Hi there dear rob,
I think this is an interesting incident, but its not the first one nor it will be the last case ever. You might ask me, why is that?
The answer is not simple, but i'll try my best to explain for you what i'm thinking of.
Let us start with a basic human need. Imagine yourself in a very poor country, starving to death, and you know well that once you see any food around, you will jump without hesitation to take it even if you used force to achieve that, just to spare yourself, and live. Do you really think that you will ever care who is calling people to adopt a certain belief and law over another, or do you care what happen to other people's feelings and no body cares about you?
Why should you--as a poor uneducated man--support any, of course other than those who are willing to feed you?
Do you remember the situation in WWI and WWII and how europe was so fastly jumping on the throat of each other, killing each other, hating each other?
At that moment, who would really care what happen to a poor african child in Africa?
I'm not talking in here about individuals but about ordinary people. No one cares, and no one should. Nevertheless, when Europe started to have peace amongst themselves, they started to think, why can't we make other nations peaceful too?
In the West, you don't really *experince* in your daily life what those people do experience. I'm not looking for excuses but i'm trying to tell you that you can't understand why those people do that if you are not one of them, or at least, if you didn't listen to them and live with them. I'm talking about the same high horses you mentioned in one of your posts describing some muslims, because the same can be said about many people in the west who don't know what is the meaning of hunger, suffering, being humiliated, etc.
I was going through some very old arabic books from the time of Al-Andalus "Spain currently" and i didn't believe what i read. Jews, Christians and muslim scholar were sitting together to discuss and maybe to invent things, and they all live in happiness because the place where they live was full of "justice", and i won't say love because if someone can't apply "justice" then there is no point in "love", because love is much higher than justice.
I read one of the links you posted about Taslima and observe how did she answer this question:
FI: When and why did you become a secular humanist?
Nasrin: When I was young, I was forced to practice religion. I had to read the Koran in Arabic without knowing the meaning. I said to my mother several times: "I don't have any interest in reading something I don't understand. I want to know the meaning of the verses." My mother said, "We don't need to know the meaning. We should read because these are the verses written by God. If you read these, God will forgive you and send you to heaven."
When I was 14 or 15 years old, I found the Bengali translation of the Koran, and I learned what God says in the verses. I was surprised to read wrong information about the solar system in the Koran - for example, that the sun is moving around the earth and the earth is not moving but standing still because of the support of the mountains.
The inequalities and injustices against women and the people of different faiths in the Koran made me angry. If any religion allows the persecution of the people of different faiths, if any religion keeps women in slavery and keeps people in ignorance, then I cannot accept that religion. As an individual, I wanted to serve people irrespective of religion, race, and gender. And instead of having irrational blind faith, I preferred to have a rational logical mind. In short, I became a secular humanist. To me humanity is the ultimate.
Once i read this i knew what was the problem, her parents didn't educate her about Islam as the school did about any other type of knowledge. She was smart enough to question this blind belief, but her mom didn't help her to understand her faith, maybe because of the lack of knowledge, then alone, she went through the text and read it, and i feel sorry that she misunderstood many concepts in the Quran, and she built her disbelief in Islam on some misconceptions about Islam which i invite anyone to go through them if they are interested.
When she started building her case, instead of answering her questions, people attacked her, and the more they attack her, the more the west apperciate her, and the more she think that she is right all the way.
As to those who attacked her, but why not from other religions too, is for the fact that she was a muslim and all of what she used to cretecise is just pure islamic teachings "which she misunderstood", and she reached to the conclusion based on that, that all religions and their laws must be abolished.
As to what Muslims should do, you have to go back and see my pervious analogy to understand that if someone is not satisfied and can't get his basic human rights, so he will not care about others.
As to scholars, all what they have to do is to advice the public, but the public will only pick someone who agree with them in their emotional state.
My points are not organized but this is just my first impression and thoughts and i would go deeper if someone directed me to a specific direction or question.
Thanks in advance.
