3 Malaysian churches attacked in 'Allah' dispute, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

3 Malaysian churches attacked in 'Allah' dispute

KUALA LUMPUR: Three Malaysian Christian churches were attacked with firebombs on Friday, causing extensive damage to one and sharply escalating

religious tensions in the country over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslim minorities.

Prime Minister Najib Razak condemned the attacks by unidentified assailants, who struck before dawn in different suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. He said the government "will take whatever steps it can to prevent such acts."

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the country's leaders were very concerned about the situation. "We don't want this to spread out into something else ... I am not only assuring the minorities, I am assuring all Malaysians, anybody who is in Malaysia, that they are safe," he told reporters.

Malaysia is often held up as a model for other Islamic countries because of its economic development, a progressive society and the generally peaceful coexistence of its different races. The Malay Muslim majority comprise 60% of the country's 28 million people while the rest are mostly ethnic Chinese and Indians. They follow Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths.

The Allah controversy, however, has the potential to shatter that carefully nurtured harmony, drive a deep racial wedge and scare away sorely needed foreign investment as the country struggles to emerge from the global financial crisis.

In the first attack, the ground-level office of the three-story Metro Tabernacle Church was destroyed in a blaze set off by a firebomb thrown by attackers on motorcycles soon after midnight, police said. The worship areas on the upper two floors were undamaged and there were no injuries.

Two other churches were attacked hours later, with one sustaining minor damage while the other was not damaged.

http://newageislam.com/3-malaysian-churches-attacked-in--allah--dispute/islamic-world-news/d/2345

Hanged for trying to bridge the gap between Islam and Hinduism, Islamic Personalities, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Personalities

Hanged for trying to bridge the gap between Islam and Hinduism: Remembering Dara Shikoh, a Sufi-prince, scholar and translator, on his 350th death anniversary

By MINI KRISHNAN

What is significant for us today is not that there was a war for kingship — in itself nothing unusual — but that one of the chief charges Aurangzeb brought against the rightful heir was that in publishing the Majma-‘ul-Bahrain (The Mingling of the Two Oceans) Dara had openly committed to the truth in Hinduism. Like his great-grandfather, Dara tried to bridge the gap between Hinduism and Islam. The Emperor Akbar had strongly believed that his Mughal nobles needed to understand their Hindu subjects and had set up a translation bureau to render the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata into Persian. Prince Dara Shikoh went much further.

Dara Shikoh, whose name means “the glory of Darius”, was born to Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal in 1615. He was the heir apparent and his father’s favourite son. As he grew up, and began to display very special qualities of scholarship and a deep interest in mysticism, which he researched relentlessly, it became clear that he was no ordinary man. In 1640 he was introduced to Lahore’s famous Qadri Sufi saint, Hazrat Mian Mir who had urged both Jehangir and Shah Jahan to be kind to all their subjects. In the same year, Dara published his first book, Sakinatul Auliya, a collection of biographical sketches of Muslim saints. His interests took a steep turn when he met Baba Lal Bairagi, a Hindu gnostic, conversations with whom he recorded in a little book entitled Mukalama Baba Lal wa Dara Shikoh.

http://newageislam.com/hanged-for-trying-to-bridge-the-gap-between-islam-and-hinduism--remembering-dara-shikoh,-a-sufi-prince,-scholar-and-translator,-on-his-350th-death-anniversary--/islamic-personalities/d/678

Pakistan: The inhumanity of majoritarianism in Lynching Jagdish, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Pakistan: The inhumanity of majoritarianism in Lynching Jagdish

By Farida Majid

In the post-Zia-ul-Huq Pakistani society dominated by rebarbative Salafi-Wahhabi Islamist zealots even Sufi Muslims quake in fear of being caught as the defiler of ‘faith.’ Ahmadiyyas are declared ‘non-Muslims’, and Khoja, Ismaili Shia and other communities pray at their mosques and celebrate their holy days with the very real possibility of being blown up by a suicide bomber. What hope would non-Muslims have of leading a dignified human existence in such atmosphere? There was a Pakistani Christian nurse in my English class at a CUNY college in the Bronx, New York City, in 2005. Clouds of pain and bitterness floated over her face as she groped for an answer to my casual question after a class: ‘How are things at home?’

Jagdish had come to Karachi to earn a living as a factory worker from a hangdog Hindu community in the south of Sindh province. Fellow Hindu workers with whom he resided in Marwari Mohalla in the city were too traumatised to go out to work after the lynching incident on April 8, 2008, thereby losing their meagre income. The factory management of Nova Industries neither condoled Jagdish’s death nor made any gesture to reassure the return of the Hindu labourers.

http://newageislam.com/pakistan--the-inhumanity-of-majoritarianism-in-lynching-jagdish/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/99

Do Indian Muslims want to be protected by the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba?, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Do Indian Muslims want to be protected by the likes of Lashkar-e-Taiba?

L-e-T vows protection to Muslims from Hindu suicide squads

By Shahid Burney | Arab News

The LeT has threatened Thackeray following the comments he made in the editorial of his party mouthpiece Saamana on Sunday in which he had called upon the Hindus to form Hindu suicide squads and to make better “Hindu bombs” to counter “Islamic terrorism.”

Responding to the utterances of Thackeray in the editorial, the LeT chief Qari Abdul Wahid Kashmiri was quoted as saying in the media that the Muslim community members would be protected from “Hindu fundamentalist terrorists” a reference to militant workers of Shiv Sena, Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal.

“Whether it is Indian security forces or Hindu fundamentalists like Shiv Sena, VHP or Bajrang Dal, LeT will defeat their ill motives and prevent Muslim community members from these Hindu terrorists. We promise total protection to the Muslims from such elements,” Kashmiri said.

http://newageislam.com/do-indian-muslims-want-to-be-protected-by-the-likes-of-lashkar-e-taiba?--/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/125

Desecration Of Quran: Time To Dig Up Reasons!, Islam and Politics, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Politics

Desecration Of Quran: Time To Dig Up Reasons!

by Durdana Najam

Catholic priest Father Francis Nadeem, Pakistan Hindu Welfare Council Chairman Dr. Munawer Chand and renowned Islamic Scholar Zahid Mahmood Qasmi vehemently condemned the desecration of the Holy Quran in Moulana Tahir Ashrafi’s talk show Deen-o-Dunya on Business Plus. All of them were of the view that religious tolerance is extremely important, especially when the world is torn apart by fundamentalism and extremism. Father Francis categorically denied having any connection with Terry Jones or his ideology. He went on to say, “We share the sentiments of our Muslim brothers and the Bible does not allow any such act. Christianity, Islam and Judaism connect to a singular source; we all are the followers of Abraham and his God. The Bible preaches love and humanity. No sane Christian could ever think of burning the holy scripture of any other religion.” Adding a word of caution, Father Nadeem said that the disease of fundamentalism could attract anyone, so it did Terry Jones. To Dr. Munawer Chand, the Chairman Pakistan Hindu Welfare Council, “The Quran is held in esteem by every Hindu.” He strongly condemned Jones’ act and called for immediate action by the US government to prevent such acts from being repeated in future. Zahid Qasmi believed that unless the US respects the religious feelings of Muslims, the war on terror would keep spewing fire. “On the one hand, the US is engaging the Taliban to pave the way for a peaceful and safe exit from Afghanistan by 2014 and on the other, it is not containing its own people from stoking hatred against Muslims. Desecration of the Quran is one of the many emotive issues that have set the Afghan Taliban against the NATO/ISAF forces. Lately some NATO soldiers urinated on the dead bodies of Afghans, had a photo shoot with the dead body parts of Afghan militants, and an American soldier during his night raid campaign slaughtered nine children among sixteen in pitch darkness.”

http://www.newageislam.com/islam-and-politics/durdana-najam/desecration-of-quran--time-to-dig-up-reasons!/d/7297

Well Said Nawaz Sharif, well done SAFMA, Islam and the Media, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the Media

26 Aug 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com

Well Said Nawaz Sharif, well done SAFMA

By Dr Mohammad Taqi The security establishment frets that a strong politician from Punjab, who always had the wherewithal to cut them down to size, has been consistently expressing his will to do so too “Your Excellency doesn’t understand. A man is a Punjabi or Bengali before he is a Hindu or a Muslim. They share a common history, language, culture and economy. You must not divide them. You will cause endless bloodshed and trouble” — Quaid-e-Azam to Lord Mountbatten. http://www.newageislam.com/islam-and-the-media/well-said-nawaz-sharif,-well-done-safma-/d/5329

The Myth of the Holy Cow, Books and Documents, NewAgeIslam.com

Books and Documents

14 Aug 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com

The Myth of the Holy Cow

Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand, NewAgeIslam.com Name of the Book: The Myth of the Holy Cow Author: DN Jha Publisher: Navayana, New Dehi Year: 2009 Pages: 207 ISBN: 978-8189059163 Price: Rs 200 ‘The central fact of Hinduism,’ wrote MK Gandhi ‘is cow protection’. Gandhi was not alone in making such a claim. Like him, most Hindu ideologues insist on the centrality of the cow to Hinduism. For them, the cow is not just a four-legged beast but, rather, the goddess Gau Mata, or even, for some, the repository of all the millions of Hindu deities. Worship of the cow, so it is argued, is a cardinal principal of Hinduism, along with vegetarianism. The supposed holiness of the cow and the Hindu ban on beef-eating, Hindu ideologues claim, go back all the way to the period of the Vedic Aryans. The belief in the sanctity of the cow is routinely marshaled by right-wing Hindus as a symbol to distinguish Hindus from others, particularly Muslims, who are treated with disdain on account of their supposed penchant for beef and their alleged constant readiness to slaughter ‘the mother cow’. In this way, the myth of the holy cow serves as a powerful tool to create and consolidate a powerful sense of Hindu communal identity transcending caste-class divides, which is premised on relentless hostility to the beef-eating Muslim ‘other’. http://www.newageislam.com/books-and-documents/the-myth-of-the-holy-cow/d/5255