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.

26 Jan 2011

110126 Quick view on some News


I.M.F. Says European Debt Still a Threat to World Recovery

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the global recovery was continuing apace, with growth in emerging economies leading that of the developed world. But, the I.M.F. said, financial uncertainty on the European periphery continues to pose a serious risk. "Downside risks to the recovery remain elevated," the agency said in its World Economic Outlook. "The most urgent requirements for robust recovery are comprehensive and rapid actions to overcome sovereign and financial troubles in the euro area and policies to redress fiscal imbalances." Updates to two agency reports come a day after Spain said it would consider nationalizing its regional savings banks, known as cajas, if they were unable to raise private funds to bolster their capital ratios. The revised outlook also follows news that the Irish government has called an earlier-than-expected general election - a delayed result of the collapse of the nation's financial sector.

Rioters Jolt Egyptian Regime

Tens of thousands of protesters clashed with police in cities across Egypt on Tuesday to demand the ouster of the president, as shock waves from Tunisia's successful revolt against its leader two weeks ago continued to rumble through the Middle East.The protests appeared to be the biggest in decades in Egypt, a country where opposition has long been kept in check and demonstrations rarely draw more than a few hundred people. According to some initial accounts, as many as 50,000 demonstrators in all turned out in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other Egyptian cities. At least two protesters and one security official were killed. U.S. officials said they were carefully watching the outpouring of anger in Egypt, one of Washington's key allies in the Middle East and one of the top recipients of U.S. military aid. The protests marked the greatest upsurge of anger so far inspired by the Tunisian protests, which culminated this month in the fall of the North African country's longtime president. In some 10 days since then, demonstrations have broken out in Algeria, Jordan and Yemen.

Jordanian nightclubs on Mecca Street upset Muslims

A Muslim radio station in Jordan is pressing the government to shut down clubs located on two streets in the capital that are named after Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. The radio station says their locations are offensive. Hayat FM said its programming on Sunday was devoted to religious and legal commentary to build public support for closing the nightclubs in west Amman. The station says lawyers are also lobbying the government to shut what they call "dens of vice," citing residents' complaints of noise and inappropriate behavior on streets named after sacred places. It adds that Jordan's prominent engineers union will stage protests on Tuesday.

Leaks Reveal Deeper Palestinian-Jewish Security Ties

Leaked documents published Tuesday show extensive collaboration between Palestinian security forces and their Israeli counterparts, a relationship Israeli commanders say has been key to security gains in the West Bank. Among the most explosive revelations in the latest release are minutes of a 2005 meeting in which Palestinian officials appear to be plotting with Israeli officials to assassinate a Palestinian militant in Gaza. The leaks are likely to aggravate unease in the Palestinian territories, following revelations earlier in the week that showed the Palestinian leadership offering extensive compromises to Israel in peace talks. Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite channel on Sunday began releasing what they say are internal Palestinian negotiating-team papers dating from 1999 to 2010. Earlier leaks showed Palestinian negotiators offering concessions to Israel in private that went beyond the Palestinian leadership's public expressions of defiance. The leaks brought a public outcry that forced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to issue a public defense of his administration's leadership of peace talks. Palestinian forces were deployed outside al-Jazeera's office in Ramallah.
U.S. Plans No Military Response to Lebanon Developments

The United States expressed its concern over developments in Lebanon on Tuesday, particularly the prospect that Hizbullah could take over the country - but is apparently not ready to intervene militarily to prevent the terror group, a close client of Iran, from installing its government. The United States last week denied reports that it had ordered a buildup of naval vessels off the Lebanese coast, on the prospect that Iranian armed forces would be invited to help keep order, American sources said. At a press conference Pentagon spokesman David Lapan said that the U.S. was keeping an eye on the situation, because "we do know that political tension, unrest and especially any violence that might follow are threats to regional stability and security." Lapan was responding to press reports that the U.S. and France were increasing their presence off the Lebanese coast in the wake of a prospective Hizbullah coup. Lapan added that "the U.S. government desires that all parties use peaceful means to resolve the situation. We continue to monitor the situation very closely." The United States, he added, "has a valuable relationship with Lebanese Armed Forces, and we are committed to do what we can to strengthen the sovereignty of the institutions as well as of the government of Lebanon." The reports said that the IDF was also on high alert, increasing patrols on the border while keeping a wary eye on Hizbullah installations in south Lebanon. Speaking last week, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel needed to be "prepared for every scenario."

Russia's ‘Return' to Afghanistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's two-day stay in Moscow on Jan. 20-21 marked his first official bilateral visit and the first state visit by an Afghan president to the Russian Federation since its founding after the Soviet Union's disintegration in December 1991. The trip - during which Karzai met with President Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and other Russian political and economic leaders - provided an important opportunity to both confirm recent growth in formal ties between the two countries as well as impart additional momentum for further expanding the relationship. Karzai was accompanied by most of the Afghan cabinet, reflecting the comprehensive nature and importance of the trip, and allowing for a wide-ranging dialogue on economic, diplomatic, and military issues.Several important agreements resulted from the meetings, the most immediate being in the realms of economics and energy. Russian officials committed to supporting several large development projects, including some that were left unfinished from the time of the Soviet Union. For example, Russian specialists have agreed to help upgrade the hydropower plant in Naghlu and to construct smaller hydroelectricity stations in other regions of Afghanistan. The Russian government also offered to help rebuild the strategically important Salang Tunnel connecting northern and southern Afghanistan through the Hindu Kush mountains. Other bilateral projects include constructing an irrigation canal in Nangarhar province, a nitrogen fertilizer plant in Mazar-e Sharif, a customs terminal in Kabul and other infrastructure.
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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]