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Nederlandse Islamitische Omroep » Archief » Budak over verkrachting
Onlangs verscheen op deze site een vraag van een islamitische vrouw die vertelde door haar neef verkracht te zijn en zij vroeg wat zij met de situatie aanmoest. Imam Bahauddin Budak gaf hierop een antwoord dat bij veel mensen in het verkeerde keelgat schoot. Zij meenden dat de imam de schuld grotendeels bij de vrouw leek te leggen.

Imam Budak heeft naar aanleiding van de ophef die is ontstaan over zijn artikel bij de rubriek Vraag en Antwoord (thema: verkrachting) het volgende laten weten.

Hij staat nog steeds achter het door hem gegeven antwoord. Echter, omdat hij vele van de reacties “buiten proportie” vond, heeft hij de NIO verzocht het betreffende artikel te verwijderen. De NIO heeft hem laten weten dat dit journalistiek gezien geen optie is. Hierop heeft dhr. Budak gereageerd door te stellen niet meer met de NIO te willen samenwerken. Dit betekent dat zowel het genoemde artikel, als alle voorgaande artikelen van zijn hand, worden verwijderd. Toekomstige samenwerking met dhr. Budak zal vanaf heden niet meer aan de orde zijn.

De NIO is niet aansprakelijk voor uitlatingen gedaan door dhr. Budak.

Dit is het gewraakte stuk van imam Budak: Continue Reading »

Tags: imam

The Word of Muhammad :: ZemZem :: ZemZem
The Word of Mohammad

Interview
Reformer Abdolkarim Soroush on the Koran

Michel Hoebink

Muhammad is the creator of the Koran. That is what well-known Iranian reformer Abdolkarim Soroush says in his book The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience that will be published early next year. With this view, Soroush goes further than some of the most radical Muslim reformers. In an interview with Zemzem by Michel Hoebink, he gives a foretaste of his book. Michel Hoebink works for the Arabic department of Radio Netherlands World. The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience will be published early 2008 by Brill. Leiden.

Since the coming to power of president Ahmadinejad, it has become increasingly difficult for Abdolkarim Soroush to work in Iran. For that reason, he has accepted invitations to teach at western universities such as Harvard and Princeton in the USA and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. In the past academic year he was a guest lecturer at the Free University in Amsterdam and the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Abdolkarim Soroush is regarded as the intellectual leader of the Iranian reform movement. Initially, he was a supporter of Khomeini. He held several official positions in the young Islamic republic, among which that of Khomeini’s adviser on cultural and educational reform. But when the spiritual leader soon turned out to be a tyrant, Soroush withdrew in disappointment. Since the early 90s, he is part of a group of ‘republican’ intellectuals who started out discussing the concept of an ‘Islamic democracy’ but gradually moved away from the entire idea of an Islamic state.

Soroush’s basic argument is simple: all human understanding of religion is historical and fallible. With this idea he undermines the Iranian theocracy, because if all human understanding of religion is fallible, no-one can claim to apply the shari’a in God’s name, not even the Iranian clergy.

In The Expansion of the Prophetic Experience Soroush makes clear that his view on the fallibility of religious knowledge to a certain degree also applies to the Koran. With thinkers such as Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd and Mohammed Arkoun, Soroush belongs to a small group of radical reformers who advocate a historical approach to the Koran. In his new book, however, he goes one step further than many of his radical colleagues. He claims that the Koran is not only the product of the historical circumstances in which it emerged, but also of the mind of the Prophet Mohammed with all his human limitations. This idea, says Soroush, is not an innovation, as several medieval thinkers already hinted at it.

You can read the interview: Continue Reading »

Comment is free: Beyond Islamic enlightenment

Ali Eteraz

It means that Islamic rationalism - the act of a Muslim using his (or her) individual reason to access the Quran and Islamic tradition - has triumphed so emphatically that both Muslim liberals (Wadud) and illiberals (Qutb), rely upon it. It means that the whole time people have been talking in terms of civilisations, we should have been talking in terms of individuals, because reason is an individual act.

In fact, some of the most unsavoury characters of 20th century Islam have essentially confirmed that there won’t be any turning back from Islam’s individualist revolution.

MEMRI: Saudi Cleric Salman Al-Odeh Slams Brother Osama bin Laden, Warns Him Hell Be Responsible for Deaths of Millions, Reminds Him He Must Face Allah

The following are excerpts from a religious show featuring Saudi cleric Salman Al-Odeh, which aired on MBC TV on September 14, 2007.

“How Much Blood Has Been Shed, And How Many… Have Been Killed… In The Name Of Al-Qaeda?”

Salman Al-Odeh: “I say to my brother Osama [bin Laden]: How much blood has been shed, and how many innocent people, children, elderly, and women have been killed, displaced, or banished in the name of Al-Qaeda? Would you be pleased to meet Allah while you bear responsibility for hundreds or even millions of people?”

[…]

“The Prophet Muhammad said that anyone who killed even a bird unjustly would meet Allah on Judgment Day, and the bird would say to Allah: Ask so-and-do why he killed me unjustly. This religion protects the sanctity of the blood of even birds and animals. The Prophet Muhammad said about a prophet who burned an anthill: Just because one ant bit you, you burned an entire colony of ants that were praising Allah? This is all the more true when it comes to human beings.”

[…]

“My brother Osama bin Laden, the image of Islam is not at its best today. People all over the world say that Islam kills anyone who is not of this religion, and that Salafism kills any Muslim who does not believe in it - whereas the Prophet Muhammad refrained from killing even the hypocrites, about whom Allah said they would dwell in the lowest level of hell. The Prophet Muhammad said that the reason was so that people would not say that Muhammad kills his friends.”

“Is The Difference Not Clear Between One Who Kills And One Who Gives Life?”

“My brother Osama, what happened on 9/11 was the killing of several thousands, maybe less than 3,000, who died aboard the planes and in those towers, whereas there are unknown preachers, through whom Allah has guided hundreds of thousands of people, who have been enlightened by the light of Islam, and whose hearts have been filled with the love of Allah. Is the difference not clear between one who kills and one who gives life?”

[…]

“My brother Osama, the annihilation of an entire people, like what is happening in Afghanistan, through destruction and through hunger… This people has lost its entire infrastructure… Or the destruction of another people, like what is happening in Iraq… There are more than three million refugees in Jordan and Syria alone, apart from those who went to other countries in the East or West. The specter of civil war, which hovers over Afghanistan and Iraq, is not something about which Muslims are happy. The Prophet Muhammad heard about a man called Harb “war” and changed his name, because he loathed war. Our God said: Fighting is ordained for you, even though you hate it. This is a hateful thing to which people resort only when it is necessary, and when there is no other choice.

“Are [You] Determined to Come to Power, Even If it is Over the Bodies of Thousands and Hundreds of Thousands[?]”

“Who benefits from the attempts to change countries like Morocco, Algeria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, or any other country into countries governed by fear, where people feel unsafe? Should coming to power be the goal? Is it the solution? Are [you] determined to come to power, even if it is over the bodies of thousands and hundreds of thousands of policemen, soldiers, ordinary Muslims, or innocent people who are sometimes killed - and then you say that they will be resurrected according to their intentions. Indeed they will, but the question is how we shall be resurrected, and how we shall appear when we meet our God, when so much blood has been shed under our patronage, whether we like it or not.”

Europe: New Groups Unite Those Who Renounce Islam - RADIO FREE EUROPE / RADIO LIBERTY
Europe: New Groups Unite Those Who Renounce Islam
September 11, 2007 (RFE/RL) — Some call them apostates, but they prefer the term ex-Muslims.

Today marked the official launch of the Dutch Ex-Muslim Committee, the latest such group to emerge in Europe. The groups say they want to make it easier for people to renounce Islam — and draw attention to places where leaving the faith is punishable by death.

The new group is headed by Ehsan Jami, a 22-year-old Dutch politician of Iranian origin. Continue Reading »

de Volkskrant - ‘Ik wil gaan léven!’
‘Ik wil gaan léven!’

de Volkskrant, Intermezzo, 11 augustus 2007 (pagina I10)
Janny Groen Annieke Kranenberg

Ze voeren een strijd in stilte, de Marokkaanse jongeren die vaak wel geloven, maar ook een wijntje drinken en soms een grap maken over Allah. De ‘zwarte schapen’ helpen elkaar. ‘Hé Fatima, wil je ook meer rust in je hoofd?’ Door Janny Groen en Annieke Kranenberg

‘We weten dat we hypocriet bezig zijn, maar het kan nu even niet anders’

Continue Reading »

The official website of Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble with Islam Today and creator of Project Ijtihad.

Posted August 26, 2007

This will be my final update on muslim-refusenik.com. I’m about to launch my new site, which will stand for Muslim reform and moral courage rather than merely against all that troubles Islam today. I’ll also be blogging, posting more free-of-charge translations to defy the censors, and making it easier to use and distribute my content wherever you are in this world.

The one thing that won’t change is my passion to reconcile religion with reason. In that spirit, enjoy my exchange below with a reform-minded Muslim. You see? I’m not alone. Neither are you!

Leading to the following statements by Ali Eteraz:

Well, it appears that true reform (the Khaled abu el Fadl variety) is winning. It has subsumed Irshad Manji. That’s a victory for all those who stuck with reform instead of contrarianism. (By the way, a lot of people accuse reformists of being contrarians just for the hell of it, but that is just the last thing people who don’t know how to rebut reformists say).

So as this realignment happens, we have to ask again. What is Islamic Reform? Well, for sure, it isn’t “reformation.”

In order to understand this, you have to read his first statement:

In one of my previous altmuslim pieces about state of Islamic Reform in the West, I made a (surprisingly for me) smart observation: “Consider, then, the irony: reformers which did not alienate the Muslim community were alienated by the media; reformers which did alienate the Muslim community were embraced by the media.” I went onto say: “The current situation leaves Western Muslim reformers in a difficult bind. Does she lean towards Ramadan and el Fadl, sacrificing exposure to the non-Muslim world while doing the hard work of reform in relative isolation? Or does she lean towards Manji and Nomani, sacrifice influence in the Muslim community but make a positive impression about Islam to the non-Muslim world?”

Trouw, deVerdieping| religie_filosofie - De Nederlandstalige luisterkoran komt eraan
De Nederlandstalige luisterkoran komt eraan
Yolanda Breur

Nederlandse vertalingen waren er al van de Koran, een braille- editie ook. Nu komt er een luisterversie van het islamitische heilige boek. Opdrachtgever is een Haagse moskee, maar de makers van het luisterboek willen niet zeggen welke dat is.

Een menselijke stem die uit de Koran voorleest, te beluisteren via de pc. En de tekst op het beeldscherm. „De opdrachtgever wil dat de voorlezers onberispelijk en accentloos Nederlands spreken,’’ zegt Ton Jumelet van Stichting Dedicon in Grave.

Deze producent van ’alternatieve leesvormen’ voor mensen met een leeshandicap is de luisterkoran aan het maken. Jumelet vertelt hoe de stichting zelf zes mensen selecteerde.

Die moeten niet alleen perfect de Nederlandse taal beheersen, maar ook onvertaalde Arabische woorden en begrippen goed uitspreken.

In april plaatste Dedicon een advertentie voor een voorlezer op de website; die moest ’een Nederlandse vertaling met Arabische fragmenten in de commentaren’ inspreken. Loon: twaalf euro per uur.

Jumelet: „De Haagse moskee die de opdracht gaf ging op zoek naar goede voorlezers. Via advertenties en mond-tot-mondreclame vonden we vijf kandidaten.” Enkelen zijn moslim, anderen niet.

Continue Reading »

This essay, written by Timor & Ramy El-Dardiry, was published on the front page of NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch national newspaper, under the title “‘We invented our own Islam’” [”‘We verzonnen onze eigen islam’”]. The full article in Dutch can be found here and here. They translated it and submitted it to Newsvine: Ave, Muhammad: a plea for reason in the debate about Islam.

Everybody loses in a discussion monopolised by fundamentalists and critics, who all cite exclusively from the Quran to prove that they are right. The average Dutch person perceives a frightening black-and-white version of Islam. Moderate and liberal Muslims become estranged, and retreat from the discussions. Only the terrorist is happy, because he is taken at face value when he claims that he is only carrying out the will of Allah as stipulated in the Quran. Nonetheless, he also freely interprets the Quran: after all, we live in a modern society. If we continue to treat Islam as a colorless monolith, we are giving terrorists free reign.

Both Muslims and concerned Western intellectuals should start to de-sacralize the role of texts in the debate, so that we can arrive at a truly constructive dialogue. It is about time that we recognize and encourage different colors in religion. This also requires a less forced attitude towards religion in public spaces.

Muslims should guard against their religion becoming the victim of a uniforming type of globalization. It is already depressing that we can now eat the same tasteless hamburgers around the world. To sacrifice religion in the same fashion to a fundamentalist movement financed by petrodollars is not only sad, but also dangerous. Muslims, cherish the diversity in your religion! Critics in their turn should point out the differences within Islam to radicals, instead of always stressing the so-called “unbridgeable” differences between Islam and the West.

If God exists, He is probably not waiting for people to criticize or obey Him exclusively on the basis of His very own texts. He created people with a slightly more creative spirit, after all. The texts will always have a different meaning for each individual. That is why we could market our Roman-Islamic faith so successfully. Our religious beliefs may have been curious, but they were just as authentic as those of Muslims in Jakarta, Washington or Amsterdam. They were just as genuine as those of radical, orthodox or liberal Muslims. Not a single text has meaning in a vacuum. If Muslims only experience and defend their religion through its text, they atr lost; if critics only attack religions based on their texts, nothing will change.

Timor El-Dardiry (1983) studied International Economics and International Relations in Maastricht and in Washington, DC respectively. He lives and works in the Dutch city of Maastricht.

Ramy El-Dardiry (1985) is a master student in Applied Physics at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. He completed several months at the Jaringan Liberal Islam in Jakarta as part of his study. He is completing his graduate work in Amsterdam.

As I wrote in the Dutch reaction on this artile, their essay smells like a ‘copy-paste islam’ but one that is neither inherently radical or the result of a-historical bricolage. It’s about the struggle over the definition of what Islam is and should be; a struggle in which people have to negotiate with others, Muslims and non-Muslims, and themselves. The essay clarifies how the social network and developments on a local, national and global level influence those negotiations. Nothing new here, but what makes Islam special is that more then any other religion, it’s a topic of heated public debates. The writers point to an interesting Dutch paradox. While in the Netherlands from the 1990s onwards religion is increasingly seen as a private matter, at the same time Islam has become the topic of public debate, thereby preventing that Islam indeed does become a private issue.

Komkommertijd, dat is de term waarmee veel ophef over Muskens en Wilders verklaard wordt. Volgens mij gaat komkommertijd echter niet zozeer om het opwaarderen van klein nieuws, maar om een soort vakantie-lamlendigheid waardoor we echt goede en belangrijke bericht vergeten.

Neem bijvoorbeeld het stuk van Timor en Ramy El-Dardiry in de NRC van gisteren. Timor El-Dardiry studeerde Internationale Economie en Internationale Betrekkingen in Maastricht en Washington DC. Hij woont en werkt in Maastricht; Ramy El-Dardiry (1985) is master student technische natuurkunde aan de Universiteit Twente. Hij bracht tijdens zijn studie enkele maanden door bij het Jaringan Islam Liberal in Jakarta. Hij studeert af in Amsterdam.

Hun stuk ‘We verzonnen onze eigen islam’ ademt de sfeer van een ‘knip- en plakislam’, maar dan niet één die inherent radicaal is en ook niet zomaar wat a-historisch gefröbel is (in die zin is de tekening van Oppenheimer erbij ook niet echt correct). Het gaat om een strijd over de definitie van de islam waarbij jongeren moeten onderhandelen met anderen: moslims en niet-moslims, en met zichzelf. Het is een stuk dat duidelijk maakt hoe de omgeving en ontwikkelingen in de lokale, nationale en mondiale omgeving deze onderhandelingen beinvloedt. Dat is altijd zo, maar wat de islam bijzonder maakt is dat deze veel meer dan welke religie ook een onderwerp van publiek debat is. Zij wijzen op de interessante paradox dat religie gezien wordt als privé-zaak. Dit is in toenemende mate sinds de jaren negentig het geval, maar juist in die jaren negentig wordt islam langzaam maar zeker een publiek onderwerp. Zolang dat blijft is het overigens nagenoeg onmogelijk dat islam echt een privé-zaak wordt.

Het stuk is hieronder integraal weergegeven. Naar mijn bescheiden mening het beste en meest interessante stuk dat sinds lange tijd in de opinie-pagina’s is verschenen: goed geschreven, evenwichtig met veel voer voor discussie. Continue Reading »