Petitioning Muslims around the world and all people of conscience to #BoycottSalah
Once again, so-called Muslim Reformers manage to seize any opportunity they can get their hands on to say the most insane things. If they’re reforming anything, it’s the art of shock and awe. The latest one I came across was this preposterous #BoycottHajj hashtag on Twitter. Turns out the lady who started it is doing so because if Muslims answered her call it would place some sort of pressure upon the Saudi government. She’s obviously doing this as a cheap play on the BDS movement against Israel. To call her an imbecile would be an insult to the word imbecile.
My last article here was a parody of her call to non-Muslim women to not wear the hijab in solidarity with Muslim women. I called on non-Muslim men not to grow their beards in solidarity with Muslim men. Here, I’ve taken the liberty to change her call for Muslims to boycott the hajj and instead made it about the prayer, because as one of my readers put it, the best response to stupidity is mockery.
Muslims should boycott the prayer (salah/namaz) and the world should boycott the government of Saudi Arabia, like it did the apartheid government of South Africa, until the House of Saud brings democracy, civil society, human rights — including women’s rights — and a peaceful and tolerant interpretation of Islam to its people and the world. I have no idea how prayer and apartheid are related, but bear with me.
I also know it sounds totally ridiculous to ask a monarchy to be the one ushering democracy, which effectively kills it, and even more ridiculous to request they continue to interpret Islam for their people and the whole world as if they’re the final authority on it. But none of this has to make sense anyways. I have the brown skin, the foreign name, and I drop Arabic words I don’t even understand just so I can sound authentic. I’m a Muslim Reformer hashtagtivist.
We should be emboldened by a growing chorus of people who are raising their voices to protest the tyrannical Saudi regime that has wreaked havoc on the world since 1979, burdening our generation with the curse of its extremist brand of sectarian, intolerant Islam. Of course, I’m totally illiterate regarding geopolitics and how exactly this sectarian, intolerant Islam arose and its link to the actions of the Soviets and the U.S. governments in that region, but who cares.
We are fed up!
Five times a day, we have to go and use an obscene amount of water, getting it all over the bathroom counter and floor, splashing it against the mirror as we perform wudu, i.e., the ritual washing, before we perform the salah. Often times the prayers interfere with our work schedule and that hinders our ability to be productive in our jobs. Students struggle to juggle between their classes and Jumua (Friday) prayer, not to mention the dilemmas experienced when salah conflicts with exams.
The salah is against our secular values and anyone insisting on it may be harbouring extremism and is challenging the separation of church and state. Adherence to Sharia is what’s behind this insistence on salah, and I worry for our children’s future as they are forced to perform this oppressive exercise of bowing and prostrating on the ground on a daily basis. This is why I support close police monitoring of mosques where such extremist observance of the salah can be found.
Saudi propaganda has spread recordings of imams in the two holy mosques of Mecca and Medina leading prayers during Ramadan, which inspires Muslims all the way in America who get taken in by the beautiful recitations to try and emulate these imams and memorize the Quran to lead their own prayers in mosques right here in America. In fact, the Saudis have spread millions of copies of the Quran across the world. What many Americans may be unaware of is that every Muslim must memorize small portions of the Quran in order for them perform a valid prayer.
Saudi preachers continue to come to America and hold lectures where they implore Muslims to attend the mosque more and remind them of the importance of praying on time in congregations. Some of them even spend time checking and correcting Quranic recitations.
I call on all conscious Muslims to have the moral courage to say no to Saudi Arabia and boycott the salah. I don’t know how this will make a difference regarding the Saudi regime, but I need to say something insane for notoriety’s sake.
It’s time we stop submitting and rise up.
