Everyday issue of harassing Islam

there has been no clear outcome of this debate perhaps, since it largely concerns the large immigrant  pendatang like you  vs native Muslim populations in Malaysia For fear of being labeled ‘culturally insensitive,’    governments fail to identify, adequately  report or solve this problem.

Unfortunately, it’s not just the government’s responsibility.  We  Muslims as citizens should also be stepping up and telling them…our elected officials…what we want  Islam  for no ourselves.should exercise our rights to express to their elected officials what we would like to see happen.  This is why I do not understand why Infidel Ivy Josiah  do not exercise their right to vote.  For me, voting is not only necessary, it is great privilege in this country and one many take for granted! – See more at:

By the way, it seems to me that a leader of this nation should be willing to say the pledge of allegiance and wear a flag pin on his lapel.  If you can’t uphold the principles of the nation, why should you be elected to run it?

Herd mentality amongst men in ganging up against a woman is not new  WAO executive director Ivy Josiah that is a different matter but you interfering  in Islamic laws  which non of your business .   Harassment comes in many forms and is not necessary always sexual in nature. Women are persecuted in many ways. Women are automatically labeled as weak, the foundation built on the underlying assumption that they will rarely put up a fight. In many unfortunate cases, the victim may not get support from another woman that she may turn to as well. The hapless victim is most times mortified by somebody she trusts, she does not getting a shoulder to lean on, instead is degraded by the same people she would necessarily turn to. This is precisely the reason why law makers and those entrusted with enforcing the law find excuses to imprudently blame the woman instead of doing what needs to be done in facilitating her protection.

What has been the unique feature of the last decade (2000-2009)–the first decade of the new millennium–that ended four years ago? In the first world, where such events are duly kept record of, it has been the sociological debate between multiculturalism and assimilation.

Because there has been no clear outcome of this debate (perhaps, since it largely concerns the large immigrant and non-native populations in developed countries), the ghastly and morally outrageous crime of what is known as honour killing (but can be really be termed hubris killing) continues to take place also on their soil. For fear of being labeled ‘culturally insensitive,’ governments fail to identify, adequately report or solve this problem.

The cultural argument against multiculturalism countering the ethical and legal one of the universal nature of human values is that culture is merely a direct result of the unique geography rather than history of a particular place. Cutlery, dishwashers (which never took off in India), wines and sunbathing in the northern hemisphere offer specific illustrations of this principal at work while closer home it is the wok, the handloom gamchha and paan. To start living in cold Norway from the scratch, one has to learn to build a house. Hence, the need for adaption, acclimitization, learning of new habits, integration. When in Rome, do as Romans do, so goes the proverb.

In an assimilationist victory in November 2010, Switzerland voted to proscribe minarets following a four-year local opposition to a construction by the resident Turkish association, which may be short-lived, however, as the UN has slammed the ban as ‘discriminatory’. But west of the channel, the British Nationalist Party, which seeks to restore the overwhelmingly white ethnicity of Britain that existed prior to 1948, welcomed one ‘Mr Singh next door’ as its first Asian-origin member. And though the far-right Dutch Party for Freedom, whose leader Geert Wilders advocates banning the Quranand curbing Muslim religious freedom, ranked second in elections to the Netherlands parliament (he was subsequently snubbed by Turkey whose politicians refused to see him citing his views so that he was forced to cancel the trip. He performed poorly in the 2012 general election), there is a sneaking suspicion somewhere that the Establishment has at last appropriated a beautiful movement that started off as a clutch of robust, neoconservative voices that called for the return of foreign emigrants to their respective lands. For the success of a nation, at the root of it, is based on the strength of the morals of its people which directly influence the quality of their life. This campaign said to the migrant gold digger: If you want to preserve your ethnicity, go back to your country and make it on its soil. And help your country do the same. Or else become one of us. There is no middle path.

But the strongest and most robust of these voices (Jorg Haider of Austria who died in 2008, Jean-Marie Le Pen of France who finished fourth in the 2007 national elections, Pia Kjaersgaard of the Danish People’s Party that has been the country’s third largest party in three successive elections since 2001 and Umberto Bossi, the incumbent Italian reforms minister) was that of former Marxist, homosexual and pragmatist, the flamboyant Pim Fortuyn. Portrayed as a Far Right populist, Fortuyn fiercely rejected this description of himself. Calling Islam “a backward culture”, he said if it were legally possible he would close the borders for Muslim immigrants to prevent what he saw as corruption of the Dutch way of life. He formed his party, LPF (Pim Fortuyn List) in February 2007, swept the preliminaries and was on the cusp of victory in the general election when he was assassinated just nine days prior to the polling. His party went on to win an unprecedented debut in Dutch parliament.

It was Fortuyn’s, and not George W Bush’s, that was the first, unequivocal and clearly unapologetic voice against radical Islam. What’s more, he offered the only viable solution — legal recourse and not invasion — a little prior to the time when Bush began to swallow his by-then infamous words, ‘war against Islam’.

Today, LPF has no presence in Holland. But since March 1, 2006, people who want to settle in the Netherlands are required to pass the “integration test” in their own country which includes a film which exposes the would-be immigrants to scenes of kissing homosexual men and topless women. Themessage is, “If you can’t tolerate gay lifestyle and public nudity, you are not allowed to be here.” So Europe which stopped the march of Islam in the medieval times would seem set to play a similar role, that of blocking Islamic radicalism, in the present era.

In 2004, the painter’s great grandnephew and filmmaker Theo Van Gogh and the Somalian-origin intellectual and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, both critics of Islam, shot Submission, a 10-minute documentary on women in Muslim societies, that provoked strong reactions from the audience. Van Gogh, who refused protection, was shot two months after the film’s release while he was bicycling to work. Two years later, Hirsi Ali became the centre of a new controversy surrounding her citizenship when a television channel reported that she had given false information when applying for asylum and had covered the fact that the main reason for her migration had been threat of forced marriage. She was forced to resign from parliament and currently lives in the United States.

Amartya Sen’s 2006 treatise Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Issues of Our Time) puts forward the concept of multiple identity and roles at the individual level as a critique of Samuel Huntington’s seminal The Clash of Civilizations written a decade ago but fails to satisfactorily determine an answer to the dilemma of social loyalty should a national or political conflict of interest arise. Cases in point include US president Barack Obama’s initial policy on BPO jobs, Jaguar spurning Tata Motors in 2007 (insinuating that the US public was not ‘ready for ownership out of India of a luxury car brand such as Jaguar&rsquo and the rise of Nicki Haley and Bobby Jindal.

The escapism of Hirsi Ali (whose father, too, is a political figure in Somalia) that sparked her identity fraud in real terms was essentially a result of her defeat to sociopolitical forces in her native land. She remains a divided, contentious figure: one who was neither allegiant to nor nurturing of her natural identity but who protested its shortcomings.

If Hirsi Ali criticised Islam by becoming an outsider and pointing out along with others its exclusive need of reform, Iranian-Canadian Muslim refusenik Irshad Manji (The Trouble With Islam Today, St Martin’s Press, 2004) has fulfilled that objective by becoming the sole person, man or woman, worldwide, to have actually donned that difficult mantle, attempting to reinterpret and amend the religion from inside and stressing on upholding what she finds original and true in it, particularly where the roles and responsibilities of the sexes are concerned.

Irshad’s documentary, Faith without Fear, follows her journey to reconcile faith and freedom. Released in 2007, the film depicts the personal risks Manji has faced as a Muslim reformer. Disturbingly, her detractors dismiss her scholarship as coming from a western and hence privileged background.

On the ground, though, Iran’s Neda Agha Soltan is not the only martyr for the cause of Muslim renaissance, much hoped for but yet to arrive in 2010 or even in 2012, as the country goes to polls again this year. The Arab Spring has travelled to Bangladesh where it has taken a unique form. For the first time, some Muslims have recognized the argument for atheism and secularism if not reconciled it with their faith and for the first time a modern oriental culture has eschewed both escapism and atavism and looked history in the eye.

Flashback again to 2010-end when a rights forum reports the story of a 10-year-old Afghan girl whose face was disfigured with acid for going to school by the Taliban. She still goes to school today. Her parents, she said then, had told her that so long as she is not killed by them she must continue to receive her education and attend those classes.

When Muslim organizations invite Shaykhs who speak openly about the values of Islam, the Islamophobic western media starts murdering the character of that organization and the invited speaker. The question these Islamophobic journalists need to reflect upon is; are these so called ”radical” views that they criticize endorsed only by these few individuals being invited around the globe, or does the common Muslims believe in them. If the common Muslims believe in these values that means that more or less all Muslims are radical and that Islam is a radical religion. Since this is not the case, as Islam is a peaceful religion and so are the masses of common Muslims, these Shaykhs cannot be radical. Rather it is Islamophobia from the ignorant western media who is more concerned about making money by alienating Islam by presenting Muslims in this way. Islam Net, an organization in Norway, invited 9 speakers to Peace Conference Scandinavia 2013. These speakers would most likely be labelled as ”extremists” if the media were to write about the conference. But how come this conference was the largest Islamic Scandinavian International event that has taken place in Norway with about 4000 people attending? Were the majority of those who attended in opposition to what the speakers were preaching? If so, how come they paid to enter? Let’s forget about that for a moment, let’s imagine that we don’t really knew what all these people thought about for example segregation of men and women, or stoning to death of those who commit adultery. The Chairman of Islam Net, Fahad Ullah Qureshi asked the audience, and the answer was clear. The attendees were common Sunni Muslims. They did not consider themselves as radicals or extremists. They believed that segregation was the right thing to do, both men and women agreed upon this. They even supported stoning or whatever punishment Islam or prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) commanded for adultery or any other crime. They even believed that these practises should be implemented around the world. Now what does that tell us? Either all Muslims and Islam is radical, or the media is Islamophobic and racist in their presentation of Islam. Islam is not radical, nor is Muslims in general radical. That means that the media is the reason for the hatred against Muslims, which is spreading among the non-Muslims in western countries.