LATEST ARTICLES
Muslims and Islamophobia
Islam
that epitomizes the ethos of compassion and mercy is often subjected to
stricture by the Islamophobes. They project Islam as the religion of terrorism
and extremism—a religion where virtues of compassion and mercy find no place—it
is in fact, a notion based on sheer ignorance, prejudice and bias.....
Islam and Pluralism
The cleric however failed to mention the fact that Muslims also
continued to live peacefully with the Jews and other tribes of Medina who had
not broken any accords much later after the revelation of this verse – with
non-Muslims playing important roles in governance. This is historical Islam...
Islamic World News
• Turkey Joining EU ‘Antidote’ To
Islamophobia: Diplomat
• UAE-Backed Project Bringing
Light to Lives Of Rohingya Refugees
• Supreme Court Declines to Hear
Case Promoting Islam in Public School
• 224 SDF Soldiers, 183
Turkish-Backed Rebels Killed In Syria Clashes - Monitor
• Is Turkey Able To Handle An
Influx Of Islamic State Prisoners?
• Turkey Agrees to Pause Military
Operations in Northern Syria
• ‘You’ll Answer in Afterlife’,
Heartbroken Mum Tells Prosecutor, Investigators after Tahfiz • Sexual
Abuse Case Dismissed
Compiled
By New Age Islam News Bureau
For Details and More News from
All Regions, Please Click, ‘Read More'
Islam, Women and Feminism
• Two Muslim Women, Hajer Sharief
and Ilwad Elman Were Nominated For the Nobel Peace Prize
• First Female NATO Number Two
Hands Over Post Amid Turkey Crisis
• African Refugee Women Report
Surge Of Sex Attacks In Egypt
• Macron Warning On Stigmatising
Muslims amid France Veil Row
• Malaysia Is the World’s Best
Destination for Muslim Women Travelling Solo, Report Finds
• PM’s Daughter Urges
Policymakers To Read SIS Study On Malaysian Muslim Women, Not Just Headlines
• ISIS Says It ‘Freed’ Women Held
By Syrian Kurdish-Led Forces
Compiled
by New Age Islam News Bureau
Islamic Personalities
It was the true nationalist in Sir Syed, who in 1859 had the courage of
conviction to publish one of his most famous works Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind (The
Causes of the Indian Revolt) in which he exposed the aggressive expansionist
policies of the British East India Company and their lack of understanding
about Indian culture....
Islam and the West
An
end to the Western policy of arming the Y.P.G. and ensuring that north-eastern Syria
will not be used as a zone to challenge Turkish national security will create
the right conditions for Turkey to overhaul its ailing political system and
expand the sphere of liberties.
The War Within Islam
The Turkish policy midwifed the birth in the 1970s to militant groups
like the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which only dropped its demand for Kurdish
independence in recent years....
Islam and the West
The United States, since its emergence as a Big Power in the wake of
World War II, has openly pursued at best an amoral — and at times, where
suitable, an immoral — path when formulating its foreign policy....
Urdu Section
پیر کے روز پیلی بھیت شہر کے بیسل پور علاقے میں واقع
غیاث پور کے ایک سرکاری اسکول کے ہیڈ ماسٹر سید فرقان علی کو اس لئے معطل کردیا
گیا کہ ان کے اسکول میں علامہ اقبال کی تحریر کردہ نظم ”لب پہ آتی ہے دعا بن کے
تمنامیری“ صبح کے وقت بچے گاتے ہیں۔......
Islamic Society
Lo! Once again Nobel Prizes for Sciences have been awarded for this year
– although by one of the biggest armament and killing industries of the world.
May be in next generation a Muslim might be awarded one, or at least share in
one, as did Dr Abdus Salam, about a generation ago. However here too the
churches intervened, just as did other churches previously; and a practicing
Muslim scientist to the core was declared a non-Muslim; usurping what the
scripture itself says is the Creator's sole right and prerogative....
BEST OF BEFORE ARTICLES
Radical Islamism and Jihad
Mr. President,
Islamophobia and Islamist
violence are both growing and in the unlikeliest of places. Recent attacks on
churches in Sri Lanka were as much of a surprise as the attack on mosques in
Christchurch. And now copycat attacks are taking place elsewhere. A vicious
cycle of xenophobic violence is in operation.
While the world suffers
from Jihadist violence, Muslims in particular suffer the most causalities in
sectarian wars incited by the Islamist Jihadist ideology. And yet, even almost
two decades after 9/11, Muslim nations continue to be in denial. Islamist
ideology based on the Islamic theology of consensus is absolved of any
responsibility for violent extremism.
The result is that Muslim
children continue to be taught in madrasas Islam supremacism and contempt for
other religions. Even explicitly violent passages have not yet been weeded out
from text books.
The terrorism it generates
takes many shapes. If Hindu, Sikh and Christian girls are abducted and forcibly
converted to Islam in Pakistan, this too essentially comes from contempt for
other religions taught in religious seminaries. In several countries including
Pakistan, some Muslims do not wait for courts to pass judgements to punish
those they consider guilty.
The Council should convince the offending
states to establish the rule of law on the basis of the UN Charter and repeal
unacceptable laws against freedom of religion and conscience.-----
Radical Islamism and Jihad
We need to consider two things here; firstly if the act of Shirk
(polytheism) had been the cause of fighting, the peace-treaty would not have
been signed between the Prophet (peace be upon him) and the Mushrikin of
Makkah. Secondly, if those Mushrikin had not been the religious persecutors or
the violators of the peace-treaty, the fighting would not have occurred. ..
Radical Islamism and Jihad
Dr
Ayman al-Zawahiri, you should have sought to understand the philosophy of
Kashmiriyat that reigns in Kashmir before writing your latest missive. The
Muslims of Kashmir have traditionally understood the message of Islam much
better than the fundamentalists and exclusivists who present Islam as a
totalitarian, fascist, political ideology of world domination, which seeks to
eliminate all the scores of religions sent by God before Prophet Mohammad. This
is the reason why even those Kashmiri politicians who now advocate secession
have contested elections for the legislative Assemblies constituted under
India’s secular and progressive constitution. This is the reason why only a few
Kashmiri youth have taken to the path of terror, which you call Jihad. Most of
the terrorism seen in the state of Jammu and Kashmir has been part of a proxy
war waged by neighbouring Pakistan for its own ends. Pakistan, of course, has
turned export of terrorism to a fine art, affecting all corners of the globe....
Radical Islamism and Jihad
Aware of this, the jurists of all ages have
unanimously agreed in their area of principles of jurisprudence that any word
of the Quran whose meaning is apparent (Zahir) still has the possibility of
specification or further interpretation. Therefore no one in this world can
present this verse (9:5) as a definitive evidence to prove that the word “Mushrikin”
mentioned in the Quran refers to all Mushrikin of the world or of all
ages....
Radical Islamism and Jihad
Numerous fatwas (edicts) have
been issued by ulema (Islamic scholars) across the globe, particularly since
9/11 in a bid to stem the tide of Islamist terrorism. Tens of thousands of
ulema have endorsed these fatwas issued by influential institutions of Islamic
learning of all sects in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh as well as other parts of
the world. When issued, these fatwas inspired great expectations. As perceptive
and insightful an observer as Mr. Ziauddin Sardar proclaimed “the beginning of
the end of the war of terror” when a hundred thousand Deobandi ulema endorsed a
fatwa issued by the hundred-year-old Islamic madrasa in Deoband, India,
“unequivocally denouncing terrorism,” in June 2008. Similarly, Sufism-oriented
Barailwis, hard-line Salafis, Ahl-e-Hadeesis, have all denounced Islamist
terrorism in their separate or joint statements. But terrorist ideology
continues to attract our youth, particularly in the Indian state of Jammu and
Kashmir. What used to be merely a Pakistan-sponsored secessionist struggle is
showing signs of tuning into an Islamist struggle for the establishment of
Islamic Sharia through a universal Caliphate, very much redolent of the
objectives of the so-called Islamic State or ISIS. Popularizing the slogan of “Shariatya
Shahadat,” a militant leader Zakir Musa, Burhan Wani’s successor, even
threatened to kill Hurriyat leaders for calling Kashmir’s separatist movement
political and not religious. Calling them “hypocrites, infidels, followers of
evil”, the militant had warned to chop off their heads to be hanged in Lal
Chowk in Srinagar, “if they create hurdles in the path of making Kashmir an
Islamic State”....
Radical Islamism and Jihad
The U.N. Human Rights Council passed a resolution, proposed by Pakistan
on behalf of Islamic states, last March, condemning “defamation of religion” as
a human rights violation. Speaking for the 56-nation Organization of the
Islamic Conference (OIC), Pakistan said that “Islam is frequently and wrongly
associated with human rights violations and terrorism.” It called on states “to
deny impunity” for those exhibiting intolerance of ethnic and religious
minorities, and “to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect
for all religions and beliefs.”
However, Mr. President, news reports often emanate from Islamic
countries, particularly Pakistan, of intolerance of and disrespect for minority
religious beliefs. We also see free publication and distribution of Jihadi
literature associating Islam with and indeed promoting human rights violations
and extremist violence. Even school and madrasa text books are not free from
extremist and exclusivist teachings, asking Muslims to stay away from religious
and cultural celebrations of other religious communities. Pakistan’s notorious
anti-blasphemy laws ensure that members of religious minorities are either
lynched by mobs or awarded death sentences on mere accusations of blasphemy.
The case of a Christian lady Aasia Bibi, mercifully out of the country now, has
brought this issue to world’s attention. Ahmadiya Muslims are officially
excluded from Islam and even debarred from claiming to be Muslim in any way.
Like non-Muslim minorities, they too suffer indignities of various kinds in
their daily life. Hundreds of young Hindu girls are routinely abducted and
forcibly converted to Islam and raped in the name of marriage.
While this resolution seeks to protect Islam from defamation through any
association with terrorism, the religion is routinely defamed in Muslim
countries by publication of literature justifying violence against non-Muslim
civilians. The very title of a long essay in the Taliban mouthpiece
Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad was: ‘Circumstances in which the killing of innocent people
among infidels is justified.’
I would, therefore, urge the Council to ask the Muslim countries to
treat intolerance of minorities and Jihadi literature too as defaming the
religion of Islam....
Radical Islamism and Jihad
A War on Terror
has been raging for 17 years now but we are no closer to defeating Islamist
terror. Jihadism continues to attract Muslim youth. This is because the world
has not paid enough attention to the ideology of Islamism and Jihadism.
Mainstream
Muslims have considered Islam a spiritual path to salvation, one of the many.
Islam aims at reforming society for a peaceful, harmonious, pluralist
existence. However, due to certain historical factors, the theology and
jurisprudence of Islam that evolved in the 8th and 9th
centuries (CE), present Islam as a political, totalitarian ideology of
supremacism, xenophobia, intolerance and gender discrimination. It is this
theology of violence, exclusivism and world-domination that is taught in
madrasas and sustains Islamism. But despite the Islamist violence against
peaceful Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the community is still not focussed on
the need for evolving a counternarrative of Islam.
It is imperative that Muslim countries that
have signed the UN Charter look into the issue urgently and work towards
developing a new theology of peace, pluralism and gender justice. While several
countries like Morocco and now Saudi Arabia appear to be moving in this
direction, the one country that has made a solid contribution is Turkey. In a
decade-long exercise 100 Turkish scholars have managed to limit the number of
authentic ahadith to just 1600, out of over 10,000, and provide each hadith
with context and suitable interpretation. This book of authentic Hadith has been
provided to all mosques in Turkey but I hope it is made available to the global
Muslim community in their own languages as soon as possible.
Allama Iqbal, a
poet-philosopher of the South Asian sub-continent had called for the
reconstruction of religious thought in Islam almost a hundred years ago. Let us
at least start working on it now....
Islamic Q and A
According to the Sunni Islamic Jurisprudence, the Mut’ah Marriage
is forbidden. Once this temporary marriage was permissible in the beginning of
Islam but soon it was abrogated and declared Haram (forbidden) until the
Day of Judgment....
The War Within Islam
Madame President,... But xenophobia, particularly in the form of Islamophobia, is growing in several European countries and partly feeds upon the flagrant violation of the human rights of religious minorities in several Muslim-majority countries. Petrodollar Islam has injected the poison of Islam-supremacism in Muslim societies worldwide. Even exemplary moderate countries like Indonesia, Malaysia are now infected with this virus. But the worst case scenario is evolving in the only Muslim nuclear power, Pakistan. Jihadi vigilantes including members of security forces are hunting down and killing all those who oppose their version of Islam. The country is drowning in a sea of violence but civil society, media or elected parliamentarians dare not condemn the wanton killings in the name of Islam. -- Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam, addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council’s 16th session in Geneva on 22 March 2011 in the General Debate on Follow-up and implementation of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.
Islam,Terrorism and Jihad
Facing the brutalities of Islamist terror, while President Obama will not go beyond calling it violent extremism, the head of Sunni Islam's oldest seat of learning, Jamia al-Azhar admitted in a counter-terrorism conference in Mecca that extremism was caused by “corrupt interpretations of Quran and the sayings of Prophet Muhammad”, and Islamic curriculums needed to change.
This call for reform, coming from Jamia Al-Azhar, is gratifying. But a half-hearted approach to reform will not work. The problems Muslims face are very basic and cannot be solved with mere tinkering with text-books. The global Muslim community will have to introspect. One question repeatedly asked, for instance, is about the contextual verses of the holy Quran that are utilised by Jihadists to brainwash our youth. Jihadists present these contextual verses as an eternal guide for Muslims.
One would imagine that the followers of Islam who believe, and many certainly do, that Islam is a religion of spirituality, peace, coexistence and tolerance, would be up in arms against the Islamic State. But while routine denunciations from some sections do come occasionally, there is no outrage visible in the Muslim society. The world cannot help noticing that while tens of thousands of Muslims come out on streets to demonstrate the moment there is an allegation of so-called blasphemy against any one, hardly any Muslim would protest at the myriad brutalities perpetrated by Islamist terrorists.
Clearly there is something wrong, some disconnect, some deeper and more complex phenomenon at work than what can be understood from a superficial look at the issue. Instead of expressing outrage, we find thousands of Muslim young men and women running from their comfortable homes, private schools and cushy jobs to fight and join in the brutalities of the so-called Islamic State. Some 12,000 Muslim young men and women are said to have joined so far from 80 countries……