Reply to Daisy (2)

Submitted by Shazia Khanum (Canada), Sep 21, 2005 at 07:48

Many thanks,

A few points:

1. Being loud and clear is still peaceful. Peaceful means without any violence, including verbal "violence", and striving with the utmost courtesy and accuracy.

2. There are many people who are shredding the ideological arguments of the militant Muslims to pieces. Just like some of the commentators here, the militant Muslims also utter partial verses from the Qur`an and take them out of context to misinterpret and misapply them to justify their cause. So their ideological argument must be soundly defeated. And many people are doing it despite the fact that there are those who paint us all the same and discourage us.

3. The hierarchy in Islam does not exist in the sense that there is an "official" organizational structure with someone at the top, like the Pope. There are gazillion hierarchies that do exist with very small groups following who they trust in matters of religious interpretations. Yet there are gazillion Muslims (a majority) who do not belong to any of them nor do they trust the imams and the mullahs. Every person is accountable for themselves.

4. But you are right, we need to come out of our passive-ness. And we must not be discouraged by those who declare us all the followers of a demonic religion and who stereotype us all and cannot seem to make a distinction between Islam and Islamism.

5. You stated: "Muslims must do more than Muslims are doing to eradicate extreme Islamism." No question about it. You are absolutely right.

6. There was no intention of boasting about anything on my part. Boasting is one of the patterns of the lower self and causes arrogance and pride, both a no-no in Sufi Islam. Correcting someone when they are stereotyping us all in order to make them see that there are differences between Muslims and pointing out to them the inaccurate interpretations is not boasting.

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