Rasheed and Father Zakaria Botros

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Dec 24, 2010 at 14:35

Erich wrote

>Perhaps scholarly Muslims who believe in self-criticism,

If you mean by "scholarly" some one who is trained in critical thinking then you should be aware that you will not find many but they do exist as you shall see below.

>open criticism of Islamic history and Islamic interpretation, could be found. Let them defend their religion as their conscience demands, but with honest self-criticism, liberated from all the emotional honor-shame reactions. Then the discussion would be interesting. The problem is that such honest Muslim scholars do not represent the Muslim umma and ulema as it really is.

Yes they do exist and some of them are really brave people as in the case of Professor el-Qimni who is an Egyptian historian who wrote a book about the Arab invasion of Egypt and that it was no more than imperialism and colonialism. And to add insult to injury he named his daughter Isis which is a very un-islamic name as Isis is really the Goddess of Egypt. The poor man had to leave Egypt for a period. We also have the case of Farag Foda who was indeed a brave man and was killed by Muslim terrorists and then we have the case of the great Nageeb Mahfooz who wrote the great book "Awlad el-Gabalawi:" and it is no more than fiction about the his doubts about these monotheistic religions and he almost got killed but the real story here is that when al-Ahram which is the biggest newspaper in Egypt published the entire book in one of its editions, the entire print was sold within hours and it speaks volumes for the fact that many people in the Muslim world have great doubts about islam

And let us not forget the very brave professor Abu Zaid and his crime was suggesting that the Qur'an is a text at a point in time and the tools of literary criticism should be applied to the study of the Qur'an

The poor man had to leave Egypt

> They would, perhaps unintentionally make us more hopeful about their religion than we should be.

There is also many web sites by Arabs that exmine their societies and Islam in great detail and one of the best is "Modern Discussion" and it is just amazing how far some of the authors go in being critical of Islam

It seems that you have spent some time in Turkey! Turkey is so different from the Arabic speaking world and I suspect that being critical of Islam in Turkey is seen as an attack on who is really a Turk . The Arabs see the attack on Islam as something that does not make any sense to them and that with few explantions all will be OK and you can see that in Moustafa Zayed's arguments and I'm sure it is beyond him how come Dr. Pipes and Robert Spencer do not get it

>The apologists, on the other hand, are just false advertisers and dealers in false equivelancies (adolescent nonsense like "well, there are violent Christians too!").

When I hear this from Muslims I tell them then you are saying that islam is violent too right? i still am waiting for a Muslim that can give me an answer

>One can only learn about real Islam today by what devout Muslims say to Muslims, as the caller Rashid, the convert from Islam to Christ, said about his own father's teachings as an Imam. What apologists of the Dawa say in debates can be disregarded. How could it be otherwise? They are agents of the very problem being discussed!

Rasheed is an amazing man (I did some research about him) and he is very popular in the Middle East and he is watched by millions on Qanat al-Haya or Life Channel and his program is called Su'al jari' or daring question and it is the same channel where Father Zakaria Botros used to have his program until he was asked to leave as he was offending too many Muslims!

I have great respect for him and I must admit I learned a lot from Father Zakaria as his command of Arabic is far better than most Arabs and he reads the islamic sources and he tells Muslims: this is what your sources tell us and if you do not like it than get rid of them. He also believes that the only way to get rid of islamic terrorism is to convert Muslims to Christianity

I wish him all the best

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