Aussie Muslims Open Mosques, Defeat Fear
"We want to hold Queensland Mosque Day and it will be one day when people can come all day, on one day from next year. There will be food and information sessions," Ali Kadri, a spokesman for the Holland Park and Logan Islamic communities in Queensland, told Brisbane Times on Friday, September 19.
"I am going to announce that Friday. Tomorrow I will announce the date".
The idea of open sessions was announced 24 hours after major anti-terror raids were carried out in Sydney and Brisbane, with police claiming to have foiled planned attacks on Australians.
They also come after up to 40 pamphlets filled with abusive, anti-Muslim language, were reportedly left outside the Logan mosque earlier this month.
"The problem is that if we can't teach Muslims the proper meaning of Islam, then they will learn from YouTube, where it is heavily biased against the proper teaching of Islam by the extremists,” he said.
“So we want people to come to the mosques to learn the proper meaning of Islam.
“If you want to learn medicine, you go to medical school, you don't go to a garage.”
The Muslim leader said that Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world, is 1400-year-old religion that cannot be judged by modern day terrorism phenomenon.
“They should not link what is happening now to Islam itself,” Kadri said.
He added there were 1.4 billion to 1.5 billion Muslims living throughout the world in many peaceful countries.
“There are some really, really peaceful countries, but there are some countries where there is a problem,” he said.
“And the problem is not because of Islam, it is because of geopolitics and the international relations of current times.”
For Queensland Muslims, the open mosque days were designed to encourage Australian to defeat their fear and step inside mosques.
“We want them to come here and see it is doctors and engineers, lawyers, teachers going on with their religious life in the mosque,” he said.
“That is what mosques do, that is what a mosque is about. There is nothing mysterious, or mystical about it.”
Support
The Muslims’ idea was immediately welcomed by Premier Campbell Newman who promised to attempt to attend one of Friday’s sessions, encouraging Queenslanders to go and show support for Muslims.
“I would encourage Queenslanders who love our democracy, who love our multicultural community to actually turn up as a gesture of good faith,” Newman said.
“As a gesture of fellowship to show the people in that community that all Queenslanders on the whole, are right behind them 100 per cent and understand exactly the difficult issue that confronts us all.
“So that's probably the way that I'd put it, that Queenslanders other than Muslims should turn up and go to these mosques as they're opened up to see firsthand, but more importantly, to actually demonstrate solidarity with them.”
Newman criticized anti-Muslim pamphlets, asserting that “lashing out” at a particular group would “break our community apart”.
“We're dealing with some criminals who are using a particular religion, the Muslim religion, as a badge to try and convince other people to get on board,” he said.
“If anybody uses what's happened to vilify any group, any race, any religion, essentially ladies and gentlemen, they are playing into the hands of these terror groups, these would-be terrorists.
“That is actually helping the terrorist organizations to achieve what they want to achieve. So we must continue to be tolerant and supportive. We must work hard to continue to keep our community together.”
Source: OnIslam.net
