Amina: The Stockholm syndrome revisited:In defending the niqab you are defending your right to be "Humiliated, Submissive, and Blindly Obedient to Men"

Submitted by Plato (India), Oct 1, 2009 at 04:21

Amina, you wrote,

>>I only argued against the censorship of Islam which I find to be extremely offensive. Not to mention it would only incite anger and fail to facilitate any cause for reconciliation.<<

I really had to laugh at this one. Allah demands the censorship of all non-Islamic religions. The mother of all censorship laws is the Koran. You apparently have not read your holy scripture. Let me give you a peep into how the Koran interferes with and censors Muslims and no-Muslims every step of the way:

FRIENDSHIP CENSORED:

Surah 98:6 "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people."

144 YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! Take not for friends unbelievers rather than believers: Do ye wish to offer Allah an open proof against yourselves?

NON-MUSLIMS' BELIEFS CENSORED:

003.085 YUSUFALI: If anyone desires a religion other than Islam (submission to Allah), never will it be accepted of him; and in the Hereafter He will be in the ranks of those who have lost (All spiritual good).

003.083 YUSUFALI: Do they seek for other than the Religion of Allah?-while all creatures in the heavens and on earth have, willing or unwilling, bowed to His Will (Accepted Islam), and to Him shall they all be brought back.

>>I say that one should have the choice to practice his or her religion irrespective of the crimes that are being prepetuated outside their conscious control. Isn't that a privilege you enjoy?<<

You read the verses I quoted above. Does Islam give a choice in the matter of faith? The crimes being committed by Muslims are a result of the conscious control that Allah has on Muslims via the Koran. For the Koran further says:

009.033 YUSUFALI: It is He Who hath sent His Messenger with guidance and the Religion of Truth, to proclaim it over all religion, even though the Pagans may detest (it).

058.021 YUSUFALI: Allah has decreed: "It is I and My messengers who must prevail": For Allah is One full of strength, able to enforce His Will. [THE MUSLIM CRIMINALS YOU SEE THINK THEY ARE TRYING TO ENFORCE ALLAH'S WILL]

009.029 YUSUFALI: Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth

Do you see any choice in the practice of one's religion in the above three verses?? Allah has consciously denied any privilege of religious freedom to non-Muslims. Any one who is not asleep while reading the Koran will realize this fact. The Muslim terrorists were fully conscious and absorbed their content when the madrassa Mullah recited these verses to them.

The crimes being committed by followers of Islam are not out of the conscious control of Muslims. You had the Australian mullah who declared women without burqas exposed meat. Did you boot him out unceremoniously? The Danish cartoons set off crimes by Muslims in several countries including Muslim ones and very few Muslims took a conscious stand against those crimes. The Pope's statement resulted in violent crimes in Muslim countries and how many Muslims protested against those crimes. In India Taslima Nasreen was attacked because she wrote a book by Muslims and very few Muslims condemned the crime. The Salman Rushdie affair seems to have had the conscious consensus of the majority of Muslims.

Muslims, pagans, Satanists all have choice in Australia, where the majority are Christians. And in every Christian-majority country you can name. How many Muslim majority countries have this freedom?

>>I abhor the misconception that Islam is a religion of terrorists.<<

Then you must also abhor the fact that the Koran contains verses like the one I have quoted above. Or these verses in which Allah unashamedly tells the prophet that He will cast terror into the hearts of no-Muslims:

008.060 YUSUFALI: Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.

008.012 YUSUFALI: Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them."

Sura (3:151) - "Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers, for that they joined companions with Allah, for which He had sent no authority".

You can plead context for these verses but remember it is Allah Himself encouraging the Muslims to fight by saying He will instill terror into non-Muslims.

>>And before you make a smart mouth remark, can you vouch that Christianity (I am assuming you are one) is a religion of purists?<<

Here is a smart mouth remark from a non-Christian: If Christians tried to be purists they would have to follow Jesus' advice to show the other cheek. Those who do not follow this are not true Christians. In the case of Muslims it is the ones who follow Allah's (aka Muhammad) advice in 8:60, 9:33 who are the purists.

>>Is everybody a good person? Of course not, we're only human. <<

We humans who are not good are so by Allah's will:

006.125 YUSUFALI: Those whom Allah (in His plan) willeth to guide,- He openeth their breast to Islam; those whom He willeth to leave straying,- He maketh their breast close and constricted, as if they had to climb up to the skies: thus doth Allah (heap) the penalty on those who refuse to believe.

010.099 YUSUFALI: If it had been thy Lord's will, they would all have believed,- all who are on earth! wilt thou then compel mankind, against their will, to believe!

If We had so willed, We could certainly have brought every soul its true guidance (32:13)

007.186 YUSUFALI: To such as Allah rejects from His guidance, there can be no guide: He will leave them in their trespasses, wandering in distraction.

>>So why should an entire community suffer censorship because of the heinous crimes others choose to commit?<<

The fact is they should be censored because the Muslim community is not willing to reject Allah's verses like 9:29, 9:33 or 8:60. Non-Muslim countries have not censored even these verses calling on all Muslims to subjugate and terrorise them. And people who believe and follow these verses are allowed to live peacefully among non-Muslims. Can you as a Muslim guarantee that your fellow Muslims will not apply these verses in Australia? If you cannot, and if the majority of Muslims cannot, why should they not suffer censorship given you have to follow all of Allah's commands.

>>These are the questions that trouble me when people are quick to jump on the Islamophobia bandwagon.<<

Have you noticed unbeliever-phobia in the Koran? It is nothing if not a wagonload of non-Muslim phobia. If not, re-read the Koran and keep your eyes open for verses similar to the ones I have quoted and do look for their contexts too. You will then realize why there is Islamophobia and the question will not trouble you any more.

>> Before I go though, can I just say, since when is NOT wearing a niqab/scarf/veil a "Christian" tradition? I don't know how you got that idea.<<

It is not the niqab/scarf/veil per se that is the problem. Christians and others wear it by their own free will not because their men, like Muslim men, insist on it for fear of their women folk being leered at by other males (under the pretext that the niqab protects them from rape). Muslim women think they are doing it freely not realising they have been lured into that belief by the Koran and its male interpreters. So it is the thoughts and attitudes that force women into the black shroud that is the problem.

Wearing a headscarf has been a Christian tradition. But when fashion changed no male priest or relative was there to violently oppose the change of fashion. Now read what your sister in Islam in Saudi Arabia has to say about the abaya, another version of the niqab:

"Among those who observed Donna, however, were some Muslims, Arabs, and even some Saudis. The Saudis were upset by what they saw and told Donna so. When she asked why, they explained that she was using the abaya in an invalid way. ……. They explained to her that she must walk slowly, must look down when walking and keep her eyes more or less in front of her - no glancing from side to side, in other words. She must not talk to anyone or laugh loudly and certainly must not address any remarks to anyone lest they misunderstand her purpose in doing so.

"To say the least, Donna was astounded by their remarks and realized that they were not simply talking about a garment to be worn but about their perceptions of what an abaya symbolized. They seemed determined to deny that a normal human being was under the black material. ……. The abaya indeed covers a typically weak and frightened character (a woman of course), who views herself as a sexual entity confined in a well-defined space she can never escape from. This is why the whole culture of the abaya imposes so many restraints upon women. One of the restraints is that she must walk as if her feet were hobbled and she was unable to move easily and normally. Nor is she allowed to look around and observe the surrounding world comfortably, as slowly or quickly as she might like. The abaya has also contributed directly to preventing certain basic movements; for example, she can no longer move her hands normally. Aside from that, ordinary free conversation is forbidden and is replaced with low and often unclear speech that makes little sense."

"The Abaya Makes Women Appear Humiliated, Submissive, and Blindly Obedient to Men"

"The question that comes to mind is whether our grandmothers had to deal with all these things or with the mindset that has produced them. The answer - negative of course - can be explained by saying that male culture has forced the abaya on women, colored it with certain attitudes and used religion to buttress and support their ideas of what an abaya is and how it should be worn and used. It all depends upon selected religious interpretations, with the necessity of ignoring others which fail to support or do not go along with the basic premise. ….. and for men, it represents their sexual thoughts and desires for women.

"But how did men succeed in convincing women to transform the free personality that Allah endowed them with into enslaved characters wearing an abaya? …... It was a combination of emotional factors which were cleverly exploited. Men used women's weaknesses to make women believe that an important part of the male-female relationship was the man loving the weak and submissive elements of a woman's nature. …..

"What is strange is that women accepted the idea and were soon submitting themselves to the prison of the garment, the walking slowly, the looking only straight ahead - just to fulfill, it seems, what men imagined the abaya to be all about.

"Women's imaginations, however, seem to have gone to work to create new and more complicated garments which would confine her more than ever before. The old abaya was a simple, on-the-shoulder garment, open on both sides; nowadays women wear abayas which rest on their heads, making them look like large walking crows. As for other abayas, they occupy the wearer with keeping them wrapped around the shoulders, the head and the face so that the woman can't move without worrying that one or more of the bits will fall and she will stand revealed. http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=saudiarabia&ID=SP135606

Regards

Plato

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