Islam Faith Vs Tradition

TED Talks Islam/Muslim Extra Credit

Faith vs Tradition:

• The Kaaba is the holiest shrine of Islam.
• Islam is a strict sexually separated culture, but they don’t care during the Kaaba.
• Kaaba and the rituals around it are relics from the earliest phase of Islam.
• You can’t find the idea of seclusion of women in the Koran.
• Seclusion of women was originally byzantine and Persian practice.
• Muslim religion began with a core, divine message that eventually added traditions, perceptions, and practices to it.
• Loyal Muslims: should not cling to everything in their culture.
• Westerners should not look at Islamic culture and make assumptions about Islam.
• People think that female circumcision was started by Islamic people, but it started in Northern Africa, and predates the Islamic people.
• Many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian.
• The religious police impose the supposed Islamic way of life on every citizen, by force.
• In Turkey, the police force people to uncover their heads.
• Islam crea
• ted the idea of the individual in the Middle East and saved it from the communitarianism.
• The intellectuals or statesmen of the 19th century looked at Europe and saw that it had things to admire, but they were missing so much, and looked at Islamic tradition, and saw that there were problems with it, but they’re not the core religion, so maybe they can be re-understood.
• The Ottoman Empire made reforms that gave Christians and Jews citizen status, accepting a constitution, accepting and representative parliament, advancing the idea of freedom of religion.
• Islamism is the problematic idea that in very extreme forms lead to terrorism in the name of Islam.

What Do You Think of When You Look at Me?

• She questioned her beliefs as a Muslim, but found a strong faith in God every time she read the Quran.
• During 9/11, she felt afraid for anyone to know that she was a Muslim.
• Going to a mosque regularly is actually linked to having more tolerant views of people of other faiths and greater civic engagement.
•  Radicalization actually happens in the basement or bedroom in front of the computer, and not at the Mosque.
• ISIS bases it brutality on the Quran.
• Groups like ISIS and the KKK claim to base the ideas on their book, but their actually motivated by brutality to read the book improperly.
• When we’re afraid, we become more accepting of authoritarianism, conformity and prejudice.
• Islamophobia can be used as a tool of public manipulation, eroding the foundation of free society.

What My Religion Really Says About Women:

• Haram: religiously prohibited, aib: culturally inappropriate.
• She easily found women who were leaders innovative, and strong politically, economically, and militarily.
• Religious institutions are run by men and driven by male leadership.
• The Libyan revolution in 2011 made women feel that they were part of the decision making process and they were encouraged to participate.
• Political leaders gained support for their opinions by citing religious scripture.
• Her organization became the largest and most widespread campaign in Libya, and spoke directly to 50,000 people, and hundreds of thousands through advertisements.
• She used scripture to get past communities who were against them, and had Friday sermons actually promoting women rights.
• By changing the message, they provided and additional narrative which promoted the rights of women in Libya.

I am the Son of a Terrorist. Here’s How I Chose Peace:

• He moved 20 times by the time he was 19, and was the target of bullying in every school, but kept his identity a secret.
• He was taught the homosexuality was a sin, but when we got to work with gay performers, he saw how nice and non-sinning they actually were.
• “The Daily Show” made him be honest with himself about bigotry and made him realize that a persons’ race, religion, or sexual orientation had nothing to do with their character.
• His mother made him realize how much energy it takes to be negative and hate people.
• He decided to use peace to protest in hopes that someone who was planning on using violence would hear his story and change their ways, and he wanted to fight terrorism in a way that didn’t hurt anyone.

When People of Muslim Heritage Challenge Fundamentalism:

• When she was younger, a group was killing a scholar every Tuesday, and not even the police would answer the call from her father when the attackers had showed up at their doorstep.
• Algeria's fundamentalist armed groups would murder as many as 200,000 civilians in what came to be known as the dark decade of the 1990s
• Muslim fundamentalist movements threaten human rights across Muslim-majority contexts.
• Western discourse in response to the movements, said that one, something about Islam is inherently fundamentalist, and two, offers a discourse that is too politically correct to acknowledge the problem of Muslim fundamentalism at all.
• There has been an increase in discrimination against Muslims in recent years in countries like the U.K. and the U.S.
• Faizan Peerzada and the Rafi Peer Theatre workshop had received threats from the jihadist, but refused to heed to them, and their 2008 festival was bombed and injured nine people. He decided to continue the festival as planned the next day, and thousands of people showed up to the festival.
• Maria Bashir is the first and only woman chief prosecutor in Afghanistan. She investigates cases of violence against women.
• Maria has 23 armed guards because of bombs that nearly killed her kids, and took of the leg of one of her guards.
• The Taliban wanted a part in the government, but Maria feared for what would happen with the women rights department.
• Mr. Bihi has been vocally denouncing the recruitment and failures of government and Somali-American institutions like the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center after his sons’ murder.
• Jihadis still kill students in Nigeria.