A reader here called my attention to the following good news/bad news:
Good News: El-Farouk Khaki is receiving a Pride Award from Toronto Pride for his work in organizing and supporting the religious lives GLBTQ Muslims and their allies. El-Farouk Khaki is a lawyer working on human rights and refugee cases.
Bad News: Irshad Manji internationally known minion of Satan is also receiving an award....for human rights. She is from Toronto. Okay. She is a lesbian. Okay. But the ignorant media hungry destructive Pipes acolyte is hardly someone to be praised for her work on human rights. Perhaps these two nominations signal a split in the political views of the Toronto gay community? Perhaps it indicates their own racism towards Muslims in that they can recognize their own racist sentiments in Irshad's talk? Urgh.
No matter, congratulations to our beloved El-Farouk!
Progressives are just as judgmental as the Tablighs I know and the Maliki conservative-traditionalists I know.
How can you denigrate someone who you disagree with. She ardently defends the right of Israel at the expense of Muslim and Christian suffering and apartheid tactics, to borrow from the late Edward Said, "Bantustans."
How do Muslims constitute a single race?
Muslims come from every ethnic and racial category conceived.
Perhaps Irshad Manji is less deserving, but bestowing awards on celebrities is nothing new.
Now I realize that PI.org is no different from MWU! and the sarcastic antics of Jawad Ali.
Your comment is no different from Faisal Alam who called into question the nomination of Ingrid Mattson because she is a white woman, pulling the race card may be fashionable among some liberal Leftists, but not amused by these antics.
Manji is the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier. No sarcasm there. Just pure revulsion on my part. If I say it, I mean it. I'd gladly spit in her face.
Wow, I am curious why you have such an intense disdain for her?
You forgot to mention that she's brown too . . . ganja brownie points there. :)
Yes, it is because she is brown-skinned. You got me! Darkies line up! I'm repulsed by my brothers and sisters brown skin .
GM, have you entirely lost your mind? Enough already.
Sorry, I like to be an ass sometimes. Let me go grab my dildo now.
Congratulations to Farouk!!!
So right on Manji Laury......
Sometimes it seems like any time Progressives express an opinion they
are dubbed intolerant. If they don't take a stand on an issue, then they
are viewed with disdain as moral relativists. Catch 22, cannot win. It's
just one of the more insidious ways of silencing real dissent. Laury a racist??
what a joke! It's rather clear to me that Manji is a sellout. No apologies there.
Geh. I don't like Irshad Manji, but I won't call her Satan's minion either. We built this space to acknowledge even those whose words make our blood boil, who are standing center-stage, advocating at the top of their lungs that which we would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of ours*.
I don't like her, but I don't have to in order to acknowledge her.
*Yes, I'm channeling Sorkin. Leave me alone.
Ilan is right. I am clenching my teeth.
Even my mother enjoyed her appearance on KPBS, I would like someone to write a thoughtful piece on why they dislike Irshad Manji.
And while we are at it, what is the issue with Ingrid Mattson?
And Sheikh Hamza?
Islamic Principles of Peace, they are soemthing all Muslims should be familiar with, especially when they clench their teeth or talk ill of another they do not know personally. I know nothing about either of them, but anger will not make them change their stance on anything/
http://darvish.wordpress.com/2006/07/15/islamic-principles-of-peace/
Ya Haqq!
In the same entry you praise one muslim and condemn another.
I don't have to agree with everything a particular muslim says or does to support them. God knows I don't like everything I read at your site.
I liked Manji's book and she is an important voice for freedom of thought and action in the muslim community. she also makes some very necessary and legitimate criticisms of ethnic and national traditions passing themselves off as islam.
You should try coming to the gulf where I live and you will see saudi islam in action. Asian muslims are treated worse than slaves by their arab owners, I mean employers. This doesn't mean that I hate all arabs, but there is a lot to criticise in this.
Being muslim doesn't mean being arab or pakistani or any other nationality. Being muslim means submitting ourselves to the one God. We all have to do this in our own way. Ridiculing those who try to secure this freedom for us does not help any muslim.
I could never live in the Gulf.
I was there, I didn't like it, being Persian you're not treated like shit there since well a sizeable community of Iranian expatriates reside in Dubai and elsewhere, plus we Persians think we own the damn thing.
Anyways, Asian Muslims are treated like shit.
My friend, a nurse was arrested in Riyadh when she encountered a car accident, the Indonesians were treated first since they are Muslim, but the Pilipinas were allowed to bleed and did not receive medical attention until much later since they are Christians.
She intervened, the first mistake as a Muslim woman was stake off her jilbab, arrange her hijab in the manner of a head wrap, and then proceed to help and assist the Pilipinas. She was arrested for "interferring in a police matter" and spent a week in jail until her deportation proceedings to the United States was arranged.
This was the same visit after the Hajj where she was cited for operating a motor vehicle in Jeddah and cited for "indecent exposure."
...the Indonesians were treated first since they are Muslim, but the Pilipinas were allowed to bleed and did not receive medical attention until much later since they are Christians.Gustavo..
Gus...this is the biggest bull i have ever heard. There is injustice in the Gulf, true. This???? is Bull and if you believe it you are gullible of the first kind.
My friend relayed this information to me, I have no reason to doubt her account. She was arrested, did spend time in confinement, and was deported.
So much for a memorable Hajj experience.
Who are you by the way?
I wouldn't put anything past the Saudis, they allowed some female schoolchildren to die since they didn't have to time to get their abayas.
This is the same government that had a panel toy with the idea of more female restrictions pertaining to the Haram.
But Iranians are just as equally culpable, they have hung gay youth and disabled girls from construction cranes.
America carpet bombed Vietnam, was compliant with the killing of 1.5 million Indonesian Communists, and left the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
There, I have demonized both Muslims and Westerners.
I'm both, so no one should claim I am biased.
If you do want to read why very active progressive Muslims have problems with Irshad M, please do read the following. It is a link to my personal blog, but it is a compilation of writings by others, I take no credit for the erudition:
http://ifaqeer.blogspot.com/2005/05/irshad-manji-progressive-muslim.html
True, ridicule doesn't help. However, if a person takes a stance that I find
unconscionable, I will voice my objections regardless of the person's faith.
Manji does make some good points in her work- but the manner in which
she approaches and builds those points often displays a good deal of
ignorance at best, and racism at worst. One can dismiss the approach,
and focus on the core of the ideas, but allowing the dissemination ofÂÂ
ignorance, racism, and Manji's other flaws is too high a price to pay
for some, a point that holds great merit. I see both the good in her work,
and the deep flaws in it. I try not to let those flaws blind me to the needsÂÂ
the popularity of her work indicates: some people are looking someone
to speak critically about Islam, all the better if they speak from the
authority that direct experience grants. Some are looking for someone to
speak as a critical lover of Islam: one who loves the beautifully nuancedÂÂ
intellectual traditions of Islam, and believes that the tools they provide can
indeed help make a better world. Manji may be trying to become the latter,
but is now far closer to the former. Those who are seeking the former areÂÂ
content with what Manji has to offer. Those seeking the latter may read her
work, but sooner or later move on. ÂÂ
I guess the reader Laury mentions is me, as we posted this news at the Eye on Gay Muslims blog. We also have a slightly older article called "Salaam Canada and the El-Farouk effect"... feel free to check it out.
I am sorry that my comments set off so much negativity. I was trying to use the example of my own host country to make a point.
If you want to see some arab on arab injustice you can go to Google video at the following link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6456354220684200475&hl=en
This is straight up sunni on shia discrimination. Which is excused because the sunnis here don't believe that the shia are real muslims anyway. As an American living here in the gulf I have to listen to friday sermons where the imam curses americans and jews and asks God to punish us all. Then we pray.
I do not think that Manji is a type of Islamic savior come to liberate us, but hers is one voice among many which should be heard. Perhaps because I am here in the middle of it I found her criticisms about traditions passing as Islato be especially important. If I was still in the US with no foreign experience they would probably affect me differently.
I want unity among my brothers and sisters. Unity requires tolerance for our differences. Manji's criticisms are obviously colored by her own experiences, same for all of us.
Peace be with you all.
When you attend the khutbas, do you understand Arabic well enough to decipher the speech or do they have devices catering to English speakers?
Such negativity?
I would disagree David, I merely said I could never live in the Gulf, Iran maybe, but never an Arab state.
I merely reported what happened to a Muslim woman who lived up to her Muslim duties of caring for those less fortunate than herself.
I could never attend a khutba without raising hell about it, here in the United States, I can express descent about a topic mentioned at the minbar, but then again, mosques here are small in comparison to the grand congregational mosques.
But the question is, why do the Saudis allow demonization of the West, considering that we are protecting that dysfunctional kingdom from being destroyed by its many Muslim enemies?
Iranians are admired by Sunnis because we had the gumption of standing up to Israel and shattering Israeli invincibility.
The Saudis and their pathetic princes blasted Hezbollah.
But Hezbollah wasted katsuyshas in Galilee, would have been better spent bombing Jeddah and Riyadh.
Sorry, there is one thing I agree with OLB, the Saudis must go.
How have my comments been negative?
Seriously, you mentioned criticism of your adopted country, and well I will say the hell with the "Guardians of the Two Holy Mosques."
This whole thread has been negative in tone before your comments.
We Muslims can not be blind to misogyny, ignorance, arrogance, racism, and other -isms inflicting the Muslim world.
You sound white, and you probably enjoy a generous salary and live in a walled compound villa, whereas some of your neighbors probably keep their hired help (slaves) on their sizeable balconies living in what amount to little more than shanty housing.
Many white people live in Saudi, and are treated like God, and being Muslim, God you are as good as gold.
It is one thing to decry the shitty behavior of Arab Muslims, but if you do nothing about it, then why complain in a safe environment.
Afraid of being a marked man?
I'm sorry for being so harsh. But if you do nothing to change conditions in Saudi, then why complain. When you are asked on Judgment Day what you did for your fellow brothers and sisters in distress, what will you say?
African vs. Arab divisions
How ironic that in Africa that the African Union should deny Sudan the privilege of being bestowed the privilege of chairing this 53 nation organization.
While the Arab nations support the genocide of Black Muslims who are not ethnically Arab, Africans including Black Muslim nations are standing on the side of justice, and thus igniting conflict between Arabs (seen as foreign conquerors) and Black Africans.
Talk about divisions.
Mabrook 2 El-Farouk!