The Real World > Religion
Islam
thorbiorn:
Hi,
Today I read about the Iranian Hamshari cartoon competition, the rules are here: http://www.nationalvanguard.org/printer.php?id=7921
- Note from 20060410: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nl/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=312458&content_id={9FDABE3E-3694-458C-AEB6-2754CCC2DC05}¬oc=1 has a comment. -end of note.
When I first heard of the rumour of a holocaust competition I failed to understand why, that is until: http://www.ihr.org/news/112705HoloDenial.html 'Holocaust Denial' Laws are Disgraceful
By Mark Weber - November 27, 2005
David Irving, the controversial British historian, was arrested in Austria on November 11 for a 16-year-old violation of that country's "Holocaust denial" statute. He has now been formally charged, and if found guilty could face years in prison.
His case is by no means unique. In Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and several other European countries, as well as in Israel, it is a crime publicly to dispute the official version of Holocaust history.
The list of those who have been fined, imprisoned, or forced into exile for "denying the Holocaust" includes Robert Faurisson and Roger Garaudy in France, Siegfried Verbeke in Belgium, Juergen Graf and Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in Switzerland, and Guenter Deckert, Hans Schmidt and Fredrick Toben in Germany.
On November 8 the trial in Germany of "Holocaust denier" Ernst Zundel began with a dramatic clash between his attorneys and the presiding judge. And a few days later Germar Rudolf, a German citizen, was deported from Chicago to his homeland, where he likewise faces years of imprisonment for "denying the Holocaust."
Tony Blair's government considered introducing a "Holocaust denial" statute in Britain, but eventually rejected the idea. Italy, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden are among the other European countries that have declined to enact such laws.
Some people may be offended by those who play down Jewish death and suffering during World War II. But free and open societies protect even offensive speech. That's why western countries defend the right of their citizens, for example, to praise Communism or promote atheism.
"Holocaust denial" laws violate ancient and universal standards of justice. They criminalize even factual or truthful statements that "play down" or "whitewash" the Holocaust. They are selective and one-sided. In countries where they are on the books, the Holocaust is the only chapter of history that cannot be freely discussed. They inhibit historical inquiry and restrict free speech. They are a disgrace, and should be repealed. "
Other links
Holocaust History Archive: http://litek.ws/k0nsl/detox/ has Holocaust History News, Educational Essays for Students and Professors
http://www.jewwatch.com/ Jew Watch is a Not-For-Profit Library for private study, scholarship, or research.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1692086,00.html
http://vho.org/dl/ENG/Giant.pdf : ebook on Holocaust research by Jurgen Graf with the title: With Feet of Clay, Raul Hilber and his Standard Work on the "holocaust" .
Dialectics:
Thesis: The Danish Cartoons, Antithesis: The Iranian Holocaust Cartoons: Synthesis/NewThesis: Israeli?
thorbiorn
thorbiorn:
Hello,
This post includes some comments on various articles about the cartoons. My comments are preceded by "T:" .
On http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs20060213.php there is a link under "Clash of Civilizations" with a sub-link to Denmark and Jyllands-Posten: The background to a provocation http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/denm-f10.shtml By Peter Schwarz, 10 February 2006: "The basic lie in the controversy over the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published by Danish and European newspapers is the claim that the conflict is between free speech and religious censorship, or between Western enlightenment and Islamic bigotry.
The taz newspaper, which has close links to the German Greens, declared the conflict was about reducing the influence of all religions, including Christianity, "to a tolerable measure."
T: In Robert E Svoboda's "Aghora III, The Law of Karma" his teacher, the Aghori Vimalananda mentions that Islam was expected to only last about 1400 years. He said this around 1980. He saw the battle between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Iran-Iraq war as the beginning to the end. Is this possible?
What does the Danish paper say about to the accusation from WSWS? I found the following: "Who's afraid of Muhammad?" Joerg Lau explains how some cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten turned into no laughing matter": http://www.signandsight.com/features/588.html
Excerpts: "Last summer it was made known that Bluitgen was having trouble finding an illustrator for his most recent book project: the life of the prophet Mohammed, told for children. Islam forbids representations of the prophet, but Denmark is a secular country and Bluitgen had the best of intentions. Nonetheless, the illustrators he approached were wary and turned him down. The murder of the Islam-critical film maker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic fundamentalist had shaken up the Danish arts scene." (news story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3974179.stm )
T: I went there and found: "Tuesday, 2 November, 2004, 11:41 GMT. Gunman kills Dutch film director. Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh, who made a controversial film about Islamic culture, has been stabbed and shot dead in Amsterdam, Dutch police say."
Excerpts:
"The film was made with liberal Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who fled an arranged marriage." ... "Van Gogh - who was related to the famous Dutch painter - had also been making a film about Pim Fortuyn, the populist right-wing, anti-immigration politician assassinated in May 2002.
Film controversy
The film Submission told the story of a Muslim woman forced into an arranged marriage who is abused by her husband and raped by her uncle. It triggered an outcry from Dutch Muslims. In one scene the film showed an actress in see-through garments with Koranic script written on her body, which also bore whip marks. The Netherlands is home to nearly one million Muslims or 5.5% of the population. One of the film maker's colleagues at the film production company said Van Gogh had received death threats "but he never took them quite seriously". "He was a controversial figure and a champion of free speech," he told Reuters."
T: Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a black woman. Reading the short story about her made me recall: "Man is focused on his principles, his order, as he sees it. It is she, the woman, who picks up the pieces to give life a new meaning." - Kundalini Yoga by Swami Sivananda Radha, page 31. In the sentence I understand "new" not to mean good or bad, just new.
Continuing with the Joerg Lau's article:
"This cowardice prompted Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Denmark's biggest daily, Jyllands-Posten, to get involved. Rose asked the country's most renowned caricaturists to draw the Prophet Mohammed. Rose says he wanted to see "how deep this self-censorship lies in the Danish public." Forty cartoonists were approached, twelve sent in their pictures and these were published http://www.perlentaucher.de/artikel/2888.html at the end of September in the paper's weekend edition."
T: The possibility, that the explanation of Flemming Rose is what happened, exists. Others may have used the opportunity for thier own purposes.
On http://www.signs-of-the-times.org/signs/signs20060214.php under the title
"Cartoon Chaos": This is the real outrage - Amid the cartoon furore, Danish imams ignore the tragedies suffered by Muslims across the world. http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1708259,00.html By Tariq Ali, The Guardian, 13 Feb 06: The latest round of culture wars does neither side any good. The western civilisational fundamentalists insist on seeing Muslims as the other - different, alien and morally evil. Jyllands-Posten published the cartoons in bad faith. Their aim was not to engage in debate but to provoke, and they succeeded. The same newspaper declined to print caricatures of Jesus. I am an atheist and do not know the meaning of the "religious pain" that is felt by believers of every cast when what they believe in is insulted. I am not insulted by billions of Christians, Muslims and Jews believing there is a God and praying to this nonexistent deity on a regular basis. But the cartoon depicting Muhammad as a terrorist is a crude racist stereotype. The implication is that every Muslim is a potential terrorist. This is the sort of nonsense that leads to Islamophobia."
T: There has been much debate in Denmark. Since the writer does not read Danish and the Danes have not cared to translate, few are those that know. What one picks up on CNN, does not reflect on what happens, but on what we should perceive.
Tariq Ali continues: "Muslims have every right to protest, but the overreaction was unnecessary. In reality, the number of original demonstrators was tiny: 300 in Pakistan, 400 in Indonesia, 200 in Tripoli, a few hundred in Britain (before Saturday's bigger reconciliation march), and government-organised hoodlums in Damascus burning an embassy. Beirut was a bit larger. Why blow this up and pretend that the protests had entered the subsoil of spontaneous mass anger? They certainly haven't anywhere in the Muslim world, though the European media has been busy fertilising the widespread ignorance that exists in this continent."
T: Some weeks ago there was a series posted on this website about Mind Control in the 21st Century. The main point: Perception Control = Emotional Control = Mind Control.
Tariq Ali: "What I find interesting is that these demonstrations and embassy-burnings are a response to a tasteless cartoon. Did the Danish imam who travelled round the Muslim world pleading for this show the same anger at Danish troops being sent to Iraq? The occupation of Iraq has costs tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Where is the response to that or the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Or the rapes of Iraqi women by occupying soldiers? Where is the response to the daily deaths of Palestinians? These are the issues that anger me. Last year Afghans protested after a US marine in Guantánamo had urinated on the Qur'an. It was a vile act and there was an official inquiry. The marine in question explained that he had been urinating on a prisoner and a few drops had fallen accidentally on the Qur'an - as if pissing on a prisoner (an old imperial habit) was somehow more acceptable."
"It's strange that the Danish imams and their friends abroad ignore the real tragedy and instead ensure that the cartoons are now being reprinted everywhere. How will it end? Like all these things do, with no gains on either side and a last tango in Copenhagen around a mountain of unused butter. Meanwhile, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine the occupations continue."
T: Add to this part of an earlier post in this thread:
"On the 12th of February there appeared an article in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten: "Wrong information from Imams, by Orla Borg and Lars Noergaard Pedersen. "Those Imamas, who traveled as a delegation to the Middle East to tell about the Mohammed drawings gave downright incorrect information about the rights of Muslims in Denmark. In their prepared document of 43 pages they wrote the following about the situations of Muslims in Denmark: ..."
T: One begins to wonder who is in charge of Islam - and most other religions. In the above we have seen examples of manipulation and AS MUCH lack of sensitivity and compassion from at least some of the leaders as they blame others for having.
What is forgotten in most religions is that it is assumed that when a person professes the same as oneself, he/she/ is on ones side, is ones brother or sister of faith. However according to Ponerology, about 6% of the population might not have the natural ability to act like a "brother or sister" as commonly understood by the other 94 %.
http://ponerology.blogspot.com/ explains "Ponerology" : n. division of theology dealing with evil; theological doctrine of wickedness or evil; from the Greek: poneros -> evil'.
On http://cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm there is information and research in the field of psychopathy collected by Laura Knight Jadczyk, the Quantum Future School and other researchers.
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I am grateful this SOTT site exist and that one can find and share knowledge here. So I do not mind advertising: "The Real Enemy and What YOU Can Do"
http://signs-of-the-times.org/signs/editorials/signs_TheRealEnemyandWhatYOUCanDo.php
Whether book or donations, check out http://www.qfgpublishing.com/ , a couple of free downloads!
thorbiorn
thorbiorn:
Hi,
Since the cartoons appeared in September 2005, there have been many articles in Danish newspapers debating Islam. Below is one which presents some views of Islam and Denmark from a Muslim point of view.
Translation of excerpts from an article that appeared in Jyllands-Posten, 1st section page four, Monday the 23rd of January 2006. The interview was with Hassan Salaa, Imam at the Taiba mosque in Heimdalsgade in Noerrebro, Copenhagen, Denmark, It was made Tuesday the 8th of November 2005.
Title: Coffee with the Imam
By Lars Noergaard Pedersen and Kristoffer Pinholt
T: Excerpts from the article:
"We do all that our religion stands for, and carry out all the duties that Islam prescribes," begins Hassan Salaa.
He explained that Taiba does not have a fixed Imam. They are six Imams, who in turn lead the Friday prayer for typically between 50 and 80 listeners.
"Every Imam must have the proper education otherwise we will not accept him.
I have studied Islam in Syria and have received a Sharia-education. People know, that I am Imam when I speak", says Hassan Salaa and adds, that he does not represent any particular Islamic line of thought, and that he has studied Sharia at a special school, the Hetin-school, for 13 years.
"I am originally from Palestine, have lived in Lebanon, but was forced to flee when Zionist soldiers attacked in 1982. I was two months in a prison in Lebanon set up by Zionist soldiers. They had build prisons the size of refugee camps. I fled with many others to Syria. In 1987 the Syrian government initiated a fight against all the Sharia schools and captivated all who supported the schools. I did not myself choose Denmark, because I had no other possibility. Some of the people, who helped me to flee, said that, Denmark was the only possibility."
A Man Must Do Everything (T: bold text is from the article)
Q: How is your view of the relationship between men and women?
A: We have a duty to teach the young about sex between men and women in a marriage. One counsels differently depending on how old the person is, but it is very important, that the young learn about sex. We teach the young, that a man must do all - all - to a woman except two things: He must not have anal sex with her. This is said in the Koran. And he must not have sex with her, when she has menstruation.
No matter which rule we talk of in the Koran, it is correct. No matter which. - Hassan Salaa, Imam (T: In the article the text is in bold, with a bold grey line to the left.)
Q: How do you view the controversial subject of stoning and hand-amputation?
A: "Islam covers all the questions of life. It is complete and that is why many are afraid, that Islam will rise to dominate the whole world. The rule about stone throwing against a person, who has had sex outside of marriage, we can not introduce in Denmark, because Islam says, that it can only happen in an Islamic state. In addition stone throwing requires not just one judge, but four witnesses. They shall have seen that it has happened. It deals not so much about stone throwing in itself, but about, that we by this rule get a more pure society, because the people become afraid of the punishment. - Just like you punish people with for example three to four years of prison after having raped a girl. The goal is not to get people in prison, but that people understand that it is illegal and get afraid of the punishment. Human beings must adjust according to the system. This is the way to a pure society. And then one must remember, that stoning only is for people, who are married. Is one not married, one is instead awarded whipping. Again not to beat people, but in order to make society function according to the rules."
Everything in the Koran is Correct (T: bold text appears in the article)
Q: Would you accept hand amputation of thieves in Denmark if the premises of Islam where fulfilled?
A: No matter which rule we talk of in Islam, it is correct. No matter which. I want to follow the rules of the Creator. Not human's. In Denmark I may live under the rules of the parliament, because as refugee I am the weak. If the politicians do not compel us to break our rules, we may live here. It is also said in the Koran, that one should protect all nationalities, just like Jews and Christians can live in Islamic states.
Q: Do you wish the Sharia legislation introduced in Denmark?
A: If Sharia is to be introduced, Muslims must own the land. Muslims own for instance not Palestine or Iraq, and we will do all to get those countries back. Do we get them back we may introduce Sharia, because they are our own countries.
Q: Do you wish that Denmark becomes Muslim soil?
A: Of course I wish that. Because Islam is the truth. And this we can prove. Our Sharia, our Islam, is perfectly compassionate. Therefore all should have part in it.
Q: Is it not difficult to reconcile Islam with the Danish society?
A: No, because we are allowed to adjust in a country, that does not follow Islam. But it becomes a problem if the state begins to fight individuals and religions as we have seen lately, for example if one can not wear scarf.
Q: What is your view of Israel?
A: Israel? Do you mean the Zionist state? Israel is a prophet. Do you speak of the land, which has been taken from us it is called the Zionist state.
Q: So what is your view of the Zionist state?
A: It is as you watch it on the television, and which is the reality. They took Palestine by a massacre and have butchered and murdered thousands after that. But the whole world is silent.
Q: Why do you not speak Danish?
A: "I speak a little," he says in Danish, and then gets help from the interpreter: "It is my fault that I have not more time to learn Danish. It is because, I work all the time with Sharia and especially work with Mosques where people speak Arabic ."
T: I tried to find something to substantiate his claim about the fate of Palestine. One article follows, it has date but no year.
http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-worldconspiracies-zionism-part2.html#anchor55529
APRIL 22, 10:40 EDT
After Half-Century, Historians Debate Israel's Birth
By DAN PERRY Associated Press Writer
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- For the Jewish refugees and pioneers who built Israel on the ashes of the Holocaust, theirs was a straightforward tale of justice, heroism and redemption.
But a half-century later, a maturing nation is reassessing its violent birth, with historians angrily debating a long-suppressed question with broad implications: Was Israel born in sin?
For Ilan Pappe, among the most outspoken of Israel's "new historians,'' the answer is a resounding yes.
"Jews came and took, by means of uprooting and expulsion, a land that was Arab,'' the Haifa University scholar said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We wanted to be a colonialist occupier, and yet to come across as moral at the same time!''
The "new historians'' claim that in many cases their predecessors dishonestly perpetuated national myths, especially surrounding the 1948-49 war that established Israel and created the Palestinian refugee problem.
Among the claims made by the revisionists:
--The Jews' victory over several invading Arab armies in the 1948-49 war was not the miracle they like to believe. The stronger side won.
--The Arabs who fled Israel (estimates range up to 700,000) were not just responding to Arab leaders' calls to clear out of the way so Arab armies could massacre the Jews. Many, if not most, were driven out.
--After the war, the Arabs were not the rejectionist side. Israel's leaders hid from their people a series of peace overtures because they were unwilling to compromise ." end.
thorbiorn
thorbiorn:
Hi,
In a previous post which included a translation of the interview with the Danish-Palestinian Imam, Hassan Salaa, he said: "We teach the young, that a man must do all - all - to a woman except two things:"
From this I understand that whatever Theo van Gogh, who was mentioned in a previous post, might have showen in his film, it was probably at the least theoretically permissible, although maybe offensive to show graphically.
I have tried to find out more about women and Islam, how some women understand the religious laws and regulations of Islam. Below are some links.
THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT AND THE MUSLIM WOMAN by Maryam Jameelah: http://www.islam101.com/women/jameelah.htm
ISLAMIC TRADITIONS AND THE FEMINIST MOVEMENT CONFRONTATION OR COOPERATION? by Dr. Lois Lamya' al Faruqi: http://www.islam101.com/women/feminism.html
Liberation by The Veil by Sehmina Jaffer Chopra: http://www.islam101.com/women/hijbene.html
Gender Equity in Islam: http://www.islam101.com/women/equity.html
Hijab: Question and Answer: http://www.islam101.com/women/hijabfaq.html
Women's liberation through Islam: http://www.islam101.com/women/womlib.html
T: They write in their conclusion: http://www.islam101.com/women/womlib.html#9 "VIII. CONCLUSION
The Qur'an states: "And it becomes not a believing man or a believing women, when Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad) have decided on an affair (for them), that they should (after that) claim any say in their affair; and whoso is rebellious to Allah and His Messenger, he verily goes astray in error manifest." (33:36)
The Muslim woman was given a role, duties and rights 1400 years ago that most women do not enjoy today, even in the West. These are from God and are designed to keep balance in society; what may seem unjust or missing in one place is compensated for or explained in another place. Islam is a complete way of life.
- Mary Ali and Anjum Ali "
T: In a few words the following author hints at the rights of women in Iran before and after Islam.
Status of Women in Ancient Iran: "Every where we see, that Zarathushtra mentions mother and father men and women son and daughter and he does not differentiate between sexes.
In the wedding ceremony prayer recited by the priest, husband and wife are equally made responsible for all decision and actions to be taken.
It is worth noting that with the passage of time changes were introduced to the disadvantage of women. Most of which happened due to the influence of the Semitic race on the Aryan race."
T: Last is a view from a non-Muslim. It is not explicit about Islam and women, but is about fundamentalism and tolitarianism.
"The philosophical Madonna" http://www.signandsight.com/features/510.html This article appeared in German in Die Welt on Saturday December 3, 2005. http://www.welt.de/data/2005/12/03/811737.html Title: "Daniel Cohn-Bendit recalls his relationship with Hannah Arendt and reflects on her and his generation. An interview with Die Welt"
"Q: Since we're talking about America... how do you think Hannah Arendt would respond today to Islamicism?
A: She would say that Islamic fundamentalism is a form of totalitarianism. And that we need to have the power to fight this totalitarianism while at the same time considering Islam as a religion as equal to others. But she would also say that all religions have totalitarian moments in them. That our democracies developed in the emancipation from religion. And that's what Islam has to address: the emancipation of Muslims from their religion, through which a changed Islam and a Muslim atheism would emerge."
T: How does Hannah Arendt understand Totalitarianism?
"The Origins of Totalitarianism", by Hannah Arendt http://pages.prodigy.net/mschnall/arendt.html Excerpt:
"Those who aspire to total domination must liquidate all spontaneity, such as the mere existence of individuality will always engender, and track it down in its most private forms, regardless of how unpolitical and harmless these may seem. . . . Any neutrality, indeed any spontaneously given friendship, is from the standpoint of totalitarian domination just as dangerous as open hostility, precisely because spontaneity as such, with its incalculability, is the greatest of all obstacles to total domination over man. . . . Totalitarianism strives not toward despotic rule over men, but toward a system in which men are superfluous. Total power can be achieved and safeguarded only in a world of conditioned reflexes, of marionettes without the slightest trace of spontaneity. . . ."
T: In the past the right wing of politics benefited from the communist scare. Today it is the terrorist scare. The theology of Islam is boosted to fit the role. Who benefits are the fundamentalists on both sides.
T: How would Hannah Arendt argue with Islam, I do not know. But there is another thinker who suggested a way. The following is from the chapter "The Enemies of the Open Society" pages 90, and 91-92 in "Popper" by Brian Magee, Fontana/ Collins 1975.
Bryan Magee writes: "But although the practical consequences of reactionary and Utopian theories are societies like those of Hitler and Stalin, the desire for a perfect society is clearly not in itself rooted in human wickedness, but the reverse. The most horrible excesses have been perpetrated with sincere moral conviction by idealists whose intentions were wholly good; like those, for example of the Spanish Inquisition. The ideological and religious autocracies and wars that constitute so much of Western history are the most biting exemplification of the proverb - the road to hell is paved with good intentions."
"He (T: that is Popper) takes Plato as the supreme example of a philosopher of genius whose political theory embodies a wish to return to the past, and incorporates and extensive and detailed critique of it in the first of the two volumes of "The Open society and Its Enemies". The second volume contains a corresponding critique of Marx as the supreme philosopher whose theory projects a perfect future." ... "His way of tackling these heavyweight opponents, especially Marx, constitutes in itself one of the most important lessons in method to be gained from his writings. Throughout the history of advocacy and controversy the approach even of polemicists of genius, like Voltaire, has been to seek out and attack the weak points in an opponent's case. This has a severe disadvantage. Every case has weaker as well as stronger parts, and its appeal lies, obviously, in the latter; so to attack the former may embarrass its adherents but not undermine the considerations on which their adherence largely rests. This is one of the reasons why people so rarely change their views after losing an argument. More often such a reverse leads eventually to a strengthening of their position, in that it leads them to abandon or improve the weakest parts of their case. It often happens that the longer two intelligent people go on arguing the better each side's case becomes, for each is being all the time improved by the other's criticism. The Popperian analysis of this is self-evident. What Popper aims to do, and at his best does do, is to seek out and attack an opponent's case at its strongest. Indeed, before attacking it he tries to strengthen it still further. He sees if any of its weaknesses can be removed and any of its formulations improved on, gives it is the benefit of every doubt, passes over any obvious loopholes; and then having got it into the best argued form he can, attacks it at its most powerful and appealing. This method, the most intellectually serious possible, is thrilling; and its results, when successful, are devastating. For no perceptible version of the defeated case is reconstructable in the light of the criticism, every known resource and reserve of substance being already present in the demolished version. This is what Popper is thought to have done with Marxism."
T: Little of the present debate about Islam has tried to do what Popper suggests.
thorbiorn
thorbiorn:
Hello,
To give an impression of the debate about Islam in Denmark and its reasons, below follows another translation. It is from Jyllands-Posten Monday the 23rd of January 2006. I should like to express my gratitude to a few friends who respectively brought the paper, helped with words and editing.
Headline: The New Old Racism
Subtitle: If one takes the Koran and the traditions of the expressions and deeds of Mohammed literally, then it leads to voluntarily dissociating oneself from the community of solidarity and closing the door behind oneself in the parallel society, writes today's column writer.
By author Kaare Bluitgen, Copenhagen.
(T: there are four parts indicated by a bold letter before the first word of each part.)
Should the Koran be forbidden? The question may seem absurd, but is relevant in relation to the discussion of the limits to freedom of speech.
"Kill the infidels!" I teach now and then at the college for continued education of teachers, and here I was one day confronted with one of the problems of daily life: The internal language among the students was at times very ugly, and therefore one teacher had taken action against the expressions of a vociferous boy. But when it turned out that it was a citation from the Koran, the teachers became insecure. Should they forbid the expression knowing full well they would be blamed for being intolerant towards Islam and stigmatizing Muslim pupils?
One can also ask, if it should be allowed to tear to pieces and threaten others under the cover of quotes from so-called holy books.
The Supreme Court has established that the concept of racism should be understood in its extended and in the present form of everyday language. That means as discrimination against or keeping groups at a distance, which can well be of the same race as one self.
On such a foundation of evaluation, the Koran becomes a book that preaches racism. Again and again there is encouragement to persecute and murder of those that believe in other gods. The Christian and Jews must be assigned a particular taxation. Every human being who is not a Muslim shall be submitted to Muslims.
The Koran makes it clear, that Allah will throw fear into the hearts of the infidels, so that the faithful can decapitate them and cut off the end of their fingers.
It is not only in the Koran one can find this form of racism. The most famous Muslim biographer of the life of the prophet Mohammed is Ibn Ishaq. In his voluminous work "Sirat Rasul Allah", ( www.onlineislamicstore.com/b3828.html ) which is based on contemporary reports, he quotes the messenger of Allah for sayings like: "Kill every Jew, it stands in your power." Hateful outbursts against Christians, poets and Bedouins there are many, along with numerous incitements to discrimination against women and dissociation from people who worship other gods.
Mohammed let a man and a woman from Medina, who had committed adultery, be stoned outside his mosque. He decided that marriages between Muslims and pagans should be dissolved. It was also forbidden to participate in the funeral of an infidel.
The night after Mohammed had commanded a massacre on many hundreds of Jewish men who had surrendered he took one of their women for himself. At another time he ordered the torture of a Jewish treasurer who did not want to reveal his hiding places. Finally he was decapitated. His wife, only seventeen years of age, was led past the corpse of her husband. Mohammed threw his mantle over her, so all could see who had chosen her. The same night she was married to Mohammed and should overnight in his guarded tent.
Mohammed issued prohibition against eating domesticated donkeys, meat-eating animals, and against wearing hair in a ponytail style during pilgrimage, and numerous other forbidden and allowed actions, such as the right of a man to beat his indecent wife, came from his mouth over the years. Within the Muslim society Mohammed introduced a strict social control, amongst others by isolating those members who behaved themselves in a deviating manner.
Mohammed was a unique prophet in the way that he sustained his people by raids of looting. As the first of all prophets, Allah allowed him to take loot, both precious metals, one-humped riding-camels, women, and children. And Allah opened to him both the West and the East.
On several occasions Mohammed gave his adherents permission to lie to non-Muslims, and he mercilessly persecuted poets and female singers that had offended him. He could give amnesty to warriors, who had fought against him with weapons, but the power of the word was too dangerous.
The prophet of Allah was consistent in his destruction of the symbols of other religious cultures. Sculptured idols were smashed or burned, holy trees cut down, pictorial art eradicated. On his deathbed he decreed that all other religions other than Islam should be abolished from Arabia.
It is clear that such thoughts and actions leave deep and lasting traces in the mind of a child. A child, that only has learned to recite the Koran and does not receive help to work through the scary impressions, can be damaged for life. And the many rules about haram and halal in the eyes of the fundamentalist, makes integration in Denmark impossible. Rules about eating, company, and relationship between the sexes necessitates that children and teenagers from fundamentalist parents isolate themselves from their Danish classmates. Muslim children, that have been allowed to play with my children in the yard, have not been permitted to visit us and vice-versa (translator note: the children of the author were not allowed by the fundamentalist parents to visit their homes). Others have not been allowed to attend children's birthday parties, and still others speak in an unbelievably hateful and derogatory language, because my daughter does not wear scarf, and my son eats pork. In addition there are the well known problems from the school day in relation to swimming, gymnastics, pictorial art, holiday calendar, school-class parties and outdoor schools; and demands of prayer room, separate kitchenware, days off on Fridays for prayer, and school shop according to the imaginations about pure and not pure originating from the books of Moses and continued in the Koran.
If one takes the Koran and the traditions about the statements of Mohammed literally then one needs to ghettoize oneself. This is voluntarily dissociating oneself from the community of solidarity and closing the door behind oneself in the parallel society.
It is naturally far from all Muslims who are fundamentalists. But the faith in one truth is the mother of all hate. Hereby, people who think differently are portrayed as liars, heretics, infidels etc. These beliefs abound with in the Koran. One certainly can also find horrific statements in The Old Testament, but the most essential is naturally, if one considers the script to be Gods spoken word, which therefore has to be complied with, or if one takes an historical approach to the text.
The religious hate can be reinforced by social marginalization, but the problem is, that we in Denmark, irrespective of whether we are closer to Adam Smith or Karl Marx, believe that the social is crucial. This is how we have looked at ourselves and the rest of world for a couple of hundred years. The religious pollution of the public space has for decades been so invisible, that we simply do not understand the role it can play, and which it likely will play henceforward. And tolerance is the sure looser.
Before the time of Mohammed, Mecca was a multi-religious town, but when he came to power, he reserved it exclusively for Muslims. Agreements made with infidels, those in the Koran so-called "impure", were cancelled. Mecca is still a "pure" town. There would most likely be a major uproar if Copenhagen was limited to Christians or believers in Nordic Gods, but I know of no Muslim, who has boycotted the pilgrimage to Islam's most holy town in protest against this grotesque racism, which only has its parallels in the "whites only" areas of the past South African apartheid era.
Religious conflicts have been absent for decades from the Danish society, and when they came, we treated them from old habit as social problems. Therefore the integration is at the same level as twenty years ago; or maybe a couple of steps below. From fear of offending the feelings of the believers we refrain from highlighting and maintaining those values, which not least the worker's and the women's movement during decades battled to attain.
Through a thousand years Islam has, within its area of extension, met its dropout critiques with murder, persecution and censorship. Today a great number of Muslims live in that part of the world, where no ideology or religion can lift itself above criticism. It means, that Islam not as Christianity has developed in dialog with other streams of thought. The result was very clear in the Salman Rushdie case. That one man could shake a world religion said more about the fragility of the latter, than the strength of the former. The house of cards tilted, the fundamentalists are in reality without foundation. This could never have happened within Judaism or Buddhism.
The public school has a role to play. The religious freedom of the students should be respected, but when a boy shows up and says, that according to the Koran all women only have half the value of men (with the correct references to chapter and verse), and that the Koran is the revealed word of God, then the teachers should explain, that at home they can believe what they want, the pupil should just know that it is wrong, what is written in the holy book: Women are indeed just as much worth as men.
I encounter almost no teachers, who dare say it so clearly. But by this they violate the mission statement of the public schools, which speaks of education and daily life based on equality. And they destroy the future of the pupils, who are not enlightened, but continue life shrouded in a darkness of letter-faith religious interpretation.
The hours assigned for the history of Christianity in the lesson-schedule of the school must be reformed to the subject religion and life-perspectives. Then the Koran can be included and it becomes possible to enlighten the Muslim pupils about the historical creation of the book. Through this the pupils can be insured an understanding of, that the Koran, like any other "holy" book, is bound in time and space. Therefore it deals with the right to sexual relationship with ones female slaves, and not about the equality of the sexes, therefore are mentioned one-humped riding-camel, but not reindeer.
When the messenger of God, in the old records, makes an attempt in the art of healing and prescribes milk and urine from a one-humped riding-camel against spleen enlargement and states that pneumonia comes from Satan, then it is not difficult to see, how wrong it can go, if one in the modern world takes the widower after a female merchant in the Arabic desert, from about almost one and a half thousand years ago, Mohammed ibn Abdullah, as prophet and not as a human being in a historical context. Going to extremes and considering his words and deeds as worthy of being followed, we are not only speaking about increased health risk for spleen patients, but of something which can appear similar to open war.
The Dutch film instructor Theo van Gogh was murdered in a way, which in certain details corresponds to the way the prophet Mohammed had his assassins murder critical poets.
The immediate reaction from a number of prominent Danish Muslims was that the freedom of speech should be curtailed in order not to offend their religious feelings.
Should one rather forbid the origin of distorted emotions? No, the Koran should of course not be forbidden, and the Old Testament should also not. Neither should the books and speeches of Hitler and Stalin. On the contrary the knowledge of these thoughts should be spread, so we can insert them in a historical context and once again try ourselves in the difficult art to learn from history." -
T: The more I study the topic the more complicated it becomes, certainly more than I had expected.
Thorbiorn
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