Freedom and “Free Dumb”

The other day I was asked by a co-worker on contract from America “Isn’t Islam fundamentally a peaceful religion?” I said to him that it’s peaceful in the context of contracts and agreements and it’s all about war when the message of Islam is surpressed or when we’re attacked in any way. I got this knowledge and inspiration from someone else back in his country a while ago and I admired how he was brave enough to truthfully answer a hard question posed to him.

Since then I’ve been asked about freedom and I must wonder why there is still such an emphasis on freedom even to the extent that businesses and societies fail from the excess. It brought to mind a scene in a movie about the war on drugs being fought in Mexico and America. (Not Traffic). When a wanted fugitive just got on a plane openly and flew off despite the police sent to arrest him an American asked one of the police men why he was let go. The cop said to him it’s because the society let the drug traffickers grow too big. And this is something that was not legal in either country!

My brother on his own website has said “The problem with the Western version of “freedom” is that it gives ability for evil to become strong… The Islaamic System wishes to not allow evil to spread or strengthen itself. This is the major difference between the two freedoms. Our freedom, in Islaam, is meant to strengthen all ways for us to become morally acceptable in the eyes of Allah whilst at the same time, making it harder for us to become immoral.” I couldn’t have said it better than that. I don’t read about the word freedom much in the Qur’an or in the hadiths but I also never saw it much in the Bible I read it as a kaffir. Morality, whether Christian or Islamic, contains its own freedom and it is limited compared to the freedom in a democracy. It has to be limited so because immorality does not cease to have bad consequences just because a society legalizes it. I like to use the example of stealing because it really sums it up. If stealing under a certain dollar amount (let us say $100 like it is in your country) becomes legal or even just under-punished, then it becomes more profitable to steal the items that cost less than that than it is to trade/work. Then the merchants must charge at least the hundred dollar value for their goods to be protected by the harder laws and consequences. That along with theft itself drives up the prices of goods for everyone alike. Then theft becomes more necessary for some to just get by. That drives up the prices even more. You see where the cycle is headed if theft becomes legal period or is just not even punished harshly enough? Then consider this fact, it already exists to a lesser degree because it is illegal and punished, but not punished harshly enough to make it a rare occurrence.

The next example I can use is that of strip-dancing for money because it is legal and in America it thrives with its sister vice of prostitution. It’s illegal in the Bahamas so it exists underground and therefore many of us don’t know even where to find them. When I visited a cousin who was in college in Florida, I saw how popular strip clubs were there. Here, the places are dangerous, especially for tourists. There, they were open and the police were even there to provide security. I wasn’t Muslim yet but I had to leave after a while of standing in line. It was beneath me to pay to see someone strip and dance, we regard that as a low thing that only ugly men have to do. But non-flash photography was allowed in there so he showed me photos later after making fun of me for going back to my hotel. But when I asked what drove the women to do this for men they don’t know and are likely wearing wedding rings like I saw in line, he and his roommate told me how they usually do it to earn a living or pay for school. They work a few hours at night and have more time to study but they collect so much in tips that it becomes foolish for them to work normal jobs even if they’re available. That’s what freedom does. It takes the honest ambitious women we want our wives and daughters to be. You ready for this? Then it makes them into the harlots we don’t want them to be by paying ‘free’ market value for their sex and nakedness!

Freedom in Islam includes freedom to strip-dance for your husband or for your wife, without having to worry about your daughters becoming exhibitionists because it’s so easy and it’s the only way to pay for school! There is freedom in Islam, but what we have here in the west, increasingly even in my country, is just freedom to be dumb. Free-dumb is nothing worth fighting for let alone dying for it. Free-dumb is even more worthless a thing to fight for than oil! Real Freedom with a capital F is only in rebelling against the oppression of human beings who rule as though they are Allah. Freedom worth fighting for is only that of freedom to live a life a worth living, and a life worth living is only that of a Muslim once the message of Islam has reached the ears. Once one knows of Islam, all else is either one extreme of oppression and confinement, the opposite extreme of free-dumb, or even some vile concoction of those two. I chose to live a life worth living, one that results in an eternal life worth living afterwards.