The edifice of Islam is based on five pillars: lman (belief), Salah (prayer), Saum (fasting), Zakat (poor-due) and Haj (pilgrimage to Ka’bah). These five pillars, which constitute the fundamental principles of Islam embracing all the essential factors of ethical laws, evolve into a practical code of life for humanity. They are unique and unrivalled in their spirit and actions and redolent of a spiritual flair for mankind.
It has become almost fashionable for a Muslim to say ‘Islam is in danger’. The religion whose literal meaning is peace is today seen as the root cause of terror and violence. The Muslim world cannot merely dismiss this as a fallout of a grand conspiracy against Islam by people of other faiths. It has failed to present the real essence of Islam and remained a mute spectator to many atrocities against humanity committed in the name cleansing the world of infidels.
This is a fact that no society can live long with injustice and double standard in giving justice to its people. Unfortunately our country India is fast turning into a society of that character. The attitude of police, administration and judiciary towards Muslim youths arrested in connection with terror cases shows the double standard of justice in the country.
Growing up in the eighties, one could not escape the slogan, “Pakistan ka matlab kya–La ilaha ilallah.” If not cried out at public rallies, it was written as graffiti. Though it rhymes and jingles, the motto never made sense to me, not even when I was fourteen. La ilaha ilallah is a Muslim’s creed. The idea that there is no god but Allah is an affirmation of monotheism, the Islamic concept of tawheed. How on earth could this be the definition of Pakistan? In fact, wouldn’t it be shirk to say that Pakistan, like other countries run by flawed humans, represented the oneness of Allah?
Since Kamala Suraiya nee Das and Obama bin Laden, there has been interest in what is called the `Muslim’ issue. We, the Hindu majority, are now looking curiously at people who have been our brethren for several centuries, who share our culture, traditions, food habits and certainly, history.
True understanding of the Quran cannot be possessed by the one with neither intellectual nor spiritual prerequisites, let alone the one who is impudent and insolent of religion.
Confusion and error in knowledge of Islam, as a religion and a civilization, are more harmful to Muslims than mere ignorance.
The mind which is ignorant is simply in a state of privation of knowledge.
Being ignorant in the simple sense of lacking in knowledge means one does not pretend to know. Here, one neither knows nor fancies that one knows religious truths.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In recent times the news of Muslim girls marrying non-Muslim boys is thought provoking and have taken a grave turn.
Muslim girls are openly showing their love for their lovers. Not only this, they are willing to tie the knot at any cost even if it means changing their religion.
These incidents are not few but in hundreds. This is another story that only a few incidents are highlighted in media. A few days back, the dead body of a Muslim girl was found in a park situated in Banjara Hills where she had gone with her non-Muslim husband.
Remember Chandra Mohan, the then Deputy Chief Minister of Haryana. He is the son of Bhajan Lal, a big gun in Congress political circles who had disowned his son because he had converted to Islam to marry another woman while his first wife was still alive. Chandra Mohan’s lady love was none other than a former legal luminary of Chandigarh, now named Fiza. The case of conversion to beat the bigamy law created a furore in both social and legal circles. Chandra Mohan, who had renamed himself Chand Mohammed soon had a change of heart and re-embraced the Hindu Dharma and reverted to his Hindu.
Israel Seeks Ways to Silence Human Rights Groups
In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad.
It has begun by targeting one of the world’s leading rights organisations, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), as well as a local group of dissident army veterans, Breaking the Silence, which last month published the testimonies of 26 combat soldiers who served in Gaza.
The fifteenth night of the month of Sha’baan, commencing with sunset, is a highly auspicious night. It is known as Shab-e-Baraat – tha Night of Deliverance from sins.
Authentic Traditions reveal that the account of a person’s activities of the last year is closed this evening and simultaneously fresh account is opened for the new year. In this night Allah passes of His Knowledge of every individual’s activities in the year ahead to the angels concerned.
Auron ka hai Payaam aur, mera Payaam aur hai, / Ishq key dardmand ka tarz-e-kalaam aur hai! (Iqbal. It is “The Pen” – al-Qalam – and education that will teach and change the world, the Qur’ān proclaimed, through gentle persuasion and reasoned discourse, and not through coercion or force symbolized by the sword.
The debate over women’s clothing is as old as Islam itself. Indeed, it may well go back further. Many of the injunctions found in the Qur’an, seen by Muslims as the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Mohammed in 7th century Arabia, definitively resolved earlier points of contention that threatened social order.
You’ve probably heard of Madrassas. The word, which means “schools” in Arabic, took on ominous overtones after 9/11, when Western pundits and politicians warned that extremist Saudi-financed religious schools were filling the education gap throughout the Muslim world but sending youngsters straight into the arms of Al Qaeda.
As soon as I arrived home, I felt a great relief, if that is the right word. I had been unable to return home to Gaza since before the 23 days of bombing of Gaza earlier this year, because of the ongoing siege. I am not sure that the word relief summarizes my intense and conflicting emotions. Mixed feelings of relief, happiness, but also disorientation, continued to overwhelm me. Gaza my beautiful home, yes, my beautiful home, my beautiful people, who are trying so hard to live. To continue from one day to another. Despite the odds, the hardships, the deaf ears of the world.
During the Nuremberg Trials, there is a story of a disturbing incident that occurred. The prosecution was finding it difficult to convict those accused of committing crimes against humanity. The suspected war criminals were either justifying their mass murder as acts of self-defense, or claiming to be helpless statesmen and soldiers only obeying orders. Someone then brought in the head of a Jewish victim preserved in a jar.
In a blunt memo to top military officials, a senior US official has called for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, detailing a growing tension between US and Iraqis forces, reported The New York Times on Friday, July 31.
“(It is time) for the US to declare victory and go home,” Colonel Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, wrote in a detailed memo submitted recently to senior US commander in Iraq General Ray Odierno.
Colonel Reese said the US troops have became a persona non grata in Iraq.
The civilian death toll in Afghanistan has risen by 24 per cent this year, the United Nations has said.
In a new report released on Friday, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) blamed bombings by the Taliban and air raids by international forces for the majority of the killings.
The report said that 1,013 civilians were killed on the sidelines of their country’s armed conflict from January to the end of June, compared to 818 in the first half of 2008 and 684 in the same period in 2007.
Nigeria, August 01: A US-based human rights group has called for an investigation into the killing of the leader of the Nigerian Islamist group blamed for a series of deadly attacks in the country’s north.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said on Friday reports that Mohammed Yusuf, the leader of Boko Haram, was shot and killed while in police custody were “extremely worrying”.
“The extra-judicial killing of Mr Yusuf in police custody is a shocking example of the brazen contempt by the Nigerian police for the rule of law,” Eric Guttschuss, the organisation’s Nigeria researcher, said.
The recent presidential elections in Iran have revealed a major problem for the Islamic Republic: It is, and has always been, politically fractured. To find the initial cracks, just look back to 1979. The revolutionaries and the disciples of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini, sharply disagreed as to how the state should be constructed and what its objectives should be.
Prejudices against women are a universal phenomenon, found in almost every human society. When such prejudices are sought to be given religious sanction, it becomes much more difficult to do away with them. Lamentably, certain views and prescriptions contained in the corpus of traditional Muslim jurisprudence or fiqh do indeed militate against women, and even go against the spirit and teachings of Islam, a religion that stresses women’s rights and equal status.
Gaza City, July 29: Police order a lingerie shop to hide its scantily clad mannequins. A judge warns female lawyers to wear head scarves in court. Beach patrols break up groups of singles and make men wear shirts.
It’s all part of a new Hamas campaign to get Gazans to adhere to a strict Muslim lifestyle — and the first clear attempt by the Islamic militants to go beyond benign persuasion in doing so.
It suggests that having consolidated its hold on Gaza in the two years since it seized control by force, Hamas feels emboldened enough to extend its ideology into people’s private lives.
After a sequence of brutal accidents that targeted some of the Muslim communities all over Europe ending with the murder of Marwa Al-Shirbini in Germany, IslamOnline.net (IOL)’s European Muslims Page launched the “Islamophobia in Europe” poll asking its readers whether a Muslim woman living in Europe would take off her hijab (Islamic veil) for any reason or not.
It was really unexpected to find most of the voters (67.86%) rejecting the idea of giving up hijab for any reason, while a minor number of voters (32.14%) agreed to take it off.
Unless President Barack Obama resolves to expunge ‘special’ from the U.S.-Israeli ‘special relationship,’ this entangled alliance will continue to ensure that the U.S. is portrayed as guilty by its association with Tel Aviv’s thuggish behavior in Palestine and elsewhere. And by the U.S. insistence that Israel not be held accountable under international law.
Laying down a code of conduct for its fighters, the Afghan Taliban has issued a book restricting the use of suicide bombings and guiding fighters on how to act on hostages and win hearts and minds of the Afghan people. “A brave son of Islam should not be used for lower and useless targets,” says the book obtained.
The book, “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Rules for Mujahideen”, says that Taliban fighters should avoid civilian casualties while launching attacks. “The utmost effort should be made to avoid civilian casualties.”