“… Still, I don’t feel that the West has really become less condensing towards foreign cultures than the Greeks and Romans were: it has only become more tolerant. Mind you, not towards Islam – only towards certain other eastern cultures, which offer some sort of spiritual attraction to the spirit-hungry West and are at the same time too distant from the western world view to constitute any real challenge to its values.” (Muhammad Asad)
Purdah: The west seems (is) averse to purdah. France came out shamelessly against it. (And the West is tolerant! Cruelest joke of the century!) The impression created is that ‘Islamists’ are hell bent upon enforcing it; that if Islam comes to power anywhere in the world today, by midnight there will be a punitive clamp down on erring females; and that by purdah, Islam restricts the freedom of the fairer sex. Well, among the basics of Islam is that it cannot be forced upon someone. Regarding ‘restricting the freedom’, if freedom of the fairer sex means commercialisation of the female body, if freedom of the fairer sex means that her curves can be used to sell anything – cars, cooking oil, deodorants or toilet brushes, then yes! Islam is up – up against such freedom. Forget advertisements, the next trend from Japan is skinvertising – slap stickers on her thighs, send her out in a miniskirt and then of course, pay her! Sick! (Google the term, MS Word Thesaurus still marks it red!) If this is freedom, Islam is not for it! (And everyone who is not sick should not be so!) Rest assured, Islam advocates education for everyone, girls first!
Democracy: The mainstream media sets afloat propaganda about Islam and the credulous masses fall easy prey. Since the dominant world order at present is democracy (supposedly!), Islam is painted as something ‘against democracy’. (Some of the recent headlines from Egypt read ‘ISLAM vs. DEMOCRACY!’ –Unpleasant Irony!) Yes! If democracy means that an American is more valuable than the life of an Afghan or an Iraqi, or if democracy means, democracy just up to the boundaries of your nation and not an inch beyond that, Islam is certainly against it; for the prophet of Islam was not of the Arabs only. He was the prophet of mercy for all.
Islam, by no means, is against the basic ideals of democracy. What more equality can anyone speak of than the fact that a Negro slave is chosen to be the muezzin so as to call the believers to pray? And what more mutual respect can one think of than the fact that the same Negro slave is welcomed by the second Caliph of Islam, standing in reverence, as “Here come our master; here come our lord.”? In fact, this is what Miss Sarojini Naidu, the Nightingale of India says speaking about this aspect of Islam: “It was the first religion that preached and practiced democracy; for in the mosque when the minaret is sounded and the worshippers are gathered together, the democracy of Islam is embodied five times a day when the peasant and the king kneel side by side and proclaim, God alone is great.”
Tailpiece: When I look at the magnitude of deceitful propaganda around and at the scale of damage caused by the same, I almost feel miserable but something from within gives hope against hope:
“The wolves prey upon the lambs in the darkness of the night, but the blood stains remain upon the stones in the valley until the dawn comes, and the sun reveals the crime to all.”
It is incredible how an author can ignore the carnage being performed by Muslims in the Muslim world today and somehow justify it by comparing to western Christians over 1000 years ago…has your society not learned anything in a thousand years…the west is certainly different than it was then and tolerance is common in western countries…you say the prophet allowed Christians to pray in Islamic holy places but today non Muslims cannot even travel to Mecca…it appears that the prophet had tolerance that today’s Muslims ignore…I think it is the lack of this true following of Islam and dependence on radical uneducated mullahs that have brought you to this disaster…the carnage of sectarian violence must be corrected by the ummah…no outsider can do it for you…alter yourselves or you will not live peaceful lives…
this article deals vd ‘propaganda abt islam’ – u havn’t perhaps got dat right. It is gud u talkd abt the voilence by muslims in the Muslim world (no one is trying to justify dat) but please dig a bit more – u will see a western hand in almost all the cases. And ya it is true dat we muslims havent learnt much from history.
P.s western tolerance is a good myth and the crusades (and their effects) are ugly, undeniable chapters f human history that continue to haunt the modern world.