A Quote by Abu Bakar Bashir
There is not a single Muslim leader today who has the courage and commitment to defend Islam and Muslims, they are all in awe of the United States and other Western powers, and are indebted to them.
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There have been huge Muslim demonstrations against cartoons depicting Muhammad and any other perceived insult against Islam. But I am unaware of a single demonstration of Muslims against Muslim terror directed at non-Muslims.
'Muslim' is not a political party. 'Muslim' is not a single culture. Muslims go to war with each other. There are more Muslims in India, Russia and China than in most Muslim-majority nations. 'Muslim' is not a homogenous entity.
The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country - I know, because I am one of them.
Many Muslims consider the United States hostile to Islam and to Arab interests. In fact, the United States saved tens of thousands of Muslims in the Gulf, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo.
The religiously observant is lumped in with the nominal Muslim, the nominal Muslim is lumped in with the non-Muslim and the radical. If we want to make sense of this mess and stop pushing Muslims into the arms of the extremist, we need to make meaningful distinctions between the religion of Islam that a billion Muslims follow and see as a guidance as a peaceful righteous moral life and the puritanical Islam of a minority which so captures the media's attention.
When I was in the US, I felt that the discourse there surrounding Muslims as the other, problematising Muslims and Islam as the other was very similar to what we find in Australia, which is that the image of Islam is a constructed image in the West. We are starting from a point of view that Islam and Muslims - well Islam is a violent, misogynistic, hateful religion and that is where the debate always starts from - that presumption underlies the discourse.
We have reaffirmed again and again that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace, and when it comes to America and Islam, there is no us and them, there's only us, because millions of Muslim Americans are part of the fabric of our country. So, we reject any suggestion of a clash of civilizations.
If we are true small 'l' liberals, it's our job to seek out feminist Muslims, ex-Muslims, liberal Muslims, dissenting voices within Muslim communities, gay Muslims - we should promote those voices and in doing so, we demonstrate Islam is not a monolith, Muslims are not homogenous, and that Muslims are truly internally diverse.
There is a cottage industry of these Muslim bashers who are training law enforcement personnel, military personnel... and you are breeding a generation of leaders in our society who have this suspicion of Islam and hostility towards American Muslims and Muslims in general. The intention of these trainers is to demonise Islam and to marginalise American Muslims.
We only have one penal code in the United States, and it applies in every single state, every city, no matter who is there. This is part of the fear mongering, that has gripped the United States, the notion that we need to pass a law forbidding the institution of a foreign Law in the United States when it is forbidden by the constitutions is yet another example of targeting Muslim communities because they are seen as different, or exceptional in other ways.
I mean, the United States has had an eighteen-year military commitment in Afghanistan, and frankly, I can't think of any country other than the United States which is even capable of such a commitment.
In the Islamic world, the U.S. is seen in two quite different ways. One view recognizes what an extraordinary country the U.S. is. Every Arab or Muslim that I know is tremendously interested in the United States. Many of them send their children here for education. Many of them come here for vacations. They do business here or get their training here. The other view is of the official United States, the United States of armies and interventions.
300 years after the rise of Islam there were Zoroastrians in Iran. The Muslim armies never forced people to accept Islam. It was only within Arabia that God ordered the idolaters to have a choice of either embracing Islam or fight against Muslims, because He wanted to remove this terrible idolatry that exited there. But outside Arabia where Islam met Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and Hindus, they were given a choice by and large. That's why many Christians and Jewish communities survived in the Muslim world, but gradually many of them embraced Islam for different reasons.
If the culprits are Muslim, they have twisted the teachings of Islam. Whoever performed, or is behind, the terrorist attacks in the United States of America does not represent Islam. God is not behind assassins.
Interpretations of Muslim assimilation have gravitated between two arguments: that Muslims will remain as permanent outsiders or that Muslims will blend in with little difficulty at all. Mucahit Bilici demonstrates how wanting these arguments are. Finding Mecca in America takes us into the uncharted territory of what it is actually like to be Muslim immigrants in the United States. I am especially impressed by the study's theoretical depth and empirical insights.
There was a time when only specialized Christian missionaries needed to be able to defend the gospel of Jesus Christ against the attacks of Islam. Today every Christian has an opportunity and obligation to present the gospel effectively and in Christian love to the Muslims who have permeated our Western society. When your neighbor, your mechanic, your favorite basketball player, your employer or employee, or even your children's friends could very well be Muslims, the need for proper understanding and an effective Christian witness is abundantly clear.
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