In today’s khutbah, I intend to share some thoughts with you on the much talked about topic of Islamophobia. As Muslims living in the West, how should we respond to it? How should we go about confronting it with tolerance and understanding?
The term ‘Islamophobia’ was first introduced as a concept in 1991 and defined as “unfounded hostility towards Muslims, and therefore fear or dislike of all or most Muslims.” The term was coined in the context of Muslims in the United Kingdom in particular and Europe in general. It was devised on the xenophobia framework. Xenophobia means the hatred or fear of foreigners or of their politics or culture.
As far back as 2004, Kofi Annan, the then secretary General of the United Nations had said that the consequences of recent developments had left many Muslims around the world feeling aggrieved and misunderstood, concerned about the erosion of their rights and even fearing for their physical safety. He felt, and rightly so, that coining a term that took account of increasingly widespread bigotry was a sad and troubling development.
Brothers and sisters! Such is the case with Islamophobia. It basically reflects a social anxiety toward Islam and Muslim cultures. The pressures of living together with people of different cultures and different beliefs from one’s own are real, especially in a world of intense economic competition and in which there have been sudden influxes of immigrants. But that cannot justify demonization or the deliberate use of fear for political purposes.
It is interesting to know that most of the people who are Islamophobic have no true knowledge of Islam and have probably never met a Muslim. If you were to ask people, especially those living in the West to write down with honesty all the words that come to their mind, when they think of the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslims’, you will in all probability get words or expressions like jihad, terrorist, extremist, fanatic, retrogressive, fundamentalist, and so on. And in all probability, they will associate names like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Az-Zawahiri, Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Isis, and so on with Islam and Muslims.
Some of the prevailing notions or attitudes among those who harbor Islamophobia are: (1) Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities; (2) Islam does not share common values with other major faiths; (3) Islam as a religion is archaic, barbaric, and irrational; (4) Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism, and (5) Islam is a violent political ideology.
You may be surprised to know that Islamophobia is not new. Dante, a major Italian poet of the middle ages in his book ‘The Divine Comedy’, written in the third quarter of the 14th century depicts Prophet Muhammad (SAW) to be in the lowest depths of hell. Based on this book, an Italian silent film called L’Inferno was released in 1911. We have the more recent cases of the ‘Danish Cartoons’, ‘The Satanic Verses’, the releasing of the film ‘Fitnah’ and the much publicized ‘Burning of the Qur’an’ episode. A well-known American Christian Evangelist and missionary says, “We’re not attacking Islam, but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God of the Christians or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God. And I believe that Islam is a very evil and wicked religion.”
If you happen to search Islamophobia on the internet, you will find blogs like ‘Jihad Watch’. Its author is the co-founder of the new anti-Muslim organization called SIOA, which stands for ‘Stop the Islamization of America’. There are others like this author who are accused of being racists. Their views are dangerous because they open the gate to persecution of Muslims. You have a website run by Evangelical Christians called ‘Answering Islam’. There is another one called ‘The Clarion Project’ that focuses on the threats of Islamic extremism and radical Islam.
In a post-9/11 world, many Americans merge the mainstream Muslim majority with the beliefs and actions of an extremist minority. Typically, stereotypes depict Muslims as opposed to the West. But what do the world’s Muslims think about the West, or about democracy, or about extremism itself? A book called Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think authored by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed is the product of a six-year study (2001 to 2007) in which the survey conducted by the Gallup Organization gives the views of 90% of the Muslim world.
Contrary to the stereotype, most of the Muslims polled did not indicate that they hate the western way of life or its freedom. On the contrary, they admire the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, rule of law and technological advances of the West. This does not mean, however, that they want to “ape” the West in all aspects; particularly in the areas of family values and attitudes toward sex. Many Muslims voiced concern about the West’s moral decay and the breakdown of traditional values. Interestingly enough, Americans voiced similar concerns.
Brothers and sisters! You know as much as I do that people get carried away by propaganda. This is not to say that Muslims, Christians, and Jews, as well as followers of other belief systems do not have their black sheep. Groups of extremists and terrorists who claim to be following a particular religion do not represent the core teachings of their religion. This is as true for Muslim extremists and terrorists as much as it is true for Christian and Jewish extremists and terrorists or followers of any faith for that matter. Thus the violent extremist fringe groups such as the ‘Isis’, the ‘Ku Klux Klan’, and the Gush Emunim of Islam, Christianity and Judaism respectively are not true representatives of their faiths.
Writing in the Times Magazine, the well known British author Karen Armstrong rightly suggests that it would be as grave a mistake to see Osama bin Laden as an authentic representative of Islam just as it would be to consider James Kopp, the alleged killer of an abortion provider in Buffalo, N.Y., a typical Christian or Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 worshipers in the Hebron mosque in 1994 and died in the attack, a true martyr of Israel.
A couple of weeks back, the Imam’s Council of the Michigan Muslim Community Council (MMCC) issued a press release stating that the executions, the ethnic cleansing of religious minorities and the desecration of places of worship by the self-proclaimed ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ or ‘Isis’ are fundamentally against the teachings of Islam. The press release also condemned the atrocities taking place in Gaza. The blatant Zionist attacks against innocent men, women, and children are in total contravention of the teachings of the Jewish faith. Similarly the Christian militia that continues to brutally massacre Muslims in Central African Republic or the Buddhist regime that is bent upon eliminating Muslims in Myanmar are doing just the opposite of what Christianity and Buddhism teach them to do.
May Allah (SWT) give us the wisdom and the tawfeeq to see and understand situations in their proper perspectives.
أَقُولُ قَوْلِي هَذَا وَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ لِي وَلَكُمْ وَلِسَائِرِ المُسْلِمينَ وَالمُسْلِمَاتْ فَاسْتَغْفِرُوهْ إِنَّهُ هُوَ الْغَفُورُ الرَّحِيمُ
الحمد لله رب العالمين والصلاة والسلام على سيد المرسلين وعلى آله وأصحابه أجمعين
Brothers and sisters, Islamophobia, as stated earlier, is not a new phenomenon. During the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW), when the adversaries of Islam began to see that their own kith and kin had started to enter into the fold of Islam, they launched a malicious campaign to distort Islam and its teachings. Through misinformation and disinformation, they attempted to portray the Prophet of Islam as a poet, a sorcerer, and a soothsayer just to build up a public opinion against him. They called him majnoon, meaning an insane person. They brought false accusations against him claiming that the Qur’an was taught to him and dictated to him by some human being.
وَقَالُوا أَسَاطِيرُ الْأَوَّلِينَ اكْتَتَبَهَا فَهِيَ تُمْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِ بُكْرَةً وَأَصِيلًا
“And they said, it is just fables of the ancients, which he has had written down. They are dictated to him morning and evening.” (al-Furqan, 25:5)
وَقَالُوا مَا هَذَا إِلَّا إِفْكٌ مُفْتَرًى وَقَالَ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لِلْحَقِّ لَمَّا جَاءَهُمْ إِنْ هَذَا إِلَّا سِحْرٌ مُبِينٌ
“And they said, this is nothing but an invented lie; and the unbelievers say of the truth when it comes to them, this is nothing but plain magic.” (Saba’, 34:43).
These people managed to create conditions that were conducive to people’s accepting anything said about him and the Qur’an without independent judgment. All this was done to discredit him and his teachings. But how did the Prophet (SAW) face up to this campaign of distortions? Although he was on the receiving end, he took everything that was thrown at him and kept his spirits high. He did not react angrily, as do those people who are easily agitated when they are provoked and start trading insults with the opposite side. He was calm and collected in all his exchanges with the adversaries of Islam. That is because he did not view it as a personal matter. It was a matter of the message he was sent to spread. It was, therefore, inevitable that dialogue was conducted in a way which was guided by Islam’s straight path, its ideology and its tolerance. Does not the Qur’an say?
فِي الدِّينِ لَا إِكْرَاهَ There is no compulsion in religion. And does it not say: لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلِيَ دِينِ “For you is your way of life, and for me is my way of life.”
We should know that there are numerous sincere people in our society among atheists, agnostics, humanists, and followers of other religions and belief systems who are in search of truth. The negative stereotypes and vicious propaganda against Islam and Muslims have dramatically brought Islam into limelight. People have become curious about Islam. They want to learn about Islam. And what is the outcome? Besides a multitude of ordinary people, numerous elite among those who are in search of truth including clerics, judges, scientists, doctors, scholars, politicians, academicians, journalists, professionals, technocrats, artists, athletes, and celebrities have embraced Islam, and are continuing to do so. You have just to read their stories to know how they were captivated by the truth of Islam. There are hundreds and thousands of such stories published in the print and the electronic media. To relate just one story—In 2013, a Dutch politician by the name of Arnoud Van Doorn, a harsh critic of Islam who had helped to produce the highly controversial anti-Islam film called ‘Fitnah’ that depicted Islam as evil and extreme, converted to Islam and performed Hajj. So, the bottom-line my brothers and sisters is that Islamophobia is proving to be a blessing in disguise.
This is not to say that we should not make an effort to remove Islamophobia and remove misconceptions about Islam. Until today, many Americans think that Allah is a moon god. The use of a lunar calendar and the popularity of crescent moon imagery in Islam is said to be the result of this origination. Many Americans believe that Muslims are required to kill non-Muslims. Such misconceptions have to be corrected through proper education. Any strategy to combat Islamophobia must depend heavily on education—not just about Islam, but about all religions and traditions, so that myths and lies can be seen for what they are.
Interfaith dialogue is also useful. But problems are not caused by the similarities among religions that are typically celebrated in such dialogue. They are caused by other similarities—the inclination of human beings to favor their own groups, beliefs and cultures at the expense of others (‘Asabiyyah). Interfaith activities could take a more practical direction by building on the examples of those communities in which different peoples come together regularly in professional associations, or on the sport field, or in other social settings. Such day-to-day contacts can be especially useful in demystifying the “other”. Let us pray to Allah (SWT) to increase us in knowledge and to guide us to that which is right.
انْفَعْنِي بِمَا عَلَّمْتَنِي وَ عَلِّمْنِي مَا يَنْفَعُنِي وَ زِدْنِي عِلْمًا اللَّهُمَّ
O Allah, benefit me from that which You taught me, and teach me that which will benefit me, and increase me in knowledge.
وَصَلَّ اللهُ عَلَى خيرِ خَلقِهِ مُحمَّدٍ وعَلَى آلِه وأصْحَابِه أجْمَعِين- بِرَحْمَتِكَ يا أرْحَمَ الرَّاحِمِين
– وأ قِمِ الصَّلاةَ
إِنَّ الصَّلاةَ تَنْهَى عَنِ الْفَحْشَاءِ وَالْمُنْكَرِ وَلَذِكْرُ اللَّهِ أَكْبَرُ وَاللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ مَا تَصْنَعُون
