Earlier today
Magma Reports put a few
Questions to the Canadian Muslim Community .
I was very unhappy about some of the implications the diarist made. But many here have asked essentially the same questions about membership in the Democratic Party, the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and so on. It boils down to this: Should one continue to be a member of the group and work for justice from within? Or should one leave?
No doubt we're aware of the anti-social, extremist, anti-intellectual, anti-Western religious fundamentalists and jihadists within Islam. For many the term Islamofascist easily rolls off the tongue. Are there any decent, moderate, possibly liberal Muslims within the community? Who are they? What do they stand for?
More
The
Muslim Canadian Congress has an agenda many progressives here could support. They are philanthropic, having raised money for earthquake relief in Pakistan. It has been their policy to oppose the use of Sharia law in Canada. It promotes the equality of men and women. It supports same sex marriage. It condemns terrorism and the war on terror. It defends the Palestinians.
The Muslim Canadian Congress has expressed relief at the arrest of suspected members of a terror cell in Toronto.
In a statement released today, the MCC said the Muslim Canadians are in a state of shock to learn that young members of their community would contemplate carrying out terror attacks on fellow citizens.
"Thank God these men were stopped before they could carry out their alleged plot," said Niaz Salimi, President of the MCC.
A founder of the Congress and spokesperson, Tarek Fatah, is often quoted in the media. Today's Toronto Star contains his editorial Keep politics out of our mosques
He said
Muslims cannot sit still while a fascist cult of Islamic supremacy takes over places of worship
About ¾'s of Islam's 1.2 billion followers are poor and illiterate. But that is not the case in the west. So why are youth here influenced by the clash of civilizations rhetoric of traditional leaders from Saudi Arabia and Iran?
While the overwhelming majority of Canada's Muslims have been stunned by this development, few can honestly deny that they had seen this coming.
For years, some of us have been incessantly talking and writing about the growth of this extremist phenomenon, this contempt for secular parliamentary democracy and non-stop berating of Muslim youth who become "Canadian" and warnings to them that they will be punished in the hereafter if they do not adhere to the barren version of Islam where joy itself is a sin.
But there is almost no opportunity to voice dissent.
Monday night's discussion on TVO was also significant because it is only in non-Muslim institutions that Muslims can debate from adversarial positions.
There is not a single mosque in Canada where Muslims with opposing views can debate anything political, social or theological. The doors of debate are shut by the cement of orthodoxy. Only doublespeak and hypocrisy are allowed to flourish. As long as Muslims can find someone else to blame for our ills, the problem is seen as resolved.
I say, enough is enough. Muslims cannot go on behaving as if everything is normal. We cannot sit still while a fascist cult of Islamic supremacy takes over our mosques.
We cannot afford it any more because we risk losing a generation to the temptation of simple answers to life's challenges; a solution that states that life on Earth is meaningless because it is temporary and therefore not worthy of sustaining, not worthy of enjoying.
I urge Muslims to recognize that a mosque is not the places for politics, it is a place of worship. Imams who peddle politics need to be told to take their politics to the electorate and not to the pulpit.
Finally he repeats a position he has often promoted.
Religion and politics is an incendiary mixture and invoking God on one's side in a political dispute is dishonest, callous and dangerous. Let us tell our imams to keep their politics to themselves and not to stain our religion by using the divine texts to score political points and promote terror.
It is ironic that Muslim extremists are portraying themselves as anti-imperialist when, in fact, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are nothing more than a creation of the CIA. Muslims need to recognize that the agenda of these extremists is a cult of hate and fascism, not one of advocacy for their community.
Perhaps the Muslim Canadian Congress does not represent the majority of Muslims in Toronto. Perhaps the 350 families of the United Muslims Association Mosque are more akin to Martin Luther's congregation. Many members are from the Caribbean and Guyana.
In 2004 two young women, Maryam Miraza and Naudia Ally led prayers and gave the sermon at Id in the UMA Mosque. It broke the traditional prohibition of women leading prayer to a group of men and women. This act was so significant that the story was reported by The Hindu, India's National Newspaper.
It did not happen overnight. It has evolved, and this was probably the right time," adds Fazil Razaq, the UMA's vice-president. The congregation, which was started by a small group of people in the basement of Ally's house, went through its development pangs. "At one time," says Razaq, "we had many people pushing for reform while some people were very conservative. We have struggled with this (a woman leading prayers), and it was our priority." More than 200 people had gathered to hear Mirza lead the prayer. As the York University student said confidently, "For our survival in this world we must change or we will be left behind. The same can be applied to religion...we must help Islam move forward and I believe we are doing just that." Members in the audience nodded in agreement. At the end of her 10-minute sermon, in which she emphasised the equality of the sexes as enshrined in the Quran, the need for education and initiating progressive changes while remaining within the fold of Islam, Mirza evoked immense support from the audience that included her proud parents. The sermon, or Khutba, was divided into two parts. While Imam Jabbar Ally delivered the first part, he left the concluding part to Mirza. The decision to have Mirza preach was taken by the UMA executive because they felt she had the "courage, knowledge and ability" to perform the task (she has played an active role in the congregation in the past few years). The choice of who would conclude the proceedings with Id greetings fell on Naudia Ally, who also happens to be the Imam's daughter.
Pressing issue
For the UMA members, the issue of gender rights is a pressing one. Says Ally, "People say you are women's advocates, and I say why not? My mother is a woman, my wife is a woman, my two daughters are women and so are my sisters. Every one of us, where would we have been today without women? Somebody has to take a stand and we are willing to do it, we are not breaking the laws of Quran."
Roman Catholics here on Kos compare your reaction to Imam Ally's statement with your Church's position on the ordination of women. Roman Catholic Women Priests Do you remember the Ordination of the St. Lawrence Nine? and the Church's reaction?
Raheel Raza is worthy of note for her role in the CMM. She is the author of Their Jihad... Not my Jihad!. Her attempt to be the first woman to lead prayer in Canada was thwarted initially.
This is a landmark event because it crosses yet another threshold of conservatism," said Tarek Fatah, co-founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and whose small yard was the venue for the Juma Prayer led by Ms. Raza. "It sets an agenda where you can't go back from here."
Back for Mr. Fatah and others is to the belief among many traditional Muslims that women-led prayers are heretical and un-Islamic. Indeed, it was fear of confrontations that caused the traditional Friday afternoon prayer to be moved twice -- from the Noor Cultural Centre and from a commercial building in downtown Toronto, after a New York-based Urdu-language newspaper published the leaked secret location -- before landing in Mr. Fatah's yard. The prayer had also been condemned as anti-Islamic.
Finally there is the woman the New York Times has dubbed "Osama Bin Laden's Worst Nightmare" Canadian Muslim Lesbian The Muslim Refusenik, Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith She advocates the liberal reform of Islam. Currently a visiting fellow at Yale University she has created Project Ijtihad
Ijtihad (pronounced "ij-tee-had") is Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking. In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived. Inspired by ijtihad, Muslims gave the world inventions from the astrolabe to the university. So much of we consider "western" pop culture came from Muslims: the guitar, mocha coffee, even the ultra-Spanish expression "Ole!" (which has its root in the Arabic word for God, "Allah").
What happened to ijtihad?
Toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader -- the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four, pretty conservative, schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam. It's time to revive ijtihad to update Islam for the 21st century. That's why I've created Project Ijtihad.
What's Project Ijtihad?
Project Ijtihad is my foundation to spur a reform in Islam -- a reform that enables the emerging generation of Muslims, especially young women, to challenge authoritarianism and restore Islam's tradition of critical thinking.
The mission is to build a leadership network through which young, reform-minded Muslims can do three things:
0. Meet face-to-face so that they see they're not alone;
0. Develop the confidence to openly dissent with conformity in Islam; and
Learn about the Golden Age of Islam, when Muslims, Jews, Christians and others worked together to preserve and expand knowledge -- something we're rarely taught in our public schools or in our Islamic religious schools.
And so I hope you can see that there are decent, moderate, even LIBERAL Muslims who have decided to stay and fight for justice from within Islam. They are taking their stand in Canada.