A malaise brewing in Islam

Bucks County Courier Times ^ | May 31, 2002 | Ayhan Ozer

[2banana]

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FROM A FAITH PERSPECTIVE
A malaise brewing in Islam

Not only for outsiders, but for devout Muslims too, Islam has become illiberal, alien, dangerous and bewildering.

Islam has always been criticized for being intolerant to self-criticism.

Today, as a Muslim and as an insider, I would like to hold a mirror to Islam; if the Muslim community does not like the reflection in the mirror it is not the fault of the mirror. You can call it a soul-searching of a concerned Muslim.

The West all along has been apprehensive about Islam, because for centuries Islam presented a spiritual challenge, rather than a material one, which is easier to deal with. In fact, the psychological impact of the Sept. 11 attack, being of Islamic provenance, was much more profound than the physical damage.

Being free from rituals and trappings, Muslims boast that in Islam the form is subordinate to substance. Yet, out of ignorance and overzealousness, an abundance of arbitrary rules invented by those who claim to be more Muslim than the Prophet Muhammad has shifted the focus of Islam from substance to format.

Shrill voices, brute force and intimidation have put Islam in a straitjacket of rigid rules. Not only for outsiders, but for devout Muslims too, Islam has become illiberal, alien, dangerous and bewildering. Islam dominates and stifles the Muslim world, and it has failed to create a free society anywhere on earth. So long as Muslims turn their backs to rational thinking, and blindly follow the literal prescriptions in the Quran for guidance in the 21st century, they are in for more perplexity and turmoil.

Today, ask any Muslim about democracy, women's rights and terrorism, and in a knee-jerk reaction they will argue that Islam is compatible with democracy, women have all kinds of rights - supposedly sometimes even more than Western women do - and, Islam abhors terrorism!

Yet, the practices belie those claims unequivocally.

Today, no Islamic country, except Turkey, is a democracy. Conditions of women in Islamic societies are woeful. The segregation of women, cloistering and veiling are demeaning, and all these prove that Islam is deeply antifeminist and misogynistic.

Islam has always considered women inferior in every way, physically, intellectually and morally. Ironically, no one seems to pose the obvious question, "How can a country become successful if half of its population is excluded from economic participation?" But male dominance in Islamic societies is so repressive that the economic well-being of women is a distant second to the satisfaction of the male by keeping women under heel.

As for terrorism, Muslims have used terrorism from the time immemorial. They hold the dubious honor of using terrorism as a legitimate tool in state affairs.

The Abbasids Empire with its capital in Baghdat, between 750-1250 A.D. produced the earliest terrorists called "Hashashins."

A warlord named Hassan Sabbah in the fortress of Alamoud sent out foolhardies heavily drugged with opium (hashish) to kill his enemies. The word "Assassin" in the western lexicon originates from Hashashina. Today, the world is fed up with endless Islamic terrorism plague: al-Qaida, Talibans, Philippines, September 11, and Palestinian suicide bombers, martyrdom....

Unless Islam frees itself from the yoke of the ignorant mullahs, it stands to lose its adherents around the world. Especially young generations do not want any more to identify with a backward and a restrictive religion bordering cruelness. When they look around the world they see the Muslim countries fallen behind the modern times, retrogressive and primitive.

Other religions too seem to be inflicted with problems, but of different nature.

Recently, in a "New York Times" article, Maureen Dowd was referring to the flaws of the religions in general, such as Islamic radicals who blow up themselves and innocent civilians to get a ticket to heaven, the Israeli settlers who go to terrible lengths to grab the "divinely promised land," and the pedophilia scandal shaking the Roman Catholic church and the shameless cover-up by church officials, and she said, "When religion should have a calming influence, it has a dispiriting influence.... Just when people need religion to bring them peace, it brings them war or crisis or abuse or just plain pain. As the need for spirituality is growing, the credibility of various faiths is waning. Instead of addressing itself to the angels in our nature, religion seems to be inspiring the demons in our nature..."

Granted, all the religions have problems, but Christianity and Judaism are afflicted with circumstantial problems that can be corrected with common sense. Islam's problems are more fundamental and structural, it takes hard work and a long time to even identify them, for there will be debates, discussions, even wars for daring to find fault in Islam; the corrective measures may never make the agenda.

It seems just when we wish to take refuge in religion, we find ourselves fleeing from religion for sanctuary.

Ayhan Ozer is director of public relations of the Turkish-Muslim Cultural Association in Levittown. From a Faith Perspective is a weekly column by members of Lower Bucks faith communities.

Friday, May 31, 2002

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[2banana]

Finally, a close look at Islam by a Muslim (and it ain't pretty)

[bloodmeridian]

A little humor break:

The Saudi Ambassador to the UN has just finished giving a speech, and walks out into the lobby where he meets President Bush. They shake hands, and as they walk, the Saudi says, "You know, I have one question about America."

President Bush says "Well, your Excellency, anything I can do to help you, I will do." The Saudi whispers, "My son watches this show Star Trek', and in it there are Russians, and Blacks, and Asians, but never any Arabs. He is very upset. He doesn't understand why there are never any Arabs in Star Trek."

President Bush laughs and leans toward the Saudi, and whispers back, "It's because it takes place in the future...."

[bigeasy_70118]

The first time I have ever seen an article from the Bucks County Courier Times posted on FR.

I started my career as a 10 year old paper boy delivering that rag on my dirt bike.

[ZeitgeistSurfer]

Islam's problems are our problems. Message to Muslims: Fix them quickly or we will fix them for you.

[CaptRon]

This guy really nails it. Kind of figures that this guy is a Turk.

[TADSLOS]

Note to Ayhan Ozer: Make sure your life insurance premiums are paid up. Your family (provided they survive) will need the money after you meet an untimely and violent death from the hands of the mad mullahs.

[Freebird Forever]

Unless Islam frees itself from the yoke of the ignorant mullahs, it stands to lose its adherents around the world.

Unless individual islamic adherents free themselves from this unholy creation of satan, they deserve everything they've got coming.

[crystalk]

"Free from ritual and trappings." What a larf.

[alloysteel]

....and it must make their blood run cold, to hear such a truth told in jest....

America is the hammer sent by Allah to smash the apostasies of the false mullahs, and if this means the Arabs sink into obscurity or even extinction, that would be the judgment wrought. For they must have a serious genetic defect, if that belief in the rightness of their cause means they should not suffer retribution for their assault on the shining ideal of mankind that is the soul of the United States.

[marty60]

He doesn't go far enough. He must acknowledge the TRUTH: WHEREVER ISLAM GOES.....DEATH AND DESTRUCTION FOLLOW.

[swarthyguy]

Significantly,not an arab. Hope he stays safe. He needs all our goodwill.

[FITZ]

This person should find out where Salmon Rushdie is hiding and join him. It's the death penalty to anyone who dares to criticize in any way.

[let freedom sing]

funny bump

[caa26]

I thought Salmon was out of hiding now. He even made a cameo appearance in Bridget Jone's Diary last year.

[rageaholic]

John Walker Lindh is key to understanding Islam. Here is an individual with a blank mind who goes shopping for a religon, becomes a Muslim, and then sets forth on a trek to find the heart of Islam. And what does he find when he gets there? Osama bin laden and a loaded Kalishnikov.

[rageaholic]

This person should find out where Salmon Rushdie is hiding and join him. It's the death penalty to anyone who dares to criticize in any way.

Islam sucks! Now come n' get me you b*stards!

[BlueLancer]

"America is the hammer sent by Allah to smash the apostasies of the false mullahs..."

200 years from now, I want their children's children's children's children to cower and cringe in fear whenever they hear the sounds of jet engines overhead because their legends tell of fire from the sky.

I want them to hide in dark caves and holes in the earth, shivering with terror whenever they hear the roar of diesel engines because the tales of their ancestors talk about metal monsters crawling over the earth, spitting death and destruction.

I want their mothers to be able to admonish them with "If you don't behave, the Pale Destroyers will come for you", and that will be enough to reduce them to quivering obesience.

I want the annihilation to be so complete that their mythology will tell them of the day of judgment when the stern gods from across the sea .. the powerful 'Mericans .. destroyed their forefathers' wickedness.

[lavaroise]

So long as Muslims turn their backs to rational thinking, and blindly follow the literal prescriptions in the Quran for guidance in the 21st century, they are in for more perplexity and turmoil.

THere is a hierarchy of laws in religion, however people pick and choose without checking if what they pick respects the hierarchy. For example, Islam's forbiding of making pictures of God or people is always hypocriticaly broken in their anti-semitic articles and descriptions of God and Islam. The sheer popularity of idolatry in Islam is incredible.

When religion should have a calming influence, it has a dispiriting influence....

And of course, secular liberals too swarm in such hateful idolatry and descriptions. They claim religion should be defined as to support material feelings (calming effects? Opium of the people? Prozac?), while religion is a dissociation from the leverages that great powers could yield in complete despise or hatred of individuals considered more sinful.

To see muslims stepping on women's face by force and gregarious sexist ideology is just as bad as submitting people to feelings for other ends. It just does not free people from concrete leverages. What are these idiots liberals thinking? Muslims do repress women through such feelings. And liberals do repress people through feelings for "sinless" women or children (It's for the children! Anyone?)

Religion is service for God, feeding God back what He gave us. That is it. It is a personal duty, for if it were to be organised, who is to say that the entity ordering a form of feeding God would be less of a sinner than the congregant - implying the organiser would make the congregant sin? The bottom line is that in the end, it is a very personal responsibility. And though this charitable attitude or respect towards God implies charitable acts and acts of charitable proselytism, such business is very controvertial.

The final question of every devout person, IMHO, is how can I return the favor to God? Jews sacrificed sheeps, and, apparently, it was not enough, because through sheep sacrifice they held other things from God. They gave God the bad parts and the priests ate the good parts. Prayer and ideas are what was instituted that God needed. Instead of feeding on ideology and priestly charlatanism, people were requested to feed God ideology - as a child pleasantly making a drawing to his father or mother. Still today we are suffering from ideologues such as Mullahs, liberals, communists and whatever other idea consumer out there.

So quiet secret prayers, for God only, really becomes central, though prayers aloud do develop within the community prayer themes. In the end, humble prayers in the quiet of the night, for others, if not, for God only, without any after thought of wish to feed from God or anything, is the most effective prayer, again, IMHO, for I want not to make others sin either.

Then, last but not least, if we can feed God jurisdiction, then God can come amongst us. This is the last hurdle that we are not even reaching yet. The world right now is fighting over ideology, more so than over materials. It has not even reached the level goal of fighting over jurisdiction in order to give hope to God's jurisdiction and self-applied miracles to happen. That is, this is what I think, for I do not think there are more goals after this, but, who knows, we may become others.

[Post Toasties]

I see that a couple of others have already mentioned this, but it seems that, among Muslims in their home countries, it's usually Turks who appear to be capable of really analyzing the nuts and bolts of religion and its relationship with the real world objectively. Most other Muslims are like dumb animals by comparison.

[timestax]

bttt