VOICE OF GLOBAL UMMAH

VOICE OF GLOBAL UMMAH

August 11, 2013, Volume 240

Editors: Mohamed & Rashida Ziauddin 

In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent and Merciful

EDITORIAL:

If Islam stands for peace, then Muslims should be role models emulating their way of life towards attaining peace. Peace should first start from within one's self  and then transcend towards the outside world beginning first with peace within one's self, one's immediate family, relatives, friends, workplace, local community and beyond. 

What better way to start peace from within by focusing on positives and by removing the toxic negative feelings of hate, anger, resentment etc. The anti-Islamic forces are literally working overtime to work on developing HATE towards the peace loving religion of Islam. But if Muslims also follow the same approach as anti-Islamic forces to develop and foster hate against other non-Muslim entities, that what is the difference between the two. As true peace loving Muslims, we must confront hate with love to the maximum extent as feasible and realistically as possible. 

Leaving aside international, national and local laws that as an individual, one has no control over, what each individual can definitely work on is to first identify their own inventory of biases, hatred, negative stereotypes against others who contradict one's own of what is RIGHT. This includes negativity in various ways against non-Muslims specially Jews or any other non-Islamic attributes of the West. If we expect others to be tolerant of us, we need to reciprocate the same by being tolerant of others. A good Muslim can practice all the Islam he wants while at the same time exercise maximum tolerance in terms of accepting the rights of non-Muslims to practice a way of life that they feel is right for them. "There is no compulsion in Islam" Verse 2:256 - HOLY QURAN.

Our spotlight in this issue is for Muslims to practice PEACE in the form of stopping viral hate which is in no short supply in the cyber sphere. There are many instances where our own loving Prophet Mohamed (SAW) won over non-Muslims who initially were full of hate and anger by reciprocating with abundant expression of love, tolerance, kindness and patience. Let us, members of the GLOBAL UMMAH emulate our loving Prophet. This is the need of  the hour. Below webinar is an excellent step in the right direction in which not just Muslims but people from all faiths could work together to stop the new social cancer of the 21st century - VIRAL HATE.

 

Parliament Webinar: Learning To Stop Viral Hate, The Social Internet, and the Interfaith Response

(www.parliamentofreligions.org)

 

 

When a comment becomes dangerous, Interfaith activists must respond. From closed groups to public forums, the power of the social internet is feeding a new kind of potentially fatal disease, Viral Hate. From behind screens, social media users are becoming complacent to hate-borne comments and those who are posting them lack concern for the real life repercussions. It is not only, as Abraham H. Foxman and Christopher Wolf explore in their book Viral Hate, the fact that “words of hate can easily turn into acts of hate” but that internet users frighteningly consider hate a natural byproduct of the immense internet sphere.

 

Join the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions in discussion with co-author Christopher Wolf on how these assaults on human dignity cannot simply be censored by law but need, and are in fact an obligation of, companies, internet users themselves and society to counteract this viral problem.

You will learn the state of hate on the internet now, how it affects us all,  and how to effectively respond. 

    

(Christopher Wolf)

 

Christopher Wolf is widely recognized as one of the leading American practitioners in the fields of privacy and Internet law and serves as the director of Hogan Lovells LLP’s Privacy and Information Management practice.  He is the national chair of the ADL Civil Rights Committee as well as the founder and co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum think tank. 

Title: Learning To Stop Viral Hate: The Social Internet and the Interfaith Response

Date: Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Time:1:00 PM – 2:00 PM CDT

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