Letters to the Editor, January 25, 2004

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I am an Australian woman, raised as a Christian. When I first heard of France's policy on dress I was impressed. The French are a thinking active people on the world stage. Dress code and symbols do a great deal to create barriers. In universities, making people just 'people' (including men) learning together may create endless possibilities, and real solutions for peace across our globe may be seeded in such an equal environment.

However, I personally would feel violated if I was told I had to conform to an Islamic dress code - one I feel silences the voices of women in so many ways. However, as I looked at the faces of those women protesting to be able to wear their head-scarves I realised that in their eyes our clothing silences the voices of women. Patriarchy is rampant globally. Women are ordered and viewed by men in every nation. We have not found equality yet. It is vital that universities lead and the solution may be to compromise. Dress, like language, often dictates our consciousness and our ability to expand that consciousness.

Perhaps a dress code might be found that does refuse any religious symbols but that doesn't offend any woman. Academia has a responsibility to question everything, including God and State and itself. Censorship exists in West as well as East and has no place in higher learning. Perhaps the French anthropologists may like to look at the possibility of such a compromise. Perhaps they and their counterparts everywhere my be best placed to find solutions born of respect for all people. Maybe a dress code for men and women that looks the same? With the French sense of style in the fashion world such a uniform, or range of uniforms may also be pleasant to wear.

Editor: This is a case of religious persecution applied by the state against its citizens. The headscarf is not fashion or a political statement. Rather, it is a religious requirement. These French Muslim women are wearing it with their full freedom. Nobody is forcing them. It's the French government that is violating their rights and violating their body.

It is also male dominance par excellence. Pious Muslim men wear beards. We haven't heard a French objection to men observing this Islamic teaching. The issue is nothing but intolerance and it is the French contribution in the overall Western assault on Islam, in different ways.

1. Is it correct when a person dies, he does not go to heaven or hell until the Day of Judgment? Where does the soul stay?

4. Do Muslims believe that Adam was black and Eve was tan? where did white come from?

6. Islam is supposed to respect the Jewish and Christians Books. Why are Jews hated?

1. According to Islamic teachings, accountability will be in the Day of Judgment, not before. All souls go to heavens waiting for the Day of Reckoning. Then, believers go to Paradise and non-believers go to Hell.

2. I'm not much knowledgeable about followers of the Nation of Islam in the US. However, if they profess that there is no god except Allah and Muhammed is His messenger. And if they believe in the Holy Qur'an and the Sunna (teachings) of the Prophet, as the two major sources of Islam, then they are Muslims.

3. Islam means peace. It also means surrendering one's will to God. This means the belief that only God can benefit you or can cause you harm. Islam is the religion that God taught to humans on this planet through the senior angel, Jibril (Gabriel). It was revealed to humanity in different stages when people needed guidance. Thus, the message of Islam was taught through Adam, Noah, Ibrahim (Abraham), Abraham's descendants (Ismael, Isaac, and Jacob), Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muhammed, to name the most prominent of the messengers.

Thus, the Old Testament (the Torah) and the New Testament (the Engel) are Books of Islam, too. All messengers of God are considered Muslims, and we don't differentiate among them.

However, the Holy Qur'an, the word of God in Arabic, does not include chapters or sections of the two Books. Rather, it includes the same teachings. It completes them and gives a judgment about points of disagreement between Jews and Christians. An example of that is regarding Jesus Christ. While Jews did not believe in him, Christians believe in him as the Messiah and also the son of God.

The Holy Qur'an has supported Christians in that he was the Messiah but did not support them in their belief that he was the son of God. God, Allah, was not born of anybody, has never given birth to anyone, and there is nothing like Him.

4. There is nothing in the Holy Qur'an about the colors of Adam and Eve. So, this is not an Islamic teaching.

But if you want a scientific explanation about human skin color, it's found in anthropology. Simply, this is a pigmentation the human skin develops in relation to the sun heat and the sun ultra violate rays, which cause cancer. People living on the equator (where the sun is closest to the Earth's surface) have the darkest skin color. As they move to the north and to the south, away from the equator, the need for darker skin becomes less and less, until the skin becomes fairest near the arctic circle.

5. Yes, Islam started in the Middle East, where it was preached by Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed. The vast majority of Arabs, more than 95 percent, are Muslims. However, the vast majority of Muslims are not Arabs. They constitute more than 1.3 billion people living in all continents but concentrate in Asia and Africa, where God gave them most of the Earth's oil, which is the main target of current wars.

6. Muslims not only respect the Old Testament and the New Testament, they also believe in them. And a person cannot be a Muslim if he or she does not believe in them as the Books of God.

Muslims and non-Muslims do not hate Jews. Actually, followers of the three religions lived together for thousands of years in peace, respect, and mutual recognitions. The exception was the time of the Crusades, which represented European invasions and conquests more than religious wars.

Muslims and Jews lived together for the entire Islamic history, about 14 centuries, in tolerance, peaceful existence, and fruitful cooperation. This was the case in the early Islamic states of Umayyads and Abbasids, as well as during the eight centuries of Arab-Islamic rule of Andalusia, or Arab Spain. Jews lived as citizens of the Islamic states throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, with full respect and in peaceful existence.

The change has happened when European Jews invented Zionism as a colonial and imperialist movement to dispossess the Palestinian people. Then, these Zionists started to influence Jews everywhere to immigrate to Israel to participate in the Zionist project.

Had the Israelis treated Palestinians as citizens, there would be no conflict. Instead, they evicted them from their villages and cities in 1948 and left them for 55 years in refugee camps. Moreover, they occupied the rest of Palestine in 1967 and continued the annexation of more Palestinian land.

The conflict is not religious. It is not about verses in the Holy Qur'an or verses in the Old Testament. Rather, it is about the land of Palestine and the Israeli aggression against Arabs and Muslims.

Nobody hates Genevieve Cora Fraser*, Uri Avenery, Latif Douri, Yossi Sarid, Yossi Beilin, or Noam Chomski. These are all Jews. But they are brave and peace-loving Jews. They are against the Israeli aggression, which is targeting the Palestinian people. They are also against the Zionist support of the Israeli aggression. Israel, Palestine, and the whole world need more of these to counterbalance the influence of the Sharonites and their neocon supporters.

* Genevieve Cora Fraser publishes some of her articles and poems at Al-Jazeerah. She is a Christian agnostic with Jewish ancestry.