The Guardian tells us of a leaked document from the UK government detailing their counter-terrorism strategy on isolating extremists in the Muslim community. The interesting part is where it details on how they qualify extremists:
"People would be considered as extremists if:
• They advocate a caliphate, a pan-Islamic state encompassing many countries.
• They promote Sharia law.
• They believe in jihad, or armed resistance, anywhere in the world. This would include armed resistance by Palestinians against the Israeli military.
• They argue that Islam bans homosexuality and that it is a sin against Allah.
• They fail to condemn the killing of British soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan."
And from the looks of it, the defining characteristics are nothing new in this post 9-11 climate in which we find ourselves. Many of these qualifying traits have been used to describe extremists from day one of the war on terror, so its simply more of the same.
However, it does help us to see the long-term agenda in suppressing any form of political Islam. Its clear they wish for us to demarcate between religion and state thereby adopting secularism as an ideology.
And to boot, we mustn't support the defeat of their occupying, imperialistic ways!
What a sweet deal!
Now I don't agree with so much of the methodology adopted by many Islamists who advocate a global caliphate or the Jihadis fighting the US/UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I will never compromise my belief in the principles they are struggling for.
Am I wrong to believe that the majority of Muslims agree with me? The majority wants to live by the laws of the Quran and Sunna. The majority believes in Jihad as an essential component of Islam. The majority believe homosexuality is haram. The majority believe the foreign forces in Iraq and Afghanistan must leave.
Is it too much to ask that they understand the nuance between the majority of Muslims who believe in these basic Islamic principles and the minority who are going about achieving their goals in an unacceptable manner?
So basically, UK is telling us that for us to become accepted members of their society, we have to sell out on some of our basic principles.
No to Jihad, No to Sharia, No to Khilafa, and Yes to Homosexuality.
Yaay! Where do I sign up?
WAW
3 days ago
15 comments:
Here's a nice speech by Tony Benn which defines moderate muslims.
http://saju.net.in/blog/?p=81
Actually, I don't think most Muslims will agree with you. The silent campaign to influence minds is quite successful. People are content to put their heads in the sand and gloss over Qur'an and Sunnah when it comes to these matters, but pontificate on freedoms and rights at length.
I'm an extremist, haha!
AA- BrownSandokan, check out this poll that shows the Muslim masses siding against American bases in Muslim lands as well as supporting Islamist groups. I don't think the masses are so much against Shariah and Jihad as the media would like to portray.
Is it wrong to not want an Islamic state?
If Saudi Arabic became an Islamic State, I would not move there...
-The Muslim Kid-
That's an interesting article .. jazakallah khair for the pointer.
While I understand Muslims want the wonderful Islamic rule of the past and tell how great it was for everyone, I think most of us (ignorant?) Westerners simply see Islamic governments as represented by the horror stories we hear.
So instead of thinking of tolerance and kindness and freedom of worship and no compulsion in religion, we remember the British school teacher made to leave the country in which she was teaching because her schoolkids had the audacity to name their pet teddybear "Mohammad." *horrors!!!* Or we think of other such actions (e.g. honor killings) and Islamic places (e.g. intolerant of all other religions Saudi Arabia) and think "THIS is Islam? WHY do we want that here?"
I wish instead we saw the good ol' days of Islam, but right or wrong, the above-mentioned things are what first come to mind when we think of Islam ruling our countries. And we simply do not want that here.
Susanne,
You made very good points.
gess
Susanne,
Thank you for your thoughts. I do believe that too many westerners are constructing their opinions of an Islamic state on the sensationalism of the media. After all, that's why the teddy bear story and the closing of girls schools immediately come to mind.
How come the mentioning of Islamic rule doesn't bring up the incredible ban on opium growth witnessed under Taliban rule or the unheard of 6-month peace in Somalia under rule of the Islamic Courts? Instead all the hoopla is about the statues blown up by Taliban or the 12 yr old rape victim stoned by the Shabab in Somalia.
"the above-mentioned things are what first come to mind when we think of Islam ruling our countries. And we simply do not want that here."
The majority of Muslims do not wish to impose the Shariah on non-Muslims lands. Their main hope is to simply live under the rule of the Quran in their own daily lives.
I think you may be confusing the jihadi calls of Al-Qaeda and Shabab with the vast majority who don't care to create a GLOBAL caliphate, but aspire for it only in their homelands.
Thank you, Naeem. Of course you are right. We do base our views of Islam on the sensational stories we hear.
If people want Islamic rule in Islamic lands, so be it. However, I fear for the minority religions in those lands because it doesn't seem as if shariah and tolerance go together in this day and age. (does it?) Or maybe I am thinking of those sensational stories again. :-/
Thanks for your reply. Enjoyed it.
Susanne:
You might find a documentary entitled "Inside a Shari'ah Court" to be of interest. Originally released by the BBC in 2007 (although my wife and I watched it last night on the Crime & Investigation network, of all places), the filmmaker, Ruhi Hamid, went to Nigeria for six weeks to see how Shari'ah had been implemented in the state of Zamfara (the first Nigerian state to do so). Among the points made by Ruhi was that crime had gone down and that the Christians there lived peacefully with the Muslim majority, the former not being required to use the Shari'ah court unless they requested to do so (which was becoming more commonplace, much to the consternation of a Christian lawyer who was losing a lot of business). The last four minutes of the documentary can be viewed here.
Incidentally, if you would think that the film was a gloss job as Ruhi is a Muslim, you might find it of interest that the main character in the film, Judge Isa, repeatedly asked Ruhi if she really was a Muslim as he found a number of her questions and behavior to be suspect. My wife and I found Judge Isa to be an engaging character.
Hello, just found your blog.
Perhaps it is a bit late in this thread to address Susanne, but I do not find the shocking stories so shocking. I want to preface what I say by alerting everyone that I am an ordinary white American and I am not particularly religious.
We have our own fair share of shocking stories here in the United States. For example last year the government used military force against a very conservative Christian religious compound and forcibly removed all their children. The only "crime" these people had committed was dressing modestly and having more than one wife! (FLDS raid) The court eventually ruled against the government for doing this and freed hundreds of the children having declared that every letter of every accusation of the supposed abuse was completely 100% false, but the psychological damage to the children was done, the families are irrevocably split up and near bankruptsy. The photos of the tanks and and guns invading them are still around for anyone to look up.
Susanne can also go view free online documentaries (title is "Rules of Engagement") about Waco in which innocent children were burned to death by our own government. These are not wild "conspiracy" theories! The government itself admits what has happened.
She could also familiarize herself with the statistics showing that there are more people in prison in the US per capita than any other country of the world. These prisons are not pleasant places to be and many people there are innocent.
In the state of Texas, I live in Houston, the public schools have their own police stations and routinely arrest children for childish behavior that would recieve scarcely more than a dressing down by their parents at home. By children, I don't just mean a teenager, but prepubescent 11 and 12 yos and as young as 8 yo, both boys and girls. This was a recent topic on a radio show (hosted by Michael Berry on KTRH which I personally listened to in which dozens of parents called in to say that their child had been arrested and prosecuted for using the wrong WORDS in an argument or discussion (charged with felony of making terroristic threats) with a friend or acting in self defense against a group of bullies, accidentally injuring someone (both the injured child, and observers all agree it was an accident so this is not one parent lying about bad behavior) etc. The parents life savings and retirement are wiped out because of the legal costs of defending their child. The schools will call the police about the incident before calling the parent and the parent, some of these kids are arrested, cuffed etc, and taken downtown, so the parents have no idea what is happening until it is all over. In a case last month the precendent in Texas was started in which an 11 yo was placed in an adult jail, granted he is segregated from the adult males, but when he was transfered to a juvenile facility a judge intervened and ordered him BACK to the adult jail. One can only imagine what trend this is going to lead to...but more to the point, many parents are too afraid to discuss it in public or go to the press because they worry it will make things worse for their case. This is not a "conspiracy"stated on some blog this was parent after parent calling in and everyone could hear what they were saying and I myself have a photo of one such police department on a school campus if someone wishes for verification. No other state has police stations that are on school campuses and run by the school boards to my knowledge. All of the parents thought that this system of arresting children existed only for teenagers committing very violent acts and never though it could happen to much younger children for very minor infractions. They just didn't think it would happen to them. As an example of only one of these cases that actually has made it to the media (and didn't involve arrest at that) google "Shelby Sendelbach" who was charged with a felony for writing in small script on a wall. It took national media attention and the intervention of high ranking politicians to get her punishment overturned. Her case is only the tip of a very big iceberg.
Permit me to go into what will appear to be another long digression so that I can make a point about how to objectively decide what is a shocking and barbaric practice.
The state governments in the US require men to support the children their wife concieved in adulterous affairs in many circumstances. In Texas, not unlike many states, he has only two years after the birth of the child to challenge paternity and get DNA testing, but why would he do this if his wife is acting loving and faithful to him? Even if he does discover it during that time there is no requirement that the woman reimburse him for the expenses he incurred while raising the child during that time. If he discoveres his wife cheated on him after the two years are up that's his problem. He can not get his name removed from the birth certificate as the father and the woman has the right to not tell the child who his real father is. But if she is successful with her treachery there are no legal consequences at the end of the 18 years if it's discovered then. Google "paternity fraud" and you will be shocked at the cases you find of this taking place and what the judges say to justify this.
The lowest estimate for the number of children that have been sired through an adulterous affair in the US is 4% and a middle of the road estimate is 10%. Their fathers are happily married and raising them and clueless that their wives have cheated on them and that they live a lie every day. The medical profession here is complicit in this as they do not share this information with the father if they discover it during genetic testing, nor are they required to by law.
My point is that I would wager that if you could ask any of men, "If you could relive your life over again and had to choose your current outcome of living a lie with a cheating lying wife, raising children that are not yours or having your hand chopped off or being lashed (but otherwise having a faithful wife and your own children) what do you think they would say? Men who have actually discovered their children are not their own post to message boards that they would rather be beaten and tortured rather than endure their circumstances. This test of choice indicates that what we have in the US is much more barbaric than what happens in other countries.
I get furious when our media publishes isolated shocking events of individual injustice in other countries when we are drowning in it at home. I don't understand why people aren't more angry here in the States. Girls burning to death in a school in Saudi Arabia motivates shock, outrage, and changes in that nation. But here in the state the ATF burned women and children at Waco and what do we the people do? We figure out a way to justify our government by blaming it on the people that got burned to death. And make no changes in law whatsoever so that it doesn't happen again, buying the governments story of what happened uncritically and without question. I did not follow what punishment there was for the police that prohibitted the girls from leaving in Saudi Arabia, but in Waco not a single solider or poltician was successfully sued civilly for preventing the women and children from leaving that burning building, much less convicted criminally and our media didn't really bother to question the government for doing that either, the media blamed it all on the people inside the building.
In Britain there is less direct government violence against its own people, but they still have barbaric paternity fraud and many thousands of people die long slow painful deaths as a result of bad NHS policies. Westerners who eschew violence seem to be blind to the fact that passive aggressive injustice results in even more painful and barbaric results than the direct judicial sentences of Sharia even though the amount of suffering and pain over all ends up being greater in passive aggressive Western policies directed against its own people.
If you have read this far, I thank you very much for your time and apologize for being off topic to the original blog entry.
Karen, thanks for your reply. Trust me, I'm not a huge fan of our corrupt government and the many things you mentioned are some of the reasons. I just don't want Shariah either.
Thanks for what you shared.
Flarin Karin, welcome to the blog. What an interesting comment.
I appreciate your efforts to bring some perspective into the discussion of shariah. Even if we simplify the shariah into hand chopping and lashing (a minor component, but gets all the headlines), it needs to be compared to the 'passive aggressive' component caused by the criminal system found in the west.
And as you mentioned, all too often this component is glossed over and written off as aberrations to the 'perfect' system.
Excellent points!
Salaam Naeem --
You know what? I might be an extremist too.
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