Islamism & Islamophobia Abroad - News & Analysis

[akashganga]

Muslims plan parallel parliament in Switzerland.
http://www.rightsidenews.info/201202241 ... rland.html

Muslims go and live among all open societies and enjoy all privileges, and even abuse hosts. Have you ever seen a single muslim country where non-muslims are allowed to come and settle permanently. In arab gulf they allow non muslims to come and work for few years and eventually they have to leave. Fast forwared 100 years and Europe will turn into Eurabia.

[chetak]

By the way can some one tell me from which body part this strand of hair belongs?Head or some place else.

Is it short and curly?

and apparently fireproof?

Marxists-Sunnis spat: Can fire destroy (Prophet’s) hair?

Can fire destroy hair? This seems to be the question Kerala’s CPIM) and Sunni Muslims are most concerned with presently. The Sunnis say fire can’t destroy hair if it belonged to Prophet Muhammad. A particular Sunni faction says the Prophet’s hair won’t burn but it should not be put to such tests. But Marxists say fire would destroy hair, irrespective of to whom it belongs.

.....on such weighty matters is the feeble intellect of the marxist siezed with

[shiv]

Have you ever seen a single muslim country where non-muslims are allowed to come and settle permanently.

Pakistan. The US is there on a permanent basis.

[pgbhat]

^ in that case we can add more or less the entire Arab world.

[akashganga]

Have you ever seen a single muslim country where non-muslims are allowed to come and settle permanently.

Pakistan. The US is there on a permanent basis.

US is everywhere in the planet. The main reason for that is US paper currency is the global reserve currency and they maintain that by a massive military machine. Pakistan is a unique beast. It has nuclear weapons and is a IT (international terrorism) super power. Its nuclear weapons were built with saudi petro dollars and generous chinese/korean help. Indirectly pakistan nukes are also meant for saudis. If only pakistan did not have nukes they would not have dared to hosts jehadists else they would have been bombed to stone age by unkil.

[pgbhat]

Its nuclear weapons were built with saudi petro dollars and generous chinese/korean help.

and unkil and auntie looking away.

[A_Gupta]

USA: G.O.P. backs Sharia, unwittingly.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.c ... hp?ref=fpb

[JwalaMukhi]

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/320365

Perce said Elbayomy, who was subsequently charged with harassment "grabbed me, choked me from the back, and spun me around to try and get my sign off that was wrapped around my neck." The judge not only dismissed the harassment charge but lectured Mr. Perce about Islam.

The judge held a copy of the Quran and challenged Mr. Perce "to show me where it says in the Quran that Muhammad arose and walked among the dead. I think you misinterpreted a couple of things. So before you start mocking somebody else’s religion, you might want to find out a little more about it. It kind of makes you look like a doofus. …"


The judge then went on to say "In many other Muslim-speaking countries, err, excuse me, many Arabic-speaking countries, predominantly Muslim, something like this is definitely against the law there, in their society. In fact, it could be punished by death, and frequently is, in their society."

[abhishek_sharma]

Women and Islam: A Debate with Human Rights Watch

To Kenneth Roth:

In your Introduction to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2012, “Time to Abandon the Autocrats and Embrace Rights,” you urge support for the newly elected governments that have brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Tunisia and Egypt. In your desire to “constructively engage” with the new governments, you ask states to stop supporting autocrats. But you are not a state; you are the head of an international human rights organization whose role is to report on human rights violations, an honorable and necessary task which your essay largely neglects.

You say, “It is important to nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam while standing firm against repression in its name,” but you fail to call for the most basic guarantee of rights—the separation of religion from the state. Salafi mobs have caned women in Tunisian cafes and Egyptian shops; attacked churches in Egypt; taken over whole villages in Tunisia and shut down Manouba University for two months in an effort to exert social pressure on veiling. And while “moderate Islamist” leaders say they will protect the rights of women (if not gays), they have done very little to bring these mobs under control. You, however, are so unconcerned with the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities that you mention them only once, as follows: “Many Islamic parties have indeed embraced disturbing positions that would subjugate the rights of women and restrict religious, personal, and political freedoms. But so have many of the autocratic regimes that the West props up.” Are we really going to set the bar that low? This is the voice of an apologist, not a senior human rights advocate.

Nor do you point to the one of the clearest threats to rights—particularly to women and religious and sexual minorities—the threat to introduce so-called “shari’a law.” It is simply not good enough to say we do not know what kind of Islamic law, if any, will result, when it is already clear that freedom of expression and freedom of religion—not to mention the choice not to veil—are under threat. And while it is true that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been in power for very long, we can get some idea of what to expect by looking at their track record. In the UK, where they were in exile for decades, unfettered by political persecution, the exigencies of government, or the demands of popular pressure, the Muslim Brotherhood systematically promoted gender apartheid and parallel legal systems enshrining the most regressive version of “shari’a law”. Yusef al-Qaradawi, a leading scholar associated with them, publicly maintains that homosexuality should be punished by death. They supported deniers of the Holocaust and the Bangladesh genocide of 1971, and shared platforms with salafi-jihadis, spreading their calls for militant jihad. But, rather than examine the record of Muslim fundamentalists in the West, you keep demanding that Western governments “engage.”

Western governments are engaged already; if support for autocrats was their Plan A, the Muslim Brotherhood has long been their Plan B. The CIA’s involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood goes back to the 1950s and was revived under the Bush administration, while support for both the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat e Islaami has been crucial to the “soft counter-terror” strategy of the British state. Have you heard the phrases “non-violent extremism” or “moderate Islamism?” This language is deployed to sanitize movements that may have substituted elections for bombs as a way of achieving power but still remain committed to systematic discrimination.

Like you, we support calls to dismantle the security state and to promote the rule of law. But we do not see that one set of autocratic structures should be replaced by another which claims divine sanction. And while the overthrow of repressive governments was a victory and free elections are, in principle, a step towards democracy, shouldn’t the leader of a prominent human rights organization be supporting popular calls to prevent backlash and safeguard fundamental rights? In other words, rather than advocating strategic support for parties who may use elections to halt the call for continuing change and attack basic rights, shouldn’t you support the voices for both liberty and equality that are arguing that the revolutions must continue?

Throughout your essay, you focus only on the traditional political aspects of the human rights agenda. You say, for instance, that “the Arab upheavals were inspired by a vision of freedom, a desire for a voice in one’s destiny, and a quest for governments that are accountable to the public rather than captured by a ruling elite.” While this is true as far as it goes, it completely leaves out the role that economic and social demands played in the uprisings. You seem able to hear only the voices of the right wing—the Islamist politicians—and not the voices of the people who initiated and sustained these revolutions: the unemployed and the poor of Tunisia, seeking ways to survive; the thousands of Egyptian women who mobilized against the security forces who tore off their clothes and subjected them to the sexual assaults known as “virginity tests.” These assaults are a form of state torture, usually a central issue to human rights organizations, yet you overlook them because they happen to women.

The way you ignore social and economic rights is of a piece with your neglect of women, sexual rights, and religious minorities. Your vision is still rooted in the period before the Vienna Conference and the great advances it made in holding non-state actors accountable and seeing women’s rights as human rights. Your essay makes it all too clear that while the researchers, campaigners, and country specialists who are the arms and legs and body of Human Rights Watch may defend the rights of women, minorities, and the poor, the head of their organization is mainly interested in relations between states.

Meredith Tax
Centre for Secular Space

Sultana Kamal
Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), Bangladesh

Fatou Sow
Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML)

Faizun Zackariya
Muslim Women’s Research and Action Front (MWRAF), Sri Lanka

And thirteen other women’s rights organizations around the world; the full list can be found on the Centre for Secular Space website. A petition to HRW can be found here.

Human Rights Watch replies:

In the introduction to Human Rights Watch’s most recent World Report, released on January 22, Kenneth Roth wrote that Western governments cannot credibly maintain a commitment to democracy if they reject electoral results when an Islamic party does well. That was the hypocritical stance of the West when, for example, it acquiesced in the Algerian military’s interruption of free elections that the Islamist Salvation Front was poised to win and then in the brutal suppression of that party in the early 1990s, or when President George W. Bush cut short his “democracy agenda” after Hamas won Palestinian elections in 2006 and the Muslim Brotherhood did better than expected in Egyptian parliamentary elections in 2005.

Western governments should reject this inconsistent and unprincipled approach to democracy. Human Rights Watch called on Western governments to come to terms with the rise of Islamic political parties and press them to respect rights. As rights activists, we are acutely aware of the possible tension between the right to choose one’s leaders and the rights of potentially disfavored groups such as women, gays and lesbians, and religious minorities. Anyone familiar with the history of Iran or Afghanistan knows the serious risks involved. However, in the two Arab Spring nations that have had free and fair elections so far, a solid majority voted for socially conservative political parties in Egypt, and a solid plurality did so in Tunisia. The sole democratic option is to accept the results of those elections and to press the governments that emerge to respect the rights of all rather than to ostracize these governments from the outset. As Roth wrote:

Wherever Islam-inspired governments emerge, the international community should focus on encouraging, and if need be pressuring, them to respect basic rights—just as the Christian-labeled parties and governments of Europe are expected to do. Embracing political Islam need not mean rejecting human rights, as illustrated by the wide gulf between the restrictive views of some Salafists and the more progressive interpretation of Islam that leaders such as Rashid Ghannouchi, head of Tunisia’s Nahdha Party, espouse. It is important to nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam while standing firm against repression in its name. So long as freely elected governments respect basic rights, they merit presumptive international support, regardless of their political or religious complexion.

The signatories of the above letter disagree. In their view, Islamic political parties that come to power “remain committed to systematic discrimination.” We, too, are deeply concerned about that possibility and have been spending a great deal of time monitoring the conduct of Islamic parties, pressing them to respect all rights, and condemning any conduct that falls short. Human Rights Watch has a long history of standing up to governments founded on political Islam that discriminate against women, gays and lesbians, and religious minorities. But we would not reject the possibility that a government guided by political Islam might be convinced to avoid such discrimination.

For example, there is a significant difference between the brutal reign of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the conservative-religious government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, which despite its share of abuses has not used Islam as a justification for repression. Given the many diverse interpretative strains of Islam, we believe it best to press newly elected Islamic governments to respect the rights of all rather than to take action that would preclude that possibility categorically.

The people who signed the above letter are not content with that approach. They would insist on “separation of religion from the state,” presented as “the most basic guarantee of rights.” But that is obviously not what the people of Egypt and Tunisia, when given a choice, voted for. So what exactly do the letter writers propose? A military coup should not be recommended lightly. Taking the position that adherence to democratic principles can be achieved only when non-Islamic parties prevail, as Bush did, is a disaster for those principles. Promoting tolerance of women and gays by way of intolerance for Islam, an approach epitomized by Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party, does not seem a productive approach.

Of course, any electoral choice must be constrained by international human rights law, but there is no internationally recognized right to separate religion from the state—a separation mandated by certain national constitutions, such as those of the United States or France, but not others, such as Norway or the United Kingdom. That is why Human Rights Watch focuses instead on pressing all governments, regardless of their secular or religious basis, to respect and defend such legally recognized rights as the right to practice one’s religion freely, to organize and speak out against one’s government, and to avoid discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.

And while one would hardly know it from the letter, Human Rights Watch has done extensive work in these areas, challenging, for example, Hamas for barring female students who did not wear head scarves from school, Salafists in Tunisia for occupying a university campus, and Egyptian forces for attacking women demonstrators and subjecting them to humiliating “virginity tests.” Indeed, such issues were a major part of Roth’s news conference in Cairo releasing Human Rights Watch’s recent World Report.

Focusing on the electoral victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the letter’s signatories seem to suggest that pressing the Brotherhood to respect rights will be futile, citing statements made by people in exile who are alleged vaguely to be “associated with” the Brotherhood and actions of more extreme Salafists who are not Brotherhood members and whose conduct took place before the Brotherhood gained power and had any capacity to stop them.

Predicting the future is always perilous, and the risk of Brotherhood rule going awry is real. The Salafists, whose candidates for parliament secured some 24 percent of the vote to the Muslim Brotherhood’s 47 percent, will undoubtedly be a reactionary force, and the military still has not relinquished power. However, Brotherhood officials since winning the parliamentary elections have been proceeding cautiously and making some encouraging statements. Certainly we will criticize them strongly if they engage in abusive practices, but for now we are actively pressing them to transform those positive early signals into governing policies founded on respect for the rights of all. We hope the letter’s signatories will join us.

Kenneth Roth
Executive Director, Human Rights Watch

Sarah Leah Whitson
Director of program on the Middle East and North Africa

Liesl Gerntholtz
Director of program on women’s rights

Graeme Reid
Director of program on gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights

February 23, 2012, 3:35 p.m.

Bringing Mecca to the British Museum

Over the next two months the great domed interior of what used to be the British Museum’s reading room, where Marx researched Das Kapital and Bram Stoker (creator of Dracula) was a reader, is host to Hajj, a remarkable exhibition that celebrates the most sacred event in the Islamic calendar, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The exhibition seems more than a cultural event—a milestone, perhaps, in the public recognition and acceptance of Islam at the heart of British life. Conceived by British Museum director Neil MacGregor and the museum’s Islamic art curator Venetia Porter with assistance from the Saudi Arabian government, it is an unusual collaboration between a museum dedicated to secular learning and the current rulers of Islam’s holiest sites, who have lent many important works.

Presiding over its opening in late January were Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah, deputy Saudi foreign minister and son of the Saudi King, and Prince Charles—the heir to the British throne. There was a pleasing irony in the ceremony’s being held (with soft drinks only) in the gallery devoted to the eighteenth century Enlightenment with the princes reading their speeches in front of a Roman statue of the goddess Minerva. Prince Charles, who will presumably be the next Supreme Governor of the Church of England, spoke of the show’s “timeless truth that all life is rooted in the unity of our Creator.” Prince Abdulaziz—by Saudi standards an enlightened figure who sponsors translations of scientific texts into and out of Arabic—referred to his country’s “tangible efforts to spread peace all over the world,” a comment that raised few eyebrows from the assembled ranks of the British establishment, despite recent Saudi efforts to help the ruling Sunni dynasty in Bahrain suppress demonstrations by mainly Shiite protestors.

But while there were political implications, this was not in any strict sense, a political forum and in any case British royals, including Prince Charles, appear more comfortable with the hereditary rulers of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, whom they regard as kindred spirits, than the uncertainties unleashed by the Arab Spring.

Hajj was organized in partnership with the King Abdul Aziz Public Library in Riyadh, which facilitated the loan of objects from Saudi Arabia, and helped with some of the texts, as Porter explained. (Funding came from the HSBC Amanah bank and the British government’s Arts and Humanities Research Council.) And while Saudi Arabian officials had no role in the choice or presentation of other objects loaned from more than thirty other collections, the organizers have clearly gone to some lengths to accommodate Saudi sensitivities and to undergird the monarch’s role as Guardian of Islam’s two holiest shrines (namely Mecca, where Muhammad was born and Medina where he is buried).

One of five obligatory “pillars” of the Islamic faith, the Hajj unites Muslims from all classes, backgrounds and traditions. It includes the ritual circumambulation of the Ka‘ba, the cubular building that stands at the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, in the direction of which Muslims in all parts of the world face during daily prayers, as well as other demanding rituals conducted in the neighborhood of Mecca.


The Ka’ba is a somewhat stark flat-roofed structure, fifty feet high with a forty-foot façade and slightly shorter side walls, constructed from the layers of the grey-blue stone found in the hills surrounding Mecca. As the captions in the exhibition state, Muslims believe it was built by Abraham (Ibrahim), the original monotheist and with his son Ishmael (Ismail) ancestor of the Arabs). Abraham is said to have instituted monotheism and ordained the pilgrimage at God’s command, but later generations fell away, allowing idol worship to prevail until Muhammad “restored” the true religion of Abraham. The show does not mention the scholarly questions that have been raised about the Abrahamic account. The Encyclopedia of Islam—the canonical source for non-believers, states that “aside from Muslim traditions, practically nothing is known of the history of the Ka‘ba,” although Mecca (under the name Macorba) is mentioned in Ptolemy’s Geography, so it is assumed that the shrine existed in the second century CE.

In imitation of the tawaf (the ritual of circumambulation around the Ka’ba, which is performed by pilgrims by walking seven times around it in a counter-clockwise direction) the visitor to the beautifully-designed exhibition glides up a curving gallery, to encounter a series of displays showing the history of the Hajj through the ages. A Saudi lady, who had performed the pilgrimage several times, told me the experience brought tears to her eyes: “When you enter this exhibition you feel you are entering Mecca”—a city forbidden to non-Muslims, including the British Museum people who curated the show. The exhibits include artifacts, maps, textiles, documents from some forty collections, including those loaned from Saudi Arabia, notably the great kiswa, the black silken hanging embroidered with gold calligraphy, that covers the building.


Until the Saudi occupation of Mecca in 1926 the kiswa was sent annually from Cairo in a richly decorated camel-borne palanquin known as the mahmal, of which the exhibition has a superb example. Archive footage from 1918 shows the pomp with which this august aniconic symbol of Islamic devotion began its journey.. An edited version of Journey to Mecca, a recent Imax film, conveys some powerful images of Islamic faith in action: the ritual of prostration, honed over fifteen centuries - as the believers bow in perfectly coordinated movements in circles that radiate outwards from the Ka‘ba; the standing at the sacred mount of Arafat outside Mecca, which the white-robed pilgrims cover completely, like some vast colony of sea-birds; and a speeded-up view of the tawaf, where the Ka‘ba stands majestically—like the mysterious black monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001—an otherworldly symbol surrounded by the blurred gyrations of the worshippers.

The impression is underscored by a striking statement about the merging of individual identities in the mass by the Shiite intellectual Ali Shariati, who died in 1977 two years before the outbreak of the Iranian revolution he helped to inspire: “As you circumambulate and move closer to the Ka‘ba you feel like a small stream merging with a big river. You have been transformed into a particle that is gradually melting and disappearing. This is love at its absolute peak.”

The skeptically-minded will find some significant gaps in the show’s presentation of its subject. For example the caption for the mahmal footage is somewhat reticent, pointing out only that the practice of sending the embroidered palanquin from Egypt was discontinued in 1926. No mention is made of the trouble that erupted between the Egyptian pilgrims and the Saudi Wahhabis who had recently taken over the holy city. Leadership of the Hajj and protecting the pilgrims from marauding beduin were the foremost prerequisites of Islamic legitimacy and were reflected in contests over Mecca, the ritual center of the Islamic world. In 930, for instance, ultra-radicals of the Carmathian sect wrenched the sacred Black Stone from the south-eastern corner of the Ka‘ba and took it back to their stronghold on the Gulf near modern Bahrain. It was only returned - in pieces - more than two decades later, after the Abbasid caliph had paid a massive ransom. Given its historic and ritual significance, it would have been useful to have had a display showing the stone’s interesting but mysterious provenance. The captions relate only the Muslim belief that the stone, said to have been brought by the Angel Gabriel, was originally white, but became blackened by its contact with sinful humanity.

Some observers, including the English travelers Richard Burton who visited Mecca disguised as an Afghan in 1853 and Eldon Rutter who made the pilgrimage in 1926 considered it to be meteorite, others a fragment of rock created by meteorite impact. Such theories point in the direction of an object rendered sacred by reason of its extra-terrestrial origin. Fortunately some of the exhibition’s omissions are filled in the catalog, which contains informative articles by Robert Irwin and Ziaduddin Sardar. (My own contribution to the catalog, over-generously acknowledged, was limited to providing minor editorial suggestions, although I will have the opportunity to discuss some of the anthropological dimensions of the pilgrimage at an event scheduled for March 23).

Irwin’s essay balances the exhibitions wholesomely positive displays by pointing out how the pilgrimage had the disastrous side-effect of spreading cholera during the nineteenth century; while Sardar mentions several recent disasters, including the deaths of more than 1400 pilgrims in a stampede in 1990 and more than 300 when fire swept through a camp in 1997. Sardar also acknowledges the astonishing “improvements” being made to the holy site by its Saudi beneficiaries, which include the Royal Clock Tower, a replica of Big Ben five times the size of the London original. No surprise, perhaps, that this astonishing testimony to the taste of Saudi Arabia’s princes finds no place in the British Museum’s hallowed precincts, though images are freely available on the Internet.


In part, the exhibition’s unskeptical approach seems also to reflect the fact that it is dedicated to a living religion, not an antique belief system. It lays out Muslim beliefs without exploring the archaeological and anthropological matrices from which they issue. The question this raises is: should a scholarly and secular institution refrain from such exploration in order to accommodate religious sensitivities?

In this regard it may be noted that the lead essay on the early Hajj was commissioned from Hugh Kennedy, a “safe” medieval historian, rather than a scholar of religion such as G. R. Hawting. In line with the views of some western revisionists Hawting suggests that the “idolatry” against which Muhammad inveighed may not have been an actual practice, but a rhetorical trope used in arguments between rival monotheists.

On the other hand, the exhibition’s endorsement of orthodox Muslim beliefs conveys an important public message. Within a week of the exhibition’s opening nine Muslim men including seven British citizens, received prison sentences of 12 to 13 years after pleading guilty to a series of terrorist offenses, including plots to place a bomb in the toilets of the London Stock Exchange. Inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen and al-Qaeda leader killed in a drone attack in Yemen last year, the group epitomizes the alienation felt by many young Muslims from mainstream British society. An exhibition that celebrates the Islamic faith inside Britain’s foremost institution of culture must serve to counter feelings of exclusion.

Numerous schools with Muslim pupils have signed up for group visits to the show, not to mention coach loads of visitors from cities with substantial Muslim populations. The exhibition, with its blend of history, culture and the art that speaks to faith, and arises out of it, takes the British Museum beyond its traditional remit of preserving the past and puts it at the heart of the public debate about Islam and the place of Muslims in British society. Tactful, non-critical references to the beliefs held by Muslim majorities seems a reasonable price to pay for this bold initiative which MacGregor sees as serving the Museum’s “guiding principle of using objects and the forum of an exhibition to try to understand the complex world in which we live”. Minerva’s owl may fly at dusk but for Islam’s active believers, and the petrodollar Guardians of the Holy Places, this is still mid-afternoon.

[arun]

In P.R. China, axe wielding Mohammaddens run amok in an area mostly occupied by Non-Mohammaddens resulting in 12 fatalities.

AFP via Google:

Deadly attack on market in China's Xinjiang: police

[ramana]

Douglas E. Streusand, "Islamic Gunpowder Empires: Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Essays in World History)"
Publisher: Westview Press | ISBN: 0813313597 | 2010 | 408 pages |

Islamic Gunpowder Empires provides readers with a history of Islamic civilization in the early modern world through a comparative examination of Islam’s three greatest empires—the Ottomans (centered in what is now Turkey), the Safavids (in modern Iran), and the Mughals (ruling the Indian subcontinent). Author Douglas Streusand explains the origins of the three empires; compares the ideological, institutional, military, and economic contributors to their success; and analyzes the causes of their rise, expansion, and ultimate transformation and decline. Streusand depicts the three empires as a part of an integrated international system extending from the Atlantic to the Straits of Malacca, emphasizing both the connections and the conflicts within that system. He presents the empires as complex polities in which Islam is one political and cultural component among many. The treatment of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires incorporates contemporary scholarship, dispels common misconceptions, and provides an excellent platform for further study.

Growing up I always thought that the Mughals and Ottomons were different than the early Islamic Sultans that ruled India.

One thing about both the Mughals and the Ottomons is they both overthrew the earlier Turco based Islamic sultanates. These earlier Turco sultans evolved from Mamelukes (Slaves) to non-Slave dynasties all over Islamic world the middle period. The Turco Sultans supplanted the Arabs.
In case of the Ottomons they even declared themselves a Caliph! Akbar and Shah Jahan dithered.
Of the above three empires two were Sunni: Ottomon and Mughal and the other was Shia:Safavid. The Mughals were half and half as Humayun and Akbar wer Shia while seeking safety with Safavid Shahs.

All these ideas came to me to describe political Islam as three waves: Arab wave, Turco Sultan wave and post Sultan wave. These empires ruled in their own name unlike the Turco wave that sought legitimacy from the Caliph.
We are now in the fourth wave of Islam without monarchies and partial people's choice of leaders in some areas.

[ramana]

A new improved Taqiyya doctrine:

Tawriya: New Islamic Doctrine Permits 'Creative Lying'

by Raymond Ibrahim
Stonegate Institute
February 28, 2012


Perhaps you have heard of taqiyya, the Muslim doctrine that allows lying in certain circumstances, primarily when Muslim minorities live under infidel authority. Now meet tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances—including to fellow Muslims and by swearing to Allah—provided the liar is creative enough to articulate his deceit in a way that is true to him. (Though tawriya is technically not "new"—as shall be seen, it has been part of Islamic law and tradition for centuries—it is certainly new to most non-Muslims, hence the need for this exposition and the word "new" in the title.)

The authoritative Hans Wehr Arabic-English Dictionary defines tawriya as, "hiding, concealment; dissemblance, dissimulation, hypocrisy; equivocation, ambiguity, double-entendre, allusion." Conjugates of the trilateral root of the word, w-r-y, appear in the Quran in the context of hiding or concealing something (e.g., 5:31, 7:26).

As a doctrine, "double-entendre" best describes tawriya's function. According to past and present Muslim scholars (several documented below), tawriya is when a speaker says something that means one thing to the listener, though the speaker means something else, and his words technically support this alternate meaning.

For example, if someone declares "I don't have a penny in my pocket," most listeners will assume the speaker has no money on him—though he might have dollar bills, just literally no pennies. Likewise, say a friend asks you, "Do you know where Mike is?" You do, but prefer not to divulge. So you say "No, I don't know"—but you keep in mind another Mike, whose whereabouts you really do not know.

All these are legitimate according to Sharia law and do not constitute "lying," which is otherwise forbidden in Islam, except in three cases: lying in war, lying to one's spouse, and lying in order to reconcile people. For these, Sharia permits Muslims to lie freely, without the strictures of tawriya, that is, without the need for creativity.

As for all other instances, in the words of Sheikh Muhammad Salih al-Munajid (based on scholarly consensus): "Tawriya is permissible under two conditions: 1) that the words used fit the hidden meaning; 2) that it does not lead to an injustice" ("injustice" as defined by Sharia, of course, not Western standards). Otherwise, it is permissible even for a Muslim to swear when lying through tawriya. Munajid, for example, cites a man who swears to Allah that he can only sleep under a roof (saqf); when the man is caught sleeping atop a roof, he exonerates himself by saying "by roof, I meant the open sky." This is legitimate. "After all," Munajid adds, "Quran 21:32 refers to the sky as a roof [saqf]."

Here is a recent example of tawriya in action: Because it is a "great sin" for Muslims to acknowledge Christmas, this sheikh counsels Muslims to tell Christians, "I wish you the best," whereby the latter might "understand it to mean you're wishing them best in terms of their [Christmas] celebration." But—here the wily sheikh giggles as he explains—"by saying I wish you the best, you mean in your heart I wish you become a Muslim."

As with most Muslim practices, tawriya is traced to Islam's prophet. After insisting Muslims "need" tawriya because it "saves them from lying," and thus sinning, Sheikh Uthman al-Khamis adds that Muhammad often used it. Indeed, Muhammad is recorded saying "Allah has commanded me to equivocate among the people inasmuch as he has commanded me to establish [religious] obligations"; and "I have been sent with obfuscation"; and "whoever lives his life in dissimulation dies a martyr" (Sami Mukaram, Al Taqiyya Fi Al Islam, London: Mu'assisat al-Turath al-Druzi, 2004, p. 30).

More specifically, in a canonical hadith, Muhammad said: "If any of you ever pass gas or soil yourselves during prayers [breaking wudu], hold your nose and leave" (Sunan Abu Dawud): Holding one's nose and leaving implies smelling something offensive—which is true—though people will think it was someone else who committed the offense.

Following their prophet's example, many leading Muslim figures have used tawriya, such as Imam Ahmed bin Hanbal, founder of one of Islam's four schools of law, practiced in Saudi Arabia. Once when he was conducting class, someone came knocking, asking for one of his students. Imam Ahmed answered, "He's not here, what would he be doing here?"—all the time pointing at his hand, as if to say "he's not in my hand." The caller, who could not see Ahmed, assumed the student was simply not there.

Also, Sufyan al-Thawri, another important Muslim thinker, was once brought to Caliph Mahdi who refused to let him leave, until Thawri swore to return. As he was going out, Thawri left his sandals by the door. After a while, he returned, took his sandals and left for good. When the caliph asked about him, he was told that, yes, Thawri had sworn to come back—and, indeed, he had come back: only to take his sandals and leave.

Lest it seem tawriya is limited to a few colorful anecdotes more befitting the Arabian Nights than the religious law (Sharia) of a billion people, here are some more modern Muslim authorities—Sheikh Muhammad Hassan, the famous cleric who says Islam forbids Muslims from smiling to infidels, except when advantageous, and Dr. Abdullah Shakir—justifying it. They both give the example of someone knocking on your door, you do not wish to see them, so a relative answers the door saying, "He's not here," and by "here" they mean the immediate room, which is true, since you will be hiding in another room.

Likewise, on the popular Islam Web, where Muslims submit questions and Islamic authorities respond with a fatwa, a girl poses her moral dilemma: her father has explicitly told her that, whenever the phone rings, she is to answer saying "he's not here." The fatwa solves her problem: she is free to lie, but when she says "he's not here," she must mean he is not in the same room, or not directly in front of her.

Of course, while all the sheikhs give examples that are innocuous and amount to "white" lies, tawriya can clearly be used to commit terrible, "black" lies, especially where the adversarial non-Muslim infidel is concerned. As Sheikh al-Munajid puts it: "Tawriya is permissible if it is necessary or serves a Sharia interest." Consider the countless "Sharia interests" that run directly counter to Western civilization and law, from empowering Islam to subjugating infidels. To realize these, Muslims, through tawriya, are given a blank check to lie—a check that surely comes in handy: not just in trivial occasions, like avoiding unwanted callers, but momentous ones, such as at high-level diplomatic meetings where major treaties are forged.

Note: The purpose of this essay was to document and describe the doctrine of tawriya. Future writings will analyze its full significance—from what it means for a Muslim to believe the Supreme Being advocates such lying, to how tawriya is liable to suppress one's conscience to the point of passing a lie detector test—as well as compare and contrast it with the practices of other religions, and more.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum

http://www.meforum.org/3181/tawriya-cre ... ying-islam

[Prem]

Is this not complete opposite to Raghukul reet sadda challi ayee, pran jayee par vahcan na jayee".i

Tawriya !! In Punjab there is common saying. Pour the sweet syrup on your body, jump into the mound of sesame seeds and count all seeds which got stuck on the body and If Tawriya practioner take that many holy oaths to keep the words , dont trust him.

[arun]

The veneer of “Deeper than Ocean’s” and “Higher than Himalaya’s” friendship of the Momin for Kaafir’s peels off with Momin Mohammadden elements in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan going to bat for Mohammaddens living in areas occupied by Kaafir P.R. China:

Pakistani militants say Chinese woman killed for revenge

[krisna]

The veneer of “Deeper than Ocean’s” and “Higher than Himalaya’s” friendship of the Momin for Kaafir’s peels off with Momin Mohammadden elements in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan going to bat for Mohammaddens living in areas occupied by Kaafir P.R. China:

Pakistani militants say Chinese woman killed for revenge

Very nice. At last the faithfools are gazing northeast wards.
Let the games begin.

[Agnimitra]

UK politicians are wooing the Moslem vote bank, and even charges of anti-semitism are not going to cow them down. Will the lure of power in the ME/NA lead the Anglosphere to dump Israel and take up Islamist cause?

Lady Tonge bites back after Nick Clegg disowns her over her Israel comments

Liberal Democrat peer Lady Tonge has expressed disappointment that party leader Nick Clegg "very hastily and ill-advisedly" disowned her after she said Israel "would not be there forever".
...
Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme if she thought Clegg's ultimatum had been justified, Tonge said: "I think [he acted] very hastily and I think ill-advisedly. He's going to have a lot of flak about it, I do know that.

"Of course, I always have an enormous amount of flak and I am quite used to that. But I have also had an enormous amount of support."
...
"One day, the American people are going to say to the Israel lobby in the USA: enough is enough. Israel will lose support and then they will reap what they have sown," she said.

Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, said Clegg was right to demand that Tonge apologise or leave the Lib Dem grouping in the Lords because her comments sought to "delegitimise Israel".

He told Today: "The problem with Baroness Tonge is that she represents an extreme anti-Israel view.

"She attempts to delegitimise Israel, her criticism is disproportionate and it is also damaging not just to Israel but to her own credibility.

"I agree with free speech and she is welcome to go and say all these conspiracy theories on Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park … but she represents the Liberal Democrats, and it was right for Nick Clegg to ask her to apologise because what she was saying was trying to delegitimise Israel."

He added: "People like Baroness Tonge have these conspiracy theories but say very little about what goes on in Damascus, in Syria, every day. It is incredibly relevant because no one ever asks if Syria is going to exist or if Syria should not exist.

"But in the case of Baroness Tonge it is conspiracy theories and an attempt to delegitimise Israel.

"What I am trying to say is that the criticism of Israel – and it takes a lot to unite Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the foreign secretary – her criticism is far more disproportionate and takes little account of what is going on."

Tonge said "facts on the ground" had inspired her comments.

"I base my comments on what is happening to Palestinians in those areas, let alone what is happening now in East Jerusalem.

"Everywhere you look and go, you see the brutalisation of Palestinians. That is not conspiracy, that is facts on the ground."

She added: "You know, it has been said by many, many people, to say that if Israel continues with the policies it's pursuing at the moment towards the Palestinians, let alone in the wider Middle East, if you combine that with the fact that Israel has lost its allies like Turkey and Egypt and is making enemies all over the Middle East, if you add to that the fact it just cannot carry on pursuing the policies, doing the things it's doing, and expecting to survive.

"At the moment it survives because it has the backing of America but that may not go on forever. The American people may get fed up of backing this state that angers everyone and irritates everyone."

Tonge was sacked as the Lib Dem children's spokeswoman in the Commons in 2004 when she suggested she could consider becoming a suicide bomber.

[devesh]

carl ji,

the real problem is that the guys (conservative MP) who expresses his opposition to the lady never uses the word Islam. that's the thousand pound gorilla. the real issue is Islam's genocidal agenda here. and the refusal to raise this awareness is the real problem that is worrisome. it also indicates the path that "West" is taking. they have been intellectually neutered in the fight against Islam. most likely because of a subtle admiration for Islam's brand of totalitarianism.

[Agnimitra]

devesh ji,

The extreme leftist movement in Europe is a natural political ally of Islamism, and so they tend to get into bed with one another. However, at all other levels, the Islamists hate the leftists. Each one thinks they are using the other, and you are right about the subtle admiration leftists have for Islam. They think they can tweak it a little bit and make it perfect.

[akashganga]

devesh ji,

The extreme leftist movement in Europe is a natural political ally of Islamism, and so they tend to get into bed with one another. However, at all other levels, the Islamists hate the leftists. Each one thinks they are using the other, and you are right about the subtle admiration leftists have for Islam. They think they can tweak it a little bit and make it perfect.

There is a minority among leftists who make common causes with islamists. But majority of leftists understand that islamists are very dangerous. But we should not be fooled by right wing open opposition to islamists in the west. In the west right wing is all made of christian fundamentalists who are equally dangerous to Indian spiritualism/culture/civilisation as islamists.

[Sachin]

There is a minority among leftists who make common causes with islamists. But majority of leftists understand that islamists are very dangerous.

If the commie jokers in Kerala can be taken as a sample of leftists, then this observation is incorrect . These fellows cannot see the writing on the wall. And at times their blind hatred towards USA also makes them take a pro-Islamist stand taking the policy "my enemy's enemy is my friend".

[devesh]

devesh ji,

The extreme leftist movement in Europe is a natural political ally of Islamism, and so they tend to get into bed with one another. However, at all other levels, the Islamists hate the leftists. Each one thinks they are using the other, and you are right about the subtle admiration leftists have for Islam. They think they can tweak it a little bit and make it perfect.

There is a minority among leftists who make common causes with islamists. But majority of leftists understand that islamists are very dangerous. But we should not be fooled by right wing open opposition to islamists in the west. In the west right wing is all made of christian fundamentalists who are equally dangerous to Indian spiritualism/culture/civilisation as islamists.

1. both "left" and "right" are false "oppositions" of the Western world.

2. "right" is filled with Christist fundamentalists.

3. "right's" opposition to Islam is mainly based on theology and Abrahamic competition for the claim of superiority.

4. Most Leftists are either overtly or unconsciously pro-Islamist. they don't understand the roots of Islam and pretend that it is the "individual who distorts Islam", when in fact, once the "individual" falls under Islam's grip, he is systematically brainwashed by Islam and turned into a sociopath. it is not the "individual" but the "institution" that has to be blamed. Leftists do the opposite and revel in their supposed unbiased superiority.

and also, to understand the track record of the "left" against Islam, we have to realize that "left" is ultimately useless against Islam. they drain society's energy into useless tasks and the Islamists pick up where the "left" leaves. they are a soft target for Islam, and most importantly they are the main tool in keeping the non-Muslim sleeping and deluded. the "left" is as much the enemy as "right".

[arun]

X Posted from the India-US thread.

US legislator Keith Ellison who is a follower of the Mohammadden religion misleading name notwithstanding, introduces a resolution interfering in India’s affairs.

An attempt by Keith Ellison to deflect the criticism of his Momin brothers in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan over human right violations in Balochistan by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee by seeking to attack Kaafir India in the same forum ? :

US House resolution asks Gujarat to restore religious freedom

[Sachin]

and also, to understand the track record of the "left" against Islam, we have to realize that "left" is ultimately useless against Islam. they drain society's energy into useless tasks and the Islamists pick up where the "left" leaves. they are a soft target for Islam, and most importantly they are the main tool in keeping the non-Muslim sleeping and deluded. the "left" is as much the enemy as "right".

I should make a .pdf file of the statement above. Bang on target. You pretty much expressed my feelings in the above two sentences. Leftists v/s Islamists, it is obvious who would win. The sheer number of commies who support Islamists is the proof for this.

[A_Gupta]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/sport ... ation.html
In Texas, Islamic Schools Face Tough Road to Participation {in sports}

With 500 students, increasing academic prestige and an established soccer team, Iman Academy SW, an Islamic school in Houston, was seeking membership in 2010 to the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, a group that organizes competition among more than 200 schools in the state.

In addition to an application form, Iman Academy SW was given a questionnaire. Among the questions:

¶ “Historically, there is nothing in the Koran that fully embraces Christianity or Judaism in the way a Christian and/or a Jew understands his religion. Why, then, are you interested in joining an association whose basic beliefs your religion condemns?”

¶ “It is our understanding that the Koran tells you not to mix with (and even eliminate) the infidels. Christians and Jews fall into that category. Why do you wish to join an organization whose membership is in disagreement with your religious beliefs?”

¶ “How does your school address certain Christian concepts? (i.e. celebrating Christmas)”
...
...
The questionnaire sent to Iman Academy SW said: “Members of the Tapps executive board have little knowledge of Islam and the Koran, so it is possible that some of the passages taken from the Koran have been taken out of context. If so, please help them understand.”

It went on to ask if the school taught its students that the Bible is corrupt: “When was the Bible allegedly polluted? Does the Koran actually state that the Bible is polluted?” Also, it asked: “What is your attitude about the spread of Islam in America? What are the goals of your school in this regard?”
...
Iman Academy SW did fill out the application and questionnaire and was denied membership. It did not challenge the association’s decision.
...
Several school officials in Texas said Tapps circulated a survey among members in 2010 about potential inclusion of Islamic schools in the league.
...
The survey asked whether it was “in the best interest of Tapps to accept Islamic schools for membership,” according to a letter from Yager to Keystone parents posted on the school’s Web site. The survey also asked whether Tapps schools would leave the association if a majority of the votes were for or against inclusion of the school.
...
On Dec. 8, 2010, Tapps representatives distributed the results of the survey, reporting that 83 of 220 schools had replied, Yager said in his letter. Some 37 percent of respondents felt that it was in Tapps’s best interest to accept Islamic schools, and 63 percent said it was not, Yager said. Ten schools said they would leave Tapps if a majority said yes to admitting an Islamic school; one school said it would leave Tapps if the majority said no.

[/quote]

[ramana]

There is book called "Virus of the Mind" by Richard Brodie. Its a study of memes and how they influence the mind.

We should identify the TSP memes and Abrahamic religious memes: Judaism, Christianity, Islam and its derivatives.

[anupmisra]

That inbred idiot, Anjem Choudhary al londoni had exhorted all (Indian) Muslims to rise on the 3rd of March 2012 (the 88th anniversary of the destruction of the last Islamic State) in New Dehli in a public demonstration and demand what is rightfully theirs i.e. the authority, to establish the Khilafah and rule by the laws of God alone.

Did this uprising ever happen?

[Haresh]

How taxpayers are still funding the extremists

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/ ... mists.html

[Haresh]

The British Left definatley love the islamists, anything for a vote!!!

http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/th ... hrir.thtml

[Agnimitra]

British Pakistani propagandists are elated at "Sheikh-ul-Islam" Tahir-ul Qadri's reception in Hyderabad, AP. Its psychologically very important for them to feel the adoration of Indo-Moslems directed at someone from TSP.

Qadri with an overflowing audience in Aghapura, Hyd. Last time he visited Hydarabad was 8 years ago, where supposedly "2.5 million" attended in pouring rain.

[devesh]

there are strong winds in the direction of gathering all the faithfools under the banner, in Hyderabad region. Tahir-ul-Qadri is a sufi mullah and recently, the news of setting up a major Sufi Center in Hyderabad is also very disconcerting. the Sufi always arrives before the Ghazi. this is disturbing to me on many levels. primarily because Muslim population in Andhra is concentrated heavily in Hyd only. for all their centuries of rule, outside of Hyd, faithfool population is very low in the formerly Nizam territories. this new Sufi Center and arrival of Tahir indicates that the mullah mafia is confident of future success. what gives them this confidence is worrying?! both Eastern Maha and Karnataka have a good BJP presence and North+West AP is similarly outside of the Mullahs' grip. they are confined to Hyd. under these circumstances, the huge investments in Hyd don't make sense.

there is something that I am missing here. some crucial insight into the ways of Islam. I would think they would be better of focusing their energies in areas like UP, where their investments have a high rate of success. moving so far from their safe haven into a place where they will be virtually surrounded on all sides seems like a bad move. Am I overestimating the "Hindu strength" in the Deccan?

[ramana]

The Historical Reality of the Muslim Conquests

by Raymond Ibrahim
Jihad Watch
March 1, 2012

http://www.meforum.org/3182/history-muslim-conquests
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Because it is now almost axiomatic for American school textbooks to whitewash all things Islamic (see here for example), it may be useful to examine one of those aspects that are regularly distorted: the Muslim conquests.

Few events of history are so well documented and attested to as are these conquests, which commenced soon after the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad (632) and tapered off circa 750. Large swathes of the Old World—from the India in the east, to Spain in the west—were conquered and consolidated by the sword of Islam during this time.

By the standards of history, the reality of these conquests is unassailable, for history proper concerns itself with primary sources; and the Islamic conquests are thoroughly documented. More importantly, the overwhelming majority of primary source materials we rely on do not come from non-Muslims, who might be accused of bias. Rather, the foremost historians bequeathing to posterity thousands of pages of source materials documenting the Islamic conquests were not only Muslims themselves; they were—and still are—regarded by today's Muslims as pious and trustworthy scholars (generically, the ulema).

Among the most authoritative books devoted to recounting the conquests are: Ibn Ishaq's (d. 767) Sira ("Life of Muhammad"), the oldest biography of Muhammad; Waqidi's (d. circa. 820) Maghazi ("Military Campaigns [of the Prophet]"); Baladhuri's (d. 892) Futuh al-Buldan ("Conquests of the Nations"); and Tabari's (d.923) multi-volume Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, ("History of Prophets and Kings"), which is 40 volumes in the English translation.

Taken together, these accounts (which are primarily based on older accounts—oral and written—tracing back to Muhammad and his successors) provide what was once, and in the Muslim world still is, a famous story: that Allah had perfected religion (Islam) for all humanity; that he commanded his final prophet (Muhammad) and community (Muslims) to spread Islam to the world; and that the latter was/is to accept it either willingly or unwillingly (jihad).

It should be noted that contemporary non-Muslim accounts further validate the facts of the conquests. The writings of the Christian bishop of Jerusalem Sophronius (d.638), for instance, or the chronicles of the Byzantine historian Theophanes (d.758), to name a couple, make clear that Muslims conquered much of what is today called the "Muslim world."

According to the Muslim historical tradition, the majority of non-Muslim peoples of the Old World, not desiring to submit to Islam or its laws (Sharia), fought back, though most were eventually defeated and subsumed.

The first major conquest, renowned for its brutality, occurred in Arabia itself, immediately after Muhammad's death in 632. Many tribes which had only nominally accepted Islam's authority, upon Muhammad's death, figured they could break away; however, Muhammad's successor and first caliph, or successor, Abu Bakr, would have none of that, and proclaimed a jihad against these apostates, known in Arabic as the "Ridda Wars" (or Apostasy Wars). According to the aforementioned historians, tens of thousands of Arabs were put to the sword until their tribes re-submitted to Islam.

The Ridda Wars ended around 634. To keep the Arab Muslims from quarreling, the next caliph, Omar, launched the Muslim conquests: Syria was conquered around 636, Egypt 641, Mesopotamia and the Persian Empire, 650. By the early 8th century, all of north Africa and Spain to the west, and the lands of central Asia and India to the east, were also brought under Islamic suzerainty.

The colorful accounts contained in the Muslim tradition are typified by constant warfare, which normally goes as follows: Muslims go to a new region and offer the inhabitants three choices: 1) submit (i.e., convert) to Islam; 2) live as second-class citizens, or "dhimmis," paying special taxes and accepting several social debilitations; 3) fight to the death.

Centuries later, and partially due to trade, Islam came to be accepted by a few periphery peoples, mostly polytheists and animists, who followed no major religion (e.g., in Indonesia, Somalia), and who currently form the outer fringes of the Islamic world.

Ironically, these exceptions are now portrayed as the rule in America's classrooms, as many textbooks suggest or at least imply that most people who converted to Islam did so under no duress, but rather through peaceful contacts with merchants and traders; that they eagerly opted to convert to Islam for the religion's intrinsic appeal, without noting the many debilitations conquered non-Muslims avoided—extra taxes, second-rate social status, enforced humiliation, etc.—by converting to Islam. In fact, in the first century, and due to these debilitations, many conquered peoples sought to convert to Islam only to be rebuffed by the caliphate, which preferred to keep them as subdued—and heavily taxed—subjects, not as Muslim equals.

Meanwhile, as U.S. textbooks equivocate about the Muslim conquests, in the schoolrooms of the Muslim world, the conquests are not only taught as a matter of course, but are glorified: their rapidity and decisiveness are regularly portrayed as evidence that Allah was in fact on the side of the Muslims (and will be again, so long as Muslims uphold their communal duty of waging jihad).

The dissimulation of how Islam was spread in the early centuries contained in Western textbook's mirrors the way the word jihad, once inextricable to the conquests, has also been recast. Whereas the word jihad has throughout the centuries simply meant armed warfare on behalf of Islam, in recent years, American students have been taught the Sufi interpretation of jihad—Sufis make up perhaps one percent of the Islamic world and are often seen as heretics with aberrant interpretations—which portrays jihad as a "spiritual-struggle" against one's vices.

Contrast this definition of jihad with that of an early edition of the venerable Encyclopaedia of Islam. Its opening sentence simply states, "The spread of Islam by arms is a religious duty upon Muslims in general.… Jihad must continue to be done until the whole world is under the rule of Islam.… Islam must completely be made over before the doctrine of jihad [warfare to spread Islam] can be eliminated." Muslim legal manuals written in Arabic are even more explicit.

Likewise, the Islamic conquests narrated in the Muslim histories often mirror the doctrinal obligations laid out in Islam's theological texts—the Koran and Hadith. Muslim historians often justify the actions of the early Islamic invaders by juxtaposing the jihad injunctions found in Islamic scriptures.

It should also be noted that, to Muslims, the Islamic conquests are seen as acts of altruism: they are referred to as futahat, which literally means "openings"—that is, the countries conquered were "opened" for the light of Islam to enter and guide its infidel inhabitants. Thus to Muslims, there is nothing to regret or apologize for concerning the conquests; they are seen as for the good of those who were conquered (i.e., the ancestors of today's Muslims).

In closing, the fact of the Muslim conquests, by all standards of history, is indisputable. Accordingly, just as less than impressive aspects of Western and Christian history, such as the Inquisition or conquest of the Americas, are regularly taught in U.S. textbooks, so too should the Muslim conquests be taught, without apology or fear of being politically incorrect. This is especially so because it concerns history—which has a way of repeating itself when ignored, or worse, whitewashed.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum

[Prem]

The fear of Increasing Saudi influence in GOI's ( GOI=Gandhis=Congress of India) circle was mentioned about 2-3 years ago in BRF. Now its becoming a reality and going to to get worst only. Its a double edged sword and lets hope our Leeders understand this and know how to use it.

[jamwal]

[RCase]

Islam and (pseudo) science debate.

Watch this rather long video about a MPTP (more Paki than Paki) convert taking on Hoodbhoy.

If someone is interested in interpreting body language signs, it is very amusing to see Hoodbhoy squirm at Hamza's sweeping statements. Some of the reasons of much green on green action in Pakistan is evident - cannot agree with each other's interpretation and finally resort to I am holier than you. The end is rather surprising!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUNPq5qn3U0

[akashganga]

Islam and (pseudo) science debate.

Watch this rather long video about a MPTP (more Paki than Paki) convert taking on Hoodbhoy.

If someone is interested in interpreting body language signs, it is very amusing to see Hoodbhoy squirm at Hamza's sweeping statements. Some of the reasons of much green on green action in Pakistan is evident - cannot agree with each other's interpretation and finally resort to I am holier than you. The end is rather surprising!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUNPq5qn3U0

I am impressed by Hoodbhoy. He comes out as a really secular guy. He is courageous. If you watch this carefully at one point Hoodbhoy says his ancestors may have been Hindus. Is this a frudian slip. The greek convert is a nut case.

[shiv]

Respect given to Pakistani women under Islam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fv ... q4PFnl1S6Q

[arun]

Somehow the message articulated by Zakir Naik that” Islam Gave Women Their Due Rights 1433 Years Ago” was not conveyed to this bunch in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan:

Honour killing: Woman shot dead in Shikarpur

An earlier article by AFP dating to December 2011 that clearly suggests that the message articulated by Zakir Naik that” Islam Gave Women Their Due Rights 1433 Years Ago” has as yet not seeped in any significant way into general society in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan:

675 'honour killing' victims in Pakistan: HRCP

[JwalaMukhi]

Miracles do happen. This is a welcome change to once a paki always a moron dictum. Poor guy he would be wajibull cutl.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/features/ne ... -in-spain/

“Imran Firasat” A Pakistani citizen with legal residence in Spain as a political refugee has presented an official petition to the numerous institutions of Spanish government for calling the prohibition of Quran.

(8) The Quran is a book which causes women to suffer and be tortured by means of its full of injustice and macho laws.

[dada]

# Jwalamukhi - Quote

Quran is a book outlining a comprehensive strategy for acquiring absolute MPW (money-power-women)
this "strategic knowledge" has been inherited by every muslim from his parent / grandfather generation
The muslim culture has ensured that this knowledge is passed on to future generations as well

Is there really anything spiritual about quran(as claimed by many islamists) when it has been totally preoccupied with worldly/materialistic goals ?

Life of this ideology is around 1400 years. But Life span of the ordinary mortals starting from the Prophet himself to the Caliphs & to the present day muslims has never been more 60-90 yrs

[Aditya_V]

Islam and (pseudo) science debate.

Watch this rather long video about a MPTP (more Paki than Paki) convert taking on Hoodbhoy.

If someone is interested in interpreting body language signs, it is very amusing to see Hoodbhoy squirm at Hamza's sweeping statements. Some of the reasons of much green on green action in Pakistan is evident - cannot agree with each other's interpretation and finally resort to I am holier than you. The end is rather surprising!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUNPq5qn3U0

I am impressed by Hoodbhoy. He comes out as a really secular guy. He is courageous. If you watch this carefully at one point Hoodbhoy says his ancestors may have been Hindus. Is this a frudian slip. The greek convert is a nut case.

But his logic on Indo-Pak relations are ridiculous, Problems are created by Pakistan but India needs to give Kashmir, Give aid, Give electricity etc etc.