Tagged: religious freedom

Muslims, Christians, Jews: get over yourselves. It’s getting old.

DISCLAIMER: This post is full of opinions referenced from facts, this is NOT an article. This is my personal opinion and you are free to think that it’s worthless. But, you’ll be really stupid and I’ll be sorry for offending you (but I won’t really care).

comic from www.lovingit.co.uk

Ok… so, seriously. This is getting tiring, ya’ll. If someone already has hate and they want to feed it, they make a situation worse. With this mentality, you don’t want peace, you don’t want closure, you don’t want sane answers. You want something to blame, something familiarly nasty to cling to, which makes you just like the radical terrorists (who, uh, by the way, referring to the incident that happened in Egypt, haven’t been actually proven to be Muslim yet). But, we’ll entertain the idea for now since those dirty Muslims are known for their “terroristic tendencies.”

I know what you’re going to say: “But, like, I’m like sitting here in the states and I heard that my friend who was in Cairo heard from their friend who was in Sharm from their friend in Alexandria five blocks down from the Church that people were yelling the Islamic war cry ‘Allah Akbar!’ So like, of course they were Muslims, those Muslims are bastards going straight to hell.. fel naaaaaar, gohanaaam ya kelab.”

Seriously? Islamic war cry?

True story, Christian priests around the world have called it that in letters to governments and/or congregations all over the world referring to this incident. So first of all, my response to this is Allah Akbar, bitches.

Don’t worry, I’m not getting ready to virtually blow up Facebook. ‘Allah Akbar’ means God is great. It’s not a damn Islamic war cry. It’s like Christians saying Praise the Lord when something scary, good, or crazy happens. If I was there that day, I would have said Allah Akbar. It’s called a figure of speech, matter of fact, I’ve heard Arab Christians say it before. Again, I know what you’re going to say: “but the Quran talks about fighting and jihad and you crazy blood-thirsty Muslims want to kill us all and drink our sweet blood.”

Really?

Jihad is a damn Arabic word and it means struggle, referring to our everyday struggles in this world, whether it be in war, at work, or with our families & friends. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the Bible also talks about our inner struggles. In fact, the Bible mentions war and extermination significantly more than the Quran, according to a very recent study done by Philip Jenkins, a U.S. religious historian who is a Professor at Penn State (the video is here).

Basically, I’m tired of having to feel like we as Muslims need to apologize everyday for what idiots do.

My fellow Christians, we are sorry for what happened all over the world, especially Egypt. Not as Muslims, but as human beings who can’t stand to see other people suffer for no reason, we are sorry for our fellow people, our Christian neighbors. I understand that emotions are extremely raw right now. But, the terrorists claim to be in pain too so they choose to hate people and decide to blow them up, sounds simple yeah. But that’s the jest of it, they’re simply sick. Their radicalism grew from blind hatred. All hatred is bad, but nothing stabs you in the heart like blind hatred. You want the facts? If the Old Testament was misinterpreted and taken “literally” without reading it in CONTEXT, we would be blowing up people left and right. Oh wait, that’s what the crusaders did, and that’s what today’s Christian and Muslim radicals preach to this day.

After the incident in Egypt, as a proud American-Egyptian from Alexandria, where the bombing took place, I cried. Yes, I’m broadcasting it to the world, I got emotional. Even though, hey, I’m not supposed to get emotional and show feelings or “wear my heart on my sleeve” because I’m like supposed to be a journalist… or whatever. Well, then, I guess I better find me another career path.

This is where my family lives, this is the street that’s five minutes away from my home. Just thinking that they were in harm’s way before even knowing the facts, I got crazy emotional. And, after seeing the last status of one of the victim’s a Coptic-American friend of mine posted, I cried again for a girl who was just hoping to celebrate New Years and go in that Church that night just to be “close to God.”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we all need to realize that we are people. We are all dirty, emotional, conflicted people. Clinging on to the blind hatred is what got us here in the first place and it’s going to destroy us, as Muslims, Christians, Egyptians, and PEOPLE. Now, these days I’ve seen an excess of videos being posted about “true Islam.” You know, when someone goes on youtube and searches for “radical Islam” or “crazy terrorist” and thinks that FINALLY the cat’s out the bag! Thinking FINALLYYY they found out what “true Islam” is. Maybe you don’t get my obnoxious sarcasm. But, guys, this is really getting old and obvious.

I went on youtube, searched for radical Christians, just to see what it would feel like to be an ignorant person for five minutes, and frankly, I was scared. For two reasons,

1) George Bush’s face popped up again in my life.

2) There were religious figures and “scholars” talking about killing and wiping out Muslims and anyone else against Christianity for that matter. In fact, a white, all male “Christian” group, the Ku Klux Klan who used to hang people (just because they were different, black, or non-Christian) also popped up. They still exist today by the way, waiting for a “revolution.”

Now, I could start hating all white Christian males, specifically American ones. Buuuuuut, I don’t wanna. And hey, I’m not that smart, but I’m smarter than that. Just like most friends I know and are dear to me, I was raised and educated to know the difference and to seek sanity in order to understand both sides of a story. Plus, that would just eliminate any chance of me and Mark Wahlberg ever having children. Mark, if this somehow falls in your hands, please don’t be alarmed just because I’m Muslim, call me;) Anyways…

Since the dawn of time, religions have been fighting each other. The Crusades, for example, where Muslims where attacked in the Name of Jesus and in the name of Christianity, were nothing but a dirty wipeout for greed, land, and power. As a “true” Muslim, it offends me that someone would use the name of a Prophet to do their dirty work. If it makes you feel any better, Muslims are being blown up every single day and in their place of worship too. If it’s not in Iraq, it’s in Afghanistan, if it’s not in Afghanistan, it’s in Lebanon, if it’s not there, it’s in Palestine. Ahh, Palestine. Or Israel, or whatever you wanna call it. remember good ol’ Israel? “Proudly blowing up Muslims since 1948.”

*Disclaimer* By all means this does not mean that idiots should seek out Christians and Jews to inflict the same pain upon innocent people. And yet, my friends, I just KNOW someone reading this is gonna leave out everything I said and take that one sentence out of context.

Look at the bigger picture. History repeats itself. Instead of apologizing and hating each other, let’s be proactive, put our egos aside and work together to “restore sanity,” like Jon Stewart said. Let’s educate each other, let’s help each other. Tell me what I don’t know or see, and I’ll do the same for you. And for my fellow Egyptians, let’s talk about this blind, useless hate that we’ve been building up and take it down instead of trying to destroy each other. The people who committed that crime in Alexandria know that there’s tension in Egypt between select groups of Christians and Muslims, and they also know the tension that’s between the people and the government. And like idiots, we’ve fallen into their trap. Let’s make them accountable for their actions now and prevent this from happening again for ALL of us. Let’s show them that we are unbreakable and fix what happened as much as possible. I know we aren’t in Utopia, but things have to be set right. Or, semi-right.

Now you can sit here and call Muslims crazy blood-thristy monsters (we ain’t in Twilight) or you can be proactive and stop contributing to the hate. Christians have every right to be upset. But, after seeing the reactions, and looking at the history between the two faiths, everyone could say they’re upset. The Jews could also get in on some of this good ol’ raw hate/anger. Looking at history, it’s hard to say who threw the first punch. But also, looking at history we can learn not to repeat it.

 

“It takes two to tango.”  (Speaking of, does anyone want to take latin dance lessons with me? All this hatred makes me wanna dance my pain away.)

 

W.W.J.D -What Would Jesus Do?

W.W.M.D- What Would Mohamed Do?

But, it doesn’t matter. We’re all screwed anyway. Have a great day. Ok, I’m seriously done with this note now, you can go.


Yeah, I’m Biased.

“Be totally objective, because if you’re not being objective, you are not doing your job,” our professors said.

In school, they always taught us as future journalists, we should never be biased. This is true.

Objectivity is the foundation of real journalism. It’s the way things should be and personally, I’ve always firmly stood for objective journalism. But, since life is not how it “should be,” we’re obliged to change things up a bit and put our own ideas in some of the things we write. Sometimes journalism has to take different forms. As long as you acknowledge that others have a different story and you are willing to listen, there is no reason why it shouldn’t take these various forms.

In light of recent events, discrimination has been creeping into our lives, hindering our thoughts, and our freedoms. We are forced to take a stance on certain issues, otherwise we’d be compromising the essence of who we are, and sometimes even compromising our integrity.

For example, Muslims are the new Jews. Cliche, but hell yeah I said it. Today’s Muslims are being treated almost exactly the same way Jews were treated by the Nazis before WWII. When you talk to some people about this problem or ask them why Muslims are being scapegoated, they respond by saying, “Well, the terrorists are Muslims!”

History is repeating itself, even though people lost their lives and fought world wars to prevent it from doing so.

So this brings me to a second point: Really? Is “they did it, they’re Muslim” going to be your educated answer to every problem thats going on in today’s world? So every time a rapist who just happens to be a Christian or an atheist or Jew rapes someone or kills someone in some kind of gang related incident in the world are you going to blame it on his or her religion? Or to remind you of a more recent example, since some man like Pastor Terry Jones from Florida wanted to burn the Muslim holy book, the Quran, this past September 11th, can I now assume that all white Christian males from Florida are close-minded, kooks who don’t know how to act responsibly for their country and their race?

Well, the answer is NO! I can’t and I won’t. Why? Because we should all refuse all forms of discrimination. At the end of the day we are all people. Whether you are straight, gay, black, white, brown, pink, purple, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, rich, poor… I couldn’t say this enough, people. We are individuals. That’s why I’m in love with the country that I’ve lived in since I was a child, the country that brought me up to be who I am today. That’s why I defend this country everywhere I go around the globe because inequality is not what America is all about: Individualism & Equality. Yes, they deserve to be capitalized, italicized, and bolded.

Maybe at one point in history, America might have been filled with bigotry, but we’re not letting that happen again. We’re speaking out against injustices, whether people choose to listen or not, we’re speaking out for what’s right. We are all people and we are all different. Being diverse comes with the territory. We are unique not to use our differences against each other, on the contrary. If you think a certain group of people is weird or bad, or if you hate someone just because of their skin color or creed, then you need help. And, its OK that you need help, but you should be willing to accept that you just don’t know enough about that group of people to pass any kind of judgment. We are different so we could learn from each other. We are different to help not hinder.

I know the world will never suddenly change, but that won’t stop people with views like mine from standing for what we believe in. If defending peace, equality, & diversity seems to be biased, then so be it. Yeah, I’m biased.

Egypt to ban full veil?

niqab women

photo courtesy of www.brisbanetimes.com.au.

It is official. The full veil, or niqab, is being banned. However, it is not being banned everywhere in Egypt. Last week, Head of Al-Azhar Mohammed Tantawi said that he intended to ban the wearing of the niqab in Al-Azhar University. While they are only banning the niqab inside the Azhar classrooms, this may actually be a step forward to ban the practice in Egypt all together.

I know what you are thinking. Whatever happened to religious freedom or the freedom to dress how you prefer? Well, personally, I am 100% for personal freedom and human rights. However, what I am not for is taking away a woman’s identity. Your face is one of the most important elements of your identity, and you just can’t hide that from the world. Niqab actually has nothing to do with Islam. In fact, Tantawi emphasized that niqab is not an Islamic practice, but rather an old tradition. History has it that it started as a tradition by Bedouin Arabs. A tradition that was forced upon women by the Arab men.

Covering up your face not only takes away your identity, but it also makes people skeptical of you and your actions. Some Muslims think that those who are afraid of Niqabis are stereotyping. Well, in many cases people are not only skeptical because Niqabis are Muslim, they are skeptical because behind the veil is someone hiding. I am a Muslim and I’m also skeptical of those who wear the Niqab. Why? Simply because I do not know who is behind that veil. I don’t even know that this person under the veil is really a female. Also, it’s a known fact that facial expressions are vital components of conversations between people and I can’t even read their facial expressions in order to have a proper conversation with them.

This is also one of the reasons why niqab is indeed a security issue in Egypt, as well as all over the world. In my opinion, those who wear the niqab are often seen as mysterious. You can never know who is behind that full, black veil. People in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world abuse it all the time. Some men wear it to disguise themselves as women so they can ride the women’s metro cars or buses to rub against the women.  These sexually deprived men use the niqab, which is supposed to be a “religious” symbol, to harass women in a very disgusting manner. Also, many prostitutes use the niqab to return home unseen by their neighbors or enter buildings that are guarded by security.

So, why should we as women embrace a tradition that was forced upon us since pre-Islamic times? Many women in Egypt will tell you that they wear the Niqab in order to hide from the men’s animalistic stares. But, is that what we should really do? Hide and conceal even our faces because a group of disgusting, immoral men can’t control themselves? According to an article posted in the New York Times, 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women said that they were harassed in some form in the streets of Egypt. Even veiled women were included in those statistics. As a Cairo resident, I have personally seen my veiled friends get harassed. I have also talked to many veiled women who have been harassed. In fact, many women who wear the full veil get sexual remarks from men about their ‘mysterious’ eyes. Again, we as women are letting the men in society steer us into the wrong direction. If this is the reason that some women cover their faces, then they are simply giving in to the negative pressures of society.

My word to all my fellow sisters out there is this: don’t hide your identity that God gave you. Show your face and let your voice be heard. If you believe that dressing modestly is what you should do, then cover your hair or your body as you wish. But, don’t let anyone take away your identity, and certainly don’t take it away yourself.