By Kamran Pasha
Filmmaker and author of Mother of the Believers- USA

The evil of suicide bombings must be defeated by Muslims, as it violates every tenet of Islam. In the past week, at least 150 people were killed in Iraq in a wave of suicide bombings which have torn apart any illusion of security in that tragic country.

As a Muslim, as a human begin, I am filled with horror at images of men, women and children torn to shreds by the madness of people who turn themselves into incendiary devices. And I am filled with outrage and fury at the diabolic forces that seek to present this monstrous, murderous, terrorist activity as somehow sanctioned by my faith.

Let me put this in as simple terms as possible. Suicide bombings, indeed all forms of terrorism, are rejected by mainstream Islam, and always have been.

The Holy Qur’an says it in very clear, without any ambiguity:

“Do not kill yourselves, for truly God is merciful. And if any do that in rancor and injustice, soon shall We cast them in the Fire. ” (Surah 4:29-30)

The Qur’an makes it clear that there are rules to human conflict and limits that must be followed:

“And fight in the way of God against those who fight you. But do not transgress the limits. Truly God does not love transgressors.” (Surah 2:190)

As I discuss in my new novel Mother of the Believers, traditional Islamic law established very clear rules of war based on the practice of Prophet Muhammad and his early followers: Do not kill civilians. Do not kill women and children. Do not harm priests of of other religions. Do not destroy the environment.

Abu Bakr, the first leader of Islam after Prophet Muhammad, gave these commandments when Muslims were fighting the forces of the Byzantine Empire, which had sought to destroy the new religion and killed the Prophet’s ambassador:

“Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules to keep by heart: Do not commit treachery, nor depart from the right path. You must not mutilate, neither kill a child or aged man or woman. Do not destroy a palm tree, nor burn it with fire and do not cut any fruitful tree. You must not slay any of the flock or herds or the camels, save for your subsistence. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them to that to which they have devoted their lives. You are likely, likewise, to find people who will present to you meals of many kinds. You may eat; but do no forget to mention the name of God.”

Muslims always took great pride in the fact that they acted honorably, even in war. They looked with contempt upon the warriors of Europe, who slaughtered civilians mercilessly during the Crusades. When Saladin defeated the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem and took the holy city, he spared its Christian populace and pointedly said: “We will not do to you what you did to us.”

His comment was in reference to the First Crusade, where Christian “holy warriors” massacred tens of thousands of civilians upon taking Jerusalem in 1099. Muslims were slaughtered en masse, the Jews of Jerusalem were locked into its main synagogue and set on fire. And Arab Christians were murdered by their co-religionists for the sin of having dark skin and looking like the enemy. The Gesta Francorum, a Crusader chronicle of their activities, proudly notes that the “the slaughter was so great that our men waded in blood up to their ankles.”

In the town of Ma’arra in Syria, the Crusaders committed the ultimate atrocity — cannibalism. As Crusader chronicler Radulph of Caen wrote: “In Ma’arra, our troops boiled pagan adults in cooking-pots; they impaled children on spits and devoured them grilled.”

To this day, the Crusaders are referred to in the Muslim world as “the cannibals of Ma’arra.”

The Muslims looked at this kind of atrocity committed in the name of God as unworthy of any great religion, and held themselves above such monstrous behavior.

So how is it possible that its modern equivalent, the mass murder of civilians through suicide bombings, should now be done in the name of Islam?

In Dying to Win, Robert Pape, a scholar at the University of Chicago, analyzes the history and motivation of suicide bombers. Many people who read the book will be surprised to learn that suicide bombing was a tactic that was first used regularly by Hindu terrorists known as the Tamil Tigers. One of the most prominent victims of this tactic, Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India, was killed on May 21, 1999 by a female suicide bomber from the Tamil Tigers. According to Pape, Gandhi’s murder marks the first use of the “suicide vest” which has become the tool of suicide bombers throughout the world today.

A full chronology of the history of suicide bombing among Tamil extremists can be found at:

http://www.spur.asn.au/chronology_of_suicide_bomb_attacks_by_Tamil_Tigers_in_sri_Lanka.htm

(A warning that the link contains graphic photos of the carnage caused by suicide bombers.)

One of the greatest tragedies of modern Islam is that Muslim extremists began to adopt this horrific tactic of suicide bombing over the past two decades. Palestinian militants, arguing that they had no other effective way to combat Israeli oppression, began to adopt these tactics, and the image of the “Muslim suicide bomber” began to take hold in the media .

I remember at the time most Muslims I spoke with expressed disgust at these horrific acts, but some added the caveat — “What else can these poor people do? They have no tanks or jets to take on Israeli tanks and jets. This is their only way to fight.”

My response then and now is that Islam is a religion that has established rules of war for a reason. Human conflict is perhaps inevitable, but unless there is a sense of morality among warriors, even among the warriors of the oppressed, human beings will descend into monstrosity. The nobility of a cause is forever tainted when dipped in the blood of innocents. The argument that Israeli military activities kill countless Palestinian civilians, so Muslims are free to target their civilians in response, is not an argument that is supported by the noble spirit of Islam. As Saladin pointed out, the Muslims would not inflict on the Christians the atrocities that the Crusaders had inflicted on their victims, simple because we as Muslims were better than that.

And I warned those who would excuse the suicide bombers as long as they targeted “the enemy,” that in Islam all human beings are brothers and sisters and have rights before God and man. I predicted that once some Muslims turned their back on Islam’s strict rules of war and went beneath themselves in order “to win,” the wrath of Allah would be unleashed upon us. If we allowed suicide bombings against non-Muslims, then soon would God punish our sins by unleashing the same horror on Muslims.

Tragically, my prediction came true. Suicide bombers in Iraq and Afghanistan now kill thousands of Muslims a year, innocent people going to pray or shop in the marketplace. Their only crime being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This kind of monstrous behavior is not Islam. It never has been Islam. And it will never be Islam, no matter what kind of self-serving justifications the terrorists use.

For those who wish to learn more about mainstream Muslim positions about war, terrorism and suicide bombing, I refer you here:

http://islam.about.com/cs/currentevents/a/suicide_bomb.htm

http://www.harunyahya.com/terrorism3.php

It is time for Muslims and people of all faiths to stand together in love and justice and end this horrific scourge of terrorism and suicide bombing on humanity.

I look forward to the day that the world will no longer associate such monstrosity with my beloved faith. And that one day, mankind will believe that Islam represents what its name stands for: “Peace.”

Author : Kamran Pasha
Kamran Pasha is a writer and producer for NBC’s highly anticipated new television series Kings, which is a modern day retelling of the Biblical tale of King David. Previously he served as a writer on NBC’s remake of Bionic Woman, and on Showtime Network’s Golden Globe nominated series Sleeper Cell, about a Muslim FBI agent who infiltrates a terrorist group.
http://www.kamranpasha.com/index.php

By Kamran Pasha
Filmmaker and author of Mother of the Believers- USA

I returned recently from a week in France where a debate is raging over whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear the burqa, the traditional Middle Eastern garment that covers not only the whole body, but the face as well. President Nicholas Sarkozy unleashed a firestorm of controversy with his recent call for a ban against the veil, with supporters calling it a necessary stance to protect women’s rights, and opponents decrying the proclamation as racist and symbolic of Europe’s bigotry towards its Muslim population.

But what is really going on here? Why does a simple choice of women’s attire inspire such fierce emotion? What is it about the veil that brings out such a visceral response? The issue that is not being examined in this debate is one that is perhaps too close for comfort, too sensitive to examine in a post-modern world where assumptions about male and female identities are wrapped in decades of political ideology. The question is not about banning efforts by Muslim men to forcibly wrap women in burqas against their will. The question is over whether Muslim women who freely choose to don the veil should be legally prevented from doing so.

So the real question beneath the debate, the question that is too troubling to ask aloud, is whether there is something about the veil that is actually attractive to some women, and what that means for Western sacred cows about potential differences in masculine and feminine psychology.

I have been forced to look deeply into the issues of masculine and feminine dynamics in recent days. The publication of my novel, Mother of the Believers, which tells the birth of Islam from the perspective of Prophet Muhammad’s wife Aisha, has pulled me into the heart of modern discussions regarding the role of women in Islam. On my book tour through the United States, I have found myself at the center of impassioned arguments about women’s rights in the Islamic world and the intention behind ancient traditions such as veiling.

I have often found myself standing silent as women in the audience argue the issues among themselves with great passion and intensity. My role as an observer among these debates has allowed me to come to certain perceptions that might surprise both men and women used to speaking of women’s rights in the language of modern feminism. And the most startling perception, certainly for me, is that for many women, power is not defined in masculine terms of leadership over others, but in terms of social identity. And for many women, how their bodies are perceived by others is deeply central to their sense of who they are and their power over the world. And I have learned that for some women, the veil is actually a representation of an ancient kind of power, one that is rarely acknowledged in polite circles today – the power of feminine mystique.

Before I wade further into the dangerous waters of post-feminist social critique, I would like to acknowledge a point that opponents of the burqa have made – that the veil is not an Islamic religious requirement. They are correct. The veil predates Islam and was actually invented by Byzantine Christians and subsequently adopted by Zoroastrian Persians, long before Muslims appeared on the scene. In fact, the ironic social origin of the veil is that it was once used as a mark of power, not oppression.

Wealthy Christian women wore veils as a sign of high social status and nobility, while women who were unveiled in Byzantine culture were denigrated as low class, and indeed prostitutes in Byzantium would go about unveiled as a means of advertising their wares. “Respectable” Christian women believed that showing their beauty to all and sundry was cheap and demeaning. This Christian social tradition was not widespread in pre-Islamic Arabia. Like their Semitic sisters among Jews, Arab women would often wear headscarves, but face veiling was uncommon.

As I discuss in my novel, the only women that were required to be veiled in the early days of Islam were the wives of Prophet Muhammad, known in the Qur’an as “Mothers of the Believers.” Their role was to serve as the spiritual matrons of the Muslim community, and as a result they were required to live and dress differently from other women to designate their status. According to early historical sources, the veil was introduced for the Mothers after the the Prophet’s enemies taunted them and subjected them to demeaning slurs.

The triggering incident (which I recount in my novel) occurred when Aisha, a beautiful and charismatic woman, was being too forward at a social gathering, leading men at the event to ogle her and speak in demeaning terms about a woman they were supposed to revere as a spiritual guide. Shortly thereafter, the Qur’an commanded the Mothers to speak to men “through a curtain” so that their dignity would be preserved and harassment minimized.

This unusual requirement of veiling remained limited to the Mothers of the Believers and was not extended to the entire Muslim community. After Prophet Muhammad’s death, the Muslims conquered the neighboring Byzantine and Persian empires, where they first encountered widespread veiling among the upper classes. The egalitarian Arabs were offended by the social hierarchies of their conquered subjects, and Muslim leaders began to encourage veiling across every social spectrum to neutralize the haughty pretenses of aristocracy. So the mass introduction of the veil in the Middle East was originally an effort at elevating lower classes and defusing the privileges of the wealthy. While hard to imagine today, the veil was actually tool of social progress in a world with very different values.

So the critics of burqas are only partially correct – the veil is not Islamic in origin, but was definitely used by Muslims as a means of social engineering in the early days of the religion. Flash forward to the 21st century, where the veil no longer holds the same meaning as it did for Byzantine Christians. Today the veil is perceived by many in the West in opposite terms from its social origins, as a sign of oppression rather than nobility. And thus we come to the debate raging in France and much of Europe over whether the veil should be banished from the public sphere.

But the question then arises as to why Muslim women in free and open societies choose to don the veil in the first place. Certainly for some women, it is the result of social pressure from family members, and so their choice in the matter is not truly free. But in my talks with Muslim women, I was intrigued to hear stories from converts who have chosen to don the burqa despite strong social pressure from family and friends against it.

For these women, the veil represents something that is never raised in the modern debate. It represents an embrace of mystery. A reclamation of feminine mystique. An embrace of an age-old belief that less is more, that the power of the feminine is heightened by the allure of the unseen. Throughout human history, poets have written of love sparked just by seeing a glimpse of a woman’s eyes. The veil has often been the ultimate symbol of feminine coyness that activates masculine desire, the quest for the hidden pearl that sparks the dance of Eros. For some women throughout history, the veil has been a symbol of femininity on a deeply primordial level.

There is a strange duality to Western attitudes toward women’s liberation. Women are encouraged to pursue and master traditionally male roles in the worlds of business and politics. And yet they are also valued primarily for their physical looks and encouraged to display their charms at every opportunity. And so a strange schizophrenia has set in, where women are encouraged to be masculine in their ambitions while pressured to flaunt their feminine sexuality in public. Carla Bruni, the First Lady of France, is held up as an archetype of the empowered European woman, and is widely admired in the press for her beauty and style. But her intelligence and political savvy are rarely mentioned as assets.

The Muslim argument for the value of modest dress, whether it be the burqa or the less-restrictive hijab (headscarf) has always centered on a critique of the demeaning attitudes of the West toward women’s bodies. As the covers of popular magazines from Cosmopolitan (for women) to Maxim (for men) reveal, women’s social value in the West is determined by the size of their breasts, the beauty of their curves, the commoditization of their flesh. The end result has been a society in which women struggle with their self-esteem due to their perceived attractiveness. Eating disorders among women are commonplace, and even teenage girls feel pressured to get breast implants to increase their social value. Muslim women who choose to don modest dress say they are making a feminist stance against this cheapening of their bodies by modern culture. For them, wearing modest dress is the contemporary equivalent of burning their bras.

Undoubtedly others would disagree. But then we face the crux of the problem – is it the place of the state to define for women what values they should have? How they should see themselves, their clothes and their bodies? Even if the French are able to successfully enact a ban on the burqa, the attitudes behind the veil will not go away. The argument that the veil serves as an automatic barrier to Muslim women achieving leadership positions in business and politics is false. In my novel, I demonstrate how the Prophet’s wife Aisha, was able to become a politician, a scholar, a poet and a military commander – all while donning the veil. Muslim women from the Egyptian queen Shagrat al-Dur to the Mughal empress Nur Jahan have ruled nations from behind a veil. The burqa is not an automatic barrier to success in the public sphere for women. But more importantly, those women who have no desire to embark on such professions will not be coerced into doing so by regulating how they choose to cover their bodies.

It appears that some opponents of the the veil are actually more upset about the choice many women make to continue in traditional lifestyles even though other opportunities are available to them. But many women have no desire to embrace traditionally masculine ambitions, and will not do so no matter how much others try to force them to change. And efforts to compel Muslim women will only be met by anger and resentment. If some women are required by the state to dress in a fashion they find too revealing, even demeaning, there will only be a calcification of rebellion, a hardening of resistance to social control. The unrest that Europe faces with its Muslim population will only increase in intensity. As demographics change, as Europe inevitably moves toward Muslim social prominence, the tensions between the self-proclaimed arbiters of identity and their unwilling subjects will explode.

With all that said, here are my personal opinions on the matter, for whatever they are worth. I am a believer that every society has a right to regulate conduct within its borders, including how people are dressed. France has as much right to ban the burqa as Iran has to require it. But I believe that people should be honest about their motivations in either case. In both instances, such rules are the instruments of control freaks attempting to tell women how to think and feel about themselves based on clothing. And in my experience, efforts to legislate thoughts always fail. As we have seen in recent years, Iranian women have been pushing for greater freedom of dress, despite decades of indoctrination by the country’s clerics. At the same time, Muslim women have been pushing for the right to be left alone in Europe, to dress as they wish, despite intense social pressure to conform. The European couture police will no more be successful in compelling Muslim women to think in a certain way than have been the mullahs in the Middle East.

Specifically with regard to France, my own experience in that beautiful country (I lived in Paris for several months in 2007) leads me to believe that the controversy over the burqa is not really about women’s rights. It is about preserving a certain cultural heritage from the onslaught of foreign values and perspectives. The burqa controversy is really about attempting to save a beleaguered French identity from being replaced by a new and alien social tradition that is spreading through the power of demographics. But social engineering is a poor tool to curtail the realities of reproduction. At current birth rates, Muslims will become a numerically influential community inside France within this century. The same is true for many other nations in Europe. Efforts to stem the power of Muslim culture from reshaping European identity are as pointless as trying to hold back a river with one’s hands.

Of course, fear of change is understandable. But the burqa debate is just the tip of something darker, even sinister, within European culture today. It is based on a hatred of the other that arises from Europe’s unacknowledged racism toward its immigrant population. This fear against Muslims has led to some truly horrifying incidents of violence in Europe. A few days ago, a pregnant Muslim woman in Germany was murdered while testifying in court against a man who had subjected her to slurs for wearing a headscarf. Marwa el-Sherbini was stabbed 18 times by the man she had accused of racist bullying. Her three-year-old son watched in horror as his mother was killed in broad daylight, inside a court of law. Marwa’s husband was shot by court guards when he attempted to save her life.

This truly sickening incident has received almost no media coverage in Europe, even though Marwa has become a heroine and a martyr throughout the Muslim world. The fact that Europeans have chosen to ignore the brutal murder of a woman whose only crime was that she covered her head with a piece of cloth, reveals the real issues beneath the burqa debate. It is ultimately not about women’s rights, but about power over immigrants. Marwa was no weak and submissive Muslim woman. She was highly educated, a noted athlete (she was a national handball champion in Egypt), and her husband a genetic engineer seeking his PhD. Marwa represented the future of Europe’s Muslim immigrants – empowered, educated and strong. And she was butchered like an animal for having the audacity to dress differently. The fact that her death has not been a source of European soul-searching suggests that some truths are too painful to face.

The debate over Muslim dress and women’s rights will continue. But it needs to be seen in a broader issue of cultural values and history. There is much that Europe, with its ancient history and traditions, can add to the melting pot of Islamic identity. And there are important things that Muslims can remind their Western neighbors, including the value of traditional masculine and feminine dynamics. By showing respect for Muslim women’s choices in dress, the veil can paradoxically become an instrument to lift the barriers that separate human beings from each other.

Author : Kamran Pasha
Kamran Pasha is a writer and producer for NBC’s highly anticipated new television series Kings, which is a modern day retelling of the Biblical tale of King David. Previously he served as a writer on NBC’s remake of Bionic Woman, and on Showtime Network’s Golden Globe nominated series Sleeper Cell, about a Muslim FBI agent who infiltrates a terrorist group.
http://www.kamranpasha.com/index.php

ISLAM IN BRIEF

1. Islam means “submission to the will of God”. Islam teaches belief in only one God, the day of Judgement and individual accountability for actions. Islam greatly values peace.
2. Muslim is the one who follows Islam. Muslims submit to the will of God and accept the Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him) as his last messenger.
3. Muslims believe that Muhammed was a prophet and the last in a series of messengers of God, which include Abraham, Noah, Moses and jesus.
4. The Qur’aan is the holy book of Islam. The Qur’aan instructs Muslims to respect other faiths and decrees that there is no compulsion in religion.
5. Islam’s basic teachings are after the worship of God, respect and care for parents, good neighboring, giving to the needy, poor and orphanage. Any act of goodness will elevate a Person closer to God.
6. Jihad does not mean “Holy War”. Jihad mean to strive against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society and to stop injustice.

Islam is the second largest and the fastest growing religion in the United States. There are more than 1.6 billion Muslims around the world.

Please explore Qur’aan on your own, click here

http://www.quranexplorer.com/quran/