By Jamie Glazov
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. She is the author of Their Jihad ... Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.
FP: First, tell us a little bit about your own religious and political journey. Why, for instance, have you ended up being a moderate and not an extremist Muslim? Why you do not veil yourself etc?
Raza: I was born into a Muslim family in Pakistan where I became a Muslim by rote -- i.e. without really understanding what the faith stands for and what our prayers mean because they are in Arabic which is not my first language. I grew up in a culture where women were supposed to be seen and not heard so questioning was not encouraged. However I was a rebel since an early age and did question the status quo but luckily for them, left Pakistan.
I truly learnt about the beauty and depth of my faith when I came to Canada 20 years ago which is ironic when you think that I came from a so-called Muslim country to this secular land. How? Like many other immigrant parents, we were concerned that our kids might lose their faith. So we used to take them to Sunday school where they read the Qur’an (the Muslim scripture meaning The Reading) in English and studied the life of our Prophet. They were fortunate to have excellent mentors and teachers who were academics and scholars, well versed in both secular and scriptural subjects. In the process my husband and I learnt the spiritual message of Islam and discovered to our amazement, that there is great beauty and wisdom there.
Our knowledge and research allowed us to shed much of our excess baggage in terms of rituals and cultural norms being passed off as faith and we were able to remove the veil on our minds and see the beauty of this spiritual message and also find much to our amazement, how similar it is to the message of the monotheistic faiths that came before Islam – Judaism and Christianity. This set me on the journey where I am now – as an interfaith advocate creating understanding and dialogue between faiths because I realize that much of the racism and hate around us is based on ignorance. Read more ...
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. She is the author of Their Jihad ... Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.
FP: First, tell us a little bit about your own religious and political journey. Why, for instance, have you ended up being a moderate and not an extremist Muslim? Why you do not veil yourself etc?
Raza: I was born into a Muslim family in Pakistan where I became a Muslim by rote -- i.e. without really understanding what the faith stands for and what our prayers mean because they are in Arabic which is not my first language. I grew up in a culture where women were supposed to be seen and not heard so questioning was not encouraged. However I was a rebel since an early age and did question the status quo but luckily for them, left Pakistan.
I truly learnt about the beauty and depth of my faith when I came to Canada 20 years ago which is ironic when you think that I came from a so-called Muslim country to this secular land. How? Like many other immigrant parents, we were concerned that our kids might lose their faith. So we used to take them to Sunday school where they read the Qur’an (the Muslim scripture meaning The Reading) in English and studied the life of our Prophet. They were fortunate to have excellent mentors and teachers who were academics and scholars, well versed in both secular and scriptural subjects. In the process my husband and I learnt the spiritual message of Islam and discovered to our amazement, that there is great beauty and wisdom there.
Our knowledge and research allowed us to shed much of our excess baggage in terms of rituals and cultural norms being passed off as faith and we were able to remove the veil on our minds and see the beauty of this spiritual message and also find much to our amazement, how similar it is to the message of the monotheistic faiths that came before Islam – Judaism and Christianity. This set me on the journey where I am now – as an interfaith advocate creating understanding and dialogue between faiths because I realize that much of the racism and hate around us is based on ignorance. Read more ...
Source: FrontPage Magazine
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