Moina Shaiq is a Muslim who migrated from Pakistan to the United States in 1978 with her family, taking full advantage of the freedoms and opportunities that this country offered. After the San Bernardino massacre of 2015, she decided that she had to do something to bring the truth about peaceful Islam to Americans “before prejudice set in.” She placed an ad in her local paper, in Fremont, California, inviting people to come to a local coffee shop to “Meet A Muslim” and ask whatever questions they wanted. “‘Meet a Muslim’ events hope to dispel misconceptions,” Associated Press, August 13, 2017:
The ad offered ideas for questions: Are women oppressed in Islam? What is the Islamic view of terrorism? How does Islam view other religions?
To her surprise, about 100 people turned out that day, and her “Meet a Muslim” program was born.
“It was over overwhelming,” said Shaiq, a mother of four and a grandmother. “Fremont is so diverse, you will see women in hijab on the streets all the time. I didn’t think people here would be interested or even need to know about Muslims.”
Shaiq has since spoken about being Muslim and answered questions at dozens of libraries, pizza parlors and coffee shops in the San Francisco Bay Area. She recently expanded Meet a Muslim to churches, service clubs and private homes, and traveled to Arizona and Atlanta with the program.
Since that article appeared in the Associated Press in August 2017, Shaiq has appeared at many more events — as of May 2018, a total of 150 — and she shows no signs of slowing down.
She appears to believe that the true Islam, the faith as rightly understood, and presented by her, has nothing to do with terrorism, and that mere prejudice, and the effect of such sinister islamophobic websites as Jihad Watch — a site for which she has repeatedly expressed a particular animus — explains the widespread hostility to her faith. She can apparently find no other explanation. Might that hostility have something to do with the more than 33,500 attacks by Muslim terrorists since 9/11/2001? Could that critical attitude toward Islam, where it exists, have been a result of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Fort Hood, Little Rock, Orlando, San Bernardino in this country, or the Muslim attacks in Europe, in London, Manchester, Paris, Toulouse, Nice, Madrid, Barcelona, Brussels, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Malmö, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Beslan? Might non-Muslims have taken note of the killings of Christians by Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, sometimes by well-publicized fanatics — groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram — and sometimes by perfectly orthodox Muslims, as those, for example, in Egypt killing Copts and blowing up churches, appear to be? Isn’t it just possible that the observable behavior of Muslims, and not blind prejudice, explains the growing unease about Islam?
Determined to do something about these misunderstanders of Islam, the indefatigable Moina Shaiq has been feeding her unwary listeners a highly misleading version of Islam. Her deceptive presentation consists of the following:
First, to show the peaceful and non-violent nature of Islam, she quotes the Qur’anic verse 5:32, but fails to read, much less elucidate, the whole of that verse. 5:32 says that “On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our messengers with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.” Moina Shaiq does not explain that the verse was intended not for all mankind, but only for the Children of Israel. When she quotes the verse, it becomes “whoever kills an innocent [“slew a person”], it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.” This verse, lifted from the Jewish text of the Mishnah, sounds good. But it is the part that is left out by Moina Shaiq that is most important. For that part of the verse makes an exception to the rule of not-killing, and says that such killing is merited as punishment either for ‘“murder“ or for “spreading mischief [corruption, fitna] in the land.” “Spreading mischief in the land” means disobeying Allah.
Another deliberate lapse; Moina Shaiq does not follow 5:32 with the key verse, 5:33, that immediately follows and makes clear the real meaning of 5:32, which is not to condemn all killing, but to note when it is allowed. 5:33 describes the proper way to kill those who “make war upon Allah and His messenger”: “The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land.” Who “makes war upon Allah and His messenger”? It’s the non-Muslims, of course, and it is they who should be “killed or crucified.”