Muslim Heretics Conference

The BBC’s Sadeq Saba has visited the Iranian holy city of Qom, the spiritual home of Iran’s conservative Islamic establishment and the source of some of the most outspoken dissent against the system.

Qom is one of the main centres of Shia learning in the world and many of the country’s senior clerics live in the desert city.

It was from the city that Ayatollah Khomeini started his drive to establish an Islamic system of government in Iran, eventually succeeding in 1979.

THE DISILLUSIONED FORMER SUCCESSOR

“Welcome to your house.”

This is how I was greeted in English when I met Grand Ayatollah Hossain-Ali Montazeri at his home in Qom.

He told me he had learnt a little English when he was a political prisoner under the Shah. This was my first meeting with one of Iran’s highest ranking clerics, also one of the Islamic Republic’s outspoken critics.

Sadeq Saba at the shrine of a revered female Shia saint in Qom

He had a pleasant smile and a warm presence. He sat behind his desk and invited me to sit next to him in an armchair.

I immediately felt at home. His son Ahmad, also a cleric, and one of the ayatollah’s assistants, was filming the meeting and a friend of mine were also present.

Ayatollah Montazeri, who is in his mid-80s, looked a little frail. He told me the medication for his prostate problem made him feel sleepy all the time.

His house is located in the centre of the city near the shrine of Hazrate Masoumeh, one of the most revered female saints in Shia Islam. It is an old and modest house which serves as both his residence and his office.

While I was waiting to meet him I saw dozens of his followers from all over Iran coming to the office to ask his guidance on religious questions.

Hardline supporters of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, attacked this house in 1997 when Ayatollah Montazeri questioned the unaccountable rule exercised by the supreme leader.

The damage to the building was extensive and he was lucky not to be physically harmed. He was immediately placed under house arrest which lasted for more than five years.

During our hour long conversation he repeatedly expressed regret for accepting the role of designated successor to the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Khomeini.

He was given the position a few years after the Iranian revolution because he was seen as the co-leader of the revolution and as somebody who was instrumental in writing the country’s new constitution.

I asked him what it was that finally triggered his split with Ayatollah Khomeini, just a few months before the latter’s death in 1988.

He said one day one of his associates, a cleric, came to him in panic saying his 13-year-old daughter was in danger of execution on suspicion of supporting an opposition group.

Ayatollah Montazeri said he did his best to prevent the execution but to no avail.

Ayatollha Montazeri was once the designated successor to Khomeini

He said he was gradually becoming disillusioned by the human rights abuses under the new government but he emphasised that the killing of that little girl led him to write his famous scathing letter to Ayatollah Khomeini warning him that the behaviour of his intelligence ministry was worse than that of the Shah’s secret police.

Ayatollah Montazeri has a large following because of his status as a senior theologian.

He is known as a key reformist who is trying to adapt Islam to the needs of the modern world by issuing progressive fatwas (religious rulings).

I asked him how the Sharia law that sanctions the killing of Muslims who convert to other religions could be justified.

His answer has far-reaching implications for the Muslims around the world.

He said that if a Muslim converted to another religion on his free will and after a careful study, his choice must be respected and his rights protected.

He said the Prophet Muhammad ordered apostates to be killed because his enemies were deliberately converting to Islam and then converting back to their old religions in order to give Islam a bad name.

He emphasised that such a ruling doesn’t apply to the modern world and people should be free to choose their religion.

Ayatollah Montazeri strongly criticised the recent parliamentary elections in Iran. He said the mass disqualification of candidates meant that the new MPs were not actually elected by the people but rather appointed by the authorities.

He thanked the BBC for reporting news of his house arrest.

His son Ahmad said the Iranian government intended to erase his father’s name from people’s memory by placing him under house arrest. But he said thanks to the BBC Persian service, his father’s followers and the public in general were kept informed about what was happening to him.

Ayatollah Montazeri said he always listened to the BBC Persian service even when he was the second most important leader in Iran.

At the end of the meeting he gave me a selection of his new books and a CD containing his celebrated speech in 1997 when he questioned the legitimacy of Ayatollah Khamenei’s rule.

As I left his house I was stopped by a man who didn’t introduce himself. He asked me a few questions about who I was and what I was doing in Ayatollah Montazeri’s house.

THE ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE

Ayatollah Montazeri is not the only senior cleric in Qom who does not approve the regime in Tehran.

I met another prominent theologian who emerged as an opponent of the new Islamic government when Ayatollah Montazeri himself was in power.

Grand Ayatollah Sadeq Rouhani was one of the first senior clerics to be placed under house arrest under a direct order from Ayatollah Khomeini just a few years after the Iranian revolution.

He greeted me warmly at his house. Although in his mid-80s he looked remarkably healthy and energetic. Senior clerics in Iran seem to live long lives.

Ayatollah Rouhani insists on his pre-eminence among all ayatollahs

He sat in his chair as I sat on the floor next to him. He was very proud of his writings on Islamic theology and his library of thousands of books arrayed on the bookshelves behind him.

In contrast to Ayatollah Montazeri, Ayatollah Rouhani is a traditionalist theologian and his opposition to Ayatollah Khomeini was from a more conservative viewpoint.

He told me his differences with the new government sharpened when Ayatollah Montazeri was selected as the future leader of Iran by a clerical assembly in the early 80s.

He said he had nothing against Mr Montazeri personally and no leadership ambitions himself.

In his opinion, Ayatollah Rouhani said, the supreme religious leader of an Islamic state should not be selected by an assembly of other clerics, but rather chosen by divine powers.

Ayatollah Rouhani was so angry at the selection of Ayatollah Montazeri that he publicly declared Ayatollah Khomeini’s government un-Islamic.

Armed security forces immediately attacked his house in the middle of the night and he was put under house arrest for 15 years.

Ayatollah Rouhani opposed a range of other government policies and disapproves of such things as the playing of chess and listening to music.

In the middle of our meeting, a cleric from Iran’s state television station came to seek the ayatollah’s opinion regarding a television drama they were planning to make.

He introduced himself as the religious adviser to the TV station and said the programme was about love affair between young Sunni-and-Shia mixed couple in western Iran.

He wanted to make sure that Ayatollah Rouhani wouldn’t oppose the programme when it goes on air.

The ayatollah was reluctant to approve the project and the cleric had to leave after more than half an hour of futile attempts to convince him.

Ayatollah Rouhani told me that over the past years, Iran’s supreme leader has repeatedly tried to meet him but he has always refused.

He told me that he was the highest Shia authority in the world and nobody, including Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, could be compared to him.

THE LIBERAL

Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei’s house was my next destination. I had no prior appointment but when his assistant told him that I was from the BBC he greeted me warmly.

It was evening by this point and Ayatollah Sanei was sitting on a chair in a large room with about 200 of his followers all sitting on the floor and chatting to each other. He told me that he held such gatherings every night.

Ayatollah Sanei is seen as one of the most progressive theologians in contemporary Iran.

He was the highest judicial authority under Ayatollah Khomeini but later decided to move to Qom to devote his life to theological issues.

He has so far kept himself out of trouble with the government by not publicly challenging the authority of the leader - he has probably learnt from the example of Ayatollahs Montazeri and Rouhani.

But the conservative press regularly attack him for his unconventional religious rulings.

A few years ago he caused uproar in conservative religious circles by declaring that women were completely equal to men in all aspects of political and social life and went as far as saying that a woman could even become the supreme religious leader.

The ayatollah’s views are in total contrast to his brother’s, Ayatollah Hassan Sanei, who as the chairman of an Islamic charity put a bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head after his book The Satanic Verses was deemed blasphemous.

CLERICAL WEDDING PARTY

After leaving Ayatollah Sanei I went to a wedding party with a friend. Both the bride and groom’s father were clerics. They had hired a modern public hall in the city for the wedding.

I have never been to such weddings and I was curious to know how clerics, their families and friends celebrate weddings.

When I was introduced to the bride’s father as a BBC journalist he treated me as a guest of honour and asked me, jokingly, to broadcast the ceremony live on the radio.

Women and men were separated. The groom was the only man allowed to the women’s section where the bride was sitting.

When he came to greet us one by one I noticed that he was wearing a Western-style suit with bow-tie and his hair cut was ultra-modern, a style usually disapproved of by the authorities.

The groom’s close friends were all wearing bow ties. In fact most of the guests were wearing ties. Ties are normally frowned upon of as a western or imperialist import in Iran. I was one of the few guests without a tie!

Food, fruits and sweets were plentiful - the only thing missing was alcohol.

There was no music apart from two male singers with beautiful voices who sang unaccompanied for part of the evening.

I asked a cleric who was sitting next to me whether the groom’s father approved his son’s outfit and hairstyle. He said the poor father had no say in the matter.

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Visiting Iran’s ayatollahs at Qom

PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSLIM JOURNAL

IMAM W. Deen Mohammed

Muslim leader brings message of unity to Tacoma

By Matt Nagle

Tacoma Weekly
mattnagle@tacomaweekly.com
Published on: July 03, 2008

PHOTO COURTESY OF MUSLIM JOURNAL

IMAM W. Deen Mohammed

On July 8, the leader and international spokesman for the largest Muslim community in America will be in Tacoma for a dinner reception and speaking engagement at the Oasis of Hope Center. Imam W. Deen Mohammed will bring with him a message of religious and racial unity, which he will present in a free public address titled “True Human Essence and the Nature Upon Which It Was Created.”

Imam Amir Abdul-Matin is founder of the Islamic Education and Community Center of Tacoma and it was he who invited Imam Mohammed to Tacoma. He explained that while the center is not housed in a physical location, it is a “virtual” center of activity based on ideas and grassroots organizing focused on bringing people of all races and religions together to foster understanding and human connection.

Imam Abdul-Matin praised Imam Mohammed for his vision and wisdom, and said Tacomans could learn a lot about the true nature of Islam, and themselves, by listening to the visiting scriptural scholar. He said society must rid itself of prejudicial attitudes toward one another and toward Islam, which is often maligned in the media due to a lack of knowledge about what the religion stands for.

“Religious and racial unity are what we need,” Imam Abdul-Matin said. “We have to break down these barriers and start getting people together and let the human come out. That’s what we are first: human beings.”

He provided a quote from Imam Mohammed that parallels this call for humans to embrace one another. “The world is fed up with petty issues of whites and blacks. We need to remove all doubts about Islam as a religion, not a social or political movement, but a religion that wants many of the same things as Christianity.”

“He’s my teacher. When I hear what he says, it meshes with my soul,” Imam Abdul-Matin said. “I know this is right because my heart tells me it’s right.

“Bringing back to the conscious mind what’s in the heart of the human being about their humanity – that’s what teaching the religion is.”

Imam Mohammed is the son of Elijah Muhammad, who was leader of the Nation of Islam until his death in 1975. Often at odds with his father and the ideology of the Nation of Islam, Imam Mohammed was expelled from the group several times, but became leader of the organization upon his father’s death. He then embarked upon a mission to reform the group to be more in line with traditional Islam. He brought about many changes, including opening up the previously black-only organization to include members of all races.

Today, he is the spiritual leader of an estimated 2.5 million Muslims. He is an esteemed member of The World Supreme Council of Mosques, The Peace Council, and an international president of the World Conference of Religion and Peace. He has met with countless world religious and political leaders during the past 25 years, including Pope John Paul II, and addressed a gathering of more than 100,000 at the Vatican at an interfaith conference on the “Eve of the New Millennium.”

“I want to make sure our Muslim people understand clearly what Islam is,” Imam Mohammed said. “I don’t want them to be confused by fanatics or radicals and some good people who have been hurt by the politics of their own countries. They’re trying to tell us what Islam is, and they’re distorting the facts about Islam.”

Imam Abdul-Matin explained that the root of the word “Islam” is “salaama,” which means to surrender, and also “salaam,” or peace. “Islam means total submission to the will of God…and Muslim means those who submit their wills to God. That’s what Islam means. It doesn’t mean a foreign religion over in the Middle East run by terrorists and extremists. The word in itself is defining the nature of the human being.”

Joining Imam Mohammed for his Tacoma engagement will be Dr. Dexter Gordon, director of African American Studies at University of Puget Sound, and Islamic scholar Imam Mohamad Joban, a full time imam (prayer leader) at Muslim Association of Puget Sound. Residing in Redmond with his wife and twins, Imam Joban is the current president of the Imam Fatwa Committee in Washington St

Muslim leader brings message of unity to Tacoma || Tacoma Weekly

Maajid Nawaz’s organisation deserves credit – but it does not have all the answers on how we should tackle extremism

All comments (43)

• Moral clarity. You get the feeling that’s what the folks down at Civitas want, and what they believe would exist if only the politically correct brigade stopped muddying the waters with its relativism and its harping on about the need to understand the causes of things. It’s only a lack of moral clarity that’s preventing the west facing down the scourge of Islamism, which is the greatest threat to our way of life (with the possible exception of the EU). Moral clarity means calling a spade a spade, and then shouting “spade, spade!” to anyone who’ll listen, or in this case, “Islamist, Islamist!”

Being a relativist of some conviction, then, I’m wary of Civitas and its offshoot, the Centre for Social Cohesion, which does exactly the opposite of what it says on the tin. Any group that has the enthusiastic backing of these two thinktanks needs to be treated with scepticism, I reason. The Quilliam Foundation, a Muslim counter-extremism outfit, has certainly been given the Civitas seal of approval, and this week its director, Maajid Nawaz, spoke about his aims at its offices in Westminster.

He deserves the benefit of the doubt, of course. Though Quilliam has already been criticised for pushing a rightwing agenda, its record is still too short to make a definitive judgment. Nawaz, at least, came across as an articulate man with a sincerely felt mission. The essence of that mission is to stop others falling into the trap that he did. He was recruited by the Islamist party, Hizb ut-Tahrir, when he was 16, and for years after that was at the forefront of its activities, founding the party’s branches in Pakistan and Denmark.

Groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, Nawaz believes, are Islamist (rather than simply Muslim) because they believe all of the following: that sovereignty lies with God; that sharia law must be enforced at the level of the state; that the ummah, or community of believers, forms a political entity; and that a re-established caliphate should expand to take over the world. Nawaz takes on these assumptions using theological and historical arguments. Those arguments boil down to the fact the Islamism doesn’t have any basis in the Qur’an or sunnah, or, indeed, in the way Muslims organised themselves for the 1,300 years up until the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

But isn’t there a danger in letting the Islamists – whose leading lights are well-versed in theology – define the rules of the game? Nawaz, for example, appealed to Ottoman efforts to reconcile Islam with the changed political realities of the 19th century as a model for our times, yet his main line of attack against the Islamists is to accuse them of innovation (or bid’ah). And he came out with the memorable line “anything can be interpreted in any way”, which, though undoubtedly true, doesn’t exactly help to convince people that your own interpretation is the correct one.

And it’s not great for moral clarity either. Perhaps that’s why Ken Minogue, a Civitas trustee, declared himself “put back on his heels” by the comment during the post-talk discussion. Minogue was also unhappy that the west’s failure to intervene in the Bosnian war had radicalised Nawaz. Muslims should forget about their grievances against the west because, he argued, Muslim-on-Muslim violence is far worse. Or, “Cars are always blowing up in some damn capital or another”, as he put it.

Iftikhar Malik weighed in with a more relevant point: Islam should be seen as a civilisation, and throughout its history religion has been intertwined with politics, just as in the Christian world. This would make Nawaz’s claim that Islam is a personal rather than a political identity an innovation, and, according to his own logic, just as bad as anything the Islamists were trying.

But, whatever the theological or historical validity of his position (and I’m beginning to feel that theology and history are somewhat red and herring-like when it comes to the causes of radicalisation), you can’t question his fervour. And that’s perhaps the key here. Nawaz is a man who slavishly devoted himself to a close-knit, disciplined organisation whose ideology informed his every action. Now he’s ditched it and thrown himself with similar gusto into picking apart that organisation. He’s writing a book. He gives talks and does broadcasts. And in some sense this frenzy of activity must feel like a way of righting the balance in his own extraordinary life.

Fascinating, on one level, but does it make the Quilliam Foundation a good place to go to for insights into the future of western Islam? Yahya Birt touched on this, perhaps, when he said that the net might need to be cast wider than Nawaz’s own journey when figuring out ways to combat radicalism. He’s probably right. Nawaz has learnt some important lessons - and he deserves credit for trying to share them - but they’re not the whole story. Things would be easy if they were. Sadly for Civitas, the world is a little more complicated than that.

David Shariatmadari: The Quilliam take on Islam is fascinating, but flawed | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Tahir Aslam Gora
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jun 26, 2008)

We Muslims view all aspects of life — economics, politics, family and universal realities — through religious lenses. But we are living in a world where not many nations are judging everything by religious standards any more.

In this situation, it seems much of the world expects us to shed our religious beliefs in order to share common human aspirations and developments.

When we don’t come up to the required standard of compatibility, our fellow citizens ask for reforms and reformers within the Muslim community who can help us to become compatible with rest of society.

Muslims have been striving for their own reforms through the ages. During the ninth and 10th centuries, Mutazalites, known as followers of rationality in Islam, encouraged reasoning and questioning within the theological orbits.

In modern times, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, brought a modern secular structure to Muslim Turkey in the 1920s. One may disagree with some of Ataturk’s actions, but good leaders are remembered for their overall reforming abilities, despite their blunders. Ataturk’s name surely stands for that.

More recently, Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a liberal Sudanese reformer and a voice of liberated Islam, was executed in a Khartoum prison in 1985 for committing apostasy.

Today, in a time when Islamic reforms are needed, we don’t find any notable momentum across Muslim nations.

But in Canada, interestingly, we can find some streaks of Islamic reform.

Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam Today, claims to be on the front line of Muslim reform through her two ventures, Project Ijtihad and the Moral Courage Project.

Ijtihad is a widely used term in talking about reforming Islam. It means an intellectual effort by Muslim jurists to reach independent religio-legal decisions.

The Muslim Canadian Congress is another strong voice to challenging Islamists in Canada and around the globe. This network of progressive Muslims, along with Homa Arjomand’s International Campaign against Sharia Court in Canada, was the real resistance on the ground to the potential imposition of Islamic sharia law in Ontario.

Asra Nomani, a well-known U.S. Muslim author, was an organizer of unprecedented Islamic prayer led by a woman, Amina Wadud, in the United States in 2005. Later on, the Muslim Canadian Congress organized woman-led prayer by Toronto Islamic scholar Raheel Raza. But these few happenings haven’t led to regular prayers led by women.

There is another dilemma for Islamic reform, in which, as in any movement, you can find divisions.

Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, at one point said Irshad Manji’s book, The Trouble With Islam Today, was not addressed to Muslims but, he wrote, “aimed at making Muslim-haters feel secure in their thinking.”

Today, Fatah says he regrets that.

“Looking back to the time I slammed Irshad Manji’s book, I now realize I was unfair to her. There were many redeeming points in her memoir, which I overlooked in my rush to judge it.

“For example, she was right in identifying systemic racism in the Muslim world as one of the cancers impeding a Muslim renaissance. I was wrong in overlooking that fact. Having said that, her allegation that I am anti-Jewish was amusing, considering the fact that some Islamist bloggers charge me with being a Zionist.”

Sonia Ahmed, the founder of Miss Pakistan Canada Beauty Pageant, is shaking Islamists by holding beauty contests and sending beauty queens to all world beauty pageants.

I am trying to initiate a movement of reformed Islam called the New Islam Movement, which aims to set up modern Islamic centres where gender segregation could be denounced and where modern arts and open debates could be carried on. My fellows and I strongly feel that reformation of Islam can be launched better “on the ground” than through lectures and Internet blogs.

In short, Canada seems the future base for reformation of Islam.

Tahir Aslam Gora is a Pakistani-Canadian writer living in Burlington. goratahir@yahoo.ca

TheSpec.com - Opinions - Canada’s a centre for Islamic reform

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands — Having run the polite-but-grim gauntlet of Dutch government security to gain access to Geert Wilders, I finally understood what the 24-hour security requirements of the man’s continued existence really mean: To make the survival of Western-style liberty in the Netherlands his political cause, this Dutch parliamentarian has to live under high-tech lock and key.

This stunning paradox, with no end in sight, illustrates how far political freedom in the West has already eroded. Think of it: For writing about the repressive ideology of Islam, for arguing against the inequities of Sharia (Islamic law), for making a video (”Fitna”) to warn about Islamic jihad, Wilders lives in his own non-Islamic country under a specifically Islamic death threat.

If it is politically incorrect to notice this, it is also indisputably true. True, too, is that, sans state security, this death threat could conceivably be carried out anytime, anywhere — from the picturesque streets outside the Dutch parliament, to the house Wilders hasn’t slept in since 2004. That, of course, was when, on an Amsterdam street, a Muslim assassin plunged a knife into Theo van Gogh’s corpse, thus attaching the Islamic manifesto threatening both Wilders and his then-parliamentary colleague, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with death.

Not long ago, political debate in the Netherlands met with, well, more political debate. Now, however, with a growing Muslim minority — and it’s politically incorrect to notice this, too — political debate sometimes meets with Islam-inspired political assassination. At least it has, traumatically, twice in recent years: once, with the 2002 murder of the anti-Islamic-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn by an animal rights activist who claimed Fortuyn was scapegoating Muslims; and the following year with the ritualistic Islamic murder of Van Gogh, director of “Submission,” a short video made with Hirsi Ali about Islamic mistreatment of women. In all, such Islam-inspired violence has been enough to chill Islam-inspired debate.

And that’s just the situation at home. This week, even as Amsterdam’s chief public prosecutor, Leo de Wit, announced that no charges would be brought against Wilders for “discrimination” or “incitement to hatred” related to Wilders’ writings or video (”We find Mr. Wilders’ remarks were limited to Islam as a religious movement,” De Wit said), Jordan announced it is bringing a “Fitna”-related criminal case against the Dutch parliamentarian.

In other words, Jordan will indict a Dutch politician according to Jordanian (read: Islam-inspired) law. “Jordanian authorities are not aiming to arrest” the Dutch leader of the Freedom Party, Radio Netherlands Online reports. “They say the decision to prosecute was taken in order to send a signal to the Netherlands.”

A “signal”? How about a gag? Of course, like other Western peoples, the Dutch seem content to censor themselves, happily mouthing multicultural platitudes that effectively rationalize their own culture’s Islamization. Not Wilders.

I recently asked the 44-year-old Dutchman what was stronger in his country: Islam or multiculturalism.

“Unfortunately, they are both strong,” he replied, seated in his lightly furnished but heavily guarded office. “But cultural relativism is the biggest problem.” He went on to explain: “Multicultural society would not be that bad — I don’t really believe in it — but it would not be that bad if, at least, we would be strong enough to say that our culture is better and dominant. But when you combine multicultural society with a dominant sense of cultural relativism, you are heading in the wrong direction. You are committing suicide when it comes to your own culture.”

He continued: “I am not advocating a monocultural society. I just want what the Germans call leitkultur (leading culture). I want our own culture to be dominant — not the only one, but to be dominant. I have a big problem with the cultural relativists who say every culture is equal. I don’t believe every culture is equal.”

Hoping to preserve the primacy of Western culture in this Dutch corner of the West, Wilders advocates a halt to Islamic immigration. “I’m not saying that every Muslim in the Netherlands is a criminal or a terrorist,” he explains. “We know the majority is not. Still,” he continues, “there is good reason to stop the immigration, because the more we have an influx of Muslims in the Netherlands, the strength of the (Islamic) culture will grow, and the change of our societies will increase.” He sees his efforts as “a fight against an ideology that I believe at the end of the day will kill our freedom, kill our societies and change everything we stand for.”

He’s right — and, yes, it’s politically incorrect to say that, too. Everything the West stands for, starting with freedom of speech, is already changing as our institutions, up to and including, for example, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, increasingly proscribe critical references, or indeed, any references to Islam. While it’s clear that the European manifestation of Islamic ideology has already killed Wilders’ personal freedom in the Netherlands, the general impact on freedom throughout the West has yet to be fully appreciated.

“I have a mission,” Wilders said. “I believe very strongly in what I say, and my party fortunately shares this view. And nobody in the Netherlands is doing (what I do). And somebody should. And I pay a high price for it.”

What is the expression — freedom isn’t free? This is literally and acutely the case when it comes to this heroic and dedicated Dutchman.

Townhall.com::Geert Wilders: Prisoner of Islam::By Diana West

Election victory: Hasina Khan and her Tory opponent, Simon Parkinson

Marcus Leroux

A female Muslim councillor has been subjected to a hate campaign by Muslim men in her ward, leaving her unable to visit some of the streets that she represents.

Hasina Khan, 38, the only Muslim councillor in Chorley, Lancashire, said that she had suffered a barrage of threatening phone calls, verbal abuse and insulting graffiti because the men objected her public role.

Mrs Khan, a mother of three, said: “I’ve had to totally change the way I go about my job. I used to do ward walks all the time, but now there are some streets I can’t even walk down.”

The hate campaign began when she put herself forward as a Labour candidate three years ago. “It is just a few members of the community who think I should be at home with a veil over my face, although if other people choose to do that, then I respect their choice,” she said.

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“However, I feel that if it was a male Asian councillor then he would be treated as a hero. Because I am a woman I get the opposite treatment. They can’t understand my mainstream views and those of ‘live and let live’ and how the British culture should be respected … It has been extremely hard for me and my family and if it wasn’t for my British constituents, I don’t think I would have been able to get through it.”

Terry Brown, the Mayor of Chorley, who represents the same ward as Mrs Khan, said: “Because she’s a female Asian woman their view is that she should be at home producing babies.

“It’s a shame. She’s a well-respected member of the community and … an exceptionally talented woman.”

Despite the campaign, Mr Brown insisted that there were no ethnic tensions in the area.

Mrs Khan, who blames the smear campaign on a small minority of Muslim men, said that she would not give into the threats. “This has gone on for too long and I will not sit back and let it happen any more … Nobody should have to go through this, especially an Asian Muslim woman, as Islam is very protective and fair with women. It isn’t just about me any more - it is about thousands of other women who are being held down by people who refuse to wake up to the reality that it is the 21st century.”

Dukandar Idris, the imam of Chorley’s Dawat ul Islam mosque, said that Mrs Khan should have taken her grievances to the mosque’s elders, rather than speaking out. He also questioned some of her claims: “Which streets can’t she walk down?”

He said that, as imam, he could not forbid Muslim women from standing for election, but he would be entitled to forbid his wife. “Because this is Britain, you cannot tell anyone what to do. I can tell my wife, but cannot tell other women, ‘You cannot do this and that’,” he said.

There is little participation by Muslim women in local government. Of the 19,400 councillors in England in 2006, 75 were women of Asian origin and 20 were from Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds. There are nearly six male Asian councillors for every female Asian councillor.

Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, urged Mrs Khan to go to the police. “It is unacceptable for anyone to be treated in this way. We want more Muslim men and women playing an active role in … politics.”

Muslim councillor Hasina Khan: I will not let male bigots win - Times Online

I went into the discussion “Who Speaks for Islam?” assuming that it would be an informative but relatively tame chat between two like-minded people. The speakers listed on the program–Irshad Manji and Dalia Mogahed–were both women intellectuals raised and educated in the West; based on their bios, it was hard to imagine either one of them advocating anything but a modern, democratic approach to the Muslim faith.

But as soon as I glanced at the stage, it was obvious that the discussion was going to be edgier than I’d expected. Manji was dressed in a funky orange top with butterfly sleeves, and she had uncovered hair in the spiky shape of a sea anemone. Mogahed, on the other hand, wore a beige blazer and long skirt, and her neck and head were hidden beneath a champagne-colored hijab. What followed was not a debate between an extremist and a liberal but a nuanced discussion between a moderate and a reformer. And that’s what made it riveting.

After greeting the Muslims in the room with “Salam aleykum” and the atheists with “How the hell are ya?”, Manji launched into a spirited defense of religious reform. The problem, she insisted, was that ordinary Muslims were afraid to forge a personal relationship with the texts. Instead of countering extremist interpretations with more tolerant readings of the same verses, Muslims were quietly looking to elite scholars and clerics to show them the way.

Mogahed responded, speaking more gently but no less articulately than Mogahed. She described the Muslim approach to analyzing the texts, a process known as ishtihad. Any man or woman has the authority to offer legitimate interpretations, she explained, as long as that person first puts in the requisite hours of work and scholarship. “But when we open it to simply anyone,” she argued, “what we risk is the ishdihad of ignorance.” In other words, giving unlimited authority to the masses will allow more Osama Bin Ladens to be born.

I found this argument oddly compelling, probably because I have a passing acquaintance with Orthodox Judaism. Unlike evangelical Christians who take the Bible at its word, Orthodox rabbis read scripture through the long lens of scholarly tradition. I’m not an observant Jew myself, and I’m baffled whenever I look at a page of the Talmud, where a single Hebrew verse gives rise to a maze of Aramaic interpretation. In a strange way, though, the Talmudic method encourages rigorous questioning even more than liberal Judaism does. It’s hard to argue with an independent thinker who announces, “Here’s what I think this verse means.” But when you’re poring over endless opinions on the semantics of a single word or the legal implications of a one-line commandment, it’s easy to get into lively debates about what the Torah is actually trying to say.

While I empathized with Mogahed’s position, it was hard to deny any of Manji’s arguments for Islamic reform. When Mogahed insisted that Bin Laden’s speeches were mere political rhetoric sandwiched between praisings of God and the Prophet, Manji pointed out Muslim extremists do justify their violence with actual verses from the Koran. Her argument reminded me of Christopher Hitchens’ point that a spark of religion can ignite ordinary human intolerance–say, bitter rivalries between football fans–into widespread catastrophe.

Unlike Hitchens, Manji feels that Muslims should continue to revere the Koran. But because imams and mullahs aren’t stepping forward to loudly counter extremist interpretations, she believes that ordinary Muslims need to take responsibility for their own scriptures.

Here are a couple of video segments that capture the essence of the debate. (Thanks to David Gibson and Colorado Audio Visual for filming this session.) In the first clip, Jeffrey Goldberg, who expertly moderated the session, asks the panelists to explain the power dynamic in Islam, and Manji presents her philosophy in a nutshell.

In the second clip, Mogahed offers an analogy to explain why Islam itself is not the root cause of extremist violence. I should add here that Mogahed’s assertions are based largely on her professional experience: she’s the executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and the book she wrote with John Esposito–also called Who Speaks for Islam?–is based on poll data from 50,000 Muslims in 35 nations.

The Atlantic at Aspen (July 02, 2008) - Islam Speaks for Itself (Video)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.: In the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Princess Wijdan Al Hashemi and her friend Aliki Moschis-Gauguet noticed that the only depictions they saw of Muslim women showed figures behind veils, oppressed by their cultures.

Moschis-Gauget said, “‘Do you see what’s going on the media?… Muslim women are being portrayed as women living behind long veils,’” said Al Hashemi, founder and director of the Royal Society of Fine Arts of Jordan. “She couldn’t stand the way Muslim and Arab women were being portrayed.”

Al Hashemi and Moschis-Gauguet, president of the Pan-Mediterranean Women Artists Network, turned to the world they knew best to find an answer: the world of art.

To combat what they saw as misperceptions about the Muslim world and Arab nations, the two women teamed up to create a traveling exhibit featuring female artists from Islamic countries. The show “Breaking the Veils: Women Artists From the Islamic World” began its three-year United States tour at the Clinton Presidential Library, where it will be on view through Sept. 14.

The exhibit features works by 52 women from 21 Islamic countries, from Algeria to Yemen. It previously toured 15 European cities and Australia.

Despite the show’s title, not all the artists are Muslim. Al Hashemi said some works are by Buddhists, Christians and Hindus from the Arab world.

“When we say the Islamic world, we mean the cultural world … not the religious world,” Al Hashemi said.

She said she is hopeful the works will eliminate stereotypes and misconceptions many have about Islam and Arab countries. For example, she said, many visitors have been surprised by the works of art that depict humans or animals. Although some Muslims oppose any art that depicts humans, Al Hashemi said such works are common throughout Islamic countries.

“The presentation of human images in Islam is only prohibited in mosques and places of worship to keep the Muslims from going back to worshipping idols,” she said. Al Hashemi calls the opposition to depictions of human figures an “extreme interpretation” to the Quran’s strict opposition to idolatry.

Some of the pieces touch on the political issues facing Islamic countries. A series of paintings by Laila Shawa, a Palestinian artist living in London, touch on the conflict between Israel and Palestinians.

Shawa’s silkscreen on paper work, “Amended Resolutions 1,” superimposes a United Nations resolution that established a special committee to investigate Israeli practices in occupied territories with the image of rubble, possibly a destroyed home.

A piece by Fahda Bint Saud of Saudi Arabia depicts three women whose faces and entire bodies are concealed by a veil — one covering her eyes, another her ears and the third her mouth.

The exhibit also includes a work by Al Hashemi, who wrote Arabic calligraphy in several colors on layers of handmade paper.

“It says, ‘He is Love,’” she said as she toured the exhibit before its opening at the Clinton library.

Most of the artists featured won’t be on hand for its U.S. tour. After Little Rock, the art will be displayed at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg beginning in October, said Susan Anderson, executive director of the ArtReach Foundation, which is presenting the paintings during its U.S. tour.

Nawal Abdullah, a painter living in Amman, Jordan, said in a telephone interview that she hoped the exhibition would bridge a gap between the cultures. By showing the art of the Islamic world, she said, the exhibit shows that there are more similarities than differences between the United States and Islamic countries.

“Art for me is my language,” said Nawal Abdullah. “It’s a means for a need to communicate the true feelings. I hope that people will understand me and they will all feel the same language

Exhibit aims to shatter US stereotypes of Islam - International Herald Tribune