This is an opinion piece by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a regular contributor for The Independent. She herself is a Muslim.
She made some interesting statements, which I thought might be interesting to post here.
Responses welcome.

Full article here.

Approved, sorry about the delay, I was making pancakes out of trousers.

Actually, I wasn't.

What an amazing post.

Take me a while to get to the bottom of the points raised. Excellent find Glo.

In a nutshell it asks, "what makes a muslim?", is it ensuring that you dunk flies in your milkshake? Or is it acknowlaging, trusting and fearing in Allah?

Thanks, barney

I was interested to see how this article - written by a Muslimah - will be received here in LI.
I am sure some Muslim members will strongly disagree, but others may not. I hope we can keep this to a sensible and rational thread ... here's hoping!

Muezzin, let me know if your trousers can be salvaged. I am quite handy with needle and thread, you know.

Peace

It started out great but then she completely ruined it by saying:

In other words, mixing religion and politics leads it danger... and yet the Prophet was a religious and political leader, only a blind person would deny that.

Oh, look what I found...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasmin_Alibhai-Brown

Ahem. That pretty much sums up everything for me. I hope you'll excuse us if we don't take her too seriously.

Exactly, the likes of her and Ameena Wadood.

The article of her saying that is actually found here: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion...oo-447845.html.

Her opinions are far from ''interesting'', they are purely idiotic.

May Allaah guide her inshaa Allaah.

Greetings, Malaikah and Ameena

Like I said, I was expecting some people to disagree with her strongly.
I am interested in learning how people feel and think, and what makes them tick ... so your opinion matters to me.

It may be that there are no Muslims here in LI who agree with her.
It may be there are some, but they won't speak out.
It may be that people who would agree with her are likely to hang out in other forums ...

With regards to her feeling stereotyped (by the Islamic authority, but also by the secular environment she lives in), can you relate to that?
Do you agree/disagree?

You may find some of her views critical of Islam, but are there others you might agree with?
Or does the fact that she makes some critical statements of Islam make all her views false?

I hope you don't mind my questions.
I love to hear what people think.

Nice topic, thanks for sharing...

Honestly, there are things which she says in that article which are quite relevant to me as a Muslim, even though she is not talking about "my kind" of Muslim. There is the palpable expectation from strangers on the street that we as Muslim women cover up because someone is forcing us, that we might be black and blue underneath "all that stuff" we wear. There is the definite expectation that we are not able to read and write, let alone think.

On the other hand, if she is calling for the hijab to be banned from Islamic thought and principles, then she is feeding the stereotype. She is helping it along, and even aiding and abetting it. She would appear to be speaking for just "her type" of Muslim, rather than all of us as a whole. And when we speak of prejudice towards our own community, then care should be taken to not be divisive within your own community. I mean, I can feel her outrage...shouldn't she be able to feel mine, rather than (perhaps inadvertently) blaming "my type" of Muslim (or Islamic principles) for the stereotype that she is expected to conform to?

Just my thoughts off the top of my head. Apologies if I seem inconsistent or don't make sense.

I only seem to get the muslim stereotype on the internet. But then, that's because 80% of the internet is made up of 'tards. In real life, I've had noone come up to me and make any muslim stereotype comments. Which may have something to do with the fact that my hometown is pretty tolerant of everyone. But I like to think it's because I'm so freakin awesome.

I agree with the problem of Muslim being stereotyped - by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Peace Glo,

shall we start here:

Subhanallah, so you don't HAVE to be an ATHIEST to join their little group...
so, NOT being an atheist makes you entitled to be a member? how... enlightened of them...

as it stands today, i can see some reason in that statement.

i VEHEMENTLY disagree, BUT there might be some logic, and indeed precedent, for "cultural Muslims" to exist. there were some VERY WEAK MUSLIMS in early Islam. the Rasulullah, Salla Allahu Alayhe wa Salaam, was VERY patient with some and the goal was to increase them in Taqwa and Iman and get them on the straight path.

erm, NOT to the point of being Kufaar! cuz, then your simply not a Muslim anymore...

now supposing there was a group calling themselves "Christians" and they claim that Mary was a Temple prostitute (May Allah protect and forgive us!) and that Jesus was merely a result of of some harlotry, (May Allah protect and forgive us!) . using this for their basis of doctrine, Priests are PERMITTED to rape alter boys and nuns are REQUIRED to submit to any priest OR nun who so desires them. on top of that, they claim that Jesus was not only NOT god, but not even a prophet (May Allah protect and forgive us!), JUST the sex partner of the REAL head of the church, Mary Magdala.

NOW, this being the case, would you then take a closer examination of their beliefs to see if there was something that you COULD agree with? OR would you just say that they aren't Christians like MANY MANY Christians do with some folks who have views ALOT closer to Christianity, such as Jehovah's Witness or the followers and successors of Herbert W. Armstrong?

OR would you say, i am too busy to deal with such nonsense?

Everybody gets stereotyped by everybody else. Its what we humans do.

We say muslims are angry violent madmen who want to take over the world.

We say jews are greedy rich madmen who already control the world.

We say atheists are angry immoral anarchists out to destroy the world.

We say christians are crazy people eagerly looking forward to the end of the world.

This is the game we play.

Oh, and we say women are bad drivers and men never ask for directions.

We humans are just like that. Humans suck.

In contrast, dogs don't care what breed the other dog is. They'll go sniff each other regardless.

Hi Pygo

Do you think there are grains of truths behind these stereotypes?
Where do they come from, and how are they sustained?
Surely stereotypes evolve and can be changed, given time ...

Should we not strive to undermine those stereotypes?
Let's demonstrate that it is possible

• to be a Muslims, but not an angry violent madman who wants to take over the world.
• to be a Jews but not a greedy rich madman who already controls the world.
• to be an atheists but not an angry immoral anarchist out to destroy the world.
• to be a Christians but not a crazy person eagerly looking forward to the end of the world.
• to be a woman and a good driver
• to be a man and ask for directions ... (Yeah, right! )

Only by our example and insistence will people change their view about us ...

Unfortunately confirmation bias will hamper any such effort we make.

To take the less emotionally charged stereotypes of the above, women actually ARE decent drivers pretty much on par with men and men actually DO frequently ask for directions. We just tend to remember the cases that match our preconceptions and forget the ones that don't.

In the end, the simple fact is that human beings are hardwired to see things in terms of ingroup/outgroup and various stereotypes.

The best I think we can do is to spread awareness that we do this so we can catch ourselves doing it.

I, for example, need to keep in mind that not all religious people are out run my life. And I would ask the religious folks here to keep in mind that not all atheists are out to corrupt them from their paths of enlightenment.