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.

30 Apr 2010

100430 Quick view on some News

French police fine Muslim driver for wearing veil

A French Muslim woman has been fined for wearing a full-face veil while driving a car. Police in the western city of Nantes said the veil - which showed only her eyes - restricted her vision and could have caused an accident. The woman's lawyer says they will appeal against the decision, which he described as a breach of human rights. The incident follows months of intense debate in France about whether the veils should be banned. Earlier this week, President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered parliament to debate a law banning women from wearing full-face Islamic veils in public. President Sarkozy said last year that full-face veils oppressed women and were not welcome in France. Plans to ban them by law have provoked intense debate about religious freedom in a secular society, as well as the position of Muslims in France. France has Europe's largest Muslim minority population, estimated at about five million. The French interior ministry estimates that only about 1,900 women wear full veils in the country.

Greece bailout will cost €120billion - three times original estimate, claim German MPs

German MPs today claimed that bailing out the crisis-hit Greek economy is likely to cost €120billion - around three times the original estimate. Officials said that the €45billion figure covered just the first year of a rescue package which is in fact likely to run for three. Germany was already dragging its feet over moves to help Greece, which had misled Europe about the dire state of its finances. The precarious state of its economy has plunged the Eurozone into renewed crisis just as it stumbles out of the worst recession in living memory. Spain became the latest victim of the financial turmoil as Standard & Poor downgraded its credit rating one notch to double-A with a negative outlook. The agency had downgraded Greece and Spain earlier in the week. German MPs made their claims about the true cost of the loans after a meeting with Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank.

Israel, Hamas held 120 rounds of talks

Hamas senior figure Mahmoud al-Zahar said his organization held 120 rounds of talks with Israel, mediated by Egypt and Germany, vis-à-vis kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. During a speech, al-Zahar said Hamas will continue to hold Shalit captive until Israel complies with all its demands.

Iran has no military presence in Venezuela: US general

Iran is expanding its diplomatic and economic ties with Venezuela but has no military presence in the South American country, a US general said on Tuesday. The comments came as Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez denied allegations from the Pentagon that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force were stationed in his country. The leftist leader, who often heaps scorn on the United States, called a recent report "absolutely false" at a military ceremony. The head of US Southern Command, General Douglas Fraser, said Iran was bolstering its relations with Venezuela. "We see a growing Iranian engagement with Venezuela," Fraser told reporters. Iran has a "diplomatic, commercial presence" but, "I haven't seen any evidence of a military presence," he said. There was no indication that Iran had sent arms to Venezuela, he added. The general's comments came after a Pentagon report last week said Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps had stepped up its presence in Latin America, especially in Venezuela.Apart from its military might, the elite force -- which serves under the authority of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei -- also wields substantial economic power and runs numerous large enterprises.

U.S. forces in Afghanistan will soon outnumber those in Iraq

According to Brookings, by late May or early June, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan will outnumber those in Iraq--a shift that's symbolic of the Obama administration's focus on Afghanistan. Currently, there are 90,000 American troops in Afghanistan and 100,000 in Iraq. Forces are being withdrawn from Iraq at a pace of around 5,000 a month, while the U.S. builds up a presence ahead of a major offensive in Afghanistan, increasing troops by a couple thousand a month.

Musharraf to form political party

Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf is planning to launch a political party in a comeback bid two years after he was unseated in elections, officials said Wednesday. Musharraf, who has been abroad since ending his nine-year stint in power, could face a criminal trial if he returns home and he is wanted for questioning by the government over the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto. An aide and election official confirmed to AFP that the retired general had applied to register a new political party with the electoral authorities in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. Mohammad Ali Saif, a former cabinet minister and now a legal adviser to Musharraf, said election authorities would hear the application on May 10. "I have formally applied for a new political party called All Pakistan Muslim League. Pervez Musharraf is the head of this party and we will formally announce it after getting registered," he told AFP
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

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]