irshaddering thoughts

Kids! B4 u join the jihad, read this

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Dec 11, 2009

Muslim victims of jihadist violence (Credit: MSNBC)

Five young  Muslim-Americans have been arrested in Pakistan on suspicions that they intended to commit terror against U.S. forces.

According to The Chicago Tribune, “One of them left behind  a video that showed American casualties. In the video he stated that Muslims needed to stand up and fight to defend their fellow Muslims…”

Whoops. It turns out that al-Qa’ida’s jihad kills eight times more Muslims than Westerners.

Here’s the data to prove it. Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al-Qa’ida’s Violence Against Muslims is a new study that uses Arabic-language sources to track down and add up the casualties of jihad. Some of the conclusions:

* “From 2004 to 2008, only 15% of the 3,010 victims [of al-Qa’ida attacks] were Western.”

* “From 2006 to 2008, only 2% (12 of 661 victims) are from the West, and the remaining 98% are inhabitants of countries with Muslim majorities.”

* “One could argue that non-Western casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan are unfortunate martyrs or collateral damage given the ongoing wars initiated by the United States.” But “[o]utside the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, 99% of al-Qa’ida’s victims were non-Western in 2007, and 96% were non-Western in 2008. From 2006 to 2008, only 9 of 352 victims were Westerners (3%), meaning that non-Westerners were 38 times more likely to die in an al-Qa’ida attack outside of Iraq and Afghanistan during those years.” 

The authors of this report — Nassir Abdullah, Scott Helftstein and Muhammad al-Obaidi of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point — emphasize that their data is drawn “from exclusively Arabic news sources” in order to pre-empt charges of Western bias.

And the research illuminates an unmistakable reality: “Irrespective of al-Qaeda’s justifications,” the authors write, “if history provides a glimpse into the future, the group and its associates will pose the greatest threat to fellow Muslims.”

Kids, do like the Prophet and “read!” (That’s what the Angel Gabriel told him upon bringing down the first Quranic revelation). Read! This. Study.

Moral Courage Project named Visionary of the Year

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, On The Road, Announcements on Dec 04, 2009

With Emmy-winning Iranian actress Shohreh Agdashloo

“Hola!” from Los Angeles, where I’m accepting the 2009 Visionary Award bestowed by the Women’s International Film and Television Showcase.

This award recognizes the human rights campaign that the Moral Courage Project led over the summer. Inspired by the independent film, “The Stoning of Soraya M,” we used the movie and my thousands-strong Facebook community to galvanize people worldwide against the tribal practice of stoning in countries like Iran, Somolia, Afghanistan and Sudan.

According to Iranian actress Shohreh Agdashloo, who stars in “The Stoning,” international pressure has paid off: A few weeks after the film came out and our campaign gained steam, Iranian authorities announced that stoning would no longer be part of Iran’s penal code. Whether the new regulation gets enforced — particularly in rural Iran — is another matter altogether.

Still, we can all take strength that global campaigns work when back-channel diplomacy doesn’t. Just ask Maziar Bahari. He’s the Newsweek journalist unjustly jailed by Iranian authorities.  After 118 days in the notoriously nasty Evin Prison, Bahari was sprung. Last week, he told interviewer Charlie Rose that an international and very public effort by his wife and fellow journalists made all the difference.

In my next book, I’ll offer more examples of people in the West allying with people in the East and triumphing for the eminently universal cause of human rights.

For now, here’s my message: Don’t be silenced by the woe-is-us crowd who insist that we’re merely pawns of The Man.  They don’t know world history or individual agency.  Most tragic, they also don’t know what it means to leave a legacy.  If you want to leave a legacy, then exercise your personal leadership for a greater good.

You can start by joining my Facebook community.  Facebookers form the vanguard of the Moral Courage Project. They’re the ones who propelled the summer 2009 campaign against stoning. They’re the ones who made it viral. They deserve the Visionary Award that brings me to Los Angeles.

I accept it on behalf of them.

A sneak peek at my next book

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Nov 26, 2009

With this post, I’m inaugurating a unique feature on my blog. I call it “Notes From My Next Book.”

Every so often, I’ll blog about an idea that I’m hashing out as I write the first draft of my new book. Send me your thoughts about the idea that I’m wrestling with, and you could find your advice reflected in the final product!

But first, what exactly am I writing?

My next book will be a guide to finding the God of love within Islam — the God that loves not only Muslims, but also Christians, Jews, agnostics and… questions.

I believe the God of the Qur’an wants us to replace our fears, not replicate them in dysfunctional, violent, forms. Being majestic, this God is secure enough to handle any doubt, any inquiry, any experiment. After all, nearly every chapter of the Qur’an opens by describing God as the “most merciful and compassionate.”

By contrast, the god of tribal culture is segregationist, irrational, vindictive and petty. Too many Muslims revere this god in the guise of Islam. As the world-renowned Palestinian psychologist Eyad Serraj told me, “Islam was introduced to move Arabs beyond tribalism. But Islam has not conquered Arab culture; Arab culture has conquered Islam.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. A new generation of Muslims, especially those of us lucky enough to live in open societies, can change pernicious customs. We have the right — and the responsibility.

In Islam, our choices aren’t limited to conforming or leaving, as I so often hear from young Muslims who write to me in frustration. With my new book, I’ll show struggling Muslims how to embrace a third option: reforming ourselves. When we reform ourselves, we transform our understanding of faith. Not only do we renew what it means to believe in our Creator; we give our Creator a reason to believe in us.

Fear of God can thus be replaced with a genuine relationship.

By introducing the God of love to Muslims, I want non-Muslims to see that they, too, can transcend their fears of asking questions about Islam. I’ll explain why good-hearted non-Muslims should risk offending. Their willingness to bust deadly silences can encourage reformist Muslims to speak up, too.

Bottom line: Liberal Muslims need the support of liberal non-Muslims. And the future of liberal democracy needs us all.

This isn’t a clarion call for “moderation.” It’s a call for more of us to be, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “creative extremists.”  Rooting out corruption is never an act of moderation. Honesty demands intense commitment — and commitment strikes moral relativists as extremism. But while terrorists exemplify destructive extremism, honest-to-God reformers fight with the most creative resource of all: moral courage. I’ll demonstrate how all of us, Muslim and not, can develop moral courage for a life defined by purpose — even transcendence.

That’s entirely consistent with Enlightenment ideals.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the iconic Enlightenment philosophe, pointed out that “[t]here is one further distinguishing characteristic of  man which is very specific indeed and about which there can be no dispute, and that is the faculty of self-improvement.” Not so different from the Qur’anic injunction that “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves” (13:11).

In my next book, global politics meets personal growth.  Now, I must meet deadlines.

Afghanistan: What Obama is doing right

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 18, 2009

President Obama faces one helluva decision as he returns from China, a decision made even more wrenching by the Fort Hood shooting and  the U.S. justice department’s move to put suspected terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in a transparent, civilian court near 9/11’s epicenter.  Under such circumstances, the specter of bungling national security has to haunt any president — all the more so when we grasp what’s actually going down in Afghanistan.

Recently, I spent a few days in Europe at a human rights gathering. As we discussed, debated and plotted what we all hoped would amount to progress, Afghanistan loomed large on everybody’s minds.  But I hadn’t appreciated just what a dog’s breakfast that country has become until I spoke privately with one of the conference participants. She’s a young Afghan woman who has launched a series of schools in her region.

“How do you feel about the fact that the November elections are now canceled?” I asked her after news broke that Karzai’s rival had dropped out, citing corruption of the process.

“It’s the least worst of the options,” she sighed. “What the media never reports is that the people of Afghanistan are literally tortured whenever we hold another election. In the previous election [on August 20], the Taliban actually sliced off the noses of some voters.  And they cut the ears of other voters.

If we are going to hold a new election, it cannot be a game. Since the election results will be corrupted for sure, there is no point in having one right now. All that would be achieved is more death and damage to the Afghan people.”

“So, should President Obama should commit more troops?” I continued.

She paused. “Yes,” came the ultimate answer. “Let me tell you why. When the international forces arrived, they said to women, ‘Here is the deal: You build your society and we will protect you as you do that. We cannot re-construct your nation for you. But we can secure your efforts to create a better situation for all.’ 

We believed them. Now that we are in the middle of running new schools and medical clinics and so on, we are meeting our end of the bargain. If the international forces do not met their end of the bargain, then we are left in the hands of the Taliban. They know exactly who we are, and we will be the first ones slaughtered when the soldiers walk away.”

Hearing this from an Aghan woman who expresses herself gently and without rancor has left me even more sympathetic to the task that President Obama faces. Despite caustic accusations of dithering and dissing his generals on the ground, the president is absolutely right to be asking question upon question before announcing any decision.

What happens when you don’t dig deep with precise and sometimes annoying questions? Here’s an extract from historian Gordon Goldstein’s, Lessons in Disaster. He tells the story of McGeorge Bundy, a top presidential adviser whose spectacular career successes at Harvard and elsewhere dazzled all.  But:

“In response to the crisis in Vietnam, the administration’s preeminent intellectual demonstrated a fundamental lack of rigor in his analysis of the ends and means of American strategy… He did underestimate the resilience of the enemy. He did fail to examine the plan for military action. And he did fail to anticipate that the American escalation would be met with a furious countervailing escalation by the forces of the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese army…

There was no analysis or evidence to validate Bundy’s expectation that Ho Chi Minh and his fervent followers would capitulate. Bundy also failed to insist that the national security bureaucracy quantify the policy implications of a coercion strategy. How many bombs will it take to dilute the will of the insurgency? How much disruption and destruction would the United States have to impose on their lines of supply and reinforcement? How many US troops would be required to persuade the Vietnamese communists  that they could not prevail? How many casualties would be required to compel them to quit? How many years would it take?…

In scattered notes conveying his struggle to identify the roots of a disastrous military strategy, Bundy wrote, ‘LBJ [President Lyndon B. Johnson] and the rest of us don’t ask how much Ho can endure… We think of ourselves as propping up Saigon, which will do better and do its share and somehow do – enough.’”

Welcome to one of the biggest leadership challenges that any president must confront: lack of moral courage in his inner circle. Dr. Irving Janis, a psychologist who studied “groupthink,” concluded that in small and cohesive clusters of people, critical thinking typically loses to the comforting sway of consensus. In other words, unity will almost always be confused with uniformity.

Both in the Bay of Pigs and in the Vietnam fiascoes, a highly educated and confident fistful of individuals — all of them distinguished in their chosen professions — abandoned their questioning faculties in the bubble of the White House.

That’s why, when it comes to investigating the facts, the President has to take the lead — and take the time to get his hands mucky in details. He doesn’t know what information is being kept from him by his advisers because they, themselves, might not have posed the right questions (if any) to their sources.

Like I said: a dog’s breakfast.  It’s an accurate description not just of Afghanistan, but of what it will take to make Afghanistan less of a mess.

Debating Fort Hood and Islam

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 12, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Who says newspapers no longer matter? After my Globe & Mail commentary about why we shouldn’t whitewash Islam from the analysis of the shooting at Fort Hood, MSNBC called. Then they called again.

This week, I appeared on two of MSNBC’s signature shows. Click the box above for my discussion on “Morning Joe” and the box below for my debate with Chris Matthews on “Hardball.”

But please don’t tell my editor any of this. I’ve got book deadlines, dammit…

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Fort Hood: Analyze it, don’t sanitize it

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Nov 10, 2009

Editorial cartoon by Anthony Jenkins, Globe & Mail

In my latest column for the Toronto Globe & Mail, I argue that we shouldn’t whitewash the words “Islam” and “Muslim” when publicly discussing the Fort Hood shooting. Here’s an extract:

Let’s be clear: If an alleged criminal merely happens to be a Muslim, then religion may well be immaterial. But if his crime is committed in the name of Islam, then religion serves to motivate. In that case, the suspect’s Muslim identity absolutely matters. Words, gestures and images should be analyzed – fully, openly and honestly.

Read my entire commentary, then join the discussion on my Facebook fan page.

A Catholic and his conscience

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Oct 29, 2009

Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice

Friends and foes: What do you do when you’re knee-deep in book-writing deadlines, you want to keep your blog fresh and dynamic, and you believe that new voices deserve to be heard on the very themes for which your audience turns to you in the first place? Hell, you share your platform with guest boggers!

With that in mind, let me intro you to Janice Formichella.  An activist for Afghan women, among others, Janice stood out the moment I came to know of her. Propelled by struggles with her own religion, she read of my book, The Trouble with Islam Today, took my  NYU course, “Public Leadership and Moral Courage,” earned among the top grades in that class, and is now campaign director for the Moral Courage Project.

In that capacity, Janice led last summer’s social networking around “The Stoning of Soraya M,” an indie film about the heroic efforts made by Iranian women to challenge human rights abuses in their country.

Janice didn’t worry about whether a “Western feminist” has the right to support Iranian women; as a citizen of the world, she and her conscience powered forth.  I’m glad they did. And I think you’ll enjoy her latest contribution to the theme of moral courage below:

A Catholic and his Conscience

By Janice Formicella

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Jon O’Brien, President of Catholics for Choice. The interview took place first thing on a Monday morning and, I have to say, listening to this activist’s enthusiasm and morally courageous work was the perfect way to begin my week.

Catholics for Choice (CFC) is an organization that seeks to represent Catholics who “disagree with the dictates of the Vatican on matters related to sex, marriage, family life and motherhood.” Jon states that the goal of CFC is to “be an example of Catholicism as lived by normal people” with “an understanding of the world in which we live.” The leadership, he says, have “misunderstandings about sex that have nothing to do with how people live.”

CFC is largely concerned with ending poverty and does a significant amount of work overseas. Jon points out that the Vatican’s attacks on choice do not make as deep an impact in the U.S. as they do internationally. For instance, in the U.S. a Catholic can easily practice the “right to disagree” with the leadership over birth control by going to any drug store to buy condoms or taking the pill; however, those in the global south do not have such luxuries. This is why so many Catholics find it offensive that the church leadership lobbies the UN against distributing condoms.

Although the “uber conservative” Catholic world vision states that Catholics must obey leadership regardless of their views, Jon says that is not a Catholic teaching. In fact, he informed me that as a Catholic, “you are required to follow your conscience.”

I asked Jon to give me an example of such a heritage in the Catholic faith. “Imagine how Galileo’s mother felt,” he said to me. After all, “it took the Vatican 1000 years to forgive him for having scientific integrity and speaking the truth.”

Galileo

Jon also gave the examples of Ted Kennedy and Kevin Dowling, a priest in South Africa who believes that the Catholic hierarchy must change its approach to teaching from one that claims to be “open to life” to one that tries to prevent death.

Like Dowling, Kennedy and Galileo, CFC has come under severe scrutiny from the hierarchy of the Church. However, Jon derives his moral courage from the “knowledge that what we are saying is the truth.”

Having come from a religion with similar troubling positions regarding women and sex, I was curious where CFC stands on working with Catholics who choose to leave the faith. Jon says he is “deeply hurt” to hear of people who have been wounded by the leadership of the church, especially women and gays. However, Jon says that he respects “the moral courage involved in saying ‘I need to go.’”

According to Jon, those who have left the faith “have a great sensitivity to how the institution hurts people.” I asked him if ex-Catholics can stay involved in his movement. His response: “Of course.”

Why do he and others at CFC stay in the Church?  Not because they are afraid to leave, Jon clarifies, “but because we are the Church. The Church is a community of people. Ownership does not reside in the Bishops.”

Jon joked that CFC should be given a retainer for all those who have remained in the faith thanks to the presence of his organization. Jon meets Catholics all the time who have been struggling about “how to stay Catholic,” given their deeply held views. After discovering CFC, people often express relief and remark how great it is to have “representation” after feeling alone for so long.

I was touched by Jon’s dedication to his religion, despite what seem to be the many roadblocks to his faith. But it all seemed to come together when he put it this way: “We are each asked to stand up. If we don’t, there will be nothing left to stand up for.”

By the way, in his new book What the Dog Saw, Malcolm Gladwell tells us about the inventor of the birth control pill — a devout Catholic, it turns out.

Get more info about how the Moral Courage Project can help you stand up for what you believe. Passionately.

“Hear my plea or deliver my death”

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on Oct 23, 2009

Jila Baniyaghoob (Courtesy: IWMF)

Every year, the International Women’s Media Foundation selects four journalists from around the world who exemplify moral courage — speaking truth to power in their own societies for a  greater good.  And every year, the foundation organizes a gala to celebrate these death-defying reporters.  Most of them are able to attend, and some of the biggest names in American media serve as the award presenters.

So it came as something of a shock, and a distinctly high honor, to have been asked to present a Courage in Journalism Award at this year’s gathering. But the woman to whom I’d be giving the statue — an Iranian dynamo named Jila Baniyaghoob — couldn’t leave her country.  Which meant that I was also asked to accept on her behalf.

Here’s how I paid tribute to Jila:

“Jila Baniyaghoob found her voice as a journalist in the late 1970s at the dawn of Iran’s fundamentalist revolution, when she published a short story in a major Tehran daily — a story about children living in poverty.  Jila was 11 years old.

In June 2006, when she was arrested and taken to Evin prison while covering a women’s rights protest, Jila was scolded by interrogators for story that she’d written as a pre-teen so many years before.  Clearly, the authorities had been watching her closely. They scrutinize her every move to this day.

But their surveillance has not stopped her from revealing details about the lives of the Iranian people.  Recently, for example, she wrote about Nasimah, an unmarried 20-year-old woman whom Jila met while waiting in a Tehran medical clinic. Under her black chador, Nasimah was trying to feed her infant son, who had no name thanks to the ‘shame’ of his birth. He was wrapped in old, thin, dirty clothes. Nearby, Nasimah’s male relatives shunned her as they waited for a paternity test to verify who the baby’s father was.

‘I realized by no one in her family was interested in buying clothes for the baby,’ Jila wrote. ‘To people living in the countryside, there is nothing more intolerable than for a girl have an illegitimate child.  Nobody was willing to tolerate this disgrace to their family.’

But Nasimah told Jila that she didn’t worry.  After all, her family had promised a judge that they wouldn’t harm her.

Later in the article, Jila reported what happened to Nasimah after she left the clinic. ‘When Nasimah’s brothers and cousins returned home from Tehran, they tried to hang Nasimah, but she escaped. Finally, they poured petrol and set her alight. The following day, Nasimah’s son was fatally poisoned. The only sound in my mind was Nasimah’s voice saying that her family would not harm her or the baby because they had promised the judge.’

When Jila heard that she had received the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award, she pledged to be here with us to accept it. That was before June. Before Iranians spilled into the streets to demonstrate against the election results. Before, that is, Jila was arrested — again — and sent back to Evin prison.

We don’t know what happened to Jila inside jail this time round.  But in 2007, she wrote movingly about being locked up for reporting on a women’s rights protest. Jila says that her she and her cellmates killed time by chanting songs composed to defy discrimination against women. They wrote lyrics, put them to music and sang them together. Don’t worry; I’ll spare you a performance. Let me simply recite the words:

Whoever is in love
Has no fear of death
Since love has no fear
Of fetters and prison

Authorities blindfolded her outside her cell. She underwent grueling interrogations. The foul water she ingested caused toxic shock. But always – always – Jila created excuses to extract joy, even from the jaws of solitary confinement.  She tells us that ‘for several hours I walked the cell’s width and length. Supposedly, it was exercise and what a pleasant exercise for solitary confinement!  I walked and said out loud all the poems I knew. When I forgot a part, I would stop moving and keep thinking until I remembered. As soon as I remembered, I would jump up and down with excitement and then start with new poems.’

She also memorized messages scrawled on prison walls by previous inmates, alternating between moods of darkness and moments of dawn. ‘Dear God,’ read one  message, ‘hear my plea for deliver my death.’ Then this message: ‘With a little patience, spring is near.’

Jila has been sprung from Evin.  But her husband, journalist Bahman Ahmadi Amoyee, remains behind its walls. She recently posted an open letter to him on her website. Jila tells him that she comes often to stand outside Evin, since the powers-that-be won’t let her inside. ‘By the walls of Evin, I feel that I breathe the same air that you breathe,’ Jila conveys, adding: ‘What a senseless comparison. The air in the hot cells of Evin prison has nothing in common with the fresh air of Evin’s hilltops.’

She closes her love letter to her husband this way: ‘Do you remember that you always used to remind me of the Asian motto: Let us turn our sorrow into strength? I promise to turn all the sorrows that we face into strength.’

Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to witness that strength. And it is my profound privilege to accept this Courage in Journalism Award for Jila Baniyaghoob, with the hope, prayer and deep belief that one day soon, she’ll be able to accept our gratitude for her unrelenting pursuit of truth. May Allah bless her, her husband, and all those whose unheard voices find solace in Jila’s.”

If you’d like to send a message to Jila, contact me and I’ll share your thoughts with her through a confidential address used by the International Women’s Media Foundation. This is a unique opportunity to strengthen the resolve of someone who inspires many us, yet could do with inspiration from us, too.

And to learn more about moral courage — how you can exhibit it in your own community, and why you should — get to know the Moral Courage Project.

Islam’s reformers are such punks

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Announcements on Oct 18, 2009

Now in theaters…

This weekend, an intriguing documentary opened on the big screen in Toronto — and it takes the movement for Muslim reform another step forward.

“Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam” is based on the book by Michael Muhammad Knight and directed by the award-winning Omar Majeed, who happens serve on the board of my charitable foundation, Project Ijtihad.

Rock on, I say.

Because, at rock bottom, Islamic punk is about more than smashing guitars and stereotypes; it’s about internal spiritual reform. Reading a recent New York Times story about the Islamic punk scene, here’s the quote that leaps out at me:

“‘As Muslims, we’re not being honest if we criticize the United States without first criticizing ourselves,’ said Mr. Kamel, 23, who grew up in a Syrian family in Chicago. He is lead singer of the band al-Thawra, ‘the Revolution’ in Arabic.”

Am I allowed to blurt, “Rock on!” twice in one blog entry? Wait. It’s my blog, dammit. I’ll do what befits my character — as long as it respects the dignity of my fellow human beings. And I won’t let anyone tell me I’m less Muslim for insisting on everyone’s freedom of expression. That’s the message of Islamic punk.

Check out this video trailer. You’ll love what you see. But what you’ll hear is at least as compelling — and I don’t just mean lyrics or drum beats. I mean the words spoken by Michael Mohammad Knight, author of The Taqwacores. His poignant narration lends the video a philosophical edge:

“I stopped trying to define punk at around the same time I stopped trying to define Islam. They aren’t so far removed, if you think that both began in tremendous bursts of truth and vitality, and seem to have lost something along the way…”

I saw a previous version of the trailer, too.  In it, Knight added that both Islam and punk music “have suffered from sell-outs and hypocrites, but also from true believers whose devotion has crippled their creative drive. Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing could be further from the truth…

But the most important similarity is that, like punk, Islam itself is a flag; an open symbol representing not things, but ideas. You can’t hold punk or Islam in your hands. So what could they mean besides what you want them to?”

Which brings me to a related point.  Last year, I had dinner with Melvin Van Peebles, the director who revolutionized American pop culture with a low-budget, indie flick entitled Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. His film inaugurated the “Blaxploitation” genre, putting young African-Americans on notice that culture was theirs for the shaping.

With Baadasssss director Melvin Van Peebles (Photo: Lem Lopez)

Melvin’s advice to this generation: Whatchoo waitin’ foh? Whatevuh you got to do, sheeet, go do it!  He did, and the intersection of art and politics has never been the same. Just ask President Barack Obama.

Thanks in part to Islamic punk, Muslim reformers are doing what need to get done. Because sometimes, sweet badasses, you have to slam-dance your way to freedom.

Learn more about the documentary — and where you can catch it — right here.

Should the burqa be banned in a free society?

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts, Q & A on Oct 10, 2009

London, UK (Photo: M. Douglas)

A few days ago, I sent this message to my Facebook fans: “France is currently debating whether to ban the burqa and veil. Now, my own country of Canada is debating that, too. A **Muslim** group is calling on the Canadian government to outlaw the burqa. How do you think the government should respond?”

Twenty-four hours later, I re-visited my fan page. Hello! I found more responses to this question than to just about anything I’ve ever posted.  Equally revealing, Muslims are disagreeing with each other.

Male versus female, you ask?  In a sense, yes. In my Facebook community, Muslim men are likely to reject the burqa outright while Muslim women are inclined to support choice.

Here’s a sample of their arguments, peppered with interventions from non-Muslims who have experience with Muslim societies:

* “Burqa? This hideous thing should most definitely be banned.”  - Umar

* “The GOVERNMENT should not have a say over whether a woman can wear it or not. If they did, they would be no different from Saudi Arabia or any other country that forces women to wear it.” - Sara

* “Yes, ban the burqa. A woman’s head is not an extension of her private parts.  A woman in burqa is convinced she is a a giant pussy on legs.  This is  offensive. Burqa is also dangerous. Not different from seeing a man walking down the street wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood, or a skinhead with a tattoo of a swastika on his forehead.” - Azhar

* “I wear the hijab on my head and I live in America. I would fight with the government til the end on something like this. Who cares what people wear as long as they are not doing anything wrong to you?” - Diana

* “One of my best friends is Muslimah and she lived in Algeria for years, never wearing a veil, never being asked to wear it.  As soon as her family moves to the States, her father, who is quite secular in Algeria, tries to impose the veil on his daughters. Why? Because in his eyes, they’re living in a hostile nation, and he needs to protect his daughters from the eyes of infidel boys/men.  My friend resisted and used the Quran as her justification. But her others sisters veiled, to keep the peace, because of their abusive dad.” - Rodney

* “The burqa is a marketing tool for Islamists. In a day and age when Islamist criminality is worldwide, the burqa is not an option!” - Najat

* “Sure, there have been security problems in countries with men hiding under burqas and niqabs. But I have also been witness to a woman being harassed by security in the middle of Khan Al Khalili, a very busy market in the middle of Cairo. Banned or unbanned, it is still Muslim women who are the victims here. Banning a style of dress will not ensure extra security for anyone.” - Sue

* “In the Middle East, a woman wearing burqa who was allowed to drive almost hit me because she couldn’t see me!” - Rosa

* “I don’t agree with [a] country imposing a certain dress code. Who the hell are you? If they want to ban it, ban it all. That means the nuns can’t wear what they wear.  A Christian can’t wear a cross, a Jewish man can’t wear a kippah, and all other religious symbols should be banned too.” - Faisal

* “Irshad, the other day, with horror, I saw a WalkingBurqa in The Eaton Centre [Toronto shopping mall].  I told my daughter to forget about the shopping and let’s get the hell out of here. U never know what’s inside the WalkingBurqa.  Canadian government should ban it… ASAP.” - Rehmatullah

Now I’m asking my Facebook community to interpret the photo at the very top of this post. Snapped in London recently, the picture shows three burqa-clad women walking the same footpath as a woman in a tank top and skirt.

How do you interpret this image? What does it say to you?

Join the conversation, and many more to come, on  my Facebook fan page.

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