The Status of ‘Suicide Attacks’ or ‘Martyrdom Operations’ in the Shariah, Islamic Sharia Laws, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Sharia Laws

The Status of ‘Suicide Attacks’ or ‘Martyrdom Operations’ in the Shariah

By Maulana Waris Mazhari

(Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand/Noor Mohammad Sikand)

However, now that fidayeen attacks are no longer confined just to Palestine and directed only at Israelis, but have become a global phenomenon, targeting even Muslim countries and Muslim peoples, as in the case of Pakistan, those who sought to provide legitimacy for such actions are faced with a peculiar dilemma. It is true that, prior to the American aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, fidayeen attacks by Muslim groups were confined only to Palestine. However, continued American imperialist offensives, including America’s unstinting support to the Israeli occupiers, have driven many Muslim youth to the wall, forcing them to take to such radical steps as suicide bombings in utter desperation. This must be recognized as the basic root of the phenomenon of fidayeen attacks by Muslim groups that has now spread out from Palestine to expand to other lands. Ultimately, the dominant Western powers, particularly America, are to blame for this development, which they berate as inhuman and cruel. The fact of the matter is that these bombings are a result of pent-up feelings of revenge in the face of intolerable oppression. At the same time, it must also be recognized that seeking to right wrongs in this manner has led to these Muslim groups exceeding the bounds of Islam and morality. Hence, it is crucial for Islamic scholars to seriously ponder on the legitimacy of suicide bombings in Islam, especially since Muslim groups who engage in such attacks often do so precisely in the name of Islam and claim that in doing so they are acting according to Islamic commandments.

http://newageislam.com/the-status-of-suicide-attacks-or-martyrdom-operations-in-the-shariah/islamic-sharia-laws/d/2733

Obama should rebuild US, not Afghanistan, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Obama should rebuild US, not Afghanistan

By Thomas L. Friedman

Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can’t agree with the US President, Mr Barack Obama’s decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I’d prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place. Given our need for nation-building at home right now, I am ready to live with a little less security and a little-less-perfect Afghanistan.

I recognise that there are legitimate arguments on the other side. At a lunch on Tuesday for opinion writers, the President lucidly argued that opting for a surge now to help Afghans rebuild their Army and state into something decent — to win the allegiance of the Afghan people — offered the only hope of creating an “inflection point”, a game changer, to bring long-term stability to that region. May it be so. What makes me wary about this plan is how many moving parts there are — Afghans, Pakistanis and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies all have to behave forever differently for this to work.

But here is the broader context in which I assess all this: My own foreign policy thinking since 9/11 has been based on four pillars:

l The Warren Buffett principle: Everything I’ve ever gotten in life is largely due to the fact that I was born in this country, America, at this time with these opportunities for its citizens. It is the primary obligation of our generation to turn over a similar America to our kids.

* Many big bad things happen in the world without America, but not a lot of big good things. If we become weak and enfeebled by economic decline and debt, as we slowly are, America may not be able to play its historic stabilising role in the world. If you didn’t like a world of too-strong-America, you will really not like a world of too-weak-America — where China, Russia and Iran set more of the rules.

http://newageislam.com/obama-should-rebuild-us,-not-afghanistan/war-on-terror/d/2182

The trouble in between: Thailand's restive south and Malaysia, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

The trouble in between: Thailand's restive south and Malaysia

Dec 10th 2009

Thailand's restive south and Malaysia

Najib and Abhisit have a look-see

PEOPLE in Thailand’s three southernmost provinces have heard plenty of promises from Bangkok since January 2004, when Muslim insurgents began a campaign of separatist violence. Government ministers, royalty and military brass have descended in droves to dispense advice, arms and money. But the conflict, which has so far claimed the lives of nearly 4,000 Thais, shows no signs of ending.

Last year saw a surge in troops and a dip in violence. But the shootings and bombings have increased again, with gruesome tactics such as the beheading of victims. The militants behind the killings do not declare themselves. They have neither taken their violent campaign to the rest of Thailand nor combined forces with foreign, anti-western terrorists. Caught up in their own political drama, few Thais pay close attention to the southern conflict.

On December 9th Abhisit Vejjajiva, the prime minister, accompanied his Malaysian counterpart, Najib Razak, on a one-day trip to the area, a former sultanate that is populated mostly by ethnic-Malay Muslims. Mr Najib is the first Malaysian leader to visit since the insurgency began. Thai diplomats have worked hard to prevent the conflict from becoming an international issue, though America has begun to look more closely and has earmarked aid money for peace-building projects.

http://newageislam.com/the-trouble-in-between--thailand-s-restive-south-and-malaysia/current-affairs/d/2234

Did America keep mum on 26/11?, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Did America keep mum on 26/11?

Did the Americans have detailed advance information about the 26/11 plot which they did not share with India, only passing on a watered-down warning? And was there an American spy within the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba who kept Washington (or Langley) informed of terror acts planned against India — even if this information was never handed over to us?

It is certainly beginning to look that way.

When Headley was first arrested, the Americans declared that they had foiled a plot to kill a Danish cartoonist. Then, more details began to trickle out. The terror suspect, we were told, was a US citizen of Pakistani origin. He had some links with the LeT. He had visited India. He may have been part of an advance team for 26/11.

Indian investigators, intrigued by these reports, flew to Washington to meet Headley. They were denied any access to him. They tried to work out if Headley was in fact somebody they themselves had been looking for. They had asked the CIA if it had any information about an American who, their sources had told them, was part of the LeT. They received no real cooperation.

Then, even as the Indian media were obsessing about Headley’s friendship with Mahesh Bhatt’s son, investigative journalists in America tracked down court papers pertaining to Headley’s arrest on drug charges in 1998. These papers showed that Headley had been convicted and sent to jail. But after 9/11, he had been set free and sent to Pakistan to work as an undercover agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

According to US journalists, Headley had been given a new passport in the American name of David Headley (his American mother’s maiden name is Headley) rather than his original name of Daood Gilani. He flew around the world, entering and leaving the US at will, avoiding the sort of attention that a convicted drug criminal was certain to attract at US airports.

http://newageislam.com/did-america-keep-mum-on-26/11?/war-on-terror/d/2252

Why Should Any Muslim Object To Pranab Mukherjee Attending An Ahmadiya Convention?, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

The War within Islam

Why Should Any Muslim Object To Pranab Mukherjee Attending An Ahmadiya Convention?

New Age Islam has received a press release from some organisation called Shariath Protection Council based in Chennai that says, inter alia: ... “But if the Hon’ble Minister (the Union Finance Minister, Shri Pranab Mukherjee) intends to interact with Qadianis, taking them to be Muslims, then it is incumbent on the Council to correct his wrong assumption and to make known that, his participation in the said Convention, despite their protests, will wound the sentiments of Muslims, as a result of which Muslims will cease to take his Party as their ally.”

I would have thought that we Indian Muslims are not Pakistanis and that we have not declared Ahmadis non-Muslim. In our view anyone is a Muslim who says la ilaha illallah Muhammadur rasoolullah (There is no god other than the one God and Muhammad is his prophet) and Ahmadis do that. Indeed, I had the personal experience of seeing their love for Prophet Mohammad and belief in his finality as a law-bearing prophet when I spent a few years in Suriname, South America where the majority of Muslims are Ahmadis. They differentiate between law-bearing prophets and people who are renewers of Islam (mujaddedeen) coming every new century or so and who are inspired by God to say things that they didn’t know they had in themselves.

Yes, some Ahmadis do call Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani Saheb a prophet, albeit a non-law-bearing prophet below the status of law-bearing prophets like Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Ram or Krishna, etc. We have our differences with them and of course, the majority of mainstream Muslims do not agree with them. Indeed many Ahmadis, the so-called Lahori group of Ahmadis, led by as great a scholar of Islam as Maulana Mohammad Ali, too do not agree with them and merely consider Mirza Saheb a mujaddid (renewer of Islam). Indeed if we go by the logic of Ahmadis we would have to consider not only Mirza Saheb but also people like Ghalib, Iqbal, Shakespeare, Keats, Einstein, etc. as prophets. These people were indubitably inspired to say things that they did not know the source of. They only knew that they did not know the things they said in a clearly altered state of mind – in some cases like that of Ghalib, for instance, an altered state of mind produced by the influence of liquor. Similarly, some of them consider Mirza Saheb a reincarnation of Jesus Christ who is supposed to come back at the end of history. I am sure many Qadianis themselves consider this rather absurd.

http://newageislam.com/why-should-any-muslim-object-to-pranab-mukherjee-attending-an-ahmadiya-convention?/the-war-within-islam/d/2285

Qaddafi criticises the inherent unfairness of the United Nations, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Qaddafi criticises the inherent unfairness of the United Nations

An hour into his address, Colonel Qaddafi began calling for investigations into each of the major wars since the United Nations was founded: the Korean War, the war over the Suez Canal, the Vietnam War and the United States’ wars in Iraq, which he called “the mother of all evils.”

The Afghan war, too, he said, should be investigated for possible prosecution. At times, Colonel Qaddafi veered into conspiracy, saying, for example, that the H1N1 influenza virus, also called swine flu, might be a military or corporate weapon that got out of a lab, and he intimated that an Israeli hand was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, should be solved by the creation of a single state, which Mr. Qaddafi called Israteen, but Mr. Qaddafi stressed it was wrong to infer that Arabs hate the Jews. “You are the ones who burned them, not us. You expelled them,” he said, referring apparently to European nations.

For Mr. Obama personally, however, he had only warm words, calling on the collected nations to welcome “our son” on the occasion of his first United Nations appearance. “We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president of America,” he said, saying he feared America would return to its old ways after the end of Mr. Obama’s term.

http://newageislam.com/qaddafi-criticises-the-inherent-unfairness-of-the-united-nations/islamic-world-news/d/1790

America is not and never will be at war with Islam: US President Barack Obama, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

America is not and never will be at war with Islam: US President Barack Obama

4 June 2009

We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the world, tension rooted in historical forces that go beyond any current policy debate. The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation but also conflict and religious wars.

More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims and a Cold War in which Muslim majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

Violent extremists have exploited these tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims. The attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and western countries but also to human rights.

All this has bred more fear and more mistrust. So long as our relationship is defined by our differences, we will empower those who sow hatred rather than peace, those who promote conflict rather than the cooperation that can help all of our people achieve justice and prosperity. And this cycle of suspicion and discord must end.

http://newageislam.com/america-is-not-and-never-will-be-at-war-with-islam--us-president-barack-obama---/islam-and-the-west/d/1441

American Media Wake Up to 'Ugly Innuendo' on Islam, but only after Colin Powell’s intervention, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

American Media Wake Up to 'Ugly Innuendo' on Islam, but only after Colin Powell’s intervention

He told Tom Brokaw that he was troubled by what other Republicans, not McCain, had said: “‘Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.’ Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim. He’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no. That’s not America. Is something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president?”

Powell got a note from Feroze Khan this week thanking him for telling the world that Muslim-Americans are as good as any others. But he also received more e-mails insisting that Obama is a Muslim and one calling him “unconstitutional and unbiblical” for daring to support a socialist. He got a mass e-mail from a man wanting to spread the word that Obama was reading a book about the end of America written by a fellow Muslim.

“Holy cow!” Powell thought. Upon checking Amazon.com, he saw that it was a reference to Fareed Zakaria, a Muslim who writes a Newsweek column and hosts a CNN foreign affairs show. His latest book is “The Post-American World.”

http://newageislam.com/american-media-wake-up-to--ugly-innuendo--on-islam,-but-only-after-colin-powell%E2%80%99s-intervention--/islamic-world-news/d/933

Pakistan: Under the ISI's shadow, War on Terror,

War on Terror

Pakistan: Under the ISI's shadow

Ghazi Salahuddin

Sunday, August 03, 2008

We know that a formal visit to America by a new Pakistani leader is designed as a foreign policy extravaganza. It is very much like a theatrical production in which the stage, the props, the lighting and the background music are carefully orchestrated to glorify the main character. But here was a lead player who did not have very impressive lines to speak. Did the ISI, with its past experience of destabilising governments of its own country, write the script?

Be that as it may, the invisible presence of the ISI was the highlight of the Gilani visit. As for the prime minister's own tangible presence, its impact was visibly diluted by his less than satisfactory performance. Some embarrassing details of his encounter with the Council of Foreign Relations, with specific respect to his answers to questions, have been published by this newspaper. Yes, he did receive some grace marks for maintaining a pleasant demeanour.

http://newageislam.com/pakistan---under-the-isi-s-shadow-/war-on-terror/d/418

War on Iran: The Perfect Storm from Hell, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

War on Iran: The Perfect Storm from Hell

By Lord Stirling

The war party in Israel and America has facilitated the rise of a regional (Iran/Syria/Lebanon/Palestine) MAD. I truly believe that the Likud/neo-con strategy is a total failure. The stated goal of the strategy is to break-up and weaken several Middle Eastern states that pose, or could pose, a strategic risk to Israel. To this end Saddam was encouraged to attack Kuwait resulting in the First Gulf War. When he was able to demonstrate, even in the face of intense allied air attacks, his ability to “deliver ordinance on target” using his Scud missiles the United States (and allies) decided not to drive all the way to Bagdad. We knew that he was holding back “the heavy stuff” and only using “dumb” high explosive warheads; not the chemical, biological and radiological warheads that could have caused massive damage to Israel and to the Saudi oilfields. Saddam Hussein's military had prepared what it called the "great equalizer", an arsenal of 25 Scud warheads carrying over 11,000lb of biological agents, including deadly botulism poison and anthrax germs (an additional 33,000lb of germ agents were placed in artillery shells and bombs). It was only after he was forced into denuding himself of his advanced weaponry that the neo-cons were able to begin the Second Gulf War.

http://newageislam.com/war-on-iran--the-perfect-storm-from-hell/islam-and-the-west/d/176

Critics slam 'shameful' ad that will run during 9/11 anniversary, Muslims and Islamophobia, NewAgeIslam.com

Muslims and Islamophobia

Critics slam 'shameful' ad that will run during 9/11 anniversary

Islam promotion to hit NYC subway in September

Muslim group pays US $ 48, 000 to run ads about understanding Islam

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

NEW YORK (AFP)

The campaign coincides with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as well as the seventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

"You deserve to know," the ads posted in subway cars will read, offering the tagline and contact information for the Islamic Circle of North America as a response to "questions" about the Prophet Mohammed and Islam.

The group is paying the Metropolitan Transit Authority 48,000 dollars to run the ads.

The Islamic Circle of North America describes itself as "a leader in pioneering up to date strategies to better convey the true understanding of Islam to others and clarify many of the misconceptions of Islam," its website says.

"This project is executed with cooperation of several major Islamic organizations and communities," it says.

Republican lawmaker Peter King has urged the MTA to cancel the campaign.

http://newageislam.com/critics-slam--shameful--ad-that-will-run-during-9/11-anniversary/muslims-and-islamophobia/d/298

What Obama should say on Iraq, Islam and Politics , NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Politics
What Obama should say on Iraq

BY FAREED ZAKARIA

And then there are the more tangible costs. The war has resulted in over 4,000 U.S. combat deaths, four times as many grievously wounded, and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths. Over 2 million Iraqis have fled the country and 2 million more have been displaced within the country. The price tag in dollars has also been staggering. In the last five years, the United States has spent close to $1 trillion on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. That is enough money to rebuild every school, bridge and road in America, create universal health care and fund several Manhattan Projects in alternative energy. Whatever benefits the invasion of Iraq might produce, it cannot justify these expenditures in lives and treasure.

http://newageislam.com/what-obama-should-say-on-iraq/islam-and-politics/d/132