American Muslims deserve a break. There are as many as 6 million to 8 million Muslims living in the United States and contributing to the country as doctors, engineers, artists, actors and professionals, but for a decade many have found themselves and their religion wrongly equated with the acts of terrorists like Osama bin Laden. Many have been the victims of fear, suspicion, prejudice, Muslim-bashing, unlawful surveillance, illegal search, arrest and imprisonment.
Efforts to build Islamic centers and mosques in New York, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Tennessee have been equated with building monuments to terrorism. Prominent American public figures and politicians -- including Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, Rep. Peter King and Newt Gingrich -- openly spoke against Muslims and encouraged unfounded social suspicion of them. The net result is an increase in anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bashing, witnessed in the hysteria that has led to a movement across some 20 states in America to ban sharia.
Today's historic changes, the death of Osama bin Laden and the Arab Spring offer an opportunity to redress anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bias (Islamophobia) and to reaffirm that American Muslims, like other mainstream Americans, desire a secure and democratic America. Despite the fact that American Muslims years have had to explain that neither they -- nor their religion -- sanction terrorism.
Major polls have consistently shown American public opinion of Islam plunging. The furor over the proposed Islamic center (Park 51) in New York City resurfaced hostility toward Islam and Muslims. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, large minorities said they could not think of anything positive to say about Islam. In one study, 38 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam, compared to 30 percent who reported a positive view. Another study conducted by The Washington Post found Islam's unfavorable image creeping up to 49 percent among Americans.
This fear and hostility has been reinforced by the American public's basic ignorance and misunderstanding of Islam: The Pew Forum's September 2010 survey of religion literacy found that only about half of Americans know that the Quran is the holy book of Islam. It also found that less than a third know that most people in Indonesia -- the world's most populous Muslim nation -- are, in fact, Muslim. What many did know and fear were stereotypes based on misinformation.
Mainstream American Muslims have too often been equated inaccurately with terrorists and people who reject democracy. Muslim Americans cherish the freedoms guaranteed by the American Constitution as much as others and, as the Gallup World Poll of 35 Muslim countries reported, like all Americans, majorities of Muslims globally desire democracy and freedom and fear and reject religious extremism and terrorism.
Failure to recognize and appreciate these facts continues to feed a growing Islamophobia in America that threatens the safety, security and civil liberties of many American Muslims despite the fact that, as Gallup and Pew polls have shown, they are as educationally, economically and politically integrated as other Americans. It is time to remember and act on the words of President George W. Bush in calling upon all American to distinguish between the religion of Islam and the acts of a fraction of Muslims who commit acts of terrorism and President Barack Obama's words reminding Americans that: "the United States is not -- and never will be -- at war with Islam. ... Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own."
It's time to turn a deaf ear to our preachers and politicians of hate and get it right with our American Muslim fellow citizens.
John L. Esposito, the author of 'The Future of Islam,' is the founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Sheila B. Lalwani is a research fellow at the center.
Follow John L. Esposito on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnlesposito
http://www.load-islam.com/artical_det.php?artical_id=531§ion=indepth&subsection=Glorious%20Quran
With regards to abrogation (Ar. naskh), it is a confirmed Islamic doctrine in the Qur'an. Since the Qur'an was revealed gradually over a period of twenty-three years, the legal rulings were not imposed on its adherents all at once. Rather, it gave them time to grow in faith and become accustomed to Islam. As Shaykh Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi mentions
Woodrow Wilson’s vice president Thomas Riley Marshall famously and snidely said, “What America needs is a good 5 cent cigar.” It’s doubtful that was so essential then and it’s even more dubious almost a century later but America is in dire need today and what we need has nothing to do with cigars.
First and foremost, America needs a new president but that will have to wait almost nineteen months. In the interim, for starters, America needs to wake up with regard to the true nature of Islam and to the obliviousness, if not the calculated deviousness, of America’s Left with regard to everything but, most specifically, regarding the true nature of Islam.
We’re told, contrary to common sense and powers of observation, that our nation and the West aren’t at war with Islam and anyone who believes we are should disabuse themselves of that absurd notion posthaste.
We should disregard 30 years of bloody assaults on Western interests throughout the world, forget the 3 conflicts in which we are engaged in Muslim countries, the 6,000–and counting–dead American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, the subway bombings, the interdicted attacks, the obvious war footing at our airports, and we should especially stop dwelling on September 11th, 2001!
None of those realities are evidence of any war but rather of misunderstandings and a lack of communication with the Islamic world. . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4745)
Any idea who said that?
Think deeply and you will realise the differences in your own household.
This is a very critical point: the equality must be specified with respect to some measurable property. For example, women on average are superior to men if we ask who is shorter in height than the other ("Growth and Development", Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1992).
Women are also superior on average if we ask whom do children bond go deeper, mothers or fathers.
What then, is the really important property which we are worried about in terms of gender equality?
Naturally, from the point of view of the Qur'an and Sunnah, the obvious important property is who is dearer God, men or women?
This question is emphatically answered in the Qur'an
The Qur'an and Sunnah repeat over and over again that God only favours one person over another based on that person's awareness, consciousness, fear, love, and hope of God (the Arabic word is difficult to translate: Taqwa). All other criteria are excluded: gender, ethnic group, country, ancestry, etc.
Given that God does not favour one gender over the other in His attention to us (and it helps to remember that God is neither male nor female), we can now address the differences between the genders in Islam.
First, men and women are not the same as we know.
I am what being called Ahmedi muslim. Why we killed and prosecuted. Why you not answer.
However, both are bound by obligations to one another, especially the following important one which must be understood in any discussion on men and women.
Women are not obligated to work, whereas men are obligated. The man must provide for the family, but the woman does not have to spend out of her money for it, though she gets a reward for doing so.
Given that husbands are obligated to provide for wives, and that marriage is a highly recommended goal of Islam, it is easy to see why women's inheritance share is half that of men. We note also that men are obligated to provide a suitable dowry to women on marriage.
[2:228]...And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness, and men are a degree above them...
It is simply a way of partitioning responsibilities in a household of two adults: someone must make the final decision on daily matters. Though the final decision rests with the husband, it is through mutual consultation that decisions are best reached at.
The wearing of the veil by women is also an illogical premise to claim that women are inferior to men. It is more appropriate to indict a society of female exploitation if it tolerates pornography rather than if it enforces the veil.
Polygamy, for example, was common and wives remained in their father's households. Elite women enjoyed considerable power and prestige - they had no political or human rights and female infanticide was common. Women had been among Muhammad's earliest converts and their emancipation was a project that was dear to his heart.
The Koran strictly forbade the killing of female children and rebuked the Arabs for their dismay when a girl was born. It also gave women legal rights of inheritance and divorce: most Western women had nothing comparable until the nineteenth century.
A revelation addressed women as well as men and emphasised the absolute moral and spiritual equality of the sexes. Thereafter the Koran quite frequently addressed women explicitly, something that rarely happens in the Hindu, Jewish or Christian scriptures.
Islam was later hijacked by the men, who interpreted texts in a way that was negative for Muslim women.. Once Islam had taken its place in the civilised world, however, Muslims adopted those customs of the Oikumene which relegated women to second class status.
They adopted the customs of veiling women and secluding them in harems from Persia and Christian Byzantium, where women had long been marginalised in this way. Today Muslim feminists urge their men folk to return to the original spirit of the Koran.
Rape is one of the hideous crimes and one of the worst in the sight of God. It is considered a complicated crime that involves violence, oppression and sex.
The punishment for such crime however was not assigned any one specific punishment to allow every case to be judged individually and according to every community standard keeping in mind that it is one of the worst crimes and therefore expected to be given the worst punishment permitted under the civil law allowed in every community.
The need for four witnesses in case of adultery when no other evidence exists does not apply in cases of rape where modern science allows the use of advanced techniques to identify the rapist with the highest accuracy.
The victims of rape, if they notify the authority immediately, will have enough proofs to convict most, if not all the accused rapists, as the physical facts including semen, saliva, blood, hair, fibres, skin scraps, bite marks,.....etc. are so many and easy to identify to convict the rapist.
Requirement( four wirnesses) is needed only if a person who has no other proof accused an un-expected person of such a crime.
http://www.jews-for-allah.org/jewish-mythson-islam/women..html
It was Islam that gave the women the right to divorce her husband 1400 years ago. There is a chapter in the Quran called Divorce, giving details of rules. Did Hindu, Christian, European laws allow divorce 1400 years ago? 1400 years ago Islam gave inheritance rights on properties to the women. When did these rights given to women in the non-Muslim world? when India for instance
After 1948.
Forty years ago (1970s) the male domination was greater for instance in South and South East Asia among all religious groups including Muslims. But 40 years ago fewer educated ladies were using even head scarves. But now in Malaysia alone for instance the University male female ratio is approximately 50:50.
Did you not notice the number of women who took part in the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and other places?
Saudis will change when the USA feels it as a disadvantage
More women get liberated, more educated but at the same time more educated women wear head scarves, far more than 40 years ago. This indicates even educated Muslim women voluntarily accepting a certain style not based on male domination. It is unfair to judge Islam by the way of life of Saudis(2 % of Muslims)
Misogyny of clergy ( Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jain,) is peculiarly neurotic because it is based on a rejection of sexuality which is unique among the world religions and certainly not found in either Judaism or Islam.
It is not fair to blame Muhammad and Islam for their misogyny. If Muslim women today reject some of the freedoms that we feel we have offerred them, this is not due to perversity but because the western view of women and the relation between the sexes is confused.
We preach equality and liberation, but at the same time exploit and degrade women in advertising, pornography, and much popular entertainement in a way that Muslims find alien and offensive
Ideas borrowed from the book written by Karen Armstrong (Page 239)
Title of the book. “Muhammad : A Western Attempt to Understand Islam: Publisher: Victor Gollancz
Some say every foreigner has to follow the Muslim rules in Muslim countries. This is absolutely wrong. Go to Malaysia, Indonesia, Morocco, Lebanon, Beirut, Turkey, Brunei and Bangladesh. In those countries foreigners wear what they like.
You may find thousands of ladies in mini-skirts. Hundreds swim on the beaches in their bikinis. Muslim countries expect them to dress decently.
Muslims believed that Islam was for the Arabs as Judaism was for the sons of Jacob. As the 'people of the book' (ahl al-kitab),Jews and Christians were granted religious liberty as dhimmis, protected minority groups.
When the Abbasid caliphs began to encourage conversion, many of the Semitic and Aryan peoples in their empire were eager to accept the new religion. The success of Islam was as formative as the failure and humiliation of Jesus have been in Christianity.
Politics is not extrinsic to a Muslim's personal religious life, as in Christianity which mistrusts mundane success.
Muslims regard themselves as committed to implementing a just society in accord with God's will. The ummah has sacramental importance, as a 'sign' that God has blessed this endeavour to redeem humanity from oppression and injustice; its political health holds much the same place in a Muslim's spirituality as a particular theological option (Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Baptist) in the life of a Christian.
If Christians find the Muslims' regard for politics strange, they should reflect that their passion for abstruse theological debate seems equally bizarre to Jews and Muslims.
Dalit( Low caste untouchable children in Hindu society) children at a school in Jagatsinghpur district (India) complain that teachers refused to check their notebooks. We are considered untouchables. The teachers refuse to touch our books and our homework is never corrected," said Bijaya Mallick, a student of Class IV at the school at Keutapala in Balikuda block. "If we even touch our teachers by mistake, they scold us for polluting them," he added.
The 40 odd Dalit students in the school were allegedly singled out and made to clean classrooms and toilets. "I clean toilets at school," said Samir Mallick, a Class V student. He looked puzzled when asked why he agreed to do so. "The teachers tell me to do it," the 11-year-old boy said. "We are not even allowed to take water from the drinking pot at school," he added.
Several students and their parents complained that they were victims of caste discrimination by the school staff since long. The final straw, however, was when teachers refused to serve mid-day meals to the children.
When one religion proves itself over and over again to be incompatible and hostile to it's hosts in foreign countries it isn't prejudice for people to discriminate against them. It's a matter of observation. You might let a cat into your house for instance but you would keep a snake out. You wouldn't let them both in and pretend like they're equal because you don't want to discriminate against animals.
http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2006/caged_humans_running_rice_mill.html
It was with incredulity that we heard Siddamma's story of workers held in private prisons used to run privately owned rice mills. Workers from primarily tribal communities were imprisoned for small amounts in loans – Rs 500 to Rs 3000( US$10 to 60).
Workers were denied any medical attention and were forced to live in conditions where women were not even allowed medical help during delivery of babies and were expected to be at work the next day.
And these were supposed to be mills that took government subsidized grain and milled it – often for use by the public distribution system. Surely the government would know of these processes?
Siddamma said that when various human rights groups approached the block level government official, presenting to her the story of one woman who had managed to escape, the official is supposed to have said that she owed the mill owners lakhs of Rupees for them having taken care of her needs and she could either leave the mill and pay that amount or go back to the mill.
As these details came forth, incredulity turned to anger and frustration. At the governments we elect, and leadership we look towards?
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery#Indian_subcontinent
The Greek historian Arrian writes in his book Indica:
"This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave." (Book VIII, Chapter X)
Though any formalised slave trade has not existed in South Asia, unfree labor has existed for centuries in the Medieval ages, in different forms. The most common forms have been kinds of bonded labor. During the epoch of the Mughals, debt bondage reached its peak, and it was common for money lenders to make slaves of peasants and others who failed to repay debts. Under these practices, more than one generation could be forced into unfree labor; for example, a son could be sold into bonded labor for life to pay off the debt, along with interest.
And so, we finally agree on something.
Muslims who obviously interpret the Quran peacefully, and live peaceful lives are civilized, yes?
Well, anecdotal news stories and quotes from individuals aside, that group represents the vast, vast majority of all Muslims.
I agree fully that those who interpret the Quran dogmatically, literally and incorrectly (such as in the case of any terrorist/extremist views, such as Al Qaeda, or the Taliban) are barbarians.
You just may want to truly pay attention to how many Muslims, out of all Muslims, hold the barbaric view, or engage in barbaric behavior.
As an actual number, any is far too many, of course.
As a percentage of Muslims, the percentage of barbarians is so small, that to accuse Muslims in general of the same would be to fall into the blindness of bigotry.