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Your letters - posted June 18, 2007

Posted in Q & A on Jun 18, 2007

Posted June 18, 2007

 Friends and Foes: This update is the first in a special series dedicated to free-thinking Arabs. Given the grim news out of the Middle East right now, dissident Arabs face higher odds than ever when calling for reform in their own societies.

Hamas throws Fatah members off rooftops. Muslims attack holy Islamic shrines in Iraq. Absurd fatwas emerge from Egypt (it’s criminal for a single woman to hug a man but that woman can be in the same room as a man as long as she has breast-fed him five times). All of this happened in the same week!

The Quran tells us, “God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (13:11). Most Muslims have broken faith with that passage. But there’s hope.

In the next three updates, I’ll post letters from young Arabs who refuse to go with the flow. Let us salute their courage and support their dreams.

“I am 28 years old, an Egyptian who lost 4 years of his life working in the magic kingdom of Saudi Arabia! Irshad Manji, just like you, I a Muslim who refuse to put his mind on the shelf and that refusal is enough to reject the Desert Islam that came from Arabian Peninsula to teach us tribalism, fanaticism, women oppression, violence, zealotry, bigotry, and irrationality.

In fact, any modern civilization cannot afford those tribal thoughts. A lot of Muslim preachers consider women as a source of seduction and hence they must cover every single inch of their bodies (can’t you see a similarity between women in niqab and ninja turtles!) The Quran itself never stressed those tribal ideas. There is no single verse in the Quran talking about hijab; hence the source of that idea must be the Arab culture. Why should women have to comply with that?

A lot Muslim preachers are still talking about Jews as the grandsons of pigs and apes. Not to mention those who pray for the destruction of all Jews and Christians. Didn’t Allah say that He honoured mankind? Didn’t the Prophet say to his folk, when they asked him to pray for the destruction of the idolaters, that Allah didn’t send me to curse not to insult but rather to show mercy? Such contradictions lead me to one conclusion: the version of Islam that we have today is polluted. Yes, polluted by Arab tribal politics.

There is only one way to decrease the the influence of the desert on Islam: liberate Mecca and Medina from the Saudis. The next step is to make a universal administration of those cities. Something like the Vatican. Mecca and Medina and holy places of Muslims and thus it belongs to all Muslims, not just the Arabs.

Irshad Manji, thank you for being honest! The only help I can provide is to send your book (the Arabic version) to my email groups to spread your words. However, don’t expect any reform before peak oil prices!” - Shams

Irshad replies to Shams and all reform-minded Muslims: Come to Project Ijtihad’s MySpace page and engage in debates about the issues that are censored back home. The world needs to hear your voices. And your voices need to change the world.