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 Jun 2010

100603 Quick view on some News

Germany's President resigns after revealing colonialist ambitions in Afghanistan

Germany's president, Horst Köhler, resigned without warning this week, after intense criticism of remarks in which he suggested military deployments were central to the country's economic interests. Köhler's departure leaves a vacuum that will only add to Angela Merkel's growing political woes, amid criticism over a lack of decisive leadership, and a four-year low rating for her government in opinion polls. Köhler, 67, was accused of advocating a form of "gunboat policy" after saying that a large economic power like Germany, with its significant global trading interests, must be willing to deploy its military abroad.

Though a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), he has previously managed to stay out of the political fray. In a radio interview given on his return from a tour of German military bases in Afghanistan earlier this month, Köhler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund, said that the largely pacifist German public was finally coming to terms with the concept that their country could no longer avoid involvement in military missions, which helped "protect our interests, for example, free trade routes, or to prevent regional instability, which might certainly have a negative effect on our trade, jobs and income". The remarks were seized upon by the German left, who accused Köhler of supporting a type of "gunboat diplomacy" and of betraying the thousands of German soldiers who are currently stationed in Afghanistan.

Jewish State asks South Asian Muslims to help bridge gap with Palestine

Facing international backlash over its raid on the Gaza-bound Turkish aid flotilla, the Jewish state on Wednesday sought help from South Asian Muslims to build bridges between Israel and the moderate Palestinian leadership. At a specially convened press interaction for selected Delhi-based Muslim journalists, Israeli Ambassador to India Mark Sofer asked Muslims to look at the wider picture in Middle East, denying it was a battle between Jews and Muslims. "We respect Islam and the conflict in West Asia is not a religious one. Islam is a religion of peace and beauty. Whoever indulges in violence in the name of Islam, abuses and misuses the religion," Sofer said. He admitted that Israel had made mistakes, but criticised the international community for shutting eyes to mistakes made by the Palestinians and other Israeli adversaries in the region.

UN official criticises US over drone attacks

The use of targeted killings with weapons like drone aircraft poses a growing challenge to the international rule of law, a UN official says. Philip Alston said that the US in particular was doing damage to rules designed to protect the right of life. Mr Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, feared a "Playstation" mentality could develop. His report to the UN Human Rights Council will also bring renewed scrutiny of Israel and Russia. Both nations are also reported to have carried out targeted killings of alleged militants and insurgents. President Barack Obama has increased the use of Predator drones to attack militants in Pakistan. The UN report comes days after the US hailed news of the death of Sheikh Sa'id al-Masri, al-Qaeda's third in command in Pakistan, who was reportedly killed by a drone strike in May, along with his family. Mr Alston reserves particular criticism for CIA-directed drone attacks, which he said had resulted in the deaths of "many hundreds" of civilians. "Intelligence agencies, which by definition are determined to remain unaccountable except to their own paymasters, have no place in running programmes that kill people in other countries," the report says. Mr Alston also suggests that the drone killings carry a significant risk of becoming war crimes because intelligence agencies "do not generally operate within a framework which places appropriate emphasis upon ensuring compliance with international humanitarian law".

Japanese prime minister resigns under pressure America

When Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan abruptly stepped down Wednesday, largely for his failure to move an American air base off Okinawa, he was essentially admitting he had not won popular support for a prominent campaign pledge: ending Japan's postwar dependence on the United States for its security. "This has proved impossible in my time," Mr. Hatoyama said in a teary speech to explain his decision to step down. "Someday, the time will come when Japan's peace will have to be ensured by the Japanese people themselves." The Obama administration's reaction to the resignation suggested that it would not miss Mr. Hatoyama much either. The White House, in its statement, pointedly did not thank or praise him, saying only that the alliance would "continue to strengthen," regardless of who was in charge. Senior officials often seemed frustrated by his decision-making, and President Obama never developed a rapport with him. In Washington, some analysts even argued that Mr. Obama played a role in Mr. Hatoyama's downfall, damaging his standing by keeping him at arm's length and refusing to compromise on the air base. Administration officials denied this, saying they worked with Japan in recent months to resolve their differences. Mr. Obama, they noted, lavishly praised Mr. Hatoyama for his decision not to move the base off Okinawa.

Global military spending soars despite crisis: report

Global military expenditures soared to a record high last year, unscathed by the economic downturn, with the United States accounting for more than half of the increase, a think tank said on Wednesday. In 2009, $1,531 billion were spent worldwide in the military sector, a 5.9 percent rise from 2008 and a 49 percent jump from 2000, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in its report. "Many countries were increasing public spending generally in 2009, as a way of boosting demand to combat the recession," explained Sam Perlo-Freeman, the head of SIPRI's military expenditure project. "Although military spending wasn't usually a major part of the economic stimulus packages, it wasn't cut either," he said in a statement. The institute said 65 percent of countries for which data was available had hiked their military spending last year. Top spender: The US remains by far the top military spender, dishing out $661 billion to the industry in 2009, or a whopping 43 percent of the total global military expenditure.Washington thus paid $47 billion more than a year earlier and accounted for 54 percent of the global increase, the SIPRI said.China is believed to be the world's second largest military spender, the institute said, adding that while it did not have access to the official figures from Beijing it estimated the country had spent around $100 billion in the sector last year.With its $63.9 billion in military expenditures last year, France came in third place, the SIPRI said.
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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]