Hope for Islam

Are you familiar with the name Jamal Miftah? He is a Muslim from Pakistan who is currently living in the United States. He wrote a letter to the editor of the Tulsa World. Below is the text of that letter (taken from Neal Boortz's website):

Because of lack of knowledge of Islam, Muslim youth are misguided into believing by the so-called champions of the cause of Islam that the current spate of killings and barbarism, which has no equal in the recent civilized history, is jihad in the name of Islam. They are incited, in the name of Islam, to commit heinous crimes not pardonable by any religion and strictly forbidden in Islam....

Even mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S. and around the world have become tools in [Al-Qaeda's] hands and are used for collecting funds for their criminal acts. Half of the funds collected go into the pockets of their local agents and the rest are sent to these thugs.

They are the reason for branding the peaceful religion of Islam as terrorism. The result, therefore, is in the form of Danish cartoons and remarks/reference by the Pope.

I appeal to the Muslim youth in particular and Muslims of the world in general to rise up and start jihad against the killers of humanity and help the civilized world to bring these culprits to justice and prove that Islam is not a religion of hatred and aggression.

I appeal to the Muslim clerics around the world that, rather than issuing empty fatwas condemning suicide bombing, they should issue a fatwa for the death of such scoundrels and barbarians who have taken more than 4,267 lives of innocent people in the name of Islam and have carried out more than 24 terrorist attacks on civilian installations throughout the world. This does not include the chilling number of deaths because of such activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is well over 250,000.

I appeal to al-Zawahri and his band of thugs to hand themselves over to justice and stop spreading evil and killing innocent humans around the world in the name of Islam. Their time is limited and Muslims of the world will soon rise against them to apprehend them and bring them to justice.

Just when you see something like this, then the other shoe drops: Mifta was banned from his mosque for this. Fortunately, he was reinstated after a small Media firestorm over this (the full story here), but it still leaves a bad taste that he would have been banned in the first place, and whether the mosque reinstated him just to get the Media off their backs.

In the interest of fairness, according to a Tulsa World article:

Mosque spokeswoman Sheryl Siddiqui said the matter should have been quietly resolved, but because of the media and the Internet, "It's had such legs."

The story was carried by local television and radio stations and spread nationwide on the Internet.

"This was not about the article; it was about a disturbance in the mosque," she said. "We agree with most of his article, except the one statement that American mosques support terrorists.

"Our mosque does not, and I don't know of any that do," she said.

Even if you only consider that part of Miftah's letter, is that reasonable cause for banning him from the mosque? It is not like mosques in other countries have not had links to terrorists: the London train bombers had links to radicals through a mosque (link here). Perhaps Miftah should not have mentioned the U.S. mosques specifically?

Frankly, this is a smokescreen to avoid the main thrust of Miftah's letter, which is that Muslims should be condemning terrorism, to the point of issuing fatwas "for the death of such scoundrels and barbarians". Muslims should surround and support Miftah.

Neal Boortz said it best:

Now there is one Muslim I would be proud to have as a neighbor and count as a friend.

Thanks to Jamal Miftah, I have hope for Islam.