I have to share this.
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As-salaam alaykum everyone:
I have found this discussion very interesting and informative, and thank
everyone for participating.
As someone who was involved in Muslim community responses to the Salman
Rushdie controversy back in 1989 (in Washington state), I would like to
encourage everyone to study that situation and the lessons learned from it
for Muslim community activism and outreach. Our Muslim community leadership -
local, national, and international - handled that situation the same way as
the Danish cartoon controversy is being handled now. The approaches and
arguments are about the same now as then.
However, virtually all international, national and local Muslim community
representatives from that time learned not to take the bait from those
people, groups and forces wanting for their own purposes to prompt outbreaks
of "Muslim extremism" (or whatever you want to call it). There have been many
such attempts since that time until this Danish cartoon situation. Instead,
wisdom has prevailed for the most part and public education by Muslims has
taken sensible approaches that sidesteps these sorts of stereotyped
situations and avoids bad publicity, at least, until this Danish cartoon
controversy erupted.
I urge everyone to learn from American Muslim history, and from this recent
situation, and be prepared for the next such inevitable situation. I don't
see the involvement of the previous generation of Muslim community leaders in
handling this debate. I wonder if they were even consulted by the newer
generation of Muslim community leadership for their experience (even though
Muslim culture encourages us to value the experience of our elders, etc.)
I imagine this generation of Muslim community leaders will learn their
lesson, as did the previous one, and not take the bait for a while, perhaps
15-20 years. By that time, there will have been another turnover of
leadership, to the next generation of leaders who didn't experience this
Danish cartoon controversy, and won't remember there ever was a Salman
Rushdie controversy. They will handle the next big "freedom of _expression_ vs.
insulting Islam" controversy by taking the same approaches and using the same
arguments again, without having considered how effective they are (if at
all).
This is because we don't seem to learn from our community's history, or from
the experienced people of our community.
We need to be aware that the same types of issues and controversies keep
recurring, and that lessons have been learned about how to handle them. The
knowledge and experiences gained needs to be passed on by previous
generations of leadership. Newer generations of leadership need to be aware
that the situations they are dealing with are not new, and that they need to
maintain a relationship with the experienced generations of leadership and
learn something from them. There are lots of precedents and existing
information available with regard to how to handle controversial situations,
and we need to have a way to share these kinds of knowledge.
I urge everyone to give this matter some serious thought, otherwise it is all
going to be a matter of "it has all happened before and it will all happen
again." We will all be wasting a lot of good energy on "the same old, same
old" thing over and over again instead of advancing our general goals, a few
of which seem to be improving public awareness of Muslim people, faith and
culture, and protecting our community (people and assets).
Sincerely,
Nahid Khan.
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{Invite (mankind, O Muhammad ) to the Way of your Lord (i.e. Islam) with wisdom (i.e. with the Divine Inspiration and the Qur'an) and fair preaching, and argue with them in a way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Aware of those who are guided.}
(Holy Quran-16:125)
{And who is better in speech than he who [says: "My Lord is Allah (believes in His Oneness)," and then stands straight (acts upon His Order), and] invites (men) to Allah's (Islamic Monotheism), and does righteous deeds, and says: "I am one of the Muslims."} (Holy Quran-41:33)
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "By Allah, if Allah guides one person by you, it is better for you than the best types of camels." [al-Bukhaaree, Muslim]
The prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also said, "Whoever calls to guidance will have a reward similar to the reward of the one who follows him, without the reward of either of them being lessened at all."
[Muslim, Ahmad, Aboo Daawood, an-Nasaa'ee, at-Tirmidhee, Ibn Maajah]
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