Last week, a Muslim mob in India, seeking Taslima Nasrin’s blood for her writings critical of Islam, hounded her out of Calcutta. With assistance from police, she escaped from Bengal and is now hiding somewhere in the Indian capital. She had to flee her home country Bangladesh when a militant Islamic mob pursued her in 1994 in similar fashion on the same charges. She found a home of some sort in West Bengal, where people speak the same language she speaks and writes in. But now, Taslima has nowhere to go. She may well forget about her writing career altogether.
The mission of Muslims in life is to emulate Prophet Muhammad’s life in meticulous detail to gain access to Paradise. The slightest deviation from it will land them in hell for some time to be roasted in a terrible fire, before getting access to Paradise. Bravo Muslims of India, you are trying to emulate the Prophet. Let us go back 14 centuries to Prophet Muhammad's time.
Prophet Muhammad’s 13 years of preaching Islam in Mecca yielded only about 150 converts in all. By 620, his mission in Mecca had come to a standstill. Open preaching among Meccan citizens had been banned. In 620, he secretly started preaching to pilgrims from Medina during the Hajj pilgrimage at the idol-temple of Ka’ba. Six Medina pilgrims converted to Muhammad’s faith. Next year during Hajj, another six joined to give allegiance to Muhammad’s creed. The pilgrims returned with a Meccan disciple of Muhammad, named Musab, to instruct them in the Islamic creed in Medina.
Musab turned to be an able preacher; and came back with 75 converts during following Hajj season in March 622 to meet Muhammad at in secret at Akaba near Mecca. Obviously seeing the great success of his creed in Medina even in his absence, the Prophet expressed his eager desire to move there with them. In urging their support for his protection if moved there, Muhammad said: "I invite your allegiance on the basis that you protect me as you would your [own] women and children." The Medina converts replied: "By Him [Allah] Who sent you with the truth we will protect you as we protect our women. We give our allegiance and we are men of war possessing arms which have been passed on from father to son” [Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, Karachi, p204].
Muhammad was all set to move to Medina. In April he ordered his disciples to relocate there. Over the next two months, all Muslim converts left for Medina in small batches except Muhammad and Abu Bakr and their families plus Ali still left behind. It was time for Muhammad to leave; and in the company of Abu Bakr, Muhammad set off for Medina. Ali and females of Abu Bakr’s and Muhammad’s families, including Prophet’s child-wife Aisha, were still left behind. They set off for Medina after a few more days like nothing had happened [Ibn Ishaq, p219-221].
Article comments
1 - RJ
Very interesting. Thanks for the article.
2 - The Obnoxious American
Kind of scary.
3 - SP
Muslims are graetest threat to Indian security. The socalled moderates also are apologists not really mindful of the violence by the militants. Except in FFI I have not come across any muslim who unapologitically found fault with the violent attitudes of muslims in sttling things
4 - Alamgir Hussain
SP, obviously India has suffered terribly from her Muslim problem, especially over Kashmir, since its birth. The worst days are still to come from wider Muslim community.
We hear Bangladesh is going to go under water in 4-5 decades. If India is to bear the burden, that's going to add to India's troubles big time.
Indian Hindus almost universally condemn the British Raj for dividing India; not so much for the economic exploitation. In reality, the Partition was the biggest gift from the British -- although not many would buy it.
5 - Shyam Roy
Everyone in this planet has an explicit right to criticize his or her own religion and express views on any subject except the use of violent and profane language. If Islam or any religion for that matter is great, then it should be able to withstand any criticism from its followers. That could not be construed as insult. The problem is Islam is religion that is extremely derogatory to women like covering them with burqa, four wives per man, and no rights for women etc. like no other religion in this planet. What Taslima did is to speak against the evils of Islam and the atrocities of the Moslems in Bangladesh against Hindu minorities like force to marry one daughter to a Moslem for Islamification of the Hindu families in Bangladesh. Taslima, being an elite intellectual of Bangladesh, spoke against the evils of her own religion, own society, and own country. Being a woman of Islam is a crime in itself.
Being a woman in Bangladesh and India is no easy picnic either. In Bangladesh and India particularly West Bengal, women including female children, have no more rights than family pets. Scores of girls, women, and even female fetus are abused or tortured, or killed every single day under a variety of pretexts in these regions every single day. In Bangladesh, under the Law of Sharia and in West Bengal under the communist rule, the funeral of Democracy has been over a long long time ago. Thus, pushing for democratic rights or talking about that is nothing more than intellectual mumbo jumbo. Under these poisonous conditions of these societies, women are expected to be tortured and suffer in quiet pain and not expected to oppose or speak against let alone write about it.
Taslima Nasrin dared to write and chronicle them in magnificent eloquence that should be must reading for all high school students in all societies. That is not to put any religion on the spot but to start a Jihad against the abuse of women in this planet start a movement fro true equal rights fro men and women.
6 - Umm Sumayya
Muhammad Hussain has done an artful job of creating an attack on Islam while "defending" Taslima Nasrin.
His malignent eloquence takes events that occured during the early days of Islam and distorts them more effectively than a circus mirror does in making a trim healthy person look obscenely fat.
There is a difference in Islam and Culture and the ignorant attackers of Ms. Nasrin are not following their own religion when they seek to "punish" her for her writings.
Mr. Hussain does not point any of this out in his article. He just uses this forum to get his vitriol out into the public blogosphere while tokenly addressing the real problem of Taslima being persecuted by people who probably never even read her writing but heard somebody else tell them it was "Bad" and "Against Islam!"
Islam did not "grant" rights to women - it merely confirmed the ones that had been hers all along. Rights to own and control her own property, be able to speak out against discrimination and abuse, decide who she wanted to marry or even IF she wanted to marry, and most importantly, the right to an education that was as good as if not better than the one afforded to her "brothers."
If Muhammad Hussain truly wants to help sart a Jihad against the abuse of women on this planet, he should stop twisting the words of Islam and try to teach these "cultural" Muslims what the Quran and Hadith actually represent. Until that time, I think that His defense of Taslima is just a soapbox for him to get pats of approval from Islamaphobics and maybe getting them to buy a book or two for their coffee tables.
7 - Christopher Rose
Of course, Islamaphobia is largely a force for good, just as all opposition to the monotheism that scars contemporary life is a force for good.
8 - zingzing
damn, chris.
9 - Jordan Richardson
Irrational fear of the irrational is not a "force for good," Chris.
10 - Christopher Rose
I'm not sure that it is irrational though, Jordan. I for one would not welcome living under sharia or any other laws based on monotheism.
11 - Jordan Richardson
I think most people would refuse to live under sharia law or what have you, but the connotations of Islamophobia are much more couched in raw prejudice and bigotry. Most useful definitions I've heard of it compare it to Antisemitism and other such things, so I'm not entirely comfortable with suggesting it as a force for good.
12 - Christopher Rose
I know what you mean, Jordan, but I don't think it is right to abandon a word just cos some usages go beyond a rational objection to or fear of faithism.
13 - Jordan Richardson
It's not really that there are different usages, though. That is what it means. Disliking authoritarian or religious rule of any strike isn't really a "phobia," either. And phobias are almost entirely irrational.
14 - zingzing
i'm scared of horses.
15 - Apostate
Reading and re-reading the article, I find that the author is just stating some historical facts (which is correct to my reading of Islamic scripture and history) and making a reasonable analogy. For that the Islamists and there apologists would call him/her an Islamophobe. It's like "irrationals" calling the rationals "irrational".