:bism: (In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)
(Peace be upon you)
Greetings,
And I see plenty more evidence in this thread supporting my side of that debate. I say Islamic teachings cause people to hate homosexuals. How could it be clearer? We have an Islamic "scholar" here openly calling for the murder of gay people. Is it completely beyond the bounds of possibility that his words have caused frabgas to feel emboldened and to launch an attack on me as if I were a gay person? Can you not feel the hatred emanating from his words?
To answer you, while I feel the hatred emanating from some of words written tonight, I have two things to say about that which I've already said to him in this thread about the tongue: 1) His words are his own responsibility for which he will be judged. 2) What he as an individual says or does is not representation of Islam.
On IB, you've been long here enough to know that we're a collection of individuals within Islam. I have never, for example, denied the existence of zealots among us or indeed any communities that ascribe themselves to a religion; but what I've denied is that that that that zealotism is the valid interpretation of Islam.
I am a Muslim. I don't believe Islam teaches any person to hate any sinner but the sin. I know I don't hate homosexuals. And I doubt I ever will. However, that also does not mean that we do not inform people that homosexual acts are considered a sin and the person who exerts self-control over himself/herself enough to master desires in this vein for the sake of God will attain a higher level in Paradise than someone who didn't similarly struggle. Because this is a form of
jihad (struggle) against the desires of the self. And while I may never understand someone's struggle with a specific sin, I do understand what it is like to struggle as all human beings struggle in some way or the other against themselves in one way or another.
And contrary to the two most explosive threads of tonight, most Muslims live their lives out daily just as the majority of non-Muslims would. As a rule, no Muslim strives to wonder about the sexuality or sexual lives of people as to what they are doing with whom in the bedroom as that is an invasion of someone's privacy which is naturally abhorrent to us not only as decent human beings but as Muslims who're explicitly taught in the Qur'an to avoid negative assumption and suspicion: "
O you who have believed, avoid much [negative] assumption. Indeed, some assumption is sin. And do not spy or backbite each other" (Qur'an 49:12).
I came in later onto some of the threads. However, I have a question. Can you as one person be said to have views that represent the entire population of U.K.? No, right? Similarly, even brother Hufaizah's views cannot be said to represent the views of the entire Muslim population specific to the entire range of things we've discussed in different threads over time.
(Thanks to you, Search, for your characteristically eloquent defence of my right to an opinion. Your obvious goodness shines amongst the hate we've seen displayed tonight. Phew! What an evening it's been!)
I really don't need thanks for doing the right thing; I would have done it regardless. However, I do have a request to make: And that request is not only for you but also @
fromelsewhere which is to not broad-brush us as a community nor Islam.
