Sign-up for the MWU! newsletter--enter your email address below:
Readers Now Online
We need your help.
If you support our magazine and our mission, please consider contributing to this project and progressive Muslim media. We accept donations through PayPal’s secure system by using the button below.
The statement below was submitted by members of the Network of Progressive Muslims, an email discussion list. -- Ed.
As we celebrate the ending of Ramadan and the Feast of the Breaking of the
Fast, we, the undersigned members of the Network of Progressive Muslims, which has members on all continents of our planet, are heartsick about the destructive military devastation of Fallujah in Iraq and the Darfur region of Sudan taking place during this blessed month.
The American offensive on an entire city, shelling it repeatedly in a way that obviously will result in many civilian deaths, and attacking hospitals and schools as legitimate military targets, seems to us to completely violate any idea of permissible limits in warfare. The targeting of the city because of its supposed character as a "stronghold for insurgents" seems nothing more than simple revenge for the mob displaying of the already dead bodies of the four mercenaries that took place several months ago. Every day we read of car bombs in Baghdad, pipes cut or set fire in Mosul, police and American soldiers shot in Ramadi, yet it is Fallujah that has become the one main target of American rage. This attack on an urban center that prior to occupation was one of the most peaceful and crime-free cities in Iraq, has no excuse and is a clear war crime on the part of the American military and the Iraqi interim government.
Reports from Iraq indicate tens of thousands who have left the city, with no provisions, and tens of thousands of civilians who are imprisoned now in this death trap. The demands of our conscience, not to mention the Geneva Conventions, require us to bring attention to their plight.
The carnage in Darfur is a deep tragedy in which all sides have committed atrocities but in which we can nevertheless see and condemn a pattern of extreme cruelty on the part of the Janjaweed militias and the Sudanese governmental authorities. Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 300,000 people may have been killed, with up to 1,000,000 people displaced from homes. We as the human community can not simply stand by and allow these unspeakable atrocities to take place. Our conscience, our commitment to the humanity of one another, and our standing before our God demands of us a course of action. We call for all sides to respect the recently signed protocols for a cease fire and we condemn anyone who took part in those atrocities as war criminals regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation.
As Muslims, we are called to acknowledge the dignity of all human life, Muslim and non-Muslim, male and female, rich and poor, gay and straight. We are to stand with the suffering of the marginalized regardless of whether Muslims are the victims as in Fallujah or some of the oppressors, as in Darfur. As our Prophet instructs us, we are to aid our brethren whether they are the oppressed or the tyrants: the oppressed by coming to their aid, the tyrants by preventing them from their tyranny. In this time of fasting and repentance we call on aggressors to repent and to stop their atrocities. They will be called to account, not by us, but we have a responsibility as progressives, as Muslims, and as human beings to denounce and condemn crimes against civilians wherever and by whomever they may occur.
