Post 80--Insulting the Prophet

In the previous post I wrote about Aasia Bibi (Sometimes her name is spelled as "Asia.") being released from prison. I also wrote how risky this action was in the face of apparently large groups of Muslim extremists who threatened social violence if she were released. I expressed admiration for a judge and a government who dared to release her. As it turns out, I was right.  The government felt compelled to negotiate with extremist groups and then took Bibi back into custody for her own safety in a secret place. Spain and France offered to take her in, but even that was not acceptable to those extremists. I will try to keep you informed as things develop.

Now Bibi's case was one of a false accusation of blasphemy.  You might react with a shrug of your shoulder, thinking that this does not concern you, especially if you live in the Western world. Pakistan is far away from us. But hold on. This post tells you that it's coming closer to us--not Pakistan (It stays where it is; it does not move.), but the Muslim position on blasphemy against the Prophet.   

Bill Warner is a blogger on  < Political Islam.com >.  I find him kind of extreme and conservative.
Now, there's nothing wrong with being conservative, but being extreme is. I am not an extremist, but I am a conservative,  a radical conservative even. Now that will probably sound ominous to you, but my radicality is not the popular kind which is just another word for "extremism." Mine means that I like to go to the radix or root of a problem. That's what "radix" means. In that sense, it is good to be radical, for it means you are not satisfied with a mere superficial interpretation of things.  And conservative? Again not in the popular street sense or even media sense of the word, but philosophically. I have respect for traditional pillars and cultures; I am not a revolutionary so much as a reformer or conserver, but one that always is open to considering new ways in a reformer sort of way. Well, I should get back from this diversion to the real topic of this post.

Warner wrote the following on his post:

"Tyrannical European Court of Human Rights says Mohammed is a Prophet, if insulted there could be blood in the streets."

By now many are familiar with the recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Elizabeth Sabitch Wolf. This ruling stated that “abusive attacks on the Prophet of Islam (Non-Muslims referring to Mohammed as the “Prophet of Islam” is an important detail to understand), [are] capable of stirring up prejudice and putting at risk religious peace, the domestic courts had come to the conclusion that the facts at issue contained elements of incitement to religious intolerance.”  This statement by the ECHR indicates that in order to maintain religious harmony, citizens may not insult Mohammed, and this is more important than freedom of expression. This European ruling is in line with the Islamic principle of blasphemy. Under Sharia, criticizing Mohammed is equivalent to apostasyand punishable by death. Censoring ourselves to please the Sharia is an underhanded subversion of democracy, an attack on free speech—jihad of the pen and tongue—by our own hands. Without free speech, you no longer have a republic or a democracy, you have tyranny.  Furthermore, there are two important subtexts to be noted in the ECHR ruling...[continue reading]: Sharia law has now been inserted into the laws of member states – Leading expert on Islam

Post 77--Freedom of Speech and Offensive Speech

Recently the European Court of Human Rights upheld an Austrian woman's conviction of calling Prophet Muhammad a pedophile. The conviction, it ruled, did not restrict her freedom of speech. The "Court's" judgement was approved by a higher court apparently who ruled that the earlier one had "carefully  balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected."  She is said to have publicly declared that the Prophet's marriage to a young girl was akin to "pedophilia."  Back in 2011 she was convicted of "disparaging religious doctrines" and ordered to pay a fine of  $713 plus costs, a ruling that was also upheld in higher places (The Associated Press, Vancouver Sun, October 26, 2018). 

I do not know enough about that marriage to argue for or against the woman's opinion.  Even if I had enough data to support her opinion, I would definitely not state it this way in public. As a Christian, I have no desire to insult what my neighbour holds dear and precious, even if I disagree with him. I may wish to convince him of another truth and change her mind about his own, but I would do so with respect in the fashion of dialogue, where two partners explain their different opinions, opposing, contradictory opinions even, but always with respect. 

The only time I would turn more vociferous would be when "the other" becomes unjust or oppressive. If it were an extreme case, I might lose it.

You may have noticed that I placed quotation marks around "court" in the first paragraph. There's a good reason for that, at least from the Canadian point of view. Canadian human rights "courts" are anything but courts. Not infrequently they are described as "kangaroo courts." They hand out sentences without the solid data that characterize the more standard courts.  I've had no experience with them, but I read the newspapers and too often read about the soft "legal" --there's those quotation marks again!-- reasoning practiced in these  "courts," reasoning based more on bias and prejudice than on facts and legalities. Whether this holds true for their parallels in the EU, I am not sure.   

Of course, Christians who read the Bible literally can find plenty of excuses for berating other religions. The Old Testament makes short thrift of the pagan religions that surround Israel without any attempt at showing respect. The New Testament has its own examples. Jesus, in fact, castigates the leaders of His own religion something fierce, for having twisted its spirit and turning it into a vehicle of oppression. He leaves our Austrian woman far behind in the dust with His insults! The issue for Him was that the good of the best religion was so thwarted and abused that it became impossible for our Lord even to control Himself. He became totally disrespectful in public! He became a model revolutionary!

So, there is a place for lack of respect, for telling it as it really is, but there has to be a pretty good reason for that. Jesus pushed the line for appropriateness; I would  not go beyond Him, for His was based on true insight and wisdom and on love for the poor who were the victims.

In today's Vancouver, the egoism and greed of the property owners would probably evoke the same outburst from Jesus as did the religious leaders of His day. It is no wonder that entire groups of residents blare and yell it out in often brutal language. It is a shame that the Church and individual Christians are playing the same game as their secular counterparts. I am ashamed of them and am moving closer to shouting down especially church leaders who only bring bandages and ambulance service to the homeless, instead of attacking the systemic issues of greed and selfishness. 

But, to come back to our Austrian lady, should she have said what she did?  I would probably say "no."  But should she have the legal freedom of speech to say it?  I would probably say "yes."  Freedom of speech should not be restricted by emotions and bias. Political correctness is going too far. But that's human rights "courts" for you. 



  

Post 59--Rights of Men

There is this website < www.fridaynasiha.com > that is published every Friday and publishes basic Qur'anic teachings in a positive way. It shows the best face of Islam and leaves you with thoughts to ponder. If you're a Christian, as I am, then it leads you to comparisons with your own faith. All in all, I find much of it very uplifting, even though at almost every turn I am tempted to counter the teachings with my version of Christianity, which is "Reformational."  If you want to know what that means, you will have to go to my website < www.SocialTheology.com > where it is explained in a few places but, more important, where it is displayed and woven into the text. I plan to fill more posts with these Friday Nasihas and hope thus to instigate personal Christian dialogue with Islam.  In terms of Reformational theology, you will find traces of both "common grace" and "antithesis." Perhaps these terms are useful tools for such dialogue. 

Here then the first of the Nasihas with more to follow as we go along.:

                                                         Rights of Men
Hud (Hud) - Chapter 11: Verse 117

"And your Lord would never destroy human habitations wrongfully, while their inhabitants are righteous."

The verse implies that Allah does not destroy a people even if they commit association in His divinity so long as their dealings between themselves are carried out in justice. It is only when they begin to wrong each other on a large scale that they meet with their destruction. Hence it is said that a dominion lasts despite disbelief but not despite justice. [Zamakhshari, Shawkani]

God's chastisement does not afflict any people merely on account of their holding beliefs amounting to shirk or kufr, but afflicts them only if they persistently commit evil in their mutual dealings, and deliberately hurt other human beings and act tyrannically.

Hence those who are learned in Islamic Law hold that men's obligations towards God rest on the principle of [His] forgiveness and liberality, whereas the rights of man are of a stringent nature and must always be strictly observed - the obvious reason being, that God is almighty and needs no defender, whereas man is weak and needs protection. [Razi, Asad]

It is imperative that there should always be a good number of righteous people in every society. A community that is prepared to put up with everything except a group of righteous people in its midst is certainly destined for self-destruction. God's final decision, whether to punish a community or not, depends on the extent to which that community possesses the elements that would enable it to respond to the call of truth.

If we truly love the society we live in and don't want the punishment of God to come down upon us, we should try our best to develop a group of people who will call people to do good and forbid them from evil.

Compiled From:
"Ishraq Al-Maani " - Syed Iqbal Zaheer, Vol. 5, pp. 294, 295
"Towards Understanding the Quran" - Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, vol. IV, pp. 138, 139 

Post 58--Islamophobia and Christophobia

                                                   
Islamophobia and Christophobia or "Christianophobia." I prefer the former simply because it is easier to write or pronounce. However, "Christophobia" and "Christianophobia" are, strictly speaking, not the same.  The one means "fear of Christ;" the other, "fear of Christianity" or "fear of Christians." That's all strictly speaking. I prefer and use "Christophobia" except when quoting.

They seem to be opposites, but that's not always the case.  There are adherents of other religions, including secularism, who either practice both of these phobias or eschew both even when they disagree with both Christianity and Islam. And then there are Christians who reject Islamophobia and Muslims who reject Christophobia. It's a mixed up world we live in.

There is this British organization called "BarnabasAid" that supports and helps defend Christians who are being persecuted, whether that persecution is by Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or Secularists. Though British in origin and location of its international headquarters, it has branches in a number of other countries. If you've been reading this occasional blog, you may remember that I have referred to them before. Their website is < https://barnabasaid.org/ >.  They publish daily prayers for the persecuted church as well as a monthly that provides the background to many of the prayers.

It must be admitted that "Barnabas," as I will call them here, writes more about persecution perpetrated by Muslims than by anyone else. As a result, one might expect them to practice Islamophobia, but that is not the case.  At the end of this November they posted an article under the title "We need to tackle BOTH Muslimophobia AND Christianophobia." The article deals with the British situation. Please read and ponder:

========== 

Today the media is awash with stories about the extremist organisation Britain First, whose videos were retweeted by President Trump. Barnabas Aid wishes to put on record that we totally reject the ideology of this organisation and explain why it is so wrong.

Although the organisation “claims” to stand up for Britain’s Christian heritage, it is racist – having split off from the BNP not because it rejected the BNP’s racism, but because of corruption within the BNP. Any form of racism is completely contrary to the Bible. Britain First also engages in “street patrols” to try to enforce its ideology, a tactic similar to that used by some Islamists. Far from standing up for Britain’s heritage as it claims, in fact Britain First significantly undermines it.

Then the article goes on to quote one Elizabeth Ellis:

The UK was the first country in the world to begin to establish human rights such as freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. There are seven important aspects of freedom of religion that have developed in the UK over the last five centuries:

Freedom	Year achieved
to read the Bible in public	1547
to interpret the Bible without government interference	1559
of worship	1689
to choose or change your faith or belief	1689
to preach and try to convince others of the truth of your beliefs	1812
to build churches, synagogues, mosques etc.	1812
from being required to affirm a particular worldview or set of beliefs in order to hold a public sector job or stand for election	various “Test Acts” requiring this were abolished between 1719 and 1888

This heritage of freedom of religion spread out from Britain to countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and many others around the world. It is one of the most important parts of Britain’s heritage. However, Britain First have policies which significantly undermine this heritage of freedom. For example, they state that they wish to:

• “Disbar followers of the Islamic ideology from holding public office” i.e. introduce a new “Test Act” (issue 7 in our list above).
• “Introduce a comprehensive ban on the religion of ‘Islam’ within the United Kingdom. This ban will include the prohibition of…religious publications (such as the Quran, Hadiths), the operation of mosques, madrasas and ‘cultural centres’ and the public preaching and / or teaching of Islamic scriptures and doctrines” (issues 3,4,5,6 above).
• “Anyone found to be promoting the ideology of Islam will be subject to deportation or imprisonment” (issue 5 above).

However, we also need to say that it is NOT just Britain First who are undermining the UK’s heritage of freedom of religion. There is increasing Christianophobia in the UK, coming from a variety of sources.  In the last few years we have seen a Crown Prosecution Service lawyer claim in court that, in the context of modern Britain, quoting from the King James Bible in public “must be considered to be abusive and is a criminal matter;” we have seen attempts to enforce government registration and Ofsted inspection of Sunday schools; and in the last general election we saw several major media outlets, including the BBC, Buzz Feed, The Daily Mirror, The Independent and The Spectator, either asking Christian candidates overtly theological questions or claiming that, because they held Biblical Christian beliefs such as believing in miracles or Christian marriage, they were “unfit” to hold public office. We need to tackle BOTH Muslimophobia AND Christianophobia.

Conservative Muslim Views on Women and Their Roles

Post 25—

Apology and Plan

I once again apologize for the time lapse between this and the last post. I was under such intense work pressure that I just had to let go for a while.I may as well tell you now that I expect to be in Nigeria the full month of May and am not sure I will have the facilities or the files I need to write new posts while there. So, perhaps one or two posts over the next week and then off to Nigeria. When the next one after that? We’ll see. Possibly early June.

The last post features an article about women in Islam by a modern Indian Muslim, Dr. Ashgar Engineer. This post features the views of a few Nigerian Muslims of more traditional stripe. This material can be found in vol. 6 of my series Studies in Christian-Muslim Relations, pp. 277-280. If you contrast the last post to this one, you will find that it is hard to identify the Muslim perspective on women. There is a wide range of perspectives, often conflicting, with the one side likely to berate the other as unIslamic. Once again, will the true Muslim please stand up?

Pattern of the Arguments

There is a pattern to the arguments and/or practices of these social conservatives.
They tend to begin with an emphasis on the equality of women with
men, with the high place of honour women occupy. Women are entitled
to all human rights. Then these writers move on to the primary
and most honoured and influential work of women, namely that of
education. The education referred to means almost exclusively the
training a mother gives to her child at home. And, of course, to protect
her honour, she needs to be shielded from the gaze of all men,
except husband and close relatives, either in purdah or in burqa. And
voila—that free, equal and highly honoured creature ends up after all
in her traditional role of housewife. Not by conscious choice, of
course; the situation is defined by the men in her family. Their traditional
status is so ingrained that most women hardly know anything
different. They all base themselves on sharia—as they see it, the popular
version. They would not think of demanding changes. This is the
world they know and makes them comfortable.

A Very Manly View

An article by Abdulkadir Orire, at the time Grand Khadi(Supreme Court Justice)of Nigeria's Kwara State, introduces you into the world of the fully obedient
woman. According to Orire, the husband relates to his wife
as a farmer does to the soil. He “has to take great care of the soil, after
he has chosen the fertile good and best one. He has to choose his own
time to plant and the mode of cultivation.” He makes sure he does
not exhaust the soil. “He should be wise and considerate and does not
run riot. That means he should require every kind of mutual consideration
from his wife.” The wife, in turn, must “obey her husband in
all matrimonial issues” as long as they do not harm her or violate the
commands of God. She must not leave the house without his permission.
He is a lucky man who is “pleased with her sight; who, if he
orders her to carry out a command, she willingly obeys him; who, if
he is away, she protects for him her person and his property.” She is
to keep him and home happy. “She should try to appear to him beautiful
as well as carry out his orders patiently and dutifully.”1

That’s a classic picture that many readers will expect. That’s the
picture the media paint over and over again. It is not false; such situations
exist, perhaps more often than it would be politically correct
to admit. Orire, of course, is a man.

Rabi Wali: A Moderate Woman’s Views and Protest

The rest of this post is taken up with the writings of Rabi Wali.
She seems a bit ambivalent about the place of
women and appears to want to eat from both sides of the fence.
Some might call her approach “middle of the road.” “Through the
sharia, we see that a nation is made up of groups of people living
together as free and equal citizens submitting to the Will of Allah.”
“In terms of social and economic development, the family is the
nucleus of a nation” and its “cornerstone.” For a nation to be
healthy, it needs a firm cornerstone. “The leaders of the family are
[thus] the source of any progress, development, prosperity and
strength of the community.” Wali then asks a number of questions
about the role of women in the above scheme. “Do they have
equality with men concerning all the activities of nation building
or not? Do they have the same rights? And must they do the same
duties in order to be equal? What is the relationship between man
and woman in the family structure?” There is a hadith in which
someone asked the Prophet about the “rights of our women on us.”
He replied, “Feed them and clothe them as well as you do yourself
and do not beat them and do not abuse them.”

The Qur’an and Hadith also tell us
that women are partners in building a family with mutual consultation.
The women are allowed and expected to do everything
that would raise their spiritual and material levels like
their male counterparts. The women of the early Islamic period
were participating very actively in political affairs to the extent
that they could demand their rights from the highest leader.
The wives of the Sahaba were going and coming freely
from their economic activities. Thus, Islam allows Muslim
women to strive and reach the highest levels within the confines
of sharia and the comfortable limits Allah provides for
her. Men are required to make everything easier for them.
On the other hand, the woman is encouraged by Islam to
appreciate the fact that she is also required to give her full
share to the all-round development of the marriage. She
should endeavour to make the house a paradise on earth for
all the members of the family. This is easier for her because of
her biological makeup. Her natural role as mother and comforter,
her character should be essentially gentle, beautiful,
loving, forgiving and merciful and should be recognised and
utilised to the best interest of the family. The husband and
wife should complement one another. Women are not deficient
mentally. They should be the best teachers during the most
important period of a human life, the formative years that is
before conception to five years.

Therefore, despite the fact that Islam allows women to take
the role they wish, it is in their best interest and the interest of the
society that their chief role should be that of building the miniature
nation peacefully, with as little tension and conflict as possible.
This is the stand of Islamic justice, love and tranquility from
individual families leading to a just, loving and strong nation.

The Reality

Unfortunately, that is not always how it is among Nigerian
Muslims, Wali laments. Women are the backbone of the economy. They farm, they
tend livestock, they process food, they fetch water, they trade,
they contribute in taking care of the family in every sense
through their commercial activities in arts and crafts.
Yet they are never fully recognised seriously in decision
making. Although things may be changing, formal education
is not considered as part of a woman’s right. She is on
the whole considered a commodity with marriage as her destiny
as far as she is young and beautiful at the end of which
she is discarded.

Conspiracy of Silence

Then there is also the fact that women have been denied
the proper Islamic knowledge of their role. So they just have
to accept whatever is dished out to them by their menfolk in
fear of being branded as “woman liberators,” a term which
has been imported from the Western world and which is
meant to confuse, rather than clarify the issue of woman’s
identity. The religious interpretation appears to be a conspiracy
of silence even on her lawful rights from the husband or
fabrications supported by misquoted and misinterpreted
verses and Hadith.