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.

16 Sept 2010

The Pope's Visit to UK

Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Britain for an official State visit on Thursday 16 September 2010 – the first such kind of Papal visit since the Reformation (other Papal visits have been unofficial).

There are two main thoughts that emerge regarding this trip and the media coverage in its run up.

Firstly, the media coverage has been overwhelmingly negative. It is as if the liberal media have been waiting for an excuse to add to their attacks on religion generally, to attack Catholicism specifically – outside of the understandable coverage about the abuse of children by clergymen.

The liberal media has chosen to focus upon every issue where the Catholic doctrine conflicts with their own secular beliefs in a self-righteous orgy of barely concealed abuse and criticism. From Catholic theories of creation that conflict with Darwinism, to views on stem-cell research, celibacy in the clergy, abortion, and women priests, the media and some commentators have declared open season, with a semblance of a debate.

The media hysteria led Cardinal Walter Kasper, an aid to the Pope, to exclaim Britain is a “Third World country” marked by “a new and aggressive atheism”.

Of course Muslims will disagree and differ with on matters of belief and on religious rules and rituals. Islam’s view on creation is neither based on blind faith in religion, nor upon blind faith in speculative scientific theory, but based on reason and rational thought. Islam does not have a clergy, encourages marriage and discourages celibacy. Islam, through ijtehad, answers questions on cloning, stem cell research and abortion, based on clear legal reasoning, not upon debatable moral precepts.

Moreover, Islam has had a very difficult historical experience with the Catholic Church – from the Crusades through to the ethnic cleansing of Muslim Spain in the name of Christendom. More recently Pope Benedict himself offended Muslims by quoting a 14th Century Christian emperor who claimed that Prophet Muhammad (saw) had brought the world only “evil and inhuman” things.

However, most Muslims will not raise these issues of religious difference, or historic grievance as an excuse to attack the Catholic Church during this visit.

Yet the secular liberal establishment, through the media, in spite of the fact their government has invited the Pope, have barely concealed their contempt for this man, and the religion he leads.

However, Britain and Europe are at odds with the rest of the world. Evidence is that elsewhere religion has not been sidelined, particularly in the Islamic world, and in fact is on the rise – calls for Shariah and Khlilafah ring out from the streets from Turkey to Indonesia.

Indeed, one could argue Europe did not abolish religion, they merely substituted it – becoming slaves to material things; replacing clergy making laws with capitalists making laws; and congregating at the alter of celebrity and sport.

Also, Europe’s particular experience of oppression under the Church leading to the division of church and state cannot be generalised to the rest of the world. In particular the Islamic world achieved its greatest progress and civilisation when it had a stronger political adherence to Islam; and when that link was broken it has been in decline ever since.

The second lesson for Muslims that emerges from this visit is the length of time it has taken for Britain to be at relative peace with its 6 million Catholics. Catholic citizens of this country, though pure born and bred English or Scots for generations, had been seen as second class citizens and viewed with immense suspicion. Ultimately their loyalty was always seen to be with Rome and for this reason they faced inequality, and often abuse – even if they were model citizens. There were, in Tudor and Stewart times, attempts on the life of the monarch, but even non-violent Catholics who proselytised their faith were persecuted – even tortured and executed on grounds of suspicion. To this day a Catholic cannot sit on the throne.

This lesson is sobering for Muslims. We may behave with the utmost integrity and manners, fulfil duties to our neighbours, and be a force for good in society. However, the State views our brotherly loyalty to the global Ummah with at best suspicion, and at worst treason. They view our loyalty to Allah and His Messenger, and our distinct Islamic values, as a challenge that requires compulsion to join their way of life. Hence they have embarked on a programme of coercive assimilation.

Yet Islam is different to Catholicism. It is a greater challenge. It is the truth – rooted in reason and without contradiction. It agrees with man’s nature and satisfies his instinctual needs. Our ties to the Ummah are embedded in Quranic commands to hold fast to the rope of Allah and not to be divided.

Our duty to live by these values and invite others to them, is the same reason Muslims are seeing secular states across Europe (and indeed in America) abandon its pretence at human rights and pluralism in order to ‘deal with Muslims’.

This should not be any source of regret for a Muslim. It is a privilege to carry this deen, even if others hate it. It is a privilege to invite others to this deen, and many will accept by Allah’s Leave, as He is sufficient as our Wakil.
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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]