Dec 13, 2011

Muslims should boycott Lowe's but also address legitimate concerns

Lowe's is the latest corporation to pull out as a sponsor of TLC's "All American Muslim". I find this move to be bigoted and despicable and I will subsequently stop shopping at Lowe's.

The show they were sponsoring isn't my favorite television show but it is a show that needs to be aired. The goal of the show is to depict the lives of normal, boring American Muslims. What is wrong with that? Everyone on earth knows how the fringe extremist Muslims think. This was a much needed show.

Lowe's claims that they are removing their ads because they didn't want to 'alienate anyone'.

What the ...?

They just alienated an entire community by pulling their sponsorship.

On a second and more important note, I believe Muslims across America need to come together and address the root cause of this sponsorship suspension. The initial opposition from the Florida Family Association that forced Lowe's hand may be racism or bigoted or extreme.

But whatever the case may be, their gripes with Islam is that it seems to be an extremist religion.

So if Arabs and Pakistanis, Sunnis and Shiites, Nigerians and Indonesians etc can come together in unison to support "All American Muslim", can't they take this opportunity to collectively acknowledge the accuracy of the fear that the West does have towards Islam. I say use this opportunity to condemn terrorism, condemn the suppression of women, and make strides towards removing extremism from Islam, from their communities and start educating the right people back in their home countries.

Every Muslim comes together to complain about the West attacking Islam, but when some extremist Muslim does something stupid, moderate and liberal  Muslims are silent. Why do they disconnect ourselves from their religion when it suits them, and suddenly become defensive and united when they are attacked?

Muslims need to not only condemn extremist behaviour as a group but also work towards removing this scourge from their ranks.

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