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The Muslim Times' Editorial team: If you like what you see, please forward it to friends and family. To know more about us: click here.
Most of the postings are to do with what an average Kenyan citizen has to deal with, in the country, to survive. They go through and are treated with a lot of injustice, where very few in 'officialdom', will take notice of their problems or even do anything about them. Hence, this blog and the belief in, 'One learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand ignorant worshipers' - Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
Showing posts with label Freedom of Speech.... Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom of Speech.... Show all posts
Saturday, June 29, 2013
An Open Letter to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
The Muslim Times' Editorial team: If you like what you see, please forward it to friends and family. To know more about us: click here.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Fred Reed - why the US isn't popular....
So true.....
The View from Abroad
Fred Reed - March 10, 2013
I bet this won't surprise you.
The United States is the most hated country in the world, followed closely by Israel, and then by nobody. Why? Why not Ecuador? China? Russia? East Timor? The hostility puzzles many Americans, who genuinely believe their country to be a force for good, a pillar of democracy, a defender of human rights.
To the rest of the world, none of this is even close.
If you have lived abroad, as so very few Americans have, the explanation for the hatred is obvious: Meddling. Relentless, prideful, uncomprehending meddling, frequently military, often with horrendous death tolls. Americans, adroitly managed by a controlled press, historically illiterate, incurious, decreasingly educated, either have never heard of the American behavior that angers others, or believe it to have been inspired by virtuous motives. Nobody else thinks so.
Add to unfamiliarity with the wider world the constantly inculcated assertion that America is the greatest, most wonderful nation ever to exist, a light to the world, a shining city on a hill, and you get a dangerously delusional state. Especially now. In the past, American economic and military supremacy were such that the US didn't have to care what others thought. The times, they are a-changing.
It might be wise to compare briefly the view through American and foreign eyes. Consider Iraq. To most of the world, the war on Iraq was brutal, unprovoked, and murderous. More than a few, looking at the ruins of Fallujah, thought of Guernica—of which few in the States have ever heard.
Many Americans do not belive that we destroyed Iraq for oil, empire, and the Israel lobby, as was in fact the case. No. We wanted to topple an evil dictator and dispense the precious gift of democracy. It was a question of goodness. Many apparently still believe that Iraq had something to do with the attacks on New York. Again, controlled press, poor schooling, little curiosity.
Similarly, Americans tend to see the war on Afghanistan as having to do with ending Terror or sprouting democracy—not as the Great Game redux, or the quest for the TAPI pipeline or Caspian hydrocarbons.
To most of the world, Afghanistan is just another sorry spectacle of American fighter-bombers killing peasants, of gutted children and drone attacks on half-identified targets. This, the merciless use of overwhelming firepower against lightly armed campesinos, is what the world sees, over and over. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan. It isn't pretty.
I live in Mexico. In countless towns, probably in every city of any size, you see streets named Niños Heroes, Heroic Children. In Guadalajara there is a traffic circle with an imposing monument to them. These things commemorate the children who tried to fight the American soldiers invading Mexico City. In that (purely acquisitive) war Mexico lost half its territory. Yet how many gringos know that it ever happened, or when, or for that matter have ever heard of the bombardment of Veracruz or Pershing's incursion?
Americans who have some grasp of history sometimes say of the Mexican-American War that Mexicans should "get over it." Some might tell the Jews to get over the Holocaust, or Americans to get over 9/11. It is much easier to tell people to get over what you have done to them than to get over things they have done to you.
Then there is the War on Drugs. Americans believe this to be a campaign against Evil—best conducted, of course, in other people's countries.
There are other views. Thoughtful Mexicans do not see why drugs are Mexico's problem. If gringos don't want drugs, why do they buy them? Why don't they solve their own problems? It is no secret internationally that American students in high school and universities use drugs. Why don't the Americans put their college kids in jail? And, they say, probably correctly, that Washington, by sponsoring the elimination of big drug lords, caused the current fighting among littler lords to control the trade, thus creating carnage. Predictably, the flow of drugs northward was not affected.
The combination of clueless ignorance and a sort of Walmart-parking-lot arrogance make mysterious to them much behavior of other countries. Consider their view of Iran, an evil Arab country, somewhere, that wants the Bomb so it can blow up Israel and New York. No explanation occurs to them for Iran's hostility to the US, which wants regime change so Iranians can be democratic and have freedoms. Ask Billy Bobbers whether they have even heard of, much less been in, major Iranian cities like Tehran, Sulawesi, Sidon, or Tbilisi. No. Yet they are sure the inhabitants are dangerous and un-American.
Iranians may perhaps see things differently. They know that in 1953 the democratically electeed prime minister Mohammed Mossadeg was overthrown by the CIA leaving the Shah, a routinely ghastly dictator, in control. This had much to do with the occupation of the US embassy in 1979, which was sold in the US as evidence of the badness of Iranians.
Later, in 1988, the US Navy, in the form of the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian airliner and killed everyone aboard. Americans shrugged it off: Such things were doubtless necessary to stop terrorism. But imagine the outrage if the Iranian navy shot down a US airliner.
Nobody beyond the borders buys our song about spreading freedom and human rights. America has supported countless sordid dictators rulling by army and torture chamber (the Saudis being a current example). We have put many dictators on their thrones, such as Pniochet in Chile. Others notice that the only country that openly and proudly tortures prisoners is…us.
Always, the underlying problem is meddling. Bin Laden's guys didn't attack New York because it was a slow morning and they couldn't think of anything else to do. They were furious at US meddling in Moslem lands. You may think, and I may think, that Islam is a primitive faith not well adapted to the modern world. Fine. I may think that hornets do not have an ideal social organization. But I know better than to poke their nest.
This is why they hate us—meddling, bombing, invading, droning, telling them how to run their countries. No, George, it is not because of our freedoms.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Freedom of Speech is not Absolute or ‘Gospel Truth!’
A very good eye-opener and a MUST read.
Raziya
Making Islamic sense of free speech
To read in the Muslim Times.
The Muslim Times' Editorial team: If you like what you see, please forward it to friends and family. To know more about us: click here.
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'One learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand ignorant worshipers': Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
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Friday Sermon Sept 21, 2012: True Love for the Holy Prophet Muhammad
Source: Alislam.org
Khalifatul Masih V - Mirza Masroor Ahmad
Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih began his Friday sermon by reciting the following verses of the Holy Qur'an. The translation reads:
'Allah and His angels send blessings on the Prophet. O ye who believe! you also should invoke blessings on him and salute him with the salutation of peace.
Verily, those who annoy Allah and His Messenger – Allah has cursed them in this world and in the Hereafter, and has prepared for them an abasing punishment.' (33:57 – 58)
These days an intense wave of indignation has swept through the Muslim world; in Muslims countries as well as among Muslims living in different countries of the world in response to an extremely crude and offensive act of anti-Islam elements. Indeed, Muslims are justified in this. Whether or not a Muslim has proper insight of the real station of the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him), he is ready to give his life for his respect and honour. Indignation of every Muslim is natural at the crude and offensive film made about the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) and the wicked way in which affront has been directed at him in it. He, who was a benefactor of humanity, mercy for all the worlds and beloved of God and who stayed awake at nights in his sorrow for humanity, who expressed so much anguish to save humanity that God in the heavens said: 'So haply thou wilt grieve thyself to death for sorrow after them if they believe not in this discourse.' (18:7)
The extremely insulting film about this great benefactor of humanity was surely going to make a Muslim's heart bleed and it did. And more than anyone, it pained Ahmadi Muslims for we are the followers of the true and ardent devotee of the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) who gave us the insight and perception of the great station of the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him). Our hearts are torn at this gross act and we are extremely hurt and wounded. We prostrate before God to contend with the perpetrators and make them a cautionary sign that would last till the end of the world.
The perception that the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) gave us is thus; he wrote: 'Muslims are those people, who give their lives for the honour of their noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him). Death is their preference to the dishonour in genuinely reconciling with such people and becoming their friends whose task is to day and night verbally abuse their Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) and cite his name extremely insultingly in their magazines, books and advertisements and mention him in utterly degrading words. Remember, such individuals are also not the well-wishers of their own people because they create impediments in their way. I say most truthfully that it is possible that we may reconcile with wild snakes and wilderness beasts, but we cannot reconcile with those people who do not desist from insulting the honour of God's holy Prophets. They think that there is triumph in abusive language and vulgarity but each triumph comes from the heavens. Through the blessing of their pure discourse, those with pure speech ultimately win hearts and minds whereas those of wicked nature have no other skill other than creating discord and conflict in the land in a disorderly way…Experience also bears witness that the ending of such offensive people is not good. The sense of honour of God ultimately comes to pass for His beloveds.' (Chashma Ma'rafat, Ruhani Khaza'in, Vol. 23, pp. 386 – 387)
These days apart from magazines and advertisements other mediums are also used for this vulgarity. Out of their stubbornness these people are contending with God. InshaAllah, they will come under His chastisement. In their obstinacy they continue to perpetrate their excesses. When in 2006 wicked natured people in Denmark made vulgar caricatures of the Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) while Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih drew the attention of the Jama'at to demonstrate appropriate reaction, he had also said that these people will not stop here and will continue to perpetrate such acts in future. Today we observe that they have resorted to greater vulgarity and meanness. It is their defeat against Islam that is forcing them to be offensive in the name of freedom of speech. As the Promised Messiah (on whom be peace) said, they are not even the well-wishers of their own people. It will one day be unfolded to them all that what they are doing is in fact harmful for them. These people are mean and selfish.
Right now in the name of freedom of speech politicians and others, in places openly and in places discreetly, are speaking up for these people; some are also speaking up for the Muslims. But it should be remembered that this world is now like a global village and if wickedness is not openly called wickedness, these matters can also destroy the peace of these countries. It should be remembered what the Imam of the age said; that every triumph comes from the heavens and the heavens have decided that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) whom they are insulting will triumph in the world and he will triumph by winning hearts and minds because pure discourse is effective and it does not require extremist measures or to respond to vulgarity with vulgarity. God will deal with these perpetrators in the next life.
To read further click here
Anti-jihad ads reminiscent of McCarthyism, 1950s fear mongering
US Congressman Mike Honda
By Congressman Mike Honda
Source: The Washington Post
This week felt like a throwback to the 1950s, to McCarthyism and fear mongering. I, and countless others, spoke out in defense of Muslim Americans who were feeling attacked by ads on New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. public transit systems that compared Muslims to "savages". Physical safety was of serious concern for many Muslim Americans, which is why the three transit authorities appropriately delayed or declined the ads, later to be court-ordered into running the ads.
What happened next is what alarms me most. Anyone who stepped up to defend fellow Muslim Americans was deemed by the ads' sponsors as the "enemy." I've heard this accusation before, except when I was much younger, growing up in Colorado in a Japanese internment camp.
This is what the ad says: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad." The logical and reasonable inferences here are the following: jihad (read: Muslim, due to etymology) equals savage. Muslims, thus, are savages.
To read further click here
Since 2001, U.S. Congressman Mike Honda has represented California's 15th Congressional District, which includes western San Jose and Silicon Valley.
Love thy Neighbor is a Christian Value, Hate and Stereotyping aren't
Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD
Source: Islam for the West
Dr. Zia H Shah: Chief Editor of the Muslim Times
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)
In presence of these clear teachings by Jesus Christ, no believing Christian can condone hate speech against his or her neighbors. Even those who are agnostic and atheist, in the West, often consider Jesus to be a good teacher of moral values, so, in a way this biblical message, in the Gospel of Mark, has a universal appeal. Hillel, a Jewish scholar, was a teacher and a founder of a school (Beit Hillel) in the first century B.C.E. Hillel was born in Babylonia. At age forty, he went to live in Jerusalem. There he became the spiritual leader (Nasi) of the Jews from about 30 B.C.E to 10 C.E. When asked by a non-Jew to relate all the Torah had to say while standing on one foot, Hillel replied, "Do not unto your neighbor what you would not have him do until you; this is the whole Law; the rest is commentary." No one likes hate speech against him or her, especially if it begins to take hold and creates possibility of discrimination, hatred, mayhem and murder. No wonder there are laws against hate speech, against antisemitism and even against holocaust denial. Most Muslims, living in the West are peace loving and have moderate views towards their fellow citizens and are worried about the recent anti-Islam film and negative ads in New York subways and hate speech against them, which is finding some roots in the Western countries, in one form or the other.
How could the Christians hate the Muslims and be brotherly towards the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews and atheists, while the Muslims honor Jesus to be an honorable prophet, consider belief in him as part of their essential beliefs, take his mother the chaste Mary as a role model, as described in the Holy Quran and notice all the time that a chapter is named after Mother Mary in the Quran and realize that the name of Jesus appears more often in the Holy Quran than the name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad himself, and all the other religions regard Jesus as a liar, a non-entity or have no opinion about him? Does it make sense? It is self evident that those who hate monger against the Muslims are not well wishers of Islam or the 1.5 billion Muslims, but, are they well wishers of the Christians, leading them into a world of contradictions and chaos?
Your friend and family can contact you through email within a few seconds from the remotest corners of our global village. If a disaster strikes any part of Africa, Australia or Galapagos, we hear about it instantaneously. So, in the context of our global village each and every homo-sapiens is a neighbor! I believe, that is exactly what Jesus would say if he were to come back!
To read further click here
Making Islamic sense of free speech
Harris Zafar – Spokesperson, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, USA
Source: The Washington Post
By Harris Zafar
While many celebrated the winter holidays, news broke of the arrest in Saudi Arabia of liberal writer Turki Al Hamad for allegedly insulting Islam on Twitter. We also heard of another Saudi activist, Raif Badawi, who was arrested in June and will now continue with his trial, accused of apostasy for ridiculing Saudi Arabia's religious police and making other comments that officials found insulting. These incidents have re-ignited the age old debate about the use of freedom of speech, especially with regards to Islam.
The difference between Islam's view on free speech and the view promoted by free speech advocates these days is the intention and ultimate goal each seeks to promote. Whereas many secularists champion individual privileges, Islam promotes the principle of uniting mankind and cultivating love and understanding among people. Both endorse freedom for people to express themselves, but Islam promotes unity, whereas modern-day free speech advocates promote individualism.
Let me explain.
The ultimate goal of Islam is to unite mankind under a single banner of peace. The Koran– Islam's holy scripture – says God created everyone in unity, but our own man-made differences has compromised our unity (2:214). In order to unite mankind, Islam instructs to only use speech to be truthful, do good to others, and be fair and respectful. It attempts to pre-empt frictions by prescribing rules of conduct which guarantee for all people not only freedom of speech but also fairness, absolute justice, and the right of disagreement.
The Koran instructs people to speak the truth (33:71), to speak in a manner that is best (17:54), to speak to others kindly (2:84) and to refrain from inappropriate speech (4:149). With Islam's guidance to purify our intentions, it promotes free speech when our intention is to serve a good purpose, promote peace, bring people closer to God and unite mankind. If, however, our intentions are to insult others or promote disorder or division, we should refrain. Read further.
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'One learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand ignorant worshipers': Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
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