Muslim Heretics Conference

The Taliban have perpetrated another barbaric act in the name of Islam – and all Muslims have a duty to condemn them

Comments (68)

•  Ziauddin Sardar

The murder of aid worker Gayle Williams is an atrocious act. The fact that it has been justified on religious grounds is an abomination. As a Muslim I feel ashamed that such a barbarity has been perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Williams, who worked for the Christian charity Serve, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle as she walked to her office in Kabul. For over two decades, motorcycle assassinations have been a regular feature of the Afghani and Pakistani landscape. And the murderers have, more often than not, turned out to be religious fanatics. The responsibility for this particular shooting was readily claimed by the Taliban.
Williams was killed simply for being a Christian. “Our leaders issued a decree to kill this woman”, said a Taliban spokesman, because she “came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity”. The fact that “this woman” was a woman was also clearly held against her. As such, her cold-blooded murder was legitimate and had religious sanction in the mental universe that the Taliban inhabit.

Who and what are the Taliban? The majority of their members are young students groomed in seminaries that operated in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation and hard-fought Afghan guerrilla war. The seminaries, financed by Saudi dollars, expounded a particular interpretation and approach to Islam – the totality of dogma as necessary detail, prescriptive dos and don’ts. The objective of the Taliban is to institute an Islamic utopia in Muslim Afghanistan. Like all utopias, religious or secular, it is a restrictive, totalitarian, nightmarish vision.

This vision of Islam, like any utopian project, must clear away imperfections, the unacceptable, the intolerable, the distracting, and create ground zero, the purified territory on which, alone, true righteousness can exist. The fact that Islam has existed in Afghanistan for over a thousand years does not make it Islamic in the eyes of the Taliban. To become truly Islamic, Afghanistan has to be forced to return to an idealised history when Islamic time began and all was perfect. Nothing can be allowed to stand against this endeavour. And all actions, however murderous and criminal, are justified in the pursuit of this goal.

This is why the Taliban hate everything that does not fit their criteria for being Islamic. They execute women who do not cover their hair without a qualm. They behead those who do not support an Islamic beard, which should sprawl unconfined and not be neat and trim. So far this year, they have killed 29 aid workers for simply being foreigners, Christians, or different.

Every act, however barbaric and evil, is celebrated and seen as a step forward towards their ultimate goal. The Taliban see themselves as heroes, engaged in a life and death struggle to recreate an imagined Medina in the time of the Prophet Muhammad. Their disaffection with everything that exists today is zealous to the minutest detail. Oh, and it is certain, unquestioningly certain of the rectitude of all its answers to any and all problems.
That is why Gayle Williams will not be the last innocent person to be brutally killed simply for being different or for serving humanity. There will be many more as long as the Taliban exist. For the Taliban have no notion of humanity, nor do they subscribe to anything that can be remotely described as humane. Such a notion of Islam can only be condemned, in the strongest terms possible, by all people of faith. Muslims need to do much more than simply distance themselves from the inhumanity of the Taliban. We need to take positive steps to do something about this evil.

Ziauddin Sardar: The Taliban’s killing of Gayle Williams was a barbaric act all Muslims should condemn | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Appearance provokes debate among student groups

Written by POOJA KUMAR

Published October 21, 2008

Nonie Darwish, author and public speaker, will be visiting UC Davis on Wednesday, Oct. 22 at 8:30 p.m. in 1100 Social Sciences. Hosted by the Davis College Republicans, the title of her presentation is “Searching for Peace Within.”

“From the side of my culture, the Middle East, I will start by saying every culture has challenges with peace and we might end the finger-pointing,” she said.

Darwish, author of Now They Call Me Infidel, will begin her speech by delving into her upbringing and introducing her perspective on peace between cultures. She will also discuss women’s rights in the Middle East and her belief that American Muslims need to speak up.

Darwish was born in Cairo, Egypt and grew up in Gaza. In 1978, she moved to America and became a Christian.

“I don’t consider [that] I left Islam,” she said. “Islam left me. When I went to mosques in America the atmosphere was very anti-Semitic. I was told, don’t assimilate in America. I lived with that religion for a long time I didn’t want to go anymore. The way Islam is brought today is very anti-women and very anti-minority. Islam law is very oppressive of women and minorities. I could not reconcile that and stay a Muslim.”

After the events of 9/11, Darwish started speaking out against radicalism, hate speech and violence.

“The human rights of 3,000 were taken by people whose religion told them to do so,” she said. “They are following the words of their religion literally. And unfortunately I don’t just blame them; I blame their teachers and religious leaders. There is a lot of literal education of religion in the Muslim world going on right now. If the Koran says strike the hearts of unbelievers they go strike the hearts of unbelievers.”

Sept. 11 prompted Darwish to begin an online forum called Arabs for Israel that is for Arabs and Muslims who support the state of Israel and the cause of peace in the Middle East, according to the organization’s website. She soon started receiving e-mails of support from Arab readers, but the senders always told her to refrain from publishing their names.

“I thought there was a need for good and free-loving Arabs to speak out for their wish of peace for Israel but they are still afraid because it’s a taboo,” she said. “I created this as a forum to speak freely.”

Allison Daley, Immediate Past Chair for the Davis College Republicans said DCR invited Darwish to speak because she will be an interesting and different speaker who has a unique experience to share.

“People will be more open and aware that this going on. We want everyone to come with open hearts and open minds,” Daley said. “We believe that peace comes from the heart, from the individual. We hope that people take away that peace in the Middle East can be achieved and women’s right in the Middle East as well is a big issue. We want a message of peace and love and for everyone to be able to get along in the Middle East without killing.”

President of the Muslim Student Association Yussuf Abdel-aleem said Darwish takes examples from certain instances related to Islam and attributes them to the whole Muslim population.

“We don’t like people like Darwish to come because we feel they misrepresent and misconstrue Islam,” said Abdel-aleem, a senior political science major. “For example, she generally shows Islam as misogynist and chauvinistic, which is the case sometimes, but she can’t make the distinctions between cultural differences between the religion of the Islam and the reality of Islam, which 2 billion people of the world are practicing today.

“And she is part of what the Davis College Republicans are trying to do - to tarnish the image of Islam,” Abdel-aleem said. “I feel like half of what she says is for shock value.”

In response, members of DCR said all student groups are welcome to listen to Darwish and her experiences. DCR encourages people to come with open minds, Daley said.

“Obviously on a campus such as UC Davis the Republicans don’t have a great reputation,” Daley said. “We want people to understand that whatever the stereotype of Republicans might be, they should form their own opinion and meet us. We work towards peace and having people like Darwish who have a message of peace and hope.”

Darwish also said she is trying to speak out against only those who are radical.

“I know the majority of Muslims are good and peace-loving people and those are not the people I’m talking about,” she said. “I criticized Islam and I have the right to.”

“In my culture they are very sensitive to self-criticism and it is time to get over such views because I consider it a virtue [to criticize one owns culture]” she said. “How did we produce so many people who are ready to kill others? Not all Muslims but quite a few of them. Why did this happen? What did we do to produce them? There is something in our education or way we teach our religion.”

POOJA KUMAR can be reached at campus@californiaaggie.com.

California Aggie // Oct 21, 08 // Former Muslim author to speak on peace and human rights

When Islam meets Bridget Jones

Would you read this book? (Picture posed by model)

A romantic telling of the life of one of the wives of Islam’s prophet has caused controversy among some Muslims - and its publication has been indefinitely postponed in the UK amid fears of a violent reaction. But is The Jewel of Medina actually any good? Blogger Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is one of the few people in Britain to have read it.

The Jewel of Medina is a chest-heaving, brassiere-busting book of outrageously tacky historical romantic fiction.

Some parts of the media are suggesting that this book is at the forefront of defending free speech. The author wants it to reach out to solve our global problems of intercultural dialogue. Between them they had me rolling around on the floor laughing.

Even if you feel that it is your duty to read it in the defence of freedom of speech, don’t do it, I beg you - go out and enjoy the last sunny days of autumn, play with your children, watch paint dry - you’ll thank me for it.

Prophet Muhammad novel scrapped

The book claims to tell the story of Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad, through her own eyes, from the age of six, through adolescence and into adulthood. But although she lives through one of the most dramatic periods of history, the narrative conveys little of the enormity of the changes of the era, and of which Aisha was a huge part.

Sherry Jones, the author, says she wanted her book to be “at once a love story, a history lesson and a coming-of-age tale”.

In order to do so, she fabricates a storyline about a lover, Safwan, whom Aisha runs away with - but then decides to leave and return to Muhammad.

But this invented plot dominates, leaving barely any room for the real history and importance of her story.

Whether you believe her to be fact, fiction or fantasy, and Muslims believe her to be very real, Aisha is of great significance in global history. The one fifth of the world population who are Muslim regards her as the wife of the Prophet Muhammad and a “mother of the believers”.

WHO WAS AISHA?

Second wife of the prophet

Betrothed as a child

Arrangement described as a typical political union of the times

Aisha recorded his life and teachings

Regarded as a scholar

Dubbed ‘Mother of the Believers’

Buried alongside prophet’s companions

She is said to have been a leading scholar and teacher and recounted many of the traditions about the personality of Muhammad.

Muslims hold Muhammad, Aisha and other religious figures very close to their hearts, dearer to them than their own parents, and just as much to be respected, protected and defended.

Muslims believe they went through enormous hardship in order to keep the spiritual message of faith intact, and in return wish to honour their contribution.

This is to be carried out in a measured and peaceful manner, in keeping with the spirit of Islam that advises returning harsh words with good ones, and malice with mercy.

With this in mind, I would have ignored this book and let it fade into obscurity. Allowing the book to be remembered only for the lack of interest it generated would have been the ultimate poetic justice.

The original publisher pulled out - and those parts of the media who wanted to stir things up said Muslims wanted it banned.

So, in order to find out what the (manufactured) fuss was about, I found myself spending 12 dreary hours reading this cringe-worthy melodramatic prose.

Even if you feel that it is your duty to read it in the defence of freedom of speech, don’t do it, I beg you. Go out and enjoy the last sunny days of autumn, play with your children, watch paint dry. You’ll thank me for it.

Bodice-ripper

So let’s deal with its literary merits. If you’re a man, you’ll probably hate this bodice-ripper. If you like well-written prose, then you should steer clear too.

What it does have going for it is pace and saucy pre-TV-watershed romance.

Anyone who reads the book will see that it honours the prophet and his favourite wife

Sherry Jones, Author

Open it randomly and you read churning phrases such as: “His eyes like honey flowed sweet glances over my face and body,” or “Is your young bride ripe at last?” Grab a crumbling Flake and a pot of ice-cream.

The author claims she wants to humanise Aisha, to reach out to the Muslim world and to create debate.

I found the opposite of this spirit in the book. Muslims will not recognise the characters and stories here because they vary so wildly with recorded history. As the copyright note makes clear, this is a work of fiction.

Take, for example, the night of “Hijrah”. This was the moment when the first band of Muslims left the hostile city of Mecca to move to Medina where Islam flourished - a turning point in Islamic history. But the book changes events to place Aisha at the house of Muhammad.

Jones changes the very essence of these individuals, so their characters are at odds with historical traditions.

Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, as well as one of the great leaders of early Islam, is portrayed as conniving, hot-tempered and lascivious. The Islamic texts document him as a consistently staunch defender of truth and justice, an upstanding character.

So, if you drive a wedge between Muslims and others by fictionalising core characters, how can the book be a platform for debate?

Jones admits that she has introduced concepts that were absent from the period and place to help to create her story.

For example, Aisha is put into purdah, seclusion, as a child, but this is an Indian sub-continental idea then unknown to Arabia.

A huge focus of Aisha’s energies is to become the hatun, the lead wife, and make all the other wives bow to her. But hatun is a Turkish concept - and bowing is contrary to all Islamic teachings.

What we end up with is an outdated Orientalist reading of an exoticised woman.

Her angst is the angst of 19th Century Orientalists who couldn’t understand and therefore maligned ideas they found unfamiliar, such as veiling.

The result is an awkward unconvincing story, created to fit a pre-existing pre-determined idea of what life for Muslim women ought to be like. The cover art is The Queen of the Harem, a 19th Century Orientalist painting of a European-looking woman.

Sex, sex and more sex

The most irritating thing is its constant obsession with sex. The author sees it everywhere and in everything, and makes Aisha do the same. Her life is reduced to a parody of a smutty Bridget Jones diary.

I lost count of the references to “child bride”. Even till relatively modern times, marriage for women in their early teens was completely natural and common in parts of the world, including Europe.

Many Muslims will indeed be offended by this book, and they should make clear why they feel hurt. If our society upholds the right to offend, then the right to be offended goes with it. But it is respect and empathy for their feelings that Muslims want, not fear.

What we need for debate and discussion are accessible histories of all the key figures in Islamic history. As Muslims, instead of honouring these individuals blindly, we will accord them much more respect by opening our eyes to their achievements through critical re-examination of their lives. This cannot be done in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

Some Muslims oppose a style of writing and analysis that offers insights into the very human lives these individuals led.

I believe this opposition is misplaced, because that is what we already do with the words and deeds of the Prophet, known as the hadith: we read, empathise and re-apply the essence of those day-to-day experiences.

The crucial issue in creating positive understanding and dialogue through such writings is that they must be historically sound, and see the world through the experiences, morality and realities of the protagonists themselves.

Shelina Zahra Janmohamed’s is the author of the Spirit 21 blog. Her book, Love in a Headscarf, will be published in February 2009. Jewel of Medina, by Sherry Jones, is available from international book-sellers - but not currently on sale in the UK.

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | When Islam meets Bridget Jones

The Jewel of Medina: Is This Any Way to Treat the Prophet’s Wife?

By Azadeh Moaveni / London Monday, Oct. 20, 2008

Is it worth risking your life for the sake of a bodice ripper? That was the question I asked myself last spring, when I first read Sherry Jones’ novel The Jewel of Medina, a treacly romance starring the Prophet Mohammed and his favorite wife, Aisha. Now, The Jewel of Medina is at the center of an international controversy over issues from censorship and free speech to the idea of Islam versus Art.

In May, Jones’ publisher, Random House, canceled its contract with the author, citing sources who had warned that the book could incite acts of violence. Two publishers, Beaufort books in America and Gibson Square in the United Kingdom, picked up the novel; the former sped up its release this month to avoid acts of violence, while the latter, having suffered an attempted fire bombing of its offices in early October, said this week it was postponing publication indefinitely. I had been sent an early copy to blurb by Ballantine, a division of Random House, the company that is also publishing my own forthcoming memoir. When my scribbled notes in the margins went from “likely to offend?” to “certain to offend” to “fatwa!” I realized I needed to demur from offering a comment.

Since Random House dropped the novel, a heated and familiar debate (one could insert The Satanic Verses, the film Submission, or those infamous Danish cartoons for every mention of The Jewel of Medina) has erupted over whether Western civilization is once again being endangered by philistine Muslims who just don’t get the concept of free speech. As word about the novel spread across the Muslim internet, Salman Rushdie and a parade of commentators condemned Random House for sacrificing free expression to security concerns. Meanwhile, the most fierce judgment against the novel came last week from a radical Islamic organization in the United Kingdom, which called Jones an “enemy of Islam,” her book “blasphemy,” and warned of “deadly prospects for Jones and prospective publishers.”

Some critics, like Alvaro Varga Llosa writing in The New Republic, argue that “the book’s content is irrelevant to the discussion.” But others — the curious, or potential victims caught up in the threat of “deadly prospects” — will want to know what is causing such offense. Most likely to trouble Muslims is the novel’s overall lustiness, in particular the erotic encounters between Mohammed and Aisha, and the historically contrived sexual attraction between a married Aisha and a young, attractive Medinan. The book’s earliest critic, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of Texas, called it “soft pornography.” Of course, whether you would rate The Jewel of Medina’s erotic passages as porn, run-of-the-mill cringe-inducing sex scenes of the contemporary fiction variety or blasphemy is a matter of perspective, and taste.

The erotic trouble with the novel doesn’t end with its explicitness, however. For the sake of her racy narrative, Jones effectively rewrites Aisha’s biography and casts her in the role of near adulterer. Interpreted in light of the author’s modern, Western sensibility, this underscores Aisha’s power; her fictional Aisha has sexual urges and isn’t afraid to consider acting on them. She’s a woman in the Sex and the City mold. To lead her Carrie Bradshaw/Aisha to the brink of temptation, Jones subverts one of the key events in early Islam’s history, the incident of al-Ifk, or “The Slander.” The historical version has Aisha falsely accused of adultery, and ultimately exonerated by a surah (a revealed verse from the Koran) that also outlines the moral foundation of Muslim society. In Jones’s version, Aisha actually goes to first base.

In an interview published with the novel, Jones says that her objective was to “empower women, especially Muslim women.” But again, empowerment is a matter of perspective. Given that her narrative strips Aisha of the purity for which she is called the “Mother of the Believers,” and given the increasingly conservative social mores that hold sway among young Muslim women across the world, many would argue that the novel fails in this regard.

Jones’s treatment of Ali, the key imam of Shia Islam, the Prophet’s cousin and Aisha’s eventual political rival, is another flashpoint. While it would be impossible to write a novel from Aisha’s perspective without channeling her resentment of Ali, the problem is not Jones’s reproduction of this historically attested antagonism, but her cartoonish portrait of Ali as the Jafar villain out of Disney’s Aladdin. Jones undermines herself here with an astonishing insensitivity to Muslim sensibilities (the faith considers dogs ritually impure) by resorting to verbs usually reserved for dogs to describe Ali’s disagreeableness to Aisha. He points his sharp nose, sniffs for lies, barks — a virtual canine companion to the Prophet — and that’s all before the first chapter even starts.

To give The Jewel of Medina the full Edward Said treatment would take pages — for starters, Jones grafts foreign concepts (such as the Turkish notion of the hatun, or head of the harem) onto 7th century Arabia and conjures an atmosphere dense with exotic clichés (”I spread a smile thick as hummus across my lips”). Her Aisha is so thoroughly Western, indeed so thoroughly American, that she might as well have asked her father, upon being betrothed to the Prophet, “What am I, like, a sheep? Mohammed is old — ick. Can’t I wait for someone more fabulous?” But regardless of the novel’s literary deficiencies, the threat of violence that now stalks Jones underscores that the tensions that kept Salman Rushdie in hiding for nearly a decade have not faded — for writers and publishers wary of attack, and for aggrieved Muslims who feel their faith the target of perpetual insult.

The Jewel of Medina: Is This Any Way to Treat the Prophet’s Wife? - TIME

Caryle Murphy

• Last Updated: September 26. 2008 12:17AM UAE / September 25. 2008 8:17PM GMT

Riyadh // When the head of Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court recently declared that media officials responsible for airing immoral television programmes could be killed, his remarks provoked what has become a familiar response around the world.
Ridicule and scorn for Saudi Arabia, and more “proof” for Islamophobes of the “backwardness” of Islam.
Sheikh Lihedan’s remarks were not the only ones in recent months to trigger a spate of global eye-rolling.
In March, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al Barrak declared that two Saudi writers, whom he accused of expressing heretical ideas, should be put to death unless they recanted.
Another elderly sheikh, Abdullah bin Jibreen, told an interviewer on Al Majd TV, a conservative Riyadh-based religious station, that journalists “who insult scholars to shame or discredit them or undermine their authority … should be punished”.
Sheikh Jibreen’s suggested chastisements included “imprisonment for a long time”, being “removed from the positions they hold, or … flogging”.
There were other less frightening, but sometimes silly, pronouncements that caused non-Muslims to wonder why representatives of such a profound and spiritual religious tradition as Islam concern themselves with trivialities.
The most famous was a declaration by a member of the Saudi religious police, officially known as the Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, that dog-walking had become an unacceptable “phenomenon” in Riyadh. He demanded enforcement of 14-year-old ban on selling cats and dogs.
Then came a Saudi cleric bemoaning the fact that young children have become enamoured of such cartoon figures as Mickey Mouse even though Islamic law stipulates that mice should be killed.
Sheikh Mohammed al Munajid told Al Majd TV last month that sharia regards a mouse as “one of Satan’s soldiers”.
According to a translation of Sheikh Munajid’s statements by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, the cleric then said: “How do you think children view mice today – after Tom and Jerry? Even creatures that are repulsive by nature, by logic, and according to Islamic law have become wonderful and are loved by children. Even mice. Mickey Mouse has become an awesome character, even though according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases.”
Saudis who do not follow the austere, narrow-minded version of Islam that prevails in their country’s religious establishment love to publicise comments such as these to embarrass the clerics.
But the press coverage, both in Saudi Arabia and abroad, often disregards some important aspects of religious discourse in the kingdom.
First of all, the press almost always refers to any comment from a religious figure as a fatwa. But in most cases, their comments do not rise to the level of a fatwa, and are therefore not worthy of the deference normally accorded such religious opinions.
One only has to look at the YouTube video of Sheikh Munajid’s Mickey Mouse comment (youtube.com/watch? v=bnhQjk7T478) to see that it was an offhand remark, perhaps an attempt to make a joke. It was not a researched, carefully worded fatwa.
Indeed, a more pertinent criticism of such comments is to ask why sheikhs do not spend their religious capital on more important moral concerns, such as demanding badly needed reforms to the Saudi court system, and urging kindness and justice for the poor, including the expatriate workers who do most of the manual labour in the kingdom.
Also, the press rarely notes if the sheikh making the controversial comments is associated with the government or not. Sheikhs Barrak, Jibreen and Munajid, for example, do not hold government jobs.
By contrast, Sheikh Lihedan does. And this was why his comments about television executives prompted a rapid government rebuttal.
Sheikh Abdul Mohsen al Obaikan, a moderate religious scholar who advises the justice ministry, denounced Sheikh Lihedan’s remarks, and said they would encourage terrorists by giving them “a reason” for “taking lives, attacking television stations and targeting the localities where TV owners may be”.
He made clear that Sheikh Lihedan’s statements should not “be considered as the opinion of the Saudi Muslim scholars or even of the state”.
Lastly, those who publicise controversial remarks by Muslim scholars rarely raise the bigger question prompted by such comments: Who speaks for Islam?
Actually, this is the burning ember stoking almost every controversy in Islam in these volatile times. What the ultra-conservative sheikhs – and often their critics too – fail to note is that the voices of authority in Islam have become far more numerous than at any previous time in modern history.
Rising education levels of all Muslims in the past 50 to 100 years means that today the realm of who is qualified to interpret Islam’s holy texts has expanded greatly. Religious scholars who spend their whole lives poring over ancient scriptural texts used to have unchallenged authority to interpret Islam. Not any more.
Today, those clerics are being asked to share that authority with other Muslims in a wide variety of occupations – professors, journalists, artists, film-makers – who have their own ideas about Islam’s role in intellectual pursuits, governmental affairs and even just plain everyday life.
Muslim clerics generally do not like and even feel insulted by this challenge to their monopoly on interpreting Islam. During the Al Majd TV interview, for example, Sheikh Jibreen said the punishments he recommended for his critics were “so that they can concede to the superiority of scholars and clergymen who are held in high regard in the state and otherwise”.
And Sheikh Munajid, in a television interview in March that was translated by MEMRI, addressed the question of clerical authority directly.
“Some of these heretics say, ‘Islam is not the private property of anyone.’ So what do they want? … They say, ‘We want to issue rulings.’ Someone who is ignorant, who does not know any Arabic, or who has no knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence wants to issue rulings?! They say, ‘We reinterpret the texts’,” Sheikh Munajid said.
“There is a very dangerous conspiracy against the religion of Islam in newspapers and in what these people say,” he continued. “A journalist, or one of those low lifes, wants to … These people are a mixture of western, local and imported ideologies, but they want to express their views with regard to religious rulings. This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people – the prerogative of knowledgeable people, not of fools or heretics.”
So what to do?
The Arab world needs more freedom of speech, not less. So as long as ultra-conservative clerics do not incite violence, they should be allowed to publicly say what they please.
Those who disagree with them ought to have the same right.
I asked one Saudi government employee recently what he thought King Abdullah felt about Sheikh Lihedan’s comments.
“Disappointment,” he replied. “The king just made a big effort and spent a lot of money to hold an interfaith conference in Madrid as a way to improve Saudi Arabia’s image,” he said. With one sentence, he added, Sheikh Lihedan destroyed the king’s efforts.
In a meeting with Islamic scholars in Mecca on Monday, King Abdullah spoke frankly about the challenges facing Islam, saying that “unfortunately, the image of Islam is being tarnished by none other than Muslims themselves”.
“If we want to be honest with ourselves,” he said, “we have to accept this reality that the sons of Islam are the ones desecrating this pure religion. Islam disowns them and disowns anyone who tries to give it a bad name.”
Of course, he was speaking about suicide bombers and their terrorist handlers.
But was he also thinking about others whose words harm Islam?
cmurphy@thenational.ae

Saudi clerics’ outbursts hurt image of Islam - The National Newspaper