nursing a deep anger and despair about her fellow Muslims.
That's pretty evident from the article.
I'm not sure why they call her Muslim when it's also stated, "She said she no longer practiced Islam. "I am a secular human being," she said".
Muslims are Muslims because they practice Islam. If you don't practice "Islam", submission to God, you're not "Muslim", One who submits.
But I respect her choice, and the good Doctor does bring up a number of points worthy of discussion among Muslims.
Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.
IMHO, what we have today is a clash between the values of the west, and of Islam. It's often painted as religious or cultural, but it goes deeper than that, at the core it's a clash of values.
When, as an American Muslim, I look around, I like yourself can see "western values". Racism, Perpetual enslavement to interest rates. Growing alcoholism and addiction to gambling, both of which bring added social problems. The sexual exploitation of women for advertising. Soring crime rates. Oppressive poverty and obscene wealth. A political system for the betterment of the richest at the expense of the poorest and a Judaical system which shows preference to the rich while harsh and unforgiving to those whose greatest crime is the inability to afford competent legal counsel. Indeed, a nation where the poorest and helpless are abandoned to die in their attics or rooftops. Our brothers and sisters in Iraq can also look around to what "western values" have brought to them... Death, chaos and oppression. Islam on the other hand does not tolerate racism, holds that interest is wrong and oppressive to the poor. Advocates sobriety and prohibits gambling, and requires equal justice and treatment for all regardless of wealth or social standing and requires an annual redistribution of wealth from among the wealthy to the poorest.
Is there any wonder that there is a "Clash"?
It is a clash between what is right with Islamic Values and what is wrong with western values.
"I believe our people are hostages to our own beliefs and teachings," she said in an interview this week in her home in a Los Angeles suburb.
I believe our people are hostages to bid'a, innovation in our religion. Teachings not based upon Quran which have crept into our religion over the last 1400 years. I believe our people are hostages to superstition and tribalism, both of which Islam was meant to correct and lastly I believe our people are hostage to the dictatorial rulers placed and empowered by the west for the benefit of western powers.
She said the world's Muslims, whom she compares unfavorably with the Jews, have descended into a vortex of self-pity and violence.
Why compare the Muslims with the Jews in this context? Our histories are different as are the cultures involved. If we as Muslims as a people had to endure the diaspora and the horrors of the Holocaust might we not also be different today? To compare Muslims and Jews in this regard makes this into a Muslim vs. Jew debate.. something it's not.
Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."
Perhaps the good Doctor forgets that it was Zionist acts of terror that helped force the british out of Palestine and created the modern state of Israel? Were these acts done by all Jews? Were these acts purely driven by religious zealotry? Of course not. They like the acts of terror carried out by "Islamic" Militants are on the whole politically motivated by an active minority, not the majority. The Doctor uses a broad brush to paint all Muslims as Barbarians as evidenced below...
She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies...."
Many people other than Muslims have resorted to violence in anger. I could use her broad brush and say that only Americans kill innocent women and children in the hundreds of thousands.... But I won't. Many people from many ethnic paths have murdered and killed for their agenda, and I'll condom all of them equally.
In the debate, she questioned the religious teachings that prompt young people to commit suicide in the name of God. "Why does a young Muslim man, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up?" she asked. "In our countries, religion is the sole source of education and is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched."
Nothing in the Quran or Islam teaches such action. On the contrary, the Quran teaches against the harming of innocents and of murder in general and further admonishes us, "God does not like the aggressor."
In the end I disagree with much Dr Sultan has to say, and I think much of her viewpoint is colored by her own disillusion and anger toward what she perceives "Islam" to be. I do agree that the Militants are a reaction to modernity, but there are similar people in every nation and culture who resist change, not just in Islam... One need only look at our own history to find examples.
IMHO, What Islam needs isn't to get rid of Islam, but to get back to what Islam really is... Submission to the will of God, not submission to the west or forcing others to submit to our will.
May Allah have mercy and Guide both Dr.Sultan and myself... and the rest of us.
Peace
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