This entry will be somewhat of a rant. I am sick and tired of people branding me and my religion as satanic. I understand that right now it is very hard to view the good aspects of Islam and Muslims. However it just is not fair to blame the millions of Muslims who live around the world for the actions of a few horrible fundamentalists.
I recently posted a comment under the name Hazel on Big Pharoah’s site. I was saying that Saudi’s do not take the good values of Islam at heart. This prompted comments from 2 people. One is Abu Kufr and the other called Tantor. Now these two gentlemen (and I use this term very loosely) have branded Islam as a satanic religion and all Muslims as terrorists. How ignorant. They know nothing about what really goes on in the Muslim/Arab communities. They are using information which is false and which have no basis at all in Islam.
Tantor had the guts to say that there are hatred inciting comments written on the pillars of Mina. I wonder if he has ever been to Mina to see these comments. Ignorant claims, generalization and racism is only going to cause more problems in relations between the Western and Muslim world. I do feel that to hate all Muslims based on the actions of a small group is racism, even if Islam is a religion not a race. Call it whatever you want, but basically hating people who have never done anything to you and are not even interested in you is wrong. Hate those awful people who did these terrible acts, not everyone else who happens to share the same religion they do. These horrible terrorists do not understand Islam and are just hiding behind it and using it. They are giving Islam a bad name. Should we hate all Christians in the world because of Timothy McVeigh? Most Muslims are disgusted and horrified with the horrible terrorist acts that are being done in the name of Islam. People need to see Muslims as normal human beings who are just trying to live in this world like anyone else.
Fed up of being branded as Satanic Wednesday, Nov 8 2006
Uncategorized 4:57 am
Egypt and Islam Thursday, Nov 2 2006
Uncategorized 4:05 pm
I would like to comment on the wave of religiousness that has captured Egypt lately. If anyone has gone to Egypt recently they will have seen that more and more women are donning the Hijab and the Niqab, and more men are growing beards and going to pray at the mosque. While I have no objections to how anyone lives their life, I do have an objection to the way these people are acting. These people think that appearance is everything, and that by covering their face, or growing their beards they are going to heaven. However, the moral and ethical system in Egypt has completely broken down. People only appear religious, but all day long they fight with one another, harrass each other and generally just step all over each other. Women who are not covered are either told to cover up by strange men in the street, or they are harrassed sexually by the same men who were just in the mosque praying. No one is taking the real values of Islam to heart. No one is kind to anyone else. No one smiles at anyone. No one forgives anyone for the slightest mistake. Everyone lies and cheats. Is this what Islam has come to? Is this what the Prophet has preached? I would like to see people getting along rather than people being covered from head to toe gossiping about each other (which is what most of those covered women do all day interestingly).The hijab, niqab, and the beard growing are all values foreign to Egypt. After 1919 and the emancipation of women in Egypt (think Huda Shaarawi) women in Egypt dressed as freely as they wanted to, and they never ever feared of walking down the street in a mini skirt and being harrassed. Now a women cannot walk down the street in a half sleeve shirt without being called all sorts of names. All this ideology came after the wave of migrant workers who went to the Gulf states and came home to Egypt with these values. Most of these workers are/were of the lower class, and they are/were taught that even if they are/were poor now, they will have everything they want in the after life if they cover up, grow beards, go to the mosque to pray etc.
However, after saying all of this, I still want to say I love Egypt. It is truly the greatest Arab country in my opinion and I am living for the day when it turns around to what it was in the 50′s and 60′s. Women should be free to wear the Hijab/Niqab or not wear it. They should not fear walking in downtown Cairo and being harrassed by crowds of rowdy youths.
Very good comment on Big Pharaoh’s site Wednesday, Nov 1 2006
Uncategorized 9:10 pm
I read a very good comment by a lady named Northern shewolf on Big Pharoah’s post regarding the harrassment that happened in Cairo recently. I agree with her 100% and I thought I would copy and paste what she said
”As I see it in this instance, the whole salafist/wahhabi agenda to push women back into invisibility bears a definite responsibility for this, what happened is simply the result of decades of furious sermonizing and ‘fatwa-ing’ by retrograde clerics, which combined with dire social conditions and non existant basic human rights, will always lead in spurts to sudden ‘mass-madness’ or crowd hysteria. There is no rime or reason for these invariably sudden explosions of mayhem, in this case Eid Al Fitr being the pretext, sadly a displacement of a grab-bag of emotions: fervour, anger, desire, excitement, frustration etc… That women were automatically targeted should be no big surprise either to anyone. ME men feel so devalued without respect and honour and for so long now, that in accordance with their cultural imperative, it is easier to fall back on old conceits as the mosque, which they view as the only institution that cares about them, constantly urges them to do. So they pressure their women to cover themselves as a sign that they still have some dignity. But even the most uneducated amongst them know that this is just a device, so whenever tension rises women are a convenient scapegoat. rape is the ultimate show of oppression being the most dehumanizing act a man can commit. Since the Sharia courts are infamous for their idiotic rulings and overall disregard of women’s rights, such horrid scenes will keep on repeating themselves.”
She is right in everything she says. Until the sharia courts start treating women and men as equals, the Middle East and the Islamic world in general will never advance. We need to allow serious Ijithad (which is allowing rules and laws to be changed based on the current time’s needs) before we can even think of improving women’s situation in the Arab world. However the wahabi ideology (which unfortunately has been introduced to Egyptian culture) has closed the door of Ijithad and is insisting on the laws that applied to women 1400 years ago to continue to apply today.
Why it sucks to be an Arab woman part 2 Wednesday, Nov 1 2006
Uncategorized 5:29 pm
Yesterday I had blogged about Al Hilaly’s remarks and I said that they incite violence against women. Well today I would like to talk about the horrific acts that have taken place in downtown Cairo. First of all I would like to say I love Egypt and I do not like to criticize it. That is why anything I say in this entry is targeted only towards those horrible young men that acted in such a terrible manner. These men harrassed and assaulted young women (whether veiled or not) in downtown Cairo during Eid. Eid is supposed to be a time of celebration immediately following a holy month. People are supposed to rejoice! Those poor young women were just out to enjoy an evening of harmless fun with their friends when these men assaulted them. Of course the police was no where to be seen. The police are always the first on the scene of a strike or a demonstration, but when masses of men start to harrass women, no one is there to rescue them. It was upto the normal citizens and shopkeepers to help these young women escape. Now a lot of analysis is going on around why this happened. I do not care why it happened! What I do care about is that these young men must be found and punished! The ministry of interior is saying that since no one came forward with a complaint, they cannot do anything. They know that no one will come forward with a complaint as 1) No father will want to take his daughter to a police station and complain that she was groped or harrassed as this will tarnish her reputation (yes I know it is crazy but if a girl gets harrassed/assaulted/raped it is her reputation that gets tarnished and her chances of getting married plummet) and 2) No girl/woman will go alone to a police station to complain as she will be afraid and the policemen there will probably end up harrassing her. So the ministry of interior should launch an aggressive investigation by themselves and find those men and throw them in jail until they are too old to see.
