Re: Trouble for Taslima Nasreen http://www.mukto-mona.com/new_site/mukto-mona/muk-forums.htm Mr. Akbar Hussain wrote: [Fighting with Islamic extremists is a fight with wild animals. There is a huge gap between reason and their barbarity. When thousands of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis are killed by the Islamic terrorists they keep quite but a cartoon of Muhammad leads them to suicide bombing. Are these people capable of preaching any religion?] I had asked Mr. Hussain a number of questions, one of them being: [Are you saying that what the reactionary clerics say and preach is their invention?] I had a specific reason for asking this question, though it sounded a little bit rude. Let me explain why I had asked it. According to an Islamic source, there are over 1.5 billion Muslims in the world today. Out of this huge number, only about 300 million know and speak Arabic. There is a very small number of the non-Arabic speaking Muslims who have studied Arabic and know what is written in the Quran. Yet, all of them, without any differentiation, try to live their lives according to the teachings of the Quran! The vast majority of the non-Arabic speaking Muslims who are educated have, though, read the Quran in their formative years, but they did it without knowing what they were reading. I have many examples to cite here, but will suffice with a couple of them. I have a devout Muslim friend in Three of my sisters-in-law live in If we go out and ask the non-Arab Muslims if they know what is written in the Quran, I am sure the vast majority of them will answer in the negative. If pressed to explain how then they carry out their Islamic obligations, the answer will be: we do what we have seen our parents and guardians doing in their lifetime. We also depend on our Imams and religious leaders and we do exactly what they tell us to do. This explains why Muslims go wild on Fridays while protesting against the alleged or the so-called blasphemers of their religion. They do exactly what their Imams tell them to do in their Friday Sermons, part of which they deliver in their native languages. For making my point clear, I quote hereunder a letter, published by the Daily Star of Dhaka on September 7, 2005, in which the writer stated, among others, the following: [Because the Khutba is delivered in Arabic, only a few in Around this time, I found out that the Imam of the mosque, in an upscale area of The translation proved my apprehension right. The sentences that the particular Imam was adding roughly translated like this, [Allah, make the Mujahids victorious in their Jihad in [here sometimes places such as Allah, make us victorious against the idolaters, Jews and Christians.] I asked the Imam, [Why should we be saying things against members of other religions in our prayers?] I added, [I do not know if we have Jews, but we have Hindus, Buddhists and Christians as citizens of Any way, when I went for Hajj in 2002, I found that the Imams in the Holy Mosque of Mecca and Now the questions are: Why the Imams say hateful things against the idolaters, Jews and the Christians? Are their hateful preaching their own inventions? The answer to the above questions is an empathetic No. The Imams say what they read in the Quran. There are numerous passages in it through which Allah has asked the Muslims to seek His help against those inhabitants of the Again, the question is: Can anyone change the Muslims' minds, when hateful and anti-human messages of the Quran continue to influence their thoughts and actions? The answer is No. No one can change the Muslims' mind without doing something about the hateful preaching of the Quran. Since Muslims will never like to see any changes in it, the only thing those of us who wish to help them can do will be to place the Quran in the time and place to which it belongs, and then try to gradually change their perceptions of the world around them. To put the Quran in its right time and place, we will have to tell the Muslims that it was meant for the time it was revealed to Muhammad and for the people it speaks about, and that everything it says is contextual, and not eternal. To drive him this point, we can quote many verses from the Quran. Here, I will quote just one verse to prove right what I have stated in the foregoing paragraph. Verse 24:62 reads: [Only those are Believers {Muslims}, who believe in Allah and His Apostle {i.e. Muhammad}: when they are with him on a matter requiring collective action, they do not depart until they have asked for his leave; those who ask for thy leave are those who believe in Allah and His Apostle; so when they ask for thy leave, for some business of theirs, give leave to those of them whom thou wilt, and ask Allah for their forgiveness: for Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.] Can the Muslims follow today what is stated in the above verse? And if they cannot do what it requires of them, then can any one claim to be a Muslim? If their failure takes them out of Islam, what should they do? The answer is simple: they should treat as contextual what is written in the Quran and go on living their life without making themselves too concerned with much of what is written in it. If those of us, who are seeking to bring about a change in the thinking of the Muslims, can plant the above thought in their mind, only then would they, over a period of time, forget to hate those humans who are not Muslims. Sans this, I do not think any one will succeed in helping the Muslims out of their quagmire – a quagmire that is neither good for them, nor for the rest of mankind. Regards, Mohammad Asghar
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Sign the Petition : Release the Arrested University Teachers Immediately : An Appeal to the Caretaker Government of Bangladesh
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/university_teachers_arrest.htm
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Daily Star publishes an interview with Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/news/daily_star/daily_star_MM.pdf
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MM site is blocked in Islamic countries such as UAE. Members of those theocratic states, kindly use any proxy (such as http://proxy.org/) to access mukto-mona.
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates 5th Anniversary
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/5_yrs_anniv/index.htm
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Mukto-Mona Celebrates Earth Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Earth_day2006/index.htm
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Kansat Uprising : A Special Page from Mukto-Mona
http://www.mukto-mona.com/human_rights/kansat2006/members/
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MM Project : Grand assembly of local freedom fighters at Raumari
http://www.mukto-mona.com/project/Roumari/freedom_fighters_union300306.htm
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German Bangla Radio Interviews Mukto-Mona Members:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/german_radio/
Mukto-Mona Celebrates Darwin Day:
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Special_Event_/Darwin_day/index.htm
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