “hirabi” or “hirabist” would be good places to start. “Hirabah,” the base word, is a term for barbarism or piracy. Unlike “jihad,” which grants honor, “hirabah” brings condemnation; it involves unlawful violence and disorder.
Of course, it’s probably best not to engage in these nuances at all. Which is why American leaders would do best to call terrorists by their rightful name: “terrorists.” The label may seem passé, but terrorism is an internationally recognized word for an internationally recognized crime. If we want to win a war of words, we would do well to choose the ones we use with greater care.
P. W. Singer is a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Elina Noor is an analyst at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia.
Va. Mosque Reaches Out, Joining Immigrant Fabric
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 2008; A01
For years, the Dar al Hijrah mosque was an isolated, slightly
mysterious presence in Falls Church -- a stark stone building hidden
behind a row of trees, rarely visited by non-Muslims in the multi-
ethnic Culmore neighborhood, and known mostly for traffic jams on
Leesburg Pike as worshipers arrived for Friday prayers.
These days, the mosque bustles with visitors chattering in Spanish
and Vietnamese as well as Persian and Urdu. Immigrants from a dozen
countries gather there each Thursday, many with toddlers and baby
strollers, to pick up donated chicken, bread, fruit and vegetables.
On weekends, the doors are thrown open for community blood drives or
mental health fairs. At night, mosque officials often attend
meetings at nearby churches, synagogues or social agencies,
including a monthly brainstorming session called Culmore Partners.
"The average person here has had no interaction with Islam. They may
even think we are the enemy, especially after September 11th," said
Abdulkareem Jama, a network engineer from Somalia who is president
of the mosque's board. "The more we open up and interact, the more
we demystify things and seem normal to each other."
Dar al Hijrah has evolved dramatically since 2001, when it came
under official suspicion amid reports that a man linked to the
terror attacks in New York and Washington had visited there. This
year, its glossy 25th anniversary report includes congratulatory
letters from a variety of private and public institutions.
The mosque's coming out also reflects the growing cooperation
between area Muslim institutions and the largely non-Muslim
immigrant communities that surround them. In Culmore, the trend has
brought many groups together to help immigrants who struggle with
poverty, discrimination and legal problems.
Father Horace Grinnell is the pastor at St. Anthony of Padua
Catholic Church, a longtime anchor of Culmore. Until six months ago,
he had never met the leaders of Dar al Hijrah. Now, they are
collaborating on a health clinic and other projects.
"There has been a quantum leap in synergy and coordination,"
Grinnell said. "They were painted pretty harshly after 9/11, but now
they are reaching out on all fronts. We can both be a resource for
people, whether they are Catholic or not."
Beyond places of worship, the evolving mosaic of shops, restaurants
and offices in Culmore and several other Northern Virginia areas
reflects an increasingly comfortable meld of Middle Eastern cultures
with the Latin American and Asian cultures that once dominated them.
On Leesburg Pike, a Pakistani dentist's waiting room has Spanish-
language and Muslim-oriented newspapers; an Arab-owned travel
company books trips to Central America; and an Iranian grocery owner
often chats with the Salvadoran discount furniture seller next door.
"There is harmony here," said Luis Lazo, 55, as he stopped by to
greet Lida Sadahjiani in her shop stuffed with Iranian
delicacies. "We don't speak the same language, but we have known
each other a long time."
Just across Leesburg Pike, Ali Altaf, 35, a bank employee, was
eating lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant with his wife and
children. In the window were signs in Arabic, Persian and Spanish.
His waitress was a Peruvian immigrant named Emiliana Navarrete, 21.
"People here seem more knowledgeable about each other's cultures
now; they are getting to know each other better," Altaf said.
Navarrete showed the notepad where she had written the names of
Persian dishes phonetically so she could understand telephone orders.
"Baba kanush, korma sapsi," she practiced with a laugh.
Such public familiarity has not crossed the line into many personal
friendships, let alone religious conversions, local leaders said.
There are only a handful of Hispanic Muslims in the area, including
Farhanaz Ellis, an outreach worker at the All Dulles Area Muslim
Society in Sterling.
Ellis, born to a Catholic family in Panama, said her mosque had held
a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and presentations for
emergency workers. Yet she seemed to have few personal ties to area
Latinos and said much of her work involved explaining Islam to
outside groups.
"Many people here have the misperception that Islam oppresses women
and that Muslims see non-Muslims as infidels," she said. She does
not try to change critics, she said, "just give them food for
thought."
One area Muslim who has plunged into Hispanic issues is Mukit
Hossain, a Bangladeshi immigrant in Herndon who co-founded a day-
laborer center there for Latino workers. The center provoked a
public outcry and was shut down last year.
Hossain said area Muslims, most of whom came to the U.S. legally,
traditionally had little interest in the problems of illegal or
Latino immigrants. After the terror attacks of 2001, however, they
began to face public hostility and find common cause with other
immigrant groups.
"What happened on 9/11 was a wake-up call for all of us," Hossain
said. To those who question why he would help Hispanic laborers, he
retorted, "Do they think I am a terrorist here to convert people?"
Immigration is a "human rights issue," he said. "No one from any
country should be treated like an animal."
It was the threat of a crackdown on illegal immigrants that first
brought Dar al Hijrah into close contact with advocacy groups. A
meeting was called in Culmore to discuss how to help families in
cases of raids or arrests, and mosque officials offered their
premises.
"We were blown away by their hospitality. They even bought us all
pizza," said Cindy Brown of Hogar Hispano, a nonprofit aid agency
for Latinos on Leesburg Pike.
Mosque officials say they have no desire to push their religion on
other immigrants, only to inform them about it. At community events,
they set up a booth with brochures in Spanish, including a booklet
on the history of Islam, women's rights and "common
misinterpretations" about their faith.
"We are one community of many cultures and faiths, and we want to
break down the barriers that divide us," said Mohammed Abdelilah, a
manager at Dar al Hijrah. "This is nothing magic. It's not for
political gain. It is for the sake of God."
At a recent food distribution in the mosque, families from Morocco,
Iran, El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea, Guatemala, Pakistan and Ethiopia
waited their turn. Although clustered together by language groups,
they greeted each other with smiles.
Carlos Moreno, 71, an immigrant from El Salvador, said that with
food prices climbing, he and his wife were grateful for the
assistance and felt comfortable visiting the mosque.
"The Bible says there should be no divisions between human beings,
no racism and no prejudice," Moreno said. "When we die, we all look
the same. Rich or poor, black or white, we all go to the same place."
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 2008; A01
For years, the Dar al Hijrah mosque was an isolated, slightly
mysterious presence in Falls Church -- a stark stone building hidden
behind a row of trees, rarely visited by non-Muslims in the multi-
ethnic Culmore neighborhood, and known mostly for traffic jams on
Leesburg Pike as worshipers arrived for Friday prayers.
These days, the mosque bustles with visitors chattering in Spanish
and Vietnamese as well as Persian and Urdu. Immigrants from a dozen
countries gather there each Thursday, many with toddlers and baby
strollers, to pick up donated chicken, bread, fruit and vegetables.
On weekends, the doors are thrown open for community blood drives or
mental health fairs. At night, mosque officials often attend
meetings at nearby churches, synagogues or social agencies,
including a monthly brainstorming session called Culmore Partners.
"The average person here has had no interaction with Islam. They may
even think we are the enemy, especially after September 11th," said
Abdulkareem Jama, a network engineer from Somalia who is president
of the mosque's board. "The more we open up and interact, the more
we demystify things and seem normal to each other."
Dar al Hijrah has evolved dramatically since 2001, when it came
under official suspicion amid reports that a man linked to the
terror attacks in New York and Washington had visited there. This
year, its glossy 25th anniversary report includes congratulatory
letters from a variety of private and public institutions.
The mosque's coming out also reflects the growing cooperation
between area Muslim institutions and the largely non-Muslim
immigrant communities that surround them. In Culmore, the trend has
brought many groups together to help immigrants who struggle with
poverty, discrimination and legal problems.
Father Horace Grinnell is the pastor at St. Anthony of Padua
Catholic Church, a longtime anchor of Culmore. Until six months ago,
he had never met the leaders of Dar al Hijrah. Now, they are
collaborating on a health clinic and other projects.
"There has been a quantum leap in synergy and coordination,"
Grinnell said. "They were painted pretty harshly after 9/11, but now
they are reaching out on all fronts. We can both be a resource for
people, whether they are Catholic or not."
Beyond places of worship, the evolving mosaic of shops, restaurants
and offices in Culmore and several other Northern Virginia areas
reflects an increasingly comfortable meld of Middle Eastern cultures
with the Latin American and Asian cultures that once dominated them.
On Leesburg Pike, a Pakistani dentist's waiting room has Spanish-
language and Muslim-oriented newspapers; an Arab-owned travel
company books trips to Central America; and an Iranian grocery owner
often chats with the Salvadoran discount furniture seller next door.
"There is harmony here," said Luis Lazo, 55, as he stopped by to
greet Lida Sadahjiani in her shop stuffed with Iranian
delicacies. "We don't speak the same language, but we have known
each other a long time."
Just across Leesburg Pike, Ali Altaf, 35, a bank employee, was
eating lunch at a Middle Eastern restaurant with his wife and
children. In the window were signs in Arabic, Persian and Spanish.
His waitress was a Peruvian immigrant named Emiliana Navarrete, 21.
"People here seem more knowledgeable about each other's cultures
now; they are getting to know each other better," Altaf said.
Navarrete showed the notepad where she had written the names of
Persian dishes phonetically so she could understand telephone orders.
"Baba kanush, korma sapsi," she practiced with a laugh.
Such public familiarity has not crossed the line into many personal
friendships, let alone religious conversions, local leaders said.
There are only a handful of Hispanic Muslims in the area, including
Farhanaz Ellis, an outreach worker at the All Dulles Area Muslim
Society in Sterling.
Ellis, born to a Catholic family in Panama, said her mosque had held
a celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and presentations for
emergency workers. Yet she seemed to have few personal ties to area
Latinos and said much of her work involved explaining Islam to
outside groups.
"Many people here have the misperception that Islam oppresses women
and that Muslims see non-Muslims as infidels," she said. She does
not try to change critics, she said, "just give them food for
thought."
One area Muslim who has plunged into Hispanic issues is Mukit
Hossain, a Bangladeshi immigrant in Herndon who co-founded a day-
laborer center there for Latino workers. The center provoked a
public outcry and was shut down last year.
Hossain said area Muslims, most of whom came to the U.S. legally,
traditionally had little interest in the problems of illegal or
Latino immigrants. After the terror attacks of 2001, however, they
began to face public hostility and find common cause with other
immigrant groups.
"What happened on 9/11 was a wake-up call for all of us," Hossain
said. To those who question why he would help Hispanic laborers, he
retorted, "Do they think I am a terrorist here to convert people?"
Immigration is a "human rights issue," he said. "No one from any
country should be treated like an animal."
It was the threat of a crackdown on illegal immigrants that first
brought Dar al Hijrah into close contact with advocacy groups. A
meeting was called in Culmore to discuss how to help families in
cases of raids or arrests, and mosque officials offered their
premises.
"We were blown away by their hospitality. They even bought us all
pizza," said Cindy Brown of Hogar Hispano, a nonprofit aid agency
for Latinos on Leesburg Pike.
Mosque officials say they have no desire to push their religion on
other immigrants, only to inform them about it. At community events,
they set up a booth with brochures in Spanish, including a booklet
on the history of Islam, women's rights and "common
misinterpretations" about their faith.
"We are one community of many cultures and faiths, and we want to
break down the barriers that divide us," said Mohammed Abdelilah, a
manager at Dar al Hijrah. "This is nothing magic. It's not for
political gain. It is for the sake of God."
At a recent food distribution in the mosque, families from Morocco,
Iran, El Salvador, Vietnam, Korea, Guatemala, Pakistan and Ethiopia
waited their turn. Although clustered together by language groups,
they greeted each other with smiles.
Carlos Moreno, 71, an immigrant from El Salvador, said that with
food prices climbing, he and his wife were grateful for the
assistance and felt comfortable visiting the mosque.
"The Bible says there should be no divisions between human beings,
no racism and no prejudice," Moreno said. "When we die, we all look
the same. Rich or poor, black or white, we all go to the same place."
The Islam you don't hear about
A trip to Indonesia ¡X home to more than 200 million Muslims ¡X reveals a faith that hardly resembles the one Americans have come to know in the blood-ƒosoaked years since 9/11.
By Stephen Prothero
After the 9/11 attacks, Americans put out a call for moderate Islam. Many Muslims answered that call, but few Americans heard them. Early this month, I traveled to Asia to see what Islam looks like on the ground there, and to listen to what Muslims themselves have to say about their religion, terrorism and the United States. What I found surprised me.
(Photo - In Jakarta, Indonesia: The Southeast Asian nation is home to the world¡¦s largest Muslim population / Crack Palinggi, Reuters)
I went to Asia because Islam is by no means a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In fact, Asia is home to most of the world's Muslims. I focused on Indonesia because there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country ¡X roughly three times as many as in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
But what makes Indonesia strategically important to the United States is not simply its huge Muslim population (roughly 200 million) but the fact that Indonesian Muslims are by no means anti-Western.
There are fundamentalists in Indonesia, to be sure, but they account for roughly one in every 10 citizens there. The overwhelming majority of Indonesia's Muslims are moderates, and about one in five are progressives.
Fundamentalists typically want to see their countries follow the path of Saudi Arabia or Iran in instituting an Islamic legal code referred to as shariah.
Moderates and progressives typically favor the separation of mosque and state, and they enthusiastically affirm democracy. Progressives distinguish themselves from moderates by speaking out more forcefully for religious pluralism and equal rights for women, and by drawing more generously on the thinking of intellectuals from Europe, Latin America and the USA.
The fringe, not the core
Although scholars might quibble about these definitions and the portion of the Indonesian public to assign to each, what is plain is that in Indonesia fundamentalism is fringe. A survey released in May by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute observes that "Islamist parties have failed to attract votes" in Indonesia, which "today has one of the world's most successful track records in combating terrorism."
The Muslims I spoke with during my visit to Yogyakarta, a cultural and intellectual center of this vast island archipelago, came from both the moderate and progressive wings. All are eagerly adapting Islam to local circumstances, mixing its ancient traditions with those of their own. They see no conflict between Islam and civil society.
During my days in Indonesia, I did not see a single woman covered from head to foot in the chador so characteristic of Iran, and in the rural areas I visited many women did not wear any head covering at all. According to "Who Speaks for Islam?" a Gallup poll of Muslims worldwide released earlier this year, 88% of Indonesians believe that a woman should be allowed to do any job for which she is qualified. In Indonesia, I heard about female imams (prayer leaders) and about marriages between Christians and Muslims. Repeatedly, I was told that Muslims reject any coercion in religion, that they view not only Jews and Christians as fellow "people of the book" but Hindus and Buddhists as well.
Religious pluralism, especially, seems a key concept here, where the influences of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity have wafted across Indonesia's 17,000-plus islands for centuries. Why did God create the world? According to the principle of an Islamic school in Yogyakarta, it's because God prefers multiplicity to unity ¡X because "difference is good."
The Muslims I encountered scoff at any notion of a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. Any clash of civilizations that exists, they tell me, is between fundamentalists of all faiths and their liberal and moderate opponents. And in that clash, the vast majority of Americans are in common cause with the vast majority of Indonesians.
During my visit to Indonesia, Muslims pointed out many important commonalities between our two countries. Both are huge geographically. Both have ethnically and racially diverse populations. Both provide constitutional guarantees for religious freedom.
Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party nomination while I was in Indonesia, and everyone I met wanted to talk about him. Indonesians are rooting for Obama not because he is some secret Muslim (they know he is a Christian) but because he spent some of his formative years in their capital city of Jakarta. One of my Indonesian interviewees, citing a local tradition of how family networks can be extended not only through marriage but also through political regimes, went so far as to suggest that if Obama is elected, Americans and Indonesians will become kin.
During my interviews, I always asked what Indonesians would like to convey to Americans about Islam. Repeatedly, my interlocutors returned to the question of war and peace. "Islam is not about violence," they told me. "Islam is not terrorism. Islam is peace."
Justice. Equality. Democracy.
This did not surprise me. What did surprise me was how American all these people sounded. I heard repeatedly about equality and democracy and humanitarianism and tolerance and reason and human rights, as if I were speaking with 21st century reincarnations of America's Founders. When I asked Zuli Qodir, an intellectual of a highly popular moderate group called Muhammadiyah, what Islam is all about, he began with, "Islam is justice. And equality. And democracy."
Just before I left, a progressive student activist in Yogyakarta went so far as to assert that in some respects, "the American people are more Islamic than the Indonesian people." While political corruption is endemic in Indonesia, he explained, Americans respect the rule of law, viewing such corruption as something to be rooted out rather than something to be tolerated.
Americans have good reasons to be apprehensive about Islam. Islamic radicals bombed two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002, killing 202 people. And the men who hijacked three jets on 9/11 shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") as they steered those planes toward their targets.
But jihadists are one thing, and ordinary Muslims are quite another.
Americans of good will know this. What we also need to know is that in the fight against Islamic radicalism, one of our key allies could be Islam itself.
Stephen Prothero is the chair of the department of religion at Boston University and the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know ¡X And Doesn't.
Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, June 23, 2008 in Forum commentary, On religion
A trip to Indonesia ¡X home to more than 200 million Muslims ¡X reveals a faith that hardly resembles the one Americans have come to know in the blood-ƒosoaked years since 9/11.
By Stephen Prothero
After the 9/11 attacks, Americans put out a call for moderate Islam. Many Muslims answered that call, but few Americans heard them. Early this month, I traveled to Asia to see what Islam looks like on the ground there, and to listen to what Muslims themselves have to say about their religion, terrorism and the United States. What I found surprised me.
(Photo - In Jakarta, Indonesia: The Southeast Asian nation is home to the world¡¦s largest Muslim population / Crack Palinggi, Reuters)
I went to Asia because Islam is by no means a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In fact, Asia is home to most of the world's Muslims. I focused on Indonesia because there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country ¡X roughly three times as many as in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
But what makes Indonesia strategically important to the United States is not simply its huge Muslim population (roughly 200 million) but the fact that Indonesian Muslims are by no means anti-Western.
There are fundamentalists in Indonesia, to be sure, but they account for roughly one in every 10 citizens there. The overwhelming majority of Indonesia's Muslims are moderates, and about one in five are progressives.
Fundamentalists typically want to see their countries follow the path of Saudi Arabia or Iran in instituting an Islamic legal code referred to as shariah.
Moderates and progressives typically favor the separation of mosque and state, and they enthusiastically affirm democracy. Progressives distinguish themselves from moderates by speaking out more forcefully for religious pluralism and equal rights for women, and by drawing more generously on the thinking of intellectuals from Europe, Latin America and the USA.
The fringe, not the core
Although scholars might quibble about these definitions and the portion of the Indonesian public to assign to each, what is plain is that in Indonesia fundamentalism is fringe. A survey released in May by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute observes that "Islamist parties have failed to attract votes" in Indonesia, which "today has one of the world's most successful track records in combating terrorism."
The Muslims I spoke with during my visit to Yogyakarta, a cultural and intellectual center of this vast island archipelago, came from both the moderate and progressive wings. All are eagerly adapting Islam to local circumstances, mixing its ancient traditions with those of their own. They see no conflict between Islam and civil society.
During my days in Indonesia, I did not see a single woman covered from head to foot in the chador so characteristic of Iran, and in the rural areas I visited many women did not wear any head covering at all. According to "Who Speaks for Islam?" a Gallup poll of Muslims worldwide released earlier this year, 88% of Indonesians believe that a woman should be allowed to do any job for which she is qualified. In Indonesia, I heard about female imams (prayer leaders) and about marriages between Christians and Muslims. Repeatedly, I was told that Muslims reject any coercion in religion, that they view not only Jews and Christians as fellow "people of the book" but Hindus and Buddhists as well.
Religious pluralism, especially, seems a key concept here, where the influences of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity have wafted across Indonesia's 17,000-plus islands for centuries. Why did God create the world? According to the principle of an Islamic school in Yogyakarta, it's because God prefers multiplicity to unity ¡X because "difference is good."
The Muslims I encountered scoff at any notion of a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. Any clash of civilizations that exists, they tell me, is between fundamentalists of all faiths and their liberal and moderate opponents. And in that clash, the vast majority of Americans are in common cause with the vast majority of Indonesians.
During my visit to Indonesia, Muslims pointed out many important commonalities between our two countries. Both are huge geographically. Both have ethnically and racially diverse populations. Both provide constitutional guarantees for religious freedom.
Barack Obama clinched the Democratic Party nomination while I was in Indonesia, and everyone I met wanted to talk about him. Indonesians are rooting for Obama not because he is some secret Muslim (they know he is a Christian) but because he spent some of his formative years in their capital city of Jakarta. One of my Indonesian interviewees, citing a local tradition of how family networks can be extended not only through marriage but also through political regimes, went so far as to suggest that if Obama is elected, Americans and Indonesians will become kin.
During my interviews, I always asked what Indonesians would like to convey to Americans about Islam. Repeatedly, my interlocutors returned to the question of war and peace. "Islam is not about violence," they told me. "Islam is not terrorism. Islam is peace."
Justice. Equality. Democracy.
This did not surprise me. What did surprise me was how American all these people sounded. I heard repeatedly about equality and democracy and humanitarianism and tolerance and reason and human rights, as if I were speaking with 21st century reincarnations of America's Founders. When I asked Zuli Qodir, an intellectual of a highly popular moderate group called Muhammadiyah, what Islam is all about, he began with, "Islam is justice. And equality. And democracy."
Just before I left, a progressive student activist in Yogyakarta went so far as to assert that in some respects, "the American people are more Islamic than the Indonesian people." While political corruption is endemic in Indonesia, he explained, Americans respect the rule of law, viewing such corruption as something to be rooted out rather than something to be tolerated.
Americans have good reasons to be apprehensive about Islam. Islamic radicals bombed two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia, in October 2002, killing 202 people. And the men who hijacked three jets on 9/11 shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is great") as they steered those planes toward their targets.
But jihadists are one thing, and ordinary Muslims are quite another.
Americans of good will know this. What we also need to know is that in the fight against Islamic radicalism, one of our key allies could be Islam itself.
Stephen Prothero is the chair of the department of religion at Boston University and the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know ¡X And Doesn't.
Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, June 23, 2008 in Forum commentary, On religion
June 26, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque
By ROGER COHEN
ISTANBUL
I’ll admit it: I’m thin-skinned about the kinds of slurs and innuendo about Muslims that have accompanied Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Years of being subjected to them while I covered the Bosnian war did that.
We heard the whole gamut back then: how the European Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo were really “Turks” engaged in a “demographic genocide” (through high birth rates) against Christians, and how they were engaged in a plot to establish a “Muslim crescent” looping up from Turkey through the Balkans, and how they roasted enemy prisoners alive on spits.
All the while, of course, said Bosnian Muslims were being herded by Christian Serbs into concentration camps that were centers of torture and systematic killing of a cruelty Europe believed it had forever banished.
That was before 9/11, of course, and before the Egyptian-born writer who uses the pseudonym Bat Yeor popularized the term “Eurabia” to express her vision of a Muslim-infiltrated Europe capitulating Munich-like to Islamism, and before Pat Buchanan’s apocalyptic “The Death of the West,” and before Americans were encouraged in numberless ways to equate Islam with terrorists plotting Armageddon.
Give Americans the Rorschach test today and what they’ll detect in the ink blots are bearded Muslim “suiciders.”
I’ll admit something else: my own feelings about Islam have veered back and forth in recent years. Most of us were ignorant when the planes-turned-missiles struck. We’ve been searching for bearings: even the word “jihad” is variously described as a holy war against the infidel and an inner struggle for higher spiritual attainment.
When, in 2005, I talked to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalian-born Dutch author, in a meeting in The Hague that had to be organized like an undercover operation because of threats to her life from Islamic radicals, I was struck by her words:
“Islam is not a religion of peace, or only of peace with other Muslims. We should acknowledge that it’s a very violent religion, instead of pretending, like Bush, that this violence is not true Islam.”
Certainly, the threat to her made in its name was violent. Certainly, the Koran is a long way from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Certainly, there are Koranic verses that Al Qaeda and other extremists have been able to use in attempts to sanctify their murderous acts. Certainly Islam, politically expressed, has often proved irreconcilable with modern notions of pluralism, democracy and women’s rights.
But a “very violent religion?” No. From Beirut to Baghdad to Cairo to here in Istanbul, I have often felt the wonders of hospitality and generosity and wisdom that seem to well from Islam.
At Obama’s old school in Jakarta earlier this year, an establishment scurrilously described as a madrassa” in all the innuendo, a gentle principal showed me the large mosque and small Christian prayer room. He then invoked the words emblazoned on the coat of arms of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country: “Unity in diversity.”
That’s what I saw among the kids at the school, 85 percent of whom are Muslim, and the rest Christian. That’s also what America’s supposed to be about, not religious slurring and stereotyping.
Yet, because he’s named Barack Hussein Obama, and because his Kenyan grandfather was a Muslim, and because his commitment to Israel has been questioned, and because the U.S. Rorschach test is Muslim-menace mired, he’s had to tread carefully.
As Andrea Elliott chronicled in an important article in The Times, Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. He had to apologize after two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred from appearing behind him at a recent rally in Detroit.
Obama should visit a mosque. He has repeatedly shown his courage during this campaign; Americans have responded to his intellectual honesty. One of the important things about him is the knowledge his Kenyan and Indonesian experiences have given him of Islam as lived, rather than Islam as turned into monstrous specter.
This enables him to break the monolithic, alienating view of a great world religion that is as multifaceted as Judaism or Christianity.
I’ve no doubt that Obama is a strong supporter of Israel. But what I find as important is that he would come to Islam without prejudice. That’s the precondition for dialogue, whether with Iran or between Israel and Palestine.
Here in Turkey, a Muslim country of myth-dispelling permissiveness, I met with Joost Lagendijk, the chairman of the Turkish delegation of the European Parliament. He’s Dutch. What he hears at home is: “Fear of Islam and fear of Muslims and fear of immigrants.”
Fear-mongering about Islam is a global industry. It thrives on ignorance. Obama has a unique power to break the cycle, not least by emboldening moderate Muslims to denounce terror. Nothing would do more in the long run for the security of the world.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
Op-Ed Columnist
Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque
By ROGER COHEN
ISTANBUL
I’ll admit it: I’m thin-skinned about the kinds of slurs and innuendo about Muslims that have accompanied Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Years of being subjected to them while I covered the Bosnian war did that.
We heard the whole gamut back then: how the European Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo were really “Turks” engaged in a “demographic genocide” (through high birth rates) against Christians, and how they were engaged in a plot to establish a “Muslim crescent” looping up from Turkey through the Balkans, and how they roasted enemy prisoners alive on spits.
All the while, of course, said Bosnian Muslims were being herded by Christian Serbs into concentration camps that were centers of torture and systematic killing of a cruelty Europe believed it had forever banished.
That was before 9/11, of course, and before the Egyptian-born writer who uses the pseudonym Bat Yeor popularized the term “Eurabia” to express her vision of a Muslim-infiltrated Europe capitulating Munich-like to Islamism, and before Pat Buchanan’s apocalyptic “The Death of the West,” and before Americans were encouraged in numberless ways to equate Islam with terrorists plotting Armageddon.
Give Americans the Rorschach test today and what they’ll detect in the ink blots are bearded Muslim “suiciders.”
I’ll admit something else: my own feelings about Islam have veered back and forth in recent years. Most of us were ignorant when the planes-turned-missiles struck. We’ve been searching for bearings: even the word “jihad” is variously described as a holy war against the infidel and an inner struggle for higher spiritual attainment.
When, in 2005, I talked to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somalian-born Dutch author, in a meeting in The Hague that had to be organized like an undercover operation because of threats to her life from Islamic radicals, I was struck by her words:
“Islam is not a religion of peace, or only of peace with other Muslims. We should acknowledge that it’s a very violent religion, instead of pretending, like Bush, that this violence is not true Islam.”
Certainly, the threat to her made in its name was violent. Certainly, the Koran is a long way from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Certainly, there are Koranic verses that Al Qaeda and other extremists have been able to use in attempts to sanctify their murderous acts. Certainly Islam, politically expressed, has often proved irreconcilable with modern notions of pluralism, democracy and women’s rights.
But a “very violent religion?” No. From Beirut to Baghdad to Cairo to here in Istanbul, I have often felt the wonders of hospitality and generosity and wisdom that seem to well from Islam.
At Obama’s old school in Jakarta earlier this year, an establishment scurrilously described as a madrassa” in all the innuendo, a gentle principal showed me the large mosque and small Christian prayer room. He then invoked the words emblazoned on the coat of arms of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country: “Unity in diversity.”
That’s what I saw among the kids at the school, 85 percent of whom are Muslim, and the rest Christian. That’s also what America’s supposed to be about, not religious slurring and stereotyping.
Yet, because he’s named Barack Hussein Obama, and because his Kenyan grandfather was a Muslim, and because his commitment to Israel has been questioned, and because the U.S. Rorschach test is Muslim-menace mired, he’s had to tread carefully.
As Andrea Elliott chronicled in an important article in The Times, Obama has visited churches and synagogues, but no mosque. He had to apologize after two Muslim women wearing head scarves were barred from appearing behind him at a recent rally in Detroit.
Obama should visit a mosque. He has repeatedly shown his courage during this campaign; Americans have responded to his intellectual honesty. One of the important things about him is the knowledge his Kenyan and Indonesian experiences have given him of Islam as lived, rather than Islam as turned into monstrous specter.
This enables him to break the monolithic, alienating view of a great world religion that is as multifaceted as Judaism or Christianity.
I’ve no doubt that Obama is a strong supporter of Israel. But what I find as important is that he would come to Islam without prejudice. That’s the precondition for dialogue, whether with Iran or between Israel and Palestine.
Here in Turkey, a Muslim country of myth-dispelling permissiveness, I met with Joost Lagendijk, the chairman of the Turkish delegation of the European Parliament. He’s Dutch. What he hears at home is: “Fear of Islam and fear of Muslims and fear of immigrants.”
Fear-mongering about Islam is a global industry. It thrives on ignorance. Obama has a unique power to break the cycle, not least by emboldening moderate Muslims to denounce terror. Nothing would do more in the long run for the security of the world.
Blog: www.iht.com/passages
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Ali-Karamali: Of Documentaries and Dehumanization
Sumbul Ali-Karamali writes in a guest op-ed for IC:
A lazy way to dismiss conflicts as hopeless is to characterize (usually erroneously) the disputing parties as having been “at each other’s throats for centuries.” It happened in Bosnia when the Christian Serbs started expunging Bosnian Muslims from the area; it happened in Rwanda when the fighting between Hutus and Tutsis erupted; and it’s happening now with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s also happening in Iraq. It is nearly impossible to listen to news about Iraq without hearing of “sectarian violence” and receiving the impression that the U.S. (the invader, remember?) is simply there as the intermediary between the Sunni and Shi’a, who have – of course – always been at each other’s throats.
And now National Geographic has aired a documentary, Inside the Koran,) which features depictions of the Shi’a as “sinners,” and promotes a fractured view of Islam. (It also contains all sorts of other problems, as it confuses culture with Islamic doctrine, doesn’t explain the context of the verses it quotes, characterizes the Qur’an as inconsistent and contradictory – as if the Qur’an is the only religious text that’s ever been interpreted differently by different people – and features no Qur’anic experts discussing the historical, intertextual, and linguistic features of the Qur’an that actually do render it consistent.) And it contains lots and lots of violence, because so many people erroneously think it is impossible to discuss Islam without explaining it in a violent context.
I find this constant conditioning, and in this particular case, the constant portrayal of Sunni and Shi’a Islam as adversarial, extremely damaging. It’s self-fulfilling, dehumanizing, and inaccurate.
More:
http://www.juancole.com/2008/08/ali-kar ... s-and.html
Ali-Karamali: Of Documentaries and Dehumanization
Sumbul Ali-Karamali writes in a guest op-ed for IC:
A lazy way to dismiss conflicts as hopeless is to characterize (usually erroneously) the disputing parties as having been “at each other’s throats for centuries.” It happened in Bosnia when the Christian Serbs started expunging Bosnian Muslims from the area; it happened in Rwanda when the fighting between Hutus and Tutsis erupted; and it’s happening now with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s also happening in Iraq. It is nearly impossible to listen to news about Iraq without hearing of “sectarian violence” and receiving the impression that the U.S. (the invader, remember?) is simply there as the intermediary between the Sunni and Shi’a, who have – of course – always been at each other’s throats.
And now National Geographic has aired a documentary, Inside the Koran,) which features depictions of the Shi’a as “sinners,” and promotes a fractured view of Islam. (It also contains all sorts of other problems, as it confuses culture with Islamic doctrine, doesn’t explain the context of the verses it quotes, characterizes the Qur’an as inconsistent and contradictory – as if the Qur’an is the only religious text that’s ever been interpreted differently by different people – and features no Qur’anic experts discussing the historical, intertextual, and linguistic features of the Qur’an that actually do render it consistent.) And it contains lots and lots of violence, because so many people erroneously think it is impossible to discuss Islam without explaining it in a violent context.
I find this constant conditioning, and in this particular case, the constant portrayal of Sunni and Shi’a Islam as adversarial, extremely damaging. It’s self-fulfilling, dehumanizing, and inaccurate.
More:
http://www.juancole.com/2008/08/ali-kar ... s-and.html
Islam's reformists should give westerners hope
Other stories exist; the possibility for a reformed Islam is one of them
Mark Milke
For The Calgary Herald
Sunday, August 31, 2008
In journalism, especially in television, a crass quip about what receives coverage is that "if it bleeds, it leads."
Media critics often decry that reality, but few people would buy a newspaper with stories about how "78-year-old Mrs. Jones again successfully navigated the street crossing to her grocery store."
The news, as the word implies, is about something "new," including that which is out of the ordinary. But the result of such a focus is that positive stories are rarely told except in occasional lifestyle features.
Islam suffers from bad press for the same reason. That faith is not the historic or present religion of many westerners and what we do hear associated with it is often what's sensational and tragic (and caused by the radicals I detailed in last week's column).
But there is another story, that of the moderates and reformers. They too should be noted as they address some of the problems within some mainly Islamic communities and do so head-on.
For example, after the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings and despite a threat on his own life by Swedish Islamists, imam Hassan Moussa of Stockholm's Great Mosque published an opinion piece in which he complimented the British government for expelling what he labelled as "preachers of hatred." He also took direct aim at the lame excuses offered for terrorism.
"After 7/7, I realized that there is no longer any room for compromises or excuses, that there is nothing to understand; that instead, we must stand together to do everything to stop those who spread hatred and death," wrote Hassan Moussa.
"After the London attacks, the time for 'buts' is over, at least on my part; I don't want to hear any more 'buts' or other excuses for suicide attacks in Europe. I never again want to hear, 'But what about the victims in Iraq.' "
In a similar vein, last September, Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh put the blame for terrorism where it belongs -- on those who carry it out. "I say to my brother Osama [bin Laden]: How much blood has been shed, and how many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed, displaced or banished in the name of al-Qaeda?"
The cleric then warned the al-Qaeda leader about his fate: "Would you be pleased to meet Allah while you bear responsibility for hundreds or even millions of people?"
The proper assignment of blame aside, there are also advocates for reform, including of indefensible laws. Last month in a Lahore newspaper, a Pakistani lawyer, Taimur Malik, called for reform to Pakistan's blasphemy law, which proscribes capital punishment for anyone found guilty of blaspheming Muhammad. Malik argued a fair hearing was almost impossible in the current intolerant atmosphere. I grant that reform of a blasphemy law may not seem like progress to us in the West, but in some countries, it's progress.
There are other examples of an Islam with adherents attempting to turn the tide against extremists. In May and early June, thousands of Islamic clerics and madrassa teachers in India met in New Delhi for the Anti-Terrorism and Global Peace Conference. The conference issued an anti-terrorism fatwa labelled as the world's first unequivocal fatwa against Islamic terror.
On perhaps the very liberal side of Islam, in Paris, the Manifeste des Libertes is a group worth noting, dedicated as it is to the promotion of freedom in the Arab world. The group's website, manifeste.org, carries articles by reformist and secular Muslims. The group's founding document includes a "manifesto" with more than 1,800 signatures from those whom it describes as "women and men of Muslim culture," "believers, agnostics, or atheists" (it includes Salman Rushdie) who "firmly condemn misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism" perpetuated in the name of Islam.
And one last positive example: In 2007, Iraqi reformist Abd Al-Khaliq Hussein, wrote an essay on the liberal website, Elaph, entitled, A Hands-On Lesson in Tolerance for Muslims, From Pope Benedict XVI.
In it, Hussein argued "I think that these people [the radical Muslim Brotherhood], by associating the Koran with the sword and making this into their logo, have done damage to Islam, whether knowingly or unknowingly."
He noted the human rights violations in the Arab and Muslim world and its discrimination against religious minorities, and then held up Europe and the Pope himself as examples of true religious tolerance.
What bleeds will most always lead; it's the nature of news gathering and won't change. But other stories exist; the possibility for a reformed Islam is one of them.
Author Mark Milke's column appears every Sunday.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Other stories exist; the possibility for a reformed Islam is one of them
Mark Milke
For The Calgary Herald
Sunday, August 31, 2008
In journalism, especially in television, a crass quip about what receives coverage is that "if it bleeds, it leads."
Media critics often decry that reality, but few people would buy a newspaper with stories about how "78-year-old Mrs. Jones again successfully navigated the street crossing to her grocery store."
The news, as the word implies, is about something "new," including that which is out of the ordinary. But the result of such a focus is that positive stories are rarely told except in occasional lifestyle features.
Islam suffers from bad press for the same reason. That faith is not the historic or present religion of many westerners and what we do hear associated with it is often what's sensational and tragic (and caused by the radicals I detailed in last week's column).
But there is another story, that of the moderates and reformers. They too should be noted as they address some of the problems within some mainly Islamic communities and do so head-on.
For example, after the July 7, 2005, London subway bombings and despite a threat on his own life by Swedish Islamists, imam Hassan Moussa of Stockholm's Great Mosque published an opinion piece in which he complimented the British government for expelling what he labelled as "preachers of hatred." He also took direct aim at the lame excuses offered for terrorism.
"After 7/7, I realized that there is no longer any room for compromises or excuses, that there is nothing to understand; that instead, we must stand together to do everything to stop those who spread hatred and death," wrote Hassan Moussa.
"After the London attacks, the time for 'buts' is over, at least on my part; I don't want to hear any more 'buts' or other excuses for suicide attacks in Europe. I never again want to hear, 'But what about the victims in Iraq.' "
In a similar vein, last September, Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh put the blame for terrorism where it belongs -- on those who carry it out. "I say to my brother Osama [bin Laden]: How much blood has been shed, and how many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed, displaced or banished in the name of al-Qaeda?"
The cleric then warned the al-Qaeda leader about his fate: "Would you be pleased to meet Allah while you bear responsibility for hundreds or even millions of people?"
The proper assignment of blame aside, there are also advocates for reform, including of indefensible laws. Last month in a Lahore newspaper, a Pakistani lawyer, Taimur Malik, called for reform to Pakistan's blasphemy law, which proscribes capital punishment for anyone found guilty of blaspheming Muhammad. Malik argued a fair hearing was almost impossible in the current intolerant atmosphere. I grant that reform of a blasphemy law may not seem like progress to us in the West, but in some countries, it's progress.
There are other examples of an Islam with adherents attempting to turn the tide against extremists. In May and early June, thousands of Islamic clerics and madrassa teachers in India met in New Delhi for the Anti-Terrorism and Global Peace Conference. The conference issued an anti-terrorism fatwa labelled as the world's first unequivocal fatwa against Islamic terror.
On perhaps the very liberal side of Islam, in Paris, the Manifeste des Libertes is a group worth noting, dedicated as it is to the promotion of freedom in the Arab world. The group's website, manifeste.org, carries articles by reformist and secular Muslims. The group's founding document includes a "manifesto" with more than 1,800 signatures from those whom it describes as "women and men of Muslim culture," "believers, agnostics, or atheists" (it includes Salman Rushdie) who "firmly condemn misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism" perpetuated in the name of Islam.
And one last positive example: In 2007, Iraqi reformist Abd Al-Khaliq Hussein, wrote an essay on the liberal website, Elaph, entitled, A Hands-On Lesson in Tolerance for Muslims, From Pope Benedict XVI.
In it, Hussein argued "I think that these people [the radical Muslim Brotherhood], by associating the Koran with the sword and making this into their logo, have done damage to Islam, whether knowingly or unknowingly."
He noted the human rights violations in the Arab and Muslim world and its discrimination against religious minorities, and then held up Europe and the Pope himself as examples of true religious tolerance.
What bleeds will most always lead; it's the nature of news gathering and won't change. But other stories exist; the possibility for a reformed Islam is one of them.
Author Mark Milke's column appears every Sunday.
© The Calgary Herald 2008
Seven Questions: Bernard Lewis on the Two Biggest Myths About Islam
Posted August 2008
He is one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islam and the Middle East. Bernard Lewis shares his thoughts on Iraq, “Islamofascism,” the roots of terrorism, and the two biggest misperceptions about the Muslim faith.
From the Jan./Feb. 2008 issue of Foreign Policy: “A World Without Islam,” by Graham Fuller.
Remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.
Foreign Policy: What do you see as the biggest misperception about Islam?
Bernard Lewis: Well, there are two. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, predominates. It depends when and where. I would call them the negative one and the positive one. The negative one sees Muslims as a collection of bloodthirsty barbarians offering people the choice of the Koran or the sword, and generally bringing tyranny and oppression wherever they go. And the other one is the exact opposite, what you might call the sanitized version, which presents Islam as a religion of love and peace, rather like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness. The truth is in its usual place, somewhere between the extremes.
FP: Do you believe in the “clash of civilizations” theory of Samuel P. Huntington, that the Islamic world and the West are destined to butt heads?
BL: Well, I don’t go into destiny; I’m a historian and I deal with the past. But I certainly think there is something in the “clash of civilizations.” What brought Islam and Christendom into conflict was not so much their differences as their resemblances. There are many religions in the world, but almost all of them are regional, local, ethnic, or whatever you choose to call it. Christianity and Islam are the only religions that claim universal truth. Christians and Muslims are the only people who claim they are the fortunate recipients of God’s final message to humanity, which it is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves—like the Jews or the Hindus or the Buddhists—but to bring to the rest of mankind, removing whatever obstacles there may be in the way.
So, we have two religions with a similar self-perception, a similar historical background, living side by side, and conflict becomes inevitable.
FP: You write in your chapter about radical Islam that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and that most fundamentalists are not terrorists. That’s not self-evident to everyone, so can you just explain it a little further?
BL: Naturally we hear about the acts of terror. Nobody ever wrote a headline saying “a million people went peacefully about their business yesterday and did nothing.” Terrorism is very much the news of the moment and it is also the threat of the moment. It is a real menace, and I don’t wish to understate that or diminish it in any way. But if one assumes that that’s all there is to Islam, that’s a grave mistake, because terrorism only comes from one brand of Islam, and even that one brand of Islam is not entirely committed to terrorism. But for a terrorist movement, you do need mass support.
FP: I noticed that you use the term “Islamofascism” in the conclusion of your book. That term has been hotly debated. What do you think? Is it harmful or useful?
BL: Well, I don’t use it; I discuss it. I think one has to confront that this is a term that is used. I don’t like it because it’s insulting to Muslims. They see it as insulting to link the name of their religion with the most detestable of all the European movements. It’s useful in the sense that it does distinguish real Islam from “Islamofascism,” but I still feel that the connection is insulting, and I prefer to use the term “radical Islam.”
FP: A lot of analysts, and this is especially something you hear from political leaders in the Muslim world, say that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism—that these are completely separate issues. Is that a view that you subscribe to? Some people say that terrorism is largely caused by occupation or a response to U.S. policy, not Islam.
BL: Well, I can’t subscribe to it since the terrorists themselves claim to be acting in the name of Islam. There was one Muslim leader who said, not long ago, that it is wrong to speak about Muslim terrorism, because if a man commits an act of terrorism, he’s not a Muslim. That’s very nice, but that could also be interpreted as meaning that if a Muslim commits it, it doesn’t count as terrorism.
When a large part of the Muslim world was under foreign rule, then you might say that terrorism was a result of imperialism, of imperial rule and occupation. But at the present time, almost the whole of the Muslim world has achieved its independence. They can no longer blame others for what goes wrong. They have to confront the realities of their own lives at home. A few places remain disputed, like Chechnya and Israel and some others, but these are relatively minor if you’re talking about the Islamic world as a whole.
FP: Iraq, which used to be ruled by a Sunni ruler, is now being governed by Shiites. What does that mean in the context of Islamic history?
BL: I think it means a great deal. But what is important in Iraq is not that it’s being ruled by the Shiites, but that it’s being ruled by a democracy, by a free, elected government that faces a free opposition. It proves what is often disputed, that the development of democratic institutions in a Muslim Arab country is possible. A lot of people say, “No, it’s impossible. It can’t work. They can’t do it.” Well, it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible, and I think Iraq proves that. What is happening in Iraq I find profoundly encouraging. Of course, it is the ripple effect from Iraq that is causing alarm among all the tyrants that rule these countries [in the region]. If it works in Iraq, it could work elsewhere, and this is very disturbing [for tyrants].
FP: As someone who has spent so much time studying the Ottoman Empire, the history of Islam, and the region, is the future of Islam something that has a deep meaning to you personally? Where do you see the Muslim world headed in the next decade?
BL: I’m not a religious person. But I find things that are good and encouraging. Islam over the last 14 centuries has brought dignity and meaning to millions of drab and impoverished lives. It has created a great civilization that has gone through several different phases in several different countries. It is now going through a major crisis, and it could go either way. It could descend into a fanatical tyranny, which would be devastating for Muslims and a threat to the rest of the world. Or they may succeed in developing their own brand of democracy. When we talk about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world, it doesn’t have to be our kind. Our kind results from our own history and institutions. It’s not a universal model. They can, and I think will, develop their own brand of democracy, by which I mean limited, civilized, responsible government. And there are signs of that.
Bernard Lewis is professor emeritus at Princeton University and the author of dozens of books, most recently Islam: The Religion and the People (Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing, 2008), coauthored with Buntzie Ellis Churchill.
Posted August 2008
He is one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islam and the Middle East. Bernard Lewis shares his thoughts on Iraq, “Islamofascism,” the roots of terrorism, and the two biggest misperceptions about the Muslim faith.
From the Jan./Feb. 2008 issue of Foreign Policy: “A World Without Islam,” by Graham Fuller.
Remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.
Foreign Policy: What do you see as the biggest misperception about Islam?
Bernard Lewis: Well, there are two. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, predominates. It depends when and where. I would call them the negative one and the positive one. The negative one sees Muslims as a collection of bloodthirsty barbarians offering people the choice of the Koran or the sword, and generally bringing tyranny and oppression wherever they go. And the other one is the exact opposite, what you might call the sanitized version, which presents Islam as a religion of love and peace, rather like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness. The truth is in its usual place, somewhere between the extremes.
FP: Do you believe in the “clash of civilizations” theory of Samuel P. Huntington, that the Islamic world and the West are destined to butt heads?
BL: Well, I don’t go into destiny; I’m a historian and I deal with the past. But I certainly think there is something in the “clash of civilizations.” What brought Islam and Christendom into conflict was not so much their differences as their resemblances. There are many religions in the world, but almost all of them are regional, local, ethnic, or whatever you choose to call it. Christianity and Islam are the only religions that claim universal truth. Christians and Muslims are the only people who claim they are the fortunate recipients of God’s final message to humanity, which it is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves—like the Jews or the Hindus or the Buddhists—but to bring to the rest of mankind, removing whatever obstacles there may be in the way.
So, we have two religions with a similar self-perception, a similar historical background, living side by side, and conflict becomes inevitable.
FP: You write in your chapter about radical Islam that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and that most fundamentalists are not terrorists. That’s not self-evident to everyone, so can you just explain it a little further?
BL: Naturally we hear about the acts of terror. Nobody ever wrote a headline saying “a million people went peacefully about their business yesterday and did nothing.” Terrorism is very much the news of the moment and it is also the threat of the moment. It is a real menace, and I don’t wish to understate that or diminish it in any way. But if one assumes that that’s all there is to Islam, that’s a grave mistake, because terrorism only comes from one brand of Islam, and even that one brand of Islam is not entirely committed to terrorism. But for a terrorist movement, you do need mass support.
FP: I noticed that you use the term “Islamofascism” in the conclusion of your book. That term has been hotly debated. What do you think? Is it harmful or useful?
BL: Well, I don’t use it; I discuss it. I think one has to confront that this is a term that is used. I don’t like it because it’s insulting to Muslims. They see it as insulting to link the name of their religion with the most detestable of all the European movements. It’s useful in the sense that it does distinguish real Islam from “Islamofascism,” but I still feel that the connection is insulting, and I prefer to use the term “radical Islam.”
FP: A lot of analysts, and this is especially something you hear from political leaders in the Muslim world, say that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism—that these are completely separate issues. Is that a view that you subscribe to? Some people say that terrorism is largely caused by occupation or a response to U.S. policy, not Islam.
BL: Well, I can’t subscribe to it since the terrorists themselves claim to be acting in the name of Islam. There was one Muslim leader who said, not long ago, that it is wrong to speak about Muslim terrorism, because if a man commits an act of terrorism, he’s not a Muslim. That’s very nice, but that could also be interpreted as meaning that if a Muslim commits it, it doesn’t count as terrorism.
When a large part of the Muslim world was under foreign rule, then you might say that terrorism was a result of imperialism, of imperial rule and occupation. But at the present time, almost the whole of the Muslim world has achieved its independence. They can no longer blame others for what goes wrong. They have to confront the realities of their own lives at home. A few places remain disputed, like Chechnya and Israel and some others, but these are relatively minor if you’re talking about the Islamic world as a whole.
FP: Iraq, which used to be ruled by a Sunni ruler, is now being governed by Shiites. What does that mean in the context of Islamic history?
BL: I think it means a great deal. But what is important in Iraq is not that it’s being ruled by the Shiites, but that it’s being ruled by a democracy, by a free, elected government that faces a free opposition. It proves what is often disputed, that the development of democratic institutions in a Muslim Arab country is possible. A lot of people say, “No, it’s impossible. It can’t work. They can’t do it.” Well, it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible, and I think Iraq proves that. What is happening in Iraq I find profoundly encouraging. Of course, it is the ripple effect from Iraq that is causing alarm among all the tyrants that rule these countries [in the region]. If it works in Iraq, it could work elsewhere, and this is very disturbing [for tyrants].
FP: As someone who has spent so much time studying the Ottoman Empire, the history of Islam, and the region, is the future of Islam something that has a deep meaning to you personally? Where do you see the Muslim world headed in the next decade?
BL: I’m not a religious person. But I find things that are good and encouraging. Islam over the last 14 centuries has brought dignity and meaning to millions of drab and impoverished lives. It has created a great civilization that has gone through several different phases in several different countries. It is now going through a major crisis, and it could go either way. It could descend into a fanatical tyranny, which would be devastating for Muslims and a threat to the rest of the world. Or they may succeed in developing their own brand of democracy. When we talk about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world, it doesn’t have to be our kind. Our kind results from our own history and institutions. It’s not a universal model. They can, and I think will, develop their own brand of democracy, by which I mean limited, civilized, responsible government. And there are signs of that.
Bernard Lewis is professor emeritus at Princeton University and the author of dozens of books, most recently Islam: The Religion and the People (Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing, 2008), coauthored with Buntzie Ellis Churchill.
SpotLight: 5 million US Muslims seek voice in OIC
By NISHA SABANAYAGAM
2008/08/31
America’s first ever US special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference, Sada Cumber, was in Kuala Lumpur recently. He talked to NISHA SABANAYAGAM about how the Muslim world has moved from an open society to a closed one
Q: You have visited many countries in recent times. What have you discovered about the Muslim world?
A: There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and they occupy 22 per cent of the land mass. And yet the total gross domestic product of this group is a little over seven per cent of the world.
About 70 per cent of the natural resources come from this 22 per cent land mass and yet the total exports are a little over US$800 billion (RM2.66 trillion).
I have been to over 23 countries in the last five months and have never seen or learnt so much in my life about diversity in Islam. We are still engaged in issues such as who is a better or lesser Muslim.
It is imperative that Muslims should have an intra-faith dialogue among ourselves. Only then should we be engaging in inter-faith dialogue. We, who have taken the same stand in recognising the unity of Allah, should be united. We need to work for economic strength and education.
Q: What are some of the issues in the Muslim world that need improving?
A: In the Muslim world, we are lacking in good governance, rule of law, access to justice, higher education in science, technology and research, health, strong civil society, transparency and accountability. These are the human rights that all Muslims deserve in our lives, as stated by the Quran.
Q: What are your duties as a special envoy?
A: My responsibilities are to engage with the Muslim communities around the world and work with Muslim organisations in the US.
There are about five million or more Muslims in the US, representing more than 80 countries and cultures. They practise their faiths in over 1,200 mosques. America has allowed us to engage in a quality of life that is very much appreciated. One of the reasons why I am engaged with the OIC is because the Muslims of America wanted a voice in the OIC.
Malaysia is one of the very few Muslim countries I have visited that practises plurality in society.
I also feel the status of women, which is a very important in Islam, is reflected in the successful professional Malaysian sector. This is an important issue with the Muslims in the world.
Q: What is the emphasis your programme is placing on the status of women in Islam?
A: If you look at the life of Prophet Muhammad, after his departure, the two sources of most information were from women. Women have always played a very important role in the early stages of Islam.
We have to work to enhance the status of women. Part of the reason we are lagging behind is because we are disabling half of our Muslim world, which is made up of women. There are many countries today, such as Malaysia and Bangladesh, in which this issue is being debated. It is female leadership, such as in this country, that is needed. We need these empowered women to move on to the next level.
Q: How is it that a religion that started with innovations in science and technology and equality for men and women ended up lagging behind in these issues?
A: Fourteen hundred years back, Prophet Muhammad's leadership allowed Muslims to enjoy a free and open society where all had an opportunity to engage in the intellectual pursuit. We have come very far from that.
We've led ourselves to become a very closed society and we are paying for that today.
If we look at America, we came from 80 countries to an enabling environment where we can pull ourselves up. You have a choice to take yourself to wherever you want to be. The open society gives you that confidence and we (the Muslim world as a whole) went away from that.
Q: How would you encourage this enabling environment?
A: We need to engage in education. An educated society is a progressive and moderate society. I don't know if I am politically correct in saying this, but if you look at Central Asia today, it is a progressive and moderate society because every Muslim across the board is educated there.
With education , you can build a strong civil society, which can then ask and demand strong governance. Strong governance will give access to justice and rule of law. And those are the elements that will engage in science and technology and innovation.
There are people who say Islam does not need innovation because 1,400 years ago it emerged as a perfect religion. We need to go away as far as possible from these thoughts because innovation is part of our life.
Islam is a faith of tolerance and intellect. It is a faith where you do personal research.
I admire that Malaysia is on that path. Forty years back, Malaysia was an agricultural society. Today, it is a high-paying export economy. And that's because of your leadership. You decided to get yourself out of that situation by educating yourself and took yourself to the next level.
Q: Does this partnership between the US government and the OIC address fundamentalism in any way?
A: Fundamentalism and extremism in Islam come from a narrow interpretation of the Quran.
Islam allows people to live together and create an environment where you have respect for each other and other faiths. The challenge today is the narrow interpretation that is out there.
Education, a strong civil society and economic development are factors that can help us fight back.
On the other hand, ignorance, isolation and poverty will run into those narrow interpretations.
Q: How is the US going to work with Muslim countries, like Iraq for example, to ease existing tension between the two countries?
A: The US is committed to peace and stability in all regions, including the Middle East.
Even today, you see the American presence in Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Europe. You will see that Japan alone for the past 27 years has grown nine per cent every year.
Wherever there has been American presence, societies have opened up and are more progressive and moderate.
Q: But what about Iran?
A: Iran is an important country in the region and has a responsible part in the region within the OIC.
The US is committed to securing a diplomatic resolution with Iran on the nuclear issue. Once that is resolved, there will be enough opportunities to work with Iran on other areas through the OIC.
Q: Would you agree a large part of the Muslim world would see this as a public relations move by the US to build better relations with Muslim countries in view of the invasion of Iraq and the tension with Iran and Afghanistan?
A: We are living in a large universe which has turned itself into a small village. It is imperative that societies live together.
If any of us has the idea that we can live without each other in a peaceful environment, then I think we are fooling ourselves.
America as a global leader is committed to working with all societies. This commitment has nothing to do with any other engagement we have. As a global leader, we have no choice but to live together and bring peace and prosperity to the people of the world.
Q: Is aid to the Muslim world part of this partnership?
A: This is an OIC and US government partnership, but it is also a public and private partnership.
The US government plays a role in facilitating and bringing our expertise and resources to the initiatives. I can go out and raise funds from the private sector. I have raised a lot of funds (about US$10 million) from the private sector.
It is a three-way partnership and this is the way to move forward. Relying more on the government sometimes does not work because you are involved in political thinking. It creates a lot of discomfort.
Q: How important is it for Muslim governments to create an enabling environment for Muslims to progress?
A: The government can only do so much. Most of a progressive, moderate and open society is developed by the people.
As Muslims ourselves, we need to make sure that we have an educated society to ask and demand good governance, strong civil society, economic development and create checks and balances.
A knowledge society creates a complete person of education. It would allow you to live a lifestyle which is very open.
Q: There is much difference between secular policy and Islamic policy. How would the partnership address the differences in how the policies are pursued?
A: If you look at the models (in Muslim nations), a lot of them are successful. Turkey is a secular society but does not want to be called a moderate Muslim country. Faith has nothing to do with government.
Malaysia is building its own model. No one model is a rigid or correct model. These models bring a certain commitment and if the society finds a certain comfort in it, then we should be able to live through these models.
Q: Would you say that Islam is a religion that encourages not just Muslims but people of all religions to prosper and progress?
A: The Quran talks about the people of the book, who are not just the Muslims but the Jews and Christians. If you bring them all together in a society, it is then about learning and sharing from each other. Such societies are built by learning and living with each other.
Q: So if a Muslim country suppresses other religions in education or certain aspects of lifestyles, would that be an improper Muslim country?
A: The beauty of the scripture or revelation is that you can pick and choose. There are certain schools of thought which would particularly go for a very narrow interpretation. That's not Islam, nor is it the majority of Islam.
Q: As a Muslim, how do you feel about the issue of conversion?
A: As a Muslim, for me Islam is very personal. If you look at the Quran, it clearly says there is no compulsion in faith.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2008 The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad. All rights reserved.
By NISHA SABANAYAGAM
2008/08/31
America’s first ever US special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Conference, Sada Cumber, was in Kuala Lumpur recently. He talked to NISHA SABANAYAGAM about how the Muslim world has moved from an open society to a closed one
Q: You have visited many countries in recent times. What have you discovered about the Muslim world?
A: There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and they occupy 22 per cent of the land mass. And yet the total gross domestic product of this group is a little over seven per cent of the world.
About 70 per cent of the natural resources come from this 22 per cent land mass and yet the total exports are a little over US$800 billion (RM2.66 trillion).
I have been to over 23 countries in the last five months and have never seen or learnt so much in my life about diversity in Islam. We are still engaged in issues such as who is a better or lesser Muslim.
It is imperative that Muslims should have an intra-faith dialogue among ourselves. Only then should we be engaging in inter-faith dialogue. We, who have taken the same stand in recognising the unity of Allah, should be united. We need to work for economic strength and education.
Q: What are some of the issues in the Muslim world that need improving?
A: In the Muslim world, we are lacking in good governance, rule of law, access to justice, higher education in science, technology and research, health, strong civil society, transparency and accountability. These are the human rights that all Muslims deserve in our lives, as stated by the Quran.
Q: What are your duties as a special envoy?
A: My responsibilities are to engage with the Muslim communities around the world and work with Muslim organisations in the US.
There are about five million or more Muslims in the US, representing more than 80 countries and cultures. They practise their faiths in over 1,200 mosques. America has allowed us to engage in a quality of life that is very much appreciated. One of the reasons why I am engaged with the OIC is because the Muslims of America wanted a voice in the OIC.
Malaysia is one of the very few Muslim countries I have visited that practises plurality in society.
I also feel the status of women, which is a very important in Islam, is reflected in the successful professional Malaysian sector. This is an important issue with the Muslims in the world.
Q: What is the emphasis your programme is placing on the status of women in Islam?
A: If you look at the life of Prophet Muhammad, after his departure, the two sources of most information were from women. Women have always played a very important role in the early stages of Islam.
We have to work to enhance the status of women. Part of the reason we are lagging behind is because we are disabling half of our Muslim world, which is made up of women. There are many countries today, such as Malaysia and Bangladesh, in which this issue is being debated. It is female leadership, such as in this country, that is needed. We need these empowered women to move on to the next level.
Q: How is it that a religion that started with innovations in science and technology and equality for men and women ended up lagging behind in these issues?
A: Fourteen hundred years back, Prophet Muhammad's leadership allowed Muslims to enjoy a free and open society where all had an opportunity to engage in the intellectual pursuit. We have come very far from that.
We've led ourselves to become a very closed society and we are paying for that today.
If we look at America, we came from 80 countries to an enabling environment where we can pull ourselves up. You have a choice to take yourself to wherever you want to be. The open society gives you that confidence and we (the Muslim world as a whole) went away from that.
Q: How would you encourage this enabling environment?
A: We need to engage in education. An educated society is a progressive and moderate society. I don't know if I am politically correct in saying this, but if you look at Central Asia today, it is a progressive and moderate society because every Muslim across the board is educated there.
With education , you can build a strong civil society, which can then ask and demand strong governance. Strong governance will give access to justice and rule of law. And those are the elements that will engage in science and technology and innovation.
There are people who say Islam does not need innovation because 1,400 years ago it emerged as a perfect religion. We need to go away as far as possible from these thoughts because innovation is part of our life.
Islam is a faith of tolerance and intellect. It is a faith where you do personal research.
I admire that Malaysia is on that path. Forty years back, Malaysia was an agricultural society. Today, it is a high-paying export economy. And that's because of your leadership. You decided to get yourself out of that situation by educating yourself and took yourself to the next level.
Q: Does this partnership between the US government and the OIC address fundamentalism in any way?
A: Fundamentalism and extremism in Islam come from a narrow interpretation of the Quran.
Islam allows people to live together and create an environment where you have respect for each other and other faiths. The challenge today is the narrow interpretation that is out there.
Education, a strong civil society and economic development are factors that can help us fight back.
On the other hand, ignorance, isolation and poverty will run into those narrow interpretations.
Q: How is the US going to work with Muslim countries, like Iraq for example, to ease existing tension between the two countries?
A: The US is committed to peace and stability in all regions, including the Middle East.
Even today, you see the American presence in Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Europe. You will see that Japan alone for the past 27 years has grown nine per cent every year.
Wherever there has been American presence, societies have opened up and are more progressive and moderate.
Q: But what about Iran?
A: Iran is an important country in the region and has a responsible part in the region within the OIC.
The US is committed to securing a diplomatic resolution with Iran on the nuclear issue. Once that is resolved, there will be enough opportunities to work with Iran on other areas through the OIC.
Q: Would you agree a large part of the Muslim world would see this as a public relations move by the US to build better relations with Muslim countries in view of the invasion of Iraq and the tension with Iran and Afghanistan?
A: We are living in a large universe which has turned itself into a small village. It is imperative that societies live together.
If any of us has the idea that we can live without each other in a peaceful environment, then I think we are fooling ourselves.
America as a global leader is committed to working with all societies. This commitment has nothing to do with any other engagement we have. As a global leader, we have no choice but to live together and bring peace and prosperity to the people of the world.
Q: Is aid to the Muslim world part of this partnership?
A: This is an OIC and US government partnership, but it is also a public and private partnership.
The US government plays a role in facilitating and bringing our expertise and resources to the initiatives. I can go out and raise funds from the private sector. I have raised a lot of funds (about US$10 million) from the private sector.
It is a three-way partnership and this is the way to move forward. Relying more on the government sometimes does not work because you are involved in political thinking. It creates a lot of discomfort.
Q: How important is it for Muslim governments to create an enabling environment for Muslims to progress?
A: The government can only do so much. Most of a progressive, moderate and open society is developed by the people.
As Muslims ourselves, we need to make sure that we have an educated society to ask and demand good governance, strong civil society, economic development and create checks and balances.
A knowledge society creates a complete person of education. It would allow you to live a lifestyle which is very open.
Q: There is much difference between secular policy and Islamic policy. How would the partnership address the differences in how the policies are pursued?
A: If you look at the models (in Muslim nations), a lot of them are successful. Turkey is a secular society but does not want to be called a moderate Muslim country. Faith has nothing to do with government.
Malaysia is building its own model. No one model is a rigid or correct model. These models bring a certain commitment and if the society finds a certain comfort in it, then we should be able to live through these models.
Q: Would you say that Islam is a religion that encourages not just Muslims but people of all religions to prosper and progress?
A: The Quran talks about the people of the book, who are not just the Muslims but the Jews and Christians. If you bring them all together in a society, it is then about learning and sharing from each other. Such societies are built by learning and living with each other.
Q: So if a Muslim country suppresses other religions in education or certain aspects of lifestyles, would that be an improper Muslim country?
A: The beauty of the scripture or revelation is that you can pick and choose. There are certain schools of thought which would particularly go for a very narrow interpretation. That's not Islam, nor is it the majority of Islam.
Q: As a Muslim, how do you feel about the issue of conversion?
A: As a Muslim, for me Islam is very personal. If you look at the Quran, it clearly says there is no compulsion in faith.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Copyright 2008 The New Straits Times Press (M) Berhad. All rights reserved.
Happy Eid, America
By Daisy Khan
Washington Post Blog, September 30th 2008
An Open Letter to All Americans:
Last week, I received a call from Empire State Building officials. They wanted to know the date of this year's Eid-ul-Fitr for their lighting schedule.
Today, the world's most famous office building will celebrate Eid, the Muslim day of celebrations marking the end of Ramadan, our annual 30-day period of fasting, prayer, and charity, by shining its tower lights in green. Last year, city officials resumed this tradition after a six-year hiatus. Not everyone welcomed the Empire State Building's commemoration of a Muslim holiday; in fact, officials received a number of letters and calls objecting to their inclusive gesture.
Empire State Building Lit for Eid-ul-Fitr.(Photo)
In spite of the protest, they decided to illuminate the building in green again this year. I cannot put into words how meaningful it will be for me to walk down the streets of New York City with my family and see one of America's most beloved monuments recognizing one of Islam's holiest days, just as it does with Hanukkah, Christmas, and other religious holidays. I cannot tell you how grateful and how proud I am to be an American Muslim.
Why do green lights on top of a skyscraper elicit such a strong reaction in me?
Considering that this city was terrorized by individuals who called themselves Muslims, and considering that after 9/11 hate crimes against Muslims increased 1,600 percent, those green lights testify to our country's remarkable commitment to its original and enduring value of pluralism. In the light of the challenges we, as a nation, have endured in the past few years, this may seem like a small step. But it is a symbolic leap.
Even as I am deeply heartened by the illumination of the Empire State Building for Eid, I am acutely aware that we continue to face situations that threaten the strong American ethos of liberty and respect for all. Recently, a movie entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," was sent to 28 million homes in swing states across the country. This movie, which distorts reality, plays on fear, and kicks up hatred against Muslims for political gain, is another attempt to disseminate inaccurate information for the purpose of dividing our American community. This method of popular, prejudice-based propaganda has historical precedent. I hope that this time we move beyond its incitements and don't allow it to prey on our great nation.
One effective way to do this is to visit http://www.changethestory.net/ , an interactive website for Muslims and non-Muslims to engage with each other. It is my conviction that if we change this story, we will begin to change the world.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... .html#more
By Daisy Khan
Washington Post Blog, September 30th 2008
An Open Letter to All Americans:
Last week, I received a call from Empire State Building officials. They wanted to know the date of this year's Eid-ul-Fitr for their lighting schedule.
Today, the world's most famous office building will celebrate Eid, the Muslim day of celebrations marking the end of Ramadan, our annual 30-day period of fasting, prayer, and charity, by shining its tower lights in green. Last year, city officials resumed this tradition after a six-year hiatus. Not everyone welcomed the Empire State Building's commemoration of a Muslim holiday; in fact, officials received a number of letters and calls objecting to their inclusive gesture.
Empire State Building Lit for Eid-ul-Fitr.(Photo)
In spite of the protest, they decided to illuminate the building in green again this year. I cannot put into words how meaningful it will be for me to walk down the streets of New York City with my family and see one of America's most beloved monuments recognizing one of Islam's holiest days, just as it does with Hanukkah, Christmas, and other religious holidays. I cannot tell you how grateful and how proud I am to be an American Muslim.
Why do green lights on top of a skyscraper elicit such a strong reaction in me?
Considering that this city was terrorized by individuals who called themselves Muslims, and considering that after 9/11 hate crimes against Muslims increased 1,600 percent, those green lights testify to our country's remarkable commitment to its original and enduring value of pluralism. In the light of the challenges we, as a nation, have endured in the past few years, this may seem like a small step. But it is a symbolic leap.
Even as I am deeply heartened by the illumination of the Empire State Building for Eid, I am acutely aware that we continue to face situations that threaten the strong American ethos of liberty and respect for all. Recently, a movie entitled "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," was sent to 28 million homes in swing states across the country. This movie, which distorts reality, plays on fear, and kicks up hatred against Muslims for political gain, is another attempt to disseminate inaccurate information for the purpose of dividing our American community. This method of popular, prejudice-based propaganda has historical precedent. I hope that this time we move beyond its incitements and don't allow it to prey on our great nation.
One effective way to do this is to visit http://www.changethestory.net/ , an interactive website for Muslims and non-Muslims to engage with each other. It is my conviction that if we change this story, we will begin to change the world.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... .html#more
'Islamophobia' a Threat to Global Peace: OIC Chief
By Sarwar Kashani
Astana
Rising "Islamophobia" is a threat to peace and coexistence in a multi-cultural and diverse world, the chief of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said here Friday as he extended support to the right to self-determination in Kashmir in accordance with the UN resolution to solve the 60-year-old dispute between India and Pakistan.
Addressing foreign ministers and other participants from the West and Islamic countries in an international summit, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the political dialogue among civilizations was a must.
"It is important for the civilizations to understand cultural, religious and ethnic differences, without which mutual coexistence is impossible," Ihsanoglu said in his address to 'Common World: Progress through Diversity' in this Kazakhstan capital.
The international summit here was held in the backdrop of a widening gap between the Muslim and Western worlds.
"Islamophobia, targeting Muslims, is on the rise in the world," he said, adding "Islamophobia not only stands in front of the Muslims, but the whole humanity."
"Women wearing hijab are vulnerable to attacks by those who project Muslims as a threat to European existence," he said.
"Stability, peace and security in the world are inseparable from each other. Muslims are psychologically, economically and socially affected by Islamophobia. Such a dramatic situation is a segregation based on race and religion," the OIC chief said.
He said Islam is a religion of peace and advocated reconciliatory measures between Muslims and Christians.
"Islam is the religion of peace, moderation and compassion and it celebrates diversity and recognises with respect Christianity, Judaism and other religions," he said.
The Astana conference aimed at to develop understanding between the West and the Muslim world.
Later, talking to journalists from around the world, the OIC chief said his organization "endorses a 1948 UN resolution mandating a plebiscite in Kashmir".
Denouncing the acts of violence in Kashmir, he said the "OIC condemns terrorism in any form in any part of the world".
Stressing that the Kashmir issue needed to be solved as per the wishes of the people, the OIC leader said a settlement should be acceptable to all parties - Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris. This, he added, would result in durable peace in South Asia.
"We support the dialogue process that was started between the then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and advocate settlement of conflicts through peaceful means," said the OIC secretary general.
He said terrorism was a phenomenon in the world and couldn't be attributed to any particular religion or region.
By Sarwar Kashani
Astana
Rising "Islamophobia" is a threat to peace and coexistence in a multi-cultural and diverse world, the chief of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said here Friday as he extended support to the right to self-determination in Kashmir in accordance with the UN resolution to solve the 60-year-old dispute between India and Pakistan.
Addressing foreign ministers and other participants from the West and Islamic countries in an international summit, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the political dialogue among civilizations was a must.
"It is important for the civilizations to understand cultural, religious and ethnic differences, without which mutual coexistence is impossible," Ihsanoglu said in his address to 'Common World: Progress through Diversity' in this Kazakhstan capital.
The international summit here was held in the backdrop of a widening gap between the Muslim and Western worlds.
"Islamophobia, targeting Muslims, is on the rise in the world," he said, adding "Islamophobia not only stands in front of the Muslims, but the whole humanity."
"Women wearing hijab are vulnerable to attacks by those who project Muslims as a threat to European existence," he said.
"Stability, peace and security in the world are inseparable from each other. Muslims are psychologically, economically and socially affected by Islamophobia. Such a dramatic situation is a segregation based on race and religion," the OIC chief said.
He said Islam is a religion of peace and advocated reconciliatory measures between Muslims and Christians.
"Islam is the religion of peace, moderation and compassion and it celebrates diversity and recognises with respect Christianity, Judaism and other religions," he said.
The Astana conference aimed at to develop understanding between the West and the Muslim world.
Later, talking to journalists from around the world, the OIC chief said his organization "endorses a 1948 UN resolution mandating a plebiscite in Kashmir".
Denouncing the acts of violence in Kashmir, he said the "OIC condemns terrorism in any form in any part of the world".
Stressing that the Kashmir issue needed to be solved as per the wishes of the people, the OIC leader said a settlement should be acceptable to all parties - Pakistan, India and the Kashmiris. This, he added, would result in durable peace in South Asia.
"We support the dialogue process that was started between the then Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf and Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and advocate settlement of conflicts through peaceful means," said the OIC secretary general.
He said terrorism was a phenomenon in the world and couldn't be attributed to any particular religion or region.
October 26, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Endorsement From Hell
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.
“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”
That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.
Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.
“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.
An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.
During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam.
In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests. Perhaps the best example is one of the least-known failures in Bush administration foreign policy: Somalia.
Today, Somalia is the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur or Congo. The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame. But Bush administration paranoia about Islamic radicals contributed to the disaster.
Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.
Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia’s best hope for peace collapsed.
“A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. As a result, Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism have surged, partly because Somalis blame Washington for the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers.
“There’s a level of anti-Americanism in Somalia today like nothing I’ve seen over the last 20 years,” Professor Menkhaus said. “Somalis are furious with us for backing the Ethiopian intervention and occupation, provoking this huge humanitarian crisis.”
Patrick Duplat, an expert on Somalia at Refugees International, the Washington-based advocacy group, says that during his last visit to Somalia, earlier this year, a local mosque was calling for jihad against America — something he had never heard when he lived peacefully in Somalia during the rise of the Islamic Courts Union.
“The situation has dramatically taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “The U.S. chose a very confrontational route early on. Who knows what would have happened if the U.S. had reached out to moderates? But that might have averted the disaster we’re in today.”
The greatest catastrophe is the one endured by ordinary Somalis who now must watch their children starve. But America’s own strategic interests have also been gravely damaged.
The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That’s probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
Op-Ed Columnist
The Endorsement From Hell
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated.
“The transcendent challenge of our time [is] the threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” Senator McCain said in a major foreign policy speech this year, adding, “Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House.”
That’s a widespread conservative belief. Mitt Romney compared the threat of militant Islam to that from Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Some conservative groups even marked “Islamofascism Awareness Week” earlier this month.
Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.
“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.
An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.
During the cold war, the American ideological fear of communism led us to mistake every muddle-headed leftist for a Soviet pawn. Our myopia helped lead to catastrophe in Vietnam.
In the same way today, an exaggerated fear of “Islamofascism” elides a complex reality and leads us to overreact and damage our own interests. Perhaps the best example is one of the least-known failures in Bush administration foreign policy: Somalia.
Today, Somalia is the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur or Congo. The crisis has complex roots, and Somali warlords bear primary blame. But Bush administration paranoia about Islamic radicals contributed to the disaster.
Somalia has been in chaos for many years, but in 2006 an umbrella movement called the Islamic Courts Union seemed close to uniting the country. The movement included both moderates and extremists, but it constituted the best hope for putting Somalia together again. Somalis were ecstatic at the prospect of having a functional government again.
Bush administration officials, however, were aghast at the rise of an Islamist movement that they feared would be uncooperative in the war on terror. So they gave Ethiopia, a longtime rival in the region, the green light to invade, and Somalia’s best hope for peace collapsed.
“A movement that looked as if it might end this long national nightmare was derailed, in part because of American and Ethiopian actions,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. As a result, Islamic militancy and anti-Americanism have surged, partly because Somalis blame Washington for the brutality of the Ethiopian occupiers.
“There’s a level of anti-Americanism in Somalia today like nothing I’ve seen over the last 20 years,” Professor Menkhaus said. “Somalis are furious with us for backing the Ethiopian intervention and occupation, provoking this huge humanitarian crisis.”
Patrick Duplat, an expert on Somalia at Refugees International, the Washington-based advocacy group, says that during his last visit to Somalia, earlier this year, a local mosque was calling for jihad against America — something he had never heard when he lived peacefully in Somalia during the rise of the Islamic Courts Union.
“The situation has dramatically taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “The U.S. chose a very confrontational route early on. Who knows what would have happened if the U.S. had reached out to moderates? But that might have averted the disaster we’re in today.”
The greatest catastrophe is the one endured by ordinary Somalis who now must watch their children starve. But America’s own strategic interests have also been gravely damaged.
The only winner has been Islamic militancy. That’s probably the core reason why Al Qaeda militants prefer a McCain presidency: four more years of blindness to nuance in the Muslim world would be a tragedy for Americans and virtually everyone else, but a boon for radical groups trying to recruit suicide bombers.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, and join me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/kristof.
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Mehreen1221
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What is more damaging to the Genuine Islamic faith and its reputation…Ultra conservative Iranian Shiite mullahs or Saudi style Wahabism?
I say both of them are fatal but I am more disgusted by the former…due to their fanatical and mischievous theocratic goals which are unknown to the most people of the world and their recent political rise, facilitated by foreigners, against the later and while doing so they destroyed the progressive elements in the Muslim and particularly the Arab world.
I say both of them are fatal but I am more disgusted by the former…due to their fanatical and mischievous theocratic goals which are unknown to the most people of the world and their recent political rise, facilitated by foreigners, against the later and while doing so they destroyed the progressive elements in the Muslim and particularly the Arab world.