A capable Muslim can become PM: Rahul Gandhi, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

A capable Muslim can become PM: Rahul Gandhi

Aligarh : Religion does not matter when it comes to becoming the prime minister and a Muslim can get the top job provided he is the most capable person for it, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said in Aligarh on Monday.

"It is not about what religion or community you come from, it is what you bring to the table, what capability you have," he said in an interaction with students of the Aligarh Muslim University.

He was replying to a question that having come a long way after Independence how much more time will it take for India to have its first Muslim prime minister.

"Today, Manmohan Singh is not the Prime Minister of India because he is a Sikh. He is the Prime Minister because he is the most capable person to do the job.

"And let me tell you something that even when you do have a Muslim prime minister, he will be a prime minister because he is the most capable person," 39-year-old Gandhi said.

He told a questioner, "You need to step up and the number of leaders coming out of your community needs to go up. You got today a Sikh prime minister that nobody would have ever imagined in a country of over a billion people that we would have a Sikh prime minister. Sikhs are a very small percentage of this country."

Gandhi said his effort was to involve people from different communities and from different parts of India in the political system.

Exhorting Muslim youths to participate in national politics in a big way, Gandhi said, "Increased participation of Muslim youths is the ideal way to take on problems not only of the Muslim community but the country as a whole."

http://newageislam.com/a-capable-muslim-can-become-pm--rahul-gandhi/islamic-world-news/d/2212

Afghanistan: A case for more schools, not troops, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Afghanistan: A case for more schools, not troops

By Nicholas D. Kristof

October 30th, 2009

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad one, most likely a waste of lives and resources that might simply empower the Taliban. In particular, one of the most compelling arguments against more troops rests on this stunning trade-off: For the cost of a single additional soldier stationed in Afghanistan for one year, we could build roughly 20 schools there.

It’s hard to do the calculation precisely, but for the cost of 40,000 troops over a few years — well, we could just about turn every Afghan into a Ph.D.

The hawks respond: It’s naive to think that you can sprinkle a bit of education on a war-torn society. It’s impossible to build schools now because the Taliban will blow them up.

In fact, it’s still quite possible to operate schools in Afghanistan — particularly when there’s a strong “buy-in” from the local community.

Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, has now built 39 schools in Afghanistan and 92 in Pakistan — and not one has been burned down or closed. The aid organisation CARE has 295 schools educating 50,000 girls in Afghanistan, and not a single one has been closed or burned by the Taliban. The Afghan Institute of Learning, another aid group, has 32 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, with none closed by the Taliban (although local communities have temporarily suspended three for security reasons). In short, there is still vast scope for greater investment in education, health and agriculture in Afghanistan. These are extraordinarily cheap and have a better record at stabilising societies than military solutions, which, in fact, have a pretty dismal record.

http://newageislam.com/afghanistan--a-case-for-more-schools,-not-troops/war-on-terror/d/2093

Killing of apostates from Islam: Pakistan, Somalia and UK, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Killing of apostates from Islam: Pakistan, Somalia and UK

In Somalia another four converts from Islam have just been beheaded by radical Sunni Islamists who desire a 100 percent fanatical state. The four Christians were killed by the Al-Shabab on the grounds of "fitna." Fitna applies to creating religious discord and in the minds of Al-Shabab, all converts who leave Islam must be killed in accordance with the Koran and Hadiths.

Therefore, a natural liberty, religious freedom, which exists in the "free world" is being denied many and clearly radical Sunni Islamists are intent on Islamizing the world by killing all minorities within their Islamized states, for example in Afghanistan and Somalia.

On the one hand, we have radical Sunni Islamists beheading people or burning people alive; and on the other hand we have state sanctioned victimization of religious minorities and the persecution of apostates from Islam.

Given this, it is clear that the methodology of radical Sunni Islamists is more brutal with regards to beheading people or burning them alive. Yet the mentality of religious persecution exists within mainstream Islam because the majority of mainly Muslim nations have policies which infringe on religious liberty.

Not only this, the mindset of discrimination is rampant within religious communities and while the liberals enjoy lambasting their own respective cultures and appeasing Islam in the West; they remain silent about mass discrimination within the Muslim community towards non-Muslims and apostates.

http://newageislam.com/killing-of-apostates-from-islam--pakistan,-somalia-and-uk-/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1691

Six Christians burned alive in Pakistan riots, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Six Christians burned alive in Pakistan riots

Six Christians were burned alive in Pakistan yesterday when hundreds of Muslims attacked and looted their homes, sparked by rumours that pages from the Qur'an had been desecrated.

The dead, including four women and a child, were killed when Christian homes were torched by hundreds of supporters of a banned Muslim organisation in the Punjabi village of Gojra, in eastern Pakistan.

Tensions have been running high between the two communities over allegations that Christians had defiled pages from the Muslim holy book, despite authorities insisting that the rumours were unfounded.

Television footage from the area showed houses burning and streets strewn with debris and blackened furniture as mobs ran at each other. There were reports in the local media of exchanges of gunfire between Christian and Muslim communities and those rioters had blocked a railway line.

Pakistani authorities named the Muslim group involved in the violence as Sipah-e-Sahaba, which has been accused of launching attacks against security forces and carrying out bomb attacks in public places in recent years.

Rana Sanaullah, Punjab's law minister, said that an investigation had been carried out into allegations made during the week that a copy of the Qur'an had been defaced but that no such incident was found to have taken place.

Although the situation had calmed down by Friday, he said yesterday that "some miscreants and extremists entered the city [on Saturday] and pushed people toward armed clashes".

http://newageislam.com/six-christians-burned-alive-in-pakistan-riots/islamic-world-news/d/1594

The Battle between Monotheism and Homosexuality, Islam and Human Rights, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Human Rights

The Battle between Monotheism and Homosexuality

1. Traditional Patriarchal Norms

Religions have tended to represent patriarchal norms, enforcing a straight heterosexuality at the expense of any other sexual expressions. This primal instinct, arising from both sexuality and power relations, becomes institutionalized into the religions produced by primitive societies (and minds). Most traditional religions have happened to ritualize and dogmatize practices that tend to place heterosexual males in charge of women, families, religious communities, societies and governments. Although the direct influence of religion in secular society has receded from the government level, residues of its effects remain entrenched in some areas of law.

This form of dominance ends up stigmatizing those who do fit into the scheme, notably, strong females and non-heterosexuals such as homosexuals. Modern religions have broken this mould. Wicca is an example of a religion which has redeemed the idea of powerful females, but unfortunately, it codified in its rituals and theory many elements that consider a male-female combination to be balanced and correct. It started out that Gerald Gardner, one of the founders of Wicca, and one of the first Wiccan periodicals, The Wiccan, both expressed anti-homosexual tendencies. I tell this story in a fuller form in "The Peacock vs. the Ostrich - Religious Behaviour and Sexuality" (2008). Thankfully this barrier was never strong, and, there is today no anti-homosexual movement in Wicca; its practitioners are wholly embracing of consensual sexuality in general. Another religion that has reached this pinnacle is Satanism. What they have in common is a modernity and non-monotheism, something which the rest of the opinions on this page lack.

http://newageislam.com/the-battle-between-monotheism-and-homosexuality---/islam-and-human-rights/d/1519

UK challenging Radical Islamism by promoting Mainstream Islam, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

UK challenging Radical Islamism by promoting Mainstream Islam

SUCK OUT TERROR POISON

By Manoj Joshi

Recently, I had the opportunity to study aspects of the first strand of the Four P’s strategy — preventing the emergence of violent radicalism on the part of the Muslim youth in the UK. The plan addresses disadvantage, mis-perception, and alienation by putting money into a number of projects addressing inequality and discrimination. Targeted schemes have sought to improve the educational and physical infrastructure of the ghettoes, and even more boldly, to directly challenge radical theology by promoting moderate Islam as well as inter-faith dialogue. The approach has been to knit together various ministries, local governments, civil society, community institutions like mosques, gurudwaras and temples to attack the problem.

According to Rhydian Philips, of the counter-terrorism department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the idea behind the strategy is to deal with grievances which can make people vulnerable to recruitment. These could relate to justice, employment and education. The central government has provided £90 million for three years for NGOs to promote youth activity, reform curriculum, build local police capability and fund moderate Islamic preachers to talk to communities in UK, as well as fund road-shows in target countries like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

http://newageislam.com/uk-challenging-radical-islamism-by-promoting-mainstream-islam---/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1174

Indian Muslims: A wonderful model and challenge to the rest of humanity, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Indian Muslims: A wonderful model and challenge to the rest of humanity

Media silent as Indian Muslims forego holiday

By Marc Gopin

Washington, DC - Millions of Muslims across India decided to temper or even cancel festivities on their most cherished week of holy yearly celebrations, Eid al-Adha, which commemorates the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son in obedience to God and His mercy upon him as a result, in protest of violent acts committed in the name of Islam by the criminals who murdered so many in Mumbai.

According to a Times of India article, "They wore black ribbons, carried placards of peace, sent out emails and SMS's reiterating harmony and put up banners saluting those who died in the 26/11 terrorist attack.

Some Muslims even avoided festival purchases such as new clothes. From Chennai's Thousand Lights Mosque to Delhi's Jama Mosque, from the Khwaja Banda Nawaz Dargah (shrine) in Gulbarga to the mosques of Mumbai – Eid celebrations were subdued, in a symbolic declaration of Muslim protest against terrorism.

"At every shrine prayers were said for the grieving families in Mumbai. In the cities of Ajmer Sharief, Kaliyar Sharief (Uttarakhand) and Barabanki's Deva Sharief, communities came together burying their differences to focus on one thing: communal harmony. By showing our unity, we have spoilt the terrorists' Eid," said Qari Mohd Miya Mazhari, editor of the Urdu daily, Secular Qayadat.

http://newageislam.com/indian-muslims--a-wonderful-model-and-challenge-to-the-rest-of-humanity/islam-and-pluralism/d/1056

Recapturing Islam From the Terrorists: we surely need the Ghazalian approach, not the rigorism of Ibn Taymiya

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Recapturing Islam From the Terrorists: we surely need the Ghazalian approach, not the rigorism of Ibn Taymiya

By Abdal-Hakim Murad

As New York turns its gap-toothed face to the sky, wondering if the worst is yet to come, Muslims, largely unheeded by the wider world, are counting the cost of the suicide bombings. The backlash against mosques and hijabs has been met by statements from Muslim communities around the globe, some stilted, but others which have clearly found an articulate and passionate voice for the first time. In comparison with the pathetic near-silence that hovered around mosques and major organisations during the Rushdie and Gulf War debacles, the communities now seem alert to their cultural situation and its potential precariousness. Many of the condemnations have been more impressive than those of the American President, who seems unable to rise above clichés.

The motives are twofold. Firstly, and most patently, Sunni Muslims have been brought up in a universe of faith that renders the taking of innocent lives unimaginable. By condemning the attacks, we know that we defend the indispensable essence of Islam. Secondly, Muslims as well as others have died in large numbers. The Friday Prayers in the World Trade Centre always attracted more than 1,500 worshippers from the office community, many of whom have now surely died. The tourists, who spent their last moments choking on the observation deck, waiting for the helicopters that never came, no doubt included many Muslim parents and their children.

http://newageislam.com/recapturing-islam-from-the-terrorists--we-surely-need-the-ghazalian-approach,-not-the-rigorism-of-ibn-taymiya--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/822

Guilt by association for US Muslims, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

Guilt by association for US Muslims

By Hussein Ibish

8 August 2008

Asbahi resigned on Monday, after just 10 days on the job, because in 2000 he served for a few weeks on the board of an Islamic investment fund with Jamal Said. Said has been allegedly linked to accused fundraisers for Hamas whose recent trial did not result in any convictions, but who remain under a cloud of suspicion.

This reflects an unreasonable and unfair climate of guilt by association. It is part of a familiar pattern that is one of the main forces hindering the political integration of these communities into American civic life.

Asbahi himself is not accused of any misconduct. Rather the issue is his fairly distant association with Said, who himself is disparaged because of the alleged activities of his own associates.

The problem is that almost anyone who has been engaged in Arab or Muslim political affairs can probably be somehow connected in some manner to someone else somewhere whose views, activities or associations can be called into question in the post-9/11 environment.

http://newageislam.com/guilt-by-association-for-us-muslims/current-affairs/d/472

The Ideology Of Thought Control In Pakistan, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

The War within Islam

17 Aug 2011, NewAgeIslam.Com

The Ideology Of Thought Control In Pakistan

By Maheen Usmani 1 Aug. 2011 Denial is not just a river in Egypt. It has become something of a personality cult in Pakistan. Nowhere is this cognitive dissonance more visible than amongst the educated who refuse to accept facts and logic, clinging instead to a neurotic persecution complex. Columnist Khaled Ahmed says: “The vast majority of literate Pakistanis take comfort in ignorance, skepticism and conspiracy theories. The self-glorification of an imagined past matched by habits of national denial have assumed crisis proportions today when Pakistan’s existence is under far more serious threat from fellow Muslims than it was in 1947 from rival non Muslim communities.” What lies beneath this inability to critique and lack of intelligent analysis? http://www.newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/the-ideology-of-thought-control-in-pakistan/d/5267