When Pakistan banned an issue of Newsweek's international edition three years ago because the above-pictured article about the work of pseudonymous scholar of Islam Christof Luxenberg was deemed "insulting to the Quran," the newsweekly stood its ground, declaring "This does happen in some places around the world with one of our 10 international editions." But it's one thing to be banned in Pakistan -- where "it is an offense punishable by death to offend Islam, its prophet or its holy book" -- and quite another to self-ban an article on their own website. One author thinks it's creeping dhimmitude, but a little research at Newsweek.com suggests that all articles are routinely deleted from the site after a certain period of fime. Even so, it's a touchy subject, explored in some depth in The Atlantic Monthly's January 1999 "What is the Koran."
"With freedom of choice and access to information comes doubt," writes B. Spengler -- who thinks Islam has an infallibility problem -- in The Pakistani Post:
It is well and good for Western newspapers to republish the Mohammed cartoons in solidarity with Jyllens-Posten. But not one major news outlet has reported the most controversial religion story of the year, the debate among the pope and his advisers about whether and to what extent Islam is capable of reform . . .
The theological problem I have discussed in other locations, most recently in reporting the pope`s seminar at Castelgandolfo. Christianity and Judaism have adapted to doubt, the bacillus of modern thought, by inviting doubt to serve as the handmaiden of faith . . . As the pope explained, the eternal, unchanging character of the Koran that the Archangel Gabriel dictated verbatim to Mohammed admits of no doubt. Muslim belief is not dialogue, but submission. It is as defenseless before the bacillus of skepticism as the American aboriginals were before the smallpox virus.
That is why Muslims cannot respond to Western jibes at the person of their Prophet except as they did to the Jyllens-Posten cartoons. I do not sympathize with scoffers but, like Benedict, I see doubt as an adversary to be won over, rather than as an enemy to be extirpated.
As Father Joseph Fessio, a student and friend of Pope Benedict XVI, told Hugh Hewitt recently:
There are, I think there are 98 Islamic countries in the world, and 97 of them do not have religious freedom . . . And that's what's going to happen to Europe. Once there's an Islamic majority, it is going to not . . . it's going to eliminate religious freedom. However . . . and therefore, Western civilization as we know it. However, in the United States, we also are not having children. There's abortion. There's contraception. There's the ideal of a one or two child family. But where is our immigration coming from? From Ecuador, from Mexico, from Cuba, from Guatemala. And these people are Christians. And so, I believe without being . . . you know, having hubris as an American, I believe that Christians in the United States are the ones who will be able to save not just Christianity, but Western civilization, if we maintain our fidelity to the scriptures, our fidelity to Christ, our fidelity to family life, and our fidelity to fertility and fruitfulness in marriage. So I believe we are in a world-historical century, which is going to depend upon the strength of Christianity in these United States.
Ironically, help may be on the way from an unexpected quarter, the children of the prosperous Muslim immigrants of the '60s and '70s, now coming of age. Look past the annoyingly airy, happy-talk prose of this pre-9/11 Newsweek article, and listen to the voices of young Muslim-Americans who believe in the American dream and are, according to the article, "rediscovering an Islam founded on tolerance, social justice and human rights":
America's Muslims are not only taking on stereotypes, they're taking on the status quo. As it was for Christians and Jews before them, America is a laboratory for a re-examination of their faith. America's Muslim community is a quilt of cultures: about 25 percent are of South Asian descent, Arabs represent another 12 percent and nearly half are converts, primarily African-Americans. U.S. society allows them to strip away the cultural influences and superstitions that have crept into Islam during the past 1,400 years. By going back to the basic texts, they're rediscovering an Islam founded on tolerance, social justice and human rights. Some 6 million strong, America's Muslim population is set to outstrip its Jewish one by 2010, making it the nation's second-largest faith after Christianity. Richer than most Muslim communities, literate and natives of the world's sole superpower, America's Muslims are intent on exporting their modern Islam. From the Mideast to central Asia, they'd like to influence debate on everything from free trade to gender politics.
"Women are facing a growing backlash, according to fashion victim Manal Omar, the director of Women for Women International’s program in Iraq," reports a Mother Jones interview of the young Muslim-American woman last year.
Manal Omar (above photo), raised in South Carolina, was one of the bright young Muslim-Americans inteviewed by Newsweek pre 9/11:
Tall and leather-jacketed, with a trace of Southern drawl, she explodes any stock image of the crushed and silent Muslim woman. In high school, she played basketball in hijab -- the Muslim woman's head covering ("my coach nearly freaked"); at college, she won national public-speaking prizes. Friends thought she should become a stand-up comic. Instead, Omar went into refugee relief. In her off hours, she's working on a series of books for Muslim-American teenagers -- "a sort of Islamic 'Sweet Valley High'," she says.
"Children of immigrants are the fastest-growing group among the nation's estimated 7 million Muslims, and they're changing the face of Islam in this country by combining their faith with the American tradition of diversity," according to a later, post-9/11 Newsweek article last fall. We wish some enterprising media types would get in touch with Manal and some of the other young people featured in those articles to get their take on the "Cartoon Wars."
I am looking for a good Muslim Wife,
Please Contact me at [email protected] .
Jazakumullahu Khairann,
Thank you very much.
May God Help All His Creation
Posted by: Mohamed Swefy | March 07, 2008 at 07:12 PM