US serious to build partnership with Muslim communities: Farah Pandit, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

US serious to build partnership with Muslim communities: Farah Pandit

New Delhi: In her first visit to India today as United States Special Representative to Muslim Communities, Farah Pandit highlighted President Barack Obama’s vision to build partnerships with Muslim communities across the globe on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect. She was holding a roundtable with Muslim journalists in New Delhi.

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are more than serious about establishing good relations with the Muslim communities on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect. We are engaging young Muslim generation in dialogues and conversations to build trust and remove misunderstandings, said Kashmir-born Farah Pandit.

Asked how she thinks President Barack Obama’s outreach effort to the Muslim world is successful, she said: We have continued our efforts to reach to the Muslim communities and build relations and remove misconceptions. We are not ticking box to list success points.

She took several questions from the journalists, most of them were from Urdu media, but carefully avoided political issues when repeatedly asked why the US needed to launch such outreach efforts and a special portfolio of United States Special Representative to Muslim Communities. When asked specifically if the move is an admission that some of its foreign policies have gone wrong, she again did not answer clearly.

Some eminent community members including Maulana Umair Ilyasi also came to meet Farah Pandit.

As Special Representative to Muslim Communities, Pandit is responsible for executing Secretary Clinton’s vision for engagement with Muslims around the world on a people-to-people and organizational level. Prior to this appointment, she was Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. In this role she was focused on Muslim communities in Europe where she was responsible for policy oversight for integration, democracy, and Islam in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Pandit was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, India.

http://newageislam.com/us-serious-to-build-partnership-with-muslim-communities--farah-pandit/islamic-world-news/d/2474

Fort Hood Fallout: Islam transcends loyalty to nation, Muslims and Islamophobia, NewAgeIslam.com

Muslims and Islamophobia

Fort Hood Fallout: Islam transcends loyalty to nation

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

November 18, 2009

It’s not quite a fatwa but Iran’s Supreme Leader has spoken through his representative in London. Ayatollah Abdolhossein Moezi, director of the Islamic Centre of England, has called on Muslim immigrants to be “better Muslims” and not to join the West’s armed forces. It is un-Islamic, he says, for them to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The wonder is that the directive was so long in coming. It needed the tragedy of Maj Nidal Malik Hassan, the American-born military psychiatrist son of Palestinian refugees, who ran amok and killed 13 people, to remind Ayatollah Khamenei of the conflict of loyalties that Muslims in the West face. A contributory factor may have been reports from The Hague, where Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader indicted on 11 charges including genocide, has succeeded in bullying the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia into postponing his trial. But not before the court heard transcripts of his telephone conversations warning of “a black cauldron where 300,000 Muslims will die”.

Karadzic’s troops besieged and captured the United Nations safe haven of Srebrenica. Nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were tortured, machine-gunned and bulldozed into mass graves while their womenfolk were abused, raped and forced to defile the Quran. The Bosnian leader himself was quoted in court as saying, “They will disappear from the face of the earth.”

Those revelations, coinciding with Maj Hassan’s murderous spree, may have convinced the Ayatollah of the need for Muslims in the West to take a stand. But the dilemma is not confined to the diaspora. The Governments of Jordan, Egypt, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia ostensibly support the US and Nato in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, significantly, they dare not send troops to wage the so-called war on terror. It also bears noting that the ruling regimes in some of these countries have also been targeted by jihadis. Pakistan is sui generis for it is as much at war with itself as it is under attack. Lines are blurred because religious extremism is also a feature of the continuing internal struggle for political power.

http://newageislam.com/fort-hood-fallout--islam-transcends-loyalty-to-nation/muslims-and-islamophobia/d/2110

CHAPTER 3: TABLEEGHI JAMAAT - A STAGGERING

Books and Documents

CHAPTER 3: TABLEEGHI JAMAAT - A STAGGERING RECORD OF RELIGIOUS TYRANNIES by Maulana Arshadul Qadri

By Maulana Arshadul Qadri

When the late Sultan Abdul Aziz Ibne Saud took the victorious strides especially for Hijaz-e-Muqaddas, the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind was the only party, which considered it as a good fortune for Hijaz against the European Diplomacy and congratulated the Late Sultan.

And then through its special representative it continued giving useful advices in the court of the deceased Sultan from time to time and Jamiat Ulema Hind proved very successful in this task because they accepted our advices, which closed the mouths of opponents and our corrective objectives also became successful.

After the complete establishment of the Government and the dynasty of the family of Saud, on the occasion of the First Haj Pilgrimage Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind was that religious and political party which sent its representative and expressed its happiness and satisfaction. (Shah Saud Walia Arab Ka Daura-e-Hind, Lala Rukh Publications, Srinagar, Kashmir, pp/38)

"The Victorious Step of the Najidis" for which Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind had sent its message of greetings and the "Corrective objects" on which it has expressed its happiness and satisfaction, until the shuddering details of these things do not come before us we will not be able to understand the background of this address. Thanks to Allah the details of these matters have reached us through reliable sources.

http://newageislam.com/chapter-3--tableeghi-jamaat---a-staggering-record-of-religious-tyrannies-by-maulana-arshadul-qadri--/books-and-documents/d/915

After the Delhi blasts: Indian Muslim radicals too are affected by global Jehad, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

After the Delhi blasts: Indian Muslim radicals too are affected by global Jehad

Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times

September 20, 2008

The experience of the 1980s holds two lessons for us. One: we must not panic unduly or worry needlessly. We have survived much worse. And two: never judge a community by its terrorists. The Sikh militants did not represent their community. These bombers do not represent Indian Muslims.

So why is it happening?: Thousands of books have been written on the jehadi resurgence and I don’t claim to know all the answers. But if you think that India, a country of over a billion, is in a bad way because of these blasts, then think of tiny England. The British security services are monitoring 200 terrorist networks. They estimate there are 16,000 known terrorists in the UK, 3,000 of them trained in Al Qaeda camps.

There is no history of anti-Muslim feeling in Britain. Yet after such events as the 7/7 attacks, polls have found support for the terrorists among some Muslims and pollsters say that over half of Britain’s Muslims have some sympathy for Osama Bin Laden.

So, no country can be immune to a global trend. And given the size of our Muslim population, we have done better than most.

http://newageislam.com/after-the-delhi-blasts--indian-muslim-radicals-too-are-affected-by-global-jehad-/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/781

House of Representatives Issues Formal Apology for Slavery, Islam and Human Rights, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Human Rights

House of Representatives Issues Formal Apology for Slavery

By: The Associated Press

Tuesday 29 July 2008

The Cohen resolution does not mention reparations. It does commit the House to rectifying "the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African-Americans under slavery and Jim Crow."

It says that Africans forced into slavery "were brutalized, humiliated, dehumanized and subjected to the indignity of being stripped of their names and heritage" and that black Americans today continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery and Jim Crow laws that fostered discrimination and segregation.

The House "apologizes to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States, for the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow."

"Slavery and Jim Crow are stains upon what is the greatest nation on the face of the earth," Cohen said. Part of forming a more perfect union, he said, "is such a resolution as we have before us today where we face up to our mistakes and apologize as anyone should apologize for things that were done in the past that were wrong."

Cohen became the first white to represent the 60 percent black district in Memphis in more than three decades when he captured a 2006 primary where a dozen black candidates split the vote. He has sought to reach out to his black constituents, and early in his term showed interest in joining the Congressional Black Caucus until learning that was against caucus rules.

http://newageislam.com/house-of-representatives-issues-formal-apology-for-slavery/islam-and-human-rights/d/361

Islam body to guide UK govt: Is this an attempt to create an Anglo-Saxon version of Islam?,

War on Terror

Islam body to guide UK govt: Is this an attempt to create an Anglo-Saxon version of Islam?

By Rashmee Roshan Lall, TNN

19 July 2008

The British body will be distinct from its five-year-old French forbear, the Council for the Muslim Religion and will have more authority and weight than the UK's most important, existing Muslim representative body, the Muslim Council of Britain.

Analysts said the new British body has emerged as an attempt to sideline violent extremists who preach a hate-filled version of Islam dedicated to the destruction of Western systems and patterns of thought.

The new British body, which was publicly endorsed as a good idea whose time has come by communities secretary Hazel Blears, will see Oxford and Cambridge Universities host a group of scholars to lead the debate on key British Muslim issues such as women's rights and responsibilities and loyalty to the host country, Britain.

http://newageislam.com/islam-body-to-guide-uk-govt--is-this-an-attempt-to-create-an-anglo-saxon-version-of-islam?/war-on-terror/d/261