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2012 in Review

The WordPress.com stats helpers prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 30,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

The Final Word on Insults to the Prophet

Muslims believe in freedom of speech.  But we also believe in freedom from insults and humiliation.  It should come as no surprise that we are as willing to fight and die for our rights as the West is for its.

Sorry for responding to the issue so late. I have sporadic- or erratic- internet access these days.

It’s simple really:

We Muslims believe in freedom of speech, too. We also believe in freedom from humiliation and indignity. So there is a balance in our concept.

The bottom line though, is that we are just as willing to die and kill- and everything less than those- for the rights we believe in as Americans are for the freedom of speech. If you think about it, we aren’t attacking and occupying countries (though we have the power to) for our beliefs, so we are not the extremists.

Now, why isn’t it that people are burning the Gitas, or mocking Buddha or Confucius, making cartoons about Lao-Tzu, or accusing Jesus of crimes? Why is it mostly the Qur-aan and Muhammad (Salla-llaahu ’alayhi wa sallam)?

I think that Buddhists would be up in arms if Pali texts were being burnt, and Asian Buddhists are not as peace-loving as the fetishistic Western concept of Buddhism.  The atrocity-filled 30-year civil war in Sri Lanka was waged by Buddhists.  And the atrocities committed by Buddhists in Myanmar (which Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung Sun Suu Kyi watches silently) are unspeakable. The willingness of Buddhist laymen, laywomen, monks and nuns to set themselves on fire in protest against China’s colonization of Tibet and suppression of Thai Buddhism is commendable in some respects, but is far from the smile-at-everything image Westerners imagine of Buddhism.  I wonder why they don’t speak out against this?

And don’t think for a minute that Hindus would sit meditating in Himalayan caves if their gods and texts were being insulted.  They probably wouldn’t even allow the graphic violence and grotesque sexuality of their texts to be read aloud.

Christians are generally more tolerant to insults aimed at Jesus Christ (peace be upon him), but that is actually disappointing. Would you believe that someone made a picture of Jesus and Mary (peace be upon them) out of elephant dung?  It’s true.  And the Christians did nothing.  This isn’t tolerance, it’s humiliation.  If I believed that Christ was God, the son of God, my lord and my savior, and the person who would judge me on Judgement Day, I would die before I let them do that.

The jewish version of the Torah that the Christians follow, and the Talmud that the Jews follow, are both genocidal, and so are today’s Zionists.  Yet the only genocide we can talk about is the World War II holocaust, which we were taught about at a susceptible age and can’t question.  The same Western countries that die and kill for the freedom of speech would throw you in jail for saying the “wrong” thing about the World War II holocaust;  where’s the freedom of speech there?  Even principled scientific inquiry is not allowed.  Can we not demand the same thing about whom there are no historical doubts?

Wait…

That’s it!

Finally, it can be put in words the West seems to understand: Muhammad and the Qur-aan are our holocaust.

Put it in your lawbooks and be done with it.  Lock up the subject of insults and throw away the key.  Because we come from a people who would sooner part with their mother or their father, or their mother and their father, than to see harm come toa single hair on Muhammad’s head.  Our forefathers and mothers stood between him and arrows and swords, and so we stand, rank upon rank, ready to defend our Prophet from any harm at any cost, with no thought of our selves.

Like it or not, that’s the reality, and we ain’t goin’ nowhere.  We are the rock that will not break ’til you break yourself against us.

All that aside, a man who is the founder of the fastest-growing ideology on this planet, that flowers in every clime and circumstance, automatically deserves respect.   So, maybe, just maybe, instead of taunting us with a lighter held under our holy book, more people should open it.

Let them call us extremists.  We don’t mind.  We know that they are hypocrites who know neither pride nor shame.

Fundamentalists?  Fine.  Because of those same fundamentals we know not to eat with the same hand we wipe feces with.

Terrorists?  Please.  Western civilization’s greatest achievement is wiping out entire races and languages all over the globe.

Backwards?  Yeah, right.  They are as brutal as the cavemen they claim to descend from, as savage as the beasts they claim are their distant cousins.

That said, we Muslims too should be wary of violating Islam by contradicting it.  The greatest insult to the Prophet is disobedience.  The innocent should never be harmed.  The religion and gods of others should never be insulted, lest we be the cause of insults and attacks against Muslims and Islam.  If any Muslim seeks to hurt the life, honor or property of an innocent, I stand in spirit and body against that, and so should we all.

 

Wa Salla-llaahu ’alaa Muhammad wa ‘alaa aalihi wa azwajatihi was sahbihi ajma’een, wa man ittabi’ahum bi-lIhsan