If Briton Haroon Rashid Aswat (above) is a "Terror Mastermind", then he's got to be a graduate of the Dr Evil School of Terrorist Masterminds (Wanstead), or maybe Hooky's Mini Me...
Available for weddings, christenings, and childrens parties. Sorry, no bar mitzvahs.
On a more serious note, reporting of the story about muslim women being advised to remove their hijabs for fear of attack is worth taking a close look at.
Yesterday's Today programme report included a vox pop in which one hijab-sporting lass stated it was "statistically proven" hair was the most attractive part of a woman's body, so it was safer to cover it. After you've picked yourself up off the floor, consider what a tragic indictment of women in Islam that actually is.
Then we had so-called "leading Islamic cleric" Zaki Badawi, saying it was acceptable in Islamic law to remove the hijab in cases of extreme danger, which was rebutted by gorgeous, pouting Rajnaara Akhtar, chair of the Assembly for the Protection of the Hijab, who remarked:
"We have a right to practise our faith and we're going to maintain that human right and I think to take off the hijab in some ways denies our identities as Muslim and we shouldn't be forced to do that."
Now, can we just step back for a moment...
For one thing, I'm not sure if Zaka Badawi realises, but wearing a hijab is actually contrary to Islam. As this article on the leading Islamic website submission.org points out, sporting the hijab is un-Islamic. Ahmed Okla writes:
In brief, hijab is a traditional dress and has nothing to do with Islam or religion. In certain areas of the world, men are the ones who wear the hijab while in others the women do.
Mixing religion with tradition is a form of idolworship, since the followers of traditions are following laws from sources other than God's scriptures and claim it to be from God. Idolworship is the only unforgivable sin if maintained till death.
Ignoring what God asks you to do in His book, or following innovated laws not stated in the the Quran, is a clear sign of disregarding God and His message.
When tradition supersedes God's commandment, the true religion takes a second place. God never accepts to be second, God has to be always the FIRST and to HIM there is no second.
Does Zaki realise this? Does he care? Is he too intimidated by the rise of extremists to say so? Or is he rather less moderate than he may at first seem? Either way, instead of going on about chaps who have been tortured and the like, he could have simply pointed out that covering your head in the name of Islam is unnecessary, if not un-Islamic. So why didn't he?
Next up, we have Ms Akhtar and her "right" to practice her faith, but a quick Google will reveal that Rajnaara is also a vocal member of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), the UK branch of Islamicists the Muslim Brotherhood whose goal, as this item on Harry's Place points out "in its weak form is merely opposition to secular democracy and in its strong form is the abolition of democracy and the creation of a Caliphate ruled by god's annointed (i.e. them)."
So here we have a story generated by an arguably immoderate cleric spouting flawed theology being rebutted by a representative of an extremist organisation which is cut to much the same cloth as the Bolsheviks or Fascists of yore. No mention that the hijab is not compulsory, no interviews with bare-headed muslim women (heaven help them). Is it pure ignorance, inverted racism, or, as Bazpinder suggests below, just lust for sensation that drives the media to misrepresent the facts and present extremists as mainstream?
Either way, you can be sure it further alienates the non-Muslim majority while casting extremists as all muslims, much to the delight of Ms Akhtar and the BNP. And so history repeats itself: a determined totalitarian minority harnesses the complacency of a middle class elite to achieve its objectives, in this case the hijack of British Islam. Far-fetched? Or tried and tested? Well the same technique worked in Russia, Germany, and Iran. Why do you think the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party has teamed up with the MAB, in the spirit of "my enemy's enemy is my friend"? While we're going out, getting drunk, loading up our Ipods, a minor coup is taking place and though it might not threaten our sovereignty, it sure ain't going to make travelling by Tube any safer...
Some young idolterers at the recent post-July 7 conference organised byIslamofacists Hizb'ut Tahrir.
2 comments:
Religion and traditional costume/fashion is a dangerous mix because it's all tied up with identiy (especially among migrants).
I remember so clearly all the discussions and debates that went on when school uniform was introduced in a school in Sheffield. The hijab and shalwar kameez was given the most colour and style options which seriously pissed off the non-muslim girls.
Costume is just another way of subjugating women under the pretence that it is a "more Islamic" way to live. The really sad thing is that educated muslim women buy in to it. How many muslim men do you know who would feel unable to wear Western dress in certain social settings?
That's right - it's often the middle class women who are the most effective advocates, but they're really no different than Victorian middle class women shocked at the wanton display of an ankle... which says more about the repression of Victorian society than the strength of their arguments. Just as I suspect it was the women who enforced Victorian social mores, so too in Islamic circles. But that does not make their home-made repression right as of course it's foundations are in a patriachal society which exiled Victorian women to the parlour or brothel, and judge Muslim women one quarter the worth of men under Sharia.
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