Author: Ophelia Benson

Check out Hanan Dover, who made lots of comments on that ‘Muslim Village’ discussion of Habib. She’s not rabid enough for some of the commenters there, but she’s rabid enough for (I hope) most people.

So, what do Islamic Scriptures say about homosexuality…just from these verses we can deduce that Islam forbids any sexual relationship other than between man and woman, and even then, it must be within a marriage. In a hadith, Abu Hurairah (ra) reported Allah’s Messenger (pbuh) said: ‘Four types of people awake under Allah’s anger and go to bed under Allah’s displeasure.’ Those who were listening asked: Who are they, Messenger of Allah?’ He replied: ‘Men who imitate women, women who imitate men, those who have sex with animals, and men who have sex with men.’

And so on and so on and so on, complete with all the (ra)s and (pbuh)s and the rest of the robotic bullshit.

There is no changing the Quran. The Quran is a perfect guide for humanity. Human law nor science is above Allah (swt)…And this brings into light the difference between what homosexuality means in Islam and what homosexuality means is in the modern world…There is Wisdom in Allah’s rulings and they do not change and He only gives us these restrictions for the benefit of humanity. So, it should be crystal clear even literally clear that Islam forbids homosexual behaviour…Can you be a Muslim thief, or a Muslim paedophile, or a Muslim rapist? No, as you cannot attach what is inherently sinful in Islam to the religious identity as it goes against what a Muslim is. You can call yourself a Muslim psychologist, a Muslim doctor or a Muslim teacher as these can all co-exist as long as they adhere to Islamic principles, but homosexuality does not.

Dover is a Muslim psychologist. Something tells me she’s not a very good psychologist – and as Bronwyn Winter pointed out, she was suspended ‘from her post as a lecturer in psychology at UWS because of her homophobic views and practices (she has also expressed anti-Semitic and anti-feminist views). Suspension is an extreme measure, only possible when evidence has been found to support allegations of serious misconduct, such as misuse of university funds or serious breach of the University Code of Conduct.’

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, UWS does about Habib’s course. Insh’allah they’ll tell the imams and the imams’ supporters to go away.

And there’s the statement of the Australian National Council of Imams.

The Australian National Imams Council is a body that represents the Muslim Imams of Australia and through them the community of Muslims in Australia. Currently there are 94 Imams in the Council and they are drawn from all the States and Territories of Australia. We are responsible for a variety of matters including the Appointment of the Mufti of Australia and the issuance of legal rulings for the benefit of Muslim Australians.

Oh yes? But we always hear that Islam is not like religions that have official centralized clergy who can speak as authorities – so in what sense is the ANIC ‘responsible for’ the issuance of legal rulings? How do all these legal rulings work when crowds and flocks of people issue them while no one has any actual authority to issue them? They seem to be binding yet not authoritative. How does that work? And why does anyone put up with it?

Notice also the announcement that ‘through’ the imams of Australia the ANIC ‘represents’ the community of Muslims in Australia. But it doesn’t. People can’t ‘represent’ people in that way. We don’t get to represent other people just by saying we do. The other people have to agree. Not just fail to object; actually agree. Otherwise this boast of representation is just hot air. I might as well claim I represent all American kuffars. I could make the claim, but that wouldn’t make it true.

Then the statement gets on to the bullying.

[W]e would like to place on the record our deep concern with regards to a course taught at the University under the course name ‘Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature’. The course structure and content has involved repeated and unjustified attacks upon Islam by the lecturer and a course reader that is seriously flawed. The reader promotes a very negative view of Islam and especially women in Islam. It does not represent normative, traditional Islam as practised by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim Population in the world today and through fourteen centuries of Islamic history…We would appreciate a reassessment of this course, its content and the manner in which it is taught so that it more accurately reflects the actual and not imagined teachings of Islam. And to truly reflect the normative teachings of Islam which is best placed under the Centre of excellence in Islamic studies.

No doubt you would. But the content of the course is the business of the University of Western Sydney and Dr Habib. So piss off.

I hope that is more or less what the UWS tells them.

‘Communities’ demanding a veto on the content of university courses. Not just ‘communities’ of course; religious ‘communities.’

Students, community members and the Australian National Imams Council have complained about the content of the course, Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature, being taught at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies. They say it gives a negative view of women in Islam.

‘Community members’ have complained. Yeah, and other ‘community members’ haven’t complained, so what are we supposed to conclude from that? Who knows.

Homosexuality is forbidden in the Koran for both sexes. Dr Habib has also been accused by Muslims for Peace of teaching that it is not obligatory to wear the hijab, that the Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) are just Chinese whispers and that Muslim scholars can be ignored because they are males.

Has she? Well good for her! Go Dr Habib; you rock.

The imams council does not believe the course represents the normative traditional Islam as practised by most of the world’s Muslim population. “The subject’s emphasis on sexuality and its explicit sexual content is not reflective of normative Islam, which is what we thought the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies would attempt to portray,” ANIC president Sheik Moez Nafti wrote.

That’s interesting. But the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies is part of a university, not part of a mosque, so what you thought is (let us hope) fundamentally beside the point.

A nasty little outfit called ‘Muslims for Peace’ offers its opinion.

Today, the board of management of the so-called ‘Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies’ (Centre of Kufr) meets in Melbourne…The Imams manifestly fail to protect our Muslim youth from this evil Centre, by demanding — at the very minimum — that the pro-Lesbian lecturer of the Unit in question is dismissed from the Centre and her Lesbian Studies course abolished…Muslims For Peace has been virtually alone in calling upon all Muslims associated with this accursed Centre, at whatever level — academics, administrators, students or whatever —to immediately disengage from the Centre. Now that its wicked nature should be crystal clear for all to see, Muslims should fear Almighty Allah and break all connections with this diabolical Centre of Kufr.

Very good that ‘Muslims for Peace’ has been virtually alone in this campaign of epithet-hurling and heresy-sniffing. Very good that this group (or is it a ‘community’?) is a minority, one hopes a very small minority. Unfortunate that anyone at all thinks that way. People who label other people as evil, accursed, wicked, diabolical and all mixed up with ‘kufr’ are nasty and also dangerous. That kind of language tends to work people up to the point of violence. Browse some more on this horrible site and you will find your stomach turned. The very next article for instance.

But we must also be clear about the nature of evil itself. In most Muslim countries, drinking alcohol is rightly considered to be bad. But what about those who drink the blood of people? – not literally, but by causing the deaths of thousands of innocent people, including women and children, as a result of their policies; are such acts any less evil? In Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Iraq, Egypt and many other places, Muslims are murdered by the kuffar in connivance with Muslim rulers.

Muslims are murdered by the kuffar, and that’s what counts. The world is divided into good people and bad people, and we apportion our moral thinking accordingly. ‘We must be clear about the nature of evil’: we must be convinced that ‘kuffars’ are evil and we are good; we must not care about all people or all sentient beings, we must care only about Muslims and call everyone else ‘the kuffar.’ Muslims for ‘Peace’ indeed.

There’s a lot more dreck about Habib’s course on the page; they’ve made quite a vendetta about it. The discussion at Muslim Village is interesting (in a nasty bullying way), and so is Bronwyn Winter’s article.

I hope you’re not bored with Priya Venkatesan yet, because I’m not. She’s the mother lode, so to speak.

Tyler Brace asked her if it was true that she called the students fascist demagogues, and she said no never, not true.

I went into class after that whole clapping incident, and I said. ‘What you did was horrific. What you did was really bad.’ Not bad, I didn’t accuse them of being bad, I said what you did was unacceptable. They started arguing with me. I said fine. You think you know everything. You think you know everything without the knowledge base to boot, without the training, you think you have a command of all the knowledge in the world at this stage in your life, then I’m sorry, that is fascism and that is demagoguery. When I made the two words fascism and demagoguery I looked at the picture on the wall. I made sure that I did not look at the students, and that I did not make any personal attacks on them.

Isn’t that cool? She didn’t call them fascist demagogues, all she did is say when you do what I’m saying you did, that is fascism and that is demagoguery – and she was very careful to look at the wall when she said it, so they would know it was nothing personal. There’s semiotics for you! Or something.

The fact of the matter is that by being so arrogant about their command of knowledge about arguing with me about every point that I was making and that’s really arrogant. That’s very arrogant because frankly, and I’m not trying to be an academic elitist, but frankly, they don’t even have a B.A. They’re freshmen. They’re freshmen.

Yeah. And they just don’t have the rich knowledge that she has, which shines through in everything she says and writes. You have only to read the full interview (endless as it is) to see that. She’s erudition itself. She knows a really really lot and they don’t.

[T]he fact of the matter is that I have the PhD in literature, I make the assessment if someone has talent for philosophy, literary theory, and literary criticism. A student might say, well, the hell with you I’m still going to become a literary critic, I had to do that, there were people who criticized me while I was a student, you’re not a good writer or whatever, but I said well I’m still going to go ahead with my goals, but I never made any personal attacks on them…

Ya…but you should have listened to them though. They were right. You’re not a good writer. And I wouldn’t trust your opinion on who has a talent for philosophy, either. Literary ‘theory’ you can decide if you want to, but philosophy? I don’t think so.

I made the argument that in many cases science and technology did not benefit women, and if women were benefiting science and technology, it was an aftereffect. It was not the goal of science and technology. It was a very feminist claim, and you may not agree with it. But that was Merchant’s argument…But there was one student who really took issue with this…science and technology, women really did benefit from it, and to criticize patriarchal authority on the basis that science and technology benefited patriarchy or men, was not sufficient grounds for this type of feminist claim. And he did this with great rhetorical flourish; it was very invective, it was a very invective sort of tone.

Aw, that’s a shame. I suppose he was another one who has no talent for philosophy.