for muslims or middle easterns in general?

Question

dont you agree that to some extent people who say that islam and arabs are mainly about terrorism and killing and treating women terribly.. shouldnt be blamed..

dont get me wrong when i hear some 1 saying that i feel like i wish to hurt them soo bad..

but really if all what they see is people who keep telling them that bec. they r not muslims they r going to hell,, and people that keep killing innocence even other muslims because thats what they belive is right...and no other religeon or belif is accepted to us ( which is not true.. we r suppose to respect every 1s belives because islam told us that)
and people covering their women totaly and hurracing any forigner...

and no 1 else is doing anything to prove them wrong... so if ou tell them that islam is not even close that.. how r they going to belive that we r not barberics..

WHY SHOULDNT WE RAISE FOUNDATIONS AND GROUPS TO FIGHT FOR OUR IMAGE AND TO HELP REDUCE THE IGNOURANCE THAT SURROUNDS US FROM MUSLIMS AND FORIGNERS

to MICHO:
what r u talking about i know all that very well... am saying that we ough it to our selves and TO the religeon that god left in our trust to make sure WE r not understood wrong and that this religeon is understood right

TO YASMINE;
i agree with you in some areas..but even if its the west that funds terrorism,, its muslims who r brain washed to belive that they r fighting for god... because they were not teached better

TO NOBODY:

i totally agree with you in the part that.. egyptian and middle eastern traditions are thought to be religeous and fundamental..such as nikab which mainly came from el khalige..

TO KALOOKA
i agree with you,,, but islam's bad behaviour has been provoced to apear larger by arabs and western politicians..

i think that all it will take to help improve our image is that if each 1 of us sees some1 hurracing a lady in the street hed stop him,, or if he saw some extremist destroying our religeon;s image to talk to him,,, and to talk to people who think other wise to tell them what really we stand for and not to listen negative talk

Answer 1

You're right. In fact, I just read an article about this in Islamica Magazine. It made me think that if groups of people suddenly began committing horriffic actions in the name of their religion, I would also get a very bad impression about it; just like the one many people have of Islam today.

A lot of people here on Yahoo Answers have commented that we- as moderate Muslims- don't do or say enough publicly against those who disfigure Islam in their eyes. One person mentioned that the whole world saw us protesting against the insulting cartoons of Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) but that not one Muslim was seen or heard protesting over the 9/11 attacks or the Russian school incident.

I always urge those people who have this extremely negative image of Islam to learn more about it first but let's be honest with ourselves; who has the time or inclination to research something as huge and complicated as religion when the media- seemingly- offers all the answers in the form of documentaries, news bulletins and pictures. I don't want to get into the whole media-is-biased issue but I'll give you a quotation that's been made by a professer (unfortunately I don't remember his name) about the media: he said " 'Muslim Beats Wife' makes a story, but whoever heard about an article titled 'Muslim Buys Flowers for Wife'"?
Bad news are the most sensational, and that's an unfortunate fact.

Now, I'm completely with you that we need to raise awareness about what true Islam is; a beautiful, tolerant, peaceful religion led by an honest, kind, peaceful, loving Prophet. The Internet is an obvious place to start, so how about we create a website to promote the real nature of Islam where we can put articles written by moderate Muslims?

I would love to be involved in something like that, so if you'd like email me through Answers and we could exchange ideas about this. Thumbs up for speaking out about such a sensitive issue!

Answer 2

It seems that there is a frequent reference to Christians and the Crusades, being compared with Muslims and jihad. Here's the main thing... the crusades were hundreds of years ago. Christians have moved on. Isn't it about time Muslim's move into the modern world, and give up all those medieval practices? This is the 21st century. Jihad has no place in this modern world. It's frightening that so many uneducated people cling to such barbaric practices.

Answer 3

Allow me to sure my thoughts with you. This is my own personal point of view which may or may not be right.
1- Islam is a religion. The middle East on the other hand is a collection of cultures and civlizations.
2- There is a difference between religion and culture.
3- In Egypt, people used to believe that "khetan" or women circumsizion is a part of the Islamic religion.The Muslim clerks proved them wrong. Another thing that Egyptians take for granted as a part of the Islamic traditions is to get togther 40 days after the death of somebody and read Quran. This isn't taken from Islamic,it's a pharonic traditions that was modified with time to suit Islam.
4-If you are convinced of 2 and 3 then we can move on to 4. The Egyptian "culture" is very much affected by what happened to the Egyptian people. Same goes with all the countries of the ME. I am going to remain focused on Egypt as my country of birth. Egypt had been occupied most of the post-pharonic era, until the year 1952 when we got our independence. During this period of time , education was limited to the elite"The rich, and the smart". Taking this into consideration, one wouldn't think it is strange that the rate of illetracy in Egypt is so high.
5- Based on 4, lots of things that r done everyday have nothing to do with the teachings of Islam. Islam here is nothing but the cover behind which they hide, most of the extermists have read very few books and started preaching to the less knowlegable.
6- It is a good idea always not to blame the general ideology of those who commit mistakes but to blame the doers. In other words, Islam is not to be blamed by the mistakes of Muslims. Muslims are to be blamed for their mistakes. Islam in my point of view is a branch of knowledge, one should read about it and issue his judgements to what seems or doesn't seem suitable in it from the point of view of the reader.
7- You have mentioned some interesting things. "Niquab" or full-face veil is not obligatory to women. "Hejab" or hair-veil is mandatory on the other hand. However, wearing "Niquab" should be a matter of personal choice, in the same way wearing tight clothes or revealing ones is.
8- Inviting other people to our religion is not something that is done by Muslims alone. I believe those who have travelled to western countries can comment on many attempts to make them join Christianity. The whole idea about asking someone to join your religion is not by all means wrong. I didn't mind at all talking with priests and church people about religions. It's better than those people who invite me to the "non-religion". Having a religious discussion could be something mind-stimulating and very interesting. It's not about proving who is right and who is wrong , but it is about learning from the others.
9- Basing on 8, inviting other people to one's religion is not wrong. The way by which this invitation is done is what needs to be taken into consideration.
10-I have my point of view about "changing our image to the world" I believe that we should start by changing what we do wrong. And once we have cleared everything and got the majority to act properly, we should work on the image thing.

I am so sorry I wrote such a long answer.

Answer 4

i know what you're talking about. i see that muslims to great extent are responsible for the bad image that they have worldwide. i view it like; stupidity and corruption hit us in all aspects of life, why exclude the religion? and i mean by religion; the interpretation and speakers of islam.
I mean that Islam is not responsible for that, its when the corruption, opression, etc. spread, it take religion with it. and it, by the way not about islam alone, you'll find the same extremist, know-it-all, few religuous people in Christianity in Egypt.
It's a matter of mentality.
and i say, let's try making our country better, that's when people outside will believe we are not as bad as they thought we are!

Answer 5

the question is, why they spot lights on Muslim mistakes and no one spots on every one else..
in america every day one or more woman die of home violenc, and there are departments for dealing with home violence,
the freedom there ggave more than 6 million child, the father or the mother do not known...

unfortunatly i can list a very long list in usa and canada, uk, france, and europe with most that countries where claimed that they have more freedom than what islam gave us...

the sad and black image is, WE have weak media, weak leadres, most of important leaders are slafe there at their feet.

and those people killing civilians, claiming that islam ordered to do it.

we hav eto do our best to tell every one that islam never oredered to kill or hate, islam for build happy and strong society.....
if we could do it , they well accept us

Answer 6

i partialy agree with u
well our image to non-muslims is horrible, we all know that, ur right its because of those fanatics and people who dont understand Islam well.
on the other hand, Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world, u know why? its because of the existence of educated and open minded people who dont judge without seeking for the truth first.
i still believe that all kinds of terrorism is coming from the west, its like a political agenda, USA knows very well that Islam is true and is a very respectable religion, thats why they plan for terrorist attacks and fund them in order to mislead the rest of the world and make them percieve us as terrorists who have no mercy, all that with Israel playing behind the curtains, and i'm sure u know how much they wanna vanish Islam.
unfortunatly they have a good audience for that, cause most americans are just airheads, and they are so easy to believe in anything.
the difference between us and the west is that they got used to generalize when for example they see an ignorant man calling himself "Muslim" hurting his wife and treating her like a slave, they tend to say he is a bad "muslim", but when we see any bad thing an american does we dont relate it to his religion.
u'd better look at the whole thing from a higher prespective, all whats happening now is God's will, these are steps leading at the end to Islam's victory, its in Quran, so we cant do anything about it.
i just think its useless to try to convince them "we are good" whats in it for us anyway?

Answer 7

look my friend
what happened about ben laden in afganistan and his animal treatment to womens is not true islam
he didnt make them educated he prevented them to share opinions he treated them like an animals
but the silly american media showed that as islam and never showed the real muslims girls who r smart in all fields

its not war against islam but islam used as a reason
1) to collect more supporters from american people by encourage thier religion love to serve thier in taking money from congress

2) to destroy any new power in the area
3) to kick russian companies out of iraq and bush companies replaced by it

they divided iraqi people into many nations to fight each others for reasources and to leave american solders in iraq without revenge and to make no peace in iraq and all the world will say plz america stay in iraq

In our religion, we must respect all the other religions because they are all from GOD. And by the way we MUSLIMS must believe in all the PROPHITS like (Jesus) peace be upon him, (Moses) peace be upon him, (Ishaq) peace be upon him, (Jacob) peace be upon him, (Noah) peace be upon him.. because they are all Messengers from GOD

You will never find any MUSLIM disrespect any of the PROPHITS. Because we are taught in the Quran to believe in all the PROPHITS including (Jesus) piece be upon him.

Read about ISLAM from the right channels, get the knowledge of it instead of talking about things you are not aware of.

Do not judge ISLAM from some Muslim people, not all MUSLIMS give good example of what ISLAM is really about. We cannot judge Christianity from CHRISTIAN people because they are hardly any one practices the real CHRISTIANITY these days.

Yes Islam does believe in Jihad. But the Christians believed in the Crusades
If you want to compare the amount of people killed do to Jihad and the amount of people killed do to indoctrinating people with Catholicism

Answer 8

good idea

Answer 9

I am a hater of ignorance as well.....

Answer 10

Baseless question.