Can you stand by the following statement? If you can, please sign the statement below. Let us see if we can, just by turning out to register our opinion, make the unthinkable happen, as the American people did for Obama. Let us see if ordinary Muslims standing together in unity can deliver Peace.

THE STATEMENT

We speak as the ordinary people of Islam to you - the peoples of every other faith and even those without religious faith. We speak with urgency because the conflict you see in Gaza at this very moment threatens so much we hold precious in this world, as it threatens so much you hold precious as well. We ask that you try to understand us and what we seek, so that we can together put an end to this madness that endangers not only the people of Palestine but the whole of humankind.

All we ask, brothers and sisters of the world, is to live in harmony and with mutual respect. Indeed, we have learned many things from all of you and we have made many mistakes, just as your people have. But we have also learned something from our own cultures and religion, which we know in our hearts, raises us as a people and it is this we are not willing to give up. You will find that if you can give us and our cultures the respect we feel we deserve as inhabitants of the same planet as yourselves, we as a people will repay you with gifts of civilization that the world has forgotten. For instance, we have ideas that stem from our own culture, from Islamic finance, that we believe can help the whole world defeat the current recession.

Many of your leaders have called our leaders terrorists and have refused to speak to them. Our leaders have indeed stepped up to take on the seemingly impossible task of winning the respect of those in power in the world. Yes, you say you will give us respect if our leaders behave properly, but your leaders, as you have seen, give ours only pity, contempt, and patronizing advice instead and look at us as less than yourselves. If there is to be mutual respect, can you really look down on us? Can you see that our leaders understand this, and inevitably we have to fight for respect if it will not come from asking? Can you hear that what we are really saying is that the civilized way of the world is to sit around a table and talk as equals and that we would only like our place at that table?

We stand guarantee for our leaders. We assure you that if you extend to us the hand of respect, our leaders will respond with graciousness beyond your expectations. That is the way of our culture. If they fail to do so, we the ordinary people will turn up our voices and our leaders will know they have to listen.

Can you hear us, brothers and sisters of the world? Do you feel the same desire for harmony and peace? If so, turn up your voices as well. Use the Internet. Use the telephone. Let us mobilize the power of all human beings to bring about a better world for all of our children to grow up in together, a world without the ill-founded prejudices that have caused so much strife and bloodshed throughout human history. Do not believe when you hear that Islam wants to take over the world and threaten your way of life. That is not so. Everyone must follow their lights, as we follow our Prophet Muhammad, whose teachings were completely in line with the teachings of our other Prophets Ibrahim (Abraham), Musa (Moses), and Isa (Jesus). The only thing we desire for the world at large is the very essence of Islam, its true and deep meaning: Peace.


“Please, in the name of humanity, give us respect and you will see that we, like yourselves, are respectable and respectful.“

 

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