Sheer Lunacy: the start of my anti-progressive/anti-liberal
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Sheer Lunacy the start of my anti-progressive/anti-liberal posts
So I came across this article yesterday... and I was utterly flabbergasted, to say the least. Not by its progressiveness or stark bid
ah-ness (is that a word?), but by its complete ridiculosity. These liberals are growing more powerful with each day that passes, as they seem to attract all these disenfranchsed and pissed off Muslims who're mad about various things to join their movement. These liberals sound like people who are hopping mad that they didn't get elected as the masjid president or local imam... so gosh darnit, let's just start our own masjid where I can implement what I think ought to be practiced in the masjid. Key emphasis "on what I think"... since of course, none of them have actually studied Arabic or the Sacred Sciences or anything of that nature. Of course not, analim course is 7 years! Who has time for that! I mean, sure, to become a doctor/lawyer you have to study for 7-8 years but man, to become a religious doctor, we don't need that many years. What do those guys need to study for that many years anyway. I certainly don't need any knowledge or formal study of Islam... all I need is enough money and a willingness to sensationalize everything and I too can be looked at as a religious personage (exhibit A Asma Gul Hasan) to speak my mind about issues.As I've mentioned in previous posts, the problem with these liberals is that their power is growing day by day, especially amongst Muslim women, whom they're pretty successful with by fooling and conning them with nonsensical tripe about how backward and anti-women traditional Islam is. By misinterpreting and twisting sacred texts around, they're becoming increasingly successful in subverting many gullible Muslims to follow their ideology. More dangerous, however, is that their power grows day by day as their media-friendly facade is quickly allowing them to claim the vacant position of an American Muslim voice--a position that desperately needs to be claimed by the traditionalists before it's lost forever.
Anyway, in what is the start of several posts on this matter (since one post would be incredibly long), I've decided to take various articles by and about progressive/liberal Muslims (PLMs) and... well, basically tell them why they're just straight up wrong with my comments in italics in the text of the article. Quite simply, my stance throughout all of this is this if they want all these "reforms" and "innovations", I have no problem with that... it's a free country and you can do what you want. But, as Shaykh Hamza said, just don't call it Islam... call it anything else, but don't call it Islam. Don't mock this religion and its Prophet and those men and women who sacrificed, were tortured, and died to preserve the purity of this deen. Call it Mislam or New Islam or whatever... just don't mock what our predecessors have done.
Women, men share prayer space in Canadian mosque (a sign of the End...?)
'Returning to our roots' Religious center is a trend toward liberalism and tolerance driven mainly by younger Muslims
By Ron Csillag
Religion News ServiceSalt Lake Tribune
TORONTO - The handful of girls and women arriving for Friday prayers at the Islamic center make small talk before removing their coats and shoes, tying their head scarves and quietly filing into the prayer room - just as their Muslim sisters do the world over this day. (well it's good that at least they're donning hijab while praying)
After the adhan, the call to prayer, they listen intently to the English sermon, then perform the qiyam, the standing posture. Like the men, they raise their hands to their ears and then fold them, right over left, over their hearts. Like the men, they prostrate and touch their foreheads to the ground, returning to the standing position.
The only conspicuous difference is that at the Noor Cultural Centre, females do not use a separate entrance, do not sit in a balcony or behind a partition, or languish at the back of the room (languish eh?)
The small, glassed-in prayer space in the center's basement is believed to be the first place in Canada where Muslim men and women pray side by side - or at least, lined up with each other.(isnt there something about the first place that an evil is manifest is considered the worst of places... i'm not sure, but I think I recall reading that someplace... either way, I feel pity for Toronto)
It's not completely egalitarian - a three-foot (note that it's not 2... not 4... but exactly THREE... cause you know, three is sunnah after all...) aisle separates the men's and women's sections - but it's being hailed as a major first step in the expression of a more flexible (what kind of loaded term is "flexible"... it's more flexible for women to be praying side by side with men?) form of Islam in the West.
Is it Osama bin Laden's worst nightmare? The start of a renegade movement? Neither, says the center's CEO, Roshan Jamal, who, as far as she knows, is the only woman to head an Islamic organization in Canada. ("A people that places its affairs in the hands of a woman shall never prosper ".... certainly, this hadith has been misinterpreted by some to exclude women from all positions of authority (scholarship, etc)--which is clearly against what the early communities did--but here's what happens when you put an unqualified woman (or even man) in charge...)
''It's not breakaway. It's not reform,'' says Jamal, a 59-year-old accountant who favors business suits and doesn't cover her hair in public. ''It's mainstream. It's how Islam was meant to be practiced. (yeah, I'm sure in all your years of accounting you had plenty of time to study Islam in a scholarly manner and figure out how Islam was meant to be practiced.... cause see, the present scholars, gee, they've only dedicated their lives to studying this deen... but somehow, they just don't know how Islam was meant to be practiced. I guess Ms. Jamal's accounting experience gave her this incredible insight (baseerah) into becoming a reformer(mujaddid) of our time. Hey Ms. Jamal, how would you feel if a scholar from overseas called you up one day and said, "Hey, you know what, your accounting methods and practices are all whack... I've been studying shariah for 30 years, BUT, I've suddenly discovered the way that accounting was MEANT to be practiced.... here's how...") ''We are simply returning to our roots.'' (no damnit, thats my point, Traditionalists are sticking to their roots.... just say you're creating a more user-friendly Islam-ish religion and you're willing to get rid of anything that's not media-friendly... if you would just say that and abandon the noble rhetoric, I wouldn't have problems with you chaps.) Thirty years ago, when Jamal came to Canada from Mozambique, ''there were few mosques and women were not very comfortable. I found every space restrictive. I didn't feel I belonged. There were a lot of women like me.'' Muslim women ''ended up going nowhere. They would go 'to the mosque' for Eid or for Friday prayers, or just to someone's basement.'' The Islamic facility, housed in the former Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, opened a year ago and offers its mostly Sunni members lectures and language programs. The prayer room opened on the first day of Ramadan, in October. (haha, I bet these deviants started fasting on Friday as well... that's a joke guys, relax) ''This is the kind of thing I always dreamed of,'' says Jamal, with a smile, ''a place where broad-minded people can go to learn and worship.'' Toronto seems to be at the cutting edge of this kind of openness. Last month, a 20-year-old Muslim woman became the first female to deliver a sermon in a Canadian mosque. It raised some eyebrows, but also earned kudos from Muslims, including many men. (on the authority of Sa'ad Quadri, this female also gave the khutbah without hijab, in short sleeves, with make up on... the whole nine yards. Well that's good at least, if you're gonna do something wrong, you might as well do it right) And a University of Toronto graduate student analyzing the Hadiths - the sayings and practices of the prophet Mohammad - has concluded that most Islamic trends oppose the segregation of men and women. Her research was published recently in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. (wow, so 14 centuries of scholarship which included the likes of Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Malik, Imam Shafii, Imam Ahmad b. Hanbal, Imam al-Ghazali, Imam al-Haddad, etc. probed the depths of all branches of knowledge but somehow they couldn't come up with this piece of knowledge that this graduate student suddenly came up with? Subhanallah, what an opening. Our scholars wrote treatises on every subject under the sun--Imam al-Suyuti even wrote treatises on marital relations... my point is not to be facetious, but to illustrate that our scholars wrote about EVERYTHING... why didn't they glean this from the hadith whereas this GRAD STUDENT can?)
Though there are no formal ties between the two, Jamal acknowledges that the Islamic facility she runs and the New York-based Progressive Muslim Union of North America, which emerged last month, mark a new trend toward liberalism and tolerance driven mainly by younger Muslims. (may God help us all...)
The Noor center ''is an effort to show there's another side to Islam . . . that God is not punishing but loving,'' says Jamal's husband, Husein, a 69-year-old physician who often leads the prayer service (there's no full-time spiritual leader or imam). ''If you want to reach people, there's no point in being confrontational. This is a gentle, no-fault approach.'' (Actually, God is both, while it is true that His Mercy outstrips everything else, we cannot deny His Justice/Punishing attributes)
The prayer space wasn't created willy-nilly. Center officials say they consulted no less an authority than the Ayatollah Sistani, one of only five living grand ayatollahs and the most senior Shiite cleric in Iraq. (wow, so a bunch of Sunnis consulted a Shiite scholar for a ruling... hmm, why is that? Is that maybe because no self-respecting true Sunni scholar would ever make such a ludicrous ruling?)
''He said it was completely permissible for men and women to pray together,'' says Husein Jamal, ''but there had to be three feet between them.'' (Mashallah, again, with the three feet... not two, not four, but THREE... again, its sunnah, remember!)(some of the article skipped for brevity... you can read it all here http//www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_2497099#top)
''You can say we are a product of the reaction to the hard line.''
Both Jamals say there is nothing in the Quran or Hadiths that enforces the segregation of women and men at prayer. (of course, with all their scholarship and years of studying the Sacred Sciences... they just know the Qur'an and Hadith better than millions of scholars throughout Muslim history)
''The Prophet asked women to lead prayers,'' (not true Ms. Jamal... this hadith that you allege to from the collection of Abu Dawud wherein the Prophet gave permission to an Ansari woman by the name of Umm Waraqah to lead prayer in her "masjid" is often misinterpreted by many. When I asked my teacher, Mawlana Ubaidullah Saleem, about this, he told me that this was referring to Umm Waraqa leading WOMEN in prayer with no men in the congregation. The "masjid" here refers to her house itself, which was used as a musallah-type masjid by the local women when the men went off to pray in the Prophet's Mosque. Mawlana Ubaidullah said that this is a common mistake in interpretation made by those who have not studied the Arabic language. Moreover, why is this the only narration mentioned? Why did the Prophet not ask the most qualified women like Ayesha and Fatima to lead the prayer, or grant them permission to do so. Certainly, it was not due to their shyness, since Ayesha led an army in the defense of what she believed to be right. Even this incident cited by some from the Tarikh of Tabari about a woman named Ghazala leading the prayer (around the 7th century) is considered weak for many reasons this is the only mention of it, it goes against all the other narrations of women not leading the prayer, and gee, she was of the Khawaarij... so if we're going to be following Khawaarij precedent on such matters... you might as well just rename the religion) notes Roshan Jamal. ''In Mecca, men and women pray not only together, but intermingled.'' (this is only an exception made in present day during Hajj when there's no other way to get segregation with millions of people... the rules are temporarily suspended in Masjid al-Haram and nowhere else. however, for those who have actually been to Hajj, you know that there's still efforts at segregation)Bottom Line This is a free country and you can do whatever you want, no one is going to stop you. If someone wants to have inter-gender prayer, be a homosexual, say that hijab isn't mandatory, etc... that's fine by me, since God is the ultimate Judge... BUT, just please don't tarnish what our predecessors have sacrificed for by calling it Islam. Call it anything else, but please, just don't call it Islam.
http//www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=kr156
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only few words from me to u. " Get a life ".
peace
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only few words from me to u. " Get a life ".
peace
Free your mind.
thanks for good wishing.. I hope you can practice that too..
peace
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Bottom Line This is a free country and you can do whatever you want, no one is going to stop you. If someone wants to have inter-gender prayer, be a homosexual, say that hijab isn't mandatory, etc... that's fine by me, since God is the ultimate Judge... BUT, just please don't tarnish what our predecessors have sacrificed for by calling it Islam. Call it anything else, but please, just don't call it Islam.
Peace be upon you brother,
I dont really post here, i only come to look and observe peoples questions and answers!
i quoted this because i wanted to ask you is this the same reason why Sunni's and Shias(spelling?) call themselves Sunnis and Shias??
So in actuall fact you Sunnis cant call youself true Islam???I dont go around saying that "This is True Islam"..because in actuall fact we dont know what is "True Islam" and what is not "True Islam"!
Also i would like to ask you a question, why is it that the Traditionalists make Islam like its a physical thing??
My friend wanted to get married to this lebonese Girl..but because he was a convert and didnt have a beard, he could not marry her...why is this??
Her mother a father called him a fake Muslim!
This is one case..but there is many, its happend to friend of mine and person i know.
The sister her in australia are always running away from there homes because of bad treatment from the family...ironicly most of them are Muslims..why brother?Brothers and sisters ask me "What did u study brother"..i tell them Audio engineering, they say to me "Im sorry to say brother but that is Haram"!!
My heart breaks because Music and film is my hobbie..and that where i want to go!
These are just some of the small reasons why i left the traditional Muslims!
Anyway please brother take care.
Peace and thanks
Sebs
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There is only one expert or 'scholar' if you will, of Islam and that is God, everyone else is but a learner. Nobody has the right to claim themselves an expert and tell other people how to live their lives. A man can study the book for 50 years and still not learn anything, because his heart could be sealed by God, because he wasnt willing to change himself from within. There is a difference between reading words and absorbing their meaning. There is only one true way to study Islam and that is to live it, the way its meant to be lived, not to sit on your butt counting hadith and stalking the shadow of the last prophet.
Its all in one book, from One God.
If there is one thing I can agree with you Ansar, it is that people can get carried away in their attempt to free their minds, I'm sure some people might lose sight of the bigger picture while trying to study Islam, and their egos might overtake them.
Whats funny though, is that the meaning of the words 'traditional' or 'fundamentalists' have been mixed up with 'progressives' and 'liberals'. I find the followers of various hadith to be the most progressives, dangerously so unfortunately.
Anyway, that is all. Peace.
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Peace Ansar
just a few observations
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a lot of what these people are putting forward to support their 'liberal/progressive' position is drawn from hadith. Its a shame they don't justify there actions on a quranic basis. Personally I am a liberal minded person in the political sense - but in matters of religion I follow the word of God which is not liberal, not conservative, not any of these labels. It is divine.
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some of what they say rings real alarm bells for me. The Noor center ''is an effort to show there's another side to Islam . . . that God is not punishing but loving,'' Trying to squash the many attributes of Allah into the ephitet of 'loving' is the kind of simplistic thinking that has confused many religious people. I think about how christianity misses the point about Allah being all-powerful - not simply nice.
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also bro, bear in mind that the media distorts and edits what people say. Indeed you may have made distrotions and edits in your article. I wouldn't damn them simply on the basis of the isnad of the Salt Lake Tribune.
In terms of the issue of segregation. In general I think there is too much of it - BUT - in the Masjid I like the fact men and women pray seperately - I just hate the way the sisters always get these lousy prayer rooms. The law of equality is proscribed for us and I think we should have equally nice spaces to pray to Allah.
peace
adsfjk
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Peace Sister Warda
I think the reason I like segregated prayer spaces is because of the social dynamic - its asier to be amongst other men as its a less socially complex situation. This isn't the same as saying that the presence of women would 'distract' me - everything, potentially, distracts me! Rather as a social negotiation I find a single sex prayer space easier to handle and I appreciate that ease. I don't particularly like it when you share a prayer space and the women have to stand at the back. It seems like an unashamed sexism and I'd rather there were two equal spaces - one for each gender.
Perhaps it would be different if one were praying exclusively in the company of men and women who held the same understanding of your faith - ie not hadithists - but I think that is unlikely in my situation in Manchester, UK and I question whether its would actually be desireable anyway since such a Masjid would be, by definition, a sectarian one.
I should stress that I don't see this as a matter of religious faith - as far as I am aware the quran is silent on the matter of segregated prayer. Its my personal preference. And maybe if my imaan was more developed it would be less of an issue for me - ie I would be more aware of Allah and less aware of who are the people standing around me.
Also I do enjoy having discussions about Islam in mixed gender groups - in my experience you get a lot further in these situations than when you are only talking with other men. The segregation question is just about the prayer hall.
salaams
asdfjk
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Salam asdfjk,
I used to see it as you do. Until this Ramadhan We, the women came down from the third floor where is the womens place for praying (and which looks quite lousy in compare to the place where men pray what looks like a real mosque... ) A Sister stopped us from going further down where the men went out as well,... . So we stood there waiting with children who wanna go out after nearly two hours of Tarawih. My friend said to the woman "These are our brothers why do you have to stop us? we are not afraid of them." I was the only who agreed. Then she said "so, let them stop and wait, we have the little children". I agreed again loudly and some other women, too. So she let us go... And we went downstairs with the men. And guess what? Nothing happend, except of shy faces...
It was then that I thaught together with my friend the first time why not? Less assume I am praying and see my husband ? Nice. Or I see the one Im in love with... nice , love is from God.Anyway I can understand your opinion and respect it.
Bye and a happy new year
warda -
Peace Ansar D
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Peace be upon you brother,
I dont really post here, i only come to look and observe peoples questions and answers!
i quoted this because i wanted to ask you is this the same reason why Sunni's and Shias(spelling?) call themselves Sunnis and Shias??
So in actuall fact you Sunnis cant call youself true Islam???I dont go around saying that "This is True Islam"..because in actuall fact we dont know what is "True Islam" and what is not "True Islam"!
Also i would like to ask you a question, why is it that the Traditionalists make Islam like its a physical thing??
My friend wanted to get married to this lebonese Girl..but because he was a convert and didnt have a beard, he could not marry her...why is this??
Her mother a father called him a fake Muslim!
This is one case..but there is many, its happend to friend of mine and person i know.
The sister her in australia are always running away from there homes because of bad treatment from the family...ironicly most of them are Muslims..why brother?Brothers and sisters ask me "What did u study brother"..i tell them Audio engineering, they say to me "Im sorry to say brother but that is Haram"!!
My heart breaks because Music and film is my hobbie..and that where i want to go!
These are just some of the small reasons why i left the traditional Muslims!
Anyway please brother take care.
Peace and thanks
Sebs
The reasons why you have left traditional islam are quite silly. First of all, there is a difference of opinion on music. And watching movies is permissible as long it doesnt contain something impermissible.
There is also a difference of opinion on the beard. A lot of people dont wear it. Scholars say its only 'makrooh' to shave off your beard and thats it. This is a typical response you get from people like you who dont understand what islam teaches. If you dont like some things then reject those points but dont reject islam totally.
I just came to warn you dear brother. You have a strange belief which has got nothing to do with Allah and his messenger. You believe in sectarian beliefs that not even 1000 people follow. So-called modernists who want to re-interpret quran and hadith have a better chance to recruit followers.
I'm sorry to say, but you have gone astray.
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Peace Ansar
beliefs that not even 1000 people follow.
How do you know that?
Well if you think logically you'll come to that conclusion...ok ok...take a zero more....its still does not consists even 0,00000001% of the muslim community. And if we look at the history of islam, these beliefs never actually appeared. Odd isnt it.
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And if we look at the history of islam, these beliefs never actually appeared. Odd isnt it.
Salaam,
What particular beliefs are you referring to? Are you talking of interpretation of the scripture or something more profound such as following guidance in what is considered revelation solely and disregarding any human sources?
If so, can you prove whether no one or group followed scripture solely? Does this relate to some evidence that you possess or belief? What happens in societies to issues that are beyond conventional wisdom, how does it get treated? If you consider the possibility that this is the truth would you expect these thoughts to be freely distributed or supressed?
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Women, men share prayer space in Canadian mosque (a sign of the End...?)
Ansar,
What is happening in the socalled sacred mosque in mecca. Only men are circumventing the rectangular stone walls? Is it end of Ka'aba?
''In Mecca, men and women pray not only together, but intermingled.'' (this is only an exception made in present day during Hajj when there's no other way to get segregation with millions of people... the rules are temporarily suspended in Masjid al-Haram and nowhere else. however, for those who have actually been to Hajj, you know that there's still efforts at segregation)
The End. Show is over!
May Allah save -