Crime & Abetment
For those that have not seen it, there was an excellent article by Rafia Zakaria on altmuslim.com
From the article:
While countless sermons across the Muslim world on any given Friday are devoted to the insidious and nefarious tactics of Islamophobes that want to malign Islam, and millions of dollars are devoted to excavating the image of Islam as a religion of peace by distributing pamphlets and holding open mosque nights, little time or intellectual energy is devoted to cleaning house from within
[...]
Many Muslims are especially susceptible to the tendency to hold internal reform hostage to external geopolitics. Discussions emphasising the necessity of development of initiatives that acknowledge and combat misogyny and terror inevitably devolve into tirades that enumerate the geopolitical injustices Muslims across the globe are subject to. In a distorted expression of supposed solidarity, the unjustified and gruesome deaths of innocent civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Lebanon are used to construct an ideological wall that requires a conscious and purposeful denial of the atrocities perpetrated by Muslims. If the history of the world is any testament, making internal reform conditional on the cessation of all atrocities against Muslims is akin to eliminating its remotest possibility.
Filed under: The Culture of Denial and Pretense
Excuses, excuses excuses…
Deny, deny, deny….
Spin, spin, spin…
Muslims have gotten used to relying on the crutch of “what Islam REALLY says” without acknowledging what Muslims are actually doing. No one cares about what our texts permit or forbid…they only know what they see. And what do they see? What do WE as Muslims really see when we look at our ummah? I mean, let’s take off the rose colored glasses and take our heads out of our asses (showing off my mad rhyming skillz) and take a good hard look and stop using the excuse of what “they” are doing to us. “They” don’t make us bomb our own restaurants in Pakistan or because of our lack of manners and patience (not to mention common sense) stampede each other into smithereens at our religious gatherings. “They” don’t make us use women like wash rags, going through one after the other just because some shuwaykh found a loophole in his understanding of fiqh to permit getting our freak on without the burden of responsibility. “They” don’t make us mutilate little girls. “They” don’t make us fly planes into buildings killings unsuspecting office workers going about their own business, drinking their morning coffee. Do “they” make us act like confused and primitive maniacs when calamity strikes? What about “marketing” the dead as a way to solicit sympathy? Decapitations on film anyone? Oh, “they” made us do this.
Dialogue can never begin because as soon as anyone suggests anything close to personal responsibility, it becomes an excuse to rant against “them” and deflect blame to our collective suffering. Not to mention that, like all dark family secrets, to talk about them out in the open gives “them” more ammo (like they need anymore) to defame Islam. Like pointing out that Muslims are rude and arrogant in the gulf states and cannot acknowledge a red light to save their friggin’ lives is somehow treason and apostacy. Pointing out the high illiteracy rates amonst Muslims is taboo (shhhhhh, you can’t say THAT….the kuffar will know that we’re dumb as a bag of rocks). And on and on…Denial…I guess it really is appropriate that it’s a river in Misra.
I’m not sure who you guys are talking with…I’ve never been around Muslims who didn’t realize the shortcomings that we have as an ummah. The only Muslims I’ve been around who didn’t constantly talk and complain about how messed up Muslims are were those who realized that this didn’t necessarily help the situation.
So, if a discussion about a problem Muslims have is a prelude to a possible solution alhamdulillaah. If its just complaining to pass the time during iftar, then I’ll pass.
Allaah knows best.
Slowly, slowly, progress is being made. It can be seen in the moderate and intelligent voices speaking up little by little, and refusing to be silenced by violence, threats, murder and ignorance.
Allah knoweth the right course.
As-Salaamu ‘alaikum,
Rashad: the point is that Muslims dislike being judged as a whole community on what peasants in Africa or India or certain types of Gulf Arabs do. People know these things because that’s what the media report because generally only bad news is news. If people judge us by things people do which are against Islam, what can we say other than that those people are ignorant or don’t care, and that most Muslims don’t behave like this? As it happens, most Muslims don’t mutilate little girls and actually dislike arrogant Gulf Arabs (speak to any Pakistani who’s worked there and he’ll probably tell you a few stories about the subject). I no more accept being judged by them than I accept being judged as an English person by the behaviour of football hooligans, who are mostly disliked.
A new fraud on the Internet
A new fraud on the Internet