Saudi prof faces flogging for having coffee with woman
Muhammad Ali Abu Raziza, a psychology lecturer at the university of Mecca, has been sentenced to 150 lashes and eight months in jail after the religious police caught him with a woman in a coffee shop...
My problem is that the sword is combined with the phrase 'There is no god but Allah. When I wrote this, there were certain circumstances - it was when Al-Zarqawi and his people were decapitating hostages with a sword. It was as if the sword had become one of the symbols of Islam. When you combine the sword with the phrase 'There is no god but Allah,' some people might get confused, and think that you want to spread 'there is no god but Allah' by means of the sword.
Top university 'begged' for Saudi funding
A prominent Australian university practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3m, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal.For me, the highlight of this news story isn't that the Saud clan donated money to an academic institution- for they have been doing that for decades in the United States- but that Muslims themselves are becoming more aware of what follows the money.
Documents obtained by The Australian reveal that Griffith University - described by vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor as the "university of choice" for Saudis - offered the embassy an opportunity to reshape the Griffith Islamic Research Unit during its campaign to get some "extra noughts" added to Saudi cheques.
...
The Australian revealed last September that the Muslim community feared Griffith's $100,000 Saudi grant would skew the university's research and create sympathy for an extremist Islamic ideology - Wahabbism - which is espoused by al-Qaeda.
Since the 1970s, when rising oil revenues enabled the Saudis to export the Wahhabi brand of fundamentalist Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia has been a major exporter of ideas and values that differ from those espoused by Osama bin Laden and his followers on issues of strategy, but not on the broader perspectives.
During its years of rivalry with Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, the Saudi government nurtured leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood which President Nasser had forced underground after an attempt on his life in 1954. Those exiled from Egypt included Muhammad Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb – the Brotherhood's leading intellectual. His writings have helped to inspire a wave of terror attacks, from the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 to the more recent attacks on New York, Madrid and London.
Washington: US State Department Urged to Shut Saudi School in Fairfax
A federal panel yesterday urged the State Department to shut down a Saudi government-supported private school in Northern Virginia unless it can prove it is not teaching religious intolerance.I find it interesting that when the government panel began their accusations that the school promoted a "radical" curriculum, the school's principal had this to say:
In a report released yesterday, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom criticized what it called the promotion of religious extremism in Saudi-run schools around the world, including in the kingdom. It leveled particular criticism at the Islamic Saudi Academy, which operates two campuses in Fairfax County, expressing "significant concerns" that the school is promoting a brand of religious intolerance that could prove a danger to the United States.
I think they went to Saudi Arabia and saw some curriculum there and thought we are teaching the same curriculum...There is virtually no attempt to deny that "radical" textbooks do indeed exist in the heartland whose official religion the same article goes on to describe as "...a rigid strain of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism".
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.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 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.
One should not live under the impression that American designs on Iraq are
entirely benign. Their stated goal is to establish a viable democracy in the
once-Baathist regime. To use the neo-conservative lingo; Iraq would be a bastion
of transparent and equitable government in a sea of Arab despots. God willing,
and this is Bush ruminating, Iraq would expose the error of the despots, and
force a popular movement supporting democracy out into the open.
In the meantime, American forces cannot withdraw from the country they helped
ravage from the ground up. Just last month, the Democrats mischievously added a
caveat to Bush's call for more funds to be released to the American Project in
Iraq. A timetable stipulating a deadline for troops to withdraw from Iraq was
appended to the bill. As was expected, Bush wielded his Presidential veto to
shoot down the bill. There was outrage all round the neo-conservative table. How
could the Americans pull out now? Would that not hand victory over to the Iraqi
insurgents who had been calling for Americans to leave the country in the first
place?
Putting such childish reasons aside, I do agree that pulling the troops out now
would lead to disaster. Sectarian hatred, once such a rare thing in Iraq, has
been stoked to boiling point, chiefly because of the entry of Salafist-inspired
al-Qaeda into the theater of war. Salafists consider all Shia Muslims, which is
the dominant group in Iraq, apostates- eminently suited for slaying. Their
stance is so extreme that some of the domestic militants, ostensibly Sunni
Arabs, have sought to
distance themselves from them. While the rabid sectarianism can be laid
directly at the door of the Salafist extremists, their entry into Iraq cannot.
From the outset, the Bush Administration must have known that a fractured Iraq occupied
by American troops would be a tantalizing magnet for such groups, whose members
originate from all over the Middle East but chiefly from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The logic was, better that the terrorists fight on the soil of the 'ragheads'
than the hallowed soil of the homeland.
But there is another reason why America does not want to pull out anytime soon.
A sovereign and independent Iraq would spell disaster for American ambitions. The
government would not only be dominated by Shia Muslims, it would also be closely
connected with Iran, hitherto a pariah state as far as the Bush Administration
is concerned. Furthermore, a strong, viable Shia across Iran and Iraq would
surely provoke nationalist sentiments in the
already-repressed Shia population
in Saudi Arabia, which is a mainstay in America's list of allies.
The solution thus far has been an unimaginative pounding together of disparate
individuals and parties into a government that can barely function outside the
Green Zone, an area heavily guarded by American and Iraqi troops. The latest
weapon brought to bear down on the incessant violence going on in the country is
a surge in troop levels and a more aggressive approach in the hunt for
terrorists suspects. Indeed, it is the Shia militias instead of the more deadly
Sunni militants that have borne the brunt of the American crackdown. This in
itself should be instructive. American policymakers fear the prospect of an
assertive Shia polity more than the suicide bombings (a tactic shunned by the
Shia clergy anyway) carried out by Sunni militants. Why bother, when Sunni
targets have almost been exclusively Shia Muslims, marketplaces, rituals and
shrines?
Penny Anderson, of The Worldly Event, recently sent me links to a series of videos. It's a documentary made by UK's Channel 4, claiming to be an expose about the Muslim community's radical underbelly in Britain. What's worse, Channel 4 seemed quite adamant to pin the radicalism onto the particular stream of Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia- a stream we've all come to know as either "Wahhabism", or the anachronistic Salafism.
Well, I've viewed it, and my first impression is: it's a very blunt weapon. Shield of Islam's Jinnzaman correctly pointed out that the criticisms leveled against certain Salafist institutions and mosques might very well apply to the rest of the Muslim community. For example, the issues of jihad, Muslim and non-Muslim relations, prayer and hijab for women are not exclusively near and dear to Salafists alone, but to most Muslims. The problem with the documentary is that it took many of the situations and quotes out of context, and does not bother to take a more in-depth look at those issues and present their many facets.
I am not going to analyze the program because it has been making its rounds in the Muslim blogosphere, especially at Mujahidden Ryder's blog, but I will offer some comments off the top of my head.
I think it is very good that mainstream media has finally learned to particularize between Muslims who adhere to orthodoxy and those who subscribe to more ideological interpretations. Such a courtesy was not evident in the early days of the stupidly-named "War on Terror", and a lot of damage has been done in the way of relations between Muslims and the proverbial West because of the lapse.
To be fair, when more astute commentators did try to expose the dubious agendas of certain Muslim groups, these Muslim groups tend to fall back on a tired tactic. Islamaphobia! They'd say. Anti-Muslim sentiment! In fact, I had discussed this public-relations coup in an earlier post:
Dubious institutions propagating a particular brand of Islam have time and again also described attacks on them as being Islamaphobic in nature. By spreading out the criticism amongst the whole community, the intent of such organizations is perhaps to win the sympathy and outrage of a greater number of people than it can realistically muster on its own. A critique on its aims, members and sources of funding, for example, becomes an unprovoked assault on Muslims and Islam itself, even though it never began that way.That is why I believe it is good that a name is pinned on these movements because that is the first step in isolating them. Such a step is important because it destroys the ridiculous myth that Muslims only come in one shape and size. There are moderates (much as I dislike the term for its inherent condescension) and there are extremists, and the moderates far outweigh the extremists. It's pretty obvious here.
...it is the convention in Islam to name groups after their founder or after its most prominent characteristic or proponent. In the case of Wahhabism, it is called that because it traces back to Muhammad ibn Abdil-Wahhab.I agree. History attests to the fact that prominent Saudi scholars had not only been aware of the term, but had rhetorically accepted it. In a widely-circulated fatwa condemning the otherwise unremarkable practice of Muslims celebrating the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Shaykh Abdullah bin Baaz proclaimed that,
...the creed of the Wahhabiyya is based upon fulfillment of witnessing that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah and completely abandoning all innovations, superstitions and whatever goes against the Sharee'ah.I don't quite see what the all the fuss is about, especially since the line of descendants that emerged from Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab is still singled out by his admirers as ahl al-shaykh, meaning, "family of the shaykh".
Not only does Saudi Arabia provide money and martyrs for the Iraqi theater of war, help now arrives from the theological front:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia: Over 30 prominent Islamic clerics from Saudi Arabia on Monday called on Sunni Muslims around the Middle East to support their brethren in Iraq against Shiites and praised the insurgency.
The clerics issued a statement warning that Shiite Muslims were taking control of Iraq in a conspiracy with "Crusaders" in an attempt to marginalize Sunni Muslims.
Thousands of Iraqis have been killed this year in sectarian bloodshed between the majority Shiites and the Sunni Arab minority, who lost their dominance of the country to Shiites after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Saudi Arabia, like most Arab countries, is predominantly Sunni but has a significant Shiite minority. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have all expressed concerns over increasing Shiite power in Iraq and other parts of the region, which they see as an opening for Iranian influence.
The statement was signed by more than 30 Saudi clerics — most from Saudi Arabia's top Islamic universities, the centers of the kingdom's hardline version of Sunni Islam.
"After almost four years of occupation, it is clear that the aim behind this occupation is for the Crusaders and Shiites to take control of Iraq, paving the way to complete their control over the region," read the statement, posted on a Saudi news Web site.
The clerics praised Iraq's Sunni insurgency, saying that jihad, or holy war, "is one of the most important tenets of religion, and what has been taken by force can only be regained by force."
They called on Sunni Muslims around the Middle East to "stand directly with our Sunni brothers in Iraq, using all appropriate and considered forms of support" and urged clerics to "educate the public about the Shiite threat."
The sectarian conflict in Iraq has raised fears of a growing split between the two main sects of Islam around the Middle East as members of each rally around their brethren there.
Key Iraqi officials have said that millions of dollars in financing has been sent to Iraq's insurgents private donors in Saudi Arabia, though Saudi officials have denied the report.
A Muslim friend once told me that the word mosque was derived from the word mosquito. "It's a Crusader plot to defame Muslims," he confided. Like most conspiracy theories, however, it's plain baloney. First of all, the Crusaders are dead. Second of all, Crusaders were too stupid to have concocted any sort of etymological device to describe their enemies. The height of Crusader ingenuity was probably describing their feet being colored to the ankles with the blood of the slain Jews and Muslims of Jerusalem.
But mosques are interesting in other ways. When extremists want to show the Shias in Iraq who is boss, they bomb the domes off Shia mosques. Now, if you think bombing domes are an odd way of sending a message, think again. History attests that some Muslims- well, actually those belonging to a certain strain- have been at domes for a long time, including the green one that is currently above Prophet Muhammad's grave.
Why the dome-fetish, though? Some Muslims apparently believe that building domes above the graves of holy men promotes shirik (idolatry). In the world of the dome-destroyers, the logic even extends to Prophet Muhammad's tomb.
In some countries, mosques are seen as a barometer for radical teachings. India for example, has this exquisite national monument, the Grand Mosque, that is in urgent need of repair. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia offered to pump in money to fund the reconstruction. The Indian media, ever
the rabid watchdog over its troublesome minorities, was quick to point out that the offer had a caveat. The kingdom
apparently wants to fund education too. Naturally, Indian security agencies are wary that the money could go into preaching radical Islam.
But that's all fluff. If I were an Indian Muslim, I would be more worried about the Grand Mosque not keeping its distinctive style. Not only is it an eclectic mix of Hindu and Muslim architecture, there are three graves within the mosque's compound. And
its obscene complement of fifteen domes (yes, 15!) can only belong in a dome-destroyer's fantasy.
The re-construction might degenerate into a de-construction project, as happened
in the
Saudi-aided reconstruction of Sarajevo's mosques in the aftermath of the
Bosnian genocide. A mosque that is deliberately torn from its native context-
as expressed through its unique architecture- is well on its way to nurturing an
exclusivist mindset amongst Muslims that India can frankly do less with.
Then, there's good old England. According to Guardian Unlimited:
A plan to build a 'mega mosque' in east London has become mired in controversy with allegations that it is being bankrolled by Islamist groups in Saudi Arabia. Opponents say it would promote a radical form of Islam. They accuse its backers of not consulting local people.Oddly enough, the mosque has created a unique coalition of protesters comprising local Muslims and Christians. Way to go, silent majority!
Tablighi Jamaat, the controversial Islamist sect that has applied for planning permission for the multi-million-pound mosque, has been described by French intelligence as 'an antechamber of fundamentalism'. This evangelical movement, which has gained a strong following among young male Muslims, is a Deobandi Muslim organisation that has close links with the Wahhabi fundamentalist form of the religion promoted in Saudi Arabia and practised by the Saudi royal family.
The sect, which bought the brownfield site in the early Nineties, has sent hundreds of British Muslims to madrassas - religious schools - in Pakistan each year. There are concerns within British intelligence that these trips may have radicalised some of them. Followers have also attended the sect's Saudi-financed UK headquarters in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. They include Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, two of the bombers who struck London on 7 July last year.
In an article written for Family Security Matters, Stephen Schwartz rhetorically asked "Is California an Islamic Republic?", and directly accused the state's most prominent Muslim, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, of being a dishonest person and a poseur.
Sidi Aftab Ahmad Malik [1] responds:
In his recent article: Is California an Islamic Republic? (The Family Security Foundation, Inc., October 25, 2006), Stephen Schwartz, in his tireless search for an opportunity to profess his undying patriotism, has written a personal attack against Hamza Yusuf Hanson. The nominal basis for his attack is an article in a Saudi newspaper, in which Hamza Yusuf "was described as 'the mufti of California.'" It is not clear how accurately this was translated for him, particularly as he later states that "It is Hamza Yusuf Hanson who is dishonest, when he calls himself, ridiculously, 'the mufti of California,' and when he claims to be a Muslim moderate." Schwartz's claim then, is that Yusuf has been called or has called himself the mufti of California and, therefore, Schwartz claims, "propagandizes for the Islamicization of America," based on how Yusuf has "built himself up as a major Western Muslim leader."Notes:
My immediate response is to question why Schwartz has searched out this reference (of questionable accuracy) to denounce Hamza Yusuf. Why does he go to such pains to try to convince his readership that Yusuf is an extremist who does not speak for the majority of Muslims? The implication of course, is that Schwartz is a moderate Muslim (struggling for plurality) and in fact speaks for the majority of mainstream Muslims. In fact, Schwartz has a long record of denouncing other Muslims as either being Islamists, Jihadists, or Wahhabis—all words that the public has been taught to "understand" represent three incarnations of everything evil in the world today. While the reality remains that many Americans still cannot make sense of Islam, Schwartz's simplistic articles only offer a dangerous black and white view of a complex landscape. I find it astonishing that Schwartz, the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism cannot even recognize the plurality within the Muslim community itself, and rather than acknowledge this, he demarcates disperse communities into moderates versus extremists.
Schwartz's unabashed attack on Hamza Yusuf is at best misguided and at worst libelous. His continued character assassination of one of the most distinguished, loved, and brilliant Muslim scholars in the Western world is enough to discredit him in the eyes of many mainstream Muslims. The respect that Yusuf commands from numerous sectors of the Muslim community throughout the world is unquestioned; it is based on nearly fifteen years of studying with scholars throughout the world, in a tireless effort to grasp the depth of traditional Islamic scholarship. Schwartz himself wrote a moving obituary of the late "famous Sufi teacher" and scholar, Shaykh Muhammad Alawi, in which he highlights the authority that Alawi commanded. And it is this very same Muhammad Alawi that is counted among the teachers of Hamza Yusuf, who was awarded a handwritten diploma by the Shaykh—something that Alawi rarely did—conferring upon Yusuf the licence to teach the Islamic sciences, which include Sufism.
I find it lamentable that Schwartz maintains this misguided assertion that Hamza Yusuf is dishonestly portraying himself as a Sufi and hiding ulterior motives that only Schwartz has been able to decipher (the rest of the gullible world has failed to recognize these ill-intentions). Surely this, above and beyond his other outlandish claims, clearly indicates that Schwartz is a man with an agenda and far from a serious or scholarly commentator on Islamic affairs. I question Schwartz's intentions because he is most likely aware of and has met many contemporary Sufi shaykhs from America to Great Britain; West Africa to the Middle East; the Subcontinent to the Arabian peninsula, who confirm and acknowledge Yusuf as being counted among the qawm—a sufi term that refers to "the people [of spiritual excellence]." Could Schwartz's accusations stem from such a superficial fact that Yusuf does not dress like a Sufi shaykh, but wears western clothes? (I have actually met some individuals who criticize his ability to be a shaykh precisely because of this.) Or, perhaps Schwartz is irked by the fact that Yusuf is invited by a wide range of people to speak to diverse audiences, some of whom may not see eyeto- eye with the spiritual tradition of Islam?
Ironically, back in 1997 at Stanford University, the late expert on Sufism, Annemarie Schimmel, Hamid Algar of the University of Berkeley, and Hamza Yusuf spoke on the theme of "Sufism and its influence on Europe." In closing the program, Yusuf stressed that Sufism was an integral part of Islam, stating that "in the tradition of Islam Sufism has always been part of the traditional Islamic curriculum in every single Muslim university." He continued to remark that he knew of "no period in the Islamic tradition in which Sufism was not taught in the universities and not seen as an important and fundamental aspect of the tradition of Islam." More ironic yet is the fact that this favorable write-up of the event was (and remains) posted on the Naqshbandi.org website, a prominent Sufi group that operates under the auspices of the Sufi sage, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani. If we believe, as Schwartz proposes, that Yusuf decided to transform himself from a "radical" Muslim preacher into a spiritual Sufi, the author of the lengthy article would not have concluded by saying that this event took "great courage" and was a "courageous stand" in the light of the fact that (at that time) Sufism was perceived by many Muslims as something alien to Islam—clearly a result of the strength of a Wahhabi-brand of Islam.
I actually agree with Schwartz on one issue: it is ridiculous for Hamza Yusuf to call himself "the mufti of California"; I daresay that Yusuf would consider it ridiculous as well. I doubt that Schwartz's reference to the article in the Saudi newspaper is accurate. But I would correct Schwartz on the role of a mufti. He confusingly defines a mufti as a "religious judge, directing sharia courts in Sunni Muslim countries," (one would think a fairly substantial position of authority), then says that California does not need a mufti, "because Sharia governs such minor aspects of Islamic life as the issuance of halal butchers' licenses…and the propriety of certain financial transactions." Schwartz reveals his ignorance of the sharia, not to mention the role of a mufti. Then he goes on to clarify (for those unaware!) that California does not have sharia courts.
By way of clarification, a mufti fulfils a role that goes beyond merely declaring meat halal. The role of a mufti is more akin to that of a rabbi and an imam to that of a cantor. A rabbi explains Torah and Mishnah to his congregants and the function of a mufti is to explain the Qur'an and the Prophetic way to his followers; this can relate to everything from how to prepare oneself for prayer to whether insurance is a halal financial transaction. A mufti gives non-binding legal opinions and has no state authority, nor can his opinions be enforced by the state in most matters. Muslim nations often appoint a Grand Mufti, as in Egypt, but most muftis actually have no state affiliation. Muftis are also noted for their intellectual ability and moral character. Indeed, the late Dr. Zaki Badawi of London was, in one of his obituaries, referred to as the "Grand Mufti of Islam in England." There were no sensationalist headlines the following day that sought to explain how all along, Zaki Badawi the mild-mannered moderate Muslim, was a stealth Islamist by night, because it simply would not be true. Rather, the title was bestowed upon him as a mark of respect and acknowledgement of his intellectual prowess, authority and admiration he had earned from many people, Muslims and non- Muslims alike in the UK.
In his article, Schwartz has manipulated the facts in order to create a fictional scenario in which a fictional character (only nominally based upon the real Hamza Yusuf) has a fictitious aim of establishing an Islamic republic in California. The only credence that Schwartz has that lends itself to this mythical construct is a quote by Zaid Shakir (who he inaccurately refers to as Ziad Shakir), in which Shakir remarked that he would "like to see America become a Muslim country." Had he known Shakir personally, Schwartz would have understood the inaccuracy of his explanation. Shakir's remark is no more than an imitation of the Prophet Muhammad's words: "Love for humanity what you love for yourself." Shakir, a dedicated savant and intellectual giant, said that to love what he loves (and clearly, Zaid Shakir loves Islam), how could he not wish for other people to enjoy what he enjoys from Islam? As the late Betty Shabaz remarked, only people of violence read violence into Malcolm's words and I would add that only those who want to feed the current climate of fear, announce it wherever they can.
Hamza Yusuf has been vociferous in the past as well as the present, on the topic of those who seek to subvert the lands in which they live, and has said in no uncertain terms that these people should leave—if they wish to live under Islamic law, there is nothing preventing them from moving to those lands in which it is the rule of the land. At the same time, Yusuf has not made secret his views on what he sees as the ailments of the society in which he lives. There is gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, the educational system is not producing rounded human beings, and there are areas in America where there is intense racial tension and segregation. While Yusuf has openly criticized the country's foreign policy, he has emphasized that foreign policy should not be seen as synonymous with the American people; this is a message that he has particularly stressed when speaking in the Middle East. The problem we face is that despite the Internet and talk about a global village, there still remains a huge gulf between the West and the Muslim world.
To be patriotic (and Schwartz implicitly implies that Yusuf is not), does not mean to turn a blind eye to injustices. To be loyal or zealously support one's country can be dangerous if it is merely another name for crude nationalism. True patriotism—to truly have a great love for one's country—would include exercising one's judgment, evaluating policies, and engaging in discussions. When Yusuf says that most Americans do not comprehend Islam or that racism is a real concern, he is not revealing a conspiracy of hate toward America. These are issues that have been debated for decades by many (non-Muslim) social scientists and (non-Muslim) religious/political commentators. It is only at the mercy of Schwartz's pen that such concerns are twisted and morphed into a sinister and threatening menace. In an environment that is plagued by a virtual avalanche of tracts, writings, and publications that express unrestrained animosity to Islam and Muslims, written by so-called experts on Islam (the vast majority of whom do not read, write, or speak Arabic), the quest for sanity and balance seems lost within a quagmire of suspicion and self-appointed "moderate" Muslim leaders. The only losers in the end will be the principles of equity, integrity, and justice. When these are lost, what reigns is anarchy, and this will ultimately lead to the perpetuation of hate crimes.
Once again, America is barking up the wrong tree. US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice has stated that one of the main aims of her tour of the Middle East is to fire up moderate Muslims in the region.
"We are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all the people."Her words are ironic, considering that two of her more significant pitstops are Egypt and Saudi Arabia. I may be wrong, but that's probably why the democratic line is being liberally coated in fluff and spin. Instead, she emphasizes more on forces of moderation, a label into which Saudi Arabia and Egypt might be dropped into without uncomfortable questions being asked.
All credit to Wardah Books for covering Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl's recent visit to Singapore.
Besides promoting his book, The Great Theft, Professor Khaled also gave an interview to the Straits Times. The contents of the interview are nothing less than fascinating and signals a hopeful direction that Southeast Asian Muslims are charting for themselves. I reproduce it in full below, bolding the parts I feel are important.
 "There may need to be sacrificial lambs. I'm going to play this role and speak my conscience." |
I wonder if media outlets like the BBC even understand half the contents about Islam that they put on their website. Take this article, for example, in which a Saudi journalist had had the gall to challenge the writings of Ibn Taymiyya. The teachings of the thirteenth century scholar, of course, underpins the whole religious establishment of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
For his trouble, Jamal Kashoggi was sacked from the Saudi paper, al-Watan and has since based himself in Washington as media advisor to the Saudi ambassador to the US. Oddly enough, in a recent interview, he said,
"I feel good about the price that was paid because it opened up the door for more openness in the Saudi media...Now, is he implying that Muslims with a non-Wahhabi background actually perform the reverse? That such Muslims in fact allow their respect for scholars and clergy and muftis to spill over into the messy business of placing these same people beside God in holiness?
It's now very common for Saudi intellectuals to argue even with the Grand Mufti, and this is very healthy. We will always maintain our respect for our scholars and clergy and muftis - but at the same time one of the good things about our Wahhabi background is we see no-one as holy except God himself."
I was listening to a BBC reporter interview a Hamas official, and wondered why the first feeling I got was that of incredulity. I must be honest here; for some reason, I always cringe when I hear a Middle Eastern accent on the news. It's not the accent, really, but the manner in which a message is delivered, a speech is read out or a question is answered. There just isn't any organization I can relate to, and I am often left feeling a little frustrated.
Part of the feeling might be blamed on an unconscious stereotype I must have of Arabs. There is little need to hide the pernicious influence of Western media in this respect. But I don't believe that it plays such a large part because I feel the same way whenever Israeli officials are interviewed. Benjamin Netanyahu and Dory Gold are exceptions, though. Both are accomplished orators with nice American, news-friendly accents.
In contrast, people like the Hamas official are partial toward:
1. Repetitive emphasis
People from that part of the world seem to believe that an argument can be made stronger if certain demonstrative pronouns (most notably, that) are repeated, ad infinitum. For example, the sentence:
What Israel is doing in the occupied territories is criminal, unjust and oppressive.The Hamas official renders it thus:
What Israel is doing in occupation. That is criminal. That is unjust. That is oppressive.It's butchery of the language, plain and simple. Then, there is always the syndrome of...
What Israel is doing in occupation. That is criminal, and unjust, and oppressive.Replacing a perfectly-usable comma (pause in speech) with mulitple ANDs smacks of being ill-prepared, as if the person being interviewed is ad-libbing things right off his head. The official is not putting forth a case. He is ranting. It weakens authority and legitimacy.
You should talk about Israeli targetted killings, and demolishing of homes, and preventing pregnant women from reaching the hospital, and shooting at little boys and girls.Though the comparison is, in my personal opinion, justified, the question remains unanswered. What is so damaging is that most listeners will discard the comparison and gleefully focus on the clumsy manner in which the question was evaded.
Dear Sir,Because such incapacity should never go unrequited, I present SaveTheHijaz's blistering retort here.
What rubbish.
But then what would you expect if you use two completely unreliable sources: Ali Al-Ahmed, a disgruntled one man 'organisation', whose modus operandi is to spew out anti Saudi material of any kind (its basis on fact being fairly irrelevant) and Sami Angawi, the equally disgruntled former director of the Pilgrimage Research Centre who was fired for the mismanagement of affairs and wants to attack all those that now have responsibility for the Two Holy Places.
Perhaps your readers would be interested in what is really happening. Every artefact discovered has been preserved and protected and will be displayed in new museums in Makkah and Madinah - indeed some artefacts are already on display. In all, more than $19 billion has been spent on preserving and maintaining these two Holy sites.
We are proud of our rich Islamic heritage. A pride reflected in the title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, a title taken by our King. We are also aware of how precious this Islamic heritage is and how important the preservation of this heritage is, not just to us but to the millions of Muslims from around the world who visit the Two Holy Mosques every year, it is hardly something we are going to allow to be destroyed.
Turki Al-Faisal
[source: Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP)]
Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia is a strange man, and I don't mean this in a
disrespectful way. He has been in power for a long time, mostly due to the
fact that his half brother, Fahd ibn Abdul Aziz had fallen into a coma for ten
years before passing away in 2005. As Crown Prince, Abdullah had been
commander-in-chief in all but name only. So when he graced the funeral of
the Sufi teacher Syed Mohammad Alawi Al-Maliki in 2004, it was a premonition of
things to come when he would one day be
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.
Bad news for the
religious establishment who regulate Islam in the kingdom,
of course. Syed Alawi is reviled by those who inherit their intellectual and
even
genealogical lineage from the eighteenth-century preacher, Sheikh
Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab. The latter, whose line of descendants are known
as ahl-al-sheikh, had been instrumental in the initial expansion
of the al-Saud tribe into a full-fledged kingdom and the subsequent
repression of many traditional aspects of Islam, including Sufism.
According to a Saudi Institute report on
religious freedom,
Several government-financed books were written by Hanbali clerics to attack Syed Alawi accusing him of Sufism and apostasy. Algerian-born Shaikh Abu Baker Al-Jazairi, who worked as a speaker at the Prophet's mosque and a teacher at the Islamic University in Madina, attacked Syed Alawi in several speeches and in at least one book.It's a misnomer to characterize the kingdom's scholars as Hanbali, since whatever they take from that particular Madhhab (school of thought) invariably filters through scholars like the thirteenth-century Syrian scholar ibn Taimiyya, who spent his last years in prison for alleged deviancy. As this refreshing website attests, however, the Hanbali Madhhab is very different from the face that emanates from modern movements that claim affiliation with the school of thought. Note the sections on following Madhhabs and even the ruling on the celebration of Mawlid (the Prophet Muhammad's birthday), which a vocal minority condemns as being a blameworthy innovation.
Shaikh Abdullah Bin Manee, a high ranking judge and a member of the Council of Senior Uluma, wrote a book calling Alawi an apostate and a religious deviant. The late Grand Mufti, Shaikh Abdul Aziz Bin Baz, wrote the book's forward.
Note: Salman al-Ouda, of course, is the supervisor of the popular fatwa-website called IslamToday.Saudi Arabia has mobilized some of its most militant clerics, including one Osama bin Laden sought to recruit as his spiritual guide, in a campaign to combat the continuing appeal of al-Qaeda's ideology in the kingdom...
Perhaps the two best-known Wahabi radicals are Salman al-Ouda and Safar al-Hawali. They both spent about five years in prison in the 1990s for criticizing the ruling Saud family for inviting U.S. troops into the kingdom during the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War against Iraq.
After the sermon, Saudi authorities pressured Ouda and Hawali in particular to moderate their tone and to help the government combat al-Qaida inside the kingdom. Hawali, the more radical of the two, suffered a stroke last year and has become inactive. Ouda has largely complied, officials said.
...introducing a new practice like this birthday observation is tantamount to second-guessing Allah.Nonetheless, David B. Ottaway's article continues:
Note: Abdel Mohsen al-Obeikan was featured in one of my previous articles, entitled A scholar breaks ranks. His opposition to al-Qaida's ideology should not, therefore, come as a surprise.Another participant is Obeikan, a former radical Islamic jurist who has publicly challenged Maqdisi and bin Laden to debate their ideology with him.
In an interview at his elegant marble-faced home on the northern outskirts of Riyadh, al-Obeikan recounted that he twice met bin Laden here just before he was expelled by Saudi authorities to Sudan in 1991. The al-Qaida leader sought to convince him to become the spiritual leader of a movement to overthrow the Saud royal family, "like Khomeini," he said, referring to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of Iran's 1979 lslamic revolution.
The masbahah, or prayer beads, has always been a source of controvosy for some Muslims. Sheikh Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani- the Saudi scholar who once issued a fatwa urging Palestinians to leave the occupied territories en masse- wrote,
...the subhah (prayer beads) is bid'ah and was not known at the time of the Prophet...One wonders then what reaction this little device might invite.
David Myatt is certainly no stranger to ideologies, having been active in the
neo-Nazi camp and also founding the hardline British National Socialist
Movement (BNS). In 1998, all that changed when he walked into a British mosque and
announced his conversion to Islam.
David Myatt's discovery of Islam is vividly portrayed in an
Internet article he wrote for the
Saved Sect website.
His association with the Saved Sect speaks volumes on the stream of Islam he is partial to.
The Saved Sect, more
formally known as the Savior Sect, receives its name from the famous hadith
(tradition):
My nation will be divided into 73 sects, all of them will be in the Fire except for one (the saved sect)...Like most other Salafist flavors that derive the idea of a saved sect (al-Firqat un-Naajiyah) from the hadith, the Saved Sect merely claims to represent the views of the saved sect without claiming that they themselves are saved.
1. Labeling popular scholars such as Sheikh Hamza Yusuf and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi as apostates. Not even Saudi-Salafists like Sheikh ibn Baaz or Sheikh ibn Uthaymeen are spared.Such lists are hardly novel, since ideologies don't ordinarily tolerate one another. The Saved Sect's criticism of popular Saudi sheikhs, for example, ensures hostility from a tireless and well-endowed quarter; that of Saudi Salafism. However, to extend the point about general ideological intolerance, Saudi Salafism does share a common enemy with the Saved Sect. Both groups detest Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and many conservative Salafists label him as the Wicked Mufti. A Mufti, of course, is an Islamic scholar who is qualified to issue religious edicts called fatwas. Combined with the appellation, wicked, it denotes a person who perhaps issues heretical fatwas.
2. Positively identifying the Saudi kingdom as the personification of the ancient cult of secessionists known as Khawaarij (seceders). [see khawaarij]
3. Condemning the practice of taqleed (adherence to a School of Thought) that is widespread amongst Muslims to be a "road to deviation, misguidance, superstition and all other forms of falsehood". [see taqleed]
4. Labeling Sufism as a deviant sect. [see bid'ah]
...[they] tend to have the same habit as did the Soviets, labeling a 'deviation' with the name of the thinker (Suroorism, Qaradawism, Qutbism).Aside from having a whole movement named after him, Sheikh al-Qaradawi is also the target of any number of threats. They range from relatively harmless name-calling, like being dubbed a "barking dog" by no less a personage than Sheikh Muqbil ibn Haadee al-Waadi'ee, to out-and-out appeals for his execution. In this, Sheikh Abu Basser at-Tartousi, a man who explicitly styles himself a Wahhabi [1] and christens the Saudi regime as a kafir (Islam-rejecting) establishment, quotes a verdict by Saudi Sheikh ibn Uthaymeen [2],
...if he [al-Qaradawi] doesn't repent, he is to be killed as an apostate.
The Saved Sect, however, carefully maintains that it does not,
...advocate any type of violence towards any particular nation.Yet, ironically enough, in an article entitled "How Islam will dominate the world", the group recommends several ways in which a state or country can become Daar ul-Islam (the domain of Islam). One of them states that Muslims should,
...rise, overthrow the government and implement the Sharee'ah by force...
A CBS poll claims to prove, within a reasonable margin of error, that people's perception of Islam is going down the drain.
Margin or no margin, one does not need a poll to know that.
In almost all interfaith gatherings, the agenda inevitably coalesces on the question of Islam's image. I think it saps the agenda somewhat. More can be done instead of simply waxing and waning that Muslims are hated as never before. God forbid that such gatherings should go the way of most OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) meetings.
Nonetheless, it is a fact that most people believe that one of the means to
reduce the potential for future terrorism is to build bridges between faiths.
While this is a commendable attitude, I have never believed in its realism, not
while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example, is couched in the absolutist terms of religion. To put it bluntly, peace has little chance of succeeding if terms
like Jerusalem, third holiest city of Islam, and Jerusalem, eternal
capital of Israel are consistently placed on the negotiating table.
The Israeli position, especially, makes little sense in the tumultuous context of
the Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures). They, of all people, should know the falsity of such claims.
For better or for worse, however, Israel has
influential friends in the United States.
No group has been more vociferous in supporting America's myopic stance on the
Middle East than the Christian premillennialist camp. Malise Ruthven (Fundamentalism, the
Search for Meaning) calls them,
theological refugees in a world they no longer control. They have a baleful influence on American foreign policy, by tilting it towards the Jewish state which they aim eventually to obliterate, by converting 'righteous' Jews to Christ. They have damaged the education of American children in some places by adding 'scientific creationism' to the curriculum...On a planetary level, they are selfish, greedy, and stupid, damaging the environment by the excessive use of energy and lobbying against environmental controls. What is the point of saving the planet, they argue, if Jesus is arriving tomorrow?Interfaith gatherings, while great for fostering relations between the intellectuals and elites of religions, have limited impact on the ground. Sometimes, I suspect that these talks are promoted for their sheer futility, because let's face it, the initiatives and positions adopted by interfaith councils seldom, if ever, trickle down to the sermons delivered from either Christian pulpits or Muslim minbars. No boats are rocked. It's a useful distraction from real problems.
...an open dialogue between Sunni, Shiaa and Sufi Muslims.He further adds,
"We should meet and refer our differences to the Quran and the Sunna."Now, I am not going to comment on Sheikh Ayedh's inference that Sunni Muslims and Sufi Muslims are two different things. It's obvious he means Salafist Muslims when he mentions Sunni Muslims, even though the Sunni'ism of the majority of Muslims is based on taqlid (adherence) to the four Madhhabs (Schools of Thought) and a qualified acceptance of the science of Tassawwuf (Sufism). This majority is in fact established by the Jordan Initiative, which places the Madhhabs at the apex of a list it calls "true Islam". Why is this an issue? Salafists typically despise taqlid and condemn it every opportunity they get.