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On the Council of Ex-Muslims

On the Council of Ex-Muslims

  • Posted by Maryam Namazie
  • On July 5, 2007
  • 5 Comments

To hear a report on the Council of Ex-Muslims on the Guardian’s Islamophonic for June 28 with myself and activist Sohaila sharifi, click here.

 

5 Comments

Anonymous
Giving without reserveIt is with reticence that I write this. I do not wish to place myself on the moral high ground, or to sermonise anyone. This chapter tries to show the truth and importance of dreaming of our Holy Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet). These words seek to confirm that ours is a Prophet of Mercy, a Witness, and a Bearer of Good Tidings. It also aims to portray the consequence of da’waat in the Masjid al-Haram. It is moreover meant as a method of encouragement for our children to some day continue with the Prophetic Tradition of raising an orphan for the sake of Allah, The One of Unbounded Grace. So that they may by this means know that there is more to life than just prayer and fasting. And that they should give of themselves unreservedly. That they might through it also, temper their adhkaar with compassion. We were asleep at the Mashrabiyya Hotel in Khalid bin Walid Street in Shubayka, Makkah al-Mukarramah when, by the Mercy of Allah, I had the most beautiful dream. I saw myself standing in the holy presence of our Truthful Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet). The appearance of the Holy Messenger of Allah matched scriptural records.Our Prophet (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) was spotlessly dressed in white robes and a white turban. I stared aghast. Our Prophet (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) stood about two meters away and faced me directly. Someone so unimaginably holy, so indescribably handsome, one will not come across. I do not have the words with which to suitably portray this most wonderful man, the Seal of the Prophets (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet).I reached for my turban, embarrassed for not wearing it.“Leave it,” I said to myself. “You are in the Company of the Prize of creation.”Brilliance shone from our Guided Prophet (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet). Our Prophet (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) smiled at me. The smile radiated light. I stood alert, too humbled to speak. I wished that the dream would last forever. The heavenly smile lasted between ten and fifteen minutes, it felt like.Alhamdu-lillaah. I had never considered myself deserving of such an enormous honour. This was a spiritual experience of the first magnitude. “What does that smile mean?” I asked myself over and over again. I stared at the House of Allah for extended periods, contemplating its meaning.Deep in thought, I barely noticed the usually persuasive central-African women selling bird-seed as I walked back and forth from the Masjid al-Haram. I was hardly aware of the Turkish female who was dealing in steel daggers at the side of the street. Two men eagerly collecting on behalf of Bosnian refugees also failed to draw my attention. I half-heard a Pakistani lad calling out the price of bottled perfume to prospective customers alongside the road. Malaysian girls trading informally with scarves only just caught my eye.“Unless you receive the sort of treatment that a host bestows on a guest, don’t ever think that, because you have performed the ziyaarah of the Bait-ullaah, you’ve been the guest of Allah,” my father had once counselled me.A similar comment from my uncle, Haji Suleiman, I had further recollected. He had said to me: “Die persoon was Makkah toe – vra vir hom wat het hy gekry.” This rendered into English, says: “The person has been to Mecca – ask him what he had received [there].”I considered his observation a bit harsh then, but now the force of his remark was bearing home on me. He knew what he was talking about. For “’Ammie Haji” it had happened very quickly. Aged twenty-five on his first Haj in 1949, Haji Suleiman had landed inside the Holy Ka’aba when someone lifted him head-high and tossed him over the 2.25 metre high threshold of the Bait-ullaah. “Did you not get hurt?” I inquired further. “No!” he responded excitedly. “I was young and fit and had landed on my feet,” he continued proudly. Once over the doorsill, he did not have too far to fall, as the inside floor was 2.2 meters above the ground.’Ammie Haji performed two cycles of discretionary salawaat once inside. Till his dying day, he wondered who had done him the good turn.Every Muslim who had walked on the holy soil had the potential for such an experience, I realised. Such incidents might have been more prevalent than was ordinarily heard of, I thought. I had for a long time suspected that at least some pilgrims who repeatedly visited the Holy Land, apart from drawing from its built-in holiness, did not preclude themselves from offerings of this nature. It would be silly to think that parallels could not be drawn with Madinah in occurrences of this kind. It would also have been reasonable to expect wondrous incidents of this nature to occur in Jerusalem, the City of the Farthest Mosque, as the major Middle Eastern religions agreed on the sanctity of this city. Thinking that this sort of happening was in any way unique to myself, was ludicrous.Part of my da'waat in the Holy Mosque in Mecca, was to ask Allah, The One Who Makes Clear to us His signs so that we may be grateful, to Grant to ourselves the opportunity and blessings of raising an orphan for His sake.Having the money with which to afford to go on Haj has always been its first consideration. There were many people who had performed the Holy Pilgrimage more often than I. With regard to my parting from the Holy City, though, I had received a fascinating send-off.My wife and I had, over a number of years, tried to adopt a baby by applying at several local agencies, and were given all sorts of excuses which disqualified, and sometimes discouraged us. Reasons given were that we were not married according to South African law, that few babies from local Muslim parents came up for adoption, and the fact that we have children of our own. We were also faced with, what was to my mind, the worse aspect of the South African race laws. These regulations and those administering it, in this case, the social workers, prescribed that a ‘brown’ orphaned child had to be matched with ‘brown’ adoptive parents. A ‘yellow’ baby could only be placed with prospective ‘yellow’ adoptive parents, a ‘white’ orphan could not be raised by ‘black’ adoptive parents, and so on. They played dominoes with human lives. Some social workers were more ready to read the ‘race act’ than others.In an interview and in response to a question on whether we would mind adopting a child from a ‘lower rung’ of the colour scale, I told them that “a nice green one would do.”A jab to my ribs from my wife quickly halted the acid flow down the sides of my mouth. Stirring the ire of our then masters by criticising their political beliefs would not help, she meant. “When the white boss tells a joke, and regardless of its lack of humour – laugh!” she chided me later.Race inequalities existing at the time ensured that hundreds of black orphans went begging in more ways than one. It virtually excluded us from adopting a child. No orphans that matched our race and blood mix were on offer and they weren’t likely to easily present themselves for adoption, we were told. My wife is of Indian (as in “Indian” from India, as opposed to “American” Indian) stock and I am of (well) mixed blood.On the morning of Wednesday, 1st June 1994, just three days after arriving back home from Haj, we received a telephone call from Melanie Van Emmenes of the Child Welfare Society. She explained that a five-month old girl had come up for adoption. The baby had earlier undergone successful abdominal surgery and she asked whether we would adopt the child. We jumped at the chance. A rush of adrenaline replaced the after-effects of travel. We were rejuvenated. Capetonians usually visit local pilgrims before departure and also on their arrival back home. We excused ourselves from the few visitors and asked my mother-in-law to host them in our absence. My wife and I immediately went to the Adoption Centre in Eden Road, Claremont. We signed the necessary papers. Afterwards, we told our children that we were about to receive an addition to the family. We plodded through a maze of red tape in order to legalise the process. (My wife and I had to marry in court because Muslim marriages were not recognised then, believe it or not). A few days later, my wife, brother and I collected the petite infant from a foster-mother in Newfields Estate. I shall never forget the joyous feeling when I first carried the frail waif past the front door. Her name is Makkia. We named her after the great city from which we had just returned.Taking her into our home is one of the better things that we have done. Makkia has added a marvellous dimension to our lives. She is part of our life’s-work. I shall always be grateful to the people who had assisted us with the adoption.Raising an orphan means giving from the innermost recesses of one’s heart. Adoption springs from the soul of the adoptive parent. When a child is orphaned, we cry. God cries more.The meaning behind the glowing smile from our Trustworthy Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) had played itself out in the most delightful way. My dream shows our Prophet’s level of awareness and highlights his profound love for orphans and how kindly he looks on raising an orphan. It demonstrates that raising an orphan is an immensity before God. In our Prophet (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) we have a beautiful pattern of conduct. Our Affectionate Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet), also, had raised an orphan. Like a lamp that spreads light, the Messenger of Allah (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) invites to the Grace of Allah by His leave. Our Divinely-inspired Prophet is the first of the God-fearing. No person is better than him. Our Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) is the leader of the prophets. He is without sin. Our Prophet (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) is faultless and the foremost of those who submit to the Will of Allah. An exemplar to those who worship God, our Kind-hearted Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) is the beacon of the pious. He is an inspiration to those who are thankful to God and the leader of those who remember Allah. How should I express gratitude to the Holy Messenger of Allah (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet) for his kind intervention? I am unworthy of untying the thongs of our Prophet’s sandals.May Allah, The One Who Befriends the righteous, Send His Richest Peace and Blessings Upon our Holy Prophet Muhammad and On his family and companions, as much and as often as Allah Wills.Allah, The One Who Is Sufficient For those who put their trust in Him, Had Granted our want through the barakah of our Beloved Prophet Muhammad (May Allah Convey Peace and Blessings upon the Holy Prophet).I’ve been fairly constant about wearing a turban during ’ibaadah since.
Anonymous
http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=126055
Anonymous
What a wanker....christians and non believers choose parts of their religion thst suits them most. For example i believ in god...oh yeah i'll have a child out of wedlock. the quran has promoted peace..try read in...in the quran it has said there will be many like you who will lie about us...there will be those who will be walking in blindnes for we let them see what we only want them to see. Just because there are a minority who have misinterpreted islam doesn't make us all the same. Oh yeah Hitler was a christian!
LARRY THE isLAMB
Unless,ofcourse, you are being brutally raped and violently attacked in a domestic setting where your drunken husband who's just had sex with one of his four mistresses, who's been carrying an STI, perhaps even AIDS - one of the mistresses carries HIS (DEFORMED, HANDICAPPED due to DRUGS & ALCOHOL))child,(or one of five to six (not on Sundays!) men she slept with that week only), he's lost all of his money on gambling at the bookies and on his mistress, he's cracking-up,(probably BI-POLAR) his wife, beaten and abused over the years, certainly IS MAD...for being with him, but how can she ESCAPE? Her drunken, psychopathic, violent, husband ABUSES not only her but his little girl too - SEXUALLY (incest?) The kids suffering at school,no friends, a sociopath! Wait till that kid gets a little older??? The teachers are concerned about the bruises, and the blood stains in her panties!the father will end-up a dosser,RAPE-PISSED,(SUICIDE?) mother a prostitute, Heroin JUNKIE, (SUICIDE?) the KID, (SUICIDE? PSYCHOPATH/SERIAL KILLER? MENTAL ASYLUM?)well...PEOPLE LIKE MARIAM NAMAZIE - WHO SAY THAT we in THE WEST have NO PROBLEMS!! YES! BLAME THE MUSLIMS!!! PATHETIC!! REMEMBER, WESTERN SYPHILISATION IS IN ITS DECLINE - OH! I WONDER WHY? THYANKS MARIAM, SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LATER YEARS IN AN OLD PEOPLES HOME, ROTTING-AWAY LIKE A ROTTEN CABBAGE. PLEASE HELP US! THE MUSLIMS ARE DOING FAR BETTER THAN US, we will soon become EXTINCT!
personalrep1
There is no such thing as Radical Islam. It’s all just Islam. Osma bin laden, all the jihadists, suicide bombers, all those murdering in the name of Islam are true Muslims . They are following the exact teachings of the Koran. It is the so called Moderate Muslims who are the aberration. It was Hitler who once said that when you lie – tell a big lie. The two biggest lies in all history – is that Islam is a Religion of Peace and Muhammad – a Prophet of Peace. In the past 1400 years, Islam has murdered 270,000,000 nonbelievers. 80 million Hindus killed. 60 million Christians were slaughtered 10 million Buddhists died. 120 million Africans Allah’s Apostle said, “I have been made victorious with terror.” Bukhari 4:52:220 In his personal life, Muhammad was a megalomaniac; a self-appointed “prophet”, using his self-serving revelations, for personal gain, and to satisfy his own base nature. He was personally guilty of murder, including by beheadings and crucifixion, rape, torture, kidnapping, extortion, slavery, mutilations, theft, adultery, false witness, abuse of women, physically and sexually, and sexual abuse of at least one child. Mohammad slaughtered unbelievers and masterminded over 60 massacres.Islam is an ideology whose main duty for Muslims as a religious duty is to war against the unbelievers and conquer the world for Islam.All Muslims believe that the Koran is the divine word of ALLAH. In order for the Koran to be the divine word of ALLAH - every word, every teaching must be PERFECT. All teachings in the Koran and all Islamic texts (written or verbal) that are not PERFECT are not the teachings of ALLAH - A PERFECT GOD but the teachings of man – the teachings of Muhammad – The ANTI ALLAH. This means that all teachings recorded in the Koran and all other Islamic texts, revelations, writings, sayings, fatwa’s of murder, killing, death and destruction, violence, hate, violent jihad, terrorism, torture, maiming, wife beating, inferiority of woman, women as instruments of sexual pleasure in paradise, honor killings, stoning, cutting off limbs, child sex, sharia law, bigotry, intolerance, slavery, inequality of infidels, inequality of any human being, that infidels can be murdered as a holy duty, that Muslims who renounce Islam can be killed, that Muslims (or anyone) who challenge the teachings of Islam can be murdered, etc are evil and irrational AND NOT THE PERFECT TEACHINGS OF ALLAH – A PERFECT ALLAH – AN ALLAH OF ALL PURE LOVE AND PEACE – BUT THE TEACHINGS OF THE ANTI-ALLAH – THE TEACHINGS OF MUHAMMAD No ALLAH who is ALLAH would ever preach that killing and murdering of any human being in his name will be rewarded by accession to Paradise. You cannot climb to heaven on the corpses of the murdered. No ALLAH who is ALLAH would ever create a Paradise full of big breasted, sexual nymphs. If ALLAH commanded that infidels (or any other human being) be killed then he would be irrational and evil and no longer PERFECT - no longer ALLAH.The Koran is not the word/teachings of ALLAH. NOT ONE WORD IN THE KORAN OR ANY OTHER ISLAMIC TEXT IS FROM ALLAH. NO ALLAH WHO IS TRULY ALLAH WOULD EVER SPEW SUCH PURE HATRED AND INTOLERANCE. NO ALLAH WHO IS ALLAH WOULD EVER CREATE A RELIGION OF WAR, DEATH AND DESTRUCTION. NO ALLAH WHO IS ALLAH WOULD EVER PREACH TEACHINGS OF MURDER, TORTURE, AND CRUELTY. NO ALLAH WHO IS ALLAH WOULD EVER CREATE A SEXUAL PARADISE OF BIG BREASTED WOMEN. NO ALLAH WHO IS ALLAH WOULD EVER PREACH THE FAMILY VALUES LISTED ABOVE. NO ALLAH WHO IS ALLAH WOULD EVER DEMONIZE AND SUBROGATE WOMEN. NO ALLAH WHO IS ALLAH WOULD EVER SEND AN EVIL, CRIMINAL LIKE MUHAMMAD AS HIS PROPHET TO CREATE A RELIGION TO TERRORIZE MANKIND. THE KORAN IS THE TEACHINGS OF MUHAMMAD - THE TEACHINGS OF THE ANTI-ALLAH. The greatest danger mankind faces is the smuggling of a nuclear weapon by an Islamic Fundamentalist into a major western city killing millions in the name of and to the greater glory of ALLAH. If the hateful teachings are not removed from Islam this is the disaster that will destroy civilization as we know it. It will dramatically change human history forever. The stakes are that high.The Reformation of Islam is an issue of conscience. Islam as it is presently constituted is an issue of conscience and its Reform is definitely the concern of all peace loving, democratic believing peoples everywhere. Violence in Islam is a direct threat to all mankind. It is an issue of National Security not only for the West but also for Muslim countries.Least we all forget - it is mostly Muslims who are suffering and being killed and blown up in horrific numbers. Since 911 - over 150,000 Muslims have been murdered by their fellow Muslims in the worst ways imaginable.Murder, suicide bombings, violence, etc are evil. When these evil acts are committed in the name of and to the greater glory of ALLAH – this is the greatest evil that anyone can commit. Again - to kill and murder so you can ascend to a Paradise of Big Breasted Nymphs to rape and molest for all eternity – this is truly evil incarnate. Any Muslim who supports suicide bombers, who commits acts of violence, acts of terrorism, acts of violent jihad in the name of ALLAH are MURDERERS. All the evil teachings in the Koran must be renounced and denounced totally and completely WITHOUT EQUIVOCATION. These teachings must be removed from the Koran and a NEW MODERN KORAN published. The publication of a MODERN KORAN will be an instant worldwide best seller.By leaving these violent and abhorrent teachings in the Koran, moderate Muslims are in effect saying that these teachings are NORMAL. They are basically acquiescing to evil. Once you accommodate evil, you lose your moral center and become willingly or unwillingly an accomplice to evil. You cannot be a Good Muslim – pray 5 times a day etc – and ignore the evil – the moral black hole that lies at very the heart of Islam. We can no longer allow Peace Loving Muslims to declare Islam as a religion of Peace and Love and tolerance etc while leaving in the Koran and Islamic texts -teachings of terror, death and destruction, subrogation of women, intolerance, hate etc. We can no longer allow these Muslims to live in a fantasy world of an ALLAH of all Goodness and Muhammad – The Prophet of Peace while the Koran contains teachings of a hateful, murderous ALLAH – the ANTI ALLAH. By demanding that Peace Loving Muslims prove that they are Truly Peace Loving – by removing these evil teachings from the Koran – will be a TRUE MOMENT OF CATHARSIS FOR ISLAM.By,Larry Houleintermedusa@yahoo.comwww.godofreason.com

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Maryam Namazie