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- Mar 6, 2017
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This video of the Left's darling Linda Sarsour was taken during a panel discussion a year ago at New York's Union Theological Seminary called "Standing Up for Justice: Muslim Women in Action." It just popped up on social media.
To cheers from the audience, Sarsour said, "Our prophet was a racial justice activist, a human rights activist, a feminist in his own right. He was a man that cared about the environment. He cared about animal rights...He was also the first victim of Islamophobia."
Wow.
I'm going to take a slightly different stance on this. I am NO fan of Linda Sarsour. But I actually think she has got this one right. Islam needs to be understood in exactly the terms she defines. She is right that Islam needs to define itself as a socially just system which upholds women's rights, and human rights, and animal rights and environmental rights. That is exactly the thinking Islam (as a whole) needs. And it needs to come from within the Islamic community. And damn straight its should also come from women of the Islamic community. See, it is this sort of belief system which will lead to the self-examination and then the upheaval and transformation Islam needs to do in order to achieve the social justice, which, as she points out, is inherent in its faith. She even has a call to action.
We, as those who are (rightfully) skeptical of Islam's ability to model social justice, must listen to people like Ms. Sarsour. Not to reject her ideas -- but to support them and to insist upon this being demonstrated in RL. We must say, "show me". Not, "you are wrong" or, "you are a hypocrite" but, "show me".
Where she misses the point though, is in her willingness to become a martyr rather than doing the hard work of creating social justice as a reality within Islam. The desire to "fight and die" as an alternative to change is still too strong an ideology in Islam. In my opinion, of course.
<< Islam needs to be understood in exactly the terms she defines.>>
I am simply curious.
If Islam was never, ever, how Linda Sarsour has been defining it, then how can she, and others, continue to attempt to make the West understand it in those terms, when Muslims themselves - who are themselves the victims of what Islam has represented from the start of it history in the 7th Century CE (Submission) turn against what Islam represents, and many have either left Islam ( at their own life's peril) or attempt to turn Islam into a more moderate religion (ideology) without any success.
There were many Muslim, Arab moderates in 1920 when the Mandate for Palestine was issued, as all the other Mandates.
What happened to them?
Killed, or made to run or hide.
Today it is no different.
How can moderates become the norm when the extremists never, ever, feel defeated and any Treaty they sign or agree to is nothing but a way to eventually defeat the enemies, just as Muhammad had done during his lifetime?
Abbas is moderate?
Linda Sarsour is a moderate?
Or are they playing the Islamic game of "Fool the enemy" and then win the war?