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.

29 Jul 2010

100729 Quick view on some News

American and Egyptian scholars strive to bridge religion gap

Fifteen young American religious scholars and 14 teaching assistants from Al Azhar University - one of the oldest and most influential Islamic institutions in the world - spent two weeks together this month at Georgetown University in an attempt to bridge the divide between the Muslim world and the United States.

The potpourri of young religious scholars studied the legal foundations of American democracy and religious diversity in the U.S. and met with political figures, including White House advisor Valerie Jarrett and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim American elected to Congress. The American and Egyptian students spent eight to nine hours in class each day and lived together in Georgetown dorms. The Americans included members of the Jewish, Buddhist and Christian faiths.

Though Al Azhar has a long history of global engagement, the university, under the direction of a new leader, the French-educated Ahmed Tayeb, feels the need to adapt its tactics in light of changing times, said Mahmoud Azab, an Al Azhar professor of Semitic languages and civilizations. Gihan Ibrahim Shaaban, an Al Azhar professor of linguistics, said the university felt compelled to act by some Americans' perception that Islam calls for terrorism. "We have to show the real Islam," she said.Patrice Brodeur, an associate professor of Islam at the University of Montreal, who led sessions at the conference, said Al Azhar's international engagement may surprise some given the university's history of traditional Islamic scholarship. Jocelyne Cesari, director of the Islam in the West Program at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities, said in a telephone interview that she is encouraged that Al Azhar is reaching out, but she said that it is important for the United States to respond in kind.

FBI policies against Muslims attacked

US civil liberties groups have attacked FBI domestic surveillance guidelines, claiming that they unfairly target innocent Muslims in terrorism and other criminal investigations. "It's quite an invasive data collection system," said Farhana Khera, executive director of the Muslim Advocates group. "It's based on generalised suspicion and fear on the part of law enforcement, not on individualised evidence of criminal activity." The FBI claimed that its procedures were designed to ensure that probes don't zero in on anyone on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion or the exercise of any other constitutional right. Its Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide was approved in December 2008 during the final days of the George W Bush administration and establishes policy that guides all FBI domestic operations, including counterterrorism, counterintelligence, crime and cyber crime. But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is also concerned about the procedures. It has asked FBI field offices in 29 states and Washington, DC, to turn over records related to the bureau's collection of data on race and ethnicity. The FBI operations guide gives agents the authority to create maps of ethnic-oriented businesses, behaviour, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations.

British Army 'nearly seized up' fighting on two fronts

The Army came close to 'seizing up' under the intense pressure of fighting wars simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan, a defence chief said yesterday. Two former military leaders appeared at the Iraq Inquiry to lay bare a catalogue of failures which left troops overstretched and overburdened. And the pair criticised the Labour government for poor political leadership and problems with vital equipment and training which jeopardised lives and damaged morale. General Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the general staff from 2006 to 2009, even hinted he believed Britain was wrong to attack Iraq - a war the Army had 'no desire' to fight and which undermined the 'more important' campaign in Afghanistan. Meanwhile General Sir Mike Jackson - his predecessor as the UK's top soldier from 2003 to 2006 - said troops suffered because of a shortage of helicopters in Iraq while morale received a blow through shortages of personal kit. Their claims will add fuel to accusations that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown repeatedly treated the military with contempt while in power.

David Cameron refuses to back down over terror remarks about Pakistan

No 10 said that the Prime Minister had no intention of rowing back from his warning to Pakistan that the country must not "promote the export of terror" around the world. Islamabad warned that his words had made the region more unstable. During a series of interviews in India, where he is on a three-day trade mission and where his words have been welcome, he insisted that he had a duty to say what he thought. "I don't think the British taxpayer wants me to go around the world saying what people want to hear," he said. Asked if his remarks had "overshadowed" his visit, he added: "I don't think it's overshadowed anything. "I think it's important to speak frankly and clearly about these issues. I have always done that in the past and will do so in the future."

Indian teacher barred from work for refusing burqa

A female lecturer has been prevented from teaching at a Muslim university in eastern India by students demanding that she wear a full veil, a report said Thursday. Aliah University in Kolkata is the first Muslim university in West Bengal state and has no formal dress code, but its student union has demanded that female teachers cover themselves in class. Sirin Middya told the Indian Express she had refused to comply and had been prevented from teaching for three months. "Most of the teachers do not like the diktat of the students to wear the burqa, but they have no option but to accept it," she told the newspaper. "This is the Talibanisation of educational premises and there is no one to come to our rescue."
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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]