{"id":4459,"date":"2011-02-26T15:03:57","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T11:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=4459"},"modified":"2011-02-26T15:05:31","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T11:05:31","slug":"the-strangest-questions-muslims-are-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/religion-in-the-middle-east\/the-strangest-questions-muslims-are-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"The Strangest Questions Muslims Are Asked"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhy do you shove it down our throats?\u201d yelled the man from the audience.
<\/em><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\nI was speaking at the LSE Literary Festival over the weekend on a panel about \u201cIslamophobia and Literature\u201d. It was a Saturday night, and thus the full audience made for an impressive turn out on a fairly heavyweight subject. \u00a0We the panellists were a light-hearted bunch though \u2013 my book on love, and the others had re-written fairy tales, and a book about a Muslim women\u2019s chat group amongst their other credentials.
\n
\nAnyway, back to the heckler.
\n
\n\u201cShove what down whose throats?\u201d I yelled back to him.
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\n\u201cYou lot, you Muslims. Why do you try to shove it down our throats?\u201d
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\nIt was the usual Daily Mail diatribe (\u201cWe\u2019re becoming a shariah state, the Moozlims have taken over! We\u2019ve been eliminated from our own country\u201d etc etc.) so I decided to challenge him back for hard evidence, not just rhetoric. \u201cGive me three examples of when someone has shoved it down YOUR throat?\u201d I heckled back.
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\nHe muttered, the wind taken out of his sails, something about \u2018Tower Hamlets\u2019 and then grumbled under his breath as though he\u2019d had enough.
\n
\nIf he had had enough of Muslims and Islam, why on earth had he come on a Saturday night to a literary discussion about Islamophobia, I wondered. A nutty form of masochism? A secret penchant for Muslims?
\n
\nIt got me thinking\u2026 If you are a Muslim, what is the strangest, funniest or most curious thing that you\u2019ve been asked? What could you barely contain your giggles about, but had to answer seriously? Or what did you think \u2018How on earth am I supposed to know the answer to that?\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHELINA ZAHRA JANMOHAMED: The West’s understanding of Islam can be very limited, leading to some strange beliefs, and ever stranger questions for Muslims…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,73],"tags":[91,1813],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}