From: David James Alexander Hanley <U55870%uicvm.uic.edu@ohstvma.acs.ohio-state.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.atheism.moderated
Subject: Re: Prof. Mazrui's public lecture on Islam and Rushdie, paraphrased
Date: Friday, 14 Aug 1992 23:18:23 CDT
Distribution: world
Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

In article <9208131631.AA17973@rutgers.edu>, RBNXHS@rohvm1.bitnet says:
>
>In this part of Muslim response (#2), I shall paraphrase what
>Prof. Mazrui (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) said in the
>Public Lecture, given at the Cornell University on March 1, 1989,
>in NO particular order (his actual speech is about 18 pages long):

  We probably would have preferred if you sent the speach to those who
requested it via e-mail.

>----
>Central to the crisis of mutual incomprehension (between the West
>and the Muslim world) was indeed the concept of treason. The
>western world does understand the concept of treason to the state.
>What the West does not understand is the idea of treason to what
>Islam calls the Ummah, the religious community, treason to the faith.

  WRONG!  It just doen not beleive in MURDER for every little
transgression.

>
>English law does not always distinguish between the state and the
>Royal family. Treason in England has included violating the King's
>consort, or raping the monarch's eldest unmarried daughter, as well
>as sexual violation of the wife of the eldest son and heir. To the
>present day treason under English law includes polluting the
>Royal bloodline or obscuring it.

 1) These laws are NOT enforced.
 2) What happens in another country is no excuse for you to murder.

>
>In Islam there is no sharp demarcation between the church and the
>state. The concept of treason is often indistinguishable from
>apostasy. The supreme penalty of treason to the Ummah, or the
>religious community, was often death.

  Peachy.  Why do you use 'was' however?  Rushdie would disagree!

>
>Islam is not unique in regarding attack on religion as a threat to
>the state. Scottish law until the 18th century made blasphemy not
>only a crime but also a capital offense.

  But they're civilized now, unlike you.  Right?

>In Britain blasphemy is no
>longer a capital crime - but it is still both a statutory and common
>law offense (since the 17th century).

  Again,
1) This does not matter.
2) It's not enforced.

>But then again, blasphemy in
>Britain is only applicable to Christianity, not for Judaism, Islam
>and other religions.

  Ohhh, Are you unhappy that you can't be an opressor as well?

>A related difficulty also concerns the fact that
>western law provides very little protection against libel for those
>who are already dead. As such, how can one file a suit against Rushdie
>for libelling Muslim characters who have been dead for 14 centuries?

  That's because It's REALLY STUPID for a dead person to file a libel
suit.  Any why has not one muslim person elaborated on exactly what
this libel is?

>
>A real equivalent of comparative blasphemy would be in portraying
>the Virgin Mary as a prostitute, and Jesus as the son of one of her
>sexual clients (na' wudhu' billah). Also comparable would be any
>novel based on the thesis that the 12 disciples were Jesus's
>homosexual lovers, and the Last Supper was their last sexual orgy
>together. It would be very interesting to speculate which one of
>the leading western, *civilized* writers would march in procession
>in defense of the rights of such a novelist.

1) This is not what rushdie wrote.  It is more in line with 'last
temptation' The author does not live in fear of his life.  Curious.


>
>  [ Useless crap deleted ]
>The Qur'an is the ultimate constitution of the community of
>believers. Muslims expect all the believers to be ready to defend
>the Qur'an as their own ultimate fundamental law. (Just as, American
>political morality expects its citizens to be ready to "uphold,
>protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.")

  Americans generally don't kill people who ridicule the constitution.

>
>Rushdie not only casts doubt on the authenticity of the source of
>that fundamental law. He satirized its rules and attributed
>fictitious dicta to it. Rusdie's blasphemy does not lie in his

  I've read books that satirise the bible and the constitution.  The
authors are quite wealthy and doing well.  Curious?

>saying that the Qur'an is the work of Muhammad. The blasphemy lies
>more in Rushdie's suggestion that it is the work of Devil. Indeed,
>Rushdie gives the Prophet a name which Rushdie himself describes
>as the "Devil's synonym". In Medieval Europe the ultimate religious
>symbol of the devil on earth was Muhammad. The ultimate 'racial
>symbol' of the devil on earth was the black man. Islam was the
>ultimate religious distance away from 'godliness'. Blackness was
>the ultimate racial distance away from 'humanness.'

  Why are you trying to change to a totally unrealted issue?

>
>If Hitler hurt the Jews, and Rushdie hurt the Muslims,

  Putting rushdie in the same category as hitler?  Woah.  Did rushdie
put muslims in death camps?

>did both
>dislike the 'Blacks' as well? There is no doubt about Hitler's
>Negrophobia. But are there elements of Negrophobia in Rushdie's
>Satanic Verses, as well?

  Are you trying to get black people to kill rusdie as well?
  Pathetic.

>  [ Useless and irrelevant data deleted ]
>
>Prof. Ali Mazrui ended his talk by asking the Muslims to forget and
>forgive the author as a fellow human being and to appeal to Imam
>Khomeini to lift the 'fatwa' of death sentence (in absentia) on
>Rushdie.

  First I've heard of any muslim doing this.  Why did he try to
justify it than? do you agree?

>He ended his speech by reciting the first revealed verses
>from the Qur'an:
>      Read in the name of thy Lord, who creates you from a clot.
>      Read, for your Lord is Most Gracious.
>      It is He who teaches by means of pen.
>      Teaches man what he does not know.
>      However, man acts as arrogant,
>      for he considers he is self-sufficient.
>      Yet, to your Lord will be the return. (Surah al-Alaq.)
>Islam is a religion born out of the imperative to read. Muslims
>should respond by celebrating the written word in the spirit of
>that first revealed verse (READ).

  Why don't they try to read the SATANIC VERSES?
  Mabye they'd discover it wasn't so bad after all.



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