In New School Year, A Wake Up Call to Young Muslim Parents
The New York Times that usually suppresses news/views on Islamic violence and terrorism by dismissing them as “Islamophobia” reports on a recent plot that could have been a major massacre of the Jews in New York City (in celebration of the 1st anniversary of the Oct 7th attack).
The title of the story was: “Man Plotted to Kill Jews in New York on Oct. 7 Anniversary, U.S. Says” NYT, 6 Sep 2024. The subtitle said, “A 20-year-old Pakistani citizen was arrested in Canada after plotting to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York, according to the Justice Department.”
The report meant, among other things, that there were active cells and well-oiled machinery identified by government agencies in North America (US and Canada) or in Europe that target immature, gullible young students full of imaginary ideas and mold them into the shape they wanted.
With the start of the School Year (Sept 1st week, 2024), it’s a wakeup call to all Muslim parents to keep their kids safe from the Islamic predators who would like to radicalize them on one pretext or the other.
I’m saying this as a first hand witness in the capacity of an instructor on the campuses of Canada and the USA where I had many students from the Muslim families. We have been friends with many Muslim parents as well.
On school campuses, they set up stalls eulogizing Islam, projecting the founder of the faith as the greatest preacher-warrior of all times. The faith and its unquestionable leader is held as the one who has the solution to all problems of the contemporary world, including unemployment. inequality, environmental degradation, drugs, sex, war or gun violence. All these issues are very attractive to the young minds who wish to do something in some way in their idealism to contribute something to the society.
Ironically, the constitutionally ensured right to the freedom of expression and opinion or the right to propagate one’s faith without scrutiny, unavailable in the Islamic world, facilitate this pernicious phenomenon in the Western societies.
The young minds, in their quest to do something radical, are led into the influence of an Imam or Mullah of a mosque. Their peers take them there. There they find their warm, welcoming hosts have all the means to radicalize him/her and the coercive machinery too to keep them in their ranks: Hamas in Gaza or the ISI or other radical Islamic organizations all over the world are examples.
The 20-year young man of Pakistani origin is also a product of this phenomenon.
A Letter Written to Canadian Muslim Friends
The following is the text of my letter I shared with members of our community here in Canada on a different occasion: Seeking the Truth in the Month of Ramadan
Hello Friends,
I’m writing this as an educator and a parent who put his two boys through schools in North America. Now, as a grandparent I will be watching my grandkids going to school soon. As a first generation immigrant to Canada, I fervently believe in the composite growth of a boy or a girl so that they, besides being patriot to their land of birth, mature into a rational, scientific, global citizen.
As the Muslims around the world including the 57 nations, where Islam is the state religion, are observing the month of Ramadan, the new generation of Muslim boys and girls who go to schools, colleges and universities with their friends belonging to many other faiths must be talking about what Ramadan and Islam (including the Quran, Hadees or the biography of Muhammad) mean to them – just as other students should be discussing their own faith.
Very humbly and persuasively, to seek the truth, I would advise students and teachers of all denominations to discuss around the following points without any fear of recrimination:
Socrates had said, “The unexamined faith is not worth believing.” Many things said in the Quran, for example, the Earth is Flat, don’t stand scientific scrutiny today. The Islamists not only resist revision or changes in the Quran but demand strict punishment to people who dare critique the Quran or the founder of the faith, Muhammad.
Why should non-Muslims not fear Islam or the Islamists?
II
Surah Ghafir 40:62 in the Quran says: “That is Allāh, your Lord, Creator of all things; there is no deity except Him, so how are you deluded? “
Another translation of the same Surah/Ayat by Dr Musatafa Khattab in The Clear Quran says: “That is Allah, your Lord, the Creator of all things. There is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Him. How can you then be deluded ˹from the truth˺?”
https://quran.com/40/62?translations=149,20,131,85,95
Try to reason: If the point is that there’s only one God who is “the creator of all things”, no religion or believer in god should have any disagreement. Why does the Quran or the prophet or an Islamist preacher insist on the exclusivity of Allah being incomparable or superior to all other deities or gods? Allah should ideally be co-equal with the god of any faith, he is the only creator of the universe.
The truth is the Islamists wish to drill into the minds of every one that their god, Allah, is distinct and superior to all “other gods”, thereby trying to prove that their faith, Islam, is superior to all, an attempt to establish their supremacy. That’s precisely the reason why in some countries the Islamists insist on conducting collective Namaz at public places using loud-speakers for azaan at high decibels from all mosques or on wearing hijab/burqa in schools. Insistence on halal products is the latest addition.
III
Some Muslims say Islam is a religion of Peace, their scriptures define Islam as Submission. Muslims say the Islamist extremists or terrorists among them aren’t real Muslims. The extremists and terrorists, on the other hand, claim they are the real Muslims and those who don’t follow them aren’t. Who should be believed?
IV
We are told that the Jews and Christians are the progenies of Isaac, whereas the Muslims are the offspring of Ishmael. Both Isaac and Ishmael are blood brothers but their descendants have been engaged in blood feud for centuries, why?
V
Jews and Christians have granted equal status to their Muslim cousins in their countries that are mostly open, secular, scientific and democratic. What have the Muslim majority or 57 Islamic countries have done to the Jews, Christians and members of other minorities in their own countries?
VI
Raising the bogey of Islamophobia, the Islamists complain they are being vilified for their faith. The Islamists owe their unquestioned allegiance to their holy book, the Quran and violently oppose its review, revision or amendment. The Quran claims that people were in the Age of Ignorance, Al-jahilliyah, before the advent of Islam in the 7th century. Is this theory to be believed? Should we allow this theory to be taught to our kids? Can we say opposition to this kind of teaching is Islamophobia?
Ask your friends if they know any faith other than Islam where the punishment for renouncing the faith, characterized as apostasy, is death? Will this not frighten a young man or woman and prevent them from probing or questioning? Do we aspire to be docile and compliant for the future?
VII
For the sake of religion or for personal growth, would a parent or a guardian like their children to read or memorize (by rote) a book, the Quran, in a foreign language, Arabic, without understanding the meaning? Can the modern-day parents organize their families along the teachings in the Quran or Hadees?
On becoming familiar with the biography of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, will the educated and enlightened Muslim parents of the 21st century let their children follow Muhammad as a role-model?
If the hijab/burqa or other coverings for the female didn’t signify unequal status of women against men, why would many Muslim women, particularly students, refuse to wear it, as in Iran? Why are there so many strictures for women only and not for men in Islam? Will pointing out the gross inequalities between men and women in Islam be called Islamophobia?
VIII
Forced conversion into Islam is prescribed as a military objective in the Quran? How many of you would consider this religious?
Subsequent to the invasion of the Islamist conquerors in the Indian subcontinent, most Hindus were converted into Islam either forcibly or by offering allurements. What is wrong with the argument that the Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, with a few exceptions, have Hindu ancestry?
By holding their god above all other gods – Allah-U-Akbar – the Muslims pray and wish to acquire “victory” over the “disbelieving people”?
Surah Aal-e-Imran: 3:147 https://quran.com/3
Who are these “disbelieving people”? Surah Al-Bayyinah 98:6 says:
“Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures.” https://legacy.quran.com/98/6
The disbelievers have been compared by the Quran to the “livestocks” who did not think, hear or reason and had gone “astray” in their way.
Al-Furqan 25:44 https://quran.com/en/al-furqan/44
Is Islam not a set of dogmatic practices and faith that runs against science, logic, equality and universal brotherhood?
Is fear of Islam and the Islamists, then, completely baseless or unjustified?
Students and teachers must discuss these questions dispassionately in the new school year.
(Views Personal)
[Originally from Darbhanga, Bihar (India), Dr Binoy Shanker Prasad lives in Dundas, Ontario (Canada). He is a former UGC teacher fellow at JNU in India and a Fulbright Scholar in the USA. Author of scholarly works including a book, “Violence Against Minorities”, “Gandhi in the Age of Globalization” (a monograph) and a collection of poems”, Dr Prasad has taught at Ryerson University, Centennial College and McMaster University. He has also been the president of Hamilton based India-Canada Society (2006-08 and 2018-20)]
