About religious tolerance [Archives:2005/808/Letters to the Editor]

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January 17 2005

Nadwa Al-Dawsari
[email protected]

I read your column of this week in the YT. I was personally in a situation where I was praying in a Mosque when the “Imam” started asking God to destroy the “Jews and Christians” and to make their children orphans and their wives widows! The first thing I did is cutting off my prayers and leaving the mosque immediately. There was no point to continue when the prayers turned to be a space for fueling hatred rather than a space to connect people.

It is really very sad that those clerks and Mullahs are claiming to represent Islam and what is more sad is that they are influencing a large segment of the society.

I think that the mosque, being a very important societal institution, should be reformed. Enough is enough. Politicians and Mullahs have kept us lagging behind many nations in terms of development and civilization.

We have been paying the price of Mullah's radical interpretations which, if not produced terrorists, produced generations who think that they are victims of the West and that all they could do is to pray that the conspirers' plots turn against them!!

We urgently need an up to date interpretation of the Qur'an that teach Muslims the value of love and hard work and, most importantly, the value of using their minds instead of being passive receivers to whatever the Mullahs or elites say. These values are there in the Qur'an and the Prophet's saying but unfortunately clerks don't see them or, probably, don't want to see them for their own ends!!
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