The quality of mercy
It’s a very merciful religion if you try to understand it – we’re told. Is that right?
A community debate over religious freedom surfaced in Western Pennsylvania last week when Dutch feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who has lived under the threat of death for denouncing her Muslim upbringing, made an appearance at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Islamic leaders tried to block the lecture…They argued that Hirsi Ali’s attacks against the Muslim faith in her book, “Infidel,” and movie, “Submission,” are “poisonous and unjustified” and create dissension in their community.
Thus artfully demonstrating just how open to discussion and criticism ‘the Muslim faith’ is, at least according to them.
Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali’s appearance. “She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death,” said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.
Of course Hirsi Ali didn’t ‘come into the faith’ in the sense we would normally understand that: she was born into it; that is, she was born to Muslim parents and raised as a Muslim child; that’s a physical kind of coming into it, but it’s hardly an intellectual kind. And that’s even before you get to the question of whether any intellectual commitment should be irrevocable on pain of death, to which I would with all due modesty and uncertainty answer ‘No.’
Although ElBayly believes a death sentence is warranted for Hirsi Ali, he stressed that America is not the jurisdiction where such a crime should be punished. Instead, Hirsi Ali should be judged in a Muslim country after being given a trial, he added. “If it is found that a person is mentally unstable, or a child or disabled, there should be no punishment,” he said. “It’s a very merciful religion if you try to understand it.”
That’s an interesting idea of mercy.
Thank god I am in my 50s I wont live to see eurabia become a reality!
ElBayley is, by our standards, completely insane.
But, then he is a priest, so what do you expect.
After all, he blackmails people for a living, because that is what priests do.
What bugs me about this is the not-quite threat in there. Of course he can’t say “go out and kill her” because the police would be on top of him in five minutes. However, he talks about what would take place if she lived in a muslim country. I assume that he approves of the laws of such a muslim country and, given the chance, would enforce them in the US.
Her death is what he wants to happen and he approves of the idea. It gives a positive “spin” to the idea of killing her. Given that, others may see this as an encouragement.
The “merciful” bit is, of course, meaningless as Ali is obviously compos mentis, an adult and able bodied.
This is a legal (unfortunately) death threat formulated to silence critics.
Yep. Eurabia is certainly imminent here in the US. (I hate that word. It’s generally used almost exclusively by warmongering Neocons whose main issue right now is that we have not launched an invasion of Iran and Syria)
Muslims are what 1/2 of 1% in the United States. Let’s recognize who the REAL threats are: 1/3 of the population believes the earth was created 6,000 years ago, that God annointed George W. Bush King, that it is ok to run “stealth candidates” to foster a Christianist Dominionist agenda. We are not facing Eurabia-we are facing Gilead. After all-Pat Robertson and crew’s views have been at least partly adopted by the current administration. Remember who called for the assassination of foreign leaders, U.S. Supreme Court justices, etc?
(Note: I am not downplaying the particularly nasty piece of work this Iman is. Is he a citizen? If not, why is he still here?)
Brian are you serious G.W.B is more of a danger than radical islam!I dont want you next to me in a fox hole when the war starts in earnest!