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It takes a nation to protect the nation

From The Heart Of A Muslim - by Tawfik Hamid

From The Heart Of A Muslim
 By Tawfik Hamid
"I am a Muslim by faith, a Christian by spirit, a Jew by heart, and above all I am a human being."

~ Dr. Tawfik Hamid.
 Dr. Hamid is an Egyptian scholar and author of the article.

The world needs more people like him---ones who have the courage to face-up to reality.


I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.

After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.

I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward non-Muslims. We Muslims are the ones who need to change. Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.

We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called jizia. We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the mosques.

What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "descendants of the pigs and monkeys"? [Yet, both Arabs and Jews are descendants of Ibrahim (Abraham)!] Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?

I have been into [Christian] churches and [Jewish] synagogues where they were praying for Muslims. While all the time, we curse them, and teach our generations to call them "infidels", and to hate them.

We immediately jump in a 'knee jerk reflex' to defend Prophet Mohammad when someone accuses him of being a pedophile while, at the same time, we are proud with the story in our Islamic books that he married a young girl seven years old [Aisha]when he was above 50 years old.

I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.

Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathise with their cause. Until now our 'reputable' top religious authorities have never issued a fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shari'a law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.

Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the hijab (head scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders. It is our abs olute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts.

We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East.

We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have their own nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel, women cannot be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of 'apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights.

I agree that the 'Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel.

It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world. On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel, its 'enemy.' If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.

We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind. Our religious leaders have to show a clear and very strong stand against polygamy, pedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religions, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam.

Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion. The time has come to stop our hypocrisy and say it openly: 'We Muslims have to change.'

Tags: Hamid, Heart, Muslim, Tawfik, Zdissident

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Permalink Reply by paul collings on September 6, 2012 at 22:55
Permalink Reply by shiva on September 7, 2012 at 5:47

Yo Paul

 If you opened the link I gave, you will see he gives a lot of verses from the koran, but the verses have been altered and are very misleading.

Here are a few examples.

Koran 2:208 according to Islamforpeace/Tawfik Hamid: 

 O ye who believe! Enter into peace whole-heartedly; and follow not the footsteps of Satan (the evil one); for he is to you an avowed enemy). 

Koran 2:208 according to 

Sahih International
O you who have believed, enter into Islam completely [and perfectly] and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. Indeed, he is to you a clear enemy.
 
Muhsin Khan
O you who believe! Enter perfectly in Islam (by obeying all the rules and regulations of the Islamic religion) and follow not the footsteps of Shaitan (Satan). Verily! He is to you a plain enemy.
 
Pickthall
O ye who believe! Come, all of you, into submission (unto Him); and follow not the footsteps of the devil. Lo! he is an open enemy for you.
 
Yusuf Ali
O ye who believe! Enter into Islam whole-heartedly; and follow not the footsteps of the evil one; for he is to you an avowed enemy.
 
Shakir
O you who believe! enter into submission one and all and do not follow the footsteps of Shaitan; surely he is your open enemy.
 
Then this sneaky little trick
 
Koran 49:11 according to Islamforpeace/Tawfik Hamid: 
O ye who believe! Let not any nation laugh at another nation: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): 

And we trust that we should unite with other fellow human beings, irrespective of their faith, to do good deeds for humanity - which pleases God - such as finding a cure for cancer and other diseases, ending poverty, and relieving suffering throughout the world.
Notice that Islamforpeace/Tawfik Hamid do not quote the whole verse
Sahih International
O you who have believed, let not a people ridicule [another] people; perhaps they may be better than them; nor let women ridicule [other] women; perhaps they may be better than them. And do not insult one another and do not call each other by [offensive] nicknames. Wretched is the name of disobedience after [one's] faith. And whoever does not repent - then it is those who are the wrongdoers.
 
Muhsin Khan
O you who believe! Let not a group scoff at another group, it may be that the latter are better than the former; nor let (some) women scoff at other women, it may be that the latter are better than the former, nor defame one another, nor insult one another by nicknames. How bad is it, to insult one's brother after having Faith [i.e. to call your Muslim brother (a faithful believer) as: "O sinner", or "O wicked", etc.]. And whosoever does not repent, then such are indeed Zalimun (wrong-doers, etc.).
 
Yusuf Ali
O ye who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor let some women laugh at others: It may be that the (latter are better than the (former): Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill-seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used of one) after he has believed: And those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong.
 
Now here is the verse in context http://quran.com/49/8-14
 
Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on September 7, 2012 at 6:14

Well thanks go out to our 4F Researcher for doing the groundwork!  For our readers' sake, I summarise the following:

  1. In the first quote, Tawfik Hamid substitutes 'peace' for 'Islam', thus changing an exhortation or order to follow Islam, into one to follow peace.  If he did want to substitute a general noun for a specific noun, the proper one would have been 'submission', as any true Islamic scholar would tell you.
    In other words, he tried to trick us into believing that Mohammed exhorts his believers into following the path of peace, whereas in reality, he exhorts his believers into following the path of Islam or Submission - with all that that entails in Sharia Law, etc.
  2. In the second quote, Tawfik Hamid substitutes 'nation' for 'people' or 'group', where the latter two terms are taken to be subdivisions of people within the Umma, i.e. Muslims.  
    So TK alters the exhortation to not insult other Muslims, into an exhortation to not insult other nations, thereby trying to fool us into believing that non-Muslims are included in the protection.  In fact, non-Muslims are excluded from this protection because they are wrongdoers ("whoever does not repent - then it is those who are the wrongdoers").

There are two issues here: (a) what is his intention? (b) what is his effect?

(a) None of us know what is going on his mind, so we are all entitled to our own opinion.  Personally, I think he is well intentioned, but people's capacity for self-delusion is enormous.  He probably re-writes the Quran thinking that little Tawfik can steer this oil tanker of Islam down a gentler route.  I don't think he has some cunning master plan to make Islam dominate.  But that is just conjecture.  If anyone has a mind reading machine, I'd be grateful to borrow it.

(b) His effect can be discussed objectively.  As Paul and I said before, his effect is at best, confusing and at worst, a time wasting, energy sapping, force diverting manoeuvre, with dangerous strategic implications.
Politically, its important for all of us to be seen to be trying to reach out and make a compromise, even with countries like North Korea. Ahh, I need to think about this some more.

Finally, when this discussion is finished, I will write to the Hudson Institute, and point out those verses and issues to them.  The Hudson Institute are well intentioned, and they are struggling in a very difficult and hostile arena, with the US media as they are. I'm sure we can all see the predicament they face.

Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on September 7, 2012 at 6:33

I've just read the Canada Post article posted by Paul.  There's definitely a danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater by being too critical of someone who, however deluded, has put his life on the line, and even Michael Coren seems to approve of him.

I think a better model is to see the battlefield as arrayed with multiple players all operating with different strategies at different levels (after all, that's how Islam operates).

Under that model, is he is a useful player now? 

There is a completely different answer to this problem that I espouse though.  I advocate a rigorous application of secular principles to everyone in our society, with a refusal to get sucked into theological discussions. The the question of the 'true Islam' or a reformed Islam, is just not our business.  Muslims can talk about it if they like, but we don't care.  We just re-draft and strictly enforce our law on everyone.

Two years ago, I didn't think it was possible to do this in a secular way, but now I am sure it is, because we've managed to itemise many of the gaps, here:
http://4freedoms.ning.com/group/admin/forum/topics/the-12point-plan...

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