Knowledge of Islam lacking

Washington: Knowledge of Islam, Mormonism lacking

Most Americans know little about the faiths but say their own beliefs have little in common with them, a poll shows.

Most Americans say they know little to nothing about the practices of Islam and Mormonism but say their own religious beliefs have little in common with either of these faiths, according to a national survey released Tuesday.

Forty-five percent of those polled said Islam was more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers. Nearly 1 in 3 respondents say Mormonism is not a Christian religion, the report said.

The survey of 3,002 Americans was conducted last month by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Although 58% of respondents said they knew little or nothing about Islamic practices, 70% of non-Muslims said Islam was very different from their own religious beliefs.

Using language as a mask for bigotry

No joke

The common definition of cult is captured in the common joke: my faith is a religion, yours is a sect and that guy over there whom we don't like, well, his is a cult.

In its more scholarly usage the term tries to measure socio-cultural distance. The greater the mismatch of the customs between believers and their host culture, the more likely the believers are deemed somewhere on the spectrum between sectarian to cultish.

I post this op-ed by Kathleen Flake because I feel that the accusation that she makes can also be leveled on Salafism. The latter is famous for its hit-lists of Muslim groups that they don't agree with, as I detailed in The Great Commission of Mussulman. Naturally, I do not have in mind the contemporary practice of Salafism, but the religious and legal institutions defined in the documents of Salafist doctrine.

Thus, those who know enough about the rift between Salafism and mainstream Islam will find it highly ironic that they are simultaneously represented in a document as important as the Amman Message. As I mentioned in an earlier article, The Prophet's family makes a stand,

The inclusion of the line "Likewise, it is not possible to declare whosoever subscribes to true Salafi thought an apostate..." seems almost like an afterthought. Why not? Since virtually half the groups above it are considered by Salafists to be deviants, or at the very least, innovators. Sana Abdallah of United Press International (UPS) bluntly surmises that the document attempts to thwart "...the wrath of the Salafi militants and to try to attract them to the teachings of 'true Islam'."

Politics fuels despair

Politics Fuels Despair, Resentment

The most fundamental problem in U.S.-Muslim world relations today is our inability to view current events through the prism of historical, socio-political, and-economic conditions in the region, such as the history of colonialism or the reality of authoritarianism in the Middle East.

When it comes to the Muslim world, there is a dogged insistence among policy makers and the American public alike to view Islam itself as the source of current tensions between the U.S. and the Muslim world. The most dangerous aspect of this illogical premise that blames Islam for the tensions and violence in the Muslim world is that it paints a picture that is inaccurate, bleak and hopeless.

Earnest article.

Saudi gift to Australian university

Muslims attack $1m Saudi gift to Australian university

UP to $1 million will be pumped by Saudi Arabia into an Australian university, sparking fears the money will skew its research and create sympathy for an extremist Muslim ideology espoused by al-Qai'da.

Muslim leaders and academics have attacked Queensland's Griffith University for accepting an initial $100,000 grant from the Saudi embassy, which they accused of having given cash in the past to educational institutions to improve the perception of Wahhabism - a hardline interpretation of Islam.

The Australian understands the Griffith Islamic Research Unit will in coming years receive up to $1 million from Saudi Arabia, which has injected more than $120 million into Australia's Islamic community since the 1970s for mosques, schools, scholarships and clerical salaries.

A former member of John Howard's Muslim reference board, Mustapha Kara-Ali, accused the Saudis of using their financial power to transform the landscape of Australia's Islamic community and silence criticism of Wahhabism. "They want to silence criticism of the Wahhabi establishment and its link to global terrorism and national security issues," he said.

Saudi largesse always comes with theological string attached. We have seen how effective peddaling doctrine alongside money is in Iraq (Money, martyrs and mongers) and Afghanistan (Who are the Taliban?).

Muslim televangelist

Islam's Up-to-Date Televangelist

The rhythmic clapping began the minute Amr Khaled stepped through the door of the packed Crystal City ballroom. Surrounded by security guards, the Egyptian preacher had to weave his way through the crowd — men both cleanshaven and bearded, women both fashionably coifed and dressed in conservative Islamic dress - that had come from up and down the East Coast to hear him. Two massive screens projected his image to those in the back.

"My goal is that you leave happy," Khaled began softly, once he finally got to the lectern. "My goal is to fulfill the hadith of the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, that says, 'Whoever puts joy in the hearts of the believers, his reward is not less than Paradise.' " The crowd ate it up. For the next 90 minutes, they laughed at his witticisms, smiled at his stories, nodded at his exhortations and clapped again - spontaneously and often. But most of all, they listened intently.

Disagreement on veil

Ottawa: Canadian prime minister disagrees with decision to allow Muslim women to wear veils for Quebec vote

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday he disagrees with a decision that allows Muslim women to wear veils covering their faces when they vote.

Elections Canada, an independent body that oversees national elections, said last week that Muslim women will be allowed to wear veils when they vote in by-elections later this month in Quebec where the issue of the traditional covering has been hotly contested.

Muslims parade in New York

New York: Muslims parade in New York, condemn Sept. 11 terror attacks

Hundreds of Muslims chanted and waved flags from around the globe as they marched Sunday in the 22nd annual American Muslim Day Parade.

About 20 protesters shouted anti-Muslim slogans from behind police barricades along Manhattan's Madison Avenue and sought to link the marchers to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A member of the parade organizing committee, Dr. Hafiz Ur Rehman, a pediatrician from Bay Shore, said the marchers condemned the 2001 attacks.

"We are law-abiding citizens, and we want the people of New York to know that Muslims are part and parcel of the landscape," he said. "The motto of this parade is that Islam holds human dignity high. And that is what we want to demonstrate."

Apostasy on international agenda

Netherlands Places Apostasy on International Agenda

The Netherlands is to make a case for the freedom of religion and ideology during the sixth session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva this month. Partly initiated by the Netherlands, the EU will hand in a resolution that emphasises the right to apostasy.
...
The resolution by Dutch initiative is salient because domestically, coalition parties Christian democrats (CDA) and Labour (PvdA) have expressed no support whatsoever for Ehsan Jami. This 22-year-old former Muslim, a PvdA local council member, is to set up a committee towards the acceptance of apostasy on 11 September. On 4 August, Muslims assaulted him on the street. Jami did not receive a phone call from his PvdA, which reproached him for insulting the Prophet Mohammed.

Thank you, extremists, for forcing the hands of many governments in the Western hemisphere to equate all Muslims with the likes of you.

Islam is not a cereal

Shaykh Nuh Keller Lecture on Modernism and Fiqh Al-Aqaliat (Jurisprudence for Minorities)

I would like to share my notes on one specific group of topics the Shaykh spoke about namely the perils of Western Apologetic Islam, Modernists and Minority fiqh.

The topic was covered, chiefly in response to a question asked on 17 August during the Q&A session, but the Shaykh made references to the topic throughout the Suhba and encouraged murids who had missed the to session to get the recording and specifically listen to what was said about the topic of minority fiqh. The Shaykhs answer was passionate and masha Allah as always very balanced but also straight and to the point. It contained several quite strong warnings, and coming from a man of the Shaykhs calibre such are not to be taken lightly.

I have immense respect for Shaykh Ha Mim Keller and his works, the most outstanding being his English translation of Imam Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri's Reliance of the Traveller. This voluminous book on Islamic jurisprudence singlehandedly popularized the madhhab of Imam ash-Shafi'i in the English-speaking world. Since the latter is a growing phenomenon in the Muslim global community, the book's achievement is no small feat.

In fact, I also suspect that Reliance of the Traveller helped check the spread of the Salafist movement and its "free yourself from madhhabs" attitude in regions like Southeast Asia, where Arabic has never been an indigenous language. A useful measure of this is the rabid criticism of the book that comes from Salafists, despite the fact that it is endorsed by some of the highest authorities in the Sunni world.

Then again, this contradiction could be one of many devices that some ideologues are deploying in order to change the very meaning of Sunni-ism to fit their own petty ends. For more on this, read my previous essay entitled, Urban myths that bear repeating.

Islam vs Science?

Are Muslim beliefs compatible with critical inquiry?

Almost every standard world history textbook celebrates Islam's golden age of science. Between the ninth and 13th centuries, Muslim scholars not only translated the great works of Greek medicine, mathematics, and science but also pushed the frontiers of discovery in all of those areas. They improved and named algebra, refined techniques of surgery, advanced the study of optics, and charted the heavens. Then, toward the end of the 13th century, something mysterious happened: The scientific spirit seemed to die almost completely.
...
Some modern scholars make a more serious intellectual argument for the compatibility of science and traditional Islamic thought. And those thinkers believe that ignorance of an Islamically based understanding of science is what really impedes its pursuit in the contemporary Muslim world.

One of the more articulate proponents of that position is the Iranian-born philosopher of science Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University and the author of, among other books, Science and Civilization in Islam...

I think the analysis of the problem should include two additional factors:

1. The kind of scientific inquiry that is dominant in today's world plays a large part in Muslim suspicions of it. Modern science, after all, prides itself for propagating a world-view that has little or no need for a Creator.

2. The perception that science and technology are tools that the Western world will use to gain control over Muslim societies. Thus, in some societies (not necessarily Muslim), rejecting the tangible signs of technology is tantamount to rejecting Western hegemony.

For a quirky view of how technology affects the different factions within the Muslim world, read my early essay entitled: Terrorists, always on time.

Faith and Doubt

Faith and Doubt Fellow Travelers

Faith and doubt are twin brothers or sisters in the human condition. The Qur'an recognizes the capacity of the human being to believe or not to believe. Believing in the visible and the tangible is more widely acknowledged by most people when they are confined within their own mental estate. When they venture beyond their own world into the wide world of others where language and concepts rule, chances are one may claim belief when in actual fact belief is not the thing in place, social solidarity has become the mother of all faiths. This is true of religious belief as well as secular faith in ideologies.

Death sentence for Iraqi cultees

Iraq: Death sentence for 10 members of Iraq cult

Ten members of an Iraqi doomsday cult were sentenced to death yesterday and 394 jailed for their roles in a January rebellion against Iraqi and US troops that left hundreds dead, police said.

Najaf police chief Brigadier General Abdel Karim Mustapha said the court sentenced 10 leaders of the Soldiers of Heaven to death and released 54. "The rest were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 15 years to life."