Salaam all I have to share this.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- As-salaam alaykum everyone: I have found this discussion very interesting and informative, and thank everyone for participating. As someone who was involved in Muslim community responses to the Salman Rushdie controversy back in 1989 (in Washington state), I would like to encourage everyone to study that situation and the lessons learned from it for Muslim community activism and outreach. Our Muslim community leadership - local, national, and international - handled that situation the same way as the Danish cartoon controversy is being handled now. The approaches and arguments are about the same now as then. However, virtually all international, national and local Muslim community representatives from that time learned not to take the bait from those people, groups and forces wanting for their own purposes to prompt outbreaks of "Muslim extremism" (or whatever you want to call it). There have been many such attempts since that time until this Danish cartoon situation. Instead, wisdom has prevailed for the most part and public education by Muslims has taken sensible approaches that sidesteps these sorts of stereotyped situations and avoids bad publicity, at least, until this Danish cartoon controversy erupted. I urge everyone to learn from American Muslim history, and from this recent situation, and be prepared for the next such inevitable situation. I don't see the involvement of the previous generation of Muslim community leaders in handling this debate. I wonder if they were even consulted by the newer generation of Muslim community leadership for their experience (even though Muslim culture encourages us to value the experience of our elders, etc.) I imagine this generation of Muslim community leaders will learn their lesson, as did the previous one, and not take the bait for a while, perhaps 15-20 years. By that time, there will have been another turnover of leadership, to the next generation of leaders who didn't experience this Danish cartoon controversy, and won't remember there ever was a Salman Rushdie controversy. They will handle the next big "freedom of expression vs. insulting Islam" controversy by taking the same approaches and using the same arguments again, without having considered how effective they are (if at all). This is because we don't seem to learn from our community's history, or from the experienced people of our community. We need to be aware that the same types of issues and controversies keep recurring, and that lessons have been learned about how to handle them. The knowledge and experiences gained needs to be passed on by previous generations of leadership. Newer generations of leadership need to be aware that the situations they are dealing with are not new, and that they need to maintain a relationship with the experienced generations of leadership and learn something from them. There are lots of precedents and existing information available with regard to how to handle controversial situations, and we need to have a way to share these kinds of knowledge. I urge everyone to give this matter some serious thought, otherwise it is all going to be a matter of "it has all happened before and it will all happen again." We will all be wasting a lot of good energy on "the same old, same old" thing over and over again instead of advancing our general goals, a few of which seem to be improving public awareness of Muslim people, faith and culture, and protecting our community (people and assets). Sincerely, Nahid Khan. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Join modern day disciples reach the disfigured and poor with hope and healing http://us.click.yahoo.com/lMct6A/Vp3LAA/i1hLAA/TXWolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Save Aceh now! visit http://www.pusatkrisisaceh.or.id Click English section for contact Islam Relief Organizations Want to learn about Islam and Christian? visit: http://come.to/christian-islam Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/muslim/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
