No Truer Patriot or More Loyal Citizen than a Muslim
No nation or society or country ever had a truer patriot, or a more loyal citizen, than a Muslim who truly understands Islam and is unequivocally committed to it.
How to Purify Our Motives and Intentions
People: Let us take “us and ours” out of the equation in any form or fashion. What is left will be as close to pure Islam as possible. That is the first step to purity of the heart and to the purity of our motives and intentions that Islam requires as a starting point to everything else in life.
Loving America, Did You Say? Why in the World Not?
Loving America – or any other place where one lives and works, and where one pursues one’s education and career, and raises one’s family – may be the end point of life for others. But for Muslims, who truly understand Islam, that is where life on earth begins.
To My Fellow-Muslims in the West, a Fresh Start
God gave us an opportunity to present Islam to the West in its original purity and simplicity. We used it instead for building our lives and for pursuing wealth and name, and power and position, for ourselves and our families. Results now stare us in the face. How about making a fresh start even now and getting on with the business of Taking the Qur’an to Every Home and Heart that Needs it?
Damage Done to Islam by “Islamic” Mercenaries
Some of the worst disservice to Islam may have been done by the mercenaries among us – those who turned Islam into a career path, rather than treating it as a cause and a mission that Islam was meant to be.
Islam and True Patriotism Are the Twain that Never Do Part
If you think you have to give up your Islam in order to be a patriot, you understand the meaning of neither Islam nor patriotism. Islam and True Patriotism are the twain that never part company.
Character Is the Key, Did You Know That?
It is not Islam or Iman Muslims need more of, it is character. Just like so many others in the world do.
While Floods Ravage Pakistan,
Pakistan President Goes Looking for World Leaders to Meet
It is August 2010. And it is also the month of Ramadan – 1431 – during which Muslims everywhere fast the entire day.
Pakistan, we are told, is having the worst floods of its 60-year history, with 20 million reported victims. And during this crisis the president of that country is said to have been on a fairly extended tour of Europe and UK to meet what are called World Leaders.
We may have a couple of things to say on that. First, nothing a politician ever does comes as a surprise to us, especially one from Pakistan.
Second, if all the president of Pakistan wanted to do was to fly over a large body of water like the Atlantic, why couldn’t he have gotten into a helicopter and flown over the flooded parts of his own country? If he wanted to, he could have asked his military to colour those waters green to make them resemble the Atlantic. Pretty much everything in Pakistan is run by the military we are told.
Is Full-Face Covering Really the Way Out for Muslim Women?
If God had wanted to impose a Niqab – full-face covering some people insist is an absolute Islamic requirement – on every woman everywhere as an absolute feminine necessity, don’t you think he would have asked nature to take care of it, like eyes, nose, mammalian glands and menstruation? For, Nature is the instrument, and the handmaiden if you will, through which God generally works his Will in the world.
The Mantle of Misogyny Muslims Inherited from Others
There was a time when the Christians and the Jews debated endlessly whether the woman was a human being or not; and whether she had a soul or not; and whether she was taking everybody to Hell or not.
Some of them called her the Instrument of the Devil. Others gave her the name Gateway to Hell. Everybody agreed that she was somehow a lesser human being, fundamentally lacking in the human essence and spirit.
But in the Middle of the Seventh Century – 1400 years back – Islam came and put an end to all that nonsense. Once and for all.
At least so you would have thought. But, as it turns out, not if the Muslims could help it. For, eventually, they too decided to dive into the same lizard hole the Christians and the Jews were occupying before them. Just as the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, had warned them they would.
But, unlike the Jews and the Christians, the Muslim concern was not if a woman had a soul or not; and if she led them all to hell or not; but, rather, if a woman could have a leadership role in life or not.
They also agonized about what kind of clothes they would like to see a woman wear.
Not all Muslims, mind you, but yet quite a few among them. Especially, many of those who thought they were the better ones among Muslims – more ostensibly God-fearing; more manifestly conformist; and more punctiliously observant of the required Islamic “rituals”; and somehow, paradoxically and inexplicably less tolerant and less accommodating of others than their Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam, was.
As if that was their mandate from God: Going after the female half of their species and telling them what to wear and how to behave.
So, the Muslims gladly wore the broadly misogynist mantle inherited from the Christians and the Jews, even though they opted for only the lighter and milder version of it. In the process, the Muslims forgot their own glorious teachings and traditions of female emancipation, equality and empowerment. And in many cases they went after the womenfolk with a vengeance under one pretext or another, even though there never were any burnings at the stake – a la Joan of Arc or other putative witches of Salem, Massachusetts.
In the process, the Muslims gave up education and science and turned their back on innovation, creativity and enlightenment.
They also replaced personal liberty with social and political tyranny and exchanged a democratic and egalitarian way of life for hereditary monarchy and dictatorship. And for all sorts of feudal and authoritarian power structures.
And they filled their mind with all kinds of idle thought and empty spaces.
I have always refrained from honouring these debates by joining them. But let me ask this question anyway – a question that to me is most simple and elementary. Those who spend endless hours and days debating if a woman can be a leader or not; and if she can be in charge of something or not; and then they drag the glorious and blessed name of Islam in this almost perverse, foolish and futile debate; all they need to do is just think about one thing.
That is all they need to do. Think about one thing. Answer one simple question.
Let them ask themselves: Just who was the owner, master – and leader – of their kitchen, when their gourmet meal was being prepared the previous day, and who was in charge of that cup of sumptuous tea or coffee – or some other similar drug – that their wife placed in their hand that morning?
And then let them allow their imagination to wander. And let them ponder all the Might-Have-Beens of that kitchen and all the likely brews that could have taken the place of that cup of life-giving early morning tea or coffee. And all the different kinds of poison, some slow to act and some faster to work their havoc; some most painful and some with their deadly effects barely visible to the naked eye.
No, under the eminent, capable and compassionate leadership of their women, their cup of tea was still a cup of tea and the food they had been consuming all of yesterday was nothing but food. The result is that these ingrate men live on – maybe only to ungraciously malign their women another day.
They are still alive and breathing – these ungracious and ingrate men – and continuing to make mischief. Their wives did not use their total mastery of their territory to put an end to their existence with a chalice full of hemlock. And the women of their household – and practically every other household on earth – exercised their leadership in the most positive, supportive and nurturing manner that they have been doing for who knows how long.
And then what many of these male Muslims need to do thereafter is to hang their head in shame and turn to God and repent from their folly and their arrogance – and for having strayed so blatantly and shamefully from the pure, pristine and pro-female teachings of Islam.
And immediately thereafter they need to start apologizing to every woman they meet – starting out with their mother and wife.
These Muslim men who ask if a woman can be a leader.
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