www.stand4islam.blogspot.com: 100214 Quick view on some News

About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

14 Feb 2010

100214 Quick view on some News

Chief Constable warns terror fight will take decades

The British government's plan to tackle violent extremism will require decades to take effect, a top police officer has said. The Prevent strategy, forged after the 2005 London bombings, aims to work with communities to avert terrorism. But West Yorkshire Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison told the BBC Two's Generation Jihad programme it would take "probably 20 years" to bear fruit. He added the UK's whole community including Muslims "could do more" to fight against extremism. MI5 estimates there are about 2,000 Muslims living in the UK who pose a potential terrorist threat - plus an unknown number who sympathise with extremist ideology.

U.S. missile defense aimed at Russia

The U.S. missile defense plan in Europe is directed at Russia and should be included in the talks on a new arms control deal, Russia's top general said on Tuesday. "The development and deployment of the missile defense system is aimed at Russia," Russia's armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, said in televised remarks. "Despite statements from officials that it will ensure our security, this is not the case," he said. Russia had a negative assessment of the U.S. plan, which could weaken its strategic deterrence potential, he said. Makarov also blamed disputes over whether a new document should demonstrate links between offensive and defensive weapons for delays in signing a successor to the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The plan must be part of the negotiations on a new arms reduction treaty, he said. Romania last week agreed to host anti-ballistic missile interceptors on its soil as part of the revamped U.S. missile shield.

Somali jihadis warn government against offensive

Somali Islamist on Tuesday warned Somalia's transitional government against a planned offensive, saying it faced defeat. Hezb al-Islam militia and Al Shebab fighters said that the government and the African Union (AU) peacekeepers backing the regime will "regret" raiding them. "Our fighters are confident they will defeat the enemy of Allah however they are prepared and whatever they have with them. Allah will help us win the battle," said Mohamed Osman Arus, the Hezb al-Islam spokesman. "We have information on the planned offensive by the apostate government against the positions we control here in Mogadishu and other regions as well, and we are fully prepared to counter-attack them," he told AFP. The two jihadi groups seized much of Mogadishu from the government in fierce battles launched last May aimed at toppling the American backed Somali government. With the help of the AU troops, the government controls just a small area and strategic sites in Mogadishu where it continues to come under relentless attack . "Our position is clear and we are always well prepared to defend our religion from any attack," Shebab spokesman Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage said Monday. "The preparations that the apostates are making is not new to us. They always vow to wage final war against us and it never happens," he added.

Jewish state worried about its relationship with Turkey

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said yesterday that Israel would strive to salvage its strained relations with Turkey, despite Ankara's "weekly" condemnations. "To sharply condemn Israel every week, to say Israeli military forces have carried out genocide, to call operations to protect our citizens 'a crime against humanity,'" Lieberman said at the start of a three-day visit to Azerbaijan. "This sharp anti-Israeli line cannot be repeated every week." "For 10 years we have supported very close and friendly relations with Turkey," Lieberman said. "The recent changes in Turkey's foreign policy concepts were unexpected and not entirely clear. We hope Turkey will make certain amendments to its foreign policy." Tension flared last month after Lieberman's deputy, Danny Ayalon, humiliated Turkish envoy Ahmet Oguz Celikkol during a meeting to protest an anti-Israel television program airing in Turkey. Ayalon told photographers in Hebrew: "Pay attention that he is sitting in a lower chair and we are in the higher ones, that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling."

Obama promises tough sanctions against Iran

US President Barack Obama has said the US and its allies are developing a "significant regime of sanctions" against Iran for its nuclear programme. He said the international community was unified over Iran's "misbehaviour". Speaking in Washington, he said despite Tehran's denials, it was clear Iran was working to build nuclear weapons. His remarks came after Iranian state media reported that Iran had started the process of enriching uranium to 20% for use in a medical research reactor. Obama also said he was pleased at Russia's quick disapproval of Iran's latest move. But he said it was unclear how China would respond to a new push at the UN Security Council for another round of sanctions against Iran. China, a UN Security Council member, has called for further talks over the issue. China and Russia have been reluctant in the past to support international sanctions against Iran.

Pakistan offers Taliban talks to stem Indian influence

Pakistan has offered to mediate with Taliban factions in return for a friendly Afghanistan and ways to stem the growing Indian presence the New York Times reported citing Pakistani and American officials. Pakistan has told the US it wants a central role in resolving the Afghan war and has offered to mediate with Taliban factions who use its territory and have long served as its allies, the influential US daily said in a report from Islamabad on Wednesday. The offer, aimed at preserving Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan once the Americans leave, could both help and hurt American interests as Washington debates reconciling with the Taliban, it said. "Pakistan's army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, made clear Pakistan's willingness to mediate at a meeting late last month at NATO headquarters with top American military officials," the Times said citing a senior American military official familiar with the meeting. "The Pakistani offer makes clear that any stable solution to the war will have to take into account Afghanistan's neighbours, in a region where Pakistan, India, China, Iran and others all jostle for power," it said. What the Pakistanis can offer is their influence over the Taliban network of Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani, whose forces American commanders say are the most lethal battling American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. "In return for trying to rein in the Haqqanis, Pakistan will be looking for a friendly Afghanistan and for ways to stem the growing Indian presence there," the Times said citing Pakistani and American officials.

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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”

[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]

"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"

[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]

"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."

[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]

"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."

[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]

"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."

[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]

“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”

[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]

"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."

[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]

"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."

[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]

“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”

[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]

"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"

[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]

"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."

[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]

"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."

[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']

"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"

[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']

"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.

[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]

"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"

[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]

"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"

[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]

“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”

[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]

“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”

[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]