Omer Subhani is the Communications Director for CAIR-South Florida, and he has undertaken a multipart “exposé” of my work, which I just discovered and have been responding to this week. And as we have seen in Parts I, II, III, and IV, he’s just as honest and committed to fair dealing as his colleagues in that unsavory organization.
In Part V, “Wash Sins Away with Wudu!,” it’s more of the same. This one is all about honor killing, with a kind of bizarre detour into wudu, which is ritual washing, and things I supposedly said on Michael Savage’s show in February:
You know, if doing wudu was a sure fired way of cleansing oneself from sin then I would be a wali of Allah. No doubt about it. According to Robert Spencer, who was on the Michael Savage radio show, Muslims like to kill people, especially their shameful daughters, for reasons of purity.
He replied to a question Savage asked him regarding what Islamic rules there are that are out there that call for honor killings. Spencer replied, roughly, with the following: “Well, I think that the fundamental attitude comes from the purity emphasis, and the shame honor emphasis in Muslim culture. For example, the fact that in Islam there is no idea of the confession or being forgiven of ones sins before the end of one’s life rather there is just purification you make various ablutions and wash after sin has been committed, but you can never be sure that Allah will forgive you.”
“Spencer replied, roughly…”! Very roughly, indeed! I don’t have a transcript or recording of this appearance on the Savage show, and certainly don’t take Subhani’s version of what I said as accurate, but wudu isn’t for washing away sins. It is for ritual purity, undertaken before prayers and handling the Qur’an. It is broken, and hence must be performed again before prayers, if one breaks wind, urinates, sleeps, vomits, etc.
But it does not have to do with forgiveness of sins, and even in Subhani’s representation of my remarks on the Savage show I don’t say it does — I was saying that there is no idea of the forgiveness of sins in Islam, only of ritual purity and impurity. But that doesn’t prevent Subhani from taking my remark (as he represents it) that “you can never be sure that Allah will forgive you” and pretending that I said that wudu brings forgiveness:
Wash after the sin has been committed? This is just too easy to pass up that I have to point out the obvious stupidity of such a statement.
So if a Muslim kills his mother and father, just because he got mad let’s say, then all that Muslim has to do is wash up and he or she will be fine, forgiven by God, sin free??? Really?
Of course not, and I didn’t say anything remotely like this even by his own account.
That’s even easier than making a confession at church, wouldn’t you say Robert? I mean, think of the gas you would waste for every time you had to go run down to the church to be forgiven.
In all seriousness, I hope I misheard Mr. Spencer’s brilliant analysis. The aspect of Savage’s show that I found rather humorous was the idea they were promoting that “honor killings” are becoming more and more common in the U.S. The U.N. estimates roughly 5,000 or so the past year… in the whole world. There have been two incidents that have made national headlines in the U.S. related to the notion of honor killing. The Said sisters in Texas and Aqsa Parvez in Canada. May Allah have mercy upon all three of them. So… one was in the United States.
That’s two more than there were in North America the year before, or at least two more that were reported, and isn’t that two too many, Mr. Subhani? But of course he is too busy whipping himself up in a frenzy against Savage and me to take any pains actually to do anything to try to head off another honor killing in the U.S.
He concludes with this:
Anyway, the Prophet, peace and prayers be upon him, told his Companions not to kill their daughters when they were born because they were ashamed that they did not have a son so I would imagine that killing your daughter because she wasn’t wearing a hijab would also be similarly looked down upon. But that’s just me. Allah knows best.
Yeah, that’s just you. Unfortunately, all too many Muslims don’t agree with you. A few years ago the Jordanian Parliament rejected on Islamic grounds an attempt to stiffen penalties of honor killings. But I’m certain that Omer Subhani hasn’t had a single word to say about that. No, his venom is reserved for uppity non-Muslims like me who have the temerity to notice.