I get email notifications of blogs I follows, yes, I’m that lame, I still use email notifications once in a while, and honestly, I find it cute to wake up to a new post by someone you care about, despite the fact that you never met them before. The Pink Agenda author, who is an interesting person, usually, with posts that are sometimes too personal for me to understand, wrote an hour ago this post: Is Islam Evil & Why Does Muhammad Look Mongolian?.
I read the post on my email, then gave it another read on his site, before I wrote him a comment. As a person who comes from a Muslim background, I felt like he sees Muslim people like this:
While, honestly speaking, Muslim people are more like this:
Yes. Muslims are a nation of family guys, with lots of misconceptions about the world, falling from the skies without parachutes and trying to enjoy it. Honestly speaking, they’re not all the bearded men you see on your TV waving guns and promising destruction on the safe families back in the States, and to steal your child’s lollipop while they are at it; those men exist, yet, they are a very small percentage of the Muslim community. I kid you not, I did not think that I’d ever write a post defending Islam, that religion basically was curl to my mother (and every woman I know), it was the reason why my father and I don’t see eye-to-eye on anything, especially that fact that I’m gay, and also the reason why I hated Fridays when I was young. You imagine to wear a dress-like thing called Abbayya and put a stupid hat on that mess up your hair and go to the mosque for two hours while some clerk is speaking in a sleepy voice. Yet, what religion is not exactly that, anyway? Isn’t Christianity all about Sunday Church and being anti-gay? Isn’t Judaism all about funny hats, hating on women and messed up hair?
Anyway, here is my comment on that article; I hope that it would open up a conversation here.
I was born to a Muslim father, and I know Quran by heart, and while I consider myself to have my own relation with whatever-higher-power-out-there, I still do not see Islam as a religion that calls for violence. The parts of Quran that you speak of, calling for Jihad, also comes with lots of undoubtable phrases that such Jihad should be done while not harming a woman, a child, an old man or even a tree. That Jihad should be done by the order of a reasoning leader, and done for the reason of spreading the word of Islam in other nations (which can be done by a TV channel nowadays, if someone is interested in such a matter) or to protect other Muslims around the world.
I don’t think that we should paint any violence done by any individual according to what religion they believe in. I know this will sound silly, but it’s like blaming McDonald’s for every fat man dying of a heart attack!
That said! I do not justify the Boston attack at all, and I consider it an act of terrorism: yet, the religion of the criminals who are behind it should not be an issue to discuss at all; they took their own sickness out on people, the religion was their justification. If they weren’t aware of Islam, they would be serial killers, or murderers, yet, they used Islam as a way to justify their hideous acts to themselves; and we should not encourage other people to use the fact that they were Muslims to also justify an attack on a certain religion; that’s sectarianism.Finally, I don’t consider myself a Muslim, and I do believe that Islam has its faults and has its good sides, and I do believe that it’s faults are more than its good deeds, yet still, it’s a religion that is still developing itself, maybe in 600 years we would see an Islam that is closer to the current understandings of liberal Christians.
I, personally, do not need religion in my life, yet some people might need it; and there is no religion that is better than the other; there are religions that passed by the timeframe needed for it to be civilized, while others are still in the process.
Also, I leave you with this video, in part because it’s super funny, and also, because it somehow speaks about this kind of discrimination when the guy pretending to be Princess Jasmine speaks about her lost Aladdin, saying things like:
Hey, I’m OK, but I’m slightly scared. My husband’s a mark for the War on Terror. Aladdin was taken by the CIA. We’re not Taliban, you’ve got the wrong man in Guantanamo Bay. Prince Ali, where could he be, drowning in wawa! Interrogation from the nation of the “free”! Bin Laden’s taken the fall, We’re not trained pilots at all, Jafar went crazy and no one put up a fuss. We’re for freedom, Genie can vouch for us.
Bush was crazy, Obama’s lazy, al-Qaeda’s not in this country!! Set free my Prince Ali!!!
Danny Ramadan 