Born Agains and Self-Haters:
Muslims Have them too
By: Mohamed Elmasry,
President CIC
September 21, 2003
Like any other mainstream religious group, Muslims also include those who
believe themselves to be "born again" in their faith, as well as those who
live with the demons of self-hatred. The enthusiastic born-agains may seem
less harmful to Islam as a whole than those who harbour varying degrees of
spiritual and psychic guilt, but both expressions of faith can breed dangerous
kinds of extremism.
Although the terms "born again" and "self-hating" were introduced by
Christians and Jews respectively, they are equally appropriate in identifying
and describing the rise of a similar phenomenon among Muslims, especially
among those living in North America.
Most self-hating Muslims claim to practice their faith. They call themselves
liberal, moderate, and contemporary.
In themselves, these traits are neutral, but in reality they contribute to
distancing the self-haters from their religion, masking deeper issues.
Self-hating Muslims secretly (or not so secretly) despise their religion and
curse the day their parents gave them Muslim names.
Yet most lack the courage to change either name or faith, or leave the
communities in which they grew up. Instead, they try to accommodate
their ambivalence by being very selective, or even minimal, in their Islamic
practices; and if asked for an opinion, will indicate that Islam should be
reformed to suit their own increasingly tenuous beliefs. Often, they are not
satisfied to leave other Muslims to live their Islam in more traditional ways.
When self-hating Muslims write books or op-ed articles, they have little or
nothing good to say about Islam and its nearly two billion global adherents.
They attribute every failure of Muslims in both the past and present to the
beliefs of Islam, the teachings of the Qur'an, or the sayings of the Prophet.
You can always expect their writings to sting with the venom of discontent.
Why, then, should a non-practicing, or minimally practicing Muslim want the
Qur'an revised to suite his or her negative attitudes?
When the Qur'an asks Muslims to pay charity or alms to help leave this earth
better than they came into it, the faithful willingly comply while the
self-haters insist that paying secular taxes to municipal, provincial and
federal governments is sufficient to fund social programs.
And when the Qur'an forbids drinking and gambling, it is to nurture humanity's
undivided love, respect, and awareness for its Creator; otherwise, there would
be overwhelming temptations to indulge in dangerous excesses that could lead
to a greater love for drinking and gambling than for God.
One of the greatest social experiments of modern times was the U.S. National
Prohibition Act. Passed by Congress in 1919, the anti-alcohol laws not only
received near-unanimous secular support (forty-six of the then forty-eight
states), but also vigorous endorsement from the Church
and popular press.
No other constitutional amendment before or since has ever been given such
sweeping affirmation from virtually all sectors of society. Yet after fourteen
years, Prohibition was repealed. Why? Because this radical legislative
experiment had produced one major and conclusive result: you cannot legislate
public morality.
America tried, but failed, to live without liquor. Back then, western society
had apparently forgotten, or never knew, that there existed an international
community of Muslims (most living overseas) who had not experienced the
degrading mental and physical effects, the frightful social and personal
costs, and the enormous economic waste inherent in the mass consumption of
alcoholic beverages.
Now if Jesus Christ -- whose first miracle as some Christians believe was
turning water into wine -- had taught, as did Muhammad more than fourteen
hundred years ago, that people should not partake of intoxicating drinks,
history might have taken a very different route.
Today's plethora of distilleries and breweries, and the massive advertising
that promotes their products, might be as rare here as they were, until
recently, in predominantly Muslim countries. Now, self-hating Muslims are only
too willing to buy into the global commercialism that crosses, or prefers to
ignore, once-respected boundaries of faith and culture.
Born-again Muslims are dramatically opposed to the practices and attitudes of
their self-hating brothers and sisters. As with born-agains in any faith
group, many swing from one extreme lifestyle to another. Some even
become militant religious fanatics, trying to prove to themselves and to
others that they are more Muslim than Mohammed; or as Christians often say,
more Catholic than the Pope.
Many of the born-again turn first to public activism, but some step over the
line to profess potentially murderous hatred for others whom they deem
unworthy (fill in the blank: infidels, apostates, etc.). In their zeal to
reform by force, they all too often become killers who view their own likely
deaths as instant martyrdom. Often obsessed beyond reason, they consider their
traditional co-religionists to be non-committed and lacking in faith, or
sinners with no hope of salvation.
Although self-hating and born-again Muslims are yet a tiny minority in the
world, they inevitably receive maximum media exposure, and this is a source of
serious concern to mainstream Muslims everywhere. As if, with the continuing
fallout from 9/11, we Canadian Muslims don't already have enough to worry
about.
[Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, a professor of computer engineering at the University of
Waterloo, is national president of the Canadian Islamic
Congress. He can be reached at
np@canadianislamiccongress.com]
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