Tag: Muslim

Charlie Hebdo’s Muslim Tragedy

There is a self-inflicted tragedy in the Muslim response to Charlie Hebdo.

In the discussions of Charlie Hebdo and the events surrounding it, one divide between the west and Islam was clear.

While the cultural west (those who identify culturally and/ideologically with values that grew out of the West) cry out the attack on Charlie Hebdo as an affront to freedom of speech, Muslims reiterate the demand that the Prophet not be depicted in any form.

The issue is not about violence. It is not about response to the cartoon. Any attempt to refer to the issue as though it is about violence is akin to saying the Christian response to abortions is to bomb its clinics. That violence have occurred is a secondary event. It resulted from other concerns that have not been sufficiently explored.

What need to be investigated is the difference in values. It is this difference that determined our action and reaction.

While the west claim freedom of speech as an absolute right, Islam does not confer a similar position to speech.

Instead, in Islam, freedom is qualified to only what is good. We have the freedom to do what is good, not to participate in conduct that are evil or criminal.

The west however, has struggled in framing the discussion within a coherent discourse. It claims to grant absolute freedom to speech. But it admits that freedom to speech cannot impinge on another person’s rights or represent public menace.

The concept of “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” is traditionally seen as a limit to speech. To falsely shout fire in the theatre may cause a panic resulting in stampede, death and destruction. The person’s right to speech then, does not include his right to be a menace.

But that is not where the limits are now. While France and its cultural allies claim to believe unequivocally in freedom of speech, to deny the holocaust, performing the quenelle and other expressions deemed to be anti-Semitic lay outside of this freedom.

The limit to freedom is therefore not only in relation to public menace but also on who it applies to.

While Islam provides an objective and clear standard, the west’s limit is subjective. It demands some groups to be protected while denying others of that right.

But what is interesting in the discussion the last week is how Muslims are internalising western cultural values. Muslim leaders have come out in support and promotion of freedom of speech as though it is an absolute. And this support is subsequently promoted and universalised.

Tony Abbott’s response to Keysar Trad’s comments is a case in point. Trad, an Australian Muslim community leader claimed to reject Charlie Hebdo’s caricature of the Prophet but recognise their right to offend. This was promoted by the media and the Prime Minister with the added demand that Muslims who took umbrage should emulate Trad’s stance.

Western values are not theirs. It is ours.

The right to offend and insult is now a given. It does not merit further discussion. It is universalised and we are to adopt it as our values.

Islamic values do not exist independently anymore. It only exists if it is compatible with the west.

That is the self-inflicted tragedy of the Muslim response to Charlie Hebdo.

Source: www.almakhazin.com

January 16, 2015
Al Qaeda Claim Of Responsibility In Charlie Hebdo Attack Serves As Reminder Of Danger It Still Poses

WASHINGTON — The younger of the two brothers who killed 12 people in Paris last week most likely used his older brother’s passport in 2011 to travel to Yemen, where he received training and US$20,000 (S$26,600) from Al Qaeda’s affiliate there, presumably to finance attacks when he returned home to France.

American counterterrorism officials said on Wednesday that they now believed Cherif Kouachi was the aggressor in the attacks — not his elder brother Said Kouachi, as they had first thought — but that Said might also have travelled to Yemen, as the American and French authorities have said.

A fuller portrait of the brothers has emerged as an international effort is focused on determining who might have been behind the attack on the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and what direct role, if any, that Al Qaeda, its affiliates or their bitter rival, the Islamic State, had in planning and ordering the assault.

In a video and written statement, the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen on Wednesday formally claimed responsibility for the deadly assault. It said the target had been chosen by the Al Qaeda leadership, but did not specify which leaders.

If the claim of direct responsibility holds up, it would make the attacks in France the deadliest planned and financed by Al Qaeda on Western soil since the transit bombings in London in 2005 that killed 52 people. It would also serve as a reminder of the continued danger from the group at a time when much of the attention of Europe and the United States has shifted to the Islamic State, the militant organisation that controls large swathes of Syria and Iraq and has become notorious for beheading hostages.

The new information about the Kouachi brothers could help explain what Cherif Kouachi had told a French television station before his death last week; that he had gone to Yemen in 2011, probably through Oman, and was financed by Anwar Awlaki, the American-born cleric who oversaw attacks against the West by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, also known as AQAP.

The American authorities now believe Cherif most likely had contact with Awlaki in Yemen, possibly in person.

But it is still unclear what specific guidance the Al Qaeda branch gave the Kouachis about carrying out an attack, though it is believed that the satirical magazine was one of the targets discussed, an American counterterrorism official said.

“I suspect that Cherif Kouachi did engage AQAP members in Yemen, but that he was not fully brought into the organisation,” said Mr Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington. “Perhaps concerned about infiltration by Western agents, AQAP might have offered minimal training, directed the group towards publicly-announced target lists and sent him on his way.”

Mr Fisher added that if that had happened, “AQAP did not exactly direct the attack, but it had some knowledge of the Kouachis and could plausibly try to claim credit”.

The statement by the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen called the Kouachi brothers, who were killed by the police last Friday, “two heroes of Islam”.

But it referred to the actions of Amedy Coulibaly, who attacked a police officer and was killed by the police after holding hostages in a kosher supermarket, as a coincidence and did not take responsibility for them.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US said it had determined that the video clip claiming responsibility was genuine, but that it had not reached a conclusion on whether or not the claims being made in the video were valid.

“The big question that investigators need to look at is, how much of a role did AQAP play in the actual planning in the final stages of this process?” said Mr J M Berger, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They could have given these guys money and training three or four years ago, but when they executed it, it could have been done with money (from other sources).”

Source: www.todayonline.com

January 16, 2015
How Would Prophet Muhammad Have Reacted To Charlie Hebdo Caricatures?

The level of freedom of expression in the early centuries of Islam would put much of the current Muslim world to shame.

After the brutal assassination of two visitors and eight of its staff members, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has vowed to continue its trademark irreverence and secular iconoclasm, which critics have accused of being Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian.

Its first issue since the tragic massacre features a cartoon of a tearful Prophet Muhammad holding a sign showing the famous twitter hashtag “Je Suis Charlie.” The turbaned figure stands under the slogan “All is forgiven.”

As a staunch advocate of freedom of expression, I believe the publication has every right to run such a cartoon, even if their decision would upset the religious sensibilities of some Muslims such as Egypt’s grand mufti, Shawqi Allam, who blasted the cartoon as racist.

The caricature drove me to consider some hypothetical questions: What would Muhammad make of this? Would the prophet forgive Charlie Hebdo’s lampooning of him and his religion? If he were alive today, would he tweet his solidarity with the slain cartoonists?

My own reading of Muhammad’s life and history leads me to conclude that although the prophet may not have tweeted “#JeSuisCharlie,” he would have condemned these savage murders and even forgiven French satirists no matter what insult was directed his way.

While some might find my assertion hard to believe, it is backed up by Muhammad’s own actions and convictions. Although the prophet’s contemporary self-appointed defenders take offence on his behalf and believe they are doing his will by protesting perceived insults or punishing those who commit them, their actions could not be further from the truth.

During the vulnerable early years of Islam, the Islamic prophet endured and tolerated mockery and disdain. Even in victory, Muhammad wisely advised to exercise tolerance. Upon his triumphant return to Mecca, he forgave the inhabitants of the city which had been home to his fiercest enemies. He even pardoned a member of his inner circle, Abdullah Ibn Saad, who denounced the prophet as a charlatan.

More importantly, the Islam Muhammad preached recognised the pluralistic nature of society and guaranteed freedom of belief. Surat al-Baqara of the Quran reminds Muslims: “There shall be no compulsion in religion.”

Significantly, the constitution Muhammad drew up in Medina included in its definition of the “umma” all the oasis’ inhabitants, not just its Muslims. These included both the “people of the book”, ie: Christians and Jews, but also, perhaps surprisingly, pagans – all of whom were granted equal political, cultural and religious rights as Muslims.

There was so much freedom of thought and expression in the early centuries of Islam that it would put much of the current Muslim world to shame. Although many contemporary Muslims are convinced that ridiculing Islam and rejecting religion are western innovations, this is closer to wishful thinking than historical fact.

In Christendom, Muhammad and Islam was derided from a rival religious vantage point; that the prophet of Islam was believed to be the false prophet of a fake religion. He was even condemned to the ninth circle of Dante’s inferno where he supposedly stands “rent from the chin to where one breaketh wind”.

Within the Islamic world itself, Muhammad and Islam were criticised and mocked from a secular, rationalist, anti-religious perspective.

One example is the religious sceptic and scholar Ibn al-Rawandi (827-911) who, despite his rejection of religion and Islam, lived a long life in the 8th-9th centuries.

Rawandi, who spent a significant part of his life in Baghdad, believed that intellect and science supersede all else, that prophets were unnecessary, that religion was irrational, that Islamic tradition was illogical and that miracles were a hoax.

In neighbouring Syria, a few decades later, the Richard Dawkins of the Abbasid era was born. Abu al-Ala’ al-Maarri (973-1058) was so contemptuous of religion that he divided the world into two types of people: “Those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion, but no brains.”

Maarri also lived to a ripe age. Rather than being visited by assassins, he attracted many students and engaged with scholars of various persuasions, even when he decided to return to his hometown of Maarra to live ascetically in seclusion.

Although this tradition of free thought and scepticism has shrunk over the centuries, it still exists. It even witnessed resurgence in the 20th century – and included the “Dean of Arab Literature”, Taha Hussein – until the conservative Islamist current started to block it in the late 1970s/1980s.

The years since the revolutionary wave in 2011 have seen secularists, sceptics and atheists mounting a comeback. But with some countries equating non-belief to terrorism and arresting atheists, theirs is a risky venture.

But these efforts are essential. Freedom of thought and expression were vital components of Islam’s golden age and lifting Arab and Muslim countries out of their current plight will require a return to that era of free inquiry.

Khaled Diab is an award-winning Egyptian-Belgian journalist, writer and blogger. He is the author of Intimate Enemies: Living with Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. He blogs at www.chronikler.com

Source: www.aljazeera.com

January 16, 2015
Muslim Mayor Of Rotterdam: Muslim Immigrants Can Leave If Dissatisfied With Life In Western Countries

The Moroccan-born mayor of Rotterdam has said Muslim immigrants who do not appreciate the way of life in Western civilisations can ‘f*** off’.

Ahmed Aboutaleb, who arrived in the Netherlands aged 15, spoke out in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last week.

Appearing on live television just hours after the shootings, Mayor Aboutaleb said Muslims who ‘do not like freedom can pack your bags and leave’.

Labour politician Ahmed Aboutaleb, a former journalist who was appointed mayor of the Dutch city in 2008, is known for his straightforward stance on integration.

The 53-year-old won the praise of London-mayor Boris Johnson over his comments last week attacking fellow Muslims who move to Western nations but refuse to accept the Western way of life.

‘It is incomprehensible that you can turn against freedom,’ Mayor Aboutaleb told Dutch current affairs program Nieuwsuur (Newshour).

‘But if you don’t like freedom, for heaven’s sake pack your bags and leave.

‘If you do not like it here because some humorists you don’t like are making a newspaper, may I then say you can f*** off.

‘This is stupid, this so incomprehensible. Vanish from the Netherlands if you cannot find your place here. All those well-meaning Muslims here will now be stared at’.

Mayor Aboutaleb grew up the son of an imam in northern Morocco, but moved to the Netherlands in 1976.

After working as a reporter he became a civil servant before being appointed State Secretary for Social Affairs and Employment in 2007.

When he was appointed mayor of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the country with a population of more than 610,000, he became the first immigrant in such a position in the Netherlands.

Mayor Aboutaleb, who represents the Dutch Labour Party, de Partij van de Arbeid, has long had a no-nonsense approach to immigration and integration.

Speaking to the Observer shortly after his appointment he said his message to immigrants is ‘stop seeing yourself as victims, and if you don’t want to integrate, leave’.

This week, London Mayor Boris Johnson hailed Mayor Aboutaleb as his ‘hero’ and ‘straight to the point’.

‘That is the voice of the Enlightenment, of Voltaire,’ Mr Johnson wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

‘If we are going to win the struggle for the minds of these young people, then that is the kind of voice we need to hear – and it needs above all to be a Muslim voice.’

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

January 14, 2015
French Muslim Philospher Abdennour Bidar: Muslims Must Acknowledge That The Roots Of Terrorism Lies Within Muslim Society

In an essay published October 3, 2014 in the French newspaper Marianne, French Muslim philosopher Abdennour Bidar, author of Self Islam: A Personal History of Islam (Seuil, 2006); Islam without Submission: Muslim Existentialism (Albin Michel, 2008), and A History of Humanism in the West (Armand Colin, 2014), wrote that Muslims cannot make do with denouncing and repudiating terrorist barbarism, but must acknowledge that its roots lie within Muslim society, and especially within the Islam that is prevalent in the Arab world today. He points out that Islam, like all religions, has throughout its history been a source of much good, wisdom and enlightenment, but that today’s mainstream Islam rejects the freedom and flexibility that are advocated by the Koran and instead promotes rigidity and regression that ultimately give rise to terrorism. The Muslim world, he concludes, must therefore reform itself, and especially its education systems, based on principles of freedom of religion and thought, equality, and respect for the other.

The following are translated excerpts from his essay:

“I See That You Are Losing Yourself And Your Dignity, And Wasting Your Time, In Your Refusal To Recognize That This Monster Is Born Of You”

“Dear Muslim world: I am one of your estranged sons, who views you from without and from afar – from France, where so many of your children live today. I look at you with the harsh eyes of a philosopher, nourished from infancy on tasawwuf (Sufism) and Western thought. I therefore look at you from my position of barzakh, from an isthmus between the two seas of the East and the West.

“And what do I see? What do I see better than others, precisely because I see you from afar, from a distance? I see you in a state of misery and suffering that saddens me to no end, but which makes my philosopher’s judgment even harsher, because I see you in the process of birthing a monster that presumes to call itself the Islamic State, and which some prefer to call by a demon’s name – Da’esh. But worst of all is that I see that you are losing yourself and your dignity, and wasting your time, in your refusal to recognize that this monster is born of you: of your irresoluteness, your contradictions, your being torn between past and present, and your perpetual inability to find your place in human civilization.

“What do you [Muslims] say when faced with this monster? You shout, ‘That’s not me!’ ‘That’s not Islam!’ You reject [the possibility] that this monster’s crimes are committed in your name (#NotInMyName). You rebel against the monster’s hijacking of your identity, and of course you are right to do so. It is essential that you proclaim to the world, loud and clear, that Islam condemns barbarity. But this is absolutely not enough! For you are taking refuge in your self-defense reflex, without realizing it, and above all without undertaking any self-criticism. You become indignant and are satisfied with that – but you are missing an historical opportunity to question yourself. Instead of taking responsibility for yourself, you accuse others, [saying]: ‘You Westerners, and all you enemies of Islam, stop associating us with this monster! Terrorism is not Islam! The true Islam, the good Islam, doesn’t mean war, it means peace!’”

“The Root Of This Evil That Today Steals Your Face Is Within Yourself; The Monster Emerged From Within You”

“Oh my dear Muslim world, I hear the cry of rebellion rising within you, and I understand it. Yes, you are right: Like every one of the great sacred inspirations in the world, Islam has, throughout its history, created beauty, justice, meaning and good, and it has [been a source of] powerful enlightenment for humans on the mysterious path of existence… Here in the West, I fight, in all my books, [to make sure that] this wisdom of Islam and of all religions is not forgotten or despised. But because of my distance [from the Muslim world], I can see what you cannot… and this inspires me to ask: Why has this monster stolen your face? Why has this despicable monster chosen your face and not another? The truth is that behind this monster hides a huge problem, one you do not seem ready to confront. Yet in the end you will have to find the courage [to do so]…

“Where do the crimes of this so-called ‘Islamic State’ come from? I’ll tell you, my friend, and it will not make you happy, but it is my duty as a philosopher [to tell you]. The root of this evil that today steals your face is within yourself; the monster emerged from within you. And other monsters, some even worse, will emerge as well, as long as you refuse to acknowledge your sickness and to finally tackle the root of this evil!

“Even Western intellectuals have difficulty seeing this. For the most part they have forgotten the power of religion – for good and for evil, over life and over death – to the extent that they tell me, ‘No, the problem of the Muslim world is not Islam, not the religion, but rather politics, history, economics, etc.’ They completely forget that religion may be the core of the reactor of human civilization, and that tomorrow the future of humanity will depend not only on a resolution to the financial crisis, but also, and much more essentially, on a resolution to the unprecedented spiritual crisis that is affecting all of mankind.”

“I See In You, Oh Muslim World, Great Forces Ready To Rise Up And Contribute To This Global Effort To Find A Spiritual Life For The 21st Century”

“Will we be able to come together, across the world, and face this fundamental challenge? The spiritual nature of man abhors a vacuum, and if it finds nothing new with which to fill the vacuum, tomorrow it will fill it with religions that are less and less adapted to the present, and which, like Islam today, will [also] begin producing monsters.

“I see in you, oh Muslim world, great forces ready to rise up and contribute to this global effort to find a spiritual life for the 21st century. Despite the severity of your sickness, you have within you a great multitude of men and women who are willing to reform Islam, to reinvent its genius beyond its historical forms, and to be part of the total renewal of the relationship that mankind once had with its gods. It is to all those who dream together of a spiritual revolution, both Muslims and non-Muslims, that I have addressed my books, and to whom I offer, with my philosopher’s words, confidence in that which their hope glimpses.”

“Forward-Looking Muslims Understand All Too Well That Al-Qaeda, Jabhat Al-Nusra, AQIM, And The Islamic State Are Only The Most Visible Symptoms Of An Immense Diseased Body”

“But these Muslim men and women who look to the future are not yet sufficiently numerous, nor is their word sufficiently powerful. All of them, whose clarity and courage I welcome, have plainly seen that it is the Muslim world’s general state of profound sickness that explains the birth of terrorist monsters with names like Al-Qaeda, Jabhat Al-Nusra, AQIM, and Islamic State. They understand all too well that these are only the most visible symptoms of an immense diseased body, whose chronic maladies include the inability to establish sustainable democracies that recognize freedom of conscience vis-à-vis religious dogmas as a moral and political right; chronic difficulties in improving women’s status…; the inability to sufficiently free political power from its control by religious authority; and the inability to promote respectful, tolerant and genuine recognition of religious pluralism and religious minorities.”

“Could All This Be The Fault Of The West? How Much Precious Time Will You Lose, Dear Muslim World, With This Stupid Accusation[?]”

“Could all this be the fault of the West? How much precious time will you lose, dear Muslim world, with this stupid accusation that you yourself no longer believe, and behind which you hide so that you can continue to lie to yourself?

“Particularly since the eighteenth century – it’s past time you acknowledged it – you have been unable to meet the challenge of the West. You have childishly and embarrassingly sought refuge in the past, with the obscurantist Wahhabism regression that continues to wreak havoc almost everywhere within your borders – the Wahhabism that you spread from your holy places in Saudi Arabia like a cancer originating from your very heart. In other ways, you emulated the worst [aspects] of the West – with nationalism and a modernism that caricatures modernity. I refer here especially to the technological development, so inconsistent with the religious archaism, that makes your fabulously wealthy Gulf ‘elite’ mere willing victims of the global disease – the worship of the god Money.

“What is admirable about you today, my friend? What do you still have that is worthy of the respect of the peoples and civilizations of the world? Where are your wise men? Have you still wisdom to offer the world? Where are your great men? Who is your Mandela, your Gandhi, your Aung San Suu Kyi? Where are your great thinkers whose books should be read worldwide, as they were when Arab or Persian mathematicians and philosophers were spoken of from India to Spain? You are actually so weakened behind [the mask of] self-confidence that you always display… You have no idea who you are or where you want to go, and it makes you as unhappy as you are aggressive… You persist in not listening to those who call on you to change by finally freeing yourself from the dominion that you have granted to religion over all [aspects of] life.

“You chose to consider Muhammad a prophet and king. You chose to define Islam as a moral, political, and social religion that must rule as a tyrant in the state as well as in civilian life, in the street and in the home, and in every man’s conscience. You chose to believe that Islam means ‘submission’ and to impose that belief – while the Koran itself declares that ‘there is no compulsion in religion’… You have made [the Koran’s] cry for freedom into the reign of coercion. How can a civilization so betray its own sacred text? I say that, in Islamic civilization, the time has come to institute this spiritual freedom – the most sublime and difficult of all [freedoms] – in place of all the laws invented by generations of theologians!”

“Numerous Voices That You Refuse To Hear Are Rising Today In The Ummah To Denounce This Authoritarian Religion That Cannot Be Questioned”

“Numerous voices that you refuse to hear are rising today in the ummah [Islamic nation] to denounce this authoritarian religion that cannot be questioned… Many believers have so internalized the culture of submission to tradition and to the ‘masters of religion’ (imams, muftis, sheikhs etc.) that they don’t understand us when we talk to them about spiritual freedom or personal choice vis-à-vis the ‘pillars’ of Islam. This is a ‘red line’ for them – so sacred to them that they dare not allow their own conscience to question it. And there are so many families in which this confusion between spirituality and servitude is implanted from such an early age, and in which spiritual education is so meager, that nothing concerning religion may be discussed.”

“But this [taboo] is clearly not imposed by the terrorism of some crazy fanatics… No, this problem is infinitely deeper. But who is willing to hear this? In the Muslim world, there is only silence regarding this matter; in the Western media, they listen only to all those terrorism experts who increase the general myopia day by day. Do not delude yourself, my friend, by pretending that by eliminating Islamist terrorism we will settle all of Islam’s problems. Because what I have described here – a tyrannical, dogmatic, literalist, formalistic, macho, conservative, and regressive religion – is too often the mainstream Islam, the everyday Islam, which suffers and causes suffering to too many consciences, the irrelevant Islam of the past, the Islam that is distorted by all those who manipulate it politically, the Islam that always ends up strangling the various Arab Springs and the voice of the young people who are demanding something else. So when will you finally bring about this revolution in society and conscience that will make spirituality rhyme with liberty?

“Of course, there are pockets of spiritual freedom in your great territory: families that hand down [to their children] an Islam of tolerance, personal choice and spiritual depth. There are places where Islam still gives the best of itself: a culture of sharing, honor, pursuit of knowledge, and spirituality in search of the sacred place where man and the ultimate reality called Allah meet. In the land of Islam, and in Muslim communities worldwide, there are strong and free consciences. But they are condemned to exercise their freedom without the recognition of real rights, facing the peril of community control or sometimes even of the religious police. Never has the right to say ‘I choose my Islam’ or ‘I have my own relationship with Islam’ been recognized by the ‘official Islam’ of the dignitaries, who fight to impose [the view] that ‘the doctrine of Islam is unique’ and that ‘obeying the pillars of Islam is the only right path…’

“This denial of the right to freedom of religion is one of the roots of the evil from which you suffer, oh my dear Muslim world; it is one of those dark wombs in which, in recent years, monsters have grown, and from whence they leap out at the frightened faces of the whole world. For this iron religion imposes excruciating violence upon all your societies; it too closely confines your daughters and your sons in the cage of good and evil, the lawful (halal) and the illicit (haram), chosen by none but imposed on all. It traps the wills, it conditions the mind, it prevents or hinders every personal life choice. In too many of your countries, you still tie together religion with violence – against women, against ‘bad’ believers, against Christians and other minorities, against thinkers and free spirits and against rebels – so that religion and violence ultimately blend within the most unbalanced and vulnerable of your own sons – in the monstrous form of jihad.”

“You Must Begin By Reforming Education… Based On Universal Principles”

“So, I beg of you, don’t pretend to be amazed that demons such as the so-called ‘Islamic State’ have taken your face. Monsters and demons steal only those faces that are already distorted by too much grimacing. And if you want to know how to refrain from bringing forth such monsters, I will tell you. It’s simple yet difficult: You must begin by reforming the education you give your children, in its entirety, in all your schools and all your places of knowledge and power. You must reform them according to [the following] universal principles – even if you are not the only one violating or disregarding [these principles]: freedom of conscience, democracy, tolerance, civil rights for [those of] all worldviews and beliefs, gender equality, women’s emancipation from all male guardianship, and a culture of reflection and criticism of the religion in universities, literature, and the media. You cannot go back, and you can do no less than this. For it is only by doing so that you will no longer give birth to such monsters. If you do not do so, you will soon be devastated by [these monsters’] destructive power.

“Dear Muslim world: I am but a philosopher, and as usual some will call the philosopher a heretic. Yet I seek only to let the light shine forth once again – indeed, the name that you have given me commands me to do so: Abdennour, Servant of the Light. If I did not believe in you, I would not have been so harsh in this essay. As we say in French, ‘He who loves well, punishes well’ – and those who today are not tough enough with you, who want to make you a victim, are doing you no favors. I believe in you. I believe in your contribution to build the future of our planet, to create a world that is both humane and spiritual!

“Salaam, peace be upon you.”

Source: www.memri.org

January 14, 2015