Clipmarks | arifsali's 'islam' clips

Comedy show plays on Danes' fears of Islam and terrorism

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:19:35 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Osama is a businessman who sees terrorism as a profit center, selling terrorism-themed T-shirts, caps and ballpoint pens. Abdul, a convert to Islam, acts as if he cannot kill enough people, or make bombs big enough. Ali, a Pakistani, has won a competition for the honor of avenging the cartoons published in Denmark that disparaged Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.

Despite the threat they seem to present, the men have so far eluded the Danish police - not because they run such a sophisticated operation but because they are the principal characters in a situation comedy, "The Terror Cell."

The show, about a bunch of losers in a gang that can't shoot straight, is scheduled to debut on Danish television next year. Its creator, principal writer and star is Omar Marzouk, a Muslim and one of the best-known stand-up comics in Denmark.

Tags: cartoons, muslims, comedy

Can you find a single verse which specifically sanctions the use of violence

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:02:37 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Interesting article, at the source

Clip Source: blogs.guardian.co.uk

One of the peculiar features of the recent rise in Islamophobia is the manner in which so many opponents of the Muslim faith try to pass themselves off as experts on the Qur'an. In the wake of the Channel 4 Dispatches programme, It shouldn't happen to a Muslim, which I commissioned for Channel 4, numerous critics on Comment is free and on the channel4.com viewers' forum tried to convince me that the Qur'an preaches violence, terror and holy war. In my experience, such critics tend not to have actually read the Qur'an in its entirety, let alone in its original Arabic script, and prefer to rely on a rather disingenuous combination of mistranslation and misquotation.

A few years ago, the prominent Canadian-Muslim scholar, Dr Jamal Badawi, offered a prize of $1 million to anyone who could find any verses in the Qur'an which referred to "holy war". The prize remains unclaimed, as the Arabic translation of "holy war" - "harb muqaddasah" - appears nowhere in the Quran.

Tags: quran, islam

Nation’s first mosque to go solar

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:41:07 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: newsblogs.chicagotribune.com

Members of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview not only have seen the light, they will rely on it from now on when they pray inside their house of worship.

On Thursday, the Bridgeview mosque earned a distinction as the nation’s first mosque to go solar when leaders installed solar panels on the roof to help heat the building’s water.

The solar thermal system will tie into the existing water heater, powered by natural gas, to provide hot water for people as they wash their hands, face and feet before prayer.

"Islam teaches us to conserve and protect God’s wonderful creation," said Imam Jamal Said of the Mosque Foundation. "This solar hot water system helps us do just that. ... The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was quick to teach his companions: ‘Never waste water even if you have river flowing to your door.’ We will be mindful of his teaching as we wash for prayers with this water warmed by the sun."

Tags: environment, religion, islam, united states

Islamic world should learn from Turkey court ruling

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:00:33 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: its relations with the United States have frayed over the past few years.

CNN: Why is that?

Zakaria: Mostly because of the Bush administration. The Pentagon never forgave Turkey for not allowing a second front (through Turkey) for the invasion of Iraq.

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

The battle threatened to throw the country into turmoil. Now, it seems that stability has been restored. The party won't be banned, but it will curtail some of its more overtly Islamic activism. (Which was not very Islamic, in my opinion, anyway.)

CNN: Is this important beyond Turkey?

Zakaria: Yes, Turkey is the only genuinely liberal democracy in the Muslim world. If it appeared that it could not strike a balance between religion and politics, it would send a terrible signal.

People around the Islamic world should now take a hard look at Turkey, where the AK Party, which is full of very religious Muslims, is also the most progressive party in the country, passing dozens of liberal, European-style reforms of the economy, legal and social system. Turkey under the AK Party shows the most inspiring combination of Islam and democracy in the world.

Tags: turkey, democracy, muslims

Online Queen

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:47:03 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

It is the seventh video she will have posted since she made her online debut in March. Speaking in English, she asks people to suggest stereotypes they have heard about the Arab world so she could "break them down one by one".

King Abdullah's wife may not be the only public figure tapping into the popularity of YouTube - politicians and monarchs worldwide have created sites.

But as a prominent Arab using the internet to try to engage with the west and promote moderate Islam, she stands out from the crowd.

"My teenage son is a man of very few words and his response was 'cool', so I guess it's got to be good," she jokes.

YouTubers seem to agree with him: so far over two million people have watched her videos (a combination of posts from her and contributions from various musicians, comedians and local Jordanians).

Tags: jordan, queen, youtube

Islam and Hinduism's blurred lines

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:16:50 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Mr Singh is a member of the Kathat community in Rajasthan and follows what his community believes is a pledge undertaken by their forefathers.

Legend has it that the Mehrat, Kathat and Cheeta communities - with a combined total of one million people in four districts of central Rajasthan - are the descendants of the Hindu ruler of the warrior caste, Prithviraj Chauhan.

The three communities also have strong Islamic connections, because many centuries ago, their forefathers undertook a pledge to follow three Muslim practices.

These include the circumcision for the newborn male children in the community, eating halal meat and burying their dead.

That is the tradition many have followed, keeping the word of their ancestors. But it has also led to them facing something of a faith-based identity crisis.

A majority of them are poor and illiterate. They are people with a mixed Hindu-Muslim identity.

"We don't care about being Hindu or Muslim. It is sheer politics," he says.

Tags: islam, hinduism, india, culture, religion

Say No To Terrorism

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:05:45 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.yehhumnaheen.org

The Yeh Hum Naheen Foundation is a Pakistan based non-profit organisation that was established under the Societies Act of Pakistan in October 2007, with the following key aims:

To reinforce the point that Islam is a peaceful faith that promotes tolerance and harmony.
To develop an awareness among people regarding the issues of the growing radicalization of Pakistani youth.
To promote better understanding and co-existence of Muslims around the world among non-Muslim communities.
To convey that the majority of Muslims do not support the rise in terrorism, and to deny Muslims the opportunity for involvement in terrorist activities.
To show the positive impact of Pakistan and Muslims around the world, and remove the distance between east and west through media education.

Tags: pakistan, terrorism, muslims

Exhibit aims to shatter US stereotypes of Islam

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:53:47 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - In the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Princess Wijdan Al Hashemi and her friend Aliki Moschis-Gauguet noticed that the only depictions they saw of Muslim women showed figures behind veils, oppressed by their cultures.

Moschis-Gauget said, "'Do you see what's going on the media?... Muslim women are being portrayed as women living behind long veils,'" said Al Hashemi, founder and director of the Royal Society of Fine Arts of Jordan. "She couldn't stand the way Muslim and Arab women were being portrayed."

Al Hashemi and Moschis-Gauguet, president of the Pan-Mediterranean Women Artists Network, turned to the world they knew best to find an answer: the world of art.

To combat what they saw as misperceptions about the Muslim world and Arab nations, the two women teamed up to create a traveling exhibit featuring female artists from Islamic countries.

The show "Breaking the Veils: Women Artists From the Islamic World"

Tags: art, culture, islam, religion, women

The dilemma of anti-extremist Pakistanis

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:03:00 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: The whole piece is worth reading.

Clip Source: icga.blogspot.com

Yesterday the New York Times ran a front-page article on the growth of al-Qaida in Pakistan and the failure of the Bush administration to devise any strategy to confront it.

(Instead they are apparently thinking again about attacking Iran.

As usual, the Times article presented the alternatives as do nothing, Predator missile strikes, or invasion by U.S. Special Forces, without any discussion of competing Pakistani and Pashtun political agendas for the tribal agencies.

American hypocrisy has played into the hands of Islamic militants. They have been vigorously promoting the notion that this is a bipolar conflict of Islam, which they claim to represent, versus imperialism. Many Pakistanis, who desperately want someone to stand up to the Americans, buy into this.

According to Khattak, one part of the "government of Pakistan" is at war with groups created by another part of the "government of Pakistan." A policy toward "Pakistan" cannot address this problem.

Tags: terrorism, united states, pakistan

The Islam you don't hear about

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 05:27:04 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: blogs.usatoday.com

A trip to Indonesia — home to more than 200 million Muslims — reveals a faith that hardly resembles the one Americans have come to know in the blood-soaked years since 9/11.

After the 9/11 attacks, Americans put out a call for moderate Islam. Many Muslims answered that call, but few Americans heard them. Early this month, I traveled to Asia to see what Islam looks like on the ground there, and to listen to what Muslims themselves have to say about their religion, terrorism and the United States. What I found surprised me.

I went to Asia because Islam is by no means a Middle Eastern phenomenon. In fact, Asia is home to most of the world's Muslims. I focused on Indonesia because there are more Muslims in Indonesia than in any other country — roughly three times as many as in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

Tags: indonesia, islam, muslims

In Algeria, a Tug of War for Young Minds

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:20:16 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

ALGIERS — First, Abdel Malek Outas’s teachers taught him to write math equations in Arabic, and embrace Islam and the Arab world. Then they told him to write in Latin letters that are no longer branded unpatriotic, and open his mind to the West.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Malek is 19, and he is confused.

“When we were in middle school we studied only in Arabic,” he said. “When we went to high school, they changed the program, and a lot is in French. Sometimes, we don’t even understand what we are writing.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The confusion has bled off the pages of his math book and deep into his life. One moment, he is rapping; another, he recounts how he flirted with terrorism, agreeing two years ago to go with a recruiter to kill apostates in the name of jihad.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

At a time of religious revival across the Muslim world, Algeria’s youth are in play. The focus of this contest is the schools, where for decades Islamists controlled what children learned, and how they learned, officials and education experts here said.

Tags: algeria, education, youth

Pakistani sentenced to die for blasphemy

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:24:45 GMT

clipped by: arifsali

Clip Source: www.newsvine.com

A Pakistani judge sentenced a Muslim man to death Wednesday on charges he insulted Islam's Prophet Muhammad, a court official said.

Falk Sher, a court administrator, said Judge Shoaib Ahmad Roomi also sentenced the man, Shafeeq Latif, to life in prison and fined him $75,000 on a separate charge of desecrating pages of Islam's holy book, the Quran, in 2006.

Latif was accused of making derogatory remarks about Muhammad.

The trial was held in the eastern city of Sialkot after police arrested him in a nearby village.

Latif's lawyer was not immediately available for comment, but Sher said the defendant had the right to appeal.

Under Pakistan's blasphemy laws, anyone who insults Muhammad can be punished by death. Scores of people, including Muslims and minority Christians, are facing trial under the laws, which human rights groups have demanded be abolished.

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the government on Tuesday to abolish the death penalty

Tags: pakistan, law, religion, blasphemy

Students rusticated due to religious bias

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 21:59:51 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Pakistan.
Shameful

Clip Source: www.thepersecution.org

Professor Dr Asghar Ali Randhawa, Principal of Punjab Medical College rusticated 15 Ahmadi women students and 8 men students from the college as well as hostels on June 5, 2008. Four of the women students were in the final year of their studies.

As per essential details, a campaign was going on for the last one month against Ahmadi women students who were accused of preaching Ahmadiyyat. It is not far-fetched that an Ahmadi occasionally chooses to defend herself against the oft-repeated charge that “Ahmadis are the worst enemies of Islam and Pakistan.” At this college, the anti-Ahmadi campaign was supported by a warden of the hostel.

As all this was an organized campaign, some extremist male students, mostly from the Islami Jamiat Talaba, increased their efforts to poison the college environment further. The college administration, rather than handling them firmly as done by the Punjab University recently, gave them a free hand.

Tags: pakistan, islam, students

Against Islamic Extremism

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:30:10 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: It is for this reason that one must approach Islam from Islamic sources if one wants to understand it. This doesn’t mean one will have to accept all that one reads, nor that one can’t be critical after you have studied it: but you will then be able to be critical of something which is true and representative of the faith, not something made up.

Clip Source: vox-nova.com

What has become one of the most difficult things for Westerners to understand is that Islam is not a monolithic religion. There are many ways Islam has manifested in history, both in its normative forms, but also in its secondary and under-represented forms. Just as it would be wrong to form one’s understanding of Christianity by looking to Christian slave-owners in the 19^thcentury (even if they could have appeared as normative to many looking to the Christian faith at that time), so it is wrong to form one’s understanding of Islam based upon 21^stcentury radicals.

Just as it is wrong to read an anti-Catholic polemical tract to understand Catholicism, so it is wrong to read anti-Muslim polemical tracts to understand Islam (even though the tracts will indeed “quote from legitimate sources” they will do so carefully, cherry-picked for the most shock value, and without a legitimate hermeneutical approach to help the readers properly understand the context of the quotes themselves).

Tags: islam, religion, faith, culture

The paradox of Muslim weakness

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:51:50 GMT

clipped by: arifsali
clipper's remarks: Interesting article

Clip Source: www.iht.com

In the years since 9/11 two broad narratives have emerged in the West to explain the nature of the so-called war on terror.

On the right it has become commonplace to equate Islamism - the ideology that seeks to order 21st century societies by the medieval norms enshrined in Islamic Shariah law - with a long line of totalitarian threats to liberal democracy. Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution, for instance, calls it a "foul apparition that has succeeded fascism, Nazism, and communism as the world's next bane."

The left sees the issue as a product of poverty or flawed policies toward the Middle East. Robert Fisk of The Independent blames Islamist terrorism on "political situations and injustice in various parts of the world."

Both views are flawed

Tags: islam, west