Op-Ed

Hav­ing been on both sides of the veil, I can tell you that West­ern male politi­cians and jour­nal­ists have no idea what they are talk­ing about when they blame Islam for child brides, female cir­cum­ci­sion, hon­or killings and forced mar­riages. A care­ful read­ing of the Qur’an shows that just about every­thing West­ern fem­i­nists fought for in the 1970s was avail­able 1,400 years ago to Mus­lim women, who are con­sid­ered equal to men in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, edu­ca­tion and worth. When Islam offers women so much, why are West­ern men so obsessed with Mus­lim wom­en’s attire ? Even British gov­ern­ment min­is­ters Gor­don Brown and John Reid have made dis­parag­ing remarks about the niqab, and they hail from Scot­land, where men wear skirts.

At the end of the Hajj (annu­al pil­grim­age to Mec­ca), Mus­lims through­out the world cel­e­brate the hol­i­day of Eid al-Adha (Fes­ti­val of Sac­ri­fice). In 2006, Eid al-Adha will begin on approx­i­mate­ly Decem­ber 31st, and will last for three days. Dur­ing the Hajj, Mus­lims remem­ber and com­mem­o­rate the tri­als and tri­umphs of the Prophet Abra­ham. One of Abra­ham’s main tri­als was to face the com­mand of Allah to kill his only son. Upon hear­ing this com­mand, he pre­pared to sub­mit to Allah’s will. When he was all pre­pared to do it, Allah revealed to him that his ​“sac­ri­fice” had already been ful­filled. He had shown that his love for his Lord super­seded all oth­ers, that he would lay down his own life or the lives of those dear to him in order to sub­mit to God.

I am grow­ing increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed at the mealy-mouthed, apolo­getic bunch of Mus­lims parad­ed across our TV screens these days. And just when one lot sud­den­ly wake up, smell the cof­fee and begin to dis­agree with US and British for­eign poli­cies, anoth­er bunch take their place.

The real reli­gious extrem­ists who pose the great­est threat to rad­i­cal­iz­ing our youth are the Chris­t­ian Fun­da­men­tal­ists in the White House and Down­ing Street. Bush and Blair have become al-Qaeda’s finest recruit­ing offi­cers. More and younger Mus­lims are wak­ing up with the real­iza­tion that it is not ter­ror­ism or extrem­ism that is being tar­get­ed but Islam itself. It is up to the Ummah to lead and inspire our youth, just as the Prophet (P) led and inspired mil­lions and con­tin­ues to do so.

But why did the Mus­lim react in such a man­ner when Pope Bene­dict repeat­ed some­thing that we are already accus­tomed to hear­ing from not so friend­ly west­ern pub­lic fig­ures ? After all flam­boy­ant tel­e­van­ge­lists like Jer­ry Fal­well have said worse things than the Pope –- call­ing the Prophet of Islam a pae­dophile and ter­ror­ist – yet we nev­er asked for an apol­o­gy. In the mod­ern era, not least because of the late Pope John Paul II, Mus­lims have a gen­uine respect for the head of the Catholic church. The Cru­sades, the Recon­quista, the Inqui­si­tions were far behind us. The Catholic Church with its long his­to­ry and tra­di­tion, its large num­ber of faith­ful and the author­i­ty of its lead­er­ship, its unam­bigu­ous moral pre­cepts and its litur­gies and rites rep­re­sent what con­sti­tutes Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy to ordi­nary Mus­lim eyes, as the last bas­tion against the inex­orable march of sec­u­lar­iza­tion of west­ern society.

In the 12th cen­tu­ry, Peter the Ven­er­a­ble, Abbot of Cluny, ini­ti­at­ed a dia­logue with the Islam­ic world. ​“I approach you not with arms, but…

Apos­ta­sy, appar­ent­ly a human rights relat­ed issue, is high­ly sen­si­tive to the mul­ti-racial and mul­ti-reli­gious char­ac­ter of Malaysia. It tends to be prob­lem­at­ic, unten­able to some, espe­cial­ly when it deals with con­ver­sion into and out of Islam. It is true, the whole ques­tion involves cer­tain legal and social impli­ca­tions. At times, its reper­cus­sions appear to rat­tle the social sol­i­dar­i­ty and reli­gious har­mo­ny of our peace­ful nation. All these threat­en­ing con­se­quences are actu­al­ly caused by igno­rance. This writ­ing is not to incite fur­ther dis­sen­sion. Nei­ther is it intend­ed to sound apolo­getic. On the con­trary it calls for all par­ties direct­ly or indi­rect­ly affect­ed by the sub­ject mat­ter, Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike, to view it with an open heart guid­ed by wisdom.

There are those who say that lying and deceiv­ing is at the soul of all crime and that Chris­tian­i­ty epit­o­mizes these traits more than any oth­er faith. As proof of their asser­tion they often quote Paul of Tar­sus, arguably the true founder of Chris­tian­i­ty, who is record­ed to have said, ​“But if through my false­hood God’s truth­ful­ness abounds to his glo­ry, why am I still being con­demned as a sin­ner ? Any why not do evil that good may come ? – as some peo­ple slan­der­ous­ly charge us with say­ing. Their con­dem­na­tion is just.” (Romans 3:7 – 8)

The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies and their allies have been call­ing for the destruc­tion of Islam open­ly ever since the advent of the Inter­net. A cur­so­ry glance at these fanat­i­cal and big­ot­ed web­sites will at once give the dil­li­gent read­er an idea of their geno­ci­dal ten­den­cies against the Mus­lim Ummah, unfair­ly equat­ing Islam with ter­ror­ism, and even denounc­ing Islam as equal to Nazism and hence Islam is not a ​“reli­gion”, accord­ing to their big­ot­ed lens­es. While their inten­tion is clear (i.e. the destruc­tion of Islam), some lib­er­al Chris­tians who have tak­en this author to task for the so-called ​“call” for the destruc­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty are bliss­ful­ly unaware of these devel­op­ments. Sad­ly too, some igno­rant lib­er­al Mus­lims from among the ummah are sid­ing with these pas­sive Chris­t­ian lib­er­als and are too caught unawares of this hid­den mis­sion­ary threat. Even more, there are groups who open­ly pan­der to the hid­den agen­das of the kufaar and open­ly side with them in their geno­ci­dal ambitions.

The saga of Abdul Rehman’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty may be over but the after­math is far from set­tled. Like a clock­work of hate, the episode has brought upon yet anoth­er wave of crit­i­cisms against Islam and its record for reli­gious tol­er­ance. But what few would realise is that the West has a his­to­ry of reli­gious intol­er­ance and per­se­cu­tions that would put Mus­lim Afghanistan to shame.

There are 1.2 bil­lion Mus­lims in the world, and Islam is the world’s fastest-grow­ing reli­gion. If the evil car­nage we wit­nessed on Sept. 11 were typ­i­cal of the faith, and Islam tru­ly inspired and jus­ti­fied such vio­lence, its growth and the increas­ing pres­ence of Mus­lims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a ter­ri­fy­ing prospect. For­tu­nate­ly, this is not the case.

The Inter­faith Coali­tion of Nashville orga­nized this year’s inter­faith con­fer­ence in the Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty, Nashville, USA. Judaism was rep­re­sent­ed by Dr. Don­na Whit­ney, Chris­tian­i­ty by Dr. Tom Davis, Hin­duism by Dr. Howard J. Resnick (HD Goswa­mi), and Bud­dhism by Pro­fes­sor Win Myint. Dr. Habib Sid­diqui rep­re­sent­ed Islam. This is the tran­script of his speech on Islam. The con­fer­ence was opened by Dr. Jawaid Ahsan. Dr. Charles Hem­brick, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Reli­gion at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty, mod­er­at­ed the conference.

Car­toons are doing what so many could not : Uni­fy­ing Mus­lims across the globe. On the oth­er hand, a grow­ing num­ber of brave free­dom-fight­ers, led by…

We all have read about the present state of affairs con­cern­ing the Muham­mad car­toons con­tro­ver­sy and the dement­ed news­pa­pers of the Euro­pean coun­tires who…

Some time ago, MENJ pub­lished Hans Kung’s view of the Prophet Muhammad(P) along with a brief edi­tor’s note. It seems that Jochen Katz was quite out­raged at this but more so at the ​“edi­tor’s note” and soon after pub­lished a ​“response”. In short, Katz is say­ing that Kung only express­ing his own per­son­al opin­ion about the Prophet Muhammad(P). and does not rep­re­sent all Chris­tians. He objects to the edi­tor’s fol­low­ing state­ment (under­lined by Katz): “… Hans Kung con­veys the Chris­t­ian opin­ion on Prophet Muham­mad(P).” Of course the edi­tor did not argue that Hans Kung is rep­re­sent­ing all the Chris­tians and has recent­ly cor­rect­ed his state­ment so that it now reads : “…Hans Kung con­veys a Chris­t­ian opin­ion on Prophet Muhammad(P).” Cer­tain­ly, there is no one view among Chris­tians regard­ing Prophet Muhammad(P) and so, just as Hans Kung does not speak for all Chris­tians, Answer­ing Islam cer­tain­ly does not speak for all Christians.