Killing our future

I will make no secret of the fact that I begin this in a low mood, with a cloud of melancholy descending on me. I have been off work with a viral infection for the past few days, so I suppose a weakness of spirit is only to be expected, but it is not that. Sometimes you tell yourself when you are ill that at least the time off will give you time to do some other jobs, but it doesn’t work that way: the headaches and dizziness just make you lethargic, driving you into a meandering state of mind that seeks lazy entertainment in day-time-television and glossy magazines. Well I don’t own a TV and you can only flick through the Misco catalogue once before it strikes you as rather pointless. But there is still the Internet, temporarily restored for the sake of a broken laptop.

Thus this afternoon I have had my fill of social heresy, delving into the latest offerings of Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which was all brought on by my watching the 60 Minutes clip on CBS about the detention of an innocent man at Guantanamo Bay for five years. I know, I know, I’m playing with fire, there will be an inquisition shortly to determine how I even dared type it into Google. And when I did, why I didn’t choose to learn about Stuttgart’s advances on the 966 (and particularly when I have been driving that battered old Fiesta for the past seven years; do I not aspire to anything, for crying out loud). Yes, I know, I shall be cast out for such brazen heresy, but I pray my alibi will suffice: ‘It was the Lemsip. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was asleep at the controls of the machine.’ Actually I didn’t have any Lemsip today because yesterday my Doctor said it was terrible stuff packed with adrenalin and useless junk, so I just had paracetamol instead (and that was in fact after watching nonsense, which I will get to in a little while).

In fact I will get onto it right now. After watching a short presentation that I shall not bore you with, I stumbled upon a film by some bloke called Alex Jones, who seems to be a kind of Michael Moore of the lunatic fringe and I ended up watching a few minutes of two of them. I was quite surprised because a Salafi friend of mine thinks Mister Jones is pretty much on the money most of the time. Well perhaps he is because he does a nice range of sweatshirts and mugs, but I’m not sure this is what my friend means. I can’t even remember what the first one was about because it’s become a bit of a blur, but the second one explained how every war over the past few centuries has been instigated by one secretive family and its supporters, whose ultimate aim is to establish a one-world-government, evident in the creation of the United Nations. The Bush family are all in on it, which I suppose is why the President tried to get around the UN in order to invade Iraq. Oh no, sorry… Well never mind.

The point is, this is happening right here, right now and we have to wake up and smell the coffee. However I am not sure that producing a boring two and a half-hour long film is the best way to get people to wake up, even if it has a cool sound-track. And there is a little part of me that wonders whether some people have been inhaling something other than the chocolaty aroma of FairTrade coffee. But I digress. I watched this second film for about fifteen minutes (about thirteen minutes longer than the first) and it spent quite a long time focusing on the black limousines carrying the members of the Bilderberg Group to a meeting where they were gathering to plot the next stage of their secretive scheme for total world domination. What I couldn’t quite work out was how we have so much information about this top secret plan, given that it is top secret. But maybe if I had bothered to watch the remaining one hundred and thirty minutes I might have found out. Who knows? Maybe the Rothschild kids have a blog on WordPress.com or a Facebook account. Maybe they keep poking people they think are their fellow-conspirators because they have the same name. It’s easy to make that mistake.

Which sort of brings me onto what I actually wanted to write about, before this peculiar digression in which I amused myself so well that I almost forgot I was feeling a bit down at all. But I suppose I had better return to it, for otherwise I will have to delete my opening paragraph, which will mean I will have to delete the one that follows, which will ultimately mean there will be no need for this one and thus it could have stayed all along. So I’m leaving it as is. So yes, the low mood.

Not only did I stumble upon Mister Jones through the magic of hyperlinkamation, but I also encountered social networking websites. More specifically I encountered Muslims using social networking websites. More specifically still, I encountered our children, our ‘yoof’, our next generating using social networking websites. Maybe I am just suffering from early-onset middle-age slipperdom, but I have to say I was utterly shocked by what I read and saw there. It is not really the websites themselves: these are simply a tool, although Islamically speaking we could certainly identify problems there. Maybe it was the character and behaviour of these teenagers that really shocked me. Websites such as hi5.com are not closed environments like Facebook, and so anyone can see anyone’s profile. True, maybe tis just the drugs and not enough Lucozade. Maybe in the battle between the intellect and the virus, the virus is winning. Maybe I am over-reacting. But my reaction was just this: how do we reach out to our children if this is where they have reached?

Maybe you will experiment with hi5.com, typing in a Muslim name or two. Perhaps you will see nothing wrong. Perhaps it was just me, having bad luck on a bad day. Maybe the relationships pages of an Asiana forum are an extreme aberration. Perhaps the groups of Bengali boys obsessed with the gangster life and groups of Bengali and Pakistani girls obsessed with modelling are but an isolated pocket, a mere aberration. I hope so. I hope that my reaction is purely the fog of a feverish illness which seems to be descending almost as soon as it was lifting. I hope I am just mistaken, for these words came to my mind a couple of hours ago: ‘We are killing our future.’

And so how will we reach out to our children?

"BBC claims of hadith reworking unfounded"

Salam alaikum,

Some of you might have seen an article / heard a report on the BBC which suggested that the Turkish Government is preparing to “revise” Islam. I think this article in today’s Zaman (a mainstream Turkish newspaper) sheds some light on the BBC claims:

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=135202

Speaking with Today’s Zaman on Wednesday, Dr. Mehmet Görmez, the directorate’s deputy director, said: “Our project is not aimed at effecting a radical renewal of the religion, as is claimed by the BBC. Our objective is to help our citizens attain a better understanding of the hadith. Though I underlined several times during our interview with a BBC reporter that our project cannot be considered a reformation of Islam, he distorted the facts, saying Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam — and a controversial and radical modernization of the religion.”

The hadith texts are not considered by Muslims to be God’s word, as the Quran is. Regardless, they are seen as qualified attempts to collect a body of reliable texts for Muslim scholars to use in adjudication. Scholars such as Bukhari and Muslim traveled throughout the Muslim world gathering and evaluating oral reports that had been passed down through generations from the Prophet Mohammed and his contemporaries. Each of these scholars then evaluated the chain of transmission of each saying, taking into account each individual reporter’s reputation, memory, etc.

All of which underscores the pre-eminent wisdom of the Qur’an once more:

“O ye who believe! If an evil liver bring you tidings, verify it, lest ye smite some folk in ignorance and afterward repent of what ye did.” Qur’an 49:6

“O man, follow not that whereof thou hast no knowledge. Lo! the hearing and the sight and the heart–of each of these it will be asked.” Qur’an 17:36

In other words we ought always to verify our facts when news comes to us, lest it cause others harm. May Allah forgive us all.

Kindest regards, salams and duas,

Zeynep

Man bites dog

My email to Eddy Mair on Radio 4’s PM programme this evening:

Can you prove to me that the huge crowds witnessed on the streets of Khartoum after Friday prayers today were because of the teddy bear insult? If you go to any Muslim city anywhere in the world after Friday prayers you will witness massive crowds. Indeed, you will witness them even outside the mosques up and down this country? Virtually every Muslim attends the Friday prayer – clearly they have to go somewhere when the prayer ends and in the absence of a teletransporter the first thing they will do is pour onto the street.

You may not care about this, you may not know about it or you may be enraged by the behaviour of Muslims, and not want to read these few short thoughts of mine. That is fine – you can simply pass over this post.

But here we are, I have been “enraged” – yes, by media hype – what hypocrites they are given that they constantly attack the government with accusations of spin. I have always defended “the media” against claims of bias: they report the news, they do not make it.

But here I sit amidst my “enraged” fellow countrymen – lambasting the Muslims, demanding that they be deported, that they deserve no respect, that their religion is barbaric and inhumane – listening to interviews on the radio and reading newspaper articles all covering this same ground, and I ask myself a question.

Why do you not know about 138 Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world reached out to Christian leaders in an open letter to the heads of all Christian churches just a month ago, emphasizing, “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Common-Word/Christian-Response.html
http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Common-Word/Muslim-Response.html

Why too do you not know about the Amman Initiative which saw 170 Sunni and Shi‘a religious scholars and Muslim intellectuals from 40 countries gathering to condemn terrorism in absolute terms in July last year?

Why is it that you nothing about these? Where was the media coverage? Where the vast acreage of opinion pieces? Where the journalists demanding that Muslim’s reaction? Where?

Yes, dog bites man – not news; man bites dog – news. But some of us have to live with fallout.

Inverted Commas

Who is it that knows what is in the hearts except God?

Will you set yourself up as Judge? Do you claim to know what is in another’s heart? Will you place my faith in Inverted Commas too if I say something with which you disagree? I refer of course to an exchange in another thread. If you’re oblivious to it, you are blessed and need not trouble yourself with these words of mine. But if you are one who arrogates to him/herself the right to place another’s faith in Inverted Commas, I beg second thoughts.

Is any of us perfect? Do none of us make mistakes? When we become Muslim, whether as one who adopts a new faith or one who returns to the faith of his family, we do not suddenly becomes saints. Instead we struggle, slowly slowly to bring Islam to life in our lives, making numerous mistakes along the way. When in the early days of my Islam I demanded answers to uncomfortable questions as I acclimatised to my new faith, did brothers and sisters place my faith in Inverted Commas, or did they accommodate me patiently instead? When in the early days of my Islam I continued to drag my cultural baggage along behind me, did friends abandon me, or did they offer sincere advice?

No one living in these times could deny that there are hypocrites and agent-provocateurs amongst us, but who are you to judge who those people are? Who are you to say that the one who makes mistakes is the outsider? Who are you to say that the one who has opinions different from your own is not really your brother in Islam? And why must every convert to Islam face accusation and innuendo at the hands of her/his brothers and sisters? Can you perhaps appreciate the pain your words caused, as I can for words directed at another? It is not for you to judge what is in your sister’s heart. Indeed it is absolutely not for you to judge when all you know of her is tiny green text on a black screen. That is all I know of her and all I know of you.

When I became Muslim nearly a decade ago, there were those that claimed I only became Muslim because I was pressured into converting by ‘fundos‘ (what fundos?). There were others who set out to brief their friends on why they should not trust me, why they should be suspicious of my conversion for reasons x, y and z, that my shahada was just part of a game (as if the son of a priest and nephew of missionaries would play a game of so many sacrifices like that). Yes, I have been in the shoes of our sister whose faith you place in Inverted Commas. Fortunately I had around me others who advised me when I made mistakes, who shared with me alternative points of view when I seemed stuck on my own, who supported me in times of need.

May all of us grow in wisdom. A sinner was once promised paradise simply for showing kindness to a cat. Perchance God will have mercy on us too.

iWant

Some alternative readings on the cult of Apple (I think Apple make very pretty gadgets, but)…

iSlave

iPoison + iWaste

iGenocide: Mass Murder, the iPhone, and You

iPhone – Made In China

No news of an eco-phone

Gadgets and my slice of the pie

How green is that iPhone?

Post Script
I have a mobile phone and a house full of gadgets. My phone isn’t very cutting-edge—while colleagues boast of integrated MP3 players, digital cameras, bluetooth, colour screens and whatever else, the only novel feature I can discern on mine is an LED torch—but still, I have a mobile phone and numerous gadgets like it. Thus when I speak of my concern about the cost of our wants, I do not do so as an untainted Luddite living the purests lifestyle—but as a rather uncomfortable technophile instead. Still, it is true to say that the reaslisation of the cost of our wants pains me; if only I could sustain this concern.

1 Comment

Quote:

justgrits.wordpress.com

Bowes said,
October 27, 2007 at 6:05 am

Do you recall the murder of Victoria Climbié in the UK in February 2000? She died at the age of nine following months of barbaric abuse at the hands of her guardians, both of whom were evangelical Christians? She had been burnt with cigarettes, tied up for over 24 hours on several occasions, and hit with bike chains, hammers and wires. She died on 25 February 2000, a day after being admitted to hospital suffering from hypothermia, multiple organ failure and malnutrition, on the day her guardians’ local church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, was planning to hold a service of deliverance for her – they believed she was possessed and intended to cast the devil out.

Would we attribute this barbarity to Christianity? Local churches all had contact with the child during the abuse, but turned a blind eye, as has been documented in the course of the enquiry. Couldn’t we then attribute this barbarity to Christianity? The answer of course is no. What of the cases of child abuse that have come to light in recent years at the hands of Roman Catholic and Anglican priests in the United States, the UK and Ireland? Would we attribute these acts to Christianity? The answer, again, is no. We recognise that every community has good and bad people.

If you were to read the traditional sources of the Muslim faith yourself, rather than relying on information published on a racist website, you would discover that the barbarism described in your post is not in fact “accepted and expected and praised” in Islam. There is the story in which one of Muhammad’s young grandchildren climbs onto his back while he is prostrating in prayer and plays with his garments; rather than casting him off, Muhammad lengthened the prostration until the child climbed off on his own. He also told his followers that any man that did not show affection to his children did not have proper faith. Indeed the clue is in the quotation: the story has outraged Morocco – a Muslim country – indicating quite the opposite, that such behaviour is in fact rejected and condemned.

Islamic tradition actually considers the child pure, for there is no concept of Original Sin — reflecting the latter part of your quote from Matthew’s gospel, the Muslim faith holds that the child that dies in infancy will go straight to paradise. Muhammad said these children will meet their parents on the day of judgement and grab them by their garments or their hands to no end other than that God will enter their parents into Paradise. The position of the Church on such a child by contrast is a little ambiguous – ranging from the view that unbaptised child moves into a realm of limbo in the hereafter to the view that the child is not “saved” and will thus go to hell. It was for this reason that my mother, as hospital chaplain, had to go out in the middle of the night on a number of occasions a few years ago to perform “emergency baptisms”.

I don’t think the Muslim position on children could be clearer. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But I might also end with a quotation from the Bible.

For example… “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing (1 Peter 3:9).

Or… “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:17-21)

After all, didn’t Jesus say, “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28)?