Islamophobia

Mingers!

When I see stories like this getting webtime, I now instinctively reach for motive. After all, where is the news value in this story? A couple break the law and get sentenced. And?

I suppose when the economies of the world are being systematically brought to their knees by a small group of obscenely wealthy criminals, and while Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan are being butchered in the biggest armed robbery of all time (it’s what rednecks and racists call “liberation” or “spreading freedom” doncha know), we really need to be  judging those barbaric Muslims who frown upon drunken scum fornicating with the shameless abandon of animals on an otherwise unspoiled beach.

Propriety, grace and dignity used to be values we upheld in Britain, but now we worship loutishness, boorishness, drunkenness, violence and debauchery.

Hats off to Dubai for enforcing some moral standards. If you break the law, you should be punished accordingly. If you don’t like it, go be a slag somewhere else. (Or at least get a room…)

Ramadan Mubarak to all of my readers.

Here’s a link to last year’s post on the subject, nearly all of which still applies.

In previous years, the fasting period (from dawn to dusk), was short enough for me to keep some fasts. This year, Ramadan has shifted towards the back end of summer and therefore the fasting period is a challenging 16 hours. Given my diabetes, it would be crazy for me to try and keep the fast and then wrestle control of my condition in the 8 hours that remain of the day (or rather, night). So I’m disappointed, but I won’t be fasting.

Ramadan didn’t used to mean much to me as a Qadiani, but since I have been a Muslim, it has been an uplifting experience. I feel connected to every Muslim on the planet, of every race and background. (Qadianis are connected only to a Punjabi subgroup, because despite their best efforts and the support of Western media and governments, Islam and even other groups are highly resistant to this heretic creed). Of course, Qadianis do fast, and I do pray that those who love the part of Qadianism that takes its core from Islam, will be guided to truth and revert to Islam when they realise just how divergent Islam and Qadianism are.

Islam is vibrant today, because despite rampant Islamophobia, more and more people are drawn to Islam and indeed, are becoming Muslims by the day. The dark(!) picture painted of Muslims in the Western media doesn’t very often tally with the reality. For starters, Islam is way too diverse and confusing for most people to grasp. Sure, modern-day Orientalists, some of whom are faux-left-wing bloggers thrown up to media-stardom level by a system that clearly hasn’t a clue, have tried to pin this label and that on us, completely missing the point - that despite many differences, Muslim people have more in common with each other than their rulers and dividers would like to portray.

In this holy month, Muslims will be fasting and doing their best to be as “good” as they can. We will be reciting Al Qur’an, we will be praying taraweeh, we will make dhikr, we will attempt to minimise our bad habits and increase our good ones. We will be kinder to neighbours, we will be more loving to our parents and our children. We will call for peace and denounce oppression and tyranny.

What is it about my Islam that you still find threatening?

The top ten thinkers in the world today are Muslims!

In a poll conducted by Prospect, a British magazine, of a hundred of the world’s top thinkers, the top ten were Muslims. Alhamdulillah! This is especially surprising considering the poll was jointly hosted by Foreign Policy, a US publication. Of course, the value of such a poll is dubious when proven intellectual frauds like Ayaan Hirsi Ali make the top 20 ahead of he likes of Vaclav Havel, Niall Ferguson and even the spineless apostate Salman Rushdie.

Still, it’s great to see Muslims on top, ousting rabid right-wing wannabes like Christopher Hitchens - who once was left-wing, but having never outlived or outclassed Gore Vidal, resorted to the journalism of convenience and dipped his nib in the vitriolic ink of hypocrisy and hatred that represents the majority of the West’s Islamophobic media machinery today.

So here we have it, the top ten, led by a guy I’ve never heard of…

1. Fethullah Gulen
2. Muhammad Yunus
3. Yusuf al-Qaradawi
4. Orhan Pamuk
5. Aitzaz Ahsan
6. Amr Khaled
7. Abdolkarim Soroush
8. Tariq Ramadan
9. Mahmood Mamdani
10. Shirin Ebadi

Nice especially to see two of my favourite Islamic writers in that list. (I won’t tell you who they are). Two of that list are also Nobel laureates. Interesting things happening in Turkey these days and I don’t just mean their football team reaching the semi-finals of Euro 2008, though I must confess to having cheered loudly when they equalised against the prematurely euphoric Croatia.

Oh by the way, no Qadianis in the top 100. Funny that. I tried to think of a solitary Qadiani thinker. I failed. You see, they don’t think. Because if they did, they wouldn’t be Qadiani anymore now, would they?