“I don’t worry too much about the Muslims who face racial slurs in Europe and America, the ones who are suspected of harboring murderous thoughts at their workplaces or those who are picked out of immigration queues and asked awkward questions about their luggage and their ancestors. I tell myself that at the end of their humiliating journeys they can expect privileges like running water, electricity and tainted promises of equality.
I do worry about the Muslims who face extinction at the hands of other Muslims in their own homelands, usually in places where they are in a huge majority. My friend Sabeen Mahmud was murdered earlier this year, probably for not being a good enough Muslim, and it happened in this country, a country so Muslim that you can live your entire life here without shaking hands with a non-Muslim.”
“Yes, the word Islam does mean peace. The dictionary says so. But it takes gumption to wave a dictionary in front of someone who has lost a daughter, a son or a partner, and say: “Here, I have something for you. Look. ‘Islam.’ It means peace.”
Saying that Islam is a religion of peace is like saying that Hinduism is about respecting cows and Buddhism is about the lotus position. Is Judaism basically a property dispute? And are Christians always looking for that other cheek?”
“Whenever I hear someone say Islam is a religion of peace I want to yell at them and say, “Hey, look behind you.”
“Who is a good Muslim? The kind who prays and leaves it to Allah? The kind who doesn’t pray and leaves it to Allah? The kind who thinks Allah is too busy and so takes matters into his own hands and takes a shortcut to the hereafter? Well, no, maybe not that kind, because as we told you, Islam is a religion of peace.
The most poetic bit Muslim pundits tell the world is that Islam says if you murder one human being you murder the whole human race. So how come Sabeen Mahmud is gone and the whole bloody human race, including her killers, is still alive?”
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posted by f. sheikh