The Rushdie fiasco rears its ugly head once again. Our main mosque originally organised us to attend demonstrations in London. It was an exhilirating experience, highly political, waking an entire generation in the UK from a deep slumber... rethinking and reimagining Islam's role in the world. Some thoughts on the issues this latest event is throwing up. Rushdie committed one of the most heinous acts imaginable, intentionally insulting a prophet and a messenger openly and publicly, for a measly price of fame and notoriety. The Islamic position is quite categoric - such an abhorrent act undermining a role that brings revelatory mercy and solution to mankind, alleviating their suffering, conflicts and privation, is a crime against humanity, deserving of capital punishment. This is usually administered through an Islamic judicial process to avoid miscarriages of justice, in this case a technicality as the crime is not in any doubt - akin to Madeline Albright, George Bush and Tony Blair's crimes against the Iraqi peoples lacking any doubt. In the West secular liberal ideologues and zealots idolising freedoms have normalised, nay trivialised, insulting, abusing and ridiculing all things sacred, sparing few if any Judeo-Christian religious figures. They cannot, or rather choose not to, understand the seriousness of such vile acts which evoke shock, disgust and outrage in the most reasonable of people of faith. These feelings however are readily seen when in cases where they ruthlessly pursue figures like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Snowden or more generally in cases of cancel culture, abuse of children or domestic violence worse if the criminal walks away scott free, valorised by wild-eyed celebrity ideologues. The grotesque and spectacular failure of the 'justice' system to deliver justice becomes manifest... Secular legal systems protect secular values and a capitalist economy, disciplining recalcitrants thereof. They leave behind a trail of injustices, frustrations and anger... which in turn enbolden individuals to take the law into their own hands to mete out 'justice'. We see this regularly and repeatedly around the world, applauded and glorified when done by masked superheroes and vigilantes on the silver screen, understood when undertaken by aggrieved parents or victims, however condemned when the individual turns out to be a subaltern member of society - blacks, immigrants and demonic Muslims. Rather than fetish over the legitimacy of individual responses to such injustices, we should accept there are systemic problems that need to be addressed. These are the broken secular sociopolitical systems we live under, underpinned by misguided values, dogmas and doctrines, all of which need replacing with Islam as a comprehensive system and way of life, that dispenses a pseudo-justice not to further liberal ideology or preserve capitalist interests, but genuine, substantive and actual justice, if we are to move forward.
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