From the heart of a Muslim
Tawfik Hamid
I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.
After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being, to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.
I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward Non-Muslims. We Muslims are the ones who need to change. Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.
We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called Jizia. We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the Mosques.
What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews “Descendants of the pigs and monkeys”.. Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?
I have been into churches and synagogues where they were praying for Muslims. While all the time we curse them, and teach our generations to call them infidels, and to hate them.
We immediately jump in a ‘knee jerk reflex’ to defend Prophet Mohammed when someone accuses him of being a paedophile while, at the same time, we are proud with the story in our Islamic books, that he married a young girl seven years old (Aisha) when he was above 50 years old.
I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.
Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause. Till now our ‘reputable’ top religious authorities have never issued a Fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shania law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.
Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the Hejab (Head Scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders.
It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts. We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East .
We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them “Jews-Free countries” while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have its nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel , women can not be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of ‘Apostasy,’ while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights. I agree that the ‘Palestinians’ suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel.
It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world. On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel , its ‘enemy’. If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.
We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind. Our religious leaders have to show a clear and very strong stand against polygamy, paedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religions, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam.
Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion. The time has come to stop our hypocrisy and say it openly: ‘We Muslims have to Change’.
Tawfik Hamid
Before I comment i would like to say that i am a non-muslim.
Hindu to be very precise. I have done some own research regarding this issue of islamic radicalism.
What mr. Hamid says though is 60-70% right.What he does not consider is the fact that the overall muslim community is not as he describes. Secondly he praises Christianity which itself involves a bloody history of crusades or the religious wars.
Both Islam and Christianity considered that women do not possess a soul. That perhaps explains the Islamic attitudes to wards women.
Christians also treated nonChristians as subhumans . The open auctions in the past of women in Islam and African Slaves by Christians in USA are records of these actions. Efforts to completely eliminate infidels by Islamists in the last one thousand years of history and even today do not arouse the feelings and comments by saner Islamic elements. Indirect annihilation of Blacks in USA being practised has perhaps now taken a turn for the better with President Obama at the helm.
Thanks for a very moving piece.
We can only hope that India remains insulated from the growing Islamic fundamentalism while not allowing any kind of Hindu fundamentalism to take roots in our soil. We cannot leave it to our politicians who are unlikely to change overnight. The only way out is to impress the younger generations, the uncorrupted minds, to grow up as Indians first and not allowing religions to guide their worldview.
We cannot put a veil on history. From the advent of Islam in India till the beginning of the British Raj, for nearly 600 years, forceful conversion of Hindus and destruction of Temples were carried out by majority of Muslim rulers, from small chieftains to the emperors, who ruled the vast majority of non-muslims across the subcontinent. Barely, any temple was spared from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Kamrup to Kathiabar, unless it happened to be in most inaccessible terrains. These acts of extraordinary savagery destroyed more than the physical structures, they destroyed the vestiaes of a glorious civilization.
However, it is totally mindless to simulate anger and take it out on fellow Muslims in a modern world for the misdeeds of rulers in a bygone era. Religious fanaticism was not totally absent in ancient India. Hindu rulers also desecrated Buddhist monasteries at times.
The conversion of Hindus to Islam or Christianity has also been due to the decline of Hinduism and the practice of casteism.
Our only hope for a brighter future is to unbind us from the shackles of the dark forces of religious intolerance and fanaticism.
This is d truth….
It was very brave and conscientious for Mr. Tawfik Hamid, to present his views suggesting to Muslims to do some self-review and self-criticism about their religion, so that Muslims can start to remove practices that are discriminatory, violent, insulting and harmful against non-Muslims and women.
During the Persian empires (525 B.C. to 630 A.D.)the rulers who followed the 4,500 year old religion of Prophet Zarathushtra (called Zoroaster by Greek philosophers who studied his teachings)were generally secular, allowing Greeks, Jews, Christians and others to freely practice their religion. Prophet Mohammed himself was taught about Zoroastrian beliefs by his friend, Salmane Farsi (original name was Dastur Dinyar, a former Zoroastrian priest) and so Zoroastrians were not harmed during Mohammed’s life, but after the Arab conquest of Persia, the Muslim rulers forced conversions to Islam, burned religious books, killed priests and intellectuals, and introduced laws that discriminated, humiliated, and persecuted non-Muslims.
Early Christianity of the Roman Catholic church also had many bad practices involving violence and discrimination against non-Christians and women. Even Christians whose beliefs differed from the Catholic church doctrine were tortured and killed. But, the Christians have introduced many reforms over the centuries. Muslims can learn from the history of the Christians and start reforms that will bring their beliefs in line with the core ethical beliefs of all major religions.
All religions believe in one supreme almighty power (God) who we call by different names, which makes us all the children of the same one God who loves all his children equally and treats each one with the same justice. If God gave us freedom of choice and reserved the right to do justice when we die, we should respect God’s wish and not interfere with the right to choose, as long as one does not hurt another.
Interfaith organizations which promote mutual respect and dialog among different religious communities, can help to remove the ignorance about other religions, and give hope for a better peaceful future free of evil done in the name of religion.