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.

9 Dec 2010

101209 Quick view on some News

FBI Paid Ex-Con $177,000 to Entrap Muslims

In exchange for paying informant Craig Monteilh $177,000 to infiltrate Muslim communities, the FBI got little to show, except for embarrassment. Monteilh, a convicted forger of banks notes, was hired by federal law enforcement to spy on Muslims in Southern California and, he says, entrap them on charges of terrorism. But the FBI didn’t rack up a lot of convictions from Monteilh’s handiwork. As a matter of fact, it was Monteilh who wound up being served—after his talk of violent jihad resulted in his fellow Mosque members filing a restraining order against him. Jerry Markon of the The Washington Post writes: “Compounding the damage, Monteilh has gone public, revealing secret FBI methods and charging that his ‘handlers’ trained him to entrap Muslims as he infiltrated their mosques, homes and businesses. He is now suing the FBI.”

Euro faces major crisis, says Brown

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned that the euro is facing a "major crisis" early in the New Year.Mr Brown said that leaders of eurozone countries need to get together in a "High Noon" moment to seize the initiative from the markets and prevent them picking off troubled economies one by one. Failure to solve the euro's problems in "one fell swoop" would condemn the continent to "a decade of high unemployment and low growth", he warned. The crisis would affect the UK, even though it is not in the single currency, because 60% of its trade is with eurozone countries. Mr Brown said that the much-publicised sovereign debt crises of countries like Greece and Ireland were not the only problems facing the euro, which much also resolve structural rigidities and the enormous debts of its banks. He told the BBC: "I sense that in the first few months of 2011, we have got a major crisis in the euro area." Three different forces were working together to destabilise the currency, he said."We have got fiscal deficits, obviously, and that is the main thing that people have been talking about," he said.

Wikileaks: Saudi princes engage in sex, drug parties

United States diplomats have described a world of "sex, drugs and alcohol" in which the official religious individuals of Saudi Arabian loyalties engage in, according diplomatic cables recently published by Wikileaks on Wednesday. According to the leaked dispatches, officials from the Jeddah consulate detailed an underground Halloween party in which alcohol and prostitutes were readily available. The party, attended by over 150 Saudi men and women mostly in their twenties and thirties, was organized by a member of the Saudi royalty, a wealthy prince from the Al Thunayan family. The party was held in a heavily secured villa and some of the funding was contributed by a US energy drink. The diplomat recommended the prince's identity remain secret. The dispatch was signed off by Martin Quinn, the consul in Jeddah. "Alcohol, though strictly prohibited by Saudi law and custom, was plentiful at the party's well-stocked bar," explained the cable. "The hired Filipino bartenders served a cocktail punch using sadiqi, a locally-made "moonshine". It was also learned through word-of-mouth that a number of the guests were in fact 'working girls', not uncommon for such parties." American party attendees added that, "Though not witnessed directly at this event, cocaine and hashish use is common in these social circles." Secret, underground parties protected by Saudi royalty and accessible only to the wealthy, were described as "thriving and throbbing" in the dispatch.

Talks called off as Turkey's EU bid loses momentum

Turkey's bid to join the European Union has stalled and talks scheduled for 22 December have been cancelled. Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers, had hoped to maintain momentum by opening a new chapter in the accession talks. But Steven Vanackere, Belgium's foreign minister, told European Voice that Turkey's implementation of new competition rules was “a bit too slow”. The Belgian presidency will be the first since Turkey began membership talks with the EU in 2005 that fails to open a single negotiating chapter. Vanackere insisted that the “momentum is still going on” in Turkey's bid to join the EU. Opening the competition chapter was “a question of weeks and months at the beginning of the next presidency because a lot of work has been done”, he said. Belgium hands on the presidency to Hungary on 1 January.

US troops test "smart" rifle in Afghanistan

U.S. troops in Afghanistan are testing a high-tech "smart" rifle that uses computer-chip-embedded rounds that can detonate behind walls, LiveScience.com reported Wednesday. Using sensors, lasers and optics, the XM25 rifle guides 25mm rounds -- each embedded with a microchip -- to hit a target up to about 2,300 feet (700 meters) away, the report said. Once reaching the target hidden behind walls, rocks or trenches, the bullets, which act like grenades, can be detonated, according to the report. The report explains the way how the rifle works -- a laser is built into the targeting scope that sits on top of the weapon. It measures the distance to a target -- for instance, the wall that conceals a combatant. The soldier then can modify the distance to allow the bullet to detonate past the wall. When the soldier pulls the trigger, this information is wirelessly relayed to the computer chip in the shell. A magnet inside the bullet generates alternating current as it spins through the air, and conveys information to the microchip to let the bullet know how far it's travelled. Once the computerized bullet reaches its programmed distance, it will explode, spreading shrapnel evenly in all directions, the report said. The XM25 rifle is being developed by firearms producer Heckler & Koch, and costs 25,000 to 35,000 dollars apiece, according to the report. Troops operating in various outposts with high levels of enemy activity began carrying the semi-automatic XM25 rifles in November, the report said. Depending on the feedback from the soldiers, the Army will decide whether to issue 12,500 smart rifles to troops in Afghanistan, starting in 2014, said the report.
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]