Western Muslims are leading a social movement that crosses religion and ethnicity, a wonderful development. Parents in the US and Canada have protested school boards that want to educate LGBTQ lifestyles to youngsters.
Muslim parents are organizing and protesting in all of these situations, making ripples on social media.
Parents should worry. A Maryland school system allows three-year-olds to read books about homosexuality and transgenderism. State-sponsored ideological brainwashing of babies who cannot construct entire words or think rationally.
Parents must teach their children morality. Parents and children have the right to reject views they disagree with.
Yet, allegedly secular institutions like public schools are increasingly requiring pupils to adopt and endorse LGBTQ ideology, often with the threat that they “do not belong” in their country, as one Edmonton, Canada, teacher told a Muslim student.
Muslims will not be coerced to believe anything against their beliefs
“Navigating Differences: Clarifying Sexual and Gender Ethics in Islam,” a declaration I helped write, has been signed by over 300 Islamic academics and preachers in North America. This paper provides the Islamic viewpoint on sexuality and gender ethics.
This declaration will empower Muslim parents, educators, students, and professionals to express their religious beliefs without legal repercussions. If they don’t support LGBTQ events, conventional, family-based moralists are typically labeled “homophobic” and prejudiced. Many face societal implications for such ideas.
Worse, youngsters must attend drag performances and other immoral events.
This declaration aims to show school boards and businesses why Muslims should be exempted from religiously incompatible activities.
The signatories are “committed to working with individuals of all religious and political affiliations to protect the constitutional right of faith communities to live according to their religious convictions and to uphold justice for all” in the non-partisan statement.
Despite demonstrators from Maryland to Ottawa insisting they are claiming moral autonomy rather than political loyalty, certain groups persist on making this a partisan issue.
Left-wing liberals—including some progressive Muslims—are angry and ashamed of anything less than complete LGBTQ acceptance. They believe we should offer reciprocity to other marginalized groups since we’ve been oppressed as Muslims, even though LGBTQ campaigners routinely ignore our spiritual problems.
Conservative media outlets have given Muslim parents a platform to air their grievances, which is supposed to prove that these protesters and all of us who oppose the LGBTQ agenda in schools are aligned with the far-right, including white supremacists. No way.
The increasing warmth of politically conservative organisations and media outlets toward Muslims is encouraging some in the community to hurry to join the political right after toying with the left. They err. Again.
North American Muslims should base their morals on their faith, not politics. A recent lesson can help us grasp why this distinction is so important.
North American Islam faced an existential crisis after 9/11. Muslims were demonized. Deported scholars. Airports harassed bearded Muslim men and hijabi ladies. Muslims altered their initial names and avoided masjids. In the first decade of this century, North American Muslims lived in dread, worry, and estrangement.
Many Muslims started using politics as an ideology
The North American political right openly hated Islam and Muslims, while the left was more receptive. Muslims joined liberal political parties in Canada and the US to survive politically and literally. Left-wing institutions provided Muslims the best chance of surviving conservative anti-Muslim forces.
But adopting the left meant accepting a full bundle of causes, some of which matched intellectually with Islamic norms (like fighting racism) and others that did not (like drug legalization).
For the first time in 14 centuries of learning, some progressive Muslims claimed that the Quran has been misinterpreted and supports alternative sexual practices and same-sex weddings.
To clarify, Islamic law distinguishes between a wicked conduct and a non-sinful aspiration. We should love and respect same-sex believers who follow Islamic law. They contrast with individuals who defy Islamic law and celebrate disobedience. Muslim leaders should avoid making religious claims.
“Believer is not bitten from the same hole twice,” says Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Muslims who are properly upset about moral rot in our society due to inclusion should be careful not to swing from extreme to extreme.
We are neither left nor right. Our ideology is based on our unbreakable faith, credo, and the everlasting words of God and His ultimate Messenger. As a “Middle Nation,” we are moral role models, as the Quran states (2:143).