But it seems that his idiosyncratic views have landed him in trouble and that he has closed his blog down as a result. Full details on Political Scrapbook and in the Burnley Citizen.
I hope we will see an older, wiser Irfan return to blogging one day.
6 comments:
gotta feel a little sorry for him. Although, I was accused of being Islamophobic by him, which I didn't greatly appreciate. His "overstretches" are basically harmless, but pretty dumb. I too hope his blog is reincarnated is an older, wiser, more measured form.
Finally! And very predictably. "Liberal" in name only as far as I could see, the guy was a saloon bar loudmouth for whom the journey from (over)reaction and "thought process" to posting was all too short. No doubt he is already wandering the parks of Burnley, yelling at pigeons.
He was young and naïve, too eager to post, unable to reconcile the conservative religious culture that was his background with his chosen political party. I felt a great deal of sympathy for him, as I recognised quite a lot in him that applied to me when I was his age (I fear sometimes it still does ...).
Unfortunately, it was just impossible to try and argue through these things rationally with him. His political and religious knowledge were very limited, and his tactic if you pushed him a bit to try and get him to think tended to be just to concede or claim he was trying to be provocative and didn't mean what he said.
I hope he is still quietly reading this sort of stuff, and thinking, and will develop a mature attitude that does reconcile his wish to be a Liberal with his Islam.
I do find Islam a rather unpleasant religion, and if pushed I could argue why I find it so and yet can stick with my own religion (Catholicism) which many would say is equally (or more so) unpleasant. There are some aspects of my religion I appreciate more now than I did when I was a younger and more conventional "liberal Catholic", in particular seeing how evangelical Protestantism is so mis-used by the political right gives me some appreciation of the Catholic notion of authority. I find I even rather like Pope Benedict (I never cared much for JP II).
There is a desperate need for Islam to be pulled out of the rut into which it has slipped, which at present seem to be emphasising all its bad aspects and losing any that are good. From my own background I can see what is going wrong, and wish I could engage in conversation with people like Irfan to try and help them pull it out of that. But I suspect a careful discussion on the merits of Francis de Sales and other of the nicer figures of the Counter-Reformation (my line is essentially that Islam has had a Calvinist reformation and needs a counter-reformation to rediscover its spirituality) would go way over his head. I really hope that it wouldn't do so in a few years time.
Irfan was a reckless blogger who rarely put his brain in gear before throwing some really quite serious accusations about (he once accused me of being in league with extremists, and was the first to go off half-cocked after Dale's post-smeargate accusations of stalking). It was only a matter of time before this behaviour caught up with him.
To echo DC's comments, he never struck me as much of a liberal. It was almost as if he picked a 'tribe' at random and started attacking outsiders (or anyone passing by) as a way of fitting in.
I think you'll find he is now appearing on Recess Monkey as "Liberal Monkey".
Get some pop-corn...
@ Matthew H
Read up on Islam. It was actually a much more open, intellectual and accepting religion than Christianity, esp Catholicism.
A good story to read about is the foundations of the Alahambra that was built by the Moor people from North Africa in Southern Spain.
The funny bit was how close Europe came to being Islamic and how the Christians who came to invade Spain destroyed anything of intelligence and instead built opulent churches so their followers could worship them.
Islam used to feel education was open to all, including the slaves but Catholics felt the opposite and reinforced this idea when they invaded Spain.
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