A friend recently, hit the nail on it's proverbial head, by saying that he liked my patriotism, in reference to my religiosity.
This is something that the powers-that-be hate tooth and nail. That we Muslims identify with one another even whilst we adopt different cultures and languages. It is a patriotism of a type because we gain a sense of belonging and identity through it. The second aspect of that patriotism is that we cannot help being proud of our religion and that is what my friend inadvertently referred to.
But just like secular patriotism, we are in danger of the same problem of doing, promoting and accepting wrong, just because it is what we 'as a collective' do.
Thankfully Muhammad (saw) kept us from that harm through his patriotic saying, "Help your brother whether he be the oppressor or oppressed".
In the era before Muhammad (saw) it was a pagan Arab slogan that cemented the tribal rights, and their sometimes consequent wrongs by quite literally admonishing the support of wrong-doing. But that was then transformed in Islam with Muhammad (saw)'s qualification "If he be the oppressor then help him by stopping his oppression."
A slogan that allows for no silence in the face of any wrong, and even less so when it is your brother who belittles himself through through doing, or accepting, wrong.
Later in the conversation he drew my attention to a woman of Iranian descent who was purportedly being threatened with stoning for taking part in a Beauty Pageant. Then I was at a loss for words.
But now my loss is all gain.
I can understand my Muslim brothers and their wives reaction to that nonsense. The single atomic unit of any Muslim society is the family and not the individual. This is quite unlike the West, where no matter how many policy essays address the benefit to society of families, the individuals rights remain paramount.
And so from my and the majority Muslim perspective, no women, nor for that matter any male, has the right to act or promote actions which can undermine the family. I do not believe that I need to spell out for you exactly how taking part in Beauty Pageants can undermine family values. I will leave that to your imagination.
So I believe in the primacy of family rights, over individual rights. And that acts that can undermine family values should be precluded by convention, and that anyone that seeks to undermine such values should be castigated with due measure.
But two wrongs never did make a right, as the English say.
Stoning or whipping is a punishment decreed by GOD for the sexual crimes. How then can they be advocated for anything less than that?
To advocate that is to make a mockery of the decree of GOD, and to visit an oppression that GOD himself likens to the killing of the whole of humanity.
We also know that it is decreed that the fornicator only be allowed to marry their like, the fornicatoress (S. Noor). Is not the similitude of a women who wishes to reveal her body to the World, like that of the fornicator? And whilst no sexual crime has been committed, the judgement in regards of her should be like that of a fornicator.
And should she not be excommunicated from the community?
And if it is that she, or for that matter he, feels more at home in the West, then they should be given every encouragement to relocate. That they might live with those whose values they mimic most.
And let us Muslim hold our values, true and solid, never deviating from them.
Shafeesthoughts.
This is about a conversation I had with my friend Lukas P. about a year ago. May God guide him to the straight path. And sufficient is God for me. Ameen.
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