The National Free Press - World Edition: Free Speech, Free Press and Human Rights

“This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog”, the young man shouted as he threw the first shoe at the American president, George Bush. “This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq”, he hurled the second shoe. In seconds, the Prime Minister al-Maliki’s security guards and US secret service agents pounced on him and began beating him violently before he was whisked away to an unknown location. This incident occurred on Dec 14, 2008, at a press conference held at the Prime Minister Palace. The 29-year old, Muntazar al-Zaidi, an Iraqi broadcast journalist from al-Baghdadia TV and no stranger to his fellow Iraqis for his journalistic contribution, thus became an overnight global hero. At the time when Zaidi who could be heard screaming outside on account of the beating that left a large trail of blood behind him on the carpet, Bush sadistically remarked: “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves”.

And attention he did receive. Hundreds of lawyers, including American lawyers, around the world offered to take up Zaidi’s case which may carry an imprisonment for up to 15 years upon conviction. The next day of the incident thousands of Arabs led protest marches in major Arab cities demanding Zaidi’s freedom. On Dec 17, the Iraqi law makers called for the Iraqi legislature to take up the issue. The Iraqi government felt pressure to produce an apology letter ascribed to Zaidi which he supposedly penned in prison. Zaidi has been awarded a bravery award by a Libyan charity group headed by Qaddafi’s daughter. Malaysian Foreign Minister, Rais Yatim, called his act “the best show of retaliation so far”. Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, sent an official invitation to Zaidi’s family members, who have received many threatening calls after the incident, to come and live in Venezuela if they so wish. Songs and poetry eulogize the imprisoned Zaidi who is offered a 6-door Mercedes, marriage proposals and handsome job offers by his global admirers. Muntazar al-Zaidi currently holds a “cult status” in the eyes of his supporters some of whom presented shoes to American embassies around the world.

“Please don’t judge someone’s Iman (faith)” – is what we often hear in social circles, as was the main message of some email responses I received. I’d like to challenge this statement by arguing that we not only judge other’s Iman when it is called for, but, as a Quranic principle, this is exactly what we ought to do.

Of course this should not give way to attacks on basis of suspicion or hearsay, but it also does not mean that we become blind to others’ Iman as reflected in their expressed thoughts and actions. An ideal Islamic social system awards the right to citizens to marry, give court testimony, join public office or the military, narrate a hadith etc. – all dependant on the judgment based on one’s professed thoughts and actions (reflecting Iman) beyond any other consideration.

What should matter most is for one to see whether the criterion one employs to judge Iman is tenable Islamically or not. If we feel embarrassed or fearful of speaking the truth about our Deen when called upon to do so then why should we feel upset when accused of being deficient in our Iman? Let me be clearer: I feel that some people want to paint the whole idea of polygamy in Islam so as to show how closely Islam caters to the socially approved idea of gender equality.

People should be very free with sex; they should draw the line at goats. - Elton John

About a week ago I received a news story of an interview of a prominent gay activist with a mission to reconcile his “gay-ness” and those of others with God’s final message of Islam. He established and now directs an organization whose objective is to empower gay Muslims. Welcome to al-Fatihah: A US-based non profit gay support organization founded in 1998 that started out as an online discussion group and now runs over ten chapters in three countries.

Its founder, the 28-year old Faisal Alam, says that at the age of sixteen he began to realize that something was wrong – “something I didn’t have a word for”. Alam was attracted to his own gender. A few years later he began venting his homosexual urges at local gay clubs during his university days in Boston where he would be “Muslim by day and homosexual by night”. An engagement with a Muslim girl came to a crashing halt when she discovered “that there was something wrong with their relationship”. After a nervous breakdown in 1996, Alam started an online mailing list with a mission to “advance the cause of homosexual Muslims”. Today al-Fatihah boasts of thousands of Muslim members around the world. It has created a 12-member “scholarship committee” that has produced a booklet that challenges the “traditional interpretations” of the mainstream Muslims. For future it plans to create homosexual friendly curriculum and arrange workshops in Islamic schools and centres.

The Queen of England, Her Majesty Elizabeth II, who was once likened by Salman Rushdie to a “smoked fish full of spikes and bones”, decided to honor Rushdie with knighthood for his “invaluable services towards literature”. The incident raises the questions of merit, timing and the Queen’s better judgment as well as that of a befitting Muslim reaction to an untoward provocation.

Going through blogs and emails, I found that many British consider Rushdie a heroic symbol of the West’s commitment to freedom of speech against the deadly forces of Islamic fanaticism. While some feel that the author received the award for his symbolic importance rather than the literary quality of his work, others ask: “How has Rushdie contributed to the lives of ordinary Brits, who have dished out millions of pounds for his protection, to now be referred to as “Sir” Salman?”

On the issue of freedom of speech, Muslims and many fair-minded people, British or not, note a double standard at play here. The freedom of speech is a cherished notion of the Western societies, and it should be, but it must be tempered in due measure with a sense of responsibility. It is not an absolute right. Imagine had Rushdie produced a novel depicting a fictitious people called The Slime as the curse of the world, warmongers, killers of Jesus and had celebrated Hitler as a hero-savior for eliminating them in large numbers, would the justifications had been:

Muslim or not, the family institution in our society is in peril. Yet the pathetically ignorant, self-styled “Martin Luthers” of Islam find no other preoccupation worthier than to use fringe issues to take stabs on Islam at a time when attacks come from all sides – and for what? A paltry 2-minute-publicity?

The latest example is that of a hijab-clad Muslimah, Noor Javed, who felt it a duty to write a scathing article on polygamy practiced in the GTA in a recent Toronto Star article entitled: “GTA’s Secret World of Polygamy”.

Javed’s article, spun around a single case, starts off with the story of a Safa Rigby who discovers that her husband had taken two other women as wives during her 1-year stay in Egypt. Angry and upset, Safa felt she needed to opt out of marriage. And she does. No one says that Safa had no right to be upset, most women would be, but what bothered me was that Noor Javed used this one particular case to indict something she knows fully well to be permitted in Islam. Moreover, Javed repeatedly and erroneously cites the “illegality” of an Islamic polygamy in Canada in her article. Perhaps she forgets that a second additional marriage that is undeclared and unregistered with the city does not bear any legal recognition. Hence, it can not be “illegal” as no enforced law is broken. It would be similar to a person having one legal wife and 10 girlfriends on the side with whom his relationship can not be called illegal. One wonders whether Noor Javed would write a similar article in condemnation of adultery, which victimizes Muslim families on a much grander scale and which thrives as an acceptable institution in society.

If you are a Muslim parent concerned about your child's well being in this world and the next, a contentious issue to be decided in the upcoming provincial elections concerns you. The gist of the issue is: Should the Ontario government fund faith-based schooling as it funds catholic schooling with the public tax dollars.

The present political leadership of Ontario believes that it is justified to support the education of catholic students, numbering 600,000 in the province, but not 53,000 students mostly of Jewish, Hindu and Muslim backgrounds. A fear mongering campaign is being waged to ensure the status quo which the UN brands as discriminatory towards other religions.

As Muslims, however, this discriminatory policy is not what troubles parents the most. It is the fact that the children, their prime possessions, are being influenced by a school culture and education that promotes values in clash with those of the faith professed by the parents. When it is said that the Canadian system of education is second only to Finland's, one is being fair to ask: Who is to judge? From the Muslim perspective child education ('ilm) is about nurturing values in a child's personality as enjoined by the one we believe to be the Creator of humanity. A child devoid of Islamic spirit is a child of poverty - no matter how many math formulas, correct word spellings, nature facts or historical dates clutter his head. An ideal learning environment holds central to it a faith-based purpose of human existence on earth: in our case, to live life in accordance with the model left by the Prophet (SAW).