Daily Times

For those of you who do not reside on this side of the hemisphere it may come as a surprise, but people like me are used to it by now. Ever get invited by a group, a cause or even a place of worship to a nice hotel for a programme or a dinner, what it really means is: carry your wallet. By the time the evening wears out, you will leave with either a wallet a bit lighter, a cheque book with one less of a cheque to write, and last but not least, if you have nothing on you, you will end up pledging something down the road. Of course only if you want a place in sweet paradise, you bet you will do it, no matter what.

Again it is the lure of the hereafter that makes people give, give and give more. The people on stage with a straight face, ask you in God’s name and want you to trust them as if they have spoken to the Almighty themselves, much like Moses. Yes, even the places of worship do a high pressure sales pitch, and one often wonders, hmm God is nearer and dearer to my heart or my wallet? I am going to return to the Almighty any way and the Almighty is beyond dollars and valuables, then why the men behind the podium are selling His glory for a few measly dollars?

Where I take major exception is talk to any Muslim clergy about credit cards and they give you a long lecture about interest and how it is forbidden in our faith. Yet when it comes to donations, in order to make it convenient for you, they are willing to accept credit cards. I rest my case here as I do not want the readers to get perturbed as the reflection in the mirror is often very ugly. There is a lot more to say, but I will bite my lip on this angle. What some places of worship in particular have experienced in terms of financial mismanagement and lack of transparent accounting practices is another subject, for another day. But man is, for sure, an enterprising creation of the Almighty, always looking into ways to feed his needs and greed.

So where I reside there is a group that represents the faithful and provides them legal representation, in case they need it. People supposedly do it on a voluntary basis. Yet they want your money to open up local chapters and cover expenses. If they are able to gather a speaker who happens to be a non-Muslim and who somehow echoes their thought process, they honestly feel they have scored a home run. Fine, I agree that the US government is full of flaws, but I certainly do not subscribe to the ‘bogeyman’ mentality that it is out to entrap Muslim citizens or for that matter Muslims in general here in the US.

The shameful Japanese-American internment during World War II is often repeated as an excess. No doubt, it was morally and legally wrong and historians have unabashedly condemned it to the hilt. The post-9/11 interrogation techniques, such as water boarding, are criticised and I agree. A wrong act, even if committed by a government, needs to be highlighted. The use of drones is brought up and I agree that the use of drones on innocent civilians, especially on the elderly, women and children, is wrong and immoral.

But here comes the flip side of the argument as well, which needs to be reviewed with an objective mind. So when Faisal Shahzad, a US citizen decides to harm his fellow citizens by planning to plant explosives at Times Square, what example is he setting for his fellow Muslim Americans? When the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be a Chechen Muslim and a college-going student, what image is he creating for his fellow Americans? When Anwar Al Awlaki goes rogue and becomes a victim of a drone strike in Yemen, what rights does he have if any, being a US citizen trying to harm US or Yemeni citizens? Why in God’s name do the so-called valiant jihadists hide in the midst of innocent civilians, who end up becoming victims of the wrath of these pesky drones?

There have been a few cases where law enforcement agencies have gone under cover and lured gullible youth in local mosques to do something crazy. That to me is not entrapment. That is a test. Just like you would deliberately drop a $ 20 bill in the mosque and see who picks it up and takes it to the board members or who pockets it. Some may consider it profiling, I go with the law of averages and odds. If every single youth who is given this lethal attraction rejects it as he or she is supposed to, the agents will not waste their valuable time on such futile exercises. Remember, they do not have unlimited budgets either.

Yet my dear friends try to create this persona of a bogeyman going after them just because they are Muslims. I am sorry I do not subscribe to that mentality and I sincerely hope to remain that way. You write your own script, you define your own identity and you side with your conscience. I, for one, certainly do not believe in the mindset that harbours a wrongdoer solely because he or she shares a similar belief system. The reason is plain and simple. According to my belief system, on the day of resurrection, even my own will fail to own me. I will be answerable for my own actions. Period. End of story.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar