This is a message I got on facebook ( I have deleted the name of the sender ) :
Hi sir....Asslam o alaikum
Aap kaafi dooor ras insaan hai aur education & history par apko command hasil hai. Mai apse ek request karta hun. Plz aap ek baar Islaam ko achhe se study krye or hmare Nabi Mohammad Sab ke baare mein padhye or Quraan ko padhye ek baar zrur sir. Uske baad aap khud faisla karye ke Islaam kaisa mazhab hai or wo kya chahta hai.
This is my reply:
I am 69 years old, and have been reading and discussing all my life since I was very young. I have studied Islam well.
Islam was a great religion which spread from Spain to Indonesia because of its great message of equality. It was a great leveller, treating all men as equals. The oppressed people, who were often inhumanly treated ( e.g. the 'low' castes in India ) accepted Islam as it gave them social emancipation ( the same reason why Buddhism and Christianity spread ).
The early Muslims emphasized on science and education. The Prophet is said to have said that for knowledge ( ilm ) one should even go upto China . Arabs were great scientists, and regarded Hindus as their gurus in science and mathematics. They learnt the decimal system, etc from the Hindus, and passed this knowledge on to Europeans.
However, of late the Wahabi type bigoted idiots have disgraced and painted a wrong picture of Islam, because of which many people in the world today identify Islam with terrorism.
Islam was a great liberating religion. but many fundamentalist and stupid fools have sought to make it it an enslaving religion. For example, these bigoted idiots support burqa or hijab which puts women in a cage. In my opinion burqa or hijab is against the spirit of Islam, which was a great liberator. So it is anti-Islam. But these stupid fools will not agree to something so obvious. They say that it should be left to the choice of the woman to wear burqa or not.
The truth is that many women wear burqa or hijab because of the force of social pressure or custom, which can be as powerful as physical force.
Some idiots say that a woman without a burqa or hijab is naked or like a woman in a bikini. This is a stupid argument, and only idiots can make it. Is a woman wearing a sari or salwar kameez or shirt pant naked or in a bikini ?
Oral talaq, which is only permissible to men, discriminates against Muslim women by keeping a damocles sword hanging over their heads. It is one of the main causes of keeping Muslims backward. By treating women as inferior, it plucks out one of the two eyes of Muslim society. Abolition of oral talaq is absolutely necessary for emancipation of Muslim women, and since women comprise half of society, it is absolutely necessary for emanc ipation of Muslims ( see my article ' Womens Emancipation ' on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in )
The Talibanis want that girls should not be sent to school. But the Prophet had emphasized on education. So are Talibanis not anti-Islamic ? Some bigoted fools in Pakistan are against vaccinating children for polio etc. Are they not idiots ?
It is time Muslims declare these idiots anti-Islam.
Some people make pictures or cartoons insulting to Islam. It is best for Muslims to ignore this, instead of shooting such people, as was done to Charlie Hebro, which only gives Muslims a bad name.
