Egypt: The Next Volcano?, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Egypt: The Next Volcano?

By Eric Margolis

Egypt is facing a potential political eruption that could rock the entire Mideast and seriously undermine US domination of the strategic region.

This threat comes as tensions in the Mideast are already extremely high. Threats of war involving US, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran are flying fast and furious.

President Husni Mubarak, the US-supported strongman who has ruled Egypt with an iron hand for almost 30 years, is 81 and in frail health. Amazingly, he has no designated successor. No one knows who will take over Egypt when he dies.

For Mubarak, it may be "après moi, le deluge." Dealing with elderly dictators is always an extremely tricky business.

Mubarak, an air force general, was put into power with US help after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat by nationalist soldiers in 1981. Sadat had been a CIA "asset" since 1952.

My sharp-tongued mother interviewed Sadat in the 1950's and described him as a "clown." Sadat was a hero in the US and Israel, but Egyptians hated him and greeted his killing with jubilation.

Egypt, with 82 million people, is the most populous and important Arab nation. Cairo has long been the cultural center of the Arab world. It is also an overcrowded madhouse with eight million people (12 million in the great Cairo area) crammed into an early 20th century colonial city built for 500,000. Cairo's population has tripled since I lived there as a boy in 1957.

About 28% all Arabs are Egyptians. Deduct North Africa, known as the Maghreb - and not traditionally part of the Arab heartland - and Egypt counts for a third of all Arabs. The Nilotic Egyptians are quite different ethnically from the Arabs of Arabia, Syria and Iraq, but they all share a mostly common language, religion, and sense of pan-Arab identity.

http://newageislam.com/egypt--the-next-volcano?/islam-and-the-west/d/2767

Ibn Arabi: The man who saw God in creation, Islam and Spiritualism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Spiritualism

Ibn Arabi: The man who saw God in creation

By Arif M. Khan

The zeitgeist of of contemporary Spain had deeply impacted Ibn Arabi, who has not only engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and ideas, but also focused on knowing reality through personal experience. Ibn Arabi is regarded as a Sufi teacher who did not confine himself to one tradition or dogma, but saw the unity of God in the unity of creation. His emphatic assertion “all that is left to us by tradition is mere words, it is up to us to find out what they mean” reflects his sensitivity to the demands of the times he was living in.

Ibn Arabi and his philosophy evoked varied reactions, some considered him a saint and the others a heretic. His books were banned. Once he was forced to flee from Egypt to escape the charge of heresy. Critics strongly resented his emphasis on employing reason to realise Truth, which was considered by Ibn Arabi as an expression of the divine. In a beautiful simile, Ibn Arabi says, “Light cannot be seen in itself, but only through the objects in which it is reflected. Similarly , God can be seen by the reflection on his creation, which is nothing but himself.” How contemporary society reacted to Ibn Arabi is best reflected in a story by Sheikh Muzaffar Ozak and included in Ibn Arabi’s book Futuhat al –Makkiya.

According to the narration, a teacher of Muslim law was delivering a lecture on the subject of heresy. One student got up and asked if the heretic under study was someone like Ibn Arabi. The teacher responded in the affirmative. This was during Ramadan, the month of fasting. In the evening, after breaking his fast, another student asked the same teacher, “Who according to you is the greatest saint of our times?” The teacher replied, “Ibn Arabi”.

http://newageislam.com/ibn-arabi--the-man-who-saw-god-in-creation/islam-and-spiritualism/d/2564

Misyar: Saudi licence for sex sans strings, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Misyar: Saudi licence for sex sans strings

ISLAMABAD: In conservative Saudi Arabia, men and women are increasingly availing misyar, a no-strings marriage of convenience focused primarily on sexual relations.

Misyar allows couples to live separately, but come together for sexual relations. It deprives women of almost all the rights that a normal marriage would entitle them to, but offers men an "opportunity for a bit of fun on the side, in secret, and at a huge discount."

Misyar's rising popularity also owes to the high cost of marriage in Saudi Arabia, as dowry, dinners, parties, decorating a flat and the honeymoon, set the groom back several hundred thousand riyals. "Misyar for cash-strapped men is a boon," the Guardian reported.

A Saudi cited by the report claimed that he entered several misyar marriages after his first normal marriage fell apart.

He said none lasted for more than six months and said the marriages had not been as cost effective as he had hoped, irrespective of the fact that he was hoping to find a compatible partner for a permanent relationship. He said that misyar wives were "crafty and inclined to extract money and gifts".

"Thanks to Bluetooth technology, websites and an abundance of apartments in major cities like Riyadh and Jeddah, there are tales of misyar wives who have clandestinely entered into more than one misyar contract," the paper said. "These ladies say misyar husbands never tell their full-time wives about their relationships, so why can't misyar wives have similar arrangements?" it stated.

http://newageislam.com/misyar--saudi-licence-for-sex-sans-strings/islamic-world-news/d/1689

Wahhabi teaching on the rise in Bangladesh: Saudi Arabia provides the money, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Wahhabi teaching on the rise in Bangladesh: Saudi Arabia provides the money

Perhaps the most visible and dramatic sign of the growth of extremism came three years ago. On 17 August 2005, between 11 and 11.30 am, 527 bombs were exploded in a massive attack on all but one of the country’s 64 districts. Such a carefully co-ordinated campaign of terror shocked the nation – but in many respects it was just the tip of the terror iceberg. Other terrorist incidents, including an attack on the Bangladeshi-born British High Commissioner, members of the judiciary and sporadic attacks on religious and ethnic minorities are further indicators of the presence of well-organised terrorist networks.

However, it is not simply the acts of violence that should cause concern. The Islamists’ ideological influence has spread to almost all parts of Bangladeshi society – not least the political arena.

The umbrella organisation is Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical group founded in India in 1941 by Mawlana Abul Ala Maududi. According to one analyst in Bangladesh, Jamaat’s objective is to create “a monolithic Islamic state, based on Shari’ah law, and declare jihad against Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and free-thinking Muslims.” Religious minorities – and Muslims regarded by Jamaat as heretical, such as the Ahmadiyya sect – are targeted for eviction, according to one human rights activist, “or at least to be made into a ‘non-existent’ element whose voice cannot be heard.”

http://newageislam.com/wahhabi-teaching-on-the-rise-in-bangladesh--saudi-arabia-provides-the-money/islamic-world-news/d/1019

Ideological founts that sustain and inspire Indian Mujahideen, SIMI, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Ideological founts that sustain and inspire Indian Mujahideen, SIMI

The jihadi outfits have 'purist link'

By Rajeev Deshpande,TNN

22 Sep 2008

In its new garb, a SIMI faction found IM perfectly conveyed "home grown" militancy. The harkening to the two shaheeds — Sayeed Ahmad and Shah Ismail — marks a connection of a Delhi-based madrassa that attracted notice in the late 17th century under Shah Abdur Rahim as Madrassa Rahimiya. The school came up as part of a protest against the anti-orthodox views and policies of Akbar and was a centre of Hanafi learning.

The madrassa really came into its own under Rahim's son Shah Waliullah who is variously regarded as "reformer" or "hardliner". This apparent contradiction stems from his bid to rid Islam of "impurities" and "false beliefs" that had crept in. His views reflected the Muslim clergy's disquiet and anger but he gave it a sharper purpose, advocating "reform" of Islamic practices in line with those of early Muslims in Arabia.

Waliullah took a stringent view of Sharia and was pessimistic about the faith of converts. He advocated the need for persuasion to explain religion's superiority and scholars such as Sayyid Athar Rizvi and K S Durrany point to his injunctions against "polytheists and hypocrites" and opposition to influences of pre-Islamic Arabia and Greek philosophy in Islam.

http://newageislam.com/ideological-founts-that-sustain-and-inspire-indian-mujahideen,-simi-/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/785

Financed by Iranian and Libyan individuals Al-Qaeda moves to Yemen: Saudi newspaper's extraordinary claims, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Financed by Iranian and Libyan individuals Al-Qaeda moves to Yemen: Saudi newspaper's extraordinary claims

Al-Qahtani, a high-school graduate from southern Saudi Arabia, is thirty-years-old and has a son named Mohammad. Al-Qahtani is wanted by Saudi authorities on terror-related security charges. Six Al-Qaeda detainees provided this information to Yemeni security forces after they were arrested in July.

The sources said Al-Qahtani is responsible for the financing of several terrorist operations targeting Yemeni facilities as well as major sectors, including the attack on Spanish tourists in mid-July.

The sources said that Al-Qahtani has not taken part in the operation but that he was taking refuge, along with two other members of the network, in a mountain shelter adjacent to the Obaidah tribe area close to the Yemeni border with Saudi Arabia.

In a message titled “Come to Yemen” posted in March on Al-Qaeda.

Web sites, Naif Al-Qahtani called on Al-Qaeda agents present in Saudi Arabia to move to Yemen and that he would worry about financing their move.

http://newageislam.com/financed-by-iranian-and-libyan-individuals-al-qaeda-moves-to-yemen--saudi-newspaper-s-extraordinary-claims/war-on-terror/d/667

Saudi Power - Shaping another U.S. Foreign Policy Misadventure, Islam and the West, NewAgeIsla.com

Islam and the West

Saudi Power - Shaping another U.S. Foreign Policy Misadventure

The Saudi kingdom can be considered one of the youngest of the oldest kingdoms in the world. Its establishment and operation recalls the reign of the Spanish Catholic monarchy of the 15th century. Similar to the Ferdinand and Isabella pact with the Catholic church to gain recognition for their kingdom in return for sole approval of the Catholic church in Spanish lands, Arabian chieftain Mohammed ibn Saud, in 1744, allied himself with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, leader of the Wahhab sect. The Wahhabis backed the Saud families in their methodical conquest of the entire Arabian peninsula, and, in turn, were allowed to control Saudi social society as the dominant and only fully recognized religion. Believing in the basics of Islam, they enforced a strict interpretation of the Koran.

King Ibn Saud, a descendant of Wahhabi leaders, seized Riyadh in 1901 and eventually conquered almost all the peninsula. By 1933, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia finally coalesced close to its present form. Ibn Saud established an absolute monarchy and ruled it by an all encompassing Sharia; the body of Islamic religious law which regulates public and private life.

http://newageislam.com/saudi-power---shaping-another-u.s.-foreign-policy-misadventure-/islam-and-the-west/d/197