Shedding Light on Some Misinformation about Islam

For political expediency there is much false information disseminated by the Right to stoke fear. Unfortunately for Muslims they have become the center of this fear mongering. I come from a Muslim family, and would like to make an attempt at correcting some, by no means all, of this misinformation. I am not a theologian, far from it as a matter of fact, nor am I a particularly religious person but, my “dog tags” identified me a Muslim, so I have a “dog in this fight”. Listed is some of the misinformation: 1. Head covering (Hijab) is a Muslim thing 2. Islam is a patriarchal religion 3. Muslims wear beards Below is an old family photograph showing my paternal grandfather, his wife, my grandmother on the left and seated prominently in the center of the picture her mother, my great-grandmother. Standing behind them are a niece and nephew who lived with them at the time of the photo. My grandfather was Imam of a Muslim Tatar community in Minsk Belarus. Tatars have been living in the area of Poland, Lithuania and Belarus since the late thirteen hundreds and, though culturally eastern European, have maintained Islam as their Religion. 4. If we don’t proactively stop it, Sharia Law will be implemented throughout the country. Muslim Tatars have lived in this Christian region for hundreds of years there is still no Sharia law.

You will notice the women are not wearing hijabs which are part of Arab culture. There is no requirement for head covering in the Koran except for the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) wives. In fact I saw a news clip on CNN I believe, that featured a story about the head of one of the former Soviet Republics which has an 80% Muslim population wanting to ban the hijab because he is against Arabification of his country. The Arab culture tends to be quite patriarchal. In a similar photograph from the Middle East the man would be sitting in the middle. However, some Muslims live in matriarchal societies. The obvious head of this family pictured above is the wife’s mother. (My wife, who is of a similar background, shows me a picture of her mother’s family with her grandfather sitting in the middle.) Though my grandfather has a beard, the young man standing in the back, also Muslim does not. More Misinformation: 5. Muslim men cannot marry non-Muslim women. (I think I heard it on a Sean Hannity radio program) There is no prohibition against marrying “people of the Book” (Christians and Jews) though I am not sure that applies to none Abrahamic beliefs also. My father married my mother, a Catholic, with his father’s blessing. Leslie Hazelton, a Jewish academician and student of Islam, in her book “The First Muslim”, a book on the historic Mohamed, writes about his two Jewish wives. In fact my understanding is that if one marries a person of another faith, there is a prohibition against forcing her to adopt Islam. I watched a TED Talk by journalist Mustafa Akyol entitles “Faith Versus Tradition in Islam” Where he highlighted some of the cultural (particularly bad) customs attributed to Islam. 6. Female circumcision is a North African custom practiced by backward people in the region both Muslim and non-Muslim, 7. Likewise “honor killing” is practiced by Muslims, Christians and nonbelievers in parts of Asia and Africa. 8. Separating women from men. Mustafa Akyol pointed out that while on the pilgrimage to Mecca, during the holiest and most ancient ceremony dating back to the beginning of Islam, he noticed women were not separated from men. He suggested that the separation of the sexes was likely to be a custom picked up from Persia. I think its origin may have been Jewish. A few decades ago I attended an Orthodox Jewish wedding and during most of the ceremony and reception men were separated from women. Islam is a progression of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Many of the customs practiced by Jews and Christians of the region were adopted by Muslims. 9. Burkinies. There is a requirement for modesty in Islam for both men and women, though modesty, I don’t believe is defined. Amish ladies dress very modestly by western standards as do Jewish Orthodox women, wearing long skirts and covering their arms and heads. In fact there was a clip on the news about two women (I believe they were members of parliament) who were not allowed into the Knesset, (Israeli Parliament) because their skirts were too short. A while ago I a saw a program on PBS featuring a Chechen folk dance group that toured Western Europe. The dancers were mostly in their early teens. When not on stage, they were dressed as any European teens with girls wearing miniskirts or shorts. Were it not for the cupped hands in prayer before the performances, based on what we see on TV, one would never think of them as Muslim. The above are just a few examples of information circulated about Islam and Muslims. Many people are uninformed because until recently, with the exception of the “Black Muslim” movement of the 6os, Islam had not been in the limelight and with such a small population in this country, a majority of people never met a Muslim. Many believe all Muslims are Arab but Arabs make up only a small portion of the world Muslim population. (There are even Arab Christians) There are Muslim communities all over the world made up of every race and almost every ethnicity. However, many are also intentionally misinformed for political reasons. Hopefully the above will help to form a bit truer picture of Islam and Muslims.