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.

5 Dec 2010

Qatar’s flawed 2022 Vision

It hasn’t been a good week if you are an Arab ruler. Wikileaks exposed the subservience of the Arab leaders to the West and their contempt for the Muslims. While Thursday’s announcement that Qatar will stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup may have brought a smile or two, the news was slightly overshadowed by England’s humiliation in losing the 2018 bid, but Qatar will be the first Muslim country to host the tournament.

Qatar beat other bids from Australia, Japan and South Korea and America to secure the tournament. The veiled xenophobia at Qatar hosting the tournament has already begun – its going to be too hot, too alcohol free and too football-yob unfriendly to warrant going anywhere near the place. One has to remember there remains 12 long years between now and the start of the tournament, Qatar still has time to sell it’s soul to appease the Western football fan. Qatar is well known already for being the home of Al-Jazeera and the Al Udeid Air Base which is used by the Americans to aid it’s global ‘War on Terror’, so who says Qatar doesn’t know how to accommodate foreigners.

Hosting the tournament won’t be cheap, millions have already been spent just to secure the tournament with reports suggesting the former French footballer Zindine Zidane was paid £15 million to front Qatar’s bid.

Qatar will build 12 stadiums, a brand new 50 million passenger airport, a high speed rail link and a satellite city capable of housing 200,000 people. High tech solar-powered cooling systems will ensure both pitch and stadium temperatures will be kept down to 27ºC. The infrastructure changes alone will cost the emirate nearly $43 Billion.

It has been hailed as victory for the whole of the Middle East, showing FIFA’s daring to gamble on taking the tournament to a new part of the world. Just like the tournament earlier this year in South Africa and the Commonwealth games in India hosting a major sporting tournament is almost seen as a rights of passage for any developing country. The abundance of oil money in the Gulf sates means they are not unnoticed in the wider world, whether it be for their mile tall Skyscrapers, their super rich elite or their bailing out of the British banks, they are firmly part of the glitterati of the world.

However the oil wealth of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which comprises Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman is matched in equally high levels of poverty in other parts of the Middle East, such as Yemen. Yemen sits on the border of the largest oil supplier in the region Saudi Arabia, however it has some of the highest malnutrition rates in the world, especially amongst the under fives. It is the old story of the haves and have nots.

No one can doubt the wealth the GCC countries have, the sheer audacity of the Qatari bid would put many struggling Western economies to shame, it is equally clear that this wealth is not always put to the best use. The Oil that is the source of this wealth, could easily become the saviour for many Muslims in the world, all that is needed is a clear vision. It must not be forgotten that this wealth is not the sole property of a ruling family or a country but it belongs to the whole ummah.

The Messenger of Allah (SAW) said “Muslims are partners in three things: in water, pastures and fire” reported by Abu Dawud. This means the Billions of dollars earned every year from Oil and Gas sales in the GCC belongs to the whole Ummah.

The distribution of wealth to the most needy is a fundamental part of the Islam, The messenger of Allah (SAW) said, “The Son of Adam has no better right than that he would have a house wherein he may live, a piece of clothing whereby he may hide his nakedness and a piece of bread and some water.” [Tirmidhi]

Surely this wealth would be much better spent on the many millions of Muslims who need it more than the football fans of the world. There are numerous examples from the Islamic history as to how the Caliphs distributed the available resources for the benefit of the Muslims. The Caliph Umar Bin Abdul Aziz ensured that the needy did not go without food by distributing wealth and abolishing unjust taxes. His methods were such a success that when it came to time to distribute the Zakat, the state could not find anyone in need of it.

The rule of the Muslim world under the Islamic Khilafah is littered with examples of the alleviation of suffering a just system can produce. The Muslims of Qatar and the world need to just look beyond organised distractions and use the abundant wealth and resources at their disposal to be the standard bearers to the rest of the world, not only in football stadia but in every aspect of life.

[Taken from Islamic Revival Website]
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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]