deen-dunya दीन-दुन्या د ین - د نیا

Women in Islam

2010-08-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

by Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood

How can anyone justify Islam's treatment of women, when it imprisons Afghans under blue shuttlecock burqas and makes Pakistani girls marry strangers against their will?

How can you respect a religion that forces women into polygamous marriages, mutilates their genitals, forbids them to drive cars and subjects them to the humiliation of "instant" divorce? In fact, none of these practices are Islamic at all.

Anyone wishing to understand Islam must first separate the religion from the cultural norms and style of a society. Female genital mutilation is still practised in certain pockets of Africa and Egypt, but viewed as an inconceivable horror by the vast majority of Muslims. Forced marriages may still take place in certain Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, but would be anathema to Muslim women from other backgrounds.

Indeed, Islam insists on the free consent of both bride and groom, so such marriages could even be deemed illegal under religious law.

A woman forbidden from driving a car in Riyadh will cheerfully take the wheel when abroad, confident that her country's bizarre law has nothing to do with Islam. Afghan women educated before the Taliban rule know that banning girls from school is forbidden in Islam, which encourages all Muslims to seek knowledge from cradle to grave, from every source possible.

The Koran is addressed to all Muslims, and for the most part it does not differentiate between male and female. Man and woman, it says, "were created of a single soul," and are moral equals in the sight of God. Women have the right to divorce, to inherit property, to conduct business and to have access to knowledge.

Since women are under all the same obligations and rules of conduct as the men, differences emerge most strongly when it comes to pregnancy, child-bearing and rearing, menstruation and, to a certain extent, clothing.

Some of the commands are alien to Western tradition. Requirements of ritual purity may seem to restrict a woman's access to religious life, but are viewed as concessions. During menstruation or postpartum bleeding, she may not pray the ritual salah or touch the Koran and she does not have to fast; nor does she need to fast while pregnant or nursing.

The veiling of Muslim women is a more complex issue. Certainly, the Koran requires them to behave and dress modestly - but these strictures apply equally to men. Only one verse refers to the veiling of women, stating that the Prophet's wives should be behind a hijab when his male guests converse with them.

Some modernists, however, claim that this does not apply to women in general, and that the language used does not carry the textual stipulation that makes a verse obligatory. In practice, most modern Muslim women appreciate attractive and graceful clothes, but avoid dressing provocatively.

What about polygamy, which the Koran endorses up to the limit of four wives per man? The Prophet, of course, lived at a time when continual warfare produced large numbers of widows, who were left with little or no provision for themselves and their children.

In these circumstances, polygamy was encouraged as an act of charity. Needless to say, the widows were not necessarily sexy young women, but usually mothers of up to six children, who came as part of the deal.

Polygamy is no longer common, for various good reasons. The Koran states that wives need to be treated fairly and equally - a difficult requirement even for a rich man. Moreover, if a husband wishes to take a second wife, he should not do so if the marriage will be to the detriment of the first.

Sexual intimacy outside marriage is forbidden in Islam, including sex before marriage, adultery or homosexual relationships. However, within marriage, sexual intimacy should be raised from the animal level to sadaqah (a form of worship) so that each considers the happiness and satisfaction of the other, rather than mere self-gratification.

Contrary to Christianity, Islam does not regard marriages as "made in heaven" or "till death do us part". They are contracts, with conditions. If either side breaks the conditions, divorce is not only allowed, but usually expected. Nevertheless, a hadith makes it clear that: "Of all the things God has allowed, divorce is the most disliked."

A Muslim has a genuine reason for divorce only if a spouse's behaviour goes against the sunnah of Islam - in other words, if he or she has become cruel, vindictive, abusive, unfaithful, neglectful, selfish, sexually abusive, tyrannical, perverted - and so on.

In good Islamic practice, before divorce can be contemplated, all possible efforts should be made to solve a couple's problems. After an intention to divorce is announced, there is a three-month period during which more attempts are made at reconciliation.

If, by the end of each month, the couple have resumed sexual intimacy, the divorce should not proceed. The three-month rule ensures that a woman cannot remarry until three menstrual cycles have passed - so, if she happens to be pregnant, the child will be supported and paternity will not be in dispute.

When Muslims die, strict laws govern the shares of property and money they may leave to others; daughters usually inherit less than sons, but this is because the men in a family are supposed to provide for the entire household.

Any money or property owned by women is theirs to keep, and they are not obliged to share it. Similarly, in marriage, a woman's salary is hers and cannot be appropriated by her husband unless she consents.

A good Muslim woman, for her part, should always be trustworthy and kind. She should strive to be cheerful and encouraging towards her husband and family, and keep their home free from anything harmful (haram covers all aspects of harm, including bad behaviour, abuse and forbidden foods).

Regardless of her skills or intelligence, she is expected to accept her man as the head of her household - she must, therefore, take care to marry a man she can respect, and whose wishes she can carry out with a clear conscience. However, when a man expects his wife to do anything contrary to the will of God - in other words, any nasty, selfish, dishonest or cruel action - she has the right to refuse him.

Her husband is not her master; a Muslim woman has only one Master, and that is God. If her husband does not represent God's will in the home, the marriage contract is broken.

What should one make of the verse in the Koran that allows a man to punish his wife physically? There are important provisos: he may do so only if her ill-will is wrecking the marriage - but then only after he has exhausted all attempts at verbal communication and tried sleeping in a separate bed.

However, the Prophet never hit a woman, child or old person, and was emphatic that those who did could hardly regard themselves as the best of Muslims. Moreover, he also stated that a man should never hit "one of God's handmaidens". Nor, it must be said, should wives beat their husbands or become inveterate nags.

Finally, there is the issue of giving witness. Although the Koran says nothing explicit, other Islamic sources suggest that a woman's testimony in court is worth only half of that of a man. This ruling, however, should be applied only in circumstances where a woman is uneducated and has led a very restricted life: a woman equally qualified to a man will carry the same weight as a witness.

So, does Islam oppress women?

While the spirit of Islam is clearly patriarchal, it regards men and women as moral equals. Moreover, although a man is technically the head of the household, Islam encourages matriarchy in the home.

Women may not be equal in the manner defined by Western feminists, but their core differences from men are acknowledged, and they have rights of their own that do not apply to men

English convert to Islam, Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, is the author of over thirty books on Islam and other subjects.

Email: Ruqaiyyah@aol.com

History of Taraweeh Salaah

2010-08-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

Simple instructions on how to perform Salatul Taraweeh

This method is according to the Hanafi school of thought.

As this is not a Fardh (compulsary) prayer, the Dua's / tasbeehs (supplications) may vary VERY slighty to the version you have learned, but insha'Allah both versions are correct.

Please bear in mind this is a basic method, so dont start any debates here about the number of rakats and methods. All corrections pointed out will be gracefully taken on board...

Before you start your taraweeh complete your fardh prayers for salatul Esha.

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The 1400 Year History of Taraweeh Salaah

By Ahmed

Amongst the special Ibaadah of the month of Ramadhaan are the fasts and the Taraweeh salaah. The information below will be dedicated to the history of the number of Rakaahs of Taraweeh that have always been performed in the two holy Harams.

The Taraweeh Salaah During the Time of Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم)

Saheeh Muslim reports a hadith from Hadhrat Aaisha (رضى الله عنها) that when (during Ramadhaan) Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) once performed the Taraweeh salaah in the Masjidun Nabawi, the Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم followed him in the salaah. When Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) again performed the salaah the following night, an even larger congregation followed him. It was then either on the third or fourth night that Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) did not come to the Masjid for the Taraweeh salaah. Explaining his reason the following morning, Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said to the Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم, “I noticed your fervour and did not come to the Masjid to perform the Salaah fearing that this Taraweeh salaah should become compulsory for you.” 1

It is therefore evident that Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) performed the Taraweeh salaah in congregation at least twice or thrice in his lifetime. Imaam Ibn Taymiyyah رحمة الله and Allaama Showkaani رحمة الله have both mentioned that a study of Ahadeeth regarding Taraweeh reveals that Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) never specified the number of rakaahs for Taraweeh.

During the Period of Hadhrat Abu Bakr (رضى الله تعالى عنه)

During this period, the Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم meticulously performed the Taraweeh salaah individually or in small congregations.

During the Period of Hadhrat Umar (رضى الله تعالى عنه)

During his Khilaafah, the second Khalifah Hadhrat Umar Faarooq (رضى الله تعالى عنه) combined all the small congregations into one because of the possibility of the Taraweeh salaah becoming Fardh no longer existed. With the approval of all the Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم, twenty rakaahs Taraweeh salaah was performed every night of Ramadhaan after the Isha salaah, followed by three Rakaahs Witr salaah. 2

There are many people nowadays who perform the Taraweeh salaah with Jamaah throughout Ramadhaan because it was carried out during the time of hadrat Umar (رضى الله تعالى عنه) with the consent of all the Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم. However, these people object to the number of Rakaahs. If they keep the following Hadith in mind, their objection will Inshaa Allah be removed.

Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) said, “I advise you fear Allah, to listen and to obey (your leaders) even though your leader be an Abyssinian slave because those of you who live after me shall see great disputes. It is therefore compulsory for you to adhere to my practices and to the practice of the righteous and rightly guided successors (Khulafaa Raashideen). Hold fast to these practices and bite on them with your molars.” 3

In this Hadith Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) has emphasised to his Ummah that it is imperative for them to emulate his practices as well as the practices of the Khulafaa Raashideen. When Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) has instructed the following of the practices of his Khulafaa, how can their practices be labelled as Bidah? How can one promote forsaking something that Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم) empathetically wanted done? How can there be scope to oppose something that the Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم unanimously agreed upon?

This practice of the righteous Khalifah Hadhrat Umar (رضى الله تعالى عنه) falls perfectly within the purport of this Hadith. Therefore one should perform twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh salaah in congregation every night of Ramadhaan after the Isha salaah. This is then followed by three Rakaahs of Witr salaah.

During the period of Hadhrat Uthmaan (رضى الله تعالى عنه)

The third righteous khalifah Hadhrat Uthmaan (رضى الله تعالى عنه) also continued the practice of twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh salaah in congregation, followed by the three Rakaahs of Witr salaah. 4

During the period of Hadhrat Ali (رضى الله تعالى عنه)

The fourth righteous khalifah Hadhrat Ali (رضى الله تعالى عنه) also continued the practice of twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh salaah in congregation, followed by the three Rakaahs of Witr salaah. 5

The Taraweeh salaah in the Masjid Haraam in Makkah

The famous book of Ahadeeth Jaami Tirmidhi states that according to the majority of scholars, the number of Rakaahs in the Taraweeh salaah is twenty, as reported from Hadhrat Umar رضى الله تعالى عنه, Hadhrat Ali رضى الله تعالى عنه and other Sahabah رضى الله تعالى عنهم. This is also the opinion of Hadhrat Sufyan Thowri رحمة الله and Hadhrat Abdullah ibn Mubaarak رحمة الله. Hadhrat Imaam Shafiee رحمة الله says, “I have seen the learned scholars of Makkah perform twenty Rakaahs of Taraweeh salaah.” 6

In his famous book Kitaabul Umm (vol 1 page 142), Imaam Shaafiee رحمة الله says that twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh salaah is reported from Hadhrat Umar رضى الله تعالى عنه and the learned scholars of Makkah also perform twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh with three Rakaahs Witr.

In the third century A.H., the famous historian of Makkah Muhammad bin Ishaaq Faakihi documented that during the month of Ramadhaan it was the practice of the people of Makkah to sit five periods of Taraweeh (rest periods between every four Rakaahs of the Taraweeh salaah. This denotes that they performed twenty Rakaahs of salaah.) 7

It is therefore evident twenty Rakaahs of Taraweeh salaah has been performed in the Masjid Haraam of Makkah for the past fourteen hundred years. Throughout, this period, there has never been a single night when only Rakaahs have been performed.

Taraweeh salaah in the Masjidun Nabawi صلى الله عليه وسلم

The renowned Saudi scholar and Mufassir Sheikh Atiyya Saalim رحمة الله who was a Sheikhul Hadeeth, judge and lecturer in the Masjidun Nabawi صلى الله عليه وسلم wrote a book in Arabic entitled “The history of the Taraweeh salaah in the Masjidun Nabawi صلى الله عليه وسلم for more than a thousand years.” In this book[8], he conclusively proves from historical evidence that twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh salaah has been performed in the Masjidun Nabawi صلى الله عليه وسلم for the past fourteen centuries. He adds further that even after the establishment of the Saudi rule, both the Harams in Makkah and Madinah have twenty Rakaahs of Taraweeh salaah with three witr. 9

The heart-rending and beautiful Taraweeh salaah in both the Harams is broadcast live throughout both on radio and television.

A fourteen century old practice

Twenty Rakaahs Taraweeh salaah is being performed from the first century of Islaam up to this fifteenth century.

Source: The Historyof Makkah Mukarramah
by Dr Muhammad Ilyas Abdul Ghani

References
1 – Muslim – The Chapter concerning encouragement for performing the Taraweeh salaah.
2 – Mu’atta Maalik, as quoted in Nasbur Ra’yah
3 – Tirmidhi – Hadith 6272. The hadith is classified Hasan Saheeh and even Albaani has verified its authenticity [see Mishkaat annotated by him (Vol. 1 pg. 28)]
4 – Sunan Kubra of Bayhaqi – Chapter concerning the number of Rakaahs during the nights of Ramadhaan.
5 – Sunan Kubra of Bayhaqi – Chapter concerning the number of Rakaahs during the nights of Ramadhaan.
6 – Tirmidhi
7 – Akhbaar Makkah by Faakihi (Vol.2 Pg. 156,157)
8 – Pgs. 41-58
9 – Pg. ६५

courtesy Haq Islam

The Partition Shamshad Ilahi Ansari Shams جشن ء آ ز ا د ی تقسیم کی 63 و یں بر سی پر

2010-08-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

شمشا د الہی انصاری شمس کی نظم

کب جانو گے تم کب سمجھو گے

تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے

میرے بلکھتے ، معصوم والد کو
گھٹنوں -- گھٹنوں خون میں لتھپتھ
آ دھی جلی لاشوں اور دھد کتے گھروں کے درمیان
سے بھری ان گلیوں میں د م گھو ٹو ں د ھو یں
جسے د و ڈ کر پار کرنے میں وہ ا ہل نہ تھا.
نفرت اور ہیوانیت کے گھنے کہا سے میں
میرے والد نے اپنے بھائیوں ، لواحقین کے
ڈ ر ے سہمےچہرے غا ئب ہوتے دیکھے تھے.

غلیظ نعر و ں کے تا جرو ں نے
تخر یب کے تلا تم پر بیٹھا کر
جو خواب تمہاری آنکھوں میں بھر دیئے تھے
تمہیں انہیں جینا تھا ، لیکن
تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے ، معصوم والد کو
اس کے آدھے خاندان کے ساتھ...

میں پو چھتا ہوں تم سے
آخر کیا حاصل ہوا تمہیں
ان مبینہ نئے نعر و ں سے
نیا ملک ، نئ ر اہ اور نئی تاریخ سے
جو شر و ع ہوتی قا سم ، غز نی ، لنگ سے
اور مشرف تک جا تی.
گز شتہ نصف صدی میں کیا ہوا حاصل.
جنگ ، چند د ھما کے اور بامیان میں بدھ کا قتل.

تم کب جانو گے
کہ تقسیم صرف ز مین کا ہی ممکن ہے
وراثت ، ثقافت ، تاریخ کا نہیں.
توپوں کے گولوں سے مجسمہ کشی ہے ممکن
خیال اور وجود کشی نہیں.

تم کب جانو گے
کہ تمہارے گہرے سبز رنگ عکس نعر و ں کی
بر عکس گو نج میرے گھر میں زعفر ا ن گرم کرتی ہے.
جو گھر خاندان تم بیسہارا ، مجبو ر ، مخد وش
پیچھے چھوڑ کر گئے تھے
وہاں بھی کبھی کبھی ترشول کا خوف ستا تا ہے.
تمہارے گہرے سبز رنگ نے
زعفر ا ن کا رنگ بھی گہرا کر دیا ہے.

تم کب جانو گے
کہ وہ تاریخی توانائی
جو تقسیم کی با ئث بنی
وہ نئے بھارت کی سنجیو نی بن سکتی تھی
جو لوگ باہم قتل کر رہے تھے
وہ بنجر زمین کو سبز ہ بنا سکتے تھے
کل -- کارخانے چلا سکتے تھے
تعمیر کے بلند کو ہ پر چڑھ کر
دنیا کو بتا سکتے تھے کہ یہ ہے
ایک ترقی یا فتہ ، جمہوری ، مہذب ، بلند ہندوستان

تم کب جانو گے
کہ تمہارے بغیر یہ کام اب تک نا مکمل ہے
خلا میں لٹکا ہے کیونکہ
تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے معصوم والد کو

تم کب جانو گے
کہ میرے پس ماند ہ والد کو سہارا دینے والے ہاتھ
ہر شام کرشن کی عبا د ت میں مربوط ہو تے تھے
گنگا کا جمنا سے ر بط کا راز
بدھ کی خمو شی اور مہا ویر کی ر حم د لی
کبیر کے دو ہے ، خسر و کی ر با ئیا ں
مندر میں پو جا اور مسجد و ں میں عبادت
تم کس طرح سمجھو گے ؟
کیونکہ تم نے اس خطے کی تمام عقل کے برعکس
سرہد یں ز ہن میں بھی بنائی تھیں

تم کب جانو گے
کہ مذہب کے نام پر تعمیر یہ شیطا ن
اب خود تم سے آزاد ہو چکا ہے
وہ ہر پل تمہارے وجود کو ختم کر رہا ہے کیونکہ
تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے معصوم والد کو

تم کب جانو گے
کہ ماضی لا محد و د ، تا بند ہ اور غیر منقسم ہے
وہ سچ کی طر ح مقدس ہے
کب تک جٹھلا و گے اسے
کتنی نسلیں اور بھو گیگیں
تمہارے تاریخ کے بد فعل کو
کیوں نہیں بتاتے انہیں
کہ ہم سب ایک ہی تھے
ہمارے ہی ہاتھوں نے بوئ تھی پہلی فصل
مہن جوداڈو میں
سند ھو تہذیب کے عا دم مکا ن
ہم نے ہی بنا ئے تھے
ہم نے ہی رچی تھی ویدوں

کی رچا ئیں
ہم سب تھے مہا بھا رت
ہمارا ہی تھا رام ، کرشن ، بدھ ، مہا ویر
ہم نے ہی قبول کیا تھا محمد کا پیغام
ہم نے ہی بنائی تھی پیروں کی درگاہیں

تم کب جانو گے
کہ جھوٹ کے پاؤں نہیں ہوتے
جھوٹ کو نہیں ملتی تا بند گی
تمہارے ہر گھر میں رفیع کی آواز
مینا ، مدھوبالا ، ایشوریہ کا حسن
کرشن کی بانسر ی پر لہر ا تی دلوں کی د ھڑکنيں
ہر نوجوان میں چھپا دلیپ ، امت ، شاہ رخ کا چہرہ
تمہارے جھوٹ سے بڑا سچ
اور کیا ہو سکتا ہے

تم کب مانو گے
کہ تم سب کچھ جانتے ہو
سیاسی فریب کی ریت میں
دبی آنکھیں ، دماغ ، دل اور وجود
سچ کی آ ند ھی میں
برلن کی دیوار کی طر ح
کبھی بھی ڈ ھہ سکتا ہے.
جھوٹ کی چادر میں لپٹے بم ، بند و قیں اور بارود
محو فر بیب کی دیواریں ، سر حدیں ، ا فو اج
مخنث بناسکتی ہیں
لاکھوں بے گنا ہ لوگوں کا بہا خون
کبھی بھی مانگ سکتا ہے حساب
ا جڑ یں گھر و ں کی بد د عا ئیں
اپنا اثر دکھا سکتی ہیں ، کیونکہ
تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے معصوم والد کو..

تم کب جانو گے

تم کب جانو گے
کہ ہم بھی خطاوا ر ہیں
ہم نے بھی چلی ہیں سیاسی چا لیں
ہم نے بھی توڈی ہیں قسمیں
ہمیں بھی بتانی ہیں گاندھی کی جوانی کی بھولیں
سمجھنی ہے جنا ح کی نا دانی
نوسکھیا کانگریس کی جھوٹی مر د ا نگی
انگریزوں کی گھو ڑ وں کی چال ، شہ - مات کا کھیل
فیض ، فراز ، جوش ، جالب کا درد
اور ظفر کے بکھرے خواب ، کیونکہ
تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے معصوم والد کو..

تم کب جانو گے
کہ میرے والد کئی برس ہوئے گزر گئے ہیں
کھلی آنکھوں میں خواب اور آس لئے
کہ تم لوٹ آ و گے
ان کا وہ جملہ مجھے بھی کچو ٹتا ہے
"جو چھوڑ کر گیا ہے ، اسے ہی لوٹنا ہوگا"
میں نے جب سے ہوش سمبھا لا ہے
میں بھی یہی دہرا تا ہوں
میرے بچے بھی اب ہو گئے ہیں جوان
وہ بھی سوال کرتے ہیں
نئی روشنی ، نئی طرز ، نئی سمجھ کے ساتھ
تمہارے یہاں بھی یہی ہے حال
آج نہیں تو کل یہ شور اور تیز ہوگا
جوان نسلیں جائز سوال پوچھیگیں
ہزاروں برس کے سا جھے چلھے؟
پچاس ساٹھ برس کی علیحد گی؟
تمہیں دینے ہوں گے جواب کیونکہ
تم پیچھے چھوڑ گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے معصوم والد کو..

تم کب جانو گے
کہ پیچھے چھٹے ، جلے ، بکھرے ، ٹو ٹےگھر
پھر آباد ہو گئے ہیں
وہاں پھر سے بس گئے ہیں
بچپن کی کلکاریاں ،
جوانی کی رونق
اور ضعیفی

کی شا ن و شو کت
تمہارا پلنگ ، تمہاری کرسی
تمہاری کتابیں ، تمہارے خط
تمہاری گلیاں ، وہ چھت
اور آم جامن کے پیڑ
تمام کچھ قا یم ہیں منتظر ہیں
تمہیں واپس آنا ہوگا
تمہیں ہی لوٹنا ہوگا کیونکہ
تمہی تو چھوڈ کر گئے تھے
میرے بلکھتے معصوم والد کو..

ساٹھ برس قبل

ہند ی سے ا ر د و پیشکش شہر و ز

Courtesy Hamzabaan

Taraweeh Salaah – Night 1

2010-08-11T23:01:00.000-07:00

In the Name of Almighty Allah Most Gracious, Most Merciful

By Sheikh Abdul Hamid Lachporia

“Blessed is He Who hath revealed unto His slave the FURQAN [the Criterion of Right and Wrong], that He may be a warner to mankind. He unto Whom belongeth the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth, He hath chosen no son nor hath He any partner in the Sovereignty. He Who created all things, and ordered them in due proportion”. [Surah Al-Furqan: Verses 1 and 2].

“We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an,In order that you may learn wisdom.” [Surah Yusuf Verse 2].

In the spirit of the above verses these notes are being prepared in order to foster an interest in understanding the Most Glorious and Noble Qur’an with the sincere intention of recognizing it as a practical Divine Book with which to influence our lives. How much more inspiring would it have been if only all of us would have understood a minute portion of its Divine Message. It is hoped Insha’Allah that that we can all derive full advantage of this humble effort. It is humbly suggested that this brief synopsis of the Surah/Surahs as recited each night during Ramadan be explained to the Jamaat prior to commencing the Tarawee prayers.

May Almighty Allah Jallah Wa’ala in His Infinite Mercy and Bounty accept our humble efforts and may He accept all our Duahs,Supplications, Ibadah and good deeds during this glorious month of Ramadan and throughout the coming years – Insha’Allah Bie Itt’Nillah. Ameen Ya Rabbul Ala’meen.

1ST TARAWEEH
The Surahs recited for the first night of Tarawee consists of: Surah Al-Fatiha and two thirds of Surah Al-Baqara.

SYNOPSIS OF SURAH FATIHA
The prayers and invocations with which our Beloved Nabee Sallallahoo Alayhi Wasallam began a prayer-service would appear to be little else than the acknowledgement and affirmation before Almighty Allah Subahanahoo Wata’ala of His Glory, His Unity, His Majesty and His Greatness and of one’s own humbleness.”O Allah! With Thy glorification and Thy Praise; Blessed is Thy name, and great is Thy Glory, and there is no god save Thee.”O Allah! I seek refuge in Thee from the enticement, the whisper and the spit of Shaytaan Lanathulahi Alay.” Refuge is then sought from Shaythaan and in order to keep the Salaat and reverence for the Most Holy and Glorious Qura’n safe from his evils it is begun with Bismillah, in accordance with the Quranic dictum: Verse 98 of Surah An-Nahl:

“And when thou recitest the Qura’n, seek refuge in Allah from Shayhaan the outcast.”

Let us now take Surah Al- Fatihah. Our Beloved Nabee Sallallahoo Alayhi Wassallam said that Surah Al- Fatihah is the greatest and most virtuous in the Most Holy and Glorious Qura’n and declared: “By Him Who is in possession of my life, a ‘Surah’ like this one has neither been revealed in the Taura’h, nor in the Zaboor, nor in the Injeel nor even in the rest of the Most Holy Qura’n.” Hazrat Hassen Al- Basri Rahmatullahi Alay reports the saying of our Beloved Nabee Sallallahoo Alyhi Wasallam “that whoever reads Surah Fateha with total and complete understanding is like one who has read the Taura’h, the Zaboor, the Injeel and the Most Holy and Glorious Qura’n. It is also reported in a Hadith that Shaytaan Lannatulahi Alay lamented, wept and threw dust on his head on four different occasions; first when he was cursed; secondly when he was cast out of Jannah; thirdly when our Beloved Nabee Sallallahoo Alayhi Wasallam received his Prophethood and fourthly, when Surah Al-Fatihah was revealed. Surah Al- Fatihah is without any doubt, a priceless gem of the Holy Qura’n. If the scholars, moral teachers and spiritual mentors of the world were to get together to produce a text which could suffice for all of mankind, irrespective of the diversity of their needs and circumstances, and through which they could express in their prayers what lay at the bottom of their hearts they could not bring forth the like of it.

Since Surah Al-Fatihah is the first chapter of the Holy Qura’n, it has been referred to as Fatihatul-Kitaab or the opening of the Qura’n. Because of its intrinsic value, it has been assigned a place of honour in the Most Holy and Glorious Qura’n and allowed to appear at the very beginning of the opening chapter. Indeed, the Most Holy and Glorious Qura’n endorses its importance in the following terms as declared by Almighty Allah Subahanahoo Wata’ala in verse 87 of Surah Al-Hijr:

“O Prophet! It is a fact that We have given thee seven oft-repeated verses and the great Qura’n.”

These Seven oft-repeated verses are the Opening Surah and they sum up the entire teaching of the Holy Qur’an. What can be a more precious gift to a Muslim than the Glorious Qur’an or any Surah of it? All the wealth in the world, honour and material possessions sinks into insignificance in comparison with it. Surah Al-Fatihah is also called “Umm-ul-Qur’an ” (the core of the Qur’an), “Al-Kafia” (the Sufficient), “Al-Kanz” (the Treasure House), “Asasul-Qur’an” (the basis of the Qur’an) and “Sab’a-al-Mathani” (The oft-repeated seven), each emphasizing a particular aspect of its great and paramount importance. To style this chapter as “Umm-ul-Qur’an” (the core of the Qur’an) is to acknowledge that in its tense comprehensiveness, it concentrates within its ambit the thought-content of the entire Qur’an, and that, on that account, it rightly deserves the place of honour among its chapters. If any one of us were to read nothing but Surah Al-Fatihah out of the Qur’an and grasp its true meaning, we would understand all the essentials of the Faith which form the subject of detailed exposition by the Qur’an. Hence, knowledge of the contents of Surah Al-Fatihah is regarded as indispensable to a Muslim. According to Sahih Bukhari and Muslim, our Beloved Nabee Muhammad Sallallahoo Alayhi Wasallam is reported to have said that “there is no Salaat for him who does not recite Surah Fatihah.” What plainer view can be taken of human devotion to Almighty Allah Subahanahoo Wata’ala and all that it implies than what is presented in Surah Al-Fatihah?

Here are but seven brief phrases, each one of not more than five words, every word crystal clear and impressive. Almighty Allah Subahanahoo Wata’ala is here invoked in His Attributes, the manifestations of which mankind beholds day in and day out, however much he may, through indifference, neglect to reflect over them. Here you have mankind’s admission of his absolute dependence on none other than Almighty Allah Subahanahoo Wata’ala, his acknowledgement of the Divine Kindness shown to him, his earnest yearning to be saved from the pitfalls of life and to be led along the straight path i.e. The Path of Seerathal Mustaqeem By way of Surah Al-Fatiha – Almighty Allah Azza Wajjal teaches us and He introduces Himself to us and He tells us with words of wisdom and with the expression of Truth of His Sovereignty, His Qualities and His relationship with mankind and with the rest of His creation. He tells us to commit ourselves totally and completely to Him Alone if we want to succeed in this life as well as in the Aghirah. The essence of Surah Al-Fatiha is that mankind is crying out to the Glorious Creator and Sustainer: “O Almighty Rabbul Ala’meen! Help me and show me the Right Path, the Royal highway leading to the Path of Seerathal Mustaqeem”.

SURAH AL-BAQARA
[The Cow revealed in Madinah and contains 286 Verses].
Surah Al-Baqara sums up the teachings of the Most Glorious Qur’an. When mankind is crying out to the Glorious Creator and Sustainer: “O Almighty Rabbul Ala’meen! Help me and show me the Right Path, the Royal highway leading to the Path of Seerathal Mustaqeem” – Almighty Allah Jallah Wa’ala replies with Surah Al-Baqara. The revelation of Surah Al-Baqara is when Almighty Rabbul Ala’meen Exalted replies by saying: “Here is the help that you asked for.” Surah Al- Baqara discusses the creation of mankind, his ultimate fall from Grace as well as the Divine promise of forgiveness in spite of his wrong doing. We are told the story of the Bani Isra’eel and how they transgressed the Divine Will of Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata’ala and how they persisted in their evil ways.

Surah Al Baqara also covers the story of Nabee Moosa Alayhis Salaam and Nabee Esa Alayhis Salaam, and how they had to deal with the corruption and evil ways of their people. We are also told how the Yahood and Nasara despite been blessed with divine scriptures and prophets rejected Nabee Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Sallallahoo Alayhi Wasallam and the Din of Islam out of pride and jealousy. Which Muslim, Christian or Jew does not know the name of Nabee Ebrahim Alayhis Salatu Wassallam? Two thirds of mankind revere him as their leader. Nabee Moosa A.S., Nabee Esa A.S. and our Beloved Nabee Muhammad Sallalahoo Alayhi Wassallam are all his descendants. It is the lamp of Taqwa and Imaan lit by him that has for so long illuminated the entire world. Nabee Ebrahim A.S. was born in the city of Ur in what is now Iraq over four thousand years ago. At that time the people had completely forgotten Almighty Allah Subahanahoo Wata’ala. No one recognized Almighty Allah as the Master and Supreme Creator and no one lived in surrender and obedience to Him or to His Laws.

Together with his illustrious son – Hazrat Isma’il Alayhis Salaam they built the Ka’bah in the Holy City of Makkah and purified it, thus establishing the one and only true and complete Din of Islam for mankind. The Holy Ka’bah was to be the very centre and home of Taqwa and Tawhid. The name of this Surah i.e. Surah Al-Baqara [The Cow - Verses 67 to 71] deals with the hypocrisy and evil deeds of people who have gone astray. This is when people reach the abyss of a spiritual death and referred to by Almighty Allah Subhanahu Wata’ala as “deaf”, “dumb” and “blind” despite the fact that they are physically alive.

The final summation of Surah Al-Baqara confirms to us that our honesty and upright conduct are not mere matters of policy or convenience: all our life in this world must be lived as in the presence of Almighty Allah Jallah Wa’ala. The finest example of Faith we have in our Beloved Nabee Sallallahoo Alayhi Wasallam’s life; full of faith. Let us render willing obedience to the Will of Rabbul Ala’meen Exalted. Our responsibility though great, is not a burden greater than any one of us can bear. Let us pray for Almighty Allah’s assistance, and He will Insha’Allah, surely help and assist us. Ameen.

Courtesy: everymuslim

In India: How long will Muslims remain marginalized?

2010-08-03T01:08:00.000-07:00

Shamim Akhter

A Week back I went through a report in BBC website under the title “India state-run banks ‘turn away Muslims’” regarding denial of access to government banks to Muslims in India. The report reveals the truth of the government banks operating in different parts of the country.

The report quotes the National Commission of Minorities as saying that there has been a 100% increase in the number of complaints it has received over the past year from Muslims who say they are being prevented from opening accounts in state-run banks.

On the other hand this is the fact that Muslims make up India's largest minority community.
BBC writes that reports indicate the worst case took place in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, where some 90,000 Muslim students were unable to open accounts to deposit scholarship cheques given to them by the government.

However, some bankers say it is not so much their religious background, but their economic status that makes it hard for Muslims to get banking facilities. It says Muslims’ poor economic status means they are often excluded by private banks, which prefer more well-to-do clients.

Official reports frequently put Muslims at the bottom of India's social and economic ladder. And already a number of reports have suggested that India's Muslims fare poorly when it comes to getting access to quality education or employment opportunities.

Not only this, if we talk about the presence of Muslims in government jobs it is more heart-rending.

Today, about 140 million Muslims constitute over 13% of India’s billion-strong population. Since the independence of India in 1947 the percentage of Muslims in government census has remained same, i.e. 12% or 13% or less. But in an interview with "The Hindu" newspaper (Friday, October 01, 1999) Mr. Justice K. M. Yusuf, a retired Judge from Calcutta High Court had said that in his view the total percentage of Muslims in India is at least 20%.

But the appalling fact is that Muslims comprise only 5% of employees in the government of world’s largest democracy. A study says the figure for Indian Railways, the country's biggest employer, is only 4.5%.

The study continues to reveal that the community continues to have a paltry representation in the bureaucracy and police – more or less 3% in the powerful Indian Civil Service, 1.8% in Foreign Service and only 4% in the Indian Police Service. And Muslims account for only 7.8% of the people working in the judiciary.

Moreover Indian Muslims carry a double burden of being labelled as 'anti-national' and as being 'appeased' at the same time’, says a three-year back report on the state of Indian Muslims.

India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had said, “If India was to be a secular, stable and strong state, then our first consideration must be to give absolute fair play to our minority.”

But what fair play and treatment have been provided to the Muslims of the largest democracy of the world? (The BBC report - India state-run banks 'turn away Muslims' reveals partially the truth). Why are we lagging behind in every walk of life? It is the time of self and collective introspection and to find the ways to overcome the appalling state.

(The writer hailing from the state of Bihar in India works in Kabul with Ariana Radio & Television Network, Kabul, Afghanistan)

RSS: Culture Of Hate

2010-08-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

Interview with D.R. Goyal, author of an authoritative narrative of RSS history

AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA

In an interview to R.S.Goyal the author of Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh elaborates on how the Hindutva hand in the Ajmer, Hyderabad and Malegaon blasts is nothing new and explains how Hindutva as a political ideology breeds terror.

The investigations in the Ajmer, Hyderabad and Malegaon blast cases point towards the involvement of Hindu fundamentalists. Over the past five years, we have heard a lot about fundamentalist Hindu organisations plotting bomb blasts in Muslim areas across the country. This kind of secret plotting seems to be a new development in India। What could be its political repercussions?

First of all, bomb-making and such other acts are not a new thing for these organisations. For example, in 1947, Mr L.K. Advani, then an RSS swayamsewak and not a Bharatiya Janata Party leader, ran away from Karachi because in his house bombs were being made to kill Mr Jinnah. Many of his associates were arrested and punished. He was able to get out. Now he says that he came by plane to Gujarat after the incident. But in his first biography by Atma Ram, it was said that he took a boat from Karachi to Gujarat and then could go to Rajasthan and other places in India.

It is not only bombs. Terrorism can take many forms. What happened in Gujarat in 2002? Is it not terrorism? See Kandhamal। Are they not terrorising Muslims and Christians? I would say that it is not Hindu terrorism, as most of the media have coined it, but it is Hindutva terrorism, which is political in nature.

Do you recollect any other instances in history where the RSS and other such Hindu organisations engaged with such forms of terrorism?

Many such instances can be noted. What was Madanlal Pahwa doing when he threw a bomb at Mahatma Gandhi? Was he not inspired by the RSS? After that, Nathuram Godse fired at Mahatma Gandhi and killed him. The RSS tried to wriggle out of the matter by trying to dissociate itself from Godse. But later, Frontline quoted Godse's brother as saying that they were all members of the RSS family. All the brothers, not only one. So, it is not a question of something new happening. They say that they are trying to be friendly with Muslims. The fact is that they can never do that ideologically. M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS' most important ideologue, in his book We or Our Nationhood Defined says the minorities in this country should be treated as Hitler treated Jews in Germany। So the Muslims and Christians should be treated the same way.

The RSS and other Hindutva organisations have started attacking media offices. For instance, the Headlines Today office was attacked in Delhi and Zee 24 was attacked in Mumbai। We saw the same kind of attack last year at the CNN-IBN office.

This, too, is nothing new. In pre-Independence days, they were against publishing any news about the RSS. Even if some newspaper published a report of Golwalkar arriving somewhere, it was attacked. Journalists were attacked for publishing news about the RSS. It is true that until 1947 there was hardly any news published about the activities of the RSS, which means that they were trying to work secretly. Secret work is always the mark of terrorists. They started open work only after 1947. The scheme was to set up a political front. Various issues of the RSS mouthpiece Organiser in the late 1940s clearly show a debate within the RSS whether to enter politics or not. The argument in favour of setting up a political party was that when the RSS was banned, there were no political voices to condemn the ban and defend it. It was with this objective that they formed the Jan Sangh. But it was not a regular party with a constitution, a concrete political programme, and a foreign policy stand. The Jan Sangh's only programme was to defend the RSS. And then they started taking up the issues of Akhand Bharat and abolition of Article 370. It was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who first stated that history could not be changed and Pakistan would have to be accepted as a nation state. Before that, they [Hindutva leaders] did not even accept Pakistan as an independent state. They wanted to have Pakistan just as Pakistan wanted to have Kashmir. But the BJP still publicly states that it draws its inspiration from the RSS.

I would say that their attitude towards social life is the same as that of the Taliban – those who are not Hindus have to be punished। Either you convert to Hinduism or you will be punished.

What explains the time gap of such terrorist action by the RSS and its sister groups? All the examples you gave were pre-Independence and the recent terrorist acts are not more than five years old.

In between, they were actively involved in engineering riots. If you look at the pattern of the Sangh Parivar-led riots, detailed planning and execution were involved. Babri Masjid demolition means for them a statement that unless they get back all the temples destroyed in history, they will demolish all the mosques. What does it mean? The RSS is creating an atmosphere where fear prevails and other people are expected to act out of fear through riots and carnage like in Kandhamal. See what is happening in Karnataka. The RSS, as an organisation, has not been properly understood both by our state and by our people.

The RSS, in rhetoric at least, has dissociated itself from organisations like Sanatan Sanstha, Abhinav Bharat or Sri Ram Sene, which have been linked to bomb blasts and rioting.

The RSS has always said that it is a social and cultural organisation and not a political one and that it does only social work. But the question to ask is: When did it start saying this? Only after it was banned. Golwalkar and Savarkar were arrested for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi and were released only on the grounds that the prosecution could not produce enough witnesses. Some of the witnesses ran away. If Godse's brother is to be believed, all of them were RSS workers. Then it was the teachings of the RSS that prompted Nathuram to kill Gandhi. Madanlal Pahwa could also be cited as a case in point. It was banned because Sardar Patel himself wrote in a letter to [Jawaharlal] Nehru that saving Hindus was one thing but creating an atmosphere [of hatred] against Muslims was wrong. He also wrote that the worst thing the RSS did was to create an atmosphere that led to Gandhi being assassinated.

To get the ban withdrawn, the RSS submitted a constitution to the Home Ministry saying that it accepted the national flag and the Indian Constitution. Until 1949, the RSS had no constitution. The organisation had operated for almost a quarter of a century without a constitution. It was a secret organisation.

According to their constitution, they had to keep a record of its members. They have no such record as yet. Their constitution is not even known to many members. In 1967, there was a court question to the RSS about its finances and whether it paid taxes. The RSS replied that its work was akin to politics and it was not liable to pay taxes. Their accounts are all secret. When I was in the RSS, no one except Golwalkar was allowed to write anything. My fault was that I wrote three letters to a senior person in the RSS asking the organisation to help Hindus when the famine had broken out. This was criticised. My habit of reading was also severely discouraged. I was then asked to come to the central office where I saw all kinds of corruption. Money laundering was very much there. All these organisations are Hindutva carriers and members of the RSS. Dissociating itself from these organisations, therefore, would hardly prove the RSS' innocence. For instance, in 1969, riots broke out in Ahmedabad. There was a separate organisation called “Support for Hindus” to lead the riot. Similarly, when there were riots in Jalgaon and Bhiwandi, a similar organisation was set up. However, if you look at their composition, all the members were also members of the RSS. The parent organisation of such groups that engineer such riots is always the RSS.

In the teachings and writings of the RSS, do you see enough instigation for militant action?

The RSS was formed at the request of Savarkar, who had written the book Hindutva। But because Savarkar was not able to function openly owing to his house arrest, he asked K.B. Hedgewar to start a youth organisation as an affiliate to the Hindu Mahasabha to propagate Hindutva politics. It is well known that until 1937, the RSS was a volunteer organisation under the Hindu Mahasabha. But after Golwalkar lost an election for the post of secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha, he severed all relations with the Hindu Mahasabha. Golwalkar wrote We or Our Nationhood Defined and Bunch of Thoughts.

In Bunch of Thoughts, he clearly identifies three enemies – Muslims, Christians, and Communists. If you have defined enemies, it is assumed that you have to fight and kill them. He also wrote that sacrificing your life is not heroism but success is. He wrote about “parakramavada” (aggressive bravery). You have to be aggressive and win to become heroic.

When I was an RSS member as a child, I was very averse to bloodshed. They used to teach us how to kill pigeons as if we should start with pigeons, and then graduate later to killing bigger mortals.

In recent times, the appointment of Nitin Gadkari as president of the BJP is being seen as the RSS asserting its control over its political front again.

The job of the Jan Sangh was to defend the RSS. Power was never its objective. It so happened that in 1977 it was able to collaborate with other political parties. They [Hindutva forces] started getting into power. Then, in 1998, they got power at the Centre. When this happened, their old leaders Vajpayee and Advani started to see RSS chiefs and leaders as their juniors. As long as Golwalkar was alive and until Balasaheb Deoras was there in the RSS, these two leaders of the BJP revered them and were also afraid of them. After Golwalkar and Deoras, they felt that they were senior to the RSS chief. This led to some differences between the RSS and the BJP. Former RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan even went ahead to say that these two should take retirement. After Vajpayee became too ill to be politically active and the BJP lost the last parliamentary elections under Advani's leadership, the RSS used it to its advantage to impose its own man, Gadkari, on the BJP.

Factionalism, however, has grown in the RSS. Mohan Bhagwat is seen as a junior person. Students who go to colleges and schools prefer to go to Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad [student wing of the BJP] rather than an RSS shakha.

Could you tell us more about the process of indoctrination in the RSS?

The speech made by the RSS chief at the annual Dasara function in Nagpur is circulated to all the shakhas and the members are made to hear it many times. If you compare what Nitin Gadkari is talking about and what Bhagwat spoke of in the last meeting, they are similar. He talked about China, Maoists, failure in security arrangements – the same thing. They say that not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims.

What, according to you, will be the political repercussion of such a militant trend in the RSS and other Hindutva groups?

When they came to power at the Centre, they gave up the demands of a Ram temple [at the Babri Masjid site] and abolition of Article 370. Then a person like Kalyan Singh also declared that they were cowards. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad [VHP] refused to invite Advani to a function in Haridwar, complaining that he did not push the Ram temple issue. Both the RSS and the VHP are trying to revive the issue in another name, “Hanuman Jagaran”, but the BJP is reluctant. The VHP is planning to hold a meeting of sadhus and sants in Ayodhya to revive that. They may not be able to do that, but they are trying.

How do you differentiate between Hindutva terrorism and Islamist terrorism?

Terrorism always starts when a community identifies itself as a nation. The same is the case with the Taliban in Pakistan. The militant ideology of the majority section of population, however, is more vicious in nature. In Ludhiana, I remember a Muslim leader called Ludhianvi who was close to Nehru. When there were riots in Ludhiana, he sheltered many Muslims at his house.

Muslims thought since their leader was there, there was no need for them to leave their original homes. The RSS realised this, and every night fire torches and stones were thrown at his house. Subsequently, Nehru requested him to leave Ludhiana and come to Delhi. Now, there is hardly any Muslim population in Ludhiana.

Islamist terrorism, as I see in India, was not organised until recently. They were mostly reactions. You could see individual reactions from goondas like Dawood Ibrahim who held the torch of the Muslim cause. It was because Muslims were marginalised and discriminated against, the cause of which could be attributed to organisations like the RSS.

From 1950 onwards, a trend started wherein a riot results in polarisation and consolidation of Hindu votes in favour of the Jan Sangh and later the BJP. The inquiry commissions set up after every riot failed to point out that a particular organisation was behind it. Whenever the Sangh Parivar combine finds itself in a politically weak position, it does such things. See how the BJP, pushed to a corner in politics, is once again trying to revive the Hindutva debate through such terrorist acts. Hindutva forces have always used terrorism to their political advantage and not because they suffer socially and economically like the Muslims in India.

Courtesy Frontline, 31 July 2010

the first Muslim Chief Election Commissioner of India

2010-07-29T05:50:00.000-07:00

SY Quraishi

The President of India appointed the senior Election Commissioner, Shahabuddin Yaqoob Quraishi as the Chief Election Commissioner [CEC] in the Election Commission of India. With this the lone and first Muslim Election Commissioner SY Quraishi, got glory to become the first Muslim Chief Election Commissioner of India.

He will assume the office with effect from the 30th July, 2010 as the present Chief Election Commissioner Navin B. Chawla will leave the office on attaining the age of sixty- five years on 29th July, 2010.

The 63-year old Quraishi who has already served the Election Commission for more than four years, will enjoy the prestegious post of CEC a little more than two years. He was appointed as Election Commissioner on June 30, 2006.

Born on July 11, 1947, in Delhi, he is an IAS officer of 1971 batch from Haryana cadre and had worked in the governments both centre and state levels giving special contribution in the areas of social sector reforms covering health, education, population, drug abuse and civil society action. Before being Election Commissioner he also served as Secretary of Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

He has held various other top posts in his life including Director General of the National Aids Control Organization (NACO), Director General, Doordarshan, Director General of the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan and Director of the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu.

A post graduate in history Quraishi, before joining Civil Service had earned distinction for his study of modern Persian, Arabic and German languages. Later he also received Ph.D degree in communication and Social Marketing.

He is also known for his extensive work in the field of population, women and child development, youth and adolescent issues. The UN and other international organizations have availed his experience in these areas.

He authored a number of books, articles and papers on different topics related to democracy, elections and social sector issues. His two famous books are “Islam, Muslims and Family Planning in India” and “Islam and AIDS.”

5 Million French Muslims to defy Order on Burqa. A Rich Muslim vows to pay Buqa fines.

2010-07-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Gavin Mortimer Flamboyant Rachid Nekkaz pledges €1m to pay fines of French Muslim women caught wearing the full veil।

On the eve of tomorrow’s Bastille Day celebrations, there is more revolution in the air in France and this time the ringleader is a flamboyant Muslim businessman called Rachid Nekkaz.’

The 38-year-old property developer is incensed that France has moved one step closer to banning the burka, with women caught wearing the full veil in public liable to a €150 fine and anyone convicted of forcing a woman to cover up facing a fine of up to €30,000 and a year in prison.

The first stage in passing the controversial law was today approved in the National Assembly with members of the Lower House voting overwhelmingly – 335 votes for to one against – to introduce the ban.

If the French senators in the Upper House ratify the proposal in September, it will become law by the spring of 2011. Nekkaz (above), along with the majority of France’s five million Muslims, is furious at what he sees as a persecution of his religion, pointing out that fewer than 2,000 French Muslims actually wear the full veil.

He has begun a campaign to fight the law and he’s pledged one million euros of his own money to pay the fines of any Muslim convicted. Speaking outside the National Assembly, Nekkaz said: “One million sounds a lot, but to protect one’s liberty it’s not much, and I hope that others in this country who hold the constitution dear and want to protect our fundamental liberty will join me in fighting this law.”

The debonair Nekkaz, a shining example of an integrated, modern French Muslim (he was born in France to Algerian parents), has set up a campaign group called ‘Hands off my Constitution’, and plans to raise the €1m by selling some of the properties he owns in the Parisian suburbs. In front of the cameras he wrote a personal cheque for the seven-figure sum before describing the proposed law as ‘Anti-Constitutional’ and demanding that President Sarkozy shelves the idea.That seems unlikely.

Not only has Sarkozy described the full veil as degrading to women, but it’s an issue that has the overwhelming support of his UMP party. Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said last week that wearing the veil “amounted to being cut off from society and rejecting the very spirit of the French republic that is founded on a desire to live together’ (…)

US disagrees, with ban on viels by French.

On the other hand in America. US officials has reiterated Washington’s disagreement with a measure approved by the lower house of France’s National Assembly banning the use of face-covering Islamic veils in public.

“We do not think that you should legislate what people can wear or not wear associated with their religious beliefs,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.

“Here in the United States, we would take a different step to balance security and to respect religious freedom and the symbols that go along with religious freedom,” he said.

The bill is not yet law, as it will now go to France’s Senate in September

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s determination to ban the ‘Hijab‘ and the ‘Burqa‘ won enough political support to approve the measure, even though critics argue that it breaches French and European human rights legislation.

“I would only say that, as I understand it, this is a first step in what may be a lengthy legislative and perhaps a legal process,” said Crowley।

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Veil empowers women: British minister

2010-07-19T06:51:00.000-07:00

As debate intensifies across Europe on banning the Islamic full-body veil at public places, a British minister has defended a Muslim woman's right to wear the burqa and says it is empowering.

Environment secretary Caroline Spelman said women were "empowered" by the freedom to wear the face coverings.

Her comments came after her colleague, immigration minister Damian Green, resisted demands from within the Tory party to ban the burqa, according to Daily Mail.

Green said a ban would be "rather un-British" and run contrary to the conventions of a "tolerant and mutually respectful society".

This is despite a YouGov survey which found that 67 percent of voters wanted the wearing of full-face veils to be outlawed in Britain.

France's lower house of parliament has overwhelmingly approved a ban on wearing burqa, while Spain and Belgium have similar laws in the pipeline.

Tory MPs supporting a ban include Philip Hollobone, who has tabled a private member's Bill that would make it illegal for anyone to cover his or her face in public.

Spelman, however, argued that wearing a burqa is important for women's rights.

"I don't, living in this country as a woman, want to be told what I can and can't wear. I've been out to Afghanistan and I think I understand much better as a result of actually visiting why a lot of Muslim women want to wear the burqa," she said.

"It is part of their culture, it is part of understanding that they choose to go out in the burqa and I think those that live in this country, if they choose to wear a burqa, should be free to do so.

"We are a free country, we attach importance to people being free and for a woman it is empowering to be able to choose each morning when you wake up what you wear."

Hijab:Experience of a Japanese woman

2010-07-16T02:42:00.000-07:00

My Hijab Made Me Happy

Nakata Khaula a Japanese woman who embraced Islam and adopted Hijab and found how it provides the wealth of self confidence, serenity and dignity to a woman।

When I reverted to Islam, the religion of inborn nature, a fierce debate raged about girls observing the Hijab at schools in France. It still does. The majority, it seemed, thought that wearing the head scarf was contrary to the principle that public – that is state – funded school should be neutral with regard to religion. Even as a non-Muslim, I could not understand why there was such a fuss over such a small thing as a scarf on a Muslim student’s head. The feeling still persists amongst non-Muslims that Muslim woman wear the Hijab simply because they are slaves to traditions, so much so that it is seen as a symbol of oppression. Woman’s liberation and independence is, so they believe, impossible unless they first remove the Hijab.

Such naiveté is shared by “Muslim” with little or no knowledge of Islam. Being so used secularism and religious eclecticism, pick and mix, they are unable to comprehend that Islam is universal and eternal. This part, women all over the world, non-Arabs, are embracing Islam and wearing the Hijab as a religious requirement, not a misdirected sense of “tradition”.

I am but one example of such women. My Hijab is not a part of my racial or traditional identity.; it has no social or political significance; it is, purely and simply, my religious identity.

I have worn the Hijab embracing Islam in Paris. The exact form of the Hijab varies according to the country one is in, or the degree of the individual’s religion awareness. In France I wore a simple scarf, which matched my dress and perched lightly on my head so that it was almost fashionable. Now, in Saudi Arabia, I wear an all-covering black cape; not even my eyes are visible. Thus, I have experienced the Hijab from its simplest to its most complete form.

What does the Hijab means to me? Although there have been many books and articles about the Hijab, they always tend to be written from an outsider’s point of view; I hope this will allow me to explain what I can observe from the inside, so to speak. When I decided to declare my Islam, I did not think whether I could pray five times a day or wear the Hijab. Ma be I was scared that if I had given it serious thought I would have reached a negative conclusion, and that would affect my decision to become a Muslim. Until I visited the main mosque in Paris I had nothing to do with Islam; neither the prayer nor the Hijab were familiar to m. In fact, both were unimaginable but my desire to be a Muslim was too strong, Alhamdulillah, for me to be overly concerned with what awaited me on the “ Other side” of my conversion.

The benefits of observing Hijab became clear to me following a lecture at the mosque when I kept my scarf on even after leaving the building. The lecture had filled me with such a previously unknown spiritual satisfaction that I simply did not want to remove it. Because of the cold weather, I did not attract too much attention but I did feel different, somehow purified and protected; I felt as if I was in Allah’s company.

As a foreigner in Paris, sometimes felt uneasy about being stared at by men. In my Hijab I went unnoticed, protected from impolite stares.

My Hijab made me happy; it was both a sign of my obedience to Allah and a manifestation of my faith. I did not need to utter beliefs, the Hijab stated them clearly for all to see, especially fellow Muslims, and thus it helped to strengthen the bonds of sisterhood in Islam.

Wearing the Hijab soon became spontaneous, albeit purely voluntary. No human could force me to wear it; if they had, perhaps I would have rebelled and rejected it. However, the first Islamic book I read used very moderate language in this respect, saying that “Allah recommends it (the Hijab) strongly” and since Islam (as the word itself indicates) means we are to obey Allah’s will I accomplished my Islamic duties willingly and without difficulty, Alhamdulillah!

The Hijab reminds people who see it that God exists, and it serves as a constant reminder to me that I should conduct myself as a Muslim. Just as police officers are more professionally aware while in uniform, so I had a stronger sense of being a Muslim wearing my Hijab.

Two weeks after my return to Islam, I went back to Japan for a family wedding and took the decision not to return to my studies in France; French literature had lost its appeal and the desire to study Arabic had replaced it. As a new Muslim with very little knowledge of Islam it was a big test for me to live in a small town in Japan completely isolated from Muslims. However, this isolation intensified my Islamic consciousness, and I knew that I was not alone as Allah was with me.

I had to abandon many of my clothes and, with some help from a friend who knew dressmaking; I made some pantaloons, similar to Pakistani dress, I was not bothered by the strange looks the people gave me.

After six months in Japan, my desire to study Arabic grew so much that I decided to go to Cairo where I knew someone. None of best family there spoke English (or Japanese) and the lady who too my hand to lead me into the house was covered from head to toe in black. Even her face was covered. Although this is now familiar to me here in Riyadh, I remember being surprised at the time, recalling an incident in France when I had seen such dress and thought, “there is a woman enslaved by Arabic tradition, unaware of real Islam,” (which I believed, thought that covering the face was not a necessity, but an ethnic tradition).

I wanted to tell the lady in Cairo that she was exaggerating in her dress, that it was unnatural and abnormal. Instead, I was told that my self-made dress was not suitable to go out in, something I disagreed with since I understood that it satisfied the requirements for a Muslim. But, when in Rome….so I bought some cloth and made a long dress, called Khimar, which covered the loins and arms completely. I was even ready to cover my face, something most of the sisters with whom I became acquainted did. They were, though, a small minority in Cairo.

Generally speaking, young Egyptians, more or less fully westernized, kept their distance from women wearing Khimar and called them “the sisters.” Men treated us with respect and special politeness. Women wearing a Khimar shared a sisterhood, which lived up to the Prophet’s saying (Allah’s blessings and peace be on him) that a Muslim gives his salam to the person he crosses in the street, whether he knows him or not.” The sisters were, it is probably true to say, more conscious of their faith than those who wear scarves for the sake of custom, rather than for the sake of Allah.

Before becoming a Muslimah, my preference was for active pants-style clothes, not the more feminine shirts, but the long dress I wore in Cairo pleased me; I felt elegant and more relaxed.

In the western sense, black is a favorite colour for evening wears as it accentuates the beauty of the wearer. My new sisters were truly beautiful in their black Khimar and with a light akin to saintliness shone from their faces. Indeed, they are not unlike Roman Catholic nuns, something I noticed particularly when I had occasion to Paris soon after arriving in Saudi Arabia.

I was in the same metro carriage as a nun and I smiled at our similarity of dress. Hers was the symbol of her devotion to God, as is that of a Muslimah. I often wonder why people say nothing about the veil of the catholic nun but criticize vehemently the veil of a Muslimah, regarding it as a symbol of “terrorism” and “oppression.”

I did not mind abandoning colourful clothes in favour of black; in fact, I had always had a sense to longing for the religious life style of a nun even before becoming a Muslimah.

After another six months in Cairo, however, I was accustomed to my long dress that I started to think that I would wear it on my return to Japan. My concession was that I had some dresses make in light colours, and some white khimars, in the belief that they would be less shocking in Japan than the black variety.

I was right. The Japanese reacted rather well to my white khimars, and they seemed to be able to guess that I was of a religious persuasion. I heard one girl telling her friend that I was a Buddhist nun; how similar a Muslimah, a Buddhist nun and a Christian nun are.

Once, on train, the elderly man next to me asked why I was dressed in such unusual fashion. When I explained that I was a Muslimah and that Islam commands women to cover their bodies so as not to trouble men who are weak and unable to resist temptation, he seemed impressed. When he left the train he thanked me and said that he would have liked more time to speak to me about Islam.

In this instance, the hijab prompted a would not normally be accustomed to talking about religion. As in Cairo, the hijab acted as a means of identification between Muslim’s; I found myself on the way to a study circle wondering if I was on the right route when I sew a group of sisters wearing the hijab. We greeted each other with salam and went on the meeting together.

My father was worried when I went out in long sleeves and a head-cover even in the hottest weathers, but I found that my hijab protected me from the sun. Indeed, it was I who also felt uneasy looking at my younger sister’s legs while she wore short pants. I have often been embarrassed, even before declaring Islam, by the sight of a woman’s bosoms and hips clearly outlined by tight, thin clothing. I fest as if was seeing something secret. If such a sight embarrasses me, one of the same sexes, it is not difficult to imagine the effect on man. In Islam, men and women are commanded to dress modestly and not be naked or semi-naked in public, even in all male or all female situations.

It is clear that what is acceptable to be bared in society varies according to societal or individual understanding. For example, in Japan fifty years ago it was considered vulgar to swim I swimming suit but now bikinis are the norm. If, however, a woman swam topless she would be regarded as shameless.

In Islam we have no such problems

Allah had defined what may and may not be bared, and we follow. The way people walk around naked (or almost so, excreting or making love in public, rob them of the sense of shame and reduces them to the status of animals. In Japan, women only wear makeup when they go out and have little regard for how they look at home. In Islam a wife will try to look beautiful for her husband and her husband will try to look good for his wife. There is modesty even between husband and wife and this embellishes the relationship.

Muslims are accused of being over-sensitive about the human body but the degree of sexual harassment, which occurs these days, justifies modest dress. Just as a short shirt can send the signal that the wearer is available to men, so the hijab signals, loud clear: “ I am forbidden for you.”

This shows that it is preferable for a woman to stay at home and avoid contact with male strangers as much as possible. Observing the Hijab, when one goes outside, has the same effect.

Having married, I felt Japan for Saudi Arabia, where it is customary for the women to cover their faces outdoors. I was impatient to try the Hijab and curious to know how it felt. Of course, non-Muslim women generally wear a black cloak, rather nonchalantly thrown over their shoulders but do not cover their faces. Non-Saudi Muslim women also often keep their faces uncovered.

Once accustomed to, the Hijab is certainly no inconvenient. In fact I felt like the owner of a secret masterpiece, a treasure, which other can neither know about, nor see.

It is an error of judgment to think that a Muslim woman covers herself because she is a private possession of her husband. In fact she preserves her dignity and refuses to be possessed by strangers. It is non-Muslim (ad so called “liberated” Muslim) women who are to be pitied for displaying their private self for all to see.

Observing the Hijab from outside, it is impossible to see what it hides. The gap between being outside and looking in, and being inside and looking out, explains in part the void in the understanding of Islam. An outsider may see Islam as restricting Muslims. In side, however, there is peace, freedom and joy, which those who experience it have never know before.

Practicing Muslims, whether those born in Muslim families or those reverted to Islam, choose Islam rather than the illusory freedom of secular life. If it oppresses women, why are so many well-educated young women in Europe, America, Japan, Australia, indeed all over the world abandoning “liberty” and “independent” and embracing Islam?

A person blinded by prejudice may not see it, but a woman in Hijab is as brightly beautiful as an angel, of oppression scar her face. “ For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but is the hearts within the bosoms, that grow blind.” Says Allah in the Holy Quran (Al-Hajj-22: 46)

How else can we explain the great gap in understanding between such people and us?

Courtesy उम्मीद

Manners of Eating

2010-07-14T04:45:00.000-07:00

IMPORTANCE OF EATING MANNERS
Eating manners are very important since it is repeated many times every day. It must be done properly whether eating alone, with family, or with friends. To avoid pretenses, you should train yourself in proper eating manners, whether alone or with your family. It will then become a natural part of your behaviour, and you will be at ease at the table.

MANNERS OF EATING
There are certain table manners that are indispensable. Say ‘Bismillah’ when starting, to thank Allah and say ‘Alhamdulilah’ when finished. Eat what is in front of you. Eat using your right hand. A hypocrite was eating with his left hand when the Prophet saw him and advised him to eat with his right. The man falsely said ‘But I cannot’ The Prophet said ‘May it be so’ and the hypocrite was not able to lift his right hand again.

The companions of the Prophet followed his example in stressing the use of the right hand while eating. Omar was Khalifa when he saw a man eating with his left hand and similarly advised him to eat with his right. The man answered ‘My right is busy’ Omar repeated his request and the man repeated his answer. Omar asked him ‘What is it busy with?’ The man answered that it had been severed in one of the battles. Omar blamed himself for neglecting such handicap and ordered the treasurer to provide the man with a servant to help him.

If eating with your hand, use three fingers with small bites, lifting it gently with ease to your mouth. Close your mouth while eating to avoid unnecessary noises. To eat on the floor is nearer to what the Prophet used to do. However, there is no problem to eat at a table. Imam Ghazali said, ‘To eat at a table is to make eating easier and there is nothing against that.’ Do not start eating ahead of the elders or the nobles. If you are the elder, do not commence eating before everyone is at the table.

It is preferred that eating should not be conducted in silence. It is good manners to talk during meals. Topics should be nice stories suitable for eating. At the end of the meal, if hands are to be washed, the elder or the noble should be asked to proceed first.

At the end of a meal, thank Allah as in the Hadith reported by Abo Dawood and Nasa’i in ‘the deeds of day and night.’ Thank Allah who fed us and provided us with drink. It is very appropriate to make a prayer for your hosts as it is reported by Muslim that Al-Migdad ibn Al-Aswad reported that the Prophet said, ‘May Allah feed those who have fed us, and provide drinks to those who provided us with it.’

Do not express your disapproval or dislike of certain foods. Either eat it or pass it over quietly. Abu Huraira reported that ‘the Prophet never expressed his dislike of a food. If he liked it he will eat it. If he disliked it, he will set aside.’

Do not put in your plate more than can eat. Leftovers could be thrown out, it shouldn’t, and wasted. Put smaller portions twice rather than one large portion that you will not eat. The Prophet did not approve of leaving any food in a plate since as he said ‘You don’t know which portion is blessed’. Food is a blessing of Allah, to misuse it is contrary to Islam. Do not forget the poor and the needy who do not have the portion you are throwing away

MANNERS OF DRINKING
Drinking manners are no less important. To start in the name of Allah is a must. Use your right hand to drink. Abo Dawood and Tirmizi related that Hafsa (RA) said ‘the Prophet used his right hand for eating and drinking. He used his left for other things [such as personal hygiene].’ Do not pour your drink down your throat in one gulp. Drink it in three sips. Ibn Abbas reported that the Prophet said ‘Do not drink like a camel. Drink twice or thrice. Say the name of Allah before drinking. Thank Allah after finishing.

Do not exhale in your glass. This will irritate others and will smudge the glass or the cup. Ibn Abbas reported that the Prophet forbade exhaling in a glass or puffing into it.

Do not drink directly from the jug or the container. Beside being unhygienic behaviour, others may want to drink after you who could be irritated. Abo Huraira narrated that the Prophet forbade drinking directly from the mouth of the sheepskin or the flask.

GLUTTONY
Modesty is the crown (hallmark) of the common people. Keep this crown on your head if invited to a feast or if you are presented with food or drink. Do not be gluttonous devouring food as if you have not eaten for a long time, or as if you have not seen such excellent food before. Do not sample every dish on the table. People, even generous hosts disapprove of greedy eaters. Be reasonable and moderate in enjoying the generosity of your hosts.

GOLD AND SILVER CUTLERY
Do not eat using golden or silver plates or cutlery. This goes against the spirit of Islamic modesty. Pomposity is not an Islamic trait. Bukhari narrated that Huzaifa said the Prophet said ‘Do not drink in golden or silver cups nor eat in such plates.’ If you were a guest, simply ask your host to replace it with another one.

from the book ISLAMIC MANNERS By Shaykh Abdul-Fattaah Abu Ghuddah (RA)

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عز ا ب قبرGrave punishment: The True Story कब्र का अज़ाब

2010-07-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

ओमान का एक नवजवान महज़ तीन घंटा कब्र में रहा ..लेकिन उसकी लाश को देख कर रूह लरज़ जाती है.हर इंसान का पूरा वजूद खौफ खुदा से काँप उठेगा.नवजवान की सारी पसलियाँ एक दुसरे में गुथम-गुथा ..आँखें बाहर निकलती हुयीं.....मुंह और नाक से खून की धार....[.चित्र और फिल्म देखें ].

उसकी मौत अस्पताल में हुई .उसके पिता को इलाज में हुई लापरवाही की आशंका थी सो उन्होंने फतवा हासिल किया कि क्या कब्र से निकलवाकर शव-परिक्षण किया जा सकता है .लेकिन जब इसकी नौबत आयी तो लाश देख कर लोगों के रोंगटे खड़े हो गए .या इलाही माजरा क्या है!!! बेशक बकौल हजरत अली [रज़ी ] कब्र आमाल का संदूक है.और जैसा उसके घर वालों ने बताया कि उनका लड़का आवारा और बदचलन था .राज़ अल्लाह ही जानता है.

In this photo 18-year old young Arab boy who died in one of the hospitals of Oman. The boy died in hospital and was buried under the Islamic law on the same day after obligatory ablution of the body. However after funeral the father doubted the diagnosis of doctors and wanted to identify the true reason of his death. The corpse of the boy had been dug out from the grave within 3 hours after his funeral as his father insisted to know the truth.
Relatives and his friends shocked when they saw the corpse. He was completely different within 3 hours. He turned grey as if he was a very old man, with traces of obvious tortures and the most severe beating, with the broken bones of hands and legs, with the edges broken and pressed into a body.

All of his body and face were full of bruise. The open eyes-showed hopeless fear and pain. The blood obviously indicated that the boy has been subjected to the most severe torture.

Close relatives of the dead boy approached Muslim Scholars who have unequivocally declared that it is the result of torture in grave; which Allah (s.w.t) and Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w) have warned. The shocked father of the boy has admitted that his son was spoilt child, did not obey his parent, did not do Salat (prayers / namaz) and had a carefree way of life, having involved in different sins.

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नमाज़ के बिना मुक्ति नहीं No salvation without prayer

2010-07-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

कुरआन की सूर:नंबर ७४ में बताया गया है कि आख़िरत [जिस दिन इश्वर मनुष्यों के कर्मों का हिसाब लेगा] में जब लोगों के भविष्य का निर्णय हो जायेगा और कुछ लोग स्वर्ग को और कुछ लोग नर्क में पहुंचा दिए जायेंगे, उस समय स्वर्ग वाले नर्क वालों से पूछेंगे कि वह क्या चीज़ थी जिसने तुमको नर्क में पहुंचा दिया .[मा सलक्कुम फ़ी सक़र]

नर्क वाले उसका जो जवाब देंगे,उसका एक हिस्सा होगा:
लम नक मिनससलीन [अल मुदस्सिर 43]
अर्थात हम नमाज़ अदा करने वालों में से न थे.
कुरआन के इन शब्दों पर गौर कीजिये तो स्पष्ट है कि यह एक सम्पूर्ण वाक्य है.इसका अर्थ यह है कि हमको अल्लाह रब्बुल आलमीन की वह मारिफ़त [अध्यात्म,अलौकिकता ,पहचान] प्राप्त नहीं हुई जो हमारे दिलो दिमाग को बदल दे, जो हमें अल्लाह के आगे झुकने पर विवश कर दे, जो खुद ईमानी तक़ाज़े [आस्था के दायित्व] के तिहत हमको ऐसा बना दे कि हम उस निज़ाम-ए-इबादत [उपासना की व्यवस्था] में शामिल हो जाएँ. जिसमें अल्लाह के बन्दे मिलकर अल्लाह के लिए नमाज़ अदा कर रहे थे और नमाज़ को अपनी रोज़ाना की ज़िन्दगी का एक अनिवार्य हिस्सा बनाये हुए थे.

यथार्थ यह है कि नमाज़ मारिफ़त खुदाबंदी का व्यावहारिक प्रकटीकरण है. जब एक बन्दे को अपने रचयिता से परिचय होता है तो वह आतुरता पूर्वक उसके आगे झुक जाता है, वह उसके आगे सजदे में गिर जाता है, जो कि इस बात का संकेत है कि बन्दे ने अपने पूरे वजूद को अल्लाह के हवाले कर दिया है.

नमाज़ की उच्च अवस्था यह है कि वह अनुनय-विनय [खुशुअ] की नमाज़ हो.अगर किसी को खुशुअ की नमाज़ हासिल न हो तो उसकी प्राप्ति की कोशिश और दुआ करते हुए उसको यह करना है कि वह फिर भी नियत समय पर रूटीन [routine] की नमाज़ पढता रहे ताकि फ़रिश्तों के ज़रिये मौजूद दुनिया में जो रेखांकन अंकित किया जा रहा है, उसमें अगर उसकी नमाज़ की खुशुअ दर्ज न हो तो कम से कम उसकी रूटीन की नमाज़ फ़रिश्तों के रिकॉर्ड में आ जाय.रूटीन की नमाज़ इस बात का स्वीकार है कि --खुदाया मैं खुशुअ की नमाज़ न पढ़ सका .तू अपनी रहमत से मेरी रूटीन की नमाज़ को क़बूलियत [स्वीकृति] का दर्जा दे दे.

ख्यात इस्लामी चिन्तक मौलाना वहीद उद्दीन की चर्चित पत्रिका अल रिसाला अंक जुलाई पृ 3 से साभार

नोट:कुछ इस्लामी इन्सैकलोपीडिया शब्दों को हुबहु रखा गया है सिर्फ भावार्थ ही ब्रैकेट में दिए गए हैं.

Zeeshan Ali :First Muslim girl from Bihar to get Fulbright fellow

2010-07-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

Bringing laurel to Bihar and her community, Zeeshan Ali has won Fulbright Fellowship from the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF). She will be the first Muslim girl from Bihar to have been awarded the prestigious fellowship.

“I was quite surprised when the news was broken on me. I really feel honored. I am happy beyond bounds,” says Zeeshan, Patna University Ph.D. student, talking to TwoCircles.net.

Originally from Pinjrawan town in Arwal district in the state, Zeeshan has got post-matric education in Patna. She did I.Sc. in 2002 from Magadh Mahila College, Patna’s esteemed women college. She did graduation (English Hons) in 2005 from the same college. She got Masters degree in the subject from Patna University in 2007 and on 20th May 2010, she submitted at the university her doctoral thesis on “The Pinteresque: Themes and Dramatic Strategies in the plays of Harold Pinter. She matriculated in Gaya.

The teaching fellowship has been awarded to her by USIEF under its Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) Program. Under this program, Indian nationals, who are between 21 and 29 years of age and currently teaching English at college level or training to be teachers of English, are selected. The selected FLTAs from India teach Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, or Urdu at select U.S. campuses during their nine month fellowship. As many as 150 countries participate in Fulbright program, out of which 60 countries have been selected for Fulbright FLTA.

Zeeshan Ali, who is Assistant Professor of English at Maulana Azad College of Engineering and Technology, will teach Hindi and Urdu under the program. Apart from being Fulbright Fellow she will also be cultural Ambassador from India to the US. She will leave for the US in the end of July।.

Courtesy: Twocircles.net

Our Lord, give us good in this world کہ خورشید کا سامانِ سفر

2010-07-05T04:49:00.000-07:00

اٹھ کہ خورشید کا سامانِ سفر تازہ کریں

ہم نے دین حق کی تلاش میں گھاٹ گھاٹ کا پانی پیا اور در در کی

ٹھوکریں کھائیں ۔اس سفر میں اپنے دل کو ہر تعصب اور اپنے ذہن کو ہر عصبیت سے بالاتر رکھا۔آخرکار جن کی بات خدا، رسول اور قرآن سے قریب نظر آئی۔مگر ان تک آتے آتے لڑ کپن اور نوجوانی کی وہ عمر گزرگئی جس میں پڑ ھ لکھ کر علم و تحقیق کی بارگاہ میں داخلہ کا اِذن ملتا ہے ۔ مگر معلوم ہوا کہ دورِ جدید میں علم و تحقیق کا بنیادی کام تو شائد اب ختم ہورہا ہے مگر ایک عظیم تر کام ابھی باقی ہے ۔ ۔ ۔ اس تحقیق کے نتائج کو دنیا تک پہنچانے کا کام۔یہ بتانے کاکام کہ فلاحِآخرت دین کا اصل نصب ا لعین ہے ۔تزکے ۂ نفس نجات کا پیمانہ ہے ۔ایمان و اخلاق کی دعوت دین کی بنیادی دعوت ہے ۔دین کا ماخذ تنہا محمد رسول اللہ صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم کی ذات ہے ۔قرآن دین کی بنیاد ہے ۔سنتِ ثابتہ قرآن کی طرح مقدس اور ناقابل تغیر ہے ۔شریعت اپنی اصل شکل میں ہر دور میں قابلِ عمل ہے ۔

ایک طرف حق کی یہ دریافت اور اس کے ابلاغ کا یہ عظیم کام ہے اور دوسری طرف ملک و قوم کے وہ حالات ہیں جنھیں دیکھ کر ہر دردمند دل کڑ ھنے لگتا ہے ۔جہل، تعصب، ظلم، ہوسِزر، مفاد پرستی، بے راہ روی اور اخلاقی انحطاط کے اس دور میں دینِ حق کا ابلاغ اور زیادہ سے زیادہ لوگوں تک اس کو پہنچانا اب ایک دینی ذمہ داری ہی نہیں ، ہمارے اجتماعی وجود کے لیے موت و زندگی کا مسئلہ بن چکا ہے ۔ہماری خواہش ہے کہ ہم لوگوں تک صحیح علم کا ابلاغ کریں ۔ ان پر عائد کردہ مذہبی اور اخلاقی ذمہ داریوں کا شعور ان میں پیدا کریں ۔قومی اور ملی معاملات میں حق اور انصاف پر مبنی رویوں کی تلقین کریں ۔اور سب سے بڑ ھ کر جنت کی اُس ابدی بستی میں جگہ پانے کی خواہش ان میں پیدا کریں جس کی دعوت دینے تمام انبیا و رسل تشریف لائے اور جہاں صرف اور صرف اخلاقی طور پر پاکیزہ لوگوں ہی کوداخلے کی اجازت ملے گی۔

یہی وہ کام ہے جسے لے کر ہم اس سفرِ نو کا آغاز کر رہے ہیں ۔ہم اپنا بھروسا تنہا صرف اس خدا پر رکھتے ہیں ، جس کا سہارا اگر مل جائے تو انسان کو کسی اور سہارے کی ضرورت نہیں رہتی ۔دینِ حق کے ابلاغ کا یہ کام ہمارا ذاتی کام نہیں ، خدا کا کام ہے ۔جو لوگ اس کام میں آگے بڑ ھ کر دست و بازو بنیں گے ، وہ ہمارے نہیں خد اکے مددگار ہوں گے ۔ یہی وہ عظیم خطاب ہے جس سے اللہ تعالیٰ نے قرآن میں ایسے لوگوں کا ذکر کیا ہے ۔ یہی وہ خطاب ہو گا جس سے کل روزِقیامت یہ لوگ سرفراز کیے جائیں گے ۔

ہم وہ سورج ہونے کا دعویٰ نہیں کرتے جس کے طلوع ہوتے ہی ہر تاریکی چھٹ جاتی ہے ۔ ہم تو اپنے حصے کا چراغ، اپنے رب کے بھروسے پر ، اس خیال سے جلا رہے ہیں کہ اندھیری رات میں چراغ کی روشنی بھی غنیمت ہے :

گماں آباد ہستی میں یقیں مردِمسلماں کا

بیاباں کی شبِ تاریک میں قندیلِ رہبانی

جہاں رہیے اللہ کے بندوں کے لیے باعثِ آزار نہیں، باعثِ رحمت بن کر رہیے۔ اگلی ملاقات تک ، اللہ نگہبان۔

How perfect You are O Allah, and I praise You.
I bear witness that none has the right

To be worshipped except You.
I seek Your forgiveness and turn to You in repentance.

'Our Lord, give us good in this world,

And good in the hereafter, and safeguard us

From the punishment of the Fire.'
(Aameen)

(Qur'an, 2:200-201)

Zakir Naik, Osama, and terrorism

2010-06-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

Zakir Naik's success is impressive, lectured about Islam to many but he needs to change his confrontational attitude. Show Islam is peace.

Dr. Zakir Naik has never supported terrorism, it is a fact but he has refused to condemn Osama Bin Laden saying that he can't confirm what the West is saying about him, whether he is really involved in terrorism or not he has not way of knowing that. At the same time he calls USA "biggest terrorist in the world," then, the question is how did he arrive at that conclusion? He trusts the media in one instance but not the other.

If Dr. Naik doesn't trust the media then he should launch his own investigation. Go to Pakistan, Afghanistan and get a first hand information. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he had a big platform that reaches a lot of Muslims therefore, it is his responsibility to set the records straight and investigate what he is not sure about.

I for one, not going to buy his argument that he doesn't know much about Osama and his activities so can not praise or condemn him. There are enough evidence of Osama and his associates involved in terrorism and Dr. Naik can not play ignorant of that.

KASHIFUL HUDA ON TWITTER

Support Dr. Zakir Naik

2010-06-25T16:41:00.000-07:00

A LETTER FROM IRF

[ISLAMIC RESEARCH CENTRE]

Aslaam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakathahu,

We would like people from all over the world to support Dr. Zakir Naik on
the unjustified BAN given by U.K. government.

Please follow the website ZAKIR NAIK EXCLUSION
for more details, and to know more on how to
support Dr. Zakir Naik.

With Best Regards

WaSalaam

IRF Web Team

CLIPS OF PRESS CONFERENCE: [Dr Zakir Naik, Adv Majeed Memon and Mahesh Bhatt addressing the over 60 Media Correspondents / Representatives present
at Mumbai Press Club on 22 June 2010 (after the ban), including NDTV 24x7, Doordarshan, Star News, TV9, Sahara TV, the BBC (UK),Revters, PTI, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Afternoon, DNA and many others. ]

PEACEFUL PROTEST BY OVER 40 NGOS

UK BAN NOW DR. BILAL PHILIPS

2010-06-24T18:54:00.000-07:00

In another move made by UK authorities that would increase the already created controversy after the ban of world renowned Islamic scholar Dr. Zakir Naik, another personality Dr. Bilal Philips, who is a world renowned Canadian Islamic Scholar, was denied entry into UK.

This “entry denial” was not informed to him, prior to his visit by the UK authorities. Dr. Bilal Philips was scheduled to arrive in UK to attend the Quran Conference which was due to be held on 20th June. He arrived on June 18th for the same, only to get surprised that he was denied entry. He had no option but to return back to Doha.

In response to one of our correspondent, Dr. Bilal Philips said “Well, the inevitable finally happened. At least the British Home Secretary called Dr Naik in Mumbai prior to his trip and told him not to come. I arrived to London this Saturday morning, 19 June, at 8am only to denied entry and put back on a plane at 11am back to Doha! So, I was unable to attend the Qur’aan conference on the 20th as planned!!! Sorry to all who attended the conference expecting to hear from me or see me”. He further added “Allah is the best Protector and disposer of our affairs”.

According to the reports, Even the conference was harassed by the British National Party and had to change their venue at the last moment.

With the protests still on for the ban imposed on Dr. Zakir Naik, this denial of entry to another renowned personality of the Muslim world will only add more fuel to the ongoing controversy.

Muslims from around the world have protested that UK authorities, who were forefront in backing “freedom of expression and speech”, is acting otherwise।

SOURCE

Ban In UK Dr Zakir Naik could challenge

2010-06-24T02:59:00.000-07:00

There is every reason for Dr Zakir Naik to fight the ban on his entry in the United Kingdom. Dr Naik could challenge this decision of the British government in a suitable court of law and he has every right to do so. Also, he has very wisely advised his followers not to protest this ban in a violent manner. I would, however, like to contrast the situation with the fact that the same West has taught our books as textbooks for centuries in its Universities and built a remarkable civilization upon ‘our’ intellectual produce. Why is it now banning the entry of our person?

The initial remarks of Dr Zakir Naik in his interview are interesting. I contrast his words with the words of the Prophet (pbuh) – and I do not hesitate to do so because of the fact that Muhammad (pbuh) is our role model. The Prophet (pbuh) did not say that the people of Taif were afraid of the spread of Islam and of the fact that he was one of the most popular speakers. He did not involve his person. He had CONCERN – a seven letter word which is found mostly in dictionaries now. Dr Naik equates the ban on his entry with the curbing of Islam. I wonder if this is really the case.

May be there is a lesson here which we should not miss out upon. May be the West is not afraid of Islam as it is probably already there. May be it is afraid of Muslims (who think that Islam is dependent upon them). But then the West is not alone in this fear. There are Muslims who are afraid of Muslims. And justifiably so.

I still wonder if this (negative) development can be utilized for the positive projection of Islam. The ban on Dr Naik’s entry can achieve what his physical entry in the UK could not have, presumably. As for the message of Dr Naik, it can always reach the targeted audience in many other forms.

HOW DOES QURAA'N PRINT

2010-06-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

Holy Quran Printing Complex
Madina Munawara Saudi Arab..

A little description of this complex is it is build on
2,500 square meters, and every year 1 crore copies will be printed
in 50 languages, out of which 95% is distributed
around the world for free and only 5% will be sold on cost
at the complex sales counter.

It has a staff of 1700 people out of which 800 people are examiners;
each copy of Quran printed in complex is examined by 3 examiners
one after the other before it comes out of the complex.

By Qaiser Jamal [jamalkaiser@yahoo.co.in]

ग़ैर मुस्लिम की मुस्लिम से फ़रियाद

2010-06-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

HAZRAT ABDULLAH BIN ABBAS R.A.

2010-06-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

PLZ CLICK TO READ

YOUR ATTITUDEلوگ کہتے ہیں

2010-06-14T02:19:00.000-07:00

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
السلام عليكم و رحمة الله و بركاته

لوگ کہتے ہیں

مرد عورت برابر ہیں

مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

“لَيْسَ الذَّكَرُ كَالأُنثَى
ذکر (مرد) انثی (عورت) جیسا نہیں ہوتا “
(آل عمران 31)

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

آج کے دور کے مطابق دین میں تبدیلی وقت کی ضرورت ہے

مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

الْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِي وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ الإِسْلاَمَ دِيناً

“(1400 سال پہلے )
آج میں نے تمہارے لئے تمہارا دین مکمل کر دیا
اور اپنی نعمتیں تم پر پوری کر دیں اور تمہارے لئے اسلام کو دین پسند کیا “
(المائدہ 3)

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

اپنے وطن کی مٹی کی قسم کھاؤ ، اپنی ماں کی قسم کھاؤ

مگر

نبی محمد صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم فرماتے ہیں

“جس نے غیر اللہ کی قسم کھائی اس نے شرک کیا“
(رواہ ابو داود)

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

آخر اللہ کو ہماری یاد آہی گئی

مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

َمَا كَانَ رَبُّكَ نَسِيّاً

تمہارا پروردگار بھولنے والا نہیں
[مريم : 64]

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

ایسا کیوں یا رب ۔۔۔ اتنا ظلم کیوں یا رب ۔۔۔ اتنی سختی کیوں یا رب؟؟

مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

لَا يُسْأَلُ عَمَّا يَفْعَلُ

اللہ جو کام کرتا ہے اس کے لیے وہ کسی کے آگے جواب دہ نہیں
اس کی باز پرس نہیں کی جائے گی
[الأنبياء : 23]

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

پریشانیوں اور مصیبتوں نے عمر ہی گھٹا دی

*
مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

وَلِكُلِّ أُمَّةٍ أَجَلٌ فَإِذَا جَاء أَجَلُهُمْ لاَ يَسْتَأْخِرُونَ سَاعَةً وَلاَ يَسْتَقْدِمُونَ

اور ہر ایک گروہ کے لیے (موت کا) ایک وقت مقرر ہے۔
جب وہ آ جائے تو نہ تو ایک گھڑی دیر ہو سکتی ہے نہ جلدی
[الأعراف : 34]

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

آج کا دن بڑا منحوس تھا ، یہ دن میرے لیے بڑا برا دن تھا ، زمانہ بڑا غدار ہے

مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

حدیث القدسی
ابن آدم مجھے اذیت دیتا ہے
وہ زمانے (وقت) کو گالی دیتا ہے جب کہ زمانہ “میں “ ہوں
ہر حکم میرے ہاتھ میں ہے
اور میں ہی دن رات کو پلٹاتا ہوں
(متفق علیہ )

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

مال جمع کرو یہ تمھارے لیے بہتر ہے
مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

َأَنفِقُوا خَيْراً لِّأَنفُسِكُمْ وَمَن يُوقَ شُحَّ نَفْسِهِ فَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ

(اللہ کی راہ میں) خرچ کرو (یہ) تمہارے حق میں بہتر ہے۔
اور جو نفس کی حرص سے بچا لئے گئے تو وہی ہدایت پانے والے ہیں
[التغابن : 16]

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

مولوی بلا کر قرآن پڑھا لو اور انہیں کچھ کھلا پلا دو یا پیسے دے دو

مگر

نبی محمد صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم فرماتے ہیں

قرآن کو روٹی کمانے کا ذریعہ مت بناؤ۔
جس نے قرآن پڑھ کر اسے روٹی کمانے کا ذریعہ بنایا
وہ قیامت کے دن اس صورت میں آئے گا کہ اس کے چہرے پر گوشت نہ ہوگا
(مسند احمد)(بہیقی )

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

تعویذ پہن لو پریشانیوں سے بچ جاؤ گے ، کامیاب ہو جاؤ گے

مگر

نبی محمد صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم فرماتے ہیں

اگر تو اسے پہننے ہوئے مر جائے تو کبھی کامیاب نہیں ہوگے
(کبھی جنت میں داخل نہیں ہوگے )
(رواہ احمد وابن حبان)

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

اولیاء کی قبروں پر تعظیم کے لیے انہیں سجدہ کرنا اور ان سے دعائیں کرنا جائز ہے

مگر

نبی محمد صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم فرماتے ہیں

تم سے پہلے کی قوميں اپنے انبياء کي قبروں کو مساجد بنالیتی تھيں ،
خبردار قبروں کو سجدہ گاہ نا بنانا
ميں تمھيں اس چيز سے روک رہا ہوں
(مشکوۃ)

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لوگ کہتے ہیں

قبر والوں کو پکارو وہ تمھاری پکار سنتے ہیں

مگر

اللہ فرماتا ہے

جسے تم اللہ کے سوا پکارتے ہو وہ تمھارے جیسے بندے ہی ہیں
اور جن کو یہ اللہ کے سوا پکارتے ہیں وہ ان کا کوئی جواب نہیں دے سکتے
(الاعراف 194)(الرعد 14)

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آخر میں آپ سے ایک سوال

آپ لوگوں کی بات مانتے ہیں یا اپنے اللہ اور رسول کی ؟؟؟

DUA......SPECIAL DUA

2010-06-11T03:06:00.001-07:00

PLZ CLICK TO READ CLEAR

ABOUT MIRZA GHALIB

2010-06-07T13:42:00.001-07:00

Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan Ghalib (27 December — 15 February 1869), was a classical URDU and PERSIAN Poet from India during British colonial rule.

He today remains popular amongst Urdu speakers not only in India but also amongst diaspora communities around the world.

Mirza Ghali's tomb at BASTI HAZRAT NIZAMUDDIN, NEW DELHI

A Islamic scholar from America Shaykh Husain Abdul Sattar

2010-03-29T02:09:00.000-07:00

Shaykh Husain [may Allah preserve him] was born in Chicago (USA) in 1972। After completing his primary education at schools in his hometown near Chicago, he joined the University of Chicago where he studied Biology, Arabic and Islamic Civilization. It was during this period that he began his study of sacred knowledge, studying Arabic grammar (nahw), Hanafi Fiqh and Usul al-Fiqh under ulama (scholars) in Chicago. In 1994 Shaykh Husain also began training in tasawwuf (Islamic spirituality) under Shaykh Zulfiqar Ahmad, one of the leading shaykhs of tasawwuf.

After obtaining his undergraduate degree, Shaykh Husain enrolled in the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago. Along with his medical studies, he continued his studies of sacred knowledge. In his final year he took leave from medical school to focus on his religious studies, traveling to Syria and then Pakistan, where he studied a traditional curriculum for a number of years under some of their greatest scholars.

Throughout his years of study, Shaykh Husain continued his training under Shaykh Zulfiqar Ahmad. He was blessed with the close company of his Shaykh, learning the science of the purification of the heart. The deep taqwa and firm adherence to the sunnah and Shariah that characterized his teacher were eventually transferred to the student and Shaykh Husain was formally authorized in tasawwuf by Shaykh Zulfiqar in July 2001.

Shaykh Husain has completed medical school and currently works as a Physician at the University of Chicago Hospitals. During his free time, he teaches and lectures across the United States on various subjects of Islamic knowledge, including purification of the soul.

Shaykh Husain is presently engaged in editing and publishing the translations of his teacher’s books into English. In addition, he is completing his own written works including the popular series, “Fundamentals of Classical Arabic” and a manual on Hanafi fiqh entitled, “The Stairs to Bliss.” [forthcoming]

Source: Sacred Learning

Major Muslim contributions

2010-03-25T01:25:00.000-07:00

This is a partial list of some of the leading Muslims. Major Muslim contributions continued beyond the fifteenth century. Contributions of more than one hundred other major Muslim personalities can be found in several famous publications by Western historians. Biographies are available in the Islamic Civilization E-book.
Jabir Ibn Haiyan (Geber)	Chemistry (Father of Chemistry)	Died 803 C.E.
Al-Asmai	Zoology, Botany, Animal Husbandry.	740 - 828
Al-Khwarizmi (Algorizm)	Mathematics, Astronomy, Geography. (Algorithm, Algebra, calculus)	770 - 840
'Amr ibn Bahr Al-Jahiz	Zoology, Arabic Grammar, Rhetoric, Lexicography	776 - 868
Ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi (Alkindus)	Philosophy, Physics, Optics, Medicine, Mathematics, Metallurgy.	800 - 873
Thabit Ibn Qurrah (Thebit)	Astronomy, Mechanics, Geometry, Anatomy.	836 - 901
'Abbas Ibn Firnas	Mechanics of Flight, Planetarium, Artificial Crystals.	Died 888
Ali Ibn Rabban Al-Tabari	Medicine, Mathematics, Caligraphy, Literature.	838 - 870
Al-Battani (Albategnius)	Astronomy, mathematics, Trigonometry.	858 - 929
Al-Farghani (Al-Fraganus)	Astronomy, Civil Engineering.	C. 860
Al-Razi (Rhazes)	Medicine, Ophthalmology, Smallpox, Chemistry, Astronomy.	864 - 930
Al-Farabi (Al-Pharabius)	Sociology, Logic, Philosophy, Political Science, Music.	870 - 950
Abul Hasan Ali Al-Masu'di	Geography, History.	Died 957
Al-Sufi (Azophi)	Astronomy	903 - 986
Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahravi (Albucasis)	Surgery, Medicine. (Father of Modern Surgery)	936 - 1013
Muhammad Al-Buzjani	Mathematics, Astronomy, Geometry, Trigonometry.	940 - 997
Ibn Al-Haitham (Alhazen)	Physics, Optics, Mathematics.	965 - 1040
Al-Mawardi (Alboacen)	Political Science, Sociology, Jurisprudence, Ethics.	972 - 1058
Abu Raihan Al-Biruni	Astronomy, Mathematics. (Determined Earth's Circumference)	973-1048
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)	Medicine, Philosophy, Mathematics, Astronomy.	981 - 1037
Al-Zarqali (Arzachel)	Astronomy (Invented Astrolabe).	1028 - 1087
Omar Al-Khayyam	Mathematics, Poetry.	1044 - 1123
Al-Ghazali (Algazel)	Sociology, Theology, Philosophy.	1058 - 1111
Fall of Muslim Toledo (1085), Corsica and Malta (1090), Provence (1050), Sicily (1091) and Jerusalem (1099). Several Crusades. First wave of devastation of Muslim resources, lives, properties, institutions, and infrastructure over a period of one hundred years. Refer to Muslim History. Translators of Scientific Knowledge in the Middle Ages
Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Yahya (Ibn Bajjah)	Philosophy, Medicine, Mathematics, Astronomy, Poetry, Music.	1106 - 1138
Ibn Zuhr (Avenzoar)	Surgery, Medicine.	1091 - 1161
Al-Idrisi (Dreses)	Geography (World Map, First Globe).	1099 - 1166
Ibn Tufayl, Abdubacer	Philosophy, Medicine, Poetry.	1110 - 1185
Ibn Rushd (Averroes)	Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Astronomy, Theology.	1128 - 1198
Al-Bitruji (Alpetragius)	Astronomy	Died 1204
Second wave of devastation of Muslim resources, lives, properties, institutions, and infrastructure over a period of one hundred and twelve years. Crusader invasions (1217-1291) and Mongol invasions (1219-1329). Crusaders active throughout the Mediterranean from Jerusalem and west to Muslim Spain. Fall of Muslim Cordoba (1236), Valencia (1238) and Seville (1248). Mongols devastation from the eastern most Muslim frontier, Central and Western Asia, India, Persia to Arab heartland. Fall of Baghdad (1258) and the end of Abbasid Caliphate. Two million Muslims massacred in Baghdad. Major scientific institutions, laboratories, and infrastructure destroyed in leading Muslim centers of civilization. Refer to "A Chronology of Muslim History Parts III, IV."
Ibn Al-Baitar	Pharmacy, Botany	Died 1248
Nasir Al-Din Al-Tusi	Astronomy, Non-Euclidean Geometry.	1201 - 1274
Jalal Al-Din Rumi	Sociology	1207 - 1273
Ibn Al-Nafis Damishqui	Anatomy	1213 - 1288
Al-Fida (Abdulfeda)	Astronomy, Geography, Histrory.	1273 - 1331
Muhammad Ibn Abdullah (Ibn Battuta)	World Traveler. 75,000 mile voyage from Morocco to China and back.	1304 - 1369
Ibn Khaldun	Sociology, Philosophy of History, Political Science.	1332 - 1395
Ulugh Beg	Astronomy	1393 - 1449
Third wave of devastation of Muslim resources, lives, properties, institutions, and infrastructure. End of Muslim rule in Spain (1492). More than one million volumes of Muslim works on science, arts, philosophy and culture was burnt in the public square of Vivarrambla in Granada. Colonization began in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Refer to "A Chronology of Muslim History Parts IV, V (e.g., 1455, 1494, 1500, 1510, 1524, and 1538)"

Two hundred years before a comparable development elsewhere, Turkish scientist Hazarfen Ahmet Celebi took off from Galata tower and flew over the Bosphorus. Logari Hasan Celebi, another member of the Celebi family, sent the first manned rocket, using 150 okka (about 300 pounds) of gunpowder as the firing fuel.

Tipu, Sultan of Mysore [1783-1799] in the south of India, was the innovator of the world's first war rocket. Two of his rockets, captured by the British at Srirangapatana, are displayed in the Woolwich Museum Artillery in London। The rocket motor casing was made of steel with multiple nozzles. The rocket, 50mm in diameter and 250mm long, had a range performance of 900 meters to 1.5 km.

The dates in the table are converted from the Islamic calendar (A।H।) which begins with Hejira, the migration of Prophet Muhammad (s) from Makkah to Medinah. The calendar is based on lunar monthly cycles. 1 A.H. = 622 C.E.

thanks to cyberistan

Ziyaul Islam

well known Pakistani scholar Maulana Tariq Jamil

2010-03-23T08:14:00.000-07:00

Very recently scholar Maulana Tariq Jamil suffered a heart attack though he is recovering well at this moment in time.May Allah give long life and good health to Maulana Tariq Jamil in order that the Ummah continue to benefit from him.

He was born to a fudel lord (famous but unkown to us) and his parents had aspirations for him to become a doctor. After matriculation (secondary school), he attended college in the city of Lahore. Here he resided in hostel with some friends. One of the residents would approach Maulana and talk to him about tabligh, however Maulana would kick him out of the room.

There was also a disabled person who lived in the hostel and Maulana was touched and inspired by the dedication and devotion this person would show in attending Salah, despite living on the fourth floor. As a consequence he first went to Jamaat for 3 days, and then spent more time in Jamaat. After completing a period of four months in Jamaat, Maulana decided to leave his medical studies and enrol for the Alim course at Raiwind Madrassah. As a result of leaving his medical studies his parents disowned him. After 10 years of study Maulana graduated as an Alim.

He has travelled accross the world to deliver speeches and has touched the hearts of many, including Saeed Anwar, Junaid Jamshed and Yousuf Youhana.

thanks to Haq Islam

The Indian Muslim

2010-03-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

Problems and The Future

By: Bill the Butcher

Up until a couple of years ago, it was fashionable in certain quarters, including the office of the (unelected) Prime Minister of India, to pretend that there was no such thing as an indigenous aspect to Islamic terror in India, that all Muslims who took to terrorism in India were either foreigners (read Pakistanis) or motivated by Pakistanis, like the Kashmiri militant movement. This sat somewhat oddly with the idea, which George W. Bush passed on to his Laura while patting the Prime Minister on the back, that “Not a single Indian Muslim has joined Al Qaeda.”

Now this was flawed on many levels, most glaring of which is that one does not “join” Al Qaeda; it’s not a kind of Islamic version of the French Foreign Legion. Anyone can become an Al Qaeda member simply by blowing stuff up and declaring himself to be Al Qaeda, like the late unlamented Abu-Musab Al-Zarqawi in Iraq, who even Osama and Ayman al-Zawahiri asked to pipe down before granting him his franchise with great reluctance. Al Qaeda isn’t an organization; it’s an agglomeration of independent, non-interdependent franchises. Anyone can be an Al Qaeda member; theoretically, he doesn’t even have to be a Muslim.

Anyway, the idea of no Indian Muslim being part of Al Qaeda or any other international terror network was never valid even at the time. Nowadays it’s becoming increasingly obvious even to the most stupid that there’s an international aspect to Islamic terror in India, just as it’s becoming increasingly undeniable that there are Muslim people in India who take part in freelance terror against the state. Freelance terror has its own corollary; you can’t accuse a freelance terrorist of being a pawn or a tool of an international network.

Let’s take an example. A young Muslim man of less than moderate means, let’s call him Akram, who’s never left his landlocked Central Indian town can’t be accused of being a pathological puppet of Pakistan if he downloads recipes from the net and makes up a crude bomb which he then uses to try and blow up the local police station. We can’t just pass off Akram as a Pakistani dupe or even a man with an Islamo-fascist mission. One needs to ask why a small town nonentity would become a Pakistani dupe or Islamo-fascist. The answers may not exactly make everyone happy.

It may seem obvious, but it bears repeating; nobody becomes a terrorist for the hell of it. There is always a root cause, some injustice, even if that injustice is only in the terrorist’s mind. It’s meaningless to ask “Why do they hate us so?” like the Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 if, like those same Americans, one is unwilling to hear the reason why. It isn’t worth Indians asking why Muslims hate “us” – whoever the ‘we’ are – unless ‘we’ are prepared to face the truth about ourselves and that can happen only after we set out to seek the truth. Nobody takes kindly to the truth being thrown in their faces.

If we want to find out the truth about Muslims hating “us”, we could do worse than take another look at the aforesaid Mr. Akram. Mr. Akram has some education, but not much, let’s say he’s finished high school. His family is mired in poverty and his numerous siblings are a tremendous strain on his parents, both are religious but semi- or illiterate. They have far more children than they can afford because they know virtually nothing about contraception and because the local Mullah has told them that contraception is a conspiracy of the Hindus and Jews to decrease the numbers of Muslims.

Mr. Akram would like to use the education he has to seek a job of whatever level he can get, a job like he sees his fellow graduates, Hindus all, landing. However for some strange reason whenever he turns up for a job interview he’s never selected. Perhaps it’s the beard and the Muslim lace cap. Maybe he shaves the beard and dumps the cap. He’s still not selected. Maybe it’s his Muslim name.

Meanwhile, Akram’s elder brother, Aquib, who’s gone through this same grind and is as unemployed as he is, finds that petty crime is the only way to keep the family going. Aquib is not talented in crime; he’s a fundamentally honest, decent person who doesn’t have the capacity for cold planning. Soon enough he’s arrested, maybe for something he’s done, maybe for something he hasn’t. It hardly matters. He’s in custody, but nobody has produced him in court and so there is no official record of him being in custody at all. Being poor people, Akram and his family can’t afford an expensive lawyer to file writs for habeas corpus. They try to meet the local politician and try to do what else they can.

In the meantime there is a happening; a terror alarm or something like that, and the police, under pressure to “do something” take this useless Muslim petty criminal who is not officially in their custody and shoot him dead in a staged firefight and announce that they have eliminated a dangerous jihadi. What legally can Akram’s family do about it? Virtually nothing.

Now we begin to understand why Mr. Akram might want to try and blow up the police station. Also, why he might be attracted to the ideas of someone who claims the Indian state wants to destroy all Muslims?

I’m not trying to imply that the trials and tribulations of the wholly fictional Mr. Akram are typical of Muslims in India, but it illustrates the fact that grievances on many levels can create terrorists, and that unless you put an end to those grievances, you can’t stop terrorism. This is in part due to the fact that there is no such thing as a war against terror. Terrorism is a tactic, no more. If there are more effective tactics, the terrorist will switch to those more effective tactics. If you kill every terrorist, new ones will use those tactics again. You might as well declare a war on bombs or bayonets.

Of course it’s ridiculous to claim that there is no such thing as Islamic terrorism, just as it’s ridiculous to claim that there’s no such thing as Hindu terrorism; terror is a tactic, but it can be used for religion-inspired ends just as it can be used by Marxists or socialists or capitalists or any other secular group. But in every case there will be a grievance, even if only perceived.

If we are to stop terrorism, we have to tackle it at its roots, and the roots are not some training camp on the Afghanistan border. The roots are in the here and now, in the society that breeds injustice and grievances that drive normal young people to training camps on the Afghanistan border. You can wipe out those camps; so long as there are grievances, there will be new camps and new warm bodies to fill them. If we are to remove those grievances, of course, we first have to see what the grievances are so that we can then make a beginning on removing them. And in order to find out what the grievances are, it might be worth our while to check how they came about.

In India, until the British came, the Hindus and Muslims had by and large settled into a modus vivendi. It was upset by the deliberate British policy of divide-and-rule, meant to create schisms between religions so both sides would have no choice but to turn to the Brits as the only guarantors of the peace. No wonder that it was only after the British came that large scale religious rioting first broke out, in the 1820s. But the fault lines continued deepening after the British left. Their parting gift, the division of the subcontinent into two, subsequently three, countries, deepened the fault lines until they became difficult to breach.

The Hindus began blaming the Muslims for everything. The argument became that the Muslims had oppressed Hindus for a thousand years. Hindus reasoned it was their turn to oppress the Muslim. Besides, a large part of the country had been cut away to provide a Muslim homeland; what right had the millions of Muslims who stayed back to breathe Hindu air and eat Hindu food and tread Hindu ground? They had a nation of their own, hadn’t they? If they wanted to stay back, they should, in the words of the Hindunazi icon VD Savarkar, “Ask for nothing…not even human rights.”

Matters weren’t helped by the fact that when the country was divided, the Muslim elite and the professional class, sensing better opportunities in the new nation and being able to afford the costs of emigration, had left (This is in reference to North, West and Central India. In the East and the South, the Muslim middle class stayed where it was, partly for linguistic and cultural reasons.) Only the poor, uneducated Muslims, unable and unwilling to relocate to a new land, were left, isolated and helpless as a relatively tiny minority in most parts of a Hindu – though officially secular – land. Most of the Muslims were poor and uneducated because the Muslim rulers of India had never really gone on a rampage of conversion at the point of a sword. They had preferred to let who will, convert. Therefore it was the poorest and most downtrodden of the Hindus, the lowest castes and the casteless “untouchables” who had converted to escape to what they were told was an egalitarian society. Of course it had made no difference whatsoever to their material conditions. They were poor Hindus and they became poor Muslims.

If there is one thing that one learns from studying religious fundamentalism, it is that scared, uneducated and apprehensive people are far more liable to turn to fundamentalism than confident, well-educated people, even if both sets are equally believers. India had all these poor, uneducated Muslims, resented and apprehensive about their future, stranded among a huge Hindu majority, with a profusion of Mullahs among them ready to feed those fears. Even though the larger and more important of the two great associations of Mullahs in pre-Independence India, the Jamiat-Ulema-i-Hind, had condemned the idea of Pakistan and had demanded a united India; the post-independence Indian Muslim felt pushed further and further towards religious faith as the only anchor he or she had in an uncertain and frightening world.

Thus was born the first myth about Muslims: that they are all religious fanatics.

Six decades after the event, a new Muslim middle class has arisen, often very slowly and painfully. It’s still tiny in proportion to the underclass from which it has come up, but as almost everywhere else, economic prosperity has brought a measure of liberalism. The middle class Muslim is no more liable to be a fundamentalist than the average middle-class, but in the eyes of the average Hindu, all Muslims are still fanatics.

The second myth is the idea that all Muslims reject modernism and education and live in ghettoes. Like all really effective propaganda, it has a superficial plausibility and a kind of semi-truth. Many Muslims to this day do live in what are effectively ghettoes; most ghetto Muslims still lack modern levels of education and many of them are still educated in Islamic seminaries (madrassas). But it’s still only a semi-truth.

The ghettoes, in modern times, have been shamelessly neglected by the Indian state. Often you can judge the Muslim areas of a town simply because the streets, sanitation and electricity are so much worse than the rest. The schools outside of madrassas are nonexistent, the opportunities equally nonexistent. The de-ghettoisation of Muslims that had created a new Muslim middle class has in recent times given rise to a re-ghettoification.

Until 2002, the state of Gujarat had had one of the more vibrant Muslim middle classes of India. A state-sponsored Hindunazi pogrom however, virtually wiped out the Muslim middle class by directly killing them. By burning and looting their businesses and houses, and finally by frightening them into seeking the security of the ghettoes, which were then placed under virtual economic boycott, an act that in turn strengthened the mullahs. And of course the ghettoes lacked schools except the madrassas, because schools were not set up, and this was held up as proof that Muslims preferred madrassas. Another self-fulfilling myth was born.

The third major myth is that all Muslims are covert Pakistanis. This has nothing whatever to do with logic or sense. Any Muslim is suspect, and in drawing room conversations Indian Hindu Muddle Class members don’t hesitate to say so, out loud. This has a major effect on at least one aspect of security and the struggle to contain terrorism. So pervasive is this myth that a Muslim can’t even appreciate, for example, a cricketer from Pakistan without being openly accused of being a Pakistani agent.

The stupidity of this myth is heightened by the fact that it reduces the Indian Muslim to a brainless, uninformed automaton. Indian Muslims aren’t blind and deaf, so they know all about the spectacular, truly fascinating mess that calls itself the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Many of them have relatives, the descendants of those who left in 1947, and who found themselves as unwelcome carpetbaggers, so-called “Mohajirs”, refugees in Islamic Pakistan. These people say openly that they would have been better off to have stayed back in India. In those parts of this country where the Muslim middle class did not emigrate, for whatever reason – Kerala, for instance, or Assam – the Muslim of today is much better off than the average Muslim of Pakistan. The Indian Muslim knows all this.

We arrive at the fourth myth, which says that all Muslims are criminals. Americans reading this will know exactly what I’m talking about, except that there it’s the Black male who’s considered to be a criminal unless proven otherwise. The Muslim percentage of India’s prison population is far greater than the Muslim percentage (about 15%) of the general population. Just as the Black percentage of US prison populations is much greater than that of any other race. The reason is the same: people find themselves unable to find any other way of making a living, being at the receiving end of systematic discrimination both real and perceived, there is often little way out for the Muslim but to take to crime, like Mr. Akram’s late brother Aquib.

Together, these four myths have helped to cripple the average Indian Muslim’s place as an equal citizen of the nation. Together, these myths feed on each other and reinforce each other, and by doing so, they create conditions ideal for increasing Muslim resentment and thereby promote terrorism.

Because Muslims are thought untrustworthy Pakistani fifth-columnists, and besides religious fanatics who would have extra national loyalties, they hardly get any jobs in the top levels of the civil service and the military; No Muslim has ever been Army or Navy chief, the only Muslim Air Force chief was, Air Chief Marshal Idris Latif back in the late 1970s. The military forces claim to be utterly religion-neutral. However in a recent study, only 2% of the army was found to be Muslim. Officially, of course, the Indian military is religion-neutral, as is the governmental civil service. But there is something badly wrong when a poor minority, perfect poverty draft material, is to be found in much tinier percentages in the forces than its percentage of the general population (15%). The fact that one of the winners of the army’s top gallantry award, the Param Vir Chakra, was a Muslim, Sergeant Abdul Hamid, fighting in a war against Pakistan is neither here nor there. The glass ceiling for promotion for Muslims is so obvious nobody mentions it.

Then, because the police, being the police, consider Muslims to be criminals, every crime brings the police down on poor local Muslims like a ton of bricks. This fills the prisons with Muslims who exposed to genuine criminals and sometimes to incarcerated jihadist and now with permanent black marks on their records come out rather like self-fulfilling prophecies themselves, personally embittered and hardened to jihad ideas as well as to criminal endeavour. The law pretty much treats the Muslim accused as guilty until proven innocent; the now-defunct “tough anti-terror laws’ POTA and TADA actually put the burden of proving innocence on the accused, who were always Muslims or leftists.

The Indian Muslim finds themselves not only neglected by the state physically in terms of housing and healthcare, but denied jobs in the government and military and locked up for no personal fault. Therefore, the individual has no stake in the prosperity or peace of the nation. This means he is considered even more unreliable because he has no stake in the nation.

These prejudices against Muslims express themselves often in strange ways. Even an educated, clean-shaven, liberal Muslim will find it very difficult to find a place to rent in most of India’s large cities, unless he sticks to the ghettoes. If for nothing else, the owners are reluctant to rent to Muslims because the police might come one day and shoot the place to pieces. It’s happened often enough, too.

It’s a strange phenomenon often met in Indian cities, increasingly so; the Muslim who pretends not to be a Muslim. He adopts a Hindu name, often prominently displays a picture of a Hindu god, and for all intents and purposes lives life as a Hindu, reverting to his Muslim identity only when he returns to his village. He knows that if he calls himself a Muslim, the same people who buy his tea or ask him to upholster their furniture will take their business elsewhere, even though it will make no difference to the tea or quality of upholstery whether the person doing the work is Muslim or Hindu or Sikh or whatever. It’s another source of Muslim anger, because do you think the Muslim who changes his identity like this likes being forced to give up probably the only thing he thinks of as his – his Islamic identity?

That is not to say all Islamic terrorists are from the ghetto underclass, far from it. Many of them are middle-class urban professionals, those who would be thought of as “having it made”. But these people will have their own discrimination stories to tell. Even if they do not, there is no reason why they can’t get angered by the discrimination faced by their less fortunate co-religionists.
It shouldn’t be implied that there is no Muslim anger at the international anti-Muslim climate these days. However, one doesn’t need to be an Arab or even a Muslim to feel, anger and hatred towards the state of Israel for its genocidal crimes against the Palestinian people. Anyone with a conscience will find things about Zionazis to anger them, even engender hate. Anyone with a conscience in India will feel anger at the Indian government’s pandering to the Zionazis. One doesn’t have to be a Muslim for that, though naturally it does play its part in fomenting Muslim anger.

We reach the reality of the average Indian Muslim – a poor, discriminated-against member of a minority no better off than the poorest of the Hindus around them…and yet, and this is the fifth myth I alluded to above, the Indian Muslim is supposed to have been pampered and appeased at every turn.

This remarkable state of affairs has come about because of the Indian government and its complete shameless tokenism. The problems faced by the Muslims have no easy or quick-fix solutions; it will take a lot of effort. The government isn’t interested in expending any effort, so it takes the easy way out by pandering to the worst instincts of the worst of the Mullahs. For instance the Mullahs hold that the triple “talaq” (all a Muslim man has to do to divorce his wife is say “talaq” thrice, which is actually contrary to the tenets of Islam) is valid (even if spoken in his sleep), and all that a woman is entitled to on divorce is the amount agreed at the time of marriage. To show their kindness towards Muslims the Indian government went and changed the law (the Shah Bano case) to suit the Mullahs.

Again, probably uniquely among nations, Muslims are given a subsidy when they go on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Where this bizarre idea first arose I couldn’t tell you. As far as I know the Muslim politician Syed Shahabuddin pointed out that the Muslims never even asked for this subsidy. The Hajj, although it’s one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith, isn’t even a compulsory thing for Muslims, unlike the five daily prayers or the Ramzan fast. Muslims are obliged to go on Hajj at least once in their lifetimes, yes, but only if they can afford it.

You’ll note that these token measures to please Muslims do Muslims no good whatever; all they do is entrench the Mullahs further into positions of power, from where they can declare, for instance, as they did a few years ago (the Imrana case) that a woman raped by her father in law was now legally the mother of her husband. These laws embolden the Hindunazis to claim that the Muslims are being cosseted and coddled. Also, they render any real moves to help Muslims virtually impossible; the government claims it’s doing everything possible to help Muslims already. The Hindunazis will greet any actual moves to make things better for Muslims as an intolerable pandering to an already mollycoddled minority.

One of the few positive things that came out of the 2008 Bombay attacks was the fact that nobody blamed the Indian Muslims en masse for the attacks. The Indian Muslims rallied against terror too, in what seemed a spontaneous reaction and not one of the staged anti-terror rallies they are forced to put on after every attack just to prove how patriotic they are. This is a narrow and rapidly closing window of opportunity to engage the Muslim mind and try and push through measures that will actually help them. It doesn’t look like it will happen; with every passing day, it becomes more and more obvious that it won’t; yet all one can do is hope.

There must be some steps made however small towards affecting change, I believe that the first step should be engaging the moderate Mullahs. Although the caricature of the mullah is a bearded ultra-fundamentalist with all the sensibilities of the tenth century, there are actually many intelligent, progressive Mullahs (like Maulvi Dr Kalbe Sadiq of Lucknow) who promote women’s rights, support modern education, and oppose any form of extremism. These Mullahs are a minority right now because they get absolutely no encouragement whatever from anyone in power. As it stands they have to keep their heads down for self-preservation. I remember Kalbe Sadiq having to briefly flee the country after he said Islam never prohibited birth control. Instead of genuflecting to the fundiwacks of the sort who turn Islam into a caricature of itself, the government should and must engage these Mullahs. They are fully qualified Islamic clerics, have studied the Quran and the Hadith and Islamic law and jurisprudence. They have every bit as much right to express their views as the fundiwack set; more right, as it happens, because the majority of the fundiwack set aren’t even properly qualified.

Anyway – to get back to the point. If the government is serious about addressing Muslim disaffection, it has to start with the Mullahs. Once the moderate Mullahs are on board, the fundiwack set doesn’t even have to be countered – it can simply be ignored. The moderate Mullahs can simply do what they want to do in any case, promote religious reform, free Islam from the grip of the medieval morons, and bring it into the modern world.

If the moderate Mullahs issue a fatwa saying the Hajj subsidy and the triple talaq are un-Islamic, which they are, do you think the Muslim community will protest when they are withdrawn? This will also defang the Hindunazis outright; the government can go ahead with the next step.

I’d say that you can’t forcibly introduce women’s social, as opposed to strictly legal rights overnight; even with Mullah backup, it’s going to take a long time and it’s just going to rouse reaction if forced on the Muslim community. We already have woman imams running mosques in India, and the like; it’s better to allow cases to turn up and then have the moderate Mullahs pronounce in favour of modernity. Once the Muslim thinks his actions towards modernity have religious sanction, he’ll be much better with it. Kalbe Sadiq and others already said Muslim women have the right to choose their own husbands; they can then go on to point out that the burqa is un-Islamic. But it will take time.

The second step is, has to be, the improvement of the conditions in the ghettoes. Building proper roads and sanitation is something that even non-ghetto areas need; but the ghettoes are even worse off than the rest, having been deliberately neglected. Schools can’t be set up overnight, and the Indian school system is a shambles anyway. The Madrassas are there already, functioning well (within their limits) and they can be given positive incentives, like financial grants for setting up modern curricula in addition to Islamic studies. To a limited extent this is already happening in some madrassas. It’s a trend that needs encouragement.

Once you have the fundamentals in place – a modern religious leadership and modern facilities, the Muslim can be brought out of his defensive withdrawal into religious obscurantism. I believe that every religious person, unless hopelessly stupid, will choose the more moderate of two paths put to him, if he is assured that both paths have religious sanction.

Then, we have to (there really is no time to lose on this one) start an affirmative action recruitment drive for Muslims into the government, the police, and the armed forces. Not only will this give the Muslims a sense of belonging, a stake in the nation. Muslims in the army will have a stake in the army and more Muslims in the police will mean that the average Muslim will be that much less likely to see the policeman as an enemy. This will have its own effect on the war against crime as well as affecting the struggle against terrorism.

And of course we have to crush the Hindunazis. The Hindunazi is at least as great a danger as the jihadi, possibly more, because as a genuine, elected, prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru said, “The fundamentalism of the majority is likely to be mistaken for nationalism.” We can fight the jihadi but we must equally wipe out the Hindunazi. The Hindu right must be banned, as the Muslim right already is. Tough anti-terror laws are inhumane and useless and regular laws should apply equally across the religious divide.

Over a longer term, when the fundiwack Mullahs have been relegated to their deserved obscurity and the madrassas are teaching science and English literature as some already are, the Hindunazis are a bad memory and burqas are beginning to vanish. Then we can then say we’re at the end of Phase one of the battle. I believe that by that time the average Muslim will look around him, see how far he has come and oppose bitterly any reactionary force that would drag him back to where he is today.

Then we can start on Phase two. This should include a common, mutually acceptable civil law, and a new modus vivendi between the religions.

thanks to Subversify