While President Ahmedinejad mouths politically correct platitudes about academic freedom and freedom of expression, the conference is clearly a thinly veiled attempt to provoke Europe, Israel and their supporters. Most telling is the list of invitees -- a handful of Jewish rabbis who will express the opinion that Israel has cynically used the Holocaust to justify atrocities against the Palestinians; David Duke, a former president of the KKK, and notorious racist; Dr Toben who not only denies the Holocaust ever happened but claims that Germany was forced to invade Poland by England, France and their allies in order to open the way for "Jewish" communism...

The list of speakers makes it clear that the agenda of the conference is not honest academic or philosophical inquiry but blatant antisemitism and revisionist history. Antisemitism has become a severe problem within the Muslim community, an ahistorical trend caused in part by the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The PMU denounces antisemitism in all its forms, just as we denounce Islamophobia in all its forms. While we take issue with many of Israel's tactics and positions with regards the Palestinians, we believe that opposition to the policies of a particular government can never justify hatred of a people or of a religion.

Sponsored by SAVE, Narika, SEMAH, the Afghan Coalition, and the City of Fremont’s Family Resource Center

Venue:The Fremont Family Resource Center
Millennium Room
39155 Liberty St.,
Fremont, Ca. 94538

Date/Time:6PM Thursday, December 7, 2006

Fremont has had five homicides in 2006 and a recent suicide. In the past two weeks alone, Fremont saw two incidents of domestic violence spin out of control and into deadly headlines. Domestic violence is a crime that often goes unreported until it reaches a deadly level.

Experts from Narika, SEMAH, the Afghan Coalition, and SAVE will elaborate on the underlying issues present in all cases of domestic violence and call for community support in addressing the need for education and other prevention activities to stop domestic violence before it starts.

We invite you to join us to memorialize the victims and to help us to shed light on addressing and preventing domestic violence.

FOSA (Friends of South Asia)
ASATA
Foundation for Self Reliance (www.e-fsr.org)
Global Peace Partners
Progressive Muslim Union

For more information, you can contact:

Rodney Clark
www.save-dv.org
executivedirector@save-dv.org

Atashi Chakravarty
www.narika.org
atashi@narika.org

Reshma Yunus
www.semah.org
info@semah.org

Rona Popal
www.afghancoalition.org
Afghancoal@aol.com

In attendance were women from all over the world, over 100. I was humbled and proud to see so many women working to empower other unprivileged women. Some by way of lectures, books, and scholarship, as social workers, activists, and government officials, and others through the arts and pop culture. I can’t tell you about all the women I spoke to, but I can give you a peek into some of the extraordinary contributions of a few of them.

As punishment for her brother’s alleged crime, Mukhtaran Mai was gang raped by a more powerful family. A hideous punishment commanded by the village council. Usually women would commit suicide after such a punishment, but Mukhtaran decided she was going to teach them a lesson….by fighting back. Fight back she did. Beyond the court cases in which she pressed charges against the perpetrators of this crime, she decided to turn her anger into positive action. She decided to educate her village by establishing a school for boys and girls. At first the school had three students, and the teacher worked for free for 6 months. To pay the teacher’s wages Mukhtaran sewed, earning $1.50 a day and setting aside half. HALF. Would you be willing to contribute HALF of your income to a cause? But Mukhtaran’s sacrifice has brought great dividends. She now has hundreds of students, and has built a shelter for abused women. Rather than taking her own life, Mukhtaran Mai, an uneducated, nonliterate and abused woman turned her anger and pain into a positive force and became an international symbol of courage and dignity. (To view her speak visit my site at: http://www.a-n-i.net/hostbaby/merge?stage=music). In the video Mukhtaran ends her talk by saying: To remain apathetic is a crime; to remain silence is a crime, is a crime! She has a book out entitled: In the Name of Honour. Mukhtaran is assisted by ANAA (Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Human Rights), www.4anaa.org. Help them eradicate violence against women.

Dr. Massouda Jala, a psychiatrist and pediatrician from Afghanistan, provided medical care to women for 23 years. With the Taliban kicked out, her community asked her to run for office. They put her name on the ballot the day before the elections, resulting in her becoming the representative of Kabul in the 2002 loya jirga. At that point she decided that for her to be effective she needed to work to create laws prohibiting discrimination against women; thus, the Women’s Affairs Ministry (Secretariat) came into being. A movie about her entitled Still Fighting by New View Films (in DC) is in the making. An audience member asked her whether the situation for women is better with the Taliban gone. Her response: “It was, but in the past year 300 girls’ schools have been burnt down.” Incidentally, she is a cabinet member in the current Karzai administration.

Rima Khoreibi is sort of my equivalent but in a different medium. She is a children’s fiction writer and author of a series entitled The Adventures of Iman. Iman is a teenage Muslim girl, a super hero! The stories teach children about the values of Islam, with passages from the Quran and Hadith as footnotes! These books should be used as text books in our Muslim schools.

Then there is Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, an American who spent seven years completing a translation of the Quran into English from a women’s perspective. (The book will be out in spring of 2007, www.kazi.org). One example of the conventional male-centered and misogynistic interpretations of sacred text is verse 4:34: “Husbands who fear adversity on the part of wives, admonish then, leave their bed, and beat them.” But Prophet Muhammad never beat his wives or any women for that matter. The current translation of ‘bdr’ is “to beat (them)”, but lo and behold there are 25 other meanings to that same word. One means to ‘walk away’, and that is precisely what the Prophet did. Amin to that!

I came out of the conference full of hope, of conviction to do more, and rejuvenated by the women around me. But I also came out more disgusted by the hate and injustice perpetuated by men on the women. We should be outraged. I challenge the men to stop dressing like the Prophet but to LIVE like one. Be the feminist that Prophet Muhammad was. We need Muslim women and men to work together and for men to accept us as absolute equals. And to the women who ‘buy’ into men’s supremacy over women and confuse the traditions of patriarchy with the teachings of Islam: READ, THINK. Free yourselves from the mental shackles imposed on us.

Some women at the conference are skeptical whereas others are hopeful. But whichever way we lean, we should be agents for change. Muslim women and men have no choice but to challenge the traditional and oppressive state of affairs in our communities. We have regressed instead of progressed, and for some reason we in the Muslim world have been unable or unwilling to claim our rights. As I sit and listen to Mukhtaran Mai, Masouda and to the many women who have contributed so much, my own life is a blurr of confusion. Does anyone even understand what I do, do they even know I exist, does anyone care? The presence of my sisters and their kind words of encouragement have convinced me, once and for all, that what I do matters. That no matter what my contribution is, it is a pebble creating its own waves. As a friend says to me, “If I see injustice and turn my back, then I am not a Muslim”. That is the reminder that we all need to keep doing what we do.

For complete information and registration information please click here: Bridges to Understanding

Date: November 11th, 2006
Time: 2-4 p.m.
Place: USC’s University Religious Center
835 W. 34th St. Los Angeles, 90007
(entrance: gate #5 on Jefferson at McClintock)

Admission is free. Donations are gratefully accepted.

Dr. Nazir Khaja, assistant professor, UCLA School of Medicine, is a well-known American Muslim leader and interfaith and peace activist. He has written and produced several documentaries on challenges facing Muslims in America. Besides numerous articles for newspapers and magazines, Dr. Khaja also writes and translates poetry.

What is Sharia Law and why does it seem to propagate violent punishments?

Dr. Mehnaz Mona-Afridi is a professor of Religious Studies, published scholar, and interfaith activist. Born in Pakistan, raised in Europe and educated in the U.S., Prof. Afridi brings a global perspective to exploring the images of Islam in the modern world. She is a much published scholar and a highly regarded interfaith activist.

Is a modern democratic Islamic state an oxymoron?

Dr. Mehran Kamrava is the Professor of Political Science at California State University, Northridge. His specialties include political development, comparative politics, and Middle Eastern Studies. Most recently he has published The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity (University of California Press and I.B. Tauris).

The event will feature poetry by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, translated and read by Dr. N. Khaja.

The Progressive Muslim Union welcomes everyone who is interested or just curious to come together in a spirit of affection, respect, and engagement. God willing, may it be an occasion that we as people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, come closer to one another, and closer to God. Amin.

Sponsored by the Progressive Muslim Union. For more information, call
323-842-2869, email: pmu-la@comcast.net or visit www.pmuna.org.

It’s neither required by Islam nor is it a mark of civil society

The Progressive Muslim Union acknowledges the right of a woman to dress as she sees fit, but we maintain that the use of the face veil as an expression religious identity or as a symbol of political defiance is neither in the best interests of Muslim women and the Muslim community at large, nor is it a requirement of the Islamic faith. We also remind the Muslim community that the religious rights and freedoms of an individual have to be balanced with the rights of the wider society and measured by the impact it may have on Muslims in North America.

For Muslims, what is prescribed in the Quran is obligatory, with the proviso, also from the Quran, that “there is no compulsion in matters of faith.”

The following verse prescribes modesty of dress, demeanor, and conduct:

“Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that would make for greater purity for them and God is well acquainted with all that they do. And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) thereof, that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons or their husbands and sons or their sisters sons or their women or their slaves whom their right hands possess or male servants free of physical needs or small children who’ve no sense of the shame of sex and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments and O ye who believe turn ye altogether towards God that ye may attain bliss.” -(Quran 24:30,31)

The Quran, we see, is explicit in asking women to cover their chests, but nowhere does God ask women to cover their faces.

This is confirmed by a narration from the Prophet’s life. Sahih Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 74, Hadith Number 247 reads:

Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Abbas:

Al-Fadl bin 'Abbas rode behind the Prophet as his companion rider on the back portion of his she camel on the Day of Nahr (slaughtering of sacrifice, 10th Dhul-Hijja) and Al-Fadl was a handsome man. The Prophet stopped to give the people verdicts. In the meantime, a beautiful woman from the tribe of Khath'am came, asking the verdict of Allah's Apostle. Al-Fadl started looking at her as her beauty attracted him. The Prophet looked behind while Al-Fadl was looking at her; so the Prophet held out his hand backwards and caught the chin of Al-Fadl and turned his face in order that he should not gaze at her…

Clearly the woman’s face was uncovered, and, equally clearly, the Prophet did not ask her to cover it, not even when the young man began staring at her.

Even conservative scholars such as Dr Yousuf al-Qaradawi, agree that the niqab is not mandatory according to Islam. He recently told a Friday sermon, “it is not obligatory on Muslim women to wear the Niqab (full face veil).” He went on to tell his congregation, “The majority of Muslim scholars and I do not support the Niqab in which women cover their faces.”

Social Issues

Security:

Every society has a legitimate need to know a person's identity under certain circumstances – on public transportation and in public venues such as theaters or sporting arenas. We need to be able identify an individual when he or she is voting, completing banking transactions, or being pulled over for a traffic violation. Increasingly retail outlets are requesting photo ids when customers use a credit card due to the raging epidemic of identity theft. Veiling of the face makes such identification impossible, especially when the wearer refuses to remove the veil even temporarily, or demands photos for driver's licenses and other id be taken with the face veil in place.

The needs of a society to be able to identify its citizens in some circumstances outweighs even religious rights and freedoms.

Economic Impact:

A face veil will invariably close the doors for most professions where face-to-face human interaction is absolutely essential. A man or a woman in a face mask is unlikely to find employment in North America as a police officer, a physician, a retail clerk, a nurse, a school teacher, an airline pilot, a journalist, an elected official, a taxi driver, a judge, a lawyer, a bank clerk, or even as an office receptionist. Virtually any job that requires face to face interaction will be unavailable to women who wears a face veil.

Wearing niqab thus virtually ensures that women are forced to retreat from the workforce and to remain within the home, being permanently dependent on their husbands, fathers or brothers. While raising children is a serious endeavor which should not be discounted, neither should the importance of an economically vibrant community, nor women’s needs for intellectual stimulation outside of the home, economic independence, and in many instances a job simply to feed, clothe and house their children.

The face veil adds another obstacle to the economic empowerment of the Muslim community, which already faces ethnic and religious discrimination in the workplace. Instead of trying to overcome the hurdles and fight discrimination, advocates of the niqab are creating additional obstacles in the path of progress for North American Muslim.

Social and Familial Pressures:

The PMU is aware, that like members of any minority group, Muslim women often come under intense pressure to conform to certain norms of behaviour and dress, to overtly display community patriotism, and to remain silent regarding the organized, institutional disenfranchisement of Muslim women.

We are gravely concerned that although many North American women choose of their own free will to wear the veil, that their choices are effectively limited by social and/or familial pressure. The Saudi Arabian clerical establishment, with access to oil wealth and the patronage of the Saudi and American governments, has been aggressively exporting the notion that niqab is required in Islam.

This phenomenon is the product of the 20th century accession of the family of Ibn Saud to power in the states of Nejd and Hijaz where the showing of a female face was determined to be a punishable offence. Historically, from the early Arab Ummayads and Abbasides to the Persian Safavids, the Indian Moghuls and the Turkish Ottomans, at no time have Muslim women ever been required to cover their faces as an act of religiosity and piety, or national law.

In defiance of religious teachings and Muslim history and heritage, the proponents of Wahhabi Islam are today targeting young Muslim women, convincing them of their own second-class status.

The Progressive Muslim Union urges all Muslim organisations to refute the myth being spread that the Saudi sponsored face veil is a matter of piety, individual choice, and religious practice.

We also remind all Muslims that the relgious freedoms we call upon so freely in supporting women who wear niqab and hijab, extends equally to Muslim women who choose not to wear the niqab or the headscarf. Women who do not wear scarves or face veils, for whatever reason, should not experience discrimination within the community, or pressure to change their practice or their point of view. It is sheer hypocricy to demand freedom of religion for the most conservative of Muslims, while declining to extend it to another subset of our community.

By Vanessa Karam (PMU LA)

On September 9th, 2006, the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) held the first in its series of educational forums aimed at educating the Muslim and non-Muslim public about the rich diversity of culture, experience, and opinion within Islam. Spearheaded by PMU’s executive director, singer/songwriter Ani Zonneveld, the first forum appropriately was on the topic of ‘Islamic Art, Music and Dance’. Thanks to Loyola Marymount University Professor of Islamic Studies Dr. Amir Hussain, the event was hosted in LMU’s beautifully appointed Ahmanson Auditorium. Approximately 45 people of a wide variety of Muslim as well as non-Muslim backgrounds were in attendance. The program featured an engaging combination of lecture, reflection, and performance and allowed for questions from the audience.

Reading from a chapter in his brand new book Music in Egypt: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Global Music; in paperback, with CDs), Dr. Marcus explored the Islamic sources’ position on music and singing: the Qur’an does not mention either; the many Hadith are, not surprisingly, contradictory. The professor also looked at the history of music in Islam, which begins as early as the Prophet Muhammad’s arrival in Yathrib (Medina), with his supporters there greeting him with the celebratory song, known and sung until today, Tala‘a al-badru ‘alaina ‘The Full Moon Has Risen Over Us’.

Dr. Marcus’ presentation was punctuated throughout by audio and video clips of Middle Eastern music and performers as well as his own playing of the nay, an instrument which plays a central role in certain Sufi traditions: The nay’s melancholy sound is said to express the reed’s longing to be reunited with its source, the reed bed, which is a Sufi metaphor for the human soul’s longing for reunion with our ultimate source, the Divine.

As a result of the many years Dr. Marcus has spent living, training as a musician, and playing music in Egypt, he has been able to collect the opinions of Egyptian musicians themselves on the controversy over music and Islam. During his talk, he cited numerous musicians who quote the Hadith and other sources in their defense of the Islamic acceptability of music and its role in glorifying God.

Concerning the particular question of female singers in Islam, Dr. Marcus pointed out that, like the issue of music in general, this controversy has a long history and is not going to go away. On the contrary, in light of the fundamentalist pull that Islam, like other religions, is experiencing today, the issue, as one of gender politics, is at the center of the ongoing culture wars. In fact, it is not rare in the contemporary Islamic world, for a female singer or dancer to “repent” of her “un-Islamic” profession and withdraw from public life.

But, as Dr. Marcus reminded the audience, regardless of all this controversy, the most famous and superb singer of the Islamic world in the 20th century was a woman, Umm Kulthum. He played an audio clip of Umm Kulthum reciting the Qur’an as well as a video recording from one of her televised concerts in the 1960s, showing an adoring crowd of men and women (veiled and unveiled) cheering her on. He also played a recent hit by Egyptian folk singer Hakim that promotes Islam as a religion of peace and reaches out to people of other faiths.

The idea that music can also serve to move our spirit toward the Ultimate Reality was illustrated by the next presentation, an outstanding performance of traditional Iranian music, rendered by the six-man ensemble Del-Shodehgan, whose Persian name means ‘those who have lost their hearts (in the Divine)’. Made up of graduate students and alumni from USC, Del-Shodehgan performed two musical renditions of poetry by Moulana Jallaluddin Rumi, the 13th century Sufi saint and founder of the Mevlana Order, whose poems encourage us mortals to seek the Divine Love. The poems that Del-Shodehgan perform are beautifully decorated by contemporary Iranian music composed by Masters Hossein Alizadeh and Parviz Meshkatian, and accompanied by classical Iranian instruments such as the tar, sitar, tonbak and the very mystical sounds of the santur (Persian hammered dulcimer).

The next presentation turned to the visual arts in an attempt to shed some light on the question of whether Islam forbids the depiction of the Prophets in art. The speaker, Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, is a professor of religious studies and an expert on Jewish and Islamic thought and culture. Born in Pakistan, raised in Europe, and educated in the US, South Africa, and Jerusalem, Dr. Afridi brings a truly global perspective to exploring the images of Islam in the modern world.

For the PMU event, Dr. Afridi had put together a thought-provoking PowerPoint presentation, showing historical evidence for very early depictions of the Prophet Muhammad and some of his companions on coins, and later depictions of the Prophet in Persian and Timurid manuscripts as well as an illustrated (!) Qur’an. Touching on the distinction made between historical depictions of the Prophet (not uncommon) and devotional depictions (haram in orthodox Islam), the latter uncomfortably reminiscent of idolatry, Dr. Afridi repeatedly showed that the current idea that it is absolutely forbidden to depict the Prophet is by no means a straightforward, black and white issue, but rather one that should be discussed in all its historical and cultural complexity.

To put the recent Danish cartoon controversy into a fuller context, Dr. Afridi showed much older Western images of the Prophet created for a variety of purposes such as education, advertising, and anti-Islamic propaganda. She pointed out that these images had not generated the kind of scandal or violent reactions as the cartoons had. Dr. Afridi then turned to the cartoons themselves, pointing out why some of them are extremely offensive to Muslims, but also encouraging the audience to think about why the recent controversy had become so volatile.

This presentation provided much food for thought and further discussion. For those who want to research this issue more deeply, Dr. Afridi strongly recommends the online Mohammed Image Archive, a compendium of images that depict Mohammed spanning all historical periods, cultures and genres (www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/).

Next on the program was a performance by a young Bangladeshi-American singer, Ms. Amberine Huda, who sang ‘Bury Me’, a song written by Ani and featured on her ‘Ummah Wake Up’ CD. The song takes up the serious issues of honor killing and other persisting forms of discrimination against women in the Islamic world today. An excerpt: “You may not bury me in earth at birth, but there’s no difference when you dictate my worth. You shed no tears as you keep me deprived, you might as well just bury me alive...” With great poise and beauty and her powerful, young, soulful voice, Amberine exemplifies the ongoing struggle of Muslim women to realize the human rights that Islam and the Prophet Muhammad bestowed on them 1,400 years ago.

The final presentation of the forum was on the topic of dance in Islam. For this, PMU was fortunate to be able to give the floor to the Reverend, or Shaykha, Tasnim Fernandez. Shaykha Tasnim has immersed herself in the Sufi path for over three decades and, among many other roles and achievements, is a trained whirler in the tradition of the Turkish Mevlevi Order. Wearing a long robe, feet bare, glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, radiating serenity and a loving spirit, Shaykha Tasnim spoke in a gentle and melodious voice, beginning her talk with a reading from the divan of the great Master Rumi.

During her talk she was able to show in a very natural way, and without actually dancing (or “turning” as she calls it), how the dance of the Sufi reflects the philosophy of Sufism and creates a very concentrated space for prayer—not a trance-like state as is often assumed—where the circle of worshipers, the dervishes, unite with the Divine Love. She pointed out that this union was not just pursued or realized on a personal level but on behalf of all humankind. In a very personal note, Shaykha Tasnim chose this occasion to announce that she has accepted Islam, or, as she put it, that Islam has accepted her and that since having become a Muslim, every aspect of the sema (Sufi ceremony) has changed and taken on a new dimension for her.

To end this rich program, Dr. Scott Marcus made good on his earlier promise to play the ‘oud, time permitting, and was invited back up to the stage, where he masterfully performed a lute-accompanied song in the Turkish Ilahi tradition, repeatedly intoning the most central words of the Islamic faith “La illaha illa-Allah” (There is no god but God), a very fitting ending to an educational, artistic and spiritual afternoon.

PMU’s next educational forum will be held on November 11, 2-4 p.m., at USC’s University Religious Center. The topic is ‘Human Rights and Democracy in Islam’ and what Shariah Law says about them. The event will feature scholarly presentations as well as discussion and a poetry reading.

The vast majority of Muslims would agree with the substance of the Pope's lecture – that faith cannot be coerced and that aggressive, coercive violence in the name of religion goes against the nature of God and human beings. However, we take exception to his quoting Byzantine Emperor Manuel II who challenged a Muslim scholar, saying, "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Pope had to know that this description of Muhammad and his teachings would be viewed by Muslims around the world not only as patently false, but also as terribly offensive. Such a characterization of any religious figure would be offensive to his or her followers, unless followed by a clear condemnation. At a time when tensions run high between certain elements in the West and in the Muslim world, we expect the leader of a world religion to work for rapprochement rather than stirring up the pot with provocative remarks.

We encourage the Muslim community world-wide to express our dismay and frustration over the Pope's remarks with calm, reason, and to seek redress through dialogue, not expressions of outrage. We should follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad who ignored insults, and of another figure Muslims revere -- Jesus -- who taught us to turn the other cheek. We call on the Pope to recant this depiction of the Prophet and Islam, and to foster open dialogue between the Catholic church and Muslim institutions.

For details, see the full flyer.

The remark by a prominent Muslim refugee-rights activist troubled me greatly: "Zionists [are] abusing this issue," he announced curtly when he said he would not be joining me and hundreds of other people on Sunday at a "Scream for Darfur" rally at Queen's Park in Toronto.

This line of thinking, that Jews have somehow stolen the issue of Darfur's genocide by actively campaigning against it, has been making the rounds in cyberspace and needs a rebuttal.

The fact that more than 200,000 Darfurians, almost all of them Muslims, have been killed in an ongoing genocide; the fact that more than a million Muslim Darfurians are displaced refugees living in squalor and fear, appears not to have registered with the leadership of traditional Muslim organizations and mosques in this country.

One would have expected Muslim organizations to be leading the call for this week's debate on Darfur in Parliament. One expected them this past weekend to stand in solidarity with their fellow Muslims suffering in Sudan, but that did not happen. The city's Muslim elite was conspicuous by its absence.

Elfadl Elsharief, the Muslim Sudanese who organized the rally, angrily dismissed the notion that the Darfur tragedy is an exaggeration and that he and his organizers were being used by Zionists.

"It is nonsense to suggest that the death, destruction and the suffering of the Darfurian people is imaginary or that Zionists are using us as propaganda," he told me at the rally. "The Sudanese government-backed militias are the people who are killing their fellow Sudanese. The tragedy is that it is Muslims who are killing other Muslims."

Indeed, it certainly appears that some kind of Arabic-Islamic ideology is being used in Sudan to ethnically cleanse marginalized citizens who are not considered true Muslims by virtue of being black. "To suggest that this is some sort of a U.S.-Israel conspiracy is ludicrous and insane," said Mr. Elsharief. "Muslims of Arab background should stand shoulder to shoulder with the Darfurian Muslims; unfortunately, they are not. That is a shame," he added, as he walked away shaking his head in despair.

Mr. Elsharief's frustration was shared by Mohamed Haroun, the eloquent president of the Darfuri Association of Canada. "A lot of us feel that some Muslims, who dominate the community, do not consider us African Muslims as equals. I am afraid there is widespread racism against African Muslims by other Muslims. How many more Darfuri Muslims should die before other Muslims will stand up against the Sudanese government?"

The sentiments of hurt expressed by my two Sudanese Muslim colleagues are shared by Muslims across the world, but do not find expression in the Muslim leadership. Last month, Fatema Abdul Rasul wrote angrily in The Daily Star of Lebanon: "For the entire Muslim and Arab world to remain silent when thousands of people in Darfur continue to be killed is shameful and hypocritical."

El-Farouk Khaki, the immigration lawyer who was accused of being used by Zionists because he had sent out the invitation to Sunday's rally, agreed that there is widespread internal discrimination within some Muslim societies. "This is racism at its worst. I am an African-Canadian; I can tell you in no uncertain terms that the Darfur crisis has not made news in the traditional Muslim organizations because Darfurians are black. Had they been Bosnian, Kosovar, Arab, Pakistani or Iranian, I can bet you, these grounds would have been full of slogan-chanting Muslims demanding justice. Muslims need to address their internalized racism before they ask others to respect us," said Mr. Khaki, who is secretary-general of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

For three years, the government of Sudan has been engaging in genocide of the people of Darfur. For all these years, Khartoum has invoked its Islamic credentials to stave off any criticism or censure from inside the Muslim world, falsely posturing itself as a defender of Muslim frontiers against Western imperialism. It is time for Muslims to rip off Khartoum's mask of deception and speak the truth.

"I'm very excited about this development," said Co-Chair Pamela Taylor. "In order to take the next step forward, PMU needed an on the ground base of operations. I'm very pleased that Ani has stepped forward to take up this position. She is a dynamic individual and I'm sure that she will galvanize the PMU.

2:256 Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil and believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold, that never breaks. And Allah hears and knows all things.

10:99 And had thy Sustainer so willed, all those who live on earth would surely have attained to faith, all of them: do you, then, think that you could compel people to believe?

18:29: “And say: ‘The truth has come from your Sustainer: let, then, him who wills, believe in it, and let him who wills, reject it.’"

109:6 To you your way, to me mine.

PMU, further, condemns interfaith violence, such as the recent arson of churches in Nigeria and Pakistan. There is no justification for burning or destruction of the sacred buildings of other faiths. The same verses which apply to Muslim on Muslim violence apply to violence against Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists or members of other religious group. Tolerance and acceptance is the Islamic response to diversity. Political motivations, outrage over cartoons, religious bigotry, and fear of diversity are not acceptable excuses for murder, arson, and rampaging.

Many of the cartoons are deeply offensive, not so much because they portrayed Prophet Muhammad, but because they are hateful, slanderous, and inflammatory to the point of verging on racism, particularly the ones showing the Prophet with a bomb-turban, as the devil in disguise, or blindfolded and bristling with knives. These cartoons pander to the basest prejudices, defaming the Prophet’s character with gross stereotypes of Arab culture, equating the mistakes of his followers with his personage. The cartoonists had to know those images were going to be as provocative and insulting as Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” or Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” images. It is clear that they were meant not to open dialogue, as the editors who requisitioned them claim, but to provoke; it is hardly customary or productive to start a conversation by spitting in the face of the person you wish to talk to.

During his life, Prophet Muhammad was received with great love by many, but he also met with great resistance, as were most Prophets. He was insulted and cursed, at times physically assaulted, and yet, he did not return insult for insult, attack for attack. One such incidence occurred in Taif, where the citizens of the city set their children to throwing stones at him. Rather than seeking vengeance, Muhammad asked God to forgive the people of Taif, much as Christ asked God to forgive his tormentors, saying they did not know what they did.

This example is in keeping with the Qur’an, which advises Muslims to, “Keep to forgiveness and enjoin kindness, and turn away from the ignorant (Chapter 7, Verse 199) and which tells us "Invite all unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and reason with them in the best of ways." (Chapter 16, Verse 125) Clearly, the groups of Muslims who are threatening violence against the cartoonists, who have burned and torn down embassies, who carry signs screaming “Death to those who insult Islam,” even those who boycotted Danish manufacturers and withdrawn ambassadors, have betrayed these injunctions, and abandoned the Prophet’s example.

The other principle that had been ignored by these would-be defenders of the prophet is that Islam brooks no compulsion in religion, nor does it demand followers of other religions adhere to its religious sensibilities. “There shall be no compulsion in matters of faith” (Chapter 2, Verse 256) and “To you your way, to me mine,” (Chapter 109, verse 6) lay out Islam’s cardinal rules of tolerance and make it clear people who are not Muslim are not expected to follow Islamic religious rules. Even though many Muslims believe Islam prohibits portrayals of the Prophet, the Danish cartoonists aren’t bound by Islam’s rules. They can’t be blaspheming because they aren’t Muslims.

Freedom of expression is a cardinal value in both the West and in Islam. (The Prophet never chastised his followers for challenging him, for questioning, indeed he praised people who did not let their shyness get in the way of speaking frankly. Another value, we note, that many in the Muslim world have neglected to uphold). We must defend the right of cartoonists to draw satirical, biting, even blasphemous commentary, and the right of papers to publish items which may be offensive or perceived as heretical by some. A society without such freedom rapidly becomes poisonously repressed and out of balance.

But at the same time, when we must insist that the practice of freedom of expression must be responsible. It is universally agreed that inciting others to murder is a form of free speech we will not tolerate. And there are items that no editor would publish, because they are too bigoted, because they are too obscene, or because they foster hatred and intolerance to such an extent as to threaten the very fabric of the society we live in.

It is never easy to draw the line between ironic reflection that will make people laugh, pointed commentary that will open the doors of discussion on difficult issues, and pieces that incite to hatred and from there perhaps to violence. It is almost impossible to draw up universal standards by which one can judge whether to print an item or not, but we must still strive for responsibility in our decisions.

This is particularly true in a time where tensions run high – where segments of society are disenfranchised, alienated, and aggrieved. While some Europeans might like for European Muslims to “go home” that is not going to happen; and even if those who emigrated from other countries did return to their places of birth, that would leave millions of Muslims for whom Europe is their only home. In this atmosphere, publishing cartoons that are racist, hurtful, and provocative can only lead to a widening of the gap – affirming the opinions of those who think badly of Muslims, and reinforcing the feelings that Muslims are the new Jews of Europe.