Mapping the Indian Mujahideen, Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

Mapping the Indian Mujahideen

By Praveen Swami

Ahmad and Ismail were killed at Balakote in May 1831, while waging an unsuccessful jihad against Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s empire. The two men had set out with 600 followers from Rae Bareilly five years earlier to defend Islam at a time when the Mughal power had, for all practical purposes, given way to British rule.

Like his heroes, Amin found the martyrdom he worshipped: his death was the latest success in a string of nationwide intelligence-led operations targeting the IM. But the arrests of a bewildering succession of its operatives — each proclaimed by police to be “leader”, “top commander” and “mastermind” — have done little to further the understanding of just what the group is about or the threat it still poses.

Mapping the IM isn’t easy: it is more a social network than structured organisation; a label used by a loose coalition of jihadists bound together by ideological affiliation and personal linkages. In this, it is not unlike the al-Qaeda, whose operatives are drawn from the multiple transnational terror groups allied under the banner of the International Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders.

http://newageislam.com/mapping-the-indian-mujahideen/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/847

A Quick Introduction to Islam: Not a new religion, Islamic Ideology, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Ideology

A Quick Introduction to Islam: Not a new religion

Daniel Masters, Isma'il Kaka and AbdurRahman R. Squires

Oct 19, 2008

Islam is not a new religion because "submission to the will of God", i.e. Islam, has always been the only acceptable religion in the sight of God. For this reason, Islam is the true "natural religion", and it is the same eternal message revealed through the ages to all of God's prophets and messengers. Muslims believe that all of God's prophets, which include Abraham, Noah, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, brought the same message of Pure Monotheism. For this reason, the Prophet Muhammad was not the founder of a new religion, as many people mistakenly think, but he was the Final Prophet of Islam. By revealing His final message to Muhammad, which is an eternal and universal message for all of mankind, God finally fulfilled the covenant that He made with Abraham, who was one of the earliest and greatest prophets. Suffice it to say that the way of Islam is the same as the way of the prophet Abraham, because both the Bible and the Qur'an portray Abraham as a towering example of someone who submitted himself completely to God and worshipped Him without intermediaries. Once this is realized, it should be clear that Islam has the most continuous and universal message of any religion, because all prophets and messengers were "Muslims", i.e. those who submitted to God's will, and they preached "Islam", i.e. submission to the will of Almighty God.

http://newageislam.com/a-quick-introduction-to-islam--not-a-new-religion/islamic-ideology/d/902

Ahmadiyya struggle to survive: Islamic Tolerance test for Muslim Indonesia, Islam and Tolerance, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Tolerance

Ahmadiyya struggle to survive: Islamic Tolerance test for Muslim Indonesia

By Tom McCawley

July 2, 2008

The Ahmadis, who have worshipped in their own mosques and communities here since 1924, believe that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, is the messiah and last true prophet of Islam. The claim has energized and enraged Indonesia's disparate Muslim hardliners, who in recent years have united in a campaign to ban Ahmadiyya, labeling its followers "heretics" and "deviants".

Indonesia's mild-mannered and religiously moderate President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his government are caught in the middle. In a campaign season, where conservative religious groups have electoral clout, his administration has so far managed to please neither side.

Tensions flared into the open on June 1, when the hard-line vigilante group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) attacked a peaceful rally in support of both Ahmadiyya and religious tolerance at a symbolic national monument in central Jakarta. Stick-wielding FPI members, attacked women, the elderly and even clerics, leaving some 70 people injured. Police later arrested the FPI's firebrand leader, Habib Rizieq.

On June 9, Yudhoyono signed a controversial decree which failed to fully support the sect's right to exist, though it stopped short of disbanding it altogether, as religious conservatives have demanded. The decree explicitly forbade Ahmadiyya from proselytizing and threatened its members with up to five years in jail for possible charges of "tarnishing religion".

http://newageislam.com/ahmadiyya-struggle-to-survive--islamic-tolerance-test-for-muslim-indonesia/islam-and-tolerance/d/164