American Islamic Forum for Democracy stands in support of the First Amendment

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Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

American Islamic Forum for Democracy stands in support of the First Amendment

AIFD condemns calls by Islamists from Kansas City to Egypt to limit our unalienable right to free speech

 

PHOENIX (October 1, 2012) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith” issued the following statement on behalf of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy in response to growing calls by Islamists domestically and abroad to limit the reach of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

 

“The American Islamic Forum for Democracy is appalled by recent calls by Islamists domestically and abroad to limit the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Their call for limits on the grounds that distasteful or “hateful” speech against Islam or the Prophet Muhammad is an “incitement to violence” is a flagrant insult to every American and especially every God fearing American Muslim.  The Islamic Society of Kansas City is currently circulating a petition that calls for the President and the Congress to bring forth legislation that ‘outlaws any action that may insult one’s religion.’ The petition is put forth by their board of directors and signed by over 300 supporters. In Dearborn hundreds of Islamists gathered to call for similar legal limitations against the American understanding of free speech in order to pressure the U.S. government to enact their interpretations of blasphemy laws against Islam as they would want them under shar’iah which would prohibit any ridicule of Islam or the Prophet.

 

As American Muslims who deeply love the foundations of our country and our faith, we stand firmly against such calls for any speech limitations at all. We call the attention of all Americans to the paramount and revealing nature of this battle and how it is an unmistakable litmus test for Islamism in Muslim communities. Exposing which Muslims stand with the First Amendment and the freedom to denigrate all faiths and which Muslims ask for the special so-called “protection” of Islam or all faiths for that matter against any speech will better expose those Muslims who are guided by an Islamist (theocratic) or shar’iah based agenda versus those who are advocates for liberty and anti-Islamist reforms.

 

The attempts of groups like the Islamic Society of Kansas City to invoke “incitement to violence” language about criticism of Islam as an excuse which they deceptively attach to our First Amendment is an outright insult to every Muslim. To assume that harsh criticism or even hate of Islam or the Prophet Muhammad is akin to a direct incitement to violence is an attempt to infantilize Muslims and is the same language used by autocratic Islamist regimes from Iran to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order to smother dissent, reform, and human rights.

 

Make no mistake. This fight within our Muslim communities between liberals and Islamists about free speech runs at the heart of defeating the greatest security threat to the West- the ideology of Islamism and its protean movements.

 

The Islamic Society of Kansas City and the protesters in Dearborn are not alone. They are a product of a far more reaching global Islamist leadership that echoes the same Islamist concerns. Free speech is but one fault line in the attempt of Islamists to advance their interpretations of shar’iah upon the West and separate Muslims out of the consciousness of freedom. Since 1999, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC, a Saudi based neo-Caliphate like organization of 56 Muslim majority countries) has annually tried to attack the protections of our First Amendment by putting forth resolutions at the UN to condemn the ‘defamation of religion’. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the Turkish secretary general of the OIC calling for “an international code of conduct for media and social media to disallow the dissemination of incitement material,” demanded that the international community “come out of hiding from behind the excuse of freedom of expression.” The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb summarily condemned the West telling Egyptians in reference to the film condemning Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that “the West throughout history has not treated Islam with respect, but showed hostility [against it], and chosen the path of conflict, rather than understanding.” We have now also seen calls for the U.S. to “revisit its First Amendment” from the Islamist regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Iran and Pakistan.

 

It is disgraceful that Islamists from Iran to Kansas City have the temerity to tell the freest nation on earth to curtail our freedoms in order to protect Islam when it is countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran that propagate truly genocidal speech against Jews, Christians, and non-Muslims in the form of state sponsored hate films like the Protocols, Wahhabi texts that compare Jews to apes and pigs in the name of Islam, and the President of Iran who denies the Holocaust in addition to calling for the end of the state Israel.

 

History shows that the banning of speech results in tyranny and that faith is best served in an environment that protects each individual’s right to accept or reject whatever practices they choose.

 

We wholly reject any attempt by our government to protect belief systems. We have not had a problem identifying speech that incites violence in the United States. It is the Islamists who are attempting to subvert our first amendment by conveniently broadening the definition of incitement. The reactions of Islamists should not be allowed to dictate the free expression of faith around the world or the opinions of free Muslims.

 

The right to redress any faith is a hallmark of our freedoms in the U.S. To limit speech of any kind is to limit the free exercise of our basic liberty.  These calls are in fact blasphemous to the very ideals that built the United States.  Religious freedom cannot exist without the unencumbered right to critique and criticize religion.

 

At AIFD we fully condemn and reject these calls for limiting the First Amendment and instead call on the Administration to aggressively make the case for liberty and advocate a Liberty Doctrine for the Middle East. The only way to truly eliminate the violence that we have seen is to empower the people of the Middle East with the principles of liberty and freedom- the same principles that our Founding Fathers came to enjoy in their escape from theocracy.

 

We must stand on principle and reject concepts that are borne from the intolerance of ideas and diversity of thought.”

 

About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/.

 

MEDIA CONTACTS:        Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

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SWETT AND JASSER: No human rights without religious freedom

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For U.N., 1948 declaration a practical imperative

The Washington Times, 9/27/12

Member states of the United Nations should ponder an alarming statistic: According to a just-released Pew Research Center study, 75 percent of people live in countries where a bedrock human right is endangered. Not all people enjoy the right to think as they please, believe or not believe as their conscience leads and live out their convictions openly and peacefully.

As members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, we can attest that a number of United Nations member countries often perpetrate or tolerate atrocious violations — including torture and murder — against the rights of their people to freedom of religion or belief.

In 1948, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by a 48-0 vote. The Declaration includes Article 18, which states the following:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, alone or in community with others, and, in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.”

Ironically, some of today’s most brutal violators voted for the declaration when it was first proposed.

Iran is one of them. In addresses before the General Assembly, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has condemned other countries while ignoring his own hideous human rights and religious freedom record. Notwithstanding the recent release of Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, whom Iran had sentenced to death for apostasy, conditions have sunk to a level not seen since the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s reign. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s regime has ramped up the detainment, torture and execution of its citizens based on religion. It targets reformers among Iran’s Shi’a Muslim majority, as well as religious minorities, including Sunni and Sufi Muslims, Baha’is and Christians, while its senior officials, including Mr. Ahmadinejad, promote Holocaust denial and other forms of hatred against Jews.

Another supporter of the 1948 declaration and religious freedom abuser is the world’s most populous country, China.

China’s government continues to persecute people for conducting religious activities it can’t control or expressing religious ideas it doesn’t like. Conditions for Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims remain especially dire. Falun Gong practitioners are jailed, tortured and subjected to inhuman psychiatric tests, and hundreds of Protestant and Catholic leaders are detained each year for refusing to join the state-approved church. Not content to persecute the faithful, China imprisons, tortures and denies legal licenses to human rights defenders who accept their cases.

A third example is Burma. Despite Burma’s transition to civilian rule, its democratic reforms are threatened by appalling ethnic and sectarian violence. Burma continues to imprison Buddhist monks and fails to protect non-Buddhist minorities, from Chin Christians to Rohingya Muslims. One of the world’s most persecuted groups, the Rohingya have recently endured arrests, rapes and mass displacements by mobs and security forces, leaving more than 700 dead and 80,000 homeless.

While the 1948 declaration isn’t legally binding, it represents a concrete statement of principles, a clear standard for every nation. It’s time that fellow member states hold flagrant violators accountable.

It’s not just about individual freedom. Society’s well-being is also at stake. Across the globe, religious freedom is tied to robust democracy, diminished violence and greater prosperity and stability. Nations that abuse religious liberty often are incubators of intolerance, extremism, poverty, insecurity, violence and repression.

In other words, standing for religious freedom is not just a legal or moral obligation, but a practical imperative.

It’s time for members of the General Assembly to take this imperative to heart, embracing the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.

Katrina Lantos Swett serves as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). M. Zuhdi Jasser serves as a USCIRF commissioner.

 

Commentary: M. Zuhdi Jasser: Why ‘tough love’ is best answer for Arab world

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The Dallas Morning News, 9/26/12

As American stature and our embassies are attacked across the world, the U.S. needs to develop a clear vision of who we are and what we stand for in the free world. Anti-Islam films and cartoons are but cheap distractions. The challenge before the world could not be clearer — into the abyss left by ruthless dictators is a widening front in the battle for the soul of Islam:

Will Muslim majority societies heed the call of the Arab spring for the rights of the individual? Will they defend the rights of the minority over the collective, over the tribe, over the clerical oligarchs? Or will they just trade one autocracy for another? And will the U.S. stand on the principles we were founded on?

New ideas to the region like individual liberty and the separation of mosque and state are not turned on like a light switch. They are nurtured in a soil that has been tilled for critical thinking. Middle Eastern soil today is far from that. What we see today is more of the past battles between the evils of secular Arab fascism and theocratic fascism. In the information war between them, the liberals and secular democrats have been absent. Meanwhile, the fascists lie in wait for openings like the film and cartoons that exploit the imagined threat of American imperialism in order to legitimize their own ascendancy.

Islamists use these invented crises of faith to motivate spiritual fervor for the “Islamic state” and its legal instruments of shariah like blasphemy laws. While the Obama administration fecklessly condemns the violence and dissociates itself from “the video” grievance — rather than standing firm in defense of free speech and religious liberty — the Islamist agenda advances in full gear.

Consider the proclamations emanating from Al Azhar University, the world’s leading Islamist institution in Cairo. The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayyeb, condemned the West summarily telling Egyptians in reference to the film that “the West throughout history has not treated Islam with respect, but showed hostility [against it], and chosen the path of conflict, rather than understanding.

The Islamist narrative is that the defense of liberty is a license to denigrate Muslims and Islam. The U.S. has so far offered a paltry defense leaving reformers, secularists and our real allies ill-equipped and helpless.

Our motherlands face a number of hurdles before they even begin to enter modernity. But to patronize their societies with a different set of human standards than those embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a moral relativism that insults every Muslim.

Tough love is the highest form of respect. Demanding the minimum standard of non-violence is not enough. Moral relativism is exactly what the newly elected theocrats of the Muslim Brotherhood and their mentors at Al-Azhar want in order to widen rather than breach the divide between liberty and Islam.

We still have no strategy to engage real allies of liberty: the silent majority of liberals on the ground in the Middle East. We must signal to them that when it comes to democracy, there is no compromise on the defense of freedom of speech and that defense is inextricably wedded to the first freedom — freedom of religion.

For Muslims, we know well in the stories of the Prophet Muhammad that he sustained considerably more criticism than this movie, cartoons or any attacks of speech bring to bear. He either responded in silence or compassion.

As the old guards rush to fill the power vacuum, the voices of the “Arab Spring” standing up to the tyrants need to know the free world is on their side. The defense of free speech and religious liberty is not a war against faith, but a war against the oligarchs, the despots and the theocrats that would usurp their freedom. Any assumption otherwise is a bigotry our nation fought against not for.

M. Zuhdi Jasser is the author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith” and can be reached at zuhdi@aifdemocracy.org.

Constitution Day & L’Shana Tova

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CONSTITUTION DAY: On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine brave men signed the United States Constitution. Recent events in the Middle East and beyond continue to remind us how precious our freedoms are, how brave our founding fathers were in their fight to secure them, and how bold and diligent we must be to protect them.

ROSH HASHANAH: The entire team at AIFD wishes our Jewish friends a blessed new year. L’shana tova, and may your year be sweet. We are grateful for your fellowship.

A blessed new year to our Jewish friends

AIFD sends its prayers to the family of Ambassador Stevens and those that lost their life in this senseless attack

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Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Attacks highlight the need for resolve in the face of the growing threats in the Middle East

 PHOENIX (September 12, 2012) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith” issued the following statement with regards to the death of U.S. Ambassador Stevens and Department of State personnel in Libya:

“The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) sends its prayers and condolences to the families of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and those who lost their lives in this senseless and brutal attack on the United States. Our prayers are also with their colleagues in the Department of State who by all accounts have lost an ardent defender of freedom and human rights in the Middle East.

The actions of the mob in Libya and the clear interventions of the former regime are nothing short of pure evil and in no way representative of the teachings and practices of the faith of Islam.

At this time of grief it is important that we steel our resolve against this evil.  We must not blink in the face of this irrational reaction to the mere words of a little known filmmaker.  Apologies from our government to this absurd mob are ridiculous and counterproductive to establishment of true human rights within this region.

It is clear that Islamist leadership in Egypt and the remnants of the fascistic Gaddafi regime in Libya are using this movie as a tool for their own agenda as they have done countless times before.

We need a bold strategy in this region to foster the liberty minded Muslims in these countries to work against these elements of hate and anti-Americanism.  We need to help the people of these countries to go through a reformation and step into modernity and away from these irrational actions.

That process begins today by our government stepping away from the typical politically correct language that forgives these attacks and justifies their cause by condemning the free speech of the moviemaker.  There is no justification for the actions of this mob.  Any act of contrition on our part is essentially an acceptance of the OIC’s “insult to heavenly religions” and an affront to the principles that built the United States.”

About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/.

MEDIA CONTACTS:        Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

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9/11 Anniversary lost in presidential race

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Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

 

9/11 Anniversary lost in presidential race

11 years following attack American Muslim Organization calls on candidates to maintain vigilance in the fight against radical ideology

 

PHOENIX (September 11, 2012) The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is calling on President Obama and presidential candidate Governor Mitt Romney to use the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to reengage the national discussion into the root causes of this horrible attack that claimed nearly 3,000 American lives.

 

With the understandable concerns over the U.S. economy driving the 2012 president race, both the Administration and the Romney campaign seem to be content to not engage on important issues in the global arena. But eleven years since the attacks on our country the U.S. still has done little to address the ideology of political Islam which is the root cause that led Al Qaeda and 19 hijackers to attack our country.  In fact with the Islamist political victories in the Middle-East since the “Arab Spring” it is clear that the ideology of political Islam, and the radicalism that is borne within the ideology, are growing in a post 9-11 world.

 

“We need our national leaders to reengage on the 9/11 issue,” said Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, author of the A Battle for the Soul of Islam. “The threat that the United States faces is ever more real and it needs a national focus on fighting an ideology that is at complete odds with American Liberty. President Obama and Governor Romney need to be advocating for a Liberty Doctrine in the Middle East so that we can eventually have an impact on the breeding ground of hatred against our country.”

 

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy has long advocated that the solution to the ideological war against militant Islamism is the development of a Liberty Doctrine. The United States needs to develop an unfaltering commitment to advocating the principles of our country. These ideas are the greatest tool we have to combat the morally bankrupt ideologies that have shackled the people of the Middle East for generations.  As we saw with the fall of communism it is the ideals of individual liberty and freedom that can change the world.

 

“The lesson from the attacks of 9/11 is that the U.S. has to enter the ideological battle against our enemies,” said Jasser.  “We can no longer idly sit by and allow the secular fascists and the theocrats to destroy movements for liberty. If we can become champions for liberty in the Middle East, we can begin to inoculate the people of the region to the supremacist mindset that creates the ideological underpinnings of Islamist inspired terrorism.”

 

About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/.

 

MEDIA CONTACTS:        Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

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Syrian catastrophe on the verge of imploding the Middle East while U.S. has no discernible strategy

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Save Syria Now!

Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Syrian catastrophe on the verge of imploding the Middle East while U.S. has no discernible strategy

Iran spreads violence across region as Syria records 5,000 deaths in August under an intransigent Assad

 

PHOENIX (September 5, 2012) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and the co-founder of the Save Syria Now! issued the following statement regarding the latest developments in Syria:

 

“August has been recorded as the bloodiest month in the year and a half campaign for the revolution to remove the tyrant Bashar Assad and his military apparatus from power in Syria. With over 5,000 dead at the barbaric hands of the Syrian military and the UN recording over 100,000 refugees last month alone, there is no indication that Assad’s military tyranny is abating.

 

Despite this, we still see no discernible strategy from the Obama Administration on how to secure a free Syria. Secretary Clinton has failed yet again this week in negotiations with the Chinese to find a path forward. These negotiations fail primarily because the Chinese know that the President does not have the resolve or inclination to act in this region.

 

This administration has clearly determined that action of any sort is not in its best interest heading into November’s presidential election. That inaction has essentially given the Assad regime free reign to decimate the Syrian people and opened the door to the jackals of the region in the form of Iran, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

 

As the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday the Iranians have resumed airlifts through Iraqi airspace of arms and personnel to support Assad’s regime.  Iran’s Quds force has become the de facto training battalion of Assad’s ruthless Baathist Alawite militia.  Even more disturbing, many experts believe that Iran is perfectly content to allow Syria to disintegrate into another Afghanistan if it means keeping the prospects of a Western influenced free Syria from emerging from its current hell.

 

That would be a disastrous outcome for the entire region.  We are already seeing violence spill over into Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.  How long will it be before we see this violence knocking on Israel’s door?

 

Yet Clinton’s State Department cannot even articulate a clear position against the Iraqi government allowing the use of its airspace by the Iranians.

 

Further recent reports indicate that Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are ratcheting up their involvement in the country. In fact it appears that these organizations are turning the situation into an opportunity for sectarian violence against each other. While watching these two purveyors of American and Muslim tragedy destroy each other may sound enticing, ceding them the prize of Syria is simply outrageous.  Doing so at the cost of Syrian lives is inhumane and criminal.

 

Syria deserves better from the West and the international community.  It needs real leadership.  It needs a focus on freedom for its people.”

 

About Save Syria Now!

Save Syria Now! is a group of Americans of Syrian descent organizing to put pressure on the United States to call for immediate action to be taken against the regime of Bashar Assad of Syria and to bring true liberty to the people of Syria.  We stand with the Syrians protesting in the streets to end the tyranny of the Assad family.  For more information please visit our website at http://www.savesyrianow.org/.

 

MEDIA CONTACTS:        Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

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AIFD Wishes Muslims a Blessed Eid Al-Fitr as they ended their fast of Ramadan

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Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AIFD Wishes Muslims a Blessed Eid Al-Fitr as they ended their fast of Ramadan

Muslims around the world commemorated the end of their month long daily fast of Ramadan on Sunday, August 19, 2012 with the Holiday of the Feast (Eid Al-Fitr). The holiday falls on the first day of the 10th month of this year, 1433 of the Islamic (Hijri) calendar commemorating the end of Ramadan, the 9th month of the lunar calendar year.

To all our Muslim friends and supporters we at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) wish you a most blessed Eid Al-Fitr. May the commemoration of this holiday remind us all of God’s blessings. May your prayers and supplications during the month of Ramadan be accepted, answered and fulfilled by God.

As we return to our hectic days may we remember all that we take for granted from God, in health, family and prosperity in this great nation.

 

M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD

President and Founder

American Islamic Forum for Democracy

 

We need a “Zero Tolerance” Policy on Honor Violence

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Abid Hussain is a 56 year old cleric who runs a mosque in Manchester, UK. When his sixteen-year old daughter, Rabiyah, refused to marry the boy he chose for her- a cousin living in Pakistan – he beat and attempted to strangle her in the family home just above the mosque. Hussain made it clear that should Rabiyah refuse the marriage, he would kill her. Rabiyah’s brothers, Nawab and Bahaud, assisted their father in brutalizing Rabiyah.

There is no question that Abid Hussain committed unthinkable brutality against his daughter, and there is no doubt that his actions were criminal. What we also know, however, is that what happened to Rabiyah is a clear case of honor-based violence. Honor-based violence punishes a member of the family, usually a female, for actions perceived to bring “shame” or “dishonor” to the family. These “offenses” can include wearing short sleeves,  talking to a member of the opposite sex, refusing an arranged marriage, becoming pregnant outside of marriage, or even being raped. While honor-based violence is not condoned by Islam, it is unfortunately prevalent in many Muslim communities.

Over 5,000 girls and women lose their lives in honor killings every year. Honor killings are the final step in a pattern of abuse that begins with threats and often beatings like the one Rabiyah experienced.

Despite the clear danger Rabiyah Hussain’s father still poses to her safety, Judge Michael Leeming spared him an immediate and serious jail sentence. In a ruling that troubles us deeply, Judge Leeming postponed sentences for Rabiyah’s father and two brothers, referring to her father as a man of “obvious standing,” (as a cleric in the local community), and referring to the brutalization of Rabiyah as an attempt to “coerce” her in to the father’s beliefs.

In taking such a lighthanded approach, Judge Leeming effectively let an attempted murderer, Abid Hussain, and his two accomplices (Rabiyah’s brothers Nawab and Bahaud) off with a warning, on what seem like cultural grounds. What will happen to Rabiyah in the coming days, weeks, and months? Would the judge have treated a case involving non-Muslims differently – and, if so, do the lives of Muslim women and girls matter less in the eyes of this British judge?

Honor-based violence is a problem we in the United States still have yet to address effectively. Earlier this year, the honor beating and near murder of Aiya Al-Tamimi did receive modest media coverage. However, Aiya’s mother, who tied Aiya down, beat her and cut her throat – was also spared a jail sentence. We wrote about Aiya’s case here, and the threat moral relativism poses to the lives of Muslim girls and women. (See television commentary by Dr. Jasser on Aiya’s case here, here, here and here.)

 

Noor Al-Maleki, murdered by her father in 2009 (Arizona, USA)

Noor Al-Maleki was murdered by her father in Phoenix, Arizona in 2009. Noor’s father, Faleh Al-Maleki, subjected his daughter to long-term torment, ultimately running her over with his Jeep Cherokee for her “western” behavior. Noor had lived in fear of her father for years, even running away from home. Her father, however, was charged with second degree murder rather than first degree (premeditated) murder. At the sentencing, judge Roland Steinle took the opportunity to claim, at great length, that Noor was not murdered for honor – despite Faleh Al-Maleki’s repeated admission that “honor” was absolutely his motivation. (See Dr. Jasser’s comments on this case here.)

The murder of Muslim girls and women is no more understandable or acceptable because of any tribal code of “honor.” Warnings, pleas to assimilate, and passive hope that at some point, Muslim girls and women will be freed from the misogyny of “honor” are not enough. We must work to effectively identify signs of honor-based violence and prevent their brutal and horrifying outcomes.

Resources:

International Honour Based Violence Resource Centre & Honour-Based Violence Awareness Network 

MEMINI: a memorial site to remember the victims of honor-based violence.

The International Campaign Against Honor Killings

AIFD sends its deepest condolences and prayers to our brothers and sisters in the Sikh Community

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Since the horrific massacre against our Sikh brothers and sisters at their temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, we at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy have taken time to join with them across the nation in prayer. We send our deepest condolences to the people of Oak Creek and especially to the friends and family of those lost in the Sikh Community.

Our dear friend and long-time AIFD board member and adviser, Soul Singh Khalsa has taught us the beauty of your faith and the deep bonds that we in the Muslim community share with you. Not only as an author and a minister, Soul has been an inspiration to all that we do at AIFD from our beginnings long ago. These senseless and brutal attacks upon a people who live a transparent life lifting up the purity of their spiritual connection is simply incomprehensible.

We join with all our friends in the Sikh community in this time of sorrow and reflection. Especially during this time of reflection and atonement in our month of Ramadan, in our tradition we are all reminded that our time on earth is not ours to decide but to God we return:

Truly, to God we belong and truly, to Him we shall return. [Qur’an 2:156]

Verily, with God alone rests the knowledge of when the Last Hour will come: and He [it is who] sends down rain; and He [alone] knows what is in the wombs: whereas no one knows what he will reap tomorrow, and no one knows in what land he will die, Verily. God [alone] is all-knowing, all-aware. (Qur’an 31:34)