July 01, 2006

MUSLIM NATIONALISM IN UK?

Alton Towers in Staffordshire, Uk's largest fun park has been hired by a Muslim organization 'Islamic Leisure' for one day to arrange the 'first national Muslim fun day'. Upto 28,000 Muslims are expected to purchase tickets from the organization to attend the event, which boasts prayer areas and Halal foods.

The Sun Online has this disturbing report that non Muslims were denied tickets for that day.
The event is widely promoted on the internet and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee declared it "exclusively for our brothers and sisters"
This is a clear case of promoting Islamic nationalism. We have seen the chaos and wars the Indian Muslim Nationalism produced. Islamic nationalism needs to be challenged. Yakoub Islam wrote in Alt.Muslim:
"Nationalism, despite its claims to unite, always divides - the 'natives' from the 'foreigners', the whites from the blacks.It divides people into groups like a farmer separates different breeds of cattle. Islamophobia is simply a reformulation of this colour-based racism. Nationalism is a virus of hate, and now it has infected Muslims. Those fanatics who support the London suicide bombings of 7/7 follow a mutated genus of this disease - one which swears allegiance to a reified ummah and a king-god, whilst rejecting other 'nations' as the spawn of Satan. Indeed, extreme Islamic nationalism is at the heart of the debased theologies informing all global khalifa movements.

As the Qur'an says, we were created so that we might know people different from ourselves. By Allah, let's do it!"
I suspect this can also be a case of exploiting Muslim sentiments for commercial gains by that organization. British Muslims should not go for such an explicit alienation and fall into the trap of Muslim nationalism.

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