So, you are young, Muslim and living in modern Britain. This probably means you are full of questions about life, politics, spirituality, etiquettes and prayers. And what about those to do with jihad, sex, integration and identity? Stem cells? Education?
You want answers but not from weird internet sites or dodgy ‘imams’. What you want is the real thing: answers from a credible and authoritative source deeply immersed in the traditions of the faith but engaged with the contemporary.
Projects like the Radical Middle Way – supported by government, but initiated and entirely directed by community-based organisations that have a long history of engaging with young Muslims – are challenging the kind of religion-inspired ideology which seeks to drive a wedge between people.
The message is simple: the radical way, the difficult path, is the path of rejecting the extremes of assimilation on one hand and terrorism on the other. The struggle for social justice is at the heart of Islam, but not at the expense of innocent lives. The rules of engagement of this struggle must be emblematic of classical Islam's high moral standards. Suicide-violence is rejected, because there are other ways – legitimate within the Islamic tradition – of resisting oppression.
2 comments:
This is Hamzu Yusuf, Q-News, et al. I call them the radical authoritarian way - we know, so obey. Yusuf claims to be apolitical (Islam is dystopic, he told Mark Lawson on BBC3) but he appears on Question Time, and thinks he's hip but slags off blogs coz they're written by time wasters who could be doing something useful. Vain little prat steeped in 13th century scholarly conformity for the empty headed middle class Muslim earning 40K+.
Wasalaam
TMA
After hanging with Hamza and Abdullah I'm not sure which Muslims to approach to get a further picture of the real islam in the UK. I'm not into all the deference to leaders that a lot of Muslims show, I'm glad you don't seem to be a victim to it.
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