:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
Hi, sister. Sometimes, it's best if we reflect on our words; I'm doing that for you here by using your own words to point a mirror and give you a compass to find where you would like to fit within the wider picture and broader spectrum of thought; hear my words with an open mind, because I need you to free yourself from the shackles of obfuscation and pain. Thanks for your time and consideration. Here, I begin:
Sadly enough, it's not all true. If you believe that Islam is a toxic, fanatic, out of date patriarchy from the 7th century, this is what you end up with, in one form or another, a type of prejudice even if reluctantly adopted because you don't understand.
I'm also a leftist. A liberal. A cultural relativist. I don't turn to Hillary Clinton naturally, and that is because I'm not a fan (once was but no longer). But, to be quite honest, my feminist instincts know what a toxic and racist threat demagoguery presents, and I hate to say it, Delphi, but Donald Trump embodies that today, and therefore it is no surprise that among the people we know to be counted on to support him number also Neo-Nazi groups. Islam, as practiced by majority Muslim countries today, is heavily influenced with culture and not Islam; ask any Muslim and you'll get this same answer. I am a moderate, and I say a lot; I'm surprised you haven't heard my voice on IB but maybe that's because your posts number to all of 23, hardly enough to interact with Muslims or learn Islam from the proper sources. I'm, however, not surprised that you say you haven't heard from moderates because the media coverage simply isn't there to "cover" the voice of the moderates as that doesn't sell newspapers and magazines, increase television ratings, or make popular writing on the Internet.
As to the Sweden rape crisis, I refer you to Doug Sanders's piece called "
Sweden's rape crisis isn't what it seems." He wrote, and I quote:
"Sweden, the story goes, used to be very peaceful, very safe, very blond. Then it started letting in darker-skinned people. Soon there were news reports of attacks on Swedes. Now, Sweden records the highest incidence of rape in the world.
"The Sweden story has become absolutely viral. You’ve probably read a version in a Facebook post, or heard it in a speech or debate. It is the argument-ender of the intolerant: To make the case against refugees, or immigration, or “Islam,” you recount a couple of stories about refugee-camp horrors, some random anecdotes of sex crimes involving brown people in various countries, and then drop the Sweden story.
"Behind it you’ll find the resurrection of an old, deadly appeal to fear – that people of certain skin colours are natural-born predators who threaten white women. It’s a version of lynch-mob logic that happens to appeal to the liberal and tolerant as much as the hateful and intolerant.
"And it falls apart as soon as you speak to anyone knowledgeable in Sweden.
"'What we’re hearing is a very, very extreme exaggeration based on a few isolated events, and the claim that it’s related to immigration is more or less not true at all,' says Jerzy Sarnecki, a criminologist at Stockholm University who has devoted his career to the study of criminality, ethnicity and age.
"Sweden does indeed have far more reported cases of sexual assault than any other country. But it’s not because Swedes – of any colour – are very criminal. It’s because they’re very feminist. In 2005, Sweden’s Social Democratic government introduced a new sex-crime law with the world’s most expansive definition of rape.
"Imagine, for example, if your boss rubbed against you in an unwanted way at work once a week for a year. In Canada, this would potentially be a case of sexual assault. Under Germany’s more limited laws, it would be zero cases. In Sweden, it would be tallied as 52 separate cases of rape. If you engaged in a half-dozen sex acts with your spouse, then later you felt you had not given consent, in Sweden that would be classified as six cases of rape. The marked increase in rape cases during the 2000s is almost entirely a reflection of Sweden’s deep public interest in sexual equality and the rights of women, not of attacks by newcomers."
What does that tell you? It tells me the following: "The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice."
Surprise, surprise, such a simple thing to explain away prejudice because we as human beings like to believe that we're above prejudice if we claim adherence to liberal Western values. We're not. Yes, you're probably disillusioned. I sympathize. Yes, you're probably angry. I sympathize. And I do agree that you have read too much of the wrong news from Europe, routinely. I sympathize. Unfortunately, I disagree with you that this isn't an isolated thing. This
is a few bad apples. Quite frankly, whatever coat of paint you shove on it, prejudice is just that. It's bad evil bullshit that causes nothing but troubled understanding of Islam and stereotype and scapegoating of Muslims.
And so, we come to Prophet Muhammad :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him). So, let's remember the words of Prophet Muhammad :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said, "
The entire humanity is Allah’s family, and Allah loves him most from among this family, who benefits the family most."
Prophet Muhammad :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) said,“
The best from among you is the one from whom you expect the good and people are safe from his mischief. And the worst from among you is the one from whom you don’t expect any good and people are not safe from his mischief.”
Prophet Muhammad :saws:
(peace and blessings be upon him) also said, “
He who is not merciful to people Allah will not be merciful to him.”
People will fight Muslims on the beaches, people will fight Muslims in the hills and on the landing grounds. I didn't want to have to reach this conclusion. I think there is still Time. I look at what's going on in France, turn it over in my head. It really wouldn't matter WHAT people wore, if only one thing was true about radical secularism. If only radical secularism did not seek to infringe upon religious right and existed only to protect minorities. It's all good to have a Western country hinge on secularist beliefs, but when you start being convinced that that country has a godless mandate to dictate to Muslims and the entire world, only bad things ever happen just as it did with the Inquisition thousands of years ago except in the opposite spectrum.
Daesh (ISIS) was born from a host of factors that included the "
the raw cruelty of Hussein’s Baathist regime, the disbandment of the Iraqi army after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the subsequent insurgency and the marginalization of Sunni Iraqis by the Shiite-dominated government all are intertwined [...]," said Hassan Hassan, a Dubai-based analyst and co-author of the book ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror. But mostly you won't hear about the multifaceted nature of the problem that is
Daesh because it's identified as an Islamic phenomena without
asking Muslims or bothering to investigate whether the Muslim world perceives Daesh as "Islamic."
Exactly. This isn't the 7th century, and when the West fights, the West uses drones that kill civilians, such as the fact that the
War on Terror has so far killed 4 million people because we're a generation of people that like to bomb away our problems. Is that justice for 9/11 in which 2,996 people died. I don't know. You tell me. Do us all a favor - help us reign in all barbarians, even the so-called "civilized" ones given all benefit of doubt in our midst because the West can do no wrong (since Muslims are alleged to be able to do no right), before a conflict starts that none of us wants.
Exactly. Everyone's responsible for their own behavior. I personally think that the ultimate punishment for injustice is to be perfectly meted out in the hereafter, and in the meantime, civilized barbarians can make speeches about how they care about us while giving us the middle finger when we object to an endless undeclared war with no end in sight.
The real problem is "otherizing" Muslims and not understanding that we're your biggest allies in this fight against extremists and terrorist organizations like
Daesh. If you lose us, you'll have lost, because you'll use weapons to kill specific people at specific times but you cannot use weapons to kill ideas that are far bigger than all the biggest, baddest weapons and technology; only we can help you do that. Only Islam, the one practiced by a majority of Muslims, can drive away and drive out bad ideas of bad apples.
As a Muslim, I always saw it this way. Idiots are continuing to binge on sleeping pills of ignorance, deliberately imagining an orgy of some sort, that Muslim men are plotting to abduct some white girl, like we're living in the medieval era, away to his far off village, and convert her by having sex with her by force. You know, bring her round to God, fight, raid, back up the tribe, fight, raid some more. All good things, for people who like to sleep and stereotype and pretend that the problem is Muslims and any "Muslim problem" is only one-sided. Of course, when I wake up, I think about the fact that no one is speaking up for me, that my rights as a woman is being called into question and my American-ness as well because I happen to believe differently and therefore am considered a wrinkle on a fabric that needs to be ironed away. Yet there's a special belief in some ideological high ground that the West has, even though the West expects and wants me to blend silently into the background as a Muslim woman and take it all laying down, perhaps even to have an orgasm at the thought that Westerners will now police my dress code. I'm just saying. A majority of Muslims are moderates and not cave-bound people, and trust me, this is a fight no one wants. Trust me though, the people who you should be looking to hold to account is not us, because we've already managed to piss off 3/4s of the planet that isn't Muslim simply by existing and breathing, most of whom have a lot less conscience than your average white Westerner and therefore we have
persecution of Muslims in Mynamar and the
Chinese persecution of Uyghur Muslims.
Just recently, in India,
two Muslim women were gang raped by Hindus and two of her relatives were beaten and murdered because one of them was alleged to have eaten meat of cows though the woman denied that she or her family had. I mean I could go on and on, and on and on. All real news stories, from
women pushing strollers being attacked in U.S. to a
Muslim man beaten and attacked in Florida mosque in U.S. Not to mention in the Nice Attack in France, nearly 1/3 of the people who died were Muslims, and the persons in the Turkish airport attack were all Muslims, and about 60 of the people who died in 9/11 were Muslims. I mean I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on. But no, I won't. Because we, the normal everyday "moderate" Muslims, are the new "invisible" (actually, maybe the truth is that you don't want to know or believe we exist because then you can continue to have the high moral ground) and easily scapegoated by you in your broadbrush of Islam, a person who's just pretended to me that you're entirely free of prejudice and the enemy is Islam and not the bad apples and always me (because I believe in Islam) and never you (because you don't believe in Islam). It's just stupid.
There's a couplet I leave with you for further reflection:
"
Spent my life repeating the one mistake,
Dust was on my face and I kept wiping the mirror."
format_quote Originally Posted by
Delphi
Sadly enough, it's all true. If you believe in a toxic, fanatic, out of date patriarchy from the 7th century, this is what you end up with, in one form or another.
[. . .]