I received the following question from a reader who follows the Ibishblog on Facebook: "Dr. Hussein, Your advocacy is commendable. As a Muslim, you fight for me. I am just wondering, given your personal belief system, why do you advocate for Muslims?"
First of all, let me say thanks very much for this extremely important and interesting question, which demands both a simple and a complex answer. The simple answer as to why I would fight for Muslim American civil rights and liberties and against Islamophobia and discrimination is because it is right in the abstract. It is important to fight against all forms of discrimination and defamation, but we do so most effectively when it comes to the communities we know best. Those who follow my work will note that I also take a keen objection to anti-Semitism, sectarian intolerance, homophobia and other forms of discrimination sometimes exhibited by Arabs and Muslims, and it is for precisely the same reasons. There are principles at stake here, and they are universal and humanistic.
There is, however, a more complex answer as well. First of all, let us address the question of my "personal beliefs system." I imagine that the reader is referring to my personal religious opinions. I am, and have since I was a very young child (probably around age 6 or 7, believe it or not), been a committed agnostic. This means that I'm sceptical about everything, including all the claims of all major religions and the claims of atheism as well. Without going into any details, I'm convinced that the great metaphysical questions of existence are beyond the comprehension of human beings at both the rational and the intuitive ("spiritual") registers.
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