September 30, 2013

Countering the Ideology of Hate: The Tripartite Approach‏

Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman*

The world was rocked by two terrorist attacks over the past week: one in Kenya by Al-Shabaab which gunned down innocent civilians. The other was in Pakistan when the Tehrik-e-Taliban killed more than 91 Pakistani Christians. Both were inspired by a deviant understanding of Islam. Mainstream Muslims must challenge these misrepresentations of Islam by involving traditional Muslim scholars, Muslim activists and government authorities.

Using the Gulen Movement to Broaden Discussions in the West Concerning Muslim Women (1)

April L. Najjaj, Ph.D.*

…Using a Western-defined standard of feminism, academic as well as more populist writers both within and outside the Muslim world most often frame the debate of the status of women in Islam solely within a Western context, as if the Western experience is the only appropriate model for a woman in any culture to realize her full potential. There is little to no appreciation given by these authors for diversity of expression or style, regional differences, personal religious conviction, or veneration of long-standing traditions that are not easily dismissed. The problem only becomes more complicated when Muslim conservatives often suspect that anyone who advocates for the rights of women has compromised their Islamic values and sold out to Western ways. What is often missing in the ideas of many of these writers from both sides of the debate are the foundations of similarity in the life experiences of all women regardless of cultural, religious, or social context—Gülen himself argues that one extreme is as bad as the other. Both men and women negotiate gender norms and expectations; it’s how we all go about finding and establishing our place in our respective societies—in marriage, in family life, and in the broader community. Within such a wider context, there is much more of a basis of commonality in the lives of women, and it is my contention that many of the fundamental concepts of Islam expressed in a more contemporary context and espoused by Fethullah Gülen and the Gülen Movement, can be used to describe and establish a dialogue in both the Eastern and Western contexts that can give all women a shared sisterhood of experience to promote tolerance and understanding regardless of religious or cultural backgrounds.