Muslim girl hits back at Islamophobes in speech

[cronus]

Muslim girl hits back at Islamophobes in speech during school assembly

A 15-year-old girl has hit back at Islamophobes in a speech during a school assembly.
Isra Mohammed, who is Muslim, wanted to remind fellow pupils at Newcastle’s Kenton School her religion had been ‘hijacked’ by terrorists and not all people of her faith were like that.
She was particularly concerned her younger sister had been blamed for the recent terrorist attack in Paris.

Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/19/muslim-gi ... z3unFllHey

[Brian Peacock]

Nice to see the Metro doing its bit for peace and love.

[Strontium Dog]

Irrespective of anything else, her claim that "Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism" is clearly ludicrous.

[JimC]

Irrespective of anything else, her claim that "Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism" is clearly ludicrous.

It does need a "Most" at the beginning, sure...

Interesting article in the Age on the views of a British mulsim MP...

We need to talk about Islam, says former radical Maajid Nawaz


People in the West are reluctant to discuss Islamism because they are frightened of being portrayed as racist, according to Maajid Nawaz, a British politician and former extremist who spent five years in an Egyptian jail.

Mr Nawaz, 37, whose political journey has seen him move from Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group linked to violence, to Britain's centrist Liberal Democrat party, compares debate about Islamic State to the reds-under-the-bed panic of the 1960s.

"Fifty years ago, this would have been about communism," he told The Age via telephone from London. "What I would caution is that I would say we were very comfortable being able to discuss communism, partly because communism emerged in a country that was majority white.

"Because of our various colonial hang-ups – many of them justified – we are uncomfortable being able to discuss Islamist extremism for fear of being labelled anti-Muslim, or racist. I think that's unfortunate."


As a young man growing up in England, Nawaz gravitated towards Hizb ut-Tahrir, attracted by its goal of establishing a worldwide caliphate under sharia law, and quickly ascended to its global leadership. At the age of 24, by then based in Egypt, he was arrested and jailed.

During the ensuing five years behind bars he became convinced that Islamism was a totalitarian movement at odds with the tenets of the Islamic faith. Today he heads up a London-based anti-extremist think-tank called Quilliam and advocates for secular reasoning, rather than faith, to be the driving force in politics.

A prolific writer, his most recent book, Islam and the future of tolerance, was co-written with controversial US atheist Sam Harris. Both men have attracted fierce criticism – and threats – from hardline Islamist and Christian activists.

Both, also, are accustomed to controversy. In 2014, Nawaz was slammed by media and mainstream Muslim groups after he tweeted a cartoon featuring Jesus and Mohammed. The incident led to calls from other Muslim Liberal Democrats for his dis-endorsement.

Party leader Nick Clegg publicly supported his candidate. At the general election in 2015, he failed to win the seat. The cartoon controversy was, to Nawaz, indicative of the West's self-censoring approach to discussing Islamism. Today it has led to the bizarre situation in which Donald Trump may be doing more good than Barack Obama, albeit unintentionally.

"Language can destroy Islamist ideas and propaganda," he said. "But we've got to be able to name exactly what it is that we're talking about. That's where I'm critical of President Obama, because he's unable to name the problem – and if you if cannot name something, then you cannot critique it.

"To say this problem has nothing to do with Islam leaves nothing to be discussed within the communities. To say it has nothing to do with Islam is as incorrect as Trump saying the problem is Islam itself. The truth is in the middle: it's got something to do with Islam – not everything, not nothing, but something."

The key, he said, lay in the way in which Islamist ideologues hijack parts of the faith's scriptures and reinterpret them to support their political stance. It is critical for Islamic communities to discuss this process and, by so doing, "reclaim their religion from those who use it to justify terrorism. I would encourage everyone to engage in this conversation, not to shut it down," he said.

"Mistakes will be made. Trump's making a lot of them at the moment. I'm critical of Trump but actually I'm glad of one thing – at least the conversation's now being had.

"If you don't have this conversation, only the Islamist extremists prevail. Because by shutting down debate, by shutting down thought, people become closed-minded, and only fascism and theocracy benefit from closed-mindedness."

Measured by media exposure, IS is by far the best-known terrorist group in the world. But it is not the first, nor will it be the last. Nawaz sees similarities between it and past extremist groups from across the spectrum, from the Catholic IRA to the Maoist Shining Path.

"Having spent several years in the leadership of an Islamist organisation, I can assure you of one thing," he said. "All of the organisational and operational techniques used share a great deal in common with other militant movements.

"In a sense, a lot of it is part of the collective wisdom of humanity – like the spread of democracy from Ancient Greece. Likewise, causing trouble is also part of the collective wisdom. The only difference is the flavour given to these revolutions – the justification, and the populations they affect.

"The great struggle of our age, of our generation, just happens to be against theocratic Islamism."



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/we-ne ... z3uozjAv6b
Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook

[pErvinalia]

I've read/heard quite a few Muslims coming out and "owning" this problem. It's good to see. This isn't predominantly a problem of Islam, but Islam clearly has a problem with the number of extremists who are accepted in the religion. And I agree this isn't a black or white problem (which ironically Harris is an annoying proponent of). Islam = extremism; Islam = peace. Both extreme black and white positions without any nuance or rationality.

[Seth]

I've read/heard quite a few Muslims coming out and "owning" this problem. It's good to see. This isn't predominantly a problem of Islam, but Islam clearly has a problem with the number of extremists who are accepted in the religion. And I agree this isn't a black or white problem (which ironically Harris is an annoying proponent of). Islam = extremism; Islam = peace. Both extreme black and white positions without any nuance or rationality.

Except for that whole Koranic "kill and enslave every infidel you see" thing, that's pretty black and white.

[JimC]

I've read/heard quite a few Muslims coming out and "owning" this problem. It's good to see. This isn't predominantly a problem of Islam, but Islam clearly has a problem with the number of extremists who are accepted in the religion. And I agree this isn't a black or white problem (which ironically Harris is an annoying proponent of). Islam = extremism; Islam = peace. Both extreme black and white positions without any nuance or rationality.

Except for that whole Koranic "kill and enslave every infidel you see" thing, that's pretty black and white.

And I agree that the presence of such texts in the holy writings of Islam has been an enabler of fundamentalism. However (and I know you disagree), a large number of muslims cherry pick the writings quite effectively, and do not take such injunctions literally. The muslim MP mentioned in the article I posted earlier gets this...

The main task is to turn Islam into a religion whose teeth have been pulled by the secular world.

Like modern christianity...

[pErvinalia]

The Koran isn't any different to the Christian or Jewish texts. This is the problem with religion. People cherry pick whatever suits their ideology.

[Hermit]

Irrespective of anything else, her claim that "Muslims have nothing to do with terrorism" is clearly ludicrous.

Isra Mohammed says that after employing the No true Scotsman fallacy. ISIS, she says (correctly), kill mostly Muslims. Therefore, she continues (incorrectly), ISIS is not Muslim. She justifies her opinion by quoting the Qur'an (5:32) "...whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land - it is as if he had slain mankind entirely." Unfortunately, this is the same cherry picking followers of all other religions indulge in.

Isra Mohammed is spot on with her warning about equating the vast majority of Muslisms with Islamic terrorists, though, and she cites one reason why this is a big mistake very clearly: ISIS wants countries like the UK to reject all Muslims. The rejected Muslims have noone to turn to but to ISIS. By rejecting ordinary Muslims we are creating a fertile field from which Islamic terrorists receive a plentiful harvest of recruits.

[pErvinalia]

You can read my views on this issue on a recent blog post - https://expressivedepressiveblog.wordpr ... ism-thing/

Most interestingly for this discussion is a quote at the end I came across from a Muslim on facebook owning the problem. Like the one Jim quoted.

[Drewish]

Poor girl being lied to about what her faith is actually about.

[pErvinalia]

What any faith is "actually about" is up to the interpretation of individuals, mainly. Although, the Anglicans and Catlicks at least have the Pope as an authoritative doctrine figure.

[JimC]

The Koran isn't any different to the Christian or Jewish texts. This is the problem with religion. People cherry pick whatever suits their ideology.

I think that the Koran has a higher proportion of texts urging violence, but even more importantly, a higher proportion (while still being a small minority) of its current adherents are determined to follow them in comparison to the proportion of Jewish or Christian folk prepared to act on the violence inherent in their texts...

[pErvinalia]

Yeah it's a matter of quantity not quality. Trying to pretend that Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism don't have violent extremists is pointless. In the US, I'm pretty sure there have been more Christian based terrorist attacks than Islam based terrorist attacks. And the most famous one was a fluke. There was no way they would have expected those buildings to fall and kill so many people.

[pErvinalia]

And not to mention Jewish state terrorism. Killed far more Arabs than Arab terrorism has killed Jews.