Islam and Human Rights
Why are Muslims so sensitive to criticism? Don't they trust their
scriptures? Asks Sultan Shahin
Bengalis no longer enjoy the freedom of the age of Kabeer or Raheem or our
Vedic ancestors
West Bengal is now ruled by CPM - Talibanist!
It is outrageous that in this day and age a respected newspaper like the
Statesman cannot even publish as innocuous an article as Johann Hari's "Why
should I respect these oppressive religions?" It is being reproduced below
courtesy Independent of London where it originally appeared. It seems some
obscurantist Muslims had objection to it and so the Stalinist police
arrested Mr. Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha, the editor and publisher of The
Statesman, and curiously without provoking any debate or as far as I know
even any coverage in secular democratic India's independent media.
As you will see in the article below Johann Hari is very balanced and
maintains equidistance from all major religions that he mentions. He makes a
plea for freedom of expression. His main point is stated in the very first
paragraph: "The right to criticize religion is being slowly doused in acid.
Across the world, the small, incremental gains made by secularism – giving
us the space to doubt and question and make up our own minds – are being
beaten back by belligerent demands that we "respect" religion. A historic
marker has just been passed, showing how far we have been shoved. The UN
rapporteur who is supposed to be the global guardian."
I am a religious person myself. But I don't see how anyone can be religious
in the true sense of the term without having ever been skeptical about
religion, without having been agnostic or even atheist for a time. No truly
religious person can ever question the right of others to question
religion. He would have the confidence to know that this questioning person
will come to realize the value of religion in general, and maybe his
religion too in course of time. He or she will see that as this fellow is
questioning religion, he/she has the capacity to someday become religious.
But of course those who follow their inherited religion are not going to see
it this way. They are the inhabitants of the land of Jahiliya.
Now tell me my Muslim brothers and sisters! Would there have been a religion
called Islam in the world today if Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) had
taken your view of his ancestral religion? Would we have had Islam in the
world today if the Prophet had not questioned and rebelled against the
religion of his family and clan and tribe? Indeed would we have had any
religion, any science, any literature, any philosophy? All progress emanates
from questioning established truths.
However, this is no occasion for a discourse on progress. You cannot address
followers of ancestral religions, followers of Abu Jahal, and discuss with
them concepts of progress. You can just beat them in a war and then they
will join you, as the Meccan followers of Abu Jahal joined Islam after their
defeat.
I don't know what the obscurantist Muslims of an enlightened city like
Kolakata find objectionable in Johann Hari's article. Perhaps it is the
following passage that has provoked their ire:
"All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea
that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I
don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of
53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole
villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.
"I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and
the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't
respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live
again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or "ignorance", but
because there is no evidence for these claims. They belong to the childhood
of our species, and will in time look as preposterous as believing in Zeus
or Thor or Baal.
"When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much
real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade."
Obviously Hari's idea about the Prophet's character is wrong, but it is
based in large parts on the propaganda launched by Arab Muslims who want to
justify their own pedophilic proclivities by announcing from rooftops even
today that the Prophet married a girl of six and consummated his marriage
when she was nine. The kind of fatwas Saudi Wahhabi Ulema (religious
scholars) give on the issue even today, some of which available on
NewAgeIslam.com, is enough to convince any non-Muslim and indeed any Muslim
that this is what the Prophet did. Please refer to the following stories:
1. Saudi Islam, misuse of Seerat-e-Nabwi allowed: No protection to
young girls, some awful news stories
Fifty-Something Saudi Refuses to Annul Marriage to his Eight-Year-Old Wife
Father was 'swapping' her for a 13-year-old bride
Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub'i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant: It Is Allowed to Marry a
Girl at the Age of One, If Sex Is Postponed. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH),
Whose Model We Follow, Married 'Aisha When She Was Six and Had Sex with Her
When She Was Nine
www.NewAgeIslam.Com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=815
2. Marrying 9 year old girls permissible in Islam, says Moroccan
theologian: Muslims accuse him of "distorting" Islam
www.NewAgeIslam.Com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=769
3. DID SAYYIDA AYESHA (ra) MARRY MUHAMMAD (P.B.U.H), THE PROPHET OF
ISLAM, AT AGE 6?
The books written 200-300 years after the death of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),
though seeking to provide a good deal of historical information about him,
are not free from less than perfect and self-contradictory materials. These
should not be taken as the final word for a Muslim. There is a Final Word
for a Muslim and that is the Book of God, the Holy Qur'an—the book that
defines the marriageable age for a man or woman when he or she attains
soundness of judgment (Al-Qur'an 4:6). If the exalted prophet of Islam is a
model for all-time mankind, if he followed the Qur'an all his life, if Allah
stands witness to his rock-solid moral character, there is no way that he
could have taken a 6-9 year old, immature young, playful girl as a
responsible wife, argues Abdul H. Fauq.
www.NewAgeIslam.Com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=817
The above article by Abdul H. Fauq presents a very different set of research
and speculation, one that does not suit the Arab male chauvinists and
paedophiles who call themselves Muslims and thus doesn't get propagated by
the massive Wahhabi-controlled Islamic media around the world.
As for Johann Hari's claim that the Prophet "ordered the murder of whole
villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him", it is patently wrong and
cannot be presented in this way. The Prophet is an exemplar of patience and
perseverance and forgiveness. His entire history is a testament to this.
Look at Sulah–e-Hudaibiya, look at his general amnesty to the murderous
Meccans after the victory over Mecca when he was in a position to order
wholesale slaughter. As for the Jews, neutral observers have to understand
that at that time the Prophet was fighting for his community and faith's
very survival. The Jews first entered into an agreement with him and then
when war came stabbed him in the back, expecting the far superior army of
Meccans to decimate the ill-equipped and extremely weak Muslim army. But the
reverse happened with the blessings and support of God, the only thing that
could indeed have saved the Prophet, his army and Islam. Now the perfidious
Jews had indeed to be taught a lesson as a warning to other tribes who were
now entering into similar agreements with the Muslim community. Remember
this was the act of a man who was literally fighting for his and his faith's
survival. When he was victorious and in a position to order slaughter he
ordered general amnesty even to war criminals who later killed his own
family members and subverted Islam for good.
Anyway, this rebuttal is not the point now. The point at stake now is
Johann's Hari's right to express his views. Why indeed should he or anybody
else be forced to respect religions in whose name so many slaughters and
worse have taken place and are taking place now? If religions want to be
respected, the religious should behave in a respectable fashion, should try
and earn that respect, through exemplary conduct and debate, not force
people to respect them.
Sultan Shahin, editor, New Age Islam
13 Comments More..
http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1190
Islamic World News
Pakistan fighting for survival against Taliban: Zardari
Pakistan and the Islamist challenge
By A H Nayyar & Zia Mian
The motives of Al-Qaeda by Rizwan Tahir Khan
Why the U.S. should leave Afghanistan by Terrell E. Arnold
Obama quotes Muslim Holy Scripture
Satanic Verses' polarising untruths by Lawrence Pollard
Italy: Rome Grand Mosque shuns meeting of radical mosques
The Saharan Conundrum by NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE
Compiled by Syed Asadullah
4 Comments More..
http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1194
Islam and Sectarianism
The "Hidden Imam" of the Shiites – myth or reality?
The Iraqi Shi'i scholar, Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr, finds proof for the
existence of the Hidden Mahdi in what he calls "the experience of a
community". The existence of the Hidden Imam, he postulates, was experienced
by the Shi'i community as a whole in the written communications that the
representatives used supplied them with. The crux of this argument lies in
the fact that an individual experience might be doubted, but never that of
experience of an entire community. However, the glaring flaw in this line of
reasoning is that it very conveniently overlooks the part of the
representatives as the individual go-betweens. The community never had the
privilege of seeing or meeting the person they believed to be the author of
the tawqi'at. Their experience was limited to receiving what the
representatives produced. Even the argument of a consistent handwriting in
all the various tawqi'at is at best melancholy. There is no way one can get
away from the fact that the existence of the Hidden Imam rests upon nothing
other than acceptance of the words of the representatives.
The activities of those representatives furthermore go a long way to show
that they were much, much more inspired by the desire to possess than by
pious sentiments of any kind. So when the Shi'ah commemorate the birth of
their twelfth Imam on the 15th night of Sha'ban, or when they seek to apply
ahadith in Sunni sources which speak of twelve khalifas to their twelve
Imams, then let us ask them on what basis do they accept the existence of
the twelfth one? History bears witness to the existence of eleven persons in
that specific line of descent, but when we come to the twelfth one, all we
have is claims made by persons whose activities in the name of their Hidden
Imam give us all the reason in the world to suspect their honesty and
integrity. In Islam, issues of faith can never be based upon evidence of
this kind.
--- Abu Muhammad al-Afriqi
52 Comments More...
http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1178
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