Muslim Heretics Conference

If the British Government is attempting to interfere in the Muslim community on matters of Islam by funding a board of theologians, it is being wrong-headed as such a panel would have no credibility in the eyes of the Muslims.
Other governments have tried to impose their views to control Islam and have failed. It has been counter-productive and divisive. It will be perceived that the whole strategy of the UK Government on tackling extremism is to target not just violent extremists but Islam itself.
Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears, said last month, the Government?s latest package of measures was part of ?Winning Hearts and Minds? of the Muslim community. The launch of ?Preventing Violent Extremism: Next Steps for Communities? included funding a board of some 20 theologians, who have yet to be named, under the auspices of Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Blears also said the Government would train young Muslims ?to stand up to violent extremists? and help them ?understand how their faith is compatible with wider shared values.? The assumption is that young Muslims are ignorant of their faith and that the Government is best placed to educate them.
The Communities Secretary told BBC Today programme, before the announcement of her measures, that she knows of British Muslim groups who have said that ?Israel should be wiped off the face of the map? and that the Government will not engage with them. She did not say which these groups are or whether the boycott includes anyone who criticises Israel for breaching international and humanitarian laws.
Another measure targeted at Muslims and not other faiths is the development of new citizenship materials and training packages for mosque schools. It seems the aim is to have Government-approved Islamic education, including the teaching of the Qur?an, in compulsory citizenship classes in mainstream schools.
Ministers appear to have set their eyes on another Reformation akin to when the Church of England was set up to break away from Catholicism and affected the way Christianity was practised five centuries ago. It led to the dissolution of monasteries and long periods of persecution of the Catholics, with many of their rights not restored until the 19th century. From the onset, the dispute was largely political not religious, a parallel that seems to be missed.

The Muslim News - Government?s interference in Islam will fail

He is one of the world’s foremost scholars of Islam and the Middle East. Bernard Lewis shares his thoughts on Iraq, “Islamofascism,” the roots of terrorism, and the two biggest misperceptions about the Muslim faith.

From the Jan./Feb. 2008 issue of Foreign Policy: “A World Without Islam,” by Graham Fuller.

Remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.

Foreign Policy: What do you see as the biggest misperception about Islam?

Bernard Lewis: Well, there are two. Sometimes one, sometimes the other, predominates. It depends when and where. I would call them the negative one and the positive one. The negative one sees Muslims as a collection of bloodthirsty barbarians offering people the choice of the Koran or the sword, and generally bringing tyranny and oppression wherever they go. And the other one is the exact opposite, what you might call the sanitized version, which presents Islam as a religion of love and peace, rather like the Quakers but without their aggressiveness. The truth is in its usual place, somewhere between the extremes.

FP: Do you believe in the “clash of civilizations” theory of Samuel P. Huntington, that the Islamic world and the West are destined to butt heads?

BL: Well, I don’t go into destiny; I’m a historian and I deal with the past. But I certainly think there is something in the “clash of civilizations.” What brought Islam and Christendom into conflict was not so much their differences as their resemblances. There are many religions in the world, but almost all of them are regional, local, ethnic, or whatever you choose to call it. Christianity and Islam are the only religions that claim universal truth. Christians and Muslims are the only people who claim they are the fortunate recipients of God’s final message to humanity, which it is their duty not to keep selfishly to themselves—like the Jews or the Hindus or the Buddhists—but to bring to the rest of mankind, removing whatever obstacles there may be in the way.

So, we have two religions with a similar self-perception, a similar historical background, living side by side, and conflict becomes inevitable.

FP: You write in your chapter about radical Islam that most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and that most fundamentalists are not terrorists. That’s not self-evident to everyone, so can you just explain it a little further?

BL: Naturally we hear about the acts of terror. Nobody ever wrote a headline saying “a million people went peacefully about their business yesterday and did nothing.” Terrorism is very much the news of the moment and it is also the threat of the moment. It is a real menace, and I don’t wish to understate that or diminish it in any way. But if one assumes that that’s all there is to Islam, that’s a grave mistake, because terrorism only comes from one brand of Islam, and even that one brand of Islam is not entirely committed to terrorism. But for a terrorist movement, you do need mass support.

FP: I noticed that you use the term “Islamofascism” in the conclusion of your book. That term has been hotly debated. What do you think? Is it harmful or useful?

BL: Well, I don’t use it; I discuss it. I think one has to confront that this is a term that is used. I don’t like it because it’s insulting to Muslims. They see it as insulting to link the name of their religion with the most detestable of all the European movements. It’s useful in the sense that it does distinguish real Islam from “Islamofascism,” but I still feel that the connection is insulting, and I prefer to use the term “radical Islam.”

FP: A lot of analysts, and this is especially something you hear from political leaders in the Muslim world, say that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism—that these are completely separate issues. Is that a view that you subscribe to? Some people say that terrorism is largely caused by occupation or a response to U.S. policy, not Islam.

BL: Well, I can’t subscribe to it since the terrorists themselves claim to be acting in the name of Islam. There was one Muslim leader who said, not long ago, that it is wrong to speak about Muslim terrorism, because if a man commits an act of terrorism, he’s not a Muslim. That’s very nice, but that could also be interpreted as meaning that if a Muslim commits it, it doesn’t count as terrorism.

When a large part of the Muslim world was under foreign rule, then you might say that terrorism was a result of imperialism, of imperial rule and occupation. But at the present time, almost the whole of the Muslim world has achieved its independence. They can no longer blame others for what goes wrong. They have to confront the realities of their own lives at home. A few places remain disputed, like Chechnya and Israel and some others, but these are relatively minor if you’re talking about the Islamic world as a whole.

FP: Iraq, which used to be ruled by a Sunni ruler, is now being governed by Shiites. What does that mean in the context of Islamic history?

BL: I think it means a great deal. But what is important in Iraq is not that it’s being ruled by the Shiites, but that it’s being ruled by a democracy, by a free, elected government that faces a free opposition. It proves what is often disputed, that the development of democratic institutions in a Muslim Arab country is possible. A lot of people say, “No, it’s impossible. It can’t work. They can’t do it.” Well, it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible, and I think Iraq proves that. What is happening in Iraq I find profoundly encouraging. Of course, it is the ripple effect from Iraq that is causing alarm among all the tyrants that rule these countries [in the region]. If it works in Iraq, it could work elsewhere, and this is very disturbing [for tyrants].

FP: As someone who has spent so much time studying the Ottoman Empire, the history of Islam, and the region, is the future of Islam something that has a deep meaning to you personally? Where do you see the Muslim world headed in the next decade?

BL: I’m not a religious person. But I find things that are good and encouraging. Islam over the last 14 centuries has brought dignity and meaning to millions of drab and impoverished lives. It has created a great civilization that has gone through several different phases in several different countries. It is now going through a major crisis, and it could go either way. It could descend into a fanatical tyranny, which would be devastating for Muslims and a threat to the rest of the world. Or they may succeed in developing their own brand of democracy. When we talk about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world, it doesn’t have to be our kind. Our kind results from our own history and institutions. It’s not a universal model. They can, and I think will, develop their own brand of democracy, by which I mean limited, civilized, responsible government. And there are signs of that.

Bernard Lewis is professor emeritus at Princeton University and the author of dozens of books, most recently Islam: The Religion and the People (Upper Saddle River: Wharton School Publishing, 2008), coauthored with Buntzie Ellis Churchill.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4455&print=1

ROME: Dr Mohammad Al-Tabtabae, the former Dean of Kuwait University’s College of Sharia (Islamic law) and Islamic Studies, yesterday underlined the necessity for sincere efforts to be exerted by political, intellectual and religious powers to confront what he called a wide-scale and vicious campaign against Islam.
The Islamic world shoulders the responsibility of facing a smear campaign instigated against Islam, with such campaigns seeking to deliberately associate infrequent violent incidents committed by Muslim individuals with Islam itself, Al-Tabtabae said.
The former dean has been heading a high-ranking Kuwaiti academic delegation to the international conference on “Humanity in Islam,” which was hosted here.
Al-Tabtabae thanked the Italian authorities for hosting the conference for the seventh time, saying that the event had a deeply positive impact on the Muslim community here, as well as on the perception of Islam among Italians.
Al-Tabtabae also expressed gratitude to the Kuwaiti Embassy in Rome and the General Consulate in Milan for their immense efforts in participating in the organization of the conference.
The conference, which was held in the northern Italian city of Bersha on Aug 26, tackled several pivotal issues such as the status of the individual in the Holy Quran, humanitarian aspects in the life of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), issues of equality and justice, and worship from an Islamic perspective.
The conference issued a number of recommendations in the framework
of responding to the campaign launched against Islam and Prophet Mohammad, in addition to buttressing contacts among the one million-strong Muslim community in Italy.
The Kuwaiti delegation grouped professors Issam Al-Ghareeb, Yousef Al-Saqer, Abdulaziz Al-Mutawa, Walid Al-Ali, Bader Al-Mass and religious scholar Othman Al-Haidar. - KUNA

Wide-scale, vicious anti-Islam campaign should be confronted » Kuwait Times Website

Why we passed Fatwa on Islamic preacher with 86 wives –Imam Ashafa

Written by Emeka Mamah, Kaduna

Saturday, 30 August 2008

Mohammad Nureen Ashafa is the Imam of Ashafa Central Mosque, Tudun Wada, Kaduna; Vice President, Ashafa Mosque Foundation, as well as the Co-Executive Director of Interfaith Mediation Centre of Muslim-Christian Dialogue Forum, also in Kaduna.

He spoke to some media organisations on the implications of the death sentence [fatwa] passed on octogenarian Islamic preacher, Mohammed Bello Abubakar, by the Jama’tu Nasril Islam [JNI], for marrying 86 wives contrary to Islamic injunctions. Excerpts:

Do you support the fatwa passed on Mohammed Abubakar for admitting that he has 86 wives?

I strongly support the JNI fatwa. In Islam, if somebody claims to be a Muslim, he professes Islam and he wants to act in the name of Islam, then he has no legitimacy to marry more than four wives.
In Koran Chapter four, God made it very clear.

You are free to marry women of your choice; you can marry two, three, or four. However, if you feel you cannot do justice among them, marry only one wife. This scriptural text is not ambiguous. 

This is a direct instruction from God, so, anything that negates that injunction is not allowed. You cannot marry more than four wives. There is room for concubine in Islam. And that is why you see some royal fathers have four wives and they have concubines.

The history of concubine has to do with slavery, if you had women who are in your possession as slaves. This is because in those days, people bought slaves. It may no longer be fashionable in modern times but the law is still there.

If you have women as slaves, they can have children for you but you have to protect them, and give them the same honour you give your wives, though they are not legitimate wives. But Islam says if you want to be a man of honour, then give the slaves their freedom. This also goes to show that the institution of concubine is discouraged within the Islamic framework of social justice.

So, if somebody says he has 86 wives, and he claims to be a Muslim scholar, there is nowhere in the history of Islam that such a thing is accepted. Prophet Mohammed had more than four wives, he had nine wives but he had the wives before the law on limitation on the number of wives a Muslim can marry.

Traditionally, there was no limit to the number of wives a man can have. Islam took into consideration certain needs, social and emotional, sexual urge, all these are part of the things a woman needs in marriage. It is injustice if you do not provide these adequately for the woman. If she is commit adultery, what happens to her?

So, how do you share 86 wives in a year? It means that you cannot meet some of the women more than once in a week. In fact, it may not even be possible because we have 52 weeks in a year. So, if you see one every week, the others have to wait till the next year to take their turns. What is the legitimacy? There is no legitimacy for that in Islam. It is an abuse on the rights and dignity of these women. It is an abuse on the sanctity of woman-hood. It is an abuse to marry 86 wives in the name of Islam.

He can do that in the name of culture because there is no restriction on the number of women a man can marry, in most of the traditions.

He initially had two wives in Lagos but he claimed he saw a spirit telling him to marry as many wives as possible. No spirit controls a Muslim, it is God. This is unacceptable in Islam. I do not call for his head to be chopped off.  There are so many of them who do a lot of stupid things in the name of Islam. Women have rights, they have dignity and honour. Islam respects the dignity of women. If you cannot do justice to four wives, Islam says marry only one wife.

The truth is that the norm should actually be monogamy because it may be difficult for a man to treat four women equally. But, in exceptional cases, it is polygamy if you are strong. I am a polygamist because I have two wives and I try to give equal justice to the two of them. It is not enough for me to say that because I have enough money or houses then I should marry a third wife. A woman needs emotional satisfaction. That affection is part of the rudiments of marriage.

How does the man with 86 wives satisfy the sexual and emotional needs of these women? 

And the man is about 80 years old and the law of diminishing returns has caught up with him. If he were to be a younger person, then we may conclude that he takes Viagra or other stimulants but here we have a man who is about 83 years old having 86 wives.

One of the things that can nullify any marriage in Islam is when a man is not able to satisfy his wife sexually. If a man cannot meet the sexual needs of the wife, the woman is free to demand the dissolution of that marriage. It constitutes an abuse of Islam for any Muslim,anywhere to marry more than four wives.

But there are insinuations that the JNI did not follow the due process before giving the fatwa verdict and, again, there are no indications that the women are complaining that the man does not satisfy them as a husband?

In Islam, before a sentence is passed on an accused, he must be given the opportunity to defend himself. That is one. But there are certain things that somebody does that you no longer need to take evidence from anybody. Islam is based on oral and physical evidences. Islam does not accept pictorial evidence because an artist can manipulate a lot of things. The law says do not marry more than four wives but, here, a man says himself that he has 86 wives, and then under the Sharia, he is guilty. It is like a man who publicly declares that he committed adultery, he becomes liable and does not require further evidence to convict him.

The man said he has 86 wives, so, the fatwa committee does not need to sit him down to take evidence. The JNI gave the verdict based on the man’s confession that he has 86 wives.

He said the eldest wives are over 70 years old. He said so, and the television showed some of the wives, children, his house and so many other things.

Moreover, the JNI has offices in most parts of the north and in Minna. He claims to be a Muslim, so, the JNI does not need to meet him physically because he made the statement. If you say you have 86 wives, then JNI said he should no longer wear the toga of Islam, given his level of inconsistency with the Sharia law.

He has become a non-Muslim, given the level of his in conformity with the dictates of Islam.
The issue is not whether the women complain or not but it is about a golden rule. Of course, the women may not complain.

The issue is that he claims to be a Muslim and he ran foul of the law which says he should not marry more than four wives. If he were a traditionalist, he is free to marry as many women as he desires and nobody will complain. If a Muslim girl dresses half naked and begins to walk the streets, as a Muslim and an Imam, I have the right to caution and call her to order but if a Christian girl does the same thing, I do not have the right to talk to her because she is not a Muslim.

If a Muslim takes a bottle of beer and starts drinking in my presence and he claims to have a right to do that, I would take a cane and flog him right there if he is a member of my mosque because he is messing up the moral values of the Muslim community. The Islamic culture is unique because there are rules that guide the behaviours of a Muslim. That is why there is no compulsion in joining the religion of Islam.

A man has a right to decide to become a Muslim but he may not be free to just renounce the religion the moment he is in. There is no compulsion in Islam. You do not force people to come into the religion. However, when somebody willingly comes into it, it is not easy for him to say that he is leaving it.

He ought to have known the consequences before coming in. It is like being a citizen of America and tomorrow you say I am no longer an American citizen, I am now an Afganistan and I hate America.

You start condemning America. Will America let you go? It is treasonable felony because you have no right to be a citizen of Nigeria and sabotage the nation.

Islam has the same system within the religion. If a Muslim commits an act of treasonable felony, he is bound to get the capital punishment. If the man is taken to the court and claims to have forgotten that he is expected to marry not more than four wives, the court may tell him that since he admits that it is wrong, he should leave all other women, give them compensation and let them go and retain only four women. So, he has to release 82 of the women and select the best four. The children are his as long as somebody else did not help him to sleep with the women. He has to protect these children and give them the best. But if he dies now, who takes care of those children? One hundred and seven children? Who will take care of them? Should I help do that?

The answer is definitely no, because I have my children. If what that man does is in the name of Islam, he is very wrong. He should come out to defend himself. He should renounce 82 0f the women and hold on to only four. If he does that, he has a better future.

But several Emirs and other rich Muslims have more than the prescribed four wives. If this man did not speak, nobody would have known. Are there mechanisms that the JNI can use to determine those who flout the law and perhaps also sanction them?

If you have more than four wives and you do not say it, the Sharia would not know anything about it. If you do not confess that you have more than four, nobody dares say anything because you have your privacy and your privacy is well protected in Islam.

You do not intrude into the privacy of others and that is why if you claim or suspect that some-one sleeps with a certain woman without having actually caught them in the act, you will receive 40 lashes.

So, if anybody has more than four wives, either as a king, politician or businessman, as long as he does not come out openly to say so, it is left for him and his Lord. A day will come when he will account for his misbehaviour.

There are four basic principles of marriage. There must be the interest across the parties. You do not hijack a woman and give to a man.

They must be interested in each other. There must be love. There must be acceptance by the families of the couple.

There must be legitimacy of the dowry and there must be that willingness on the part of the man to satisfy all the emotional needs of the woman, within the Sharia.

What is the implication of the fatwa proclaimed on this man?

It simply means that he is a persona non grata as he is no longer recognized as a Muslim. People call him a Muslim leader but this fatwa has removed that title from him. He is no longer recognized as a Muslim and he does not represent Islam in any way. Whatever he does negates the principles of Islam.

A Muslim is free to do anything he wishes to do as long as whatever he does is not inconsistent with the Sharia law. If he does anything that does not conform to the principles of Sharia, the Sharia puts a bar and says you cannot cross. You cannot live in Islam with that.

Must he be killed because it is believed that fatwa means that he must be killed?

That is a different matter entirely.  Fatwa simply means opinion on very controversial issues affecting the Muslim Ummah, in order to check certain excesses or behaviour that may pollute the image of Islam in the eyes of the world.

Fatwa is the Islamic position on certain issues. In his own case, the fatwa does not mean he should be killed. But the content of the fatwa determines if he should be killed.
But even if the fatwa says he should be killed, that does not mean that one person should go and kill him.

He has to be taken before the court of law and the court will give a verdict after giving him some time to defend himself. Except in a situation where he says he is not going to defend himself, that he did it.

In Islam, there are certain behaviours equivalent to treasonable felony and can warrant capital punishment. No individual has the right to execute such punishment; it has to be done by a constituted authority that is the Sharia court in Islam. 

The leadership [JNI] has given an opinion; it is now left for him to be taken to a court of law for him to defend himself. 

Vanguard Online Edition

A woman swathed in black to her ankles, wearing a headscarf or a full chador, walks down a European or North American street, surrounded by other women in halter tops, miniskirts and short shorts. She passes under immense billboards on which other women swoon in sexual ecstasy, cavort in lingerie or simply stretch out languorously, almost fully naked. Could this image be any more iconic of the discomfort the West has with the social mores of Islam, and vice versa?

Ideological battles are often waged with women’s bodies as their emblems, and Western Islamophobia is no exception. When France banned headscarves in schools, it used the hijab as a proxy for Western values in general, including the appropriate status of women. When Americans were being prepared for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were demonised for denying cosmetics and hair colour to women; when the Taliban were overthrown, Western writers often noted that women had taken off their scarves.

But are we in the West radically misinterpreting Muslim sexual mores, particularly the meaning to many Muslim women of being veiled or wearing the chador? And are we blind to our own markers of the oppression and control of women?

The West interprets veiling as repression of women and suppression of their sexuality. But when I travelled in Muslim countries and was invited to join a discussion in women-only settings within Muslim homes, I learned that Muslim attitudes toward women’s appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband. It is not that Islam suppresses sexuality, but that it embodies a strongly developed sense of its appropriate channelling - toward marriage, the bonds that sustain family life, and the attachment that secures a home.

Outside the walls of the typical Muslim households that I visited in Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt, all was demureness and propriety. But inside, women were as interested in allure, seduction and pleasure as women anywhere in the world.

At home, in the context of marital intimacy, Victoria’s Secret, elegant fashion and skin care lotions abounded. The bridal videos that I was shown, with the sensuous dancing that the bride learns as part of what makes her a wonderful wife, and which she proudly displays for her bridegroom, suggested that sensuality was not alien to Muslim women. Rather, pleasure and sexuality, both male and female, should not be displayed promiscuously - and possibly destructively - for all to see.

Indeed, many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualising Western gaze. Many women said something like this: “When I wear Western clothes, men stare at me, objectify me, or I am always measuring myself against the standards of models in magazines, which are hard to live up to - and even harder as you get older, not to mention how tiring it can be to be on display all the time. When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual, not an object; I feel respected.” This may not be expressed in a traditional Western feminist set of images, but it is a recognisably Western feminist set of feelings.

I experienced it myself. I put on a shalwar kameez and a headscarf in Morocco for a trip to the bazaar. Yes, some of the warmth I encountered was probably from the novelty of seeing a Westerner so clothed; but, as I moved about the market - the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me - I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity. I felt, yes, in certain ways, free.

Nor are Muslim women alone. The Western Christian tradition portrays all sexuality, even married sexuality, as sinful. Islam and Judaism never had that same kind of mind-body split. So, in both cultures, sexuality channeled into marriage and family life is seen as a source of great blessing, sanctioned by God.

This may explain why both Muslim and Orthodox Jewish women not only describe a sense of being liberated by their modest clothing and covered hair, but also express much higher levels of sensual joy in their married lives than is common in the West. When sexuality is kept private and directed in ways seen as sacred - and when one’s husband isn’t seeing his wife (or other women) half-naked all day long - one can feel great power and intensity when the headscarf or the chador comes off in the the home.

Among healthy young men in the West, who grow up on pornography and sexual imagery on every street corner, reduced libido is a growing epidemic, so it is easy to imagine the power that sexuality can carry in a more modest culture. And it is worth understanding the positive experiences that women - and men - can have in cultures where sexuality is more conservatively directed.

I do not mean to dismiss the many women leaders in the Muslim world who regard veiling as a means of controlling women. Choice is everything. But Westerners should recognise that when a woman in France or Britain chooses a veil, it is not necessarily a sign of her repression. And, more importantly, when you choose your own miniskirt and halter top - in a Western culture in which women are not so free to age, to be respected as mothers, workers or spiritual beings, and to disregard Madison Avenue - it’s worth thinking in a more nuanced way about what female freedom really means.

Naomi Wolf is the author, most recently, of The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot and the upcoming Give Me Liberty: How To Become An American Revolutionary, and is co-founder of the American Freedom Campaign, a US democracy movement.

Behind the veil lives a thriving Muslim sexuality - Opinion - smh.com.au