Archive for January, 2010

Andy McCarthy: ‘Defensive’ Jihad Is In the Eye of the Beholder

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Former federal prosecutor and National Review Online contributing editor Andy McCarthy reacted to Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad claiming “That’s all I’m doing” is defensive jihad, today at his sentencing:

Wholly apart from any jihad against the West, Muslims have been killing each other for 14 centuries, and most of the internecine warfare is over competing scriptural interpretations and claims of apostasy (a capital offense in Islam, according to the most authoritative sharia authorities). Obviously, there is plenty of internal Islamic controversy over what Islam and its law truly stand for. Americans should be very wary of people who claim to know, however well-meaning they may seem.

The point is that, whether they are right or wrong, there are millions upon millions of Muslims who believe exactly what Shahzad believes about the nature of jihad and the demands of sharia. It is of no moment to them that we do not see ourselves as at war with Islam, or that we see the victims of terrorism as “innocent.” They see things as Shahzad sees them, even if they are not willing to go the next step of commiting acts of terrorism, as Shahzad is.

From the perspective of American national security, it does not matter if those Muslims are wrong about Islam. What matters is that there are a lot of them and they constitute a mainstream current of Islamic thought [emphasis added mine]. They have the support of influential Islamic scholars who tell them Islam is under siege, and they don’t care in the slightest whether Western intellectuals (at whom they scoff) or Muslim reformers (whom they regard as apostates) think they have interpreted Islam incorrectly.

Ground Zero mosque Imam Rauf’s solution to ending the “defensive” jihad being waged on America is replacing our Constitution with Islamic law. His rhetoric about “building bridges” attempts to hide his three decades of advocacy towards our miserable end as a Republic.

Islamic law, aka sharia law, discriminates against women, gays, and non-believers in all the nations where it is practiced. Imam Rauf seeks an America where there is no freedom of religion or freedom of speech.

Is advocating sedition under guise of religion protected political speech? Perhaps. Yet our government need not grant those who advocate this sedition either religious or 501(c) tax status.

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Coalition to Honor Ground Zero

Self Assessment at the Start of Ramadhaan

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Bismillaah

Dear Truth Seeker,

Upon greeting the month of Ramadhaan an individual must return to his own self and search it for what it has sent forth concerning abiding by what Allaah has obligated and staying away from the prohibitions.
If his condition was good such that he was abiding by what Allaah ordained and abstaining from what Allaah prohibited, then he praises Allaah and shows




The Muslim’s Creed and Islamic Beliefs

Why More People Need to Know Basic Islamic Doctrine

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

A GOOD FRIEND of mine told me the other day that our efforts to educate our fellow non-Muslims about the doctrines of Islam are counterproductive because it creates animosity against Muslims, which causes apathetic Muslims to side with the more devout, politically-active Muslims, leading to greater conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims.

This has a ring of validity to it. But at its core it is a foolish idea. The problem is, you would only know how foolish it is if you knew something about Islamic doctrine. In our educational efforts, this is the biggest thing we are up against: Assumptions made by non-Muslims who are ignorant of Islamic doctrine — assumptions that prevent you from educating them about Islamic doctrine. It’s a catch-22.

Many of them make the following assumptions: That politically-active Muslims are acting out of political motivations rather than Islamic religious motivations; that they cherry-pick verses out of the Quran to justify their actions but Islam is not what motivates them; that the majority of Muslims don’t believe any of that jihad stuff; that the majority of Muslims have no political motivations; and that anyone criticizing Islam must be an ignorant bigot. These assumptions all conspire to make it almost impossible to do the only thing that can clear up these misconceptions: Educate them about basic Islamic doctrine.

So I thought I would make a list of specific reasons why an understanding of Islamic doctrine is important. This might add a little extra motivation to listen, and help us overcome the catch-22. Here’s my list so far:

1. The US allowed Sharia law to be inserted into the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan. If any non-Muslims involved in that decision had been familiar with Islamic doctrine enough to know what Sharia law means and what it entails, they would not have allowed it to happen. So billions of dollars have been spent to free those two countries from the domination of their previous repressive governments, and thousands of soldiers from Western democracies have died, only to have set up the conditions for the creation of two more Islamic countries. And anyone who knows anything about Islamic doctrine can tell you this will inevitably lead to countries increasingly dominated by misogyny, religious intolerance, and aggression against the non-Muslim world. It was one of the most awe-inspiring, mind-blowing, remarkably self-defeating actions done by any non-Muslims in recent history.

And the only reason it happened is that the non-Muslims involved were ignorant of the basic doctrines of Islam.

2. In the free world, politically active Muslims are are pushing for concessions of all kinds. In Britain, Muslim women doctors and nurses do not have to follow the same cleanliness standards as non-Muslims, for example. In Hamtramck, Michigan, the City Council waved the noise ordinances in deference to the mosque there to allow them to broadcast an amplified call to prayer throughout the neighborhood. After a Danish newspaper published some cartoons depicting Mohammad — nothing more offensive than politicians suffer every day all over the free world — Muslims rioted all over Europe, killing 187 people. Afterward, many newspapers refused to reprint the cartoons out of fear. They were intimidated into silence by Muslims. And so on (read more concessions).

These concessions would not have been given if the non-Muslims involved had known about basic Islamic doctrine.

You can’t see the purpose of the political concessions unless you know Islam. People naturally buy into the specific reasons given for each specific concession and easily miss any larger purpose. Politically-active orthodox Muslims will continue to encroach on Western laws and customs, concession by concession, until they become a political force that cannot be easily resisted. They will have gained a level of political power that cannot be peacefully undone. They will have gained a sufficient foothold in the society, producing new Islamic norms, getting non-Muslims used to these things, until everyone feels “it’s just the way things are.” Islam is a ratchet.

The purpose of each concession is to fulfill Islam’s prime directive: To make the whole world subjugated to Islamic law. If you don’t know that, or if you don’t believe that, you will take it on a case-by-case basis, and they will gain one concession after another.

The orthodox Muslims in the West, working for Islam’s political goal, know how to play the game. They know what our buttons are. They know our Achilles’ heel: White guilt (as it is known in America) or post-colonial guilt (as it is known in Europe). And they exploit it. They exploit this and many other psychological weaknesses in the Western mind, and gain one concession after another.

We have not had much historical exposure to Islamic ways of doing things, so we have no natural resistance. It’s like introducing rabbits into Australia or mongoose into Hawaii. The other forms of life don’t have time to adapt, so the new animals easily proliferate and ultimately dominate.

3. They keep having peace talks and peace summits and peace treaties to create “peace in the Middle East,” meaning “peace between Israel and the Muslim countries surrounding Israel.” Only someone ignorant of the most basic principles of Islamic doctrine of would believe that anything approaching peace will ever be possible between Israel and the rest of the Muslim world. With no more than two hours of education about basic Islamic doctrine, any rational person would easily see that the goal is ridiculous.

But only someone who knows about Islamic doctrine could understand this. The non-Muslim world should be working toward security, not peace. Read the Quran and you will find there is no possible way for peace to exist between Israel and in the Muslim world. It is impossible.

There are obviously some Muslims who ignore much of their doctrine and who can live and let live with Israel. But as long as there are believing Muslims in the Middle East, Israel will be attacked. And all these efforts at disarming Israel or forcing Israel to make concessions to Muslims only prolongs the conflict.

This is another example of how it helps us defeat Islam’s relentless encroachment to know the basic doctrines of Islam. It illustrates why an ignorance of Islam prolongs problems, weakens the position of non-Muslims, weakens the security of non-Muslims, causes the deaths of non-Muslims, and strengthens Islam’s political power in the world.

4. The population of Muslims in Europe has grown large enough already that the politicians in Europe can no longer ignore the voting block represented by the Muslims, and they are working together (the Muslims and the politicians) to slowly dismantle, piece by piece, the hard-won freedoms, the principles of equality, and the economic viability of Europe’s democracies.

And yet Europe is continuing to allow Muslims to immigrate to their countries in great numbers.

Why is Europe continuing such self-defeating policies? Because so many Europeans are so ignorant of basic Islamic doctrine.

5. Mosques are being built all over the free world. Non-Muslims allow this. In these mosques, Muslims are being taught that their loyalty to Islam is more important than their loyalty to the country in which they are citizens. They are being taught that the ultimate goal is an Islamic world. The ultimate goal is that all people on earth are subjugated to Islamic law. They are taught strategies to accomplish this goal. They are motivated to accomplish this goal in those mosques. They are given literature — books, magazines, and audio recordings — that teach these notions and motivate them to follow these notions.

This is happening in 75% of the mosques in America, and 80% of the mosques in Canada. It’s probably being done similarly in the mosques of Europe.

Non-Muslims are allowing this because they are so ignorant of basic Islam that they unquestioningly accept the deliberate disinformation being given to them by orthodox Muslims. They are being fooled. They are being hoodwinked by orthodox Muslims with a political agenda.

The examples above barely scratch the surface. The list could go on and on. I’d be the first to admit that learning about Islam is not fun or easy. But it clears up a lot of false assumptions and greatly clarifies our situation. It allows you to look into the world and really see the forest for the trees.

We are being invaded. We are being colonized. And we are helping this happen. We are actively helping the invasion and colonization of free countries by politically-motivated Islamic supremacists. And the only reason we are not stopping it is that so many of us are so completely ignorant of basic Islamic doctrine.


Citizen Warrior

Short of talent, Islamic finance taps women scholars

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

malaysia islamic finance

(Photo: Islamic Financial Centre booth at Malaysia’s Central Bank – High Level Conference 2009 in Kuala Lumpur February 10, 2009/Zainal Abd Halim)

When Malaysian Aida Othman signed up for the new law programme at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, she did not expect to become one the few women with their hands on the levers of the world’s trillion Islamic finance sector.

Rising global demand for scholars who can advise firms on compliance with Islamic legal principles called sharia is behind the quiet and almost accidental way in which women are growing into a small but powerful force in a male-dominated business.

“There are not many women involved my job,” Aida, who manages the sharia advisory practice at Malaysia’s biggest law firm, told Reuters. “I’m glad to be able to show to young graduates and young scholars in my field if you’re interested enough there is a way into sharia advisory,” the 41-year-old, who went on to study at Cambridge and Harvard, said.

As Islamic finance expands 15-20 percent a year and enters new markets from Australia to South Africa, so the need has grown for more sharia advisers who can structure financial transactions according to Islamic rules that crucially include a ban on interest. A small circle of men dominates the boards of Islamic banks but there are now about 10 women sharia advisers in Malaysia, home to the world’s largest market for sukuk, or Islamic bonds.

Read the full story by Liau Y-Sing here. See also:

Islamic finance relies on too few of its scholars

Islamic finance seems overwhelmed by tighter supervision of sharia advisers

Islamic finance seeks young scholars to lead growth, improve products

Fatwa shopping? Not for Barclays

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FaithWorld

Anisa Sayyed: From Ticket Checker to Shooting Champion

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Anisa Sayyed has shot to fame with the gold medal which she won along with Rahi in the shooting event at Commonwealth Games.

It has not been an easy journey for the shooter who hails from Pune. She was employed with the Indian Railways and checked  passenger tickets at Vile Parle station in Mumbai, but despite her pleas railway officials had refused to give her transfer to Delhi after her husband’s posting to the national capital.

Determined that she would pursue her passion, Anisa quit the job and left for Delhi. Anisa, who hails from middle-class Muslim family, lived in a small quarter in Pune. It was well over a decade ago that she decided to take up pistol shooting as a professional sport and the medal is a result of her daily toil for almost 12 years.

Micky Aigner reports that how her patience and her coach Ghani Sheikh’s able guidance brought the girl to national sporting scene. Anisa won gold at the South Asian Federation Medal in 2004 and has also broken the national record with her score of 585/600 which is better than her commonwealth show 574/600.

Not everybody is born with a silverspoon in the mouth like say Abhinav Bindra [no question of belittling his contribution] whose multi-millionaire father provided him all possible infrastructure and facilities to practise. Rahi Sarnobat and Aneesa Sayyed have battled against all odds, against the system, against unhelpful authorities and then won.

The Indian shooters defeated the Australians 1158-1148 in the 25 m pistol shooting on the second day of Commonwealth Games in Delhi. Rahi Sarnobat is also a small-town girl hailing from Kolhapur. Anisa [her surname has also been spelt as Sayed and Saeed] regrets that all her pleas for transfer fell on deaf years despite all her efforts for two years.

“I am grateful to my husband’s company that gave me sponsorship”, she tells Ajai Masand in this report. However, she stands vindicated as her former organisation, the Railways, have now announced a reward for her achievement.

Isn’t it strange that it’s only now that we hear of her after she along with Rahi Sarnobat won the gold. There is no dearth of talent in the country, however, we remain focused mostly on cricket and sports that have glamour attached to them like tennis at the cost of other sports. [Photo: Rahi Sarnobat and Anisa Sayyed]

Congratulations to the Maharashtra girls, Anisa and Rahi, for their performance that took Indian medal tally up. Such success stories will certainly inspire more and more girls to take up sports and bring laurels to the country.




An Indian Muslim’s Blog: News, Views & Urdu Poetry Website

Geert Wilders Warns America at 9/11 Remembrance Rally

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

9/11 Ground Zero Mosque Protest gathers Victims’ Family Members, NYPD, FDNY, Veterans to hear courageous Dutch MP
New York, N.Y. 9/11, 2010, by El Marco
Dutch Member of Parliament, Geert Wilders, arrived in New York under intense security on 9/11. He leads the new Freedom Party (PVV) which is currently negotiating to form a complicated ruling coalition in [...]
Looking at the Left

Historic 9/11 Stop the Mosque at Ground Zero Rally

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Massive Media Distortion of Massive Rally in New York City
New York, NY  September 16, 2010 – by El Marco
This year’s anniversary of the 9/11 islamic terrorist attacks brought thousands of opponents and supporters of the controversial “ground zero mosque” to lower Manhattan in New York City. The American people yet again have been served a [...]
Looking at the Left

What is Better than Debate?

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

FOR THE MOST PART, debating is frustrating. If your objective is to change your opponent’s mind, debating is a largely useless and futile exercise. If you’re debating in public, that’s a different story, because you can change the audiences’ minds if you debate well. But one-on-one, debate is an impotent weapon in the war of ideas.

You know people who believe Islam is a religion of peace and that you are an Islamophobic bigot for thinking otherwise, and you would like to change their minds. If you try to do it with debate, if you try to do it by answering arguments with arguments, no matter how good you are at arguing, no matter how many facts are in your favor, no matter how articulately you put your message across, the odds are a hundred to one against you succeeding.

I’m sure you’ve already discovered the painful and frustrating truth of this. Back and forth, right and wrong, will not work. You cannot penetrate.

To have any real impact, you need more powerful weapons at your command. What am I talking about? I am talking about a way of influencing that you can add to the process of debating, such as dealing with presuppositions (the assumptions your listener started with), or working on small, incremental changes over time, or using Cialdini’s principles of influence, or using NLP rapport techniques, or becoming more charismatic.

What we need is transformational dialog. Not mere debate. We need influence, not mere argument. We need to effectively persuade, not just get peoples’ hackles up and let them dig themselves deeper into their position.

The following is a list of ideas you can use — ideas you can add to your attempts to educate people about Islam. You already have “argument” in your arsenal. Below are additional weapons you can use. We’ll be adding more articles to this list in the near future, but we can start with these:

1. How to Stay Calm When Talking About Islam

2. An Aversion to Cruelty

3. What to Do About Those Who Oppose Your Educational Efforts

4. Preemptive Ideological Strike

5. Why Girls Are the Key

6. Conversation Pieces

7. People Don’t Always Think Like You

Let’s not get stuck answering argument for argument in one-on-one debates. Presenting a logical, factual argument to answer an argument is a relatively weak tool because the other side of the debate often uses it equally well. We have more effective tools at our disposal, and we should learn to use them to our advantage. Failure is not an option. We must open the minds of our fellow non-Muslims and we must do it quickly.


Citizen Warrior

Indian Muslim News – INDIA ELECTIONS 2009

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Minority report

By Manoj C G

New Delhi: With 10 days left for elections to begin, prominent Muslim outfits have firmed up their poll strategy. Unlike the past, however, they are wary about supporting any particular party or combination, instead picking and choosing “favourable” candidates on a seat-to-seat basis. The indication is clear — all major “secular” parties can hope to get a share of the Muslim vote pie.

While this strategy may sound somewhat confused, it is only a reflection of the lack of options available before the Muslim groups, which are disenchanted with all mainstream parties for a variety of reasons. Their grievances against the UPA Government are many, ranging from the harassment of “innocent” Muslim youths in the name of the fight against Terror to the virtual shelving of the Ranganath Mishra committee report on reservation for minorities. But then again, for Muslim groups, the BJP is still the bigger enemy.

A conglomerate of Muslim outfits consisting of the Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind, the All India Milli Council, the All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat, Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind and the Jamiat-e-Ahl-e-Hadees have begun an exercise to identify the candidates they would support in 100-odd Lok Sabha seats, where they believe Muslim votes are a deciding factor.

Prominent Muslim leaders said the focus would stay on these seats, where these outfits under the banner of the Joint Committee on Muslim Organisations for Empowerment (JCMOE), would appoint local committees to pick the “favourable” candidates.

“We will go by the report of the local committees. The strategy is to defeat the BJP and its allies. Therefore, we will support candidates that are either Independents with secular credentials or those belonging to mainstream secular parties. Of course, the winnability factor would definitely be kept in mind while selecting the candidates,” Manzoor Alam of the Milli Council told The Indian Express.

Muslim leaders like Jamaat’s Mutjaba Farooq point out that, post-delimitation, there are at least 60 seats in the country where 20 per cent of the voters are Muslims, around 28 seats where Muslim population is over 30 per cent, and 14 seats where Muslims are in a majority. The idea is to favour parties that are secular in nature, said Farooq.

However, the outfits are divided on the strategy to be adopted in Uttar Pradesh where the Samajwadi Party has long been a clear favourite over the BSP for Muslims. However, the SP’s association with former BJP leader Kalyan Singh has antagonised at least some Muslim outfits, although BSP chief Mayawati’s earlier flirtations with the BJP have not been forgotten either.

(Courtesy: Indian Express)


Indian Muslim News – Unbiased. Uncensored.

The Audacity of Courage

Friday, January 8th, 2010

There has been an uproar in the Arab press recently concerning Kurdish smuggling crude oil into Iran, it seems, for refining.  Unlike the American press, which focusses on the implications as concerns the sanctions regime, nobody in Iraq really cares about that and instead the real issue is the revenue.  Under current agreements as between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Baghdad (and Article 111 of the Constitution), that revenue is supposed to be split 83-17 in favor of the central government, based on the population of Iraq (naturally the same holds for the Rumeila oil field which lies nowhere near the Kurdish region, suffice it to say, the deal works for both sides.)

Anyway, smuggling I am sure works in both directions, I am not much concerned about who is responsible for what, I’m sure blogs will pop up as they always do criticizing me for hating Kurds, or being an Arab sellout who loves Kurds too much, or whatever.  Every time I help bring students to the US from Iraq I get the same criticism (if they are Kurds, I’m the sellout, if they are Arabs, it’s because I secretly hate Kurds), I can handle all that.  The really interesting issue to me is how difficult it seems to be for people to change their roles from what they have always been to something new.  My  friend and colleague Feisal Istrabadi laments the lack of willingness of all sides in Iraq to trust one another.  Read his piece in the Texas Law Review where he discusses this if you want to see more, I don’t agree with all of it, but it is intelligent and well reasoned.  I think he’s right on much of what he says. I’d only add to it that the failure of trust seems to arise from a fundamental cowardice, a failure of courage on all sides. 

I think much the same happened between Arafat and Sharon.  Sharon was just too used to the Arabs as his enemy, Arafat too used to playing the guerilla who resisted authority and didn’t embody it, holed up somewhere in Army fatigues swearing eternal enmity long after the age in which the notion of a Palestinian nationality was denied a time when he had cause enough.  Neither of them I think had the courage to change, and you see some of that in Iraq today.  Barazani in particular has spent his life in some level of contest with the Arabs, it’s wrong to say just as eternal enemies, Barazani himself called Saddam in about a decade ago (maybe a decade and a half) to help him aganst Talabani, and Kurdish politics varies between using and demonizing Arabs, even as the Arabs, not to mention the Shah of Iran, use Kurdish resistance movements for their own ends and then sell them out , subejcting Kurdish peoples to counless miseries whenever it suits them.  The point ultimately is that I think the Kurdish leadership is used to being the outsider, suspicious of the Arabs, not trusting of anyone outside the family let alone the community (just go see the positions distributed to the clan in charge) and it’s just so much easier to play guerilla.  There was cause at one time, only a moron would deny the reality of oppression of the Kurds.  The problem is there isn’t the same cause now, it’s time to create one nation, and that’s awfully hard to do.

Lest I be accused of taking one side over another, the Shi’a can be accused of the same thing, of being so used to being deprived of power that they don’t want to share it, the Sunnis can be accused of being so used to being into power they don’t want to leave it, all of this can be said, and countless examples provided.  My point isn’t that one party is to blame, it’s patently untrue when asserted.  My point is that in order to create the trust that Istrabadi wants to see, there has to be courage, you have to be willing to part with the older ways, look at former enemies as friends, stop smuggling and start reporting revenues.  I see precious little of it in current authorities.  Barham Saleh, the head of the Kurdish parliament, certainly seems to want to turn a new page.  I’d say the same of Adil Abdul Mahdi, or Mithal, or even Ayad Samara’i on the Arab side, Sunni and Shi’a.  But by and large, I think they’re all finding it hard, their colleagues who run things are too used to their old roles, sticking to the way they’ve always done it, and of course, as comfortable as it might be, the way they’ve done it has led to untold miseries to all of their peoples.  It is remarkable, tragically so, how unwilling people seem to be to change, even when their methods are so clearly unavailing.

HAH
Islamic Law In Our Times