Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. During the 12th century, Christians were fighting brutal holy wars against Muslims, even though Jesus had told his followers to love their enemies, not to exterminate them. The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy. Our Islamophobia became entwined with our chronic anti-Semitism; Jews and Muslims, the victims of the crusaders, became the shadow self of Europe, the enemies of decent civilisation and the opposite of “us”.
I used to look at veiled women as oppressed creatures — until I was captured by the Taliban.
In September 2001, 15 days after the terrorist attacks on the United States, I snuck into Afghanistan, clad in a head-to-toe blue burqa, intending to write a newspaper account of life under the repressive regime. Instead, I was discovered, arrested and detained for 10 days. I spat and swore at my captors; they called me a “bad” woman but let me go after I promised to read the Qur’an and study Islam.
Back home in London, I kept my word — and was amazed by what I discovered. Instead of Qur’anic chapters on how to beat your wife and oppress your daughters, I found passages promoting the liberation of women. I converted to Islam 2 1/2 years later. Now I watch with disgust and dismay as former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw describes the Muslim niqab — a face veil that reveals only the eyes — as a barrier to integration, with Prime Minister Tony Blair, writer Salman Rushdie and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi leaping to his defense.
Yasmin Ooi
To be Muslim is to declare that there is no God but the One God, and Muhammad is His last messenger. To be Muslim is to live that declaration, to be witness of, and witness to that declaration, Al-Shahada. It is to recognise God. In recognising, one takes the first step towards Him. To testify to that is to submit to Him: Islam.
To be a practising Muslim is to pray five times a day at the appointed times, solah, to remember God; to pay the social, purification tax, zakat, to remember that in our wealth there is a share for people not tested with wealth; to fast during Ramadan, as had been ordained to believers before the revelation of the Qur’an, to remind us on the excessiveness of desires; and to visit His house on Earth if one is able to, hajj, to remind us that all humanity, women and men, all are equal before God. To strive to keep all that are acts of worship, ibadat, is not easy, except for the faithful. There can be no ibadat without submission to Him.