Here, a Theoretical Physicist and Islamic scholar writes a fascinating, technical, yet awesomely heartfelt critical review of IERA’s ‘new approach’ to the Quran and Science. The paper in question is quoted extensively in the interests of fairness (and for those who can’t be bothered to read all of it).

My only addition to this would be that perhaps we should remember that it was IERA who were largely responsible for the ‘old approach’ to Quran and Science (see above booklet)…

We begin in the name of Allah the Exalted. May Allah bless and grant peace to the leader of the Creation Muhammad (SAW), and on his Family and Companions until the Day of Judgement. We ask Allah to keep us away from knowledge that is not beneficial, and may increase us in (useful) knowledge that will be an adornment for us in this world and the next.

The subject of this paper is quite important, as it centres on analysing the recent paper released by Hamza Tzortzis entitled ‘Does the Qur’an Contain Scientific Miracles? A New Approach on how to Reconcile and Discuss Science in the Qur’an’. There will be some strong words that may be occasionally used hereunder, but the goal is to make many of Daa’is (Propagators of Islam) understand certain serious problems that have been plaguing the Da’wah effort for a long time now, and which are in need of urgent attention.

Introduction

o    There are certain things in life that have serious effects and their impact on people is enormous. One cannot joke about these things. Sometimes, one cannot get a second chance. For example, you only get one interview opportunity for any given job. We cannot toy with everything or everybody in life. Life and hence the lives of people are not something to be taken for granted.

o    I really urge people, especially Muslims, to come to their senses regarding their own actions. They react to things emotionally rather than with calmness, assertiveness and justice. Unfortunately we live in an age in which the truth does not prevail and this state is clearly pointed to in Qur’an in its purport that ‘the power will be shifted sometimes in favour of the truth and sometimes in favour of falsehood’[2].

o    Unfortunately, falsehood is prevailing at the moment, with the people who claim to be peacemakers being actually those who are the mischief makers (as stated in Surah al-Baqarah[3]). And as the Prophet (SAW) said that close to the Day of Judgement, those who are trustworthy will be treated as liars and liars will be treated as trustworthy.

o    There is a Marfu’ Hadeeth about this state of affairs, and it is as follows:

(حديث مرفوع): حَدَّثَنَا  أَبُو بَكْرِ بْنُ أَبِي شَيْبَةَ  , حَدَّثَنَا  يَزِيدُ بْنُ هَارُونَ  , حَدَّثَنَا  عَبْدُ الْمَلِكِ بْنُ قُدَامَةَ الْجُمَحِيُّ  , عَنْ  إِسْحَاق بْنِ أَبِي الْفُرَاتِ  , عَنْ  الْمَقْبُرِيِّ  , عَنْ  أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ  , قَالَ : قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ

“سَيَأْتِي عَلَى النَّاسِ سَنَوَاتٌ خَدَّاعَاتُ , يُصَدَّقُ فِيهَا الْكَاذِبُ , وَيُكَذَّبُ فِيهَا الصَّادِقُ , وَيُؤْتَمَنُ فِيهَا الْخَائِنُ , وَيُخَوَّنُ فِيهَا الْأَمِينُ , وَيَنْطِقُ فِيهَا الرُّوَيْبِضَةُ , قِيلَ : وَمَا الرُّوَيْبِضَةُ ؟ قَالَ : الرَّجُلُ التَّافِهُ فِي أَمْرِ الْعَامَّةِ “

The Prophet (SAW) said: “Years of great deception will come upon the people, where the liar will be believed and the truthful man will be called a liar, the treacherous person will be entrusted (with things) and the trustworthy person will be regarded as treacherous, and the Ruwaybidah will speak”. It was asked: Who are the Ruwaybidah? He said: “The worthless man who gets involved in the affairs of the masses.” (as in the Musnad of Imam Ahmad, Sunan of Ibn Maajah and Hakim’s Mustadrak)

o    Those who accept Islam as a religion are called Muslims and they are supposed to be at peace. Are Muslims ‘at peace’? If you are not at peace, what has happened? How come Islam has not put you in a peaceful state? Unfortunately, the whole Ummah is in chaos, and a person or body in a chaotic state will only cause more chaos to his surroundings.

o    This is why we see that so many so-called ‘Muslims’ are causing chaos on earth, whether willingly or unwillingly. We can see that this is not only the case with common Muslims but even more so with many of the so-called ‘Imams’. Regrettably, large numbers of these ‘Imams’ are not interested in the affairs of people, let alone the Muslims. These so-called Imams failed and have been failing this Ummah for along time now. An ‘Imam’ is supposed to be the leader of a community and lead people to peace and tranquillity, just like a mother cuddles her child and gives the child comfort, or like a father protecting his household no matter what.

o    Nowadays Imams are severely lacking in their Islamic knowledge, and many have no clue about the Qur’an or the Sunnah other than from a superficial angle. I am not even mentioning intimate knowledge of the language and culture of the society, which are very important additional traits in order to be able to influence the hearts of men. The result is that we are in a pickle as an Ummah. We have people who claim to be ‘scholars’ yet lack deep Islamic knowledge, and we have so-called ‘apologists’ whose work betrays their total lack of knowledge. We have so called ‘Muslim scientists’ who are completely lost in society and have no clue about Islam. We have ethnic Arabs who can speak Arabic but who cannot understand the Qur’an, yet they claim to be better in understanding the Qur’an than the non-Arab Muslims who actually studied the Qur’an. (Note that being an Arab does not make you superior to non-Arabs. The companions who were Arabs went to the same school as the companions who were non-Arabs.)

o    If we wish to talk about the relationship between the supposed ‘scientifically miraculous Verses of the Qur’an’ and the true exegesis of the Qur’an, let us start out by asking a simple question regarding these Verses, and then see how many people will be able to answer by reading the translation of Qur’an (and translation is mentioned here, since most Muslims cannot by themselves carry out even a rudimentary translation of the Qur’an, so they have to rely on others):

o    Why is the word ‘Sama’ used as with feminine gender in Surah al-Infitaar and with masculine gender in Surah al-Muzzammil?

o    I guess you probably failed to answer the question. So let us replace ‘Sama’ with ‘Sky’ or ‘Heaven’ and try it again. I guess you failed to answer the question even this second time, so let us try again, but this time read it from the original Arabic as ‘Sama’. Did you realize that one is feminine and the other one is masculine?

o    In fact, the word Sama also can be used as plural in addition to singular feminine and singular masculine, whereas Samaawaat can be used as a feminine plural. Also, ‘Sama’ has at least more than 10 meanings such as rain, grass, cloud, the roof of a house, something elevated, something that covers the whole earth etc.

o    I guess my point is clear and I will stop at this. This is just a simple example of what happens when you read from the translation and try to make commentary of the Qur’an relying on the translations, since you miss many crucial points due to the natural loss of information that occurs when one language is translated into another one.

o    As an aside, we see that the case of certain apologists who simply do not know Islam properly but have a lot of zeal is analogous to that of certain Hadeeth fabricators of earlier generations. For example, Nuh bin Abi Maryam (d. 173/789) fabricated many Ahadeeth through the Ibn ‘Abbas-Ikrimah chain (al-‘Iraqi in Fathul Mugheeth I:131, ‘Ali al-Qaari in Sharh Nuhbatul Fikr: 128, ash-Shawkani in al-Fawaaid al-Majmuua’ 315-317) and these Ahadeeth were included in the Tafaseer of az-Zamakhshari, al-Baydawi as well as that of others.

o    Ibn Hibaan (Rahimahullah) also obtained information from Maysara bin ‘Abd Rabbih that he had fabricated many Ahadeeth in order to attract people to the recitation of the Qur’an (adh-Dhahabi in Meezaanul I’tidal fi Naqd Ar-rijaal 4:230). This, while Muslim and Ibn Maajah (Rahimahumullah) state in their Muqaddimaat that whoever tells a lie about the Prophetm (SAW) let him prepare for himself a place in the hellfire (and this is in fact a Mutawaatir [mass-transmitted] Hadeeth).

o    There was a Bid’ati sect called the ‘Karramiyya’ who gave Fatwa to fabricate Ahadeeth in order to attract people into Ibadah (For targhib-tarhib [i.e. related to encouraging people to do good deeds and dissuading them from evil deeds]). There are also people even today who follow the footsteps of this ‘Karramiyya’ sect.

o    Now, let us carry on asking some more questions regarding ‘scientifically miraculous Verses’:

o    Can you please explain what we find in Suras Aal-Imran: 59, al-Hijr: 26,28, and 33, as-Saaffaat: 11, and ar-Rahman: 14? Allah mentions Hama, Tin, Salsal and that Adam (Alayhi Salaam) was created from various materials as stated in these three verses? So which one is it? Is there an Ishkaal (problem) in these Verses? If so, how do we solve the problem to understand these Verses, and their relationship with the so-called ‘Scientific verses’?

o    Also, if we consider matters from another angle, do you have enough knowledge to differentiate between the different Mutashabihat (the ambiguous Verses)?

o    Can you please explain why in Surah Hud Verse 1 the Qur’an is mentioned as ‘Muhkam’ (absolutely clear), while in Surah az-Zumar verse 23 the Qur’an is described as ‘Mutashaabih’.

o    Or if we consider Verse 7 of Surah Aal Imraan. The normal translation found online is given as: ‘As for those in whose hearts is deviation [from truth], they will follow that of it which is unspecific, seeking discord and seeking an interpretation [suitable to them]. And no one knows its [true] interpretation except Allah’. In fact, there are two narrations about the meaning of this Verse, one is through Abdullah b. Abbas, Hz. Aisha, al-Hasan, Malik b. Anas, Kisaî and Ferra’ (Radhia Allahu Anhum Wa Rahimahumulla) stating that only Allah knows the meaning of the Mutashaabihaat (unspecified) Verses; and through another narration Abdullah b. Abbas, Mujaaahid, Rabi’ b. Anas and others stating that only Allah and those who are firm in knowledge know the intended meaning of the Mutashaabihaat. This difference comes due to a consideration of the letter ‘و‘, and whether it is considered as isti’nafiyya or as atf. Now the question is, which category are you in when it comes to interpreting these verses, and which teacher instructed you on the correct interpretation of this Verse and how to reconcile these two sets of narrations?

   Why did al-Shatibi (RA) in al-Muwaafaqaat mention Mutlaq and Idaafi under the categories of Mutashabihaat?

o    With respect to the subcategory of Idhaafi Mutashaabihat, can you explain terms such as Khafi, Mushkil, Mujmal, Mub-ham, Muawwal, and Mutlaq?

o    The reason I have been using the above Arabic terminologies is that there is a particular technical vocabulary for the science of Usool at-Tafseer that was developed by classical Usool scholars, and it really bedevils the mind as to how anyone can come and issue commentaries of the Qur’an without knowing these sciences.

o    Note that when Hazrat Abu Bakr (RAA) was asked about the word ‘abba’ in Surah ‘Abasa, he did not answer the question by explaining the Verse. Rather, he said that he is scared of saying something which Allah did not intend to say. (Ibn Katheer, Tafseer as-Suyuuti, al-Itqan I:149).

o    Hazrat Umar (RAA) also claimed the hardship of knowing some of these words and understanding some of these verses, including the word ‘abba’ (as-Suyuuti, al-Itqan).

o    The word ‘abban’ is considered Mujmal (generic) and needs a Qareena (proper context) in order to be understood. One must be skilled in Islamic sciences to be able to look for a Qareena and derive the meaning through detailed analysis, and one must also know when and where to say ‘I do not know’.

o    Also, sometimes the meaning of a verse might be Mutashabih due to a specific Lafdh (word) found therein.

o  Consider that Verses such al-Furqan: 53, and ar-Rahman: 19-20 were considered as Mutashaabih by classical Mufassirun like at-Tabari, ar-Raadhi, Ibn Katheer and Hamdi Yazir, and they described it as a ‘Land mass in between’ or a ‘Sad’ (barrier).

o    There is a narration from Said ibn al-Musayyib (RA) saying that these two seas are referring to a sea from the Sky and another sea from the Earth (as-Suyuuti in Mufhamaat 44). Since Said’s narrations are a Hujjah (formal evidence), can we go against his Hadeeth and make Ta’weel whichever way we wish?

o    These people were experts in the Arabic language as well as in other Islamic sciences. Knowing this, can we say that we now know what it means and that this is the final meaning?

o    Some more examples of Mutashaabihaat Verses are from Al-Hijr: 22 and al-An’am:125.

o    Also in Surah ad-Dhaariyaat: 47, the word ‘Muusi’uun’ is used, which has been claimed by many as a scientific miracle of the Qur’an. But does the word ‘Musi’uun’ really mean ‘expansion’? How do we know if the universe has been expanding from the start? What happens when it stops expanding and contracting? Are we going to re-comment on this word? What if it a new theory comes along which says that the Universe has stopped expanding? Will the meaning of the verse change?

o    As an analogous example, the word ‘Tawwaabiin’ in surah al-Baqarah refers to ‘constant’ repentance. But can we say that ‘Muusi’uun’ refer to a constant expansion that has been happening from the beginning of the Universe, and continues from now and until the end of the Universe? Knowing this, how would we then explain the acceleration in the expansion of the universe?

o    As a theoretical physicist, part of my job is to follow physics papers published online and one of the recent papers suggests that the universe is not expanding but the distant galaxies are gaining and losing mass, and this is the reason why we observe the red and blue shift of light waves from distant heavenly bodies. What if the suggestion in this paper is correct? We must remember that not all inductions and scientific findings are probability based.

o    In order to connect this to Islam, we see that in the sciences of Mantiq (Logic), which is a compulsory subject of study for the scholars of Usool in the Islamic sciences, one learns that Burhan means certain proof (Daleel), which consists of Muqaddimaat (premises) which are certain and the outcome becomes certain as well, and it is a type of Qiyaas (analogy). Thus, Yaqeeni knowledge (which consists of two types: Dharuuriyyaat and Nazariyyaat/Iktisaabiyyaat ) is 100% correct. This is also something studied as part of ‘Ilm al-Mantiq, and this knowledge is compatible with reality, and it is not possible for us to neglect this information as a description of reality.

o    So the suggestion to my fellow brothers and sisters is that they must wake up from this ignorance in all fields that they are currently exhibiting.

o    What is happening nowadays is that people with money open mosques, schools and madrasahs and run them. Unfortunately people with knowledge are being treated like third-class citizens. People value money and wealth more than they value knowledge. Muslims are not even in a position to make healthy decisions; they cannot even choose their Imams or rulers properly. Hence people without knowledge generally make the decisions.

o    This is one problem. The other problem is due to people not knowing their limits. There is a revert brother who has been studying Islam for a long time outside of his home country. He has immense Islamic knowledge, is fluent in classical Arabic and an expert in other sciences yet he still does not see himself qualified enough to become an Imam or a public speaker. On the other hand, we have many reverts given platforms to talk about Islam as if they know the Qur’an, Tafseer, Ahadith, Fiqh, Tasawwuf and Kalaam sciences. They can convey the message up to a certain degree and this is not a bad thing.

o    However, when it comes to these very deep matters, they have no clue about Islamic sciences and yet they talk about Islam in the name of Allah, and his Prophet (SAW). And if someone were to investigate why they are given this platform, it is because they are new Muslims, and just because of that they are seen to be qualified enough to teach Islam to the masses, and even to people like Hamza Yusuf Hanson or ‘Abdul Hakeem Murad. Note that these two scholars have given their whole life to Islamic studies and they are still studying. Hence they have the qualifications and moral etiquettes to talk about Islam.

o    However when I see people like Abdurrahman Green, Zakir Naik, Yusuf Estes, Bilal Philips, Khaalid Yaaseen and Hamza Tzortsis, I ask one question only: “Are they qualified enough to be the leaders of Muslims?” How can someone like Bilal Philips talk about Einstein’s equation and call it Shirk? How come Zakir Naik quotes verses from the Qur’an stating that these verses talk about the Earth being round and yet these verses have nothing to do with the shape of the earth? How come Abdurrahman Green tells people to follow the Qur’an and al-Bukhari directly without any formal scholarly guidance, while all the great scholars of this Ummah were part of a school of thought in Fiqh?

o    I can carry on and on but alas this is more than enough. Certain Muslims are calling other Muslims deviants, polytheists, infidels and many other names. They never back off from their ill behaviour and never admit that maybe they might be doing something wrong or causing mischief. Don’t get me wrong, you can criticize someone’s ideas if they are incorrect. Call them upon the middle path where we can meet and discuss things without calling each other polytheist, deviant and infidel. There is nothing wrong with being assertive but this must be done without transgressing the boundaries.

o    Do we know of our boundaries? These so called speakers are human beings, and they make mistakes. It is very good behaviour if someone makes a mistake and admits it to improve oneself for the better. We should offer support for people like these.

Brief overall comments about Brother Tzortzis’ article

o    Hamza Tzortzis is one of the public speakers speaking on behalf of Islam. He released a new paper recently claiming that he like other Muslim speakers made mistakes by overusing scientific arguments and so called science-related verses from Qur’an. I would like to applaud him for his brave effort to confess that what he had been over the years was a wrong strategy. I admire his behaviour and courage for that.

o    But, I would like to make some comments over his paper, since it still has flaws. The first issue is, can so-called Muslim academics and apologists use science in any capacity to establish the miraculous nature of Qur’an?

o    Many people who became Muslim in the past did not become Muslim because of so called scientific verses. I really wonder where this notion came from. If the whole Qur’an is a miracle, what is the point of using science to verify the Qur’an? Does the Qur’an need any verification by using the so-called physical or life sciences or social sciences? Can we see early Muslims, the Salaf as-Saaliheen using any arguments of science in order to convince people to become Muslims?

o    The bigger question is: “Can you really understand the Qur’an?” When I say Qur’an I mean the original Arabic text I am referring to, not the translation or the Tafseer books which are translated to English or any other language. As far as I am concerned, there are no scholars or classical exegetes from the Salaf who made commentaries regarding the Big Bang, black holes, speed of light, embryology, or even about the shape of the earth (we do not have information about this from any Mutawaatir sources).

o    The first person who used natural arguments with sound classical Arabic knowledge and Kalaam arguments was Fakhruddin ar-Raadhi, an exegete of the 12^th century. He was an amazingly great scholar of his time, yet he committed some mistakes in his commentary as a result of his method. But the thing is, I wonder if there is anyone with his calibre on the face of the Earth right now, if there is just one person who can produce a commentary like Tafsir al-Kabeer? (The question is rhetorical: there is indeed no-one of his calibre today).

o    In order to understand the Qur’an we need Tafseer methodology and the Ahadeeth, in order to understand Ahadeeth we need Hadeeth methodology, and so on. Laymen should know their limits and just follow the basic rules that are compulsory upon them and not to get involved with Qur’an, Tafseer and Ahadeeth, as they are not in a position to be the inheritors of the Prophets or to be the speakers in the name of Allah without having the requisite scholarship.

o    When Abu Bakr (RAA) was asked to give a commentary about a Verse in Surah Abasa, he said what if I can not give it the true meaning that Allah intended, then which earth will accept me, which heavens will shadow me, where can I go, and what can I do?

o    Do not spread whatever you hear and read without having certain knowledge. Do not take uncertain knowledge which is probabilistic and use that probabilistic knowledge to prove the veracity of certain knowledge. This is unfortunately a farcical way of dealing with the Qur’an, in all honesty. How can you take a scientific theory like the Big Bang which is based on certain assumptions and has competing, alternative theories facing it (like quantum gravity) and use that as a proof to show the veracity of a Mutawaatir, 100% certain verse? How can you even compare these two types of information?

o    No one needs to ‘verify’ the Qur’an. People need to verify themselves, and sort themselves out. One does not need to “prove” certainty.

o    Imagine an unqualified surgeon teaching others how to do surgery on a patient through trial and error. He will kill lots of people with this methodology. Never ever try to learn things through putting other people’s Eternal Hereafter in danger. This is about the Qur’an, the Ahaadeeth and Islamic sciences. This is why we are created. This is the whole and the sole purpose. Please brothers and sisters, I call you to be more careful and take the example of Abu Bakr (RAA) to heart, since with all of his knowledge and expertise in the inward and outward sciences, he still did not wish to comment on one word he was unsure of.

o    Brother Hamza calls upon others to speak out against this so called scientific miracles narrative. I personally as a scientist and as an Islamic scholar have been warning people against using these arguments to prove the veracity of Qur’an and disproving all their arguments. Again, this reminds me of certain Hadeeth fabricator establishments that would fabricate Ahaadeeth with good intentions in the early centuries of Islam to attract people into more worship or make them better practitioners of the religion.

o    It is basically the same scenario albeit in a different century, since the nature of humans never changes as time goes by. Only if the people studied about Hadeeth methodology they would easily see the resemblance. When people cannot attack the Qur’an and Islam directly, some so-called Muslims ‘scholars’ are opening holes for the enemies to attack the Qur’an and to refute something which is not Qur’an but is simply presented as if it were the Qur’an.

o    This is a very dodgy game some of these propagators have been playing, a very dangerous game. It does not matter whether one is sincere or not, willingly or unwillingly, this sort of approach is causing more damage than benefit.

o    Thus, please do not discuss science in the Qur’an unless you are a scientist and a scholar at the same time. I do not know if people use ‘science’ in the right manner or not. Qur’an does not need life sciences, physical sciences or social sciences to be verified as the truth.

Commenting on brother Tzortzis’ article through quotes

o    Now let’s look at some of his other points made in that paper[4]:

Since the eighties there has been a growing movement of Muslim academics and apologists using science to establish the miraculous and Divine nature of the Qur’ānic discourse. On a grass roots level, Muslims across the world, especially in the West, try to articulate the veracity of Islam by using verses that allude to science as evidence for the Qur’ān’s Divine authorship. The internet is full of websites, essays, videos and posts on the scientific verses in the Qur’ān. A Google search on “Quran and science” produces over 40 million search results.[1]

o    Muslims have unfortunately been using the so-called ‘science in Qur’an’ narrative for two main reasons. Either to show off that they belong to a religion that is modern and scientific, that we are better than anyone of you out there and not for any practical reasons – purely theoretical reasons that they do not even understand. Most of these people do not even know how to read Qur’an properly let alone understand the verses that they are promoting as scientific, and this extends to certain academics and apologists. The second group has sincere intentions but lack the knowledge; they believe in the ‘scientific narrative’ of these Verses blindly and don’t know what they mean while they spread it all over.

o    Is there any mechanism to stop these people? Unfortunately not!

o    We must consider one important question: “What sort of people can make comments on Qur’an?” Making comments mean you are being a Mufassir. What are the conditions laid down in Usool at-Tafseer to be able to make comments on Qur’anic verses? Hamza mentioned about Usool at-Tafseer in his article yet he himself does not have any clue about whom and how one can make comments on Qur’an. It is really a chronic epidemic in this Ummah to spread whatever you read and hear. It is enough to be called a liar if one spreads whatever he hears (as per the general meaning of a well-known Hadith).

o    What is the aim of Usool at-Tafseer? (please see the attached link): In short, the aim of Usool at-Tafseer is to facilitate a person’s understanding of Qur’an as a whole and in its parts.

o    It lays down general principles and rules in order for Qur’an exegetes to make healthy commentaries. There are primary sources to study and make use of Usool at-Tafseer principles such as al-‘Aql wa Fahmul Qur’an by Haarith al-Muhaasibi, Ibn al-Jawzi’s Funun al-Afnaan, az-Zarkashi’s al-Burhan fi Ulum al-Qur’an, al-Kafeeji’s at-Tayseer fi Qawaa’id ‘Ilm at-Tafseer, and as-Suyuti’s al-Itqan fi Ulum al-Qur’an, just to mention a few. The one who wants to make commentaries of verses in Qur’an should have studied the above texts under Islamic scholars.

o    And moreover, if these verses are specifically related to the physical sciences then one also must have qualifications in the physical sciences. The condition is at least to have finished a MSc. in physical sciences such as physics, biology etc. And one very important point is that if one is an expert in physics but not in biology then he should not make comments on embryology, evolution or biology – that is, saying things as if he was ‘within’ the field when he is not part of it.

o    Now, some of the prerequisites for a commentator are:

o    The commentator should know the language and the morphology of Arabic linguistics (Sarf-Ishtiqaaq), Nahw (syntax, the position of words in a sentence and their states), Balaagha (eloquence, majaaz, kinaaya, badi’, bayaan), so it is not only a matter of looking up the words in a dictionary or lexicon and then making comments about the Qur’an. Comprehending the methods of Usool, the reasons behind religious rulings, and the theoretical pillars of this religion are also crucial.

o    Also, what is required is not only knowledge through Naql (simple transmission) but also understanding the events, the historical context, time-place, culture, sociology, social psychology, and so forth. Moreover, the ‘Aql of the commentator must be fed from the original Islamic and Qur’anic resources, thinking, and methodology, and not the Biblical or Western points of view.

o    He should also have the capacity and the knowledge of the past and link it to the future events, as well as knowing how these affect all sorts of people now and in the future.

o    The ‘matn’ must be seen as a divine message and not as a puzzle book or a mystery homicide case waiting to be resolved. The commentaries should not made for the purpose of gaining fame, or for saying: ‘I am the one who came up with this methodology!’. In here, we should seriously think about the verses which warn about people who take their whims and minds as their gods.

o    Other prerequisites such as knowing the Ahadeeth, Usool, Kalaam, etc. are also mentioned in the primary Usool at-Tafseer books. (Of course, we are not talking here about the prerequisites of people who read the Qur’an, since the aforementioned prerequisites are for those who provide commentary on the Qur’an.)

o    The Qur’an is a book about interactions at various levels: human-nature, human-human, human-Creator, and all of these involve myriad disciplines such as economics, sociology, psychology, history, moral etiquettes, warfare, in addition to knowledge about the Creator and His attributes. It is not easy to be an expert in all of these disciplines and this is why there were only 7 main Fuqaaha out of more than one hundred thousand Companions. Consider that even not every Muhaddith [Hadeeth expert] is considered a Faqeeh. A’mash who knew over 300,000 Ahadith would not give fatwa in front of Imaam Abu Haneefa (Rahimahumulla). When explained by the true scholars, it is easy to understand the Qur’an. The message of the Qur’an is easy to understand without any further explanation, but of course one needs further explanation by the Prophet (SAW) and the Ulil-Amr (scholars) in order to understand the ancillary issues of the religion.

This movement has classical and modern origins. The Islamic classical scholarly tradition was engaged in a debate as to whether to use science as an exegetical tool to explain the Qur’ānic verses.

o    It is asserted in that paper that the Islamic classical scholarly tradition was engaged in a debate on whether to use science to explain Qur’anic verses but no references are mentioned. It is unfortunately unclear what brother Hamza means in here by classical scholarly tradition.

However, it was during the eighties that the apologetic expression of this movement was born. I would argue there are two main events that facilitated the emergence of this movement. The first was the publishing of the book Bible, the Qur’ān and Science in 1976 written by Dr. Maurice Bucaille, and the second was the 1980s video This is The Truth produced by the Islamic scholar Abdul-Majeed al-Zindani. Dr Bucaille’s book argued that there were no scientific errors in the Qur’ān and that the Bible was full of scientific inaccuracies. Dr. Bucaille’s book became a best seller in the Muslim world and it was translated into many languages. Even though the book has faced academic criticism[2], it is still a popular read and used as a reference for Islamic apologetics and proselytisation.

The Islamic Scholar Abdul-Majeed al-Zindani, founder of the Commission on Scientific Signs in the Qur’ān and Sunnah, produced a video entitled This is the Truth. Al-Zindani invited prominent Western academics to attend one of their conferences. During the conference al-Zindani claimed that a group of eminent non-Muslim scholars in several fields testified to the fact that there were scientific miracles in the Qur’ān. However, the Commission received criticism that it had spread out of context and misleading statements to justify its narrative.[3] Relatively recently an Atheist video blogger and commentator personally contacted some of the scientists who had attended the conference and conducted interviews with them. The interviews were recorded and uploaded on YouTube. All of the scientists he interviewed claimed that their statements had been taken out of context, and that there is nothing miraculous about the scientific statements in the Qur’ānic discourse.[4]

o    I think one of the problems again occurs by comparing the Qur’an with the Bible. This is an outlook which is in fact childish in its very nature. We sometimes compare things in a wrong way. For example to say that the son of a medical doctor is a doctor even if he did not study is a false comparison. The point is, how can you compare Qur’an with anything else or any other book? This methodology is wrong in its very essence.

o    Having said this, we are right to ask: Who is Dr Maurice Bucaille or Abdul-Majeed al-Zindani? What are their credentials? Are they both experts in Islamic sciences? What papers have they published with regards to Islamic jurisprudence, Hadeeth, Tafseer or any other Islamic sciences? Are they theoretical physicists, cosmologists, entomologists or embryologists? Now if they are not, then how can you take their material and spread it around as so called ‘original material’ related to the Qur’an? Are they taking the literal meanings of these verses or metaphorical? What is their research based on?

o    I am not only criticizing them but also people like Zakir Naik and Bilaal Philips. They have been spreading the false ideas that they have in the name of Islam. It is so sad that this material is still out there and everyone is reading about these things in the name of Islam.

In spite of this, millions of booklets and pamphlets have been printed that make the claim that there are scientific miracles in the Qur’ān, and countless non-Muslims have converted to Islam as a result. This growing movement has influenced academia too, for example an academic book published by Curzon entitled Qur’ān Translation: Discourse, Texture and Exegesis dedicates a few pages on the topic.[5] Famous popularisers such as Dr. Zakir Naik[6] and Yusuf Estes[7] have also used the scientific miracles narrative to verify the Divine nature of the Qur’ān. Due to this intense popularisation over the past few decades, there is now a growing counter movement that attempts to demystify the so-called scientific statements, and they seem to be more nuanced, with a growing popularity. A significant number of apostates from Islam (many of whom I have had private conversations with) cite the counter movement’s work as a causal factor in deciding to leave the religion. Nevertheless, I do believe that apostasy is not entirely an intellectual decision but rather a spiritual and psychological problem. This can include a lack of spiritual connection with God and disheartenment with Islam due to unfortunate negative experiences with Muslims and the the Muslim community.

o    Someone can easily apostatize through an intellectual decision which is not related to a spiritual or psychological problem. If I[5] see that someone is telling me that the Big Bang is mentioned in the Qur’an, or if I listen to Zakir Naik who said that some Verses are proving the roundness of the Earth while it does not state this at all, then I may apostatize or reject Islam as a result of this, and this is solely based upon my intellect. This is because I am being lied to about the Qur’an, about the verses of the Qur’an. I am interested in Islam and all I get is a big fat lie. Obviously people who become Muslims due to these so-called scientific verses will leave Islam as soon as they find out about the misinterpretations of so called ‘scholars of Islam’.

o    As brother Hamza put it, this is an unfortunate and negative situation that has been experienced by apostates or those who were interested in Islam with these so called scholars or others who represent Islam.

Regrettably, the scientific miracles narrative has become an intellectual embarrassment for Muslim apologists, including myself. A few years ago I took some activists to Ireland to engage with the audience and speakers at the World Atheist Convention. Throughout the convention we had a stall outside the venue and as a result positively engaged with hundreds of atheists, including the popular atheist academics Professor P. Z. Myers and Professor Richard Dawkins.  During our impromptu conversation with Professor Myers we ended up talking about God’s existence and the Divine nature of the Qur’ān. The topic of embryology came up, and Professor Myers being an expert in the field challenged our narrative. He claimed that the Qur’ān did not predate modern scientific conclusions in the field. As a result of posting the video[8] of the engagement on-line we faced a huge intellectual backlash.

o    Hamza clearly does not have any clue whatsoever about quantum theory or fluctuations, something that is obvious in his discussion with Professor Myers. Hamza also denies that there are (so-called) Muslims who have an anthropomorphic view of God. How about Wahhaabis and so called false Salafis who believe that ‘God’ has hands, moves, sits, etc. Ibn Taymiyyah had anthropomorphic views and Hamza loves quoting him a lot in his lectures and debates. Adnan Rashid is also talking about embryology and clearly shows ignorance about the subject as well as ignorance about the Qur’an and Arabic. It is so sad that these people are pushing away people due to their ignorance. Qur’an talks about the great flood during Noah’s (Alayhi Salaam) time and Adnan Rashid denies this. This is so sad. How can these people represent Islam?

We received innumerable amounts of emails by Muslims and non-Muslims. The Muslims were confused and had doubts, and the non-Muslims were bemused with the whole approach. Consequently, I decided to compile and write an extensive piece on the Qur’ān and embryology, with the intention to respond to popular and academic contentions.[9] During the process of writing I relied on students and scholars of Islamic thought to verify references and to provide feedback in areas where I had to rely on secondary and tertiary sources. Unfortunately they were not thorough and they seemed to have also relied on trusting other Muslim apologists. When the paper was published it was placed under a microscope by atheist activists.[10] Although they misrepresented some of the points, they raised some significant contentions. I have since removed the paper from my website. In retrospect if this never happened, I probably wouldn’t be writing this essay now. It is all a learning curve and an important part of developing intellectual integrity.

o    This experience might be a learning curve to some brothers but one should not jeopardize other people’s Eternal Afterlife by testing and learning through life experiences at the expense of others. That is why it is not easy to represent Islam as a scholar, and one needs to be careful about what to say and write. This is not the way to go through a learning curve. The true learning curve is through schools where you study Qur’an, Ahaadeeth and classical texts. When you master them then you can start conveying the message in an appropriate manner.

o    While some people are ‘developing intellectual integrity’, many others are getting confused or leaving the truth for falsehood. Is it so hard to find a brother who is a scientist and has a solid Islamic scholarly background with all the money that IERA receives from donations?

o    Islam is like a toy to play with for certain people; they are playing with the verses of Allah and claiming that their intentions are good. Who on the right frame of mind challenges a professor of embryology about embryology without medical or life sciences background? How blinded can some people get?

In light of this, this essay aims to provide a rational and Islamic perspective on how to understand the scientific verses in the Qur’ān. It is time more people from the Muslim community spoke out against this problematic approach to verifying the Divine nature of the Qur’ān. It has become an intellectual embarrassment for Muslim apologists and it has exposed the lack of coherence in the way they have formulated the argument. Significantly, many Muslims who converted to Islam due to the scientific miracles narrative, have left the religion due to encountering opposing arguments. This essay intends to explain how the scientific miracles narrative is problematic and incoherent, and it aims to bring to light a new approach on how to reconcile and discuss science in the Qur’ān. It must be noted that I am not asserting that the Qur’ān is inaccurate or wrong, or that there is nothing remarkable about the Qur’ānic statements eluding to natural phenomena. I am simply bringing to light the perilous nature of the claim that some Qur’ānic verses are miraculous due to their scientific content. For this reason, I am offering a new approach to the topic that is nuanced and bypasses the intellectual hurdles and problems faced by the scientific miracles narrative.

o    I cannot even imagine someone who does not have an Islamic studies background like Sarf, Nahw, Balaaghah, Mantiq, Usool at-Tafseer, Usool al-Hadeeth to provide a rational and Islamic perspective to understand the scientific verses in the Qur’an.

o    We have been speaking against this for years and it seems that no one hears or understands, because it seems that the person must belong to a particular organization to be heard, and he has to follow the guidelines of that group, even if the group’s agenda and fundamentals are wrong.

o    I highly recommend for brother Hamza and all people like him to go and study Islamic sciences from scratch and then work for Da’wah. And if someone has no credentials in science then please avoid those verses related to science. I say the same things for Dr. Zakir Naik, Yusuf Estez, Adnan Rashid, Abdurrahman Green and others who give Da’wah. Alternatively, people should not talk about subjects that they do not know. People are not obliged to answer every single question.

A summary of the scientific miracles claim

The scientific miracles of the Qur’ān are expressed in different ways but with the same philosophical implications.

1.    The Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) did not have access to the scientific knowledge mentioned in the Qur’ān, therefore it must be from God.

2.    No one at the time of revelation (7th century) had access to the necessary equipment to understand or verify the scientific knowledge in the Qur’ān, therefore it must be from God.

3.    The Qur’ānic verses where revealed at a time where science was primitive and no human could have uttered the truths mentioned in the Qur’ān, therefore it must be from God.

There are an array of reasons of why the above expressions of the scientific miracles are problematic and incoherent. These include,

1.    The Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle

2.    Inaccurate History

3.    Teleology of the Qur’ānic Verses

4.    Scientism, the Problem of Induction and Empiricism

5.    “Unscientific” Verses

6.    Miracles, Simplicity and A Note on Qur’ānic Exegesis

Each of these points will now be explained in detail.

o    We really do not need to refer to the philosophical arguments to prove that some idea or notion surrounding the Qur’an is inaccurate. Although his explanation is very clear and good, it is unnecessary. We Muslims always use simple language for everyone to understand rather than syllogism.

1. The Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle

The science in the Qur’ān claim commits a logical fallacy called the fallacy of the undistributed middle. This fallacy is where two different things are equated due to a common middle ground that is misused. Below is a generic example:

1.    All As are Cs

2.    All Bs are Cs

3.    Therefore all As are Bs

The above fallacy is in the conclusion. Since A and B share the common category C, it doesn’t follow that A is the same as B.

Another example includes:

1.    John needs oxygen to survive

2.    My dog needs oxygen to survive

3.    Therefore John is my dog

As can be seen above, the middle ground that is misused is oxygen. Although the first two premises are true, that both John and my dog need oxygen to survive, it doesn’t follow that John is my dog.

Most of the science in the Qur’ān arguments commit this type of fallacy. Below is a summary:

1.    A description of a scientific fact A uses C

2.    A description in the Qur’ān B uses C

3.    Therefore, the description in the Qur’ān B is the description of A

The following are some specific examples:

1.    The scientific fact in embryology is the implantation of the blastocyst in the uterine wall. Implantation can be attributed as a safe place.

2.    The Qur’ān uses the words qarārin[11] makīn[12], which can mean a safe place.

3.    Therefore, the Qur’ān is describing the scientific fact of the implantation of the blastocyst.

In the above syllogism, it doesn’t follow that the words qarārin makīn (a safe place) imply the process of implantation just because it to shares the attribute of a safe place. The argument will only be valid if all descriptions of qarārin makīn refers to, and describes, the process of implantation. Since qarārin makīn can also refer to the womb[13], which was the 7th century understanding of the words, then the argument is invalid. The mere correlation between a Qur’ānic word and a scientific process or description does not ascertain the intended meaning of the verse.

Another example includes:

The scientific fact is that the Earth’s atmosphere helps destroy meteorites as they approach Earth, filters harmful light rays, protects against the cold temperatures of space, and its Van Allen Belt acts like as a shield against the harmful radiation. The Earth’s atmosphere can be attributed as a protected roof.This is wrong,the earth’s atmosphere does not destroy meteorites.

1.    The Qur’ān uses the words saqfan maḥfūẓan, which means a protect roof.[14]

2.    Therefore, the Qur’ān is describing the function of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Again, the above syllogism is invalid. It doesn’t logically follow that the words saqfan maḥfūẓan, which refers to a protected roof, describes the function of the Earth’s atmosphere. This is because saqfan maḥfūẓan can also refer to a physical roof. Some interpretations of the Qur’ān include that the heaven is erected with invisible pillars, and that a fragment of the heaven or sky can fall on Earth; (see Qur’ān 13:2 and 34:9). These interpretations indicate a solid roof like structure, as confirmed by the classical exegete Ibn Kathīr who cites a scholar mentioning that “the heaven is like a dome over the earth”.[15] Therefore the words saqfan maḥfūẓan can also refer to a physical roof or dome like structure. For that reason, the above argument will only be valid if all interpretations and descriptions of saqfan maḥfūẓan describes the function of Earth’s atmosphere. Atmosphere is a physical roof.

o    In his two examples, the one about embryology is valid and clear. In his second example he refers to Ibn Kathir (RA) who was not a classical scholar in the sense that we are referring to it in here. One cannot mention only a single 15^th century scholar to try to prove his point. Besides, what is meant by physical roof? As far as I am concerned as a scientist, the atmosphere is a physical roof, as well as other structures above the earth as a protective layer. Moreover, is there anything that is not physical apart from Allah Ta’ala?

o    We should also realise that the Tafseers may contain fabricated Ahadeeth and interpretations which are not true. What is the necessary requirement in order to differentiate the fabricated Ahadeeth from others? Someone also should study the Tafseer methodology to be able to quote from the classical Tafaseer safely. There is also a huge problem by quoting ‘invisible pillars’ and ‘a fragment of heaven or sky can fall on earth’  (Verses 13:2 and 34:9) in this argument. We do not take this religion from one scholar or one exegete only. This religion came to us through Tawaatur and we have many scholars, so it is very wrong to quote one scholar to explain the verses of Qur’an. Ibn Kathir (RA) is not even considered as an authority in Islamic sciences the way Imam ash-Shaa’fi’i is for example. If he quoted a Mujtahid as a proof to his argument then we would accept it. So we need to understand the differences between someone accepted as an authority in Islam by consensus and someone who has knowledge of the Qur’an and Hadith but is not a formal authority.

In light of the above, the argument that the Qur’ān is a miracle because the descriptions of certain words it uses seem to relate to descriptions of words used in scientific facts, is logically fallacious. The scientific miracles claim would only be valid if it could be demonstrated that the interpretations of the words that seem to correlate with science are the intended meanings. The principles of Qur’ānic exegesis dictates that this is impossible to ascertain (this will be discussed later in the essay).

Furthermore, there a myriad of questions that exposes the incoherence of the scientific miracles narrative. For instance: why are the more simpler explanations and meanings of the verses in the Qur’ān dismissed? What about the alternative valid interpretations of these verses that are unscientific or crude? Since the ambiguity of the words renders it impossible to know what the intended meaning of the verses are, how can anyone claim them to be miracles? What about the ancient civilisations and their accurate predictions of scientific phenomena before they were verified by modern science? Does that make the ancient civilisations Divinely inspired?

o    If a verse does not talk about a physical or life sciences phenomena, that does not mean that the verse in question is not a miracle. This is a very fallacious thinking and needs to be addressed properly.

2. Inaccurate history

…

The Big Bang “Miracle”: The Qur’ān mentions the creation of the cosmos in the following way:

“Have not those who disbelieve known that the heavens and the earth were of one piece, then We parted them, and we made every living thing of water? Will they not then believe?”[27]

…

o    I will skip most of this section as I agree with most of his arguments. However we again reach the same problem when he says that ‘the Qur’an mentions the creation of the cosmos’. Where does the Qur’an mention cosmos? Seriously, if it is the whole cosmos why not mention it as the whole cosmos rather than splitting it into the Heavens and the Earth? The Verse does not even mention the 7 Earths like what is mentioned in the last verse of Surah at-Talaq.

…

“I intended to prohibit cohabitation with the suckling women, but I considered the Romans and Persians, and saw that they suckle their children and this thing (cohabitation) does not do any harm to them (to the suckling women).”[30] [Please note that this does not mean the Prophet (upon whom be peace) used knowledge from other civilisations as a source of revelation. Rather, in Islamic theology when it concerns medical and scientific matters, it is advised to seek the best opinions and best practice, as practised by the Prophet (upon whom be peace) himself. Access the following link for a discussion using cross pollination as an example http://en.islamtoday.net/node/1691.%5D

This authentic ḥadīth shows that the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) had access to medical practices prevalent in other civilisations. Therefore, in the eyes of the sceptic, it is not impossible that he could have accessed other scientific knowledge that was popularised at the time.

…

o    Again there is a Hadeeth mentioned in this section which is claimed to be authentic. However we need to first ask a number of important questions such as: How authentic is that Hadeeth? Authentic, according to which Hadeeth scholars? Do Fiqh scholars use it as part of Islamic jurisprudence? What type of authentic Hadeeth is that? Is it an abrogated authentic Hadeeth? Is it one of those authentic Hadeeth that can be practiced upon or not? We should note that we should not use any Verse or Hadeeth to prove our arguments unless we have certain qualifications.

4. Scientism, the problem of induction and empiricism

Jalees Rehman, a cardiology fellow at Indiana University School of Medicine, aptly and concisely articulates a major problem with the scientific miracles narrative. He writes:

“One danger of such attempts to correlate modern science with the Qur’ān is that it makes a linkage between the perennial wisdom and truth of the Qur’ān with the transient ideas of modern science.”[36]

What Rehman is eluding to here is that there is a philosophical issue in asserting that Qur’ānic verses are miraculous. The problem is that science does not claim certainty or 100% truth, and to use science as a method to establish the absolute nature of the Qur’ān is fallacious. Science by its very nature is not static, it is dynamic. Its conclusions change over time, even ones that we may think are established facts. A hidden assumption behind the scientific miracles narrative is that science is the only way to render truth about the world and reality – a proposition known as scientism.

So there are 3 things to discuss here:

1.    Science does not claim certainty or 100% truth.

2.    Science is dynamic and therefore changes over time.

3.    Science is not the only way to render truths about the world and reality.

Science does not claim certainty or 100% truth

The philosophy of science is a field of study that attempts to address how we can derive knowledge from scientific experiments and empirical data. Key problems in the philosophy of science include induction and empiricism, as they both have limitations and a restricted scope. Understanding these issues will enable us to reach the conclusion that scientific facts are not 100% and there is always the possibility of doubt.

Induction: Induction is a thinking process where one makes conclusions by moving from the particular to the general. Arguments based on induction can range in probability from very low to very high, but always less than 100%.

Here is an example of induction:

“I have observed that punching a boxing bag properly with protective gloves never causes injury. Therefore no one will be injured using a boxing bag.”

As can be seen from the example above, induction faces a key problem which is the inability to guarantee the conclusion, because a sweeping generalisation cannot be made from a limited number of observations. The best it can provide are probabilities, ranging from low to very high. In the aforementioned example the person who made the statement could not logically prove that the next person to punch a boxing bag will not get injured.

Therefore, the problem with induction is that it can’t produce certainty. This issue was raised by the 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume in his book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Hume argued that inductive reasoning can never produce certainty. He concluded that moving from a limited set of observed phenomena to making conclusions for an unlimited set of observed phenomena is beyond the present testimony of the senses, and the records of our memory.[37]

From a practical scientific perspective, generalisations made for an entire group or for the next observation within that group, based on a limited set of data will never be certain. Take the following example into consideration, a scientist travelled to Wales and wanted to find out the colour of sheep (assuming he does not know the colour of sheep). He started observing the sheep and recorded what colour they were. After 150 sheep observations he found that all of them were white. The scientist concluded, using induction, that all sheep are white. This basic example highlights the problematic nature with the process of induction as we know sheep can also be black. Certainty using induction will never be achieved, because there is always the possibility of new observations undermining the previous conclusion.

Professor Alex Rosenberg in his book Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction  concludes that this is a key problem facing science; he writes:

“Here we have explored another problem facing empiricism as the official epistemology of science: the problem of induction, which goes back to Hume, and added to the agenda of problems for both empiricists and rationalists.”[38]

Empiricism: Empiricism claims that we have no source of knowledge in a subject or for the concepts we use in a subject other than sense experience. Philosopher Elliot Sober in his essay Empiricism explains the empiricist’s thesis:

“Empiricists deny that it is ever rationally obligatory to believe that theories provide true descriptions of an unobservable reality…For an empiricist, if a theory is logically consistent, observations are the only source of information about whether the theory is empirically adequate.”[39]

Empiricism suffers from limitations and logical problems. One form of empiricism – which I will call strong empiricism – is limited to things that can only be observed. This form of empiricism faces a whole host of logical problems. The main problem with strong empiricism is that it can only base its conclusions on observed realities and cannot make conclusions on unobserved realities. Elliot Sober explains this problem:

“Empiricists need to address problems in the philosophy of perception. The most obvious first stab at saying what seeing an object involves is to describe the passage of light from the object into the eyes, with the result that a visual experience occurs. However, the invisibility of white cats in snowstorms and the fact that we see silhouettes (like the moon during an eclipse) shows that this is neither sufficient nor necessary.”[40]

Further exploring Sober’s example, imagine you observe a white cat walking outside of a house towards the direction of an oncoming snowstorm; you can see the cat walking up to the snowstorm and then you can no longer see the cat. A strong empiricist’s account would be to deny that there is a cat in the snowstorm, or at least suspend any claims to knowledge. However, based on other intellectual tools at your disposal you would conclude that there is a white cat in the snowstorm regardless of whether or not you can observe one.

The problems faced by strong empiricism have not gone unaddressed by empiricists. They have responded by weakening their definition for empiricism by redefining empiricism to the view that we can only know something if it is confirmed or supported by sensory experience – I shall call this weak empiricism. Others have dogmatically maintained the view that the only way to truth is via direct observation and being supported by observation is not good enough. These responses have created an unresolved dilemma for the empiricist. The Philosopher John Cottingham exposes this problem in his book Rationalism:

“But what about ‘all water at a given atmospheric pressure boils at 100 degrees Celsius’? Since this statement has the form of an unrestricted universal generalization, it follows that no finite number of observations can conclusively establish its truth. An additional and perhaps even more worrying problem is that when we reach the higher levels of science…we tend to encounter structures and entities that are not observable in any straightforward sense. Atoms, molecules, electrons, photons and the like are highly complex theoretical constructs…here we seem to be very far removed from the world of direct ‘empirical observation’…The positivists tended to respond to this difficulty by weakening their criterion for meaningfulness…it was proposed that a statement was meaningful if it could be confirmed or supported by sensory experience. However, this weaker criterion is uncomfortably vague…Statements about God or Freedom, or the nature of Substance, or the Absolute, may not be directly checkable against experience…The positivist thus seems to be faced with a fatal dilemma: either he will have to make his criterion so stringent that it will exclude the generalizations and theoretical statements of science, or else he will have to weaken his criterion sufficiently to open the door to the speculations of the metaphysician. The dilemma has remained unresolved to this day…”[41]

In light of the above, since induction and empiricism are used in deriving knowledge from scientific data then science cannot claim certainty. There are the obvious problems of the unobserved and the inability to guarantee that the next observation will be the same as the previous observation. Our observations do not encompass all phenomena, therefore science is tentative. In other words it can change based upon future observations. For science to be certain, all natural phenomena must have been observed. This is impossible.

Therefore to use the scientific method, which is a method that does not provide certainty, to justify a book which demands certainty is obviously problematic and incoherent.

Science is dynamic and therefore changes over time

To claim that there is anything scientifically miraculous about a particular Qur’ānic verse is incoherent. This is because science can change due to new observations and studies. Therefore, for someone to claim that a particular verse is miraculous would mean that the one making the claim can guarantee that the science will never change. To make such a guarantee would imply gross ignorance. Ignorance of the fact that science does change and is tentative due to the problems faced by induction and empiricism. The problems of induction and empiricism (as discussed in the previous section) explain the reason for the dynamic nature in science. In summary these problems are that a new observation can be made, or more data can be found. Therefore, by definition, we can never claim that a particular verse is miraculous because to make such an assertion would mean that the science is fixed. This is impossible to maintain.

To explain this point clearly, take into consideration, Muslims living in the 19th century. The science and academia of the time were asserting that the universe is static and without a beginning, known as the steady state theory. Since the Qur’ān argues that the universe had a beginning, does that mean the Qur’ān must have been rejected by Muslims living in the 19th century? Of course not, because all Muslims believe the Qur’ān to be from the Divine, and the Divine cannot be wrong. This exposes a hidden assumption: the Qur’ān is from the Divine and science will at some point show how the verses are in line with reality. This assumption exposes the scientific miracles narrative, as the Qur’ān being from the Divine is presupposed…

o    Science does not only use induction and empiricism in their research and investigations. Induction is also not defined properly in his paper. Which induction is he talking about? Science also uses deductions as well as other methods. The scholars of Kalaam and Usool in Islam use induction too at times. We live in a dynamic universe and the laws do not change all the time in the Universe. There are certain facts which do not change. So criticizing the whole of science to back up a point is a very fallacious approach. Science can reach certainty in many fields. Science is also looking for answers to many other questions which may or may not have certain answers. Surely there are many aspects in science that are quite probabilistic and for now impossible to carry out empirical tests on such things due, for example, to high energy scales. It is also wrong to say that in order to make science certain all natural phenomena must be observed. Science or scientists do not favour such absurd claims.

o    There are certain laws in nature and in cosmos. Almost none of the laws change whatsoever during our lifetimes. Our lifespan is negligible compared to the age of the universe, or geological timescales. There are certain scientific laws which do not change. Also, we should be aware of the dynamic nature of Qur’an as well as it is for all times. It is similar to nature, there are some verses which are fixed and clear and there are also other verses with dynamic nature.

o    I think steady theory example is not a good example at all as it was not based on empirical evidences. Hence it was easily refuted and is not supported by majority of the scientists. There should be some sort of consensus in these fields. In disciplines like Supersymmetry, string theory, and quantum gravity we do not have consensus. We cannot take one of these models and say that yes this is the factual model of the universe. They are not based on empirical evidences. Empirical evidence is not bad after all. It is really absurd to claim that empiricism is bad wholesale. If we get rid of empiricism we cannot really improve in science. Of course if people exaggerate the use of empiricism and claim that that is the only way to progress in science then we say it is the attitude problem rather than methodology.

Science is not the only way to render truths about the world and reality

Another hidden assumption behind the scientific miracles narrative is that science is the only way or method to render truths about the world and reality. This assertion is known as scientism. To put it simply, scientism claims that a statement is not true if it cannot be scientifically proven. In other words if something cannot be shown to be true via the scientific method, then it is false…

o    I have skipped over the lengthy discussion presented in the paper, since there are not many people who believe in scientism, so what is the point of discussing it over here?

5. “Unscientific” Verses

Some verses in the Qur’ānic discourse are currently “unscientific”. This does not mean the Qur’ān is wrong or not from the Divine (as we have already discussed above that science is not the only way to render truth claims about the world and reality, and that it faces problems in the way that it derives knowledge from empirical data), rather it can show that our scientific knowledge is limited and has not reached the right conclusions yet. The reason I am including unscientific verses here is to highlight the inconsistency of the scientific miracles in the Qur’ān methodology. The inconsistency is that if science was a yardstick to use to verify the Divine origins of the Qur’ān, then all verses must be in line with scientific conclusions. Given that some verses are not currently in line with science, then it follows that either the Qur’ān is wrong – and therefore not from the Divine – or that the Qur’ān is right and from the Divine, and that science will catch up. This dilemma, for the Muslims at least, is solved by affirming the Divine origins of the Qur’ān and limited nature of science. In this case it de-scopes the scientific miracles in the Qur’ān claim methodology, and is reduced to the following statement: the Qur’ān is from God and the science that agrees with it is correct, and the science that does not is incorrect. Therefore, the miracle claim is reduced to: the Qur’ān will never be wrong.

o    Even to suggest that science is a yardstick to verify Qur’an is absurd and ludicrous. This shows sheer ignorance of the Qur’anic sciences for those who assume this approach. Hamza clearly explains this problem in his essay. In Islam we take the correct knowledge through three sources: Mustaqim (sane, correct) senses, ’Aql saleem, and Mutawaatir Khabar. Where does science fit into it? How can one use science as a yardstick to verify Qur’an? Have people not studied Islamic sciences at all?

Here is an example of an unscientific verse. The Qur’ān says:

“We said: Get down all of you from this place (the Paradise), then whenever there comes to you guidance from Me, and whoever follows My guidance, there shall be no fear on them, nor shall they grieve.”[50]

The above verse refers to Adam and Eve (upon whom be peace). It asserts that they were sent from paradise to earth and implies that they were both fully formed and created before coming to earth. This literal and orthodox interpretation of the verse is in direct conflict with science. The theory of evolution asserts that human beings were formed via natural selection and random mutations on earth over long period of time.  The theory of evolution also argues that human have a shared ancestry with non-human species. One attempt to reconcile the theory of evolution and the orthodox interpretation of the Qur’ān is to accept evolution for non-humans and to claim that the creation of Adam was a miracle. A problem with this is that since the scientific evidence for non-human evolution is the same or similar as the evidence used to conclude human evolution, it would be incoherent to call it a miracle, because one would have to accept the same scientific evidence for one and reject it for another, which is tantamount to rejecting the all of the science.[51]

o    The verse says ‘all of you’ not both of you so how does it refer to Adam and Hawwa (Alayhimaa Salaam)? What is the meaning of ‘fully formed and created’? Is the meaning ‘formed in their bodies like here on earth’? If so, where is the evidence for that? Where did this literal interpretation come from? If we were to go along with this, would it mean that the creation of non-humans through evolution was not a miracle?

6. Miracles, Simplicity and A Note on Qur’ānic Exegesis

When claiming that something is miraculous it means that there is no plausible naturalistic explanation. In this case, in order for a scientific verse to be miraculous there should be no physical causal link between the verse and the nature of the knowledge of the time, and there should be no alternative linguistic explanation available to explain the verse. This definition of a miracle applied to the Qur’ānic verse exposes the incoherent methodology employed by many to try and find something miraculous.

o    Another fallacy of this paper that it assumes the verses which do not describe a scientific phenomenon cannot be considered as a miracle. Every single verse of Qur’an is a miracle. The whole Qur’an is a miracle. It has nothing to do with plausible naturalistic explanations of verses. This is a very problematic approach although his intentions are sincere. As a result the paper causes certain misunderstandings. I think he believes the whole Qur’an is a miracle but because his focus is solely on the scientific miracles of Qur’an he misses the main point of the Quran being a miracle as a whole and his measure stick becomes if a verse is scientific or non-scientific.

From a linguistic perspective for a verse to be miraculous it must only have one meaning. If other meanings are available then it would be more rational to take the unscientific or crude meanings over the meanings that imply miraculousness. For a verse to be miraculous it would mean that there is no causal link between the verse and the knowledge of the language, or the science available and accessible at the time. However, since the Qur’ānic discourse allows multiple meanings (obviously within a certain scope) then the miracle claim is unfounded and incoherent by definition. The fact that the language used in the Qur’ān for the verses eluding to natural phenomena is not unequivocal and definitive exposes the perilous nature of the scientific miracles in the Qur’ān claim. Simply put, there are alternative simpler meanings that allow these verses to be explained naturalistically, and the knowledge was available and accessible at the time to explain such statements. Therefore, since a causal link can be found to explain the verses, it renders any miracle claim as null and void.

o    Seriously, can someone explain it to me what a scientific verse is? I have studied classical texts under many scholars, and have never heard of such terminology? It is also imprecise, because would we then include the social or the life sciences under such terminology?

A Note on Qur’ānic Exegesis

In order for a verse in the Qur’ān to be a scientific miracle it would mean that the meaning attributed to a verse or word is definitive and absolute. This is untenable in light of the science of Qur’ānic exegesis. In the science of Qur’ānic exegesis (known as usul ul-tafsīr in Arabic) when a verse or word has not been explained via the Prophetic traditions (ḥadīth) and the statements of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) and their students, then the linguistic meaning is offered as an explanation. When the linguistic meaning is offered one would have to consult the classical tradition and the classical Arabic dictionaries. A consequence of this is discovering a range of meanings for a particular word. The general rule is that no one can claim that the meaning that someone has chosen is the intended meaning, someone could not say that God intended word X to mean Y. Rather, the approach that has to be taken is to claim that a particular word has a range of meanings and that word X may mean Y. The indefinite nature of a word clearly highlights how it is untenable to claim a miracle, as mentioned above, it would mean that the meaning chosen for a particular word is the intended meaning by the author, in this case God.

o    Unfortunately, this is a very naïve interpretation of Qur’anic exegesis and Muhkam or Mutashabih Verses. Surely brother Hamza is not in a position to come up with this sort of approach. Is there a better linguist than az-Zamakhshari in the sciences of Qur’anic exegesis? How can the approach to consult a dictionary even be offered?

o    We must remember that are talking about Qur’an here. What would have happened if everyone looked up in a dictionary, found, and applied different meanings? This would surely create confusion. This is a laypersons remark for laypersons, and it is unfortunately appalling.

A New Approach

So what now? How do we change the direction of the science in the Qur’ān tidal wave that has engulfed Muslim apologetics (more commonly known as daᶜwah in the Muslim community)? How do we transform the narrative? The simple answer is we need a new approach. This new approach is what Professor of Physics and Astronomy Nidhal Guessoum calls a “multiple, multi-level” approach.[52]

The new approach is based on the following axioms and principles:

1.    The Qur’ān allows multiple and multi-level meanings.

2.    Our understanding of natural phenomena and science changes and improves with time.

3.    The Qur’ān is not inaccurate or wrong.

4.    In the case of any irreconcilable difference between a Qur’ānic assertion and a scientific one, the following must be done:

o    Find meanings within the verse to correlate with the scientific conclusion.

o    If no words can match the scientific conclusion then science is to be improved.

o    Find a non-scientific meaning. The verse itself may be pertaining to non-physical things, such as the unseen, spiritual or existential realities.

Mustansir Mir, Professor of Islamic Studies at Youngstown State University, argues for a similar approach. He writes,

“From a linguistic standpoint, it is quite possible for a word, phrase or statement to have more than one layer of meaning, such that one layer would make sense to one audience in one age and another layer of meaning would, without negating the first, be meaningful to another audience in a subsequent age.”

o    With this approach we need to have almost an infinite amount of layers or meanings with respect to every age. This would be very difficult to follow through properly, and is methodologically untenable.

Let’s use another example to highlight Professor Mir’s point and apply the axioms and principles mentioned above. In chapter 23 verse 14 of the Qur’ān uses the word ᶜalaqah (عَلَقَة) which can mean a clinging substance, a leech or a worm, and a blood clot, or blood in a general sense.[54] This word is used to describe a stage of the development of the human embryo. A mutli-level and multilayered analysis can include:

Appropriate for the time: The meaning that refers to the embryo as a clinging substance and a blood clot could be seen with the naked eye, as the Hellenic physicians and ancient Hebrews predating the Qur’ānic revelation also described the embryo as a clinging substance and a blood clot.[55] So from this perspective it agrees with the predominant scientific view of the time.

Appropriate for our time: The word ᶜalaqah also refers to a worm or a leech. This can correlate to the external and internal appearance of the leech.[56] This view of the embryo could only have been discovered after the 15th century. Although the embryo at this stage (days 22 – 25) can be seen with the naked eye, it is about the size of the kernel of wheat and such details cannot be seen without a microscope[57], which was discovered in the 15th century.[58]

…

This[6] however doesn’t imply a miracle, because the above interpretation of the word ᶜalaqah is not certain, and a sceptic could argue that it could be just a guess. [There is also the problem of interpreting the literal meaning of the word as a metaphorical one. This is beyond the scope of the essay, but I adopt the view that a comprehensive understanding of Arabic and Qur’ānic stylistics allows this word to be understood as leech-like or worm-like and not referring to an actual leech or worm]. The point here though is not to argue the miraculous but to articulate the view that the Qur’ān is multilayered, and therefore can address various perspectives and interpretations.

o    So brother Hamza adopts the metaphorical approach in interpreting the verses of Qur’an. But  what school of thought in Usool does Hamza follow? How does he differentiate between Mutashaabih and Mujmal verses? Is it possible to just take one person’s opinion in order to change the approach to the interpretation of the Qur’an? Did any of the classical scholars or Salaf take this kind of approach?

o    Surely science has been progressing for a long time, and we had brilliant Mutakallimun, mathematicians, scientists and medics in the past who were also experts in Qur’anic exegesis? I also would like to find out if he believes that the whole Qur’an is a miracle or not? If it is, what is the point of another so called pushed and shoved scientific miracle?

o    Surely brother Hamza is not an expert in physical or life sciences or in Qur’anic sciences. He cannot even speak Arabic, how on earth can he come up with such linguistic analysis in Arabic? Where does he get the courage and authority to interpret the Qur’an or even suggest a new approach to a newly failed approach which himself and his colleagues have been using shamelessly? Did they not know about the Mutawaatir Hadeeth (the translation of which is): ‘Whoever conveys a lie on my behalf, let him prepare himself a place in Hellfire’?

o    If this is the case for a Hadeeth referring to the Prophet (SAW), then what about misinterpreting a verse on Allah’s behalf?

o    How correct it is to liken the word from a Qur’an to a parasite because of a non-Muslim scientist mentioned it once? Are we taking our source of information from every scientist Tom, Dick and Harry, wherever we may find them?

…After establishing the plausibility of the Qur’ān having Divine origins, you can speak about the multi-level and the multilayered approach we have discussed. An example includes:

“You know what is very interesting about the Qur’ān? Well, the Qur’ān seems to address various levels of intellect and addresses different levels of understanding at different periods in human history. For example, in chapter 23 verse 14 of the Qur’ān, it mentions the word ᶜalaqah to described a stage of the development of the human embryo. This word can mean a blood-clot, something that clings and a leech or a worm. The knowledge that was available during the 7th century maintained that the embryo was like a blood-clot and that it is something that clings. Interestingly in the 21st century the embryo on a microscopic level looks like a leech, even the internal structure of the leech looks like the embryo at around 4 weeks in its development. The word leech can also imply that when we were embryos we drained our mothers resources, just like a leech does, so we should love our mothers more and lower the wing of mercy and humility because they willingly sacrificed for us. This is an interesting aspect of the Qur’ān, it seems to be able to address various times and different levels of understanding. If some statements do not seem to be in line with modern science, then science will catch up. I have already shown how the Qur’ān can be from God without using science, and therefore we can conclude that what God says is true. Also, and as you know, science is not absolute, it changes with time and that there is always the possibility of new observations and new findings.”

o    This is extremely confusing and far from the message of Qur’an. This is what happens when one does not have a clue about Tafseer methodology and Arabic, and is purely thinking in terms of English rhetoric. One cannot keep changing the meanings of Qur’an as time goes by.

How could scientific miracles be established?

In light of the above, Muslims who have adopted the science in the Qur’ān narrative may argue that what I have presented is pessimistic. They may also assert that I haven’t provided a method or criteria on how to assess if a verse can be described as a scientific miracle. The primary reason why I find the science in the Qur’ān narrative incoherent is due to the philosophy of science. However, it could be argued that a verse could be deemed as more likely to have not come from a 7th century Arab if it adhered to the following criteria:

1.    The verse must have meanings/interpretations that correlate to a scientific fact(s).

2.    The meanings/interpretations must be clear and unambiguous. [An intentionally unsophisticated meaning is possible so that the Qur’ān's direct audience could appreciate it.

3.    The scientific fact must fall within the range of the verse's meanings/interpretations.

4.    The correlation between the scientific fact and the meanings/interpretations of the verse must be a strong one. In other words, it must not be a tenuous link.

5.    The science that the verse is eluding to must be as close to a fact as possible, in other words it must not be a working in progress theory. The scientific fact must be established as a conclusive or factual via the scientific community.

6.    It must demonstrate that no other naturalistic explanations (chance aside) can account for the correlation between the meanings/interpretations of the verse and the scientific conclusion. In other words, there must be a exhaustive study of the history of science to establish that: such scientific knowledge would have been impossible to discover and no one in the past theorised or discussed the scientific conclusion in question.

7.    If such scientific knowledge was available, then a exhaustive study of the Prophetic and Arab history must be done to establish the impossibility of the Prophet Muhammad (upon whom be peace) or any 7th century Arab could have accessed such information.

8.    If the verse in question has an alternative valid simpler unscientific interpretation/meaning. Then a probability analysis of the verse must be performed. To consider the verse to be miraculously predating science, the probability analysis must show that it is far more likely it could not have come from someone living in the 7th century (in context of the history, culture and language). The probability analysis may take in to consideration that it is remarkable that at least some plausible meanings/interpretations do indeed correspond to scientific facts.

Although this proposed criteria to salvage the science in the Qur’ān narrative is still work in progress, I personally find it almost impossible to practically fulfil the above criteria. Scholars, thinkers and apologists should develop this further.

o    What is this supposed to mean? First the argument is that science is based on probabilities and not 100% accurate, and now the things are being turned on their heads and now we are talking about a so-called fact, why is there a contradiction being presented in the same essay?

o    There is in fact no need to bring a new approach in the Qur’an in relation with ‘modern science’. This is what we call Bid’ah, a new blameworthy innovation. Certain people innovated the scientific miracles narrative, and this caused lots of confusion and damage. Now, removing this innovation and replacing it with a better innovation is not a good idea. Why don’t we go back to the traditional approach of the Salaf as-Saalihin such as Imaam Abu Haneefa and Imam Maalik, rather than keep bringing new approaches (bid’aat). This is the real Bid’ah in Islam. Note that wearing Converse shoes or wearing jeans is not a Bid’ah in Islam, nor is celebrating the birthday of the Prophet (SAW) considered a Bid’ah. Rather it is something as serious as making up rules of Tafseer ‘from thin air’ .

o    Unfortunately, brother Hamza is still pushing his scientific miracle narrative by asserting that Qur’anic verses should have interpretations that correlate with today’s science. Some questions I have are: I wonder as to why it should be unambiguous (Muhkam)? If it is ambiguous then can you take the metaphorical meaning and for unambiguous Verses the apparent meaning? Besides, the apparent meaning is already established for Verses anyway, so is there an attempt to come up with a new Tafseer, or what is the aim in here?

o    Did you also not know that some ambiguous verses might be unambiguous to some people and there is no definite ambiguity for verses? Also, what scientific community are we talking about? Do people think there is an agreement about the Big Bang theory and if there is, where is this mentioned? A an extension of this, can we say that the Universe was not accelerating by scientific community a decade ago or so, but that now it is accelerating?

o    Another issue is that since when have probability analysis been done to explain verses?

o    Seriously, this is very serious travesty of the Tafseer methodology. People should just stick to what they are experts in and don’t meddle with the Qur’an and confuse people. What is being offered in here and what is being done by using scientific narrative is called Bid’ah. People in the past like the Khawaarij had very good intentions to protect the Qur’an, but they were Ahl ul-Bid’ah. So having good intentions and doing the right thing or coming up with the right approach are sometimes two different things.

o    Sometimes it is better to know one’s limits rather than transgressing the boundaries, not only putting yourself in danger but also others along with you. Brother Hamza has experienced this once, why does he insist in this mistake again? Why doesn’t he just share his experiences with people and not repeat his mistakes, as this is affecting many people. I can carry on with the serious problems found in the essay, but alas this is more than enough. I hope the brother takes the right approach and rectify himself rather than rubbing salt to the wound[7].

o    It is also extremely important to know the sciences of kalaam if one is going to make commentaries with respect to Verses which are considered to be related to physical sciences such as physics.

o    In ‘Ilm al-Kalaam, scholars study the atom, molecules and compositions. They have been looking for proofs whether the atom is divisible or not. They try to explain the concepts such as infinite or finite universe. Some of the scholars who we can mention in this vein are as follows:

o    Mu’tazili scholar Abul Huzayl al-‘Allaaf (d. 226/752) used the concept of the atom[8] in proving the existence of Allah before al-Baaqilaani.

o    Note that an atom must be covered with an ‘Araadh (temporary characteristics like shadow, taste, colour). Jawhar is the alignment of more than one atom together. This is the material, composite Jism. A’raadh is something Haadith (created), and in this sense is like an atom. So all of these things, the atoms, ‘Araadh, and Ajsaam are created by Allah. They only exist for a moment.

o    Imam al-Juwayni (419-478, 1028-1085) used al-Baaqilaani’s (338-403,950-1013) works as a primary source and later on taught them to Imam al-Ghazaali. He was a strong argumentator against the Mutazila, and although he knew logic and philosophy perfectly well he did not use Mantiq rules.

o    Next, the Shaafi’i-‘Ash’aari scholar ‘Abdulqadir al-Baghdadi (429/1037) was a mathematician, Mutakallim and Faqeeh.

o    Then we have Ar-Radhi (543-606, 1149-1210) who studied Fiqh, Usool al-Fiqh, Tafseer, philosophy, literature, medicine, and logic before writing the commentary of the Qur’an. He was an ‘Ash’ari-Shaafii’ scholar.

o    Baydhawi (585-685, 1190-1287) studied logic, astronomy, and cosmography.

o    As-Shareef Jurjaani (740-816,1340-1413) authored books on Kalaam, Tasawwuf, astronomy, maths and geometry.

o    Ibn al-Humaam (790-861, 1388-1456) was also another Hanafi-Maaturidi scholar who was an expert mathematician.

o    Molla Fanaari was the first Shaykh al-Islaam of the Ottoman state who authored books on Kalaam, Fiqh, Tafseer, Logic, Usool, Arabic and Balaagha. He was the teacher of Imam ibn Hajar al-Asqalani. His student al-Kafeeji was a teacher of Imaam as-Suyuti.

Conclusion

o    In conclusion, we see that brother Hamza Tzortzis has gone some way in acknowledging the errors that he had committed in the past. However, there has to be a reorientation towards the classical methods of Tafseer. If the Ummah of Islam as a whole wishes to say anything that may have some relationship between science and the Qur’an or the Ahadeeth, this should be left solely to the ‘Ulamaa of Islaam, those who will first of all know the sciences of Tafseer, and then they will be able to see whether there is any tentative connection between the Verses of the Qur’an and the theories of modern science, after consulting with the experts in the field. But this should only be at most a very minimal concern of the Ummah, since the first goal should always be to take guidance from the Qur’an in order for us to reach our goal of salvation in the Hereafter.

o    Finally, we pray that Allah may forgive us for any mistakes we may have made and any shortcomings in this work. And may Allah bless and grant peace to the Prophet Muhammad, his Family and Companions.

Let’s face it – Muslims (and other people) are confused: Can I use my brain – isn’t Quran and hadith a substitute for thinking for oneself?

The fact of the matter is that even if you follow Islam ‘blindly’ it was YOU who independently, using your brain, thinking for yourself, decided to do that…

The brain…there’s no way out of using it, no matter how much you cry ‘Quran and Sunnah’ you are still using it…Or what is your proof for following the Quran IN THE FIRST PLACE!?!

Or will you say ‘I follow the Quran because…the Quran says so?’ What if a Christian makes the same argument about the Bible, will you say it is legitimate?

Islam and the Quran have lauded the intellect and reasoning, and demanded it’s practically unconditional use in matters of religion – and in the introduction to a new series of lectures, Sheikh Atabek Nasafi brilliantly explains how and why.

In short, if you are unwilling to use your brain it may be that even God won’t help you…

Sheikh Atabek Shukrov Nasafi is a noted scholar and specialist in Islamic aqeeda and theological sciences. Undertaking his religious studies at first in secret in Uzbekistan while it was part of the USSR, he has gone on to have an eclectic and comprehensive Islamic education all over the Muslim world.

Already a scholar when he arrived in the Middle East, he studied in Damascus under such luminaries as Mhmd Adnan Darwish, graduating finally from Al Azhar but only after having studied both in Medina and the wider region, for example under Sh. Uthaymeen (and numerous others).

He is currently based in the Northwest of England where he is the founder of the Avicenna Academy.

http://www.avicennaacademy.com/

By our Correspondent not in Burma, Free Lover

This is an article from the Telegraph: Editorially, it is no friend of Muslims, but it has also taken Nobel Peace Prize winner Ang Sun Su Kyi to task for her crapness:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/burmamyanmar/9430518/Aung-San-Suu-Kyi-facing-backlash-for-silence-on-abuses.html

From the BBC, only marginally less British than Paul Williams:

Ms Suu Kyi’s speech also comes a month after deadly clashes in parts of Burma’s western Rakhine state between majority Buddhists and minority Muslims, sparked by the rape and murder of a young Buddhist woman.

Aung San Suu Kyi made no specific mention of the Muslim Rohingya people in her speech, and has to date remained relatively quiet on the issue.

Asked in June whether Rohingya should be regarded as Burmese citizens, she said: “I do not know”, saying Burma should clarify its citizenship laws.

In a report last week, human rights group Amnesty International said Muslims in western Rakhine state had been subjected to attacks and arbitrary arrests in the weeks since the violence – claims the government described as “groundless and biased”.

The Burmese government says they are relatively recent migrants from the Indian sub-continent. Neighbouring Bangladesh already hosts several hundred thousand refugees from Burma and says it cannot take any more. 

(‘Relatively’ recent means several centuries BTW )

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-18979410

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJt8aYsQ_Mk

As far as I know, and I would like to be corrected, she has never once spoken out for the Muslims of Burma, who have long had a hard time, despite their support for her:

”In the past, Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy has carefully steered clear of discussing Burma’s Muslim minority, especially the Rohingya, which is seen a hot-button political issue that risks alienating many of its supporters.”

http://www.b-m-a.org/?p=358

I have also long considered that the support she enjoys in the West is more to do with how she looks/looked and her former marriage to a British academic than any manifest superiority over other campaigners for peace.

Further, her reticence on this issue may be taken as an example of the fundamental problem of politics: ‘The Limitation of Sympathies’ - Charity begins at home. And it tends to stay there.

I also think her popularity is doing a disservice to women in politics in the Third World: ‘Yes you can succeed!’ (*as long as you look exotic and are married to a European).

Nothing wrong with being married to foreigners: But does anyone know of any prominent female politician campaigners in the West, lined up for senior office, married to someone from a ‘hostile’ foreign country?

Don’t think so.

UPDATED 25/10-13:

Finally, Su Kyi is shamed by The Telegraph:  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100242929/how-can-aung-san-suu-kyi-a-nobel-peace-prize-winner-fail-to-condemn-anti-muslim-violence/

The truth indeed…but will Hamza Tzortzis and his mafia at iERA like it? Or will they continue to take it upon themselves to unilaterally and heterodoxly ‘interpret’ the Quran?

It has become increasingly popular for Dawah organisations – in particular those of the Wahhabi/Saudi/Salafi (take your pick) orientation to employ arguments that claim to find ‘scientific miracles’ in the Quran.

No doubt Muslims believe the Quran is a miraculous book, but are these claims made with the correct degree of caution and Academic Islamic rigour?

Or are organisations such as ‘iERA’ playing with fire.

We conducted an extended interview with Islamic scholar and theoretical physicist Hafiz Mahmut ‘Chuck’ Connors who took time out to clear up some misconceptions: having already debunked the improper claims of scientifically non-literate individuals such as ‘The Rationalizer’, he now delves into the shadowy world of ‘Dawah organisations’ and Muslim apologists such as Hamza Tzortzis…

He also has a heartfelt message for Muslim students which I think will take many by surprise.

I wish I had advice from someone like this when I was young!

See Connors’ article here:

http://asharisassemble.com/2013/10/20/muslim-scientists-and-scholars-not-impressed-with-ieras-new-approach-to-quran-science/

       Sorry girls, but it’s rare to find any Muslim guys as ‘Bishonen’ as these

Never one to mince words or pass up a controversial rant, staff writer ‘Free Lover’ here seems to argue that Muslim boy/girl relationships in Universities are dysfunctional and dishonest. He starts by making the observation that many Muslim men of college and university age engage in excessive…Uh…’Bromance’ instead of ‘normal’ courtship with girls. But then he goes in an unexpected direction…Bound to incite comment!

We have all seen the movies: American ‘freshmen’ enter the maelstrom of what we call in England ‘Freshers week’ – beer kegs, house parties, experimental sex, a loss of inhibitions +/- girls ‘grinding’ on one another (in various states of undress. Or should that be ‘twerking’ now?). Hilarity ensues, sexual milestones are crossed, friends are made for life and usually ‘love’ and a gay BFF somehow emerge.

Of course, these cinematic accounts of usually poor quality, often in the ‘American Pie’ mould, are of questionable accuracy and can also be expected to be culturally specific (if you told anyone in the UK that you belonged to the ‘Pi Delta Gamma’ Sorority they would likely have you sectioned). However, anyone who has actually been to university in the UK (or any western country for that matter) knows that the alcohol and sex often do flow like…well, like wine. Like Vegas though, you kind of have to have been there or go there to know. And usually people are not keen to dwell on these things once they enter ‘proper adulthood’ (even our beloved British institution of getting ‘bladdered’ on the weekend is anthropologically quite distinct from ‘Freshers Week’ or ‘Friday Night At The Students Union’).

But while many young British men are getting lots out of university in terms of the permissive social aspects and the chance to get potentially unlimited exposure to the opposite sex, have you ever wondered what young Muslim men are doing at university in the meantime?

After all, let’s be honest, we Muslims disapprove of pre-marital sex, smoking ‘the Herb’ and getting ‘plastered’. But at the same time, this is an integral and even expected part of university life (University=uniformity – and there’s a reason lectures usually don’t start at nine and they don’t take attendance – in short, they are expecting and encouraging you to follow a more permissive and unstructured path than school. And what will you fill all those late nights and free time with children?).

Of course, there are many Muslims who do exactly the same as the wider community and there are many in the wider community who do not engage in the antics one expects of university life. But I am talking here about the ‘practising’ brothers (more on what this means later).

So what are Muslim men up to in lieu of the above? Well they are…

Falling In Bruv

Many people come to university practising or begin to practice at some time in university – almost always through involvement with Islamic Students organisations.

Like many ‘special interest groups’ from Evangelical Christians to Manga Fans or aficionados of French Cinema, Muslims will seek out or be sought out (often very aggressively) by the Islamic Society or ‘the Brothers’. This is the first stage of ‘falling in bruv’: ‘Salaams Bruv, you’re Muslim right? Bro you know we have to stick together. This is one seriously haraam environment. The fitnah is running wild. We need to take care of ourselves. We are an Ummah…[insert more emotional argumentation and fearmongering about the dangers of the 'non-ummah' here].’

Often the brothers, whether living at home or having moved out for the first time in their lives will seek the comfort of familiar cultural and religious people for things like the fear of living alone to getting halal food. Also, like in every community, the senior individuals who have been at the institution for longer will be able to offer everything from advice on accommodation to notes for the course and old exam papers: ‘We need to stick together cos of the kuffar. Have you sorted out your accommodation yet? There are some practising brothers who need a flatmate…’. Before you know it…

I Can’t Help Falling In Bruv

You have skipped most of the freshers fair, maybe not even joined the club or society for your own course – but you know all the brothers in ISOC and where the prayer room is and where to meet for Jummah. You may even have access to the ‘halal freezer’ where everyone stashes their curries and foodstuffs from home. You didn’t really get to (or want to) check out Filmsoc with it’s free weekly screenings, the Debating Society, the Overseas Volunteer Club, the anti-capitalist crew, the comic books guys, the student counselling service (you won’t need that, you’ve got the brothers!), Gymnastics Soc, The Chinese Friendship Society, The Giant Robot enthusiasts, RocketSoc…but hell, who cares, you aren’t at university to mix with those kuffar freaks! You’re here to get an education – and as for everything else, well, your ‘bruvs’ will hook you up: your social needs are taken care of, in a halal way (after all, all of those societies are just excuses to get drunk and laid with ‘chicks’ really aren’t they?).

Yeah, I mean maybe it would be good to make connections for future life and job prospects or just to know more about the wider society or university subculture you are in…heck, maybe a free film once a week is a good idea? But no, stop it – you could be led into ‘fitna’.

In fact, you did not even consider the other Islamic oriented societies like ‘Sufisoc’ or ‘Islamic Art’ cos you know, the ummah is one so the ISOC should be one. Besides, your brothers told you that those guys are doing ‘bidat’.

Anyway, you want to be around like minded Muslim brothers who ‘love one another for the sake of Allah’. And in the back of your mind you think, not that you are after this of course, not a good boy like you, but if there were some ‘good sisters’, well they would be in ISOC. In fact, the brothers always talk about the need to lower ones gaze and marry young. You of course don’t want anything to do with those ‘girls gone wild’ types on campus. But a good sister, who frequents ISOC, well…perhaps the brothers would even ‘hook a brother up’? Not that you are looking or thinking of that of course! You have to perfect your deen, get a job, work on your Imam, respect your families wishes [insert BS reason for not having a girl HERE].

With your social network made up almost entirely of Muslim brothers, some who you look up to and admire (his beard is so lustrous, how does he get it like that?! That brother is so knowledgeable about Islam – and he always steps in if there is any improper mixing going on! I wish I could recite like that guy! Give khutbas like that Salafi brother!) and before you know it you are happy to declare:

‘I Bruv You Man’

You know, ISOC and the brothers keep you real busy! Pretty soon you aren’t even a little bit envious of those guys going around getting ‘bladdered’ and pulling foreign students (from some one-hundred and fifty different countries no less!). When you’re not in the Prayer room, you’re ‘hanging with the brothers’ having a halal good time. You may even do some not strictly ‘permissible’ activities such as going to bowling or the cinema. Often, whatever the leanings of your groups, you are out recruiting new people to ISOC, organising talks, going and doing Tablighi Jamaat, reading ‘authentic books’, and generally loving each others company and laughing about how dumb these stupid kuffar are getting drunk and shagging their way through university. I mean these idiots do not even know the harms of alcohol or pre-marital sex! Fools. You thank Allah each day for saving you from such a fate.

Despite working hard at helping with events, you notice that the one or two ‘senior brothers’ or the ‘emir of ISOC’ are usually the only ones to liaise with the sisters. Rightly so of course. Even when you do (rarely) run into one of the girls going into the prayer room for example, you immediately lower your gaze and neither of you says salaam. It does feel a bit strange though, you know, since both you and the sisters go to mixed lectures and often say hello to the non-Muslim boys and girls and lecturers. In fact, a lot of the sisters are very friendly with them. But with each other, well, it’s just not allowed. ‘Fitna’ might happen. Still…but you tell yourself it’s just the ‘waswassa’ of Shaytaan, like the Deobandi/Salafi brothers told you (they are so knowledgeable! If only you had studied as hard and as well as them, and had their authentic Islamic background! Then you would have the self control to ‘meet with the sisters’. Only to discuss ISOC business of course).

Bruv Makes The World Go Round

Before you know it, the year has nearly ended, exams are here. You have missed a lot of classes because you were ‘doing stuff for the brothers’ – but you don’t mind, because the older brothers have ‘got your back’ with old exam papers and notes. Still, you get a niggling feeling that you are neglecting many of the diverse educational opportunities that university has to offer – after all, you could be going to any lecture in any subject, let alone your own. Also, you have been spending a lot of time for ‘the deen’, calling brothers towards Tabligh or HT or the Salafi Manhaj and aren’t really getting the grades you should. Other people on your course hardly know you. But it is O.K: since you are ‘on the path of Allah’ he will take care of those grades for his obedient servant. I mean yes, you were a bit disappointed when you flopped your mid-terms but it’s all good.

I mean, thank God for the brothers, cos boy were they right! The fitna in this place is insane! We all know of ‘Muslims’ which have ‘white’ girlfriends’. A lot of them even drink. The brothers saved you from all that.

In fact, it seems that the brothers have ‘saved’ you from girls altogether.

I mean it’s a damn good thing that they did: because it is really hard – all those nubile young things! Sometimes it is really hard to lower ones gaze. And then, lying in bed at night, thinking…that’s tough. But we are Muslims. We keep ourselves pure. Allah (and the brothers) will provide. After all, there must be lots of eligible sisters thinking the same as you, lying awake in bed at night…for example, those girls in ISOC…like that pretty convert sister for example…not that you like white girls or anything, everyone is equal of course, you would just as well a nice Arab or Asian sister. You didn’t mean that…

Bros before ‘Hos’

You are steadfast, you listen with an attentive ear when the brother you look up to the most (although all Muslim brothers are great and we all love one another for the sake of God), the Emir of ISOC, waxes lyrical about the dangers of free mixing and chastises the brothers for lingering too long with the sisters outside the prayer room after last nights talk by that amazing speaker who praised you all for being ‘firm on the religion’ in such a haraam environment. He told you that the most important thing that we should look for in a partner is ‘the deen’: he quotes that hadith, you know, the one about a woman is married for four things (oh he’s so amazing, if only your parents had taken care of you Islamic education like his! I mean after all, you came to university with a lot of religious zeal but didn’t know very much. Just then, you hear The devil – it must be him – whisper to you that maybe you don’t really know if what this speaker said is true then…but you shoo him away). He then tells people that the best way for people to lower their gaze is to marry young, like the Islam recommends. Of course, the marriage has to be done in a ‘halal’ way – and we all know that we don’t want to be like these kuffar with their ‘hook ups’. Uuugh…

I mean, it’s not like you are really interested in girls, but all this marrying young thing has got you thinking. And the Emir, well, you heard that he isn’t all talk: apparently he is married to that convert sister, you know the pretty white one. Not that white girls are especially pretty or anything. You didn’t mean that…Of course, it was all done in an above board manner – he must have informed his parents and they must have approached her or more likely her parents (you ignore the voice in your head telling you that this is almost certainly not how it happened). In fact, a lot of the ISOC Committee brothers are married or seem to be. Some have been married more than once. Of course, you are all brothers, they want for you what they want for themselves. I mean one or two of them even got married to sisters who converted in university. It is a bit funny as to how they managed to get access to those sisters, but you know, maybe in the course of arranging the last ISOC dinner…NO! That would never happen! It reeks of ‘free mixing’!

But it bothers you still: it’s now near the end of your time in university…mother hasn’t bought any viable candidates, or in fact anyone apart from your cousins. And when you get out of university, well, then won’t it be even harder to meet a sister (not that you meet them now)? Of course, all of us as an ummah of brothers will want the best for each other: you ask around – the logical thing to do is to approach the Emir or the Imam, who are both married and they will ‘hook you up’, just like they did with all those old exam papers, all those dinners at their house, all those Islamic books by Sheikh Uthaymeen. Plus being married they must know other sisters who want to get married. They’ll only be too keen to help you fulfil the Sunnah! Why did you not think of this before! You’ll see the brothers the very next day.

Bruv Hurts

But sadly, they tell you that you are not practising enough, your beard is not long enough, the sisters want a brother who [insert bulls**t excuse here]. You go to the Imam: ‘brother, if you were a student of knowledge then maybe the sisters would be interested…’

Yes, of course, you realise, it is your fault, you are not good enough to get married. You should have worked on your Deen more, you don’t have a job, you are from a different background and sadly…

Who cares anyway? You are heading for a third if you are not careful and you have to pull your grades up. And no doubt the brothers are right…but, it bothers you: how come the ISOC committee guys are ‘good enough’? And did they really approach those convert girls families first? And if background and compatibility were so important in your case, how come they did not hook up that pretty Chinese sister with, you know, like a Chinese brother? How did she end up with the ISOC treasurer who can hardly speak English let alone Mandarin? And it’s not like he’s got looks to spare either, and… (You try and shut out the Waswasah again…but this time it sounds more like common sense than The Prince Of Darkness…).

Pretty soon it’s time to leave university. You’ve kept yourself clean, you’ve made friends – no – brothers, for life. You try to feel good about it but something bothers you: all those stupid kuffar, drinking and shagging. Thank God you didn’t end up like them…but all those opportunities you missed, all those clubs you could have joined, all the different friends you could have made, and yes, all those chances at finding love that never materialised…or at least not for you…

Appendix (only for stupid people who don’t get it):

There is a very wise saying: ‘Decadence is preferable to perversion’.

What this means is that it is better to go too far in a ‘normal’ direction than any distance along a perverted path. In reality, the behaviour of the non-Muslims at university is an exaggeration of a normal need – the need for companionship and sex. Of course, university encourages this in a boundless and hedonistic way, and the repercussions are well recognised by young people themselves – the high rate of drop outs, sexual and substance abuse, unwanted pregnancies etc.

However, many young Muslim men, rightly fearing (or being told to fear) the excesses of university life, make a cocoon around themselves of their same-sex co-religionists: it protects them from the bad aspects of campus life but also insulates them from many of it’s unique opportunities – primary of which are to seek knowledge, critical thinking, nurturing an artistic sentiment and above all to find a girl.

Yes, that’s right: SHOCK ANNOUNCEMENT FOR MUSLIMS: MEN LIKE WOMEN – SEXUALLY. LIKE, FOR SEX. In fact women are mens favourite thing in the whole wide world. Even gay men like women. If they aren’t your favourite thing and your a straight male, there is something badly wrong with you.

Islam is not stopping you in the least – it tells you to go for it with a remarkable amount of leeway and a few small conditions/restrictions. But by behaving in the way that many Muslim men do – with naivete (a quality only appreciated in children), they sabotage the best chance they will ever get of finding an attractive and compatible female partner- namely, university.

SHOCK ANNOUNCEMENT NUMBER TWO: MEN LIKE PRETTY, OR EVEN BETTER, BEAUTIFUL, GIRLS. YES, THAT’S RIGHT – FOR SEX! Men means all men – Muslim and not. The Muslim men are not some amazing penis control powers having superheroes who are not interested in marrying (or at least bedding) buxom females. They are all trying to ‘get them’. Specifically, before you.

Yes, that includes, in fact especially includes, the ‘ISOC brothers’. Unlike non-Muslims, they however are trying to show off how pious they are and hiding their real intentions – the guys usually warning you off ‘mixing with the sisters’ are the guys who have a ‘legitimate’ reason to interact with them and ‘pull’ them. They don’t play the same game as you will have to due to their easy access to ‘the Sisters’ but make up the rules for you anyway.

It is a competitive market out there for eligible females (and males) and if you don’t take care of your own interests and try and get one for yourself no-one is going to help you. There is no point looking at those from well-connected families who have arranged marriages (unless you are similarly well connected). You have to put your bid in or someone else will. The secret is everyone already knows this but didn’t tell you. ‘Cos guess what: you are the competition.

Islam is used as an excuse to show some people the ‘access denied’ sign – but it’s all a scam. Islam allows you to mix with any member of the opposite sex for the purpose of marriage, sans mahrem, as long as you are not in a closed room together. It does not stop you getting to know the person. Call it a halal date if you will. It doesn’t require you to go through a third party before making an approach – in fact during the time of the earliest times of Islam, women used to approach directly without an intermediary for marriage (in front of Sahabah no less). The material on ‘Segregation’ on this site may be consulted to get an idea of where the actual boundaries lie and where people would have you believe they lie (clue: liberals, modernists and puritans are all wrong).

Self righteous and ill-intentioned people will always use religion to underwrite their strategies for self-aggrandisement: There is a rude but highly accurate name for it: c***blocking – and if you are stupid enough to fall for it in something as important as the competition to find an eligible mate, then you probably deserve what you get (or rather don’t get).

Image: The opening from ‘Exegeses on the Book of Mencius’, government imprint of 1201-1204 C.E

While reading Sachiko Murata’s brilliant ‘Chinese Gleams of Sufi Light’, I was surprised to discover that Chinese Islamic authorities such as Wang Tai Yu or Liu Chih had been able to express the whole of their Islamic teaching and Dawah in purely Confucian terms, without any qualms or conflict. Surely not I thought!

However, after coming across more Confucian teachings, as presented by Yamin Cheng in his wonderful book ‘Islam and the Wisdom of Eastern Religions’, it became abundantly clear to me why they had indeed found it so easy to express Islam with purely Confucian concepts (and even language). 

‘A great man is one who feels that he belongs to a unity which includes the universe and the different kinds of beings…when a man sees a child about to fall into a well, he has the instinct of commiseration (same feeling as the child in that situation). This is the sense of human-heartedness and it is this which makes him and the child one. Still, someone may say that man and child constitute a unity only because they belong to the same species.

However, when a man sees trembling and frightened birds and animals and hears their cries, he has a sense of pity for them. It is this which makes him one with them. Or someone may say that this unity exists only because birds and animals in common with men have feeling and sense. Nevertheless, even when a man beholds falling trees, he knows pity – and it is this which makes him one with the plants.

Someone may say again that this unity is derived from the fact that plants, like men, are living organisms.

In answer to this, we may point out that even when a man sees stones and bricks being broken up, he feels pity. This constitutes his oneness with physical objects. This sense of oneness with the universe is a gift of nature and is conferred by Heaven. It is in itself bright and intelligent.’

- Wang Yang Ming, one of the four major Confucian Scholars (16th Century –  the others are Confucius himself, Mencius and Chu Hsi)

The same point is articulated beautifully by Mencius (4th Century BC)

‘All human beings (ren chieh) have a heart (hsin) that is unbearable (pu ren) of (the sufferings) of other human beings. The Former Kings (hsien wang) have a heart that is unbearable of (the sufferings) of other human beings, therefore it is capable of having a government (cheng) that has a heart that is unbearable of (the sufferings) of others.

By taking the heart that is unbearable of (the sufferings) of others, and making it the implementation of a government that is unbearable of (the sufferings) of others, administering (chih) the people (tian hsia) is as easy as putting it on the palm.

Therefore, as for saying that everyone has a heart that is unbearable (of the sufferings of others), it is this. Supposing a person were, all of a sudden, to see a young child on the verge of falling into a well, he would certainly be moved to empathy, not because he wanted to get in the good graces of the parents, nor because he wanted to win the praise of his fellow villagers or friends, nor yet because he disliked the cry of the child.

From this, it can be seen that whoever is devoid of the heart of empathy is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of shame and dislike is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of modesty and compliance is not human, and whoever is devoid of the heart of right and wrong is not human.

The heart of empathy is the beginning (tuan) of human-heartedness. The heart of shame and dislike is the beginning of rightness. The heart of modesty and compliance is the beginning of properly-ness. The heart of right and wrong is the beginning of wisdom.

All persons have these four beginnings just as he has four limbs. For a person possessing these four beginnings to deny his own potentialities is for him to cripple himself.

If a person is able to develop all these four beginnings that he possesses, it will be like a fire starting up or a spring coming through. When these are fully developed, he can take under his protection the whole realm within the Four Seas, but if he fails to develop them, he will not be able even to serve his parents.’

This is underscored by his conversation with King Hsan of the state of Ch’i: The king asked Mencius about the possibility of a ruler to become an ‘true king’ (meaning an ideal ruler). Mencius replied in the affirmative. He gave an example of when King Hsan could not bear to see the blood of an ox in a sacrifice and suggested a lamb instead. Concerning the kings action, Mencius said, ‘The heart behind your action is sufficient to enable you to become a true king…your failure to become a true king is due to your refusal to act, not to your inability to act.’

These teachings are further explained brilliantly and lucidly in Yamin Cheng’s short book ‘Islam and the Wisdom of Asian Religions’ available here: http://ibtbooks.com/product.php?cat=CR&pid=9789839541809

I came across the following excellent article by blogger ‘ibbelund’ on Paul Williams site and just had to steal it! Also, as a note to budding Muslim ‘intellectuals’, notice the authors extensive use of footnotes and references, more than thirty in a short article. You rarely see this level of rigour from Muslims but it is the norm in Western academia.

Are children equipped with a ‘Universal Grammar’?

In the book Linguistics[1]: An Introduction to Linguistic theory, which is a textbook of linguistic theory intended for undergraduate students and early graduate students in linguistics, there are some fascinating discussions concerning human language and children’s language acquisition[2]. The following are quotes from the mentioned book:

“Young children, limited in so many respects, accomplish with apparent ease a remarkable cognitive[3] feat. In just a few short years, without benefit of any direct instruction or correction, they develop a very complex and uniform[4] cognitive system of linguistic knowledge, a grammar of the language being acquired. Just how children do this is a central question that linguistic theory tries to answer. What makes the acquisition problem particularly intriguing is that we come to know vastly more about our language than we are provided evidence for in our linguistic environment.” [5]
“How did we come to know so much about the structure and meaning of sentences in our language when what we hear are simply sequences of sounds? This problem of explaining the ease, rapidity and uniformity of language development in the face of impoverished[6] data is called the logical problem of language acquisition[7], and was first posed by Noam Chomsky (1955)” [8]

“In the course of acquiring a language, children are exposed to only a finite set of utterances. Yet they come to use and understand an infinite set of sentences, as discussed above. This has been referred to as the creative aspect of language use. This ‘creativity’ does not refer to the ability to write poetry or novels but rather the ability to produce and understand an unlimited set of new sentences never spoken or heard previously. The precise linguistic input[9] children receive differs from child to child; no two children are exposed to exactly the same set of utterances. Yet, they all arrive at pretty much the same grammar. The input that children get is haphazard[10] in the sense that caretakers do not talk to their children to illustrate a particular point of grammar. Yet, all children develop systematic knowledge of language. Thus despite the severe limitations and variation in the input children receive, and also in their personal circumstances, they all develop a rich and uniform system of linguistic knowledge. The knowledge attained goes beyond the input in various ways. How do we come to know as much as we do about language if not from the linguistic environment?

In answer to the question of the logical problem of language acquisition, it has been proposed that much of what we know about our language is not in fact learned from the input, but is rather part of an innate[11] endowment[12], which we referred to above as ‘Universal Grammar’ (UG). UG specifies the form and functioning of human language in general, hence principles which hold in all languages. On this view, the child’s mind does not approach language as a tabula rasa (a blank slate) to be written on by experience alone, or armed only with general problem-solving skills such as imitation, memorization, analogy[13], or general introduction. Rather, children are equipped with a set of specific expectations about linguistic structure and the principles which govern language. UG helps them overcome the limitations of the input and guides their grammatical development in particular ways, so children develop language rapidly and efficiently, that it is, with relatively few errors, and despite the poverty of stimulus[14] (for example, the lack of negative evidence[15]), because the basic form of language is given to them by human biology.” [16]

The uniqueness of human language

According to linguist Tore Jansson:
“Human languages are the most highly developed and most flexible systems for communication that we know of. The distinctive feature of those systems is that they can be used to convey messages of any degree of complexity in an incredibly swift and efficient manner. Their degree of complexity, their variability, and their adaptability are instances of how different they are from the means of communication that are used by other mammals”[17]

According to linguist Anders Holmberg:
“One of the properties we have as humans which makes us different from other species is a capacity for acquiring and using a form of language which is far more complex than the language, or system of communication, of any other species. This capacity has been crucial for the evolution of human technology and human society, providing us with a huge advantage over other species. The advantage derives not just from the fact that human language is a superior instrument of communication between people, but it is also a superior instrument for the acquisition of knowledge, and for storing knowledge, and importantly, it is an instrument for rational thought”[18]

Linguist Geoffrey Sampson wrote the following in the book Writing Systems from 1985:
“Although much of the impetus[19] for the original growth of linguistic science in the early nineteenth century stemmed from the hope that examination of the history of languages would reveal the laws by which sophisticated modern communication-systems had evolved out of more primitive antecedents[20], nowadays it seems more plausible to think that even the oldest languages for which data are available represent essentially the same high level of development as our contemporary languages…” [21]

Teaching mankind al-bayān

In the Quran it says:
“The Merciful (Allah, God); (it is) He who taught the Quran; he created man; he taught him al-bayān” (The Quran, chapter 55, verses 1-4)

Man (al-insan’ ar. الانسان) can refer to mankind in general as a genus, i.e. mankind, or one particular human. The verse refers to humans in general according to many scholars (not all). According to Ibn al-‘Atiyya Al-Andalusi (d. 541 A.H/ 1146 C.E), Al-Zahrawi and other scholars that which is intended in this verse is mankind in general. [22]

According to the famous exegete Al-Baghawi (d. 516 A.H/ 1122 C.E) the view that what is intended in the verse is mankind in general is the opinion of Abu al-‘Aliyya (d. between 90-93 A.H/ 708- 711 C.E.), Ibn Zayd (182 A.H/798 C.E) and Al-Hasan (al-Basri) (d. 110 A.H./728 C.E) [23]

What is the meaning of this word al-bayān (Arabic. البيان)? Al-bayan is in the definite article (English: ‘the’, Arabic: Al). The word ’bayān’ is polysemic, carrying different, yet related meanings, such as for example: ‘clearness’, ‘plainness’, ‘obviousness’, ‘manifestation[24]’, ‘elucidation[25]’, ‘explanation’, ‘demonstration’, ‘eloquence’ etc.[26]

According to the medieval scholar of Arabic language Ibn al-Manzur al-Ifriqī who is the author of one of the most famous lexicons of the Arabic language Lisan al-‘Arab:

“Al-Bayān is that through which something is illustrated (exposed) in terms of its meaning and in other senses”[27]

According to the exegete Ibn ‘Atiyya Al-Andalusi (d. 541 A.H/ 1146 C.E) Al-Bayān in the context of the verse means:

“Speech and understanding and demonstrating (exposing) this through utterances[28], so said Ibn Zayd (182 A.H/798 C.E)[29] and the majority (of scholars of Quranic exegesis), and that is what mankind has been specially favoured with amongst all other animals”[30]

The famous exegete Al-Baydawi (d. 684 or 691. A.H/ 1286 or 1291 C.E) explained the meaning of ‘al-bayan’ in the verse in a manner very similar to the explanation of Ibn ‘Atiyya [31]

Another famous Quranic exegete Ibn Kathir (d. 774 A.H/ 1372 C.E) favoured the opinion that what is intended by ‘al-bayan’ in the context of the verse is ‘speech’. What is apparent from the explanation of Ibn Kathir is that he understood the teaching of ‘al-bayan’ in this context as making speech and the pronunciation of different sounds easy[32]

Early humans possessing language as we know it; an impossibility?

“In earlier periods this was not necessarily so. Before the appearance Homo sapiens sapiens, and for some time after that there were Neanderthal men. Their brains were at least as large as ours, on average, but the form of their skulls and jaws differed from ours in some respects. This may have prevented them from pronouncing certain speech sounds that are in common use today. However this is by no means certain, since the remains of Neanderthal people consist only of fragments of bones, and speech is produced through activities in the soft tissue of the mouth and throat. Scholars who work with this problem therefore have to estimate the shape of the tissue on the basis of the shape of the bones, which is quite difficult. The types of human beings who existed several hundred thousand years ago had skulls and jaws that were even more different from ours, which makes it less probable that they could speak like us.

In summary, we can be reasonably certain that languages such as the ones we used have existed for at least 40,000 years, but they may have been in use for much longer. The upper limit is about two million years, around the time when man first began to produce stone tools”[33]

In other words, from an anthropological (and palaeontological) view it is not very probable, however not impossible. One might however object to such pessimism concerning the possibility of early humans possessing language as we know it, based on analysis of the shape of jaws and skulls, with the fact that there is not even a consensus among mainstream anthropologists on whether Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus constitute separate species or not. I do not intend by that to try to demean the research and conclusions of anthropologists, who am I to do so. It is merely an attempt to argue that such arguments are not necessarily very conclusive.

In 1994 a team of four anthropologists from USA, Australia, Czech republic and China published a paper entitled ‘The Case for Sinking Homo Erectus. 100 Years of Pithecanthropus is Enough!’.

In the abstract of this paper the authors express the following:

” We propose here to merge Homo erectus within the evolutionary species Homo sapiens. The origin of Homo erectus lies in a cladogenic event at least 2.0 myr ago. We view the subsequent lineage as culturally and physically adapted to an increasingly broad range of ecologies, ultimately leading to its spread across the old world prior to the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene Homo erectus differs from Homo habilis in a number of ways. The vast majority of these distinctions also characterize Homo sapiens. The few distinctions of Homo sapiens that are not shared with Homo erectus appear to be responses to, or reflections of, continuing evolutionary trends of increasing cultural complexity, increasing brain size, and the progressive substitution of technology for biology” [34]

The renowned American anthropologist Milfred H. Wolpoff who was part of the team behind the paper has continued to defend and argue for the view that Homo erectus and Homo sapiens constitute a single species.

Some reflections:

Truly our language is a great gift; an ability to express our inner feelings and complicated ideas with words, and communicate with others in an effective manner.

I give praise to the Creator and Originator of the Universe for this precious gift. I would not trade it for all the money in the world. I believe that there are questions which we must ask ourselves; ‘do we have these abilities for a reason and a purpose?´. Is it really reasonable to think that it is simply a matter of chance? If we have been bestowed with our language and superior intelligence for a purpose, what is that purpose? Is it to eat, drink, sleep, procreate, form bonds with others, and enjoy different types of pleasures only, just like other animals, or is there a greater purpose? According to Islam the existence of mankind fulfils a greater purpose than those things mentioned, however, this is a topic that deserves to be treated separately, in another article.
________________________________________
[1] Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. See: Fromkin, Vicoria A et al. Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory, 2000, Blackwell Publishing, introduction.
[2] “acquisition”: noun: “the act of getting something, especially knowledge, a skill etc.” To acquire: “To gain something by your own efforts” Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, eight edition 2010, Oxford University Press, p 13
[3] “Cognitive”: Adjective: “connected with mental processes of understanding” see previous reference, p. 285
[4] “Uniform”: adjective: “not varying; the same in all parts and at all times”Ibid, p. 1687
[5] Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. See: Fromkin, Vicoria A, et al. Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory, pp. 13-14.
[6] “Impoverished”: adjective: “poor in quality, because sth is missing” Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, p. 782
[7] The words and sentences marked in bold have been marked so by the author of the book, not by me.
[8], Fromkin, Vicoria A, et al. Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory, p. 14
[9] “Input”: noun: “time, knowledge, ideas, etc. that you put into work”Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, p. 803
[10] “haphazard”: adjective: “ with no particular order or plan; not organized well” see previous reference, p. 705
[11] “innate”: “adjective, (of a quality, feeling etc.) that you have when you are born” see previous reference, p. 803.
[12] “endowment”: noun: “ a quality or ability that you are born with”. See previous reference, p 502.
[13] “analogy”: noun: “a comparison of one thing with another thing that has similar features”, see previous reference, p. 48.
[14] “Stimulus”: noun: “something that helps sb/sth to develop better or more quickly” Ibid, p. 1519.
[15] “Negative evidence”: “direct information that certain sentences are ungrammatical” Fromkin, Vicoria A, et al. Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory, p. 16.
[16] See previous reference, pp. 15-16.
[17] Jansson, Tore. The History of Languages: An Introduction. 2012. Oxford University Press. p.6.
[18] http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/hermann.moisl/sel1007/lecture9.pdf
[19] “Impetus”: noun: “something that encourages a process or activity to develop more quickly” Oxford advanced learners’ dictionary, p. 780.
[20] “antecedents”: noun: “ a thing or an event that exists or comes before another, and may have influenced it” See previous reference, p. 55.
[21] Sampson, Geoffrey, Writing systems, 1985, Stanford University Press, p.17.
[22]: Ibn ‘Atiyya, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Haqq, Al-Muharrar al-wajiz fi tafsir al-kitab al-‘Aziz, unknown year, Dar Ibn Hazm, p. 1798. According to Al-Baghawi the view that what is intended in the verse is mankind in general is the opinion of Abu al-‘Aliyya (d. between 90-93 A.H/ 708- 711 C.E.), Ibn Zayd (182 A.H/798 C.E) and Al-Hasan (al-Basri) (d. 110 A.H./728 C.E), see:
[23] Al-Baghawi, Al-Hussayn bin Mas’ud,Ma’alim al-tanzil, 2002, Dar Ibn Hazm, p.1258.
[24] “Manifestation”: noun: “an event, action or thing that is a sign that sth exists or is happening”. ‘To manifest: :verb: “to show sth clearly, especially a feeling, an attitude or a quality” Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, p.936.
[25] “Elucidation”: noun: ‘To elucidate’: verb: “to make sth clearer by explaining it more fully” See previous reference, p. 493..
[26] Wehr, Hans, A dictionary of modern written Arabic: (Arabic- English), fourth edition, 1994, spoken language services, p 106..
[27] Ibn Manzur, Muhammad bin Mukarram, Lisan al.’Arab, 2009, Dar al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya,, vol. 13, p.79. My apologiez if this translation is not so clear. The sentence is quite clear in Arabic, but not so easy to translate in a manner which is faithful to the text, yet clear in translation.
[28] . Or ‘words’, the phrase used by the author is ‘al-qawl’ (Arabic.القول ) . It can mean ‘utterances’ or ‘words’ in the context of its use.
[29] When the name ‘Ibn Zayd’ is mentioned without further specification in books of Quranic explanation the one who is referred to is a scholar by the name ‘Abd al-Rahman bin Zayd bin Aslam al-‘Adawi who died in the year 182 A.H/798 C.E.http://www.tafsir.net/vb/tafsir9249/
[30] Ibn ‘Atiyya, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Haqq, Al-Muharrar al-wajiz fi tafsir al-kitab al-‘aziz, , p. 1798. The author is referring to the term animals in its more general meaning as ‘living creatures’.
[31] Al-Baydawi, ‘Abd Allah bin ‘Umar. Anwar al-tanzil wa asrar al-ta’wil. First edition, no year.. Dar Ihya al-turath al-’arabi. Vol 5., p. 170.
[32] Ibn Kathir, Isma’il bin ‘Umar. Tafsir al-Qur’an al-’Azim, 2002, Dar Ibn Hazm, Vol. 4, p 2767. The opinions concerning the meaning of al-bayan which have been mentioned are not the only opinions which exist. For a summary of the different opinions which exist concerning the meaning of bayan in the verse, I advise the reader who understands Arabic well to consult the work Jami’ al-bayan ‘an ta’wil al-Qur’an by Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari.
[33] Janson, Tore. The History of Languages: An Introduction. pp. 5-6
[34] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wolpoff/Papers/Sinking.pdf

References:¨

Al-Baghawi, Al-Hussayn bin Mas’ud, Ma’alim al-tanzil, 2002, Dar Ibn Hazm.
Al-Baydawi, ‘Abd Allah bin ‘Umar. Anwar al-tanzil wa asrar al-ta’wil. First edition, unknown year.. Dar Ihya al-turath al-’arabi.
Fromkin, Vicoria A. et al. Linguistics: an introduction to linguistic theory, 2000, Blackwell Publishing
Ibn ‘Atiyya, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Haqq, Al-Muharrar al-wajiz fi tafsir al-kitab al-‘Aziz, unknown year, Dar Ibn Hazm
Ibn Kathir, Isma’il bin ‘Umar. Tafsir al-Qur’an al-’Azim, 2002, Dar Ibn Hazm
Ibn Manzur, Muhammad bin Mukarram, Lisan al-’Arab, 2009, Dar al-kutub al-‘ilmiyya
Janson, Tore. The History of Languages: An Introduction. 2012. Oxford University Press.
Sampson, Geoffrey, Writing systems, 1985, Stanford University Press
Turnbull, Joanna (editor), Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, eight edition 2010, Oxford University Press
Wehr, Hans, A dictionary of modern written Arabic: (Arabic- English), fourth edition, 1994, spoken language services

http://www.tafsir.net/vb/tafsir9249/

http://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/hermann.moisl/sel1007/lecture9.pdf

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wolpoff/Papers/Sinking.pdf

There was once a student who spent much of his time searching for a genuine Sifu (a learned master) so that he could penetrate into the deeper meaning of life.

His search was not in vain. He found one.

‘O Sifu, my efforts are not in vain after all. Teach me, teach me the essence of human life,’ the student pleaded with the Sifu.

‘My son, you came so far, and wandered so wide, surely your heart must be sincere in search of knowledge,’ the Sifu said:

‘Yes, yes, Sifu. Now teach me something about life,’ the student begged.

‘Listen carefully, my son. Listen to what I have to say,’ the Sifu said.

‘I’m listening, I’m listening,’ the student replied eagerly.

‘He who knows and knows that he knows is a teacher, seek him.

He who knows and knows that he knows not, he is a student, teach him.

He who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep, wake him.

He who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is a novice, lead him.

He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a child, guide him.’

‘Wow, Sifu. This is really deep. Know, don’t know, know not, not know. But so sorry Sifu, I can’t really understand what you are saying.’

The Sifu then said, ‘My son, you don’t have to know these now. You just have to memorise for now.’

The student was elated, and said, ‘After that I will be able to understand? After that my mind will be clear as the sky? After that my life will be more meaningful than it is now?’

The Sifu patted the student’s back, and said, ‘After that my son, you will be as confused I am.’

From ‘Islam and the Wisdoms of Asian Religions’ By Yamin Cheng

Available here:http://ibtbooks.com/product.php?cat=CR&pid=9789839541809

It has become fashionable of late for certain species of Evangelical (and other) Christian polemnists to prominently advertise incidents of oppression and intolerance against Christian minorities by Muslims in unstable countries such as Syria and Egypt. No doubt these do take place and may well be on the increase, but they are by no means specific to Christians nor under the auspices of specifically ‘Muslim’ ethics or government.

In most cases, they have very obvious proximal sociological or economic causes which are easily identified. They are also usually in the context of wider increases in violence within those societies. For example, there is a rebellion taking place in Syria. Lots of people being targeted and dying. Among them are Christians. But the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of those dying are not Christian. Pakistan is a terribly poor country faced with an armed and brutally violent insurgency that is killing many people, sometimes at random and sometimes due to their religion (wrong type of Muslim, non-Muslim etc). Among those dying are Christians. But most of those dying are not. In fact, Christians, even accounting for their minority status, are a minority also of those who have died. Or again, there are many people dying in Nigeria, another chronically impoverished country with weak institutions and a violent terrorist group on the prowl. They are killing Christians. And everyone else they can get their hands on.

Sadly, in these and many other places, such as Burma or even rising powers like India, life is relatively cheap and death easy to come by, both for Christians and others. But to people of a certain persuasion, it seems that life may be cheap for everyone else, but a Christian life must never be allowed to be cheap. So there are a contingent of people making claims that the Christian dead have been targeted for their religion only and emphasising their tragic suffering at the expense of coverage of the fact of wider violence and lawlessness in these societies, most of which simply does not effect Christians but rather members of the alleged persecuting group, i.e the perennially hard – to – sympathise – with (for us in the West) Muslims.

The brutality and violence visited on Christians by Muslims and so-called Muslims is a disgrace and should be rebuked in the harshest terms, but it is used by Evangelicals as a public relations exercise and as a chance to expose the ‘true nature’ of Islam and the alleged heroism of Christians having to put up with living under the heel of these barbarous Muslims. The Crusader imagery is often explicit.

I am afraid this is sheer nonsense and counter productive. In fact, it is probably providing positive feedback and increasing the persecution of Christians. It also is offensive because it prioritises their suffering at the expense of the fact that the majority of violence visited on people in conflict zones in the world today is not on Christians but Muslims. In fact, if we want to be honest, the majority of violence in the 20th century until now has been towards non-Christians (as well as Christian on Christian).

There is also a complete air of unreality about what will happen to native Christian minorities in places such as the Middle East in the wake of interventions by foreign, largely Christian armies like those of say the US or UK. Yet it is obvious that even in countries with First World status and strong laws and institutions, attacks on minorities increase when they are perceived to be ‘in bed with the enemy’ or even just the same skin colour or appearance as them. It is a sad fact, but a true one which everyone knows but Christian advocates pretend not to when trumpeting the cause of persecuted Christians in Muslim territories.

Nor does the often deliberate portrayal of Christian groups in non-European lands as vanguards of European values, civilization and somehow more similar to ‘us’ (a sad holdover from colonialism) help those Christian minorities shake the false accusations by extremists that they are indeed the ‘enemy within’.

It also shows that some Christians who claim to speak for their faith, like many Muslims who do the same, just don’t know how to act and are still playing the game of inciting reprisals by playing the victim.

For example, the majority/many of the American, Polish, German, South Korean and British troops which invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq claimed to be ‘Christians’. But we do not blame Christians as a group or as a religion or the Bible as a book for what happened. We know that although the violence or offence was committed largely by Christians, it was not under the orders of ‘Christianity’. And this despite the fact that if we asked these soldiers, many of them would no doubt reply that they thought they were doing their moral duty and considered it to be religiously licit. Just as their ostensible leader Tony Blair did.  But we know they are mistaken, deluded or even lying.

Why can’t the same understanding, namely that not everything bad that a Christian does is due to his being a Christian, Jesus Christ or the Bible, also apply for Muslims?

When recalling the 4 million dead civilians in Vietnam and SE Asia during that conflict, we don’t say that they were killed by Christians nor do we say that Christians ordered the fire-bombing of Tokyo or Dresden at the end of World War II, incinerating most of the civilian population or that Christians dropped two nuclear bombs on the innocent populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (deliberately on a school day no less). And what person would argue that the Nazis were ‘Christians’ just because they were from Germany (and helped by the Church)? We are never reminded of Hitler’s professed Christianity. We know that these were just bad people, and there is a surfeit of those in every community.

Muslims should and largely do know how to differentiate between Christianity as a religion and the actions of many Christians themselves. We know about, say,  the Crusades or the atrocities by Christian militias in Lebanon or the behaviour of Serb fascists in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. But we have never attributed them to the teachings of Christ (PBUH) or demonised him and the Bible as many Christians and secularists do with Muhammad (PBUH) and the Quran after the (relatively) small affronts by Muslims. There is, I dare say, a problem with the Christian response to persecution.

Can we picture what would happen if a Muslim militia did what the professedly Orthodox Christian Serbs did in Bosnia and went on a generalised massacre and rape riot of hundreds of thousands of Christians in the heart of Europe (often with the blessings of the clergy)? There is a campaign to outlaw ‘denial’ of an alleged Armenian genocide. Less so the more recent and less contested Bosnian genocide. French intellectuals are often silent on the latter but never tire of reminding Turkey that they will never enter Europe until they acknowledge the former (mind you, we cannot expect much from academics who failed to notice that there is a shrine to a guy who killed up to seventy million people smack bang in the middle of Tienanmen Square. But I guess he didn’t kill white people or Europeans, so never mind…).

9-11 and 7-7 were heinous acts of violence carried out by Muslims, who from the very start were of dubious piety and orthodoxy – for example, we all saw the CCTV footage of the 9/11 bombers enjoying an American strip joint hours before they were allegedly due to cash in their bevy of virgins in the hereafter. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but few questioned the Islamic piety of the individuals and even Al Jazeera said it was part of their ‘cover’, with no evidence for this assertion, as opposed to the fact that they were probably…crap Muslims. These atrocities by Muslims or Muslim claimants led to the eager misrepresentation of an entire religion and even a racial group. When Anders Brevik killed many more people than in the 7/7 London attacks for allegedly ‘Crusader’ causes there was quick attempt by many segments of the media for him to be classed as ‘clinically insane’, an honour not bestowed by the media upon the 7/7 attackers or even the clearly unhinged killers of Lee Rigby – Muslims are apparently eminently lucid when the commit atrocities but other groups usually just wake up with blood on their hands screaming ‘Oh my God what happened?!’. And of course we did not start suspecting Nordic Christians at airports after Brevik (granted though, it was a ‘one off’ incident, not like the repeated antics of Salafist groups, most of whom do indeed have brown skin and beards, sadly lending to legitimate racial profiling).

The story many in the West and some Christian groups wish to portray is that when a Muslim does something bad it must be because of his religion. But when a non – Muslim does something bad it is because of politics, the fog of war or poverty or misinformation or insanity or whatever. Even when Christians openly say their violence is because of their religion, like the Serb fascists in Bosnia and Kosovo and Croatia or Anders Brevik in Norway or even some Nazis, we (rightly) don’t believe them.

The situation has not been helped lately by the Catholic church, claiming that there were ’100,000′ new Christian martyrs a year, an irresponsible and shameless hoax – worthy of the Catholic Church of the Crusades and the inquisition as opposed to the modern institution it would have us believe – exposed by the BBC here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24864587. The facts have not stopped a profusion of books on the subject, such as the recent ‘Christianophobia’ (which at the outset refuses to acknowledge, in apparent denial of the Inquisition and the Crusades, any specific historical persecution of Muslims by Christians before going on claim that Christians are the most persecuted minorities in the world, an absurd claim). Even the usually sane voice of HRH Prince Charles has been raised in defence of Christians, although much more justifiably than the ramblings of the Catholic church http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25426155

Indeed, he has a point; many Christians in the Middle East are being specifically targeted by Salafist groups and this is a disgrace. But none of this changes the fact that this targeting is in the wider context of violence in these areas, most of which effects Muslims: yes, Copts have died in Egypt, but nowhere near as many as Muslims. Copts have been specifically targeted, but so have Muslim Brotherhood members as well as members of the Army by rebels. Why the ho-hah about the Copts? Because they are a minority? Or is it really because they are Christian and the West feels an affinity for them, or Evangelical groups in the States have a lot of pull with the media (such as Fox News)? The same applies in Syria, where we hear proportionately a lot about the attacks on Christians, where as it should be borne in mind that the overwhelming majority of victims are Muslim, and many of them are targeted by Wahhabis for being the ‘wrong sect’ also. So even the sectarian targeting of Christians is not ‘special’, though abhorrent.

There is also a seeming sense of unreality and disbelief when Christians are targeted: how could this happen and why them of all people. I venture that this is due to over identification with and greater sympathy for, in the West, for Christian victims (or indeed Buddhist ones – look at the support for the Dalai Lama as opposed to the Uyghurs in China) rather than Muslim ones, perhaps due to what Candida Moss called the ‘Myth of Christian Persecution’ in her illuminating book. Instead of insisting that Islam was spread by the sword and trying to spin contemporary conflicts in that light, Evangelicals need to come to terms with the fact that the idea that Christians were being thrown to the lions by Pagans is hugely inflated – most of the time it was the other way around. Europe, Russia, South America (and others such as the Philippines) were Christianised by incredibly brutal and violent means. Some Crusades were even undertaken not to combat Muslims in the Middles East but rather to further the Christianisation of mainland Europe itself and to root out ‘Pagans’ and ‘heretics’. For example the so-called ‘Northern Crusades’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Crusades.

If one is realistic and balanced, perceived affront by any group or minority usually leads to reprisals – take the tragic case of Lee Rigby in the UK – the soldier murdered by two people claiming to be ‘Soldiers of Allah’ led to attacks on Muslims, up to and including attempted bombings of mosques. And this is in a country with a strong government, incorruptible institutions and police. What can one realistically expect in somewhere like Iraq in the wake of an invasion and widespread lawlessness? Or Syria, where there is a civil war? Or Egypt, where the Christians are (often rightly) perceived to be ‘against’ the Brotherhood? How will agitators in the lawless (and more importantly, horribly poor) Muslim countries act when Christians attempt to involve the West by claiming special persecution?

If affronts and political manoeuvring by Muslims and others in the West can lead to violent reprisals, the sad reality is that the same rules apply to Christians everywhere else. American missionaries and Evangelical lobbyists were crucial to the formation of South Sudan (the results have not been good thus far). This fact has not been lost on Salafists and even orthodox Muslims, just as the West would not react well to Muslims trying to dismember largely Christian countries, even if they were failed states like Sudan, least of all for missionary purposes. Shall we try dismembering, say, the sovereign state of Burma to help out the Rohingya or so that Wahhabi missionaries can get a foothold in South East Asia? Sri Lanka maybe to help out the Tamils? Where does it end?

We have no choice but to accept this tragic reality of tit-for-tat victimisation of largely or entirely innocent minorities or even majorities and speak against it, but with balance and perspective and not by treating violence or persecution of Christians as ‘worse’ than that towards any other group. Otherwise we will just be in danger of resurrecting the old colonial mentality where, say, the rape of a ‘white woman’ was to be repaid by a generalised massacre of the ‘natives’.

Al – Qaeda has killed many times more Muslims just in Pakistan (or Iraq or Syria or Yemen) than all of their attacks on the West. But you never hear about that. Even in Southern Thailand, according to none other than the ”United States Institute for Peace’ (essentially a branch of Congress), the violence by ‘Islamic’ insurgents claimed more Muslim lives than Buddhist, mainly those of Imams or village headmen refusing to kowtow to the Wahhabis (and the US explicitly identifies the insurgents as such).

A Christian life is no more special than that of anyone else. They are not our European, civilised vanguard or representatives in the ‘heathen’ lands of Islam or indeed India or anywhere else. If you treat them as such or they portray themselves as such, in all likelihood their lives will become more difficult not easier, as they will be seen as a ‘home front’ or an enemy within, just as some Muslims have been due to terrorist attacks in the West. This will not be a justice to them, nor will it protect them from the real threats they face, along with their fellow countrymen.

It can also be asked that if many Evangelical commentators are genuinely keen to help their co-religionists (as opposed to using them as a political football or a fundraising opportunity), they may do well to concentrate their lobbying efforts not on portrayals of Muhammad and the Quran as cruel inspirations but rather on the reality that most jihadist violence against Christians is sponsored financially or ideologically by interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf: for example, the Syrian rebels are being explicitly funded by them (and others) and many of the most radical madrassas in Pakistan and many of the scholarships to radicalise students from all over the world are offered by these countries which enjoy a special status and exemption from Britain and the United States. The fact that there are thousands of US lives and troops staked on protecting Saudi hegemony in that country and the wider region, while at the same time these countries sponsor terrorism which costs the lives of Christians should be cause for the complainants against Christian ‘martyrdom’ to demand that the US and UK not support regimes which engage in and promote Jihadist violence and ideology. It was always extremely strange when the fact that the overwhelming majority of the 9/11 bombers were Saudis and that Afghanistan was sheltering a Saudi mastermind led to no censure of Saudi Arabia but rather an attack on Afghanistan and later Iraq. Yet Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria now operates with explicit Saudi, Qatari support, and freedom of religious expression and women’s rights are most proscribed in those states such as Saudi Arabia which enjoy the most support and impunity in the eyes of the US and Britain. This is the height of hypocrisy: The US, a country in thrall to Christian Evangelical fundamentalists supports a Salafist regime in Saudi which in turn sponsors Jihadist ideology and violence against Christians which the Evangelicals in the US then gleefully blame on ‘Islam’. Meanwhile lots more Muslim lives are lost in this bizarre charade.

If there is a Muslim country where Christians are facing violence in isolation from their non-Christian countrymen, lets see the proof. Until then, we do indeed have a modern ‘Myth of Christian Persecution’, and sadly, many Christians who have the luxury of not being in affected areas and from the comfort of their pulpits or studios, love playing the victims as a public relations exersize and to smear their historical rivals the Muslims, to the tragic detriment of their genuinely persecuted brothers.

What would Jesus say?

”The Myth of Persecution…Moss, a leading scholar on Christian history, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the legacy of martyrdom continues to inspire the religious right and today’s conservative cultural warriors.”

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Myth-Persecution-Christians-Martyrdom/dp/0062104527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576595&sr=8-1&keywords=candida+moss

A series of lectures on nothing less than the most important topic in Islam or any field of thought or activity: what is the limit, if any, on the use of the human intellect in terms of arriving at ‘truth’?

Is there a conflict between reason and revelation in revealed religions and which has primacy?

At the risk of spoilers, this series of lectures is indispensable, because it literally frees the imprisoned minds of Muslims and others: reason is openly given primacy by both itself and the Quran: if the role of reason is merely to take one to revelation and thereafter not to be trusted, as many false intellectuals amongst both Muslims and Christians claim, then the means by which one reached said revelation are faulty, since they are not to be trusted.

Thus reason has primacy for it is the means by which we decide if God exists in the first place and thereafter which if any is the correct message from him.

The intellect is given free reign by Islam and no question is disallowed: in short, Islam has nothing to fear from the intellects’ unlimited application and in fact demands it in the Quran in explicit terms and in numerous places, as conclusively shown in parts 1-3 (with numerous fascinating digressions).

After showing the clear logical, rational and Quranic proofs, the eminent speaker goes on to tackle in the latter parts how the clear message of the Quran, which respects the intellect and yes, even philosophical thinking, in the strongest terms, was subverted, perverted or outright ignored by various movements and thinkers, including our old friend Ibn Taymiyyah (and by inference perhaps his faux intellectual modern day interlopers such as Hamza Tzortzis and Yasir Qadi et al…)

A brilliant talk that will remove the guilt felt by many Muslims in intellectual and scientific fields and an essential call to the actual message of the Quran and indeed for a return to the real drive of mankind – what Victor Frankl has called ‘Man’s search for meaning’

The Lecturer:

Sheikh Atabek Shukrov Nasafi is a noted scholar and specialist in Islamic aqeeda and theological sciences. Undertaking his religious studies at first in secret in Uzbekistan while it was part of the USSR, he has gone on to have an eclectic and comprehensive Islamic education all over the Muslim world.

Already a scholar when he arrived in the Middle East, he studied in Damascus under such luminaries as Mhmd Adnan Darwish, graduating finally from Al Azhar but only after having studied both in Medina and the wider region, for example under Sh. Uthaymeen (and numerous others).

He is currently based in the Northwest of England where he is the founder of the Avicenna Academy.

http://www.avicennaacademy.com/

This is a difficult question to get an authoritative answer for (but it shouldn’t be) – and hardly ever spoken of by ‘dawah carriers’, with rare exceptions. The reasons for this frequent omission will soon become abundantly clear.

From the outset, on such an important and understandably emotive topic, let me reassure my readers, that ‘circumcision’ in the sense of surgical assault on the clitoris, infibulation etc or indeed any type of tampering with the female clitoris is unequivocally prohibited, (in Arabic terminology ‘haraam’) and is hideously immoral and this is the unanimous agreement of all within the bounds of orthodox traditional Islam and sharia.

However, I must now go into more detail: because as Islamophobes and sadly Salafis as well will remind us, ‘circumcision’ (translated as ‘khitan’ in Arabic) is mentioned for women in no less than the Muwatta of Imam Malik (the early hadith compendium) as well as in Bukhari’s ‘Adhab wal Mufrad’ – several times the euphemism ‘when the circumcised part touches the circumcised part’ (i.e that of the man and the woman) is used to describe sexual activity, even in at least one case reportedly by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). This of course has led Islamophobes, the genuinely uninformed and inexcusably ignorant (often Muslims) to shout it at the top of their lungs and make a direct link between the reprehensible practices of some Sub-Saharan (and Egyptian) communities and orthodox Islam.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

But then why is ‘circumcision’ (or ‘khitan’) mentioned for women in Islamic sources at all? It was clearly widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia and there is a narration that Hadrat Uthman (RA), the third Caliph, allowed women to be circumcised when it was requested. A group of female prisoners of war had a female warden who asked him whether the captives should be circumcised as per custom at that time, and Uthman allowed it..

The key issue here is what was meant by ‘khitan’ of a woman (or even a man): even amongst the pagan Arabs it meant only taking off part of the labia minora (or as they described it ‘that part between the clitoris and urethra which looks like the comb of a rooster’ – more on this later) and absolutely nothing else. This is a procedure known as a ‘limited labioplasty’ and is common today for cosmetic purposes (though that was not the Arabs reason – more on this in a moment too).

As mentioned, this practice (limited labioplasty) was very widespread during the time of the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs, and likewise during the time of The Prophet (SAW). He is neither reported to have praised it nor proscribed it. In fact his alleged view on it is only mentioned in one undoubtedly weak hadith from ‘Sunan Abu Dawood’ (a famous collection of hadith narrations) which has two versions. In it, a woman of the Ansar (the ‘helpers’ from Medina) approaches the Prophet and asks if she is allowed to continue circumcising women, as that was her profession.

Narration #1: ‘If you want to do it, make it very shallow (arabic ‘ashimi’) and do not go very deep. Because it will brighten the face of the woman and give more portion to the husband’.

Narration #2 ‘do not go very deep because it gives more portion of enjoyment (‘athza’ in Arabic) for the lady and that is more liked by the husband’.

Both versions of this narration are weak…but so what?

Both are straightforward: that ‘khitan’, or ‘circumcision’ if you will, for the woman is merely tolerated and if done is to be for the express purpose of ‘improving her enjoyment of sex’.

How so?

The classical scholars have explained while commenting on this hadith that the logic was that when the Labia Minora are at their full extent they may partially cover or obstruct the clitoris thereby reducing it’s stimulation by friction from the male pubis (or indeed penis, especially if it is large) during sex. This in turn may conceivably delay female orgasm, since clitoral stimulation is a big part of this. Clearly the hadith commentators were already well beyond denying the female orgasm which was sadly found in some other societies until much later. Since many men suffer from premature ejaculation, failure to stimulate the clitoris would make this shortcoming even worse and may cause the woman to not experience orgasm at all during sex. Hence the woman climaxing at the same time (or at least near to) as the man is more ‘liked by the husband’, as per the hadith. It is clearly also less sexual work for him if what they say about better exposure to the clitoris is correct. Note that the covering or hood (anatomically ‘prepuce’) of the clitoris is not mentioned.

The euphemism in the first narration ‘brighten her face’ also refers to the woman’s enjoyment of sex, since depression or unhappiness is often referred to as ‘darkening of the face’ in Arabic (another misunderstood expression, which people incorrectly portray as racist).

Therefore the phrase ‘athza-lil-maraa’ in the above hadith or ‘more portion of enjoyment to the lady’ in English, is explained as to help women reach orgasm by partially removing obstructions to clitoral stimulation (namely large or mobile labia minora, especially after multiple pregnancies), especially if the man has a smaller penis or suffers from the common enough problem of premature ejaculation.

This is obvious without the commentary on the hadith to anyone who has had sex with a woman or is familiar with the rudiments of female anatomy:

Or from the (now famous) classic ‘Greys’ Anatomy’:

This is not some clever idea or interpretation I have dreamed up: not only is it obvious from the text of the Hadith, but it is the consensus of the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence that anything other than this is ‘muthla’ (Arabic for mutilation) and thus absolutely prohibited (‘haraam’) and punishable. Therefore we are the first to welcome punitive measures by the British government against FGM and demand that others follow suit.

Once again: it is the consensus (‘ijmaa’) of the four madhahib (as mentioned, the schools of jurisprudence in Islam) unanimously, that only, as they call them ‘minor lips’ can be partially removed – without touching the clitoris at all and without reaching the urethra at all.

The proof is in the agreed upon (by orthodox Muslims as opposed to modernist or protestant movements such as Salafism) books of Islamic law and conduct: ‘Bahur Rayagh‘, the authoritative text of the Hanafis is quoted below. Hanafis hold that circumcision for women is merely permissible – the Shafis, Malikis and Hanbalis hold it to be sunnah or waajib – so Muslims speakers and dawah carriers who say that ‘it is mutilation’ without clarifying why, for example, there is an opinion of Ahmad ibn Hanbal saying that it is compulsory, are leaving themselves wide open for a humiliating rebuttal, let alone the other narrations mentioned. Nonetheless, it has to be said that even regarding the limited labioplasty ‘khitan’, the Hanafi position is clearly the only tenable one – how do the other schools establish a compulsory action based on a single weak hadith?

‘It is the khitan of the lady to remove the skin which looks like the comb of the rooster (‘that thing on the head of the rooster’)…between the clitoris and the urethra there is a thin layer of skin; it is this that can be removed.’

In the ‘Majmoo’, Imam Nawawi (read: an authority) repeated the above quote.

In the Hanbali (most literalistic) school, Mansur ibn Yunus Al Buhayti repeated the above mentioned quote verbatim.

Another Hanbalite authority, the famous Ibn Qudamah Al Maqdisi:

‘The khitan is to remove the slim skin on the top of the vaginal opening’.

Note that it is interesting that even the entirely legal (and increasingly popular at the time of writing) procedure of ‘Labioplasties’ practised nowadays (often for cosmetic reasons or influenced by the types of vaginas popularised in pornographic imagery) is completely prohibited in Islam as they involve; ’a plastic surgery procedure for altering the labia minora (inner labia) and the labia majora (outer labia)’ (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labiaplasty), and Islam is completely unequivocal about anything other than only a slight trimming of the inner labia being genital mutilation (recall: ‘muthla’ in Arabic sharia terminology). Labioplasty with clitoral unhooding, is also practised in the UK/US especially if the clitoral prepuce (or ‘hood’) is too thick and interferes with sexual stimulation and is even more problematic Islamicaly – as per the prohibition of going and tampering with anything other than the labia minora (which would also exclude the clitoral prepuce).

It is clear that the problem we appear to have in the West is how to make Islam more tolerant of the widespread forms of vaginal (plastic) surgery practised here rather than Islam being permissive of the vulgarity that is FGM. Given the long-standing ijma (consensus) of Islamic jurists on this issue though, that leeway for allowing even procedures such as therapeutic clitoral unhooding is likely to be…well, perhaps none.

So let me just emphasise once again to make it abundantly clear: even the types of vaginal surgeries commonly practised in the UK and US are proscribed by traditional, old fashioned Orthodox Islam – let alone the entirely absurd claim of Islam being an excuse for FGM. In fact, Islam has a far more harsh definition of FGM than the law as it stands now.

I would personally support voices which question the expansion and acceptability of potentially harmful vaginal cosmetic surgery (although, truth be told, I would argue the same for cosmetic breast augmentation – but that’s a whole different story).

Okay, you may well ask, but then where did the idea, that no doubt exists and is sadly practised that ‘khitan’= female circumcision = removing the clitoris’ come from if all this is true?

If the Four Schools of Islamic Jurisprudence are unanimous, and condemn mutilation of the clitoris or cutting anything other than the labia minora, then why does the problem even exist?

And why aren’t most Muslim speakers, with few exceptions, willing to clarify this matter, especially as some of the classical schools regard ‘khitan’ as compulsory for women? (It is not even compulsory for men in the Hanafi school by the way)

The problem, as so often, begins with the unusual and troubling opinions of controversial 14^th century heterodox thinker Taqi Ad Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263 – 1328 C.E).

He popularised his (personal) view that ‘khitan’ or ‘circumcision’ was carried out for the actual reason of reducing the sex drive of women, that if women are circumcised they will ‘not enjoy it (sex) too much’. Even he however did not go so far as to say the clitoris should be removed (but he is implying it, in direct contravention of the hadith we mentioned from Abu Dawood).

Ibn Taymiyya is mentioned by the hadith master Ibn Hajar Al Asqalani to have left the consensus of Muslims on twenty or more issues: this is perhaps the most sickeningly gynophobic in an already disturbing oeuvre.

His disciple (and fellow icon of the Salafi/Wahhabi movement) Ibn Qayyum Al Jawzi, in his book ‘The Sunnats Pertaining to the Newborn’ sadly followed His Masters Voice and said that khitan was to ‘balance/lower the desire of the female’.

Of course, this is again in direct contravention to the alleged saying of the Prophet who said that if done, it should be only to ‘give her more portion in the enjoyment of sex’ (‘Athza-lil-maraa’). So much for a ‘Quran and Sunnah’ based religion I guess…

Interestingly, the only other scholar I could find who went against the consensus was Ibn Jawzi (the student of Abdul Qadir Al Jilani, not of Ibn Taymiyya), who mentioned it in his commentary on the difficult hadith of Bukhari, regarding the episode where Abu Bakr (RA) allegedly returned the insult of an opponent by mentioning the clitoris (which is ‘Al bidr/badr’ in Arabic). Ibn Jawzi said that the ‘bidr’ was ‘the part the lady lady leaves behind when she is circumcised’.

We can at least perhaps excuse the ramblings of Ibn Taymiyya, who never had a wife or sexual partner that we know of at least, and could perhaps be ignorant of such matters and since he did not explicitly say that the clitoris should be mutilated. Sadly however, contemporary Salafi scholars such as Nasiruddin Albani, Muhammad Hasan and Albanis’ Egyptian disciple (though they apparently only met for three hours) Huwayni, have shown no such restraint and have been far more explicit – they have said that ‘khitan’ is indeed FGM and involves the removal of ‘some part of the clitoris’, but not all (most generous of them: I wonder if they would be similarly accommodating if someone were to cut off ‘only a part’ of the head of their penis’?). They claim the saying of The Prophet (SAW) ‘keep it shallow’ refers to the clitoris.

I am sorry to be blunt: this is sheer madness and a gross and inexcusable violation of traditional Islamic law for fourteen centuries (i.e forever).

However Albani does not stop there: he violates a second consensus by saying that ‘khitan’ (which in his case really is FGM), is only to be practised on certain ladies. And who are these unlucky women? Well the ones from ‘hot countries, due to their well developed clitoris’. I will leave it to the reader to figure out how he came to this gynaecological conclusion.

Even more horrifically, doyen and most senior of the latter day Salafis, rector and founder of Medina ‘University’ Abdul Aziz Bin Abdullah Ibn Baz (1910 – 1999) went so far as to say that French women in particular should be preferentially subjected to a clitorectomy due to their sexual habits. How he arrived at this disgusting (and racist) stereotype does not bear thinking about.

So now perhaps it becomes clear why people from certain orientations in the Islamic community and the ‘dawah’ movement are unwilling to speak about important concerns that non-Muslims (and most Muslims) will have: for the sake of not going against Albani and other Wahhabi figureheads, the enquiring mind is met with amateurish efforts which are easily refuted (or even deliberately dishonest) or worst of all, a wall of silence on the issue, as we find from most of the well known Dawah carriers in the UK (I’m talking about iERA if you did not take the hint).

Yet worse, the scholarly authority behind organisations such as iERA and public speakers such as Hamza Tzortzis, Haitham Al Haddad, makes remarks on ‘female circumcision’ without the necessary clarifications: given his militant insistence on the Wahhabi tradition, one suspects they would not be forthcoming in any case…

An interesting critique of Labioplasties in the UK (often for cosmetic reasons):

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex-and-relationships/labiaplasty.htm

Wikipedia explains the WHO gradings of FGM: the ‘lowest’ grade, Ia, still involves the clitoris (it is removal of the clitoral hood and as mentioned, may be carried out in the NHS for a think and obstructing hood as mentioned above), in contravention to the consensus of the Muslim schools of jurisprudence and thus even this is a major sin and forbidden:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_mutilation#Procedures_and_health_effects

A more academic presentation of much of the same information, by an Islamic jurist:

Many people would like to let you know why they think Muslims are ‘behind’ or lacking in whatever field they choose to criticise that community for: you will find every shade of Orientalist, from those advocating a Muslim renaissance to the outright xenophobes who are content to blame Islam, the Quran or Muhammad (pbuh) for being hostile to everything from critical thinking to Capitalism (and of course for being against female empowerment). Causes are said to be everything from Ottoman scholars forbidding the use of the printing press as a ‘bad innovation’ to Al Ghazzali having allegedly stifled the rise of Islamic science (or at least natural philosophy) with his withering critique of ‘the incoherence of the philosophers’.

There are those more charitable voices who say that Islam was a good idea for those that followed it to start with but it failed to adapt to the times and therefore could not produce the apparent modern necessities of an Industrial Revolution and Democracy. These more forgiving neo-Orientalists, having no need to establish the superiority of ‘Western’ Civilizational models, then prescribe various remedies which involve incorporating the missing elements wholesale or with ‘adaptations’. They like to hold up countries like the UAE or sometimes Malaysia or even Turkey as examples of this kind of ‘syncreatism’. Nonetheless, they all agree that something went ‘wrong’. In fact, Bernard lewis, archdeacon of Orientalists (at least according to the man who coined that neologism, Edward W. Said) wrote a whole book about Islam called nothing other than ‘What Went Wrong’.

The academics are not alone: they are joined by a slew of popular writers, journalists, critics and politicians from entire spectrum, extreme Left to extreme Right who also want to opine as to what is wrong with Islam (meaning what is wrong with Muslims, but they are usually not allowed to say the latter so they just say ‘Islam’). Even female pop-stars are fond of complaining about the ‘dress code’ when they have to perform is some Muslim countries.

In short, a lot of people have an opinion. In fact, probably everyone has an opinion.

Including, of course, the Muslims.

Muslims groups also agree that something has gone ‘wrong’. In fact, there seems to be a consensus amongst Muslim and non-Muslim ‘thinkers’ that something has indeed ‘gone wrong’. The disagreement is about the cause. Whereas the Orientalists and neo-orientalists (and I use the phrase in the pejorative sense, not to denigrate the legitimate field of Oriental studies by people of any religion or persuasion) are fond of blaming the source texts, personalities and ideas of Islam, the Muslims are fond of blaming…well, the non-Muslims. Or ‘disunity’. But the disunity is itself usually blamed on non-Muslims so it often amounts to the same thing. Many of them also blame a lack of Islamic orthodoxy among Muslims and thus blame the Muslims via a kind of judgement from God, but again, this lack of Orthodoxy is frequently blamed on non-Muslims or people within the community who are not ‘proper’ Muslims (i.e. lapsed Muslims, ‘sell-out’ Muslims, secret non-Muslims or people who think they are Muslim but really are not).

The main criticisms by non-Muslims for the relative lack of ‘development’ (by which they mean military or at least financial-industrial success like the West, Japan or even China) in the Muslim world tend to fall into the following categories:

1) Muslims are unable to develop Western scientific/economic methods because they have a faith based outlook that is hostile to empiricism and the development of new technology. This is because they insist on following a defunct book and teaching which are hopelessly outdated.

2) The reason for the above is the failure of Islam to develop a ‘free thinking’ ethos; thus it stifles disagreement and inquiry, especially in matters of religion, which in Islam, appear to extend to everything including the political and economic spheres. This lack of demarcation is also found to be a cause of Muslim backwardness – they just never learnt to separate the religious from the profane and thus it held back technological, economic and social development. The social ills of the Muslim world are also blamed on this. They have too many children, they do not practice abortion or birth control and they do not allow women into the workforce. This is again because they follow the dictates of their primitive book/religion which has been superseded by modern or even Renaissance ideas such as humanism, The Free Market (for some of those who believe in this, the term needs capitalization for the same reason that ‘God’ is capitalised), gender equality and even Communism (depending on who you ask). This is a view shared by many and not only in the West. It is also sometimes applied to the Catholic Church and other groups as well as Muslims. Sometimes Christians join in and tell Muslims that they have always had to use their brains and incorporate Greek philosophy to understand their scripture, so they were ‘open’ from the start. Sometimes poor Imam Ghazzali gets the blame for shutting the door on ‘philosophy’ (despite the fact that he was himself an accomplished philosopher). Often Muslims of a certain leaning will join in to lament the fall from grace of the Mu’tazzila or ‘Rationalists’  over a millennium ago and wish for their resurgence.

3) The Quran is a ‘medieval’ remnant in modern societies, mysteriously followed by most Muslims (the spectre of Muslims not having ‘woken up’ as Enlightenment Europe did is invoked here). This line of argumentation is popular with both armchair, polemic and academic Islamophobes: any group that would believe in child marriage, sex slavery, chopping off limbs for theft, stoning someone for adultery, blowing up subways etc. is hopeless and more pertinently dangerous. Not only are the people dangerous, but even the ideas should be rooted out, as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens would have it. Basically, Islam is a dangerous and barbaric ideology from which irrationality, violence and misogyny flow naturally: it has survived only because of the relative lack of education and backwardness of the lands that espouse it. It is ideologically intolerable and more importantly, an existential threat.

4) Islam can be tolerated according to gentler voices, but it needs modifications to bring it in line with secular liberal values. Who is to carry out these modifications is left open but presumably it must be someone who is a secular liberal. This group thinks that Islam is indeed backward and perhaps even barbaric but as long as it can be ‘contained’ in the same way as Christianity was in Europe and domesticated, then it will wither away and die much like that other faith, or it will survive in a form which may even be beneficial, at least to those that feel a need for it.

5) Islam is perhaps a problem, but he main issue is the West’s attitude to the Muslim world, specifically foreign and economic policy, the IMF’s damaging influence or our attitude towards Israel and the support of dictatorial regimes in places such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This causes anger and humiliation amongst Muslims as it would in any victimised group and they become hostile, radicalised and violent. But the actual precipitating factor was the ‘West’. Proponents of this view, such as Noam Chomsky, do not really blame the religion itself but nor do they necessarily think it is a good thing. They are basically the opposite of the first group who blame ‘Muslims’ via Islam: they blame the outside forces such as the West for both the economic plight and the political situation in Muslim majority lands and even Muslim minds. They nonetheless would almost invariably agree that Muslims’ failure to adhere to secular liberal values and principles is a problem. They just think that the problem can be solved by being ‘nicer’ to Muslims.

As for the Muslim groups, a large number of individuals ranging from Abd Al Wahhab, Muhammad Ilyas, Rashid Rida, Taqiuddin An Nabbhani, Sayyid Qutb and even Osama Bin Laden (and far too many others, most of whom have inspired non-eponymous movements) have pondered the problem of Muslim ‘backwardness’ (or their preferred term ‘powerlessness’) and the need for ‘revival’ in the Muslim world. There are a great many groups such as Ikhwanis, Tablighis, Salafists, from the political to the violent, but the ideas are actually only a handful:

1) Non-Muslim powers, ranging from ‘the West’ to India and China, occupied Muslim lands by nefarious means, usually meaning ‘not in a fair fight’ (they are usually ambiguous about what constitutes a ‘fair’ fight) and this has led to the oppression and execution of the Muslim intellectuals over hundreds of years of colonialism. This combined with economic disadvantages as colonial powers such as Britain favoured non-Muslims who were more readily able to benefit from colonial policies (why non-Muslims should be more easily able to benefit from colonialism is left open or placed in the context of European hostility to Islam). This led to intellectual and politico-industrial stagnation and an asymmetric distribution of wealth and resources that persisted even after the colonial period. In fact, the colonial powers planted and continue to insert pliant leaders into the ‘Muslim world’ even in the post colonial period, which after all was very recently in the case of most countries. These leaders are just another means of ‘neo-colonialism’ and prevent Muslim ‘revival’.

Many groups, especially Salafists, imply that these leaders are secretly not really Muslim. Some go further and state that if they do not ‘rule by Islam’ they can be killed. Others go further still and say that those who support them can also be killed, for a kind of ‘treason’. This is the root idea behind many modern Salafist groups and their justification for both domestic and international violence against governments and individuals.

How the colonial powers were able to take over in the first place, or how are they allegedly still in charge is blamed on disunity as opposed to superior technological or economic/organisational abilities on the colonisers part.

2) Another group, especially prevalent in those areas that did not experience European colonialism, or conversely even benefited from it, such as Saudi Arabia, blame the decline on the alleged perfusion of heterodoxy amongst Muslims: they declined because they failed to follow Islam properly. If they had, this would not have happened. They echo Genghis Khan when he is reported to have said, ‘Had you not been so evil, God would not have sent me’. They feel that there are heresies, imports from other religions – ‘bidat’ or innovations – which have led to the formation of a less than pristine form of Islam. They question if the people practising these knowingly are even Muslim in the first place. They also see other enemies from within, for example, they feel the Shi’ites have previously and continue to undermine ‘Islam’. This group is not as interested in colonial explanations (unlike Hizb Ut Tahrir or The Muslim Brotherhood). Rather, their concern is purifying Islam and making it into the pristine form of their chosen ‘Salaf’ (after all, Shia and Mu’tazzila are from the Salaf also) or some of the people from first three generations after the Prophets (pbuh) time. Likewise, they are not very clear on the issue of acquisition of new technology or specialist knowledge: some of them say it is unnecessary as God will take care of this as long as we correct our faith (to that which they see fit). Others advocate a selective adoption of Western technology (but without Western ideals). The two sides have come to blows (and continue to do so, especially in Saudi Arabia).

3) The ‘Ijtihadists’: they are related to the above two groups, overlapping in many cases, and to varying extents blame the factors of ‘kuffar colonialism’ and lack of faith amongst Muslims. However, their primary issue is that ‘traditional Islam’ has failed by not continuing to assess and adapt to the demands of the age. They particularly blame Islamic scholars and institutions for not keeping pace and being too obscurantist or dogmatic. They are also rather annoyed at the traditional ‘schools’ of Islamic jurisprudence and often advocate novel interpretations or abrogations of the text for old problems based on their understanding. They are often led by charismatic people who set up a kind of ‘new madhab’ which has ‘new fatwas’.

This group is further divided into two: the first group, whose ‘new ijtihad’ serves the ends of ‘reviving Islam’ in Muslim countries and often provides very local solutions (for example, for the Middle East or Egypt) which the followers then try to generalise. The second group has ‘discovered’ that by new ijtihad, they can resolve issues where there is conflict with secular liberalism. Thus the first groups tailor their ‘fatwas’ to the Muslim majority countries and therefore on the face of it tend to be more orthodox. The second group tailor them to the anxieties of Muslims living in the West, especially America or the UK. This group tends to try and ‘find’ novel approaches that very often are the same as the prevailing western ideology, but in Islamic garb.

So for example, the first group may ‘discover’, in opposition to 1400 years of Islamic thought, that suicidal terrorism or killing the leader is allowed in Islam. The second group may discover that women can lead prayer after all. Despite their widely divergent views, they both believe that traditional Islam is defunct but we need to exercise a ‘new ijtihad’ and this will reveal the proper Islam that has been obscured by backward scholars and institutions.

4) This group could be called ‘modernists’ but modernity is not really their hallmark. For example, the ‘Quilliam Foundation’. They agree that Islam needs to be changed to fit in with Liberalism, and have no problem criticising the behaviour of Islamic personalities, up to and including the Prophet (pbuh) and the Quran. They basically agree that Islam is pre-modern and needs to change, but allow for this to happen and for themselves to be called Muslims. They would agree with may of the neo-Orientalist’s conclusions as to the reasons for the backwardness of Muslims. Why we should follow a revised version of what claims to be an infallible scripture is not addressed. Many of these individuals are former Salafists (such as Usama Hassan and Majid Nawaz) and bizarrely share with them the idea that traditional Islam has failed and needs reform: whereas the former would like the reform to be along Salafist lines, the latter would like it to be along secular/Liberal lines.

5) This group is a unique stand-out as it actually does not think there is a problem, other than Western misrepresentations of the Islamic world. They think that Saudi Arabia or Iran (depending on their preference) are good examples of social morality and public welfare that have been misrepresented. They will point out ‘facts’ such as Saudi Arabia’s low prevalence of rape or welfare programmes in the Gulf states as proof of problem free ‘Islamic’ systems. A strange corollary to this is the ‘Dawah’ movement in the West, which in general, when exemplified by UK groups such as Hizb Ut Tahrir and iERA, think that not only is there no problem with Islam but probably not with Muslim states either: the problem is in fact either western intervention which is preventing the flowering of a new and Islamic state of the ‘Khilafa’ in the case of the former or the fact that non-Muslims don’t know enough about Islam and that is why they are criticising it in the case of the latter. Hence, they have set out to ‘educate’ the West through debates and propaganda, explaining issues such as polygyny and apostasy to a Western audience (using a Wahhabi model). So there is in fact more of a perception problem than an actual problem. They would also agree that the ‘Muslim nations’ need to rule ‘by sharia’ (which is invariably a Taliban/Deoband/Salafist version).

So wherever you look Dear Reader, you will find a ‘reason’ for the problems that Muslims face. No matter if it is extremism or the underdevelopment of the road network in Indonesia, some form of explanation will be forthcoming. Whether you don’t know if you should vote or are having trouble finding a husband/wife, the above factions have an explanation.

But is it right? And as someone has already asked, who really speaks for Islam?

Well, none of them.

They are all…fantasists.

But instead of doing what everyone else does and presenting a theory about why I am right, it may be more productive to give a set of examples that most Muslims living in the West will recognise instantly. Whether they agree or not is a different story.

Rather than asking what holds the ‘Ummah’ or Muslims back, lets see what holds us back, as individuals, and then generalise that – since the Ummah is just a collection of individuals and their problems will simply be represented and magnified. Lets take the example of a young Muslim man growing up in the UK shall we?

The young man (lets say), if he were to show from an early age such a precocious talent for the arts that he may be a latter day Da Vinci, would nonetheless never have it come to any kind of fruition, for he would have been told by his mosque teachers and others that sculpture and painting are ‘haraam’ unless confined to the restrictive zone of geometrical patterns.  Thus a Muslim Rodin, were he to ever be born, would probably have no way to emerge, unless first divested of his Islam. But the prohibition is on sketchy grounds – the earliest hanafis disagreed about the pictures of living things for example.

The child’s’ Jewish neighbour however would have free reign, encouragement and support. But as a Muslim he has to deal with dissuasion (at best) and carrying around the guilt of engaging in ‘haraam’ while constantly being reminded that God will force him to breathe life into his works of art, and if he cannot do it, as he surely won’t, he will be cast into hell, with all of his idols. It’s not a promising start.

It is much the same if he shows great talent with the piano or violin. He won’t get even get a beginning – in fact if Cat Stevens, with all his fame and wealth can only get the puritan side of the story about music and Islam and has to give up being ‘the next John Lennon’ when he accepts Islam, what chance does our young musical prodigy have? What does it matter if the early Hanafi sources allowed music in the same way as they allowed literature: it was to be engaged in and the prohibited matters avoided only. Or will he ever be told about Imam Al Ghazzali (and his brothers) large volume on music, never translated? Does Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam even know to this day? How much influence and wealth did he lose from his twenty plus year retirement from music (and belated return)? How much more influence could he have had with the wider society? How many more people would have been curious about Islam through his Music and fame?

As for the child’s’ Jewish neighbour, he will be encouraged, lauded even, and his parents will show off his piano recitals. When the Muslim kid grows up he will be told by Salafists (and others) that there is a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ to control the media. He will wonder how exactly Muslims would have any influence in the media if film-making, painting and music are haraam. And he wonders if what the Muslims call a ‘conspiracy’ is just a surfeit of talent in the Jewish community, suppressed in his own.

Suitably dissuaded from the arts, he may look towards the humanities, but even here he will constantly wonder if he would not be better off pursuing an ‘Islamic education’ instead. He will perpetually be made to feel guilt about whether he is really studying ‘useful knowledge’ or if it is ‘for the sake of Allah’ as opposed to for his own ‘nafs’ or ego. The Jewish kid next door of course does not have to worry about this: he can study something just because he wants to.

The Muslim teenager is regaled with stories about how the second Caliph Umar (RA) burned whole libraries of books because they contained ‘nothing useful for the hereafter’ (but this never actually happened) and that only the knowledge which will benefit him in the hereafter is useful. If he comes across the hadith of The Prophet (pbuh) to seek knowledge even in China, he will be brusquely reminded by Salafists that it is fabricated (no one will tell him that there are innumerable ayats of the Quran and other hadith saying the exact same thing). He will also told, just for good measure that ‘knowledge’ here means only knowledge of Islam, namely recitation of Quran, how long your beard should be, how to avoid free mixing and not imitate the kuffar etc and not by any stretch of the imagination appreciation of literature, poetry, the reading of history or the classics, learning a language other than Arabic or studying ethnography, anthropology or a million other disciplines. If he does engage in them, he does so again with a sense of guilt (if he stays within Islam that is of course), always with the feeling that he is wasting his time, following his vain desires and engaging in ‘idle chatter’. Would it not really be better to seek ‘Islamic knowledge’? He will never be told about Al Farabi, Ibn Sina (and if he is, he will learn it from the non-Muslims and the moulanas will quickly label them ‘Greek philosophy loving kafirs and non-believers’, using Ibn Taymiyya as their proof, himself ironically a Greek philosophy loving heretic), Al Baruni, Al Haythami and all the other countless Islamic scholars who nonetheless mastered fields from musical appreciation to optics via mathematics and astronomy. If he does know of them, he will likely assume they were time wasters.

Similarly, he will not ascribe the Prophets’ appreciation of poetry to an artistic temperament, rather, if he hears about this at all, he will be confused by it.

Philosophy then of course is impossible for him, a forbidden and heretical pursuit, the language of Satan. Not only the Salafis, Deobandis and other visible sects of Islam but nearly all of the Islamic ‘authorities’ he comes across as an inquiring teenager will warn him off it and even Islamic Kalaam, telling him either that they are prohibited for him or even outright disbelief. He will never know that all of the great scholars of Ahlus Sunnah practised both freely.

No matter if he has the philosophical brain of Aristotle or Maimonides, he will never write a jot on the subject. He will never read the great philosophical works of the Muslim grandmasters, and in any case, even if he wanted to, he will never find them translated. His Jewish neighbour is of course, free to become a Levi-Strauss or a Karl Popper.

Having been dissuaded from the vast majority of intellectual and artistic pursuits, the young man, by now contemplating furthering his education at university, does nonetheless yet have one route open to him: the sciences. For are they not frequently used to confirm the truth of the Quran?

But of course, here he will find that the vast majority of the entrants into this field have no interest in religious matters and in any case, he will be once again dissuaded from the theoretical side of things as more ‘useless knowledge’ (perhaps of the kind that Umar burned). After all, what is the point of knowing the names and properties of the fundamental particles or Quantum Physics? It’s all wishy-washy nonsense. However, perhaps something more practical like engineering or medicine, something that can ‘benefit the ummah’. But the guilt is always there: is he studying for the sake of Allah? Will this really help the ‘ummah’? Is all this haraam free mixing worth it? Would he not be better off in a Deobandi or Brelwi seminary? Medina University perhaps?

When he is older, if he stays in science, he will see that the ‘Science and Islam’ arguments are the work of rank amateurs and even outright charlatans. Knowing the lack of pursuit and endeavour that the Muslims show in the sciences, it will not surprise him.

It is often said that if Bill Gates had been working in Japan instead of the US we would never have heard of him, because the rights to his intellectual output would have been held by his employer and thus he would have been just another faceless programmer (albeit a brilliant one). But what if Bill Gates was Muslim? Indeed, what then?

When the child becomes a man, he will hear, if faintly, all of the voices telling him what is ‘wrong with Islam’ and how Muslims have been held back. If he has learned his lesson, he will wonder if someone who engages in a field like the arts or sciences but always with a sense of guilt can ever achieve the same as the one who does so with a clear conscience. And he will see his Jewish friends (it is unlikely he has any though), with their role models in all spheres of life, from acting to cutting edge physics and he will wonder if it is this and not the alleged ‘Jewish conspiracy’ he was told about in the mosque which gives this community it’s alleged influence and power.

Quite apart from all of the fields of human activity that the young man thought were proscribed for him by his religion, but that he would most likely, as Cat Stevens did (after a lengthy interval), discover were in fact not so, he faces another problem: he is not quite sure if his religion is one of faith or blind following or that of independent reasoning. He is torn in different directions. He finds himself confused when outsiders challenge him as to how can he, for instance, allow adulterers to be stoned to death, apostates to be killed and such. He looks to Islamic personalities and speakers to give him the answers.

And it’s answers he gets, those and a good deal of intellectual gymnastics that go with them.

He will fall into one of two groups – justifying, say, the stoning, or refusing on some novel grounds. The latter feels a newly invented position and makes him feel like a heretic. The arguments proffered by the famous speakers for the former are of varying degrees of believability, but in any case, each one is a bit different and he has to wonder why it was left to these polemicists, often like Hamza Tzortzis, utterly lacking in secular qualifications or Islamic orthodoxy, to provide these answers and why they are not in the classical texts. He sees their atheist or Christian opponents shame them on this very point. In fact, he often feels how a Christian does hearing novel explanations for the Trinity from William Lane Craig, likewise wondering why God left the necessary clarifications to this man and not St Paul or St Anselm. Or better still, Jesus Christ.

Of course, what he does not realise is that the answers are there: but he will never learn of them, since the classical texts have been suppressed, mistranslated or ignored by the sectarian agendas of the puritans and literalists – and these heretics of the orthodox past are now the virtual entirety of those who speak for Islam. If he had, say, access to the works of Abu Hanifa, Malik and the Hanafi jurists, he would have found that they initially denied both the stoning of adulterers and the killing of apostates. Thus emboldened by the authoritative verdicts of the greatest and earliest Imams he could have held his head high in discussions and debates and would have had no need of the aforementioned Islamic intellectual pretenders (nor the verdicts or narrations of scholars old or new such as Imam Bukhari or Ibn Taymiyyah or Yusuf Al Qaradawi and countless others, who in the Islamic Big Picture, don’t really matter all that much).

But of course, he won’t hear of this.

The people answering the questions on his (and God’s) behalf about the stoning of adulterers or whatever are not interested in just defending Islam, but rather their personal ideological leaders, much in the way that Communists were not really about helping the proletariat but rather promoting Marx, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, materialism, economic centralisation etc: if they are Salafi, they will defend the opinion of Ibn Taymiyya and find innovation and licentiousness everywhere, if Deobandi, Gangohi and an insistence on making the Sunnah into Wajib, if Brelwi, Ahmed Ridha Khan…If any of these latter day idols made an Islamically illicit mistake (and they very frequently did), it becomes for these people and their naive audiences thereby mistake of Islam itself. And the classical, orthodox Islam which could inspire the young man with the confidence that people did indeed have it right, even at the start, cannot be allowed to interfere. So the ‘answer’ to the stoning of adulterers is not a ‘guess what I made up in my bedroom’ answer from Yasir Qadhi or Hamza Tzortzis; it is that the biggest and earliest group of Muslim jurists denied any such thing and regardless of any differences of opinion between the different schools then or today, you cannot stone someone to death when there is a disagreement as to whether it is even necessary. Non-Muslims and Muslims alike would be reassured, just as they would be about the lack of capital punishment for apostates and homosexuals exhibited in the Hanafi texts (though both groups are confidently and unapologetically reprobated). It is still the most widely practised school. However, it is not Islam that is being defended, but the opinion of the favourite latter-day scholars of the various speakers for Islam. In the case of the above-mentioned groups, most of them were frank heretics vis-a-vis Orthodox Islam.

Take the case of a highly educated American academic convert such as Jeffrey Lang. He learnt Arabic and struggled for years to understand the issues of hadith authenticity, abrogation in the Quran and allegations that Islam allows ‘wife beating’. Eventually he came up with his ‘own’ approach to controversial hadith (i.e. rejecting those ahad narrations that made no sense or were insulting to the Prophet or Sahabah, even if they were in ‘Sahih Bukhari’). However, this was exactly the same as the original Maturidi and Maliki mustalah (methodology) of hadith, the earliest and most authentic approach to dealing with narrations attributed to The Prophet (pbuh). But he could not get a hold of it. No one told him. He still does not know. Ditto with abrogation in the Quran – he concluded after years that it had been grossly overstated – but he only had before him the Salafist & heterodox answers of the people who claim to speak for Islam, such as the heretical comments of Haitham Haddad or others like him. But had he seen the books of the authentic scholars, he would have known, especailly having taught himself to read Arabic, that he had stumbled on the same conclusion as orthodox Islam.

Had all the speakers and writers (and now bloggers) he had come across not been too keen to explain to him that beating ones wife was only a ‘light’ beating, he would not have had to come to the conclusion that he needed to interpret the Arabic text in a different way. He would have found classical commentators such as Zamaskhari and Al Qushayri who agreed with him that of ‘beating’ there are other, perhaps more appropriate readings.  If he ever finds this information, he will be told that Zamakshari was a Mu’tazzila (and then it will take him years more to find out that most of the Quranic commentaries are by Mu’tazzila). And so on…but if a well known speaker and intellectual such as Lang has to spend years to get through the quagmire, then what hope for our young man?

The truth is he was never held back by Islam at all –  Islam always told him to go for it – whether he wanted to become a concert pianist, an actor, a theoretical physicist, a linguist or anything in between or all of them (as Ibn Sina and many other genuine Islamic scholars were). Islam always had the answers for the controversial questions from the very start, from the earliest and most reliable authorities, as opposed to dodgy Salafist publishing houses or Deobandi ‘Youtubers’.

What held him back was not Islam but rather Salafism, Deobandism, Ikhwanism, Hizbism and too many others to name, which try to take on the mantle of Islam for their own goals. But how was he to know, when the men who spoke for the religion wore the garb of these organisations and fed off the petro-dollars of their sponsors or the humiliations frustrations and ignorance of the Muslims?

Not only this, but their real source of power: make the Muslims unable to learn, excel and think for themselves. And then do their thinking for them. Badly.

Orwell always warned us that we would be brought low by that which we feared. Huxley, his fellow prophet of doom (and no friend of Islam) knew that we would be enslaved by that which we loved.

And such it is with the lovers of the groups above.

It is beyond the scope of this short article to expose all of the heterodox and extreme views held by IERA spiritual guide, scholarly authority and senior student of Wahhabi doyen Abd al Aziz Ibn Baz, Haitham Al Haddad. One can mention his shockingly poor understanding of FGM, which he legitimises by saying that Islam allows only a ‘bit’ of the clitoris to be removed (Islam in fact deems any tampering with the female clitoris to be mutilation and prohibited) or that he regards Osama bin Laden to be a ‘martyr’ (as according to Haddad he died fighting the ‘enemies’ of Islam http://www.islam21c.com/politics/2644-advice-to-muslims-on-the-death-of-osama-bin-ladin/) amongst numerous noxious and un-Islamic views held by this abominable individual.

For anyone to claim that Haddad is the voice of ‘mainstream’ Islam is absurd (a list of his masters heresies can be found here: http://asharisassemble.com/2013/04/10/ibn-baz-another-heresiography-by-gf-haddad/) but that is exactly what Haddad and his mouthpieces (partisan outlets ‘Islam21c.com) are asserting in light of his being ‘maligned’ by the Sunday Times (http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/National/article1355803.ece) and the Daily Mail (the Daily Mail was so moved by his defence that they ‘maligned’ him again here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2563170/Anger-extremist-cleric-given-podium-preach-London-university-despite-history-hate-speech-against-women-gays.html).

Haddad pleads here in response: http://www.islam21c.com/politics/reply-from-dr-haitham-al-haddad-to-allegations-made-in-the-daily-mail-sunday-times-newspaper/

”I would go further and suggest the article is intended to evoke an antipathy for orthodox religious values and of Muslims in general. This is because I have a reputation for sticking only to those beliefs and practises that enjoy a general consensus among classical Islamic scholars and schools of thought in my public and private discourse.”

It is sufficient to show what a bald lie this is via another article on the very same site where he openly criticises the ‘general consensus’ amongst Muslims in nothing other than the most fundamental aspects of creed:

”…This proof for the existence of God became widely accepted by not only the Jahmites, but also the Mu’tazilites, and later on the Ash’arites and Māturīdiyyah. It was upon this fundamental understanding and premise that all these groups interpreted the rest of the religion; including the beautiful names and attributes of Allāh. This became a crucial point at which they left the universally held beliefs of the Early Muslims (salaf) and adopted a completely different approach to understanding Islām. As it was rooted in Greek philosophy, they were termed as “mutakallimūn”, the scholars of speculative” 

You can read the whole article here: http://www.islam21c.com/theology/al-ta%E1%B8%A5awiyyah-pt-30-the-quran-is-the-uncreated-unparalleled-words-of-allah-part-23/

For the uninitiated, Haddad spends the whole of this article trying to establish that practitioners of the majority beliefs of Islamic theology, namely the Asharite and Maturidi schools of belief, are in fact heretics (he really means disbelievers but does not want to say it openly). Yet he was complaining while defending himself that he has a reputation for ”sticking only to those beliefs and practises that enjoy a general consensus among classical Islamic scholars and schools of thought in my public and private discourse”. How so if the majority of Muslims (and scholars of the past) are in fact heretics according to Haddad? This is precisely like a Mormon saying that he represents mainstream Christianity when attacked by the press. Or like a Christian saying that he believes Catholics and Protestants are both heretics…but ‘he represents the beliefs of mainstream classical Christianity and schools of thought’ i.e a bald lie.

In fact, Haddad is so banal, that he actually admits that the view he is criticising is the one of the majority of Sunni Islam in the same article:

‘The view of the Ash’arites concerning the Kalām of Allāh, which is still held until today within the broad spectrum of Sunni Islām…’

If you are going to lie, at least put a bit of effort into it…

Even more hilariously, in the same article, he impugns the ‘Kalam Cosmological Argument’ and considers it illegitimate. Which is funny, as that is the argument that his own organisation IERA and his own well known student, Hamza Tzortzis, use to prove the existence of God and call non-Muslims towards Islam and relieve Muslims of their charitable donations!

Unfortunately, because of the frequent attacks on Muslims, often by these very same papers which for once correctly named and shamed Haddad as an extremist and a heretic, namely the Times and Daily Mail, Muslims feel besieged and start to defend themselves (and anyone else who says they are with the Muslims). Haddad and Wahhabist groups understand this and use the group feeling and persecution of Muslims to rally them around their own cause and to get off the hook from non-Muslims by saying ‘hey, all Muslims think the same as us. If you’ve got a problem with us, you have a problem with all Muslims and all Islam’.

The above shows the lie in this: Haddad in one place, when defending himself against non-Muslims, speaks to Muslim unity and group feeling by saying that ‘they are just attacking me for saying what most Muslims believe!’ but when speaking to his own Salafist constituency on the very same site he states that ‘What the majority of Muslims believe is wrong!’

For once the Islamophobes are right.

They are right about Haddad.

Related:

http://asharisassemble.com/2014/01/24/the-truth-about-islam-and-female-circumcisionfgm/

http://asharisassemble.com/2013/10/14/hamza-tzortzis-wants-to-love-you-or-else/

http://asharisassemble.com/2013/10/04/emotional-blackmail-by-iera-again/

Although the title of this piece alone will cause sufficient hysteria from most quarters of both the Liberal and Muslim readership (strange bedfellows that they are) to make them respond without actually reading the rest of the article, I take it that the honest intellectual seekers amongst our readership would however like to know more…

Moazzam Begg is a former Guantanamo detainee. That description alone is enough to make him a saint and living martyr to most Muslims and most opponents of the West’s overheated ‘War on Terror’.

But it should not be, at least for the Muslims.

Indeed, Muslims have been victimised by the War on Terror (now capitalised) to the extent of losing their lives in their hundreds of thousands. It continues today in drone attacks on Pakistan, governments from around the world using it to legitimise repressive measures against Muslim minorities and a thousand other ways. Yes, Muslims have been victimised by political and ideological machinations in the West and elsewhere. But politics cannot overwrite religion. That is the very essence of Islam and some would argue the very reason for the victimisation of Muslims and their values.

Yet Muslims are doing exactly this: having been politically under siege, they are adopting a gang mentality and ‘standing up’ for each other – regardless of whether they should or not. They are not picking their battles but rather herding around every case of a Muslim allegedly being in the wrong as an example of anti-Islamic victimisation. Sadly, this is reminiscent of the practice of the pre-Islamic Arabians known as ‘my tribe right or wrong’, successfully abolished by the Prophet Muhammad and revived of late by Yvonne Ridley, IERA, and many other Muslim personalities and groups in the wake of the arrest by British authorities of Moazzam Begg on terrorism charges related to his supporting the Syrian opposition (who are technically the British and Western governments preferred combatants in that conflict):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26395066

No sooner had he been arrested than Muslims from all walks of public life, from self publicising sophists such as Hamza Tzortzis, unrepentant genital mutilators and Bin Laden Apologists such as Haitham al-Haddad and even reputable journalists like Yvonne Ridley as well as figures from the political Left and even comedian Russell Brand ,came out in support of Begg, claiming his innocence and decrying the UK for arresting him for ‘political reasons’ (thereby implying that the UK is a police state where innocent people are not only arrested for no reason whatsoever but even charged for no probable cause as well). Even obscurities such as ‘Islamic scholar’ Zahir Mahmoud voiced their (unqualified) support.

Here is a typically emotional and in fact borderline hysterical appeal from an on-line petition: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/david-cameron-release-moazzam?recruiter=84498050&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=petition_invitation

Apart from mentioning as ‘evidence’ of an impending unfair trial the case of a US prisoner (and thus nothing to do with the UK justice system to which Begg will be subjected), it continues:

‘Injustice has already been served when Moazzam Begg was taken to Guantanamo Bay to serve a sentence without a trial or charge. He was released and became a voice for the voiceless’

Apart from being an evidence free-rant, it fails to mention that it was the same British government that petitioned for his release after three years in Guantanamo that has now felt it necessary to arrest him. Bizarrely and embarrassingly for Muslims, the letter to the Prime Minister in the aforementioned petition goes on to assert that Begg should get a fair trial – though it states that he is ‘innocent’ since ‘thousands believe he is innocent’. So now Muslims have embraced trial by media – how exactly did this petitioner establish that Begg is ‘innocent’? Has a thorough investigation been carried out? The letter concludes with the utterance to the Prime Minister of Britain that the ‘arrest is politically motivated’.

Then why not furnish us with the proof of both his innocence and the political machinations behind his arrest? I’m sure David Cameron would be most irate to see that resources were being wasted on re-persecuting a man that his government could have left to rot in the hell that is Guantanamo in the first place without going to the trouble of getting him released by the (reluctant) Americans only to ‘politically persecute’ him again.

Similarly, the wannabee ‘Muslim Journalist’ (what defines ‘Muslim’ as opposed to ‘non-Muslim’ journalism awaits clarification) rag ’5pillarz’ (yes, that is how they spelt it, expect the launch of ‘The Sunday Timez Fo’ Shizzle Ma Nizzle’ by the same aspirants soon) declared his arrest an act of ‘brazen Islamophobia’ and compared him to Malcolm X (apart from the bald offensiveness of this remark it showed their sheer ignorance of Malcolm X’s life since they failed to state in which way the comparison held, since Malcolm X was never arrested under terrorism charges).

A large demonstration was organised by ‘Cageprisoners’ (the organisation that Begg runs, so impartiality was of course guaranteed. Like, you know, Fox News).

Basically, almost no Muslim authority or ‘voice’ for Muslims in the British public, ranging from ‘Dawa’ organisations such as IERA to Islamic ‘scholars’ such as Haddad and Zahir Mahmoud and even sane voices such as Sheikh Abdalhaq Bewley failed to come out in his support.

Now, I am not a ‘dawah’ organisation or a ‘scholar’, but I do know this much: Since when did the Quran and Islam embrace trial by sophistry, innocence regardless of trial and evidence? In short, how can we ‘support’ someone accused of serious crimes and insist that they are not guilty without evidence being provided or a trial or even a hearing occurring simply because they are Muslim or were held in Guantanamo?

Are the aforementioned voices going to introduce this novel system of justice so that we can see it in action? Namely that a person is not only innocent until proven guilty, but if Muslim, is innocent. Period.

This bizarre inversion of Islam is unprecedented in the entire history of that religion, which in fact is known for it’s insistence that justice be done, though the heavens fall. Yet this is precisely what Begg’s interlocutors have achieved – a ‘bidat’, or innovation, so heinous and absurd that it tarnishes the whole religion for  the sake of one man.

And what a man…

Although nearly all Muslims would have us effectively beatify Begg forthwith, he is a man who nearly all British Muslims should find very troubling.

Begg found himself in Guantanamo at the Commander in Chiefs’ leisure because he had uprooted his British family to go and live and work in Afghanistan under none other than the Taliban. Begg’s Wikipedia page (which he and his supporters are free to correct) makes for shocking reading:

”The Pentagon claimed Begg was an enemy combatant and Al-Qaeda member, who recruited for al-Qaeda, provided money for their training camps, and trained at their camps in Afghanistan to fight U.S. or allied troops.^[4][5] Begg has said he spent time at two Islamic training camps in Afghanistan, supported militant Muslim fighters, bought a rifle and a handgun, and was acquainted with persons linked to terrorism, but he denies the remainder of the U.S.’s allegations.^{[3][6][7][8][9]”}

These are similar to the same ‘politically’ motivated and ‘brazenly Islamophobic’ charges brought against him by the UK government this time. Remember, this was in support of the Taliban regime which openly flogged people for beard length, by it’s own admission proscribed girls (and most boys) education and worst of all, sheltered Bin Laden openly for years before 9/11 was even a pipe-dream and he had already admitted to the Kenyan Embassy and other bombings. But no matter. Begg thought it was a great idea to move himself and his wife and children to Afghanistan to live and work amongst the Taliban. As part of an NGO? Non-politically? No, to train with and support them it would appear:

”With his wife Zaynab and three young children, Begg moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, in late July 2001.^[9][11][28] At the time, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. It protected Osama bin Laden, a Saudi; banned music and most games, beat women for improper dress, had fired all women in public service, and severely restricted the education and medical treatment of women.^[45][46] Despite this, Begg saw it as a good and inexpensive place to raise a family.^[11] Begg wrote in his autobiography that in 2001, the Taliban had made “some modest progress—in social justice and upholding pure, old Islamic values forgotten in many Islamic countries.”^[46]

But he must be an all right guy after all since:

‘Begg now says that was his perception at the time, and since then, he has criticised the Taliban for human rights abuses.^[46]‘

But of course, what else can he say now?

Begg also has charming friends and a great taste in books:

In 1999, Begg through his bookstore commissioned and published a book by Dhiren Barot about his experiences in Kashmir, entitled The Army of Madinah in Kashmir.[37] Barot had undergone training in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and joined the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir against India. He was later referred to as bin Laden’s “UK General”, convicted in Britain of being an al-Qaeda terrorist, and sentenced to 40 years in jail.[37][38][39] In the book Barot, who used the alias Esa Al Hindi, accuses western troops of invading Muslim countries, and urges followers to strike back.[40] Barot wrote: “Terror works, and that is why the believers are commanded to enforce it by Allah.”[41] The book was used as evidence against Barot at his trial for planning a “dirty bomb” attack on London, in which he was convicted.[37]

In his book Enemy Combatant, Begg tells us: 

”I wanted to live in an Islamic state–one that was free from the corruption and despotism of the rest of the Muslim world…. I knew you wouldn’t understand. The Taliban were better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past 25 years.^[47]”

Yes Moazzam, unfortunately, I don’t understand either.

A confession that Begg made while incarcerated, probably under horrendous conditions and torture from the US (much like that which the Taliban routinely inflicted on people but Begg found was ‘better than anything Afghanistan had had in the past 25 years’):

”I was armed and prepared to fight alongside the Taliban and al-Qaeda against the U.S. and others, and eventually retreated to Tora Bora to flee from U.S. forces when our front lines collapsed…. [I] knowingly provided comfort and assistance to al-Qaeda members by housing their families, helped distribute al-Qaeda propaganda, and received members from terrorist camps knowing that certain trainees could become al-Qaeda operatives and commit acts of terrorism against the United States.^{[3][5][25]”}

Begg also said in his confession that he sympathised with the cause of al-Qaeda, trained in three al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan so that he could assist in waging global jihad against enemies of Islam, including Russia and India; associated with and assisted several prominent al-Qaeda terrorists and supporters of terrorists, and discussed potential terrorist acts with them; recruited young members for global jihad; and provided financial support for terrorist training camps.^{[3][5][25][43]}

Begg maintains his confession is false, and that he gave it while under duress.^[3][5]

After release, Begg was perhaps still less than careful about who he put his support behind:

”Begg interviewed the al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, a former imam in the United States, after the latter was released from jail in Yemen in 2007.^[43][96] Al-Awlaki was invited to address Cageprisoners’  fundraising dinners in August 2008 at Wandsworth Civic Centre…(by videolink, as he is banned from entering the U.K.) and August 2009 at Kensington Town Hall; the local authority told the group that it could not broadcast al-Awlaki’s words on its property.^[97][98] Cageprisoners has material about and by al-Awlaki on its website.^[97]”

I mean, this could all be nonsense – in which case Begg and Cageprisoners should avail themselves of the famous ‘Edit’ facility on Wikipedia and use their friends and resources to perhaps undertake legal proceedings against those making these allegations (as they did successfully against the UK government on the charges of assisting an illegal interrogation and others).

Just as with the current charges, in Islamic law, Muslims do not disbelieve the US simply because they are ‘not Muslim’ nor believe Begg just because he is Muslim. What is pertinent is that the US (and Taliban) are involved in torture rendition etc and Begg is possibly involved with the Taliban.

I would like to believe him. But thinking the best of someone and declaring their innocence are two entirley different things – in both Islamic and British law.

I can give you my opinion on this, just as all of these ‘Muslim speakers’ are doing – I could say that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time or maybe just a guy who bought into the romanticised stories about the Taliban that were fed to many British youth – especially in Deobandi madrassas and mosques before 9/11. Or maybe what the US say is true, or he went to Afghansitan because he simply loved the Taliban. But it’s pointless – I suspect no-one, including the governments of the US and UK will ever know for sure. Indeed the only one who knows for sure is Begg.

And there is no reason to believe nor disbelieve him. But at the very least, moving your whole family to live under the Taliban is amazingly stupid and an example of shockingly poor research and lamentable knowledge of Islamic norms.

And absolving Begg of his current charges without at least waiting for a trial before screaming ‘injustice/Islamophobia/political motivation’ is equally foolish.

Further, it embarrasses the entire British Muslim community by showing both it’s members and outsiders that Muslims’ public representatives and agitators are in reality little better on many occasions than Zionists: they refuse to be balanced about their own ‘members’.

What would have been more Islamicly licit is to have presented a cogent and understandable criticism of anti-terror laws and placed Beggs’ arrest in the context of these and then awaited the outcome. But of course, Syria is both a Salafist and a Neo-Con cause celebre. And I think we can all rest assured that Begg was limiting his charitable contributions (he says) or terrorist training (the UK Government says) to his favourite groups, which on past evidence are extremist Salafists like the Taliban.

And of course, many of those supporting him at rallies are barn door Salfists and Taliban supporters driven undercover and into political correctness by recent changes in British law, as well as open, secret, or ex members of groups such as ‘Hizb Ut Tahrir’ (who supported the Taliban and prior to 9/11 used to publish books chastising Muslims for not referring to suicidal bombing as ‘martyrdom’) such as Taji Mustafa, Hamza Tzortzis et al. To these speakers, ‘bad’ can only be what the US does to the indeed perpetually suffering citizens of Afghanistan but never what self proclaimed authorities like the Taliban do to Muslims. In a strange mirroring of the Islamophobes, these individuals and others want to keep the eyes of Muslims squarely on the affronts of Western powers, but never on the liberties taken in the name of Islam by Salafist groups, whether in Afghanistan or in Syria. They just want to help the Syrian people. But not all of them. Just the ones who agree with them.

Theologically, Haddad, Tzortzis, Ridley and all of the other misguided and self publicising Muslims who came out at various rallies in support of Begg should be ashamed for forsaking the most important principle of Islam – a principle so important that God demands it of himself: Justice.

I don’t think SuedeNikita looks like this. But one can hope…

Back by popular demand like the ‘Hunger Games’, SuedeNikita caused a massive stir when I published her ‘response’ to Hamza Tzortzis earlier in the year: 

http://asharisassemble.com/2013/10/14/hamza-tzortzis-wants-to-love-you-or-else/

I don’t necessarily endorse her views but I do like them…

I can already hear it: hostility, wailing, gnashing of teeth, suggestions for exorcism, even threats of violence. Masked takfir is a must. And the inevitable call for ‘unity’ against the onslaught of ‘the kuffaar’. There may even be emotional appeals such as ‘it affected my iman, how could you?!’

And of course: ‘These people defend Islam! They make huge sacrifices! What do you do eh?!’…’She’s a hater, she’s jealous’…’Ignore her’…’lets see you do better then’…’at least they are doing something! What have YOU ever done for Islam!?’…etc, etc, ad nauseum.

I actually sympathise (a bit): many Muslims, especially the young, feel under siege from the barrage of negativity and criticism they face about their religion. They can’t catch a break – whether it’s Islamophobic You-tubers, bloggers, serious journalists, the national press or the latest Hollywood movies, they must feel like they have a target on their back. In fact, young Muslims can’t go to the library, newsagents or cinema without catching grief about their religion. People like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins can say things about Muslims that if they uttered them about Jews, would get them arrested faster than Miley Cyrus can get her skirt off.

And their religious establishment, such as it is, does’t help much either: the first generation of largely immigrant Muslims had necessarily limited interaction with the ‘host’ society: they did not want to rock the boat, saw their stay as limited and faced hostility, violence or indifference and were ignored by their hosts. Their children and grandchildren however, expected better treatment, or at least more visibility and ‘attention’. Well, in the case of Muslims, they sure got it. But the Imams and scholars were not equipped or willing to deal with the problems of Muslims in a non-Muslim society and questions ranging from the Quranic stance on evolution to how to find a boy or a girl, what type of sex to have with them when you did and whether there is any good reason to oppose gay marriage were asked to a cohort of people not comfortable with being questioned about anything. At all.

Access to information also increased exponentially during that time, the internet was born and like Frankenstein’s monster, went to account its makers – all manner of questions came into the minds of Muslims that had never done so before – some due to the ‘free thinking’ attitude of the educational institutions that they attended (that their parents, like most immigrant communities, had not) and some due to the hostility towards Islam by secularists and Christians alike, especially in the ‘safe zone’ (for bigots that is) of the internet – questions like was Aisha (RA) really nine years old at the time of marriage and does the Quran actually tell you to beat your wife, as well as technical questions such as is the Quran really preserved and philosophical ones like what really is the proof that Islam is not just made up hokum?

It was a tough time, and it was made suddenly worse by 9/11. Things went into fast forward: the Muslim community had no time to adapt, no voice, no representative. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq made things worse still, radicalising host communities and Muslims alike. Hostility to Muslim Taliban or Muslim insurgents translated into inevitable hostility to local Muslims. More questions were asked, more doubts were raised. Some people left Islam all together and then railed against it, being offered immunity from the usual political correctness in the media due to their ‘ex-Muslim’ status. They could get away with saying what they wanted, generalising their personal experiences to a whole community in a way that would be instantly recognised for what it was were they Jewish. They took full licence and again, through the internet and other media, the doubts, questions and general anxiety of Muslims increased.

The ‘scholars’ tried – or rather, they saw an opening: a chance to leave their mosques and to enter the elysian fields of British or American academia: trouble with Islam meant Islamic societies, student bodies and organisations needing speakers to argue their corner and satisfy their body of students, away from home, horny and alone with their doubts and guilts in student accommodation. So a new era was ushered in: no longer would Riyadh Ul Haq, Haitham Haddad and too many others to mention, be confined to their mosques or to weekend seminars and evening classes. No – they would emerge and rescue the young Muslims from both their interrogators and their own doubts. Now the scholars would inspire a new generation of Muslims to be self confidant and at the same time show how stupid the kufaar were, university or not.

Except it didn’t quite work out that way.

Because the scholars, when faced with a critical university audience which often included combative non-Muslims, basically sucked.

Haddad soon got caught out for his frighteningly uninformed comments on Jews, and just about everything else. Other scholars, who for the sake of brevity can remain nameless, were shamed by simple questions on whether the Quran said one was allowed to beat ones wife. Far from being fonts of knowledge, their presentations consisted of authoritarian posturing, reminding the audience that they did not have the requisite Islamic ‘qualifications’ and telling them that that’s what Islam said and if they didn’t like it then ‘that’s the bottom line’ like some kind of bearded Steve Austin (yes, I am a girl and yes I watched pro wrestling).

They behaved strangely, unfamiliar with Western universities or even the wider society. They dressed strangely, spoke as if preaching to the converted and the struggled to contain their indignation at the mildest criticism or cross examination. Many threw public tantrums. But most persisted, drawn by the allure of influencing the young (what more worthwhile group to influence after all!) and perhaps even an appearance on ‘Newsnight’ to tell Paxman that Islam really was a religion of peace (or something reheated like that).

Of course, it ended badly: the scholars were famous amongst their own sectarian groups only, they usually did not have even a cursory mastery of the English idiom (or cultural quirks) and were frightfully out of touch with the issues of the day as well as the controversial questions of Islam and even religion and the belief in God that had been asked from time immemorial. At worst, some, like our friend Haddad, made it into the national press for their gaffes and earned, along with many of his colleagues, bans from educational institutes (and he was one of the Western educated ones).

But if only a desire or a wish being unfulfilled led to its withering away, humanity would be a much more peaceful race. Despite the failure of the migration of the ‘scholars’ from their courses and evening classes into the universities, the young Muslims need for ‘answers’ or at least a shield, a defence, remained as great as ever, if not more so, as calamities such 7/7 and the War on Terror kept arriving like London buses: all at once.

Exeunt scholars and enter our new heroes: the ‘Dawah carriers’. On the face of it, an evolved form of talented amateurs such as Sheikh Ahmed Deedat, these new defenders had the beginnings of their current incarnation in Zakir Naik – an apparently gifted (gifted at what was soon to be made clear) amateur who rallied huge crowds in India and the Middle East by explaining Islam to ‘non-Muslims’ and taking their questions. Conversions and warm feelings invariably followed (the similarity between his conferences and Midwestern televangelists with people being possessed by the ‘Holy Spirit’ was of course lost on the Muslims).

Moreover, he had an affable style with his ill-fitted suit and constant smile, denied the existence of any Sunni-Shia split, made liberal use of scientific facts and used them to ‘establish’ the truth of the Quran. Muslims felt confident, they felt armed with intellectual weapons with which to not only fight back but to win, win converts. A television channel and millions of adoring fans followed.

And like Kurt Cobain’s suicide, he inspired a multitude of copycats.

His own Indian organisation, IRF (Islamic Research Foundation), gave birth to IERA in the UK, which rapidly rose to become a behemoth in terms of speaking engagements, ‘Dawah’ and ‘spreading the message of Islam’ on campuses and the streets. And the lesson had been learnt from the near Biblical exodus of the Muslim scholars: the front men were to people such as Hamza Tzortzis and Abdur Raheem Green – converts, with English as their first language and trained to be politically correct (that didn’t work out for Green though) and moreover raised on a diet of rhetoric, dialectic and debate. They would do what Naik had and the scholars had not – they would give the Muslims intellectual shields and offensive weapons. Not only would the Muslims defend themselves in university and in life but they would strengthen Islam with converts. And if these converts were photogenic ‘white people’, so much the better. After all, what better proof could there be for the truth of Islam then that a child of European civilization and materialism had overcome all of the obstacles placed in it’s way and embraced the TRUTH! (the fact that the same argument could be used to establish the ‘truth’ of Scientology was not forthcoming). And if this child of the Enlightenment that had found it way back to the truth, converted…no, REVERTED was a European woman, then so much the better, for what greater proof could there be against those who claimed that Islam oppressed women. If so then why were their own women embracing it!

That they did so usually through marriage was also often forgotten…

But there was one slight problem: the issue with not knowing anything is that you cannot know if you are being taught the truth. The feel good factor with Naik and the IRF crowd was immense…but the content was mostly for those who knew relatively little – little Islam and little science that is. But for those who dug deeper, serious problems were waiting. Often more serious than the questions they had had in the first place. Not only was no-one upfront in IRF a serious academic scientist, despite their ballooning support and wealth, they resolutely refused to hire any. A lot of questions (polygyny, jihad, was Islam spread by the sword etc) were answered, to varying degrees of satisfaction. But questions such as the age of Aisha (RA), sex with slaves, FGM and reliability of hadith that had been the mainstay of academic orientalists for years went by the wayside.

In fact, ‘academic’ it was not.

Which would have been fine. Except now, by debating and ‘doing dawah’ to non-Muslims, Muslims were exposed to these issues too. A slew of Evangelical Christians were also on hand to bring to light any strange narration or tafseer under the sun. Answers brought new, tougher questions. Debates against mediocre opponents incited the wrath of more serious and learned ones.

Matched initially against atheist and polemicist opponents who had only bothered with a cursory study of Islam (if that), and never at an academic level (see Christian apologists, and Richard Dawkins himself reminded us that not only had he not read the Quran, he does not need to), the Muslims speakers came to realise that if their opponents don’t know anything about Islam, well, they don’t need to either…

The Muslims had traded scholars with little or no cultural sense or secular knowledge for ‘dawah carriers’ with presentation skills, oratory but neither secular nor Islamic knowledge.

It was a bad swap.

But cousin, business was booming! Nearly all universities had ‘Islamic Awareness’ weeks by now, bookings for speakers such as Hamza Tzortzis and many others came thick and fast, international engagements, seminars, Islamic conferences and television engagements followed. They became not only ‘Dawah guys’ but ‘intellectual activists’, ‘linguists’ ‘political analysts’ (both Muslims and their non-Muslim brethren had to suspend disbelief as nearly all of these qualifications were achieved unsupervised in the speakers’ bedrooms). But of course the Islamic ‘scholarship’ was still there: the dawah guys were always referring questions to, checking with or even studying under ‘People of Knowledge’. In the case of the biggest and most prominent organisation, these ‘People of Knowledge’ were none other than the same ones who had so recently beat a hasty retreat from campus: namely Haitham Haddad. Behind the scenes, all sectarian affiliations were preserved – IERA, like Naik, would never talk about sectarian issues or shia/sunni – but they did that as a front only. Administratively, they were run by hardliners such as Haddad who would never be seen dead with an Ashari let alone a Shia.

The new ‘defenders’, the ‘Dawah Carriers’ had not learnt Islam nor secular sciences – they had learnt politics and misdirection.

But who cared about that when there was the next debate with the student ‘atheist society’ to organise or the next Islamic Awareness stall? We could only hope that Hamza and Co would be back from Malaysia or wherever they had gone to emancipate the minds of Muslims in time! In fact, being a dawah guy was like being a rock star, just without the sex, drugs and rock and roll…well, maybe not without the sex: the ‘Big Three’ speakers of IERA during this period (Hamza Tzortzis, Adnan Rashid and A R Green) were all (or had been) coincidentally polygamous, the sunnah they had entirely randomly chosen to revive, you know instead of others such as redistribution of wealth or adopting orphans. And only a cynic would say that they took any pleasure in this act (even, when, strangely, the second wife in some cases was thereafter divorced after a very short period – but of course, only a cynic would say again that what in the West is called a ‘fling’ of a few months by a husband is called by others a ‘second marriage’ or a ‘misyar’).

So the dawah carriers were doing very well for themselves: fame, world travel, bringing back polygyny (hey, someone had to do it) and speaking at the Cambridge or Oxford Student Union (and when they got well known enough, a wage from IERA or at least a speakers fee).

The model that these ‘dawah carriers’ used, whatever organisation they belonged to, was usually the ‘Naikian’ one of confronting and debating the non-Muslims – but whereas he was in India jousting with individuals of debatable credibility such as William Campbell, Hamza and Co. in the UK were debating Theoretical Physicists, Philosophers of note and even politicians. It was all very glamorous to start with and they had a good degree of success: most of the western intellectuals had not bothered to conduct a study into Islam specifically and would just deploy the same general arguments against religion that they had with Christian Europe in mind. This gave them a huge handicap. The applause and accolades from Muslims multiplied and emboldened speakers like Tzortzis even started to venture ‘research papers’, in his case in Embryology (not being a biologist himself, he neglected to get it checked by one, though reassuringly, Haitham Haddad was on hand to make sure it was ‘Islamic’). Muslims were now even producing research! It was an unbelievable step forward. One could almost forget that nearly all of the Dawah carriers, like Tzortzis, were directly under the tutelage of the same group of ‘expelled’ and even extremist and sectarian scholars and banned groups (at least on campus) such as Hizb Ut Tahrir. They just had a different packaging. And of course, they were ‘converts’ – which for Muslims gave them instant celebrity status.

What could go wrong?

Well, a lot: for a start, academics have a habit of ‘learning things’ and ‘researching’, no matter how bigoted and uninformed they are. Rather than answering the doubts of the Muslims, by their debates and confrontational manner (not to say posturing and producing ‘research’ which…wasn’t) the ‘dawah carriers’ painted a target on the backs of the Muslim community once again. Secularists, atheists and even political groups turned their focus away from Christianity and started to focus on Islam. They saw it for the threat it was. And they rallied.

These people didn’t do their research in their bedroom and then submit it to ‘authorities’ Haitham Haddad (whose most prestigious teacher Ibn Baz said that anyone saying that the Earth was not flat was a disbeliever. Happily, he changed his mind at the behest of the Saudi monarchy) or Akram Nadwi (a faux Sufi and closet Salafist) but at the Library of Congress, CERN or The Perimeter Institute and then submitted it to reputable peer reviewed journals.

Street dawah is a very different thing – take the same model into MIT and you may have a problem:

MY NEIGHBOUR BETTY: Hi, nice day isn’t it?

ME: Lovely. I feel all warm inside.

MY NEIGHBOUR BETTY: Yes.

ME: …

MY NEIGHBOUR BETTY: How come Islam sucks?

ME: Who told you that Betty?

MY NEIGHBOUR BETTY: I saw it on the news, you’re okay love, but Muslims are forever killing people and all that. Why don’t you find nice English boy and settle down?

ME: It’s not true. You don’t believe everything you see on the news do you?

MY NEIGHBOUR BETTY: Hmmm…good point…

ME: You should read the Quran, don’t believe ‘The Man’ Betty, he’s out to get you. Fight The Power! Decide for yourself!

MY NEIGHBOUR BETTY: You’re right! Allah-huakbar!

Because most people trust people they know more than  they trust ‘the News’.

DAWAHWARRIOR:Kufr/Capitalism/Secularism/Liberalism/Atheism/Deism/Polytheism and Science and everything else sucks.

You suck also. I challenge you to a debate. Or dialogue. With respect of course.

Also, the Quran is embryologically accurate.

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: Young man, do you not think you are being a bit rash? Have you conducted a thorough analysis of these things that you speak of?

DAWAH WARRIOR: Of course I did. In my bedroom no less. I am a Intellectual Activist, Islamic Polemicist, Amateur Gynaecologist, Political Commentator, Blogger, Lover, Fighter, Linguist and part-time Thaumaturgist. I also practice Ikebana. I own the very hat that Che Guevara wore when he did that pose. And other cool stuff like that.

Also, I read about these things.

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: Where?

DAWAH WARRIOR: In books of course! What kind of question is that!

We need to have a proper dialogue and get to the truth

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS:…Look, for starters, you cannot say that science is not ‘true’ and then use it to establish the truth of your religious text can you, I think that is perhaps an epistemic contradiction.

DAWAH WARRIOR: No it isn’t.

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: Hmmm…why not

DAWAH WARRIOR: Because of ‘ontology’

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: What do you mean?

DAWAH WARRIOR: I just told you. We need to have a proper dialogue and get to the truth!

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: So are you saying that ‘Science’ is the criterion of truth?

DAWAH WARRIOR: It depends on ‘ontology’

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: …

Did you perchance consult with any embryologists or scientists before coming to your conclusions?

DAWAH WARRIOR: I don’t need to – I researched it myself and besides, Professor Keith Moore said that Embryology proves the Quran. What more do you want? You need to check your ‘ontology’.

PROFESSOR BOFFIN McBRAINS: Look, just having the opinion of one authority, even if it is big one, does not prove the case definitively, especially not in science. Einstein was great, but if no-one else thought his theories were worthwhile he would have struggled. So it is indeed intriguing that Keith Moore said that, but it was a long time ago; would it not be worthwhile to sit down with some more embryologists and sort things out, maybe reach a kind of ‘consensus’. Don’t you have the same concept in Islam? I believe you call it ‘ijma’ right?

DAWAH WARRIOR: That would be a waste of time. Also, you don’t know anything about Islam, I don’t appreciate you talking about stuff you know nothing about.

We need to have a proper dialogue and come to the truth.

PROFESSOR BOFFINS McBRIANS: I’ll admit I have not looked into Islam very deeply, but can you give me some good reasons that I should?

DAWAH WARRIOR: Because kufr sucks and Islam is peace.

PROFESSOR BOFFINS McBRAINS: But if Islam is so great, then  how come Muslim majority countries have such problems and are relatively lacking in many spheres? I find it problematic to abandon a tried and working system, however flawed for one which is unknown.

DAWAH WARRIOR: It is because in those countries they do not follow Islam and thus also suck. Also, it is the West’s fault.

You need to sort out your ‘ontology’.

PROFESSOR BOFFINS McBRAINS: Why do you keep saying that?

DAWAH WARRIOR: Because we need to have a proper dialogue and come to the truth.

I remember as a second year student in Newcastle when I first came across Hamza Tzortzis. It was on a Satellite Television Islamic channel that time (though I saw and met him many times in person as well) and he was not that well known. I was from a Muslim family, living away from home with the struggles and challenges that any young girl of my age has. University was tough – I was what they call conventionally attractive and I was also smart enough to know that guys were to get into my knickers whether they had a ‘Ramones’ T-shirt and a piecing or a beard and a thoub. I had a lot of questions about my community and it’s behaviour as well as many more imposed on me by the media and Islam-baiters.

Tzortzis was a breath of fresh air: he lobbied for rational arguments for the existence of God, he said that morality had no basis without God and backed it up convincingly. And he could talk about how the ‘Big Bang’ proved Islam until the proverbial cows came home. I went to my computer and set up a ‘Paypal’ account just so that I could donate to his website. I chased up all of his talks. Okay, it got a bit same-ey after a while, but there were debates and he was a great rhetorician. I was in love (intellectually of course).

Imagine my disappointment when I learnt that he had taken his arguments largely from an Evangelical Christian called William Lane Craig and another less well known but more honest speaker called Adam Deen, as opposed to from Al Ghazzali or the Asharite theologians as I had assumed. I was shocked when I found he had absolutely no consistency – he would say whatever he had to to win. In short, the man I had mistaken for a Socrates was in fact a sophist. He borrowed arguments that were palatable for public relations purposes from sects of Islam, that he as a Salafist, deemed heretical (granted, these were on insignificant issues such as whether God exists or not, but still). He told people to read Ibn Taymiyyah, a man who had deemed the very ‘Kalam Cosmological Argument’ Tzortzis had borrowed from Ghazzali (via Evangelical Christianity) to be heresy (and cliterectomy for women to be a virtue, he was the ‘father’ of FGM amongst Muslims in one sense).

It made no sense. The more I looked into it, the more I saw that he and his contemporaries would only give a Salafist answer, even if it was the most incredulous and unbelievable and unpalatable one. On issues where his teacher Haddad held shocking views, such as FGM and suicide bombing, Tzortzis would duck the issue entirely. He was more Nick Clegg than Caliph Umar. Tzortzis had no respect for non-salafist opinion unless they could get him an advantage in a debate with an atheist (they in turn were blissfully unaware that he was a Wahhabi anthropomorphist and as such could not even justifiably use most of his Kalaam Arguments). He was usually not well versed enough in them anyway to deploy them with any degree of success. His gaffes started to become famous. He stumbled on an easy question about apostasy because he tried to present the extremist Salafist opinion as the Islamic one (whereas for most Muslims, Salafism = heresy). His embryology paper had to be withdrawn, but his self-publicising nature became evident when he tried to cash in on this momentous gaffe of his which afflicted countless Muslims by then taking it upon himself to be the architect of a ‘New Approach to Quran and Science’, despite his colossal error, exposed by atheists, and the fact that he is neither a scientist nor a Quranic exegete (don’t worry, he got it checked by Haddad and Nadwi, the same guys who signed off on the embryology, so it should be fine. Oh, wait…).

He was supposed to be making it easy for British Muslims but he and his organisation were all for forcibly segregated events, his organisation would allow him to speak to women only audiences (nice work if you can get it guys eh?) but would not even allow Yvonne Ridley to speak to a mixed audience. In short, it was Saudi Islam with faux science, massive investment by British Muslim money and arguments for morality and the existence of God borrowed from people they considered heretics or unbelievers. It was kind of…their own religion.

I had indoctrinated my brother into the cult of the Dawah carriers and he became a helper to one of the most famous dawah organisations (which must needs remain anonymous). From him I heard about the lifestyle of some of the well known speakers, especially how they made the most of shall we say ‘access’ to women at segregated events. Not only that, but the organisations themselves had an unspoken incentive to single men and women to become helpers so that they could ‘find a halal partner’. It didn’t surprise me in the least: despite my access to the original Arabic texts and the fact that I had undertaken Islamic Studies at university, I had seen how keen many of the ‘Dawah carriers’ were to explain their ideas to me at their talks and events, as if I had not understood them (this was their equivalent of ‘So…do you come here often blah blah’). They were similarly keen to engage in e-mail correspondences and gave out their e-mail address to girls like me like Smarties. Less so to the guys at the events. ‘Organisers’ and ‘helpers’ were also forever coming up to me to ask if I was ‘looking’ (they meant for a husband). They paid particular attention to the marriage needs of converts or non-Asian or mixed race girls (like myself). Very liberal of them. Or maybe, like many other men, they were just after the exotic and the fashionable.

‘You do know what you are doing by helping out at these events don’t you?’ I told my brother, ‘You’re just like those guys who control the ‘backstage access’ at concerts or Hip-Hop shows. You’re just hoping for the left-overs from the famous guys aren’t you?!’. He didn’t contradict me. What was most ironic was that he was helping enforce segregation at Islamic talks for the express purpose of getting ‘access’ to the sisters! It was a most bizarre inversion: exude a public face of segregation and then use it to get a chance to pull.

Of course, not all Dawah personalities were like this, there were notable exceptions such as Paul Williams and Shabir Ally. But these people were more public Muslim intellectuals than Dawah personalities. And neither availed himself of the need to reinvigorate the practice of polygyny like Tzortzis and Co. Sadly, Williams and others like him were the exception rather than the rule.

Having studied Islam, I was shocked by the amateurish antics of IERA and other speakers. They showed hardly any improvement over the years I followed them and would answer according to their ideological biases and not Islamic orthodoxy and scholarship (see Appendix). They were joined by a whole slew of HT and ex-HT and secret HT speakers whose main concern was political posturing and indeed politicising Muslims (to their own ends of course) and nothing relating to genuine Islamic theology, law or practice. Worse, they conjured up answers to controversies and questions which were shockingly banal.

But in the country of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Muslims, starved of answers and left to fend for themselves for so long, lapped it up. And they continue to do so. Until the inevitable exposure and backlash, which will leave them as unguided and adrift as they always have been.

I remember once explaining the issue of the age of Aisha to a famous Dawah carrier. His knowledge was rudimentary at best and he could not understand that just because a narration was classed as ‘Sahih’ by muhadditheen, it didn’t mean that we took it into belief. I explained some basic hadith sciences to him from a Sunni and Ash’ari perspective and tried to tell him that accepting that she was nine at the time of sexual intercourse was not necessary. He shocked me by announcing that even if I was truthful in what I had said, in dawah it must be defended that she was nine since that was what was the belief of some Muslims. I will let the reader fathom the stupidity of defending every view of every Muslim. Of course, what he in fact meant was that rather than educate people of the fact that ahad narrations do not give certainty and that there is ikhtilaaf about not only the age of Aisha but even Khadijah and Muhammad (pbuh) himself, he would just take the easy way. Or rather, he would continue to attract bookings and funding from Wahhabi and Salafist organisations and events.

So there you have it, most of the so called ‘Dawah movement’ is a feel good initiative aimed at under siege and under confident Muslims. There is no empiric evidence of ‘converts’ by these movements though there is lots of empiric evidence that most converts to Islam leave thereafter. They aggravate and offend powerful academic interests in the West and thus bring even more sanction, intellectual and otherwise, onto the Islamic community. Most of the ‘answers’ the provide are not logically correct nor Islamically licit. Further, they have left the issues which really need an answer, such as slavery, FGM etc, for which Islam indeed has good answers, as you can see on this very site, untouched.

Further, females need to be warned that famous speakers such as Hamza Tzortzis seemingly lead a polyamorous lifestyle which is facilitated by their ‘celebrity speaker’ status.

Because by now, thoughtful reader, you have understood what I am trying to say. Some of my girlfriends go to concerts hoping to get backstage. But most of them are very careful – they know what goes on at concerts.

Have a look at the lifestyle of most dawah carriers and you will be equally careful about getting backstage at their events too…

New contributor Adil has produced a beautiful piece which is a real eye-opener. Agree or disagree, he is a fantastic essayist and a pleasure to read. I really hope to see more from him, as will you…

Recent years have seen an increasing number of Muslims, particularly younger ones, performing Dawah (sharing Islam with others) by means of philosophical argumentation in the public arena, often in the form of debates, whether formal or on the street. Whilst most people from any faith would agree that faith should not solely hinge on philosophical argumentation, using philosophical arguments is not inherently problematic; I certainly believe that a robust understanding of philosophy can strongly augment ones faith and address claims against it. Unfortunately, many Muslim popularisers of this style of argumentation continue to use methods of proselytisation which I, and other Muslims find problematic. The approach which I speak of can be crudely summarized as:

A hard line Salafi interpretation of Islam argued for with liberal use of scientific and only partially understood philosophical arguments which are conveyed in a point scoring style of argumentation

Whilst this description is inapplicable to most Islamic spokespeople, it holds true for a significant minority of Dawah-givers who have become very popular amongst young Muslims who are enamoured with their confident rhetoric. One organisation which embodies the above description is The Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA) whose stated goal is ‘To present Islam to wider society’; a laudable cause which needs to be done more and done well. However, I have great concerns about the methodology and ethos of the organisation (at least the UK branch), and some of their imitators who set up various Dawah stalls around University campuses and other areas. Prominent speakers from or affiliated with iERA whose views and/or methodology I find troubling include Hamza Tzortzis, Imran Ibn Mansur AKA ”Dawahman”, Abduraheem Green and Adnan Rashid. To learn more of the history and emergence of this style of Dawah, I recommend a truly excellent and eloquent article named ‘Dawah Carriers Are Destroying Your Faith….And Having A Good Time In The Process’

While I have reservations about critiquing the methods of people who have indeed successfully brought others to Islam, I believe it that most of those people came to Islam in spite of the shortcomings which I discuss below, and that there are better methods to convey Islam then this style of apologia. Without further ado here are my top 10 issues with the Dawah carriers I have mentioned, though this critique is not limited to them.

1.) Their arguments have been Shamelessly Plagiarised

It is now common knowledge that Hamza Tzortzis and ‘Dawahman’ have copied most of their philosophical arguments from popular American evangelist William Lane Craig. Tzortzis fans typically respond by pointing out that Craig got his arguments from medieval Muslim theologians (which holds true for the famous Kalaam cosmological argument, as Craig candidly admits). There is nothing wrong with borrowing ideas; but as every University student knows, if you want to use someone else’s ideas, at least take the time to shuffle the wording a little and swap a few words for some appropriate synonyms even if to avoid the plagiarism software! The fact that Dawahman, Tzortzis et al did not invent their arguments does not diminish their credence. The fact that they blatantly copied William Lane Craig does. True, this does not invalidate their conclusions (nor does the fact that fellow Salafis typically detest Kalaam arguments), but it is perfectly natural to lose trust in an argument when it has been borrowed verbatim from someone else, particularly an exclusivist Christian evangelist who also criticises Islam. But who knows? Perhaps, to borrow an argument from our atheist friends; we live in an infinite multiverse where some universes will yield Muslim and Christian apologists who at the same time and same place will generate almost word for word identical arguments? But I thought we were above that logic? Read some quotes from Hamza Tzortzis and Dawahman and some from Bill Craig and decide what is most plausible.

These quotes are taken from Hamza Tzortis’ article responding to Richard Dawkins The God Delusion alongside quotes from an article by William Lane Craig entitled ‘does God exist’

Hamza Tzortzis: “The existence of a life permitting universe is due to conditions that must have been fined-tuned to a degree that is literally incalculable. Take the following examples:”

William Lane Craig: “The existence of intelligent life depends upon a conspiracy of initial conditions which must be fine-tuned to a degree that is literally incomprehensible and incalculable.”

Hamza Tzortzis: “The Strength of Gravity & the Atomic Weak Force: Physicist P. C. W. Davies has calculated that a change in the strength of gravity or of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10¹⁰⁰ would have prevented a life permitting universe.”

William Lane Craig: “For example, the physicist P. C. W. Davies has calculated that a change in the strength of gravity or of the atomic weak force by only one part in 10¹⁰⁰ would have prevented a life-permitting universe.”

Hamza Tzortzis: “Big Bang’s Low Entropy Condition: Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of the Big Bang’s low entropy condition existing by chance are on the order of one out of 10¹⁰. Penrose comments, “I cannot even recall seeing anything else in physics whose accuracy is known to approach, even remotely, a figure like one part in 10¹⁰.”“

William Lane Craig: “Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of the Big Bang’s low entropy condition existing by chance are on the order of one out of 10^{10^(123)}.  Penrose comments, “I cannot even recall seeing anything else in physics whose accuracy is known to approach, even remotely, a figure like one part in 10^{10^(123)}.”“

Note that Craig quotes Penrose Directly while Hamza accidently drops ^123, leaving Penrose describing the more modest figure of ten billion!

And finally, from Hamza alone:

Hamza Tzortzis: According to Penrose the volume of the phase space would be 1/10 to the power of X which is 10¹²³. This is smaller than the ratio of a Proton! This precision is much, much greater than the precision that would be required to hit an individual proton if the entire universe were a dartboard!

It is clearly up to the reader to decide what the ratio of a proton is! Doesn’t a ratio have to entail at least two entities? Did he mean radius? Who knows?

*Note: I believe Hamza has updated his article since and given proper references to the Christian apologists where he got his arguments from. Firsthand evidence of blatantly copying Bill Craig can be seen in some of his lectures and debates on the existence of God.

As for the Dawahman, read this transcript from the beginning of a video featuring him entitled: 10 Ways The Dawkins Delusion Proves That Allah Exists!

Science cannot account for mathmatical and logical truths. Science pressuposes logical and mathmathical truths so for science to try to explain it would be tantamount to science going around in circles. Science cannot account for metaphysical truths, the self, the conscious, if this external world is in fact a reality, it is rational that we can but scientifically we cannot show that. Science nor does it tell us anything about moral truths it cant account for whether the nazis in the concentration camps were evil which of course objectively with objective morality we can say yes they were evil but science doesnt comment on whether it was evil whether it was not evil. The same way science cannot account for aesthetic truths for example if you see your wife and she looks beautiful as you say in the UK she looks real nice with make up and everything. ”Babe you look *something* (I think he says ‘banging baby’ or some sort of back ally slang) today Mashallah” SubhanAllah. Thats an aesthetic truth. Science cannot comment on your perception of beauty right? And finally, most surprisingly, science cannot comment on, cannot account for science itself because for you to say that science is the means to absolute truth how do you scientifically show that to be true? You cant scientifically show that statement to be truth its self refuting. And science actually …it …. many scientific theories for example the erm, Einsteins theory of specific, no special relatively sorry it hinges on the assumption that when light travels from point A to point B it travels at a constant speed but you can’t prove that, you have to assume that so science is based on faith to some degree.

Smart stuff right? Even with the gangster speech. How does it compare to William Lane Craig describing rational notions which science cannot prove to Peter Atkins during a debate:

Logical and mathematical truths cannot be proven by science. Science presupposes logic and math so that to try to prove them by science would be arguing in a circle, metaphysical truths, like there are other minds other then my own or that the external world is real or that the past was not created 5 minutes ago with the appearance of age are rational beliefs which cannot be scientifically proven. Ethical beliefs about statements of value are not accessible by the scientific method. You can’t show by science whether the nazi scientists in the camps did anything evil as opposed to the scientists in Western Democracy. Aesthetic judgements number four cannot be accessed by the scientific method, because the beautiful, like the good cannot be scientifically proven; and finally, most remarkably would be science itself. Science cannot be justified by the scientific method. Science is permeated with ah unproveable assumptions for example in the special theory of relativity the whole theory hinges on the assumption that the speed of light is constant in a one way direction between any two points A and B but that strictly cannot be proven. We simply have to assume that in order to hold to the theory.

Even with Dawahman adding the gangster talk in the middle I doubt this would even pass a plagiarism check!

The sad thing is, I believe these arguments themselves are pretty strong. Clearly, there are some rational notions which science cannot account for, and the Kalaam cosmological argument for me, robustly defends the need for a cause of the Universe. The plagiarism however, is blatant and simply undermines the arguments, given that they have been pretty much copied verbatim from someone else. Also are Salafis meant to be ‘imitating kuffar’ like this? I will leave the author to fathom some of the problems entailed by hardline Salafis copying the overwhelming majority of their religious apologia from a hard-line Christian evangelist who strongly criticises Islam, but they are fairly obvious. Where is Abduraheem Green to slap down his buddies for copying Bill Craig so blatantly? Given Mr Greens paranoia about ‘imitating Kuffar’ he is a walking definition of the term ‘slippery slope’; is he not worried that if his colleagues are copying everything else Bill Craig says maybe they might start worshipping Jesus soon?

2.) They are unwilling to criticise extremism….and unwilling not to embody it either

This concept differs from the common scenario created by Islamophobes when a Muslim does so much as sneeze on someone and a demand goes out to Muslims worldwide to ‘condemn’ the guilty parties, pretty much to clear their name, as if Muslims bear some sort of collective responsibility by default.

This is different. This is an unwillingness to whole heartedly criticise brutal practices which practitioners justify (or try to reconcile) using Islam; and with the same vigour as they do unto their more preferred opponents i.e. non Muslims and non Salafi Muslims (The extent to which they view differences between the two is debateable). This is particularly applicable to people they share platforms with (or have been tutored by), such as the preacher Haitham al Haddad who regards Osama Bin Laden as a martyr and recommends female circumcision. Other then saying that killing civilians is not Islamic, which granted, even hard-line groups such as iERA and Hizb ut-Tahrir will do, harsh critique seldom if ever happens; one pertinent reason being that several prominent Dawah popularisers are themselves extremists. Yes, extremism is a promiscuously used term and often one given to Muslims who consistently practice or have the ‘audacity’ to apply Islamic principles anywhere beyond their own homes. However just because Islamophobic neo con stooges (i.e. Maajid Nawaaz) overuse the term does not render its use redundant in all circumstances. By extremism I mean comments like this:

The purpose of the jizya is to make the Jew and the Christian know that they are inferior and subjugated to Islam, OK?

Even by some statement that you can make. For example, slandering and attacking the Muslims unjustly, such as you find many Muslims have done this about the Taliban. Slandering them and attacking them and reviling them based upon news that has come from the disbelieving media, helping the kuffar against the Muslims.

You know guys, I’ll tell you something right? I’ll probably, someone at least is probably going to want to assassinate me after what I’m going to say here but you know, I don’t really get very sad when, you know, a non-believer dies

I was staying with my parents and my dad came down and told me, you know, early in the morning, you know, that Lady Diana had died, you know…hamdulillah…hamdulillah” (laughter).

…if you find the Jew or a Christian walking down the street, push them to the side *makes pushing gesture*. It is well-known from what Umar ibn al-Khattab and the khulafa ar rashidin used to implement, that the Jew and Christian was not allowed to ride on a horse when the Muslim is riding on a horse. They would have to walk”

”Here we need to concentrate on our immediate problem and that is kuffar, we’re surrounded by them”

Who are these comments from? Some random Dawah guy off the street who doesn’t really represent anyone? Is this a strawman? This is Abduraheem Green, the CHAIRMAN of iERA, described as a ‘warm and engaging character,’ on their website! To my knowledge, he has not retracted any of these statements nor have Hamza Tzortzis, Yusuf Chambers or any of his other colleagues condemned or criticised his statements. Yes, things can be taken out of context, even statements which might appear damning. I would not, for instance claim Hamza Tzortzis to be extreme based on his infamous comment ‘as Muslims we reject the idea of freedom of speech or even freedom.’ Perhaps he would go on to articulate the implications of unregulated freedom of speech or the philosophical incoherence of absolute freedom, I have my doubts, but who knows? The furious and incoherent statements from Mr Green (and many many more), however are on YouTube for all to hear and only sound viler when heard in their full context. Green, being a very knowledgeable follower of Islam must surely remember that according to Muhammad (pbuh), a violent speaker (which Green certainly can be) will not enter paradise. Or perhaps that was not meant to be set in stone? Are you a modernist Mr Green?

3.) They are often rude and intrusive

One would think representatives of a system which makes politeness and dignity incumbent, would be zealous paragons of good manners. Whilst most Islamic speakers do embody such virtues; for iERA speakers like Hamza Tzortzis and Dawahman, maintaining dignity seems optional at times. Whilst they may not surpass the obnoxiousness of the subjects of their clashes (Richard Dawkins, Laurence Krauss et al) it is not unreasonable to hold them to a much higher standard. Some gems from Mr Tzortzis include:

-The following jab during a debate with Professor Pervez Hoodboy: ”Its abit of a culture clash. In Britain people tend to be more nuanced. Maybe because you’re a product of the Muslim world which you hate so much” (Which lead the Professor to storm out)

-Comparing Professor Graham Thompson to a baby during a debate about the existence of God

-Asking a debating opponent in Ian Bryce ”if you can even read.” (Bryce was a particularly crude and vitriolic opponent in the debate; but was this not an opportunity to showcase ‘reasoning with what is best’ as the Qur’an demands?)

-Jabs and low blows throughout his infamous debate with Professor Laurence Krauss. Granted, Krauss, as usual debated in an insulting and arrogant manner; but so what Hamza? Were you trying to ‘imitate the kuffar’ or something? Brother Green won’t be happy about this.

-On TV: ”I call him Richard DORKins.” Admittedly, I have called Richard Dawkins worse at some point. But I am not publically representing Islam on TV, and would know better than to be so childish if I was. Surely someone so interested in salvation would know better than to alienate someone for your own petty pleasure by insulting their surname on TV? This is as puerile as an Islamophobe making a stupid quip about the HAM in Hamza!

For all of the above and more; Tzortzis remains a bastion of etiquette compared to his more shrill compatriot; the Dawahman. For those unaware, Dawahman is a young proselytiser who amalgamates Islam with back alley slang, and (according to him) ‘swaggah’ with nice dress which is done purely for the pleasure of Allah (I never realised Allah was so interested in fashion; no doubt were Dawahman stuck on a desert island with no hope of rescue, he would put equal effort in retaining his ‘swaggah.’ I always imagined that the beauty being eluded to in this beautiful saying related more to the beauty of the Universe, and animals and the natural world but perhaps mine is a silly modernist interpretation or something). My qualms with Dawahman however are not limited to my impression of his image and mannerisms, which are not to my taste but admittedly subjective. Less subjective is his rudeness and social ineptitude. Perhaps Dawahman has forgotten Qur’an 6:108: (”And do not insult those they invoke other than Allah , lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge” ) if the following of his antics are anything to go by:

-A cringe worthy sung adaptation of Merry Christmas: ”Merry Shirkmas.” (Shirk: Ascribing partners to God)

- (To a random passer-by on the street straight after ascertaining that he had a girlfriend) ”If she breaks your heart which she most likely will or you’ll do the same, you’re not going to get married trust me” And later telling him to remove an earring and throw it away in front of him because ‘it was gay.’

-A myriad of jabs and insults against Richard Dawkins (this can be found in a video ’10 Ways The Dawkins Delusion Proves That Allah Exists!’) including a mocking: ”You fail” after each point of refutation against Dawkins, ”This is why I call you a DORK” ”What an idiot” ”Richard Dawkins is a pratt.”

All of these immaturities however, pale compared to the utterly embarrassing scene consisting of Dawahman harassing Laurence Krauss following his debate with Hamza Tzortzis, yelling that he had a question and was ‘oppressed’ because he was initially ignored. Picture a shrill and hyperactive adolescent asking you to define a word chanting ‘answer my question answer my question’ several times; putting a microphone in front of your mouth for a split second and then laughing at you shouting down the microphone ‘FROM HIS OWN MOUTH, he couldn’t explain what empiricism is’ whilst jumping up and down. You now have a impression of what followed; though even were I an adept writer I would not be able to articulate just how cringe-worthy and embarrassing the scene was. Unsurprisingly a video of this scene now features on many Islamophobic channels where Dawahmans behaviour is used as an excuse to bash Islam and Muslims wholesale.

Unfortunately, while many street Dawah speakers are polite and dignified, the approach of others resembles a bullying nature; threatening people with the promise of hell, pressuring interested persons to take the Shahada on the spot, and seldom genuinely engaging with the other view but nodding and say ‘yep’ and maybe ‘I appreciate that’ once or twice before interrupting them; sure, much of this anecdotal; such that I am willing to concede that maybe I have just been unlucky and heard of a disproportionate amount of bad cases by chance; I certainly hope so.

4.) They are disingenuous

There is a fine line between vindicating your views and point scoring, and invariably even the people with the best of intentions will probably cross it at some point. For many Dawah warriors however, that line is far on the horizon…behind them.

The first and only time I witnessed Hamza Tzortzis in the flesh was at a talk titled ‘Multiculturalism and Islam’ which I eagerly anticipated, expecting a scholarly discussion on how Islam tackles with the issues posed by multiculturalism; perhaps how using such principles would help us today; but how did Hamza start? By announcing that he would phrase the title of the talk as ”Why Islam.” He then proceeded to talk about anything but multiculturalism (which was not discussed at all) and trotted out his arguments pinched straight from Bill Craig! Disingenuous to say the least as are some of his arguments in practice (Not to deny the intrinsic merit of the arguments themselves).

When arguing whether God exists, Hamza typically uses William Lane Craigs arguments: Kalaam cosmological argument, fine tuning, objective morality, and then the inimitably of the Qur’an (instead of Craigs Resurrection of Jesus argument). Seasoned debaters like atheists Dan Barker and Ed Buckner knew what the name of the game was and tried to refute Craigs, I mean, Hamzas arguments, and Hamza responded to their rebuttals and so forth. Fine. Other academics were not fully aware of the nature of this type of debate were clearly unprepared and not aware of the nature of the debate (Professors Graham Thompson and Pervez Hoodboy who Hamza Tzortzis debated being two such examples). A suitable response from the Muslim speaker in the rebuttal session would be to address the fact that there is obviously some misunderstanding about what the debate is supposed to entail, and that the different approaches need to be reconciled and perhaps requesting the other speaker to consider the arguments themselves and their relevance. But in practice the following usually happens; ”The Professor was unable to refute this contention, that contention, this contention and that contention,” Strictly speaking this may be true, but beating someone ‘on points’ because they had not knowingly signed up for this does not even help the cause because neither speakers are properly engaging with the others arguments. Point scoring and poor debate etiquette (which I know many atheist debaters show, which is why the Muslim debater should argue his case even with the ‘handicap’ of excellent debate etiquette and not by point scoring) only preaches to the converted.

I also take issue with the argument based on the ”inimitably of the Qur’an when presented as one of several arguments for the existence of God; while its conclusion may be true; it is simply a disingenuous and unfalsifiable argument when used in a debate format. Typically the speaker will assert that the Qur’an is outside the productive capacity of the Arabic language, the best Arab poets and writers cannot match it, and it has an unimaginably high ratio of rhetorical devices per sentence. This is a pretty good argument if you want to score points, because no one can even attempt to falsify it in the space of a few short minutes. What is the opponent supposed to do; learn Arabic and then try to make a sentence crammed with more rhetorical devices? According to the those who put forth this argument ”It doesn’t matter if you don’t know Arabic because this is objective and everyone in the world who studied the Qur’an knows this.” One might as well say ‘it is a miracle. Just trust me.’ At no point am I contesting the conclusion of this argument; I would expect a revelation to be written in a unique linguistic manner but instead of just asserting this to score in an argument; one would get far more respect by saying along the lines of: ‘This isn’t an argument that I’m trying to win the debate with but I urge you, as a seeker of truth to look at the Qur’an in your own time and the opinions of various academics and so forth about it etcetera’ In a debate format this argument could be made about pretty much any other holy books, even if the claims were false, and it would still be impossible to falsify within the format of a short debate!

Finally, Kalaam (dialectics or speculative philosophy in theology) is completely at odds with the Salafi ideology of groups like iERA. Does Hamza Tzortzis realise that his use of the Kalaam cosmological argument would be considered a despised and heretical innovation to Salafi scholars? Does he realise that not only is the principle of his using the argument inconsistent, but the argument itself it is incompatible with the anthropomorphic conception of God which his beloved Ibn Taymiyya had? A God which an actual face and actual body parts? Salafis using the Kalaam Cosmological argument are risking a catastrophic rebuttal from atheists when they realise that Salafis believe in tajseem (anthropomorphism) and would rebutt them along the lines of ‘What is the explanation God?’ as their conception of God actually shares characteristics with contingent entities if he has a face and hands and a body etc.

In conclusion, stealing arguments from ‘Kafir’ (Note: I have no problem with using arguments from non Muslims but unlike the likes of iERA I do not regard non Muslims as kafir by default; and I would also have decency not to shamelessly plagiarise them) which are at inconsistent with their own theology is intellectually dishonest sophistry, and I think their opponents see it.

5.)’‘God is not merciful”

This is a reference to the theology of Zakir Naik, Adnan Rashid, Hamza Tzortzis et al which they staunchly maintain is ”what Islam clearly says.” Two obvious examples include their view that being a non Muslim effectively warrants eternal damnation no matter what (barring a few extreme circumstances such as never hearing the word Islam; though one cannot help but consider the pointlessness of telling people about Islam if most people who hear of it will be automatically damned), and that even non violent apostasy deserves capital punishment.

Regarding the former; the salvation question is a complex and difficult one, (a book I recommend for learn more about this is ‘Islam and the fate of others’ by Professor Mohammad Hassan Khalil) which I cannot comprehensively address here; but merely point out that to many of the greatest Muslim thinkers, the damnationist paradigm which is now propagated was not self evidently ”what Islam clearly says.” Have the Dawah warriors read Al Ghazali who believed that the hereafter would eventually be like this life in that the majority of people will be glad that they exist rendering damnation a fate for a minority? Perhaps the quasi Universalism of Ibn Arabi or the eventual universal salvation which Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya believed was necessary in order to be consistent with absolute mercy; regarding the fire to be an agent of purification? Do they know that Ibn Hazm was unable to reconcile his staunch damnationist stance with the mercy of God and argued that God was actually not gracious nor merciful in a way humans relate to? Do they realise that even ultraconservative Ibn Taymiyya who they love quoting believed that one day the fires of hell would be extinguished? (Some have contested that he held this view; this is addressed in the aforementioned book).

Have modern day Dawahmen read the vast body of scholarship suggesting that the state of ‘Kuffar’ is an active state of covering the truth when it has been made evident and not merely a passive state of not possessing belief? Some scholars go further to say that only people who actually know that Islam is true and then reject it fit the Qur’anic conception of a disbeliever. Are they all deviants? In essence, the salvation theology of Dawahmen is very similar to original sin in practice; if you are not the right religion you are pretty much damned by default; not for wantonly and deliberately turning away from the truth. Whether the Dawahmen have it right or not, is not the sole issue here, rather the disingenuous implication, if not assertion that theirs on this matter is the only remotely viable (some of their followers will even claim ‘non deviant’) view. For the conception of God held by the Dawahmen, statements of God’s mercy are but hollow disclaimers and not befitting the Islam of compassion and mercy and justice in any real sense of the words.

6.) They make outrageous generalisations about other belief systems

While many Islamic apologists aspire to project as accurate a view of different belief systems or political systems as possible, such that even adherents to those systems would be happy with the way they are presented; others prefer to grossly generalise both the ideologies, and their followers in a not too dissimilar fashion to the way Muslims sometimes get smeared across the board by Islamophobes.

Before going a step further; I am not a liberal, nor a feminist (invariably I will get accused of being one; or being ‘pro liberal,’ and even the fact that I have stated I am not liberal nor a feminist may well be used as evidence that I am, something about ‘denial,’ we shall see). I am also very critical of many conceptions of liberalism and feminism, and I also know that the founding fathers of liberalism were far less tolerant of other belief systems then one might assume. Finally, I realise that some generalisations are inevitable and not inherently bad, providing people are aware of exceptions. ‘Christians believe in the divinity of Jesus,’ is a generalisation which does not always hold true, but is not wholly inappropriate. The stereotypes about liberals and feminists which have become a target for several prominent Muslim spokespeople however, are much less frequently applicable to those who call themselves liberals or feminists; who on the whole do not fit, the career orientated, family detesting, religion hating, male hating bigoted persona which is described as what feminism and liberalism entails.

Invariably this gets countered by the claim that there is no standard to hold feminists to account and thus, Femen activists and other extremists are not really violating any feminist principles, whereas a violent Muslim can objectively be shown to violate Islamic ones because the scriptures and so forth condemn such behaviour. They will then come to the heart of the matter and state that Islam is sufficient and feminism and liberalism are Kufr (denial of God/his commandments) and should not be the way you address the world; ergo calling yourself a Muslim feminist is Kufr because feminism is not an Islamic concept. Recently, Tariq Ramadan said that he didn’t mind feminism providing he got to define it. He was scathingly criticised by Abdullah Al Andalusi, from the Muslim Debate Initiative who argued that the same could be said of the word ‘gobbledygook,’ and that the logical conclusion of Tariq’s approach would be that one could call themself a Muslim polytheist but define polytheist as different aspects of God or a Muslim atheist but define atheist as rejecting other Gods and so forth. This fails to recognise that even if a principle like feminism is UnIslamic, common sense dictates that it is at least not as overtly logically contradictory as polytheism, given that the Islamic declaration of faith itself states that there is only one God! Furthermore, it is invariable that we will give ourselves labels in addition to ‘Muslim,’ but providing these do not contradict Islamic principles I cannot see the problem. Is there a problem with a Muslim calling themselves an environmentalist? Or a humanitarian? The above logic would demand that a Muslim couldn’t call him/herself either! Any alleged problems with a not set in stone definition attributed to feminism are equally applicable here! Just as there is nothing in the book of feminism saying do not protest Femen style, there is no rule in environmentalism saying do not murder people who destroy the rainforest; is it Kufr to be a Muslim environmentalist?

I propose the seemingly radical suggestion of using more ‘nuance’ (something Hamza Tzortzis insists his opponents should use) and look at people’s individual views for what they actually are. If a Muslim calls themselves a feminist but by feminism they merely mean that women are intrinsically of the same value as men, then why anathematise them and play the quotation marks game when describing them as Muslim? If a Muslim refers to himself/herself as a feminist and is blatantly an outrageous provocateur (like Mona Eltahaway) and is clearly trying to stigmatise men for instance, then by all means criticise them and I will too.

7.) They liberally make implicit takfir (excommunicating a Muslim as being an apostate)

One might think that groups who constantly bemoan the disunity of the Ummah and how fitna and discord is everywhere would avoid alienation of other Muslims as much as they possibly could; but you would be wrong. Muslims who critique the methods of organisations like iERA, or their doctrines, or live in a manner which is deemed to be too liberal (and believe me, the bar for too liberal is set very very low) can expect to have the validity of their faith challenged. The act of openly declaring a Muslim a non Muslim is a very strong one and a false accusation of Kufr (ingratitude/rejection of God) is a great sin; so explicit takfir is rare. Instead, the offending Muslims will be henceforth referred to as ”Muslims” (and only with inverted commas); or referred to in other scathing terms; clearly implying that their being Muslim is merely a title and not an applicable description of them.

What is interesting not note that this implicit takfir is generally used against Muslims who are too modern and liberal; but seldom if ever towards Muslims who are ultraconservative, even if their ideals and behaviour are completely insane. When was the last time anyone from the Muslim debate initiative or iERA scathingly questioned the ‘Muslimness’ of the Taliban (a group Abduraheem Green said Muslims must not criticise)? True, I have heard one or true remarks that such groups unfortunately have been using some UnIslamic methods (this will sometimes be said in a backhand way i.e. they are copying Western Utilitarian style warfare; which might be true, but surely that warrants even harsher and more frequent criticism!), but the contempt and ‘witheringness’ in the critique of the Muslim groups which truly drag the name of Islam through the mud is conspicuously absent.

8.) ”Aisha WAS 9. You’d better believe it”

While this may not sound top ten problem worthy; some popularisers have made it so, and will not even suffer to respect the view that others have that Aisha was older when she married Muhammad (pbuh) as if this were some sort of a trial to prove ones worthiness. I do not wish to get stuck into the various evidences that Aisha was older then 9; personally I think strong evidences exist, but I do not wish to discuss them here. This issue here is that numerous Dawah personalities anathematise people who do not accept that it is an Aqeeda (belief) issue. One would think, given that their notion of salvation is generally a case of ”Muslims, heaven no matter what, perhaps after a stint in hell; non Muslims, remain in hell no matter what,” they would show some flexibility on this issue. One wonders, if push comes to shove whether they would rather people remain non Muslim and believe Aisha was 9 then be Muslim and believe she was older. Or perhaps they are bound to give certain answers because their funding sources (including donations from Saudi) might dry up were this issue not defended ‘properly.’ One can only speculate.

9.) They encourage Islamophobic activity and alienate people from Islam

How attractive is a soft spoken, well researched and original scholar as a target for a ‘debunking’ video? Comb the internet and you may find one or two if you try hard enough, but not many. Contrast that with a loud, ill mannered, confrontational apologist who has made numerous gaffes, plagiarised many of his arguments and has (barely) closeted extreme views. A phrase involving flies comes to mind. Many popular anti Islam channels and blogs are only as ever present as they are because of popularisers from organisations like iERA; which is observable by the number of videos featuring them; there are about as many anti Islam videos online as there are Islamic videos featuring Hamza Tzortzis! Contrary to what the proud counter-claim might be; this is not indicative of people believing they are right and desperately trying to stop them; in many cases I fear they are looking for easy meat; easy meat which they have found in the form of Dawahman harassing Professor Krauss, Adnan Rashid and Hamza Tzortzis crashing an atheist convention and Abduraheem Green raving like a lunatic about how disgusting non Muslims are amongst other things.

Negative attention may have been positive for Muhammad Ali but it is not positive for the message of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and I firmly believe that there are Muslim apologists who generate as much negative attention as positive; from their inconsistent methodology to their extreme views. Yes some people have converted to Islam because of them; but how many more people have been scared away from Islam (including those born into it) by their harassment or damnationist theology or refusing to even respect the view that Aisha was anything other than 9 years old when she married the Prophet? What happens when someone who’s faith was affirmed by arguments for the existence of God realises that they were plagiarised almost verbatim from someone else, even if they were actually valid arguments?

Another question to ponder is what is the retention rate of people who convert from street Dawah? Given that many of them go into the conversation knowing next to nothing about Islam and go through a flow chart of questions which ends in them taking the Shahada, can we really be certain that most of them stay Muslim? It would be very easy for some new converts who converted quickly because of being put on the spot to go straight home, sleep on it, and convince themselves they just did it for a laugh almost, much as it hurts to think. Without an intellectually fulfilling, holistic, and relevant framework to live (which cannot be delivered in a 20 minute Dawah session) a convert must be very proactive in order to cope. Certainly, some people who give Dawah also support converts, but is the hardline (which need not mean ‘most authentic’) Islam of the Dawahmen the Islam the convert signed up to? He knew he would have to pray and fast and not drink alcohol but did he realise a beard was obligatory or that all his family are damned almost by default for not being Muslim? Maybe the Salafi paradigm (billed to the convert as the holistic Islamic paradigm) is not so appealing. Of course, not all people who proselytise do teach this; Shabir Ally, the president of the Islamic information and Dawah centre in Toronto for instance would reject both claims; and I think he is a brilliant and wise representative of Islam, but I am not criticising such people.

10.) There are better people out there to listen to

I am not alone in being disillusioned with the style of Dawah which I have described and the views of some of its deliverers. Since becoming disenchanted, I went on a search for academics and spokespeople whose work I felt I could place more trust in (I dare someone from iERA to criticise me for the fact that some of them are non Muslim while keeping a straight face). Fortunately I found many, who I have found far more credible, consistent and intellectually honest. Below, I list a few whose works I have found enlightening and intellectually fulfilling. If you are interested religious and Islamic thought, starting from the big questions like the existence of God, the problem of evil, views on salvation and other important questions in religion I recommend a search for books, podcasts, videos or any other resources with material from the following individuals. For all their superior academic credentials (to my knowledge iERA does not actually have any accredited academics, maybe because Western Universities are indoctrination/disbelief centres according to their chairman) none of them use jargon to intellectually infatuate a philosophically illiterate audience and they are straightforward to follow.

Shabir Ally; The president of the Islamic Information & Dawah Centre International in Toronto, Canada.

Alvin Plantinga; One of the leading analytic philosophers of the 20th and 21st century. Even the aforementioned William Lane Craig looks upto him, though unlike Craig, Plantinga has more inclusive views on other religions and salvation.

Keith Ward; Former Regius professor of divinity at Oxford University and one of the best modern day philosophers I have had the privilege to listen to. Ward has criticised Christian fundamentalism and defended Islam on several occasions.

Paul Bilal Williams; not a scholar but has written many insightful articles on his blog bloggingtheology.org.uk and has participated in numerous insightful debates.

Gai Eaton (now deceased); A British writer and Sufi scholar. There are few things I would not have given to meet this great man before he died.

Timothy Winter; A lecturer of Islamic studies at Cambridge University

Mohammad Hassan Khalil; Associate professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University

Richard Swinburne: An Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and an author of many excellent books

Seyyed Hossein Nasr: A Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University and a prominent Islamic philosopher

Karen Armstrong: An excellent British author and commentator known for her books on comparative religion

In summary, while spreading information on Islam, for purpose of creating a more harmonious and attracting converts is a noble cause; but as we have seen, this does not mean that everyone who aims to spread Islam can do no wrong. I believe that many of the methods used to spread Dawah do not capture the grace and beauty of Islam, from their delivery, to their theology and lack of substance. Lack of substance? How many converts are shown how to truly live by Islamic principles? Converts are instructed how to pray, fast and perhaps give charity; maybe refrain from gossiping at a push. How many of them are told that if they pick up litter or show kindness to an animal they have done an act of worship? How many of them are told just how much emphasis Islam places on kindness and helpfulness from everyday acts to people you know and people you don’t, to how ethical your lifestyle is? There might be a reference here or there, but the peripheral importance of these notions is generally evident.

Let us picture (and this will take some imagination); a Western country with a minority of Muslims where every Muslim family is the most liked family in their neighbourhood. They mow the lawn for their elderly neighbours; they pick up litter from the street; they are friendly; they have a reputable job but it is common knowledge they give much of their money to good causes, not that they would ever mention it; their kids are the nicest and most hard working in school; they volunteer; they give food to the homeless shelter; and they visited the racist old man who told them to ‘go back home’ when he got sick. How and why can they do all this? Because their religion teaches it. Sounds like an interesting religion; whether ‘true’ or not it certainly has some good things to say. Perhaps there are still (apparent) intellectual problems in the way of embracing this religion for some people. Perhaps some people now do want to hear some proofs in the form of arguments. Consider now how people will consider these arguments. With objectivity; prepared, even hoping to believe that the philosophical foundations are sound; as opposed to when arguments comes from a loud and annoying apologist where the natural and instant reaction to any of their arguments would quite plausibly be ‘This guy is shrill, annoying, socially inept and thinks I should automatically burn in hell because I can’t understand a word game with a language which I dont even understand. How can I establish this world view cannot be true? Maybe google ”Dawahman debunked” and get acquainted with all the channels there and all of their videos. I think I’ll learn about Islam from them instead. Interesting. Says here Islam was started by a paedophile…and all Muslims have a duty to wage jihad…a site called Jihadwatch should clue me up on that…, ‘

Maybe, just maybe, a few more of us could, whilst having a robust knowledge of philosophy, spread Islam by being the best Muslims and the best people (the former should inescapably entail the latter) we can be; and making it clear we do not merely want to behave like this because Islam commands us to but because Islam makes us want to be this way because we are that grateful for the gift of Islam. Maybe this makes me some sort of liberal modernist heretic or something similar but I urge you, as a responsible reader to judge to the best of your ability yourself.

As-Salamu Aleikum, peace be with you and have a wonderful day.

A superb sophomore effort from Adil, the new contributor who caused a real stir recently with his brilliant dissection of ‘Dawahmen’ http://asharisassemble.com/2014/04/18/10-problems-with-dawahmen/

Here I outline some common anti-religious quotes, statements and clichés some of which are often touted as being somehow insightful and witty. I apologise for the nature certain phrases which are featured, but they are fairly common, and I have accompanied them with some quick responses which are useful to have on hand.

1) Religion is a fairy tale for people afraid of the dark

Atheism is a fairly tale for people afraid of the light

2) Religion is like a ***** , it is okay to have one as long as you do not force it down anyone’s throat or wave it in anyone’s face (I cannot remember where this phrase originated from, I think it may have been a well known comedian like Ricky Gervais, who these days seems to be inclined to push his atheism fairly frequently and obnoxiously or someone similar)

….and theists have one but atheists don’t.

3) Science disproves God

Science shows there are observable trends in the laws of nature, something one would expect if there was a God. That is it. This does not undermine the concept of God in the slightest.

4) No one has ever been killed in the name of atheism because atheism is just the lack of a belief

Atheism is the positive assertion that there is no supernatural reality behind the material universe. The belief that religions are evil and must be wiped out is certainly a positive belief (not the absence of one), and one which has lead to untold millions dying under anti religious regimes which sought to destroy religion by force.

5) Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings

Logically inept. The same logic could give you;

‘Science gases people to death, religion builds hospitals’ ‘Science demolishes cities, Religion cares for orphans’ ‘Science shoots millions, religion feeds millions’ (And science flies you into buildings!)

Is that a fair and balanced critique of science? Nor is yours of Religion.

6) There is no evidence for God

What this actually means is that you have not found any reasons which you personally find sufficiently compelling. Most people in the world do believe that there are good reasons to believe in God, from personal experience or philosophical argument perhaps. If you disagree with the validity of these then you are free to dispute them, but repeating this tired phrase is disingenuous.

7) Science asks questions, Religion teaches you to be satisfied with your view of the world and not to question

A tired old cliché which describes few if any people; I have yet to know anyone who gave up doing science out of satisfaction that God was the ultimate cause of it. Furthermore, many religions actually instruct their followers to find out how the world works for themselves. If anything, believing that the Universe has a root cause would make a believer more inclined to be curious because this would tell them more about the creator.

8) Who made God?

Which Harry Potter book came before the Philosophers Stone? Who is the married bachelors wife? The question is illogical and presumes that God had a beginning. The idea of God is of an uncaused and eternal reality beyond the physical Universe. So why can’t the Universe itself be the uncaused reality? Because every piece of scientific evidence we have points towards the Universe having an absolute beginning, and because the idea of an infinitely old Universe with an infinite number of planets or stars is mathematically incoherent are some reasons.

9) Most wars are caused by religion

A simple laypersons view that no serious historian would endorse or defend. Most wars (like the world wars!) have very secular causes; usually power and/or resources. To find atrocities carried out directly in the name of ideology, look no further then modern irreligious ideologies like communism, fascism and nationalism. (If you want to call these ideologies religions, as some do, then religion no longer has to necessitate anything supernatural in which case philosophies such as liberalism and secular humanism could be called religions too!)

10) Religion is the opium of the masses

A common atheistic cliché which even fails to represent Marx properly. The full quote was: ”Religion is the Opiate of the People, the heart of an otherwise heartless world.” Most people probably equate opium with heroin and thus some sort of delusional worldview but given Marx’s full quote he was probably conveying the idea that religion eases people’s pain. But so what? Even if belief in God were a product of fear and anxiety (which I do not generally believe is the case), that would have no bearing on the truth of the belief one way or another.

11) People only believe in it to comfort themselves

Firstly, this would not make atheism more likely even if it were true, and secondly, many atheists find it more comforting not to believe in God; particularly in a society where material comforts are taken for granted and the shadow of death seems far away. Enjoy life and even when you do die, there is no accountability. Many well known atheists have said they are ‘glad there was no God.’ Should we now attack their atheism for being unobjective? Is atheism now false because they were happy that they thought atheism was true?

12) All the arguments for God have been debunked

Theism is actually more respectable in philosophical academia then it was several decades ago, and many of the key arguments for God are being hotly debated. They are anything but dead. If anything, it is atheistic arguments which are on the back foot. Fifty years ago, the argument against God from the logical problem of evil was largely held to be a decisive argument against theism; but in light of counter arguments by Philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, this argument is rarely defended today. Sure, more laymen are atheists then a couple of generations ago but many Western academics remain strong advocates of theism.

13) More and more people are becoming atheists. Soon religion will be gone

Globally, faith is probably on the increase, particularly in countries which have a history of oppressive, anti religious regimes. Just because Europe has become very secular does not mean the whole world is. Even if there was a global trend towards atheism, what bearing would that have on its truth? Furthermore a common narrative in many religions is that people stray from beliefs anyway. That does not make them false. According to many atheists, religion is essentially following others like sheep; surely their logic would then dictate that they respect me for sticking to my convictions even if the common narrative changed into an atheistic one! To become an atheist because I gave credence to your argument that ‘more people are becoming atheists’ would certainly make me a sheep!

14) Science disproves miracles

Actually, Quantum physics suggests that actually miracles are not even ‘forbidden’ by the laws of nature per se but merely unlikely (which would make miracles possible, particularly if we live in a multiverse which so many atheists are happy to posit; if there are an infinite amount of Universes then some of them would certainly have a few events which appear not to comply with the natural order) . But this aside, science simply shows that there are trends and apparent rules in nature…which any conception of God would probably bring about; but there would be no reason why he would be compelled to make his own laws absolutely changeless. The whole question is whether God exists. If he does, then miracles, while psychologically difficult to believe in perhaps, are no intellectual problem.

15) Secular states are clearly superior to religious countries (aka ‘the Scandinavia argument’)

Firstly, secularism is not necessarily atheistic, thus the most that could follow from this argument is that governments which rule according to the tenants of a particular religion are poor. This aside, many secular countries are in an appalling state; many Muslim majority countries are run by secular governments, yet proponents of this argument usually label them as ‘Muslim countries’ in order to support their case! If you want to argue that irreligious countries are superior to ones where most of the population are religious, then you cannot discount nations which have had state atheism, such as Albania, China, The Soviet Union, Cambodia and North Korea. The history of those countries will make any such argument invalid given their untold atrocities. You cannot get away with merely asserting that some Western secular countries (many of which still have laws based on Christianity!) offer a good quality of life.

16) In an atheist world good people would do good and bad people do bad. Religion is the only reason why good people do bad things

Firstly, religious beliefs have turned many people from doing bad things and encouraged already good people to do even better things, as I amongst many can personally testify, certainly regarding the former! At least be consistent.

Secondly, religion is not the only reason why good people do bad things. Was everyone who was swayed by Nazism or Zionism, or other forms of nationalism or Communism intrinsically evil and malicious; desiring to bring malevolence for its own sake? I doubt it. Most would have had friends, families, loves, hates, they would have laughed with their children, cried at funerals and helped their elderly neighbours. But they allowed themselves to believe that following their ideology was desirable and committing terrible acts was desirable for the interest of their group. To say that religion is the only, or even the main reason why good people do bad things is demonstrably foolish.

17) You are basing your ideas from an ancient book. Enjoy living in the dark ages

Is dismissing anything because of its age in any way logically valid? Democracy pre dates religions such as Islam and Christianity; should we dismiss it on these grounds? Should we equate it with becoming like ancient Greeks and wearing togas? A thousand or two years ago is a very short space of time in the scale of the Earth’s lifetime, and if the teachings of a religion are valid, they are valid regardless of when they originated. If they are invalid, then it is not their age that makes them so. Either way, the argument is ineffective. Some atheists, while criticising religions for being ‘ancient’ simultaneously mock the concept of God and revelation on the grounds of ‘why did God wait so long?’ This is also invalid as the key factor here would be the number of people who God left ‘unguided,’ not the duration of time where he left humanity unguided for. The overwhelming majority of the people who have ever lived have done so after the birth of the great world religions, so if anything their founders came at the right time.

18) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

This quote from Carl Sagan, which atheists like repeating (while complaining that theists keep repeating phrases from the Bible, Qur’an etc) implicitly presupposes that the default belief you should have is that the Universe is self existent, requires no explanation as science, in principle can or will explain everything that it is possible to know, and that God would be an unnecessary add on; a big chap hanging around outside the material world and occasionally pulling strings (or skyhooks) to make strange things happen. Obviously theists do not subscribe to this and believe that God is the ultimate reality responsible for the contingent Universe.

This aside, I take issue with the phrase itself; ‘extraordinary claims’ is a fairly subjective term (also why is ‘extraordinary’ evidence required? What about bog standard but clear evidence?) and one which could just as easily describe atheism, which to me is not a compelling world view at all.

19) Many prominent scientists are atheists

Most historically significant philosophers were theists and almost all theologians have been theists! These disciplines are just as rigorous; so would this appeal to authority be a compelling argument for theism? Not really, and neither is yours. Many reasons scientists use to justify their atheism are the same as those used by non scientists (such as evil and suffering, apparent lack of evidence etc) and many of these; even from excellent scientists are very childish and naive reasons. What makes a great scientist more equipped to speak about God then a great pianist? Individual scientists are specialists in very small niches of scientific inquiry and I do not see how this has any bearing on their understanding of philosophy or religion. Sure, science can provide evidence to vindicate or falsify an argument regarding a theological belief, say, the beginning of the Universe, but there is no reason why the atheism of certain scientists themselves makes atheism more likely to be true.

20) Humans have invented thousands of Gods, so if numbers are anything to go by, the chance of your God being the real one is a thousand to one if that

The majority of the people in the world are actually monotheists (even if they do not always agree about doctrines and so forth), so even if ‘mankind has created thousands of Gods,’ numbers are still on the theist side. Also, how would man creating many Gods do atheism any favours? All you are arguing is that we cannot be sure of which God/Concept of God is real! Not that there are no Gods! Furthermore we do have good reason to believe that certain Gods, say Zeus are unlikely because Zeus is a large biological organism with arms and legs, who would take up space on the earth, consume food and reflect wavelengths of light which would allow us to see him! I also take issue with people assuming that various other Gods were literally believed in as being the large ‘chaps’ that they allegedly were. Take Hinduism; it may feature many images of various deities but many Hindus believe that these are just different faces or aspects of the one God that other theists believe in. It may have been similar with many ancient civilisations too. Sadly we cannot ask them, but you can take it on faith if you like.

I actually have permission from Studio Ghibli to use this, so there!

A much needed and wonderfully articulate plea from Adil on the need for sharing Islam in the way it is mean to be done – this guy is all killer no filler, as evidenced by this, his third essential piece in a row.

Most faiths would accept that it is difficult or impossible for practitioners to get everything ‘right’ and observe everything they should without fail. Not inherently a bad thing; if getting everything right were tenable, many people would have nothing to strive for. However, most religions contain some core values which should really be observed in order to be a consistent adherent, and one of these may be sharing the faith. Already this might sound sinister to readers of a secular persuasion, but there should be no cause for worry. I cannot speak for other religions, but in Islam, sharing the faith need not entail ”pushing” your beliefs onto others, nor any sort of violent establishment of an ‘Islamic’ utopia facilitated by Creeping Sharia and a Stealth Jihad with some Taqiyya on the top. Sharing Islam, or ‘Da’wah’ can be well (I would argue, best) achieved by simply being a good human person and, by necessity a good example for your faith i.e. practicing what you believe in as confirmed by the Qur’an and the Prophetic traditions:

And who is better in speech than one who invites to God and does righteousness and says, “Indeed, I am of the Muslims.” (Qur’an 41:33)

“BEHOLD, God enjoins justice, and the doing of good, and generosity towards [one's] fellow-men.”  (Qur’an 16:90)

 [The truly virtuous are] they [who] fulfil their vows, and stand in awe of a Day the woe of which is bound to spread far and wide, and who give food – however great be their own want of it – unto the needy, and the orphan, and the captive, [saying, in their hearts,] “We feed you for the sake of God alone: we desire no recompense from you, nor thanks:  (Qur’an 76:7-9)

There is no compulsion in religion (Qur’an 2:256).(*Certain*Muslims are good at recalling this verse when defending Islam as being morally sound, but in practice may embody it to a very questionable extent.)

Here I suggest ideas for Muslims to consider regarding our behaviour leading to our becoming better Muslims and better people (which should be synonymous) who can show people (as opposed to just telling) that Islam has a valued place in the modern world. These are merely my opinions, but I feel that they are fairly in line with Islamic teachings, and certainly worth reflecting on. Do I consistently uphold the virtues below all the time or anywhere near? Of course not; but I would like to try, far away as I am from succeeding, and I think many of us could do much worse than having a go. Here, in no particular order are my top ten suggestions.

*(Throughout this article I refer to sections of the Qur’an and Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad). The bracketed names like ‘Bukhari’ and ‘Muslim’ are the names of the people who recorded the sayings.)

1) Have a moral code which actually translates into real life personal ethics

This can sometimes be a little awkward and people aspiring towards this in various ways sometimes have to be careful not to sound what people would term ‘preachy’ (I think many people have a slight guilty conscience which puts them on hypersensitive ‘detect preachy talk’ mode), but ultimately people will respect you if you do have a consistent and meaningful moral code. The sorts of things I have in mind are day to day things like: recycling, not dropping litter, picking up litter, boycotting battery eggs, voluntary work, giving blood, driving sensibly, buying fair-trade, supporting local family businesses/farms and so forth. Extend your ethics beyond just not buying stuff from Israel! There are endless possibilities. Show that you want to leave the world a better place than it was before you got there. Just imagine if being Muslim was synonymous with this sort of mindset and behaviour? How many Muslims today actually contemplate this, let alone care? Some, to be sure, but compare their numbers to the swathes of supposedly practicing Muslims who are virulently materialistic and subscribe to chav/’rudeboy’/’gangster’ culture as soon as they leave the Masjid? Try telling them that relationships with tens of ”kuffar” girls with a low self esteem and then marrying their illiterate cousin from a village in Mirpur is morally ‘questionable’; that speed limits exist for a reason; or that sovereign rings are a revolting waste of money which could be used to help others, or, more generally that there is nothing in their lifestyle whatsoever which is conducive to helping anyone barring perhaps their immediate family at best! ”But I pray Bro, I does Jummah Friday innit. And I eat halal too.”

What does it tell people when ‘practicing’ religious persons are not significantly and very obviously better in their ethics and moral choices in life then their non practicing or non religious counterparts? What does it say about the value of having a religion?

”And they give food, in spite of their love for it to the poor, the orphan, and the captive (saying): ”We feed you seeking Allah’s Countenance only. We wish for no reward, nor thanks” (Qur’an 76:8-9)

“What actions are most excellent? To gladden the heart of human beings, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the sufferings of the injured.” (Bukhari)

Anas Ibn Malik quotes the Prophet (PBUH) as saying: “There is none amongst the Muslims who plants a tree or sows seeds, and then a bird, or a person or an animal eats from it, but is regarded as a charitable gift for him.”  In a narration in Sahih Muslim, it reads: “If any Muslim plants something or sows seed from which man, bird, or beast eats, it counts as sadaqa for him”.

“When you see a person who has been given more than you in money and beauty, look to those, who have been given less.” (Muslim)

“Women are the twin halves of men.” (Tirmidhi)

“Once a man, who was passing through a road, found a branch of a tree with thorns obstructing it. The man removed the thorns from the way. Allah thanked him and forgave his sins.” (Bukhari)

“Do you know what is better than charity and fasting and prayer? It is keeping peace and good relations between people, as quarrels and bad feelings destroy mankind.” (Muslim & Bukhari)

“Conduct yourself in this world, as if you are here to stay forever; prepare for eternity as if you have to die tomorrow.” (Bukhari)

“The human being does not fill up any vessel worse than his stomach.” (Tirmidhi)

2) Be ambitious and high achieving in a field which is conducive to Islamic ideals

Something pleasing to me about my own former University is the high proportion of Muslim PhD students there (albeit not as many in the pure sciences as I would like to see). There are many great careers out there but I think that academia is actually one of the best yet still overlooked one a Muslim can enter; would at least help expose the silly cliché held that religion stagnates people’s thinking; it is a genuinely helpful and useful career; certainly no shameless money grabbing escapade (in other words, the cashflow isn’t inexhaustible- but the role is respected!) and we raise the overall level of thinking in our communities. This is no elitism; there are many non academic jobs which are excellent and rewarding but I think I speak for more than myself when I say there needs to be more Muslim representation in academia; though ultimately what matters most is not our job titles but our personal and work ethics. Let’s make them good.

Another example of a job requiring greater Muslim representation is teaching (my own profession). Consider how many fewer young people would grow up to be Islamophobes if one of their mentors and role models as youths was a Muslim? Suddenly the credibility of the Daily Mail headlines would begin to wane compared the reality of the consistently practised values of a real life and caring but just person. Contrary to what many laypeople assume, even the most troubled and belligerent children actually look up to teachers much more then you would imagine.

But back to reality; how do many born Asian Muslims value non business, non medical, non engineering careers? Repetition that ‘this Dunya is a drop in the ocean’ is white noise when it comes from a person who won’t marry their offspring to someone suitably ”secure” i.e. without the income of a high paid doctor or equivalent. Unfortunately the way many Muslims view the ‘status’ of jobs is an absolute disgrace.

Doctor: ”Mashallah”

Denstist: ”Mashallah”

Enjeenear: ”Mashallah”

Vet: Wet? ”It pays like a doctor? Mashallah”

Businessman: Vat is ethical business? No matter. Brings in the cash. Mashallah.

Care worker: ”I would rather marry my daughter to an illiterate landowner from Mirpur with a penchant for bestiality and wife beating then let her set foot in the same room as that.”

Prior to my teaching career one of my aspirations was to be an environmentalist, and you would not believe the barely concealed disdain it received from supposedly otherwise pious Muslims because it wasn’t typically Asian friendly (Which sadly in practice usually takes precedence over what Islam says…but they pray so it must be fine!). One would think even the most dim witted ignoramus would put two and two together…something about saving God’s ever threatened creation? Making a world more habitable for God’s creation? Nope. It’s Not medicine, not engineering, not dentistry, not banking, not business. Not acceptable.

From personal experience even my current (I like to think perfectly respectable) profession is considered by some upper middle/upper class Muslim Asians to be a deficient one! An anecdotal piece of evidence to be sure but I was once told by a Pakistani girl that as an aspiring teacher I would not suitable husband material in the eyes of her family (and her own) because of the reputation and social status associated with the job! What effect did pointing out the clearly un-Islamic reasoning featured here have? Call out any Muslim who puts class-ism and their own cultural practices first and you’ll hear nothing but a variation of ”I know but…..” and nothing. That’s if you’re lucky. I have heard condemnation of marriages to people with perfectly secure, stable and professional but sub £50,000/year jobs on religious grounds that the man has to provide. Seriously.

(Clearly the author has no bitterness or personal baggage here. I assure you. None. Honestly.)

“Allah does not look at your appearance or your possessions; but He looks at your heart and your deeds.” (Abu Huraira: Muslim)

“The best richness is the richness of the soul.” (Bukhari)

“And (recall) when We took a covenant from the Children of Israel, (saying).. .. Worship none save Allah, be good to parents and kindred and orphans and those in need.. and speak aright and kindly to people, and establish salat and pay Zakat.” (Qur’an 2:83)

The Prophet said: Beware! Whosoever oppresses a non Muslim citizen or snatches (any of) his rights or causes him pain which he cannot bear, or takes anything from him without his permission, Then “I WILL FIGHT AGAINST SUCH A (MUSLIM) ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT” [Sunnan Abu Dawud, Volume No. 3, Page No. 170, Hadith No. 3052)

“The proof of a Muslim’s sincerity is, that he pays no heed to that, which is not his business.” (Abu Hureira: Tirmidhi)

“You will not enter paradise until you have faith; and you will not complete your faith till you love one another.” (Muslim)

“When two persons are together, two of them must not whisper to each other, without letting the third hear; because it would hurt him.” (Bukhari & Muslim)

3)Help people out and be reliable all the time

This should really be self explanatory and achievable with some effort and common sense, but the concept seems elusive to many Muslims who genuinely (I think) consider themselves very practising. True to the Quranic spirit we should strive to be helpful purely to benefit the other person(s) expecting no reward or even thanks. Regarding reliability, this one mainly goes out to my Pakistani friends...DROP THE CONCEPT OF PAKISTANI TIME! Yes, we laugh about it but in reality it gets pretty wearing. Turning up to just about everything several hours late gives the appearance of laziness, apathy, indifference and a vulgar lack of consideration. Some lessons from our European counterparts wouldn't go amiss here (Half expecting an 'imitating the kuffar' based Takfir here). Let's get punctual!

“No man is a true believer unless he desires for his brother that, what he desires for himself.” (Abu Hamza Anas: Bukhari & Muslim)

“The perfect Muslim is not a perfect Muslim, who eats till he is full and leaves his neighbours hungry.” (Ibn Abbas: Baihaqi)

“A father gives his child nothing better than a good education.” (Tirmidhi)

4) Show a good temper

The people I respect most in the world are the ones you can accidently bump into even if it means spilling their drink and they won't bite your head off. They knew it was unintentional, so what justice would losing their temper bring? Even if someone does deliberately wrong them, they incline towards forgiveness. On some occasions, when people mess us about, we may not always get angry in the first place anyway because we are mellow. Which is great. But an even truer test of character is what we do when the red mist comes down. Let's do the right thing, whatever people do. If someone say, insults Islam in the worst possible terms, if you do not rise to it, you either get their respect; or if the antagonist is a truly hard-line bigot who whose heart wont soften, they'll just get really vexed that they couldn't needle you; win-win. If you take nothing else from this point, heed and reflect on this:

No one rejoices in Muslim anger from insults towards Muslims as much as the insulters themselves. By having a tantrum over a petty insult all you do is alienate people from you and make the people who made you angry very very happy.

"Do not let your hatred of a people incite you to aggression." (Quran 5:2)

"And do not let ill-will towards any folk incite you so that you swerve from dealing justly. Be just; that is nearest to heedfulness" ( Quran 5:8)

“Verily, it is one of the respects to Allah to honour an old man.” (Bukhari)

“I command you to treat women kindly…” (Bukhari)

“The strong person is not the one who can wrestle someone else down. The strong person is the one who can control himself when he is angry.” (Bukhari & Muslim)

“The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self.” (Bukhari)

“Allah will not give mercy to anyone, except those who give mercy to other creatures.” (Abdullah b. Amr: Abu Dawud & Tirmidhi)

“Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever is not kind has no faith.” (Muslim)

5) Be a good listener

How pleasant does it feel when you have a conversation with someone who actually listens to you, and talks in terms of what you just said? How annoying is it when whatever you say is blatantly unacknowledged? A great way to demonstrate your character is to listen to what people have to say, and reply in a way which addresses and demonstrates that you understand them; and ask them what they mean if you are not sure instead of assuming what they mean, using it to 'debunk' them and then they get upset for you misrepresenting them. I am not specifically referring to debates or talking about Islam or anything here (thought it certainly applies; certain Muslim debaters seem to think wagging their head up and down saying 'yeh yeh appreciate that' and not trying to actually understand the other point of view counts as listening). Just anything.

“Allah has revealed to me, that you must be humble. No one should boast over one another, and no one should oppress another.” (Iyad b. Hinar al-Mujashi: Muslim)

6) Stand up for your convictions.

One of the weakest things I have done in life was to beat around the bush as a student when people asked me why I didn't drink. ''In training for my next boxing match'' ''Isn't really my thing'' ''I just love the taste of Orange juice.'' All terrible excuses which people (understandably!) disregard and think ''Let's get Adil wasted,'' and then I would just have a much harder situation on my hands. What should I have said was: ''I'm Muslim, I don't drink.'' And that would have been it. Anyone who would then attempt to make me drink would be easily identifiable as poor friend material. We all have bouts of social awkwardness in our lives, but I have learnt from experience that the route of standing up for your convictions is usually the best.

Again, I do not advocate being ostentatious or judgemental; just honest and forthright. If you are in a group and someone sparks up a topic putting Islam or Muslims in a negative light, just pleasantly say ''oh I'm Muslim, I'm sorry you've had this impression/experience or whatever,'' basically say whatever is relevant to address their point. Chances are they'll back down. Seriously. Many people will say that they didn't really mean it like that, or no offence meant, or something similar. And you should give them the benefit of the doubt and you can even kindly enquire about their concern in order to remove their discomfort and awkwardness which they are probably feeling. And if saying you are Muslim riles them; remain pleasant anyway, and politely excuse yourself if they really won't speak to you objectively, saying that you don't mind talking to them but not when they are this irate. Any bystanders will see that the moral high ground is yours. Easier said than done, but if you were silent or even reasoned back but not letting them know you are a Muslim yourself, the outcome would not be positive. Believe me, I know.

"The good deed and the evil deed are not alike. Repel the evil deed with one which is better, then surely, he, between whom and you there was enmity(will become) as though he was a bosom friend."(Qur'an 41: 34)

For, [true] servants of the Most Gracious are [only] they who walk gently on earth, and who, whenever the foolish address them, reply with [words of] peace; (Qur’an 25:63)

“Say what is true, although it may be bitter and displeasing to people.” (Bukhari)

“Strive always to excel in virtue and truth.” (Bukhari)

“He is not of us who is not affectionate to the little ones, and does not respect the old; and he is not of us, who does not order which is lawful, and prohibits that which is unlawful.” (Ibn Abbas: Tirmidhi)

“Be not like the hypocrite who, when he talks, tells lies; when he gives a promise, he breaks it; and when he is trusted, he proves dishonest.” (Bukhari & Muslim)

7) Avoid being ostentatious

This is a deal breaker. Yes we want to do good things, and yes we want to show that our beliefs are a driving force; but this does not provide licence to be obnoxious, bombastic or otherwise socially inept. If you consistently do gracious and helpful actions, people will see it, whether is apparent to you or not. If no person sees it, your maker does, and that should be enough. The same applies when debating or discussing Islam. For a (measured, I like to think!) rant about the way certain popularisers debate and conduct themselves please visit my article: 10 Problems with ”Dawahmen”

Worship God and associate nothing with Him, and to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbour, the neighbour farther away, the companion at your side, the traveller, and those whom your right hands possess (i.e. Captives) . Indeed, God does not like those who are self-deluding and boastful. (Qur’an 4:36)

“The best of alms is that, which the right hand gives and the left hand knows not of.” (Bukhari)

8) Avoid causing discomfort to people

The rewards of causing discomfort or defensiveness to people in a debate or discussion might entail a cheap ‘ownage’ video but in reality, your cause goes nowhere and all you feed is your ego. So don’t do it. What do I mean by this? I mean that if someone enquires about the absence of wine with your meal why reply by telling them how revolting and satanic alcohol is and then reel out some statistics about alcoholism? ”No thank you, I’m Muslim, I don’t drink.” Easy. If they ask further, you can kindly and pragmatically answer any questions one by one. Again, this strongly applies in debates about faith. If your idea of Dawah is chasing someone on the street and cackling at them inanely because they cannot or will not define a philosophical term for you, what good have you actually done? Can you really tell God that you tried your best and reasoned using what is best?

9) Have fun and be sociable!

Yes, Islam prescribes many duties; but contrary to what some puritans seem to advocate, abstaining from fun is not one of them (maybe I am being harsh; they don’t say fun is Haraam itself just every activity that could conceivably lead to fun). If Muslims fail to socialise with people from all walks of life and have fun then what message is given? That the price of piety and is by necessity sacrificing any sort of personal fulfilment! So join in with social events, clubs, sports teams and the like and enjoy yourself! I am in no place to lecture anyone on Halal enjoyment here; use your conscience and Islamic understanding, know your limits, and people will respect the fact that you have a strong and defined world view which is no impediment to happiness and fulfilment.

“A Muslim who meets with others and shares their burdens is better than one who lives a life of seclusion and contemplation.” (Muslim)

“Mix with the people on the condition that your Deen is not jeopardized, and be jestful with the family.” (Bukhari, Chapter 81)

10) Have good knowledge and understanding of various Islamic issues

However excellent the example is which you set, you need to be able to explain how values which are universally considered as ‘good,’ are upheld in the Islamic tradition. If people do respect and admire your conduct and want to understand more about what makes you tick, you need to be able to answer their questions! Similarly, I believe that more of us (most certainly including myself) need a more comprehensive understanding of Muslim issues theologically, nationally and globally. If a non Muslim has concerns about Islam because he/she has seen articles and news footage showing Muslims killing, abusing and behaving in an ignorant manner, it doesn’t instantly make them a bigot and we need to remember that. Many misconceptions and misunderstandings about global issues are not actually that hard to explain, and open minded people will listen. It doesn’t take a scholar to explain say… the real roots of suicide terrorism; that acid attacks and ‘honour’ killings are by no means exclusive to Muslims; that the former Iranian president did not actually say that Israel should be wiped from the map; that the Israel-Palestine ‘conflict’ is simply one militarised state bullying and invading another which has no military whatsoever; and perhaps most importantly how most so called ”Muslim” countries are brutal secular regimes lead by corrupt dictators! One of the best sites for this information can be found here. I particularly recommend the articles on terrorism: http://www.loonwatch.com/

My Lord! Increase me in knowledge” [Qur’an, 20:114]

“The seeking of knowledge is obligatory for every Muslim.” (Tirmidhi)

“Who are the learned? Those who practice what they know.” (Bukhari)

Many thinkers have devised arguments designed to prove that Islam is ‘true’ i.e. genuinely divinely inspired. And they are great, but in the absence of Muslims showing any of the above behaviours, what use are they? True, some people convert to Islam, in their words in spite of Muslims (”Thank God I found Islam before I found Muslims”- Cat Stevens) but if, from an outsiders perspective Islam doesn’t seem to have anything going for it anyway, then most people are unlikely to imagine that there is any remotely meaningful which warrants investigation in the first place.

Bertrand Russell said you should not judge a faith by its practitioners. And you shouldn’t; entirely. If someone does something clearly and blatantly contradictory to the commandments of the faith, then it obviously sheds no light on the religion. If you see someone munching a pork pie, drinking a bottle of wine and praying to a statue and claiming it to be in the name of Islam, no one would be inclined to attribute his behaviour to Islam (actions like terrorism and ‘honour’ killings are equally contradictory; in fact even more contradictory because in extreme circumstances i.e. starvation or extreme thirst alcohol and pork could lawfully be consumed while killing innocent people is never allowed). Still, this does not mean that the teachings of a religion and the actions of its followers are never interlinked. If doctrine and practice were never linked, then while one could not accuse a religion of causing problems, we couldn’t commend it for improving people either. Thus we have to accept that people will, at least partly judge a religion on what its followers do. Let’s forget about extremism, and terrorism and the overtly negative press that Islam sometimes gets for a moment and merely consider; if Muslims are ignorant, lazy, unhelpful or even indistinguishable from people outside the faith in terms of being valued human beings, what does that tell you? At the very very best it suggests to others that the religion has no particular value.

What if the adherents to a faith are overwhelmingly generous, kind, moral, fun, genuine and sensible too? If a man from the 7th Century could inspire people right here right now in to become the most valued members of society in the 21st Century, what better proof of the validity of his message could you ask for? At the very least, more people will have respect; not the tolerating sort of respect that most good people have for other ideas, but a specific appreciation of your faith and the way they see you follow it. Perhaps some of those people will be then inclined to ask about say, the intellectual basis of the religion, and you can demonstrate that too.

One thing I can confidently predict; you will NEVER make someone who is hostile or even indifferent to Islam miraculously convert, or even change their views by just trying to intellectually muscle them into a corner with lots of mathematical and scientific ‘proofs’ that Islam is correct. Either they will dismiss them on principle or search some anti Islamic sources for counterproofs, giving them far more credence and time, because they will want to believe them. I do not claim that arguments are useless, far from it, but they only work if the person respects your position in the first place. The only possible exception I might make is defending your beliefs from direct criticism made which if unanswered would undermine your position and vindicate the critic (but even this is not so much proving yourself right as much as showing criticism to be unfounded). But don’t think this will suddenly make them change their mind. Still, even if your critics do not suddenly share your beliefs, it may shake their conviction in their own arguments, and if you are kind and dignified they may ultimately respect you, after which you might find yourself in the previous scenario, where they have an open mind and an open conscience. But nothing meaningful will happen without genuine respect and modesty in my humble opinion. We should treat people better then what we feel they deserve and be willing to accept less then what we tell ourselves we deserve.

Asalamaleikum and have a most joyful and productive day

This is a controversial and meandering piece: but it is also necessary – I wonder if people will react with intellect or emotion?

There is no doubting that the whole Muslim Ummah is currently starring in a straight-to-video production of ‘Under Siege 3: Let’s Bash Muslims’, starring Steven Seagal (and possibly filmed in Eastern Europe). For those who do not ‘get’ or care for the pop-culture references, I mean that Muslims are being caricatured and represented by the mainstream media in ways which would be unacceptable (only recently though) for our Jewish brothers. And yet many politicians, commentators and comedians seem to think that Muslims are being ‘protected’ by the media and Islam is a ‘no-go area’. They would like to see more criticism of Islam and Muslim practices (no doubt many of these people are the ideological grandchildren of those who likewise thought that the National Socialists being too politically correct about the Jewish community and that there needed to be a more ‘frank and open discussion about the role of Judaism in Germany’).

Meanwhile, the dearly departed Christopher Hitchens compares religious believers with the plague-carrying rats in Albert Camus’s novel ‘The Plague’ and his equally generous bedfellow Sam Harris explains ‘If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.’ 

Sam helpfully goes on to clarify that perhaps some people should be put to death for holding sufficiently dangerous ideas. But of course.

People Don’t Like Muslims

It is well known that these and other commentators worst vitriol is reserved for Muslims. People who think these kinds of people are ‘treading on eggshells due to Islam’s protected minority status’ probably think Hitler was ‘holding back’ at the Nuremberg Rallies.

Disturbingly, we have individuals such as Robert Spencer insisting that ‘Islamophobia’ (yes, that’s what he calls it, not me) is acceptable - he has published a book called ‘Islam: Religion of Bigots’: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islam-Religion-Bigots-Robert-Spencer-ebook/dp/B00EYQZS9Y/ref=pd_sim_b_4?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AFKZ9P8NGZ3D6MRS5JQ. Someone equally noxious has managed to get away with publishing ‘The Case For Islamophobia’ and getting it sold on ‘Amazon’!

Look boys and girls, this isn’t difficult like rocket science or twerking: we don’t need to get into a deep discussion of what Muslims believe or what the Quran says. It is, quite rightly, still illegal to deny the Holocaust (despite the current probability of a repeat performance by Europe/the Catholic Church being rather remote), purely for the reason that such rhetoric could lead to the danger of a resumption of the persecution of Jews and of course hurt their feelings. There is, fortunately, no wide-scale campaign to legalise Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic rhetoric in Europe. Likewise, if you publish a book called ‘Judaism: Religion of Bigots’ and start quoting the Old Testament about killing ‘kuffaar’ (or Caananites as they are known in that particular book), you would get locked up faster than Lindsey Lohan can locate the local Crack dealer. There is no modern book on Amazon called ‘The Case for Anti-Semitism’ nor would one be allowed. The fact that this is considered licit towards Muslims and Muslims only is ample evidence that Islam and Muslims are considered an ideological ‘free-fire’ zone due to their status as ‘enemies’ or ‘civilizational threats’ and ‘non-conformists’ i.e all of the terms that were applied to Jews throughout most of European history. And students of history are advised to remember what Jewish scholars know only too well: the Holocaust did not begin with the ‘Final Solution’ but with Anti-Semitism.

Perhaps the prize for most skewed representation should go to the otherwise remarkably untalented Douglas Murray, who has actually written a book called ‘Islamophillia’ where he shows us ‘how so many…have, at some point chosen to abandon any hope or wish to criticize Islam and instead decided to profess some degree of love for it. Love, that Murray points out, is often irrational and certainly misguided’ (*exchange ‘Islam’ for ‘Judaism’ and you know what’s up, although if you bought this you are probably still awaiting delivery of a brain from ‘Amazon: God’ so…).

And who are these people who are ‘sparing the rod’ to Islam?

Well, Liam Neeson for one (who just made two blockbuster movies where he kills the living s**t out of dozens of Muslims and shows them that he ‘knows Kung – Fu’ for trafficking ‘white women’).

And Richard Dawkins.

Yes, you read that right. Richard Dawkins suffers from ‘Islamophillia’, which must be an excessive love for or sexual fetish towards Islam.

You know who else suffers from it though according to Douglas Murray?

George Bush.

That’s right. Apparently, George Bush should have criticised Islam, as well as bombing the crap out of Iraq, killing loads of Muslim civilians and then not finding any weapons of ‘Mass Destruction’. Yes: killing Muslims is not enough – you have to cuss them out too to show that you are an honest intellectual.

‘The Telegraph’ described his book as ‘Superb’.

…?

It is likewise abundantly clear when one watches ‘Fox News’ or the somewhat saner ‘BBC’ that reporters and commentators alike are not giving any consideration to political correctness when talking about ‘Islamic terrorism’ (yes, that’s a legitimate phrase now, much to the horror of practising Muslims). It would be unthinkable to talk about ‘Buddhist terrorism’ (despite what has happened in Burma and Sri Lanka lately – where death mobs were actually run by legitimate Buddhist clergy) or Jewish or Hindu terrorism (not surprising though when it took the authorities twenty five years to admit to what our Sikh brothers had to go through: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2610663/Sting-operation-says-police-let-1984-rioters-run-free.html). Yet it is fine to say that terrorism can in some sense be ‘Islamic’. But no, Islam is still allegedly a no-go area and Muslims are getting ‘special treatment’ from the media.

We also got ‘special treatment’ from the media when, during the massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo, the worst genocides in Europe since the mass extermination of Jews in WWII, the media, to a key, referred to ‘Serbs, Croats and Muslims‘. Two ethnic groups and a religious designation. Why not ‘Orthodox Christians, Catholics and Muslims’?. Well because we are ‘protected’ of course! It’s a shame people didn’t ‘protect’ us from massacres such as Srebrinica, which Europe tolerated with relative ease of conscience until American disgust (and military might) forced Europe’s hand.

But maybe Muslims are spared and treated with ‘special leniency’ in the media but not when it comes to killing them eh?

The subject of the current widespread acceptability of Islam bashing or ‘Islamophobia’ has been more than adequately covered by talented writers and journalists such as Chris Hedges, Robert Fisk as well as many others (such as here: http://thesultansjester.com/2013/05/07/behave-yourselves-the-crimes-of-tim-winter-and-the-new-atheists-compared/).

So, even without mentioning the Iraq war, problems in Afghanistan and such, we can see that Muslims feel they are getting a hard time. That many in the West feel that Muslims deserve a hard time is no argument against the victimisation felt by that community at all.

Muslims Just Want To Feel Good About Themselves

Thus is is more than understandable that Muslims take great pride and comfort, as they always have, when a member of that ethnic or national group which is seen as being ‘oppressive’ to Islam or at least indifferent to it, in fact converts to their faith.

Islam must be an acceptable way of life if people are converting to it – the convert is a proof thus of the superiority of Islamic to western civilization or belief systems, and if she is a woman, it exonerates Muslims from the charges so often levelled at them about the mistreatment of women.

The ‘feel good’ factor is immense – not just for Muslims around the convert but for the wider community: it is a break from being ‘Under Siege’. It’s not only that the person’s salvation has been achieved (from a Muslim perspective though, not all that go to ‘Muslim Paradise’ or ‘Jannah’ need be Muslim) but the Muslim community has been exonerated: a child of the European enlightenment, Liberalism, secularism, whatever, has ‘apostated’ and joined the ranks of Islam.

Many go on to be ‘celebrity converts’, supporting Muslim causes and speaking on behalf of Islam. The 21st century archetype was of course Muhammad Ali. Nowadays we have people like Cat Stevens (in education and belatedly, music), Tim Winter (in academia), Yvonne Ridley (in journalism) and most importantly, the late, great, Gai Eaton (in everything).

And we also have people like Abdur Raheem Green, Hamza Tzortzis and most of the ‘Islamic Research Foundation’ (set up by Zakir Naik) alumni from Yusuf Estes to Hussain Yee are converts. In most dawah material and events, converts feature heavily in both marketing and fundraising as Muslims are told to part with their cash to facilitate conversions by paying for ‘dawah literature’ or ‘dawah packs’. We are constantly reminded that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the West and that 75% of new converts are women.

A lot of Muslims believe that the numbers of converts are so large that they may reach some kind of ‘critical mass’ in the West.

Islamophobes incidentally, feel the same way.

It’s vindication for Muslims.

And also Islamophobes, who warn of an Islamic takeover of Europe.

I am afraid I must hurt both groups’ feelings.

Muslims ♥ Converts

Having large numbers of Muslims makes us feel better but does it prove anything? Having celebrity converts makes us feel even better, but since Ali or Cat Stevens (who sadly immediately was made to retire from his blossoming musical career), we have not really had any globally famous people convert to Islam, perhaps with the exception of Mike Tyson. Likewise, Tom Cruise and the disproportionate number of celebrities who are into Scientology or Kaballah are not a proof of these systems either. A religion stands and falls on it’s ideas or truth claims, not celebrity endorsements. In short, Islam is not ‘Pepsi Cola’.

In fact, disingenuous groups of Muslims are forever announcing that people, usually celebrities, have converted (when they haven’t) just to get a ‘hit’ of that feel-good vibe they get from it. Recently it was Russell Brand. Before him Rowan Atkinson. People even got their hopes up when Rihanna visited a mosque. And I have lost count of the number of times that I was told that Will Smith has converted (he hasn’t) or Michael Jackson (he seemingly eventually did, like ten years after Muslims said he did). Or Neil Armstrong after hearing the azaan on the moon (he did not. And why was the azaan being given on the moon anyway? Like, ‘in space no one can hear you scream’?).

Numbers are not that big a deal – for many years, Islam was confined to a small group of followers around The Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and contrary to the polemics of many modern day Muslims, they were not all oppressed people and slaves but included a disproportionate number of nobles and wealthy individuals such as Abu Bakr, Hazrat Khadijah, Hamza and even celebrities and athletes (such as Umar), as well as slaves and non-Arabs. So maybe celebrity endorsements are important after all…

But of course, in any case, having large numbers of converts or celebrity converts makes us feel better.

But should it?

Sometimes feeling good can be dangerous, lull you into a false sense of security and make you both over-confident and under achieve. Islam is itself much more suspicious of emotional proofs, akin with Judaism (and distinct from Christianity).

That is to say nothing about what the apparent dependence on demographics and ‘conversions’ reveals about Muslims own feelings of persecution. Or perhaps, as Fanon or Malcolm X might say, their possible inferiority complex. Why do they need vindication of this kind? Jews do very well without it, in fact they even celebrate their minority and ‘exclusive’ status (though of course, they are not a proselytising religion).

It may be scandalous to say out loud, but could the attitude towards converts and the diatribe about ‘Islam being the fastest growing religion’ may reveal more about Muslim insecurities than it does about the demography of religions?

We are indeed told endlessly that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the West (and the rest of the world). Further, Dawah organisations (who after all like most charities are after your donations, for better or for worse) never tire of telling us that most of these converts are women (75% according to some).

There is something wrong here: looking at one article that made these ideas popular, such as this in the UK’s ‘Independent’ newspaper http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-islamification-of-britain-record-numbers-embrace-muslim-faith-2175178.html, atheist fundamentalists find serious methodological flaws:

”A closer look at the figures quoted by the Independent shows it hides a classic non-story. A religious think tank has calculated the number of annual conversions to Islam by polling London mosques – who have an obvious incentive to over-estimate – and extrapolating the figures nationwide.

Even the head of the New Muslims Project, a group set up to support converts, is quoted as calling the hardly earth-shattering guess of 5,200 converts per year ‘a little on the high side’.”

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/01/05/are-we-seeing-the-islamification-of-britain-the-opposite-infact/

Further, it is just not rational to claim that most new Muslims being women is a vindication of Islam: it rather implies a kind of reverse sexism by God where he has made the religion more attractive to women than to men. If you think about it. Of course, most people don’t.

A likely alternative explanation is that most of excess conversions of women vis-a-vis men are due to intermarriage, just as some apostasies from Islam are due to marriage as well. A more measured voice from Japan makes this point very well – he refuses to include conversions due to marriage into statistics for his country (I don’t agree with this) but the result is sobering:

When asked for conversions to Islam in Japan (a country of some 130,000,000 people), Professor Ko Nakata says that excluding marriage only about one hundred people have accepted Islam (an abysmally low figure):

”Interviewer – How many ethnic Japanese have converted to Islam?

Hassan Ko Nakata – Very few, not more than 7,000. And most of them are Japanese women who have married foreign Muslim men. Genuine converts like me are very few in number.

Interviewer – How many are we talking about, several hundred perhaps?

Hassan Ko Nakata – I would say there are less than one hundred”

http://religion.info/english/interviews/article_491.shtml#.U1rMIvlhwgQ

Kind of anecdotal…But actually, if one reads about the spread of Islam in all countries of the world, especially outside Arabia, marriage, adoption and Sufism, as opposed to ‘dawah tables’ were very important factors. Thomas Arnold in his masterful ‘The Preaching Of Islam’ correctly identifies this and provides strong evidence in the Chinese and Indian cases at least. Intermarriage was also important in the Malay Sultanates. In fact, in India some scholars (for example Shahrastani) went so far as to try and consider if Hindus are ‘People of the Book’ and others tried to sanction intermarriages, just as can be done with Jews, Christians and ‘Sabians’ (what Sabians are seems to be contested some say ‘Sabians’, some say Buddhists – Hamza Yusuf makes the case here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/42124877/Buddha-in-the-Quran-by-Sh-Hamza-Yusuf).

Getting emotional about the ‘huge growth in the number of converts’ and not knowing how Islam spreads and sustains it’s diverse communities and ignoring Geography 101 is not a good way to secure the future of Islam in Britain or anywhere else. And this is why such emotionality is counter productive: we as a community are getting so full of ourselves by the alleged proliferation of converts that we are in danger of assuming that the survival of Islam in the West is a done deal.

This is hubris.

Can We Handle the Truth?

Also there are some unconformable truths about conversion. American academic Sylviane A. Diouf estimates up 15% of slaves trafficked to the New World were Muslims. Some were famous huffaz (Quran memorisers) and scholars. That is some millions of people. But Islam did not survive in the US or even South America and had to be re-introduced (again, Dioufs’ book ‘Servants Of Allah’ is much needed and sympathetic to Muslims). Many if not most converts in the States were due to the NOI – a heretical group founded by the mysterious Waly Fard Muhammad, many of whose members leave and become orthodox Muslims, like Muhammed Ali, Malcolm X and others.

And where are the Muslim descendants of Yemeni sailors who opened mosques in Liverpool a hundred + years ago? Or those who went to Abdullah Quilliam’s mosque more recently? What became of these Muslim communities? Did they even survive?

It is uncomfortable to ask – but if we want to make a viable community we need to see what became of people who came before us and how and did they manage to sustain their faith community.

Could it be that non-Muslims lose their religion and become Muslims when immersed in Muslim culture and neighbourhoods and the same seems to happen to Muslims? It is a complicated and vitally important dynamic that needs to be properly studied: will Muslims face the kind of mass apostasy that Jews have in the West. It is easy to say no, but they have been here a lot longer than us. He who does not learn from ‘History’…and the Prophet (SAW) said that we would follow the Jews and Christians step by step.

For example, the Jews have been in Europe in far greater penetration than Muslims for a long time: they also have very similar personal and family laws, different dress and sadly, until recently, they were even regarded as ‘racially’ distinct (a racist error, since most are of Eurasian and not Middle Eastern descent, in Europe at least). However, Jews have a huge amount of diversity now in their community and of most relevance here is that many of the most high profile members of the Jewish community, from intellectuals such as Naom Chomsky to artists such as Woody Allen, have left their religion. The obvious question is; will the same thing happen to Muslims when they have been around for as long as our Jewish brothers?

Are there more Muslims because of the well known fact that developing countries (which includes all Muslim countries) have much higher birth rates, as do immigrant communities (something every Geography student in high school knows)? Is the increase in Muslims absolute? Relative? How much of the increase in Muslims is due to immigration and how much due to conversion? What is the conversion rate of non-Muslims living in Muslim populated areas such as London versus largely ‘English’ areas such as, say, Taunton?

Most importantly, what is the apostasy rate? What is the incidence of Muslim women and men marrying outside their faith and how many of them keep their religion? What about their children?

No answers to any of these important questions: no facts or statistics (apart from by Islamophobes: http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Muslim_Statistics_(Population))

Further, we can look at the worrying alleged proliferation of Atheism within a single generation (or perhaps two) in the Central Asian Republics during their incorporation into the Soviet Union: of course, figures are hard to trust due to their Soviet provenance, but if these countries went from being nearly all Muslim to having significant numbers of Atheists (and then back again, much like Russia and the case of Orthodox Christianity), we need to seek lessons from this: we need to ask the difficult questions such as what causes Muslims to leave their religion in these and other cases.

Most relevantly, we need Ibn Khaldun’s ‘scientific approach to history’ (latterly ‘borrowed’ by Jared Diamond et al) and investigate what is the fate of Muslims in largely non-Muslim countries and societies where they have little or no political representation. What strategies do they employ to survive? Do they even survive? Or is it like the case with slaves and perhaps Yemeni Sailors?

The test cases here are China and India, which the Arab-centric and salafist movements of today are largely unwilling to investigate (along with all the other things they don’t investigate. It is much the same in the disproportionate amount of dawah and apologetics directed at Christians – and this despite the fact that the main group of people ‘shopping’ for religion today are Chinese Buddhist/Daoist/Confucianists, but since Christians are the main non-Muslim monitory in the Middle East, then that becomes a focus for Arab-centric Salafist dawah movements).

We need proper research – are people living in heavily Muslim areas more likely to convert, the role of marriage, conversion versus apostasy, map of distribution of converts etc. None of this is forthcoming. And it means we are ill equipped to make a plan for the challenges to be faced by our community in the future.

I myself feel uncomfortable asking these questions, it is painful. But we need to know. Maybe it is all hunky dory as IRF, IERA and others would have us believe. But if it is not, we are being led up the garden path with images of conversions at conferences and events that resemble the ‘proofs’ of Midwestern Tele-Evangelists who always wheel out someone who has been possessed by the ‘Holy Spirit’ or as they do now, make endless ‘Christian themed’ movies such as ‘God’s Not Dead’ and ‘Son of God’ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3788&p=.htm.

They take great comfort from the (sort of) box-office success of these and the numerous attendees at their rallies. Meanwhile, the US is becoming more irreligious than ever and Evangelicals are losing the ‘Culture Wars’, as both the legalisation of Gay Marriage and marijuana (possibly in Florida) show. They also take cold comfort in the spread of Christianity in Africa and China (a strategy which IERA has now copied in the case of Africa).

Basically, Evangelicals in the US think they are doing great.

Everyone else can see they are getting hammered by secular and atheist interests.

Meanwhile, we are being lulled into a false sense of security by evidence free anecdotes from dawah organisations such as IERA eager to prove their efficacy.

I am waiting for a single piece of empirical evidence, such as a study, even if not published in a sociological journal, that:

1) ‘Dawah organisations’ such as IRF are responsible for significant numbers of conversions to Islam

and/or

2) That these people who do convert stay Muslims (in light of evidence that many converts apostate: http://mohamedghilan.com/2013/01/02/alienation-of-islam-rise-of-atheism/ or this heartbreaking account from a American scholar and Imam: http://imamluqman.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/seven-out-of-every-ten-converts-leave-islam-by-imam-luqman-ahmad-2/)

What does happen, much like the Midwestern U.S Evangelical conferences, whose methods and even theology these organisations ape, is that people who are ready to convert anyway or have done so through marriage (the majority it seems) are wheeled out and taken ‘credit’ for and used to prompt further donations from a grateful public.

Further, since Salafist organisations such as IERA have the most funding and profile (as well as leeway from the government due to Saudi diplomatic intercessions) and are the ones running the courses for new Muslims or at least monopolising them, most new Muslims fall in with these groups and are thus ‘taken credit for’.

Where is the ‘Research’, as IERA’s name suggests, showing us their track record converting or keeping Muslims with the vast sums of public money they use (close to £1 million last year)?

The total lack of empirical data by an organisation that makes ‘conversions’ it’s main selling point (‘Pay for a dawah pack! Pay for a Dawah leaflet!’) is illustrative. One might ask the ‘Islamic Education and Research Academy’, where is the research about converts (or anything else for that matter)?

No smoke often means…no fire.

Converts Get ‘Good Cop, Bad Cop’

It isn’t all about how the existing community feels in any case – converts have to bear huge pressures and they in turn can be a trial and a test for the existing community – one that Muslims are often handling poorly. Many converts are bombarded with ideologies and practices they had no idea about before converting, from being declared kaafir for not believing in an ahad hadith to being press-ganged into marrying straight away. The heartbreaking and classic account (and treatment) of this is Lang’s magnificent and under-rated epic battle to stay Muslim, ‘Losing My Religion’. A necessary warning is also well articulated by this author:http://islamwich.com/2013/06/14/9-lessons-from-converting-to-islam/?c=431#comment-431

The instant celebrity status handed to many converts is also very dangerous – look at the bizarre utterances A.R Green for example http://asharisassemble.com/2014/04/18/10-problems-with-dawahmen/.

Nonetheless, it must be conceded that a disproportionate number of converts have gone on to represent Islam with aplomb. Yet at the same time, these people again come under serious pressure: talented speakers and intellectuals such as Gary Miller and Jeffrey Lang (both well educated mathematicians who tried to understand Islam on a deep level) and even our own Paul Williams, were forced to retire from public life due to constant harassment by Salafist groups about their alleged heterodoxy (which to Salafists means following one of the Four Madhabs or Sufism i.e orthodox Islam) or being ‘hadith rejecters’ amongst other alleged calumnies. Famously, Muhammad Asad had to retire to Spain in the face of constant Salafist threats and allegations, merely for narrating from the Salaf in his commentary on the Quran (his commentary remains a hugely useful tool for anyone refuting modern allegations against Islam).

Asad is often wheeled out as a ‘feel good’ story for Muslims: the Jew, a child of parents killed in the Holocaust, who became a commentator on the Quran. But how many recount his hounding and death in exile?

And you cannot mention people like Gai Eaton or Martin Lings without hearing howls of ‘perennialists’ or even worse.

Celebrities like Cat Stevens and Kristiane Backer have faced the loss of their high profile careers, harassment over what kind of headscarf they are or are not wearing – but both showed great courage by sticking with Islam despite the fact that Stevens for example was mislead about the illicitness or lack thereof of music (as evidenced by his belated return to the art). I wonder how many of us would give up being an acclaimed rock star (the next John Lennon as he was called) for our faith and then stick with that faith when we found out that we had been lied to. Most born Muslims have never had to make such choices.

Some female speakers, for all of their misguided feminist posturing, have been mercilessly hounded already. But they can hardly be blamed for questioning Islamic norms when these are alleged to include clitoral mutilation, advocated by those same groups and individuals (Haddad, Tzortzis etc – you get the picture) who are supposed to be training and securing new Muslims in their faith. We have talented speakers today such as Australian Abdullah Kunde, but how long before they are hounded like those before them?

The ‘rule’ is in fact very worrying: any convert who kowtows to the Salafi methodology can expect instant celebrity status, funding and widespread access to speaking engagements and hearts and minds – whether they deserve it or not. Any convert however who continues to exhibit the kind of intellectual honesty and strength of character that brought them to Islam in the first place can expect to be harangued with allegations of heresy, perennialism, hadith rejection etc etc in the same way as Gai Eaton, Jeffrey Lang, Martin Lings and even Tim Winter and Hamza Yusuf and many others have been. They then have a choice to put up with constant anathematisation or retire from public life.

Imam Razi (yet another great scholar of Islam who Salafist overlord and self appointed Sahahbah-basher Ibn Taymiyya declared an unbeliever, along with Al Ghazzali, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Sina…) supported these individuals in the strongest terms by saying that those who say that the job of the persons intelligence is to bring them to Islam and henceforth it is to be used no longer are in fact calling the means by which the person came to Islam false.

On the other hand we have ‘Carte Blanche’ given to Salafi converts such as Green, Tzortzis and Estes etc who make the most embarrassing statements and did not undertake even a fraction of the learning of Eaton (who despite his various ijaazas, mastery of Arabic never even claimed to even be a scholar).

So converts, depending on where they ‘fall’ after conversion, are either harassed to the point of persecution or given a free license to talk rubbish and become instant celebrities.

Some of the best have chosen to spare themselves and their families the constant harassment (and at least in the case of Hamza Yusuf and Gary Miller, physical violence at public events) and retire from the field, leaving it to deranged amateurs like, Green who, in post 7/7 Britain where Muslims have it hard anyway say nonsense such as:

‘The purpose of the jizya is to make the Jew and the Christian know that they are inferior and subjugated to Islam, OK? Even by some statement that you can make.

For example, slandering and attacking the Muslims unjustly, such as you find many Muslims have done this about the Taliban. Slandering them and attacking them and reviling them based upon news that has come from the disbelieving media, helping the kuffar against the Muslims…

You know guys, I’ll tell you something right? I’ll probably, someone at least is probably going to want to assassinate me after what I’m going to say here but you know, I don’t really get very sad when, you know, a non-believer dies’. 

This religious and national embarrassment, instead of finding employment as a walking billboard for Islamophobia, in fact runs not only courses for ‘new Muslims’ but despite being unapologetic for these and many other venomous comments, has taken it upon himself to teach Muslims how to integrate into British life:http://muslimnow.com/overcome.html

People like Green and their well funded cronies are not the ones to get spat at and attacked on the streets of London or wherever, it is usually hijaabed women who had nothing to do with such stupidity that have to pay the price for it. Just as how the actions of Bin Laden, who Greens’ teacher Haitham Haddad admires openly as a ‘martyr’, resulted in him enjoying a ten year vacation in Pakistan (until it was suddenly cut short by Seal Team Six) with not one but two Pakistani girls (nice work if you can get it) while hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghans bore the consequences of his actions.

So Muslims are happy to feel good about converts, but when it comes to representing Islam, there are ‘acceptable’ and unacceptable’ representatives. Unless of course you are independently famous such as Ali or Cat Stevens or to a lesser extent Lauren Boothe or Yvonne Ridley.

I would end by saying that no convert should be sacrificed for the self-esteem of existing Muslims. Nor should they have to put up with the kind of victimization they get when they step out of the Salafist line.

Some, like Winter and Eaton are more than capable of defending themselves and their (correct) conception of their new faith.

Others, like Miller and Lang disappear into the sunset, taking their scintillating intellects with them. And this is a loss for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

UPDATE: I came across this heartbreaking piece on this blog: http://www.daysgonebyeblog.com and simply had to include it – his eloquence sums up the pain and situation of many converts much better than I could:

I am a Muslim but am I part of the Muslim community?

I’ve been to a grand total of two weddings and one walimah since I became a Muslim nearly twenty years ago. I’m sick and tired of hearing for the first time about my “friends” weddings on Facebook.

I have never been married and I am tired of looking for someone I’m attracted to who has any interest in me (for what ever reason – Allah knows best)

Because of the housing crisis in London I’ve never been able to settle in one place. And no I don’t want to live in Birmingham or Norwich. My job and my history is in London.. If it wasn’t for Tasawwuf I would have given up on Islam and Muslims all together after rejecting the Cold hearted, culturally sterile Salafism I was force fed as the one true path when I converted for the second time in the 90′s.

I found Islam as a child purely on a spiritual and intellectual level with no Muslim influence around in my Essex suburb. I often reflect on the fact if I had known more Muslims before I read about Islam I may never have become a Muslim.

So here I am lonely in a crowd. Allah has preserved my faith when so many reverts have given up on an impotent, fractured, delusional, self destructing British Muslim community that to this day pigeonholes it’s converts for jihad, celebrity scholar or to be completely ignored.

Rabbi inni lima anzalta ilayya min khairin faqir

My lord, I am in absolute need of the good You send me [Qur’an, 28:24]

A bold and brilliant new piece from Adil: practically the whole thing is stacked with insights I wish I had been given long ago.

Muslim youth (and others) would do well to listen to this guy with an attentive ear…

Okay, so I’m playing the inverted commas game which I previously gave several Dawah carriers stick for when they implicitly takfir (excommunicate) other Muslims; usually ones deemed over liberal (*cough* Not Wahabbi enough). I myself make no such allegation towards particular individuals, but rather the quotation marks represent my distain for what one could refer to as: ‘The Muslim Marriage Market’ in this day and age on the grounds that it seldom if ever comes close to living up to the principles of Islam.

To clarify a possible misassumption before I proceed; I am not attacking the concept arranged marriages; there is nothing intrinsically wrong with family helping to choose a suitable spouse, providing their offspring are willing. An arranged marriage can be beautiful, romantic, and as fulfilling as any other; the issues which we will look at here are certainly not confined to arranged marriages.

Muslim readers will have heard ad infinitum that ‘The Ummah (the worldwide Muslim community) is beset with problems.’ Some of these oft listed problems are ones I concur with as being critical (like the vile and widespread corruption in Muslim majority countries); other allegedly heinous ‘problems’ which some Muslims lament over (like, wait for it….music…and no not even gangster rap or lewd lyrics but the mere existence of music itself) should, in my opinion be replaced with this rather underrated one: our collection of morally bankrupt marriage ethics and practices. These practices entail principles which hold actual Islamic principles in contempt and are impediments to Muslims forming stable, viable and thriving families, something which is relatively important to say the least. In no particular order here are my top 11 problems with the Muslim marriage market.

1) ”No Doctor, no wedding”

Going by what some of our ‘enlightened’ representatives claim, you might think that vanity, materialism and a shameless lust for money would be traits reserved for the ‘kuffar’ (literally ‘ingrates’ and ‘coverers’ of truth, though this term is usually translated into ‘disbelievers’ and often used to label all non Muslims- as if we know that they have all purposefully and knowingly rejected God) because of their attachment to this worldly life. You would be wrong however as evidenced by the ‘No Doctor, No wedding rule‘ which is often followed far more rigorously by some Muslims then any Qur’anic commandment. Note that people following this rule will still shamelessly insist that ‘This Dunya (life) is just a drop in the ocean’ and similar phrases which only highlight their hypocrisy when contrasted to their rampant materialism. The no Doctor, No Weddingrule essentially states that the earning power and ‘flashiness’ is the primary basis by which a man is deemed ‘acceptable.’ Virtues like kindness and decency are fine, maybe a tiebreaker, but not a necessity; a kind and gentle man with a very modest job is certainly inferior to a doctor with an average at best temperament. Much of the Muslim community tends to view jobs a bit like this:

Doctor: ”Mashallah”

Denstist: ”Mashallah”

Enjeenear: ”Mashallah”

Vet: ”It pays like a doctor? Mashallah”

Businessman: What is ethical business? No matter. Brings in the cash. Mashallah.

Careworker: ”I would rather marry my daughter to an illiterate landowner from a backwater in Sindh with a penchant for bestiality and wife beating then let her set foot in the same room as that.”

Before I began my own career in teaching, my aspiration was to be an environmentalist, and you would not believe the barely concealed distain it received from otherwise supposedly pious Muslims because it was not typically Asian friendly (Which sadly in practice usually takes precedence over what Islam says…but these people pray so it must be fine right?)!One would think even the most one dimensional simpletons would put two and two together…something about saving God’s ever threatened creation? Making a world more habitable for God’s creation? Nope. Not medicine, not engineering, not dentistry, not banking, not business. Not acceptable.

From personal experience even my current profession (which I like to think is perfectly respectable; the whole Islam and knowledge and education thing? No?) is considered by some upper middle/upper class Muslim Asians to be a deficient one! An anecdotal piece of evidence to be sure but I was once told by a Pakistani girl that as an aspiring teacher I would be unsuitable husband material in the eyes of her family (and her own, though it took a while for her to be candid enough to admit this) because of the reputation and social status associated with the job! What effect did pointing out this reasoning as clearly unIslamic have? I might as well have argued with a statue. Call out any Muslim who puts classism and their own cultural baggage foremost and you will seldom hear anything but a variation of ”I know but…..” and nothing remotely meaningful. If you are lucky; I have even heard condemnation of marriages to people with perfectly secure, stable and professional but sub £50,000/year jobs on religious grounds that the man has to provide! Seriously. Not even the dignity to distance the self as far as possible from religious teachings when justifying such blatant materialism!

I am not saying that what a person does is inconsequential; a certain job might be indicative of other traits a person has (being a counsellor for example would likely suggest a person is perceptive; a desirable trait), and in Islam a man must be able to provide for a wife; but provide what? Several holidays a year, private schooling for the children, a detached house in the country and three cars? Maybe I missed the Hadith which says this is obligatory or something. I always thought it was more like food, shelter and safety from actual harm; and then all the unimportant things like love and affection and time. Maybe there is something I am ‘not getting’ here. (See point 11)

(Clearly the author has no bitterness or personal baggage here. I assure you. None. Honestly.)

*Note: The ‘No Doctor no Wedding’ rule mostly applies to men i.e. the man must have the ‘suitable’ job to be considered a good husband. A lucrative job can actually reduce the ‘suitability’ of a woman in the marriage market for the two fold reason that:

A) ”If her husband earns less this may hurt his ego”

B) ”As the husband has the job of the provider it isn’t really right that he earns less. Not the done thing.”

Point A Sometimes holds true; some men are just plain insecure and it really would damage their egos to earn less than their wives. I don’t want to seem too unsympathetic, but I am, so this is how it comes across; I really find it hard to empathise with someone mentally weak enough to feel ‘threatened’ or somehow inadequate (less still how this could manifest into bad, insecurity based behaviour, which it sometimes does) because his wife earned more money than him; unless of course she purposefully tried to make him feel such.

As for Point B, all I can say is ‘Khadija.’ Not only did she earn more than Muhammad (PBUH), but she was considerably older than him, something which is all but unacceptable to many Muslims now in practice; yet another pointless and unIslamic cultural norm. I do not subscribe to the popular feminist notion that being a housewife is intrinsically inferior to being very driven career wise; but neither should women who are very career focussed be accused (implicitly or otherwise) of being colonialised by this mindset, nor should they be ‘punished’ for their ambition; and this is exactly what happens.

(Also remember: when a woman marries, according to Islam, what’s hers is hers, and what’s his is hers too. Even if she is a millionaire and he a binman; I have insufficient evidence to say whether most Muslims do this in practice but my hopes aren’t high).

2) ”White is right. Also I have to marry another Punjabi”

No one likes being called a racist (even hardcore white nationalists with a fetish for Celtic crosses insist that the term is redundant and demand to be referred to by idiotic synonyms like ‘race realist’) and Muslims are no exception, especially given that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) explicitly and non ambiguously said that no person of any racial group was greater than another in except in their good deeds and piety. However, it is not our disclaimers that define us but our behaviour and many Muslims are demonstrably racist whether they admit to it or not.

‘I don’t really think dark people are any worse but….’

‘Yes I do agree, and I know it’s not really right but….’

‘I wouldnt mind but my parents would and I can’t hurt them. In Islam you have to be good to your parents right?’

Stop. Judging people on their skin colour is morally and Islamically reprehensible (I pray for the day when Muslims get it into their heads that the two are inseparable, but ironically enough, like atheists they can actually be pretty good at trying to detach morality from religion). You cannot square this circle whereby you refuse to accept your status as a simple minded racist yet be an exclusivist regarding the race or colour you deem acceptable for marriage (often it boils down to a revulsion for dark skin in Indo-Pakistani culture). Many young Muslims tend not to actually share these opinions with their older family but in a pathetic act of cowardice they often give them credence in practice, as if being complicit is somehow acceptable. The wretched default excuse from people who lack the conviction to challenge such cultural dogmas and others is that ‘in Islam you have to be good to your parents’. Yes, you do, but being good to people isn’t placating them; it means helping them to thrive and do the right thing, which should be good for them in this life and the next.

O believers, be you securers of justice, witnesses for God, even though it be against yourselves, or your parents and kinsmen, whether the man be rich or poor; God stands closest to either. (Qur’an 4:135)

If your parents, or grandparents or any other family members treat some races and colours as undesirable, the greatest good you can do unto them is help put them right. This need not mean go out of your way to cause drama, or that you have to elope with someone who is too well endowed with melanin for them; but help your family see the light. Give them advice like someone offering something precious on a silver platter, and offer it upwards, not downwards. Kindly remind them of what Islam says and that it really is in stark contrast to their cultural views. If they still refuse to acknowledge, then on what Islamic grounds should you obey them?

Colour is not the sole unnatural divider at play here; many young Muslims still believe ‘I can only marry a Gujarati, Kashmiri, Punjabi, Mirpuri etc.’ It doesn’t take a scholar to identify the abhorrence of such tribalistic behaviour and recognition that this is the antithesis of Islam. For Muslims who contest that this is tribal, I ask you; then what is? How is attributing positive or negative value to someone because of their province of origin or their caste anything but?

If Ethiopian Bilal were here today (Bilal was one of the Prophet’s first and most courageous disciples; refusing to renounce Islam even under hideous torture) he would be considered inadequate by many Pakistani Muslim parents. Too dark. Worst of all his daughters would be too dark. Muslims are great at losing their cool when non Muslims insult Muhammad (PBUH), but such puerile insults are nothing compared to the way that our own behaviour insults the Prophet, everything he stood for and in this case one of his dearest companions! Wake up and recognise this behaviour for what it is.

O mankind, verily, We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Verily, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Verily, Allah is knowing and aware. (Qur’an 49:13)

“He is not one us who calls for `Asabiyyah, (nationalism/tribalism) or who fights for `Asabiyyah or who dies for `Asabiyyah.” (Abu Da’wud)

“There are indeed people who boast of their dead ancestors; but in the sight of Allah they are more contemptible than the black beetle that rolls a piece of dung with its nose. Behold, Allah has removed from you the arrogance of the Time of Jahiliyyah (Ignorance) with its boast of ancestral glories. Man is but an Allah-fearing believer or an unfortunate sinner. All people are the children of Adam, and Adam was created out of dust.” (At-Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud)

“An Arab is no better than a non-Arab. In return, a non-Arab is no better than an Arab. A red raced man was not better than a black one except in piety. Mankind are all Adam’s children and Adam was created out of clay.” [Al-Bukhari and Muslim, on the authority of Abu Musa]

3) ”We can’t get married now! We need to work for 6 years to afford the wedding!”

After hundreds of singles events, searches on matrimonial websites, rishta meetings and ‘accidently’ taking all the same study modules as attractive people you happen to like, you finally find that someone who you can share your life with. Great; all that remains is another decade to wait while you save up for the wedding. Why? While there are some individuals whose desired fairytale wedding warrants shopping exclusively at Poundland for several years in order to save for such an occasion, I believe most Muslim families spend obscene quantities of money on weddings is because they feel obliged to. The family has a reputation to uphold; ‘what will people say if we skimp on the venue?’ Also if you invite person X then it necessarily follows that you must invite person Y. This person will get offended if you don’t invite them, that person invited you to their son’s wedding and so forth. The relatedness to the bride and groom to warrant being a guest is so tenuous that a Muslim version of the film Wedding Crashers wouldn’t even have to feature the crashers fabricating an elaborate back-story involving relatedness to some made up uncle.

As far as I am concerned, if I ever find anyone masochistic enough to marry me, the marriage will consist of myself, herself and some people who we actually really care about; you know, like people who would actually blink if we died, and it would happen in the Masjid. A few thousand quid, a wedding in the house of God (metaphorically speaking of course, I’m not a disciple of Ibn Taymiyya, though I do like his ‘Eventual Universalist’ views) and the reward of having brought people to pray; furthermore any non Muslims who present might become intrigued (in a good way for once) by Islam too.

Setting new trends is difficult, and sadly, the people who can barely afford extortionate weddings are the ones likely to get pilloried by the community for not having them. The people who could best begin a new and more sensible trend are those who are most wealthy. These are people everyone knows could afford to fill Wembley stadium with guests, but they choose to have a modest wedding which does not entail burning as much cash as conceivably possible, and features only guests who actually have any meaningful relationship with them, because it is the more sensible, and dare I say it, Islamic thing to do.

But waste not by extravagance, certainly He (Allâh) likes not Al-Musrifûn (those who waste by extravagance)” (Qur’an 7:31)

“The marriage, which produces the most blessings, is that which involves least burden.” (Tirmidhi)

And those, who, when they spend, are neither extravagant nor niggardly, but hold a medium (way) between those (extremes)” (Qu’ran 25:67)

4) ”Sorry I love you and all but what will the aunties say?”

‘If I marry you the aunties will whisper because…. (*Insert reason here: Too young, Not rich enough, Too dark, their sister was once seen walking next to a boy, their brother was once seen at a nightclub etc etc*)’

How many of us have heard variations of this phrase, or indeed phrases featuring a fear of being gossiped about in general? The desire to gossip is pretty natural; I would be lying if I said I never have the urge to gossip, and lying further if I said that I have always overcome it. However, it is a grievous sin according to Islam:

Why no not the believing men and women whenever such (a rumour) is heard, think the best of one another and say ‘This is an obvious falsehood’? … When you take it up with your tongues, uttering with your mouths something of which you have no knowledge, you deem it a light matter. Whereas in the sight of God it is an awful thing (Qur’an 24:12-15)

O you who acknowledge, let not a people ridicule other people, for they may be better than them. Nor shall any women ridicule other women, for they may be better than them. Nor shall you mock one another, or call each other names. Evil indeed is the reversion to wickedness after attaining acknowledgement. Anyone who does not repent, then these are the transgressors (Qur’an 49:11)

O you who acknowledge, you shall avoid much suspicion, for some suspicion is sinful. Do not spy on one another, nor shall you GOSSIP one another. Would one of you enjoy eating the flesh of his dead brother? You certainly would hate this. You shall observe God. God is Redeemer, Compassionate (Qur’an 49:12)

‘(Backbiting) is to say something about your brother that he would dislike’. Someone asked him, ‘but what if what I say is true?’ The messenger of Allah said ‘If what you say about him is true, you are backbiting him but if it is not true then you have slandered him’ (Muslim)

Yet the whole culture of ‘auntie gossip’ is omni-present. When it comes to marriage based issues, ‘aunties’ can be truly vile, snide, underhand and merciless.

‘Ooh she’s very darrk yarr’

‘He only gets paid that much? Oi hoi…Just think….ve could have married her to that lovely dactar’

‘I saw her walking in the other day in jeans. JEANS!!!!’

The reality is probably much worse; as a male I am not usually directly privy to the gossip of bored middle aged women but the fact that I have spoken to enough girls who consider it a defining factor in their decision making suggests it is pretty severe. What can we do? Joining in is morally repugnant and standing by indicates compliance and acceptance. More people need to overcome the fear of the water and have the courage to call such people out; to put their conscience first and their immediate dignity second if necessary. I believe many people would be surprised at how successful calling people out on vicious gossip can be. Imagine a circle of aunties gossiping about a young girl in the family who, let’s say was rumoured to be seen with a young man and walking next to him (horror). You get the picture. One auntie then stands up and tells all the others that this is pointless and vicious speculation that serves no purpose except for their own gratification, it could damage the reputation of an innocent person and is, as the Qur’an says, tantamount to eating their flesh. Would the remaining aunties feel comfortable continuing the gossip? Even if the lady calling them out then left the room I suspect they might not. Deep down most of us know when we are doing the wrong thing and once called out on it, it becomes far more difficult to continue.

5) ”We don’t have…..I cant even say it….basically…babies are made because Mum for them and they just appear”

A highly embarrassing truth about our community is that parents often struggle to talk plainly about marriage to their offspring let alone sex. Our prudishness is such that many Muslims will only get properly acquainted with sex education if they don’t live in a Muslim majority country (I am reminded of a Pakistani biology student I knew who wasn’t even fully sure of what sexual intercourse entailed, beyond rubbing. Seriously). I can only speculate where this wanton ignorance stems from; I have heard it argued that this is a product taken from the once squeamish Christian West, but whether this is true or not, no one is compelling us to behave like this now. Let us see how squeamish the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) himself really was:

God’s Messenger(s) said: “In the sexual act of each of you there is a sadaqa (worship through giving).” The Companions replied: “0 Messenger of God! When one of us fulfils his sexual desire, will he be given a reward for that?” And he said, “Do you not think that were he to act upon it unlawfully, he would be sinning? Likewise, if he acts upon it lawfully he will be rewarded.” (Muslim) 

“Three things are counted inadequacies in a man. Firstly, meeting someone he would like to get to know, and taking leave of him before learning his name and his family. Secondly, rebuffing the generosity that another shows to him. And thirdly, going to his wife and having intercourse with her before talking to her and gaining her intimacy, satisfying his need from her before she has satisfied her need from him.” (Daylami) 

Not very, appears to be the answer. The Muslim world has not always been as backward and prudish as we see today. Some of the most influential Islamic scholars of all time in the Medieval Islamic world wrote material which would get them lynched for spreading ‘immorality’ if they lived in Pakistan or Afghanistan today. The medieval Islamic civilisation actually featured comprehensive education about such issues and many texts from that era were very sexually explicit. Many of the great Muslim pioneers of philosophy and medicine wrote volumes on sex; from sexual health, anatomy, and even technique! For instance:

According to Imam al-Ghazali: “Sex should begin with gentle words and kissing,” and Imam al-Zabidi adds: “This should include not only the cheeks and lips; and then he should caress the breasts and nipples, and every part of her body.” (Zabidi, Ithaf al-Sada al Muttaqin, V 372).

Believe it or not it is precisely the ghastly puritanical inhibition present in our communities which actually helps drive people to carry out sex crimes. Sex education is not the same as pornography, and the burden of proof is on those who think it makes young people more ‘immoral.’ Most studies actually suggest the reverse; that sex education makes people more sensible about sex.

“Of His signs is this: that He created for you spouses that you might find rest in them, and He ordained between you love and mercy.” (Quran, 30:21) 

Allah created male and female from a single soul in order that man might live with her in serenity (Quran, 7:189)

6) ”Death before divorce”

Some Muslims will protest that ‘you can’t make halal haraam’ when called out on some idiotic behaviour or lifestyle choices which is not literally condemned by name in the Qur’an but any sane person could see it goes against the principles of Islam. Various sorts of unethical business come to my mind, I am sure readers can think of other examples. However, when it comes to divorce which is explicitly allowed in Islam, the very same Muslims would rather be hung drawn and quartered then entertain the possibility, and much less look at a female divorcee as anything but an utter degenerate. The ‘divorce stigma’ applies far more strongly to women than men. I am not saying it puts a man in a great light either but sadly for many Muslim women, being a divorcee is considered about as acceptable as an AIDS ridden prostitute when it comes to remarriage. When it comes to a past (including pre marital escapades), a man’s past it less likely to haunt him; boys will be boys! As for girls; spoilt goods. Wherever they got this idea from it wasn’t Islam.

Sure, divorce is disliked and sure it should not be undertaken lightly but it is sometimes necessary. Relationships can be destructive and abusive and sometimes the only forward is out. Some marriages may consist of two great people who are not great together. Once they divorce they are still two great people. All this said, I do think there is a gradual paradigm shift where divorces are becoming more viable, as divorce rates are increasing amongst the Muslim community (in Britain anyway), though I have heard suggestions that some are shifting to the other extreme where even a moderately bad spirited quarrel warrants divorce. Obviously divorce is a last resort, but it is an option, and it is a right which Islam supports.

Also, a woman came to the Prophet Muhammad seeking the dissolution of her marriage, she told the Prophet that she did not have any complaints against her husband’s character or manners. Her only problem was that she honestly did not like him to the extent of not being able to live with him any longer. The Prophet asked her: “Would you give him his garden (the marriage gift he had given her) back?” she said: “Yes”. The Prophet then instructed the man to take back his garden and accept the dissolution of the marriage (Bukhari).

” A believing man must not hate a believing woman. If he dislikes one of her traits he will be pleased with another” (Muslim).

“The believers who show the most perfect faith are those who have the best character and the best of you are those who are best to their wives” (Tirmidthi).

“If a wife fears cruelty or desertion on her husband’s part, there is no blame on them if they arrange an amicable settlement between themselves; and such settlement is best” (Quran 4:128).

7) ”Of course you can choose who you marry! Just make sure its someone you’ve never seen and never spoken to”

You sit next to a girl next in a ‘non segregated’ lecture. You look at her and realise she is attractive. You start talking. Even as you leave the lecture you are still talking. You realise no one else is there now. It is cold so you decide to go indoors and have a coffee. This leads to a meal, this leads to watching a movie, which leads to her coming to your house with the ‘intention’ of looking over some course notes but before you know it you have fornicated and got her pregnant. Your lives are now ruined.

What should you have done? As soon as you noticed her from your peripheral vision you should have told your brother whose wife has a friend who is on the same course as the girl you noticed to tell his wife to tell her course mate that she has caught your eye and thus should consider marrying you.

This is essentially the narrative that many young Muslims are given when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex; one which pretty much defines ‘slippery slope argument,’ and sets the bar for inappropriate ‘free mixing’ way too low, making talking to the opposite sex all but unfeasible in practice.

Now I am not saying that hundreds of dates with scores of people are required in order to find who is ‘right’ for you, nor cohabiting to make sure that you are ‘compatible’ or anything like this; but the way that young Muslims are being drilled into believing that almost any sort of interaction with the opposite gender is a hairsbreadth away from fornication is just counterproductive. I know enough boys who can hardly even carry themselves properly around girls because they have been trained to think that just talking to a girl is a step away from sleeping with her and thus have barely spoken to a female who wasn’t an aunt, sister or their mother before.

The ‘you cannot interact with the opposite sex at all’ narrative is yet another impediment put on people to stop them successfully finding partners for marriage and having the ability to interact properly with other people. Such overzealous restrictiveness also provides incentive to rebel. When someone has rebelled against one (perceived) aspect of Islam, it becomes easier to do so with others. It also makes people lose faith in this supposed aspect of Islam, bringing the wisdom of Islam into question in the mind of the person (even if the value they are opposing is not actually Islamic). As if we didn’t have enough to worry about with young Muslims being fed notions about anthropomorphic conceptions of God, ”say Masjid not mosque because mosque sounds like mosquito” fatwas and other petty frivolousness.

8) ”You *will* marry Adil here. What do you mean ‘he’s weird?’ Don’t worry about that fact that you cant stand the sight of him. Just trust us. You might as well because let’s face it you don’t really have a choice”

Muslim and non Muslim readers will have heard the stories; girls being taken on ‘surprise holidays’ and forced at knifepoint to marry a deranged landowner with a legion of slaves and a harem of 12 year old transgender concubines, but I want to discuss a far more common type of ‘forced’ marriage; entailing pressure that is harder to pin down; something you couldn’t really report as being criminal. One way to phrase this is:

”Parents forcing their children to choose to get married”

In other words, putting so much emotional and societal pressure on their children so that as long as they choose to remain unmarried, they are never at peace; I think this happens very often. Such guilty parents would likely agree in principle that forced marriage is unacceptable in Islam, but deny that what they do constitutes to forcing. The Qur’an reminds us that ‘falsehood by its nature is bound to perish’ (Qur’an 17:81) and we should be honoured to be agents of materialising this claim and show that emotional coercion is a real and reprehensible concept which cannot be passed off as merely laying out options and ‘advising.’

Marriage may be half our Deen, but it means nothing if you are forced. To say you helped your child fulfil half their Deen because you forced them to get married is rather like saying you helped them pay their zakat because you stole money from them. Yes, parents should advise, even encourage, but God is the best of judges and whatever semantics people use to claim they are not forcing their children, the best they can do is to convince is gullible mortals and for a very very short space of time.

Aa’ishah reported that a girl came to her and said, “My father married me to his brother’s son in order to raise his social standing, and I did not want this marriage [I was forced into it].” ?Aa’ishah said, “Sit here until the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) comes. The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came and she told him about the girl. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) sent for her father, then he gave the girl the choice of what to do. She said, “O Messenger of Allaah, I have accepted what my father did, but I wanted to prove something to other women.” (Reported by al-Nisaa’i, 3217).

(Narrated Khansa bint Khidam Al-Ansariya): That her father gave her in marriage when she was a matron and she disliked that marriage. So she went to Allah’s Apostle and he declared that marriage invalid.

O ye who believe! Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye treat them with harshness, that ye may Take away part of the dower ye have given them,-except where they have been guilty of open lewdness; on the contrary live with them on a footing of kindness and equity. If ye take a dislike to them it may be that ye dislike a thing, and Allah brings about through it a great deal of good. (Qur’an 4:19)

9) ”I am an avatar of my mother”

My mother is a far greater person then I will ever be, but nonetheless, she does not live through me. Yes, your mother comes first, second and third, and paradise is beneath her feet, but that does not prevent her from being a fallible human being. Nor does it make her the puppet master pulling your strings, or for that matter the owner of your spouse. Many mother (and father) in laws are lovely; they really do treat their children in law like their own; they know when to be involved and when not to be, and they put justice above what appears to be more favourable for their half of the family. Others sadly, are less noble, and think that they run the marriage; they say when they want grandchildren, and they have the right to be obeyed by their children in law at all times. The cases I have heard of husbands and wives behaving in a vile and despicable manner towards their spouses because Mummy told them to are truly disgusting and not rare enough to be dismissed as isolated incidents. Unfortunately this is sometimes inadvertently encouraged by the newlyweds themselves who are anxious to please their in laws, not realising that their submissive and over accommodating behaviour is encouraging their in laws (even subconsciously) to believe that when they say jump, you merely ask into what mud? Stand your ground early or face a spiral of manipulation

10) ”But he did this…she did this…..he/she deserves this abusive treatment which I will administer”

I do not claim that Muslim marriages contain more abuse then non Muslim ones, but I do claim that they should have much less, given the teachings of Islam. Sadly the degree to which they are less abusive is conspicuously unapparent or nonexistent. Depending on what you classify as abuse, you can raise the bar pretty low such that there is an element of it in any relationship; admittedly it is sometimes difficult to define. The (fairly loose) definition I shall use here is:

Carrying out (or witholding) a particular action in the full knowledge that it will cause physical or emotional harm and no benefit to the other person.

Rather than focus on rarer extremes of abuse such as outright physical brutality (I do not feel knowledgeable enough to give this much authoritative discussion), I want to look at ‘lower level’ forms of abuse which a far larger proportion of people indulge in. Here are several:

-Stonewalling; prolonged passive aggressive behaviour where one party refuses to significantly talk or interact with their partner. This causes far more trauma then people realise and is a particularly vicious and cowardly form of emotional torment; the passive aggressor can claim not to have ever really done anything serious; though in Islam it is the intention that counts; if you know the effect an action will have on another person and you do it, you ‘intended’ it whatever semantics you use.

-Humiliation or arguing in the public sphere; another petty way to cause pain, discomfort and ill feeling. You can keep going knowing that the other person might be too proud to cause more of a scene and thus cannot really respond to your torments. This can be done is many ways; going out of your way to side against a spouse in an argument, raising your voice, making underhand jabs infront of others, and even degrading and aggressive gestures like slapping.

-Trying to fundamentally change someone; yes a marriage should have compromise and a good spouse will advise the other about what to do in life; so I suppose in some sense people can ‘change each other.’ What I refer to by change is to change the other person in a way that is not inherently ‘good.’ For instance, pressuring them to change careers because you want them to do something more ‘high flying.’ Another pertinent example is stopping or restricting the other from doing things which define them. Again, I have to be nuanced in explaining this, we all do foolish actions and if our loved ones can help us refrain from doing so then we should take heed. Some chauvinists would condemn their spouses trying to reign in foolish and irresponsible behaviour like binge drinking as being restrictive. I am referring to perfectly halal pastimes which make us who we are and continue to do so. For me, I love doing certain sports. This is something I require for my well being and I would not be the person I am without them. If I am unable to run, lift weights or hit a punch bag for more than a week or two, I get stressful and ill tempered; like a caged animal; and cease to become the mellow and laid back person that I want to be. I know others of a similar mould who have partners who will wantonly fail to appreciate the importance that important pastimes (which develop body and mind) play in defining the person they committed too and cruelly restrict them; almost just to prove a point. ‘He/she will sacrifice doing X, Y or Z for me. They shouldn’t need that to be happy.’

Again, not all forms of trying to curb people’s habits are ‘wrong,’ some habits are potentially harmful (like certain extreme sports), even ones which are not ‘wrong’ can become addictive, and people can be selfish and put their hobbies over people who should matter to them. I realise this, but my point stands; many people do try to change their partners out of selfishness and the want to prove a point. If you try to change someone you will either fail and resent them yourself, or you will succeed and they will resent you.

-One up manship. Arguments and disagreements in any relationship between two people are inevitable but is their purpose to secure the best outcome for you both or to vindicate your ego? When we disagree with someone, let us never lose sight of our well intended objectives.

-Emotional guilt tripping; Muslims of the Indian subcontinent have surely acquired unparalleled mastery at this art. Not even just in terms of marriage; we are at a stage where our emotional stability is ridiculously low (some readers had emotional meltdowns just on reading my 10 problems with Dawahmen where I critique the methods of certain Muslim popularisers). We are excellent at getting really offended and upset, phenomenally easily, and using our upset to make unreasonable demands. Pulling on heart strings and emotionally blackmailing people is a just as underhand and disingenuous as any other form of manipulation. Let’s grow out of it.

-Failing to properly forgive. Forgiving does not mean agreeing to round off an argument because you want to bring it up another day; it really does mean forgiving and letting go. We also need to learn to better forgive in the most difficult circumstance of all; when we have ourselves been proven wrong. It is often harder to drop grudge against someone for them being right then for being wrong. Sometimes the vindicator might come across as obnoxious in his/her correctness but we can still accept they are right (whilst gently asking them to be more humble) without resenting them. But please, anything but the lame, intellectually deficient but extremely common response of ‘Stop lecturing me,’ when we have nothing to say.

In any marriage, specially an Islamic one, both parties should be striving to make the other party fulfilled, but in this society it often seems like people prefer to furiously compete with each other to secure what they see as their intrinsic right to be ‘made happy,’ at all times on demand by the other.

After having read my rantings on this problem of abuse, you may wonder ‘Is this a real problem with the Muslim marriage market as such? Isnt this just something across the board?’

This is a problem across the board, but the point is that relationships between people striving to practice and live by (as opposed to living with) Islam should be characterised either by mutual love and success, or, if the people are genuinely incompatible, mutual respect, and then end on such terms. It is my sad realisation to observe that the term ‘practicing’ Muslim nowadays really just refers to someone who does the specific noteworthy rituals which are exclusive to Islam (e.g. prayer and fasting and not eating pork). It does not actually refer to someone who upholds Islamic values like kindness and community work and the active desire to leave the Earth and its people in better state then it was prior to their existence. The fact is that abuse (which granted I have lowered the bar for considerably) exists in our community, even if it no more present than in any other, shows that there is something wrong with the way marriages are determined, and conducted, and followed through. I could not say which gender has the monopoly on this; some feminists will insist that most abuse related problems are based on misogyny and patriarchy and this may well be true in some societies. However, going by many British Asian families I have known, women can be very dominant and controlling and thus potentially guilty of several of the above. I can think of several ‘whipped’ men who would be nodding their heads to this. As God has created men and women to be equally but differently flawed, I tend to believe such cases of spiteful mistreatment are probably about even.

“Nor can goodness and evil be equal.  Repel (evil) with that is better: Then will he between whom and thee was hatred become as it were thy friend and intimate!.” (Qur’an 41:34)

And they (women) have rights similar to those (of men) over them in kindness…(Qur’an 2:228)

 “The strong is not the one who over comes the people by his strength”  “But the strong is the one who controls him while in anger.” (Abu Huraira)

11) ”You don’t get it”

Translation: ”I am literally unable to defend my position because it would entail admitting that culture is a stronger decision maker to me then Islam is. When it comes to the way I actually live my life. I live with Islam, but I live BY my culture.”

I have had similar conversations talking about the above 10 problems with otherwise very intelligent, very articulate people who are perfectly proficient at argumentation; yet their arguments here were so bankrupt, that all they could resort to was telling me that ‘I didn’t get it’ and trying some phenomenally atrocious (dis)analogies (like: ‘getting married is like going to school, you don’t get a choice.’).

A vicious part of me feels that people who are morally and spiritually weak enough to be ruled by the unIslamic practices and ideas which I have discussed, pretty much deserve to lie in the bed that they make for themselves (no pun intended) but sadly this not only damages their own lives but perpetuates this vortex of ignorance to the next generation. There are people who would read this and respond along the lines of ‘I admire people who stand up to unreasonable parental demands, who would marry someone whether white black or green, who don’t care what job someone has as long as they are a good Muslim and kind person etc….its really great…but…..I’m just not cut out to be a hero basically’

Being brave or heroic, questioning cultural norms or standing up to the people you love/fear/respect the most is not an abstract ideal reserved for an elite few people. It is a fundamental duty of every Muslim, if the occasion warrants it. Many Muslims act as if while praying and fasting is compulsory, doing good and preventing bad is some sort of optional extra that is okay, but in the scale of things it doesn’t really matter. Basically if you pray and fast enough you pretty much go straight to heaven. The damage and stagnation caused by unwritten paradigms like this (which Islam refutes ad infinitum) is catastrophic; stay tuned for an article dissecting them!

Indeed the worst kind of all living creatures in God’s sight are the deaf and dumb, who do not reason (Qur’an 8:22)

Conclusions:

All of the problems I have discussed serve to undermine Islam; even if we convince ourselves and non Muslims that Islam is not directly responsible for the problems; the fact that these problems manifest themselves so abundantly through people who claim to follow Islam does not suggest that Islam is capable of producing solutions. Once a faith seems irrelevant, people question its validity; for those who care about the future of the Muslim community it is critical that we do not underestimate this effect. However, human beings are good at compartmentalising religious teachings and their behaviour (being very selective with the former), and people of conscience should (gently) point this out to guilty persons. Whilst this set of problems can undermine Islam in the eyes of people, Islam also undermines these problems when followed as a holistic way of life. Islam does demand that a man can provide safety and security for a wife, but a manual labourer could do this, and if he is good in his character he could make a woman ‘richer’ then any investment banker could. There are no races in Islam, and thus Islam condemns discrimination based on colour; there is no tribalism in Islam, thus origin cannot be used as a basis to determine a person’s worth or suitability; Islam unequivocally condemns obscene and reckless materialism and extravagance, something many Muslim weddings are based on to the core. Gossiping is a grotesque sin in Islam, and Islamic traditions even seem to pre-empt and repudiate any possible loopholes that people would use to protest that their gossiping isn’t ‘real’ gossiping or backbiting. Islam does not encourage divorce, but it does permit it, and under circumstances far less extreme then life and death situations. While many Muslims are in practice opposed to sex education and open discussion about issues surrounding marriage and sexuality, there is nothing inherent in Islam which is similarly prudish and traditions of the Prophet along with classical Islamic scholarship suggest the reverse. Finally, the spitefulness in many tit for tat relationships which we see could not be more contrary to the spirit of Islam and its teachings.

Most of this 8000 word article has been spent criticising people, or at least their practices. Yet, unlike the case with some of my other writing (See ’10 problems with Dawahmen’) I do not forsee the same magnitude of vitriol and offence in any responses. Sure, some might argue that I am being a little simplistic or generalising or judgemental but overall I do not think the essence of what I am saying will be considered highly radical; yet many of these despicable problems I discuss are in many cases the norm, not the exception. What I am trying to say is that many people are perfectly aware of the marriage based problems today, but continue to allow or perpetuate them.

If you, as the reader fundamentally disagree with me on the above points as being problems, I am sad to say that it is hard to see us reaching common ground; but if any of the claims which I have made resonate with you, then please do not be amongst those whose internal response is ‘You might be right, but thats the way it is, thats the way its always been, and theres nothing I can or will do about it.’ Just sharing and justifying your opinions in conversation is doing something about it. Being strong enough not to accept or fall foul of any of these ‘traditions’ yourself is doing something about it too.

I do think that agreeing with many of the problems with Muslim marriages (as most Muslims I speak to actually do) but then ‘going along’ with them in practice when it is one’s own turn is easy, and as this is a trial I have yet to overcome myself, I do not want to be more judgemental then I undoubtedly come across as already. However, I hope I am less likely to fall foul or be guilty of the above as a result of writing this article and I hope and pray that any readers are less likely to do so having read it too.

Assalamu alaikum, and enjoy the rest of your day