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.

3 Apr 2010

100403 Quick view on some News

Belgium to ban the burqa

The draft legislation in Belgium, aimed at clamping down on Islamic extremism, forbids anyone from hiding their faces in public. And those who break the law will be fined or sent to prison for up to a week if the legislation is approved. A committee of MPs voted unanimously yesterday to put the hard-line bill to a full parliamentary vote on 22 April. If passed, Belgium will become the first country in Europe to impose a complete ban on the wearing of full-face veils. The law has cross-party support and is likely to be voted through.

"We cannot allow someone to claim the right to look at others without being seen," said liberal MP Daniel Bacquelaine, who proposed the bill. "It is necessary that the law forbids the wearing of clothes that totally mask and encloses an individual." Mr Bacquelaine estimated that a few hundred women in Belgium wore facial veils, adding that it was a rising trend. Belgium's Muslim population stands at about 600,000, or 6 per cent of the total. More than one-third of those are Moroccans or of Moroccan descent. The second largest Muslim ethnic group is made up of Turks.

European Islamophobia spreads to Poland

In a sight familiar in some west European countries but new to Poland, dozens of protesters demonstrated in a Warsaw suburb last weekend against the construction of a mosque. Plans by Poland's tiny Muslim community to build a place of worship and an Islamic cultural centre face opposition in a sign that concerns about Islam may be spreading eastwards to the staunchly Catholic European Union member. Between 15,000 and 30,000 Muslims, many of them immigrants from Chechnya, live in Poland -- the biggest ex-communist EU state where more than 90 percent of the 38-million population declare themselves Catholics. A telephone survey conducted on March 25 among 500 Poles showed 48 percent opposed construction of a mosque with a minaret in their neighborhood, while 42 had nothing against it. "This fear comes from a lack of knowledge... The average citizen knows a Muslim was behind the World Trade Centre attacks but doesn't follow the differences within Islam. Poles have simplistic ideas about Islam as they lack their own experience with Muslims", said Agata Skoworn-Nalborczyk, an Islam specialist at the Warsaw University.

America intervenes to stage manage Sudan's election

The US special envoy for Sudan, Scott Gration, held talks in Khartoum on Thursday with opposition leaders in a bid to rescue this month's Sudanese elections. Gration, who flew in on Wednesday according to diplomatic sources, met separately with Umma party members, Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi and Democratic Unionist Party head Mohammed Osman al-Mirghani. The mission comes a day after presidential hopeful Yassir Arman pulled out of April 11-13 vote for fear of fraud, casting doubt on the electoral process and clearing the way for a likely first-round win by President Omar al-Beshir. The move from Arman, candidate of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement from the south of the country, came after Beshir ruled out deferring the first multi-party Sudanese polls in 24 years.Already before Arman's pullout, the United States, Britain -- Sudan's former colonial power -- and Norway, a main provider of aid, on Wednesday expressed concern over the elections. "We urge all parties in Sudan to work urgently to ensure that elections can proceed peacefully and credibly in April," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Store said. "We are deeply concerned by reports of continued administrative and logistical challenges, as well as restrictions on political freedoms," they said in a joint statement.

Moscow Accuses West of 'Narco-Aggression'

Russia has accused the United States of "conniving" with Afghan drug producers by not destroying opium crops as U.S. troops advance in Helmand Province, one of the major opium growing regions. The allegation, which came in a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, was the second time this week that Moscow has criticized the West over the opium issue. NATO rejected the charge and said Russia could help by providing more troops to combat the insurgency. U.S. Marines in Helmand Province have told villagers that they will not destroy this year's crops. In the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, which was captured by U.S. troops last month, the U.S. offered to pay poppy farmers to destroy their own crops and provide seed for them to plant other crops next year. Apart from these token gestures the US has done little to eradicate Afghanistan's opium crops. Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium and Russia has become its largest market for the drug.

Pak-US ‘slave' dialogue was a good step forward : Wall Street Journal

The United States must deliver what Pakistan needs rapidly, and without too much intrusive monitoring of its strategic nuclear assets, the US newspaper ‘the Wall Street Journal' writes while commenting on last week's Pakistan-US strategic dialogue held in Washington. Terming the strategic dialogue a good step forward, it said, the US must also give the Pakistan military more usable weapons to fight its militancy. The newspaper said that the US must use its influence on India to give Pakistan breathing room, so it can concentrate on the war within rather than stay ready for action on two fronts, one against India and the other on the Afghan border. Opening US markets to Pakistani textiles and other goods will also help in the near term. In the long run, Pakistan needs help to move up the economic value chain and into manufacturing goods. With its growing population, it needs GDP growth of 6 percent or more each year to keep improving the lives of its 175 million inhabitants, half of whom are below 18 years of age. That growth depends on foreign investment, which is critically dependent on security and good governance, both of which have been in short supply in recent years. But Pakistan must also avoid becoming dependent on aid or ceding its sovereignty in the process of acquiring aid. As former military dictator, Mohammad Ayub Khan, put it bluntly: Pakistan needs "friends not masters," it concluded.
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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]