Islam today

After reading Hirschkind and Mahmood’s article, I realized just how little I, the individual living in the West know about the East. Due to the media portrayal, we look at the East in a very materialist way, we judge the Middle East by what we hear and the images we see. In reality, what they value is not the same as what we do in the West. The westerns value fashion, education, careers, freedom of speech, and autonomy and many others, we then take these standards and compare them with other cultures. We view the East, in particular the Muslims as ‘bad people’ because men are violent and women are being oppressed by men and are forced to wear veils and burqas. Even in Canada, there are men who physically abuse their wife and children. Do we recognize that Western men to be violent? Women who do not leave their families even though they are being physically abused, aren’t they being oppressed? Where do we draw the line? How can the westerns say that they are right even, when similar things are occurring to them? This is what Edward Said outlined in his article, “The Clash of Ignorance,” the westerns considered themselves to be much more superior but at the same time, Islam has these powers to foretell the future. Where can we find the balance between the East and West? Is there a way for the West to equally treat the East?

Spread of Islam

The above image is just a representation to the spread of Islam during the 6th-8th century.

According to Ayoub’s reading, I find it very interesting how Islam was able to spread so quickly across the Middle East and Asia, while the major religions: Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity coexisted. Today, Islam is one of the major religions in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, that were under colonialism . It is fascinating to see how Islam was able to survive and spread even under colonial rule. Furthermore, it would be intriguing to see how Islam was at that time able to fit into other cultures and how people from other cultures accepted them. What makes Islam so special? Why did people back then accept this new religion? Yet, we are having so many issues with Muslims today. I guess the answer to these issues is , according to Ernest, is the fact that today we judge Muslims by what we see outside of them and not taking the time to understand what it really means to be a Muslim.