LATEST ARTICLES
Interfaith Dialogue
The inter-faith ceremony, consisted of traditional Hindu-style “Hawan”
and chants of Sikh “Kirtan”, followed by reading out the Preamble of the
Constitution and taking an oath to preserve its “socialist, secular” values.
Portions from the Gita, the Bible and the Quran were read and Gurbani held….
Islam and Human Rights
The IHRC demands for the recovery and impartial enquiry into the
kidnapping and forced conversion of the teenage girls- Huma Younis and Mehek
Kumari- the state must outlaw the practice of forced conversion penalizing
those issuing the certificate of conversion....
Islamic World News
• ‘No
One Can Dare Touch Muslim Citizens’: Defence Minister’s Assurance on CAA
• India's
Supreme Court Fails To Strike Down 'Anti-Muslim' Citizenship Law
• Pak’s
Potential for Trade Will Grow If Ties with India Normalise: Imran Khan
• Indonesia
Deploys 'Mosque Hunters' To Check Their Count & 'Monitor Radicalism'
• Bin
Salman Hacked Washington Post Owner's Phone by Malicious Whatsapp File: Probe
• General
Admits Soleimani's Role in Syria's Civil War Long Before Jihadists Emerged
• US
Says Hezbollah Works For the Iranian Regime, Not the Lebanese People
• Hundreds
Show Up For Muslim Day At The Capitol In Frankfort
• China
Bins US Propaganda, Says CPEC ‘Not A Debt Trap’ For Pakistan
Compiled
By New Age Islam News Bureau
For
Details And More News From All Regions, Please Click, ‘Read More'
Islam, Women and Feminism
• Lebanon
and Comoros Sign Up For Arab Women Sports Tournament
• Largest
Swimming Pool in Russia’s Muslim South Bans Women
• Kuwaiti
Woman Makes Kickboxing History
• 'Let
Noor Run' Initiative Aims To End Discrimination in Sports, Starting With Hijab
Bans
• Women
Politicians Trolled More: Amnesty India
• Shoura
Panel Examines Demand to Reject Complaints about Missing Adult Women
• ‘Marry-Your-Rapist’
Bill To Be Introduced By Lawmakers in Turkey
• Egypt
Is Boosting Economic Growth Rates, Women's Role: Minister At Davos
Compiled
By New Age Islam News Bureau
Islam and Politics
At a time when we should have been focusing on female literacy and
empowerment, we are wasting our time on discussing distorted messages generated
by ‘WhatsApp University’....
Current Affairs
The much-awaited hearing of petitions opposing the Citizenship
(Amendment) Act, or CAA, turned out to be a routine affair with little
consequence, just as many legal experts had feared...
Current Affairs
Viewed cynically, if the movement against the CAA winds down at this
stage, the match will probably be a draw. However, if the protests persist, the
advantage will steadily veer in favour of the government....
Islam and the West
If Mohammed bin Salman or figures close to him really did hack the phone
of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, it would be another nail in the coffin of the
crown prince’s attempt to rebrand Saudi Arabia’s global image...
Urdu Section
اسلام میں مرتد اسے کہتے ہیں جو اسلام قبول کرنے کے بعد
دین سے پھر جائے اور دوسرا مذہب قبول کرلے
یا پھر اپنے پرانے دین پر لوٹ جائے۔
عہد نبوت میں بہت سے لوگ مختلف
وجوہا ت کی بنا پر مرتد ہوجاتے تھے جن میں ایک وجہ تھی زکوۃ کی ادائیگی۔.......
Current Affairs
It was an unexpected detour that led Abubacarr Tambadou from his home in
the tiny West African country of The Gambia to experience an epiphany on the
edge of a refugee camp in Cox's Bazar....
BEST OF BEFORE ARTICLES
Islam and Politics
It is the bravery and the far-sightedness of these protests that they
have not allowed any religious cleric to come near them. What also needs to be
underlined is that the established Muslim leaders of different political
parties have not been allowed to make political speeches. The beauty of the
movement is that it is acephalous wherein young people are refusing to be cowed
down despite brutal repression at some places....
Islam and Politics
In August 2014, the online portal New Age Islam (NAI) published a
translation of two editorials dated August 22 and August 25 published in the Jamaat-e-Islami,
Hind (JEI’s) Urdu mouthpiece, Dawat. Among other things, one of the editorials
stated: “It is very necessary to welcome the announcement of the establishment
of Islamic Caliphate by the ISIS because Islamic Caliphate is the aspiration of
every Muslim and there has never been a disagreement on the issue among the
Muslims in any period of history.” The JEI, incidentally, was not the only
Muslim body in India to have expressed similar sentiments until the sheer
barbarism of the ISIS stunned them into silence....
Islamic Society
Interestingly out of the
two different displays of “Islamic conduct” what was being supposed has been
proved wrong. The Jihadist ideology was trying to brainwash Muslims to fight
‘Jihad’ for their religion and eliminate the “Kufr-system” of democracy. But
the protesting Muslims have rejected the jihadist ideology, exclusion and
supremacism. Instead they have proven with their peaceful protests that they
will die remaining, though as a minority part of the Indian democracy, but will
never walk on the path of violence, nor on the path that leads to ‘detention
centres’....
Radical Islamism and Jihad
The clergy is required to counter
the exclusivist Jihadi theology of violence and supremacism which is primarily
based on the traditional Islamic theology of consensus of all schools of
thought. This has to be done through a counter-narrative based on a new
inclusivist theology of peace and pluralism. But to do that the clergy will
have to work towards evolving a new theology that is different from the
traditional theology taught in madrasas. It is this age-old theology that is
used by Jihadis to propagate their message.
It cannot be stressed enough that
the reason Jihadis have been able to capture the imagination of thousands of
our youth the world over is that they are not saying anything new. They are
simply showing a way to practice what the ulema (religious scholars) have been
preaching. The Jihadi narrative is the traditional Islamic theological
narrative of Islam domination over all other religious beliefs, and eradication
of what it considers the biggest crimes humanity can commit, particularly shirk,
polytheism or idol worship, and kufr, rejection of the prophethood of
Hazrat Mohammad (pbuh). All the most eminent scholars of Islam from Imam
Ghazali (11th-12th century) to Imam Ibn-e-Taimiya (13th-14th
century), Mujaddid Alf-e-Saani Sheikh Sirhindi (16th-17th
century), Shah Waliullah Muhaddis Dehlavi (18th century) have shown
a vision of political Islam that was finally given a more definite form in the
20th century by Maulana Syed Abul A’la Maududi, Hassan al-Banna, and
Syed Qutb. The Jihadi ideologues of the 21st century may be
stressing some parts of this traditional narrative more vigorously and
downplaying some other aspects. But they are not saying anything that is
entirely new or radically different.
Jihadi literature has not dropped
from the sky all of a sudden. This is not the creation of Osama bin Laden or
so-called “Khalifa” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Their narrative of world domination,
fighting those who do not accept the message of Islam is basically what is
taught in all our madrasas. The definition of Jihad as fighting those who do
not accept the oneness of God and prophethood of Mohammad (pbuh) is found in
books of every school of Sunni fiqh (jurisprudence), be it Hanafi,
Malaki, Shafei or Hanbali. Indeed, even Shia theology does not differ much with
Sunnis in matters of political Islam. They too want world domination for Islam
and desire to subdue all non-Muslims.
Current Affairs
World order is conditioned by relations between countries. The breakdown
in bilateral relations often determines how world events either progress, or
regress. An important component of why two countries are willing to maintain or
end their relations is sometimes governed by their commitment to bigger, more
influential powers....
Islamic Society
How remarkable then that a young non Arab woman from the West should
tell us what Islam is, however much she was misguided to Arabinise it –
innocently, with couple of Arabic words; JazaakAllah?...
Radical Islamism and Jihad
"I think that the practice of automatic, early release where you
cut a sentence in half and let really serious, violent offenders out early
simply isn't working, and you've some very good evidence of how that isn't
working, I am afraid, with this case."...
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……
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....
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.