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.

14 Oct 2010

Quick view on some News

Global unemployment to trigger further social unrest, UN agency forecasts

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned of growing social unrest because it fears global employment will not now recover until 2015. This is two years later than its earlier estimate that the labour market would rebound to pre-crisis levels by 2013. About 22 million new jobs are needed – 14 million in rich countries and 8 million in developing nations. The United Nations work agency today warned of a long “labour market recession” and noted that social unrest related to the crisis had already been reported in at least 25 countries, including some recovering emerging economies.

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom accuses the US of crimes against humanity

The United States government has apologised for deliberately infecting hundreds of people in Guatemala with gonorrhoea and syphilis as part of medical tests more than 60 years ago. None of those infected - mentally ill patients and prisoners - consented. US President Barack Obama has called Mr Colom to apologise and has said the acts ran contrary to American values. Evidence of the programme was unearthed by Prof Susan Reverby at Wellesley College. She says the Guatemalan government gave permission for the tests. No offer of compensation has yet been made, but an investigation will be launched into the specifics of the study, which took place between 1946 and 1948.White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday the news was "shocking, it's tragic, it's reprehensible". The study by Prof Reverby shows that US government medical researchers infected almost 700 people in Guatemala with two sexually transmitted diseases. The experiment ran from 1932 to 1972, with President Bill Clinton eventually apologising for it.

Muslims should conform to German values: Merkel

German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded on Monday that Muslims living in Germany conform to "fundamental German values", saying there was no leeway on the issue. She spoke a day after Germany's largely ceremonial president, Christian Wulff, had reached out to Muslims in a speech marking 20 years of reunification, assuring them they belonged. The Christian Democrat chancellor, in remarks promoting a fiercely conservative book by one of her supporters, said Muslims in Germany must orient themselves without reservation to Germany's fundamental values and constitution. "There is no leeway on this," she said, adding that Germans' perceptions of Islam were dominated by Sharia (Islamic law), the lack of equality between men and women and honour killings. Germany had freedom of religion, and Islam was welcome, "but it must be a form of Islam that feels devoted to our fundamental values", Merkel said. If it were not, fears would develop among Germans, "and that is hardly something we want to happen".

West warned that Islam insults risk 'civilisation clash'

Kings, emirs and presidents from Muslim nations have made pressing appeals at the United Nations for the West to clamp down on attacks on Islam which they warned is a growing threat to international security. In speeches to the UN General Assembly, leaders said that "Islamophobia" was causing a growing Muslim-West divide and one top Arab minister put the international community on guard against a "civilisation clash".But Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar said,"We disagree with the attribution of this so-called terrorism to the Islamic religion because this - in addition to being incorrect - is a historical injustice that is refuted by evidence from recent history." He said "gratuitous violent actions" in the US, Europe and Asia in the late 20th century were never labelled as being American, European or Asian terrorism. Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said,""We find the West, in general, being drawn into a clash with the Muslim world. This clash will serve no one except extremists and those who hold perverted ideas on both sides. It will not be in the interest of security and stability in the world." King Abdullah II of Jordan said it is "essential to resist forces of division that spread misunderstanding." Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak told the UN assembly that the world's 1.5 billion Muslims were offended by "attempts to demonise Islam." He added: "It intensifies the divide between the broad Muslim world and the West."

Erdogan: EU is putting up hurdles to Turkey's membership

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained here Monday that the European Union was putting up hurdles to Turkey's accession to the 27-member bloc."Turkey is constantly being held up and various hurdles are being put in our path. This is not right," Erdogan told a news conference after meeting his Bulgarian counterpart, Boyko Borisov."Some hindrances are being applied for Turkey which were not applied for any other EU candidate," Erdogan said.But he added: "We are resolute in continuing our accession negotiations with the EU." While Turkey has been allowed to open certain negotiation chapters with the bloc, it has not yet been allowed to close any of them. And other chapters were a long way from being opened, Erdogan said.Ankara kicked off membership talks with the EU in 2005.

Iraq’s oil reserve 505 billion barrels

Iraq’s oil reserve underground is estimated at 505 billion barrels, the Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahrastani said on Monday. “The reserve that can be extracted is estimated at 143 billion barrels,” al-Shahrestani told the press. He explained that the estimations were made in coordination with “oil companies.” “The al-Qurna oilfield in Basra (southern Iraq) is the biggest in the country, with a reserve totaling at 43 billion barrels,” al-Shahrestani added. He noted that the al-Qurna oilfield is the second biggest throughout the world.

Chinese, Russian troops in Central Asia military exercises

Thousands of Russian, Chinese and Kazakh soldiers began two weeks of war games in Kazakhstan Monday, preparing to counter regional threats ranging from drug traffickers to extremists. More than 3,000 troops will take part in the "Peace Mission 2010" exercises, the largest in three years involving the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a six-nation group. The SCO has focused in recent months on fighting terrorism and radicalism in the region, as well as drug trafficking from Afghanistan."Now and for the next few years, terrorism, separatism and extremism will remain serious factors in the stability of this region and the world," Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of staff of the Chinese armed forces, said.China, Russia and Kazakhstan each sent 1,000 troops to the exercises, which are taking place at the Matybulak military range in southern Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's defence ministry said more than 300 military vehicles and 50 Kazakh, Chinese and Russian aircraft and helicopters would join the anti-terrorist drills.Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan each sent 150 troops, the ministry said. Uzbekistan was invited, but said it would not send troops.
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]