the ban on minarets in Switzerland

bismillah ir rahman ir rahim

Muslims seem to me to be too busy reacting to fundamentalist christianity. The ban on minarets reflects the huge loss of communication between the intellectual islamic tradition and secular enlightenment thought in europe. The Islam that Europeans seem to be reacting to is too busy fighting the christian ideologies that focus on apocalyptic eshcatological visions of the Second Coming and the Rapture. Muslims need to not respond to the Christian claim to the monopoly of salvation by Jesus and his Church and respond more proactively to the forces in the world that are secular and view Christianity as an ignorant backward world view that can be tolerated but not respected other than as a tool of power. Muslims need to focus on issues of human rights, the sanctity of the environment, tolerance and world peace. I am not saying we don't. All sorts of people are talking about peace and the environment. but I think we need to comeu p with a way to separate ourselves as a religion from the violence and ignorance of the Christian Right and its agendas.

It is so upsetting that all the middle of the road Muslims are being marginalized. what is the war on terror from a Muslim perspective? It is an attack on sovreign nation states to protect the life styles of people in the first world dedicated to maintaining a rate of consumption that is destroying the planet. What are Muslims supposed to do? Did Afghanistan or Iraq do anything to provoke the United States? Are Muslims supposed to just roll over and hand over everything to the United States to distribute to Europe and North America? Asking Muslims not to defend themselves is insane. Portraying the global wars for oil as anything else misrepresents the truth.

Muslims need to separate the religious issues involved in the current global conflict from the secular issues. Religious issues include religious freedom, freedom of expression, inetreligious dialogue and the peaceful coexistence of all faiths. Secular issues include the right to self-defense, human rights, international law, nuclear disarmament, the environmental crisis.

Muslims need a religious response to the global crisis that shows leadership to the global community, as well as a response to the War on Terror that provides a peaceful resolution of global conflict.