2008 August 25 | Between Asgard and the Western Paradise

Archive for August 25th, 2008

Aug 25 2008

The Trouble With Irshad Manji, et. al.

Posted by: 阿偉 in Religion

Among critics of Islam, there few voices more prominent than the revisionist Irshad Manji, followed by Wafa Sultan, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Calling themselves “refuseniks,” Hirsi Ali, Manji and Sultan have been praised in the media for their virulent denunciations of Islam and the Prophet (SAW). They are regarded as “brave women” who are fighting oppression and marching bravely forth toward the so-called democratic-atheistic values of the West. At the same time, each of them has a unique aspect which endears them to the politically correct: Manji is a lesbian feminist; Sultan is allegedly a modern, scientific psychiatrist and secular humanist; Hirsi Ali is an atheist, and a black woman to boot. Those features alone endear them to the media as overaged poster-children who are innocently speaking out for human (and civil) rights.

Furthermore, as the media would have us believe, it is these three women, despite denouncing Islam at every turn, who have now been regarded as the only legitimate voice of “moderate” Islam despite being atheists and secular humanists. Under the pretense of dialogue, they have released books such as Infidel, The Trouble with Islam Today, and The Escaped Prisoner; When God is a Monster. Their true aims here are confrontational from the start. Such books cannot be considered to be scholarly in the context of 1400 years of Islamic philosophical development, when they selectively quote a few out-of-context Hadiths, then skip ahead to the modern age and connect the hadith to the events of the modern world. Furthermore, we should ask why — if Muslims and Christians are deemed unreliable sources for atheism — can an atheist such as Ali who opposes all religion unconditionally truly comment without bias on a faith which centers itself upon tawhid, the Oneness and Uniqueness of Allah?

It is in the West’s criticism of Islam, where the Left-Right paradigm is of no use to us. I believe this is the same reason for some of the West’s hatred of China: in both cases, the “guilty” party refuses to give in to the prevailing ideas and degeneracy of the West. China - save for the indigenous minorities who make up 8% of the population, is far from being multicultural or politically correct in the Western sense, and has a sense of pride in Chinese culture. Islam refuses to succumb to liberalism in its native land the same way Christianity went down in Europe. The anti-Muslim sentiments of the likes of Manji, Sultan, and Ali, even their non-’Muslim’ counterparts such as Oriana Fallaci, Christopher Hitchens, and former Marxist David Horowitz, are not based on any kind of support for Christiandom, the Sacred, or any higher ideal, but based on liberalism and humanism. Furthermore, the Freudo-Marxist values which they wish that Muslims would replace are as foreign to Europeans as they are to the Middle East. All this means that the leftists who criticize Islam are little more than hypocrites. They’ve criticized Islam for being imposing and ‘barracks-like,’ yet have no problem imposing harmful bidah which would have detrimental effects on the Muslim ummah.

Has Allah (SWT) not said: “This day I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favor towards you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion”? Islam does not need reform, for the very purpose of reform is to make something better. Perhaps if these so-called ‘reformers’ knew this, they would not be so opportunisitic and deceitful in denouncing the religion of 1.2 billion people.

There will always be an incontrovertible struggle between the two worlds of becoming and the world of being, between the world of change and stability, and between tradition and modernity. The sworn enemy of modernity has throughout history been the brilliant religious scholars and people who valued Tradition above all else. The cultural struggle lies not in the fact that Islam is cruel, but that the modern world is corrupt. The clash of civilizations is a battle between decadence and order, and today, it is Islam must now step up to the front lines of this struggle, as the vanguard of Traditional ideas.