Tuesday, February 12, 2013
FREEDOM of SPEECH or Freedom to INSULT by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson
Hamza Yusuf Hanson is an American Islamic scholar and (with Zaid Shakir and Hatem Bazian) is co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, United States.
He is a convert to Islam, and is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding. He has described the 9/11 attacks as "an act of 'mass murder, pure and simple'". Condemning the attacks, he has also stated "Islam was hijacked ... on that plane as an innocent victim" The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reported that he "is arguably the west's most influential Islamic scholar" and added that "many Muslims find his views hard to stomach."
Hamza Yusuf was born to two academics in Washington State and raised in Northern California. In 1977, he became Muslim and subsequently traveled to the Muslim world and studied for ten years in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, as well as North and West Africa. Later he traveled to West Africa and studied in Mauritania, Medina, Algeria, and Morocco under such scholars as Murabit al Haaj; Baya bin Salik, head of the Islamic court in Al-'Ain, United Arab Emirates; Muhammad Shaybani, Mufti of Abu Dhabi; Hamad al-Wali; and Muhammad al-Fatrati of Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. After more than a decade abroad, he returned to the United States and earned degrees in nursing from Imperial Valley College and religious studies at San José State University.
Islamophobia is PREJUDICE against, HATRED towards and IRRATIONAL FEAR of Muslims.
O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.
Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Acquainted.
The Quran Surat Al-Ĥujurāt (The Rooms) 49:13
The British Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as the "dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, [the] fear and dislike of all Muslims," stating that it also refers to the practice of discriminating against Muslims by excluding them from the economic, social, and public life of the nation. The concept also encompasses the opinions that Islam has no values in common with other cultures, is inferior to the West and is a violent political ideology rather than a religion.
The Runnymede report contrasted "open" and "closed" views of Islam, and stated that the following eight "closed" views are equated with Islamophobia:
1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
2) It is seen as separate and "other." It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
3) It is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive, and sexist.
4) It is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in a clash of civilizations.
5) It is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.
6) Criticisms made of "the West" by Muslims are rejected out of hand.
7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural and normal
Islamophobia was recognized as a form of intolerance alongside xenophobia and antisemitism at the "Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance".The conference, attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the OSCE Secretary General Ján Kubis and representatives of the European Union and Council of Europe, adopted a declaration to combat "genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and xenophobia, and to combat all forms of racial discrimination and intolerance related to it." Some scholars of the social sciences consider it a form of racism, but this is controversial.
A perceived trend of increasing Islamophobia and Islamophobic incidents during the 2000s has been attributed by commentators to the September 11 attacks, Moral panics and "racist" campaigns against Muslims while others associate it with the increased presence of Muslims in the Western world.
In May 2002, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), a European Union watchdog, released a report entitled "Summary report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001", which described an increase in Islamophobia-related incidents in European member states post-9/11.
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I do not think that the attitudes of the non-Islamic nations are the result of irrationality. I have just returned from a trip within the UK by aeroplane and the security measures at the airports are a necessary evil, put in place not because of Islamophobia but to protect ordinary citizens and the economy which was not necessary when this sect was confined to its remote and distant borders. Further, the religions and philosophies of all other cultures are largely well- tolerated, with no big issues arising, and they can and demonstrably do live in peaceful coexistence because the primarily tenets of these religions and philosophies are not based on negating the claims and central tenets of the other. This is not true of Islam, which permanently and perpetually insults for instance the central theosis meditation of the Christian development, including the Divine aspects of their messiah, which is the basis of the meditation, including belief in the mystery of the “resurrection of the dead “ not as some fiat declaration but as arising from the physical realization of their messiah. A similar permanent insult is targeted at some elements of some Hindus with their pantheon of divine beings, and so too of the Buddhists, Shintoist, Jews etc…. Therefore, quiet clearly , the problem seems to lie in Islam and not in the peaceful and work-orientated rationality of all the other Houses NOT of ISLAM.
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