veiled4allah: stand up for justice, witnesses before Allah

There are many devout Muslim men and women across the world who diligently work at both frontiers of activism and scholarship in order to spread these egalitarian Qur'anic principles and replace the discriminatory traditionalist Qur'anic readings in Islamic law with reformist humanist readings as a better realization of the renown classic Islamic legal maxim, "Laws change according to the change of time and place conditions." Nowhere in the Qur'an is there a blank-check given to men for inhuman, oppressive and uncivilized treatment of women, as some secular critiques such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji, falsely argue. Irresponsible, superficial and hateful attacks against the Qur'an and disproportionate presentation of Muslims' Qur'anic readings only as it is understood by some traditionalists, without providing any space whatsoever to the presentation of alternative views, will ultimately fail to change anything about the mentality and approach of the Muslim community. In the end, there can be no substitute for Muslim scholars and reformers who engage their own tradition in a rigorous, humanist, and self-critical fashion.

Even when typing the events that happened to her, my blood curdled in anger. From where did such a sentence come? How could a local village council even think about doing so to a woman for a crime her brother allegedly committed? What kind of barbarity is this? Now, of course, there are those who will claim that such a monstrosity is a natural outgrowth of Islam and Islamic justice. That is a bunch of hogwash (I want to use stronger language, but this blog is entitled God, Faith, and a Pen...). Nowhere is sexual violence EVER condoned by Islam. Nowhere. Anyone who says so is completely mistaken, if not blatantly lying.

I am in full support of her cause, and I pray that God grants her victory in this world and the next. What happened to her is a disturbing example of how jahiliyah, or pre-Islamic ignorance, has slowly crept back into Muslim societies. Unfortunately, throughout human history, the woman has been given the short end of the stick (to say the absolute least). Muslims are supposed to know better, because the faith they claim to follow tells them that man and woman are equal before God.