Confessions of a Would be Muslim
Reformer (sort of)
04 April 2012
By Omid Safi
I have been doing a lot of soul-searching, and I have
reached a few important conclusions. Speaking as a
moderate Muslim, I realize that my community is
primitive, backwards, mired in tradition, and in need
of massive help from KONY 2012 people to reform this
tradition to catch up with the luminosity of secular
West.
I know that there is a trouble with Islam today, and
everyday. I also want to have gay-friendly mosques
where people can just go have a beer after the
optional prayer services, ‘cause that is what it means
to be a progressive Muslim.
Because all the secret jihadists (and the FBI people
who have infiltrated them) just want to impose this
Shari'a thing on us, and for some reason all that beer
drinking and hooking up seems to be frowned upon in
that Shari'a thing.
With that, and in the name of She who is the source of
All-Mercy, here are the fruits of my search. If anyone
wants to put me in touch with Fox News or MEMRI,
please do so, I'll recite all these on camera—just
contact my agent, and he can tell you my appearance
fee. I know that we are in need of a Muslim
Reformation, and I am working on my "Martin Luther of
Islam" speech. I can't quite make it up to ML's 95
theses, but I have got a good head start below. With
that, "I give you permission to think freely":
First, speaking as a Muslim, I am so disappointed in
my Muslim brother Barack Hussein Obama. He eats pork,
drinks alcohol, regularly attends church service, had
his daughters baptized, has yet to set foot in a
mosque since becoming president, kisses AIPAC's
behind, authorizes indefinite detentions, and has seen
many Muslims killed by his drone attacks and ongoing
wars. Really, a pathetic Muslim if ever there was one.
I mean, if I wanted a Muslim ruler that would do all
the above, I would move back to the Muslim countries
where most of the rulers do that kind of stuff anyway,
and the food is a little better than here.
Second, I have been so so wrong about Israel. It is a
peaceful, peace-loving, just, democratic state, and
all criticism of it is just motivated by
anti-Semitism. Israel today is perfect, kind of like
America before all the civil rights stuff in the
1960's came along. As to those so-called Palestinians
who do not want to acknowledge Israel's right to exist
as a Jewish state, they should just go back where they
came from. (I'm not sure where that is, but I am told
it used to be a "land without a people.")
Third, the Wahhabis are unjustly criticized. We Muslim
have messed up Islam, and they are just trying to
restore it to its original model of purity. And I just
love the changes they are making to Mecca and Medina,
making it so much more traveler friendly.
Fourth, I have been way too defensive in my criticism
of the erosion of civil rights and liberties in
America. Fact of the matter is that we Muslims should
just be honored to be allowed in this country, to
consumer here, and even if we live here as second (or
third) class citizen, it's better to be here than
whatever country my parents came from.
Fifth, I recognize that the Islamophobes are right,
and there is something inherently vile and violent
about Islam.
When the Prophet Muhammad was doing the prophet thing
in the 7th century, he was so sneaky smart that he
immediately set about opposing the whole notion of
modernity that would emerge in the 17th century. How
clever he must have been… It's like he was a thousand
years ahead of his time. We backwards Muslims have to
catch up with the times, because all 1.5 billion
Muslims are really in a time warp, living in the 7th
century. It's like Islam is a breach in the time-space
continuum. It makes perfect sense to me to have people
who hate a religion be the ones to help guide us as to
how to reform Islam. So I'll be sure to tune into
Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller,Daniel Pipes, Franklin
Graham, and others.
Sixth, I testify that Sufism is just a perversion of
the true Islam of the Pious Forefathers (al-salaf al-salih),
and I pledge my allegiance to the driest, most boring,
most hierarchical reading of Islam there is. All this
talk of love and beauty and being a child of
Muhammad's soul and coming to see God face-to-face,
love and service to humanity, blah blah, people are
just trying to make us think that there is something
beautiful and mystical about Islam. Don't' fall for
it. Remember: Order, Discipline, Fitna (strife), Bid'a
(heretical innovation), Haram (forbidden)…
Seventh, I pledge myself to making sure that Muslims,
Hispanics, Gays/Lesbians, women, the Poor, immigrants,
the Radical Left, everybody on the coasts, and
everybody who doesn't look like me, talk like me,
worship in my church, can leave this country so us
proper Americans can have it all to ourselves. And it
would be a much less crowded country. Love it or leave
it baby!
And one last one: We civilized people have to protect
Muslim women from Muslim men. And from themselves.
Because Muslim women cannot and should not be trusted
to make choices for their own lives, their own bodies.
So it's up to us enlightened people to tell them what
to wear, how to dress, and what not to wear. Make sure
that we don't make the mistake of having them tell us
what their attire means to them, because they have all
been brainwashed.
Ok…. April's Fools!!!
Take a deep breath. All the above is a little April
Fool's satire about a very serious subject.
It would be all funny, except that as absurd as—I
truly pray—all the above sounds, this is actually much
of what we hear in today's public discourse about
Islam, from both wannabe Muslim reformers such as
Zuhdi Jasser and Irshad Manji (who all too often have
no grounding in Islam) to ex-Muslims (Wafa Sultan,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali), to Islamophobes (Robert Spencer,
Daniel Pipes) who repeatedly tell Muslims about the
true meanings of their tradition. I hope that satire
can be a way to recognize the absurdity of the whole
situation.
We need to do better than this. May we all be
participants in the redemption of our traditions, our
communities, our nations. That redemption can only
come about through love and participation in a
tradition and a community, not by standing outside and
voicing one's shame. Love transforms us towards the
better and more beautiful. May our faith traditions,
our nations, be redeemed through this love and service
to humanity.
©
EsinIslam.Com
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