"On September 11th our lives changed forever. We witnessed an act of aggression that in many ways does not have a parallel in past or present times. There are several elements that make this act unique, from the use of civilian planes as weapons of mass destruction to the attack on the most widely recognised skyscrapers in the world. Nor have we ever witnessed the terrible indictment of Islam as having a part to play in such a heinous crime .. "
~ Sheikh Hamza Yusuf
I was in my living room, preparing for my school-exams, as I heard footsteps descending down the stairs rapidly, it was my neighbor's son - a student of 6th grade. There was something unusual with his tone, and he gasped and gave a direct command of some sort - "switch on the television!".
The immediate thought was, probably some cricket match was on as this fella was an ardent sports fan.
I lazily moved and turned on the tube to receive a frame of smoke among the skyscrapers - the skyline looked familiar, I assumed - an earthquake probably, or was it some kind of air-crash accident .. two minutes into the content of the tube, a flash scrolled by - 'Terrorists attack on Twin-towers, estimated death-toll in hundreds'. Scores of questions fired in my brain, but apparently I wasn't thinking, it was like a mixed-mashedup-mind experiencing shock & confusion. I was in my high-school when it happened, what went down in history as the 9-11 attacks.
I lazily moved and turned on the tube to receive a frame of smoke among the skyscrapers - the skyline looked familiar, I assumed - an earthquake probably, or was it some kind of air-crash accident .. two minutes into the content of the tube, a flash scrolled by - 'Terrorists attack on Twin-towers, estimated death-toll in hundreds'. Scores of questions fired in my brain, but apparently I wasn't thinking, it was like a mixed-mashedup-mind experiencing shock & confusion. I was in my high-school when it happened, what went down in history as the 9-11 attacks.
The next day the news focussed on the tragic events with an unbelieveable content,"Muslims are seen rejoicing in some parts of the world". This gave me a jolt much heavier than the tragedy itself. The thought in my mind was the people who died in the attacks are civilians - people with dreams, people like me - children, women, old-men and people living normal life.
In folowing days my imagination went too far when I assumed Muslims not to celebrate even their birthdays and anniversaries, if it fell on September 11th. “We can’t have Muslims walking into bakeries and ordering cakes with big smiles on their faces or exchanging roses on this day shouting ‘Happy Anniversary!’ at restaurants,” explained my turbid-brain, “It would be highly suspicious and inhuman if Muslims appeared even remotely happy or laugh on this day and, as international citizens, I implore Muslims to appear sad on this day.”
And after all these turbidity it took me almost half-a-decade to learn that the media bias, mis-information and subtle-propaganda could hard-wire a normal human to associate two entirely different things and yet would convince himself/herself that they are one and the same. This idea sedimented so much into a average human that if "black" meant "color", then "Islam" meant "terrorism".
With so much confusion over 5 years, slowly made me drift into the world of agnosticism(ridiculous enough to be influenced by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris), religion & belief became just tags for me, nothing more than a cultural stamping upon my identity, and this view-point grew upon me for over 5+ years and it was partly due to the following facts
I learnt that unfortunately, much of the world does not know what almost every Muslim who has studied Islam knows; that the worst enemies of Islam are from within. The worst of these are the khawaarij who delude others by the deeply dyed religious exterior that they project.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said about them, “When you see them pray you will consider your own prayers insignificant. They recite the Quran but it does not exceed the limits of their throat.” In other words, they don’t understand the wisdom & true meanings. The outward religious appearance and character of the khawaarij deluded thousands in the past, and continues to delude people today. Every Common-Muslim should therefore be aware that despite the khawaarij adherence to certain aspects of Islam, they are extremists of the worst type. As Dr.Lang suggests,"Islam has the best religion and probably the worst believers"
The Prophet said, peace be upon him, “Beware of extremism in your religion.”
Islam is the middle way between excess and neglect. Zealots are a plague upon religion. These extremists roughly come in two types.
The first group is a reactionary extremist who falls far right of a centre-point. Reactionary extremists do not want any pluralism; they view the world in melodramatic, black and white, good and evil terms. They are good and anyone who opposes them is evil. From among the Muslims these are people who ‘excommunicate’ any Muslim who fails to share their interpretations of the Quran. They are used often by the Western media in order to scare simple people and cause them to believe that Muslims are insane and barbaric. Unfortunately, some Muslim individuals and communities provide them with much fuel to fire their incendiary flames.
In folowing days my imagination went too far when I assumed Muslims not to celebrate even their birthdays and anniversaries, if it fell on September 11th. “We can’t have Muslims walking into bakeries and ordering cakes with big smiles on their faces or exchanging roses on this day shouting ‘Happy Anniversary!’ at restaurants,” explained my turbid-brain, “It would be highly suspicious and inhuman if Muslims appeared even remotely happy or laugh on this day and, as international citizens, I implore Muslims to appear sad on this day.”
And after all these turbidity it took me almost half-a-decade to learn that the media bias, mis-information and subtle-propaganda could hard-wire a normal human to associate two entirely different things and yet would convince himself/herself that they are one and the same. This idea sedimented so much into a average human that if "black" meant "color", then "Islam" meant "terrorism".
With so much confusion over 5 years, slowly made me drift into the world of agnosticism(ridiculous enough to be influenced by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris), religion & belief became just tags for me, nothing more than a cultural stamping upon my identity, and this view-point grew upon me for over 5+ years and it was partly due to the following facts
- I was ignorant of what my original faith represented or spoke about.
- I believed whatever the Television suggested to be undeniable realities.
I learnt that unfortunately, much of the world does not know what almost every Muslim who has studied Islam knows; that the worst enemies of Islam are from within. The worst of these are the khawaarij who delude others by the deeply dyed religious exterior that they project.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said about them, “When you see them pray you will consider your own prayers insignificant. They recite the Quran but it does not exceed the limits of their throat.” In other words, they don’t understand the wisdom & true meanings. The outward religious appearance and character of the khawaarij deluded thousands in the past, and continues to delude people today. Every Common-Muslim should therefore be aware that despite the khawaarij adherence to certain aspects of Islam, they are extremists of the worst type. As Dr.Lang suggests,"Islam has the best religion and probably the worst believers"
The Prophet said, peace be upon him, “Beware of extremism in your religion.”
Islam is the middle way between excess and neglect. Zealots are a plague upon religion. These extremists roughly come in two types.
The first group is a reactionary extremist who falls far right of a centre-point. Reactionary extremists do not want any pluralism; they view the world in melodramatic, black and white, good and evil terms. They are good and anyone who opposes them is evil. From among the Muslims these are people who ‘excommunicate’ any Muslim who fails to share their interpretations of the Quran. They are used often by the Western media in order to scare simple people and cause them to believe that Muslims are insane and barbaric. Unfortunately, some Muslim individuals and communities provide them with much fuel to fire their incendiary flames.
The second group are radical extremists, who while they are almost identical with the former group, differ in that they will use violence to further their cause. They are actually more dangerous & worse than the first. They believe like every nefarious secret society before them that ‘the end justifies the means.’ They see any act as acceptable if it will further their ‘cause.’ This is blatantly anti-Islamic for a number of reasons.
Then came the wave of conspiracy theories. These were not limited to the Islamic world - infact much of these theories are rooted with the individuals living in America and were actively voicing such diverging interpretations(propagated by people like Alex Jones, and scores of other such people) and, year by year they were becoming increasingly prevalent among Muslim communities, and some theory-makers went as far as claiming the the world is run by 'green aliens' in White-House, and many paranoid common-Muslims were sucked into these games and some of these paranoid-Muslims went to trigger their own 'X-Files type' interpretation of 'End Times Map', and it grew so popular that it forced few Muslim Scholars to study the series and provide their refutations.
The 9-11 incident though tragic became a poster-advertisemt for Islamophobia, there were series of events that triggered the divide of 'Islam and West' - almost all the major geo-political events and incidents over the decade that followed, subtly-mapped into a Muslim-mind as suppression of Islam, and steadily becoming a victim of injustice: War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq, Cartoons Controversy, Minaret Ban, Adhan Ban, Niqab ban, Flotila incident, Abu Garib, Civilian Deaths, Depleted Uranium, Psycho-Soldiers, more Psychos, Ariel Sharon Incident, Gujarat riots, Quran burning, Profiling at Airports (the ex-President of India was also a target), and such.
Then came the wave of conspiracy theories. These were not limited to the Islamic world - infact much of these theories are rooted with the individuals living in America and were actively voicing such diverging interpretations(propagated by people like Alex Jones, and scores of other such people) and, year by year they were becoming increasingly prevalent among Muslim communities, and some theory-makers went as far as claiming the the world is run by 'green aliens' in White-House, and many paranoid common-Muslims were sucked into these games and some of these paranoid-Muslims went to trigger their own 'X-Files type' interpretation of 'End Times Map', and it grew so popular that it forced few Muslim Scholars to study the series and provide their refutations.
The 9-11 incident though tragic became a poster-advertisemt for Islamophobia, there were series of events that triggered the divide of 'Islam and West' - almost all the major geo-political events and incidents over the decade that followed, subtly-mapped into a Muslim-mind as suppression of Islam, and steadily becoming a victim of injustice: War on Afghanistan, War on Iraq, Cartoons Controversy, Minaret Ban, Adhan Ban, Niqab ban, Flotila incident, Abu Garib, Civilian Deaths, Depleted Uranium, Psycho-Soldiers, more Psychos, Ariel Sharon Incident, Gujarat riots, Quran burning, Profiling at Airports (the ex-President of India was also a target), and such.
As every coin has two-faces, on the flip-side 9-11 incidents also tried to balance the Muslim-minds by giving them an opportunity to bridge the gaps, prejudices and misconceptions - Scholars, Intellectuals and Common-men alike came forward to the break the stereotypes, and therefore it led to a domino-effect of different kind: Rejection of extremism by scholors, condemnation of the 911 incident, and as bridges were built it surprisingly led to growth of Islam in the West, and more surprisingly among western-women.
This was followed by waves of Young Muslims coming forward to dismantle the "Angry-Muslim" caricature built by news-media and popular-movies , and helped by young generation of scholars, converts, and preachers like: Hamza Yusuf, Nouman Ali Khan, Ali Ardekani, Idris Tawfiq, Jeffrey Lang, Eddie, Hamza Tzortzis, Adam Deen, Suhaib Webb, Peter Casey, Rageh Omaar and such, were also balanced by wisdom and patience through a number of experienced Muslims in similar/same fields.
Thanks to technology and internet - forums like social-networking sites, campaigns and discussion-rooms opened up possibilites for Muslims to express themselves - and suddenly these initiatives were complemented with popular Muslims coming to spotlight: Muslim Comedians, Oscar-winners, Pop-stars, Journalists, Peaceful-Revolutionaries(aka Twitter revolutionaries), Athletes, and even Muslim animals, mountains, and planets coming into visiblity on the world-stage, and the biggest of them we nearly had a Muslim President in White-House!:)
Though the final one was a disappointment.. yet, we had Tony Blair's sister-in-law, Lauren Booth choosing Islam, and Islam is now counted to be growing popular among Russians, South Americans, Australian-Aborigines and Chinese based on many independent yet, converging reports.
Well, what does all these little details & unrelated things about demographics, statistics and projections have to say to me? - personally, I have learnt that: Islam is not a blind and barbaric faith defined by a minute fraction of violent individuals, neither is the Prophet, peace be upon him, a liar nor a mad-man, and logically could not be both - as many individuals like Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, Alisina, Sam Shamoun, Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, and Terry Jones (loosely put the neocons) would say, and also work hard to propagate the idea openly/sublimally that 'Islam is of the evil'.
This post is kind of a 'thank you note' to my fellow Muslim friend who guided me out of agnosticism - by engaging me in discussions and how... reason, rationality, spirituality, science, God and religion are not conflicting spheres, and also thanking Dr.Lang for his wonderful book 'Struggling to surrender',that helped to open up my heart for Islam to enter again.
And by some coincidence about 2 years ago, I was introduced to an amazing bunch of individuals under a forum on facebook - who in my opinion are the 'centre of wisdom' on facebook, though not a strictly theistic forum - it definitely is an oasis in 'desert of materialism',and I came to know there are plans for launching a web-page based on the group's discussions, posts and paradigms (would share the link here once the project is online).
Though the final one was a disappointment.. yet, we had Tony Blair's sister-in-law, Lauren Booth choosing Islam, and Islam is now counted to be growing popular among Russians, South Americans, Australian-Aborigines and Chinese based on many independent yet, converging reports.
Well, what does all these little details & unrelated things about demographics, statistics and projections have to say to me? - personally, I have learnt that: Islam is not a blind and barbaric faith defined by a minute fraction of violent individuals, neither is the Prophet, peace be upon him, a liar nor a mad-man, and logically could not be both - as many individuals like Daniel Pipes, Pamela Geller, Geert Wilders, Alisina, Sam Shamoun, Robert Spencer, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Walid Shoebat, Nonie Darwish, Wafa Sultan, and Terry Jones (loosely put the neocons) would say, and also work hard to propagate the idea openly/sublimally that 'Islam is of the evil'.
This post is kind of a 'thank you note' to my fellow Muslim friend who guided me out of agnosticism - by engaging me in discussions and how... reason, rationality, spirituality, science, God and religion are not conflicting spheres, and also thanking Dr.Lang for his wonderful book 'Struggling to surrender',that helped to open up my heart for Islam to enter again.
And by some coincidence about 2 years ago, I was introduced to an amazing bunch of individuals under a forum on facebook - who in my opinion are the 'centre of wisdom' on facebook, though not a strictly theistic forum - it definitely is an oasis in 'desert of materialism',and I came to know there are plans for launching a web-page based on the group's discussions, posts and paradigms (would share the link here once the project is online).
Coming back to this blog-post, it wasn't all good though - we had Israel & Iran getting locked into an escalating battle of ego, and Iran's envious neighbor Saudi approving Israel's use of their Air-space for possible air-raids on Iran. Afghan tribal Muslim cutting off his wife's nose, Female circumcision among some Muslim in North Africa, Sectarian conflicts in Pakistan, Apostacy arrests, Rebel uprisings and attacks on NATO+US in Afghanistan & Iraq, the usual EDL vs Muslims clashes, Islamophobia still evident in Europe & USA, Dawkins gang suggesting that Muslims are delusional-beings, and Subramanian Swami suggesting to revoke voting rights of all Indian Muslims and more.. - but I'm happy emphasising the positives, things like these (link) and these (link) that there have been efforts by people from both camps to reach out to common-terms, be compassionate and most importantly be Insaan(human).
(P.S: Only those individuals who are striving to live by the spirit of Islam as a 'way of life' are referenced as the popular Muslims above. Hence the list didn't include the likes of Kasab, Salman Rushdie, Lockerbie/Underwear bombers, and such - on expected lines weren't advertised)
~ “Knowledge exists potentially in the human soul like the seed in the soil; by learning the potential becomes actual.”
― Imam Al-Ghazali
― Imam Al-Ghazali
