Yvonne Ridley's Speech at EWAMY, Cairo (EGYPT)
EWAMY - Cairo, Egypt Friday, November 24, 2006
"The Arabic language is one of the cornerstones of Islam, as we have heard today from our brother, so I do apologize in advance that this is one of the many areas of Islam I've yet to master.
Islamically, I am very young, having reverted in 2003. And while I have much to learn I can identify with the frustrations shared by young Muslims today.
I know 9/11 had a huge impact on the world, but it wasn't really the start of something. It was the continuation of a legacy of US imperialism & its fear of Islam.
Just over ten years ago, fit young Muslims across the globe flooded into Bosnia to help their brothers & sisters fight for their survival against the Serbs who were carrying out a genocide sanctioned by the silence of a watching world.
The jihad brought together Muslims fm all nationalities, status & culture. All were united; even those who could not travel to fight helped in other ways such as fund-raising, public awareness events & demonstrations.
The impact was to stop the genocide. Western intervention, when it happened, came only after it was apparent that that the Bosnian Muslims were heading for victory. The establishment of an Islamic state deep in the heart of Europe was simply too much to bear & so the West intervened. This is not my conclusion, but US President Bill Clinton admitted it in his autobiography.
This fear of Islam has now evolved in the last 10 years to such an extent that the blood of our brothers & sisters is now flowing like rivers across Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq & we saw recently what happened to Lebanon.
I have walked through many of those killing fields & let me tell you the twisted, blown up limbs of our Muslim brothers & sisters look exactly like those pulled from the rubble of the Twin Towers.
Yet the message of today is quite clear. Muslim blood is a cheap commodity.
Meanwhile tens of thousands of innocent Muslims continue to be tortured in far away dungeons and cages in Guantanamo Bay, Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Diego Garcia & ghost prisons throughout the world.
Others are tortured in Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria and even here in Egypt. Brothers are being tortured at the behest and request of the United States.
So what sort of message does that send out to our young people?
They read abt the heroic exploits of Salahudddin Ayyoubi, Khalid bin Walid, Tariq bin Ziad & listen intently to stories of courage & bravery about our beloved Prophet Mohamed.
Do you know, five years ago I had never even heard of The Prophet, but now I would give my last drop of blood to protect his name, his honor & his memory.
Even in death he continued to show how strong he was by uniting the Ummah in protest at those vile cartoons from Denmark.
Our modern day heroes include those two sixties martyrs Malcolm X & Sayyid Qutb, both whose writings have helped define me as a Muslim.
These are the sort of role models & influences our youth need to follow, but instead they receive confused & mixed messages.
One minute they are told the fear no one but Allah while the next minute they are told to dilute their Islam & keep their heads down.
Since the events of 9-11, there has been an unrelenting campaign launched to change Islam into something more palatable to Western society.
The vision is a secular & cultural Islam at peace with the world through her submission to her oppressors rather than to Allah; an Islam devoid of jihad, Shariah and khilafah. The very things we are commanded by Allah to implement in order to establish Allah's deen on this earth.
And it is in evidence everywhere I look. Hijab are being ripped off the heads of my sisters in Tunisia, France and Turkey. Sisters in Holland & Germany are also in the firing line.
And in Britain, we have Jack Straw, the former British Foreign Secretary who questioned the veil. I am not having a white, middle-aged man telling me how to dress. Keep out of my wardrobe & that of every sister on this planet.
I pick up the newspapers in Cairo today to discover the Minister of Culture has called the wearing of the veil a regression.
How dare he say that? Why are the men in Egypt standing by and doing nothing to silence him? He is insulting the honor & dignity of every Muslim woman who chooses to cover.
Farooq Hosni is a disgrace to Islam. What sort of message does he send out to our young people with his weasel words?
The niqab, like the veil, like the hijab has become a symbol of a rejection of those negative Western lifestyles like drug-taking, binge-drinking and promiscuity. It is a statement telling the West we don't want to be like you.
These Arabs who choose to be more western than Westerners make me laugh. Do they realize how pathetic they look in the eyes of the rest of the world? This Minister should be sacked from his post for dishonoring every sister who chooses to cover.
I suppose he hides behind such descriptions as moderate. Again what sort of message does that send to our young people?
If we ask them to be moderate does that not suggest that there is something wrong with Islam that it needs to be toned down, dilluted?
The last time I came to Cairo I was called an extremist by none other than the Sheikh of Al Azhar Sheikh Tantawi. The reason for this? Because, I would not shake his hand.
What is a moderate and what is an extremist? I really don't know. I am a simple Muslim. I follow no scholars or sects. I merely follow The Prophet & the Sunnah. Does that make me an extremist?
I once said being a Muslim is a bit like being pregnant. You are or you are not. Whoever heard of anyone being moderately or extremely pregnant?
Islam has been under attack for 1400 years & we should have learned by now to put our trust in no one but Allah. Yet there are those who continue to kiss the hand which slaps them.
I am afraid that we can no longer put our trust in to someone just because they might wear Islamic dress or have a long beard? I notice quite a few long beards in here today, but I am not referring to you, brothers.
There are those Muslim leaders who claim to guide & protect us but not all of them have our interests at heart.
Our young people are going to have to be very discerning since the events of 9/11, Bali, Madrid & the London Bombings, to name a few.
There are individuals who for years rallied the masses to stand up for justice and support mujahideen groups around the world & now some have become embarrassingly silent while others condemn armed jihad, portraying mujahideen as terrorists and extremists who follow a distorted version of Islam.
In some ways we are all to blame. Our greatest shame has been our silence while martyrdom operations in Palestine & other occupied lands have been condemned as acts of terror as witnessed in 9/11 and the July 7 bombings.
Our young people have to be taught that what is happening in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq & Afghanistan is legitimate resistance against a brutal military occupation, while crimes like 9/11 & the London bombings are blatant terrorism.
Equating the two only betrays our brothers & sisters who have no other option but to fight or face being wiped off the face of this planet.
The new slaves of the West criticize Islamist parties & governance by Shariah. Even student & youth movements which consistently campaigned for Palestine & Iraq have suddenly lost their tongues in a bid to be seen as Moderate.
In Britain we have an invasion of what I call the Happy Clappies. They are being flown in by the Government from the US, Canada, Yemen & Mauritania to preach a diluted form of Islam.
They are poisoning the minds of our youth & we should be very wary before the Happy Clappies spread across the world.
They attack Wahhabi groups in the most cynical manner. Some even misuse nasheeds, and I am deeply afraid that the Happy Clappies are infecting our nasheeds with the excesses of western pop culture.
The end result of all this has been a dilution of the deen of Allah, a weak and pacified Islam willing to accept the status quo in which Muslims are oppressed and subjugated; an Islam in which Muslims are content to sing & dance the night away to nasheeds, to concentrate on bettering their life in the West and to condemn the actions of their brothers & sisters who courageously resist occupation & oppression with whatever they have.
Even making dua for them now has become a crime. How long before we are told not to even pray for the mujahideen?
One of the greatest military general the world has known, Salahuddin Ayyubi, the liberator of al-Quds, was once asked why he didn't smile. He answered back that how could he smile while he knowing that Masjid al-Aqsa, remained under Crusader occupation.
I wonder what he would make of the state of the world today. I wonder what advice he would give our youth?
This is a world where Arab leaders belly-danced shamelessly in front of America while handing Iraq over on a plate.
The same Arab leaders look the other way as our beautiful Palestine is continually raped & sodomized, and that other great daughter of the Arab world, Lebanon. Where was the Arab world when she was so brutally assaulted?
And the war drums are beating again. Not only is the whole world watching, but so are our children, our youth, and our future.
We must nurture them, and inspire them with tales of the Prophet and the Sahaba.
As long as the Ummah continues to throw up figures like Khalid bin Walid, Salahuddin Ayyoubi, Sayyid Qutb & Malcolm X all is not lost.
The more we are oppressed by the tyrants the more we will fight back. That is the nature of Islam.
And this is the Islam our youth need to follow, be guided by & inspired.
Farooq Hosni and his like are pale imitations of real men. They have castrated themselves in a pathetic attempt to become more Western than the Westerners.
He will be consigned to the history books with barely a sentence while the courage & heroic resistance of our brothers & sisters will go down in chapters.
A rapidly increasing number of Muslim youth are now realizing that no matter how hard they compromise their deen to blend in with the wider society, when things go sour, they will be treated with suspicion.
The more we are told to forget Shariah, khilafah and jihad, the more Muslims will pay the blood price to uphold these values.
The jihad we are witnessing in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir & Chechnya is something noble, a just war against injustice and tyranny.
The actions of the jihadists pose absolutely no threat to the West or Western lifestyles & their resistance is not only justified but embraced & encouraged by international law.
The real religious extremists who pose the greatest threat to radicalizing our youth are the Christian Fundamentalists in the White House & Downing Street. Bush & Blair have become al-Qaeda's finest recruiting officers.
More & younger Muslims are waking up with the realization that it is not terrorism or extremism that is being targeted but Islam itself.
It is up to the Ummah to lead & inspire our youth, just as The Prophet led & inspired millions & continues to do so.
And the first lesson we must teach our youth is to fear none but Allah."
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