Fishawy, Hind and the Sheikhs

Sorry if I offended anyone in my last post, I just had to let it out of my system (isn't blogging just great:). If you're offended, just don't take it personally, and you can always think of yourself as the exception to the generalizations I make. Actually, just reading the comments now, people seem to have taken it much better than I thought they would. Maybe I'm wrong about Arabs after all! Probably not, I think bloggers are just very special people ;)

Anyway, here's a lighter post.

In today's Friday sermon, the Imam briefly mentioned how people are talking about "scandals" so frequently and so publicly, that it looks like its an attempt to make such scandals a norm in our society. He obviously was implying the famous story about Ahmed ElFishawy and Hind, which was the topic of this week's Hadeeth AlMadeena ("Talk of the Town") show and Elbeit Beitak on TV.

I kind of agree with him actually. Somethings are better left as taboos, or better, be talked about in abit of a more constructive manner, especially when in a public medium. We're not supposed to talk about our sins, and those guys are up on public television bragging about their daughter spending the nights out, and getting pregnant from Fishawy, and how she didn't sin because they were secretly married (how can it be a marriage if in secret?!). This is definetely not a unique case, quite a number of boys and girls sleep together and have premarital sex, and some girls get pregnant and get abortion, and some girls get that pre-wedding night operation. We all know it, and its good to discuss it in a constructive manner. But to get the girl, and her parents on TV and have them brag about her having pre-marital or semi-marital (whatever that would be called) productive sex, as if its of any benefit to us to hear that stuff, is just too much. I actually didn't watch the program, but I heard about some of its content, so I might not be very accurate here.

So why is this story becoming so public? I guess part of it is that the boy and the girl are famous. But also, that ElFishawy seems to have recently taken a more religious direction in his life, involved in a religious show, and being close to Amr Khaled. Ok, that would make it more interesting, the guy who is presenting an image of being religious is involved in a sex scandal. People just love that. People also love it when there are rumors (or true stories) about sheikhs involved in scandals as well. Some get really dissapointed, "I used to really like this guy", and some people find an attacking point, "Didn't I tell you all sheikhs are no good".

But I beg to differ with both. Why do we assume that a sheikh, or a religious scholar must be sinless?! Humans are by definition flawed. The sheikh knows more about our religion and is taking it as a career, but no one said that they should be role models. I'll go ask him for information and for fatwas, but I won't necessarily do like they do. They have more information, so they might have a better chance of doing better, and being closer to God, and maybe just by spending most of their time researching God's religion they are probably closer to God already. But that still doesn't make them role models. God created humans to sin, repent, and then ask Him for forgiveness. He already has angels. Those sheikhs are definetely not the prophet, neither are they the prophet's companions, or anything close to them (there are definetely exceptions however).

One of my all-time favorite Quran reciters is Mohammed Jebril. He was also involved in some scandalous story (rumor or not I don't know) involving a woman. I just don't care, he's still my favorite reciter, and I still love listening to his reading.

Now for the sheikhs that artificially make themselves role models, and keep judging people for their actions in their personal lives. I think these sheikhs are worth talking about what they do, and they should take a good look at themselves in the mirror before they judge other people.