by Dr. Mohamed Elmasry (courtesy of the Canadian ChargerMore by this author...
Is there a relationship between Islam and democracy?
If you ask me, this is a very strange question, yet one that has been debated long and vigorously by Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, activists and politicians for a long time. Why is it so strange? -- because it has not been posed today in the context of any other mainstream religion.
In a surprise victory, Nenshi -- who ran a middle-of-the-road campaign with good usage of social media -- won the Calgary elections, becoming the first Muslim to be mayor of a major Canadian city. Harvard-educated and an administrator, Nenshi won 40% of the vote.
This brutal killing has shocked the world. It was heinous and unpardonable crime, but I do not call it murder for that is a legal term and the motive and pre-meditation have to be established by a court of law.
Some of us have gotten carried away, on both ends of the spectrum. This is just an attempt to see what happened, and try to place it in the context of immigrant assimilation, problems with teenage clothing, and try to lay the blame - for that is what we all want to do when confronted with such deep tragedy.
1. Best way to escape the media-sound-bytes-silly-issues agenda of MCC is to make a pro-active agenda for community participation.
2. There is no religion without a clergy. Instead of bothering ourselves with clergy in Iran or Afghanistan or Saudi or Egypt, we should have our academics talking to Canadian Muslim clergy.
3. If a malicious or ignorant accuser accuses us of condoning 'terrorism' and is unaware of the issues surrounding 'terrorism' and prefers to adopt the neocon non-definition which makes every anti-US/Israel militant group a terrorist - it is best to ignore the question. It is much better to use the phrase, 'we are absolutely
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