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October 24, 2006
Noble Laureate Muhammed Yunus vs. Osama Bin Laden
Topics: Understanding Islam
Both claim to be Muslim, so which one represents what Islam is suppose to represent to its followers? Here's a piece that virtually begs us to ask why we don't hear more examples like it, and why the multitude of unheard voices of truly moderate Muslims like Muhammed Yunis and Muhammad Abdul Latif Jameel remain silent in word and deed - and fail to speak and act against the Muslim fundamentalists.
From MEMRI via The Big Pharoah we learn that the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat published an excellent article contrasting Noble Peace Prize laureate Muhammed Yunus, a Muslim, with Osama Bin Laden, a radical Muslim fundamentalist, who commits atrocities in the name of Islam and spreads war, poverty and disease.
[...] "There is a difference between an investor and a destroyer, a bomber and a constructor, between those who respect human rights and preserve human integrity, and those who kill innocent people cold-bloodedly, spreading fear, panic and poverty among human beings, causing people to lose sleep, and destroying their lands. I thought about these dissimilarities when the Bangladeshi Muslim Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize. He is the founder of the Grameen Bank, established to help the poor, in an effort to bring civilizations, religions and human beings closer to one another, so that they can live in peace.Continue reading, "Al-Hayat Op-Ed Contrasts Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus with Osama Bin Laden.""At the opposite end of the spectrum, there is what Osama bin Laden does. He is still hiding from one cave to another, planning how to blow up, destroy and kill; he has introduced the idea of suicide bombers, has founded a terrorist organization, and he does not differentiate between killing a child, a widow, or an elderly.
"The World Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually to those whose work contributes to the achievement of world peace and coexistence. This year, it has introduced us to a kind of person who uses his money, ideas and time to help fight poverty, and assist people, preserve their rights, and protect them. The Bangladeshi banker Yunus has founded the Grameen Bank. This is considered the first bank in Bangladesh to have started operating based on a micro-credit system to help the poor. It provides financial loans to the poorest people, especially women, and charges them with small interests that encourage the poor to take these loans. The objective is for them to be able to set up their businesses and implement their private projects, which move them from the circle of poverty to a state of capability and self-reliance. Yunus is the peaceful person who has utilized his ideas and money to fight poverty, to affirm that eradicating it is an important pivot of achieving global peace and security, and to prevent terrorist organizations from infiltrating into poor families, enlisting their children, pushing them into terrorist arms, and violating world security.
"Also, the charity work carried out by the Saudi businessman Muhammad Abdul Latif Jameel is in line with what Yunus is doing. These activities are now widespread among the Saudis and the Arabs through the 'Abdul Latif Jameel's Fund for Community Service' and soft loans, in order to fight poverty, and to set up small projects for those in need, so that they can help themselves and realize their dreams. Many women have turned from simple sellers on a sidewalk into shop owners, and into producers integrated in society!"
... "Pure Islam and the real Prophet's message are represented by what is implemented by Yunus and Adu Latif Jameel, and not by bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and those like them, who devastate the world with corruption and terrorism. Getting the poor out of poverty, rescuing them from the ordeals of time and their difficult lives, giving them hope, a future, well-being and development, making them able to produce, develop, contribute to peace and stability, and do their part in helping other poor: this is the real face of Islam, with no violence or killing innocent people.
"What terrorists do increases the number of poor, widows and orphans; spreads fear, terror and poverty; hampers development projects and destroys infrastructure. On the contrary, the award Yunus has obtained is a confirmation that Islam is a religion of peace and security, whereas bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri's ideas are the fruit of evil and sick minds.
The MEMRI article includes the statement that "terrorists increase poverty, spread terror, hamper development, destroy infrastructure; Yunus's Nobel Prize confirms that Islam is a religion of peace and security," which is, of course, a leap of logic since the actions of Muslims such as Yunus and Muhammad Abdul Latif Jameel prove that Islam can be interpreted and applied in and for peaceful purposes, as it indeed should be. However, Muslims such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahirl prove that it can just as easily be misinterpreted and misapplied to conduct acts of terror in the name of the religion. But such is the case with any religion, and it is up to the mainstream faithful to provide the structure, hierarchy, and traditions that the ideological interlopers distort for their own sick purposes.
So far, Islam is yet to implement such reforms as are necessary for this to occur, as it has been done long ago in Judaism and Christianity. Serious impediments include the hesitancy of moderate Muslims to speak out against the fundamentalists and label the fundamentalists' political, social, and ideological agenda and practice as a sick pervertion and misrepresentation of Islam.
A good first step would be for Muslims to see the works of Yunus and Jameel as an example to be followed and instilled in their youth, rather than the violence, hate, and intolerance taught in many cultures such as in the case of the Palestininians, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and elsewhere. The good news is that I believe that sooner or later this will occur; the bad news is that the world is running out of time for this to occur.
Related - Biography: Muhammad Yunus - Founder and Managing Director, Grameen Bank:
Muhammad Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, the business centre of what was then Eastern Bengal. He was the third of 14 children of whom five died in infancy. Educated in Chittagong, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship and received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. In 1972 he became head of the Economics Department at Chittagong University. He is the founder and managing director of the Grameen Bank. In 1997, Professor Yunus led the world's first Micro Credit Summit in Washington, DC. His dream is the total eradication of poverty from the world. 'Grameen', he claims, 'is a message of hope, a programme for putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long'. This work is a fundamental rethink on the economic relationship between the rich and the poor, their rights and their obligations. The World Bank recently acknowledged that 'this business approach to the alleviation of poverty has allowed millions of individuals to work their way out of poverty with dignity'. Credit is the last hope left to those faced with absolute poverty. That is why Muhammad Yunus believes that the right to credit should be recognized as a fundamental human right. It is this struggle and the unique and extraordinary methods he invented to combat human despair that Muhammad Yunus recounts here with humility and conviction. It is also the view of a man familiar with both Eastern and Western cultures-on the failures and potential for good of industrial countries. It is an appeal for action: we must concentrate on promoting the will to survive and the courage to build in the first and most essential element of the economic cycle-Man.[ View Profile ]
[ Collapse Profile ]Birthplace: Chittagong, Bengal, India
Education: B.A. and M.A. in Economics at Dhaka University
Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University"A Field Trip to Change Lives"In 1974, Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist from Chittagong University, led his students on a field trip to a poor village. They interviewed a woman who made bamboo stools, and learnt that she had to borrow the equivalent of 15p to buy raw bamboo for each stool made. After repaying the middleman, sometimes at rates as high as 10% a week, she was left with a penny profit margin. Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level. Realizing that there must be something terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his own hands, and from his own pocket lent the equivalent of £ 17 to 42 basket-weavers. He found that it was possible with this tiny amount not only to help them survive, but also to create the spark of personal initiative and enterprise necessary to pull themselves out of poverty. Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out 'micro-loans', and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning 'village bank' founded on principles of trust and solidarity. In Bangladesh today, Grameen has 1,084 branches, with 12,500 staff serving 2.1 million borrowers in 37,000 villages. On any working day Grameen collects an average of $1.5 million in weekly installments. Of the borrowers, 94% are women and over 98% of the loans are paid back, a recovery rate higher than any other banking system. Grameen methods are applied in projects in 58 countries, including the US, Canada, France, The Netherlands, and Norway.
Posted by Richard at October 24, 2006 7:15 AM
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