Islam Misrepresentation: And here we are again

In our "culturally sensitive" society any repugnant act committed in the name of faith, whether the faith is Hindu, Judaism, Christianity or Islam, is quickly decoupled from its religious foundation and dismissed as simply the case of a mad man acting on his own and against teaching carved in religious cannons. Ignorant journalists are swift to jump on the bandwagon and perpetuate this purposeful deception by explaining to their readers that religion of the perpetrator has no bearing on perpetrator’s abominable actions. And so, the deception propagates unstoppably far and wide, in the face of facts, logic and reason, being disseminated by waves of echoing politicians, journalists and other public figures.

Rosie DiManno, a columnist from Toronto Star, reminds us yet again that there is no reason to put one's faith in mainstream media’s ability to supplement its stories even with a pinch of accurate information. Naively some of us may still assume that a columnist would do at least some basic research before putting an article together, especially when this article covers the world fastest growing and intolerant mainstream religion – Islam. The article I am referring to is “DiManno: Murder is against Qur’an, Shafia testifies” (http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1099722--dimanno-murder-is-against-qur-an-shafia-testifies)

There are no expectations of Rosie knowing Quran wholeheartedly. However, it might be reasonable to assume that this lacking knowledge will prevent Rosie from putting blanket statements over the whole religion. Sadly, it did not.

I have little doubts that what we are about to discuss Rosie had absolutely no knowledge of and therefore she is not to blame for purposeful trickery of gullible Western readers. However, Rosie DiManno, as credulous and guilelessly uniformed as she is, is an integral part of a well-focused, albeit decentralized, campaign of misrepresenting Islam to the West.

First, we arrive to a blanket statement about all religions:

To be clear, there’s not a culture or religion in the world that condones murder, not in 2011, or in 2009 when this alleged crime was committed. So, nothing remarkable about Islam in that context, though the Qur’an has often been cited as expressly forbidding what the prosecution contends happened here: Honour killings to restore a family’s reputation and expunge the sins of the daughters.

This is simply not true. There are plenty of violent cultures and cultish faiths in the world that condone murder, even if they may have some basic criteria around situations where it is permissible. Aleph, formerly known as Aum Shinrikyo, is still going strong. Actually, we don’t even need to go that far and look much closer to home to find that many mainstream religions do condone murder in special cases.

Second, “Nothing remarkable about Islam in that context” ties nicely with “The Qur’an doesn’t permit murder” that can be found later in the article. Well, yes, it is, dear Rosie, even if you are not aware of it. Unlike many other modern faiths, Islam explicitly directs its followers to kill:

Quran 004.089: seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks;-

Quran 004.076: Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah, and those who reject Faith Fight in the cause of Evil: So fight ye against the friends of Satan: feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan.

Quran 009.029: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day

At this point we can go into a prolonged and misguided discussion about the full context, including historical context and universal applicability, of these and 10s other analogous verses. But we wouldn’t, even though putting these murder-inciting messages in the historical context will go against that “religion of peace” argument we so ubiquitously hear about. What we can all agree upon that these verses say a lot about “them”, but not much about “family” or “daughters”.

This is what Quran has to say about female relatives:

Quran 004.015 If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, Take the evidence of four witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some way.

Confine them until they die, if you suspect them of lewdness, says Quran. There is no definition of lewdness in Islam and therefore everyone is free to apply their own classification of lewdness to judge their female relatives.

004.034: Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, refuse to share their beds, beat them; but if they return to obedience, seek not against them Means: For Allah is Most High, great.

Men protect and maintain women. Women must obey men. Men control women’s faith and should beat them at a sign of disobedience.

Now, we should dwell away from Quran and into the Hadith territory to examine examples that Muhammad set forth for dealing with women. It wouldn’t be pretty. Muhammad is documented ordering stoning of numerous women for adultery without trial, Muhammad tells us that he would cut his own daughter’s hands off for stealing as little as three Dirhams and finally, Muhammad tells us that love for Allah should eclipse love for one’s parents and children. Put it together and you have a potent “Iron Chef”-quality recipe for honour killings: follow the way of Allah, even if it means killing or mutilating your own children; punish lewdness with confinement until death and use stoning to death for alleged sex outside marriage.

We must remember that Islam puts following Allah’s law above human life or wellbeing. Islam puts men above women and makes them responsible for maintaining women’s behaviour within the limits prescribed by Islam. And Islam prescribes death for deviating from many of its absurdly self-contradicting, incomplete, vague and perplexing laws. You don’t have to be a Sharia scholar to understand that according to Islam, naughty daughters might be justly punished with death by their pious parents. No matter how much we want to see Shafia acting in madness against teaching of Islam, the simple fact is it was indeed Islam that had influenced and guided Shafia's actions.