Time for a little navel gazing as we come up to the end of 2008. Blogging has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me this year. On the one hand, I wrote more blog posts in 2008 (379, not counting this one or any others published before tomorrow) than in any other year. On the other hand, the birth of my daughter A'ishah has taken away a considerable amount of time writing, which is only natural as taking care of her is the much, much higher priority in my life. What's interesting is that at least one person began to think that I was no longer writing on my blog. As I mentioned in that post, it's not that I've quit writing; it's just that I've been extremely busy. (I almost feel guilty for writing this post. Almost. ;) )
This year the tone of my blog has changed somewhat. I haven't written quite as much about Islam as I had in the past, and there were a lot more posts on political and economic issues. Writing about politics isn't a surprise, especially in such an important election year. The posts on economic issues were driven by two motives: both the number of serious issues that have cropped up in the past year that I felt deserved commentary, and an overall rekindling of my interest in the subject. For the past two years I had been teaching economics, which is a subject I've always enjoyed, to the point where I'm now going to try to go on for a Ph.D. in the subject, insha'allah. And so I've done a number of very small-scale analyses on different topics, many of which I've cross-posted over at Daily Kos, where I tend to get a lot more feedback. But I don't really feel that any of these posts qualify for a "post of the year," so I'm leaving them out of the list.
The blog posts that gave me the most pleasure writing this year (other than those about my daughter ;) ) was my series on The Great Arab Conquests. Somewhat surprisingly it generated little comment from others; however, the lack of attention it got didn't diminish the joy I had in writing these. I wish I could write a lot more of this type of post.
Be that as it may, my top four blog posts for 2008 were: On Submission, written in February; The Pearl - Thoughts on Identity, written in November; Six Pieces of Advice Meme For Boys, written in March; and my post of the year, Straight Talk About Islam, written in May. Two other posts in the Straight Talk About Islam Series have been written since the original post; be sure to check them out as well.
Showing posts with label Straight Talk About Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Straight Talk About Islam. Show all posts
December 30, 2008
October 12, 2008
Straight Talk About Islam: Muslims Fear Allah (swt)...
...not men, and certainly not Islamophobes.
Sheila Musaji at The American Muslim has responded to Bobby Spencer's "test" (sorry, I won't link to him) as to whether one is a "moderate" Muslim or not. While I respect Musaji's attempt to answer Spencer, this is not a test I'll ever take, insha'allah. Personally, I don't give a shit as to what Islamophobes think, whether I'm "moderate" enough for them or not. Their minds are already made up; I won't waste my time trying to persuade them otherwise. They're not worth the bother.
The problem with Islamophobes like Bobby Spencer and his ilk is that they think Muslims can be cowed from peer pressure; they don't understand that what mere men think about Islam or Muslims is largely irrelevant. Just because Islamic beliefs and attitudes don't fall lockstep with Western (or other) culture(s) doesn't mean that Islam and Muslims are in the wrong. Like the people at Hebrew National, we answer to a higher authority. Bobby Spencer hasn't grasped that yet. They think (hope, pray) that Muslims will fear them; instead, we fear only Allah (swt).
The fact of the matter is, people like Bobby have no authority whatsoever to try to sit in judgment of Muslims. I accept judgment only from Allah (swt) and other Muslims, the latter who may help me to improve myself to become a better Muslim.* If you're not a Muslim, it doesn't really matter whether you approve of our beliefs and attitudes. You should really be worrying about yourselves.
In fact, I say to you, Bobby, your time is running out. Only Allah (swt) may judge you, but His judgment is final. You need to submit to the will of Allah (swt) before it is too late.
HT: Islamophobia Watch
* Private note: And that includes you too, Aaminah.
Sheila Musaji at The American Muslim has responded to Bobby Spencer's "test" (sorry, I won't link to him) as to whether one is a "moderate" Muslim or not. While I respect Musaji's attempt to answer Spencer, this is not a test I'll ever take, insha'allah. Personally, I don't give a shit as to what Islamophobes think, whether I'm "moderate" enough for them or not. Their minds are already made up; I won't waste my time trying to persuade them otherwise. They're not worth the bother.
The problem with Islamophobes like Bobby Spencer and his ilk is that they think Muslims can be cowed from peer pressure; they don't understand that what mere men think about Islam or Muslims is largely irrelevant. Just because Islamic beliefs and attitudes don't fall lockstep with Western (or other) culture(s) doesn't mean that Islam and Muslims are in the wrong. Like the people at Hebrew National, we answer to a higher authority. Bobby Spencer hasn't grasped that yet. They think (hope, pray) that Muslims will fear them; instead, we fear only Allah (swt).
So from whencesoever Thou startest forth, turn Thy face in the direction of the sacred Mosque; and wheresoever ye are, Turn your face thither: that there be no ground of dispute against you among the people, except those of them that are bent on wickedness; so fear them not, but fear Me; and that I may complete My favors on you, and ye May (consent to) be guided; (2:150)
It was We who revealed the law (to Moses): therein was guidance and light. By its standard have been judged the Jews, by the prophets who bowed (as in Islam) to God's will, by the rabbis and the doctors of law: for to them was entrusted the protection of God's book, and they were witnesses thereto: therefore fear not men, but fear Me, and sell not my signs for a miserable price. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what God hath revealed, they are (no better than) Unbelievers. (5:47)
The fact of the matter is, people like Bobby have no authority whatsoever to try to sit in judgment of Muslims. I accept judgment only from Allah (swt) and other Muslims, the latter who may help me to improve myself to become a better Muslim.* If you're not a Muslim, it doesn't really matter whether you approve of our beliefs and attitudes. You should really be worrying about yourselves.
In fact, I say to you, Bobby, your time is running out. Only Allah (swt) may judge you, but His judgment is final. You need to submit to the will of Allah (swt) before it is too late.
He [Ibrahim (pbuh)] said: "And who despairs of the mercy of his Lord, but such as go astray?" (15:56)
HT: Islamophobia Watch
* Private note: And that includes you too, Aaminah.
May 11, 2008
Straight Talk About Islam: Who's a Muslim, and Who Isn't
When I started this series, I hadn't really thought that this topic would need any discussion, but some recent comments over at Racialicious made me think that a blog post is in order. Apparently, some people feel that just by declaring yourself to be a Muslim that you are one. This is not the case.
Being a Muslim means meeting minimum requirements. As Abu Sinan pointed out in the comments, to be a Muslim the absolute minimum requirement is to recite the shahadah publicly with the intention (niyyat) of submitting your will to Allah (swt) (see the hadith of Usaamah here). That's the absolute minimum. Then, as Aaminah also pointed out in her recent post, to be a Muslim requires an acceptance of the five pillars of Islam and a belief in the six articles of faith. Reject any of those and you're not a Muslim, insha'allah. This is the problem for the Ahmadiyya, the Submitters, the NOI, the Five Percenters, and perhaps a few other groups. They have all stepped outside the boundaries of Islam. (As for people like the clowns at "Muslims Against Sharia," only the completely gullible would think they're Muslim in any way, shape or form.)
There aren't any "cultural Muslims." The term "cultural Muslim," like "secular Muslim," is a contradiction. You're either in a state of Islam (a Muslim) or you're not. You may come from a Muslim culture, but if you're not in a state of Islam that doesn't make you a "cultural Muslim." That just makes you a non-Muslim, like all the others. A Muslim is a person who's in a state of Islam, nothing less.
Islam isn't a cafeteria religion. Muslims don't pick and choose which parts of Islam they're willing to follow. We're not like the adherants of other religions who play that sort of game. If you're a Muslim, then you believe in all of the Qur'an - "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord" (3:7). Moreover, a Muslim does not reject the ahadith, recognizing that in this time the way Muslims obey the Messenger (pbuh) (3:32, 3:132, 4:13, 4:59, etc.) is through the Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh), which is made up primarily of the sahih ahadith collections. Don't like it? Then maybe you're not ready to be a Muslim yet.
To be continued, insha'allah.
Being a Muslim means meeting minimum requirements. As Abu Sinan pointed out in the comments, to be a Muslim the absolute minimum requirement is to recite the shahadah publicly with the intention (niyyat) of submitting your will to Allah (swt) (see the hadith of Usaamah here). That's the absolute minimum. Then, as Aaminah also pointed out in her recent post, to be a Muslim requires an acceptance of the five pillars of Islam and a belief in the six articles of faith. Reject any of those and you're not a Muslim, insha'allah. This is the problem for the Ahmadiyya, the Submitters, the NOI, the Five Percenters, and perhaps a few other groups. They have all stepped outside the boundaries of Islam. (As for people like the clowns at "Muslims Against Sharia," only the completely gullible would think they're Muslim in any way, shape or form.)
There aren't any "cultural Muslims." The term "cultural Muslim," like "secular Muslim," is a contradiction. You're either in a state of Islam (a Muslim) or you're not. You may come from a Muslim culture, but if you're not in a state of Islam that doesn't make you a "cultural Muslim." That just makes you a non-Muslim, like all the others. A Muslim is a person who's in a state of Islam, nothing less.
Islam isn't a cafeteria religion. Muslims don't pick and choose which parts of Islam they're willing to follow. We're not like the adherants of other religions who play that sort of game. If you're a Muslim, then you believe in all of the Qur'an - "We believe in the Book; the whole of it is from our Lord" (3:7). Moreover, a Muslim does not reject the ahadith, recognizing that in this time the way Muslims obey the Messenger (pbuh) (3:32, 3:132, 4:13, 4:59, etc.) is through the Sunnah of the Prophet (pbuh), which is made up primarily of the sahih ahadith collections. Don't like it? Then maybe you're not ready to be a Muslim yet.
To be continued, insha'allah.
May 2, 2008
Straight Talk About Islam
This blog post was somewhat inspired by Rob Wagner's post, Muslims in Danger of Losing Their Voice, in which Rob argued that non-Muslims and Muslim apostates are calling themselves "experts" on Islam, and that the media and the non-Muslim populace are being taken in by these frauds because, in their minds, the "Insta-Experts™" have "credibility." The potential problem from Rob's perspective is that we Muslims may lose our voice because no one will listen to us, preferring the frauds instead.
I had originally written as a comment to Rob's post:
Since I wrote that, back on April 25th, I've actually been rather angry at a number of groups of people and this blog post (and others, insha'allah, in the future) are going to be addressed to them. People claim to like straight talk and this is what I'm going to do, provide some straight talk about Islam. I intend to be blunt, and if you don't like it, too bad. But I do hope that this bluntness will be enough to get it through your skull that Islam and Muslims aren't what you think they are or want them to be, and that most of what you think you know are nothing but lies in the first place.
So, to start off, let's get back to Rob's post:
You're being lied to. If you're a non-Muslim and think that the only "moderate" Muslim voices are the likes of Irshad Manji, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tarek Fatah, Ed Hussein, Wafa Sultan or any other "progressive" Muslim or apostate, then you're a greater fool than I thought. Let me clue you in: these people do not speak for Muslims. They have zero credibility among the Muslim community. These people do not understand Islam and cannot accept Islam as it is. What they want is Islam Lite. Chrislam. Call it whatever you will, it's not ISLAM. It's religion according to their own nafs, their own ego, which is exactly what many people do when they create their own cafeteria religion, picking and choosing what they like and rejecting anything that doesn't fit into their own preconceived notions. If you want to follow your own cafeteria religion, fine, be my guest. But don't expect Muslims to do the same. Which leads to me to my next point.
Islam will never go through a "reformation." Islam doesn't need a reformation. Islam is perfect. Frankly, I don't care what non-Muslims or the "progressive" Muslims and apostates think about Islam. We practice Islam as it is meant to be practiced, not as how non-Muslims or "progressive" Muslims think it should be practiced. Don't like it? Too bad. Think Islam needs to be reformed? Too bad. Until you know and understand Islam as well as we do, we're not going to pay any attention to your criticisms or calls for "reform." Just like the progressives and apostates, you don't have any credibility among us either. You'll impress us more if you try to learn about Islam from an unbiased source. And by the time you get to the point where we think you're knowledgeable enough, you'll probably be agreeing that Islam doesn't need "reforming" as well, insha'allah.
We're not going away. We're not going home to our own countries. For many of us, we are in our own country. Nor can you stick your heads in the sand and pretend that Muslim countries don't exist by stopping all trade and contact with them, as some wingnuts have suggested. Muslims make up 20% of the world's population, and we'll keep on growing, insha'allah. We're not trying to take over the world, as many idiots claim, but we will if non-Muslims don't have babies. That's not our fault; it's yours. We're going to continue having babies whether you like it or not, insha'allah. So deal with us! Get rational, rub those brain cells of yours together, and accept a society with Muslims and Islam in it. If you can't, then you're just a bunch of cowards.
To be continued, insha'allah.
Update: I've put this blog post onto Daily Kos, where it created a mild stir among the people there, primarily due to the fact that the blunt tone of this post made some people upset (and perhaps rightfully so; Kossacks tend to be more sympathetic to Islam than at other websites, so they may have felt that I was attacking them, which was not my intent). However, the good news is that this blog post generated 46 comments there (so far), so you may want to see what the others had to say.
Update #2 (May 22): If you haven't read Marc Manley's post, The Trouble with Muslim Pundits Today, in which he went to a talk by Irshad Manji at the University of Pennsylvania, you should click on that link right now. I've written two comments there as well, but I thought the content of the second one bears repeating here. Manji, Ayaan, and the others whom I criticized in the first section ("You're being lied to"), strike me as being exactly whom the Qur'an talks about in the following ayat:
Manji and the others like her criticize Islam not because they have "'the love and desire for the best for her community' that marks genuine reformers," as Dawud noted in his comment (#9), but because they have other, less noble motivations (to put it charitably). They are not so concerned with the Muslim community (except to denigrate it), but to suck up to the non-Muslims, whom they think they will receive "honor" from for being the non-Muslims' useful fool. Truly, all honor is with Allah (swt), and let the liars answer to Him, insha'allah.
I had originally written as a comment to Rob's post:
It's not that Muslims are "losing our voice," per se; it's that you have an extremely gullible non-Muslim populace that's so ignorant about the subject of Islam that: (1) they can't tell which voices are authentic and which voices are not, and (2) they won't accept anything that doesn't pander to their prejudices. The con men, either going under a "progressive" Muslim banner or out-and-out declaring themselves to be apostates, gladly sell their souls for a miserable price. The shame of it all is that this sort of problem has arisen when the masses have lost their ability to think critically. In the meantime, there are plenty of Muslims, individually and collectively, who do speak out and try to mitigate the damage. But until the ignorant masses begin to make an effort to open their minds and seek real understanding about Islam, they will remain the greater fools.
Since I wrote that, back on April 25th, I've actually been rather angry at a number of groups of people and this blog post (and others, insha'allah, in the future) are going to be addressed to them. People claim to like straight talk and this is what I'm going to do, provide some straight talk about Islam. I intend to be blunt, and if you don't like it, too bad. But I do hope that this bluntness will be enough to get it through your skull that Islam and Muslims aren't what you think they are or want them to be, and that most of what you think you know are nothing but lies in the first place.
So, to start off, let's get back to Rob's post:
You're being lied to. If you're a non-Muslim and think that the only "moderate" Muslim voices are the likes of Irshad Manji, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tarek Fatah, Ed Hussein, Wafa Sultan or any other "progressive" Muslim or apostate, then you're a greater fool than I thought. Let me clue you in: these people do not speak for Muslims. They have zero credibility among the Muslim community. These people do not understand Islam and cannot accept Islam as it is. What they want is Islam Lite. Chrislam. Call it whatever you will, it's not ISLAM. It's religion according to their own nafs, their own ego, which is exactly what many people do when they create their own cafeteria religion, picking and choosing what they like and rejecting anything that doesn't fit into their own preconceived notions. If you want to follow your own cafeteria religion, fine, be my guest. But don't expect Muslims to do the same. Which leads to me to my next point.
Islam will never go through a "reformation." Islam doesn't need a reformation. Islam is perfect. Frankly, I don't care what non-Muslims or the "progressive" Muslims and apostates think about Islam. We practice Islam as it is meant to be practiced, not as how non-Muslims or "progressive" Muslims think it should be practiced. Don't like it? Too bad. Think Islam needs to be reformed? Too bad. Until you know and understand Islam as well as we do, we're not going to pay any attention to your criticisms or calls for "reform." Just like the progressives and apostates, you don't have any credibility among us either. You'll impress us more if you try to learn about Islam from an unbiased source. And by the time you get to the point where we think you're knowledgeable enough, you'll probably be agreeing that Islam doesn't need "reforming" as well, insha'allah.
We're not going away. We're not going home to our own countries. For many of us, we are in our own country. Nor can you stick your heads in the sand and pretend that Muslim countries don't exist by stopping all trade and contact with them, as some wingnuts have suggested. Muslims make up 20% of the world's population, and we'll keep on growing, insha'allah. We're not trying to take over the world, as many idiots claim, but we will if non-Muslims don't have babies. That's not our fault; it's yours. We're going to continue having babies whether you like it or not, insha'allah. So deal with us! Get rational, rub those brain cells of yours together, and accept a society with Muslims and Islam in it. If you can't, then you're just a bunch of cowards.
To be continued, insha'allah.
Update: I've put this blog post onto Daily Kos, where it created a mild stir among the people there, primarily due to the fact that the blunt tone of this post made some people upset (and perhaps rightfully so; Kossacks tend to be more sympathetic to Islam than at other websites, so they may have felt that I was attacking them, which was not my intent). However, the good news is that this blog post generated 46 comments there (so far), so you may want to see what the others had to say.
Update #2 (May 22): If you haven't read Marc Manley's post, The Trouble with Muslim Pundits Today, in which he went to a talk by Irshad Manji at the University of Pennsylvania, you should click on that link right now. I've written two comments there as well, but I thought the content of the second one bears repeating here. Manji, Ayaan, and the others whom I criticized in the first section ("You're being lied to"), strike me as being exactly whom the Qur'an talks about in the following ayat:
“To the Hypocrites give the glad tidings that there is for them (but) a grievous penalty;- Yea, to those who take for friends unbelievers rather than believers: is it honor they seek among them? Nay,- all honor is with God.” (4:138-9)
Manji and the others like her criticize Islam not because they have "'the love and desire for the best for her community' that marks genuine reformers," as Dawud noted in his comment (#9), but because they have other, less noble motivations (to put it charitably). They are not so concerned with the Muslim community (except to denigrate it), but to suck up to the non-Muslims, whom they think they will receive "honor" from for being the non-Muslims' useful fool. Truly, all honor is with Allah (swt), and let the liars answer to Him, insha'allah.
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