Cosmetic company Inglot claims it’s manufactured the world’s first ‘wudu-friendly’ nail polish.

Being a relatively modern creation, nail polish remains obviously unaddressed by early Islamic sources. But the general consensus in the Islamic community is that praying with nail polish is impermissible because of the waterproof barrier it creates on nails, which prevents the wudu ritual from being completed five times a day.

Enter Inglot’s happy accident – their 02M Breathable nail polish line, akin to breathable contact lenses, is made with a breathable polymer that allows oxygen and water vapour to seep through to the nails.

Inglot’s tapping into the market of ‘halal’ cosmetics is something of a goldmine – no doubt, a strategic, lucrative move. And frankly, I’m not ashamed to admit that discovering 02M Breathable polishes constitutes the entire sum of my current happiness.

Ever since I clued in on nail polish’s nullifying effects on wudu, I’ve had conversations with almost all the women in my life on the topic.

Some choose to overlook the matter, others are undecided, while others choose to refrain entirely – instead choosing to paint their talons red only while on their red, which can get embarrassing pretty fast because then “everyone and their moms immediately know you’re on your period”, as a friend bluntly puts it.

Even though I have long known the stance of Islam’s intelligentsia on nail polish and prayer, I couldn’t resist bringing it up during an interview I was doing with one of the greatest Islamic scholars of our time.

I struggled with how to pitch myself, ultimately saying,

“I realise that this may not be the kind of deep and thoughtful question you hope journalists would ask of you but… your stance on nail polish and prayer, please?”

Well, ask and ye shall receive – and so I received, in a politely non-judgmental manner, an answer I’d already known.

Later, I ruminated with a friend on the absurdity of my wasting precious face time with someone who was such a repository of knowledge. I also lamented on the weight of obligation, which pressed down on me even more now that I had in personam received affirmation from authority.

My friend suggested I “go and get a second opinion”, to which I said, “I’m not having a medicalcrisis,” shunning his suggestion.

Plus, going Imam-shopping so that I could get a religious verdict more amenable to my desired lifestyle just feels many shades of wrong. After all, isn’t the grand plan of a religion like Islam to function as a lifestyle? How then can we tailor bits of it so that it aligns better with our whims and worries?

So this is why Inglot’s halal-certified nail polish comes as a welcome, oil tanker sized source of joy for me.

And the fact that a fellow, equally concerned Muslimah went so far as conducting a rigorous coffee-filter test to verify Inglot’s claims of water permeability, indicates I’m not the only one celebrating!

London: Around 13 Brits convert to Islam daily and more than half of those are white and 75 per cent are women.

It is not easy for anyone to change his/her religion and adopt the lifestyle so dramatically but a Police Community Support Officer Jayne Kemp, 28, did this and set an example for others.

Jayne Kemp who left her Catholic roots behind after “falling in love” with Islam while helping victims of so-called honour violence and now plans to change her name to Aminah.

Jayne Kemp patrols her beat wearing a traditional hijab headscarf and even works extra time after shifts so she can attend Friday prayers at her mosque, The Sun reports.

Devout Jayne converted to Islam last April and even plans to change her name to Aminah.

“I thought Islam was all about women being forced to slave away in the kitchen — but I found out it was about being generous with your time, and patient and respectful of others,” she told the paper.

“As I looked into it, I saw similarities with Catholicism and noticed values such as looking after your neighbours and cherishing the elderly, which is something older people say younger people don’t do any more.

Devoted Jayne even missed out on celebrating Christmas with her son, nine, and daughter, seven. She sent them off to their dad’s and cooked her own meal so it would be halal — the meat slaughtered in the manner prescribed by Sharia law.

“My family, in general, are supportive. If I’m happy, they’re happy. My sister said I’m the happiest she’s ever seen me.”

Jayne was inspired to convert to Islam after chatting to other Muslims on Twitter.

Muhammad Manzoor, who runs Muslim Twitter account Local Masjid from his home in Whalley Range, Manchester, helped her make the transition. via, thenewstribe

Karachi: Aamir Khan, Maulana Tariq Jameel, Shahid Afridi and Junaid Jamshed Mettings in Makka During Hajj Revealed. Junaid Jamshed disclose the meetings details.

“Junaid Jamshed said that Maulana Tariq Jameel,  Shahid Afridi and me went to Aamir Khan for some dawah [invitation]. Allah has put much goodness into that youngster [Aamir].”

“As Maulana was speaking to him, Aamir Khan give us half an hour…but once Maulana started speaking to him we stayed there for three hours. We had first meeting in Makkah and second meeting in Madina”

Jamshed said that he literally had to pick Maulana up. “You know it’s like the lost love between Maulana Tariq Jameel and Aamir Khan.”

“Amir Khan was not letting Maulana leave, he was not letting us go,” Junaid Jamshed Said.

By: Soeren Kern

Muslim immigrants in a town near Copenhagen have forced the cancellation of traditional Christmas displays this year even while spending lavishly on the Islamic Eid celebration marking the end of Ramadan.

The controversy has escalated into an angry nationwide debate over the role of Islam in post-Christian Denmark, where a burgeoning Muslim population is becoming increasingly assertive in imposing its will on a wide range of social and civic issues.

The latest dust-up involves the Egedalsvænget housing complex in Kokkedal, a town situated some 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Copenhagen where Arab and Turkish immigrants now comprise more than half the total population.

At a recent meeting of the Egedalsvænget tenants’ association, the Muslim majority on the Board of Directors refused to authorize spending 7,000 Danish kroner ($1,200) for the community’s annual Christmas event.

The vote came shortly after the same Board of Directors authorized spending 60,000 kroner ($10,000) on a large communal celebration of the Muslim holiday Eid. Five out of nine of the board members are Muslims.

A Muslim member of the board, Ismail Mestasi, defended the decision to cancel the Christmas tree and party, arguing that no one had offered to organize the celebration. “No one wanted to take on the responsibility. A vote was taken and it ended as it ended. I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I was asked to get the tree. And I didn’t want to.” But a non-Muslim board member, Karin Leegaard Hansen, refuted him, saying that she herself had offered to take on the responsibility, but that she was overruled by the Muslim board members.

The dispute, which is the latest in an ever-growing list of Muslim-related controversies in Denmark, was first reported by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) on November 7. Since then, the issue has snowballed into a national scandal and has become a key topic for public debate in the Danish media as well as in political circles.

A spokesman for the Danish Conservative Party, Tom Behnke, says he fears there are people who want to convert Denmark into a Muslim country. In an interview with DR News, Behnke said: “I think it is deeply alarming that our integration efforts are so ineffective that the moment there is a Muslim majority, we do away with good-old Danish traditions and introduce Muslim traditions instead. We are living in Denmark, and people have to adapt to the situation that applies here.”

When asked whether housing associations with a Muslim minority should sponsor an Eid party, Behnke replied: “We have to remember that in the past, an Eid festival was the Muslims’ victory celebration after they had slaughtered the Christians, so I don’t know how much there is to celebrate in Denmark. Still, people should be allowed to celebrate whatever festivals they want to, but they also must respect the festivals in the country they have come to.”

Behnke added: “There is no point in wanting to convert Denmark into a Muslim country because you yourself have a Muslim background. That must never happen. On the contrary, we must have mutual respect for one another. This is a lack of respect for Danish traditions and culture. We must not have a Denmark where Danish traditions disappear as soon as there is a Muslim majority.”

Danish police are now investigating an accusation of racism made against the Muslim board members. In an interview with the Copenhagen Post, police spokesperson Karsten Egtved said: “It needs to be determined to what extent the decision by the Muslim members of the board to first vote ‘yes’ to a 60,000 kroner Eid party, then ‘no’ to a 7,000 kroner Christmas tree to celebrate Christian traditions, violates laws by discriminating against Christians and their traditions.”

The Christmas tree controversy took an ominous new twist on November 12, when a van carrying two journalists from TV2 News was attacked by 25 masked hoodlums. The journalists had gone to the Egedalsvænget housing complex to film a report about the story, but immediately upon their arrival their van was bombarded with bricks and cobblestones. The attackers destroyed the van and chased the hapless journalists out of the area.

According to TV2, the perpetrators were Muslim youths who were seeking to silence media coverage of the Christmas tree dispute.

The major issues of Israel and Palestine conflict are their borders; the most delicate issue is Jerusalem. Both nations want the city because it holds are very important landmarks for religious places for both Muslims and Jews.

The rivalry has been going very bad with lots of killing by Israeli and US troops in Gaza. Hundreds of men, women and children are dying every day from bomb blasts, missile attacks, rocket launchers and firing.

The matter has been raised at the UN and Human rights organizations too but everyone has remained silent in all the cases. Many agreements and contracts were placed in front of the Jewish and Arab leaders, but in most cases the Jews didn’t agree or the Arab didn’t agree.

Israel has been declared as the national homeland for the Jews, but there are secular places in Israel which hold important value in the Muslim world.  The other issues between both of the countries are water rights, mutual recognition and protection of minorities and borders.

The Israel and Palestine conflict is creating bloodshed in both nations but the violence in Palestine is worse. Israel is stronger than Palestine because they have more population and so have big army staff whereas Palestine doesn’t have that much population comparatively.

Israelis are funded heavily by the US and US troops have been sent to Palestine to try to control everything. Million of innocent children are dying today and the most powerful leader Barack Obama is silent in the matter. There is a possibility that he does not know all the facts.

Israel has killed thousands of adults and children in Palestine without any reason, which should be a serious crime in anyone’s eyes. Therefore, the United Nations should play its role to stop this war immediately. Any delay in the resolution of this dispute will create severe problems for the whole world, not just Palestine and Israelis or Muslims.

Israel and America have had reasonable relationships from day one. They have helped each other and different sectors of industries and their officials and delegation pay visits every year.

Therefore America can play an important role in the resolution of this very delicate dispute. America is world power therefore its role is most important and significant in leading towards peace for everyone, not just one party.

Mohammed Chehab changed his name to Eddie around 30 years ago, to make it easier for people to pronounce, and for business reasons. Picture: Cameron Mitch Source: The

According to Islamic leaders, some legally change their name by deed poll while others adopt “new’ monikers for their resumes.

Muslim leader and Islamic Friendship Association founder Keysar Trad said the “sad” trend has become increasingly prevalent – and the recent Sydney riots would only exacerbate the problem.

“Many people are changing from Mohammed to Michael, Ahmed to Allan, Haroun to Harold and others change Mohammed to Jim, even though there is no relationship between the two,” he said.

“It’s sad many Muslims feel compelled to do this. That message is unless you do take on an Anglo name you won’t get past the front door.

“Unfortunately the protests will have an impact with some employers and I appeal for those employers to treat people on merit.”
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Mr Trad said people with traditional Muslim names often experience blatant religious discrimination when applying for a job.

“I’ve heard of many cases where people have applied for a job using their Muslim name and not getting an interview, then making a phone call and giving a different name and being called back for an interview,” he said.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Helen Szoke said migrants westernising their Christian names to increase their chances of employment is a growing and concerning trend. “There are many people who you come across who talk about the fact they anglicise their name for employment purposes or because people found it too hard to pronounce or it was foreign,” Ms Szoke said.

“There is definitely evidence to suggest that people do this because they feel it improves or enhances their opportunities to gain work.”

Eddie Chehab, 49, from Drummoyne, said he decided to change his name from Mohammed to Eddie for employment reasons and because his customers struggled to pronounce his name.

“I noticed how hard it was for people to say my name correctly, which is why I changed it but a lot of the younger generations (today) are changing theirs for employment reasons,” Mr Chehab said.

Social analyst David Chalke said it has been scientifically proven that your chances of employment are greater if you have a name which sounds acceptable to your potential employer.

“We all tend to hire people like ourselves,” he said.

The filmmaker who produced an incendiary, anti-Muslim movie that stirred extremists Tuesday to storm the U.S. embassy in Egypt and may be linked to the fatal attack on the U.S. ambassador in Libya may have gone into hiding, as doubts rose as to his true identity.

Following yesterday’s riots, a California man calling himself Sam Bacile took credit for making the film “Innocence of the Muslims” and identified himself as an Israeli Jew in two news interviews. In an interview with the Associated Press, he called Islam “a cancer.”

But a search of public records and inconsistencies in Bacile’s own accounts, as well as information from a radical Christian who helped produced the movie all suggest that “Sam Bacile” is a pseudonym and is not Israeli but an Arab Christian.

“I’ve met him twice. He is not a citizen of Israel. He is in hiding,” Steve Klein, a member of a far-right anti-Islamic Christian group who says he helped with the film’s production, told ABC News.

RIYADH, June 25 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia will enter women athletes in the Olympics for the first time ever in London this summer, the Islamic kingdom’s London embassy said on Sunday.

Human rights groups had called on the International Olympic Committee to bar Saudi Arabia from competing in London, citing its failure ever to send a woman athlete to a Games and its ban on sports in girls’ state schools.

Powerful Muslim clerics in the ultra-conservative state have repeatedly spoken out against the participation of girls and women in sports.

In Saudi Arabia women hold a lower legal status to men, are banned from driving and need a male guardian’s permission to work, travel or open a bank account.

Under King Abdullah, however, the government has pushed for them to have better education and work opportunities and allowed them to vote in future municipal elections, the only public polls held in the kingdom.

“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is looking forward to its complete participation in the London 2012 Olympic Games through the Saudi Arabian Olympic Committee, which will oversee the participation of women athletes who can qualify for the games,” said a statement published on the embassy website.

In April the head of the kingdom’s General Presidency of Youth Welfare, the body that regulates sports in Saudi Arabia, said it would not prevent women from competing but that they would not have official government endorsement.

The IOC said on Monday that talks with the Saudis were “ongoing” and that “we are working to ensure the participation of Saudi women at the Games in London”.

The head of the kingdom’s Olympic mission, Khalid al-Dakheel, told Reuters on Sunday evening however he was unaware of any developments allowing women to participate.

Top Saudi clerics, who hold government positions and have always constituted an important support base for the ruling al-Saud royal family, have spoken against female participation in sports.

In 2009 a senior cleric said girls risked losing their virginity by tearing their hymens if they took part in energetic sport.

Perhaps the most likely woman candidate to compete under the Saudi flag in London, equestrian Dalma Malhas, represented the kingdom at the junior Olympics in Singapore in 2010, but without official support or recognition.

Physical education is banned in girls’ state schools in the kingdom, but Saudi Arabia’s only female deputy minister, Noura al-Fayez, has written to Human Rights Watch saying there is a plan to introduce it. (Reporting by Angus McDowall and Asma Alsharif; editing by Andrew Roche)

Over the weekend, the generals issued two decrees dissolving the Islamist-dominated parliament and claiming all legislative power for themselves.

MPs are also expected to try to enter the parliament building on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, with counting in the presidential election run-off complete, both candidates are claiming victory.

Mohammed Mursi, the head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), said on Monday that he had won 52% of the vote.

Mr Mursi promised to work “hand-in-hand with all Egyptians for a better future, freedom, democracy, development and peace”.

But former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq’s campaign team said their figures showed that he was ahead and that the Brotherhood had “terrorised” voters.

Independent observers and state media believe Mr Mursi has won by a margin of about three to four percentage points, or about a million votes.

The official result is scheduled to be announced on Thursday.

‘Million-man march’

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf) appears to be working on the assumption that Mr Mursi will win, reports the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo.

It has made a series decrees and appointments designed to reduce or constrain the power of the president, and entrench the power of the military.

Despite opposition talk of a “military coup”, it may end up being a messy compromise that everyone can live with, our correspondent says.

Voting over the weekend to choose a successor to Hosni Mubarak, who was forced to step down by last year’s uprising, was overshadowed by two Scaf decrees.

The first ordered the immediate dissolution of parliament following Thursday’s Supreme Constitutional Court ruling that the law governing the recent elections for the lower house was unconstitutional because party members had been allowed to contest seats in the lower house reserved for independents.

Troops were deployed outside the parliament building before the decree was issued on Saturday to prevent MPs gaining access. The FJP and the ultraconservative Salafist Nour party dominate both chambers.

The second decree, which was published after the polls closed on Sunday, amended the March 2011 constitutional declaration and gave the generals complete control over legislation and military affairs until fresh parliamentary elections are held.

The Scaf will also play a significant role in running the 100-member assembly that will draft the country’s new constitution.

The new president – who will take office without the oversight of a parliament and without a permanent constitution to define his powers or duties – will be able to form and dismiss a government, ratify and reject laws, and declare war, but only with Scaf’s approval.

Muslim Brotherhood members are set to protest against the decrees on Tuesday by taking part in a “million-man march” – the name they give for almost any demonstration in Egypt, our correspondent adds.

At the same time, MPs may attempt to enter parliament to protest against its dissolution. Soldiers have been given orders not to let them in.

Source: BBC

MIAMI (AP) — The Muslim holiday of Ramadan falls during the long, hot days of August this year, and Muslim Americans are getting ready to accommodate the daylight fasts required during the month-long period with adjustments in their schedules and eating habits.

It can be even tougher for Muslims in America than for their counterparts in majority-Muslim countries, where business slows down during Ramadan and people take it easier during the day, says Dr. Elizabeth Rourke, an internist at Boston Medical Center.

“In the U.S., everyone is required to do what they would do ordinarily, the entire month,” Rourke says, “so it makes the fast much more demanding for American Muslims.”

Mubarakah Ibrahim, a personal trainer, hopes to cram all her clients in the morning when she has the most energy. She’ll serve vegetables as the first course when her family breaks their fast in the evenings to make sure they get their nutrients for the day. And she’ll buy her four kids — ranging in age from 10 to17 — shiny new water bottles as a reminder to hydrate during the hours they’re not fasting.

“We know spirituality can get you through anything,” says Ibrahim, who lives in New Haven, Conn. “But the choice really is, you can suffer through it and still do it, or you can do it and do it efficiently without making your health suffer.”

Ramadan requires daily fasts of food and water during daylight hours. Typically observers eat a meal before dawn and break their fast at sunset. The fast-breaking meal — which varies by ethnic group but traditionally starts with a handful of sweet dates — is seen by many Muslims as an opportunity to gather with family and friends.

This year the holiday begins Aug. 1, when daylight in the U.S. lasts 13 to 14 hours, depending on where you are. The Islamic calendar follows the lunar cycle, which is shorter than the sun-based Gregorian calendar, so Ramadan creeps up 11 days every year. Ramadan can last 29 or 30 days, again depending on the lunar cycle.

Fasting during Ramadan is one of the most important duties in Islam, one that even the not-so-religious typically observe. Children are not required to fast until they hit puberty, though many start building up to it when they’re younger with half-day fasts. Also exempt are the elderly, women who are pregnant or nursing, and people with chronic medical conditions. But even for healthy Muslims, the daily fast from dawn until sunset can be grueling.

Rourke teaches medical residents about Ramadan and its implication for patients — how to adjust medication regimens to fit the daytime fast when possible, how to advise patients on avoiding dehydration, how to enlist help from a local religious leader if someone who shouldn’t be fasting expresses the intention to do so.

Even for a totally healthy person to sustain that fast for a very long period of time during a time where it can be very hot, it’s a very demanding thing to ask of your body,” Rourke says.

Sheikh Ali, a college student from Boca Raton, Fla., tries to ease his body into Ramadan mode by fasting intermittently the prior month, a practice of the Prophet Muhammad that some people emulate.

The premed chemistry major also extols the benefits of eating a high-fiber breakfast, like whole grain cereal, especially in the pre-dawn meal before fasting to help keep him feeling full.

Still, many Muslims say they won’t do much differently this year and they’re not too worried about the summer Ramadan.

“Once you’ve done it for this long,” says Natasha Chida, a medical resident at the University of Miami who’s been fasting since she was in middle school, “it’s not really something that’s physically difficult, it’s just about continuing to learn self-restraint.”

Beyond abstaining from food and drink, Muslims try to avoid negative words, thoughts and actions while fasting. Ramadan is seen as an opportunity to improve oneself, spiritually and personally.

Rizwan Jaka, a technology manager in Washington, D.C., puts the fast in perspective by reflecting on and empathizing with those in need, one of the main purposes of fasting.

“In the end, we have to realize that people go without food and water on a regular basis,” Jaka says. Whatever hardships people feel during their fast, he adds, “we’ve got it easy compared to people who don’t have access to food and running water.”

Source: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/US-Muslims-prepare-for-summertime-Ramadan-fasting-1584022.php

According to Islamic teachings health fully encompasses complete physical, mental, social well-being
or a person and society, which must be safeguarded. Not through the maintenance and protection
of a health preserving regime at the entity level but through the development of protective health
and encouraging family and social system. Islam introduces the concept of preventing health and no
substance and practices that seriously endanger the health can be allowed in Islamic system.

There is need to change the society according to the divine commandments for the betterment of general health
and help in solving health related medical issues which occur due to the social practices. This must be
tackled socially through underlining principles of Quran. Islam promotes comprehensive ways towards
prevention and hygiene.

According to the principles lay down by Quran, total ban on alcoholic products, meat of dead animals,
pork, blood, drugs, tobacco, etc. should be declared prohibited. Having proper bathing after impurities,
doing Wudhu 5 times on visible parts of body for prayers, cleaning under area after urinating or after
defecation, washing and cleaning hands after getting in touch with some unclean things and moreover,
protection of inside mouth cavity by using miswak (brushing of teeth), etc. are the preventive measures
that Islam discussed for the physical health as well as for spiritual well being.

The fundamental duties of Islam such as Iman (Faith), Salaat (Prayers), Saum (Fasting), Zakat (Charity),
and Hajj (Pilgrimage) are the basic pillars of Islam for safeguarding the society to combat with practices
that are harmful for healthy mind and body. A person with strong Iman or faith in Allah abstains from
the wrong doings and what that are prohibited in Quran. Salaat is a wonderful means to abstain from
bad habits and for the strengthening of faith.

Saum or fasting purifies and detoxifies the body systems and aids in the improvement of mental health and well being of a person. It also brings people closer
and they can rejuvenate and cherish the celebrations of Eid festival. Zakat or charity is a must in Islam
and it helps in the circulation of money in the society. It is an excellent means to alleviate poverty in
the country. Hajj or pilgrimage is mandatory on those to perform who can afford and it teaches the
person to be more responsive towards his or her duties. It helps in cleaning the person inside out and is
a combination of all the obligatory duties in Islam.

With the help of above passage you can clearly understand that Islam focuses not only the exterior but
inner beautification of a person to become more productive and responsible. Islam is the code of life
and whomsoever, understand this code leads towards peace and harmony in life.

Abu Sufyan, her father, tried everything in his might to bring them back, his daughter and her husband, to worship deities and idolatry. But, they were both too headstrong and their faith never moved an inch.

Abu Sufyan remained unhappy and dejected due to his daughter and husband’s acceptance of Islam. Ramlah and her husband were treated harshly and life in Makkah became miserable and unbearable for them. When the first group of Muslims was allowed to migrate to Abyssinia, they were among those who left behind.

Upon finding the news of Muslims, fleeing away to Abyssinia made the chieftains of Makkah including Abu Sufyan very angry. The tribal chiefs tried their best to bring them back but the Abyssinian king Negus also embraced Islam and gave protection to the migrated Muslims. Ramlah Bint Abi Sufyan also known as Umm Habibah and her husband took refuge in Abyssinia. But her problems were not coming to an end yet.

Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh accepted Christianity. It was a terrible blow for Ramlah Bint Abi Sufyan. The brave lady refused to live with a non Muslim and divorced him. She rejected the idea of going to back to her father’s place, a citadel of Kuffar. So, she stayed in Abyssinia for the next ten years alone with her daughter.

She was rewarded in a great way for all her bearings and sufferings. Allah’s Apostle sent her the proposal of marriage. Umm Habibah is one of the Umhatal Momineen and much respected wife of our beloved Prophet Muhammad Sallalaho alayhi wasalam.

A new law requiring Muslim women wearing burqas or niqabs in New South Wales to show their faces to police if required has been accepted by Islamic organisations and may be followed in other states.

The law, which extends to all forms of covering including motorcycle helmets, will give police power to establish identity by insisting faces be exposed during routine traffic operations such as licence checks and random breath tests.

It will also cover people suspected of committing a crime or who might be considered a potential security risk.

Refusal to comply would risk up to one year’s jail or a A$5500 ($6747) fine.

“I don’t care whether a person is wearing a motorcycle helmet, a burqa, niqab, face veil or anything else, the police should be allowed to require those people to make their identification clear,” NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell said.

“I have every respect for various religions and beliefs but when it comes to enforcing the law, the police should be given adequate powers to make a clear identification.”

Although Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said he believed his state’s laws were “more than adequate”, Western Australia appears likely to introduce similar legislation.

WA Police Minister Rob Johnson told ABC radio he was concerned his police officers did not have the power to require people to remove head coverings when they were pulled over.

Last year, Perth District Court Judge Shauna Deane ruled a witness could not wear a niqab while giving evidence in a fraud case because the jury should not be impeded in its ability to assess her demeanour.

A burqa is a veil and dress covering the entire body, concealing the eyes behind a mesh screen. A niqab is a face veil that may leave the eyes uncovered.

Belgium and France have banned burqas, Spain has outlawed their use in government buildings, Italy prohibits covering faces in public and some Muslim countries have limited bans.

But similar proposals have not gained traction in Australia.

The planned NSW law is far less draconian – applying only to specific requirements to establish identity – and has been accepted as “moderate” by Muslim groups.

It followed the quashing last month of the conviction of Sydney woman Carnita Matthews for falsely claiming in a sworn statement that a police officer had forcibly tried to remove her burqa during a roadside licence check.

Video footage from the police car showed the allegation was false and Matthews was sentenced to six months’ jail.

But District Court judge Clive Jeffreys upheld Matthews’ appeal, ruling there was no evidence to confirm Matthews had filed the complaint because the statement had been delivered by a person wearing a burqa.

Jeffreys said he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Matthews had lodged the complaint as identification had not been confirmed.

Announcing the decision to frame the new law, O’Farrell said he was determined to give police the powers they needed to establish identity, but that there would be no discrimination.

“There has to be a balance between religious customs and a police officer’s ability to do their job,” he said.

“Whether it’s a driver’s licence or passing through customs, identity checks are required in this day and age and we’re determined to ensure police have the powers to undertake them when required.”

Muslim groups, including the Islamic Council of New South Wales, Muslims Australia, and the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia welcomed the move.

“[The planned law has] balanced the needs of people who choose to cover their face as well as the needs of law enforcement and security,” association head Keyser Trad said.

“There might be some people who will have concerns that this might pave the way for perhaps greater restrictions in the future, but I think the vast majority of Muslims will welcome this decision.”

Silma Ihran of the Muslim Women’s Association said the move was inevitable and would be accepted if handled sensitively.

By Greg Ansley

Disturbingly these ranged from vitriolic Islamophobic rants which linked Islamic finance to terrorism financing and forebodes the transformation of Nigeria into a new Jihadist haven, to flattering admiration for Mallam Lamido Sanusi, the governor of CBN, for rising above the critics and facilitating the introduction of Islamic finance under financial inclusion policy. The few voices that saw Islamic banking as an alternative form of financial management to the interest-based capitalist conventional system and more connected to the real economy and with a potential to contribute to development in Africa’s most populous country for the benefit of all Nigerians, hardly had a look in.

It would be unfair to draw generalizations from such a sample of comments, but in relation to recent statements from various groups and the sensitivity of the CBN over the matter, it becomes apparent that under the surface Nigeria is a highly sectarian society, which is further fuelled by the constant reinforcement of stereotypes on all sides of the ethnic and religious divides. Nigeria has a population of about 170 million which is roughly half Muslim and half Christian.

This is unfortunate because Nigeria in general is a highly educated society but with huge developmental challenges because of governance shortcomings in which the military have had a pervasive influence since independence, endemic corruption and economic mismanagement.

In June, the Dioceses in the Church of the Nigeria Anglican Communion appealed to the country’s House of Representatives and the Senate not to pass any legislation to facilitate Islamic banking in the country on the grounds that it would pose a serious threat to the unity of the federation; it would violate the country’s secular constitution; and favor one particular religious group.

Predictably, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) of Nigeria weighed in, stressing the constitution guarantees freedom of religion to all Nigerians and that denying the establishment of Islamic banks would deny some Nigerians the right to have access to financial services based on their faith tradition, or alternatively force them to become unbanked or to use interest-based banking.

Continue Reading….

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has asked the human resource development ministry to urgently intervene after a textbook allegedly depicting Prophet Mohammed provoked protests in Uttar Pradesh, triggering concerns over its impact on national security. National security adviser Shiv Shankar

Menon has written a letter to HRD minister Kapil Sibal, informing him that the PM has sought urgent “remedial” action after meeting key Muslim leaders, top government sources told HT.

The concerns surround a Class 4 moral science textbook that was recommended as reading material by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) for schools affiliated to it.

A chapter titled Being Good and Gentle depicts the Prophet, violating a fundamental tenet of Islam which is against all forms of idol worship, local Muslim groups in Lucknow alleged 10 days ago while launching protests and burning Sibal’s effigies.

The HRD ministry has asked the CISCE — an autonomous, central board — for a status report. CISCE chief executive officer Gerry Arathoon could not be reached for comments.

A series of senior Muslim leaders like Jamiat-i-Ulema-e-Hind leader Mahmood Madani have communicated concerns to the PM and NSA.

Veteran Muslim leaders are concerned that the incident, fuelled by protests, could escalate into a controversy similar to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet in 2005 — unless the government acts promptly.

A Danish newspaper published 50 cartoons of the Prophet and then argued that its freedom of speech and expression entitled it to publish the images while apologising for hurting any sentiments. But the cartoons and the newspaper’s defence of the publication provoked protests by Muslims across the world.

Source: www.hindustantimes.com

The irresponsible hoax however has diverted attention away from the real human rights abuses currently occurring in the country. The blog (inaccurately) tried to characterise Syrian women generally as afraid to stand up and speak out.

However this is opposite from reality – women are significant players in the most recent political revolt. The Arab Spring is not just providing a platform for political liberation, but also a platform for women’s liberation.

In early May, five days after the brutal crackdown in the town of Dara’a in southern Syria I received a text message from an unrecognised Syrian number. I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to contact a friend in the country for the previous week. All it read was ‘back from Dara’a, in chams (Arabic for Damascus), am safe’). I knew who it was from, and I was instantly thankful.

The person I received the message from had been instrumental in calling for political reform in Syria since before I first met her in 2008. She has been involved in getting young people onto the streets and calling for change, and I will refer to her as ‘K’.

I would later learn that the Syrian regime had confiscated K’s phone. Days prior she, in order to warn her friends, had posted private reports on Twitter of snipers on top of buildings shooting at unarmed protestors.

Her new application for a phone with MTN, a South African telephone company, was refused processing, at the request of the Syrian authorities.

‘K’ got off comparably lightly – Amnesty International and other human rights groups estimate over 1,000 protestors have been killed and over 10,000 have been imprisoned. Practices such as rape, sleep deprivation and beating are common practice for the Syrian authorities. The brutal mutilation, torture and murder of 13 year old Hamza Ali al-Khateeb shows Bashar al-Assad will stop at nothing to repress his people.

One day K will make an impressive female leader of Syria. She runs a halal cosmetics firm in Damascus. It employs only young women, and its office has turned into a de facto community engagement office and refuge. The firm’s employees have rallied on the city’s streets.

Unfortunately hoaxes like the ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ divert attention from the instrumental role women are playing in leading the drive for freedom in Syria.

The lessons from my time and experience in the Middle East are clear: young women, who often have never been trusted with responsibility or opportunity, are reliable changemakers in the region. They will work the long hours, take the risks and provide the commitment rarely seen among young men. For many, the shame of failure is just not an option. They take their responsibility to others extremely seriously. The Arab Spring is partly due to the commitment and engagement of young women.

The new Syrian generation has grown up with pirated DVDs and internet cafes; they have seen what freedom looks like to the rest of the world. Perhaps unrealistically, ‘K’ believes that women can have it all, but is confronted by a government (and older generations) that think the opposite.

Younger generations have grown up in surroundings where their local sheikh and their parents are not the only source of religious inspiration. It poses opportunities and threats to moderate Islam across the region as young people can access the very best (and very worst) of religious teachings from the comfort of their local net café.

For people like K the combination of seeing freedom in Western countries through the internet and the availability of progressive teachings has meant a values shift has occurred – instead of listening to the sermons about the subservience of women, K went back to the Holy Qu’ran and read what the Prophet said about equality and fairness.

Having a generation question authority rather than accept it is the first step towards a liberal society.

Continue Reading…

Source: http://www.abc.net.au

Hani Khan, a former stockroom employee for Abercrombie & Fitch Co. who says she was illegally fired for refusing to remove her Muslim headscarf, sued the clothing retailer in federal court on Monday, The Associated Press reports.

When Khan was hired to work in the San Mateo, Calif., branch of Hollister Co.—a brand owned by Abercrombie that caters to teens—she was wearing her hijab. The manager of the store reportedly said she could wear the headscarf while on the clock, so long as it was in company colors. (Which raises the question: What are those colors exactly? Distressed denim?) But Khan alleges that in subsequent months, managers constantly asked her to remove her hijab while working, and that she was later suspended, then fired for refusing.

(VIDEO: A Voice Behind the Veil: Planning to Defy a French Law)

Abercrombie & Fitch is known for its preppy, American collegiate imprint. It’s also known for allegedly alienating its employees and getting in trouble for it. In 2004, the company settled race and gender discrimination lawsuits and agreed to include racial minorities in its all-American but largely white marketing platform. Abercrombie admitted no wrongdoing, but paid $40 million to several thousand minority and female plaintiffs and agreed to boost its diversity efforts surrounding hiring and promoting.

Continue Reading….

Weightlifting’s world governing body agreed Wednesday to modify its clothing rules to accommodate a female Muslim competitor from the US.

Kulsoom Abdullah was barred from entering higher-level US competitions because her faith requires that she covers her arms, legs and head, violating international rules governing weightlifting attire.

USA Weightlifting took her case to the International Weightlifting Federation, which agreed to change the rules after its technical committee reviewed the proposal.

“The modified rule changes permits athletes to wear a one-piece, full-body, tight-fitted ‘unitard’ under the compulsory weightlifting costume,’’ IWF vice-president Sam Coffa said. “The ‘unitard’ will enable technical officials to adjudicate areas of the body which are essential to the correct execution of the lift.’’

Reports said, Abdullah began lifting last year at her gym in Atlanta, and discovered she was surprisingly good at the sport. She qualified for the US Open Weightlifting Championships last December, but the event’s sponsoring body, USA Weightlifting, told her that she would not be able to compete in her modified uniform that covers everything but her hands, feet, and face.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com

The following is from the English translation of a section of the abridged tafsir based on the book ‘tayseer ila usul it-tafsir’ by Shaykh Ata bin Khalil Abu Rishta.

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَأَنْذَرْتَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تُنْذِرْهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ

خَتَمَ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ وَعَلَىٰ سَمْعِهِمْ ۖ وَعَلَىٰ أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ ۖ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ عَظِيمٌ

“Verily, those who disbelieve, it is the same to them whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe.” {6}

“Allah has set a seal on their hearts and on their hearings, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be a great torment.” {7}

Allah سبحانه وتعالى explained in the previous verses that the book is from Allah in truth and that there is no doubt in it. He سبحانه وتعالى explained the status of those who are guided by the book and have taqwa, as the successful ones. Then Allah سبحانه وتعالى explained in verses 6 and 7 the situation of those who reject; that warning them does not benefit them, because Allah has sealed their hearts.

These verses are like an answer to a question by one in confusion about his command, asking why did Allah not guide the disbelievers? This is because if the Arabs say “inna ‘Abdallah qaaim” “verily, Abdullah is standing”, then this is an answer to one who is doubtful about the standing and therefore questions Abdullah’s standing. So, when Allah سبحانه وتعالى begins the verse with إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ سَوَاءٌ , linguistically it will be according to what has just been mentioned.

“Abdullah qaaim” (Abdullah is standing) is information about his standing.

“inna Abdullah qaaim” (verily Abdullah is standing) is an answer to one questioning about his standing and he is doubtful about it.

“inna Abdullah la-qaaim” (verily Abdullah is not standing) is an answer to one questioning and he is denying the standing. Mubarad said this.

The appearance of the hamzat ut-tasweeyah (أ) along with أَمْ (or) makes them free from the meaning of enquiry, and establishes the equality between both of them, i.e. with regards to the disbelievers, it is the same whether you warn them or not, they won’t believe – thus, equalising between the two situations.

If the word سَوَاءٌ ‘whether’ has the alif al-istifhaam (alif of enquiry) after it, then it must come with أَمْ (or) e.g. سَوَاءٌ عليّ أقمت أم قعدت ‘it is the same to me whether you stood or sat’. If one of two names were joined (عطف) after it, they are عطف joined with و ‘and’, none other, e.g. سَوَاءٌ عندي زيد وعمرو ‘Zaid and Amr are the same to me’. If after it there were two verbs and no istifhaam, then they are عطف joined together with أَوْ (or) e.g. سَوَاءٌ عليّ قمت أو قعدت ‘it is the same to me whether you stood or sat’. If there were two verbal nouns after it, e.g. سَوَاءٌ عليّ قيامك و قعودك ‘it is the same to me whether your standing or your sitting’, then they are عطف joined with و ‘and’ or with أَوْ (or).

Some further issues arise from this discussion.

1. The term الَّذِينَ (those who) is from the forms of generality, so with this meaning Allah سبحانه وتعالى informs us that those who disbelieve will not become believers, whatever the warning or bringing Islam to them. So, is this matter left general or is it specified at all?

This matter is certainly not left general, as Rasul Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم was sent to bring Islam to the disbelievers. Whoever believed from them became a believer and whoever remained, remained on kufr. Therefore, this general text is specified, with the specification being completed here with the mind. The mind can specify the shariah text if the subject matter was the aqeedah, i.e. kufr and iman, because the mind is the way to iman. Similarly, the mind specifies His سبحانه وتعالى saying:

ذَٰلِكُمُ اللَّهُ رَبُّكُمْ خَالِقُ كُلِّ شَيْءٍ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ ۖ فَأَنَّىٰ تُؤْفَكُونَ

“That is Allah, your Lord, the Creator of all things, none has the right to be worshipped but He, so how have you been turned away?” [Al-Ghaafir, 40:62]

So, كُلِّ شَيْءٍ “all things” is general, but it is specified by the mind to other than Allah سبحانه وتعالى. The verse إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ “those who disbelieve” is specified by the mind to the tribes of the disbelievers whom Rasul Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم was told would never become believers. It is authentically narrated from Ibn Abbas (ra) that he said: “this verse is about the learned Jews who were at the time of Rasul Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم and did not become believers.” Ar-Rabee’ bin Anas said: “it was sent down about some men from Quraysh who were killed at Badr.” Others said that it is about specific kuffar like Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl… [Tafsir at-Tabari 1:109]

2. Referring the ‘sealing’ back to Allah خَتَمَ اللّهُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهمْ is from the mutashabih (having more than one interpretation). The stronger opinion is that the meaning is that those specific kuffar insisted on their kufr, objecting to the truth, so that was cemented in their hearts, such that it was as if they were created with locked, closed hearts that do not accept iman or guidance. It follows then, that the meaning is majaz (metaphorical) for solidifying their hearts’ and insistence on kufr, is as though Allah created them with that attribute.

The الخَتَمَ (seal) and الغِشَاوَةٌ (the covering) can be used to indicate their dominant determination to disbelieve, so it is as though they are deaf, dumb and blind, as in the verse:

صُمٌّ بُكْمٌ عُمْيٌ فَهُمْ لاَ يَعْقِلُونَ

“deaf, dumb and blind. So they do not understand” [al-baqarah, 2:171]

Allah سبحانه وتعالى mentioned الخَتَمَ (the seal) for القلب (the heart) and السمع (the hearing), and mentioned الغِشَاوَةٌ (the covering) for the sight, due to the suitability of الخَتَمَ, which is locking and stamping with a seal for the heart (the mind).

Because of this, the complete pause after سَمْعِهِمْ:

خَتَمَ اللّهُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهمْ وَعَلَى سَمْعِهِمْ وَعَلَى أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ

is preferred rather than continuing the recitation, because الخَتَمَ is for السمع and القلوب, with the و ‘and’ after it is for initiating a new statement, hence غِشَاوَةٌ has two damma (the grammatical indicator of the beginning part of a new sentence).

القلب is used metaphorically here to mean the mind, due to its similarity in importance to the body. In the language of the Arabs the heart is used metaphorically to mean the mind in more than one situation. The Qur’an was sent down in the language of the Arabs and this usage is in more than one verse. Allah talked of the mind by mentioning the heart in many verses. For example:

فَتَكُونَ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ يَعْقِلُونَ بِهَا

“and have they hearts wherewith to understand” [al-hajj, 22:46]

Comprehension with the hearing and heart (mind) is not limited to only one angle as the sight is. You hear matters from more than one angle and understand them from more than one side, yet you see with your two eyes what is in front of you, i.e. only one angle. So, الخَتَمَ was suitable for القلب and السمع to lock from more than one angle, while الغِشَاوَةٌ (the covering) was suitable for الأبصار (the sight) to lock from one angle. Therefore, الخَتَمَ is not used to describe the eyes at all in the book of Allah, nor in the narrations of Rasul Allah صلى الله عليه وسلم, nor does it exist in the language of anyone of the Arabs, as far as I know.

3. Allah سبحانه وتعالى repeated the word عَلَى “upon”

خَتَمَ اللّهُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهمْ وَعَلَى سَمْعِهِمْ وَعَلَى أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ

to emphasise the severity of الخَتَمَ, as though الخَتَمَ was completed in two places, القلب (the heart) and السمع (the hearing), which is stronger than الخَتَمَ in only one place. For example, the one who protects something by putting it into a locked container inside a locked house, is stronger protection than putting it into a locked container inside an unlocked house. It is the same in this verse. Repeating عَلَى necessitates noticing the meaning of the related action (خَتَمَ), as though it was mentioned twice (i.e. خَتَمَ اللّهُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهمْ وَعَلَى سَمْعِهِمْ). Therefore, they said about the sentence “مررتُ بزيد وعمرو I happened upon Zayd and Amr” that it is one occasion, whereas the sentence “مررتُ بزيد وبعمرو I happened upon Zayd and upon Amr” that they are two occasions, as though when you repeated the particle you said “مررتُ بزيد ومررتُ بعمرو I happened upon Zayd and I happened upon Amr.” The two occasions is stronger in meaning than just using the عطف joining together without repeating the genitive particle, due to what is in the عطف joining together of the meaning on one occasion or two.

4. Allah brought the words القلوب (hearts) and الأبصار (sight) in their plural forms, while He سبحانه وتعالى brought the word السمع (hearing) in the singular. The word السمع does not come in the whole of the Qur’an al-kareem except in the singular. Some said about that: “السمع is a verbal noun in origin: it is said سمعت الشيئ سمعا وسماعا and the verbal nouns do not come as plurals as they are the names of categories”, except that this is not precise, because “الاسماع” did come in the language of the Arabs, but it is rare and seldom heard.

The preferred opinion is that the differences between people’s thinking and minds in relation to matters, and also their differences in seeing things with the eyes, is more common than their differences in hearing these matters, so the hearts (minds) and sight were made plural, while the hearing was left singular.

Because of that, when العلم i.e. اليقين certainty is mentioned in another verse, such that العلم indicates the lack of differences, so, the hearing, sight and the heart all come in the singular:

وَلاَ تَقْفُ مَا لَيْسَ لَكَ بِهِ عِلْمٌ إِنَّ السَّمْعَ وَالْبَصَرَ وَالْفُؤَادَ كُلُّ أُولـئِكَ كَانَ عَنْهُ مَسْؤُولاً

“And follow not that of which you have no knowledge of. Verily! The hearing, and the sight, and the heart, about each of those you will be questioned.” [Al-Israa, 17:36]

The subject of the heart, hearing and sight

1. In the Qur’an al-kareem comes the mentioning of the hearts first, then the hearing and then the sight when the matter is linked to iman, as the mind is its tool.

خَتَمَ اللّهُ عَلَى قُلُوبِهمْ وَعَلَى سَمْعِهِمْ وَعَلَى أَبْصَارِهِمْ غِشَاوَةٌ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ عظِيمٌ

“Allah has set a seal on their hearts and on their hearings, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be a great torment.” [al-Baqarah, 2:7]

After

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَأَنْذَرْتَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تُنْذِرْهُمْ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ

“Verily, those who disbelieve, it is the same to them whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe.” [al-baqarah, 2:6]

ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّهُمُ اسْتَحَبُّوا الْحَيَاةَ الدُّنْيَا عَلَى الْآخِرَةِ وَأَنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الْكَافِرِينَ

أُولَٰئِكَ الَّذِينَ طَبَعَ اللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمْ وَسَمْعِهِمْ وَأَبْصَارِهِمْ ۖ وَأُولَٰئِكَ هُمُ الْغَافِلُونَ

“That is because they loved and preferred the life of this world over that of the Hereafter. And Allah guides not the people who disbelieve. They are those upon whose hearts, hearing and sight Allah has set a seal. And they are the heedless!” [an-Nahl, 16:107-108]

2. If the matter was about other than iman and was about following the warning and guidance, hearing was brought forward, because it is the direct tool for the transmission. Allah سبحانه وتعالى says:

أَفَرَأَيْتَ مَنِ اتَّخَذَ إِلَهَهُ هَوَاهُ وَأَضَلَّهُ اللَّهُ عَلَى عِلْمٍ وَخَتَمَ عَلَى سَمْعِهِ وَقَلْبِهِ وَجَعَلَ عَلَى بَصَرِهِ غِشَاوَةً فَمَن يَهْدِيهِ مِن بَعْدِ اللَّهِ أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ

“Have you seen him who takes his own lust as his god, and Allah knowingly, left him astray, and sealed his hearing and his heart, and put a cover on his sight. Who then will guide him after Allah? Will you not then remember?” [al-Jathiyah, 45:23]

It is transgression due to not heeding the warnings, therefore the end of the verse came with أَفَلَا تَذَكَّرُونَ, so it was suitable here to bring forward the hearing.

3. When Allah سبحانه وتعالى mentioned His favours for his servants, by creating them, He mentioned the hearing, the sight and the heart in order, which points to the order of creating these organs. He سبحانه وتعالى says:

وَاللّهُ أَخْرَجَكُم مِّن بُطُونِ أُمَّهَاتِكُمْ لاَ تَعْلَمُونَ شَيْئًا وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ الْسَّمْعَ وَالأَبْصَارَ وَالأَفْئِدَةَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ

“And Allah has brought you out from the wombs of your mothers while you know nothing. And He gave you hearing, sight, and hearts that you might give thanks.” [an-Nahl, 16:78]

وَهُوَ الَّذِي أَنشَأَ لَكُمُ السَّمْعَ وَالْأَبْصَارَ وَالْأَفْئِدَةَ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَشْكُرُونَ

“It is He, Who has created for you hearing, sight, and hearts. Little thanks you give.” [al-Mu'minoon, 23:78]

قُلْ هُوَ الَّذِي أَنشَأَكُمْ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ السَّمْعَ وَالْأَبْصَارَ وَالْأَفْئِدَةَ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَشْكُرُونَ

“Say it is He Who has created you, and endowed you with hearing, seeing, and hearts. Little thanks you give.” [al-Mulk, 67:23]

ثُمَّ سَوَّاهُ وَنَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِ وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ السَّمْعَ وَالْأَبْصَارَ وَالْأَفْئِدَةَ قَلِيلًا مَّا تَشْكُرُونَ

“Then He fashioned him in due proportion, and breathed into him the soul, and He gave you hearing, sight and hearts. Little is the thanks you give!” [Sajda, 32:9]

Source: khilafah

Indonesian Gina Puspita traded a career in aircraft engineering for a mission to preach Islam and help young women build happy marriages through good sex. The French-educated mother of three hosts religious programmes through the Obedient Wives Club which is based on the belief that a fulfilling sex life is the cure for “Western-style” social problems such as divorce and abuse.

“Wives must obey the husbands in all aspect of life, such as serving food and drinks, giving calm and support for the husband, as well as in sex relations,” Pusipita, who shares her spouse with three other women, told Reuters.

A Muslim group which espouses good sex as a foundation for healthy marriages and a strong society, the Obedient Wives Club is gaining converts in the world’s most populous Muslim country after setting up in Jordan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

Founded by Global Ikhwan, a Malaysian firm involved in businesses ranging from laundromats to pharmacies, the club was initially intended to help the company’s female staff to be good wives as well as productive employees. Global Ikhwan’s officials have been linked to the now-defunct Malaysia-based Al-Arqam religious sect which was banned by the government in 1994. Before the Obedient Wives Club, Global Ikhwan had earlier established the Polygamy Club which encourages polygamy among Muslims.

The Obedient Wives Club is open to women of all faiths but says its teachings are based on the edicts of Islam which require wives to submit to their husbands and meet their needs. “When men cannot get satisfaction at home, they will seek it elsewhere,” said Nurul, an Obedient Wives Club spokesperson. “When your wife is cool towards you because your wife is busy and has no time to attend to you whereas you need it that day, what are you going to do?”

Read the full story by Olivia Rondonuwu and Razak Ahmad here.

The woman, who has not been identified, is a Muslim, and “she was told that her headscarf, though worn based on a religious mandate, was not in compliance with the company’s ‘look policy,’” said those representing her in the lawsuit. She worked at Hollister Co., a subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch, in 2009 and 2010.

Some Muslim traditions require that women wear the headscarf, or hijab, when out in public.

Her case has been taken up by the Legal Aid Society of San Francisco – Employment Law Center, a group that works to defend the rights of the socially disadvantaged. Christopher Herrera, a spokesman for the group, said the case “came to us through the Council on American-Islamic Relations. They know that we work with employment issues and with discrimination issues regarding employment.”

The Legal Aid Society and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are filing the suit on Monday in San Francisco, after which a news conference will be held. The conference is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the legal group’s offices at 180 Montgomery Street, Suite 600, San Francisco.

CAIR describes itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization.”

According to a press release issued by both groups, “The plaintiff worked for Hollister Co., a brand of Abercrombie & Fitch, for several months in 2009-10 while wearing a hijab. In February 2010, she was terminated from her position as a stockroom employee after refusing to remove her scarf.”

Herrera said he could not comment further on the case until the lawsuit is filed Monday.

The suit is being filed in conjunction with a lawsuit already filed against Abercrombie & Fitch by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the group said.

Abercrombie & Fitch representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Source: http://millbrae.patch.com/articles/san-mateo-woman-store-fired-me-for-wearing-headscarf-2

Since she first received her learner licence in 1998 at the age of 33, she has twice had her provisional licence suspended for totting up too many demerit points and twice had her licence suspended for non payment of fines.

The State Debt Recovery Office had to recover the fines. Both of those two suspensions for non payment of fines were later lifted.

It is not known how many times she was physically stopped by police and whether she had her face covered by a burqa or a niqab on those occasions.

A number of times she was caught on camera speeding and disobeying traffic lights.

After being stopped by NSW police last year for not displaying her P-plates, Ms Matthews was ordered to pay $276 in fines and court costs.

She claimed on Channel Seven and allegedly in a statutory declaration to Campbelltown police that the officer who stopped her had attempted to tear the burqa off her face, a claim that was proven untrue by the police patrol car video camera.

A magistrate last year found her guilty of making a deliberately false statement and sentenced her to jail for six months. Ms Matthews appealed, saying there was no proof she was the person in the burqa making the atatement and Judge Clive Jeffreys in the District Court yesterday upheld her appeal.

The news comes as women wearing a burqa may be ordered to remove it to identify themselves in the wake of the Carnita Matthews case.

Police Minister Mike Gallacher has revealed that police do not currently have the legal power to require women to show their face if the women refuse on religious or cultural grounds.

He said he wanted the law tightened up.

“Police powers in relation to face coverings are not clear,” Mr Gallacher said.

“It’s time to address that.”

He said he had spoken to rank and file police who wanted the situation clarified.

Any decision on whether to appeal the controversial judgment by Judge Clive Jeffreys would not be made until after the judge hands down the reason for his decision which is expected tomorrow.

The government is also considering passing new laws requiring people who make complaints against police, or in the case of witnesses giving evidence, to have to provide at least one fingerprint and their signature.

This follows the finding by the judge that he could not be certain that it was Ms Matthews who made the statutory declaration complaining about the officer who stopped her car because the person who handed the document in to the police station wore a burqa.

Mr Gallacher said he was waiting until Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione returned next week to discuss exactly what needed to be done.

He said he did not expect this to inflame community anger about women wearing full face coverings.

He said he had been told that there was nothing in Muslim culture or religion that stopped women from identifiying themselves in certain circumstances.

Yesterday, Ms Matthews avoided jail because her identity could not be proven.

Ms Matthews, 47, from Woodbine, in Sydney’s southwest, had been sentenced to six months in jail for making a deliberately false statement that a policeman tried to forcibly remove her burqa because he was a racist.

But judge Clive Jeffreys said yesterday he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was Mrs Matthews who made the racism accusation because the person who complained to police was wearing a burqa at the time.

The absurdity of the law is that, to reach the level of proof of identity to make the case, Mrs Matthews would have been required to identify herself by lifting her burqa at the police station – what started the uproar in the first place.

More than a dozen Muslim supporters linked arms and began chanting “Allah Akbar” as they stormed out of Downing Centre Court with Mrs Matthews concealed behind them.

Tempers rose and they began jostling with police after several members of the group attacked cameramen.

It marked a stark difference from their behaviour minutes earlier, when they had quietly assembled outside the lifts for prayer shortly after the judge’s decision.

Mrs Matthew’s lawyer Stephen Hopper defended their actions saying: “They are obviously happy with the result and are expressing it in a way that is culturally appropriate to them.”

Judge Jeffreys said yesterday that even if Mrs Matthews had made the complaint, he could not be sure she knew it was a “false” statement.

“I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she made the complaint,” he said.

“Even if I was satisfied that she made the complaint, I am not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that it was knowingly false.”

Mrs Matthews made the claim in her court appearance last year, saying police could not prove it was her behind the burqa when the complaint was handed in to police. The local magistrate rejected it.

The case had lit up the religious debate when a magistrate found Mrs Matthews had deliberately made false complaints that Sergeant Paul Kearney was racist and had attempted to tear her burqa off her face when she declined to remove it on request.

She was pulled over for a random breath test last June, and accused Sgt Kearney of racism only after he booked her for failing to properly display her P-plates.

The incident was captured on a patrol car video camera and helped clear Sgt Kearney, prompting calls for all police cars to carry in-built cameras to avoid false claims.

“I’ve got my P-plates on my car … there was nothing wrong with how they were displayed,” Mrs Matthews says on the video.

“You look at me and see me wearing this and you couldn’t handle it. All cops are racist.”

She then threatens, “100 per cent”, that she will take the matter to court and fight the charge.

France was the first country in Europe to implement a full ban on covering up faces in public.

France’s burqa ban descended into farce when the first women to be summoned before a European court for illegally wearing the garments were refused entry, because they would not remove their face coverings.

Source: heraldsun.com.au

The vacation judge bench of Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Justice G.P. Mittal said: “We are not inclined to issue notice even in view of the arguments made by the petitioner counsel citing apex court judgment. And especially when the child is in custody of the mother for the last over two years, it will not be allowed.”

The bench also said: “Writ petition is accordingly dismissed with liberty to the petitioner to approach for a competent authority to adjudicate custody matters.”

The court ruling came on a petition of habeas corpus filed by Shahid Khan, who was seeking production of his son from custody of his former wife Anjum Pasha and her brother and mother.

“The mother has no right to the custody of the minor and the petitioner being entitled in law to custody is entitled to enforce the said right through this petition for habeas corpus,” said Khan in petition.

The court rejected Khan’s plea. However, it enquired from the petitioner’s counsel as to how this petition was maintainable since a habeas corpus petition cannot be a substitute for a proceeding seeking guardianship of the minor child.

“We are unable to agree and are unwilling to entertain this habeas corpus petition to adjudicate competing claims of the petitioner as father and respondent as mother to the custody of the minor son and which adjudication shall necessarily entail questions of suitability and best interest of minor,” said the bench in its order given on June 15.

Citing an example from the Supreme Court in Gohar Begum (supra) case which dealt with a case where the respondent had no legal right to custody, the bench said: “Such is not the position here”.

Source: www.ummid.com

Possible Al-Qaida Hit List Targets Specific Americans NBC News hat tip Van

An al-Qaida-linked website has posted a potential hit list of targets that include names and photos of several U.S. officials and business leaders, calling for terrorists to target these Americans in their own homes, NBC New York has learned.

The FBI has sent out a new intelligence bulletin to law enforcement agencies, warning that this new web-based threat, while not a specific plot, is very detailed. The bulletin said the list includes leaders “in government, industry and media.”

The FBI has notified those individuals who are named.

NBC New York will not identify them or their companies. The list includes Wall Street firms, political leaders, leaders with think tanks and contractors who do business with the military.

The websites contain 40 specific names, 26 of them with photos attached, and they call for posting home addresses. One jihadist called for sending package bombs to any listed address as just one possibility.

Source: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2011/06/leading-islamic-groups-hit-list-targets-specific-americans.html

In a statement yesterday, Bank Negara said the Minister of Finance had granted approval to Elaf Bank.

It said Elaf Bank was allowed to conduct a wide array of Islamic banking business in international currencies other than Malaysian ringgit.

“Elaf Bank’s presence will further strengthen the economic and financial linkages between Malaysia and Bahrain and contribute further to the development of the Islamic financial system in Malaysia,” the central bank said.

Last October, Elaf Bank chief executive Jamil El Jaroudi was quoted at saying that it had applied for a Malaysian Islamic banking licence after securing six financing deals worth about US$1.4bil in the country and Indonesia.

He said the licence would enable Elaf to execute the deals and conduct other dollar-denominated Islamic banking business.

“We have a couple of mandates here in Malaysia and in Indonesia which convinced us more and more that we would like to be in South-East Asia.”

Jamil said US$1.2bil of the deals Elaf had been mandated for were in Malaysia and US$200mil in Indonesia.

“Indonesia is a huge market which is not very much tapped yet from the Islamic point of view and we believe the potential is fantastic there,” he said.

“However we would be doing that most probably through Malaysia.”

Elaf Bank has announced the opening of its “first branch office” to be located in Kuala Lumpur on its corporate website.

“This branch office will be the centre of operations for the bank in South-East Asia, further extending the activities of the main branch in Bahrain, and giving Elaf Bank a competitive edge in both strategic markets,” Elaf Bank said.

It said the opening of the branch office here was yet another step towards achieving the bank’s vision to create “virtual corridors” among major Islamic finance hubs.

“Malaysia is viewed as an exemplary Islamic finance market, and has achieved the status of being recognised as the centre for Islamic finance in South-East Asia.

“With this strategic move, Elaf Bank is embarking on a well defined growth path harmonious with its intent of broadening the opportunities and growing the geographical scope and reach of Islamic finance to benefit both the Middle East and South-East Asia regions, and beyond,” Elaf Bank said.

In a separate statement, Elaf Bank said yesterday it planned to start its branch office “immediately” now that it had fulfilled the formalities required for obtaining the license.

Jamil said Elaf Bank was developing its business through two hubs covering the Gulf Cooperation Council, Middle East and North Africa region, and the South-East Asia region, as a two-way business corridor.

“Being a wholesale Islamic bank headquartered in Bahrain, the logical next step would be to open our first international branch office in the capital of Islamic finance in Malaysia.

“This will help us operate more efficiently and closely to meet the needs of our cross-regional clients, and be able to execute deals that will contribute to the sustainable growth of the Islamic finance industry in both strategic markets,” he said.

Elaf Bank is a closed shareholding company incorporated in Bahrain. It operates as an Islamic wholesale (investment) bank with a paid-up capital of US$200mil.

It provides the full spectrum of wholesale Islamic banking and it is also involved in the development of the sukuk secondary market where it acts as a market maker.

Source: thestar.com.my

Police spokesman Olusola Amore said Islamist group Boko Haram was suspected of being behind the attack.

The blast in the car park of the police base destroyed many vehicles and a large plume of smoke could be seen rising from the scene.

A Red Cross spokesman told the BBC that another four bodies had been recovered.

“Six to be precise. Six bodies from the explosion,” Nigerian Red Cross official Taiye Olaniyi told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme, adding that many of them had been “very badly mutilated”.

Seven other people were wounded in the explosion, five of whom were being treated in hospital, the Red Cross said.

The BBC’s Jonah Fisher in Lagos says that, for the Nigerian authorities, the attack is an embarrassing strike at the very heart of their security establishment.

In the last few weeks, Boko Haram, which usually operates in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri, has been stepping up its attacks on security targets.

The group said it was behind a series of bombings in the capital that took place hours after President Goodluck Jonathan’s inauguration last month.

On Tuesday, Nigeria’s police chief promised to decisively deal with the group by sending more troops and equipment to the north, declaring they would be finished within a few months.

‘Windows shaking’

“Definitely we are suspecting a group that goes by the name Boko Haram who have been issuing threats upon threats for which the police are rising up to that challenge,” AFP news agency quotes Mr Amore as telling reporters after the blast.

He said the attack on the car park of the police headquarters happened at about 1000 GMT leading “to the death of the suicide bomber and a police traffic warden”.

The police spokesman said a Mercedes packed with explosives had joined a police convoy that included the inspector general of police.

When the vehicles reached police headquarters the car with the bomb was diverted into an adjacent car park.

It then exploded. It is still not clear whether the driver wanted to kill himself, our reporter says.

Residents say the explosion was heard across the city.

“My windows were shaking and I heard the loud noise. I saw smoke coming up,” Reuters news agency quotes one witness as telling a local television station.

A bus commuter who saw the blast told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme: “All of a sudden there was this loud explosion. Everybody was scared and people began to run around.”

He said police and Red Cross officials had rushed to the scene, and had moved people away from the area.

The police said 33 cars had been damaged beyond repair and 40 more had been partially damaged by the explosion.

The BBC’s Chris Ewokor at the scene said many of the cars were burnt beyond recognition.

The Boko Haram sect accuses Nigeria’s government of being corrupted by Western ideas and wants to overthrow the state and impose Islamic law on the country.

It has killed dozens of people, mostly shot by gunmen riding motorbikes, in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno state.

Last year, officials blamed two explosions in Abuja during celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of Nigeria’s independence, on militants from the oil-rich Niger Delta around Port Harcourt.

The Iranian women’s football team were banned from playing, moments before an Olympic qualifier against Jordan, because of their strip. Photograph: Ali Jarekji/Reuters

Once it became publicly known that a Muslim child was growing up in a Hindu family, Muslim groups asked the family to hand over the child to them. Papalal refused and asked how it could be a better option for the child to go to an orphanage. Muslim leaders intervened and relented, saying if the child is brought up as a Muslim, she can grow up in a Hindu family.

So Papalal agreed not to make the child wear a ‘bindi’ (a hindu religious symbol) and she would not be brought up as a Hindu. But their small neighbourhood in Chudibazaar area of Begum Bazaar objected to the ‘Muslim’ child growing up in a Hindu family and locality. Papalal went to the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC). The SHRC ordered that the police must ensure the safety of the child and family.

After being ostracized by other families, Papalal’s own brother decided to step in. It developed into a war of words and a physical fight between the brothers. On Thursday, he filed several police cases against Papalal including one that accuses him of an attempt to outrage modesty of his sister-in-law.

“My wife is nine months pregnant,” Papalal said on Thursday. “What crime have I committed? Just of giving shelter to a Muslim girl…they will face the curse of this young child…is there no justice in this world?”

However, Papalal’s mother said her elder son and daughter-in-law have put false cases under pressure on them because they do not want the girl to stay.

Papalal’s brother also admitted that there was tremendous social pressure on the family over the girl and that is why the two brothers ended up fighting with each other.

Papalal was sent to jail even as local authorities agreed that Sonia belongs with this family.
“We found the couple fit and we are giving legal custody for three months pending some inquiries to declare the child free for adoption,” said Isidore Phillips who heads the local Child Welfare Committee.

Following his arrest, a desperate wife pleaded for help. Speaking to NDTV, Jayshree said she is willing to die but will not give up on the child. “Let them do anything, today they have put my husband behind bars, tomorrow they might kill me, we are ready to die but we will never leave this girl,” she said.

“I am very happy that they have given us custody of the child…but look at how they are harassing us with police cases,” Jayshree added.

Civil activists in the city are now visiting the neighbourhood in an attempt to educate families there into supporting Papalal.

Source: ndtv.com

“Only Mohamed Afifi and Osama Yassin represent the MB in the coordination committee for the protection of the revolution and no one is representing it in the YRC,” said Mahmoud Hussein, Secretary General of the MB, according to a press release.

Meanwhile the MB youth do not plan to comply with this statement. “We will continue both our role in the YRC and as MB members,” Mohamed El-Qasas, member of the MB youth and member of the YRC told Ahram Online.

The MB youth declare that their participation in the “Second Rage Friday” doesn’t conflict with the MB’s refusal to participate.  “We participated in ‘Political Corruption Friday’ which is what the YRC called it,” El-Qasas told Ahram Online.

The YRC called May 27 Political Corruption Friday and not Second Day of Rage because they had different demands. “We did not call for a constitution before the parliamentary elections or a presidential council or a sit-in,” el-Qasas said. They were calling only for trials of corrupt figures of the old regime.

The coordination between the MB youth and the YRC began on the first day of the Egyptian revolution, January 25 and has continued since then. “The decisions of the MB don’t reflect on us and I think the MB did that to eliminate the role of the YRC,” Shady Ghazaly Harb, a member of the YRC told Ahram Online.

Moreover, the Ikhwan Online editor, Abdel Gelil el-Sharnouby resigned today in protest over the MB’s official statement released on the Second Day of Rage.

The MB refused to take part in the Second Day of Rage and released a statement on 27 May that said: “The Muslim Brotherhood group is very worried about Friday protests and we ask to whom this anger is directed now?”

The statement said the group sees these protests as either a revolution against the majority of the Egyptian people or a dispute between the Egyptian people and the military represented by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces. They asked Egyptian people to stop this.

Interestingly, around 100,000 protesters were at Tahrir Square on the Second Day of Rage, raising questions about the actual weight of the MB among Egyptians.

KINGSTON, Jamaica – U.S. diplomats have expressed concern that an Islamic cleric convicted of whipping up racial hatred among Muslim converts in Britain might do the same thing in his homeland of Jamaica, according to a leaked cable from the island’s U.S. Embassy.

The dispatch, dated February 2010, warns that that Jamaica could be fertile ground for jihadists because of its underground drug economy, marginalized youth, insufficient security and gang networks in U.S. and British prisons, along with thousands of American tourists.

It says Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, who was deported back to Jamaica in January 2010, could be a potential catalyst, and it noted that several Jamaican-born men have been involved in terrorism over the last decade.

Another memo says an associate of el-Faisal was suspected of involvement in a previously unreported terror plot in Montego Bay, a tourist center near where el-Faisal now lives. A second associate was allegedly suspected of threats against a cruise ship in nearby Ocho Rios. No details of the alleged schemes were provided in the cables and both U.S. and Jamaican officials declined to comment on them.

U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials have expressed concern in the past that Middle Eastern terror groups might forge alliances with drug traffickers or take advantage general lawlessness in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The January 2010 return of “extremist Jamaican-born cleric Sheikh el-Faisal raises serious concerns regarding the propensity for Islamist extremism in the Caribbean at the hands of Jamaican born nationals,” said the secret cable, apparently from Isiah L. Parnell, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.

“Given the right motivation, it is conceivable that Jamaica’s disaffected youth could be swayed towards organized crime of a different nature through the teachings of radical Islam,” said the dispatch dated February 25, 2010.

The cable is one of the quarter million confidential American diplomatic dispatches first obtained by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and separately obtained by The Associated Press.

There is no hard evidence that Jamaica has a burgeoning problem with extremism, though some of the embassy dispatches list suspected associates of el-Faisal, several labeled as radical Muslims and believed to be involved in drug and human trafficking. One is a 31-year-old Jamaican suspected of involvement in a Montego Bay bomb plot and another man suspected of threats against a cruise ship.

Other Jamaicans involved in terrorism include Germaine Lindsay, one of the four men behind the 2005 suicide bomb attacks on London’s subways, and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted in the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.

Jamaican police say they are monitoring el-Faisal but note that he has no criminal record in the country.

“To the extent that he was living abroad and was convicted of offenses, we do have concerns. But he is a Jamaican and we had to take him back,” said Deputy Police Chief Glenmore Hinds.

One of the leaked U.S. cables said Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security has established a special unit to collect information on Islamic extremism, but it voiced concern about whether the unit would be able to “react rapidly to actionable intelligence and to effectively prosecute an anti-terrorism case in the courts.”

El-Faisal, who is known as “al-Jamaikee,” or “the Jamaican” in Islamist circles, has been living in a rural town outside the northern city of Montego Bay, not far from where he grew up. He has several children.

He declined through a spokesman repeated requests for an interview with the AP.

Mustafa Muhammad, president of the Islamic Council, said el-Faisal’s angry rhetoric and conspiracy theories may attract some young and disenfranchised people, but he doubted it would have much traction among the Jamaica’s roughly 5,000 Muslims.

“Faisal has always been very eloquent and the moment he speaks he captures your attention,” Muhammad said in the library of a whitewashed concrete mosque in Kingston. “That is why it’s so sad, so very sad, about what he has come to believe.”

Jamaica’s Islamic Council has banned el-Faisal from preaching in the country’s mosques because he of his past. He now preaches in informal prayer sessions and conferences.

“He told me that he didn’t think he had ever done anything wrong,” Muhammad said. “That’s a concern to me.”

Born Trevor Forrest in 1963, he was raised in the rolling hills of northern Jamaica. His parents belonged to the Salvation Army, the Christian evangelical group. He converted to Islam after being introduced to the faith by a school teacher at about 16, Muhammad said.

Shortly after his conversion, el-Faisal’s global migrations began. In the early 1980s, he traveled to Trinidad for a Saudi-Arabian-sponsored course in Islamic and Arabic studies. He then went to Guyana for similar studies, according to terrorism researchers.

El-Faisal, now a compactly built 47-year-old man with receding hair, was deported to Jamaica for the second time last year after being arrested in Kenya, where he reportedly encouraged young men to join an extremist Islamic group in Somalia.

Before that, he preached in a London mosque attended by convicted terrorists and was imprisoned in Britain for nearly four and a half years for inciting murder and stirring racial hatred with sermons titled “No peace with the Jews” and “Them versus Us.” In one recorded sermon, he told followers that “the way forward is the bullet.” On another, he said jihadists should use “chemical weapons to exterminate the unbelievers.”

“Faisal’s popularity remains strong with online jihadist supporters, particularly American jihadist groups. His sermons are widely published across the Internet,” said Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst who is now an independent terrorism researcher.

Some experts in militant Islam said his isolation in Jamaica may create a mystique that could draw alienated people into his circle.

“There is a danger that Abdullah Faisal will radicalize individuals in Jamaica, just as he has previously done in the U.K. and elsewhere. He is a powerful, charismatic speaker who is easily capable of presenting Islamist extremism as a rational choice,” said James Brandon of the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think tank.

Source: Yahoo News

According to conservative cleric Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, open kitchens don’t allow homeowners to be protected from the eyes of their guests.

“Women should be allowed to do their work while they have guests without being watched by others,” Amoli was quoted as saying in a meeting in the holy city of Qom, where he is based.

Every now and then, Iran’s clerics and officials come up with new things they designate as “un-Islamic.”

There are obvious un-Islamic items and behaviors, such as the consumption of alcohol, which is banned in Islam. But other things, such as open kitchens, may strike some as more odd, or at least out of touch.

Owning dogs is considered un-Islamic, even though some Iranians own them. Some people also wear tight or colorful clothes and makeup in public, all of which are officially no-no’s. So are trendy hairstyles, but that doesn’t stop some young men from sporting them.

Other actions and activities that have been deemed un-Islamic — with varying degrees of correspondence to what actual people do — include Western music, ties, the mingling of individuals of opposite sexes, women entering sports stadiums to watch soccer games, and advertising for banks.

The list is long.

In practice, the “un-Islamic” designation is often used to limit personal freedoms and to push state policies.

In the past two years, officials have also targeted social sciences for allegedly being un-Islamic. The campaign was said to be part of an ongoing state crackdown on universities, which had turned into centers of antigovernment protests.

Hard-line cleric Mebah Yazdi said last year that social sciences are not just un-Islamic, but they’re against Islam. He argued that social-science graduates, who he said deal with matters such as freedom and human rights, cannot be expected to have a deep belief in Islamic principles.

The “un-Islamic” designation can also be used in political disputes.

After he was sacked last year, former Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki accused President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of un-Islamic behavior.

“Sacking a minister while [he is] on a mission is un-Islamic, undiplomatic, offensive, and outside the practices of politics,” Mottaki was quoted as saying.

Source: rferl.org

The leadership of Sofia’s mosque have said that the temple is now too small to hold the capital’s Muslim community during Friday prayers and that the authorities should authorise construction of a second mosque.

In order to avoid future tension with other residents, and to prevent rallies such as that staged by Ataka members on May 20, they have also vowed to “reconsider” their policy of allowing worshippers to pray outside, hoping to reduce obstruction to pedestrians during prayer time.

They have also promised to reduce the sound on loudspeakers to the “bare minimum” so that the noise does not disturb the surrounding area.

“We were given assurances by the Sofia municipality that this Friday (May 27) we would be allowed to carry on with our prayer as we have done in the past,” said Hyussein Hafuzov, the Muslim general secretary in Bulgaria, cited by Dnevnik daily.

“Every Friday, we get between 1200 and 1500 worshipers, most of them young people, and they are often forced to go out into the courtyard or the pavement because there is insufficient room in the mosque to accommodate them all,” he added.

There were no reported disturbances during the May 27 prayer, although there had been fears that another rally might be staged in protest.

The Muslim leadership also appealed to other Muslims to be calm and not be provoked by the May 20 incident, saying that “there was no clash between Muslims and Ataka last week per se; some people simply defended themselves and the mosque”.

Sofia mayor Yordanka Fandukova has said that measures have been drawn and presented to the Muslim leadership, stipulating that amendments have to be made so that other people are not disturbed on prayer days and that “people should be aware of the laws”. She added that “Islam is a registered religion in the country and is protected by Bulgarian law”.

Tensions in the community resurfaced again last week when three Ataka supporters were arrested and one of the party’s MPs, Denitsa Gadzheva, was injured in the incident at the Banya Bashi mosque, which followed a protest by Ataka against the use of loudspeakers to broadcast the call to prayer on Friday May 20.

This was the latest in a series of protests which started some years ago against the loudspeakers, but Ataka has revived its campaign in the run-up to Bulgaria’s autumn 2011 municipal and presidential elections, in which Siderov has said he will stand as a presidential candidate.

Scuffles broke out after one of the Ataka protesters tried to steer a column towards Muslims taking part in Friday prayers.

Earlier on May 27, the Bulgarian Parliament had condemned the actions of Volen Siderov and members of his ultra-nationalist Ataka party outside the Sofia mosque.

MPs from all parties present in the parliamentary sitting, with the exception of Ataka MPs who abstained, voted in favour of the declaration condemning Ataka’s actions, calling it a “threat to national security”.

Siderov himself said that “an internal investigation” is currently underway to determine who torched carpets outside the mosque, as Ataka members “had nothing to do with this”.

“I never advocated physical violence or the destruction of property,” Siderov said, quoted by Dnevnik.

Cuma Atabay, the chief of Turkey’s Historical Foundations, lists the recent thefts of Islamic art. Among them are carpets hundreds of years old and even a mosque door dating back to the 14th century.

Atabay is speaking at an international meeting in Istanbul aimed at combating the growing problem of Islamic art theft.

Listening is William Robinson, director of the Islamic and Carpet Departments of the London-based auction house, Christies. He says with the Gulf States entering the market, prices for Islamic art have gone through the roof.

“The overall turnover in the market has risen hugely. I would take it back to 1997, which is when Qatar entered the market. And since then, the overall trend has been very strongly upward, particularly in the last two or three years. I thinking it could be even 30 or 40 percent a year increase, which is huge,” said Robinson.

Stolen artifacts

Such high prices are fueling an increasing market in stolen artifacts, many of which end up in Istanbul’s famous and historic Grand Bazaar.

For centuries, the bazaar, with its maze of narrow streets and thousands of shops, has been the place to buy the finest jewelry and carpets and much, much more. But, says Police Chief Ismail Sahin, it also remains a center for illegal activity as well. He heads the city’s efforts against the theft and smuggling of Islamic art, most of which he says is destined for Europe.

Sahin says typically, gangs of three or four people steal items from museums or mosques and take them to the Grand Bazaar where there are dealers who have contacts in Europe. He says it is very difficult for to stop because most mosques and even some museums do not have inventories or adequate protection.

Sahin says Istanbul is an international transport hub for the West and Middle East.  Thus, he says, the city is a center not only for Turkish stolen artifacts but also for items coming from strife-ridden areas across the Middle East.

Information key to combating crime

Joachim Gierlich is a former curator at the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar. He says information is the key to combating the growing trade in illegal artifacts.

“I believe one only can win the fight if one uses modern technologies, having a very good and complete documentation to know what actually is in the museums and what is in the foundations and so on, and make this accessible,” he said.

Powerful tool

William Robinson of Christies agrees. He says the appearance of auction catalogues on the Internet is proving to be a powerful tool in curtailing the sale of stolen artifacts.

“Oh it’s a very serious issue because it’s completely against our interests for illegal things to appear on the market, let alone with us.  Because it knocks the whole market. But if we are not aware of theft we are in a much more difficult position. We want owners to have confidence that something they buy from us is not going to be claimed in 30 years,” said Robinson.

Robinson draws a parallel with the 1990′s, when the growing public awareness finally brought an end to the sale of art taken by the Nazis during World War Two. The battle against this latest illegal trade in Islamic art is expected to be no less intense, especially as the market becomes more lucrative.

Source: voanews.com

The ads, paid for by an Islamic group called MyPeace, will carry slogans such as ”Jesus: a prophet of Islam”, ”Holy Quran: the final testament” and ”Muhammad: mercy to mankind”.

A phone number urges people to call to receive a free Koran and other Islamic literature. 

The organiser of MyPeace, Diaa Mohamed, said the campaign was intended to educate non-Muslims about Islam. He said Jesus was a prophet of Islam, who was to come before Muhammad. ”The only difference is we say he was a prophet of God, and they say he is God,” Mr Mohamed said. ”Is it thought-provoking? Yes, it is. We want to raise awareness that Islam believes in Jesus Christ,” he said.

Mr Mohamed said he hoped the billboards would encourage Christians and Muslims to find common ground. They were not intended to downgrade the significance of Jesus. ”We embrace him and say that he was one of the mightiest prophets of God.”

MyPeace plans to extend the campaign, funded by private donations, to television.

The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Rob Forsyth, said it was ”complete nonsense” to say Jesus was a prophet of Islam. ”Jesus was not the prophet of a religion that came into being 600 years later.”

But the billboard was not offensive, he said. ”They’ve got a perfect right to say it, and I would defend their right to say it [but] … you couldn’t run a Christian billboard in Saudi Arabia.”

The bishop said he would pay for billboards to counter those of MyPeace if he could afford it, and ”maybe the atheists should run their billboards as well”.

A spokesman for the Australian Islamic Mission, Siddiq Buckley, said the campaign would increase awareness of the positive facts of Islam. ”I would be looking at this as a good opportunity to explain what we mean.”

Much has been made of the link between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Shia of Bahrain. Both the ruling regime in Bahrain and the Saudi invading force – leading the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to keep the ruling elite in power – accuse the Islamic Republic of fomenting revolt in the tiny but strategically significant Bahrain.

“The Sunni royal family in Saudi Arabia,” according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, “fears the growing influence of Shiite Iran in the Middle East, and is helping Bahrain’s Sunni rulers retain power.” The clerical rulers of the Islamic Republic deny any involvement. The same Telegraph report indicates that “the [UK] Ministry of Defence has now admitted that members of the Saudi Arabian National Guard sent into Bahrain may have received military training from the British Armed Forces in Saudi Arabia”.

In the crossfire between these charges – the Bahraini ruling regime accusing the Islamic Republic of interference and support for the democratic uprising in their country, while the British army is in fact training the Saudis to go and crush that very uprising, Bahraini democracy activists are being brutally suppressed.  “After severely curbing news coverage of its crackdown on opposition groups by foreign reporters,” reported Roy Gutman of the Miami Herald from Dubai, on 25 May 2011. “Bahraini authorities have begun an assault on local journalists working for international news agencies – with arrests, beatings and, apparently in one instance, electric shock.”

Clearing through all the hypocrisies and duplicities that cloud the vision, the influence of the Islamic Republic in Bahrain is not what the ruling regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and their supporters in London and Washington DC, wish you to believe: That the ruling clergy in Iran is supporting the democratic uprising in Bahrain. That would be very odd indeed. Why would the Islamic Republic help a democratic uprising in Bahrain, while viciously suppressing one of their own? Just because the protestors in Bahrain happy to be Shia? That would be the bizarrest thing ever.

All these protestations notwithstanding, the Islamic Republic and Bahrain are in fact identical – not just in the majority of their population being Shia but in being ruled by two identically brutal and intolerant dictatorships. The Islamic Republic is frightened out of its wits by the Arab Spring, especially on its own back door, in Bahrain: for the more this Spring blooms and flowers the more it exposes the criminal atrocities of the Islamic Republic over the past thirty years, including, most recently, its own homegrown Green Movement – which one might in fact consider an early blooming of the Arab Spring.

Hijacking revolution

The Arab Spring is the return of the Islamic Republic’s repressed; the exposing of the universal euphoria more than thirty years ago in the magnificent Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979 – which the militant clergy hijacked and turned into a vindictive theocracy. So, yes the Islamic Republic does indeed have a direct influence in Bahrain – but not on the massive democratic uprising in the tiny archipelago, home of the US Fifth Fleet. It is this geo-strategic military asset which makes “the great advocate of democracy” turn a blind eye to the murderous regime in Bahrain, while the UK is in fact training the Saudi military how to crack down on the uprising. The influence of the Islamic Republic in Bahrain is on the ruling regime: teaching it, by example, how viciously to quell a democratic revolt.

By way of yet another distraction, by which stratagem it has managed to stay in power over the past thirty years, the custodians of the sacred terror in the Islamic Republic had dispatched two ships, as reported by Al Jazeera, to Bahrain in order to put up a show of solidarity with the brutalised people of Bahrain. But the assumption that this is a sign of support for the Bahraini Shia is completely flawed. The Islamic Republic mercilessly represses its own Shia population – why would it care for the Shia population of another country?

In a revealing piece in The Independent, Patrick Cockburn reported the atrocities that the ruling regime in Bahrain is committing to murder its own citizens, identifying the victims as Shia. The government says the Shia were working on behalf of the Islamic Republic, dissociating their democratic will from the rest of the Arab uprising.

“The repression,” Patrick Cockburn reports, “is across the board. Sometimes the masked security men who raid Shia villages at night also bulldoze Shia mosques and religious meeting places. At least 27 of these have so far been wrecked or destroyed, while anti-Shia and pro-government graffiti is often sprayed on any walls that survive.” He further reports, “Nurses and doctors in a health system largely run by Shias have been beaten and arrested for treating protesters. Teachers and students are being detained. Some 1,000 professional people have been sacked and have lost their pensions. The one opposition newspaper has been closed. Bahraini students who joined protests abroad have had their funding withdrawn.”

Learning from Iran

These and other atrocities committed by the ruling regime in Bahrain are straight out of the handbook of the Islamic Republic, crushing its own overwhelmingly Shia opposition, its own citizens – men and women, young and old, religious or not. Are Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, two of the principal founders of the Islamic Republic and now the leaders of the Green Movement – now incommunicado and under house arrest – not Shia? Were Neda Agha Sultan, Sohrab A’rabi, Amir Javadifar and scores of other innocent demonstrators, cold-bloodedly murdered by the security forces of the Islamic Republic, not Shia?

Young men and women, peacefully exercising their constitutional rights under the very constitution of the Islamic Republic, in peaceful demonstrations, have been arbitrarily arrested, tortured, and murdered while in custody. They were all Shia. All major human rights organisations have widely reported systematic torture of (Shia – if that is how we are to identify the citizens of a republic) protestors in the dungeons of the Islamic Republic. Mahdi Karroubi, one of the revolutionary founders of the Islamic Republic and a former Speaker of the Parliament, has reported of the widespread rape of young Shia men and women in the same torture chambers.

Why would the Islamic Republic, doing this to its own Shia citizens, care more about the Shia population of Bahrain? The ruling regime in the Islamic Republic is indeed a role model for the rulers of Bahrain and all other repressive regimes as to how brutally to repress a democratic uprising – not how to launch them.

The democratic uprising in Bahrain is integral to the rest of Arab Spring – and the Arab Spring is identical in its aspirations and demands to the Green Movement in Iran. Neither a Sunni-Shia divide in Bahrain nor a Muslim-Christian divide in Egypt mars these dramatic unfolding in the Arab world and beyond. From identical economic malaise, social anomie, political stalemates, and cultural alienation, these social uprisings extend into the two continents – Asia and Africa, and now even into Europe, as perfectly evident from Greece to Spain. These uprisings have nothing to do with the Sunni-Shia, Christian-Muslim, religious-secular divides.

The ‘Shia factor’

It is imperative to remember how was this supposition of the Shia factor entered in the current geopolitics of the region. It was soon after the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, when tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians were murdered, and millions became refugees in and out of their own homeland – indeed the wholesale destruction of the entire infrastructure of a sovereign nation-state – that such some US military strategists began to distract attention from the principal culprit responsible for those atrocities and introduced the idea of the Sunni-Shia conflict as the principal problem. These military strategists, employed by the US army, began to offer the pernicious idea that much of the violence in Iraq had to do with the Sunni-Shia divide, and that it was the sign of an emerging geopolitics spearheaded by the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia for regional dominance. It was also at this time that the King Abdullah II of Jordan spoke of a “Shia Crescent” as a threat to the stability of the region.

Whether initiated by US military strategists to distract attention from the inflicted pain on the national sovereignty of Iraq and the Iraqis, or imagined by historically outdated Arab rulers afraid of their own people, the fact is that as perfectly evident from one end of the Arab world to another, Shias or Sunni, Muslim or Christian, religious or not, Asians or Africans – or now even Europeans – have now all revolted against identical sets of economically dysfunctional and politically alienating circumstances. People in Spain are now coming out and calling for their own Tahrir Square. Are they also Shia? Iran and Iraq – two Shia nations – were at each other’s throat for eight bloody years (1980-1988), killing hundreds of thousands between them. The Sunni-Shia factor, the favorite schism of US military strategists and the ruling regimes in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is a red herring.

Bahrain exposes two identical hypocrisies of the United States and the Islamic Republic. The US ignores the atrocities in Bahrain and the British advisors train the Saudi military to suppress the uprising – while they go to war in Libya; at the same time, the Islamic Republic pretends that it cares for the Shia of Bahrain, while brutalising its own Shia population, and dismisses the Syrian uprising as a plot by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. The fact, staring the whole world in the eyes, is that Iranians, Bahrainis, Syrians, Libyans, and the rest of the region are identical in their transnational uprisings against identically brutal and corrupt powers.

The abuse of the Shia-Sunni divide also points yet again not just to the false sectarianism that seeks to discredit these democratic uprisings but also to the banal racialisation of these transnational, revolutionary movements that cross all such colonially manufactured hostilities. The fact remains that the Arab Spring cannot turn a blind eye to the brutalities of the Islamic Republic just because the US is its enemy. It is imperative that the criminal atrocities of the Islamic Republic be brought fully into the opening picture of the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring will not fully blossom unless and until the green pastures of Iran are included in it. Labour unions, women’s rights movements and student organisations are identical in their demands and aspirations for their civil liberties in both Iran and the Arab world. Enduring thirty years of a corrupt theocracy has given Iranians much to teach their Arab counterparts; these magnificent revolutionary uprisings from one end of the Arab world to the other has already galvanised the Green Movement in Iran. As the tyrannous regimes in both Bahrain and the Islamic Republic earn from each other how to suppress democratic uprisings, these democratic uprisings must also learn from each other how to topple their corrupt leadership – for in whatever language you learn it: al-Sha’b yurid isqat al-Nizam!

Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York.  He is the author, most recently, of Iran, the Green Movement, and the US: The Fox and the Paradox (Zed, 2010).

Source: aljazeera.net

The dispatch, dated February 2010, warns that that Jamaica could be fertile ground for jihadists because of its underground drug economy, marginalized youth, insufficient security and gang networks in U.S. and British prisons, along with thousands of American tourists.

It says Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, who was deported back to Jamaica in January 2010, could be a potential catalyst, and it noted that several Jamaican-born men have been involved in terrorism over the last decade.

Another memo says an associate of el-Faisal was suspected of involvement in a previously unreported terror plot in Montego Bay, a tourist centre near where el-Faisal now lives. A second associate was allegedly suspected of threats against a cruise ship in nearby Ocho Rios. No details of the alleged schemes were provided in the cables and both U.S. and Jamaican officials declined to comment on them.

U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials have expressed concern in the past that Middle Eastern terror groups might forge alliances with drug traffickers or take advantage of general lawlessness in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The January 2010 return of “extremist Jamaican-born cleric Sheikh el-Faisal raises serious concerns regarding the propensity for Islamist extremism in the Caribbean at the hands of Jamaican born nationals,” said the secret cable, apparently from Isiah L. Parnell, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.

“Given the right motivation, it is conceivable that Jamaica’s disaffected youth could be swayed towards organized crime of a different nature through the teachings of radical Islam,” said the dispatch dated February 25, 2010.

The cable is one of the quarter million confidential American diplomatic dispatches first obtained by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and separately obtained by The Associated Press.

There is no hard evidence that Jamaica has a burgeoning problem with extremism, though some of the embassy dispatches list suspected associates of el-Faisal, several labeled as radical Muslims and believed to be involved in drug and human trafficking. One is a 31-year-old Jamaican suspected of involvement in a Montego Bay bomb plot and another man suspected of threats against a cruise ship.

Other Jamaicans involved in terrorism include Germaine Lindsay, one of the four men behind the 2005 suicide bomb attacks on London’s subways, and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted in the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.

Jamaican police say they are monitoring el-Faisal but note that he has no criminal record in the country.

“To the extent that he was living abroad and was convicted of offences, we do have concerns. But he is a Jamaican and we had to take him back,” said Deputy Police Chief Glenmore Hinds.

One of the leaked U.S. cables said Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security has established a special unit to collect information on Islamic extremism, but it voiced concern about whether the unit would be able to “react rapidly to actionable intelligence and to effectively prosecute an anti-terrorism case in the courts.”

El-Faisal, who is known as “al-Jamaikee,” or “the Jamaican” in Islamist circles, has been living in a rural town outside the northern city of Montego Bay, not far from where he grew up. He has several children.

He declined through a spokesman repeated requests for an interview with the AP.

Mustafa Muhammad, president of the Islamic Council, said el-Faisal’s angry rhetoric and conspiracy theories may attract some young and disenfranchised people, but he doubted it would have much traction among Jamaica’s roughly 5,000 Muslims.

“Faisal has always been very eloquent and the moment he speaks he captures your attention,” Muhammad said in the library of a whitewashed concrete mosque in Kingston. “That is why it’s so sad, so very sad, about what he has come to believe.”

Jamaica’s Islamic Council has banned el-Faisal from preaching in the country’s mosques because he of his past. He now preaches in informal prayer sessions and conferences.

“He told me that he didn’t think he had ever done anything wrong,” Muhammad said. “That’s a concern to me.”

Born Trevor Forrest in 1963, he was raised in the rolling hills of northern Jamaica. His parents belonged to the Salvation Army, the Christian evangelical group. He converted to Islam after being introduced to the faith by a school teacher at about 16, Muhammad said.

Shortly after his conversion, el-Faisal’s global migrations began. In the early 1980s, he travelled to Trinidad for a Saudi-Arabian-sponsored course in Islamic and Arabic studies. He then went to Guyana for similar studies, according to terrorism researchers.

El-Faisal, now a compactly built 47-year-old man with receding hair, was deported to Jamaica for the second time last year after being arrested in Kenya, where he reportedly encouraged young men to join an extremist Islamic group in Somalia.

Before that, he preached in a London mosque attended by convicted terrorists and was imprisoned in Britain for nearly four and a half years for inciting murder and stirring racial hatred with sermons titled “No peace with the Jews” and “Them versus Us.” In one recorded sermon, he told followers that “the way forward is the bullet.” On another, he said jihadists should use “chemical weapons to exterminate the unbelievers.”

“Faisal’s popularity remains strong with online jihadist supporters, particularly American jihadist groups. His sermons are widely published across the Internet,” said Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst who is now an independent terrorism researcher.

Some experts in militant Islam said his isolation in Jamaica may create a mystique that could draw alienated people into his circle.

“There is a danger that Abdullah Faisal will radicalize individuals in Jamaica, just as he has previously done in the U.K. and elsewhere. He is a powerful, charismatic speaker who is easily capable of presenting Islamist extremism as a rational choice,” said James Brandon of the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think-tank .

Source: canadianpress

In Cairo, tens of thousands of protesters packed into Tahrir Square — the symbolic heart of protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak in February — for the Muslim weekly prayers.

Demonstrations were also held in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the canal cities of Ismailiya and Suez, and in the Sinai peninsula.

Hundreds protested outside the hospital where ousted president Hosni Mubarak is being held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, demanding his transfer to prison, an AFP reporter said.

Mubarak is currently in custody in hospital as the authorities mull his transfer to prison amid health concerns.

In Tahrir Square, the protest dubbed “day of anger” took on a festive mood, with protesters singing, chanting and taking the light rain as a good omen, demonstrators told AFP.

But the absence of Islamist groups was noticeable, with some protesters saying they felt betrayed by the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to stay away from the rallies.

“Where are the Brotherhood? This is Tahrir,” chanted the protesters.

“During the revolt, we were all here together, left wing, liberals, Islamists and secularists. But now that the Brotherhood are recognised, they are not joining the protests anymore,” said Dina Ahmed, a protester.

The Brotherhood, the country’s best organised opposition movement which was banned under the Mubarak regime, said it was “very concerned” by the protest.

In a statement, it asked “who are the people angry with now?”

After Mubarak’s ouster, the call to protest can “only mean that the anger is directed at the people themselves or at the army,” said the Islamist group, urging protesters not to drive a wedge between the people and the military.

Youth groups that helped to launch the uprising posts calls on Facebook urging Egyptians to take to the streets on Friday to rally for “an end to political corruption.”

Three months after the revolt, they are frustrated by the slow pace of democratic change, and are this time directing their anger at the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

While the revolt achieved its aim of ousting Mubarak, the unelected military retains absolute power in Egypt.

Protesters want a civilian government, a new constitution, the acceleration of trials of former regime figures and their removal from top jobs in the police, universities and other public institutions.

They are also calling for a return of security forces to the streets, amid weeks of insecurity and sectarian clashes blamed on remnants of the old regime.

“I am against military trials of civilians, and the Supreme Council issues laws and then holds national talks, rather than consulting with people first,” said Rahma Hassan, 18.

“There has to be a serious national dialogue, not one including people we revolted against,” she said.

Activists say the military council only agreed to put Mubarak and his sons on trial after intense street pressure, arguing that the momentum must be kept up for a transition to full democracy.

“The prevalence of the law is the most important thing, and we need a new constitution before elections,” said Randa Gohar, 33, in Tahrir Square.

“I want a presidential council. The military council is not doing anything,” said another protester, Muhannad Galal, 27.

He cast doubt on the ability of military council chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi — Mubarak’s long-time defence minister — and military chief of staff Sami Enan to pave the way for reforms.

“Tantawi and Enan were with Mubarak for two decades, we are the ones who removed him, not them,” Galal said.

The military said in a statement on Thursday that it will steer clear of protests in an effort to avert any unrest.

It warned in a statement on its Facebook page of “suspicious elements who will try to pit the military against the people,” and said it “decided to have completely no presence in areas of protests to avert these dangers.”

But many activists read the statement as a sign that the army would turn a blind eye to any confrontations between protesters and old regime remnants, blamed for post-revolution clashes and sectarian violence.

At the pulpit of an inner-city Chicago mosque, the tall blond imam begins preaching in his customary fashion, touching on the Los Angeles Lakers victory the night before, his own gang involvement as a teenager, a TV soap opera and then the Day of Judgment.

“Yesterday we watched the best of seven…. Unfortunately we forget the big final; it’s like that show ‘One Life to Live,’ ” Imam Suhaib Webb says as sleepy boys and young men come to attention in the back rows. “There’s no overtime, bro.”The sermon is typical of Webb, a charismatic Oklahoma-born convert to Islam with a growing following among American Muslims, especially the young. He sprinkles his public addresses with as many pop culture references as Koranic verses and sayings from the prophet. He says it helps him connect with his mainly U.S.-born flock.

“Are we going to reach them with an Arab message or with a Pakistani message? Or are we going to reach them with an American message?” asks Webb, 38, of Santa Clara. He is a resident scholar and educator with the Bay Area chapter of the nonprofit Muslim American Society, but reaches others in lectures and through his popular website, which he calls a “virtual mosque.”

Webb is at the forefront of a movement to create an American-style Islam, one that is true to the Koran and Islamic law but that reflects this country’s customs and culture. Known for his laid-back style, he has helped promote the idea that Islam is open to a modern American interpretation. At times, his approach seems almost sacrilegious.

Although the call to prayer at a mosque is always issued by a man, Webb once joked about it being made by one of his favorite female R&B artists: “If Mary J. Blige made the call to prayer, I’d go to the mosque; I’d be in the front row.”

At a Muslim conference in Long Beach last year, he suggested that mosques adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward gays. Afterward, he was accosted by a local imam who accused him of poisoning Muslim youth. “I told him, ‘Quite frankly, you’re going to be irrelevant in 10 years,’ ” Webb says.

He is fluent in Arabic, the language of the Koran, and studied for six years at one of the world’s leading Islamic institutes, Egypt’s Al-Azhar University. His time in the Middle East convinced him that not all religious practices there make sense for Muslims here.

As recently as a decade ago, U.S. congregations readily accepted immigrant imams who had arrived straight from Islamic universities, often with a traditional approach to preaching. Many spoke little English and were unable to communicate with non-Arab congregants or connect easily with youth.

But increasingly, U.S. Muslims expect their religious leaders to play a broader, more pastoral role, says Hossam Aljabri, executive director of the Muslim American Society, a national religious and education group. “Communities want imams who can come in and go beyond leading the prayer and reading Koran. They want them to fill the social role of counseling and dealing with neighbors.”

Religious scholars say the faith’s basic tenets would not change but much of the law that governs Islam may be interpreted differently in various communities.

Webb believes, for example, that barriers between men and women in U.S. mosques are not necessary, although they continue to be used in many traditional congregations. Unlike some imams, he does not object to music and believes Muslims here should be free to celebrate such secular holidays as Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving.

But given the ethnic diversity of U.S. Muslims, finding a consensus for a single American Islam could be difficult. Some favor major reforms that would alter the faith’s core beliefs. Others oppose any change.

In 2007, Webb stopped teaching at SunniPath, an online academy of traditional Islamic education, tussling verbally in the process with a few of its scholars, who are critical of what they term “modernist Islam.”

“Modernists are doing a disservice to Islam…. They validate things that are slack in Islamic practice,” Sheikh Nuh Keller, a teacher at the academy, said at the time. “We say to the modernists, nothing needs to be modernized.”

Although Webb has spent much of his time in Egypt in recent years, his U.S. following has grown. His website, where he posts writings on such topics as relationships, personal development and Islamic studies, gets more than 10,000 visitors a day, and sparks extended conversations.

In November, one reader asked if it was OK for Muslims to celebrate Thanksgiving. Webb’s response that the holiday was allowed upset some who thought that could lead to more questionable practices.

“Soon it will be [permissible] for me to take that ‘Santa Claus’ gig at the mall…….or it is already????” asked one commenter, Ahmed.

Others appeared to appreciate Webb’s effort to balance Muslim teachings with life in the West.

“We prefer to dismiss all culture as the antithesis to Islam,” wrote Tricia. “We lack … indigenous scholars who can give us a refined view of culture that distinguishes blameworthy from admirable cultural practices.”

Imams need to be culturally relevant, Webb says. When young men ask his advice on becoming religious leaders themselves, he tells them, “Go watch ‘Nick at Nite’ for a year.”

“He’s the most approachable imam in the U.S.,” says Nour Mattar, founder of the country’s first Muslim radio station. “And he’s not boring to listen to, that’s huge.”

Christened William by his parents, Webb grew up in the Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond. His father, David, is a professor of American history at a local college, and his mother, Mary Lynn, worked as a human resources director.

Webb attended a local Church of Christ twice a week throughout childhood. “In my family, on your birthday you got a Bible with your name on it,” he says. But even at a young age, he questioned some Christian beliefs, including the Trinity.

When he was a teenager, he and several friends became immersed in a burgeoning hip-hop scene. After the others joined a local street gang, Webb, then 17, did too.

But his participation in the Bloods Pomona 456 was relatively minor, he says. He didn’t sell drugs and mostly hung out with other members looking for fights; at 19, he spent a week in jail for stealing hubcaps. In one serious incident, Webb says, he was the driver in a drive-by shooting, although no one was hurt or charged with a crime.

His teenage time in the gang and as a DJ at house parties figure prominently in his speeches and public persona, as a way to gain traction with young Muslims. That appears to work, at least with some. After his sermon in Chicago, a boy of about 12 turned to his mother, asking, “Did you hear his speech? He said he’s from the ‘hood.”

Webb was introduced to Islam at 19. He was selling music tapes at a swap meet when he met a Muslim man selling incense and handing out Korans. Webb took one home and read it in secret for several months.

He converted during his freshman year at the University of Central Oklahoma and broke the news to his parents at Thanksgiving dinner that year — when his mother had cooked a turkey and a ham, the latter forbidden by Islam.

Mary Lynn Webb says she was not happy at the time about her son’s conversion, but is pleased today when she sees him preaching to eager audiences. “I’m proud of him. It’s amazing, really, when you think that he doesn’t have that background” in Islam, she says. “I think it may have saved him from something had he stayed in the rap world.”

In college, Webb met Asma Ayoub, a Muslim Malaysian immigrant who was studying anthropology. They married in 2000 and have two children. Webb calls his wife his “greatest teacher.”

As he worked toward his bachelor’s degree in education, he also studied intensively with a local Muslim scholar. He later became imam of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City before moving to Santa Clara in 2002 at the behest of the Muslim American Society there.

The group sponsored Webb’s formal Islamic education at Cairo’s Al-Azhar. He returned to the Bay Area full time last summer.

Since then, he has worked on an educational curriculum that will focus on the experiences of young Muslims in the West. He is contemplating turning it into his own institute.

Webb hosted a town hall on his website last year where Muslim leaders debated the issue of youth radicalization. He reposted it during recent congressional hearings by Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) on militancy among U.S. Muslims.

But only rarely is Webb approached, he says — in person or by email — by anyone tempted by calls to violence from extremists. Young Muslims more often ask him about Darwinism or student loans.

When he does get such questions, he directs the youth to what he says their true jihad should be, including assimilating into American society and supporting their families.

“You see people who come to listen to him that wouldn’t listen to anyone else … people they were never able to reach out to,” says Imam Khalid Latif, Muslim chaplain at New York University.

On a hot day last year, Webb walked into Chicago’s Marquette Park, where dozens of artists were gathered for a Muslim music festival. He had been invited to speak and felt it was a good way to ease back into U.S. culture after his time away.

“I don’t think you’ll have a lot of clerics showing up here,” he said. “I know I’m going to see some things I’m not going to like.”

The festival was a departure from another conference he had just attended, where most women wore the hijab and the audience was divided into sections — for women, men and families. At this one, called “Takin’ It to the Streets,” women in shorts, tank tops and tattoos mingled with men in traditional robes. During the headlining performance by Grammy-nominated rapper Mos Def, Webb watched as couples danced and people near him smoked pot.

As he walked among the stages and booths, he was stopped often by admirers — at 6-feet-4, the blue-eyed imam stands out at Muslim events. Some asked for on-the-spot advice, as if he were a walking confessional: What should I do about this guy I broke up with? Where should I study Arabic? Is what I’m doing as a Muslim rapper OK?

Rami Nashashibi, executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, the event’s organizer, said not many scholars would accept the group’s invitation.

“It means a lot when people who represent scholarship and … authenticity within the Muslim community are present,” he said. “Even though they are not necessarily saying, ‘I condone wholesale what’s going on.’”

After Mos Def’s performance, Webb hugged him, saying, “Don’t let the community make you feel guilty about what you do.”

“Man, thanks,” said the rapper, a convert to Islam.

But for some, even this imam, despite his talk of gang life and near-encyclopedic knowledge of rappers, is too conservative. His invitation to the festival stemmed from a heated discussion on his website about the negative influences of Muslim hip-hop. Some artists initially had mixed feelings about his attendance.

And that is the challenge Webb faces, Nashashibi says. “He is trying to speak to multiple audiences in what is perhaps the most diverse subsection of the Muslim community across the world.”

After the panel, a man handed Webb a flier for a party after the festival.

“I can’t go to that; smoking weed, dancing with girls and wet T-shirt contests,” the imam said of the event, which promised none of that. He added with a grin, “I gotta draw the line somewhere.”

raja.abdulrahim@latimes.com

Source: http://www.latimes.com

Once again political Islamic groups are in the spotlight, this time due to the formation of new political parties. In one day both the Salafis and the Gama’a al-Islamiya announced they will form their own parties and compete in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

On Tuesday the First Salafi party submitted its papers to the Parties committee to become the first Salafist party formed in Egypt. For years the Salafi movement rejected involvement in politics and considered forming or joining parties to be forbidden by religion.

The founders of the new party are mostly members or ex-members of the Salafi Call in Alexandria. However, the board of directors of the Salafi Call said earlier it would not form any political party for the time being but would participate in political life through other available means.

Al Nour Islamic party (meaning light) is said to be one of five parties the Salafi movement is planning to form. However, Emad Eddin Abdel Ghafour, one of the prominent Salafi figures in Alexandria and one of the party’s founders, denies it is a religious party.

“We have members from everywhere around the country, and all social sectors are represented in our membership,” he tells Ahram Online. “We have a large number of university professors, doctors, engineers, lawyers and technocrats from almost every sector.” The new parties law issued by the government in March requires that a party have five thousand members to be formally established. Al Nour says its membership currently exceeds seven thousand.

The new party’s program, according to Ghafour aims to “maintain the identity of the country and regain its preeminent position among nations,” and to further economic and social development. Yet the party may be unable to obtain the required legal approval as the new parties law prohibits religious parties.

On its official Facebook group Al Nour identifies itself as a party that “believes Islamic laws should control political, economic and social jurisprudence.” The party also says it believes in the foundation of a modern state based on respectful coexistence among all citizens.

“The party’s founders believe democracy should be achieved within the framework of Islamic law, that people should be free to form or join political parties which should operate without constraints, that power should be transferred peacefully through free and fair direct elections, and that the people should be able to freely choose their leaders,” says the Facebook page.

Al Nour is not the only Islamic party on the way. The Muslim Brotherhood, a major Islamic political group announced weeks ago the formation of the new party Freedom and Justice. The party said it would nominate candidates for about half the seats in parliament.

This week the Gama’a al-Islamiya also announced it will form its own party and participate in the upcoming elections. The Islamic group, which was outlawed in the 1980s after the assassination of former president Anwar el Sadat, had many of its leaders released after the ouster of president Mubarak.

Tarek al-Zumur, one of the group’s senior leaders who was released a couple of months ago, told Reuters the group planned to launch a “civil political party based on Islamic principles” that would welcome members of Egypt’s Christian minority.

Al-Zumur, who was directly involved in the assassination of Sadat is expected to be a member of the new party’s policy unit. “The party will not use violence in dealing with any situation or with the state and will abide by Egyptian law and the constitution,” he told Reuters.

Al-Zumur’s statement about the party is not new, but it is considered by many as a sign that disputes within the group concerning the shape and limits of its participation in the political arena have been settled once and for all before the group’s internal elections.

Last Monday the Gama’a al-Islamiya announced the results of the first internal elections in years. In the press conference Esam Derbala, one of the group’s leaders said that the group does not accept the idea of separation between religion and politics. “We cannot mix them completely or separate them completely,” he says. “We have to understand that Islam supports freedom and social justice, and this is what we will try to teach people in the street.”

All Islamic parties’ founders stress that their parties will be open to Christian membership, a step they hope will reduce society’s fear of political Islam. However, this is not guaranteed.

In a statement released today, the group said that they are very “worried” about calls which have been circulating asking people to head to Tahrir Square for a “Second Revolution,” or “Revolution of Anger”.

“The anger is directed towards who?” the group asked in a statement. “Who is pushing the people to revolt now?”

The statement said that this event could only mean two things; either it’s a revolution against the majority of the people, or it is an attempt to brew trouble between the people and the armed forces and its representatives in the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The Muslim Brotherhood then urged the people not to let anyone cause tension, either between them or with the armed forces. They asked people not to participate in Friday’s proposed protest and to only take part in initiatives with clear goals that will help fulfil all the demands of the January 25 Revolution.

“The people from all backgrounds revolted against a repressive regime that tried to work towards the inheritance of power and monopolising the country’s wealth for 30 years, which resulted in creating poverty in the country,” the statement said.

The group added that God helped the Egyptian people who struggled during the Mubarak era and now the ousted president has been transferred to the criminal court on charges of murder and profiteering. Mubarak, the statement said, would also stand trial before a military court for taking commissions on arms deals delegated to him by parliament, which “was controlled by a fake majority which forged the will of the nation.”

“The armed forces played a significant role in answering the demands of the people and protecting the revolution,” said the statement. “They also respected the will of the people by announcing a specific date to transfer power through free and transparent elections.”

The Brotherhood added that the people expressed their desire on how they want the new constitution to be drafted when they voted “Yes” to the constitutional amendments in the 19 March referendum.

“Now it is time for the different political forces in the country to think about how to take Egypt to safety by preparing for the parliamentary elections, either by working shoulder to shoulder, teaming up or competing,” they said in the statement.

They added that to date there is no significant disagreement on the principles of the constitution, which most Egyptian citizens, who should have the last say in a referendum, agree on.

Thiruvananthapuram: The United Democratic Front (UDF) liaison committee is meeting here on Monday to sort out the dispute arising out of the Indian Union Muslim League’s demand for an additional berth in the Chandy Cabinet.

The UDF leaders are working out a formula to settle the issue. As things stand now, it appears that the IUML will have to face the question whether it will be in its larger interest to play the age-old brinksmanship it had been used to in the 1990s. Leaders of various UDF constituents admit that the political reality of a slender margin hardly offers much option to any of them to push demands beyond a point.

The Kerala Congress (M) had demanded an additional berth at the time of the discussions for selecting Ministers and allocating portfolios. The IUML, as an afterthought, sprang a surprise by staking its claim to an additional berth. The party’s action of fielding its supremo Panakkad Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal to wrest a berth was perceived as uncharacteristic of its style of functioning. Moreover, it did not go down well with the Congress leadership which was left fuming over the manner in which the IUML made its announcement.

The Kerala Congress (M), in the meantime, took special care not to affect its cosy ties with the IUML and changed its strategy by demanding the Speaker’s post if the IUML were to be given the ministerial berth.

It appears to be a triangular tussle for the posts of Speaker, Deputy Speaker and Parliamentary Affairs Minister. The Assembly is due to elect the Speaker on the second day of its first session.

The Congress leadership has made it clear that it was unwilling to concede the IUML’s demand. The Congress stand is that the IUML, which had gone through a very bad phase for the major part of the last decade, has higher stakes in ensuring the government’s stability.

As per constitutional provisions, the size of the Cabinet should be limited to 15 per cent of the strength of the Assembly. There is provision for inducting one more Minister to bring up the total number to 21. Keeping in mind the negative publicity that a huge Cabinet might attract, the claimants will have to settle for a formula according to which there will be a Government Chief Whip with Cabinet rank, instead of a Parliamentary Affairs Minister, with the IUML getting this post.

The Congress will take the Speaker’s post, which has become a crucial office in the backdrop of a slender margin, leaving the Deputy Speaker’s post to the Kerala Congress (M). This formula will come up for discussion at the UDF meeting ahead of the Assembly session beginning on June 1, sources said.

Source: hindu.com

He was the last prophet and in his time world got the holy Quran which was the complete solution of life. As he was the last prophet so, after his death, Muslim world was starting to follow the holy Quran and Hadith to lead their life which helped to create a healty history of Islam.

After the death of Hazrat Muhammad sm, the Islam got four Caliphs for governing the entire Islamic world. They Caliphs are – Abu Bakr, Umar, Usman and finally Ali. These four Caliphs were so close to Hazrat Muhammad sm. These four Caliphs ran the whole Islamic world under the strong rules and regulation of Quran. They made different laws and regulation for the Islamic world based on the Sharia. These Caliphs are known as rightly guided Caliphs.

After the end of these four Caliph’s time, different person came into power. Among them in the time of Abbasids Islam was greatly enriched in every sectors. That was known as “The Golden Age” of Islam. After the time Islam was spread in different countries which helped to make the history of Islam more healthy.

As political Islam grows as a force in post-revolution Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is forming its first political party and getting ready for a good showing in upcoming parliamentary elections. And this has liberal and secular parties scrambling.

The revolution that ended three decades of authoritarian rule by Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak has opened an unprecedented window for Islamists in country’s political life. The Muslim Brotherhood is considered the most organized, well-funded opposition movement in Egypt.

Michele Dunne is Editor of the Arab Reform Bulletin at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She predicts that the Muslim Brotherhood will neither take over the Egyptian parliament in the upcoming elections nor create an Islamic state.

“I do expect the Brotherhood, and perhaps other Islamists, to have a significant presence in the parliament, but I think it is very unlikely that there would be an Islamist president in Egypt. I think even if you ask the Muslim Brotherhood their goal they say it is not to establish an Islamic state but rather to function within a democratic system,” she said.

However, Dunne says, the real question is whether – and to what extent – the Brotherhood will respect the rights of Egyptian women and non-Muslims.

The Muslim Brotherhood, long banned from politics, this week announced the formation of their first political party – the Freedom and Justice Party, or FJP. More than ten percent of the FJP’s founders are women. The vice chairman of the new party, Rafiq Habib, is a prominent Christian intellectual. Brotherhood spokesman Essam El-Erian dispels what he calls an exaggerated fear of an Islamist “take over.”

“The Egyptian people are wise enough to have a balanced parliament and the Egyptian people are also keen to have a civil state, a democratic state. Muslim Brotherhood is not targeting at all a majority in the new incoming parliament,” he said.

El-Erian says the party will nominate candidates in 45 to 50 percent of the districts, hoping to gain about 30 percent of the parliamentary seats. This would allow for a parliament that would represent all Egyptians, not just the country’s powerful elite.

Liberal secular parties

The Muslim Brotherhood is mobilizing its supporters to make the best showing in the upcoming elections. At the same time, liberal secular parties are working to form a coalition strong enough to counter the Muslim Brotherhood.

George Ishaq is the founder of Kifaya, a broad-based opposition grass roots movement. He’s also a founding member of the newly-formed “Free Egypt” liberal party. His party is among those pushing for a proportional representation vote – that is, a list of candidates representing a mixed spectrum of political parties.

“We collect all the elements to make one vote list from different elements, but it is not against anybody, but there is a coalition from the opposition movements to go to the elections with one vote list,” said Ishaq.

Under this system, Ishaq says, voters would not just vote for individual candidates, but rather, agendas and platforms. This could work in favor of some parties, says Michelle Dunne, but not all.

“In general, it seems that proportional representation would be an advantage to the new parties and not an advantage to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood did very well under the individual district system. I am sure whatever system emerges, the Brotherhood will try to adapt its strategy and do the best they can under that system,” she said.

Election law unclear

Whether secular, liberal or Islamic, all Egyptian parties have held off planning their campaign strategies until the new electoral law is clarified. The law does not specify whether voting will be based on proportional lists or voting for individual candidates. Political parties are asking for clarification and, with the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, are pushing for the elections to be postponed until December, which would give them more time to rally voters.

Ayman Nour is the founder and president of the Al Ghad liberal party. He says neither the security situation permits nor the political scene is shaped in a concrete way to allow new political forces and formerly banned parties a fair chance to get ready for the parliamentary elections in September.

Many analysts believe that the Muslim Brotherhood is poised for an impressive showing in parliamentary elections. But they also say that as long as the Egyptian president is elected separately and allowed to select his own cabinet, there is little threat of Egypt becoming a theocracy.

Source: voanews.com

She said this while talking to the Editor in Chief Arabic daily Okaz, says a press release received here from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Minister said that in media information technology it required that Muslim countries should have their own strong voice to be aired.She said that strong voice of the Muslim countries on pattern of BBC or CNN was necessary to guide and engage our youth and to project the true image of Islam.

Dr.Firdous Ashiq said that such a media voice would prove very helpful to guide the youth, create awareness and bridging the gap between the societies, cultures and faiths.

She said that strong and vibrant media in the Muslim countries would also be helpful for women empowerment and strengthening people to people relations between the Muslim countries.

The Minister said that the killing of Saudi diplomat in Karachi was sad incident which intended to drive wedge between the two fraternal countries but the enemy will never succeed in his designs.

She said that Pak-Saudi relations are special, time tested and beyond mundane consideration.
She lauded and thanked the Saudi leadership for assisting Pakistan during difficult time.

Later on, the Minister in her address to Pakistani community in Jeddah said that Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia were making valuable contributions towards the economies of Saudi Arabia as well as Pakistan.

She said that their remittances are great support to their families and the economy of Pakistan.
She said that it was matter of great satisfaction that a large number of Pakistani investors, professionals, and labour community were working over here who were source of strength for the economies of the both countries.

The Minister said that Pak-Saudi relations have their roots in history, religion and culture. She said that the purpose of her visit was to strengthen relations between the two countries especially in the fields of information and culture.

She said that she was grateful to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and Saudi leadership for providing congenial atmosphere and working condition for the Pakistanis in Saudi Arabia.

The Minister said that democracy in Pakistan was gaining strength and the country’s leadership was in strong hands.
She assured to the overseas Pakistanis that the economic and energy problems, confronting Pakistan would soon be overcome.

She urged the Pakistani community in Saudi Arabia to abide by the laws of the land and work hard for the betterment of the economies of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

The Minister said that a girl college, women transport service, s stadium and IT Complex and a 100-bed Sweet Home for orphans were going to be established in Sialkot.

Pakistan Consul General, Abdul Salik Khan in his address to the Pakistani community said that the visit of the Information Minister would strengthen relations between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

He said that Pak-Saudi relations were of special nature. He urged the community members to work hard for the economies of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and abide by the laws of the Saudi Arabia.

The Minister was also visited Al-Faislia Culture Charitable Society for Women.
She visited various sections of the Society and appreciated its philanthropic activities.

Talking to the hosts, the Minister said that Charity and philanthropic work has great importance in Islam.
She also apprised them about the charity and philanthropic organizations in Pakistan.

Source: ftpapp.app.com.pk

The bill, which was passed in Lok Sabha and now awaiting Rajya Sabha’s nod, proposes a series of changes in the way Wakf properties are managed across the country.

“The ministry of minority affairs has overlooked and ignored vital recommendations of the Sachar committee as well as the joint parliamentary committee (JPC) on the functioning of Wakf boards,” Syed Zafar Mahmood, president of Zakat Foundation of India, said.

He said compulsory Wakf surveys recommended by the JPC have been made optional in the bill, while suggestions of inclusion of all post-Independence cases of Wakf for survey have also been dropped.

Treatment of Wakf survey commissioner’s notification as deemed mutation for purposes of revenue records and determination of title of property, as recommended by the JPC, has also been not included in the bill, Mahmood claimed.

The other criticism against bill is that the ministry has diluted the definition of the word “encroacher.”

The organisation also asked the Archaeological Survey of India to properly conserve the Wakf properties under it and demanded that structures such as mosques should be allowed to be used for the “purposes they are meant for”.

Rajya Sabha MP Mahmood A Madani pitched for a “public movement” if the government does not heed to their demands.

From Kenya to Kazakhstan, a new Islamic network is attracting millions of followers – and billions of dollars.

Inspired by a little-known Turkish imam, the Gulen movement is linked to more than 1,000 schools in 130 countries as well as think tanks, newspapers, TV and radio stations, universities – and even a bank.

This massive network is unlike anything else. It has no formal structure, no visible organisation and no official membership.

Its supporters say they simply work together, in a loosely affiliated alliance inspired by the message of charismatic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who promotes a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work and education.

Turkish businessmen are attracted by what they see as his international outlook and pragmatic approach to issues like using credit.

In Turkey today, it is thought to have up to 10 million supporters. A recent study suggests many give between 5%-20% of their income to groups affiliated with the movement.

Critics claim its aim is to gain power, to spread socially conservative Islamic attitudes on issues like marriage and alcohol around the globe, and to suppress any opposition.

In the past year, three of its most prominent critics have been jailed in Turkey, sparking claims that it has become a sinister controlling force in its native land.

Mr Gulen’s critics point to a video which surfaced in 1999, in which he seemed to tell his followers that they should deliberately attempt to infiltrate mainstream structures:

“You must move within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centres. You must wait until such time as you have got all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institution in Turkey.”

The following year, Mr Gulen faced charges of trying to undermine Turkey’s secular state.

He left for the United States, claiming the recording had been tampered with. He was later cleared in absentia of all charges.

Today, aged 70, Mr Gulen lives a reclusive life on a country estate in Pennsylvania.

He has urged his followers to build schools instead of mosques, and encourages interaction with people of other faiths through dialogue societies, including one in the UK.

Social mobility

The movement’s schools usually boast hi-tech facilities, and many students are on scholarships funded by Gulen-inspired businessmen.

Although the schools are secular, teachers are expected to act as role models. Smoking, drinking and divorce are frowned upon.

Fatma Disli first came across the movement – which she prefers to call “Hizmet” (“service” in Turkish) – at a school it founded to help students pass university admissions tests.

“The people I met through Hizmet were really hard-working, virtuous people who were practising their religion, but at the same time had important jobs. I realised that it’s possible to be religious and to have a career.”

Gulen supporters argue that the movement has also played a part in the growth of Turkey’s economy by bolstering exports.

Serdarj Yesilyurt, from Turkey’s Federation of Businessmen and Industrialists, says 95% of his members are Gulen supporters.

“Mr Gulen put forward some international values which helped to bring down mental barriers about doing trade abroad, and helped people to think big.”

The combination of philanthropy and business has been powerful, he says, with Gulen-inspired schools supporting and smoothing the way for Turkish businessmen in emerging markets like Africa and Central Asia.

Press freedom threat

However, a media group run by Gulen supporters, which includes newspapers, TV and radio stations and a news agency, has been criticised for being too close to the Islamic-rooted governing party.

There are claims that supporters of the movement dominate parts of the police and the judiciary.

Last year, a police chief who wrote a book on this subject was jailed. Earlier this year, two Turkish investigative journalists, Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener, were arrested after investigating similar claims.

As Sik was arrested, he shouted: “Whoever touches them burns!” All three men are still in jail.

They were arrested in connection with an alleged plot by right-wing extremists, hardline secularists and army generals to overthrow the state.

Press freedom campaigner Ferai Tinch says most journalists in Turkey believe that they too will suffer if they criticise the movement.

“The imprisonment of journalists is the tip of the iceberg. Nobody dares to write directly against the Gulen movement,” he says.

The movement insists it had nothing to do with the arrests.

“It’s illogical to think that Gulen followers would be involved [in arresting critics],” says Cemal Usak, of the Gulen-linked Journalists and Writers Foundation.

“That would do the biggest harm to the movement. They must be out of their minds to think such a thing.”

The only point that both supporters and critics seem to agree on is that it wields huge power in Turkey – and that its global expansion shows no sign of slowing.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13503361

Efforts to build Islamic centers and mosques in New York, Wisconsin, Kentucky and Tennessee have been equated with building monuments to terrorism. Prominent American public figures and politicians — including Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, Rep. Peter King and Newt Gingrich — openly spoke against Muslims and encouraged unfounded social suspicion of them. The net result is an increase in anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bashing, witnessed in the hysteria that has led to a movement across some 20 states in America to ban sharia.

Today’s historic changes, the death of Osama bin Laden and the Arab Spring offer an opportunity to redress anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bias (Islamophobia) and to reaffirm that American Muslims, like other mainstream Americans, desire a secure and democratic America. Despite the fact that American Muslims years have had to explain that neither they — nor their religion — sanction terrorism.

Major polls have consistently shown American public opinion of Islam plunging. The furor over the proposed Islamic center (Park 51) in New York City resurfaced hostility toward Islam and Muslims. According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, large minorities said they could not think of anything positive to say about Islam. In one study, 38 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam, compared to 30 percent who reported a positive view. Another study conducted by The Washington Post found Islam’s unfavorable image creeping up to 49 percent among Americans.

This fear and hostility has been reinforced by the American public’s basic ignorance and misunderstanding of Islam: The Pew Forum’s September 2010 survey of religion literacy found that only about half of Americans know that the Quran is the holy book of Islam. It also found that less than a third know that most people in Indonesia — the world’s most populous Muslim nation — are, in fact, Muslim. What many did know and fear were stereotypes based on misinformation.

Mainstream American Muslims have too often been equated inaccurately with terrorists and people who reject democracy. Muslim Americans cherish the freedoms guaranteed by the American Constitution as much as others and, as the Gallup World Poll of 35 Muslim countries reported, like all Americans, majorities of Muslims globally desire democracy and freedom and fear and reject religious extremism and terrorism.

Failure to recognize and appreciate these facts continues to feed a growing Islamophobia in America that threatens the safety, security and civil liberties of many American Muslims despite the fact that, as Gallup and Pew polls have shown, they are as educationally, economically and politically integrated as other Americans. It is time to remember and act on the words of President George W.

Bush in calling upon all American to distinguish between the religion of Islam and the acts of a fraction of Muslims who commit acts of terrorism and President Barack Obama’s words reminding Americans that: “the United States is not — and never will be — at war with Islam. … Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own.”

It’s time to turn a deaf ear to our preachers and politicians of hate and get it right with our American Muslim fellow citizens.

John L. Esposito, the author of ‘The Future of Islam,’ is the founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. Sheila B. Lalwani is a research fellow at the center.

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-l-esposito/american-muslims_b_865262.html

On Tuesday, an IAS officer and four WBCS officers were transferred out of the CMO. Some of them have already joined the state personnel and administrative reforms (PAR) department, and others are in compulsory waiting. Interestingly, the overhaul might also bring back Nazrul Islam – one of the most controversial IPS officers in the Left regime.

Islam, a 1981 batch IPS officer of the Bengal cadre, is now serving as Executive Director (security), Railway Protection Force, in New Delhi. Islam had earlier worked as the city police’s detective chief and was later shunted out as the IG (Enforcement Branch) after he began to openly criticize the Left Front government.

When Mamata Banerjee became the railway minister, Islam got a posting in her office and it is during his tenure there that he is said to have become her trusted officer. After May 13, when the Assembly election results were out, Banerjee is said to have planned to bring him back in the state in an important posting. A day after taking oath, the state home department has already sent a letter to the Centre seeking immediate release of Nazrul Islam from his present posting.

Sources hinted that Islam, who is now in additional director general rank, will either replace A K Maliwal – director (securities) – or may be inducted directly in the chief minister’s office as an adviser. In that case, it will be a new post created for him and he will play a crucial role in police administration. Islam was present at Raj Bhavan during the swearing-in ceremony of the new government and also went to Writers’ Buildings after that. Islam did not rule out chances of his return to Bengal.

On Tuesday, D P Banerjee, joint secretary, Syed Nasiruddin, special secretary, Sailesh Mukherjee, private secretary to the CM, and two additional private secretaries to CM were released from the CMO. They will be subsequently given new postings. Principal secretary to the CM, Subesh Das, is also likely to be released from the CMO.

The reshuffle hints at the arrival of a new set of officers in the chief minister’s office. Gautam Sanyal, who is in the central secretariat service and works as OSD to the railway minister, is likely to join as the CM’s new principal secretary. Shantanu Basu, an IAS officer working as the private secretary to the railway minister, will also join the CMO. Tapas Chowdhury, now posted as Kolkata Municipal Corporation secretary, is likely to join as private secretary to the CM and Barun Roy, now private secretary to the Union minister of state for shipping, is expected to join as joint secretary in the CMO.