King Abdullah slaps down Saudi cleric critical of Co-ed University, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

King Abdullah slaps down Saudi cleric critical of Co-ed University

Last week, a senior Saudi Islamic cleric criticised the country’s first mixed-gender university, the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), and suggested an Islamic committee to make sure it followed Islamic principled and didn’t teach “alien ideologies” such as evolution.

Late on Sunday, the state news agency SPA reported that King Abdullah had removed Sheikh Saad Al-Shithri from a top council of religious scholars.

okazAl-Shithri’s comments sparked angry reactions from liberals who saw the new university as a beacon for research that will eventually produce Saudi scientists, spearheading modernity in the conservative Islamic State. For those of you who read Arabic, here’s a sample of several op-ed pieces that ran in the daily Okaz.

“This is a strategy for the conservatives to control the university. Or at least to have a major say in it. This is the old trick for them to have the upper hand to sabotage reforms,” said Jamal Khashoggi, editor-in-chief of Alwatan daily newspaper, about the clerics comments on the university.

Saudi Arabia follows an austere version of Islam and religious police patrol the streets ensuring that the country’s strict segregation laws are implemented. Clerics like Al-Shitri have a major influence on school curricula as well as the judicial system and some have issued fatwas against co-education (here in Arabic).

Since coming to power in 2005, King Abdullah has reshuffled the cabinet, replacing some hardline clerics with more moderate ones, and promised the overhaul of the education system with an aim of focusing more on sciences rather than religion. He has also pledge to reform the judicial system.

abdullah“This university has become a reality, and it is for the good of the nation as the King had wanted it to be. It is not a cake that the two ideological streams [liberals and conservatives] can compete over,” wrote columnist Khaled Alsulaiman in Okaz after the controversial statements placed KAUST in the centre of the battle between liberals and conservatives.

http://newageislam.com/king-abdullah-slaps-down-saudi-cleric-critical-of-co-ed-university/islamic-world-news/d/1852

Islam's European Conquest: Is America Next?, Muslims and Islamophobia, NewAgeIslam.com

Muslims and Islamophobia

Islam's European Conquest: Is America Next?

By John Griffing

August 20, 2009

Britain, birthplace of parliamentary democracy, has fallen to Islam. Oxford, once home to the likes of C.S. Lewis, now houses a giant Eastern Islamic Studies Centre. If this were the only Islamic addition to Oxford, the mood would be less sombre, but when Oxford citizens are forced to awake every morning to the Muslim call to prayer with the full consent of the Church of England, nothing short of conquest has taken place.

Britain's Muslim demographic is now so dominant that the British government recently began to allow Islamic civil and religious law, known as Sharia, to be enforced alongside British law.

But if religious tolerance is good, why is this a problem? Simple-this is not an issue of religious liberty. Islam is not designed to co-exist with western civilization. It is designed to conquer it.

Most would agree that Judeo-Christian values are consistent with Anglo-American tradition. Can the same be said of Islam? Even Muslims don't think so. The chief Justice of London's Sharia Court made this chillingstatement:

If Sharia is implemented then you can turn this country into a haven of peace...Once a thief's hand is cut off, nobody is going to steal. Once an adulterer is stoned, nobody is going to commit this crime at all. This is why we say we want to offer it to British society.

http://newageislam.com/islam-s-european-conquest--is-america-next?/muslims-and-islamophobia/d/1694

The Rabubiy'ah Order: Quranic Economics By Allama Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

The Rabubiy'ah Order: Quranic Economics By Allama Ghulam Ahmad Parwez

Chapter 12: Islam A Challenge to Religion

THE RABUBIY'AH ORDER: Quranic ECONOMICS

By Allama Ghulam Ahmad Parwez

The Quran sets forth a sustaining practical programme for this inviting enterprise. The programme is essentially social and intended for the group the members of which are not competing but wholeheartedly co-operating with one another. The Quran calls upon man to join such a co-operative group organized on the basis of justice and for the purpose of achieving a lofty ideal. Only as a member of this group, can man carry out the programme of the Rabubiyyat and thereby work out his destiny. Individual man possesses immense potentialities, but these can be actualised only in a favourable social milieu and through co-operation with congenial companions. Membership of a group held together by mutual sympathy and understanding, and inspired by a high ideal is the guarantee of self-development. The Rabubiyyat Order provides such a group and summons man to join it by giving up all narrow personal ends and dedicating himself to the common goal. In such a group, man can realize himself by serving others and gladly availing himself of their help. Human personality shrinks and contracts through preoccupation with its own interests. It expands and blossoms by subordinating interests to the broader interests of mankind. The practical programme of the Rabubiyyat Order can be implemented only by a group and by the individual as a member of the group. Fulfilment of personality is possible only in a group, for an isolated man has no opportunity for self-sacrifice and for serving others. The sweep for his activities is too short to influence self-development. Membership of a group is only conducive to this, but not all groups provide this opportunity.

http://newageislam.com/the-rabubiy-ah-order--quranic-economics-by-allama-ghulam-ahmad-parwez/books-and-documents/d/1768