The Beauty of Islam that attracts intellectuals like Kamala Das by Syed Raihan Ahmad Nezami

Kamala Das had converted to Islam on 12 December 1999. Kamala Suraiya - her Islamic name - was considered to be one of the finest authors. She was also a good poet. Known as a tradition-defying iconoclast, she had sought to convince her readers that inequality among humans is most inhuman. After a long creative life and having pondered over the ideology of Islam and presumably comparing it with other religions, for a long time, she decided to take refuge in Islam. After her conversion in a grand ceremony organized at Chohi in Kerala, she observed in a T.V interview: "I didn't accept Islam under any pressure; it's my spontaneous and personal decision. So I don't care about any criticism, Islam is the most precious treasure for me and it is dear to me more than my life".  -- Maulana Nadeem Al-Wajidee Translated from Urdu by Syed Raihan Ahmad Nezami
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Harassment of Minorities is not Islam

Persecution of Ahmadiyas, Ismailis in Pakistan The Taliban have begun harassing Ismaili Muslims in Pakistan. They would not spare any one and will not be satisfied until the last person left obeys them. If this trend is not checked and criticized, they may think that they have the approval from the Muslims. They don't. They need to know clearly and loudly that their ideology has no currency among Muslims and above all, their cruelty is not Islam, not one bit.... The persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims in Pakistan is a living example; they cannot even say "As Salaam u Aliakum" or call their place of worship a Masjid. The epidemic has now crawled over into Bangladesh and Indonesia as well. Did the Pakistani lawmakers even pause to think about the legitimacy of Hudood Laws? Some thirty years later another Avatar of Zia ul Haq employed the same strategy of fear and got the Patriot Act passed here in the United States. Both the laws are a stain on the civil societies.... As Muslims, we do not have the time to do the Ijtihaad, the consultative decision making process on issues of the day. As a result we Muslims have been reduced to rituals, rather than the spirit. It is time to believe in the prime value of Islam; freedom. -- Mike Ghouse

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Taliban biggest heroine smugglers in the world

Taliban biggest heroine smugglers in the world
By Asad Mufty, Amsterdam
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Pakistan: Where have we gone wrong?

Islamic Society
Pakistan: Where have we gone wrong?
By Irfan Siddiqui, a Pakistani columnist
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Maulvi Yahya Nomani on The Truth About Jihad

Maulvi Yahya Nomani on The Truth About Jihad
Can jihad be declared against a non-Muslim government that does not in any way oppress Muslims? Can such a government be told either to accept Islam or else hand over power to Muslims? This is a very crucial question. ... it should be kept in mind that in those days all states were identified with one religion or the other.  Every state was strictly identified with a particular religion, and so it was simply inconceivable that any non-Muslim government would allow Muslims to invite its subjects to God's path.  This is why the issue was never even discussed then of how Muslims should relate to a non-Muslim state that explicitly allowed Islam to be practiced in its territory or that permitted its subjects to accept Islam and follow it. In the view of some scholars, in such a situation Muslims must adopt the path of peacefully inviting others to the faith, making use of it to the utmost extent possible so much as to that all the adequate proofs (hujjat) of God be made known. After this, God will decide, in accordance with His practice, which He invariably does after all His proofs have been clearly established, and which can take any form. My own limited understanding leads me to believe that this opinion is in closer accordance with reason, the spirit of the shariah, and the aims and wisdom of God's revelation. This position can be backed by Hadith reports that insist on the need for peaceful propagation of Islam before fighting can at all be envisaged. And, it must be remembered, today it is no longer forbidden for Muslims to communicate their faith to non-Muslim rulers or non-Muslims in general. -- Maulvi Yahya Nomani (Translated from Urdu by Yoginder Sikand)
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Syed Sanaullah

Veils and Burqas in France and Turkey

Veils and Burqas in France and Turkey

If the idea is to cover up the body, then some of the undulating heaps , faces peeping out are more stimulating than ladies in Club Mediterranee or erotic gyrations by Bollywood prima donnas. Although the custom of covering women with head scarves is now generally associated with Islamic societies, the practice predates Islamic culture by many millennia. Veiling and seclusion were marks of prestige and status symbols in the Assyrian, Greco-Roman and Byzantine empires, as well as in Sasanian Iran. The Muslim Umayyads copied it from the Byzantines in Damascus, which they took over lock stock and barrel. According to one tradition, the Prophet Mohammad's wife Aisha did not veil her face. Generally, there was greater freedom for women among nomadic Arabs, Turks and Mongols before Islam.  -- K Gajendra Singh

Sarkozy and the burqas

Sarkozy and the burqas
Nicolas Sarkozy's problem is that he hasn't read enough Hegel. ... For Hegel this isn't real freedom, because our wants and desires are determined by society. By those lights, a western fashion victim is as much a sartorial prisoner as a woman in a burqa. By real freedom, Hegel meant not doing whatever one wants but having the freedom from societal conditioning by using reason. If you come across someone who manages to be really free in this sense then send me their names so we can celebrate their escape. -- Stuart Jeffries
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‘Burqa helps, makes me feel powerful’

'Burqa helps, makes me feel powerful'
I am wearing this out of choice. If somebody forced me to wax my legs and wear a bikini, I would have been a prisoner. My hijab lets people just focus on my work and my values, than on my body." Shaista says, "I think those who are forced to wear the hijab are enslaved." But banning any kind of clothing, says Maria, is a "violation of human rights" and such statements are "irresponsible". "Sarkozy should know if such practice is being followed for thousands of years, it has some use, otherwise it would have died out," she says. -- Irena Akbar
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Syed Asadullah

Burqa Debate: Classic western feminism hits a dead-end when it comes to choice

Burqa Debate: Classic western feminism hits a dead-end when it comes to choice
I have to confess that I don't get it when some women say that being behind a veil liberates them from the prying eyes of the male gaze and makes them feel safer. It's become just about the most clichéd explanation. ...Essentially, classic western feminism hits a dead-end when it comes to a complex word called choice. Traditions that seem patently unequal find refuge in the argument of choice. And we can debate forever whether it's about free will or socialisation by a patriarchal regime, but there's not much you can say to a woman who chooses to drape herself in swathes of black cloth. I still remember Kamala Das, the eccentric — but fiercely independent — poet arriving on my television show in a burqa. She had recently converted, and this she said, was her choice. How could anyone argue against that? -- Barkha Dutt A reproduction of the Taliban dress code The reality of the matter surpasses the burqa itself. This is seen clearly in the fear that swiped France in reaction to the burqa, which appears like a reproduction of the dress code imposed by the Taliban on women in Afghanistan. the reality of the matter surpasses the burqa itself. This is seen clearly in the fear that swiped France in reaction to the burqa, which appears like a reproduction of the dress code imposed by the Taliban on women in Afghanistan. The historic implications of the burqa are those of radicalism and extremism, thus the stir is not an expression of racism against Muslims, as some claimed, but simply a fear of a drift towards sectarianism. There is no doubt that immigrants, in general, are subject to injustice and restrictions in France for many reasons not related to the burqa, but to the country's economic and social situations. Surely, there are some fanatics in France, but they remain a minority, just like in all other countries. -- Mohammad Makhlouf
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Syed Asadullah

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi on The Islamic Law of Jihad

Javed Ahmad Ghamidi on The Islamic Law of Jihad
The Qur'an asserts that if the use of force would not have been allowed in such cases, the disruption and disorder caused by insurgent nations could have reached the extent that the places of worship – where the Almighty is kept in constant remembrance – would have become deserted and forsaken, not to mention the disruption of the society itself:             And had it not been that Allah checks one set of people with another, the monasteries and churches, the synagogues and the mosques, in which His praise is abundantly celebrated would have been utterly destroyed. (22:40) In religious parlance, this use of force is called Jihad -- Javed Ahmad Ghamidi,  renowned Islamic scholar based in Lahore, (Translated by: Shehzad Saleem)
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Don't ban the burqa, question it

Should Mr Sarkozy ban the burqa from France? Definitely not. Because bans are undemocratic and an unqualified attack on individual freedom. Should we however use this opportunity to question the efficacy of the burqa, the chador, the veil or what you will? Definitely yes. Specially since the burqa isn't just another piece of cloth but has a lot of ideological and cultural connotations to it. The French President himself has termed it a symbol of subservience which has no place in a secular state. Doesn't it have religious connotations, you may also ask? But hey, just let's keep religion out of this. Primarily because, as scholars point out, the Quran makes a mention of modesty rather than the word 'burqa' when it comes to women's apparel. The veil has more a cultural significance in Islam than a theological one. The Quran categorically mentions that "the best garment is the garment of righteousness." (7:26) And righteousness may or may not be interpreted as the burqa, depending on the personal choice of the person. -- Nikhat Kazmi   --- First part of Sarkozy's statement. The burqa is not a symbol of religion. The burqa, in fact, is integral to the Muslim identity as laypersons know it. But do the scriptures, the Koran, in particular say that women must wear burqa? I spoke to a couple of friends and Sarkozy's so wrong. The Prophet certainly advised Muslim women to protect their dignity. That a woman's dignity lies in her own hands and it is best that she have a chador when stepping out of the house…. Conditioning or choice, many Muslim women bond with their burqa. It's as much a style statement as a proud marker of identity. It gives them 'security', they say in a world that has become overtly sexualised. It's their choice to wear their identity on rather long sleeves, but that's none of my business. -- Nandita Sengupta
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Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists

WASHINGTON — Documents gathered by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims provide new evidence of extensive financial support for Al Qaeda and other extremist groups by members of the Saudi royal family, but the material may never find its way into court because of legal and diplomatic obstacles. The case has put the Obama administration in the middle of a political and legal dispute, with the Justice Department siding with the Saudis in court last month in seeking to kill further legal action. Adding to the intrigue, classified American intelligence documents related to Saudi finances were leaked anonymously to lawyers for the families. The Justice Department had the lawyers' copies destroyed and now wants to prevent a judge from even looking at the material. … Saudi lawyers and supporters say that the links are flimsy and exploit stereotypes about terrorism, and that the country is being sued because it has deep pockets and was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers.-- Eric Lichtblau, New York Times

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The War within Islam: Iran: Not a simple struggle between conservatives and reformists

The struggle between the worldly clerics (in alliance with the bazaar) and the republicans is as old as the 1979 Iranian revolution, where the "fedayeen" of the Tudeh party [Communist cadres] were the foot soldiers of the revolution but the clerics eventually usurped the leadership. ...Imam Khomeini was wary of the Iranian mullahs and he created the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (which is Mr. Khamenei's source of power today) as an independent force to ensure clerics didn't hijack the revolution. His own preference was that the government should be headed by non-clerics. In the early years of the revolution, the conspiracies hatched by the triumvirate of Beheshti-Rafsanjani-Rajai who engineered the ouster of the secularist leftist president Bani Sadr (who was Mr. Khomeini's protégé), had the agenda to establish a one-party theocratic state. ... If Mr. Rafsanjani's putsch succeeds, Iran would bear the look of a decadent outpost in the "pro-West" Persian Gulf. Would a dubious regime be durable? More important, is it what Mr. Obama wishes to see as the destiny of the Iranian people? The Arab street is watching. Iran is an exception in the Muslim world where people have been empowered. Iran's multitudes of poor who form Mr. Ahmedinejad's support base, detest the corrupt, venal clerical establishment. They don't even hide their visceral hatred of the Rafsanjani family. -- M.K. Bhadrakumar

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