Protest Egypt's Constitutional Amendments in DC, Monday

On Monday, March 26th, Egyptians will be voting in a referendum on the constitutional amendments approved by the parliament that seek to cement the hold of Mubarak's NDP as the one and only party running the country. The amendments limit the freedom of citizens and parties to join the political process, and introduce draconian measures against alleged suspects of terrorism who will have to be tried in military tribunals behind closed doors. To protest these recent developments, there will be a rally held outside the Egyptian embassy tomorrow, Monday the 26th in Washington, D.C.


For more information, check Nora Younis' blog.

Let your voice be heard.

On "Desert Muslims"

Don't you love it when someone tries really hard to defend us poor, miserable, uncivilized bunch of Muslims and Arabs by indicating that "we're really not THAT bad"? I especially love it when a "seasoned" journalist or politician makes this attempt. This is how I read Nicholas Kristof's editorial in today's New York Times entitled "The Muslim Stereotype".

Kristof is in Brunei, an exotic predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian country, where the "sultan has two wives... women can drive... and young people can flirt together in cafes". There he declares that he "find[s] the common American stereotypes of Islam profoundly warped." One might assume that some good will come out of this piece, right? That Kristof will declare once and for all that Muslims are not terrorists and they don't live in the desert. Well, not quite.

In an attempt to indicate that the international media focuses too much on Arab Muslims (where most of the terrorists come from), Kristof makes a failed attempt at highlighting the "good" that comes of out of the predominantly non-Arab Muslims around the world, and specifically in Asia. He seems to have just discovered that Indonesia is a democracy and that Bangladesh has had two female prime ministers.

He writes that the West is really tried of looking at an Arab world that "sometimes seems to put its creative juices mostly into building better bombs". Someone help me here, please. When was the last time you saw an Arab country building an arsenal of weapons to protect itself? You'd think he would be referring to some of the most powerful nations in the world whose stockpiles of weapons continue to swell and their victims can be found in Iraq and elsewhere.

Oh wait, maybe he was referring to Iran's nuclear weapons program? But Iran is not Arab, or did Ahmedenijad turn it into an Arab state while I was sleeping? Well then he must be talking about suicide bombers! How could I forget?! How creative does one have to be to build a suicide belt? It's really an insult to say that all of Arab "creativity" is focused on bomb-making. If anything, suicide bombs represent a lack of power and a resort to cheap materials to create weapons that are used to attack Israeli checkpoints and Iraqi markets. If they were really creative, Arabs would be building stockpiles of conventional and nuclear weapons to rival the threat posed by the very creative Israelis.

Kristof is right in the sense that "Muslims" are often confused with Arabs, and subsequently, non-Arab Muslims get lost in the picture. This is not a fault of Arab Muslims, however. It's the fault of an ignorant media that chooses to reinforce this misconception. It's also true that most of the news headlines today focus on the Middle East, but that should not translate into "everyone involved in those conflicts is Muslim". He concludes by making an absurd correlation between the level of religiosity and modernity in the Muslim world and the geographical location of the country involved.

The plain fact is that some Muslim societies do have a real problem with violence, with the subjugation of women, with tolerance. But the mosaic of Islam is vast and contains many more hopeful glimpses of the future.

There is a historic dichotomy between desert Islam -- the austere fundamentalism of countries like Saudi Arabia -- and riverine or coastal Islam, more outward-looking, flexible and tolerant. Desert Muslims grab the headlines, but my bet is that in the struggle for the soul of Islam, maritime Muslims have the edge.

This is not in defense of the wrongs that take place in the name of Islam across Arabia. One cannot deny that problems do exist, many of which are caused by oppressive dictators and ignorance of Islamic teachings. But to attempt to highlight the "goodness" of Asian Muslims by overemphasizing the faults of Arab Muslims does nothing to help the ever increasing stereotypes and accusations hurled at Islam on daily basis. Kristof would be well served if he made an attempt to take a closer look at the lives of those "desert Muslims" and the reasons behind the problems he indicated.

After doing that, he should come by to Washington D.C. where cab drivers and children crossing streets are gunned down everyday, where women wait in alleys at night to be picked up, and where airlines pull passengers off planes because they pray to their Lord. Seems to me like a healthy dose of violence, subjugation of women, and intolerance right here in our nation's capital. See you soon, Mr. Kristof.

[The full article is only available to TimesSelect members. If you can't access it, email me and I can send it to you. A simple blog search will also lead to blogs that posted the piece.]

Sticks and Stones...On the Pontiff's Words

As if we don't have enough frustration and anger in the Muslim world for the wars, occupation, poverty, unemployment, humiliation, lack of freedoms, and so called terrorism that plague us, the highest authority of the Catholic faith decides that there is a pressing need to reiterate the ignorant and insulting message the Danish cartoons portrayed only a few months ago. And as if we don't have enough people saying we're crazy angry terrorists, a few Muslim lunatics had to go prove the Pope's statements by throwing fire bombs at churches in the West Bank town of Nablus. Do people not think anymore?! Is it really that hard to think twice before saying or doing something that might cause harm to many people around you and many people who listen to you?

The 'cartoon controversy' is still fresh in the memory of most people around the world, especially Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad was defamed in the satirical Danish cartoons with complete disregard for the feelings of 1.6 billion Muslims around the world who consider such drawings offensive at least and blasphemous at best. Millions of Muslims around the world peacefully protested the cartoons and some of course violently protested. It took much effort on the part of the Danish to retract and apologize for the actions of a few of their countrymen, and it took a lot more effort from the Muslim world to begin a dialogue about the important role the Prophet plays in the Islamic faith with the West. Discussions, conferences, and countless dialogues were held in order to bring both sides together to recognize the sanctity of different aspects of religion for followers of different faiths. This is the only positive result of the Danish cartoon controversy.

But just as people are beginning to calm down and realize that discussion and exchange of ideas is the only way to educate ourselves and each other about our beliefs, ideals, and customs, the Pope decides to spark yet another controversy by insulting the most revered figure in the Islamic faith, the Prophet Muhammad.

Muslims around the world have demanded an apology from the pontiff, and rightly so, for his insulting and inflammatory statements. Today, the Pope issued a statement, which most media outlets are still debating as to whether it constitutes an apology or not. The BBC says the Pope has apologized, while CNN says his statement comes short of an apology. [The full text of the statement is here.]

Thank you, Pope Benedict XVI, for "regretting" that your statement "could have sounded offensive" to Muslims around the world. Unfortunately, the damage has been done, yet again. And while most Muslims want an official and personal apology, that is not likely to change the reality of what happened. We all make mistakes, that is true. But we also know that a Pope is given such an important responsibility that he could not mistakenly make such a statement in a well-prepared for speech before a large audience.

And to those individuals who claim to represent me and my religion by attacking sacred churches and burning effigies and flags, please remember that the Prophet would not have, in a million years and in the face of thousands of insults, ever acted this way. His neighbor threw trash in front of his house every single day and the non-Muslims in Mecca insulted him verbally and even abused him physically. He turned the other cheek and prayed that God would forgive them and guide them. The Prophet said, "The strong is not the one who overcomes the people by his strength, but the strong is the one who controls himself in a moment of anger."

I conclude with a very well written editorial in the New York Times today which analyzes the situation very clearly and effectively:

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”

In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.

The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue. But this is not the first time the pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims.

In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was “in permanent contrast to Europe.”

A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue.

The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.

[technorati tags: pope, catholic, vatican, Islam, Islam, Muhammad]