NOTICE: I also operate a blog called MyWorld--My Neighbour. That's a more general blog than this one. I publish more posts on that one. From here on, all the posts of this blog also appear on that one. That's more than useless repetition. That blog attracts a different kind of reader. End of notice.
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Some of my Christian friends
try to make me feel guilty and may even consider me a traitor when I say or
write anything positive about Muslims or Islam, especially if it is about
Muslims and peace. For Muslims, that’s one of the major aspects of their
religion and life. That’s what their religion is all about they claim time and
again. Of course, peace can mean and does mean different things to different
people, different religion and to different ideologies. During the Cold War,
both West and East claimed to be promoting peace, while their goals were
diametrically opposite to each other. Everyone claims to be for peace, Christians,
Muslims, Secularists and all the rest.
It is also true that some
Muslims practice terrorism in the pursuit of “peace,” but this has been true for the West and for
Christians as well. I only make this claim without substantiating right now,
for that is not the major point of this particular post. I would like to say
that this was true of Westerners, including its Christians, only in the past,
but the wars and incursions the West has waged over the past few decades in the
Middle East under the Bush regimes and in which Obama is still caught can only
be described as terrorist, even if they have government sanctions, even
international sanctions. Only a few days ago a British report states those wars
were not necessary and had no good reasons!
Ach, let me get back to my intended subject for the day.
Muslims and peace. Muslims against terrorism. (Before continuing, let me credit Bethany
Linsay of Vancouver Sun [VS] for the
substance of the rest of this article—July 6, 2016, A10.) That’s the spirit in
which BC Muslims are celebrating Ramadan, their annual period of fasting. Ahmed
Yousef, President of the Islamic Society of Ridge Meadows makes no bones about
it. Ramadan 2016 has been marred by an unusual amount of terrorism and violence
by groups such as ISIL and others. In fact, in Yousef’s memory, this has been
the bloodiest Ramadan ever. A truck bomb killed 250 people in Baghdad; dozens
were killed at the Istanbul airport; 20 hostages were slain in Bangladesh;
suicide bombings hit Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi; four met their death in
Medina, one of the holiest of all Muslim cities. Yousef calls the perpetrators
of all this violence “TB: terrorists and beheaders.” They are, he says with a voice rising with
anger, “a disease, a plague that is taking hold throughout the entire universe.
They have no affiliation of any kind to anything.”
This situation has left BC’s
Muslims “feeling sad and frightened.”
“It depresses us Muslims, it takes the wind out of our sails.” I’ve
looked into the eyes of some of our Muslims “and it’s taken away their spirit,”
he says. Yes, those terrorists hit everyone, “Christians, Yazidis, soccer fans,
police officers and even members of their own organizations, but Muslims…are
the most frequent target.” (Boer comment: The same seems to be true of the Boko
Haram [BH] crowd in Nigeria.) He goes
on, “For people who think that these idiots have anything to do with Islam,
please consider the fact that most of their victims have been Muslims…. They
are thugs, they are criminals, they are mentally unstable individuals who
continue to commit these horrid acts under the name of one of the most peaceful
and most loving religions that there is out there.” Yousef “feels compelled to
speak out and condemns all violence committed in the name of Islam, calling it
a responsibility of his faith.” So far
Yousef.
A Vancouver Muslim outreach
worker with the Muslim Association of Canada, Tarek Ramadan, says, “Those are
trained groups who actually hate (fellow) Muslims or even… claim to be Muslims
and to love Allah, but hate what He has brought. They (are) hypocrites who get
their stomachs filled with cash, from who knows where, to do these acts in the
name of whatever.” “He’s tired of
outspoken politicians and members of the media mixing up terrorist groups and
ordinary Muslims.” Tarek “blames
anti-Islam rhetoric from public figures for a reported rise in Islamophobic
incidents across Canada that prompted the National Council of Canadian Muslims
to launch a campaign against hate crimes this week.” So far, Lindsay’s
contribution to this article, with thanks.
The real distortion and
perversion in all of this is that ISIL and BH tell themselves they are
committing all this heartless violence in the name of peace! Since mainstream
Islam has become so heretical and so secular and does not listen to good
Islamic reason, there is no alternative to violent methods to force them to
return to the fundamentals of the faith. Even they claim to favour peace and are working towards its establishment! I have heard/read it said quite often that
while millions of Muslims agree with the fundamental aims of these terrorists,
they reject the methods they follow towards reaching it. I am quite sure that
is the case. They want to arrive at their salama
in a peaceful, that is, non-violent way, that is physically non-violent way.
Whether that is the case
with Yousef or Tarek Ramadan, only they
would know. I am sure they want peace; I just don’t know how they define it and
what form they would like to see it take on ultimately and what their approved
method of achieving it might be. Yousef is president of his local society. I
take it that means he represents their general orientation. The family picture
in the VS seems to indicate his is an average Canadian family with nothing to
particularly identify them as Muslim. Whether that is a hopeful sign, I do not
know.
