BismillaahThe Miswak was known before Islam, but Islam added a religious perspective to its usage.Islamic AdviceThe Prophet [sallallahu alayhe wa sallam (SAWS)] recommended Muslims to clean their teeth using a miswak every day; especially after waking, when performing wudhu, before salah, when reciting the Qur’an, before sleeping, and when the mouth smells bad.There are many ahadeeth that speak
Bismillaah“Whoever relieves a Believer of a hardship of this life, Allaah will relieve from him a hardship of the Day of Resurrection…”Taken from By:Al-Haafidh Ibn Rajab al-HanbaleeTranslated and arranged by Abu Zubayr Harrison2All Rights Reserved®This is a free Publication from Tarbiyyah Bookstore Publishing & Distribution. Permissionis given to reproduce and distribute electronically or
ACCORDING TO Radio Netherlands, “The Geert Wilders trial is as good as over. The public prosecutor has called for the populist politician to be acquitted of all charges against him. The trial will continue, but everything is now an anti-climax.
“During two days of intricately constructed arguments, the prosecutors told the court they found no evidence that Geert Wilders had broken the law.
“We request acquittal on fact 2…we request acquittal on fact 3.” Statement after statement, and charge after charge, prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman, who took turns reading the arguments, said Wilders had not broken the law.
“The prosecutors consistently came to the same conclusion. What Wilders said may be ‘hurtful to Muslims, and may be met with emotional responses’, but he did not break the law.
“The prosecutors analysed each of Wilders’ statements for each of the five charges against him. The charges included group defamation, inciting hatred of Muslims and non-western ethnic minorities, and inciting discrimination of Muslims and non-western ethnic minorities.”
The conclusion was confirmed by Dutch News, which wrote: “The public prosecution department on Friday afternoon (October 15th, 2010) stated that Geert Wilders is not guilty of discriminating against Muslims. Earlier on Friday it announced he should also be found not guilty of inciting hatred.
“Prosecutors Birgit van Roessel and Paul Velleman reached their conclusions after a careful reading of interviews with and articles by the anti-Islam politician and a viewing of his anti-Koran film Fitna.”
Geert Wilders and the forces of freedom have won this battle.
Let the trumpets sound, and let’s all raise a glass to this victory. Join with people all over the world today and drink a toast to this triumph of freedom over the forces of tyranny. Free speech laws defeated hate speech laws. This is a moment worth commemorating.
And if you were one of those who helped alert others to Wilders’ case, who made comments on other web sites or shared a post about it on Facebook, or if you participated in the SITA actions and wrote letters to the judge and prosecutors, please take a bow and give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it.
THE FOLLOWING article was written by Paul on Celestial Junk. I originally read it when someone posted it as a comment on the Citizen Warrior Facebook page. The reason I’m reprinting this is because one of the most common responses we get when we mention anything negative about Islam is, “But the majority of Muslims are peace-loving people.” This seems like such a final, decisive, irrefutable, self-evident conclusion, it makes all your ranting about Islam completely pointless. Or so it seems to the person who says it.
But from now on, when someone counters your educational efforts with “most Muslims are peace-loving,” school them with Paul’s response. Here it is:
Just as a “committed” Christian is one who truly follows the Bible, so a “committed” or “devoted” Muslim is one who truly follows the Quran. And just as a “devoted” Christian is one who truly follows Jesus, so a “devoted” Muslim is one who truly follows Muhammad.
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, he replied, “Very few people were true Nazis, but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.”
We are told again and again that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Even if this unqualified assertion is true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of zealous Muslims rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the committed, devoted, zealous followers of Muhammad…the “true Muslims”…rule Islam at this moment in history. Some call them “fanatics” or “extremists.” It is these zealous followers of the Quran who march. It is the fanatical, committed, zealous, literal followers of Muhammad who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the committed Muslims who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatical followers of the Quran who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatical followers of Muhammad who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatical, committed Muslims who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatical Muslims, those who take the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad very seriously and literally, who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.
The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful Muslims, the “silent majority,” (IF they are indeed in the majority), are cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery? Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were “peace loving?”
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
SOMEONE EMAILED the following message to us: “It is difficult to get the message over when a majority of people consider it as a taboo, as something that will hurt religious beliefs. Surprisingly many people around us do not really care if a piggy bank is no longer part of a bank and don’t see a threat in this decline of our culture due to Islamic feelings. Do you have an idea, sources, etc., to help us get this point across?“
Our success in getting this point across is crucial. We must get our fellow non-Muslims to see each small concession in its larger context. We must get them to see the concessions as a gradual process of displacing our Western law with Sharia law. We must make them see each accomodation to Islam as an incremental insinuation of Sharia law into every aspect of life. Each concession is small — that’s true. That’s how and why they’ve gotten away with so much so far.
It’s like a frog-in-the-soup-pot allegory: Put a frog in a pot of cold water and warm it up slowly, and the frog won’t try to jump out (even though it easily could) until it’s too late. By the time it notices how hot the water is and is motivated to escape, it is too cooked to jump.
Orthodox Muslims, committed to Islam’s prime directive, are using the same slow-heating principle. They know if they go slowly enough — if they make small enough demands — they can heat up the water (take away our freedoms) until we are unable to mount a defense against further advances. They seek many different kinds of concessions, but they’re most committed to removing free speech — they want desperately to take away our freedom to criticize Islam. That’s the best way to prevent non-Muslims from organizing an effective defense.
How could they possibly remove freedom of speech in free countries? Orthodox Muslims are doing it very cleverly: By using our own cultural superiorities against us. One of the most magnificent values shared by the cultures of free nations is the toleration of differences, and our accute, aggressive, deeply-felt intolerance of the persecution or bullying of any minority group by a majority group. From an Islamic perspective, this wonderful feature of freedom-loving cultures is a weakness, and orthodox Muslims are exploiting it.
Orthodox Muslims portray Islam as a persecuted, bullied minority. This works well as a weapon against non-Muslims in free countries, but it also works well on the Muslims themselves. Muslims must feel persecuted. The feeling of persecution is a necessary precondition for advancing the primary goal of Islam in free countries. Why? Because, as it says in the Quran, a) Allah does not love aggressors, b) Muslims must defend Islam, and c) the only action a Muslim man can do to guarantee his passage to Paradise is to die while defending Islam.
Add those all together and the simple solution is being seen and seeing themselves as persecuted. It provides motivation to fight for Islam within its constituents, and it simultaneously disables the defenses of the non-Muslim population. Some Muslims have even been caught provoking persecution (faking hate crimes, for example) and making mountains out of molehills in order to continually portray themselves — not as conquerors and invaders — but has innocent, harrassed, tormented minorities.
Portraying themselves this way is extremely effective with non-Muslims who are filled with “white guilt” (as it is called in America) or “post-colonial guilt” (as it is called in Europe), making it fairly easy for orthodox Muslims to gain one small concession after another.
Most non-Muslims think, “What’s the big deal? The poor Muslim minorities have had some tough breaks, let’s cut them some slack and show them our support and they’ll become our friends.” The only way to sustain that kind of thinking is to be unaware of the ultimate goal or the ideology behind these efforts to gain concessions. Free people only go along with it because they mistakenly assume Islam is like any other religion. If you make that assumption, the demands for any particular concession seems acceptable.
So one way to get people to see these concessions as unacceptable is to teach them more about the basic elements of Islam. Then they will be able to see each of these concessions in a different way. They will stop seeing it as merely a way to demonstrate our tolerance, but as an incremental gain in establishing Sharia law in a free country. But they have to have enough knowledge about Islam to know that Sharia law is profoundly intolerant and thus our demonstrations of tolerance ultimately enables the establishment of intolerance.
Another approach is to help them grasp the great number and variety of concessions happening in many different arenas, and to help them see it as a deliberate strategy to move slowly and gradually enough to stay under the radar. Memorize lists like this one, so you can begin to easily recite them off the top of your head. Here is a huge collection of such concessions. Choose what you would consider the top ten clearest and most important concessions and memorize them. Each one by itself may not seem alarming, but when they are all said at once, the scope of the invasion becomes more recognizable, distinct, and impressive.
This directly counters the normal way of perceiving these concessions. In the normal course of events, if any of these events are covered in the news, each is portrayed as a separate issue, and “Islam” is usually not even mentioned. So each appears as an isolated incident that seems innocent enough. It is the very smallness and gradualness and incremental nature of these concessions that keeps anyone from resisting it or even understanding what’s happening.
This is one of the techniques the Chinese used on American POWs during the Korean war. The communists in China had a sophisticated system of brainwashing, and one of its core principles was to get POWs to make a series of small, inconsequential concessions. They would ask the POWs to simply write down a few things that weren’t perfect about the United States. Seems innocent enough. But psychologically, each POW who agreed to this small demand made a commitment, and the communists built on this, slowly widening the concessions to greater and more forceful public statements against America and ultimately in favor of the communists. When one of these servicemen came back to the United States speaking out against America and in favor of communism, it was a powerful public relations coup for China. It weakened America’s ability to defend itself against further communist aggression (in Vietnam, for example).
This brainwashing technique took advantage of the principle of commitment and consistency. Experiments show that demonstrating a commitment to something — even by taking a very small, seemingly inconsequential action — a person is much more likely to make a bigger, more substantial commitment to the same thing later.
A girl wants to wear a veil. What’s the big deal? A school wants to serve halal-only meat. A bank decides to stop giving away piggy banks because they don’t want to offend Muslims. These concessions are small commitments. They seem innocent enough. But each is a small commitment to the principle that our way of life, our values, and our freedoms should yield to Islam. When we allow it, we are committing to the principle “when Sharia conflicts with our freedoms, it is our freedoms that must give way.” And this commitment can then be built upon, and the concessions can be widened into greater demonstrations of that commitment over time.
When the Ultimate Fighting Championships first came out many years ago, I remember watching Hoyce Gracie as he held his opponent on the ground while Gracie worked his way almost imperceptibly closer and closer to the position he was aiming for. Every time his opponent moved or struggled to get out, Gracie closed in tighter, or moved into a better arm lock or whatever, until at last the opponent was held immobile and his air supply was choked off.
I have heard pythons do something similar. They grip their prey and wait until the prey breaths out. Then they squeeze a little tighter and hold it, so air is harder and harder to take in until the prey can no longer breathe.
This is what Islam is doing in the West. Get this message across. They are gaining one small concession at a time. Not many concessions are ever undone. Islam is a ratchet. It only goes one way.
But if enough non-Muslims become aware of the prime directive of Islam, these concessions will stop and many will be undone. We will be like Charles the Hammer. We will stand our ground, unified, and say to orthodox Muslims, “You shall go no further.”
The outrage among parents over Dalit or Lower Caste [sic] women cooking food for their children in schools has once again demonstrated the casteist face of our society.
‘Upper caste’ families are insistent that they would not send the kids to school if the children are served food cooked by Dalit women. In several places, villagers have turned violent and the cooks had to be sent away.
This is happening in the heartland of India, from Kanpur to Kannauj, Allahabad to Shahjehanpur and Farrukhabad to Bijnore. Despite that a Dalit woman is the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP), the caste prejudices remain strong at the ground level, especially in rural areas.
The State government recently ordered that Dalit women were to be appointed as cooks in schools under the mid-day meal scheme which is aimed at enrollment of poor children in schools. For 25 kids, the cook would be a Dalit, and in case of 100 children, two cooks including a Dalit and a ‘general’ woman would be hired.
Despite the loss of upper castes’ clout, a Kayastha, Bania or Thakur woman is not likely to go for a cook’s job in UP. A Brahmin woman belonging to poor family may however be found at a cook’s place because Brahmins are numerous and not financilaly as strong as Banias [Vaishyas] or even Thakurs.
Otherwise, backward caste women are more likely to do this job. However, a Dalit woman is still not welcome. Such are the complexities of caste in contemporary Indian society. In some schools, teachers went on leave.
Elsewhere the are not cooking food but cleaning school premises for fear of hurting ‘sensibilities’. In Kannauj 70 parents were booked by police for withdrawing their children from schools. But this is causing further hardening of stance.
For political purposes, Congress’ Rahul Gandhi and BJP’s Rajnath Singh may go and have food in Dalit households but practically untouchability is still practiced widely. The educated class of parents is least bothered about the criminality of their conduct and that these actions are corrupting the minds of their kids.
Surprisingly, it is not just the traditional upper castes including Brahmins, Rajputs, Banias and Kayasthas who are protesting the decision to appoint dalit women as cooks in schools, but the other backward castes [OBCs] are equally fierce in their opposition to Dalits.
Jats, Kurmis & Yadavs also ganged up against the Dalits. Muslims may not have openly reacted but they are no less casteist and when it comes to caste divide, readily align with the upper castes. And though Dalits comprise the biggest caste group (22%) in UP, the battle for honor is yet to be won despite the BSP ruling the state once again.
UP that has a population of around 200 million is today ruled by a Dalit woman. But that hasn’t changed attitudes much though there has been a sense of empowerment amongst the weaker sections who remained at the periphery for centuries.
The open display of caste prejudices and such inhuman attitude towards Dalits haven’t still send shockwaves across the country. In rural areas of UP, MP, Rajasthan, Haryana and also parts of South India, it is still a dream for many Dalits to wear shoes or ride horse in the marriage procession.
Such news items don’t alarm the society much. While reservation in jobs has helped a section of Dalits attain financial security, for a vast majority the real fight for dignity is far from over. The recent spate of honour killings in which often OBCs were the perpetrators show that the cancer of casteism is spreading.
Caste may not appear as strong and as divisive a factor in cities, in countryside–towns and villages–this abhorrent apartheid continues to oppress millions. It was perhaps this reason that Dr BR Ambedkar had urged his followers to move to cities.
While communalism may be responsible for more deaths in indpendent India, the fact is that casteism is a much serious social evil that is often neglected and due attention is not given towards redressing the caste issues.
It is this reason that some media reports seemed to blame the government for taking the decision to appoint Dalit cooks and in turn fanning caste tensions. Sadly no progressive or reformist voice has been heard from the society against this anti-Dalit mindset.
Legislations and penal actions haven’t changed the situation. Isn’t it ironical that even today we, in India, commonly use terms like Upper Castes and Lower Castes?
Traversing across North India, it’s not uncommon to find rare architectural heritage or unique aspects of the culture.
But a temple for Kansa is truly a discovery. On Hardoi Road, I spotted this huge idol in a village. After crossing the village and going ahead for a distance, I decided to go back and inquire about the statue.
Villagers said that it was the idol of Kansa who was worshipped here for several generations, much to the astonishment of my companions also.
In Hindu mythology, Kansa is an evil king, who kept his sister Devaki and brother-in-law Nand incarcerated and killed every child born to them, due to a prophecy that one of his nephews would kill him.
But Devaki’s eighth child, Lord Krishna, survives and later kills Kansa, who ruled the kingdom of Mathura, not far from this region where the temple exists. No wonder that Kansa is considered a negative figure almost at par with Ravana.
It is this reason that no one may have ever heard of Kansa being worshipped in India. In fact, there are a couple of temples for Ravana because he is considered a wise Brahmin and a devotee of Shiva apart from the fact that he was perhaps part of the entire divine plan in which Lord Rama as seventh avatar of Vishnu emerges and brings justice to the world.
Over the centuries, Kansa has been a demon in stories in countless households in India. In fact, a cruel maternal uncle is often referred as ‘Kans mama’. There are certain positive traits in the character of Ravana but not one in Kans.
Everyone I asked about the idol including the family that has been taking care of it, said that it was indeed Kansa, but they failed to give any satisfactory reply as to how the structure was built and the locals made it a deity.
The caretaker who is a local BJP leader said that for centuries it is being worshipped and an annual fare is also organised. Perhaps, here lies the uniqueness of Indian culture, that not just others but we also get surprised at such cultural diversities.
Bismillah (In The Name of Allaah)
Dear Reader,
IntroductionThe Salafi Da’wah is that of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. It is the Religion of Islam – pure and free from any additions, deletions or alterations. It is to adhere to the Path of the Messenger (sallallahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) and of the True Believers (as-Salaf us-Salih). As-Salaf is a collective term referring
The recently released movie ‘Once Upon a Time in Mumbai’ [OUATIM] has again brought to celluloid the story of late Haji Mastan Mirza, the underworld don who had become a cult figure in his life.
Though films and media have been obsessed with gangsters and often the dons have been glorified, there is a marked difference between Mastan and the later dons.
Despite being a notorious law-breaker and feared underworld don, Mastan, had to an extent, acquired social sanction and respect. [After him, the 'bhais' turned to open extortion, drug dealings and finally, terrorism]
This was perhaps because he had certain principles that appealed to common folk, just like the Chambal dacoits* who fought against the system but never harmed the poor, instead distributed money among them, and acquired the image of Robinhood.
In the 70s, Mastan ruled the Mumbai underworld, and made a fortune in gold smuggling. It was license-permit Raj era, and the smuggling of imported goods brought him immense riches and as a result tremendous clout. However, he stayed away from the dirty business–smuggling of weapons or narcotics.
Ajay Devgan, who plays the role of Haji Mastan, has a dialogue in the movie that illustrates this difference between Mastan and the dirty dons which followed him, “I smuggle goods that are not permitted by the government but I don’t smuggle goods that are not permitted by my conscience“.
‘Main un chizoN ki smuggling nahiiN kartaa jiski ijaazat meraa zamir nahiiN detaa’. Popular magazines of the era, particularly, Illustrated Weekly of India and India Today published special features on Haji Mastan, which further glorified him and turned him into a celebrity with a larger-than-life image.
Mastan, who had migrated from Madras [Tamil Nadu], and began working as a coolie at the Bombay port, went on to become a rich and immensely influential man.
He later financed movies and also entered politics. Mastan’s life has inspired several movies in the past also including the blockbuster Deewar and Maqbool. [Varadarajan Mudaliar, often described as the first Mumbai don, also hailed from Tamil Nadu]
Glorifying the gangsters: Role of media, movies and society
It’s indeed ironic that notorious criminals and lawbreakers are eulogised and seen as heroes in the society. Perhaps, the rags-to-riches stories fascinated section of society that saw no way towards upward mobility and could only dream of instant riches.
While gangsters get undue coverage in media, the truth is that society also enjoys reading about the exploits of the outlaws. The anger against the establishment or the ‘system’, particularly the corrupt bureaucrats and criminal politicians who are also seen as criminals to an extent, is probably a reason that a sections of soceity are in awe of the dons.
Mastan had a long and ‘successful’ innings. Though he couldn’t make a mark in politics despite floating a party and trying to forge a Dalit-Muslim political alliance, he stayed in public life and had his admirers. People flocked to see him and he was mobbed in parties. After him, the underworld turned even dirtier.
Killings for extortion became order of the day and the decade of 90s saw the underworld drift towards terrorism. Both ‘Maqbool’ and ‘OUATIM’ exploit this grey area and seem to stress on the ‘values’ and relative principles of the earlier dons.
Haji Mastan, who became a don without ever firing a single bullet!
Senior journalist Sajid Rasheed says that Mastan had got immense fame because of juicy stories–with more fiction and less facts–which were published in newspapers and magazines., and he became a don without firing even a single bullet.
“He may not have even slapped anybody but English magazines presented him as a dreaded gangster and he also enjoyed it, never contesting the charges, in fact, even trying to dress himself in such a manner so that he could appear as a don”.
“He was not a don but a smuggler who was spendthrift and helped poor and in process acquired fame. He quietly helped the needy. When I was as student in Maharashtra College, I was among a group of students who protested the presence of Mastan Mirza in a poetry meet that was held on the college premises, in order to generate funds for the institution.
However, we later found that college authorities were in dire need of funds and Mastan Mirza alone had given Rs 3 lakh, says Rasheed. “He was not a killer mafioso rather a man who had become a celebrity due to his sheer luck and the prevalent social circumstances apart from the role of media.”
Read translated excerpts of Sajid Rasheed’s article:
Fact Vs Fiction: More myths than reality, Mastan was more a smuggler than a mafiosi
Haji Mastan earned his fortune, smuggling gold and foreign goods. When Indira Gandhi imposed emergency, all smugglers were arrested under MISA. Mastan was also sent to jail. Later Congress lost elections and Janata Party assumed power.
Incidentally, someone had suggested to Mastan that he should meet loknayak Jai Prakash Narayan [JP], the ideologue of Janata Party, and confess his crimes. Along with Yusuf Patel, Mastan presented himself before JP, and seek forgiveness for his past life.
It was this ‘surrender’ that was lapped up by national media. In the pre-TV era, magazines and papers were read extensively and cover stories featuring him, turned Haji Mastan into the country’s foremost don. Mastan loved expensive cigarettes, liquor, beautiful women and splurged money.
He dressed himself in white and even wore white shoes. He was a partyman and Bollywood personalities surrounded him. A photorapher who worked as free-lancer one day beamingly told me that he had built his own house after Mirza lent him Rs 40,000 and when he went to return the amount, Mirza scolded him and refused to take back the money.
The photograph of showman Raj Kapoor bowing in front of Mirza had also been splashed in papers and magazines in the era. But much later Mastan Mirza told me that Raj Kapoor was bankrupt after Mera Naam Joker failed at the box office, and though I asked him if he needed money, Kapoor politely refused because it was black money.
Mastan said that Raj Kapoor was not bowing due to a sense of obligation, in fact, the photograph was deceptive as the showman was drunk and got stumbled when a cameraman took the photo but it was interpreted otherwise.
[Sajid Rasheed is a senior journalist and this article was published in Urdu daily Sahafat, Mumbai]
[*Chambal dacoits were seen as rebels and society in general admired them for their valour. Most of the dacoits robbed the rich, particulary, the exploitative money-lenders, and some of them had become bandits because they rebelled against the system. Either failure to get justice after the death of a kin by influential persons or caste oppression, the dacoit was seen as 'baaghi'. However, in recent years the tradition also changed and dacoits became brute killers and kidnappers.]
Bismillaah (In The Name of Allaah)
Ibn Abil-’Izz (died 792 AH) – may God be pleased with him – said:
“Knowledge of Usool-ud-Deen (the fundamentals of the religion) is the most noble branch of knowledge, since the excellence of a certain type of knowledge depends upon what it is concerned with, and this is the greater Fiqh (understanding) , which is why lmaam Abu Haneefah (
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