What Can These Women suicide bombers Be Thinking?, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

What Can These Women suicide bombers Be Thinking?

Since 1985, more than 250 women, Tamil, Chechen, Indian, and Muslim, have become suicide bombers.

An unsettling new trend is emerging: conversion of Western women to Islam and their recruitment into Islam's most murderous cults. How can such a misogynistic movement seduce women?

Recently two American women were picked up on terror charges: one the petite blonde known as "Jihad Jane" and the other, Jamie Paulin-Ramirez. What's even worse is that there are more in the pipeline.

Colleen LaRose, whose Internet name is "Jihad Jane," converted to Islam and acted as a screener and recruiter for assassins to murder a Swedish cartoonist who "offended Islam." She was trying to find others like herself-preferably women who would not easily be identified as Muslim-to carry out such missions. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, a 31-year-old American (a blonde like LaRose), was arrested in Ireland for conspiring to murder the same cartoonist. What might these women have in common?

Such women are troubled, not well educated (often school dropouts), and would be called losers in our society-but get attention and the illusion of affection from Islamic radicals. The militants need such women, and will do anything to recruit them. LaRose was so secretive about her activities that even her last live-in boyfriend (she was married and divorced several times) was unaware of what she was doing. She also had a history of alcohol abuse, and her former boyfriend noted that she was not very bright.

Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, according to her distraught mother, was also married three times-as a teenager, then to an illegal Mexican immigrant who fathered her child and was caught and deported, and now to an Algerian Muslim she met on line. She has taken her six-year-old child with her to Ireland, and her mother says that the child is being radicalized to hate Christians and to become a "good Muslim."

http://newageislam.com/what-can-these-women-suicide-bombers-be-thinking?/islam,-women-and-feminism/d/2748

Malaysia: All in the name of Allah, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Malaysia: All in the name of Allah

By Gwynne Dyer

The row over a Malaysian High Court’s decision allowing non-Muslims to refer to god as ‘Allah’ is getting ugly. The Government must stop playing along with Islamic extremists

In the late-1980s, when I was in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, a friend suggested that I drive out into the desert near Jubail to see the oldest extant Christian church in the world. And there it was, surrounded by a chain-link fence to keep casual visitors and foreign archaeologists out. Experts who saw the site before it was closed said that the church was built by Nestorian Christians, and was probably used from the 4th to the 9th century.

Its existence embarrassed the Saudi Government, which prefers to believe that Arabia went straight from paganism to Islam. But it confirmed the assumption of most historians that Christianity was flourishing in the Arabian Peninsula in the centuries before the rise of Islam. So what did these Arabic-speaking Christians call god? Allah, of course.

I mention this because last week the Malaysian High Court struck down a three-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah when they speak of god in the Malay language. The court’s decision was followed by firebomb attacks on three Christian churches in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night, and on Friday protesters at mosques in Kuala Lumpur carried placards reading “Allah is only for us.”

Prime Minister Najib Razak condemned the attacks on the churches, but he supports the ban on Christians using the word ‘Allah’ in Malay and is appealing the High Court decision.

http://newageislam.com/malaysia--all-in-the-name-of-allah/islam-and-pluralism/d/2363

Ninth Church Vandalized in Malaysia as Tensions Rise, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Ninth Church Vandalized in Malaysia as Tensions Rise

BANGKOK — A ninth church was vandalized Monday in Malaysia in a series of arson attacks that have raised religious tensions surrounding a dispute over the use of the word “Allah” by Christians in this mostly Muslim nation.

“Allah” is the common term for God in Malay-language Bibles, but the government and many Muslim groups insist that the word should be reserved for use in Islam.

The attacks, which began on Friday, came after a court ruling on Dec. 31 that overturned a government ban on the use of “Allah” by Christians. That ruling has been stayed while the government appeals.

Only one of the churches has been seriously damaged, and some of the attacks were minor. In Monday’s attack, the Sidang Injil Borneo Church in the central state of Negeri Sembilan was slightly damaged when its door was burned, according to local reports.

Government officials condemned the violence Monday but defended their position, saying conditions are different in Malaysia from those in neighboring Indonesia or in Arab nations where “Allah” is the common term for God.

“These outrageous incidents are acts of extremism and designed to weaken our diverse communities’ shared commitment to strengthen racial unity,” The Home Ministry secretary, Gen. Mahmood Adam, told reporters after briefing foreign diplomats on the situation.

“They don’t understand the situation here,” he said of the diplomats. “They just want to know why it can be allowed in other countries and not here.”

http://newageislam.com/ninth-church-vandalized-in-malaysia-as-tensions-rise/islamic-world-news/d/2364

Can Allah Be Monopolised By Any Community?, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Can Allah Be Monopolised By Any Community?

By Asghar Ali Engineer

Of late I have been receiving questions about the controversy these days in Malaysia about ‘Allah’ as Malay Muslims are objecting to the use of word ‘Allah’ by Catholic Christians. The Malays feel only Malay Muslims can use the word Allah and Christians cannot. The case was fought right about the High Court and the high court of Malaysia also allowed the use of word Allah by Christians. However, the Government of Malaysia suspended the Supreme Court verdict for the time being. It is not because the Government is trying to defy the orders of Highest Court but because the controversy has become politically unmanageable due to overcharged emotions.

The Roman Catholics translate the word God in their Malay language paper Herald as Allah and hence the controversy. Of late violence has erupted and a few days ago some three churches were attacked with firebombs and one was extensively damaged. The religious extremists are determined to inflict their views on others. Malaysia, like India, is a multi-religious society and bye and large it has remained peaceful except when violence had erupted in late sixties between Malays and Chinese.

But again relations between Malays and Christians or Malays and Hindus erupt or situation becomes tense. All multi-religious societies experience inter-communal or inter-religious tensions in some or more degrees. All Malays are Muslims and constitute about sixty per cent of Malaysia’s population. In Malaysia, Malays and Muslims have become synonymous. As mostly weaker sections of society embrace Islam in the hope of equality and justice, in Malaysia too, poorer sections embraced Islam and Malays till recently were poor and backward. However, now most of them are well educated and economically better off.

http://newageislam.com/can-allah-be-monopolised-by-any-community?/islam-and-pluralism/d/2388

New Age Islam Reflects The Strength Of The Islam That Is Universal, Letter to the Editor, NewAgeIslam.com

Letter to the Editor

New Age Islam Reflects The Strength Of The Islam That Is Universal

Dear sir,

I congratulate you on your effort to show the strength of the Islam that is universal, as opposed to a parochial one imagined by Hindus, Christians, and especially by many Muslims themselves. I think we all must educate ourselves - members of all faiths - on how we build a shared future for all of us. We must change our minds to get rid of irrational fear, to work together with all our fellow Indians to build a new India.

May your message spread among our countrymen!!!

http://newageislam.com/new-age-islam-reflects-the-strength-of-the-islam-that-is-universal/letter-to-the-editor/d/2171

Minaret Less Mosques – Ban OR the Beginning of a Renaissance, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Minaret Less Mosques – Ban OR the Beginning of a Renaissance

By Syed B. Soharwardy

www.iscc.ca

Al Madinah Calgary Islamic Centre was established in 2005. It is located in a shopping mall. We purchased two shops and converted them into a mosque. If the sign outside the mosque is removed, no one would even know that this is a place of worship for Muslims. In less than five years our congregation grew from 27 people to almost 2000 people. We have more than 200 girls and boys learning Qur’an and Islamic teachings. In less than five years 23 non-Muslim Calgarians embraced Islam at the Al Madinah Islamic Centre. Every year hundreds of Calgarians; Christians, Jews, Atheists, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and others visit the Al Madinah Centre and take part in the Interfaith Dialogues. 99% of those who attend the interfaith activities at the Al Madinah Centre change their attitude about Islam and Muslims. Their misconceptions and misunderstandings about Islam are removed. They appreciate that someone has helped them in removing those fears and distrust of Muslims that the media tries to build every day. In Ramadan, every year for one month, more than 200 Muslims and non-Muslims eat together at the sunset time at the Al Madinah Mosque.

http://newageislam.com/minaret-less-mosques-%E2%80%93-ban-or-the-beginning-of-a-renaissance-/islam-and-the-west/d/2295

Baha'i in Iran: A Life of Repression, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Baha'i in Iran: A Life of Repression

By Katajun Amirpur

Baha'i calligraphy of the 'Greatest Name’: in Bahá'í belief the Greatest Name of God is 'Bahá', or 'splendour'

Anti-Americanism, open hostility towards Israel, a legal system that does not grant men and women equal rights, and a doctrine that calls itself the "rule of the supreme legal scholar" have determined the official philosophy and actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Yet there is another, less well-known constant: hostility towards the religious minority of the Baha'i. In Iran, where the religion has its origins, there are still an estimated 350,000 Baha'i, making them the country's largest religious minority by far. Unlike Jews and Christians, however, they are not entitled to protection as a religious minority under the constitution.

The Baha'i faith grew out of Shi'a Islam, but has severed itself from its roots. Although the Baha'i recognise Mohammed as a prophet, they do not regard him as the seal of monotheistic prophethood as other Muslims do.

Instead they believe that the divine revelation entered a new phase with Bahaullah, who died in 1892 and is regarded as a manifestation of God. The central dogma of Shi'a Islam is the belief in the return of the mahdi, comparable to the Jewish messiah in eschatological terms. For the Baha'i, however, the mahdi has already returned in the form of the founder of their religion. This view is religious sacrilege for the Shi'a.

http://newageislam.com/baha-i-in-iran--a-life-of-repression-/islam-and-pluralism/d/2145

My imam father came after me with an axe: Hanna Shah,

Islamic Society

My imam father came after me with an axe: Hanna Shah

By Dominic Lawson

March 15, 2009

He is also an incestuous child abuser, repeatedly raping his daughter from the age of five until she was 15, ostensibly as part of her punishment for being “disobedient”. At the age of 16 she fled her family to avoid the forced marriage they had planned for her in Pakistan. A much, much greater affront to “honour” in her family’s eyes, however, was the fact that she then became a Christian – an apostate. The Koran is explicit that apostasy is punishable by death; thus it was that her father the imam led a 40-strong gang – in the middle of a British city – to find and kill her.

Hannah Shah says her story is not unique – that there are many other girls in British Muslim families who are oppressed and married off against their will, or who have secretly become Christians but are too afraid to speak out. She wants their voices to be heard and for Britain, the land of her birth, to realise the hidden misery of these women.

Hannah’s own voice is quiet and emerges from a tiny frame. She is clearly nervous about talking to a journalist and the stress she has been under is betrayed by a bald patch on the left side of her head. Yet she has a lovely natural smile, especially when she reveals that she got married a year ago; her husband works in the Church of England, “though not as a vicar”.

http://newageislam.com/my-imam-father-came-after-me-with-an-axe--hanna-shah/islamic-society/d/1778

Why democracy isn’t about vote margins, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

Why democracy isn’t about vote margins

By Saif Shahin

You get to smell Roy’s nausea from the 2002 riots of Gujarat, hear her impassioned plea for those incarcerated in the Parliament attack case, touch the pulse of Istanbul in the wake of Hrant Dink’s assassination, taste the morbidity of President George W. Bush’s visit to India and see the utter pointlessness of our rhetoric- laced reaction to last year’s Mumbai attack.

Her targets are the government, the police, the judiciary and the media — particularly the media.

All along these writings, there is a sixth sense of a deeper malaise, an intuition of a more fundamental fault with the way things are.

This sense is given sensibility in her astutely powerful introduction to the anthology.

“What have we done to democracy?” asks Roy. “What have we turned it into? What happens once democracy has been used up? When it has been hollowed out and emptied of meaning? What happens when each of its institutions has metastasised into something dangerous? Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short- term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race?” Roy, of course, doesn’t talk of a return to authoritarianism. She X- rays the symbiotic relationship between democratic governance, the growth of fascism and the free market, and exposes how they all feed off one another.

The ascent of the “fascist BJP” began around the same time as economic liberalisation, the book points out. Today, the Sangh Parivar’s biggest project is “Hinduising” Dalits and Adivasis, and pitting them against each other and against the minorities and Maoists. This has been visible in the way Dalits and Adivasis were unleashed on Muslims in Gujarat, the killings of Christians in Orissa, and in the creation of the anti- Maoist Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh, Roy argues.

http://newageislam.com/why-democracy-isn%E2%80%99t-about-vote-margins/books-and-documents/d/1608

Is Islam a Violent Faith? Violence, Hatred and Discrimination in the Koran, Debate, NewAgeIslam.com

Debate

Is Islam a Violent Faith? Violence, Hatred and Discrimination in the Koran

By Dr. Sami Alrabaa, January 16, 2009

If you say that Islam is a violent faith, you are accused of being anti-Islam and you are propagating “Islamophobia.”

There are more than one billion Muslims around the world, and I’m one of them. We are told that the Koran is the “word of God.” When you read the Koran, however – which over 90% of all Muslims have never read, according to a survey by Bielefeld University in Germany, and if they ever do, either they do not understand its archaic language or they do not ponder on what it says – you find out that it is full of passages that incite hatred, killing, and discrimination against women.

Below are some quotations from the Koran. We begin with what the “holy book” of Muslims says about people of other religions.

According to the Koran and many Muslims, Christians and Jews have left the true path of their religion. Therefore, they are infidels (unbelievers) like Buddhists and Hindus, for example. In other words, according to the Koran, only Muslims, i.e. 19% of the world population, are true believers. The rest are “unbelievers” and “infidels.”

http://newageislam.com/is-islam-a-violent-faith?-violence,-hatred-and-discrimination-in-the-koran-/debate/d/1125

Is Islam the Problem? Why is America Letting Bin Laden Define Islam?, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Is Islam the Problem? Why is America Letting Bin Laden Define Islam?

By Dinesh D'Souza

In arguing his thesis Spencer locates all the violent verses in the Koran and all the hideous deeds performed by Islamic conquerors, especially in their early centuries of irredentist expansion. Then he links these to the words and actions of Khomeini, Bin Laden and today's Islamic radicals. Spencer is an effective polemicist.

But his historical argument is dubious. It emphasizes violent passages in the Koran, while downplaying the passages that urge peace and goodwill. It applies a moral standard to Islamic empires (they didn't give minorities full rights! they reduced Jews and Christians to second class citizens!) that certainly could not be met by the Roman empire or the empires established by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French and the British. In the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, for example, Jews had three choices: convert to Christianity, leave the country, or be killed. No Muslim empire legislated or systematically enforced such a policy toward its religious minorities. Yes, the Koran says "slay the infidels" but no Muslim empire actually did that. For example the Muslims ruled North India for two centuries before they were displaced by the British. The Mughal emperors could have killed the tens of millions of Hindus under their control or at least forced them to become Muslims? They did nothing of the sort.

http://newageislam.com/is-islam-the-problem?-why-is-america-letting-bin-laden-define-islam?/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1149

Faith schools may be Blair's most damaging legacy, Islamic Ideology, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Ideology

Faith schools may be Blair's most damaging legacy

By Polly Toynbee

September 2, 2008

Accord wants faith schools to abide by the same admissions criteria as other state schools, with no selection by belief. Teachers should be employed for their skills, not for their faith. It opposes Labour's new rules for faith schools, which came into law yesterday, allowing them to keep all jobs for the faithful. Teaching assistants, dinner ladies and caretakers may need to get on their knees to keep their jobs from now on.

Official policy says it's up to local communities to decide the kind of schools they want. In practice, the academy programme encourages widespread faith takeovers, though in future they must offer half their places to outsiders. Years of Labour handwringing over community cohesion hardly squares with dividing children by religion. Ask why and here's the doublethink answer: religious academies now have a "duty to promote community cohesion".

Look no further than evidence from Northern Ireland to see how much worse divisions grow when 95% of children meet no one from outside their sectarian schools. There, a majority tell pollsters they would prefer mixed schools, but politicians ignore it. A Guardian/ICM poll showed 64% across Britain oppose religious schools - which is also ignored. Odd that Christian and Muslim schools are on the increase just as we are warned that faith wars are now so much more threatening than either the cold war or IRA bombs that habeas corpus must be suspended for 42 days.

http://newageislam.com/faith-schools-may-be-blair-s-most-damaging-legacy/islamic-ideology/d/703

'I cringed when they compared me to Martin Luther' - Irshad Manji, Interview

Interview

'I cringed when they compared me to Martin Luther' - Irshad Manji

What she has to say - that Islam has become calcified and that in its name millions of people around the world are being denied human rights - is offensive to many and troubling even to progressive Muslims and non-Muslims who agree with her but wouldn't say so out loud, for fear of provoking what she calls the beards and the veils. She can't seem to move without annoying someone; she is also loathed by those ghastly, blogging Christians who prefer Muslims to be the enemy and think they should be converted or stay in their 'own' countries.

Where has she got it from, this nice-looking, petite girl (she was born in 1968 but appears much younger) from suburban Vancouver? How did she get the nerve to become one of the leading voices demanding reform of one of the world's great religions, at a time when Islam has become so controversial?

Irshad Manji arrived in Canada at the age of four as a refugee from Idi Amin's Uganda. One night, when she was 10, her father chased her through the house with a kitchen knife after she threatened to report him to the police and social services for his violence towards her mother. Hiding on the roof, out of reach, she had an epiphany - or that's how she tells it now: 'I realised I was grateful because there were people I could go to, talk to, whereas if we'd still been in East Africa that may not have been the case. I realised I lived in a society where the story of who we are as a people was not finished, which meant that I, as an individual, mattered. I could be a partial author of this grander story.'

http://newageislam.com/-i-cringed-when-they-compared-me-to-martin-luther----irshad-manji/interview/d/422

Indian' Bible making waves in Kerala, Islamic Culture, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Culture

Indian' Bible making waves in Kerala

5 Aug 2008, PTI

The Mumbai-based publishing house, St Pauls, which brings out religious books, has come out with the new Indian Bible, which also has references to Meerabai, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore in the interpretations of biblical passages, Father Thelekat said.

As far as Catholics are concerned, they have to live and interpret their Christian faith and scriptures within the given culture. So they have to understand and interpret the culture, he said.

The New Community Bible is a revised edition of the popular Christian Bible translated by Late Bernardo Hurault, published from the Philippines. About 30 scholars have worked on it from 1980 and made the interpretations which are published at the bottom part of the Bible, Fr Thekekat said.

The text of the Bible is the accepted Catholic version, whose interpretations are made with an Indian cultural perspective.

http://newageislam.com/indian--bible-making-waves-in-kerala/islamic-culture/d/441

Celebrating birthdays and wedding anniversaries has no base in Islam, Islamic Sharia Laws, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Sharia Laws

Celebrating birthdays and wedding anniversaries has no base in Islam: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti makes himself a laughing stock of the world

Grand mufti rejects Al-Oadah’s fatwa

The mufti said that the celebration of other occasions such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries and mother’s day were un-Islamic.

Several prominent Muslim scholars have supported the mufti, adding that celebrating such occasions is in imitation of people of the Jewish and Christian faiths.

Sheikh Abdullah Al-Manie, a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, said Al-Oadah had made “a slip of the tongue” and urged him to retract what he had said. “Although he is a very learned scholar, Sheikh Al-Oadah has made a mistake here,” he said.

Al-Manie said Muslims have their own identity, which distinguishes them from the followers of other religions. “When we celebrate birthdays and wedding anniversaries, we are imitating other religions — something that our Prophet (peace be upon him) warned us against,” he added.

http://newageislam.com/celebrating-birthdays-and-wedding-anniversaries-has-no-base-in-islam--saudi-arabia%E2%80%99s-grand-mufti-makes-himself-a-laughing-stock-of-the-world/islamic-sharia-laws/d/607

Calling for a New Dialogue between Islam and Christianity, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Calling for a New Dialogue between Islam and Christianity

By Rashid Shaz

His Royal Highness, Excellencies and Holinesses, Ladies and Gentlemen!

This sense of religious pluralism that pervaded early Islam helped flourish a full-fledged religious life of other believing nations under Islam. History records the prophet’s treaty with the Christians of Najran which guaranteed the protection of their religious life and preservation of their religious institutions. And when Muaz was sent to Yemen as a governor, the prophet instructed him not to disrupt the religious life of the Jews. In early Islam, socializing with the people of the book was a norm as the Quran openly declared their food lawful for Muslims and Muslim food lawful for them. Muslims were even allowed to enter into marital relations with the Jewish and Christian girls. The Christians under early Islam were, so to speak, a loving and affectionate nation enjoying the general goodwill of the Muslim people, as documented in the Quran:

وَلَتَجِدَنَّ أَقْرَبَهُمْ مَّوَدَّةً لِّلَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ الَّذِينَ قَالُوَاْ إِنَّا نَصَارَى

and you will find the nearest in love to the believers those who say: "We are Christians."

http://newageislam.com/calling-for-a-new-dialogue-between-islam-and-christianity/islam-and-pluralism/d/351

The Origins of Islam: Tom Holland Explains New Book In the Shadow of the Sword, Books and Documents, NewAgeislam.com

Books and Documents

The Origins of Islam: Tom Holland Explains New Book In the Shadow of the Sword

by Tom Holland

What the stiff-necked Jews and the obdurately blinkered Christians had failed to realise, in the opinion of the Muslim faithful, was that every single prophet mentioned in the Bible had actually been a follower of Islam. Hence the starring roles granted to so many of them, from Adam to Jesus, in the Qur’an. And to Mary too, of course. That stories of the Virgin being succoured by a friendly palm tree had actually been a Christian tradition for centuries, and seem in turn to have derived from a legend told by the pagan Greeks, was blithely ignored – as, of course, it was bound to be. No Muslim scholar could possibly have countenanced a notion that the Prophet might have been in the business of filching anecdotes from infidels. The Qur’an, after all, did not derive from outside sources. Rather, it was the Jews and the Christians, by allowing their holy books to become corrupted, who had ended up with distorted, second-hand scriptures. Only in the Qur’an had the awful purity of the divine revelation been properly preserved. Every last word of it, every last syllable, every last letter, came directly from God, and from God alone.

Islam And Christianity Must Renovate Religion: Atheists Have To Stop Trashing It

Islam and Spiritualism

Islam And Christianity Must Renovate Religion: Atheists Have To Stop Trashing It

by Omar Shahid

The Bible is still interpreted literally by many Christians and, consequently, we have seen the “issue” of homosexuality – which is condemned in the Old Testament – creep back into the headlines in the past few months. Religious leaders, basing their opinions on pre-modern scriptures, often speak insensitively about homosexuality. Why some Christians – even intelligent ones – still hold the Bible as a text that should be interpreted literally is a mystery, and potentially perilous. According to leading New Testament scholar Bart Ehram in his New York Times bestseller Misquoting Jesus, The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, the Bible is far from a divine revelation and has been altered, intentionally and unintentionally, on numerous occasions.

http://www.newageislam.com/islam-and-spiritualism/omar-shahid/islam-and-christianity-must-renovate-religion--atheists-have-to-stop-trashing-it/d/7320