Monday 12 May 2014

Open Letter to Bill Maher in Time Magazine

Rabia Chaudrey has written an open letter to Bill Mayer in Time Magazine (12th May 2014) questioning his dislike of Islam:

"You noted that women are treated at best like second-class citizens, but most often like property in Islam. The first Muslim woman,Khadijah bint Khuwaylid, a successful businesswoman, boss-lady and wife to the Prophet Muhammad, and the other Muslim women of his time would have snickered at you. Women of the region were chattel before Islam, treated and traded as such, until the Quran freed them through revelations such as “O you who believe! You are forbidden to inherit women against their will.”

"I could tell you that Islam was the first system to establish women’s property rights, inheritance rights, the right to education, to marry and divorce of their free will, to be religious scholars, business owners, soldiers. I could tell you that while Christianity was debating the status of women’s souls and declaring them a source of sin, Islam had already established authoritatively the spiritual equality of men and women and absolved Eve, and womankind at large, of sin. I could tell you that the world and history is full of highly educated,successful Muslim women who are empowered by their faith, not debilitated by it. I could tell you terrorism is categorically forbidden in Islam, and that between 1970 and 2012, 97.5% of terror attacks in the U.S. were carried out by non-Muslims. I could tell you that female genital mutilation is never mentioned in the Quran; the only reference to it is found in a weak narration, and scholars find it objectionable to the point of being classified as impermissible."

"Nothing I tell you would matter, though. The facts are irrelevant. That’s how bigotry operates. It’s both telling and troubling that you referred to these issues as “the Muslim question.” The reference didn’t escape me and it’s hard to believe it was anything but deliberate. Think for a second about what was unleashed by the “Jewish question” in Europe. Bigotry sometimes does that, too."

You can read the full article here.

Sunday 19 January 2014

Thomas Jefferson and Islam?

The Bradenton Herald (19 January 2014) carries an interesting opinion piece on the views on Islam of the American founding father, President and author of the Declaration of Independence:

"In 1776, Jefferson inscribed these pivotal words among his private notes: "(N)either Pagan nor Mahometan (Muslim) nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion." They were written a few months after he composed the Declaration of Independence, when he returned to Virginia to draft new laws for his state.

Jefferson borrowed the precedent of "civil rights" for Muslims from the English philosopher John Locke's 1689 tract, "A Letter Concerning Toleration." Locke's ideas about the toleration of Muslims and Jews provoked attacks: One critic condemned him for having "the faith of a Turk." His enemies also charged, rightly, that he owned a copy of the Quran, which they termed "the Mahometan bible."

You can read the full article here.



Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2014/01/19/4941989/thomas-jefferson-muslims-and-the.html#storylink=cpy