It chills my blood

When the hypocrites come unto thee, they say, "We bear witness that thou art indeed God's Apostle!" But God knows that thou art truly His Apostle; and He bears witness that the hypocrites are indeed false [in their declaration of faith]. They have made their oaths a cover [for their falseness], and thus they turn others away from the Path of God. Evil indeed is all that they are wont to do: this, because [they profess that] they have attained to faith, whereas [inwardly] they deny the truth - and so, a seal has been set on their hearts so that they can no longer understand [what is true and what false].~ the Qur'an 63:1-2, The Hypocrites

You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that takes his name in vain.~ Exodus 20:7, the Third Commandment

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.~ Cowper

It chilled my blood tonight as I travelled home in a train to find a misguided Muslim employ the name of God and the f-word in one sentence. I, too, once used the f-word unthinkingly, back in school, but there's a difference. How can one use it alongside that of God? This noise did perturb me no less, these gangs who take the name of God in vain. I don't understand this. Why does the establishment continue to cover for male disregard for modesty? Where a woman is appointed a reference of tradition while a man can do as he pleases. Instead of using missionary, poorly argued evangelical-style da'wah, why not just express it through good behaviour? Good behaviour cannot be separated from belief -- the Qur'an enjoins them together. What message are they sending to the non-Muslim travellers? I fear that non-Muslims who cross paths with this sort of behaviour will never look into Islam, Islam held ransom to cultural realisation than a rational, moral and personal commitment to the Undefinable and the Teachings. Again the again the name of God used in vain. God has said they will not be held guiltless. Indeed they do not realise "what is true and what is false". They may proclaim the name of the blest Supreme most loudly as they commit the lewdest acts known to man, but that doesn't make them believers. Not at all. My solidarity as a Muslim is with believers, I cannot make any excuses for hypocrites.

When Haram Became Halal: Blessed are the Sheep

"Like a giant mass of wool, bloodied and filthy, they lay in trenches — slit open, stabbed or clubbed to death, while many still wriggled with some life left in them, soon to be buried alive." — Reporter for The International News, Pakistan

"I have watched the video and let me tell you that ever since I have seen those gruesome visuals, I haven't eaten or slept. Regardless of whether they were healthy or not, the way they were killed or buried alive is neither humane, nor Islamic." — Managing Director of Wellard (Australian live exporter)

"Beauty" is Irrelevant in Theology

Some Muslims place a great emphasis on what they consider to be "beauty". Beauty, of course, is a subjective marker and there's nothing wrong with it. How we treat others is an entirely different matter. It is with grace that the world began and it is with grace that we must move. The fondness of relaying how physically beautiful the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was is entirely irrelevant. The claim that he was the most handsome man is an unnecessary slogan of cultural realisation than anything touching the message of the Qur'an or the pious, humble way of the prophet.

When the ambassadors of Bani Amir went to Muhammad, they said, "You are our master." He said, "God is your master." Then they said, "You are most excellent of the highest degree." And when he heard this he said, "Say so, or less, and do not exceed reasonable bounds in praise."

In many ways it signals the poverty of theological discussions. To follow anyone based on his/her appearance or eloquence bears no weight upon truth. While there could be a genuine historical need to draw up the physical characteristics of individuals from the past to situate them more firmly within the narrative, anything outside it seems to be to be of no use at all.

In all honesty we do not know what prophets and their disciples looked like other than scant written descriptions. Given present-day celebrity obsessed media culture, it is not a bad thing. In a nutshell, it does not matter.

A moral of the story of the Prophet Yusuf (peace be upon him) is not that he was "beautiful", though some prevalent gossip totally obscures the moral with elaborations on his "beauty", but the power of Divine guidance and his will to resist the power of seduction. It was his grace that was beautiful, the preservation of his "beauty" through the strength of his will which drew upon Divine grace.

When people say this or that person is beautiful, it implies something purely physical and in relation to others. Yet true beauty is not referential. It does not deny others equal worth and is not oppressive. This is but one pearl of wisdom from Muslim theology that explores this issue:

Muhammad said, "That person will not enter Paradise who hath one atom of pride in his heart." And a man present said, "Verily, a man is fond of having good clothes, and good shoes." Muhammad said, "God is Beautiful and delighteth in the beautiful; but pride is holding man in contempt."

There are many others that enlighten the seeker, from the Prophet's response to Lady Aisha when she commented on Lady Safiyyah's short stature to the complete absence of aesthetic morality in the Qur'an. To believe is to love all of Allah's creation and to undertake a path of critical self-reflection of the ideas we inherit from forces that we meet and are surrounded by, from bogus eugenics to friendly dialogues. To believe is to respect each human being and to fall in love with good everywhere. It is to compare our own beliefs and values as Muslims with the sublime truths expressed in the Qur'an and to sincerely face the unfortunate fact that we linger far, far away from "beauty".

The Covenant of Allah / Times of Confusion

Two days ago I inadvertently chanced upon a discussion concerning one of the most popular Muslim bloggers who had apostatised. Of course, I was not a reader of the site (was directed to it once by someone).

The discussion on how this byword of Muslim blogging turned atheist, as some claim, is very interesting though not in the positive sense. Eventually I did locate the person's new blog, for I thought it was important to have a sense of her arguments and not what people were claiming about her. There were good points and bad points. It made me realise the great problems facing many Muslim converts, especially women, who are rushed off into marrying strangers as soon as they make the declaration of faith.

One of the experiences shared by the person rings true from my own observation. For example, I have never agreed to distribute dawah pamphlets on Islam Open Day at university. This Marxist-inspired tactic, with use of apologetics in its contents is appalling, in my view. We cannot state that women have rights in Islam while being silent on domestic violence and other tragedies in the community. We cannot call for justice for Aafia Siddiqui incarcerated in the United States while saying nothing about the thousands of nameless Indonesian maids abused by their employers in Saudi Arabia. Muslims must critique these facts. In fact, this story appeared in Crescent Times, an Australian Muslim paper, so there are definitely right-minded Muslims, and those anti-Muslim commentators who speak of a nefarious "Muslim mind" are clearly wrong.

It was so disturbing to read that the Indonesian women who go to work in Saudi Arabia feel the trust and are happy that they are working for fellow Muslims. But covenant is never shared between humans. And this is where I politely disagree with the lady who left Islam from what it appears are experiential realities, gauging from a handful of entries on her blog.

Islam teaches us that covenant is made solely between Allah and man. Not between human beings.

I do not think we own the right to judge a person who writes that she married a virtual stranger and was then swallowed up by a conservative establishment that looked straight through her when it came to her needs as a human being, whether it was getting served after all the men had eaten at a food stall or the inability to get a contract that stipulated that the marriage be monogamous. But here I am not speaking so much of this lady who at least has a voice, but for perhaps other women who are not fortunate either. Allah is the Best Judge, and He will take each atom into account, whether good or bad.

But that Muslims may treat each very badly is not news. Aren't we Muslims because our covenant is with Allah? Life drags many people through hot degrees, and some, even innocent ones can end up scared of "Islam" (Divine Revelation) because of what they "experience" (man-made discursive practice of ethics). And Allah is the Best Judge.

I have often asked myself if our personal experiences define our realities. In Tao Te Ching the first verse goes that the Way lies beyond what we experience. In The Road to Mecca, Muhammad Asad presses a shell to his ear, curious to behold a new sound. From my own life I can safely say that Islam was a choice, not a need. It became the Way the moment I understood the Qur'an, and though it made me pledge my allegiance during the first reading of the chapter 'The Prophets', it is only since early last year that I have gotten a fuller, richer understanding after some extensive research on how to internalise and converse with its ethics. I mention this because experience itself is never enough. To learn about Islam, to accept it, you must first read the Qur'an, its purpose, to make a covenant with Allah after you recognise His Voice. Even if you become a Muslim, you are not a believer until you consciously submit yourself after reading and learning, unto Allah alone. When you enter Allah's covenant, you must also be kind, gracious, for these are not merely qualities that are "good" but signify "surrender" and appreciation of His sermons. You will make mistakes, may be get a little political (though I have never understood those who support the Taliban, and there's something wrong to begin with) or make everything into right and wrong, but eventually you will come around to the realisation that it is all inconsequential before the simple and deep teachings of the Ultimate Reality, the Teacher, the One God.

Once I imagined I was on the Isle of Man, this fantastic place, and there were no believers, and I was sinking on my knees in hopelessness. Only Allah knows what I would have become or done. But if I truly believe, I would never disbelieve. And Allah knows what is true and untrue in our head, heart and hands.

It is recognising that Ultimate Reality, "His signs" as the Qur'an puts it that explain faith, not a symbolic identity of it.

There's no doubt that Muslims are in a terrible state. But along with the darkness, there's light. There are pious Muslims, wholly dedicated to the Message, who work diligently for goodness, who wish to bring Muslim life up-to-date with socio-economic conditions of the nation state. This Muslim ethical project (note: I didn't use the word "Islam"; this distinction is often not understood by Muslims who would rather deal with symbols and banners than actual meanings) is a necessity, because three or four centuries after the Prophet's death, peace be upon him, reliable theological discourse had been abandoned. It was only in the nineteenth century that a great scholar by the name of Muhammad Abduh diagnosed this amnesia. Wikipedia incorrectly calls Abduh a "liberal", a "Mutazili" and a "modernist". [A separate post is required for an exposition of these terms, and I will only say that an analysis of Abduh by a particular writer was flawed to the very centre in its assumption that "Islam" is a time-bound commodity which Abduh tried to mask with a "synthetic" reform - this perhaps has been the general loop-holing of religion by post-Darwinian, secular writers. Many modern anthropologists dispute this formulation which has its roots in the Enlightenment schematisation of progressive time and is frankly an 18th century Victorian evolutionary idea]. True to the spirit of Islam, Abduh was a, to use the diction of the secular tradition, a "liberal" on some matters and a "conservative" on others. Mark Sedgewick, his biographer explains:

None of these! I think he must have had some sympathy for the Mutazili, but he knew that they were different people from a very different age. The problems of his age were not theirs. Intellectually, he was certainly interested in some ideas of the Shia and the Sufis, but I don't think he ever identified with them, at least not after his youth, when he certainly considered himself a Sufi for a while. After that, I can't imagine him wanting to go to Tanta for the mawlid, or to Karbala! That thing was not his style at all. In the end, he was more of a regular Egyptian Sunni than anything else. Though he was never just a regular anything.

Muhammad Asad and his magnificent translation of the Qur'an were directly influenced by Abduh's scholarship. Abduh honoured all people, he did not consider the West as alien as Maududi did (whose ideas permeate contemporary Muslim polemics). Abduh respected women (for their social wellbeing and he also drew upon the Qur'an and scholarship to argue that polygamy was only permissible in certain circumstances), he outlawed slavery with the ideas of the Qur'an (a great achievement for contemporary Muslim life), he was a staunch opponent of colonialism (but did so through legitimate means, and parted ways with Al-Afghani on his "pan-Islamism" which has proved disastrous) among many other little and great things. Until his dying days he was working on the commentary of the Qur'an, with his prodigal expertise in theology and the Arabic language. He is quoted as stating that the Qur'an is "its own best commentary".

No scholar since Ghazali has been as influential as Abduh (for the right reasons). (For the wrong reasons) the demeaning of Islam by political ideologues like Maududi and medieval ravages by Muslim empires to consolidate worldly power in place of humility and faith have also defined thoughts and attitudes. A number of logical criticisms of Abduh can be made, if one chooses to, but casting aspersions on his belief are entirely without evidence.

As a number of intellectuals have argued, God-elected men like Muhammad and Abraham and Moses, peace be upon them, cannot make us feel as they felt. It could be elaborated that what can bind us to their ageless faith and humanity is the visibility of good ethics as taught by Allah in His Book, in allegorical and literal forms. And the example of the Prophet Muhammad, the Last Prophet, peace be upon him. But for us ethics would also mean the modernisation of social institutions in Muslim nation states, research, and dialogue. After all knowledge is the bedrock of spirituality. The pastoral, good, ethical mode of living of the prophets is absent in our age's organisation. The Qur'an (Chapter 56, Verses 10-14):

But the foremost shall be [they who in life were] the foremost [in faith and good works]: they who were [always] drawn close unto God! In gardens of bliss [will they dwell] - a good many of those of olden times, but [only] a few of later times.

Contrary to the theory of moral relativism, the Qur'an is clear that there is regression in man's faith and actions through history. Yet a little later in the same chapter, the Qur'an (Verses 27-40) provides further hope for us.

Now as for those who have attained to righteousness - what of those who have attained to righteousness? [They, too, will find themselves] amidst fruit-laden lote-trees, and acacias flower-clad, and shade extended, and waters gushing, and fruit abounding, never-failing and never out of reach.

And [with them will be their] spouses, raised high: for, behold, We shall have brought them into being in a life renewed, having resurrected them as virgins, full of love, well-matched with those who have attained to righteousness: a good many of olden times, and a good many of later times.

In the context of those who initially stumble and sin but eventually attain righteousness, there will be "many". This is a definite reality of our times. It is in contrast to the "foremost" of the first quotation, those "always drawn to God", of whom there are a "few" in times that follow the Last Revelation (Commentary by Asad, The Message of the Qur'an).

In today's environment, communication is either impersonal or absent. How do we get there? How do we bring knowledge to people that is articulate, intelligent and authentic? The well-travelled journalist Chris Hedges argues:

The debasement of language, which Shakespeare understood was a prelude to violence, is the curse of modernity. We have stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the consequences will be as extreme as in the Shakespearean tragedy....The Arabic of the Qur'an is as poetic as the intricate theology of Islam. It is nuanced and difficult to master. But the language of the Qur'an has been debased in the slums and poor villages across the Middle East by the words and phrases of "political Islam". This process is no different from what has taken place with Christianity in the United States. Our mainstream churches have been as complacent in fighting heretics as have the mainstream mosques and religious scholars in the Middle East.

Hurdles line our path. For example, during his reign the Pakistani dictator General Zia instituted a law, in the name of Islam, according to which a woman who was raped could be charged with adultery. Imagine! On the subject of improvements, can't we introduce discursive practices that condemn racism, discriminatory attitudes, sexism, and intellectual laziness in religious scholarship? We do that in the spirit of Islam. For through history and by many Muslim power-brokers, it was never about Islam.

Our covenant is with Allah only, that's why we are Muslims. We must criticise such blatant disregard for human welfare, which is one of the very founding stones of Divine and prophetic discourse. We know that many bad things have been committed in the name of Islam and will continue to be done. Sometimes we may feel like the Companions of the Cave, afraid that we will be stoned by our own brothers. But this world was never ours forever.

May we stand against injustice, against evil words spoken by those in our midst, and strive to be good. For to Allah we belong and unto Him we will return. Believers will be tested, and each time they fall they will pick themselves up again. This is faith. It's all around us, and even its fragments in other prophetic lines in lands lost as far as the tribes we have never encountered or empathised with, albeit not as clear as the Qur'an, can be found in the good ethics practised by their members. Because there is something bigger than all of us, though we all will know it - the obvious conclusion of a rational, conscious specie (man) appointed as a deputy on earth and obligated to express the virtue of righteousness toward all that lives on earth - the Ultimate Reality we call Allah, though man has sought to haplessly define the Undefinable (Chapter 21, Verses 18-22).


Photo of Muhammad Abduh

Knowledge & Apostasy

This is the most excellent essay I have yet read on the subject of apostasy. Those of us who have sought to cultivate our conscience through the Book of God may have experienced cognitive dissonance when God's Word is disregarded in favour of historical interpretations.

It is unfortunate that we give greater importance to certain ahadith conflicting with the Qur’anic values and thus bring bad name to Islam. Commitment to these values is far more important than to opinion of the ‘Ulama based on medieval ethos.

The only problem with this article though is that while correcting Mawdudi's weird thesis on apostasy the author expresses his surprise at "how an Islamic scholar of Mawdudi’s status can confuse things to such an extent...." Any right-minded Muslim who has researched Mawdudi's worldview, notably critiqued in a study by Sheila McDonough, will only have loathing for him. Mawdudi was merely a Muslim version of V.R.Savarkar, and viewed Islam as a political state programmed to express its frustration at colonialism by oppressing others. Another similarity they share is a zest for revolutionary beliefs after the withdrawal of the British Empire.

It is my view that Muhammad Asad's critique of the concept of revolution from the Islamic standpoint in his 1948 work The Principles of State and Government in Islam, which would be revisited in his future projects, is the earliest of its kind and is an indirect reference to Mawdudi's thesis. Asad would also live through the so-called Islamic revolution in Iran, witnessing the growth of the movement. "Islamisation" here was nothing short of intellectual dishonesty, a form of cultural realisation and of authoritarian control over Muslims. In these states women were invisible and difference of opinion was not tolerated. In short, Islam itself was curtailed in the name of Islam. The irony was impossibly crude.

In contrast, Islam inspires God's unceasing teachings and mercy, uplifting man to a level which he attains through His belief in the One God accompanied by good works which rescinds the first and only response of the angels to Almighty Allah on His declaration to "establish upon the earth one who shall inherit it" (The Second Chapter, Verse 30):

They said: "Wilt Thou place on it such as will spread corruption thereon and shed blood - whereas it is we who extol Thy limitless glory, and praise Thee, and hallow Thy name?"

Almighty Allah answers:

"Verily, I know that which you do not know."

In the thirty-third verse of the tenth chapter of His Book, Almighty Allah says unto man:

It is God [alone] who guides unto the truth. Which, then, is more worthy to be followed - He who guides unto the truth, or he who cannot find the right way unless he is guided? What, then, is amiss with you and your judgment?

May we believe so, and may He save us from the fitnah of group-thought and cult worship and open us to critical intelligence and the Light we merit. Also, the Prophet repeated thrice that "the worst of men is a bad learned man...." May He grant us religious scholars at whose death the Ummah is poorer, those who seek to benefit the Ummah by being true to the message of Allah and are/were true in their opinions. This also means avoiding the invention of ethnocentric commentaries on Islam. On a Ramadan night four years ago, the Yemeni Muslim historian Al-Shaiba issued a lecture in which he pointed out such flaws.

He added that among the best companions of the prophet (PBUH) were Bilal (Ethiopian), Salman (Persian), Suhaib (Roman)—and the list goes on. Al-Shaiba criticized Arab historians for perpetuating stereotypes and writing boring narratives. They wrote some legends, according to their sectarian and/or political backgrounds. Jarallah added that most of Arab historians limit themselves to their geographical locations, giving only a partial sense of the whole heritage. “Many Arab historians wrote about the life-story of the prophet (PBUH) almost similarly, but they have clear differences when they write about the aftermath.

"That’s why the Islamic history did not develop,” al-Shaiba said. “All of that passed through us as a sacred heritage, to which Arab and Muslim historians remain bound even today.” Arab and Muslim historians and researchers should be able to question that heritage, making use of what is useful and ignoring the rest, said the Sana’a University professor in a bombshell statement. “We should believe in dialogue and respect others’ opinions,” he said.

In the words of the Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace:

Verily God doth not taketh away knowledge from the hands of His servants; but taketh it by taking away the learned; so that when no learned men remain, the ignorant will be placed at the head of affairs. Causes will be submitted to their decision, they will pass sentence without knowledge, will err themselves, and lead others into error.

Polygamy

It is hardly one of the most contested debates in Muslim theology - the uses and misuses of polygamy. However, many independent minded Muslims have often found themselves at odds with traditional theology, unsurprisingly because it terminated approximately in the 10th century, and much of what we call tradition is a rehash of the opinions of dead scholars. Those familiar with the format of a fatwa are obviously aware of how scholars of the past are constantly dredged up to answer for the present. This blind piety for dead scholars, to whom we surely owe our respect, is nothing short of intellectual laziness. They would themselves have been horrified at the application of their time-bound thought in the modern world which has witnessed the carving up of monocultural forts into multicultural nation states. In This Law of Ours, the exceptional Muslim thinker Muhammad Asad documents the collapse of critical thought engendered in the first few generations after the Prophet Muhammad's, peace be upon him, death.

It does not seem to have occurred to them [religious scholars] that however great those "early generations" of Muslim scholars might have been, later times might bring forth intellects of equal brilliance which would have at their disposal not only all the material and all the scholarly apparatus which had been available to the "early generations" but would have, in addition, a greater amount of historical, psychological and scientific experience on which to draw. [Pg 58]

On the subject of polygamy itself, was it not the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, himself who confronted Ali on his decision to take another wife? This had caused Lady Fatima much distress. Any person who single-mindedly argues that all men have the divine right to take more wives has ignored a very basic premise i.e. empathy. There is nothing black and white about the injunctions in Islam, every rule must be contemplated. For example, the Qur'an's egalitarian refrain to protect the rights of widows, orphans and the poor is ironically demolished when it is precisely those that are singled out by the so-called jury in countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan for hudud (capital punishment). Tariq Ramadan has rightly called for a moratorium on this issue. This does not pander to the pejorative of evolutionary progress but sheds lights on the authoritarian misuse of Islamic Law, the purpose of which is to spread justice and not oppression. This is not giving up Islam but reclaiming its original creativitiy and humanity from totalitarian theorists like Maududi. Fazlur Rahman indicated that the basic imperative of the Qur'an is that the individual should cultivate his or her own conscience. That's certainly much closer to the theme than Maududi's refusal to concede that there is something more to Islam than his interpretation of it...the interpretation that is based on the non-Islamic concept of revolution rather than the measureless compassion and mercy of the Lord of the Worlds toward mankind.

If Things Must Change...

I just read a disturbing story of a thirteen-year-old Somali girl who was raped and then -- by a form of twisted logic -- stoned to death by "Islamic militants". There is no denying that the judges were Muslims acting in the name of Islam. Once again, we must look at this news from a different angle first. Somalia has been invaded by Ethiopia at the behest of the United States. This report like all others also serves as a propaganda by Uncle Sam as it tries to incriminate the enemy. You can bet your bottom dollar that Ethiopia has been stoning teenage girls as well, but you never hear of that as it besmirchs the status quo. The establishment feels no sensitivity toward the rape victim. It is merely to garner outrage from the public.

For those who sincerely care about incidents like these (divested from politics) in Muslim countries, there is one solution. Islam has witnessed the death of the "activist scholar", those knowledgeable Muslims who championed the causes of the poor and disfranchised. Instead, a scholar now speaks what the congregation wants to hear. Muslims are now indulging in lashing out at others for their misfortunes. This has given rise to progressive groups and other groups sunk in the quagmire of tradition in response to the literalists, all of them unable to seize the spirit of classical Islam. Hence, now is a need for scholars to speak up against the thousands of cases of injustice against thirteen-year-old girls like Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow. Islam can only move forward with the participation of conscientious scholars. I even believe that if all the scholars in Iraq united and condemned the sectarian violence, Iraq would be free. Islam has been let down by effective leadership.

Muslim Judeophobia: A Disease

I've always planned to address this issue, which is propagated by some Muslim speakers, namely that Jews are our enemies. This is wrong. Jews are not our enemies. There are numerous Jews who stand in solidarity with Muslims on Palestine. It is true that there are Jews who are Zionists and puritans. But it is also true that there are Muslims who are Mawdudists and puritans who support the oppression meted out to insiders and outsiders of their respective nation states, out of a disjointed sense of loyalty, blinded by tribal partisanship to right and wrong. Progressive or liberal Muslims will not find in me a friend either because I identify a similar ideological pattern in their blindness toward neoliberalism and wars waged by their countries, usually Britain and America. Both these groups respresent extreme factions within the Muslim body. While Mawdudists decry "Western evil", the proggies correct that through their own selective ideology. They are two faces of the same coin. Islam has always proposed a middle path. This path is enshrined in the Qur'an, an intelligent, discoursive reading of which reveals that Jews and Chrisitans are the People of the Book. They are to be respected. And not just them, we have an obligation as Muslims to respect the rest of humanity. And this can be achieved by an emphasis on those traditions that bind us together as a people. Love knows no context. It is true that there has been antipathy and even wars between Muslims and Jews. But there is no theological basis for an iota of contempt. The Qur'an offers theological critiques of both Christianity and Judaism to warn of making the same mistakes, and the New Testament and the Torah both do the same of those gone before them, and the Qur'an forbids oppression and discrimination. It is and always has been political. Indeed, Muslims are one body, but humanity is one family.

Once the Prophet was seated at some place in Madinah, along with his Companions. During this time a funeral procession passed by. On seeing this, the Prophet stood up. One of his Companion remarked that the funeral was that of a Jew. The Prophet replied, “Was he not a human being?”

We find that even during the Prophet Muhammad's time, Judeophobia was rife in Arab Muslim society. Like in today's world, it originated from politics. We also find that the Prophet's other wives ridiculed Safiyya bint Huyayy who was formerly Jewish. This thoroughly displeased the Prophet. Therefore, any amount of irrational fear or loathing of Jews should displease each one of us who calls himself a Muslim. On another occasion when Lady A'isha made some remark about Lady Safiyya's short stature, the Prophet replied: "You have said a thing that if it were left in the sea, it would mix with it (and make its water dirty)." And when we Muslims express prejudice, ignorance and downright hatred toward Jews on the basis of mad politics (on which we aren't heroes either - look at the despotic Arab countries which fly the flag of hatred and nationalism, and their overweight rulers), it is like we have said and done things that would make the sea the colour of our loudly professed albeit tainted humanity.

http://www.islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/mohamed/1424/kharitah/article09.shtml
http://news.haaretz.co.il/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=168205

Adam Was From Earth...

And so are you!

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) once said:

A tribe must desist from boasting of their forefathers; if they will not leave off boasting, verily they will be more abominable near God, than a black beetle which rolleth forward filth by its nose; and verily God has removed from you pride and arrogance. There is no man but either a righteous Mumin or a sinner; mankind are all sons of Adam, and he was from earth.

In the Same Boat

Recently, I joined a pen pal site. As I wanted to talk to other Muslims, I typed the appropriate keyword in the search box. Lazily skimming through it, I came across some non-Muslim names. The one that I clearly remember was of a girl who had added a note that "blacks and Muslims" needn't write to her, while another was of a Danish youth saying that Muslims shouldn't boycott Denmark's goods and that it was the government's fault which was very bad and racist (I agree with him). Anyway, I didn't feel like writing to anybody -- the mood was gone -- and I believe I even blinked my eyes twice. But I got around to writing to a Muslim profile which claimed that nobody should send her pictures because she was blind. I was curious so I wrote to her to ask who read her all the letters and may Allah bless her.

Today in the morning I received a letter in my email from "Roy" and he had written to be my friend. But what struck out were his words, haunting as they are -- a testimony to what viles plague our common sense of humanity:

I'm happy to be your friend if you don't mind being friends with an African.

With a few corrections, that's what he just about said. And immediately my mind traced back to the "no Muslims and blacks" entry. To make him smile, I replied that the question was not whether I wanted to be his friend but whether he wanted to be mine. I'm not very passionate to regulary converse with "Roy" because he wants to improve his English and this venture is bugging (as I've learned from the second letter which I received a few minutes ago), but I think I will write to him once in a while. We are in the same boat: blacks and Muslims and Arabs; and yes, Europeans and Americans, too. It's sort of like Noah's ark where all creation is delivered to the Lord's refuge.

Don't Be Brutal, Brother!

When I read this (whence it doesn't matter), I felt my heart sink:

A Christian stone mason received critical injuries, including dislocation of his after he was seen drinking water from a public facility, by a Muslim man on June 6 (Tuesday) just outside the eastern city of Lahore, the Pakistan Christian Post (PCP) has reported.

Nasir Ashraf, the Christian mason was working at the construction site of a school. The trouble for him began while he was returning to the site. Confronting him with anger the Muslim man asked him as to why he drank water from the public facility by using a glass that was placed at the water tank.

“Why did you drink water from this glass since you are a Christian?” the PCP quoted the Muslim man as asking Nasir.

“The man accused the mason of polluting the glass and proceeded to destroy it. The Muslim man then summoned a crowd by shouting, “This Christian polluted our glass,” and encouraged them to beat him up,” the PCP report said.

“The crowd began beating Nasir, eventually pushing him off a ledge. The fall dislocated his shoulder, broke his collarbone in two places and knocked him unconscious,” it said.

Yes, we have to work for the human rights of non-Muslim minorities along with those of Muslims, and educate those who have been misguided. "Untouchability" is a racist casteism concept. Let's live together and join hands. No one is "dirty". Whether it be a Muslim, a Christian , a Jew, a Hindu -- there is only one God and one humanity. And by undermining this, we are destroying the inner universal beauty that links us. Let's drink from each other's cups more often.