Channel 4: The Quran and Dispatches documentaries

August 3rd, 2008

Channel 4 recently broadcast two very different documentaries about Islam. Dispatches: “It shouldn’t happen to a Muslim” is a brilliant documentary about how the media has abused their position and published pure lies and have misinformed the public about the Muslims of the UK. It is a real eye opener and I highly recommend everyone to watch it. It’s on Youtube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eanrFTm6E9Y

On the other hand the other documentary promotes Islamaphobia and division in Islam. It’s a “Mockumentary” in that it’s purpose is to insult and mock the Muslims and the religion of Islam. It is unbelievably biased, highly inaccurate and poorly researched. When a program is simply called “The Quran” you expect it to be about the Quran but Channel 4 have sunk to an all-time low by making it a program that insults Islam and the Muslims. The title is a misnomer.

“The Quran” goes through many different and controversial subjects that have only a slight reference in the Quran but are effectively independent of it. They go through a gazillion incorrect notions and false understandings, misinterpreting the verses of the Quran and hadiths as they go along. They go through historical strife and where the Muslims across the world are at today - divided, poor and struggling - no thanks to western influence.

The 2 hour documentary was a very fragmented program - you could just tell the people who made it had chatted informally with a few “Muslims” (including some extremists and sectarians) and anti-Islamists here and there, done a few Google searches and then decided to make a documentary that managed to fit in all the controversial issues of Islam into the allotted time. It was a geniuinly poor effort. It wasn’t even slightly fair or impartial and it was factually wrong in numerous places.

First, they tried to dig a blade into the divisions of the sects of Islam by producing lies about arguments and the differences between the Shias and the Sunnis. They made the false claim that the Shia accuse the Sunnis of modifying the Quran (tahreef) and taking out the virtues of Ali (AS) from it!! Such a statement is so wrong it’s mind blowing how they could say that! As any educated Muslim knows, the Muslims, whether they are Sunni, Shia, Sufi or whatever, all believe in the same unaltered Quran as was revealed to the Prophet (SAW) and they certainly do not go around accusing the other groups of changing the Quran!

They completely misrepresented the concept of tawassul as a purely Shia practise which is a lie. Most Muslims: Sunni, Shia and Sufis believe in tawassul and accept it as part of Islam, but there is disagreement amongst the Muslims about its exact application however the majority of disagreements are because of lack of understanding of the other party and in recent times, the influence of some groups that completely reject tawassul has caused greater division. Effectively, the tawassul of all the Muslim groups is the same thing no matter if they are Sunni, Shia or Sufi. But yet the show went on a roll and said the Muslims are “fundamentally divided over the issue of tawassul”. Here is a horrendous, highly offensive quote from the film:

“The God the Sunni worship may not be described in human language, nor represented in any art form, for that would be blasphemous. Yet sometimes the human heart yearns for more. For a faith you can touch and feel, for drama, for music, for ceremony, for great stories of sacrifice, pain, martyrdom and salvation and for someone to pray to who has human form Shia Islam answers these needs … But the Qur’an makes it so clear that your prayer should only be directed to God.”

In another scene, having explained the apparent tenets of Shia Islam, the programme asked: “But do these specific beliefs have any substance in the Qur’an? The answer is no.” This is so biased and incorrect that it’s like they got the information about tawassul from a total idiot…  an Oxford “intellectual” called Taj Hargey who basically called all Muslims kafirs.

But that wasn’t all. They interviewed several Muslim “scholars”, and here is what these scholars basically said:

One person claimed the Injeel, the book sent to Jesus, was the New Testament of today (a part of the bible), which it is NOT; The modern day bible (NT) was written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and a few others. But the “scholar” Ajmal Maroor didn’t know this basic fact. In fact, this very person defended the documentary in a later interview!

They had a woman who also claimed to be a “scholar” and she represented the resistant feminists in the Muslim world in that she did not wear a hijab, claiming it is not a part of Islam. This is the typical response we hear from people in denial of their faith and who do not follow the Quran and Sunnah. But yet they had this woman on their panel of notable scholars. This woman does not represent but a very, very small number of Muslims.

Another “scholar” was promoting terrorism and saying the September 11th attack were justified and killing civilians is permissible, which, it is NOT! This Palestinian “scholar” thinks that killing civilians is acceptable in Islam as he justifies it when you can’t get to the soldiers because “they are killing our children”. Pffft.

Finally, leaving the worst till last (how could it get any worse you might be wondering?), they had a “scholar” from Egypt who advocated female circumcision, female genital mutilation! This is not an Islamic practise but this fool tried to make it out that it was! Anyway, while this guy is talking, an appalling video showing the genital mutilation of an African girl of about 10 or 12 with the girl being held down on the floor by two hijab-wearing women. Whilst this poor child screams in pain and begs for mercy, these women rummage under her skirt with a blade. The video ends with the girl’s mother slapping her and accusing her of lying when she said it hurt. The documentary states that 97% of girls in Egypt are circumcised. I seriously doubt that’s true! Anyway, the Egyptian “scholar” claims that Egypt’s women are honorable and chaste and that western women are whores and unchaste because they haven’t been circumcised. Not only is this an grievous insult to normal women across the world, it is an insult to every Muslim woman outside of Egypt and who has not been circumcised. Why on earth did they get such a mad man to appear on the show except to show Islam in a horrible light.

Later on in the documentary they try to shake the foundation that the Quran is perfect, unaltered. They interview a shadowed figure and his assistant about a Yemeni Quran found not long after the death of the Prophet (SAW), perhaps 30 years? This Quran lacks dots and other diacritics so the words in it can have several meanings since a change in a single accent of a word can change the meaning of a word. He goes through a few things he thinks are different between todays Quran and the Yemeni Quran. Any simple Muslim can laugh this off because they differences are based on his opinion claiming that certain words’ meanings stem from the Aramaic origins of the meaning. He says that the Quran mentions grapes instead of Houris which is a well known common joke on the internet that the infidels try to mock the Muslims with. Any Muslim that has read the Quran through (specifically surah 55) knows full well that the houris are not grapes. Further more, whatever claims he makes are pathetic since he is looking at pure text without the context of hadith. A very high number of the revealed verses of the Quran are accompanied by hadiths that explain and clarrify their meaning. His claims of a slightly different interpretation of what happened when the mother of Jesus (PBUH) gave birth to him was also faulty if we put it up against hadith. Even without hadith or diacritics in text, the words were preserved by the huffadh (hundereds of people who learnt the whole Quran by heart). All in all, a faithful, educated Muslim knows that the text of the Quran has been preserved and is perfect and had there been any differences then the different sects of Islam would have different Qurans and there would be many version but yet there is only one version of the Quran in existance from the very beginning of Islam.

It is a real shame that people will defend this program and call it a break-through. It received high ratings from many newspapers (4/5 Metro) and they actually believed what it said! It has left many Muslims angry. In future we wish to see fairer and accurate programs that weren’t researched and made by people who don’t know anything about Islam and we hope they don’t interview extremists, mad men, ignorants or liberals to represent the Muslims.

Firefox sets a world record

July 4th, 2008

As mentioned in a previous post, Mozilla wanted to set a world record for the most downloads in a day when they released the newest edition of their famous web browser, Firefox 3.0. Since no-one has set such a record before, Mozilla have set the benchmark to which any other program will aspire to, but it’s a very high number at 8,002,530 downloads!

On the subject of Firefox, my problem with the Yahoo! website crashing has stopped. It must have been going through a teething stage or something like that. Anyway, now the Google Toolbar is giving me trouble in that it doesn’t get out of Spell Check mode so when I’m writing into an online rich-text textarea it highlights all the incorrect words in red and it takes quite a while going through the HTML to clear it up. How annoying. I guess you’ll just have to put up with bad spelling for a while.

Firefox 3 crashes on Yahoo! websites!!

June 19th, 2008

 Of the annoyances of upgrading software is finding that although it performs better in some fields, in other things that used to work normally in the previous version it now fails. I’m a big fan of Yahoo! technologies like Yahoo Mail, Groups, Movies and YUI so I visit the website at least once a day to check my emails and other things. Since I got the new Firefox 3 browser, almost every time I’ve been on a part of the Yahoo website it has caused the browser to crash! I’m still not sure what it is that’s causing it to crash but I think it might have something to do with clicking links. For example if I go to the Yahoo! home page and then quickly click the Mail link on the right it crashes. Is anyone else having similar problems?

Here’s another interesting quirk linked to this problem. When the Firefox crashes the Processor usage does not go up, nor is there any disk thrashing, but when I try to open Internet Explorer it doesn’t open up the first time I double click it! I see it in the Processes list but it doesn’t show up until I try to open it again and now there are two iexplorer.exe processes open but just one window! Does this happen to you as well?

Firefox 3 Release Today! (17/06/08)

June 17th, 2008

Mozilla, the developers of the second most popular browser in the World, Firefox, are releasing version 3 of Firefox today! They are planning to break the world record for the most downloaded program in a single day. Click here to see how many have downloaded it. They are releasing the browser gradually by giving each country a speicific time when they can download it. Head over to the time sheet to view when you can get it. The UK will be allowed to download after 6pm GMT.

I highly recommend this web browser. The new version loads faster, crashes less and has better options. In fact, some of the features on Islamic-Dictionary.com were developed specifically to run under Firefox - try typing in the search box to see the intelligent suggestions window.

Modern Hijab - The revolution of color

May 24th, 2008

Most people see hijab as a plain, black piece of cloth that covers the hair of a Muslim woman. I think the common black color makes a few people feel miserable but that’s not it’s intention. It has the benefit of being un-attracting, which is the real intention of the hijab effectively. Additionally the benefit of the color black is that it’s an acceptable color in almost any situation wherever you’re going or whatever you’re doing.

It feels weird for me, as a male, to be talking about women’s issues, and I usually stay away from this sort of thing but my interest has been raised by an interesting documentary “Women in Black” shown on BBC2. Viewer discretion is advised. It’s basically about some presenter going to Egypt to discover the new trend in fashion concerning hijab and also about cultural modernisation as far as women are concerned.

Around the 1920s and up, the influence of the occupying British was significant and women tended not to wear hijab and they emulated the fashion trends of the British women. Gradually there was an increase in the “Islamification” of the country resulting in about 3/4 of girls observing the hijab today. But in modern times the concept of fashion and individual identity had also seeped into the psyche of the young woman and they have started to become creative in what they have to wear.

The hijab is often thought of as a tool of “oppression” by the enemies of Islam but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The hijab has since become modernised and is now in-vogue as millions of girls scamper through shopping centres scouring each boutique to find the most unique and stylish hijab they can find. It’s not black anymore. There is an abundant array of bright colors, motifs, methods of tying and it has become a sign of freedom because the colorful, multi-layered hijab is a symbol of freedom of expression.

It’s a wonderful thing to see people happy and confident and at the same time observing the tenants of their faith and not seeing it as a burden or a restriction. It promotes individual well being and when the units of a society begin to feel good and happy the whole of society is uplifted and benefits from it. From experience we know fashion is viral and this trend will spread across the whole of the Arab and then Muslim world. Egypt is the cultural and fashion hub of Arabia as their TV shows and films are broadcast by satellite to most Arab homes in Arabia and around the world and when they see this fashion trend they will emulate it.

Now I can’t just talk about all the benefits of an idea without mentioning anything about its downside. I’m a positive thinker but then again I have to be pessimistic from time to time. Fashion and color can be used as tools of attraction in the sense that a woman (or man) may dress provocatively with the intention to attract a mate. Some people even do this subconsciously and this is worrying. When a Muslim woman wears a colorful hijab she should be be mindful that she may attract the wrong type of attention. The hijab should not be attracting and it must be modest - consider that eventually some people will take it out of hand and the colorful, extravagant hijab will become a sign of lewdness, and this is not what anyone wants. There is also the problem of extremes in fashion - people take things to such a level it becomes ridiculous. I’ve seen this myself. I saw a woman who was dressed completely in yellow from shoes to jeans, to top and the hijab too. Clearly this was a crime against fashion and it looked ridiculous. Honestly - everyone was staring at the girl - that’s not what you want. Then there’s the misconceptions of the expectation of a veiled woman - just because she wears a veil it doesn’t mean she’s religious, or if a girl doesn’t wear the veil it doesn’t mean she’s irreligious. No. This misconception has to be righted.

Some people may be a little up-tight in their opinions on the subject of the colorful hijab, but it’s all down to personal intentions so please intend good when you do wear it. If a person wishes to wear a colored hijab they should wear something modest and they should also remember that the worn hijab is only part of the full veil - a Muslim woman’s hijab is also her good and righteous behaviour. Akhlaq and deen is paramount to a good hijab - always remember that.