Nexus Junction: 200705

Thursday, 10 May 2007

Dispatches - Undercover Mosque

Last Saturday (5 May 2007) at a reunion lunch gathering with some ex-Conner (FIS) colleagues, I mentioned to my friends that I was very perturbed by the hijacking of religion to promote hatred and intolerance. I was referring to the fundamentalist Islam as practised by militant and radical Muslims in the Middle East, but which is gradually making in-roads into South East Asia, and even influencing moderate Islam here. Personally, I feel that the problem has been severely amplified since 9/11 as moderate Muslims everywhere are not aggressively confronting the theology of hate that is sprouted by the radicals, allowing children and impressionable youths to be indoctrinated with this dangerous form of their religion that threatens life and society for everyone. By allowing these teachings of hate to grow, the intolerant form of Islam becomes the "norm" instead of the extremist variant they were supposed to be!

I had developed a certain impression of such radical Muslims from my reading of internet articles and newspaper reports. However, I was actually quite unprepared for the level of hatred that is being espoused by the religious teachers (imams) against non-Muslims until I watched this British documentary, "Dispatches - Undercover Mosque" from UK's Channel 4 TV station. The 1-hour documentary shows how although some British mosques publicly profess to promote an Islam of love and understanding and tolerance of other faiths (they belong to a government inter-faith group that works with other religious organisations), internally, the imams go about propagating their teachings of hatred for all "kuffaars" (non-Muslims), and for their ultimate aim to bring down governments and establishments and to install their militant brand of Islam for everyone.

The documentary is quite an eye-opener. It was aired in the UK on 15 January this year.