When one cares about
a
newborn kitten,
facts about Islam
seem utterly unreal.
Jihad? Sharia?
How could they matter?
The mother cat looks
out for her kittens.
I still care about
Muslim
beliefs, Islam beliefs,
the truth about Islam,
the history of Islam,
jihad, sharia ...
Islam - is it really a danger
to the West?
People worrying about loads of Muslim immigration. People against Sharia.
Islam - is this fuss about it justified? Is it really a danger to the West?
Many of us know it is.
But around us, many people believe we're either Islamophobes or crackpots who've read too many conspiracy theories.
And sometimes the thought that Islam could be - is - dangerous to my world seems unbelievable to me as well.
How could it be that there are people who actually prefer Sharia to equality between women and men?
It's all too difficult for me to believe, in my heart.
This doesn't just happen to me. I'm with a friend. We both have this simultaneous knowing and non-knowing about Islam. The beliefs expressed in the Qu'ran and other Islamic religious texts are so outrageous that it feels they can't be real: kill infidels and people who leave Islam. Stone for adultery, no matter how much the person repents. Make all non-Muslims submit to lower status and pay extra taxes.
It was the same way for me about feminism. I had a hard time taking feminism seriously because non-feminism seemed utterly outrageous. I grew up in a home where girls were considered equal to boys. (In fact, I rather feel my father believed girls were a bit superior to boys.) So non-feminism was as outrageous to me as many of the passages in the Qu'ran.
Still I became involved with feminism - I taught Women's Studies courses - because it became clear to me that there were actually a lot of barriers against women.
And I've likewise become involved with the counter-jihadi movement - in my words, with the pro-freedom, pro-flourishing movement - for the same reason. It's clear there is actually a major threat to the world I love and value - a world with ever increasing equality between women and men, between people of all races and sexual orientations.
To do what I can, I've put together a teleseminar series.
But sometimes I have to act against something so astonishing to me that I can't quite believe it's real. It's a bit like being caught in one of those suspense movies where naive people move into a haunted house, and cannot believe.
In my case, even when I can't believe, I trust the evidence. What is happening is real and needs to be dealt with.
And that bring me to what I'll end on. I wrote an anthem of sorts - a celebration of freedom - a couple of weeks ago. I've just been working on it with a musician friend (I'm mainly a lyricist.) Here are the beginning lyrics. Very simple.
I Live Freedom
I live freedom
not death
I live freedom
with each breath
freedom – liberty
to feel
to be
to think freely
I live freedom
not death
I live freedom
with each breath
freedom – liberty
to care
to love
to embrace
life, living, this vast state
Click here for the rest of these lyrics about loving and living freedom.
Elsa
August 4, 2012
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Not being able to believe
things that don't make sense to us.
I imagine that happened with many Jews
in Nazi Germany. Unbelievable,
what was happening around them.
Yes - but also true, real -
just sometimes impossible to believe -
just like some Islam beliefs,
some truths and facts about Islam.
I think of what is easy for me to believe.
Not Islam beliefs, facts about Islam,
but universal ethics.
Over and over, I come to something so different
from the truth about Islam, facts about Islam -
the ethics of caring.
For lots of resources about
Islam beliefs, click here.
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