Original post by Bebichan
I am getting tired of hearing about “a new movie condemning Islam”… “Islamic nations respond with death threats and a fatwa against “…””
Once again, we are faced with a new critic of Islam…Geert Wilders.
Wilders is a member of the “Party of Freedom” in the Netherlands and is known for his backwards mentality opposing any form of immigration from non western countries, and opposition to Multi-cultured society (especially when those cultures are from “non western” parts of the world). Fitna (which is an Arabic word referring to schism) is the latest Anti-Islam movie which he released on the 29th of March.
Islamic criticism is becoming a somewhat repetitive topic which holds no facts, and no reality to what the Islamic religion really is…and I’m sure the “real Muslims” are tired of defending their religion, and arguing with the masses of ignorant, misinformed beings.
Figures like Geert Wilders fail to impress me in their so called skills of criticism, using radical figures that are obviously psychopaths and have no relation to the religion itself as their examples of what Islam truly is. One can only sit back and laugh at the completely absurd claims they make.
One of the major things Geert Wilders speaks about is his belief that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim, that this is in no way achievable.
However there is no such thing as “radical” “extreme” or “fundamental” Islam either.
There has been a growing use of the phrase “Radical Islam”… in actual fact radicalism and Islam has no correlation. There is no such thing as “extremists” in religion…its either religious or it’s not, and when it gets to what’s described as “extreme” it is no longer religion.
It’s time and time again that Muslims have to keep proving that violence, killing and suicide bombing have nothing to do with Islamic teachings and in fact are one of the three fundamental sins of Islam (suicide in any case, violence towards others and murder).
Suicide bombing derives from a psycho-mentality that we have seen in many groups, Buddhism being one of those…it does not originate from Islam.
People who condone things like this “Killing in the Name of God” are not Muslims, but rather brain washed psycho’s.
It can be agreed that there is a growth in hate amongst what’s known as the “Islamic Nations” but this is entirely for political reasons, and whilst you have insane so called Islamic leaders preaching violence and hate, one must not continue to make the mistake that they represent of Islam. It’s not just Muslims in these regions which hold tensions toward the west.
Using terrorists and radical psychotic figures as the face of Islam is much like using the KKK as the face of white people, and claiming that the KKK’s white supremacist ideologies are the ideologies of the entire White race.
This is an absolutely inaccurate suggestion, which is far too general to be realistic.
When I witness people who have not read any Islamic scripts (such as the Qur’an for Islam) in their original language (Arabic in this case), arguing and claiming that Islam is a religion of violence and not peace, hatred and not love… it becomes annoying to try and explain to them that their argument is of no significance.
Practising Muslims, strive to read and understand the Qur’an in its original script in order to gain the real meaning of it, while Islamic critics read a void translation of separated verses taken out of context and use these as evidence against Islam.
You can’t read one paragraph of a book and generate an entire synopsis on the book.
I’ll give you an example of what is being done to Islamic texts today in order to give a negative interpretation of text by taking one sentence from my above paragraph:
“Islam is a religion of violence and not peace, hatred and not love”
Without reading the sentences before and after this, we have an unfinished sentence with no back up and no explanation. For someone who is reading that on it’s own it appears as if I am attacking Islam, while in actual fact in that paragraph I am trying to point out that these are ignorant claims.
When a verse or line in the Qur’an is quoted, and used as proof of all the negative claims against Islam, I have to stick by the argument that this is absolutely foolish.
We know for sure that there is a massive tension between the West and the Middle East, and as I have stated before, this is entirely generated because of Political tensions and has nothing to do with people being Muslims.
I mean let us not forget that 9/11 caused the invasion of two countries… and a few thousand deaths of innocent civilians… led to approximately 1.7million innocent civilian deaths.
Continual western intervention has led to the fall of Iraq, the creation of a massive insurgency which some people seem to forget was started by the mistakes of a Paul Bremer (an American official working under Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush)…who thought it a good idea to disband the entire Iraqi army (which numbered to around 700,000 people), fire all Ba’ath members in Parliament, ministries, and schools (also known as the de-ba’thification of Iraq)…
Lest we forget that the reason the Bush administration claims it decided to go to war was to remove Saddam from power and enforce democracy in Iraq…despite previous American Administrations funding Saddam, helping him to gain power and helping him to carry out atrocities against Iraqi’s.
Afghanistan which was immediately invaded post 9/11 because of links to the terrorist attacks, got in the state it was before 9/11 under a Taliban regime, after America helped to train the Taliban and get them into power in Afghanistan…so there’s two terrorist organisations America has funded or trained.
See every time the west has involved itself with Middle East it has caused nothing but trouble and more atrocities…which stirs only more hatred amongst the people, not because they’re Muslims, but because of the continuous crap they go through at the hands of western governments.
This has nothing to do with radical Islam, but it has everything to do with hate growing amongst people after decades of wars, invasions and being appointed terrorist or dictatorial leaderships by the west.
This is why I’m tired of “radical Islam” crap, “Islam is a religion of hate” bullshit, critics trying to attack a religion without looking beyond it and seeing what actually causes this mass hatred amongst people. It’s simply baseless, poorly formed arguments and I’m tired of it.
Religions should have absolutely nothing to do with politics and people continuously linking the two just causes more and more problems.
By cartoonist: Carlos Latuff
The Arab Illuminist 
