‘Is there a sharia threat to America?’ was the opening line on the Glenn Beck program on April 1st 2011. The purpose of the episode was to ‘warn’ Americans that the ‘American tax payers’ are unknowingly funding terror dew to the presence of multiple sharia compliant Islamic banks in the U.S. It is not out of the ordinary to see Beck preaching absurd islamophobic conspiracy theories and nonsensical spews about Islam and its intentions towards the U.S, but this time, his stupidity has reached its utmost potential.
Beck being only a mere speck of the anti-Muslim crusade who claim the ‘sharia threat’ is real, to say the least, he definitely stands out from the crowd with his almost amusing logic. He explained his ‘ eye opening’ revelations as follows : ‘all devoted Muslims are obligated to wage jihad in all aspects of their life in the name of Allah’ – ok , fine , certainly can’t disagree with that. He continues to blab on and say : ‘ there are two kinds of Jihad which are 1) violence and 2) Stealth or Jihad of the soul’ – that one being illogical to anyone who understands Islam but complete sense to any one unfamiliar with primary research or even facts. Terrorists view violence as Jihad, not ‘all devoted Muslims’. Jihad in the name of God involves many different acts such as self-defence against violence, working hard to make a living, studying hard or spreading the word about Islam can also be regarded as Jihad. But those who live to demonize Islam gladly leave out anything that even remotely sounds non-threatening.
Beck then links these two pieces of enlightening information to the fact that Imam Yusuf Al-Qaradawi - ‘the ninth most powerful Muslim on earth’ - stated in a 2006 interview with BBC on charity “I don’t like this word ‘donations’ (zakat). I like to call it jihad with money because God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and our money.” This statement was the backbone and introduction to his further explanations on how Jihad is now not only blowing things up, it is now also financial Jihad. He uses this quote to further stress the point that sharia compliant banks follow Islamic law; Muslims are obligated to tithe a percentage of their income to charity. Therefore, Sharia compliant banks must tithe a percentage to charity- It’s all true till this point , BUT he continues on with rhetorical questions that are strong enough to instil added fear to those who already misunderstand Islam. ‘But which charities are the monies going to? Charities like Hamas or Hezbollah?’. What he has done here is far from just fascinating, he has managed to utilize one man’s quote from a 2006 interview and has used it as a basis and a justification to the possibility that sharia compliant banks such as HSBC, Citigroup, Barclays and Deuche Bank (which he has mentioned during the show) are funding terror via obligatory zakat money. Even something as innocent as Islamic charity is now also an evil force out to get the U.S? - who would have thought?.
I’d like to know what you think Please leave a comment
¬Jana¬
GB program April 1st 2011
I swear people these days take everything out of context to damage Islam.
ReplyDeleteJihad means to put one's endeavour for Allah, but now people think it's to KILL, even the term jihad has lost it's purity.
and it doesnt help that the extremists are using Jihad to justify their un-Islamic actions.
very serious writing u've done here jana, good to know ur keeping up with the contemporary issues. I shall link u on my site.
thanks mizah :) :)
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, this is a great job you did in here. Just keep it up.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I know that there is such people like Glenn Beck in the world guided by what most people consider it as a causeless fear make them try to distorts the facts about Islam and use them as a foundations for their theories. However, there is a main reason for what these people are doing and it's called "Xenophobia".
Xenophobia means hatred or fear of foreigners or their politics or culture caused by a fear of losing identity, suspicion of their activities, aggression, and desire to eliminate them to secure a presumed purity and medically this is most likely to happen after Post-traumatic stress disorder which in this case is 11 September 2001attack.
The acts done under the name of Xenophobia are not a new thing. We see and hear all the time, all over the world, people talking about issues based on fear of stranger's culture starting with immigrant problems and the way they are treated with, passing trough the fear of western liberal cultur and ending by fear of spread of using the English language over the native one and there is more and more. Now the question is: Why the media is concentrating on making it all about Islam and Arab and try their best to stick the word "Islamophobia" in peoples minds? I have no idea.
There is a natural rule in the universe says that the more you fight something because of your fear, the more it grows, spreads and makes your nightmare come true. Now, that's exactly what people like Glenn Beck are doing. People are not stupid and ignorant to be led like cattle by anyone who thinks he knows everything. Quite the contrary, the more people aware of something and they feel a sense of conflict of opinions on it, it became more difficult to satisfy their desires to know more about it. Actually, I have experienced that my self in many different situations. People I have just met come to ask me detailed questions about Islam while I'm standing in the airport bus just after landing from a plane and waiting to reach the main airport building, people ask me while I'm waiting in the clinic waiting room and they are even asking me in the chat rooms!! I meet people who wants to learn Arabic language just to get access to another source of information that can make them understand what's going on in the Middle East.
So, by the end of this comment, all what I'm saying that maybe some people listen to this man and people like him, and maybe some of them believe in what they are saying, but there are also many others who are still searching for the truth and people like us just provide another source of info they may want to see then we leave the decision for them to choose which one they find more rational and believable.
Thank you for reading my whole comment and sorry for taking much of your time but I felt I want to share this with you.
Jana, I'm waiting to read more and more of your articles. God bless you.