we'll go through eyes to what we like to open up with god's name the merciful benefactor mercer redeemer our show is in total what islam is all about there is so much since the tragedy of september eleventh so much about the religion of islam that's been put out his ministry has been put out of by the media and by people who proclaim themselves to be muslims in it we're getting a very distorted picture of the religion what we like to do is kind of give you the essence of what the religion is all about and then you can judge for yourself we have a lot of ground to cover today our guest brother benjamin is to my left did you mean when you say that we've had two sources that have given us false impressions of the religion of islam oh what i meant by that is when you look at the religion of islam it's very clear that we've heard things about the religion that really aren't true and a lot of instances we've heard from the nation of islam  which came out of really sort of a reactionary movement against the racism and hatred that was in this country and we've heard from people who are protesting what they feel is oppression by the west and the mideast and then the islamic countries and they again are reacting out of hatred and anger and one of the things i wanted to start off with if we're really going to talk about the religion there's a quote from sort of that i think is appropriate in this is i add or verse eighty seven all ye who believe make not unlawful the good things which a law has made lawful for you but commit no excess for a law god love it not those given the excess now what do we mean by excess you know it's interesting that when we talk about islam here most people are looking at islam in the context of some sort of hateful reaction right the nation of islam grew out of a reaction of black people against the lynchings and oppression  america right after the first world war if one goes back into the history of those times there were hundreds of lynchings every year and when we talk about lynchings we don't mean one two or three people grabbing  random black man and string and we're talking about instances where crowds of thousands of people were present when black men were dragged mutilated murdered and hanged and then their bodies put on display to intimidate other people so this was very scary time and out of that grew this alleged religion called islam which purported religion and realize the depths of the mis guided tenants he had been given so he grew away from that malcolm x grew away from that and even began to teach true islam in this country now that was a transformation and most people didn't even see we have the media focusing still on the nation of islam not on the transformation of the nation of islam and so we don't get the true impression of the religion and then on the other side we have people talking about the hatred preached by people like bin ladin and others which is really a reaction to what they see as oppression and then let's be honest they may have some point in that but it's still not the religion of islam it is just a reaction to a kind of an oppression and they see when they see palestinians fighting tanks with rocks when they see palestinians getting blown up by rockets when all they may have is a gun so that reaction gives this false teaching of islam as a hateful religion and as a religion focused on hate but it's not the real religion and you know people sit here and they say well these people say this and those people say that and it's almost ironic that in this society we allow every hurtful thing to be said in the name of freedom of speech and discount the source yet when it comes to islam we have no ability to control what people say and when they say craziness people instead of judging it as what it is which is really craziness they want to believe that oh because so and so said it it must be true right yet we look at in this country we have neo nazis we have survivalists we have all kinds of crazy people talking all kinds of crazy things that was all well that's just the fringe element yet for islam it appears that the fringe is how this society and the media choose to identify islam so that's what i mean by a false impression of islam is given it doesn't talk about the peace that islam teaches it doesn't talk about the brotherhood that islam teaches with jewish and christian people it talks only about those extremists who are already acting out of hatred now and that point and let's talk about that because isn't there something in the koran where it states that the move looms should protect the churches and the senate gods if they're under attack now if that's been the case and like you're talking about all this other craziness comes if we're supposed to protect their holy places then you know like you're saying that these crazy people they're out there bombing churches and in suicide bombs etc et two that it talks about that and it basically says that oppression is forbidden for men and we should fight oppression if it's against the jew or the christian if it's to oppress the mosque or the church or the synagogue because a we don't fight oppression against others that oppression will eventually come on us and it's very true now let's talk about the qur'an for a moment because there is a lot of confusion about this book because in some verses it does talk about fighting quite a bit and you have to understand that when the religion of islam was reveal it was not accepted as the word of god by everyone as a matter of fact it threatened the foundations of the society that existed at that time sold the leaders of that society chose to fight the religion tooth and nail  so they live against people they oppressed people they tortured people they even killed people it got so bad that muslims even had to leave all rabia to flee to a christian country called abyssinia to get protection from the oppression of their own brother and we don't even hear that very much today but that's that's the truth of the religion so if our relationship with christians is so bad why did we send our own brothers and sisters in the early days of the religion to a christian country for protection because we saw them as our brothers then as we still do now  but this society doesn't like to hear that it doesn't make for good news when we talk about love and not hate or oppression or destruction and we need to concentrate on that today where we have love woman as a matter of fact he did marry a jewish woman as a matter of fact he did now that's a lot of ironic that you ask that because a lot of that brings up two issues that brings up the issue of our religious closeness which would allow the prophet of our religion to marry people who had jewish and christian origin and it also brings up the role that the women that became his wives had in the society so there are two issues that really need to be discussed a little bit more i'm going to briefly touch on on one but i'd like for you brother mom to talk about  the issue of women in the religion the one i'm going to touch on is in our religion because we feel such can ship with jews and christians intermarriage of jewish and christian women and m allowed and it is allowed because we feel that two things one they believe in god so it's ok for them to marry a muslim and to that the muslim man should not force his wife to give up her religion so that a jewish woman who still wants to practice judaism can be married to a most of them and still practice judaism because we believe that it is one of the religions that almighty god a law allows a christian woman that marries a muslim can still practice her christian religion again we're not oppressing them so that they are allowed the freedom to practice their religion even though their husband may be a muslim now that's sort of unique because normally what you see is when i'm a a man marries a woman of a different faith he tries to get that woman to adopt his faith and yet we as muslims allow our wives to practice a different faith because we understand that god has given permission for a difference very good i just want to want to a  they said why would you say that and he said this any religion that or press is their women would you call that a backward religion so if so what do you mean he talked about the like in saudi arabia women can't drive cars he talked about how the they don't allow women to be educated in some countries and that the man is the dominant force of his his word is law etc etc he says would you consider that a bag of religion they had to answer yes tainted by by nationalism by racism by economics any of those things through the years when it was really put down by the prophet i was proud to say when we study there we find that women had a very very dominant role in the development of the religion now what is happening that has really been misconstrued is that in any civilized society that has any kind of god consciousness th sexual pronouncement of things has to be controlled so if you go to any religious community with a quaker mormon or whatever you always see the women to dress modestly that's a requirement t have the woman dress modestly to walk out in the street with you know with mini skirts on and see through clothes that is entice thing that sexuality in us which is a strong drive and which can blind irrational side of us and soul and you can have animalistic society and i want to be very careful with my words because i don't want women to get the wrong impression is really a protection for women to be dressed modestly and to be respected as an individual with character rather than just a piece of meat and i don't care what all these women live organizations have to say about it they should recognize that they always complain about women being portrayed in a sexually manner or men saying file things to them etc etc etc to show off all her property to anybody who's looking to trash anything that looking so god says no cover yourself up woman now that is the main foundation of that now what has happened is that man i'm talking about males now have come along in their insecurities and have used have hijacked the name of every lives in and say ok well now you've got to stay in the corner you have to stay home you can't go out another one no other made it look at you you've got to cover your you know we were talking earlier about talking about different issues and i feel that people who know better need to explain what they know better about the situation so because we're all lumped into one group you know the th that i like to laugh about it was we talk about the oppression of the afghan the women because of their head covering and yet and still we encourage women in this country to walk around in shoes and dresses and basically make it almost impossible for them to do a lot of physical activities like even running so that they are are basically you know physically disabled almost by the clothing that they choose to wear and and it's sort of ironic that we quite women's equality with the ability to walk around half naked and you know the only thing i'd point out is if you look at a lot of the world situation today  pakistan is a muslim country that had a woman president the philippines are a muslim country that has a woman president and if you look even in afghanistan there are women in the loya jirga and there will be women in the parliament and there will be women in the cabinet and there will be women with prominent positions it's only in a very in the very recent history of this country and by recent history i mean in the last twenty five or thirty years the women have assume prominent positions and even the cabinets of the country you know and the one time that a woman had the nerve to run for vice president that became an issue a woman running for vice president not her qualifications not her knowledge so in this country it's sort of hypocritical when you look at the way women are not truly given power you know we still talk about the dollar gap in earnings we still talk about the gap and powerful women women are more than half of the population of the united states they're not half of the congress and not half of the senate and yet and still we look at these other countries and we condemn them as being oppressive when we don't have a good example here ourselves i want to i would add something also in studying islam and we're really want to find out anything about islam i would recommend that people go to some of the best sources to try to get your information just don't listen to people on t v on radio all that excitement all that hatred top get some good books or talk to some some some people who you respect as having some true knowledge about the situation now the peril that you see sudden appear we always like to talk about a member of the muhammad and i know sometimes we might overdo it and people think that we worship  mohamad or something like that but knowing the the purpose of even mentioning his name is that here is an individual who is attempting in trying to basics us women in a lot of different areas  bring us back to the original concept of what islam is truly all about that's one person there are many other people there are many scholars there are many educated people who do talks about islam there's one american essence of what this religion is all about and can remove all that stuff that holds us back it really holds us back from reaching out to other people from seeing what they're all about there's a group i think came out of rome  called the focal laureate movement it's run by a lady named claire a little bit and i think writing is right and i think she's a very pretty wealthy individual anyway she started a worldwide organization to revive the true spirit of jesus and christians and i have to say the rest of it to revive the true spirit of islam and muslims and she has worked together closely with muslims and has come to america and in many speeches a matter of fact she's come to some of our conventions the muslim american society convention and work together with muslims so there are people on the true level of what religion is all about working together because it is very simple people always game in the book is called divide and conquer if we are working against drug addiction in our community and we are working against pornography in our community and we are working against teenage pregnancies in our community if we're working against crime in our community illiteracy in our community and if we believe that god has ordained for us to work for these causes then why should we work with other people who believe in god even just because we have a different view of god right we're still working for the same goals t elevate humanity we're still working for the same goals now if there is one entity that is putting all of these negative traits and promoting them and encouraging them in the community if to can get all of the other good decent people divided and hating and fighting each other because we have different symbols of how we express our religion and we fight against each other then that takes all the pressure off that one entity wh instant is the devil is the same it's just that simple and we have to stop being so petty minded really so petty minded so overly spiritual that we just can't do anything with a christian or just kids sit next to a jew can't be around a  don't believe jesus christ the son of god we can't work with you is just so petty you know it's ironic that this all comes out at the same time that the government has announced what they call a church based initiative when really what they're talking about as a religious based initiative because everyone is realizing that to address the societal ills you have to come back to something that talks about fa something more reality and something that gives you accountability over and above your individual cell and liss ness that only comes out of a belief in god and you know it's so ironic that all of these forces are fighting against that because this is the time when those characteristics are most needed and when the partnerships among the people of faith are most critical you know that's sort of true and you know speaking and we're going to wrap up here the thing that i member that he said that really all of us whatever faith that we that we have that we look to the best of our faith and follow that and seek out camps and we will get the work in this state in the show tolerances back in last smoking a cigarette and said look at all these people who believe in god they act like fools with that hopefully i guess we can do one more show on this a part three and a few more things we need to talk on we want to thank our crew brother jamal sharif and brother to your horror also for their help also read the muslim journal and if you can kind of zoom in on the muslim journal here