Saturday, February 11, 2006

Deafening silence over Islamic human rights

Two oxymorons in one title. I'm getting better at this.

Strangely, the Islamic Human Rights Commission can find no space on their website to promote the rights of freedom of conscience or speech. They cannot find time in their busy schedules to campaign about honour killings, the removal of girls from schools at the age of 14 or forced marriages.

But they are very exercised by the Cartoon Affair. And who should pop up signing their press release, but one "Shaikh Faiz Siddiqi LLB, Barrister, Convener MAC":

The publication of offensive caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad ( peace be upon him ) have caused outrage amongst the majority of the 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.
No it didn't. It passed almost completely unnoticed. What has caused the outrage is a campaign, orchestrated by Syria and Saudi Arabia in response to a tour of the Middle East by a group of Danish imams, equipped with a dossier containing the cartoons that were published, and some others added to make things look worse, who are such extreme salafist sunnis that the government of Iran refused them an audience.

I offer a translation of the rest:


This latest outrage is being noted as an ongoing series of attacks on Islam and Muslims.
We, the attackers, are in fact (professional) victims.
The decision of different media to reprint the said caricatures has continued to inflame the situation.
And Western civilisation has yet to capitulate to us.
The angry reaction of the Muslims in the UK is being fuelled by the lack of sensitivity and unreasonableness by the media and certain governments. The apology of the Danish newspaper and the Danish Prime Minister has been rejected as it does not go far enough to rectify the damage done.
We demand greater displays of obedience and submissiveness from the Danes.
Reports of rising tensions and anxiety in the Muslim community have started to cause concern to its leading scholars and Imams. In their effort to bring direction to the protest and cohesion to the debate...
But we have got some bad press recently. Bummer. Maybe people will buy it if we pretend to be a moderating influence, working to contain the more hot-headed elements of our community. That way, we can demand the same degree of surrender to Islamic law as the suicide bombers, while not actually calling for anyone to be beheaded.

No comments: