Friends,
As a Canadian Muslim of Arab-Syrian
origin, I find Ms. Gabriel's open letter to be intellectually
offensive, mean-spirited, and demeaning, filled as it is with numerous
distortions by omission and/or commission. Virtually every single
accusatory statement made by the author can be shown to be false.
As a case in point, instead of putting
the blame for the barbaric civil war which Lebanon endured during the
1970s and 1980s on the combined attempts by the Christian Maronite
militias and their Israeli allies to liquidate the Palestinian
presence in Lebanon (a presence whose origin goes back to the creation
of the Zionist state of Israel and the expulsion of the native
Palestinians from their homeland), Ms. Gabriel has deliberately,
indeed maliciously, put the blame squarely and exclusively on the
victims of that tragic war. The massacre of Sabra and Shatila
(described by the Canadian Jewish author Aby Weisfeld as "A New
Auschwitz in his book "Sabra & Shatila: A New Auschwitz; published by
Jerusalem International Publishing House, Inc. Ottawa, Canada, ISBN
0-88628-035-4, dated September 1983), in which thousands of innocent
Palestinian refugees were murdered by the Christian Maronite militias
with the direct and active cooperation of the Israeli occupying army
in Beirut under the command of Ariel Sharon is but a striking example
as to the total falsity of Ms. Gabriel's claims and her distorted
"analysis" of events.
Within this context, Ms. Gabriel does
not need to go further than the United States' history to "discover"
that the main victims of criminal European and American slave trade in
Africa were African Muslims. In this regard, if the historical record
is examined carefully, it will show that, contrary to the popularly
mistaken perceptions perpetuated by the likes of Ms. Gabriel, the
spread of Islam in the world, whether in the Middle East or other
parts of the globe, depended far less on the use of force than did the
spread of Christianity. The universal Quranic principle is clear;
"there should be no compulsion in religion/matters of faith." The
Muslims of the Far East whose number today outweighs that of the
Muslim Middle East, with Indonesia being the largest Muslim country in
the world, were generally converted to Islam through the influence of
peaceful merchants. On the other hand, we should not forget that
despite the teachings of Jesus, Christianity was spread at the point
of a sword in much of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Western
Hemisphere.
I am almost certain that the great
American-Lebanese ( and Christian-Maronite) writer Khalil Gibran,
author of the immortal book THE PROPHET, would be ashamed
and saddened if he were to read the kind of hateful stuff which
is being fabricated and disseminated by people like Ms.
Gabriel. Before she engages in such bigoted and foolish diatribe
against Islam and Muslims, she should have the decency to read the
writings of such renowned American-Arab-Lebanese (and Christian
Maronite) historians like the late Philip Hitti, author of History
of the Arabs, and Makers of Arab History, among many
others, in order to educate herself about the richness and vibrancy of
the contributions of Arabs and Muslims to the development of human
thought and civilization.
In this respect, one may refer to the
excellent lexicon/dictionary produced by two renowned Canadians Arab
scholars, the late professor Jim Peters (a Christian Maronite Arab)
and Habeeb Salloum (a Christian Orthodox Arab), titled Arabic
Contributions to the English Vocabulary: English Words of Arabic
Origin. The authors found that well over seven thousand words in
the English language, pertaining to all intellectual and scientific
fields, are of Arabic origin. When it comes to the Spanish language,
and in spite of the famous, or infamous, Spanish Inquisitions, the
contributions of Arabic is still far greater.
The well-known Arab-Muslim jurist Khalil
ibn Ahmad said: "There are four kinds of human beings; the person who
knows and knows that he/she knows - learn from him/her; the person who
knows and does not know that he/she knows; he/she is forgetful -
remind him/her; the person who does not know and knows that he/she
does not know; he/she seeks guidance -teach him/her; and the person
who does not know and does not know that he/she does not know; he/she
is a fool - avoid him/her.
Lamentably, based on her foolish letter,
Mr. Gabriel proved herself to be the embodiment of the fourth kind; a
fool to be avoided.
Ibrahim Hayani