Bravo South African Muslims

Regular readers of this blog are aware, I am sure, of the extensive criticism I have levelled against the South African Muslim Community for the hypocritical way in which it dealt with the Mohammed Cartoon issue. This, amongst other things, resulted in an extremely vicious condemnation of Its Almost Supernatural in the letters pages of the Jewish Report by a Mr Selwyn Hurwitz.

Despite Selwyn Hurwitz’s position, I stand by my argument that the South African Muslim community was duplicitous in crying hate speech over the cartoon, when only a few weeks earlier they had defended their right to sprout offensive anti-Semitism. Nevertheless since the Mohammed cartoon furore, there does seem to have been a change in their position.

Last week some of the official organisations of the South African Muslim community excommunicated one of its senior members for espousing extreme anti-Hindu racism.

The Sunday Times reported that Muslim religious and community leaders washed their hands of the son of fiery Islamic scholar Sheik Ahmed Deedat for promoting a DVD denigrating Hinduism.

The DVD features Deedat’s late father mocking Hindu deities and preaching to Muslims about how fortunate they were that their forefathers saw the light and extricated themselves from Hinduism. It also remarks on how susceptible Hindus are to converting to Christianity and how Muslims are losing their daughters wholesale to the Hindus.

Although these types of racist comments are not uncommon from the local Muslim community, condemnation of them certainly is. This was a brave decision by local Muslim leaders and should be commended. So much more so when you consider that Deedat Jnr, a former trustee of Durban’s Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI), is a high profile member of the community.

I certainly hope that South African Muslims’ new found respect for the dignity of other religions (particularly Hinduism) also extends to Jews. But only time will tell.

Comments

[James Clark]

Hopefully to non-religon too.

Many religions tend to skip that that one out when they jump on the "tolerance" wagon.

[mike]

You are absolutely right James. Sorry for that oversight.

[SnoopyTheGoon]

Hinduism-shminduism, but how about changing their ways about Jooz?

Cheers.