#Prophet Mohammad Controversy | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

beardedmrbean · 2 years

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Indian authorities are in international damage control mode after controversial comments about the Prophet Mohammed by a senior ruling party official sparked a diplomatic spat. But inside the country, the home of a prominent Muslim family was demolished by the state in a display of majoritarian might against India’s largest minority community.

On Sunday afternoon, Mohammad Umam watched in fear and anguish as TV cameras covered the unfolding drama at his family home in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

First, a massive deployment of police officers in camouflage vests and hardhats moved towards the house as news camera teams darted in and out of their ranks, recording and relaying the action live.

Next came the bulldozers. As the police kept journalists within recording distance but safely out of the way, a yellow bulldozer appeared at the gate of the family home, extended a mechanised arm toward the outer wall and tore it down before hacking into the two-story structure, cracking walls and twisting metal rods out of the way.

“It was all shattered within two hours. It was the only home we had. I watched it all live, the media was showing it live, they were helping the administration make the allegations. We are homeless now. Everything my Dad worked for was shattered in two hours. It was so painful, I don’t have words to explain,” said Umam, his voice breaking with the strain during a phone interview with FRANCE 24 a day after the demolition.

Umam, 30, hails from a prominent Muslim family in Prayagraj, a teeming city formerly known as Allahabad. His father, Javed Mohammad, is a businessman, activist and member of the Welfare Party of India, a Muslim opposition party in Uttar Pradesh, a state ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

His sister, Afreen Fatima, made national headlines as a student leader in 2019, when protests against the Modi government’s controversial citizenship amendment law erupted across campuses in the capital, New Delhi. Fatima, now 24, has since graduated and is currently an activist and India-based research assistant at the Polis Project, a New York-based research and journalism organisation.

The latest allegations to hit the family are linked to insulting remarks about the Prophet Mohammed made by two ruling party officials in late May, sparking condemnations by several Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar.

In a cruel sequence of events emblematic of the discrimination plaguing India’s religious minorities, Islamophobic comments made by officials of a right-wing Hindu nationalist party led to the arrest of a Muslim politician and social worker, followed by the demolition of his home. The destruction was wrought by a bulldozer, an emerging symbol of the crushing might of a state shattering the rights of Muslims in a Hindu-majority nation.

Arrests in the dead of night

The Mohammad family’s misfortune began on Friday night, hours after police shot dead two protesters during street demonstrations across the country against the Islamophobic comments made by Nupur Sharma, a BJP spokeswoman, on an Indian TV station.

Sharma’s remarks, which insulted the Prophet Mohammed, sparked a diplomatic storm, with the governments of nearly 20 countries calling in their Indian envoys for an explanation. It forced the Indian government into swift damage control mode. Sharma, the familiar official voice of the BJP, was suspended last week along with another party official who tweeted her comments, which have since been deleted.

Protests nevertheless erupted on Friday in several Indian cities as well as in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh in response to the remarks. In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state governed by hardline Hindu monk and politician Yogi Adityanath, police arrested more than 200 people after the violent protests.

Shortly before 9pm on Friday, the police arrived at the Mohammad family home. “I was not at home,” recounted Umam, who works in another Indian city. “The police came to talk to my Dad. There were no charges, no warrant, nothing. They said they wanted to talk with my Dad, so he went with the police in his own vehicle.”

His father had not participated in the protests and had stayed home, posting messages calling for calm on social media, according to Umam. The police would later claim Mohammad was a “mastermind” of Friday’s violent protests. But on Friday night, after a day spent mostly indoors, the 57-year-old Muslim politician had no idea about the allegations that would be levelled against him, and so he duly complied with the police request to accompany them to the police station.

Hours later, at around 12:30am on Saturday, the police once again arrived at the family home to arrest Umam’s mother and youngest sister, 19-year-old Somaiya Fatima, in the dead of night.

“They took my mother and younger sister into custody, there was no notice, no allegations. They just intimidated my mother and sister to come with them and they were detained for 30 hours. When the police released my mother and sister, they took them to a relative’s home and told my family not to go home,” said Umam.

His father remains in detention and has been placed on a list of 10 main “conspirators” of Friday’s violence, which include prominent Muslim activists and leftist politicians.

‘It was all illegal, and it was all so fast’

The family’s physical and emotional destruction was unleashed at a dizzying speed over the weekend, when courts are closed and access to legal injunctions and stay orders is difficult.

The morning after Mohammad’s arrest, Prayagraj’s police chief informed reporters that the activist-politician was the “mastermind” of the previous day’s violence. “Police will take action against gangsters,” said the city’s top police officer in Hindi, adding, “bulldozers will also be used on illegal constructions”.

Hours later – while Mohammad, his wife and daughter were still in detention – the police pasted a notice issued by the city’s development authority on the family’s home. The notice stated the construction of the two-story structure was illegal and it would be demolished the next day at 11am local time.

“They put the notice on Saturday night. It was the weekend, the courts were closed, there was no time to go to court. My Dad, mother and sister were detained, the main people were in custody. It was all illegal, and it was all so fast. My family members were all frightened, the police were coming every two or three hours, threatening us,” recounted Umam.

Terrified and in shock, the family had no time to recover their belongings before the bulldozers arrived on Sunday afternoon.

The official harassment of Muslims accused of crimes, followed by the demolition of their homes before the justice process can take its course, is a familiar pattern that has emerged in several Indian states and territories ruled by the BJP.

It is a strategy, many experts say, conceived by a right-wing politician who has embraced the symbolism of the bulldozer for electoral gains in a country gripped by populist Hindu nationalism.

‘Bulldozer Baba’ sets a national trend

The bulldozer made a spectacular entrée on the Indian political stage in the run-up to local elections in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous state, considered a political launching pad for future prime ministers.

The stakes were high for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath as he campaigned for reelection early this year on a tough-on-crime platform, promising to “bulldoze thugs and mafias”. By the time the BJP swept the polls in March, Adityanath had earned the moniker “Baba Bulldozer” [Papa Bulldozer] as the construction tool became a ubiquitous feature at rallies, bearing candidates and supporters – some even buying plastic toy bulldozers for the occasion.

But it was not fun and games in Muslim neighbourhoods in BJP-ruled states.

As chief ministers of other BJP-controlled states got in on the Adityanath brand of populism, demolition squads went to work in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. In April, for instance, authorities in Madhya Pradesh razed dozens of homes and shops in a Muslim neighbourhood a day after riots erupted when supporters of Hindutva – or a Hindu nation – held a provocative religious procession through the area.

Condemning the move, Rahul Gandhi, leader of the country’s largest Congress opposition party, tweeted an image of a bulldozer juxtaposed with a screenshot of the Indian constitution, declaring the state’s actions “a demolition of India’s constitutional values”.

Meanwhile in the capital, New Delhi, a series of demolitions ripped several areas, including Shaheen Bagh, the site of a peaceful 2019 sit-in, when mostly women demonstrated against a citizenship amendment law discriminating against Muslims.

'Collective punishment' for speaking out

The demolition drives tend to follow a pattern that Seema Chisti – a leading journalist and co-author of the book “Note by Note: The India Story (1947-2017)” – calls a “bulldozer moment” in Indian history.

Under politicians such as Adityanath, Chisti explains, “all points of contact between Hindus and Muslims – eating, love, burial, religious rights – are turned into moments of conflict requiring the implementation of justice”.

While there are no provisions under Indian law to demolish the home of anyone accused of a crime, a pattern of “extrajudicial” justice has emerged, where “the political power is the judge, prosecutor, executioner and implementor of the law,” according to Chisti.

“These are homes where several lives are lived. In India especially, it’s a space shared with the wife, children, grandparents, cousins…and so this is a form of collective punishment that goes against the standards of international law and Indian law,” she explained.

Gautam Bhatia, a scholar of Indian constitutional law, traced the pattern of a protest turning violent, followed by the police identifying individuals as masterminds. “Immediately after that, the municipality declares that these individuals are residing in unauthorised buildings,” he wrote in a post on the legal website Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy.

Typically, Bhatia noted, “the time period between the police declaring that it has identified the masterminds behind the violence, the municipality declaring that the buildings are illegal, and the actual demolition, is under twenty-four hours.”

That’s precisely what happened to the Mohammad family over the weekend. The process was so swift, Umam explained, the family did not have the time to detail obvious discrepancies in the allegations before a court of law.

The house, Umam noted, was in his mother’s name, since it was part of her dowry from his maternal grandfather. “Our house was registered with the municipal corporation. We lived in the house for 20 years, we paid all the tax bills – property, water, electricity bills, everything. Suddenly they said it was an illegal structure,” he said.

The demolition notice, he explained, was issued in the wrong name, since his father did not own the property. City authorities also claimed the family had been given a notice on May 10, which the family denies.

A lawyer for the family has filed a case with the city high court, a time-consuming process that, in India, is an ex post facto phenomenon for families already rendered homeless and often helpless by the state.

The intent of the state authorities, according to Umam, is clear. “My Dad is a social activist who was helping poor people in impoverished areas. He had no criminal record and everyone knew him for his social activism,” he said. “They just wanted to defame him. They don’t want good leaders who help society. They do not want these people to have a voice, they want to silence them.”

#nunyas news #say what you want about how the us deals with protesters #but at least we don't bulldoze peoples houses for it #which appears to be mildly common #across a lot of asia

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 years

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Cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad were projected onto government buildings in France as part of a tribute to history teacher Samuel Paty, who was murdered by an Islamist terrorist last week.

The controversial depictions from the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo were displayed onto town halls in Montpellier and Toulouse for several hours on Wednesday evening, following an official memorial attended by Paty’s family and President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

#Charlie Hebdo #islam #Samuel Paty #muhammad #pictures of muhammad #draw muhammad #prophet muhammad #religion of violence #islamophobia #religion #islamic violence #France #blasphemy #blasphemy laws #religious sentiments #hurting religious sentiments #islamic extremists

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hijabgem · 4 years

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Hijabs - The Modern Faces Behind the Muslim Head Scarf

For born Muslims, taking traditions and faith comes like second character, and many do not feel the need to problem the majority of the issues that are essential or required in Islam. Given that they open their eyes within an environment where in actuality the mom and aunts and siblings are typical protecting their heads with hijabs and wearing free fitting garments such as for instance abayas, they cannot need to issue the intent. They just follow along and by the time they grow up, they're already following in the actions of their predecessors.

For a recently transformed Muslim though the journey of covering themselves up is really a little different. Though whenever a adult chooses to follow along with a faith, he or she understands the inches and outs of the belief completely before opting to pursue it. At the same time however, leaving ongoing behaviors and practices may be difficult at times.

A recently transformed Muslimah I achieved in Detroit recently said concerning the issues she faced after changing to Islam. Based on her, while she reviewed the religion to very an extent, and accepted Islam completely with her heart and soul, there have been numerous issues that she found out became more difficult to apply than in theory. Carrying hijabs was one of them. She started protecting her head when she modified, as she recognized the objective of hijabs in terms of giving modesty and safety for a woman. With time however, she said that she faced challenges in carrying them.

She stated that probably the most awkward situation for her was to visit household gatherings wearing hijabs, as all her relatives were however walking on not merely with revealed brains but additionally in indecent and revealing clothes. She stated that she started initially to experience uncomfortable amongst them as she thought that they treated her as a subject of debate instead of knowledge the basics of Islam and hijabs. She attempted to describe her faith and their essential concepts to her family, but eventually they started to cast her faraway from big family get togethers.

She has been a excellent and training Muslimah for almost five decades today, and she thinks that the fight she fought with her inner-self to over come her very own inner disadvantages has made her into a tougher believer of the path of Allah. On her behalf leaving her home with no safety of hijabs is difficult now, as she fully grasps the significance of the words of Allah (SWT). She no further thinks uneasy with her head covered actually is proud and confident to head into any public gathering and declare that she decided to be a Muslim.

Time, people, culture, culture, and the environment we are surrounded by, may generate the synthesis of many perspectives regarding a problem that individuals see in the current society. One of numerous controversial topics is Islam and the Hijab. Many issues and generalisations tend to be shaped in the brains of numerous non-Muslims in regards to the concepts behind the Hijab through the effect of the media.Wholesale Hijab

Throughout the years of struggle between the "West" and "Islam", the press has clearly altered the thoughts of non-Muslims by bad exploitation of Islam, and Muslims, particularly on Muslim women. Misconceptions such as for example, "Have you been bald underneath" "Would you fall asleep with this on?" to the association of "terrorism" that contrasts from what Muslim girls think the Hijab represents.

A standard misconception is "the Islamic Hijab is anything national, not spiritual ".The usage of the word "cultural" is faulty when explaining the Hijab since it means it is a consequence of practices and methods which are something split up from Islam. The cultural gown is known the ancient Pre-Islamic Era (Jahiliyah). It is the veil from the Pre-Islamic Time that's regarded as "traditional" which stops women from contributing in society. On the contrary, the Islamic Hijab isn't considered being an everyday tradition, nor does it decrease her self-respect. The Hijab is directed at showing girls with poise and equality in society. A good example of Pre-Islamic period within our modern earth could be the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban certainly are a celebration who regard such actions un-Islamic for women, who're prohibited from exercising their principal rights. The Taliban have restricted girls from employment external the house, apart from the wellness sector, and have terminated training for girls.

Prophet Mohammad (peace & delights be upon him) said, "Seeking understanding is incumbent upon every Muslim ".Even Carol VIII forbid women to review the Bible when the initial English translations started to appear. It's an paradox even though the Taliban claim their guiding viewpoint on women come in position to ensure the physical security and self-respect of girls, wherever as, many Afghan women have been killed, beaten and widely hung. For most Afghan girls fear to be severely punished by the Taliban is their major security concern.

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rudrjobdesk · 2 years

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जुमे की नमाज के बाद देश के कई शहरों में प्रदर्शन, पथराव; नूपुर शर्मा के बयान पर मचा है बवाल

Image Source : INDIA TV Clash between the police and protesters in Prayagraj after ‘Jumme ki Namaj’. Highlights जामा मस्जिद परिसर में पोस्टर लेकर हुआ प्रदर्शन नूपुर शर्मा और नवीन जिंदल पर कार्रवाई की मांग प्रयागराज में जुमे की नमाज के बाद हुआ पथराव Nupur Sharma Controversy: बीजेपी की निलंबित प्रवक्ता नूपुर शर्मा (Nupur Sharma) के पैगंबर मोहम्मद पर दिए बयान के विरोध में शुक्रवार को देश में कई…

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creepingsharia · 4 years

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Charlie Hebdo re-runs Mohammad cartoons to mark start of trial for Muslim terrorists that killed 12 at the satire magazine

No news outlets we found actually published the cover or linked to the Charlie Hebdo site. Both below.

https://charliehebdo.fr/editions/1467/

French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, the target of a massacre by Islamist gunmen in 2015, said Tuesday it was republishing hugely controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to mark this week's start of the trial of alleged accomplices to the attack.

"We will never lie down. We will never give up," director Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau wrote in an editorial to go with the cartoons in the latest edition.

"The hatred that struck us is still there and, since 2015, it has taken the time to mutate, to change its appearance, to go unnoticed and to quietly continue its ruthless crusade," he said.

Twelve people, including some of France's most celebrated cartoonists, were killed on January 7, 2015, when brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi went on a gun rampage at the paper's offices in Paris.

The perpetrators were killed in the wake of the massacre but 14 alleged accomplices in the attacks, which also targeted a Jewish supermarket, will go on trial in Paris on Wednesday.

The latest Charlie Hebdo cover shows a dozen cartoons first published by the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten in 2005 -- and then reprinted by the French weekly in 2006, unleashing a storm of anger across the Muslim world.

In the centre of the cover is a cartoon of the prophet drawn by cartoonist Jean Cabut, known as Cabu, who lost his life in the massacre.

"All of this, just for that," the front-page headline says.

'The right to blaspheme'

The editorial team wrote that now was the right time to republish the cartoons and "essential" as the trial opens.

"We have often been asked since January 2015 to print other caricatures of Mohammed," it said.

"We have always refused to do so, not because it is prohibited -- the law allows us to do so -- but because there was a need for a good reason to do it, a reason which has meaning and which brings something to the debate."

The paper's willingness to cause offence over a range of controversial issues has made it a champion of free speech for many in France, while others argue it has crossed a line too often.

But the massacre united the country in grief, with the slogan #JeSuisCharlie (I Am Charlie) going viral.

"A thousand bravos," Zineb El Rhazoui, a former journalist for the weekly, said on Twitter, calling the republication of the cartoons a victory "for the right to blasphemy".

The former director of Charlie Hebdo, Philippe Val, also hailed a "remarkable idea" for defending freedom of thought and expression in the face of "terror".

In a nuanced response, the president of the French Council of Muslim Worship (CFCM), Mohammed Moussaoui, urged people to "ignore" the cartoons, while condemning violence.

"The freedom to caricature is guaranteed for all, the freedom to love or not to love (the caricatures) as well. Nothing can justify violence," he told AFP.

The suspects, who go on trial from 0800 GMT on Wednesday, are accused of providing various degrees of logistical support to the killers.

The trial had been delayed several months with most French courtrooms closed over the coronavirus epidemic.

The court in Paris will sit until November 10 and, in a first for a terror trial, proceedings will be filmed for archival purposes given public interest.

National anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard dismissed the idea that it was just "little helpers" going on trial since the three gunmen were now dead.

"It is about individuals who are involved in the logistics, the preparation of the events, who provided means of financing, operational material, weapons, a residence," he told France Info radio on Monday.

"All this is essential to the terrorist action."

#Islam #Muslim #Jihad #Sharia #Immigration #Legal #News #Law #Media #politics #Travel

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ignisiel · 5 years

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Your name is yours.

So, I was talking about this with my friends yesterday and it’s been on my mind a lot, so I wanted to share it here. It’s how important your name can be, and something that my trans and nonbinary friends really helped me realize.

My name is Mohammad and I live in the southern US. The most common name in the world, named after the Prophet (PBUH). Most people, since I was young, when they first met me would start calling me Moe. My name, as some people have put it in the past, had too many syllables. It was hard to pronounce or took too long to say. As a kid, I didn’t think about this too much. I grew up and it was a minor annoyance at most unless I was already angry about other things.

Then 9/11 happened.

From that point on, I would usually just go by Moe. When I placed an order at a restaurant and was asked for a name, that’s what I’d tell them. I’d just let people call me that. It made things easier. I didn’t have to worry about anyone being nervous around me or feeling like I didn’t belong because it wasn’t a simpler (white) name. I didn’t have to be afraid that someone would hear my name and decide I didn’t belong on this world, so my life was in less danger.

I wasn’t the only person to do this either. People named Ibrahim would go by Abraham or the even easier Abe. Mariyam would go by Mary or May. A lot of Asian people I knew would find the most “American” (again, basically “white” names) version of their names they could. If there wasn’t one, they’d just pick a different name. This would happen with someone named Jihad who would instead go by John or James or something like that.

It was a few years ago that the main friend group I spent time with had a lot of trans and nonbinary people in it. They told me their names. In most cases I don’t even know their deadnames at all. I know their correct names and their pronouns. In some cases with genderfluid friends, they’ll tell me to use a different name on different days. I would. Simple as that. It’s what got me thinking though, something that I hadn’t put a lot of thought into until then.

“If they are able to use their names, the ones that are really theirs, their pronouns, then I can use my name too.” It was a turning point for me. I realized how much I really hated being called Moe. How it was me being afraid and ashamed of my real name, a name I actually like.

It wasn’t just the name either. I would say I’m from the US, and avoid talking about my ethnicity or that my family is from Palestine, because that country has “a lot of controversy surrounding it”. I’d stay quiet, try to take a neutral stance or even a more conservative one so that people could see I was “one of the good ones”. I denied I had ADHD so neurotypicals wouldn’t need to adjust to my annoying tendencies. I never really stopped to consider how much of myself I was hiding. My friends helped me realize that, and it’s let me be more proud of myself.

My name is Mohammad. I love my name and I’m proud of it. I hate being called Moe and will correct people every time they cal me by that. I am a Muslim. I am Palestinian. To the Muslims, Arabs, LGBTQ people, neurodivergent people, and the rest of my family in this world who feel they need hide themselves out of shame or fear, I love you all.

#muslim #islam #arab #palestine #lgbtq #adhd #neurodivergent #pride #long

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know4life · 4 years

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"Muhammad: Messenger of God"

Handsomely-mounted historical epic concerns the birth of the Islamic faith and the story of the prophet Mohammed -- who, in accordance with the tenants of Islam, is never seen or heard (as this is offensive to certain islamic schools of thought). In Mecca in the 7th century, Mohammed is visited by a vision of the Angel Gabriel, who urges him to lead the people of Mecca to cast aside the 300 idols of Kaaba and instead worship the one true God. Speaking out against the corrupt political and military leaders who rule Mecca. With the help of his uncle, a brave warrior named Hamza (Anthony Quinn), Mohammed and his followers return to Mecca to liberate the city in the name of God. The Message (originally screened in the U.S. as Mohammed, Messenger of God) proved to be highly controversial during its production and initial release. The Message was shot in two versions, one in English and one in Arabic (entitled Al-Ris-Alah), with different actors taking over some of the roles due to language requirements.

First of all thanks for providing an opportunity to download this memorable piece to refresh my childhood memories.

The movie was banned at that time, in many parts of the Islamic world because of so called custodians of the Religion. They never had had this idea that a time will arrive in a few decades, when this very movie will become an Icon of spiritual inspiration for the coming generations of all Muslims and a "Message" of Islam to the non-Muslim world!

The movie has been written, screen-played and directed in a most diligent manner reflecting all the respect and expertise of the writers and makers. The "Asaa" (the stick) of the Prophet Muhammad S. and the Sword of Ali R. turns a fire on in the hearts when shown.

The movie brings all the events to life so effectively , that one start living in the moments with clear understanding, what was happening and why!! This Movie will remain one of the best historical movies of Islam...ever, IshaAllah!

Watch it today and pass it on....and on....

Directed by Moustapha Akkad

Writing Credits (in alphabetical order) H.A.L. Craig Tewfik El-Hakim A.B. Jawdat El-Sahhar A.B. Rahman El-Sharkawi Mohammad Ali Maher

Cast overview, first billed only:

Anthony Quinn ... Hamza Irene Papas ... Hind Michael Ansara ... Abu Sofyan Johnny Sekka ... Bilal Michael Forest ... Khalid Garrick Hagon ... Ammar Damien Thomas ... Zaid André Morell ... Abu-Talib Martin Benson ... Abu-Jahal Robert Brown ... Otba Rosalie Crutchley ... Somaya Bruno Barnabe ... Umaya Neville Jason ... Jaafar John Bennett ... Salool Donald Burton ... Amr

Moustapha Akkad ... producer Harold Buck ... associate producer Mohammad Sanousi ... associate producer Music by - Maurice Jarre Cinematography by - Said Baker Jack Hildyard - Ibrahim Salem Film Editing by - John Bloom Casting By - Maude Spector Production Design by - Maurice Fowler Tambi Larsen Art Direction by - Norman Dorme Abdel Monem Shokry

Costume Design by - Phyllis Dalton

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persianatpenn · 5 years

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Radical Love: Mystical Persian Poetry

Arguably, the Aghan poet Jalal al-Din Mohammad Rumi, and the Persian poet Mohammad Shams al-Din Hafez are considered to be some of the most famous poets to have walked the earth, Rumi specifically referred to as “. . . the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language” (brittannica.com). Poetry is therefore an important part of Persian culture, as it symbolizes a kind of dispersal of ideas through religious and other interventions, into and out of the region formerly called Persia (mostly through the Persian and Arabic languages). Controversially, in America, as well as much of the western world, this poetry is misappropriated, mass-marketed, and taken advantage of as simply being “love” poetry. In actuality, the “love” written about by the likes of Rumi and Hafez is a much deeper and serious love of God, rather than the perhaps more frivolous “love” one might show to a human lover.

(Statue of Rumi in Izmir, Turkey)

For this assignment I focused on selections written by Rumi, Hafez, and lesser known poets of the Persian diaspora such as Kharqani and Qa’ani included in Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition. This book is a collection of short poems, poetic Qur’anic verses, and hadiths (sayings) of Prophet Muhammed translated and edited by Omid Safi, a Professor at Duke University who largely specializes in Sufism and the history of the Islamic world. Radical Love prioritizes a kind of “poetics of the Beloved,” an affectionate term I’m using in this context to gesture towards the action-oriented practice of veneration and worship which many Sufi mystics use(d) to address and regard God.

(Radical Love book cover)

A specific selection that stood out to me was the poem “God Breathed with Her” by ‘Attar. The poem speaks of the omnipresence of God with the subject regardless/despite external influences, stating that her breath and the breath of God are one in the same through their inexplicable linkage, “When she breathed/God breathed.” This was particularly noteworthy for me, because it speaks to the agency of this individual in terms of having a directly inherent divine connection, a sentiment that exists outside of the narrative dominantly propagated in western media of the lack of agency of Muslim womxn in regards to their faith practices (and a sentiment expressed many centuries before the canonization of such stereotypes). Rather, this piece subverts that notion, giving the power to “her,” and naming the sufficiency of God for “her.”

(p. 140)

HHH

#rumi #hafez #persia #persian #iran #poetry #persianpoetry

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thephilosopheroftheboudoir · 6 years

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Grim History

The Fatwa Against Salman Rushdie: Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech and The Satanic Verses

In 1988, Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie publishing his bombshell novel The Satanic Verses. The response to the allegedly blasphemous book was swift, loud, and hostile. People in western countries, while defending Rushdie’s right to freedom of speech, were mostly quite confused by the extreme reaction it provoked overseas. While the protests and debates have largely died down, the conflict over the right to free speech vs. condemnation for heresy remains unresolved.

The Satanic Verses is a satirical novel written in the magical realism style, a method that places ordinary people in surrealistic events and settings. The plot revolved around an Indian Bollywood movie star, Gibreel Farishta, who makes it big in London and insists on becoming British. The conflict between his Western and Eastern identities is symbolized by his mental breakdown and descent into schizophrenic delusion in which he, often humorously, believes himself to literally be the archangel Gibreel. In several sequences in the book, the man Gibreel Farishta has vivid dreams, while sleeping, about being sent by Allah to communicate his wishes to Mahound, an umistakable representation of Mohammad, the prophet of Islam.

Some details of the story were deemed offensive to Muslims. There are several characters who speak out against Mahound, declaring him to be a fraud and a charlatan. It has often been pointed out that these characters were not portrayed as heroes in Rushdie’s depiction; they were parts of subplots that exemplified the opponents of Islam during Mohammad’s life and they did not represent Rushdie’s personal views on Islam. Another problematic subplot involves an Indian cult leader who takes her followers on a suicide mission to drown themselves in the sea in order to reach paradise; the cult leader’s name was Ayeesha, the name of Mohammad’s wife who he married when she was at the age of four. The most controversial detail involves twelve prostitutes in Arabia, each one taking a name of one of the prophet’s wives. It must be noted that these prostitutes were not actually portrayed as Mohammad’s wives but merely as whores who tried to capitalize off his popularity during his lifetime.

Before the novel was released to the public, its publisher, Viking – Penguin, began receiving requests from Muslim leaders to halt its publication. The publishers went through with their plans and The Satanic Verses was first released in the United Kingdom in 1988. It was an instantaneous controversy and several countries around the world passed laws banning it on grounds of blasphemy. The first protest against the book took place in London, early in 1989. The demonstration was peaceful and was limited to a small group of Muslims who burned one copy of the novel. In 1989, the first American edition was released to wild critical acclaim.

At that time, street protests in England began to grow bigger and angrier. Mobs gathered to burn piles of Rushdie’s books and the protests spread to several other Islamic countries around the world. Book stores and publisher’s offices started getting threatened, ransacked and bombed. Approximately a third of all bookstores in the US refused to even carry the book while some stores stocked it hidden away under the counter with their selections of pornography. Despite all the uproar, it was obvious that very few Muslims had ever read the book. At that time it was only available in English and in translation to a few other languages like French, German, and Japanese; it was mostly unavailable outside Western countries. The subject matter was also dense and complicated and required a vast amount of background knowledge to be fully comprehended. It seemed that Muslims around the world had been infected with the false notion that the book was a Satanist’s polemic against the Islamic religion, being published and propagated by Western conspirators who wished to destabilize the Muslim world to make invasion and conquest easy.

The situation got worse when the Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and then president of the country, went on the radio and, in Farsi, issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The fatwa declared it a religious duty for all Muslims to hunt down and kill Rushdie for the crime of blasphemy and apostasy, for speaking out against the prophet Mohammad. Rushdie immediately went into hiding with armed bodyguards. He soon issued a public apology and begged for forgiveness. Khomeini was not impressed; he doubled down on his attack against Rushdie and the Western countries who supposedly sought to degrade the religion of Islam. Khomeini claimed there could never be forgiveness for apostasy. The six million dollar price tag on Rushdie’s corpse remained in place.

The UK immediately ended all diplomatic relations with Iran, citing human rights and international goodwill as its reasons. Other countries did as well, saying that no member of one country had the right to declare a death sentence on a citizen of another country, especially without due process of law. Muslims throughout the world not only voiced support for the fatwa but many also tried to hunt down and assassinate the unfortunate author. Western intellectuals continued to defend the work of fiction on the ground of free speech. A small number of Islamic scholars also cited the fiqh, the Muslim doctrine of jurisprudence, to condemn the fatwa on the ground that the death penalty could not be administered in the absence of a fair trial. Other conservative religious leaders in the West regrettably took sides with Khomeini, saying that freedom of speech did not extend to the freedom to criticize religion.

With hindsight it appears that the Ayatollah Khomeini had some ulterior political motives to issuing the fatwa. One is that he saw himself as being the world’s leading Muslim cleric and he wanted to gain an upper hand over Saudi Arabia in taking charge of the Islamic world. He wanted Muslims to rally to the anti-imperialist cause of his Iranian Revolution. He also wanted to drive a wedge between the West and the Muslim world, claiming that too many Muslims were embracing Western ideas of democracy, freedom and secularism. There was also the issue of The Satanic Verses’s depiction of Khomeini himself. One passage of the novel clearly depicted the Iranian leader as a demagogue using the cause of Islam to enslave his followers for his own egotistical gains.

Khomeini soon died and the Revolutionary Guard of Iran contacted Rushdie to tell him they were no longer encouraging his execution. They did, however, refuse to end the fatwa by stating that only the man who issues the fatwa can cancel it. Salman Rushdie stayed in hiding for nine years. His wife, unable to stand the strain of living under cover, divorced him. He was forced to live with an assumed name and had to change locations every three days. Now no longer in hiding, Rushdie still receives death threats from Muslims about once a year. He is said to have made over $2 million dollars from the sale of his book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy

https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/

#salman rushdie #satanic verses #grim history #iranian revolution #blasphemy #freedom of speech

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