Islam and Human Rights Why are Muslims so sensitive to criticism? Don’t they trust their scriptures? Asks Sultan Shahin


Islam and Human Rights
Why are Muslims so sensitive to criticism? Don’t they trust their
scriptures? Asks Sultan Shahin

Bengalis no longer enjoy the freedom of the age of Kabeer or Raheem or
our Vedic ancestors

West Bengal is now ruled by CPM - Talibanist!


It is outrageous that in this day and age a respected newspaper like
the Statesman cannot even publish as innocuous an article as Johann
Hari’s “Why should I respect these oppressive religions?” It is being
reproduced below courtesy Independent of London where it originally
appeared. It seems some obscurantist Muslims had objection to it and
so the Stalinist police arrested Mr. Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha,
the editor and publisher of The Statesman, and curiously without
provoking any debate or as far as I know even any coverage in secular
democratic India’s independent media.

As you will see in the article below Johann Hari is very balanced and
maintains equidistance from all major religions that he mentions. He
makes a plea for freedom of expression. His main point is stated in
the very first paragraph: “The right to criticize religion is being
slowly doused in acid. Across the world, the small, incremental gains
made by secularism – giving us the space to doubt and question and
make up our own minds – are being beaten back by belligerent demands
that we "respect" religion. A historic marker has just been passed,
showing how far we have been shoved. The UN rapporteur who is supposed
to be the global guardian.”


I am a religious person myself. But I don’t see how anyone can be
religious in the true sense of the term without having ever been
skeptical about religion, without having been agnostic or even atheist
for a time. No truly religious person can ever question the right of
others to question religion. He would have the confidence to know
that this questioning person will come to realize the value of
religion in general, and maybe his religion too in course of time. He
or she will see that as this fellow is questioning religion, he/she
has the capacity to someday become religious. But of course those who
follow their inherited religion are not going to see it this way. They
are the inhabitants of the land of Jahiliya.


Now tell me my Muslim brothers and sisters! Would there have been a
religion called Islam in the world today if Prophet Mohammad (peace be
upon him) had taken your view of his ancestral religion? Would we have
had Islam in the world today if the Prophet had not questioned and
rebelled against the religion of his family and clan and tribe? Indeed
would we have had any religion, any science, any literature, any
philosophy? All progress emanates from questioning established truths.


However, this is no occasion for a discourse on progress. You cannot
address followers of ancestral religions, followers of Abu Jahal, and
discuss with them concepts of progress. You can just beat them in a
war and then they will join you, as the Meccan followers of Abu Jahal
joined Islam after their defeat.


I don’t know what the obscurantist Muslims of an enlightened city like
Kolakata find objectionable in Johann Hari’s article. Perhaps it is
the following passage that has provoked their ire:

“All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the
idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from
the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet"
who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered
the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.

“I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God
and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it.
I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and
could live again as woodlice. This is not because of "prejudice" or
"ignorance", but because there is no evidence for these claims. They
belong to the childhood of our species, and will in time look as
preposterous as believing in Zeus or Thor or Baal.

“When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have
too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that
charade.”


Obviously Hari’s idea about the Prophet’s character is wrong, but it
is based in large parts on the propaganda launched by Arab Muslims who
want to justify their own pedophilic proclivities by announcing from
rooftops even today that the Prophet married a girl of six and
consummated his marriage when she was nine. The kind of fatwas Saudi
Wahhabi Ulema (religious scholars) give on the issue even today, some
of which available on NewAgeIslam.com, is enough to convince any non-
Muslim and indeed any Muslim that this is what the Prophet did. Please
refer to the following stories:


1. Saudi Islam, misuse of Seerat-e-Nabwi allowed: No protection
to young girls, some awful news stories

Fifty-Something Saudi Refuses to Annul Marriage to his Eight-Year-Old
Wife

Father was 'swapping' her for a 13-year-old bride

Dr. Ahmad Al-Mub'i, a Saudi Marriage Officiant: It Is Allowed to Marry
a Girl at the Age of One, If Sex Is Postponed. The Prophet Muhammad
(PBUH), Whose Model We Follow, Married 'Aisha When She Was Six and Had
Sex with Her When She Was Nine

www.NewAgeIslam.Com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=815

2. Marrying 9 year old girls permissible in Islam, says Moroccan
theologian: Muslims accuse him of "distorting" Islam

www.NewAgeIslam.Com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=769

3. DID SAYYIDA AYESHA (ra) MARRY MUHAMMAD (P.B.U.H), THE PROPHET
OF ISLAM, AT AGE 6?

The books written 200-300 years after the death of Prophet Muhammad
(pbuh), though seeking to provide a good deal of historical
information about him, are not free from less than perfect and self-
contradictory materials. These should not be taken as the final word
for a Muslim. There is a Final Word for a Muslim and that is the Book
of God, the Holy Qur’an—the book that defines the marriageable age for
a man or woman when he or she attains soundness of judgment (Al-Qur’an
4:6). If the exalted prophet of Islam is a model for all-time mankind,
if he followed the Qur’an all his life, if Allah stands witness to his
rock-solid moral character, there is no way that he could have taken a
6-9 year old, immature young, playful girl as a responsible wife,
argues Abdul H. Fauq.

www.NewAgeIslam.Com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=817


The above article by Abdul H. Fauq presents a very different set of
research and speculation, one that does not suit the Arab male
chauvinists and paedophiles who call themselves Muslims and thus
doesn’t get propagated by the massive Wahhabi-controlled Islamic media
around the world.


As for Johann Hari’s claim that the Prophet “ordered the murder of
whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him”, it is
patently wrong and cannot be presented in this way. The Prophet is an
exemplar of patience and perseverance and forgiveness. His entire
history is a testament to this. Look at Sulah–e-Hudaibiya, look at his
general amnesty to the murderous Meccans after the victory over Mecca
when he was in a position to order wholesale slaughter. As for the
Jews, neutral observers have to understand that at that time the
Prophet was fighting for his community and faith’s very survival. The
Jews first entered into an agreement with him and then when war came
stabbed him in the back, expecting the far superior army of Meccans to
decimate the ill-equipped and extremely weak Muslim army. But the
reverse happened with the blessings and support of God, the only thing
that could indeed have saved the Prophet, his army and Islam. Now the
perfidious Jews had indeed to be taught a lesson as a warning to other
tribes who were now entering into similar agreements with the Muslim
community. Remember this was the act of a man who was literally
fighting for his and his faith’s survival. When he was victorious and
in a position to order slaughter he ordered general amnesty even to
war criminals who later killed his own family members and subverted
Islam for good.

Anyway, this rebuttal is not the point now. The point at stake now is
Johann’s Hari’s right to express his views. Why indeed should he or
anybody else be forced to respect religions in whose name so many
slaughters and worse have taken place and are taking place now? If
religions want to be respected, the religious should behave in a
respectable fashion, should try and earn that respect, through
exemplary conduct and debate, not force people to respect them.

Sultan Shahin, editor, New Age Islam
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NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1190





Islam and Pluralism
Are JEWS an accursed or a blessed community?

POINT: The Miserable End of Jews – the Followers of Falsehood will
suffer humiliating Torment and Perish. Jews are an accursed community
and Muslims have to fight them till the end - An essay by A’bdullah
U’smani in the light of Qur’an and Sunnah in the Urdu Daily Sahafat,
Delhi Translated from Urdu by Syed Raihan Ahmad Nezami

(Can one really fault the world, with these kinds of views expressed
in mainstream Muslim Press and no protests against them, for thinking
that the entire Muslim community is potentially a community of
terrorists? -- Editor.)

Counterpoint: Why Muslims Are Powerless?? A compilation of statistics
showing the brilliant success Jews have acquired in almost every field
of human endeavour (apparently by the grace of God, Editor) -- Dr
Shabbir Ahmed

More..http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?
ArticleID=1198




Islamic World News
Pakistan fighting for survival against Taliban: Zardari

Pakistan and the Islamist challenge

By A H Nayyar & Zia Mian

The motives of Al-Qaeda by Rizwan Tahir Khan

Why the U.S. should leave Afghanistan by Terrell E. Arnold

Obama quotes Muslim Holy Scripture

Satanic Verses' polarising untruths by Lawrence Pollard

Italy: Rome Grand Mosque shuns meeting of radical mosques

The Saharan Conundrum by NICHOLAS SCHMIDLE

Compiled by Syed Asadullah
4 Comments More..http://www.newageislam.com/
NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1194




Radical Islamism & Jihad
Missing the essence of Pakistani Talibanism

Pakistani Talibanism, as represented by Baitullah Mehsud in South
Waziristan and Maulana Fazlullah in Swat, is a slightly different
phenomenon. It may have originated as a side-effect of the Afghan war
but it has now mutated into something with a personality of its own.
With all its primitive and even barbaric permutations — the bombing of
schools, the insistence on what amounts to female segregation, the
slitting of throats — it is a revolt against the Pakistani state. Or
rather a revolt against the dysfunctional nature of this state.

Every Punjab town, large and small, has a mosque, if not more than
one, sympathetic to the Taliban brand of Islam. So at least there is a
handy network — a Ho Chi Minh Trail, so to speak — down which the
ideology of the Taliban can travel, whether we like this ideology or
abhor it being a separate issue altogether. If this were Nepal this
would be a Maoist uprising. If this were a Latin American country it
would be a peasant or a Guevarist uprising. Since it is Pakistan, the
revolt assaulting the bastions of the established order comes with an
Islamic colouring, Islam reduced to its most literal and unimaginative
interpretations at the hands of those leading the Taliban revolt. But
then we know that with our Pakhtoon brothers there are no halfway
measures. They are given to extremes. No wonder then if evangelicalism
in their hands has descended to primitivism and barbarism.-- Ayaz Amir

More.http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?
ArticleID=1197



Islam, Women and Feminism
Islam says let love blossom: Reflections on Saint Valentine’s Day by
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

Before reading this article I should warn you that it might be
considered subversive. It may lead you into the paths of disbelief.
Beware dear reader, for we are about to discuss Valentine’s Day. --
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

'Islam must not be used to discriminate against women' by SHAHANAAZ
HABIB

Militant group issues Valentine’s Day threat through emails
1 Comments
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ArticleID=1195




Islamic World News: Saudi pregnant gang-rape victim gets 100 lashes
for adultery

2. Yemen: New law moves to reduce child marriages,

gives women greater legal protection
Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Rights by NAZILA FATHI

4. Somali Woman Rejects Islam with a Vengeance by Nick Gier

5. Al Qaeda & Taliban’s threat to India & Pakistan by Satbir Singh
Bedi

6. Twenty years on, Salman Rushdie still in shadow of fatwa

7. The Saudi Connection to the Mumbai Massacres:

Strategic Implications for Israel by Col. (res.) Jonathan Fighel

8. Malaysia Again Stamps Mark In Islamic World by Yong Soo Heong

9. Conservatism and politics of fatwa by M. Syafi'i Anwar

10. Dutch anti-Islam filmmaker sent home by Stephanie Kennedy

11. Anti-Islam Dutch MP held at Heathrow airport in London

Compiled by Syed Asadullah
More.http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?
ArticleID=1191

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