Criticizing Islam

Ahmadi Muslims are at the forefront of the fight against radicalization.
Image Courtesy The Guardian Website

In his article in the Times entitled ‘Stand up for the right to criticize Islam’ Matt Ridley writes that there is a spectrum of religious beliefs, from spiritual to the violent extreme.  Ridley, himself a humanist, is skeptical even of the power of a moderate form of religion to bring about social justice and peace.

Ridley takes issue with PM May’s statement that terrorist acts are a ‘perversion of the great faith of Islam’. He thinks that Khalid Masood was follower of a version of Islam (not a perversion) and we must accept that as a fact. The religion of Islam must be criticized for its faults.

He then cites the oppression of women, homosexuals and suppression of science by religions (primarily Islam) to prove that religion has nothing good to offer to the society, and such practises do not deserve any respect.

I agree wholeheartedly. Well said Mr. Ridley!  If this is Islam, then I, a practicing Muslim myself will stand with you and criticize it.

But the question is; to whom should we address this criticism? God?  Prophet Muhammad? Saudi Royals? Irani Ayatollahs? Your neighbour who happens to be a Muslim?

I personally would address it to the clerics who have for generations misrepresented the scriptures, providing various violent political movements with religious sanctions to commit atrocities. As I am a Muslim who reads and understands the Quran, I will also take a position based on knowledge, not prejudice.  I know for a fact that this violent interpretation represents a fictitious faith born out of malice, human misery and selfish desires of the clergy. It is not Islam.

Mr. Ridley himself agrees.  He says, ‘The one thing they (terrorists) have in common is that they had been radicalized by religious preachers claiming to interpret the Koran.’

As my criticism has a clear target, Ridley like many others has erred in finding the right language, tone or even logic to address the issue of Islamist violent extremism.  In many cases, there is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the facts in favour of a deeply cynical and malevolent narrative against Islam.

This is largely due to their lack of knowledge about Islam and partly due to the traditional European indoctrination against Islam. Islam has always been a ‘pretend’ religion which had nothing new to offer to the world as Pope Benedict let slip a few years ago. All the classical European historic texts take the standard stance that Prophet Muhammad was an impostor, and Muslims were a conquering force which threatened Europe for centuries. That reptilian fear reflex has been embedded so deep in the European psyche that even the atheist scholars of today can’t help this knee jerk reaction.

Take for example Mr. Ridley mentioning over 400 acid attacks in Britain. He thinks that it has something to do with sharia-enabled men disfiguring women all across the country.  The fact is that this heinous practice was a British invention, exported to other parts of the world, including the Indian subcontinent.  Most victims come from Colombia and India. But unfortunately, people have associated it with Islam. Was this an easy mistake to make? Perhaps you will think twice before calling FGM an Islamic practice. Or perhaps not!

 It is more convenient to support bigotry with fake facts these days. What about those 400 or so acid attack victims you may ask? These were mostly gang related incidents and majority of them were men. Acid attacks and FGM, just like terrorism, have nothing to do with Islam. It is all about politics, sexual and territorial, as well as that of identity. 

When it comes to people seeking the license to mock religions and their founders, Islam becomes the obvious focus of attention.  People are being killed around the Islamic world for criticizing Islam. This is also another gross perversion of Islamic teachings. It is the clerics who perpetuate these ideas, and there is no evidence, none whatsoever in the Quran to support such barbaric acts. I, like millions of my Ahmadiyya Muslim brothers and sisters around the world, criticize these clerics and their followers with proofs, arguments and with grace.  For us, Islam is free from all blame just as the God that we worship and the Prophet (Peace be upon Him) that we love and follow.

My sincere advice to Mr. Ridley and his fellow commentators is to join us in our 125 year old campaign to reform Muslims by understanding Islam and initiating a dialogue with those we disagree. Ridicule, fake facts and divisive Islamophobic propaganda is not the solution.

A small town with an even smaller heart

If you profess to be a Muslim, you are required to pray five times a day. An adult male must attend the mosque to pray in congregation as many times as he can. That is why you can hear muezzins call to prayer, the Adhan, in all towns and cities around the Islamic world. Five times a day, the muezzin invites the faithful to his mosque to fulfill their duty towards their God.

A Mosque is like a second home to a Muslim; his first if he achieves the spiritual devotion as intended by the scriptures.

 

Now imagine a town where the local residents have tried to block the building of a Mosque for a tiny community. Imagine how hard it is to be a practicing Muslim having no access to a  mosque. The townsfolk have a serious reason for their rejection of this mosque. They think that it would be a serious threat to their way of life. Not only that, they feel that any such construction would be against the religious tradition of the town and the country. Mobs attacked the under construction mosque numerous times despite repeated attempts by the community to seek police protection.

The community dropped the plans to build their mosque for the sake of maintaining peace in their small town and instead agreed with the local administration  to build a residence in its place. They had an Imam to accommodate and living quarters of the mosque would have been ideal. Mosque or no mosque, the Imam was there to stay to cater for their spiritual and educational needs. But the locals weren't content with this arrangement. They wanted a guarantee that no prayer congregation could take place in that house.

 

You will be shocked to learn that a sworn affidavit to this effect was also duly signed by this community.

This all happened more than ten years ago. Now the community has received various threats from their neighbours to stop using the facility for prayers. They suspect that the Imam may be leading some of his visitors and guests in prayers in secret. The local police has been reminded of the affidavit and requested to take immediate action against the clandestine activities of this group.

It could easily have been a story of Christian, Mongol, Hindu or Sikh oppression of their Muslim subjects in the past.

But this story is about Pakistan: A Muslim majority country where these particular Muslims are not Muslim. Their mosque is not Mosque. In this town of Tatlay Aali, near Gujranwala, like the rest of the country since 1974, Ahmadis are a non-Muslim minority. Since 1984 they have no rights to build a mosque or call it one. Now we have learnt that according to the pious and right-minded residents of TatlayAali, they can't even pray within the confines of their homes as it is considered to be against the law of the land.

I heard this story from an acquaintance and had it verified. For me it came as no surprise as I have seen it happen numerous times before. Back in the early 90s, I witnessed the destruction of the under-construction mosque (or Qadiani temple as described by the press) in Rawalpindi. Local mullahs petitioned against the mosque in the courts and as a result, many thousands of Ahmadis in Rawalpindi are still without a mosque of their own.

Tatlay Aali is a typical small town in Punjab. It probably could still be classed as a village, but increasing urbanization in the region has blurred the line between a village and a small town even more. It probably used to have a diverse population. A beautiful Sikh Gurudawara still stands tall, although deteriorating due to lack of use and maintenance.

 

I don't need to explain why the Sikhs left. A small Christian community also lives here.

Like the rest of the country, terrorism and religious extremism are threatening the very core of this society too. In Tatlay Aali, you hear the news of armed militants seeking safe houses in the local madrassah and engaging the local police in a shootout. A seminary teacher also got arrested for training small children for terror activities.

Tatlay Aali: Four terrorists with their pressure cooker bombs. Image courtesy express.com.pk

It also appears to be a good spot to hide and negotiate ransom for kidnappings.

The town isn't doing  so well on the moral front either.

 

While the local seminary provides shelter to terrorists, crime against donkeys makes headlines. Four poor donkeys were abducted by thieves and their skinless carcasses were discovered in the fields. I am puzzled myself, but in a country where donkey meat has been served in many a restaurants as mutton, donkey hide must have its uses.

Another news item described a case of incest - rather the rape of a girl by her father. Also in the news are numerous stories of murder and abductions.

 

Human rights commission of Pakistan reported in 2008 two harrowing incidents in Tatlay Aali . One, of a labourer whose fingers were chopped off by a landlord for refusing to do his bidding, and of a family of seven sold in slavery to another landlord for just over 1400 US dollars.

 

A young man commits suicide after having an argument with his older sister. Whereas the local police arrested a number of gentlemen on drug and alcohol related offenses. Police also discovered a brothel and arrested few people.

Organizations of various Sunni or Wahabi affiliations are aplenty in this part of the world.

One news site lists all the happening news in the region and almost the whole page is full of statements from religious leaders of this town decrying the threat of secularism to the country. One Jamaat-e-Islami leader told a rally that one should never compromise on the belief of Khatme nabuwwat, the finality of prophethood.

A leader of Sunni Tehreek laments the fact that crimes of corruption, nepotism and armed robberies are rife in the area, sewers and garbage dumps are overflowing on their streets and people are suffering under the current government.

Despite a couple of seminaries, dozens of constitutionally acceptable Mosques and tens of religious organizations, the very small Pakistani town of Tatlay Aali seems to be festering in all sorts of depravity and moral ills.

Should I be surprised that the congregational prayers of a small group of Ahmadis are a threat to the town's religious way of life?

Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack: Nothing to do with Islam, but something to do with the Imams.

You can read and hear a range of reactions from the public on the Charlie Hebdo terror attack. All sane voices, Muslims and others have condemned it.

 

Muslims will say that this is a terrible atrocity. Some will use it as yet another proof that ISIS and Al-Qaeda have nothing to do with Islam.

 

 

Our moderate leaders and organizations will condemn it as an attack on free speech. Most of them will also say that this has nothing to do with Islam. Far-right groups, religious bigots and populist columnists will blame Islam, Muslims and Immigration policies for the attack.

 

 

And then there are two groups which will use this as another ‘told you so’ moment to further their agenda of hatred and intolerance.

 

 

On one hand, we have the perpetrators of the attack and their supporters, who believe that their religion justifies such violence. They would say that Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists had crossed all bounds when they mocked the Prophet of Islam and their religion in such derogatory cartoons over the years. They had it coming.

 

 

The other group, the militant atheists will say that all religion including Islam are backward and superstitious. Their pontiff-in-chief Richard Dawkins says that not all religions are violent, only Islam is. And yes, Charlie Hebdo and their likes had it coming because our society is too scared to insult or ban Islam.

 

 

Blame the religion of course. How logical! 

 

 

I am going through the back catalogue Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon covers. I never saw one of them before, and do not wish to be subjected to such vulgarity again. It is a veritable collection of cheap humour masquerading as journalism. Graffiti has a place in human history, but it belongs to the doors and walls of public toilets, not on your local news stand.

 

 

Why would anyone need to insult a religion is beyond me. But if they want to do so, I would rather be reading, viewing or listening to something less offensive.

 

 

But there are those who are compelled to mock and ridicule the ideas they don’t like. 

 

You can mock politicians for their behavior or policies. You can ridicule a celebrity for the latest fad they are into. Or you can make poignant observations through the medium of cartoons to draw your viewer’s attention to a controversial subject. And there are no limits to what you want to express. From the sublime to the blasphemous, you can do what you like. As a viewer or a reader, I can choose not to read or view such works. As a Muslim, this is what Quran tells me to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will be very curious to learn the views of certain Imams of mosques of various denominations in the UK on this subject. I suspect that a majority of them would rather not express themselves honestly in the media. The truth is very uncomfortable to both these Imams and those politicians who go to them begging for votes every election season.

 

Most orthodox Muslim scholars do support very draconian punishments for the act of blasphemy. 

 

This has to change. Quran does not consider blasphemy as a crime. It is a sin of course, the punishment of which if not repented, will be in the afterlife.

 

 

 

But if you look at certain interpretations of some well-known scholars, and you will be surprised that their opinions contradict the Quran.

 

Mufti Obaidullah Qasmi of Darul Uloom Deoband  writes

 

‘The death punishment assigned for blasphemy is agreed by all Islamic scholars of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah and, is normally covered in Kitabul Hudud in Islamic juridical texts’.

 

 

Deoband school of though is followed by a large number of Muslims from the Indian sub-continent.

 

The more ‘moderate’ Barelvi sect which makes up a large proportion of the Immigrant Pakistani Diaspora in Britain is no different.

 

Sadanand Dhume of the Wallstreet Journal observes in a recent news report

 

‘ Clerics from Pakistan’s majority Barelvi stream of Islam—widely regarded as more tolerant than the rival Deobandi school associated with the Taliban—are among the loudest defenders of the country’s blasphemy laws.’

 

 

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws condemn the accused to death by hanging.

 

 

Same is true for the wide range of Sunni and Shia sects which have sway over the Muslim world.

 

 

Such interpretations of Quran which ignore its actual content but rely on the various medieval interpretations imposed upon it through the centuries have to be rejected. Ahmadiyya Muslim movement has denounced such notions of violence in the name of religion for many decades now. And it is heartening to see more and more Muslims coming closer to our way of understanding the Quran.

 

 

I am happy that our Muslim friends will stand up and condemn this horrendous and murderous attack, but please also ask the Imams and clerics in your mosques to denounce the ideas of punishments for blasphemy and apostasy in their Friday sermons.

 

 

For Muslims, this is another opportunity to think and question their faith leaders. This menace and hatred ISIS and Al-Qaeda have manifested in their extreme acts may need to be rooted out form their own mosques and homes first.

On The Real War Front Against Islamist Extremism

What do you imagine the front line against Islamist extremism looks like?

Will this war fix anything? Image courtesy Stars and Stripes.

Does it comprise of  NATO led troops, security agencies and hired guns fighting against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan?

Or is it the Iraqi and Kurdish military forces retreating against the
rising tide of the Salafist terrorists in the Middle-East?

Is it the unmanned drones raining fire upon the militant hideouts in tribal Pakistan or in far-flung areas of the Yemen? Or is it yet another battlefield getting ready in Sub-Saharan Africa?

What if I told you that none of the above have anything to do with fighting extremism. These wars have everything to do with the world economy and its dependence on oil and arms trade.

But the righteous soldiers who fight the real war are not armed with any weapons. Most of them haven't committed a single violent act in their lives. And another thing, bad guys don't die in this war. Good guys do.

Three of its latest casualties were a 60 years old lady, a 7 years old girl and an 8 months old baby. They all died fighting the good fight against a blood thirsty mob in a city called Gujranwala, in Pakistan. The mob, charged in religious frenzy, angered by the false accusation of blasphemy torched the houses of Ahmadi Muslims and in the process, killed three of them.

The War has been on for over a hundred years. Since then, the world has seen cycles of pointless destruction the latest of which is being conducted in the guise of 'war on terror'. This senseless violence is bringing us closer to a nuclear apocalypse.

The only way to save the world is to join the real struggle. The quest for Absolute Justice. The real Jihad to reform ourselves to change the world around us, one person at a time. I know it is cliched and perhaps too boring for those who wish to see the good triumph against evil in a fairytale fashion.

But for those who join the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community find themselves pitched against all forms of adversity on a daily basis.


From Abdul Lateef, who stood buried waist deep in a Kabul square in 1902, telling his executors that he will never renounce his belief in the Living God; to 7 year old Hira Tabassum, who recited the Kalima while she choked to death in the toxic smoke of her burning home in Gujranwala, hundreds have laid down their lives for this cause.

The Gujranwala mob: Dancing and celebrating after murdering two little girls and their grandmother. Courtesy: Dawn.com

Ahmadiyya Muslims believe in true Islamic teachings of freedom of concience, thought and speech. They understand Quran and the Islamic tradition through the prophetic guidance of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, who claimed to be the Divinely Guided Imam Mahdi who will reform the world.



Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian.



Through his claims and extensive writings, Hazrat Ahmad declared Jihad on the false beliefs and doctrines which had caused mankind to forget God and to follow their own vain desires.



He also announced that the false notion of violent Jihad has no place in Islam. Surely enough, religious leaders from various faith groups started opposing him. Soon, this opposition turned into hatred and widespread persecution followed.

The first and foremost indicator of militant, extremist Islamist activity is 'Takfir', the declaration of a person, group or community to be lesser humans, worthy of persecution and even death.



Ahmadis were perhaps the first victims of a global Takfiri movement facilitated and funded by those who think that they have monopoly over Islam.

After 125 years of valiant and constant struggle, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is now established in almost all countries of the world. It is the fastest spreading Islamic sect in the world and is gaining adherents from all nations of the world, including the Arabic speaking communities.

It may not be so apparent, but the war against bigotry and injustice is being won, one person at a time. Those who are too eager to partake in the violent wars are destined to be forgotten by history.

Each year an English country town, Alton, Hampshire receives over 30,000 delegates who attend the three day Jalsa Salana.. It is the annual gathering of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community which becomes the spiritual focal point for the millions around the world.

Over 30,000 delegates, men, women and children attend the 3 day event every year.

When some misguided Muslim youths raise black banners in London while demonstrating for Gaza, news media is quick to point out the creeping Islamist agenda among the mainstream British Muslims. The black banner of Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam has been flying over  the UK Jalsa Salana for almost half a century. This banner represents the peaceful, spiritual and unifying message of Islam.

Liwa-e-Ahmadiyyat, the black flag of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community flies over the Jalsa Salana.

The Khalifatul Masih, fifth successor of the Promised Messiah takes the pledge of allegiance from the thousands who join the community. Existing members also renew their ba'iyah (pledge). The pledge binds each of them to promise their lives for the cause of God and the Jihad for the soul of Islam until the final victory.

Ahmadi Muslim delegates at Jalsa Salana waiting for the Khalifatul Masih to pledge their allegiance

If you want to see the real front line of the real 'War' against terrorism, extremism and injustice.. Come visit Jalsa Salana UK.



Our weapon of choice: Books.



Follow the event on twitter @JalsaUK

On TV on www.mta.tv or sky channel 787

I was on BBC 3 Counties Radio's JVS show on Friday, discussing ISIS, Timothy Furnish and the causes of extremism https://t.co/wydqhyOrag

— Lutf (@Lutfislam) August 25, 2014

Pakistani Mullah and the tragedy of 28th of May, 2010

Courtesty, BBC URDU

میں یہ کس کے نام لکھّوں

میں یہ کس کے نام لکھّوں جو الم گزر رہے ہیں
مرے شہر جل رہے ہیں مرے لوگ مر رہے ہیں

کوئی غنچہ ہو کہ گُل ہو کوئی شاخ ہو شجر ہو
وہ ہوائے گُلستاں ہے کہ سبھی بکھر رہے ہیں

کبھی رحمتیں تھیں نازل اسی خطّہء زمیں پر
وہی خطہء زمیں ہے کہ عذاب اتر رہے ہیں

وہی طائروں کے جھرمٹ جو ہَوا میں جھولتے تھے
وہ فضا کو دیکھتے ہیں تو اب آہ بھر رہے ہیں

بڑی آرزو تھی ہم کو نئے خواب دیکھنے کی
سو اب اپنی زندگی میں نئے خواب بھر رہے ہیں

کوئی اور تو نہیں ہے پس ِ خنجر آزمائی
ہمیں قتل ہو رہے ہیں، ہمیں قتل کر رہے ہیں

عبید اللہ علیم