Hamza Kashgari
I don’t hate individual Muslims who were born into the cult, I find I have to say that often and loud, mostly because it is what I believe, but also to disassociate myself with those who do hate the individual who is born into Islam, for racial reasons.
A brief peek into the political, spiritual and moral cess-pit that is the Islamic world will tell anyone with half a brain that those born Muslims are often the first and most numerous victims of Islam. I do however hate the ideology of Islam. This ideology warps innocent children and too often turns them into either monsters, or into those for whom casual violence, both as victim or perpetrator is something to be accepted purely because ‘Mohammed did it therefore we have to do it’.
Islam controls the societies in which it has political power not with debate or by the community having a common code of ethics as found in other societies, but with violence and the threat of violence. It takes a phenomenal strength of character and incredible bravery for the citizens of Islamic societies to stand up and object to what is going on or to promulgate unorthodox religious views.
One such brave Muslim is Hamza Kashgari a Saudi journalist who had to flee Saudi for Malaysia after saying that although he liked some things about the Islamic prophet Mohammed, he disliked others and this phrase which I’m elevating to my quote of the day, which according to he Washington Post is:
“Saudi women won’t go to Hell, because it is impossible for them to go there twice’
In other words, life as a Saudi woman is a living hell.
For speaking what to the occidental mindset would be considered as reasonable comments, Mr Kashgari lost his job, had to flee Saudi and then was extradited from Malaysia back to Saudi where he could have faced the death penalty for his comments.
Thankfully Mr Kashgari has now been released from prison in Saudi thanks to a worldwide campaign and the fact that Mr Kashgari is so obviously a non-violent prisoner of conscience. I’m cynical enough to believe that the Saudi’s didn’t set Mr Kashgari free out of the goodness of their hearts but because there was a political advantage in doing so. Saudi money is the driving force behind the mosque building epidemic that we are seeing across Europe and pulpits of these mosques are being filled with preachers who follow either overtly or covertly the extremist Wahhabi strain of Islam.
It also looks as if jailing Mr Kashgari has backfired on the Saudi’s because it raised his profile worldwide. According to the centre-Left website Harry’s Place, one of the first things that Mr Kashgari did when he was released from prison was set up a new Twitter account which got over 5300 followers in under 9 hours.
There is a hunger for freedom, justice and education among individual Muslims in the Islamic world, especially among those in the more technologically and socially advanced areas of these societies. The Arab Spring did unfortunately turn into a Islamist Winter but the desire to be free to speak and debate without fear of the Imams, Mullahs, Ayatollahs and Sheikhs oppressing them has not gone away.
I said recently to an Ex-friend who vociferously objected to my textual trashing of a British political candidate who was naïve about the ideology of Islam that: ‘the unequal condition of women in the Islamic world is probably the greatest moral scandal of our time, equal in fact to the cruelty of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’. The likes of William Wilberforce and others saw that the trading of human beings was wrong and worked hard to stop it.
People like Mr Kashgari are the analogue of people like Wilberforce in the Islamic world, but unlike Wilberforce, they often face horrendous dangers when they speak their minds. There is still actual slavery going on in the Islamic world but by far the greater number of those oppressed by Islam are women. Islam oppresses 50% of those that adhere to it, the female half, how can that be anything but a moral and ethical scandal?
Those who hold similar views to Mr Kashgari although they are not raving secularists or atheists are taking the first steps to freedom, and because of that he ended up finding himself only a few steps away from the Saudi executioners sword. If he could face this sort of pressure with dignity, what is stopping you, who face much less pressure, from speaking out about the violence, oppression, intolerance and misogyny that is present in much of Islamic culture?
Links and addenda
Washington Post article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-kings-hypocrisy/2012/02/13/gIQA71wxBR_story.html
Harry’s Place article on the release of Mr Kashgari
http://hurryupharry.org/2013/10/29/hamza-kashgari-released/#comments#disqus_thread
More on Mr Kashgari
Here
and Here
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-saudi-blasphemy-idUSBRE99S0E220131029
Addendum 1. A comment on Harry’s Place from Sarah AB shows up starkly why people in the West should be suspicious of those Muslims who proclaim themselves to be ‘Moderate’. HP dug up a Twitter comment from Mo Ansar, a man often invited onto the BBC to put the ‘moderate’ Islamic line where Mo Ansar blamed Mr Kashgari for his plight because he had ‘intentionally blasphemed’ Islam. See this Tweet https://twitter.com/markhumphrys/status/395169633176547330/photo/1
Treating Mo Ansar as a ‘moderate’ is a similar level of stupidity as putting the shade of Dr Harold Shipman in charge of the National Health Service.
Addendum 2. I mentioned Wilberforce but if anyone is interested in the history of one of the biggest slave revolts in the time of the Transatlantic Slave Trade then I would advise you to read ‘Black Jacobins’ by the Trinidadian writer CLR James. Although James was a communist, Black Jacobins, tells the story of the slave revolt on the island of Hispaniola (now divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic), in a very readable way. Mentally edit out the Marxist guff and what you have left is the tale of a people who had been abused enough and rose up against their cruel French masters. The ISBN13 number for this book is ISBN-13: 978-0140299816 and is available from Amazon and all other good booksellers.
