Danish Moslem: Arise and Protest

This is a great article by Ibrahim Ramadan who writes about the negative impact of some Muslim leaders on the Muslim religion. Although great to see, this gentleman may be the only voice of moderation that will speak out against the hateful leaders who run his religion (into the ground I will add).

My religion is threatened in this country.

Not because I am a part of a Moslem minority in a Christian country. Not for lack of Mosques. And not by the Danish People’s Party and their stereotypical depiction of Moslems.

My religion is threatened by people who claim to belong to the same faith as I do. Threatened by organisations such as Hizb-ut-Tahrir and by people such as Ahmed Akkari, Abu Laban and Raed Hlayhel who all claim to work to spread the word of God. In reality, they’re working towards another goal entirely - to control what other Moslems should believe, think and do.

Some Moslems in Denmark have accepted the Danish Imams’ words and take strong exception to Naser Khader. They think he has sold out the Arab cultural heritage and that he’s shed Moslem values to become accepted by the Danes.

But what few Moslems in Denmark understand is that Naser Khader more than any other works to ensure that we qua Moslems are seen as assets and aren’t looked down upon as a problem in Denmark.

Is it really so heretical when Naser Khader dares say that to achieve that, we Moslems must embrace Democracy and Freedom of Speech and that it must mean that we reconsider some things in our cultural and religious background.

Lately this had some inhuman consequences for Naser Khader and his family. Some fanatical fellow Moslems have tried to threaten him into silence because they would rather not have other Moslems critically analyze the context in which our religion is seen.

But it’s time that we - the great silent majority of Moderate Moslems in Denmark - let our voice be heard and take our watch as champions of Democracy. We can’t let Naser Khader carry that burden by himself.

Because what we are witnessing at this moment in Denmark, of all things resembles most an inquisition, one which doesn’t leave out much from the horrors the unorthodox thinkers of the Christian world had to go through during the Middle Ages. In the year 2006, Moslems who don’t approve of authoritarian Islam are condemned as heretics with no right to call themselves Moslems.

Many of those who like Naser Khader champion the idea of integration of Islam and Moslems are marked by co-religionists as bad Moslems. But how did we freethinking Moslems allow this to happen?

“Read!”, was the first word of God which was revealed to the prophet Muhammed in the 7th century. But what we as Moslems do in the 21st century is the direct opposite.

Instead we turn off our brains and let ourselves be dictated to by people who call themselves religious scholars and who claim that only their interpretation of Islam is the right one.

What they omit to say out loud is that they have another agenda: to transform our religion into a political movement. The French documentary about the Danish Imams proved to be a frightening example of that.

As Moslems in Denmark we have a unique opportunity which isn’t given to our Brothers and Sisters in most of the Islamic world. We have every opportunity to get an education. For free. We’re even being paid to educate ourselves.

There is therefore no excuse in Denmark for not using the opportunities we have to seek knowledge. Here we are allowed critical questions and here we have a constitutionally secured right to speak our mind.

If we don’t use that opportunity - well, we’ll be doing the opposite of what god dictated to us. And that makes our future prospects frightening.

Not only will that entail that we as Moslems close in around ourselves, isolate ourselves from the society in which we live and passively let ourselves be led in chains back to the Dark Ages. It will also entail that we increasingle will be hated because of the words and actions which are practiced in the name of Islam without protests from us.

Naser Khader has long been a single lighthouse, leading the way in the dark, while many of us who either came by ourselves or are descendants of those who came here looking for a better life for too long have acted as if Democracy and Freedom are a matter of course which places no demands on our persons.

But its time for us Moslems to choose sides. Do we want to live in this country with all that that entails of Freedoms, opportunities and Rights - or do we really want that the intolerance, the dictatorship and the limitation of the personal freedom which we have left must also be part of our lives in the country we’ve come to?

If the latter is the case, we must take the consequence and go home the the poor neighborhoods, the refugee camps or the persecution which most of us left but which many - of both the first and the second generation - apparently have a tendency to remember in a softer light.

But if the former is the case, if we as Moslems really want this country and its principles, we’ll have to wholeheartedly and unambigously say, in a way which will leave noone in doubt, that those who speak for intolerance and fundamentalism have only a small following among Moslems in Denmark.

I clearly remember my time at the University of Cairo in the 1980s. Then there was also a small group of Islamists who tried to terrorise all of us who had an ordinary, relaxed attitude to the religion. Islamists crashed parties, destroying everything because there was music and dancing. Young men and women who were seen holding hands were beaten, humiliated and portrayed as amoral. And those who who dared criticise the actions of the Islamist students were beaten brutally.

At the end of the 80s and the start of the 90s, the Islamists took to more drastic measures. Primitive nail-bombs in the metro, in cafés and outside schools in Cairo.

Innocent children, women and men were were killed and mutilated. They were almost all of them Moslems. But for the Islamists, the goal sanctified the means and the killing of innocents was the price to pay to overthrow the ‘infidel’ governments of the Middle East in favor of the ‘true’ Islamic state.

In the years following, the Islamists’ fight was escalated to a head-on confrontation with the intellectuals who dared speak out against them. The chairman of the Egyptian parliament was mowed down with a machine gun. He had worked dilligently to modernise the Egyptian divorce laws, which had till then been run by the Sharia principle.

The aging Egyptian nobel prize winner of literature, Nagib Mafouz, was stabbed in the street. He had dared speak against fundamentalism in his hard-hitting columns.

The writer Faraq Fouda was shot dead outside his office. In books and in a debate programme he had dared suggest seperating church and state in Egypt.

The argument the Islamists made in all three cases was that they were apostates or bad Moslems who deserved death for their heretical thoughts.

We, the majority, who opposed the Islamists strongly, chose to stay silent. We bowed our heads and went about our lives out of fear of suffering the same fate. But we were many who had clouded consciences because we didn’t speak up in time.

While the Islamists were spewing hate, violence, fear and chaos, their organisations ran and organised a number of charities, free clinics, feeding the poor, school projects in blighted neighbourhoods and more. Projects which helped where the government failed and created an enormous amount of goodwill among the poorest and least educated.

But Islamism always has two faces - a mild and caring one which claims to be the protector of the poor and the true guardian of Islam and another, which in ideological phrases open to interpretation preach hate and violence, murder for the infidels and the overthrow of existing society.

That is why it is uncanny to see that the same methods employed by the Islamists in the Middle East in the 1980s and which were used to spread terror in the United States, in Madrid and in London are also being used by Imams here in Denmark.

They’re speaking with forked tongues - on one hand, the impression is conveyed that all they want to do is help those who can’t help themselves. On the other, thunderous hate speeches and calls for defending the Prophet, Islam and the Moslems in terms that by the wrong kind of people can easily be seen as a call for Holy War and killings, securing the high status of Martyr.

But the most uncanny thing is that the same unwillingness to stand up and protest this abuse of the religion which I saw in the Egypt of my youth, is predominant among the majority of Moslems in Denmark today.

The Imams who went to the Middle East with the single purpose of arousing the wrath of the Islamic World under cover of defending the Prophet have too long been allowed to be seen as representing the Moslem majority and portray all who disagree with them as deviants.

Naser Khader and the people who’ve supported his union of Democratic Moslems are generally spoken of by these Imams and their supporters as bad Moslems, as rats, as apostates, even atheists who one should warn one’s children, friends and co-religionists against associating with.

To be an apostate is one of the worst things to be in Islam. Something which is comparable to a brand, which gives every true Moslem the right to murder the apostate. So accusing the protesting moderate Moslems of being apostates is a method which makes most keep their protests low profile.

Several members of Democratic Moslems have received death threats, have been spit upon by Moslem ‘brothers’ and have been threatened to be excluded from their Moslem communities if they don’t distance themselves from Naser Khader and the cause he champions. And in the long run, the most dangerous thing about the Muhammed crisis is the consequences it will have for how we as Moslems associate with each other and our fellow Danish citizens in the future.

It’s hard to explain to people who haven’t lived in the Middle East how liberating it is to live in a country such as Denmark. A country where you’re free to say whatever you like, read whatever you like, act however you like, believe whatever you like and join any organisation or party with no repercussions for your life, career or family. But some seem to want to deny us Moslems that right and therefore we must now stand together and denounce these Men of Darkness.

The vast majority of us, the almost 200,000 Moslems in Denmark, have a relaxed and moderate attitude to our religion. Most of us have been passively observing during the Muhammed crisis, many have - rightly so - felt offended by the cartoons’ defamation of the Prophet. But few have realised that it isn’t the caricatures but those who have wielded them as a lever who threaten our religion.

It time for us to choose our sides. Will we as Moslems silently keep accepting that a herd of power-hungry people have taken Islam and the World as fearsome hostages? Or do we want to take back our religion and our right to practice it and live in peace and harmony with the surrounding world?

Our Prophet is not diminished by a handful of caricatures. But we are diminished and crippled as human beings by the hate the fanatics have tried to instill into us as a consequence of the cartoons.

The tone of the immigration debate may be hard and degrading. But have we ourselves done enough to abolish the stereotypical image of Islam as a religion of hate and the image of Moslems as people who have no wish to integrate into and much less accept the West which is persecuting us?

To become accepted and integrated in this country first and foremost demands that we as Moslems must stop pretending we are victims. Though we may be the victims of prejudices, they are prejudices which some Moslems by their behaviour have helped create and they are prejudices which all the rest of us with our passivity and lack of protests have helped keep alive.

The image of Moslems we thus help solidify is far worse than anything the Danish People’s Party have ever said.

To do well in Denmark has as a precondition that the rules of the land are supported - to educate yourself and play an active role in the community and the debate and to not only take from, but also give something back to society.

And to do that, you can’t just watch from the sidelines when someone tries to reintroduce the abrogation of our personal freedom and our freedom of speech which I think all of us left behind with a sigh of relief in the countries we once considered home.

There’s only one solution for us Moslems — use the first words that were revealed by God to the Prophet: Read! Study, be critical and take exception to those who abuse Islam.

And get out of your couch, participate actively in the Democracy because it’s not something that is just given to you along with your Danish passport. Support Naser Khader as the man who is guarantor of us and our children living as an accepted and appreciated part of this country in the future. Help make sure that our children in the future with pride in their voices can say that they are Moslems.

As Moslems we have to loudly insist that religion for us is also a personal matter between ourselves and our God. It’s not the job of any earthly being to go around with a ruler, measuring who are bad and who are good Moslems.

That measurement only God can make on the day of judgement, where all of us will answer for our deeds.