Does New Age Islam have a deliberate agenda of vilifying Islam?

Letters to the Editor

22 Oct 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

Does New Age Islam have a deliberate agenda of vilifying Islam?

Date:        Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:29:18 -0700 [14:59:18 IST] From:       Juzar Bandukwala <drbandukwala@yahoo.co.in> To:   Sultan Shahin  Editor@NewAgeIslam.com   Dear Mr. Sultan Shahin, I read New Age Islam regularly, as I want to know what the world at large thinks of my community. I thank you for the same. I wrote you once for the bias I feel that exists in your news, against Islam. For example today one item is headlined: Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom  There is a vast difference between Appeasing Islam and Appeasing Muslims. Unless you have a deliberate agenda of vilifying Islam. I say this because New Age Islam can turn off even "liberal" Muslims like me. This is the very block you should aim to reach, to make our community more responsive to Western ideas and ideals.  Sincerely Yours J.S.Bandukwala, Baroda, Gujarat --- Dear Mr. J.S.Bandukwala Thanks very much indeed for taking time out to apprise me of your feelings. The headline in question is not of my making or that of other editors at New Age Islam who decided to include this item in the compilation. New Age Islam has merely informed you of the publication of such an article on the web. I am quoting below the full article, exactly as it appeared along with its url. Please see for yourself. I think it is important for us to be, at the very least, aware of what is going on both fronts, on the anti-Islam, anti-Muslim as well as the fundamentalist-obscurantist Islamic front, though, of course, as you well know, they do not constitute the main body of our work. Believe me, I am as offended as you are with either of these group of articles and news items. Do you think I like reading about Muslim women being whipped by Sharia courts for wearing Bras or for drinking a glass of beer or ten-year-old girl children being ordered by a Saudi Sharia court in the hub of Islam to go back to their 80-year-old "husbands", or Saudi obscurantists justifying child-marriage by maligning our beloved prophet, and so on?  The only difference between me and several of New Age Islam readers who don't like reading these stories and complain is that I think it is important that we know what we are doing and what others are saying about us, so that some of us are probably inspired to do something about it, both in terms of dispelling the disinformation or misinformation and reforming ourselves by going back to our simple roots, minus the sophistry of fiqh which probably is responsible for much of our misery. If we know people are spreading misinformation or disinformation about Islam, whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims, and what points are they making, we might be able to give them the correct information. This may not help as far as these people are concerned, as most of them may be spreading disinformation deliberately, knowingly, but anything put out on the net stays there for a considerable time, is copied by others, etc. and may keep neutral readers from getting influenced by disinformation.  As in the case of Hazrat Ayesha story, for instance, we have repeatedly published research work detailing why she simply could not have been six-year-old when she got married to the Prophet. Please see: Did Sayyida Ayesha (Ra) Marry Muhammad (P.B.U.H), The Prophet Of Islam, At Age 6 URL: http://www.newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=817   It is not possible for us to refute every misinformation – we do not have a large enough editorial team – but we do hope that some readers will be able to do that, as they actually do sometimes.   However, I know you are right. Our policy maybe alienating, turning off, as you put it, even "liberal" Muslims like you. As you say: "This is the very block you should aim to reach, to make our community more responsive to Western ideas and ideals." I agree with you fully, except, I feel, most of what are known as Western ideas and ideals are actually Islamic ideas and ideals, and in many cases Islam introduced these ideas and ideals to the West at a time when they were in gross medieval darkness. These values, essentially humane values propagated by prophets of Islam since the beginning of time on this planet, will ultimately triumph, I believe. Whether that happens in the name of Islam or the West or Hinduism or Buddhism or Confucianism or atheism or Marxism is of little concern to me, as I am sure it will be of little concern to Allah, as, after all, all ideas and ideologies have come from Him. New Age Islam is just aiming to be on the side of change, change for the better. You may disagree with our method of keeping ourselves informed of both the good and the bad in world media about us. But I would request you and other readers to get involved in doing something about it. Mainstream Muslims, also called moderate or liberal sometimes, cannot absolve themselves of the blame for what is happening to Islam today. I know you personally are already contributing a lot. I have seen the passion with which you speak your mind. Please continue doing that and, if possible, use New Age Islam, too, as a vehicle for conveying your ideas both as articles and comments on the articles and news items published. Regards,   Sultan Shahin, editor, New Age Islam --- URL: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1965 Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom Literary Spotlight By Thom Nickels, The Bulletin Sunday, October 18, 2009 http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/10/18/arts_culture/doc4adae04168137521169905.txt 2009 marks the eighth anniversary of September eleventh. While most Americans can recount where they were when the twin towers in New York went down, the passage of time--and the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil since 2001—has a tendency to lull many of us into a sense that everything is okay--for now.      The men and women who had to jump from the upper floors of the towers to avoid being burned alive--the falling executives, their neckties whirling in the wind, the dozens of co-workers who jumped holding hands, the constant shocking "thump" sound of bodies hitting the ground so that the news media eventually had to "black out" the audio-- did not know what was happening to them. They may have known of a hit by a "random airplane" but they knew nothing of an organized terrorist attack. They went to their deaths unaware that this first major attack on American soil also had a side component: the slow buildup of a radical Islamic powerbase throughout Western Europe. This buildup began in the 1970s when Europe agreed to trade crude oil with Arab countries in exchange for promises of unchecked immigration (Strasbourg Resolution 492, 1971). As Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci noted in her book, "The Rage and the Pride," after the agreement the streets of her native Florence were flooded with immigrants selling pencils and chewing gum. Likewise, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the Netherlands also permitted free-for-all immigration of Muslims from Morocco, North Africa and the Middle East.  This was not immigration on a case by case basis, but a careless open door policy that led to the creation of radical Muslim enclaves in what had always been progressive, modern democracies. Unlike other immigrant groups, the new citizens avoided assimilation into the culture of the host country. In time they began to opt for Sharia-style Law within their own communities.  Women who refused to wear the burka, went to the hairdresser's, or were discovered to be in adulterous relationships were (and are) judged according to Sharia Law, while the secular laws of the host nations are conveniently put aside.  Stoning and honor killings are common, as European politicians and government officials often turn a blind eye. Fallaci and author Bruce Bawer both contend that the "blind eye" in question is the result of an undue emphasis on political correctness and multiculturism.   "Do Muslims stone adulteresses?" Bawer asks, playing the part of the multiculturist politician.  "Well, we execute murderers. Does Iran imprison, torture, and execute gays? Well, what about Guantanamo? Indeed, in recent years the politically correct response to every criticism of Islam could be summed up in those three words: 'What about Guantanamo?'—the point being that until the West itself is morally without blemish, no one has any right to criticize even the most heinous crimes against humanity by any non-Western individual, movement, group, or power." Once more, Bawer writes that these "PC" progressive governments have turned its major cities into houses divided against themselves.  "In those cities, all you had to do to travel from a modern, post-Enlightenment democracy to a strict patriarchy out of seventh century Arabia was to walk a few blocks," he states, adding that this transformation "went almost entirely unmentioned in the American and European media." The change, however, was first spotted in the Netherlands by Pim Fortuyn, author of "Against the Islamization of Our Culture," and a candidate for the Dutch parliament.  Fortuyn's contention was that fundamentalist Islam was irreconcilable with Western democracy. He warned his countrymen to rethink government subsidization of Muslim schools, mosques and community centers. For this he was called a fascist and compared to Hitler. Fortuyn was later murdered by an extremist who didn't like his views on immigration.  Left wing progressives and the European media explained that Fortuyn had it coming because he criticized Islam. Similarly, filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had made a television film which featured a Muslim woman discussing how women were treated under Islam, was shot and killed (his throat slit) while riding a bicycle in downtown Amsterdam. Although van Gogh's film was just revealing a well known truth, Dutch politicians, in the name of multiculturism, "were inclined to deplore van Gogh's alleged 'insensitivity' to Muslim feelings." Van Gogh's murder, Bawer says, "was proof not that Western Muslims needed to adjust to the realities of free speech but that Westerners needed to assimilate traditional Muslim limitations on speech."     Bawer, an American who moved to Norway to be with his partner, says that the PC multiculturist mindset has so infected American journalism that "a moderate Muslim now denotes someone who might not stone an adulteress to death himself, but who would defend to the death another Muslim's right to do so." He cites several examples of The New York Times refusing to review books that attempt to explain or criticize the slow transformation of Europe into Eurabia. In one instance, he cites a New York Times profile of a famous American Inman that went out of its way to be fluffy and soft. (The Inman, Sheik Reda Shata, believes in suicide bombers if they target Israeli soldiers; he also refuses to shake the hand of any woman and thinks that music should be forbidden if it 'encourages sexual desire').  "One could not easily imagine the Times running a profile of James Dobson or Pat Robertson that started out in quite this way," he writes, referring to the Times profile that was more PR fluff piece than objective journalism. "No reporter would try to get away with it; no editor would accept it; readers would flood the Times with outraged e-mails asking why the liberal Times was apparently trying to get them to warm up to a fundamentalist."  Bawer believes that "The pretentious, abstraction-ridden multicultural rhetoric" in today's politically correct world of journalism "succeeds in whitewashing the execution of gays, apostates, adulterers, and rape victims, and in entirely removing from the picture of the Islamic world the victims of these abominations."  He gives examples of how the Egyptian-based organization, The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood, seeks "to conquer the West not through terrorism but 'through gradual and peaceful Islamization,'" the proof of that being the current state of Western Europe. Not surprisingly, Bawer's book has been criticized as "shrill" and "over reactive" by much of PC press, though that seems far from the truth when the author lays out the frightening, verifiable facts. Thom Nickels can be reached at ThomNickels1@aol.com. URL: http://newageislam.org/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1965