| Back As-salaam alaykum :The following letter appeared in the Saturday, July 11, 1998 (Page A17) issue of The Washington Post newspaper. The letter may be found at:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-07/11/011l-071198-idx.html -MISUNDERSTANDING ISLAMBy Ibrahim HooperImagine atheist Madeline Murray O'Hair offering her views on Christianity to a prominent newspaper in the Muslim world. Now imagine that the newspaper chooses not to balance her interpretation of that faith with comments from even a single Christian spokesperson. Would Christians regard this article as fair and objective? Of course not. Unfortunately that is exactly the journalistic blunder committed in the article featuring controversial Bangladeshi writer and self-proclaimed atheist Taslima Nasrin ["Poet and Pariah," Style, July 7].Your paper's editors apparently believed it unnecessary to balance quotations in which Nasrin offered opinions such as: "If you follow everything in the Koran properly, you cannot be good." She also claimed the Koran, Islam's revealed text, commands that Muslims should beat their wives and hate people of other faiths.It may be of interest to note that on the day the article about Nasrin appeared, our office received a letter in which an anonymous writer expressed a similar, yet not so subtle attitude. It stated: "F--- Muhammad, F--- Islam, F--- the Koran, Go back to where you came from you f--- terrorists."Perhaps Nasrin and the anonymous letter writer should reflect on those parts of the Koran that would lead them to a different and more accurate understanding of Islam. They might begin with: "O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, of your kin, and whether it be [against] rich or poor...Follow not the desires [of your hearts], lest you swerve, and if you distort [justice] or decline to do justice, verily God is well acquainted with all that you do" (Koran 4:135).
----------Another interesting article:MUSLIMS EMBRACE SCHOOLING AT HOMEThe Syracuse (New York) Herald AmericanJuly 12, 1998, Page B3By Daniel Gonzalez Staff WriterAn excerpt:"It is small by comparison with last month's home-schooling convention at the War Memorial, which was organized by the Christian organization Loving Education at Home. But the very existence of a home-schooling convention for Muslims says something about the home-schooling movement. "'The home-schooling movement is growing across the country,' said Cynthia Sulaiman, the daughter of a Methodist mother and Mennonite father, who converted to Islam when she was 28 and now teaches her four children at home. Five years ago Sulaiman founded the Muslim Homeschool Network and Resource in Attleboro, Mass., to help link other Muslim home-schoolers, who often feel isolated from other Muslim home-schoolers like themselves."-----The full article may be found at:http://www.syracuse.com/news/content/local/0712.HOME0712.html |