Reflections on Sept. 11
Hamza Yusuf says, in A Time For Introspection:
Conspiracy or not,
we [Muslims] are to blame for the terrible backlash against Muslims. The
simple reason is that when a crazy Christian does something terrible, everyone
in the West knows it is the actions of a madman because they have some
knowledge of the core beliefs and ethics of Christianity. When a mad Muslim
does something evil or foolish they assume it is from the religion of Islam,
not because they hate us but because they have never been told by a Muslim
what the teachings of Islam are all about.
And so that is what this website is about. In one informative article,
we recommend Islam
and Christianity Similarities and Differences as well as most of
the articles on this website for further eye-opening articles about Islam.
As we said on our Who
We Are page on this website,
Our mandate is to
provide generally reliable Islamic information to Muslims and non-Muslims
alike in as educated, intellectual, philosophical and esoteric manner
as possible. In conformity with the tenets of Islam, we wish to promote
tolerance and harmony both among Muslims and non-Muslims. To that end,
this website has a great deal of information to provide its readers. Our
main thrust is from the Sunni-Hanafi perspective
[who comprise 80% of the Muslim population throughout
the world], although we do try occasionally to
provide information from other schools of thought for informative and comparative
purposes.
In fact, we've had visitors (both Muslim and non-Muslim) to this website
congratulate us on achieving just that.
One of the articles we link you to is by Nuh
Ha Mim Keller. In that article he says:
. . . there
will always be publicists who hate Muslims, and who for ideological or
religious reasons want others to do so. Where there is an ill-will, there
is a way. A fifth of humanity are Muslims, and if to err is human, we may
reasonably expect Muslims to err also, and it is certainly possible to
stir up hatred by publicizing bad examples. But if experience is any indication,
the only people convinced by media pieces about the inherent fanaticism
of Muslims will be those who don’t know any. Muslims have nothing to be
ashamed of, and nothing to hide, and should simply tell people what their
scholars and religious leaders have always said: first, that the Wahhabi
sect has nothing to do with orthodox Islam, for its lack of tolerance is
a perversion of traditional values; and second, that killing civilians
is wrong and immoral.
And so, along with most of the articles on this website, we also recommend
Tolerance
in Islam to our readers.
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