islam

A path worth following

In some respects the relationship between parents and their children is similar to the relationship between those who take up the path of Islam and those who are simply born into the faith. I have found myself sometimes unfairly critical of the behaviour of some Muslim teenagers — repulsed by the expletives they casually utter (forgetting that I too had a foul tongue at that age) or their innuendo-laden conversations. In truth they are finding their feet and their place in the world. The onus is on their parents to lead by example, to guide, to explain why theirs is a path worth following. And so it is with those who take up this path anew.

A common discourse amongst many converts is that particular complaint that the existing Muslim community does nothing at all to help them. There is no guidance, no emotional support, no social life: we are left to wander on alone, fumbling dangerously in the dark. Perhaps there is some truth in this. But perhaps we should turn this entire notion on its head and ponder if our critical-gaze should be directed elsewhere.

The reality is that those of us who have taken up the path of Islam — whether as converts or otherwise — have done so voluntarily. We have chosen this path. It follows, therefore, that our critical-gaze should fall inward. Those who are Muslim purely as a result of inheritance — those who have a Muslim name, but have made no emotional or intellectual investment in their faith — should surely, rightly, look to those who have chosen this path to explain why it is a way worth following.

No, it is more than that. Rather than expecting them to be good — to live by the example we believe in — we should be asking ourselves to be good. We are the ones who looked into the faith and found something beautiful. Shouldn’t we then be responsible for demonstrating that? Why leave it to someone who never had an opportunity to learn about their faith? Why expect others to carry what we found? The onus is on us — those who have taken up the path of Islam voluntarily — to lead by example, to guide, to demonstrate why this is a path worth following.

Such a task requires us to be humble, to be self-critical, to take ourselves to task — above all, to adopt the best of manners. If we say, “I can’t be bothered because they can’t be bothered,” we will get nowhere. If we say, “They don’t behave well, so why should I be expected to?” we are deluding ourselves. Our point of reference is not the world, but the best of examples. The onus is on those who have taken up the path to be an example for those who are yet to take it up.

The conduct of someone who never spoke to me once guided me towards this path. Perhaps you too may be a such a signpost. Always have the best manners and be on your best behaviour, for you never know when someone will take you as an example.

Of a mountain

The reality of this road is that it is difficult. It may be straight, but it is steep and at times rough, and often vulnerable to the molestations of bandits. As anyone who journeys to the highlands of any nation will know, the easiest route to the top of a mountain is via the winding road that hugs the contours of every hill and valley; the expedition takes an age as the road traverses mile upon mile, winding back upon itself repeatedly as it climbs higher and higher. The straight road appears the easier path at first, until the traveller encounters his first obstacle. As he ascends the great mountain, each time he thinks he is nearing its summit, another fold of hill appears above the crest he had set his hopes on. The path is straight, but it is patently hard.

My heart aches; I feel alienated. The simplistic Islam of unlearned teenagers—we do not eat pork and should not drink alcohol—is long forgotten. There can be no casual meander along this path, as I had once thought when I was weighing up whether to embrace what I believed to be true. It is a path of action, requiring us to move and reform, to stretch ourselves, to be much more than we are.  Each time we almost reassure ourselves that God will accept our undemanding nomadic faith—and forgive us our multitudinous shortcomings—new realities insist that this is not so. We wanted to believe that we had been granted paradise because we had been kind to a cat; we did not notice being cast into hell for the evil of another deed.

I don’t know if I will be able to shake these sins for which I am promised an unfortunate end and which distance me from my Lord. I have tried before, repeatedly, and failed. Once I learned that it was probably haram, years after I thought I knew all that was permissible and forbidden. But probably opened up a door for its return. Years ago, in those early days of my Islam, when a friend—himself learning of this path anew—took to running through what was allowed and what was not, I had learned that it was probably disliked. But disliked did not strike fear into this unfortunate believer as it does for his pious brethren. For months he would avoid it, striving on his path of reform, but disliked would eventually open the door to tolerated, and from there it would become halal.

But today a revelation: it is not just probably haram, but almost certainly haram. Almost being an atom’s weight of chance to the weight of the world that it is not. An unpalatable revelation that I have been sinning almost constantly for years on end, oblivious to words that clearly spell out the consequence in store for one who does not repent and turn away from it. As we self-righteously poured scorn on those who eat any old food, believing it to be permissible as the meat of the Jews and the Christians, and demanded that they desist, we forgot to take ourselves to account. By God, what a fool! With this revelation, undoubtedly they are better than I a thousand fold. How it had seemed I was walking in His Shade, dependent on His Mercy: suddenly a shocking revelation, that I was in fact walking in His Wrath.

Can I now desist? Will He grant me His mercy and enable me to overcome this hideous malady? Will He grant me an escape from this curse? To leave some of what was haram was made easy for me, alhamdulilah. Leaving intoxicants was painless, for I had only ever drunk alcohol for six months of my life, although unfortunately to excess for half of that period. Leaving it was simple because I had never liked it and I hated what I and my friends became in that state. God gave me the sense to leave it almost a year to the day before I came to believe in Islam. To abstain from consuming food and drink in the month of Ramadan too was made easy. As my skeletal frame revealed, I was not a slave to my stomach back then. I missed meals frequently and ate little. To fast was no great burden. I am grateful that God made leaving much of what is impermissible easy for me. What if I had been of those who must savour all kind of whiskies and wines, and learn to pronounce the names of European vineyards, who must accompany every meal with a cocktail of gin beforehand, beer for starters and red wine with red meat? To desist then would surely have been a burden likely to steer me away from the straight path.

But it seems, after all, that I had my trials too. Of course I have always been conscious of it; I have always known it to be wrong. But if I had known that it was not just wrong, but categorically forbidden from the outset, would I be where I am now? Wouldn’t I have abandoned it long ago, like riba, khamr and pork? Perhaps or perhaps not. Perhaps it was too pervasive, too deeply ingrained. Perhaps it had become too much of a habit, too much a part of me. Perhaps it was my wine.

I fear now returning to it. Oh, I have said that a thousand times before and I have returned to it. No, what I really fear is never being able to free myself from it and from sins like it. People have often advised me that we are not held account for our thoughts. But which thoughts? For there are those thoughts that flutter into our mind from nowhere, over which we have little control: surely it is these for which we shall remain unaccountable. But those thoughts over which we have full control, which are of the same instrument as our talking tongues and typing fingers, are surely to be questioned. As long as you do not act on them you will be safe, say some, but what is action? To think and dwell on the bad in them is surely action, for they enter the heart and stain it dark until it can retain no light. The heart dies from thoughts such as these. I know because I think them.

I have committed now to desisting from these sins, but I have been unable to throw myself down on my face before my Lord in proper repentance, for they are still here within. They are calling me back, trying to convince me that this realisation is misguided. And yet it is not that usual realisation—the result of reflection and guilt, of irritation in the heart, of a sense of the innate wrongness that descends moments later. This is not a realisation in that sense—not just the chattering of the soul. It is a realisation founded on knowledge: it is an acknowledgement of the prohibitions of our deen.

My schizophrenic soul is wrought in two. One half of me wants to pursue the path of righteousness; the other half wants to cast adrift, to hold fast to the dreams of another world. I know that when the Hour arrives I will look back and wish that I had listened to my better part. On that day of fifty-thousand years, when our life will have seemed but a blink of the eye, I will wonder why I could not have just been patient and held fast to that weak voice within. I will wonder why I turned my back on the promise of everlasting release for the sake of momentary, fleeting ease. I know what I shall think then. But just now, fifty-thousand years is unfathomable. These days, weeks, months and years seem too long to persist in righteousness.

I know I must repent now and return. The cost of repenting is great, but the price of not repenting is infinitely greater and infinitely worse. I know I must strive now, with a striving greater than previous strivings, for my distance from my Lord is now greater than ever. The voice that calls to righteousness is weak and feeble, like the parabolic mustard seed, and hardly calls me to truth any more. If I am to repent now, it will be against myself. It is like a warring cry, a declaration of war. Somewhere within, deep down, there is a feeble David, slingshot in hand. But it is Goliath that looks back wearily and with contempt. I fear the battle ahead.

There stands before me a great mountain. I stand on its foothills, unable even to see the crest of the first hill, let alone its peak. I know that my first step onwards must be repentance and a resolution never to return to my monotonous sins. Yes, of course I know, but will I? Can I make it to the mountain top?

The dekafirnated tribes

This evening, my good friend, Rashid ibn Jeffrey of Hounslow, coined a new phrase to replace the tired out names given to those who embrace Islam later in life, such as converts, reverts and new Muslims.

He proposed, and I accepted, ‘the dekafirnated tribes’. So overjoyed was I by this innovation that I agreed to use this coinage henceforth, wherever I deem it appropriate.

It may apply to individuals – ‘a dekafirnated soul’; to groups of individuals – ‘dekafirnated folk’; and to whole groups – ‘dekafirnated Engs’ (English Muslims), ‘white dekafirnated’ (white converts), ‘black dekafirnated’ (generally West Indian converts) or ‘dekafirnated tribes’ (assorted converts of any background).

Which brings me nicely to the words of another wise friend earlier on this evening, which I am quite certain he will allow me to share:

Islam is something dynamic, not frozen in time. Anything from any tradition or culture that does not clash with the values of al-Islam can be assimilated without fear. To say something is haram or makrouh, you need evidence: ‘it being alien’ is not evidence. Bilal the Abyssinian, Salman the Persian and Suhaib the Roman, all brought something with them to the Muslims.

The use of the car didn’t come from Muslim lands, but most are using it. A woman is not allowed to drive a car in Saudi, but she is allowed in other lands. Surely there are women driving cars who are better than women not driving cars.

There is something that I deeply believe in and that is: The words of Sayiduna Muhammad, salahu alayhe wasallam, were spoken to his immediate companions, but they were meant for people until the end of times. So one cannot claim that he understands the full extent of his words. It is possible that someone deep in Africa, or America or Japan sheds some light on a true meaning in his sayings that we never thought of.

I would say that it is possible for a Muslim in America today to be better than a Muslim in Saudi a thousand folds. Alhamdullilah this Deen is not confined to a certain time or space or race. It is free from all that.

Therefore, O dekafirnated tribes, whether new or ancient, strive in the way of your Lord. As said our blessed Prophet, peace be upon him: ‘Let each of you have an invoking tongue and a thankful heart.’

True words

He reads my words and then he frowns. ‘I want to hear your true voice,’ he mourns, ‘I was expecting something deep, something meaningful.’ But this is my true voice; this is what I am. We are the Pharisees in his mind, devoid of the spirit and light. If only, he weeps, we were as the Disciples, spiritual and deep. If only, but we are what we are. The sufi demands that the light of Ihsan permeates my being, but I’m still stuck on stage one, struggling to implement my Islam. And so my words eternally disappoint, sounding shallow and weak. But isn’t that as it should be? True words come from above.

Manliness

A week or so ago I received some advice that knocked me off course and disorientated me. Reflecting on their words, I found myself wandering around, wondering if I really had got everything wrong. I pondered on the advice and criticised myself for not being a dictator. And then, when I was done, I decided to ask a trusted friend and teacher for his advice as well.

“I was wondering if you could advise me how Islam defines manliness,” I said, “and/or point me towards a good book that covers the topic.”

As is often the case, his insight set me back on course again. I intended to post his response early last week, but the demolition of an outbuilding took precedence, occupying me every evening after work. But better late than never:

…

‘Manliness is “rujula”; it is what a man should reflect. In short, a true man is close to Allah, and the further from Him he is, the less of a man he is. So humbleness is manliness, arrogance is not. Patience, endurance, forbearance and so on is manliness.

Eating while walking in the street without a good reason diminishes one’s manliness. To serve your parents, your wife and family is manliness.

It is one of these men of our predecessors who said to his wife, “May my hand be cut off if it were ever lifted to strike you.”

Anyway this is a very broad topic, however I hope that the following points will be of help inshallah:

1.There are books about men, closely linked to the sciences of hadith but not always. There are also books about women. These books have different names. Some of these books are called “tabaquat…” e.g. tabaquat alquraa (men of Quran recitation), tabaquat alhufath (men of memorisation), tabaqat ashafiaa (men of the Shafiee school), etc. Tabaqat actually means levels, but it’s about men hence I translated it as men, albeit men at different levels.

But the best book of all about who is really a man is AlQur’an. AlQur’an mentions men who were Prophets and some who were not. Sometimes the Qur’an just uses the word “man” without naming the person.

2. Man and male are two different things. Every man is a male but not every male is a man. Man is a status, so a young boy of 11 may be a man and yet an adult of 50 may not be. We have a very common expression that goes “mashi rajel” —”he is not a man”— when a person breaks the etiquettes of Islam when dealing with others.

There are always men but not all are complete. Men are ranks: they are of different categories and they enter aljannah in the group they belong to.

3. We’ve been studying one category which is called “ibadu rahman” i.e. the servants of the Most Merciful at the end of Surah alFurqan.

4. Culture has a lot of influence on men and can entrap them. Hence spiritual migration, but sometimes it has to be a physical one. Historically all Prophets travelled, and were even expelled and rejected by some members of their tribes. Also it has always been the way of the ulema to travel.

However not everything that is cultural is condemned by Islam. As you know, in the Algerian desert, men cover their faces, but women do not. Also in the countryside sometimes it is the women who work the fields. The kitchen in Islam is not a space reserved only for women. The Muslims as you may know developed a whole industry related to cooking. As you may know the famous scholar ASuyuti wrote a book about cooking. And ASuyuti is definitely a man of high calibre.

6. Some men had very hard wives, but the good way they behaved with their wives propelled them to amazing levels of men. They became ‘legends’.

7. No true man sees himself above anyone else even if it were on a battle field. And there are true men who do not even feel their very existence in front of their Lord.

And Allah and His messenger know best.’

First faltering steps

To become a faithful believer is not easy. This thought occurs to me repeatedly as I set out to renew my faith and recommit myself to God. This voyage has recommenced many times over, only for me to stumble again within days. This time I’m serious, I tell myself, but still it is a struggle.

In ten years I have never abandoned the prayer, but there is more to the deen than this. Over the years I have become but a shell, fulfilling the minimum of our obligations, my prayers often rotten beneath the surface, their core like dust. As the months and years passed by I emptied sins into my book of deeds, always oblivious to their gravity, returning to them often as if they were of no consequence. To lift oneself from the habit of certain sins is a real test, for after a few days they pull at the heart, the symptoms of that addiction soon infecting one’s whole being. And so, once more, I slip.

Perhaps this time is better than all those previous occasions, I think to myself, because this time I have learned of the gravity of those sins; because this time my response is founded on knowledge and certainty. Right now I cannot imagine returning to them. It would, for me, be like drinking alcohol, stealing or taking a life. If I returned to them now, would I just give up? I pray I do not return to them. I pray I do not return.

And so it is that I find myself, a decade after I uttered my testimony of faith, making my first faltering steps along this way, and it is hard. How easy it is to fit in one’s prayers at home between one task and another, ending the day upon the prayer mat just metres from one’s bed. But to await the congregation, to venture outdoors when already tired, to head out to one’s place of prayer as others are preparing to sleep: for one unaccustomed to striving in the way of God, by the third day exhaustion has set in. And what of arising early in the morning to return? Here the fears for our community set in, for when those grey and white haired ones pass away, will the mosque any more open in the morning? One day I make it on time, the next day I awake just as the congregation draws together, the following day, who knows?

As each evening draws in, I commit to abandoning the computer and the internet, in order to sit and read instead. I have found this a blessing, a habit I could easily get used to. Yet my eyes are constantly drooping, a heaviness descending, craving for sleep, though there seems to be no time for it after work, in-between study, prayer and food, and so I find myself wondering how I will ever conquer my laziness and retrain my soul. Though a decade has now passed since I first uttered my testimony of faith, all I carry with me is a smattering of du’as and the shortest chapters of the Qur’an. Where have all the years gone and how is it that I learnt so little, committing to memory so few words?

To make up for lost time is hard, to be patient is hard, to maintain constancy is hard, to stop grieving over one’s sins is hard, to become a servant of God is hard. And so it should be. In life, we are told by those around us, you get nothing for free. Although the billions of blessings from our Lord cast doubt upon this claim, it nevertheless puts the difficulties of our spiritual quest into perspective: if, in life, we get nothing for free, why then should I demand an easy approach to the hereafter?

Taking stock of how far I have put myself back, how much I have oppressed my own soul and how little I have done to rectify my situation, it becomes apparent that this struggle of mine is not just necessary, but obligatory. It is my jihad: a real struggle, not a leisurely sojourn. Hence these first faltering steps of mine.

"BBC claims of hadith reworking unfounded"

Salam alaikum,

Some of you might have seen an article / heard a report on the BBC which suggested that the Turkish Government is preparing to “revise” Islam. I think this article in today’s Zaman (a mainstream Turkish newspaper) sheds some light on the BBC claims:

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=135202

Speaking with Today’s Zaman on Wednesday, Dr. Mehmet Görmez, the directorate’s deputy director, said: “Our project is not aimed at effecting a radical renewal of the religion, as is claimed by the BBC. Our objective is to help our citizens attain a better understanding of the hadith. Though I underlined several times during our interview with a BBC reporter that our project cannot be considered a reformation of Islam, he distorted the facts, saying Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam — and a controversial and radical modernization of the religion.”

The hadith texts are not considered by Muslims to be God’s word, as the Quran is. Regardless, they are seen as qualified attempts to collect a body of reliable texts for Muslim scholars to use in adjudication. Scholars such as Bukhari and Muslim traveled throughout the Muslim world gathering and evaluating oral reports that had been passed down through generations from the Prophet Mohammed and his contemporaries. Each of these scholars then evaluated the chain of transmission of each saying, taking into account each individual reporter’s reputation, memory, etc.

All of which underscores the pre-eminent wisdom of the Qur’an once more:

“O ye who believe! If an evil liver bring you tidings, verify it, lest ye smite some folk in ignorance and afterward repent of what ye did.” Qur’an 49:6

“O man, follow not that whereof thou hast no knowledge. Lo! the hearing and the sight and the heart–of each of these it will be asked.” Qur’an 17:36

In other words we ought always to verify our facts when news comes to us, lest it cause others harm. May Allah forgive us all.

Kindest regards, salams and duas,

Zeynep

Man bites dog

My email to Eddy Mair on Radio 4’s PM programme this evening:

Can you prove to me that the huge crowds witnessed on the streets of Khartoum after Friday prayers today were because of the teddy bear insult? If you go to any Muslim city anywhere in the world after Friday prayers you will witness massive crowds. Indeed, you will witness them even outside the mosques up and down this country? Virtually every Muslim attends the Friday prayer – clearly they have to go somewhere when the prayer ends and in the absence of a teletransporter the first thing they will do is pour onto the street.

You may not care about this, you may not know about it or you may be enraged by the behaviour of Muslims, and not want to read these few short thoughts of mine. That is fine – you can simply pass over this post.

But here we are, I have been “enraged” – yes, by media hype – what hypocrites they are given that they constantly attack the government with accusations of spin. I have always defended “the media” against claims of bias: they report the news, they do not make it.

But here I sit amidst my “enraged” fellow countrymen – lambasting the Muslims, demanding that they be deported, that they deserve no respect, that their religion is barbaric and inhumane – listening to interviews on the radio and reading newspaper articles all covering this same ground, and I ask myself a question.

Why do you not know about 138 Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world reached out to Christian leaders in an open letter to the heads of all Christian churches just a month ago, emphasizing, “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Common-Word/Christian-Response.html
http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Common-Word/Muslim-Response.html

Why too do you not know about the Amman Initiative which saw 170 Sunni and Shi‘a religious scholars and Muslim intellectuals from 40 countries gathering to condemn terrorism in absolute terms in July last year?

Why is it that you nothing about these? Where was the media coverage? Where the vast acreage of opinion pieces? Where the journalists demanding that Muslim’s reaction? Where?

Yes, dog bites man – not news; man bites dog – news. But some of us have to live with fallout.

The addictive grip of idleness

I have been reflecting quite a lot recently on what Christians refer to as ‘the addictive power of sin’, for I am one of those unfortunate souls that makes mistakes and repents only to repeat them again over and over. Faced with this phenomenon, I believe it is easy to appreciate how many Christians come to conclude that there is no escape from sin except through a dramatic external intervention—even if we believe they are wrong. While we would say that their solution is an illogical extreme, given that we only recognise sin in the light of what God has defined as good and bad, there is no escaping that sense of despair when we constantly replicate the same mistake throughout the years of our lives. Muslims are, of course, reminded of the words of God, that had He created a community that would not sin and err and return in repentance, He would have removed it and replaced it with one that would, for He loves to forgive. Indeed we are reminded of the famous Hadith Qudsi in which we are promised forgiveness, no matter what we have done, so long as we return in repentance:

O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. O son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness nearly as great as it.

We are aware of so many words which give us hope, and yet the sense of despair is real, for recurring repentance for oft-repeated errors begins to feel hollow, shallow and half-hearted. It is true that I am not the worst of people, but my criteria for judging myself is not the standard set by the behaviour of others; my errors may well seem insignificant in a world of widespread bloodshed, but the Middle Way is not defined as the path between the shifting extremes of the day. We judge ourselves against a fixed standard. The earliest Christians would have been aware that all was not lost in the face of sin—even the parables recorded in the contemporary Gospel cannon make this clear—but today’s discourse incessantly emphasises the need for a redeeming saviour. When I look at my own response, I see ignorance at its heart. Ignorance feeds despair, for addiction is persuasive. If we convince ourselves that our addiction is incurable—as is the Christian’s theological position, even though we find that many Christians are in fact people of high moral calibre who are clearly not subsumed in sin—a sense of hopelessness is really only a natural response. In my case ignorance affects me in many ways, which at first seem quite distinct, but which are in fact all interrelated. An ignorant response to mistakes is tied to the ignorance which leads to them in the first place.

All of this carries me back towards my thoughts during my recent stay in the Black Sea, which I have wanted to write about since my return, but have been unable to articulate (I still can’t as I would like to). People in that forested valley not far from the border with Georgia generally lead happy, contented lives and are self-sufficient in many ways, but I was still struck by the hardship of many of their lives. We met widows on the sides of those valleys, and children who had lost their fathers, mothers who lost their sons. I watched as old men busied themselves chopping logs for the stove and women collected hay for their cows, each preparing for the cold winter that will draw down on them in the next few months. I witnessed much more than this, and I reflected on it in light of my own life and the way I live it. My life has always been characterised by remarkable ease—I have never experienced real hardship—and yet what can be said of the way I live it? I am lazy and often feeble, capable of telling myself that I am doing okay when I achieve nothing in weeks and weeks. What my experience in the Black Sea taught me—and this thought kept recurring in my mind throughout our stay—was that our Lord has far higher expectations of us than I have ever acknowledged, that He requires a higher standard. The great hardship I witnessed convinced me that my laziness and feebleness in the face of so much ease could not possibly be acceptable to our Creator.

So here I stand taking stock of my life, and truthfulness—not humility—confesses that there is not a lot to be proud of. I may well deny that need for a redeeming saviour, but I remain tarnished by the legacy of that tradition, for instead of striving against my laziness, my weakness, my emotional addictions, I have allowed myself to succumb to them. Jesus was sent to sinners not saints, Christians often remind us, but we recognise that this was one of the roles of our noble Prophet too: the point is that they were sent to sinners so that they might reform themselves and become the best of people. I reflected on those matters during my stay in a simpler setting in Ramadan, but what have I achieved since my return? Nothing to be proud of once more. ‘To good and evil equal bent, both a devil and a saint.’

I recognise that laziness is one of my greatest diseases, but as I said to my friend last night, most of the time I’m too lazy to do anything about it. In a world of AA for alcoholics and smoking cessation counselling for Smokers, isn’t ‘the addictive power of sin’ a rather lame excuse for idleness?

1 Comment

Quote:

justgrits.wordpress.com

Bowes said,
October 27, 2007 at 6:05 am

Do you recall the murder of Victoria Climbié in the UK in February 2000? She died at the age of nine following months of barbaric abuse at the hands of her guardians, both of whom were evangelical Christians? She had been burnt with cigarettes, tied up for over 24 hours on several occasions, and hit with bike chains, hammers and wires. She died on 25 February 2000, a day after being admitted to hospital suffering from hypothermia, multiple organ failure and malnutrition, on the day her guardians’ local church, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, was planning to hold a service of deliverance for her – they believed she was possessed and intended to cast the devil out.

Would we attribute this barbarity to Christianity? Local churches all had contact with the child during the abuse, but turned a blind eye, as has been documented in the course of the enquiry. Couldn’t we then attribute this barbarity to Christianity? The answer of course is no. What of the cases of child abuse that have come to light in recent years at the hands of Roman Catholic and Anglican priests in the United States, the UK and Ireland? Would we attribute these acts to Christianity? The answer, again, is no. We recognise that every community has good and bad people.

If you were to read the traditional sources of the Muslim faith yourself, rather than relying on information published on a racist website, you would discover that the barbarism described in your post is not in fact “accepted and expected and praised” in Islam. There is the story in which one of Muhammad’s young grandchildren climbs onto his back while he is prostrating in prayer and plays with his garments; rather than casting him off, Muhammad lengthened the prostration until the child climbed off on his own. He also told his followers that any man that did not show affection to his children did not have proper faith. Indeed the clue is in the quotation: the story has outraged Morocco – a Muslim country – indicating quite the opposite, that such behaviour is in fact rejected and condemned.

Islamic tradition actually considers the child pure, for there is no concept of Original Sin — reflecting the latter part of your quote from Matthew’s gospel, the Muslim faith holds that the child that dies in infancy will go straight to paradise. Muhammad said these children will meet their parents on the day of judgement and grab them by their garments or their hands to no end other than that God will enter their parents into Paradise. The position of the Church on such a child by contrast is a little ambiguous – ranging from the view that unbaptised child moves into a realm of limbo in the hereafter to the view that the child is not “saved” and will thus go to hell. It was for this reason that my mother, as hospital chaplain, had to go out in the middle of the night on a number of occasions a few years ago to perform “emergency baptisms”.

I don’t think the Muslim position on children could be clearer. You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But I might also end with a quotation from the Bible.

For example… “Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing (1 Peter 3:9).

Or… “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:17-21)

After all, didn’t Jesus say, “But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28)?

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