SHARED BY DR .SHOEB.
“I am a Muslim by faith, a Christian by spirit, a Jew by heart, and above all I am a human being.” says Dr. Tawfik Hamid
I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam. After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.
.
http://defendingiraniandemocracy.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/from-the-heart-of-an-honest-muslim/
Mr. Salik wants all the Thinkers’ Forum members – or at least the active participants – to comment on this article. Let me be the first. The reason i sent the article for submission was b/c i saw the honesty and courage of Dr Hamid to say what he has said, in spite of death threats earlier. I agree almost a 100% with what he has said.The main thing i would like to comment is that even though we dearly respect the Prophet, though we cherish most teachings of Islam and even though we love our Muslim brethren, if any of them have done or said anything wrong, we should not necessarily stop questioning those actions and shy away from criticizing them. Only by recognizing our problems do we hope to get better.
An Arab Camel-driver having completed the lading of his Camel, asked him which he would like best, to go up hill or down hill. The poor beast replied, not without a touch of reason: “Why do you ask me? Is it that the level way through the desert is closed?”
Aesop’s fable titled the Arab and the Camel
The main reason of intolerance becoming the hallmark of Muslims is nothing but dishonest presentation of Muslim history to Muslims by Muslims. This is not exclusive
trait of Muslims, every winner has distorted history with a bias and tried to erase all other accounts of history. If most Muslims had access to history that non Muslims have written too, then average Muslim would not be shocked when Muslim’s failures are brought to their attention. Take example of Americans, here students are encouraged to analyze and criticize America’s darkest history of slavery, racism – lynchings of blacks, the civil war, the manifest destiny doctrine to conquer the West (of Mississippi), the genocide of native Americans etc. The result of this open history is that Americans don’t get emotional and start denying blindly anything negative about their past and yet are proud to have come a long way and go to extreme measures for providing equal opportunity to all races. For this reason only I feel great disappointment towards our past and present scholars who never mention the negative aspects of our history, and in fact if you read their accounts you would think such things never happened at all. Total blackout. I’ll give an example; Since Reza Aslan made his forceful claim of a scholar and Ph. D in religions (in an interview about his controversial book Zealot) I was curious about his other book No God but God – The origins and Evolution of Islam. I am still reading it and already find him a hypocrite. He has written in great detail about Hz.Mohammad’s migration to Medina but not a single word about the massacre of Medina, no mention of the dispute with local Jewish tribe. He has written briefly on all Khulfa e Rashideen and first murder mentioned is of Hz. Usman, referring to Hz. Omar’s last days as “on his death bed” without mention of his assassination and being a Shia (I guess as he is Iranian) himself, its heavily biased in favor of Hz. Ali, and highly critical of Hz. Usman. This is plain dishonesty. It will be dishonest on my part too if I did not mention that he refers Khulfa e Rashideen as “secular”, which is a curse (due to ignorance of course) in today’s Muslim’s mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if all Muslims knew that their most revered Caliphs were secular! At least for me this angle (of secular) is new and other affiliates might not find this a pleasant new discovery….I consider myself only ordinary and average person academically and in no misunderstanding of being an intellectual and this is why I think most Muslims like me never knew much detail. I have yet to read in his book if he acknowledges that Quran was codified and compiled much later than the general impression of it as a book where not a single word is controversial and is written down word by word as God revealed to Hz. Mohammad. If average Muslim on the street knew that Hz. Usman, the third Caliph actually started the compilation and burned first few compilations as inaccurate then it will not be a shock to them that Quran is just the best guess from memory of the companions of Hz. Mohammad. Had majority of Muslims been aware of this then Satanic Verses wouldn’t be such a derogatory attack on Quran, Muslims would have brushed aside Salman Rushdie if they knew about the actual history. I am pretty sure most of the demonstrators and specially those who got killed in riots never even knew what the fuss was about. Similarly there is a lot of baggage from the history of Umayyad’s and Abbasid’s rivalry….which if considered in comparison of the world at that time wouldn’t be a stigma either. The fault definitely lies in the lies told by scholars and historians who presented Muslim past as faultless and exemplary.
I totally agree with the author and Shoeb Sahib also that truth be told, it will not necessarily tarnish the image of Islam or Muslims, and may serve as course correction and benefit Islam in the long run. Who (which religion) does not have skeletons in their closets!! Raising status of religious personalities larger than life only hurts those personalities. Einstein was not a very bright student and this fact does not take away his achievements at all. Churchill, if I am not wrong wasn’t a great student either. European history is full of fanatics too but they don’t hide it. If we accepted our, history which is not very flattering, it will end the attacks and finger pointing on us but will not take away the glory and achievements of Muslims.
On a side note, I would like to respectfully mention to Mirza Sahib that Aslan, a Ph. D in religion writes religion and Din* (Deen) as same thing….whereas Mirza Sahib called Islam not a religion but Deen – a way of life. I wonder if all other religions weren’t way of life? The Ten commandments were rules of a way of life in my opinion…so what’s the point in calling Islam a way of life and not only a religion?
Babar
* Page 97, No God but God.