Friday Sermon

You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness

THE CRIME OF DRAW MUHAMMAD DAY; MANAGING THE INSULT

My fellow muslimin, place the best efforts and strive for the highest level of taqwa in our lives. The strives and the passion on doing what is ordained, must be complemented and supported by the prevention and precautions on what is forbidden.

My dear muslims

The world’s tolerance is again tested when it comes to the confliction between religion, religious principles and the freedom of expression. Whilst the Social Networking such as Facebook and top social medias You Tube, promoting the freedom of expression with their insensitive taunt to muslims and declare the May 20th as the Draw Muhammad Day, the only things appear is that the world is now seeing the upside down of the intellectuality level, scratching and denting their intellectual with irrelevant actions and morale misbehave. Muslims, just like others, should be the first to defend anyone’s right to express their own opinion, no matter how offensive it is. The reason it happen is due to the lack of knowledge surpassing their actions, or the ignorance that they’re practicing, intentionally or unintentionally. No matter where we are living, be it in a majority scale or minority would it be, the world and the human sense believe and respect values and diversity. But on top of that, on any reasonable and understood ground, freedom of expression does not create an obligation to offend or to show disrespects to the religious beliefs or revered figures of others.

Despite the cartoonist's and the Facebook seemingly attempts to distance themselves from the fake event, the extremists against Islam and those who promoting Islamophobia made sure the call to draw Muhammad went viral on the Internet. They are hoping to offend Muslims, who are sensitive to created images of the Prophet Muhammad or any prophets. What they need to know, of most possibly that they’ve acknowledged the matter long ago, as for muslims, we believe visual representations of not just our beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, all prophets are inappropriate in that they distract from God's message and could lead to a kind of idol worship, which is obviously forbidden in Islam. For all we know, what exactly happen to other religions which allow drawing, sketching the visual figure of their Prophets, it’s not just the false idolization, but they’re free to insult their own religions and its teachings. They expressed their frustration towards their own religions by mocking their religious leaders and even the Prophets and the God! It is strongly suggested to any other religions that their scholars and leaders sensitively look into this matter and might as well joining the aspiration and the stand of Islam in banning these types of visualizations. Bible didn’t approach its readers to visualize Jesus or their religious leaders. It can never be the good way to make people close to their religions, rather it does succeed in distracting people far away from their own beliefs.

So, what will be our best reactions? Firstly, it must be made clear to muslims and non muslims that Islam teaches us about the value, freedom of speech and have no desire to inhibit the creative instincts of cartoonists, comedians, artists or anyone else. What other religions and their leaders need to do is, positively pull themselves on the same discussion table with muslim leaders in their region. Let the intentional ignorance attitude washed away to the drain, based on the freedom of expression factor. If this can be done, they will acknowledge that people is free to practice their religious beliefs, and this freedom must be engaged with morale, respect and responsible acts. Should you say that you’re free and wanted to express your freedom in expression in all things, including religion, then you must let muslim women for example, to feel free wearing their burqa. It’s their personal choice, it’s the dressing style that they personally chose. Belgium who banned it, simply on the basis of its contradict with the culture of the country. Ironically, the country claimed to hold a tolerance, respect and diversity as the core culture.

That’s why rationally and truthfully, freedom is defined with responsible acts and not just totally free. Nobody is allowed to trespass other’s land, nobody is allowed to enter other people’s property, nobody is allowed to hack other people’s bank account. They’re free to buy lands and property and doing the transaction with banks, but they simply are not free to touch other’s rights. If they can accept this fact, why can’t they rationally accept that Islam forbids the visualization of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in any ways?

Secondly, Muslims and non muslims must examine how the Prophet Muhammad himself reacted to personal insults. Our Prophet has been abused, have it in words and actions from the pagans of Makkah and in Madinah too. He has been labeled with so many inappropriate names and calls. Islamic traditions include a number of instances in which the Prophet had the opportunity to retaliate against those who abused him, but refrained from doing so. He said, ‘You do not do evil to those who do evil to you, but you deal with them with forgiveness and kindness.’ Even when the prophet was in a position of power, he chose the path of kindness and mercy. When he returned to Makkah after years of exile and personal attacks, he did not take revenge on the people who had reviled him and abused and tortured his followers, but instead offered a general amnesty. With the strength of patience in preaching and deliver good messages, instead of reacting negatively to the bigoted call to support the Draw Muhammad Day, we should use that and every other day as an opportunity to reach out to people of other faiths and beliefs to build bridges of understanding and respect.

Barakallahu li walakum

Mohd Erfino Johari

Note : This is only the first part of the sermon by Ustaz Erfino on 21 May 2010 at UK Malaysian Student Department, London. You can read the whole sermon here.