RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH
Published — Sunday 27 December 2015
With the recent bloody attacks in Paris and San Bernardino by terrorists claiming to be doing these in the name of Islam, discrimination against Muslims has grown worldwide.
They are targeted by these new critics, many of them American, well-educated and from the middle of the political spectrum — who reacting with horror to the violence — will say the most absurd things. “Islam is a violent religion” and “Islam needs reform to become more liberal,” are two of the most frequent accusations thrown at our religion.
And we also have the demagogue Donald Trump, the American billionaire entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate in next year’s elections. He has a long history of saying absurd and xenophobic things from calling all the illegal immigrants from Mexico criminals and rapists, to saying in a recent speech that President Barack Obama should bar the entry of Muslims into the United States until the government finds a way deal with the threat of terrorism.
This preposterous statement brought back memories of the detention camps during the World War II into which Americans of Japanese origin were forcibly sent, even if they were born in the United States.
That Trump had the courage to say what he did, and most disturbing, that he was not forced to retract his words and apologize, shows that the American public is so afraid of more terrorist attacks happening that they are willing to sacrifice some of their constitutional rights. Not that the American president would have to get permission from Congress to begin such discrimination. The US executive branch has broad jurisdiction over immigration issues, which in theory would leave Obama with the power to stop the entry of foreign Muslims simply by invoking national security. But that would be bad for the freedom of religion and expression enshrined in the US Constitution, and certainly would lead to legal challenges in US courts.
One of the exponents of the concept that Islam is a violent religion is the American writer Sam Harris, who is the darling of late-night talk shows on US television where he spreads his poison. An avowed atheist, Harris is the perfect example of a supposed public intellectual that many liberal and well-educated Americans love to cite as if he were phenomenally wise. He does not speak the truth, so I refuse to listen to anyone who is so hateful of Islam. Unfortunately, a Brazilian friend of mine who I’ve known since we were both 11-years-old, asked me this week what I thought of Harris. He confessed to me that was enjoying more and more of Harris’ online speeches about the alleged “Islamic evil.” I said that Harris was wrong and tarnishing the reputation of Islam.
“But I thought all Islamists were terrorists,” he told me. I was shocked and saddened that this word has been associated only with terrorism by people in the West.
“Of course not! There are moderate Islamists and even democratic ones as those in Tunisia and Egypt,” I replied. But he did not seem convinced.
Another misunderstanding of Islam is that the religion needs a reformation such as the one Christianity underwent in Europe. Islam is an ancient religion, which is over 1,400 years old. In Islam, there are several strands of thought within the two largest branches of Sunni and Shiite followers. Just within the Sunni branch there are five schools of interpretation. Not to mention the Sufis, mystics who use poetry, music and dance to get closer to God.
As the British journalist Mehdi Hassan wrote in The Guardian in May this year, Islam has no clergy, nor a pope, as in Catholicism, for the supposed reformists to rebel against. And he says that Islam does not need to go through the bloody wars that Europe went through for 30 years in the 16th century, in which thousands of people died, only to reach a supposed “reform.” For him, Muslim extremists have to rediscover their heritage of pluralism, tolerance and mutual respect that have always been in Islam, embodied in the letter that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) sent to the monks of the Saint Catherine monastery, and the peaceful coexistence of Catholics, Jews and Muslims in medieval Spain.
The Turkish writer, Mustafa Akyol, recently reminded us of the concept of “Irja” or “postponement” in Islam, which means that we do not have to judge whether people are good Muslims or not, but that we have to leave it up to God to decide in the next life, as He alone can judge us. This is a too liberal concept for the fanatics of Daesh, who want to judge and execute all “unqualified” Muslims here and now.
“The scholars who put forward this concept became known as the “murjia,” or defenders of the trial postponement,” Akyol wrote in his column in the New York Times. He noted that in spite of this school of thought having been dismissed as a heretical sect, hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world still practice the concept. Even in the Gulf and other Arab countries the concept is used and applied regularly.
Islam is a dense, rich and complex religion. It is also full of love, peace, compassion and forgiveness. It is the beautiful side of this religion that is missing in the West’s imagination.
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The writer is a Saudi journalist based in Brazil.
SOURCE:
Categories: Answers to Anti-Islam, Anti Islam act by Muslims, Asia, Islam, Saudi Arabia, The Muslim Times
Funny the Brazil based Saudi writer did not explain how his view of Islamic tolerance has not drawn him to the plight of his Saudi brother who has been condemned for disagreeing on the web on some aspects of islam and who has been abandoned by Barack Obama, supposedly the chief defender of human rights. While in Saudi Arabia, Obama justified that incarceration on the basis of ‘national security’ the same concern the writer feels should not apply when it comes to islamic migrants some, if not all, of whom carry with them the potentials to breach security.
The pope does not speak for Christendom which neither has the equivalent of the islamic ‘ulema’, the ‘ummah’ or the various permanent committees set up to deal with any aspect of the religion which is not addressed by the trilogy of quran, hadiths or the sira. The writer negates the fact that there is no Christian organization similar to the OIC which is composed of independent states with deep interest in what matters to their religion.
Given the number of denominations it has, one can say that Christianity is much more fragmented than islam. The lack of a central control does not make it to veer off the course of sanity by creating hell on earth for those who disagree or do not imbibe the faith at all. Arguing on the absence of a central authority in islam to rein in terrorists is an excuse to justify the religion’s obsession with violence.
Punishment in the afterlife for what is done in the physical world serves to make people be conscious of their actions here knowing that they will be held accountable both now by the civil authority and in the hereafter by the Divine. But who will mete out punishment in the next world if violence committed in the present serves as the ticket to the hereafter and all the goodies it promises?
Calling Mr Trump xenophobic is a misuse of language. Mr Trump is not yet the GOP presidential candidate. He is only an aspirant who feels that those coming into his country should have the proper credentials. What is xenophobic in being nationalistic? I share Mr Trump’s view and hold that the same restriction should be placed on Nigerians wanting to emigrate to the United States. That way people will be forced to stay home and make contributions to national development. Call me anything you wish. That does not bother me. It is your right to be different. But extend the same right to me too.
The creation of detention camps for Japanese Americans should not be forgotten was done by a democrat president. The difference between the Japanese and the Germans and Italians was Pearl Harbour, an unprovoked attack by the empire of Japan when war had not been declared aimed at crippling America militarily and economically. After the war had broken out, America did not allow in Japanese. Islamic leaders and scholars, including independent Iran, say they at war with America. That war is ongoing. To take the action contemplated by Mr Trump is to be proactive by stopping America’s enemies from having easy access to the country. It is the same position that the writer has taken by not condemning the jailing of the blogger for security reasons in Saudi Arabia. He will do the same if his country was swarmed by ‘refugees’. It explains why he sees nothing wrong in his country not accepting a single Syrian or Iraqi refugee.
People should stop being hypocritical by wanting only what is good for them alone.