LATEST ARTICLES
Islam and Politics
The bench ruled, responding to a bunch of pleas, that the Azaan can be
recited by the muezzin from the minarets of mosques without using any
amplifying devices, and the administration is directed not to cause hindrance
to the same on the pretext of the guidelines to contain the COVID-19
pandemic....
Islam and Spiritualism
These collectively unify to focus on a Unique Singularity that manifests
in the Doctrine of At-Tawhid as divine governing System of physical and
spiritual universe. God’s Infinite Variety of Names are manifested in the
diversity of nature that includes our complex intertwined material and
spiritual life…..
Islamic World News
•
Iraq Military Spokesman to Asharq Al-Awsat: ISIS No Longer Poses a Threat
•
'Azerbaijan Wouldn't Exist Without Caucasian Islamic Army'
•
Pakistan Will Remain A Responsible Nuclear State, Qureshi Says
•
Locust Attack: A Joint Fight by India And Pakistan, Over The Years
•
Indonesia Rolls Out Public Shaming for Coronavirus Violators
•
South Africa: COVID-19 - MJC Recommends That Mosques Stay Closed for Another
Month
•
US Adviser Accuses VOA Of Being ‘Voice of Iran’
•
Iran: Brutal Killing of Floyd Indicates Systematic Racism in US
Compiled
By New Age Islam News Bureau
For
Details And More News From All Regions, Please Click, ‘Read More'
Islam, Women and Feminism
• Re-Think Gender Roles, Says Tunisian Feminist
Feminist Activist and Former Lawmaker
• Yemen’s First Responders Are Women Peace Builders
• Israel Defense Forces Not in Hurry to Integrate
Women in Elite Combat Units
• COVID-19 Poses Challenges For Indonesia’s Female
Peacekeepers
• UN Highlights 'Women in Peacekeeping' On International
Peacekeepers Day
• US Coercive Measures Against Iran Hurting Women
• UN-Women Head Praises Egypt's Efforts Preserving
Women’s Needs While Fighting COVID-19
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
Islam and Politics
The canard was started with the circulation of an audio clip where
Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad Kandhalvi instructed his followers to not
follow social distancing and disobey Covid-19-related prohibitory orders. The
Indian Express reported that a forensic examination by Delhi Police found that
the audio clip was doctored. ....
Islamic Society
From its inception, the debate that embroiled a nascent Pakistan in
never-ending internal strife was its status as an Islamic Republic. Since then,
the country has been divided among hardcore religious ideologues and secular
liberals, with no moderate scion in sight....
Current Affairs
Specifically, I am enraged by white women weaponizing racial anxiety,
using their white femininity to activate systems of white terror against black
men. This has long been a power white woman realized they had and that they
exerted….
Radical Islamism and Jihad
The foreign fighter-backed jihadist invasion placed the southern
Philippines on the global terrorism map, killing 1,100 and displacing over
350,000 civilians, 127,865 of whom are still displaced according to the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)....
Urdu Section
یہ
حقیقت ہے کہ آج علی گڑھ مسلم یونیورسٹی کے تعلیم یافتہ پوری دنیا میں پھیلے ہوئے
ہیں اور عالمی سطح پر ہندوستانی تہذیب اور ثقافت کو فروغ دے رہے ہیں۔ سرسید
ہندوستانی مسلمانوں کے اولین سماجی مصلحین میں سےتھے جنھوں نے جہالت کی چادر کو
چاک کیا اور مسلمانوں میں جدید تعلیم کی روح پھونک کر انھیں ایک نئی زندگی عطا کی۔......
Islam and Sectarianism
There was a time when Shia Sunni marriages were common in the
subcontinent. But today we have a situation where people in Pakistan are hell
bent on proving that Jinnah was not a Shia. How did we get here? The reasons
for this are both religious and political. In Islamic theology, the Shias have
been the ‘other’ which has arisen out of hair-splitting debates regarding the
succession of the Prophet. Indeed the ‘election’ of caliphs within Islam has
been largely been political affairs. The Shia Sunni divide is more of a
political issue for which theological justifications were invented later
on.,,,,
BEST OF BEFORE ARTICLES
Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam
“Every madrasa in the world teaches that Qurʾān is uncreated, like God. The
implication is that the universality of any of the verses of Quran cannot be
questioned, all of them have to be followed till eternity and every instruction
remains applicable to Muslims for ever. Now, with this understanding, how can
one question the motives of Jihadis when they quote militant, war-time verses
of Qurʾān from Surah Tawbah, Surah
Anfal and several others to justify their actions.”
This is what Mr. Sultan Shahin said
in his speech
at UNHRC, Geneva on 19 November 2019 entitled
“Indian Muslim
Clergy to Counter ISIS Propaganda: But they should go beyond rhetoric to a
genuine counter-narrative that refutes Jihadism based on traditional Islamic
theology” Though, I highly appreciate Mr. Sultan
Shahin’s tireless efforts for bringing a
progressive change in the Muslim attitude in order to come out of the trap they are in and march towards a
better future, after a thorough study of the Quran, I have reached the
conclusion that if we sincerely and honestly want to
bring about a meaningful change in the
Muslim outlook, we will have to, go even beyond the question of
createdness and uncreatedness of Quran…..
Radical Islamism and Jihad
The notion of Indian nationalism that can be
rightly understood through the constitutional rights given to Indian citizens
regardless of differences in religion, faith, culture and race. There is no
place for compulsion in terms of religion. Each individual has equal
opportunity to practice religion, grow in spirituality, advance in terms of
career and other necessities of life. Any act of oppression and injustice
committed towards any Indian individual is punishable in the Indian court of
Justice, the disloyalty of which is also an act against Indian nationalism….
Spiritual Meditations
Belief in Science and
Scientific Temper is the need of hour. Science defeated and controlled almost
all the deadly Viruses and Bacteria in the past and it will surely defeat and
control the present horrendous Corona virus soon…
Islamic Society
Philosophers like Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd and even mystics like Ibn Arabi
lambasted the Ulema for taking the religious text too literally. These
philosophers claimed that the real essence of Islam is buried within layers of
meaning and that only they (the philosophers) have access to that knowledge….
Radical Islamism and Jihad
Our
ulema should introspect deeply, and better decide to come out of their seventh
century mindset, which is still celebrating Jang-e-Badr and other battles. We
need a new theology, a theology of peace and pluralism, a theology of gender
justice, free from patriarchal bias. ISIS is presenting a powerful Jihadi
narrative based on the theology of the consensus of all sects in Islam. We need
a coherent counternarrative, which is internally consistent and makes sense to
the modern Muslim, living in the 21st century. Our ulema have a
grave responsibility. Let’s hope they fulfil that….
Debating Islam
Mufti Muneebur Rahman’s
pernicious fatwa is easily refutable.
Muslims in India and its Kashmir region can and should engage in
muamalat (business transactions) with non-Muslims without an iota of doubt in
their minds as for its permission in religion. If based on mutual benefit, such
transactions do not amount to supporting sin and aggression, the only thing
prohibited in Quran (5:2), and thus there is no violation of Islamic precepts
whatsoever....
Radical Islamism and Jihad
Salafism
is typically known for its absolute dogma. Any changes in behavior or religious
belief have, in the past, been quickly denounced by Salafi clerics as dangerous
innovations – to the extent that many Salafi groups spend more time aiming
their vitriol at other Muslims regarded as deviant, instead of at non-Muslims….
Islam and Human Rights
Madam President,
The Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)
told the Council last week that the OIC will adopt the Cairo Declaration on
Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI) after it is revised in accordance with
international human-rights standards. This would have been reassuring if
individual member states had shown any renewed commitment to Human Rights.
That, however, doesn’t seem to be the case. Only a couple of examples can be
cited here. Turkey is bringing a law that would allow child rapists to walk
free if they marry their victims, thus legitimising rape. Hundreds of Hindu, Sikh and Christians girls
are subjected to forcible conversions and rapes in Pakistan every year. Equally
frequent are continuing practices of harassment and murder of religious
minorities through misuse of blasphemy law, religious persecution against
Shias, Ahmadiyas, Ismailis and Hazaras in Pakistan. Children are still recruited for terror
activities including suicide bombing in Pakistan and other Islamic nations.
Madam President,
OIC secretary-general also notes that the organization continues to
condemn the ideological rhetoric adopted by terrorist groups. But mere
condemnation of Jihadi rhetoric has not and is not going to help. Jihadis do not merely apply rhetoric. They
have worked out a very coherent, internally consistent theology of violence and
exclusion.
This theology is effective because it’s based on the consensus of all
traditional schools of Islamic thought. It cannot be countered by the
platitudes that our scholars deploy. A new theology of peace and pluralism
needs to be evolved. This should be equally coherent and internally consistent.
OIC seems to be making no effort to evolve such a theology yet.
Considered the intellectual branch of the OIC Sawt Al-Hikma Center or
Voice of Wisdom is merely recounting the positive virtues of Islamic tolerance
based on early Quranic verses that have been declared abrogated by the
traditional ulema. It’s not taking into account doctrines in which the real
strength of the Jihadi ideology lies. For instance, the Uncreatedness of Quran,
which is the basis for universal and eternal applicability of all Quranic
verses including the contextual war-time verses; Doctrine of Abrogation, that says that
war-time instructions that were revealed later in Madina have abrogated the
peacetime pluralistic verses that were revealed earlier in Makkah; Takfirism,
that declares Muslims as Kafir, Mushrik and Munafiq and thus liable to be
killed; Millennarian end-of-the-world theories like Ghazwa-e-Hind that made
ISIS so attractive to our youth; the Doctrine of offensive Jihad to help expand
Islamic territories; the Doctrine of Global Khilafat that considers modern
democracy as un-Islamic; the Doctrine of al-Wala wal-Bara (loyalty and
disavowal, loving and hating, only for the sake of God) that asks Muslims to
have good relations only with Muslims and avoid interaction with non-Muslims;
the forcible application of the Doctrine Al-amr bil-maʿrūf wan-nahi ʿanil-munkar (Enjoining what is right and Forbidding what is
wrong) in which Islam is considered right and all non-Islamic religions are
considered wrong; the argument that Muslims who are helpless, facing
persecution, and do not have any other weapon, can use their own bodies as
weapons of war for the so-called martyrdom operations; and so on….
Islam and Sectarianism
Despite this forcible
exclusion, Ahmadis continued to practice their faith as Muslims. In order to
further stigmatize them, the Pakistan state brought an ordinance in 1984 which
forbade the Ahmadis to practice their faith as Muslims. Ahmadis could no longer
preach, say their prayers, or even repair their mosques. Periodic targeted
violence against the Ahmadis has resulted in their migration to other
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....