7,000 women march in streets of Dubai to protest of laws that arrests women who report to police after being raped.
-The Newcastle Herald, November 3rd, 2020
“RAPE VICTIMS ARE NOT CRIMINALS!”
-March for Islamic Feminist Movement, Dubai, UAE, November 3rd, 2020
The religion of Islam has a long history dating back to the year of 570 AD, when Muhammad was born. Before Islam came into being much of the Arabian peninsula was pagan, Jewish (example being that Himyarite Kingdom had Judaism as it dominant religion), and Christianity was already popular in plenty of places throughout Arabia and the rest of the Middle East.
Other time the religion that Muhammad created became widespread as it expanded outside it’s native homeland in Arabia and into Northern Africa, the Levant, Anatolia, Persia, Central Asia, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, India, and even into the Iberian peninsula.
Islam is often regarded and widely accepted by modern historians as a religion that both expanded through both peace and warfare, same how Christianity did in Europe, and how Early Judaism did in Ancient Israel.
But for a long time the religion was often plagued by massive extremism and fundamentalism, leading to many wars with other religions mainly being Christianity during the Crusades. Although Christianity was not innocent either having committed worst crimes ever imaginable, it made no difference to Islam when it came to terrorism and religious radicalism.
Originally Muhammad himself demanded racial equality and justice which it states in Last Sermon within the Quran. The prophet himself stated that nationalism and tribalism is to be discouraged, but when he died many rejected his final words and led to bad outcomes within the religion of Islam.
Islam as a result became divided into two different sects shortly after the death of Muhammad himself in 632 AD. Dispute over the succession of Prophet Muhammad led to widespread controversy in the religion across the Islamic world that it resulted in two bloody notable battles being the Battle of Jamal and the Battle of Siffin. Because of this it lead to the creation of Sunni Islam and Shia Islam.
Over time what was a religion of great thinkers, astronomers, scholars, doctors, inventors, poets, and mathematicians would end up becoming a religion slowly decaying itself into radicalism and fundamentalism. This resulted into the creation of various radical Islamic sects within the Sunni and Shia communities, most notably being the ultra-conservative Salafi movement and Wahhabism.
Due to the creation of Salafism and Wahhabism, it became widespread across the Islamic world and ended up giving a very negative image to the rest of the world as a result. And with Doomsday nearly bringing the whole world back to the Stone Age in 1983, the movements became far worse than they were before hand as many people with evil history and blood on their own hands became members of those movements.
As a result the religion of Islam along with its millions of followers would begin to question their own religion. And it made perfect sense after the destruction of Mecca done by Osama bin Laden (Going by the name “The Great One”) of the Hamas Caliphate, along with destruction of ancient ruins and artifacts both Islamic and non-Islamic (most notable being the damage done to the Sphinx in Egypt done by a member of the Hamas Caliphate).
With the World War on Terror, millions of Muslims both young and old and both male and female had begun to no longer put up with the violent radicalism that existed within Islam and because of this many realized that if Islam did not change it’s ways or reform then their own religion was basically done for as it would surely see itself decreasing in numbers as many would become atheist or convert to another religion altogether.
As a result this led to the birth of a reformist movement in the Islamic world called ‘Iislah which was taken from the word “reform” in Arabic. Strangely enough there is no true founder of ‘Iislah, mainly due to the fact many young Muslims felt that having a founder would end up leading to a disaster similar to what led to the creation of Sunni and Shia Islam.
‘Iislah itself was created in December of 2020 at the University of Sfax in Sfax, Kingdom of Tunisia. The movement was criticized by many in the Islamic community due to the fact that ‘Iislah demanded support for women’s rights and equality between sexes (most notably advocating ban on gender segregation in mosques and other buildings, not to mention advocating young women and men to speak out against sexual harassment and sexual abuse), ending discrimination towards men and women who have sex before marriage (since ‘Iislah was founded in Tunisia, it didn’t had trouble with the law since the Tunisian age of consent is 18, however in other Islamic countries where fornication was illegal was very difficult), end to child marriage in all Islamic countries, demanding abolishment of laws against homosexuality (especially in Iran where it was punishable by death), demand on secular government (seeing that theocracies resulted in the birth of fundamentalism and radicalism), pro-birth control (stating that Allah made humans to be sexually active like all animals in nature, therefore stating that having sex not for the purpose of procreation wasn’t sinful) and most notably demanding the end to female genital mutilation (which many correctly stated that in the Quran, Muhammad himself never stated anything about female circumcision, not to mention he never had his daughters go through it. ‘Iislah was correct when it stated that female circumcision was never practiced within Islam even in the early days of its existence, due to the fact Islam picked it up from Ancient Egyptian customs).
Although ‘Iislah had a long way to go, in the end it was able to establish great change across the Islamic world for the better.
-The History of ‘Iislah, written by Prof. Salamash Al-Frezad, June 20th, 2090