Islam

Lord Hameed Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hameed (CB)]

My Lords, the holy book of the Muslims begins with the concept of God as not hurting or harming or as cruel but as beneficent and merciful. It also talks of Islam as a religion of peace and not war, for every time a Muslim takes the name of the Prophet Mohammed, he adds the words, “Peace be upon him”. The Koran also instructs the believer to be tolerant and compassionate and to extend a helping hand to the sick and infirm. It also commands the pursuit of knowledge with respect for scholars, women and minorities in any land. It also instructs Muslims to respect other faiths and to live with them as good neighbours in peaceful coexistence. Therefore, strapping oneself with explosives to kill others in an act of suicide in search of martyrdom is totally un-Islamic and against the instructions of the Koran, the holy book that all Muslims must obey.

As was explained earlier, the word “phobia” is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as an extreme and irrational fear or dislike of a specified thing. Thus, noble Lords may have heard of the term “Islamophobia” being bandied about against Islam, leading to prejudice and generalised hatred or fear of Islam and its followers. The media around the world have their share of blame to bear in drip-feeding into the minds of the readers of newspapers and journals, and the viewers of television, regular doses of anti-Muslim material, not as factual reporting but to create public excitement with sensationalism to enhance the number of their readers and their viewing public. The widespread damage this does to society at large is incalculable. The resultant pressure from this on Muslim families is anger, confusion and frustration, with the resultant acts of violence.

God’s vision of a just and compassionate human society remains unfulfilled. This, in turn, leads to impressionable young men, low in self-esteem, frustrated with unemployment and ostracised by society through the media, who then become the best recruiting ground for the sergeant-majors of terrorism.

In truth, no divine religion has ever been based on conflict, whether it be the religions represented by Moses and Jesus or Mohammed, Ram or Guru Nanak, Zarathustra or Buddha himself. On the contrary, all religions strictly forbid conflict, oppression and the killing of innocent people.

The question we face as Muslims in the West is whether Islamic society is ipso facto fundamentalist. No, we say, because the holy book of the Muslims, the Koran, repeatedly commends coexistence. It says:

“lakum deen-e kum wal ya deen”—

your religion for you and my religion for me. It also says,

“la iqra fi al deen”—

let there be no compulsion in religion.

Let me give your Lordships a glaring example of how selective our principal source of information, the media, can be. I am pointing out a question of opportunities. One of the most venerated and respected figures of the Islamic world is the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, where the most holy sites for Islam are based. Recently, he delivered the Hajj sermon for the annual pilgrimage, where nearly 2 million Muslims were gathered. There, with many in the Muslim world also listening to his fatwa, or sermon, he underscored the true teachings of Islam through peace and harmony and declared that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism or extremism and urged Muslims to unite against the incidence of suicide bombings. These, he said, were recipes for being transported to hell rather than a place in paradise. I wish that our wonderful media worldwide had given more prominence to such a message, rather than the drip-drip that we see in newspapers every day which leads only to the poisoning of our minds against each other.

Finally, let us proclaim loudly our intent to defeat those who are bent on destroying our civilised way of life and resolve our differences through interfaith dialogue. My friends, it is time to stand up and be counted. This, indeed, is our duty, and we must fulfil it.

Religion in the United Kingdom

Lord Hameed Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hameed]

My Lords, I am immensely grateful to my noble friend Lord Singh for initiating this timely debate. Through centuries of human history, up to our present day, one of the most divisive elements is religion. That was never meant to be so but extremists in many faiths are bent on exploiting religion for their own nefarious, political agendas. As we know, religion can be a force for peace or war. It can heal or hurt. It can create or destroy on a scale unimaginable to previous generations. Human history is filled with episodes involved with religion and of misguided believers responsible for the slaughter of fellow humans on the altar of religion.

Although there is warmth and friendship here this afternoon, there is fear and hatred outside in the world. We cannot be discouraged, for there is enough commonality in world religions to enable us to reach out to our fellow humans. Although humans have demonstrated their genius for creativity and achievement, we have lost none of our ability to destroy and kill fellow humans with impunity. When extremists inflict violence on society in the name of religion, the innocent are often their main victims. That has to be resisted by the community at large. Voices must be raised in protest and we must withhold the robe of sanctity when it is sought as a cloak for violence and bloodshed, even if the perpetrators are from our own faith. As human beings, we are all more alike than different—irrespective of our physical make-up and self-created labels which might suggest otherwise. The challenge before us is to respect and understand others without compromising the bedrock of our own faith.

Let us now look at the philosophical analysis of religion, which relates to logic that the human can understand and relate to. Religion and politics speak to different aspects of the human condition. Religion binds people together in communities, and politics helps to mediate peacefully between their differences. One of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century came when politics was turned into a religion. The single greatest risk to the 21st century is that the opposite may occur, not when politics is religionised, but when religion is politicised.

Finally, in the vision of the modern thinker, trade would do for a man what politics could not; that is, tame passions and change the outlook of man from aggression to consumerism and production, thus integrating nations for mutual benefits from trade and finance. All these notions, however, do not answer man’s curiosity about himself. His sense of comfort, however, is well manifested in his loyalty to his tribe and community. Economics does not explain his quest for self-knowledge and identity. Religion answers this human dilemma. No other system explains, as religion does, our reason for being on this planet.