May 10, 2017: Is Tawhidi the Imam Australia’s been waiting for?
MAY 10, 2017 8:57 PM (UTC+8)
Is Mohammad Tawhidi the Imam we’ve been waiting for?
Author: M. Zuhdi Jasser
Shaikh Mohammad Tawhidi hits all the right notes as the ideal Australian Muslim media darling: a website full of condemnations of ISIS; a friendly visage at rallies, vigils and in the media; and a smattering of criticism from militant Sunnis. He has expressed opposition to unregulated madrassahs (Islamic schools), and says he “doesn’t want burqas running around.” He also insists that Muslims in the West should assimilate, saying that had his father known “so many extreme Muslims” would one day be in Australia, he would never have moved there. He says all of these things while wearing a robe and beard, providing a veneer of legitimacy so appealing to Westerners eager to hear these words in a suitably “Islamic” package.
So, is Tawhidi the imam we have been waiting for? The one who sincerely seeks to advocate for critical thinking within the “house of Islam,” who will work to abolish sectarianism, promote gender equality, combat anti-Semitism, and bring about the reformation many have discussed – but so few have meaningfully supported?
In a word, no. In a few more words: not even close.
Let me be clear: I wish he were. I would welcome such an imam, and offer him my full support. I would use every platform at my disposal to promote his views, and pass the mic to him and his colleagues whenever and wherever possible. I wish I were readying myself to do just that, rather than coming to the unfortunate conclusion that I must instead ask that he be denied this empowerment.
The unfortunate reality of this instantly famous imam seems to be something more than simple opportunism. Rather, things seem much more sinister: Tawhidi may not be the reformist imam of our dreams – but rather simply a radical of a different flavor. Rather than espousing the radical ideology of ISIS, which draws from an extremist interpretation of Sunni Islam, Tawhidi subscribes to its reflection – a nefarious interpretation of Shia Islam. And because the West is so hungry for figures such as the one he appears to be, they are none the wiser.
Archived tweets made by Tawhidi reveal extreme views held by a minority of Shias with regard to the Prophet Muhammad’s family: in them, he calls Aisha (Muhammad’s wife) a “b*tch,” talks about her “experience with semen,” and other vulgarities. He has not only called for a “review” of Islam – but specifically the banning of most Sunni teachings. His is not a reformist project: it is a sectarian project. He is troublingly quick to jump on far-right bandwagons – not because he agrees with their concerns about Islam as a whole – but because aiding them would rush the end of Sunni Islam. His religious and educational programming originates in Bashar al-Assad’s Syria and radical Shia strains in Iraq and Iran. It should cause significant pause that his criticisms extend only to Sunni Islamists – never the Islamists within his own community – and never the regimes of Iran and Syria, the heart of radical Shi’ism.
If Tawhidi wishes to prove his reformist bona fides, we urge him to indicate his clear support for the Muslim Reform Movement declaration, retract his hateful comments that stoke sectarianism, and issue swift, thorough and regular condemnations of Shia radicals and their movements by name as well. He must disclose and sever any ties with the Iranian and Syrian regimes or their supporters in Iraq, commit to the active opposition of sectarianism, and embrace the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
There’s a distinct reason that our work at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is directed at the need for reforms against all forms of Islamism – “political Islam” and all its attendant permutations of an Islamic state mentality. At AIFD, our work is blind to Sunni or Shia with a clear universal mission statement to defend liberty through the separation of mosque and state. Whether Sunni or Shia, all forms of the Islamic sharia state and its admixture of Islamic law and state are doomed theocracies and plagues upon humanity. It makes no difference whether Islamist theocracy has a Sunni or Shia flavor, it is a theocracy and thus supremacist. Tawhidi’s positions, while appealing to many in the West as an apparently bold and courageous “Muslim cleric” against Sunni Islamism, is grotesquely and conveniently unilaterally anti-Sunni Islamist.
Understanding this whole dynamic is, if anything, a distinct teaching moment.
The defeat of Islamism and its movements will never happen if one side of the Sunni-Shia sectarian battle of the Islamists is favored over the other — with the ends justifying the means. The only path towards modernity and defeat of all radical Islamism in Muslim communities is the advancement of liberal ideas against both cancers of Sunni and Shia Islamism. Anything short of that is an exercise in deceptive sectarianism, which will actually only continue the cycle of global Islamism. As the old adage goes, Australia’s Sheikh Tawhidi proves once again that if something is too good to be true, it often is.
5/21/2017: M. Zuhdi Jasser pens “My take on President Trump’s speech to the Riyadh Summit”
In grading the speech, I am holding President Trump accountable to the standards of his own brand of being “anti-establishment” and fearlessly speaking “truth to power”.
So with that on this speech, I give him a C.
In this landmark speech for the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, I give you some “Hits” and “Misses”. Take a breath and read my praise as well as my critique.
HITS and MISSES:
Yes, even with a crystal clear understanding of the diplomatic dance and needles he needed to thread as a guest in Saudi Arabia, there is most definitely a way an American President, the leader of the free world, can lead the world and the people these tyrants supposedly represent into the 21st century holding on to our own values at home and abroad without needing to apologize for that. Yet, President Trump sadly had to say, “we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do who to be, or how to worship. Instead we are here to offer partnership, based on shared interests and values to pursue a better future.” I think the legions of persecuted free citizens in the streets, homes and jails of these regimes were saddened to hear that. America CAN both respect their independence, their culture and religion while ALSO holding them accountable to universal human rights.
1. HIT: Greatest sound bite and hit of the speech was “The nations of the Middle East will have to decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their country, and frankly for their families, for their children. It’s a choice between two futures, and it is a choice America cannot make for you. A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and drive out the extremists.” Sadly and more truthfully, the hall should have then almost emptied except for Tunisia, Indonesia and a few others. Great sound bite but missed the follow through on these tyrants living off the root cause theocratic Islamist ideology that creates these global Islamist militants and their viral movements.
2. HIT: Second best hit was the call to isolate the regimes of Iran and Syria: The Iranian regime’s longest suffering victims are its own people. He poignantly said, “Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leader’s reckless pursuit of conflict and terror. Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate it, deny it, funding for terrorism, cannot do it, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they so richly deserve”. I wish he had added Syrian people in there and called for an end of the Assad regime. But without a doubt this statement was a wonderful end to the 8 years of Iranophilia at the fabricated alter of the deceptive Iranian nuclear agreement.
3. HIT: President Trump healthily rebooted the process of reestablishing unwavering American leadership with the regional governments and rebalancing the power with a long overdue tilt away from Iran in the Middle East. In fact it was wonderfully refreshing to hear him begin the process of isolating Iran.
4. Bonus HIT: Moscow cannot be happy at the strengthening of the US-Sunni axis against radical Islamists and Iran.
5. HIT: President Trump spoke positively of Muslims being 95% of the victims of terrorism and needing to lead this fight. He spoke positively of Islam as a leading religion among leading global faiths. Regardless of where anyone is on political correctness issues, all relationships of value are built on tough love. This is important.
6. HIT: Finally, finally…the end of empty, Presidential “Obama-like” apologetic rhetoric in reference to the “blame America” crowd on the Left that wants every presidential speech to begin and end with the USA asking for forgiveness in looking out for its own interests while advancing freedom and liberty and universal human rights abroad. It is beyond refreshing to see an end to that self-flagelating manifestation of American weakness and appeasement vis-a-vie apologies for what America does and has done. We often sacrifice our blood and resources for other nations while these tyrants sit on their hands and actually radicalize their own peoples.
7. MISS: (speaking to the people) President Trump spoke to the corporate Islamist dictators as if they represented Islam, Muslims and the people of their nations. They do not. After he set the stage on the above and called for an official gathering of a new coalition against ISIS and radical Islamists, he should have paused and then spoken directly to the aspiring people of these nations. He missed the opportunity to speak to the people of these Muslim majority nations who are now roiling in a nascent Arab Awakening and striving for revolutions and freedom against these very tyrants. He should have spoken past these tyrants whose ideology, Islamism, theocracy, tyranny and corrupt governance is THE primary cause of radicalization within their nations. After giving them hundreds of billions in arms deals and lip service, he had the credibility to be directive. He missed an opportunity to put all these dictators on notice that, yes, in the short term we will work with you against the chaos of radical Islam, but you must begin to own up to what your theocratic sharia states do in creating these radical Islamist movements. This was a big miss and will need to be inserted ASAP into any hope for a successful long term Trump Doctrine. I was very disappointed that the words freedom, democracy, and liberation were not used in his speech. It was as if the Arab Awakening had never happened. For all practical purposes this speech could have been give in the 20th century by any of our Republican establishment Presidents. Ushering in a new era of defeating both the viral radical Islamists and the corporate governmental Islamists was missed.
8. MISS: (Change of language to “Violent Islamism”) For a candidate that campaigned as an anti-establishment disrupter, he missed a profound opportunity to abandon the empty paralytic language of “violent extremism” and replace it with “violent Islamism”. That axis shift in national and global security focus is essential for a global strategy against radical Islamism and unfortunately, President Trump reverted to “establishment-speak” of CVE (Countering Violent Extremism).
9. MISS: (putting the Islamist establishment on notice) opportunity to take the Trump brand of anti-establishment and speaking truth to power to call out the “Islamist” establishment by name and name the OIC based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia as a “neo-caliphate” and ask that they change the paradigm of their nations from “Islamic” to “democratic” and “freedom” and “unalienable universal human rights’. All he needed to do was ask them how they would perceive an OCC (Organization of Christian Cooperation)? That’s the Trump I wanted to see.
10. MISS: (identifying Islamist, sharia laws) opportunity to call out by name and specifically as a root cause of radicalization the existence of Islamist and Salafist blasphemy laws, apostasy laws, hudud punishments, and other theocratic restrictions on religious liberty and free speech have upon indoctrinating millions of Muslims that such are the real ways of Islam and not freedom and liberty.
11. LAST… Some sound bites from my twitter feed (https://twitter.com/drzuhdijasser)
* Our only real allies in the region are the people, masses,who dream for freedom and revolution. @POTUS ignored them today for the most part
* @POTUS should have taken time to speak past this Arab Islamist mafia of the @OIC_OCI and speak to their peoples who dream of freedom
* As has been said- no @POTUS can address Islamist radicalism and terror without confronting corrupt evil governance of @OIC_OCI nations
* @POTUS should have taken time to speak past this Arab Islamist mafia of the @OIC_OCI and speak to their peoples who dream of freedom
* These countries are roiling with fears of democracy, liberalism and revolutions – I would have wanted @POTUS to speak to those values
* Strong speech-but run of the mill US establishment speech spoken to run of the mill global Islamist establishment..back to the 20th century
* Trump: directly confronts Iran, Syria, @khamenei_ir @Presidency_Sy Assad directly as terror states without mincing words. Refreshing.
* Wait he just hastily said “Islamic and Islamist terror” I think they all including are pretending he didn’t say it. Sorry doesn’t count.
* Trump “we will seek gradual reform not suddenly intervention” – uggh that sounds like the Saudi MO of delay delay delay, deception.
* Trump: “drive them out of this earth” – well then the room he’s speaking to should now empty?
* Trump “refugees shouldn’t flee but flock back” … well most of the tyrants you are speaking to treat their people like slaves and animals
* Trump: “center for battling extremist ideology” … “conquer extremism” — he has yet to say ISLAMIST EXTREMISM” disappointing
3/15/2017: There’s An Emerging “Alt-Jihad” Movement in the U.S.
There’s An Emerging ‘Alt-Jihad’ Movement In The U.S.
But It’s Not Muslims Who Are Pushing It…
by M. Zuhdi Jasser
Independent Journal Review
March 15, 2017
The “alt-right” and the “alt-left” are recent terms to describe extreme sides of the political spectrum. While the members of the “alt-” movements may feel comfortable trying to attach themselves to other travelers on the right and left, most members of the traditional conservative and liberal spectrum reject the extreme un-American nature of the alt-movements.
The insidious, myopic, and extreme nature of one movement in particular has inspired me to coin a new term: the “alt-Jihad.”
Everyone knows the “jihad” of violent and Islamist supremacism. Jihadists are those who advocate the establishment of a caliphate, or any so-called “Islamic state,” via violent or nonviolent (but no less supremacist) means.
The Muslim community worldwide is comprised of 1.6 billion individuals, each with their own relationship to the faith. There are those Muslims who subscribe to the forms of global jihadism of the 56 Islamic states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). Most people understand that while they may be a plurality of Muslims, they are a minority. The rest of us – the vast majority – reject it.
The ideological divisions are far more complicated and to that end, I was recently interviewed in the Federalist: “A Muslim Reformer Speaks about his Battle Against Islamism and PC.” Steve Postal interviewed me to commemorate the one year anniversary of the founding of the Muslim Reform Movement. Our declaration is a must read for Americans who seek to find ways to ideologically discern which Muslims share our American values and are working with us versus those who are Islamists.
Most Americans have long known the American ‘petro-Islamic’ establishment who have long been the “useful idiots for Islamism” who “willfully blind” themselves to the evils of Islamism in the name of progressive politics. Sen. Ted Cruz had hearings on this “willful blindness” last year.
A deceptively similar yet polar opposite (alt-side) is the willful blindness of the ‘alt-jihadists.’ Alt-jihadists support, empower, flaunt, and legitimize Islamist radicals and their leaders by branding all Muslims and all Islam as one and the same, and deeming us all to be enemies of freedom.
Alt-jihadists are non-Muslim thought leaders who are defined by two characteristics. Regardless of their intentions, first, they view Islam as a terminal monolith, a supremacist political ideology leaving no room for a distinction between the faith of Islam and Islamism. Second, they universally dismiss and vilify anti-Islamist reformers not as Uncle Toms but essentially similarly calling them “liars” and “illegitimate.” Alt-jihadists take it upon themselves to excommunicate anti-Islamists reformers from their monolithic version of Islam.
These two characteristics, like the apologists, only end up serving entrenching the global jihad and its Islamist monopoly from which the alt-jihadists claim to want to save the world.
The alt-jihad consists of non-Muslims who refuse to leave room for even the remote possibility of branding Islam and any faithful Muslims into modernity. The alt-jihad is simple, simplistic, self-serving and dangerous. It attempts to deny Muslim dissidents any space, hope, or support whatsoever we so urgently need to make headway. Their parroting of Islamist tyrannical rhetoric and their slash-and-burn approach only strengthens the hold Islamist extremists have on Muslim communities.
The alt-jihad does not sincerely seek for Muslims to find solutions to the problems plaguing our communities, but rather seeks the containment, if not the elimination, of Islam as a faith. Some even seem to advocate that this happen “by any means necessary.” For the alt-jihad, there is no hope for modernization of Islam – there are terrorist Muslims, and terrorist Muslims-in-waiting.
In the past few weeks the alt-jihad criticism of our work has spiked. Is something afoot? Stephen Kirby penned this for Robert Spencer’s JihadWatch.org: “Muslim Reform Group reached out to 3,000 US Mosques, got only 40 responses.” Kirby is the head of the Act for America Des Moines Chapter, and like Carl Goldberg here in Arizona, has long trolled our work, blindly striking us at the knees whenever possible.
Among many deceptive missives he wrote this patronizing fatwa (legal ruling) from his own quasi “sharia court:”
But I would like to save the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM) time and non-Muslims money. Instead of a new study on why the MRM has virtually no Muslim support, I will provide the answer: in terms of Islamic doctrine, the MRM declaration is blasphemous, and the MRM should not be surprised that over 99% of the larger Muslim community does not want to join in with that blasphemy.
It is only attention from the non-Muslim world that will enable the Muslim Reform Movement to remain on life-support, visible but irrelevant.
There you have it. With the strike of a few keystrokes from a comfortable bunker in that Iowa haven of anti-Muslim engagement, Kirby rendered his fatwa. His like-minded echo chamber across the blogosphere has since reposted these words of mass destruction and dancing gleefully on our grave.
That was not from the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s PressTV, or Qatar’s and the Muslim Brotherhood’s AlJazeera, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s state TV, nor the propaganda of American Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups – it was from the alt-jihad.
Kirby was only to be then echoed by the fatwas of Diana West at the Daily Caller (Islam Catastrophe Continues), John Guandolo at UTT (Unfit for Duty), and Militant Islam Monitor to name but a few in the metaphorical Alt-Jihadi Shura council. Their primary target was hit pieces on Sebastian Gorka, but why pass an opportunity to collaterally eulogize Muslim reformists? Therein alt-Jihadists declared the Muslim Reform Movement “an abject failure”, “utter nonsense” and “a personal fantasy Islam.”
The alt-jihadists malignantly took one fact about the poor response we received from American mosques and willfully disregarded the rest of the interview and the body of our 13 years of work at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and the new Muslim Reform Movement. Instead of honestly dissecting strategic position papers like this one: Fighting for Victory against Islamism: A Blueprint for how the West can Counter Islamist Tyranny, the alt-jihadists trip over themselves to dance on the graves of Muslim dissidents.
Beyond being destructive, the entire premise of the alt-jihad is absurd: we put out our challenge to the self-appointed leaders of the community to prove that it’s true that the vast majority of the Islamic establishment would not sign our declaration. We’ve been saying essentially that since our founding. Our effort was another public demonstration of that fact, with a new way to demonstrate it to the broader Muslim community, who are now able to see which principles their self-appointed leaders refuse to sign on to.
We admit the majority have been asleep. The alt-jihad claims in an un-American blindness to the anti-theocrats that we have no oxygen to breathe in the House of Islam.
This didn’t start this month. Alt-jihadists declared our reform movement dead on arrival at our outset in December 2015, much as they did over ten years ago with AIFD when we launched. Kirby had issued his fatwa declaring our “still-birth” days after our first press conference in December 2015: The Muslim Reform Movement plays Fantasy Islam. His Wahhabi sharia court “welcomed his readers to a personal version of Islam that had nothing to do with Islam”.
Classic alt-jihadism. The alt-jihadists have for years invoked takfirism (excommunication) against our work. But who needs an Iranian or Saudi Islamist Supreme Council of Inquisition when we have Stephen Kirby (July 2015, Dec 2015), Diana West (2012), Robert Spencer, and others to dismiss reformist dissenters inside the House of Islam as illegitimate Muslims?
But really. What brilliance and foresight does it take to defeat a nascent dissident reform movement by declaring it DOA? The alt-jihadi cabal’s arguments are not bolstered by their own strongly held Islamic interpretations, exegesis, and beliefs but rather by simply conveniently parroting the tyrannical dogma of their favorite Islamist theocrats. After I initially debated Stephen Kirby in Omaha, he went on to write the “the Lure of Fantasy Islam.” The archetypal alt-jihadist, he dismisses my own knowledge of Arabic, Qur’an, and Hadith, and instead with no rationale just regurgitates irrelevant fatwas of salafi-jihadis.
We offer theological deconstructions of Salafi-jihadi arguments and the alt-jihad’s only response is to channel the scoffing of the Islamist establishment.
There is far more than one interpretation of Islam. Our belief is that the future of freedom depends upon the victory of the Muslim Reform Movement over Islamists. And as I stated in the Federalist, Muslim interpretations of Islam cannot ever be reformed under the boots of tyrannical regimes across the 56 OIC Muslim majority nations who torture and assassinate dissidents.
But the alt-jihad does not care about solutions, especially those advocating American ideas against theocracy within the House of Islam. The alt-jihad does not care about advocating American ideas for the freedom and liberation of secular movements across the planet (the only real allies of the US) that separate mosque and state. No. It’s only about convincing the rest of America and the West that the entire religion of Islam is the monolithic problem and there is no viable path within towards modernity.
In fact, if the OIC had sought to create both, Orwellian foils and promoters of their own global supremacist form of the Islam of their sharia states, the alt-jihadists would be it. My attempts to graciously address the “concerns” of the alt-jihad are not new. I’ve engaged Robert Spencer in a debate on his conclusions regarding the Prophet Muhammad and Islam in 2010. Pamela Geller also ruled in her fatwa that I practice my own “Private Islam.” As I said in my response to similar dismissals from Pamela Geller’s in 2011, one of her numerous lies exposed was that I was “kicked out of my mosque.” Then she doubled down and I was somehow “kicked out of his mosque twice.”m I was never kicked out and never said I was. The fact they intentionally ignore is how I actually publicly took on the leadership of our mosque here: “I was bullied for criticizing Hamas.”
Alt-jihadists live in a world where truth and intellectual credibility are optional. They have one purpose: to obstruct any hope or path towards a solution within the House of Islam.
Despite the now over 14 Muslim leaders in the US, Canada, and Europe that launched our diverse Muslim Reform Movement and their diverse followings, the alt-jihad waits to impugn motives, declare us liars, or declare themselves more informed about Islam – much like the playbook of every OIC tyrant and government paid Islamist cleric across the planet would also do. But they are the traditional global jihad.
The wind beneath the sails of the traditional global jihad is the alt-jihad.
Lastly, make no mistake. The opinions of alt-jihadists are free speech. But their disagreements with us reformers are neither professional, respectful, nor hopeful of our space within the faith. They are only dismissive. Defeatist. Islamist. Exactly how the Saudi government, Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, or Khomeinists scoff at Muslim thinkers and reformers as “un-Islamic,” the alt-jihad does the same. Their work never sees the hope of our reforms for the possible synergy of secularism with our interpretations of Islam. Instead, they empower the Islamist establishment.
It is actually rather bizarre that their like-minded ideological bedfellows in takfir (the declaration of another Muslim as not being ‘Muslim’ or ‘Muslim enough’ in their behavior or ideas) are the Islamist supremacists. They seem to have all the conclusions and answers about who is and who is not a legitimate Muslim thinker.
Alt-jihadism at its core is takfirism by any other name.
No different from the useful idiocy of Islamist apologists who choose willful blindness, the alt-jihad are useful idiots for Islamist jihadists who also view Islam as one interpretation and true Muslims as only sharia supremacists. The alt-jihad is another willfully blind dead-end.
Saudis say they want more women’s rights – this Muslim-American reformer doesn’t believe a word of it
Source: Borderless News Online
Saudi Arabia now says it requires brides-to-be to agree to their marriage, instead of the usual practice of having fathers decide who their daughters will marry. This seems like progress, but one Muslim-American reformer says it’s just the latest smoke screen in an ongoing bid to appease the West, and that the Middle East nation continues to treat women as chattel.
Saudi women are 4th class citizens in a country that has been a major oil supplier to the U.S. for decades. Every aspect of their lives is dictated by male relatives, and this male dominance is enshrined in law and backed by an ultra-conservative brand of Islam. Women cannot drive, cannot work outside the home, and have few property rights. Rape victims are often blamed for being assaulted, as it’s considered their fault for being alone with a man in the first place – a big no-no in the Kingdom.
Women in Saudi have traditionally married whomever their father chooses, no matter what. If your father is deceased, than a male guardian, such as a brother, uncle or even a younger male cousin – it doesn’t matter if he’s younger than you, as long as he’s a guy – will choose your husband for you. It doesn’t matter if the groom-to-be is toothless, fat as a cow or violent toward his other wives.
Now, Saudi media is reporting that Minister of Justice Walid Al-Samaani has directed officials who handle marriage contracts that they must have the woman’s consent before the legal process can go ahead. Borderless News Online could not independently verify this, and the Saudi embassy in the U.S. did not return phone calls.
We can’t ignore the rise of homegrown hate and domestic terrorism
Source: The Florida Times Union
Terrorism doesn’t come in one style.
It can be the unpopular security guard influenced by a radical interpretation of Islam like Omar Mateen.
It can be a loner influenced by white supremacist propaganda like Dylann Roof.
It can an anti-abortion extremist like Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber.
It can be the anti-government militiaman like Timothy McVeigh.
It’s important for the nation to go after all of those who threaten the nation’s public safety.
During a recent hearing held by a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee, it became clear that many Americans are letting ideology blind them.
Those with liberal leanings are focused on the anti-government extremists.
Conservatives are focused on those with radical interpretations of the Quran.
Each side has legitimate concerns.
Sen. Ted Cruz, chair of the subcommittee, was concerned that the Obama administration seemed to be scrubbing all mention of ISIS and “Islamic terrorism” from public documents. He portrayed this as “Orwellian double speak.”
Of course, the ideology of the terrorists do not represent the vast majority of Muslims, but it must be admitted that these extremists are wrapping themselves in the cloak of the Quran. Make the distinction, but don’t censor it either.
08/05/2016 After Qandeel Baloch’s murder, is the world finally waking up to ‘honor killings’?
Source: Asia Times
The brutal murder of Pakistani model and social media star Qandeel Baloch drew so much international attention that Islamabad is finally taking steps to prevent such “honor killings” by removing legal loopholes which help culprits to escape punishment or receive light sentences. However, this social evil can’t be wiped out unless Muslim communities reform and allow women and girls to make their own clothing, dating, marital and even sexual choices.
The case of Qandeel Baloch, the “Kim Kardashian” of Pakistan, has rightly captured international headlines. A social media phenomenon, Baloch was known for posts that were provocative in the context of her home culture, even if they would be considered rather benign to many in the West, and certainly in the United States.
Honor-based violence – a type of violence in which families, sometimes with the help of the broader community, punish a victim (usually female) for a perceived social or sexual indiscretion, has long been a plague. This is certainly true in Pakistan – most especially in more insular communities where a more regressive interpretation of Islam is enforced.