While the violent crackdown on protesters cuts deep into the body of the Syrian people, ironically a healing of old wounds is simultaneously taking place. For the first time in history, Syrians have begun to publicly mourn the Hama massacre, surfacing thirty years of repressed anger and sorrow. While nearly everyone from Hama has a father, brother, uncle or neighbor who died or went missing during the massacre, speaking of this dark history, let alone mourning the losses has been taboo for thirty long years. Today, as all of Syria becomes the next Hama, Syrians stand up to their oppressors and demand their dignity and human rights. They demand the right to tell the story of the Hama massacre in all of its horrific details, to mourn those who died, and to bring those responsible to justice.

Bombs, Tanks and Hydrogen Cyanide

February 2, 1982, Hafez Alassad orders the scorched earth assault of the city of Hama. Rifaat, Hafez’s brother carries out the operation systematically demolishing the city. He orders the bombing of the city centre by air to facilitate the entry of tanks and infantry through Hama’s narrow streets. Tanks roll in to tear down whatever is still standing including mosques, churches and residential buildings. Government forces use hydrogen cyanide to kill inhabitants of entire buildings. They round up thousands of men into the military airport, military camps and stadiums and leave them there to starve. Government officials ransack and loot homes, torture and rape women and children, and then burn everything down to the ground.

There is no escape from the city. All exit points are blocked off. Rifaat suspects that people are hiding in tunnels under the old city. His men pump diesel fuel into the tunnels and set them ablaze. He stations tanks at the tunnel entrances to shell anyone who attempts escape. Finally, Rifaat dispatches the military to comb through the rubble for survivors suspected of association with the opposition. They are rounded up, tortured and mass executed.

The Tentacles of Oppression Clamp on Every Aspect of Life

The Syrian government’s oppression taints various aspects of Syrian life, instilling a culture of paranoia that even infiltrates everyday language. On the rare occasion that the ugliness of the 70’s and 80’s is even mentioned, Syrians refer to what happened as the “incident” or “event,” an alarming euphemism for torture, imprisonment and mass murder. One of the first Syrians to publically expose the Assad regime’s crimes and tell her story is Heba Dabbagh. In her heartrending memoir, Just Five Minutes: Nine Years in the Prisons of Syria, she unravels this perilous period in Syria’s modern history when Mukhabarat officers hunted down anyone even remotely associated with opposition. Heba explains how when a “wanted criminal” escapes from their clutches, the Mukhabarat hold hostages, like in Heba’s case.

In the end of her memoir, Heba describes the day she is released from prison and returns to her city Hama: “As we drove across Hama, I gazed out the window at the unfamiliar scenes. The destruction of the city cast a dark shadow. The empty streets reflected empty hearts. The hum of the waterwheel’s spinning arms had been silenced. Below the waterwheels, the Assey River had run dry and the trees and fields around its banks had withered and died… But one thing remained unchanged. Mukhabarat vehicles still lurked at every street corner, their headlights peeking out of narrow roads, observing, watching, maybe even over the dreams of those sound asleep.”

However, the sorrow of not recognizing her beloved city was nothing compared to the pain of finding out that her mother, father and five of her brothers and sisters had suffered horribly during the Hama siege before they were murdered in cold blood. Today Heba speaks at protests and tears every time she relays the murder of her family, the youngest of who was four years old.

A First Step Towards Healing

This year, for the first time, Syrians around the world will break the silence and gather to memorialize the Hama Massacre. They will recount Hafez Al Assad’s crimes against humanity and call for the end of his son’s equally criminal rule. Memorials and protests will take place in New York, Toronto, London and within Syria. The wounds of the Hama Massacre have been under wraps for thirty years. This year, as a first step towards healing, Syrians will no longer refer to the Assad regime’s crimes as “incidents;” details will no longer be hushed; stories will no longer be air brushed; and the sorrow of losing so many loved ones will no longer be confined to the realm of whispers and nightmares. Ironically, while these old wounds are starting to heal, new ones are cut open.

The recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and several other countries in the Middle East have not only triggered a miraculous emancipation from oppressive regimes, but have also rained inspiration on all of us who were paralyzed by cynicism and a lack of hope for a better world. What we can learn from this glorious moment in history is that our actions can be meaningful in bringing about positive change. No one person or even one group can claim the success for the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. It was the combined efforts of millions of passionate people. We learn from this, that every voice matters, and that the message is stronger when voices are united. Without the unity of Egyptians from all social classes, political parties, and religions, the revolution could not have succeeded.

I am overwhelmed with disbelief but also with pride when I watch the images of protesters in the Middle East. I never thought Arabs had it in them to unite and stand up to monstrous tyrants. I don’t think anyone would have believed this was even a remote possibility but today we watch the powerful voices of the people bring down the most oppressive of regimes.

But what about our freedoms? What about our love for democracy?

It bewilders me and saddens me when I watch people who claim to cherish freedom sit by and do nothing as they watch leaders attempt to crush a revolt against oppression. We have come to expect this double standard from the leaders of the western world, but what about you? What about the everyday person? Why aren’t we raising our voices in solidarity with those fighting for freedom? Why aren’t we demanding from our leaders that they denounce the murder of protestors on the streets? Why aren’t we speaking up for freedom and democracy now?

In graduate program, we discuss the ideas of freedom and democracy at length and with such passion, and so I was shocked to find out that many of my classmates barely knew about what was happening in the Middle East. Not only did they not raise their voices to aid the fight for freedom, but they barely cared to follow this news. What is it that paralyses us from supporting the values we hold most dear?

I am taken aback every time I listen to heart wrenching news of airplanes flying over protestors dropping bombs, or of tyrants hiring mercenaries to kill protestors and then logon to Facebook and find status updates riddles with meaningless personal expressions. We have become a culture obsessed with personal expression, drawn to divulging private details as public news. What space does that leave for real news? Online social media has an amazing potential to provide us with an effective new public sphere, but it continues to be largely used for image construction and self expression.

I would like to end by urging everyone who believes in freedom and democracy to stop taking these sacred rights for granted. Become a part of the historic revolutions taking place. Voice your opinion. Write to your member of parliament. Write a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Join a local protest in support of the revolutions. What good is your freedom of speech if you cannot even muster the motivation to use it to stand up for your most cherished beliefs?

As my daughter nears the age when Muslims become responsible for completing five prayers every single day, I wonder if I will succeed in teaching her this discipline. My parents did it for me. They did it by positioning prayer as a prominent and permanent fixture in our lives, a behaviour worthy of weighty rewards and painful punishments and most of all a habit associated with extreme guilt if neglected.

My parents relayed to me tales of virtuous people who stayed up nights and abandoned days because they could not bear to end their connection with God, this prayer. And they told me about how even they, my parents, normal people, actually enjoyed prayer sometimes and chose longer verses to recite because they wanted prayer to last a little longer than just five minutes.

All of that made no sense to me, because when they taught me how to pray, all they did was show me the physical actions to perform and make me memorize the Arabic verses to recite and I couldn’t grasp the pleasure in this repeated action. I guess my dad tried to take a small step beyond that when he made me sit in the living room and told me not to move until I memorized the English translation of the opening verses of the Quran. “You have to understand what you’re reciting,” he said. And that was as far as it went.

My parents succeeded in instilling the prayer habit and the fear of missing a prayer but they failed to show me the true purpose and benefit of prayer and to lead me to the place where prayer becomes a source of peace and pleasure. I have not found my own way there yet, but all that I have accomplished so far is to recognize that I’m doing it all wrong, that my prostrating and bowing tens of times a day do nothing more for me than relief me of the guilt of negligence, and that I have no idea how to experience a prayer like the virtuous people my parents told me about.

Growing up, I remember hearing about this word “khushu” which in English has no direct translation, but it’s something like deep concentration, focus or what Westerners might understand as meditation. I heard about this term and all sorts of authority figures stressed its importance to me, but not once, not one person told me how to attain this state.

I struggled to maintain this habit of prayer through my teen years, through my twenties without the heart of it all. I held on to the empty shell of prostrations and bowing devoid of this magical ingredient, “khoshu,” that is supposed to make the bitter inconvenience of prayer deeply gratifying… and filled with a unique pleasure unobtainable from any other source.

Eventually, I couldn’t hold on anymore. Prayer became tedious, horribly, sinfully tedious. This is when I knew I would either have to let go of prayer or find out how the people in my parents’ stories experienced it.

And so I have set out on this mission now. I have only just begun and have little to tell you, but I hope that soon I can share some thoughts on this. I do this for me and for my children, because I dread to teach them to pray the way I was taught to pray. I don’t have the heart to nag, prod, bribe, threaten and punish for prayers completed and prayers left behind. There has to be a better way. I think it has to do with quieting our mind chatter, detangling ourselves from worldly involvements, listening to our spiritual intuitions and giving voice to our hearts.

A few days ago, I heard that voice. It spoke a very few words and I didn’t even recognize the voice as I have not given it say for a long time. It happened as I struggled to quiet my thoughts and focus on a gentle rhythm and when I heard it I knew this wasn’t the voice I usually hear in my head. It wasn’t the id, the ego or the superego. I was very well versed with all of those voices. Altogether, they made me, but yesterday, I saw that there was more to me than these three voices, a fourth voice that Freud never wrote about. How could one of the most brilliant men of our time not have known about this other voice?

This is where my journey begins. I feel happy that I have a first step to speak of, although I am not quite sure in which direction the step is pointed. I hope to have something meaningful to teach my daughter about prayer before it turns into tedious duty.

To have ambition, to aspire, to dream big, to strive for success, these are all assets in or society and I agree that they should be. But society goes wrong when it pressures people to dream about the wrong things or to set the wrong goals. Society prods us to aim for wealth, prestige and fame. Everybody knows the drill.

Too many people work too hard to get the next promotion or take on extra shifts, second jobs or extra course at school so they could get ahead or finish faster. People behave this way because they believe that once they’ve saved enough money or completed their degree or accomplished whatever stature they are aiming for, they will be able to exhale, let go of the stress and suddenly feel good.

What I know now is that most often goals are not within themselves worthy of our sweat and struggles. A degree in a field of study we feel little passion for is not worthy of our time or effort even if it brings prestige and wealth. A well paying job is not worth the best chunk of our day and most of our energy if we don’t learn and grow from the work we do or take pleasure in it.

Of course this is a very complicated matter because what we learn from a job is often a product of what we put in to it and how resourceful we are in extracting the most of whatever situation we find ourselves in. For example, an observant factory worker can learn more on the job than a lawyer working at a big law firm sifting through paper work all day. The factory worker could pick up all sorts of ideas and tips that will one day help him/her start and run his/her own factory.

But back to goals. To reword my point: no goal is worthy of our time and effort if all we are going to get out of it is an end result. A worthy goal is one that offers an enjoyable and fruitful journey, not only an end result.

I don’t believe in working hard at a job you feel no passion for so that you could make lots of money and one day retire rich and buy a yacht. I don’t believe in setting goals that will require years of your life performing tasks that slowly kill your soul, your being, your inner spark just so that you could achieve a goal, even a goal that may offer a long list of benefits. I would never sell my happiness in the present for benefits in the future. And this is not the same as being short sighted.

Here’s what I do believe. We must set goals where not only the end results bring happiness, but every step of the way will help us grow will bring good to our lives. It’s just not worth it to work towards a goal that doesn’t offer an enjoyable journey. The journey is all you got right now. There’s no guarantee that you’ll ever live long enough or keep your health or family long enough to enjoy the end results. If you set your self up with goals where you can also enjoy the journey you can win all the way. Never spend your life waiting… waiting and being patient and persevering for something that you can’t quite be sure will ever be yours.

If you’re working just for the money, when you’re done working one day, the money will be all you have. Pursue your passions. If you think you don’t have any, then you’re not thinking hard enough or maybe you’re thinking too hard and not listening, listening to your inner voice, your soul, your heart, the part of you that only speaks up when everything else is silent.

I do admit that all of this is quite idealistic and that real life is more complex and responsibilities take over and overpower our passions and aspirations. Sometimes money does matter and sometimes family can’t come first so that family can have something to eat in the evening, but I have full faith in the statement: If there’s a will, there’s a way. So scratch out all of your excuses and admit to yourself that the only reason you’re not doing whatever it is you really want to be doing it’s simply because you haven’t yet mustered up the will power to drive you.

One thing that I find sadly missing from many people’s attitudes is a little good old putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. People constantly get mad, criticize, blame, scorn and bad talk others for their faults and failings. But who are we judge another human being? Well… at least not until we’ve walked in their shoes.

Life is not like a board game where all players start from the first square and with the same amount of currency. Life starts each of us out at different places and with drastically different currencies. Therefore, where we end up is often just as much a product of these two factors as it is our own doing.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in free will; I do. I just don’t think free will is as big an actor in our lives as most people think. Where you are today, how far you’ve come and even how big you dare to dream has a lot more to do with where you were born, what genes your parents passed down to you, how they raised you and what your teachers told you you could or couldn’t do.

Even more surprising is that how nice you are to strangers, how generous you are with your wealth, how polite or rude you are or even how often you volunteer at your local community center are all also products of the same list of things. So, maybe the next time you feel the urge to criticize someone’s rude behavior or another person’s stinginess or laziness, you’ll stop and remember that maybe life started them out a few dozens steps behind you. They may actually be superior to you because maybe they have actually taken more steps forward than you have. Don’t be fooled if you appear to be ahead. Their route may be much longer than yours because of where life started them out.

Here’s an example: a man could have been born to the most terribly stingy parents who instilled this sense of doom in him at the prospect of parting with a penny and this upbringing may have been reinforced with equally miserly genes. If this man donates $100, it may require the same effort for a man with more ‘generous’ genes and upbringing to donate $500. So we can’t judge this person for donating less because in fact he is putting the same amount of effort to part with $100 as the second man is putting to donate $500. The same applies to all human behavior.

Therefore, people should be judged based upon effort not achievement. The only problem is it is impossible to know what kind of effort people put into each action. So, let’s stop judging each other and feeling superior to people who are a few paces behind us in the game of life because you never really know how much of your achievement is really yours and how many of their faults are truly their own failings.

One week has gone by and I’m still blank on my three wishes. Sure, lots of ideas popped into my head but only to be quickly squashed by that secondary voice in my head that critiques every creative initiative.

I started out with some personal wishes, but then realized how small minded it was to wish so small.. to wish for things on the individual level when I could wish to make the whole world a better place. To make the world a better place, that sounds like a good wish. I realized that would definitely be the objective of my yet unborn wish, but my issue remained that I could not decide on what exactly the world needed to become a better place, not that there is a shortage of things wrong, but how do I narrow it down to one wish or even three wishes.

Possible wishes tossed and turned in my mind. I could wish for the world powers to be run by moral and visionary people, but then what about cancer or the aids epidemic? I could wish for a cure for cancer and aids, but then what about the millions of people who go hungry everyday? And what about the mess in the middle east? I couldn’t think of a realistic wish that encapsulated everything wrong in the world and provided an all-encompassing magic pill solution.

So, after getting frustrated with my efforts to come up with solutions for the endless political conflicts that surround us, I regressed back to the level of the individual. I realized what I wish for most is to attain a state of spiritual strength and peace.
And so I wrap my three wishes into this one dream, something I`ve longed for for a long long time. The terribly sad and ironic and pathetic part of all this is that I have spent years working towards other goals but no more than short spurts of time trying to attain spiritual strength and peace. My only excuse is that I don`t really know the steps to take, the direction to turn or the milestones to expect along the way. I just don`t know.

Recently I read a book called Three Wishes, Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak by Deborah Ellis. The book is about Jewish, Christian and Muslim children who live in war torn Palestine. Ellis interviewed these children and in her book we hear their stories in a first person narrative format. We hear the voice of each child as they relay to us their hardships, feelings and their hopes and dreams for the future.

The stories include that of twelve year old Nora, who lives in a rehab center for disabled children. Because Nora gets around on a wheelchair, her mother doesn’t let her go outside alone. Nora says, “my mother thinks I won’t be able to move fast enough if the soldiers come. My mother is afraid they will shoot me for not getting out of their way fast enough. I think I could throw stones like the other children and still get away quickly but I can’t throw stones if I’m with my mother.” There’s also the story of twelve year old Salam, whose older sister walked into a store in Jerusalem and blew herself up. As she tells her story, Salam keeps repeating, “she should have told me,” expressing her disappointment with her sister for keeping her mission secret. Salam just wanted a chance to say goodbye to her sister and maybe make her a special breakfast that morning.
Ellis tries to balance the book with an equal number of Jewish and Muslim stories and so the reader also hears many stories about Jewish boys who worry about the mandatory military service imposed by the state of Israel. Some of the boys fear what they will have to do once they become soldiers; other boys look forward to serving and protecting.

Ellis asks these children to name three wishes. Some of the children named typical wishes, the kind of wishes we’d expect to hear from Canadian or American kids, like “I want to be a doctor” or “I want to meet a famous actor” but other children have shocking wishes. They wish for things Canadian kids either take for granted or never even have to consider. One Palestinian girl wished for a house that the Israeli soldiers couldn’t destroy, so she could live in it safely with her family. This little girl’s home has been destroyed three times by the Israeli army. Her family, friends and anti-settlement Israeli’s have helped to rebuild the house each time.

Another child wished to get well soon so he could go back to fighting the Israeli’s. This boy has been shot by soldiers more than once. The last time he was shot took from him the use of his two legs. An eighteen year old Jewish girl wished to study art because as she says, “through art, we can all understand the world and each other better.”

The most memorable wish for me was that of a fourteen year old Palestinian girl, named Yanal, who wished to become a professional singer. Yanal relays how her friends tease her and tell her that no one wants to hear the songs of a Palestinian singer and that no one will buy her CD’s, but she says she doesn’t agree with her friends. She says she will make people want to listen. Yanal says, “I wish the fighting would end, so that we can just make music and have fun and not hate each other. Maybe we could even make music with the Israelis one day. I liked Yanal’s wish because it reflected an amazing ambition and a strong will in the midst of chaos. It also expressed her hope for peace.
This book stirred up some major controversy. In 2006, the Canadian Jewish Congress criticized the book for presenting a flawed  image of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. They also claimed students should not be exposed to these stories without proper context. Basically, they wanted the book banned from schools. I would like to note that Ellis does a great job providing young reader with an explanatory context for each child’s story. She also start the book with an introduction to the whole conflict.

The book was eventually restricted on various levels in different school boards, particularly for middle school aged children. I find this to be unfair because middle school aged children do study similar books such as Hanna’s Suitcase and The Diary of Anne Frank, which present children’s experiences of the holocaust. Three Wishes should not be treated differently than these books. I believe Ellis did a great job at simply allowing the children speak their experiences and feelings and that these children’s voice deserve to be heard. I also think that it’s particularly important for North American children to read this book as an opportunity to step out of their sheltered lives for a bit and learn about the difficult realities other children live every day.

Fortunately, I am not a child living in war and I was not interviewed by Ellis, but if she did ask me what my three wishes are, I’d say…  I don’t know, let me think about that one. Maybe I’ll figure it out by next week.

I recently returned from a trip to Egypt, where our tour guide led us from one grand temple to another. Of course after the fifth or sixth temple, they didn’t seem so grand anymore. Many of these temples were carved from top to bottom with images of people and animals and with hieroglyphics. Our tour guide relayed to us many of the tales carved on these walls thousands of years ago and I was fascinated to discover how much in common they had with the current religions of the world. It seems some stories never die out, like the story of the great flood where the world was destroyed except for those saved on an arc, or the story of the two brothers who fought each other for their sister and one ended up killing the other.

Besides the stories that resemble what we read in the Bible and in the Quran today, there are also many themes that are recurring such as the God’s destruction of an entire civilization due to their deviance or God’s communication with great men through dreams. On the ancient temple walls in Egypt, we can even find the story of a man who was considered th e son of God, but who was later crucified. Of course according to history, Jesus was not even born when these temples were being built.
Anyhow, all this can either be evidence for the truth or various religious beliefs, if one would like to think that God has been continuously sending the same message to mankind and relaying the same stories in order to teach people important lessons and so on.. or the recurrence of these stories can be used to discredit religions as fraudulent and as having taken stories and themes from ancient civilizations to make up their holy books.

I find this topic fascinating and would like to spend more time researching it. I took some notes that contain more examples and I hope to organize those into a more detailed post for next week, but I just wanted to get the ball rolling this week since I’m behind on posting.
If you have any thoughts on this topic, let me know.

There are 192 members of the United Nations, although some say this does not precisely represent the number of countries in the world. The United Nations, for instance, does not include Kosovo or the Vatican City, which considers itself an independent state. Of the 192 countries in the UN, more than 150 use torture. Some governments endorse torture and actually enshrine it in the law. Others simply turn a blind eye to the behaviour of police and security services.

Torture is defined as the act of inflicting mental or physical pain or suffering, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty. If you’ve read Just Five Minutes: Nine Years in the Prisons of Syria, then you know all about torture and how creative police or security agents can get in creating new ways to inflict pain. Countries that use torture can be grouped into two: those who have low regard for human rights according to international standards, and those where control over police and security services is lax.

Many countries practise what is dubbed as ‘torture lite’. This can include rough treatment, stress positions or inducing fear and confusion. The Geneva Convention prohibits this. But there is a whole school of thought that justifies this type of treatment as a legitimate means to maintain security. America is one of these countries. In December 2002, an article in the Washington Post quoted CIA agents confirming that agents routinely used ‘stress and duress’ interrogation techniques.

The United States justifies what it does in Guantanamo Bay by removing mental pain from the definition of torture. America claims that it does not physically torture, as in lay a hand on the prisoners. They don’t count sleep deprivation, being stripped naked, sexually taunted, being forced from extremely cold to extremely hot environments or being forced to listen to ear popping loud heavy metal for hours at a time as torture. The Americans have always been good at twisting language for their own purposes. If you’re interested to read more about that, check out the book called Collateral Language.

Here’s a summary of the two sides of the torture story. One side believes that if you know someone is holding vital information that can save the lives of many people, then it is justifiable to use torture to extract that information. Supporters of the other side of the argument claim that a human under torture will do and say anything to make the pain stop. They will yell out what the torturer wants to hear and the torturer has no way of knowing whether the information is true or not. I know that it wouldn’t take much to get me to confess to stealing, conspiring, or even murder. So what use is torture then, when the information it extracts is so hopelessly unreliable?

If you need to torture someone for a confession, then you have no solid proof against the person for that crime. This means that many times you will be wrong about the suspect. Jim Welsh of Amnesty International notes that torture ‘strikes at the whole root of being human’. Besides the physical effects of torture, torture survivors suffer flashbacks and anxiety for years. Many never fully recover, whether physically or mentally. Can we afford to do this to a handful of innocent people in order to get two or three truly guilty people to confess?

The international community has worked hard to create human rights standards for all nations, but many more than two thirds of the world continues to resist these standards, most often in the hopes of improving security. I don’t believe that torture will help create a safer world. Do you?

Recently, I began co-hosting a radio show called Kanyamakan (once upon a time) on CKLN 88.1. It’s an Arab community radio show that airs on Tuesdays from 8-10 pm. Kanyamakan has been on air for over 12 years and is the only Arab radio show in Toronto. Their aim is to show case Arab artists, community initiatives and to broadcast news and analysis relating to the Arab world and to Arabs in the diaspora. They focus on issues often ignored and side-lined by the mainstream media.

This Tuesday, I interviewed Patrick Cockburn, who recently came out with a book on Muqtada Al-Sadr. The book is called: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival and the Struggle for Iraq. I found the book informative, yet entertaining. It read like an adventure story as it detailed the time and place that gave rise to Muqtada Al-Sadr.

The book also has a lot to say about the Shias, the Sunnis and their constant tug of war for control of Iraq. The book provides great background for anyone who wants to understand how Iraq has ended up in its current state and how a man like Muqtada Al-Sadr can, within a few years, accumulate such power in a country divided and torn by war.

Muqtada now heads his own army, called the Mahdi army, which has become a force to be reckoned with. In current news, the Iraqi government, along with the Americans are working fast to eradicate the Madhi army and it seems they have also drive Muqtada into hiding in Iran.

One section in the book struck me. Soon after the first bombs dropped on Iraq, people began raiding and looting. They wanted to assert the lack of authority and chaos that the war had stirred up. According to Cockburn, Muqtada, issued a fatwa stating that looters could hold onto to their stolen goods so long as they made a donation of one fifth of its value to their local Sadrist office.

Many people, particularly big Shia clerics found this shocking and condemned this action. I found it hard to swallow that a man of high religious standing would excuse stealing on a large scale. The looters thought they were robbing the state, but in fact they were robbing the glory of their country.

What also adds to the shock value is Muqtada’s request for donations to his office. Quite shameless, it seems to me. It may have been less appalling if he had asked people to donate to orphanages, hospitals or shelters, but to his own office?

To be fair, I have not read Muqtada’s fatwa and I have not read other sources on this topic. I only have Patrick’s book to work with. In Islam, scholars do have the right to issue fatwas that may seem contradictory to some Islamic laws. They issue these types of fatwas as necessary measures due to unique circumstances or changing times. This is one of the features of Islam that allows it to accommodate all times and places since it was intended to be the final message to mankind.

What do you think of Muqtada’s fatwa?