Forcing people to convert people to your faith doesn’t create more believers.
Our enemies will drive us to silence, preventing us from taking ourselves to account. For who dares speak of our own crimes, when right wing racists are already gleefully jumping up and down about them? Who dares comment on our own excesses, when governments stand ready for a clamp down? Who dares speak the truth …
Many a scholar tarries unknown, far away from the public gaze, devoting their energies to a wiser faith. Seek them out if you dare.
We are the great unjust. We build careers on lies, on false qualifications. We promote our friends and overlook our enemies. We select not the best person for the job, but elevate into positions of power members of our clique, faction, sect or family. It is strange that we believe that success is our due, …
As a Muslim, I rail against the whitewashing of Muslim history. As an Englishman I rail against the whitewashing of British history too. Some are willing to acknowledge the wrongs perpetuated in the name of empires, friend or foe, but most prefer to overlook realities, and instead invest in varnished histories.
It occurs to me with increasing frequency, that all the words that have been flowing from my fingers of late are merely a substitute for all the transgressions that passed before them. It took me an age, but eventually I fell down in repentance, resolving to make everything right and not return to those wicked …
Honestly, converts and the newly religious are their own worst enemy. From knowing nothing, suddenly you know it all. Yesterday you did not believe, but today you are the truest believers of all: yours is the saved sect, free from error and misguidance, purified of the heresies that disable all other believers everywhere. It is …
For some of us, our journey began with the Qur’an. I was an agnostic in my first year at university when I bought my first translation. It was a paperback Penguin Classic edition entitled, The Koran, translated by N J Dawood. An overseas student from Pakistan did not approve, because Mr Dawood was Jewish, but …
Several years ago, a teacher and friend told me of a dream he had once had, in which one of his noble sheikhs had decided to pay him a visit at his home. Most people in that situation would undoubtedly roll out the red carpet and take the fine china from the cupboard, honoured to …
It is a shame that militant secularists cannot appreciate their own extremism, with all their sacred symbols that they will defend against the blasphemies of their enemies. It is a shame that they cannot see that the excesses they condemn amongst religious communities are right there in their own. It is a shame that they …
Perhaps those who do not harbour demons are incapable of comprehension. Perhaps those of us that do too readily see ourselves in others, projecting our own diseases onto them. Perhaps those who see only purity are upright and true. Perhaps those of us who see ourselves in others, truly only project our own darknesses out …
“O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for God, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, God is more worthy of both. So follow not personal inclination, lest you not be just. And if you distort your testimony or refuse to …
They demand that justice be allowed to take its course, knowing full well that the law of the land does not consider crimes what Islamic morality deems a sin. And when the law inevitably vindicates the accused for having done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law, they will rejoice, chanting, “We told you …
Simplistic binaries are no way to interact with the world. Just because vile racists pounce upon a case of Muslim wrongdoing for their own political ends, it does not make that case of Muslim wrongdoing right. Just because your sworn adversaries are pouncing on something you said or did, it does not mean you are …
It is sad that daily, by our actions, we reveal that we worship men. We may not bow down before them, but by our words, in ascribing purity and perfection to them, we show ourselves unable to see them as ordinary people like the rest of us. We praise them far beyond their due, elevating …
