December 8, 2008
Muslims in India Put Aside Grievances to Repudiate Terrorism
By ROBERT F. WORTH
MUMBAI, India — Throngs of Indian Muslims, ranging from Bollywood actors to skullcap-wearing seminary students, marched through the heart of Mumbai and several other cities on Sunday, holding up banners proclaiming their condemnation of terrorism and loyalty to the Indian state.
The protests, though relatively small, were the latest in a series of striking public gestures by Muslims — who have often come under suspicion after past attacks — to defensively dissociate their own grievances as a minority here from any sort of sympathy for terrorism or radical politics in the wake of the deadly assault here that ended Nov. 29.
Muslim leaders have refused to allow the bodies of the nine militants killed in the attacks to be buried in Islamic cemeteries, saying the men were not true Muslims. They also suspended the annual Dec. 6 commemoration of a 1992 riot in which Hindus destroyed a mosque, in an effort to avert communal tension. Muslim religious scholars and public figures have issued strongly worded condemnations of the attacks.
So far, their approach appears to have worked: the response has been remarkably unified, with little of the suspicion and fear that followed some previous attacks.
Hindu right-wing groups have been noticeably absent from the streets. Although leaders of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have criticized the government’s handling of the crisis, they have not stirred anti-Muslim sentiment. The fact that some 40 Muslims were among the victims of the attackers may well have helped dispel any strife.
Still, many Muslims seem anxious, fearing that some of the anger unleashed by the attacks may be directed into the Hindu-Muslim violence that has often marred India’s modern history.
“It’s a pity we have to prove ourselves as Indians,” said Mohammed Siddique, a young accountant who was marching in the protest here on Sunday afternoon with his wife and mother. “But the fact is, we need to speak louder than others, to make clear that those people do not speak for our religion — and that we are not Pakistanis.”
The cluster of banners all around him, held aloft by marchers, seemed to bear out his point. Some read “Our Country’s Enemies are Our Enemies,” others, “Killers of Innocents are Enemies of Islam.” A few declared, in uncertain grammar, “Pakistan Be Declared Terrorist State.”
There were also slogans defending against the charge often made by right-wing Hindus that Muslims constitute a fifth column, easily exploited by terrorists. “Communalist and Terrorist are Cousins,” one sign read. Some of the marchers held up a sign with lines drawn through the names of various terrorist or extremist groups, including, notably, the acronym S.I.M.I.
That stands for the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, a radical group, now banned, that has come under suspicion after recent attacks. One of the men arrested earlier this year in what appears to have been a similar plot against Mumbai landmarks used to belong to the group. Unlike the most recent attackers, who are all believed to be Pakistani, four of six members of the earlier plot were Indian.
There is little doubt that jihadists — including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group believed to be responsible for the Nov. 26-29 attacks — are seeking Indian recruits. Although such groups are rooted in the ideology of global jihad, many people fear that the Indians who join them may be motivated in part by essentially Indian grievances, like the 2002 mass killings of Muslims in the state of Gujarat that left 1,100 dead.
One of the gunmen in last month’s attacks referred to the Gujarat riots before he shot and killed a hostage at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, apparently in an effort to identify his own cause with that of Indian Muslims.
He seems to have failed. The brutality of the attacks and the fact that many Muslims died have strengthened a sense of outrage among ordinary Muslims here, and even some sense of communal harmony, however precarious.
“After this attack, everything has changed; people now see the realities,” said Saeed Ahmed, 45, as he stood outside his stationery shop on Muhammad Ali Road, a working-class Muslim area. “This is something different from what we had before, it’s like your American 9/11. It is not about Hindus and Muslims; it is about the nation being attacked.”
Certainly, the violence has prompted many Muslims, including religious scholars, Bollywood figures and politicians, to speak out more urgently than they had in the past.
“Indian Muslims have often suffered twice: first from the terror, and then from the accusations afterward,” said Javed Akhtar, a Muslim poet and lyricist. “Perhaps because of that, they have been much more articulate and more unconditionally clear about condemning this attack.”
But many remain anxious that foreign jihadists could take advantage of the divisions in Indian society to wreak more havoc here. India’s 140 million Muslims are generally much poorer and less educated than Hindus. Although some of the very rich and many Bollywood stars are Muslim, the faith is far less well represented in the professions and the middle class. Many have bitter memories of communal riots and violence, from the 2002 killings in Gujarat all the way back to the bloodletting that accompanied the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.
“There is a very deep divide,” said Mahesh Bhatt, a well-known film producer and director who is half Muslim, half Hindu, as he sat on a plastic chair on the set of his latest film on Sunday morning, with actors strolling nearby. “And if the foreign element is using the indigenous clay, how can justice be done?”
Mr. Bhatt, who has the baroque manner of an old-fashioned Hollywood eminence, added that he saw in the crisis a chance for India to heal the religious and social fractures that make it vulnerable.
“In every danger there is an opportunity, a chance to look at the evil within,” he said. “If you’re going to do this fight against terror, you’d better start by fortifying your own house.”
Perception of Islam
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Mehreen1221
- Posts: 83
- Joined: Sun Mar 23, 2008 8:02 pm
- Location: London, England
- Contact:
BULLSHITT! I was like, damnit, that's just some minor gun accidents news...some guys accidentally push the triggers of their toys and killed a bunch of foreigners...oops! he he...what's the big deal? just bury or burn the deads and move on...there are literally more deaths occur everyday on the streets and railroads of Bombay and nobody gives a fiddle, rather Indians feel envy of those deadly statistics. I was actually hoping to see blown off buildings...seriously. and I hate this nuisance name Mumbai. it is Bombay.
Last edited by Mehreen1221 on Thu Dec 25, 2008 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
At last someone with the guts to say this! Mehreen1221 is 100% right. The Hindus kill thousands of innocent Muslims in occupied Kashmir and elsewhere in India. Let's not forget how the Hindu fundamentalists are now targetting Christians, tribal peoples and low-caste groups. And, don't forget the communist insurgency in other parts of India as well as the Buddhist/Oriental groups in eastern India who are fighting to gain their indepedence from the Hindus.Mehreen1221 wrote:BULLSHITT! I was like, damnit, that's just some minor gun accidents news...some guys accidentally push the triggers of their toys and killed a bunch of foreigners...oops! he he...what's the big deal? just bury or burn the deads and move on...there are literally more deaths occur everyday on the streets and railroads of Bombay and nobody gives a fiddle, rather Indians feel envy of those deadly statistics. I was actually hoping to see blown off buildings...seriously. and I hate this nuisance name Mumbai .it is Bombay.
Anyway, as Mehreen1221 said thousands of people die every year in the most horrific circumstances in Indian. The Hindu religion/culture is pretty much indifferent to people's suffering and poverty.
I too hate the ficitious name 'Mumbai'. The Hindu fundamentalists changed it from Bombay because 'Mumbai' is the name of some made-up Hindu god. Interesting that the fascist Hindu group Shiv Shena is in charge of Bombay. Apart from baiting Muslims in the city, look what they do to their own people who migrate from other parts of India to find work out of poverty:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7287007.stm
India's victims of anti-migrant anger
Lying on a bed in a dingy ward of a government hospital in India's eastern state of Bihar, 37-year-old Srikishun Singh tries to cover what remains of his hands with a blanket.
He says his hands were chopped by a group of people in the western Indian city of Pune in Maharashtra state last month. They were demanding the removal of migrant workers like Srikishun.
It all began when the leader of a small right-wing regionalist party, Raj Thackeray, accused migrants of swamping Maharashtra, India's most industrialised state, in search of jobs.
Following his statement, his supporters attacked north Indian migrants like Srikishun in Mumbai (Bombay) and other towns in the state and damaged property associated with them.
Police arrested Mr Thackeray on charges of stoking communal tension. He has denied inciting violence.
The unrest forced many migrants to flee their neighbourhoods - in Nasik, a booming industrial city, several thousands were reported to have left.
Terrified
One of millions of poor migrants from Bihar - India's poorest state with a per capita income of $165 - Srikishun Singh used to hawk savouries on the sidewalks of Pune for a living.
He had arrived in the city just one-and-half months ago from a neighbouring city where he had worked for a decade.
"I was sleeping on the road close to the railway station when a group of people shouting 'Go away, go away, Biharis go away' attacked me and I fell unconscious," he said.
"Later when I regained consciousness I found both my hands chopped off and an old man bandaging them. The man told me to flee as soon as possible."
A terrified Srikishun rushed to the railway station and travelled home in excruciating pain after changing a couple of trains.
In his home village of Siwan, Srikishun was treated by a local doctor until he was admitted to the local government hospital.
Since then he has been lying there meeting a stream of visitors, mostly politicians, policemen and journalists.
A police team from Pune have also visited the hospital to investigate the attack.
Being the only earning member of his family, Srikishun now appears helpless.
"I do not know how my family will survive now. My two little children and wife will starve to death," he said, as his wife Durgawati Devi weeps at his bedside.
"But now I'll never return to Maharashtra".
Siwan is among the 100 poorest districts of the country. Migrants from the district send some $389m home every year.
Fear psychosis
An independent study on migration in collaboration with the London-based Overseas Development Institute found that migrants from Bihar send over $2bn back home every year.
Srikishun Singh is not the only one who has to bear the burnt of anti-migrant protests in Maharashtra.
Most of the villagers of around Siwan have also returned home - over 80% people from this village work in Maharashtra, mostly in Nasik-Pune industrial area.
One of them, Phulena Pandit, says he has never been afraid to work outside Bihar before.
"We have never faced such fear. We had to flee leaving behind all our belongings and money in the bank, " said Phulena, who was the first villager to migrate from his village in 1970.
Similarly Hari Kumar Rai, who had been living for the last 17 years in Nasik, locked his flat in the city and fled home.
"One night a group of local political activists came to my apartment and told us to leave the place immediately otherwise they would burn down my flat," he said.
"The next day I locked my flat and took a train for Bihar. I do not know what they have done with my property there."
Sri Krishna Prasad too has been living in Nasik since 1982 along with his son, Chetan Kumar, and two grandsons, Raju and Rahul.
"I purchased a house there with my savings but our world crashed in a single day when they forced us to leave the place. We left leaving everything out there. Here I have nothing to eat, no place to live," he said.
There are many more migrants in Siwan who have returned home to tell similar tales.
Almost all of them worked as a masons in Nasik.
Hundreds of villagers from neighbouring villages have also returned home after the anti-migrant campaign in Maharashtra.
According to a one estimate, there are 2.5 million Bihari migrants working in Mumbai and about 4 million in the capital, Delhi.
But those numbers will fast decrease if present trends continue.
----------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7242617.stm
Right-wing Mumbai leader arrested
Police in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) have arrested the leader of a right-wing regionalist party on charges of stoking communal tension.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray was freed on bail after a two-hour court hearing.
Mumbai police also arrested Abu Azmi, a leader of the rival Samajwadi party. He too was freed on bail.
Activists from Mr Thackeray's party are accused of attacks on migrant workers from northern India.
Mr Thackeray is a nephew of Bal Thackeray, the founder of the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena party.
The Shiv Sena has long argued for greater rights to be given to ethnic Marathis - people who can trace their origins to the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital.
Raj Thackeray left the Shiv Sena in December 2005 and formed Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in March 2006.
He is believed to have quarrelled with his cousin, Uddhav, the executive president of Shiv Sena and Bal Thackeray's son.
Tight security
Security has been tightened near Shivaji Park in central Mumbai where Mr Raj Thackeray lives and has his office.
Sena Bhavan, headquarters of the Shiv Sena party, is in the same area and has also been placed under heavy guard.
After his arrest, Mr Thackeray was taken in a convoy of vehicles to a court in Vikhroli.
Abu Azmi was arrested in a simultaneous police operation at his residence in south Mumbai.
The local branch of Mr Azmi's Samajwadi party draws much of its support from people who migrated to Mumbai from the impoverished northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The two arrests ended a 10-day period of intense speculation, sparked by remarks by Mr Thackeray, criticising migration from northern India.
The Navnirman Sena leader accused migrants of swamping Maharashtra, India's most industrialised state, in search of jobs.
Following his statement, his supporters attacked north Indian migrants in Mumbai and damaged property associated with them.
Mr Thackeray has denied inciting violence.
The unrest has forced many migrants to leave their neighbourhoods.
A taxi driver from Uttar Pradesh accused the leader of trying to "expel a community".
"It is not possible to stop anyone from coming here. If I had a good job in my village in Uttar Pradesh why would I come here?"
-
Mehreen1221
- Posts: 83
- Joined: Sun Mar 23, 2008 8:02 pm
- Location: London, England
- Contact:
December 15, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Mr. Obama’s First Trip
By MICHAEL FULLILOVE
Washington
DURING the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that in the first 100 days of his administration he would “travel to a major Islamic forum and deliver an address to redefine our struggle.”
Egypt, Turkey and Qatar have been suggested as possible sites for such a speech. But the best candidate is the country in which Mr. Obama lived as a child: Indonesia.
Choosing Indonesia would throw light on the diversity and richness of Islam, which is not, contrary to lingering perceptions, practiced solely by Arabs or only in the Middle East. The country, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, does a reasonable job of managing its considerable religious heterogeneity. Going there would help Mr. Obama to reframe the debate in the West about Islam and terrorism.
An Indonesian audience would also make sense. Indonesians have been both victims and perpetrators of terrorist attacks, including the deadly Bali bombings. The government in Jakarta is an important partner in the effort against terrorism.
Selecting Indonesia would demonstrate that Mr. Obama takes democracy seriously, given that Indonesia is a rowdy democracy — the third-largest in the world. It would show that President Bush’s misshapen democratization agenda has not turned his successor into an icy realist.
Reminding the world of Mr. Obama’s origins could help counter anti-Americanism. Who would have thought the United States would elect a president with memories of wandering barefoot through rice paddies and “the muezzin’s call at night”?
Finally, a trip to Indonesia would indicate that Mr. Obama was serious about rebalancing America’s foreign policy. It would show that he understands the shift of global power eastward, and telegraph that Washington was finally going to take the nation — the linchpin of Southeast Asia — seriously.
Mr. Obama was criticized in the campaign as offering speeches rather than solutions. Cynics will say this time that you can’t fight terrorism with cue cards. But there is no better way to make an argument than with a speech — and for this speech, there is no better place to make that argument than Indonesia.
Michael Fullilove, the program director for global issues at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Op-Ed Contributor
Mr. Obama’s First Trip
By MICHAEL FULLILOVE
Washington
DURING the presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that in the first 100 days of his administration he would “travel to a major Islamic forum and deliver an address to redefine our struggle.”
Egypt, Turkey and Qatar have been suggested as possible sites for such a speech. But the best candidate is the country in which Mr. Obama lived as a child: Indonesia.
Choosing Indonesia would throw light on the diversity and richness of Islam, which is not, contrary to lingering perceptions, practiced solely by Arabs or only in the Middle East. The country, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, does a reasonable job of managing its considerable religious heterogeneity. Going there would help Mr. Obama to reframe the debate in the West about Islam and terrorism.
An Indonesian audience would also make sense. Indonesians have been both victims and perpetrators of terrorist attacks, including the deadly Bali bombings. The government in Jakarta is an important partner in the effort against terrorism.
Selecting Indonesia would demonstrate that Mr. Obama takes democracy seriously, given that Indonesia is a rowdy democracy — the third-largest in the world. It would show that President Bush’s misshapen democratization agenda has not turned his successor into an icy realist.
Reminding the world of Mr. Obama’s origins could help counter anti-Americanism. Who would have thought the United States would elect a president with memories of wandering barefoot through rice paddies and “the muezzin’s call at night”?
Finally, a trip to Indonesia would indicate that Mr. Obama was serious about rebalancing America’s foreign policy. It would show that he understands the shift of global power eastward, and telegraph that Washington was finally going to take the nation — the linchpin of Southeast Asia — seriously.
Mr. Obama was criticized in the campaign as offering speeches rather than solutions. Cynics will say this time that you can’t fight terrorism with cue cards. But there is no better way to make an argument than with a speech — and for this speech, there is no better place to make that argument than Indonesia.
Michael Fullilove, the program director for global issues at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The 'first true scientist'
By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey
Photo at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm
Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.
Modern methods
Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.
But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.
Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.
As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.
This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.
But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.
In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".
Understanding light
He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.
He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.
What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.
So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.
He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.
He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.
Enforced study
In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.
He was given an unwelcome opportunity, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.
While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts.
But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.
Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.
This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.
Planetary motion
He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.
While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.
It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/s ... 810846.stm
Published: 2009/01/04 22:18:08 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Print Sponsor
By Professor Jim Al-Khalili
University of Surrey
Photo at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7810846.stm
Isaac Newton is, as most will agree, the greatest physicist of all time.
At the very least, he is the undisputed father of modern optics, or so we are told at school where our textbooks abound with his famous experiments with lenses and prisms, his study of the nature of light and its reflection, and the refraction and decomposition of light into the colours of the rainbow.
Yet, the truth is rather greyer; and I feel it important to point out that, certainly in the field of optics, Newton himself stood on the shoulders of a giant who lived 700 years earlier.
For, without doubt, another great physicist, who is worthy of ranking up alongside Newton, is a scientist born in AD 965 in what is now Iraq who went by the name of al-Hassan Ibn al-Haytham.
Most people in the West will never have even heard of him.
As a physicist myself, I am quite in awe of this man's contribution to my field, but I was fortunate enough to have recently been given the opportunity to dig a little into his life and work through my recent filming of a three-part BBC Four series on medieval Islamic scientists.
Modern methods
Popular accounts of the history of science typically suggest that no major scientific advances took place in between the ancient Greeks and the European Renaissance.
But just because Western Europe languished in the Dark Ages, does not mean there was stagnation elsewhere. Indeed, the period between the 9th and 13th Centuries marked the Golden Age of Arabic science.
Great advances were made in mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, chemistry and philosophy. Among the many geniuses of that period Ibn al-Haytham stands taller than all the others.
Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method.
As commonly defined, this is the approach to investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge, based on the gathering of data through observation and measurement, followed by the formulation and testing of hypotheses to explain the data.
This is how we do science today and is why I put my trust in the advances that have been made in science.
But it is often still claimed that the modern scientific method was not established until the early 17th Century by Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes.
There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Ibn al-Haytham arrived there first.
In fact, with his emphasis on experimental data and reproducibility of results, he is often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".
Understanding light
He was the first scientist to give a correct account of how we see objects.
He proved experimentally, for instance, that the so-called emission theory (which stated that light from our eyes shines upon the objects we see), which was believed by great thinkers such as Plato, Euclid and Ptolemy, was wrong and established the modern idea that we see because light enters our eyes.
What he also did that no other scientist had tried before was to use mathematics to describe and prove this process.
So he can be regarded as the very first theoretical physicist, too.
He is perhaps best known for his invention of the pinhole camera and should be credited with the discovery of the laws of refraction.
He also carried out the first experiments on the dispersion of light into its constituent colours and studied shadows, rainbows and eclipses; and by observing the way sunlight diffracted through the atmosphere, he was able to work out a rather good estimate for the height of the atmosphere, which he found to be around 100km.
Enforced study
In common with many modern scholars, Ibn-al Haytham badly needed the time and isolation to focus on writing his many treatises, including his great work on optics.
He was given an unwelcome opportunity, however, when he was imprisoned in Egypt between 1011 and 1021, having failed a task set him by a caliph in Cairo to help solve the problem of regulating the flooding of the Nile.
While still in Basra, Ibn al-Haytham had claimed that the Nile's autumn flood waters could be held by a system of dykes and canals, thereby preserved as reservoirs until the summer's droughts.
But on arrival in Cairo, he soon realised that his scheme was utterly impractical from an engineering perspective.
Yet rather than admit his mistake to the dangerous and murderous caliph, Ibn-al Haytham instead decided to feign madness as a way to escape punishment.
This promptly led to him being placed under house arrest, thereby granting him 10 years of seclusion in which to work.
Planetary motion
He was only released after the caliph's death. He returned to Iraq where he composed a further 100 works on a range of subjects in physics and mathematics.
While travelling through the Middle East during my filming, I interviewed an expert in Alexandria who showed me recently discovered work by Ibn al-Haytham on astronomy.
It seems he had developed what is called celestial mechanics, explaining the orbits of the planets, which was to lead to the eventual work of Europeans like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton.
It is incredible that we are only now uncovering the debt that today's physicists owe to an Arab who lived 1,000 years ago.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili presents Science and Islam on BBC Four at 2100GMT on Monday 5, 12 & 19 January
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/s ... 810846.stm
Published: 2009/01/04 22:18:08 GMT
© BBC MMIX
Print Sponsor
Sultans of Science: 1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered
Opens February 5, 2009
Did you know that the first piloted flying device soared well before Leonardo da Vinci took flight in the 15th century? In the ninth century on a hill near Cordoba, Spain, a scholar and inventor named Abbas Bin Firnas harnessed himself to a feathered glider and briefly took flight, amazing his spectators.
The glider is just one of the inventions recreated for Sultans of Science: 1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered, an international touring exhibition making its Canadian premiere at the Ontario Science Centre.
The exhibition celebrates the scientific and technological breakthroughs made by scholars during the Golden Age of the Islamic World (eighth to 18th centuries) and their lasting influence on modern science and technology.
Developed by Cape Town and Dubai-based MTE Studios, this engaging and thought-provoking exhibition will show visitors how a great civilization created prosperity across large areas of the known world from Spain to China. Knowledge was valued and innovation encouraged, leading to high levels of achievement in science and technology.
Architecture, optics, medicine and flight are among the disciplines examined in this beautifully designed presentation. Covering over 700 square metres, it is divided into 10 sections with hands-on activities, large-scale models and interactive maps that will take visitors on a journey back through time.
Organized by Liberty Science Center and MTE Studios.
http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/cale ... y=14012009
Opens February 5, 2009
Did you know that the first piloted flying device soared well before Leonardo da Vinci took flight in the 15th century? In the ninth century on a hill near Cordoba, Spain, a scholar and inventor named Abbas Bin Firnas harnessed himself to a feathered glider and briefly took flight, amazing his spectators.
The glider is just one of the inventions recreated for Sultans of Science: 1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered, an international touring exhibition making its Canadian premiere at the Ontario Science Centre.
The exhibition celebrates the scientific and technological breakthroughs made by scholars during the Golden Age of the Islamic World (eighth to 18th centuries) and their lasting influence on modern science and technology.
Developed by Cape Town and Dubai-based MTE Studios, this engaging and thought-provoking exhibition will show visitors how a great civilization created prosperity across large areas of the known world from Spain to China. Knowledge was valued and innovation encouraged, leading to high levels of achievement in science and technology.
Architecture, optics, medicine and flight are among the disciplines examined in this beautifully designed presentation. Covering over 700 square metres, it is divided into 10 sections with hands-on activities, large-scale models and interactive maps that will take visitors on a journey back through time.
Organized by Liberty Science Center and MTE Studios.
http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/cale ... y=14012009
This is a striking video highlighting the uplifting cultural dimensions of Islam.
Paradise Found: A Documentary on Islamic Architecture
Paradise.. We imagine many things when we think of this word. However, we do not think about Islamic Architecture, which influenced the ar...all » Paradise. We imagine many things when we think of this word. However, we do not think about Islamic Architecture, which influenced the art of Europe so profoundly. This documentary tours through the Muslim world, in search of that "atmosphere of Paradise," hidden away in mosques and palaces.
Visit
http://www.IslamicVideos.net
for more videos like this!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2115778034
Paradise Found: A Documentary on Islamic Architecture
Paradise.. We imagine many things when we think of this word. However, we do not think about Islamic Architecture, which influenced the ar...all » Paradise. We imagine many things when we think of this word. However, we do not think about Islamic Architecture, which influenced the art of Europe so profoundly. This documentary tours through the Muslim world, in search of that "atmosphere of Paradise," hidden away in mosques and palaces.
Visit
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http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 2115778034
12, 2009
Editorial
End of the Clash of Civilizations
On his visit to Turkey last week, President Obama made important progress toward recalibrating America’s relations with the Islamic world. The president steered away from the poisonous post-9/11 clash of civilizations mythology that drove so much of President George W. Bush’s rhetoric and disastrous policy.
He told Turkey’s Parliament that the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam” and promised that its relationship with the Muslim world will be founded on more than opposition to terrorism. An opinion poll last year said that only 12 percent of Turks had a favorable view of the United States. While there were some protests, Mr. Obama’s overall reception in Turkey was enthusiastic. Muslims in other countries also seem willing to listen.
Mr. Bush often voiced respect for Islam and rightly insisted that “the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends” but the “radical network of terrorists” and governments supporting them. But he and his Republican allies also used words like “crusade” and “Islamic fascists,” feeding fears that the so-called war on terrorism was really a war on Islam. The horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and Mr. Bush’s unnecessary war in Iraq, greatly compounded the problem.
Not only are Mr. Obama’s words and tone better, his policies are better. He opposed the Iraq war and has begun planning an orderly withdrawal of American troops. He is trying to engage Iran after 30 years of mutual isolation. And he has promised an active effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reaffirmed support for a two-state solution — a goal that Israel’s newly elected prime minister says he does not share.
Mr. Obama’s credibility is enhanced by personal experience. He is Christian, but his father was Muslim; the president lived part of his childhood in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority nation.
While he played down this background during the 2008 campaign, it was a compelling line in last week’s speech. “The United States has been enriched by Muslim-Americans,” he said. “Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them.”
Aides say Mr. Obama is still planning a bigger speech to the Muslim world. The next one will have to acknowledge not just common ground but important differences with many Muslim countries — including the issues of women’s rights and freedom of religion — that are not easily bridged.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opini ... nted=print
Editorial
End of the Clash of Civilizations
On his visit to Turkey last week, President Obama made important progress toward recalibrating America’s relations with the Islamic world. The president steered away from the poisonous post-9/11 clash of civilizations mythology that drove so much of President George W. Bush’s rhetoric and disastrous policy.
He told Turkey’s Parliament that the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam” and promised that its relationship with the Muslim world will be founded on more than opposition to terrorism. An opinion poll last year said that only 12 percent of Turks had a favorable view of the United States. While there were some protests, Mr. Obama’s overall reception in Turkey was enthusiastic. Muslims in other countries also seem willing to listen.
Mr. Bush often voiced respect for Islam and rightly insisted that “the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends” but the “radical network of terrorists” and governments supporting them. But he and his Republican allies also used words like “crusade” and “Islamic fascists,” feeding fears that the so-called war on terrorism was really a war on Islam. The horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and Mr. Bush’s unnecessary war in Iraq, greatly compounded the problem.
Not only are Mr. Obama’s words and tone better, his policies are better. He opposed the Iraq war and has begun planning an orderly withdrawal of American troops. He is trying to engage Iran after 30 years of mutual isolation. And he has promised an active effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reaffirmed support for a two-state solution — a goal that Israel’s newly elected prime minister says he does not share.
Mr. Obama’s credibility is enhanced by personal experience. He is Christian, but his father was Muslim; the president lived part of his childhood in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority nation.
While he played down this background during the 2008 campaign, it was a compelling line in last week’s speech. “The United States has been enriched by Muslim-Americans,” he said. “Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. I know, because I am one of them.”
Aides say Mr. Obama is still planning a bigger speech to the Muslim world. The next one will have to acknowledge not just common ground but important differences with many Muslim countries — including the issues of women’s rights and freedom of religion — that are not easily bridged.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/opini ... nted=print
April 25, 2009
Indonesia’s Voters Retreat From Radical Islam
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
JAKARTA, Indonesia — From Pakistan to Gaza and Lebanon, militant Islamic movements have gained ground rapidly in recent years, fanning Western fears of a consolidation of radical Muslim governments. But here in the world’s most populous Muslim nation just the opposite is happening, with Islamic parties suffering a steep drop in popular support.
In parliamentary elections this month, voters punished Islamic parties that focused narrowly on religious issues, and even the parties’ best efforts to appeal to the country’s mainstream failed to sway the public.
The largest Islamic party, the Prosperous Justice Party, ran television commercials of young women without head scarves and distributed pamphlets in the colors of the country’s major secular parties. But the party fell far short of its goal of garnering 15 percent of the vote, squeezing out a gain of less than one percentage point over its 7.2 percent showing in 2004.
That was a big letdown for a party and a movement that had grown phenomenally in recent years, even as more radical elements directed terrorist attacks against Western tourists and targets. The party had projected that it would double its share of seats in Parliament even as it stuck to its founding goal of bringing Shariah, or Islamic law, to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, with 240 million people.
Altogether, the major Islamic parties suffered a drop in support from 38 percent in 2004 to less than 26 percent this year, according to the Indonesian Survey Institute, an independent polling firm whose figures are in keeping with partial official results.
Political experts and politicians attribute the decline to voters’ disillusionment with Islamic parties that once called for idealism, but became embroiled in the messy, often corrupt world of Indonesian politics. They also say that the popular president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is expected to be re-elected in July, appropriated the largest Islamic party’s signature theme of clean government through a far-reaching anticorruption drive.
On a deeper level, some of the parties’ fundamentalist measures seem to have alienated moderate Indonesians. While Indonesia has a long tradition of moderation, it was badly destabilized with the end of military rule in 1998, which gave rise to Islamist politicians who preached righteousness and to some hard-core elements, who practiced violence. The country has only recently achieved a measure of stability.
Although final results from the election on April 9 will not be announced until next month, partial official results and exit polls by several independent companies indicate that Indonesians overwhelmingly backed the country’s major secular parties, even though more of them are continuing to turn to Islam in their private lives.
“People in general do not feel that there should be an integration of faith and politics,” said Azyumardi Azra, director of the graduate school at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University. “Even though more and more Muslims, in particular women, have become more Islamic and have a growing attachment to Islam, that does not translate into voting behavior.”
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world ... &th&emc=th
Indonesia’s Voters Retreat From Radical Islam
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
JAKARTA, Indonesia — From Pakistan to Gaza and Lebanon, militant Islamic movements have gained ground rapidly in recent years, fanning Western fears of a consolidation of radical Muslim governments. But here in the world’s most populous Muslim nation just the opposite is happening, with Islamic parties suffering a steep drop in popular support.
In parliamentary elections this month, voters punished Islamic parties that focused narrowly on religious issues, and even the parties’ best efforts to appeal to the country’s mainstream failed to sway the public.
The largest Islamic party, the Prosperous Justice Party, ran television commercials of young women without head scarves and distributed pamphlets in the colors of the country’s major secular parties. But the party fell far short of its goal of garnering 15 percent of the vote, squeezing out a gain of less than one percentage point over its 7.2 percent showing in 2004.
That was a big letdown for a party and a movement that had grown phenomenally in recent years, even as more radical elements directed terrorist attacks against Western tourists and targets. The party had projected that it would double its share of seats in Parliament even as it stuck to its founding goal of bringing Shariah, or Islamic law, to Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, with 240 million people.
Altogether, the major Islamic parties suffered a drop in support from 38 percent in 2004 to less than 26 percent this year, according to the Indonesian Survey Institute, an independent polling firm whose figures are in keeping with partial official results.
Political experts and politicians attribute the decline to voters’ disillusionment with Islamic parties that once called for idealism, but became embroiled in the messy, often corrupt world of Indonesian politics. They also say that the popular president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who is expected to be re-elected in July, appropriated the largest Islamic party’s signature theme of clean government through a far-reaching anticorruption drive.
On a deeper level, some of the parties’ fundamentalist measures seem to have alienated moderate Indonesians. While Indonesia has a long tradition of moderation, it was badly destabilized with the end of military rule in 1998, which gave rise to Islamist politicians who preached righteousness and to some hard-core elements, who practiced violence. The country has only recently achieved a measure of stability.
Although final results from the election on April 9 will not be announced until next month, partial official results and exit polls by several independent companies indicate that Indonesians overwhelmingly backed the country’s major secular parties, even though more of them are continuing to turn to Islam in their private lives.
“People in general do not feel that there should be an integration of faith and politics,” said Azyumardi Azra, director of the graduate school at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University. “Even though more and more Muslims, in particular women, have become more Islamic and have a growing attachment to Islam, that does not translate into voting behavior.”
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/world ... &th&emc=th
American Muslims radicalized by taxpayers
By Tarek Fatah, For the Calgary HeraldMay 23, 2009
As if we North American Muslims have not had enough scrutiny of our community due to the actions and words of the Islamists among us, a new group of jihadis has emerged, this time from inside the U. S. prison system, a product of the extremist teaching of Islam by some Islamic chaplains.
Earlier this week, New York Police arrested four ex-convicts, all African Americans who converted to Islam inside prison and charged them with a plot to bomb a Jewish synagogue, blow up planes and in general wage jihad against the United States. When the politically correct media simply reported the names of the accused--James Cromitie, 44; David Williams, 28; Onta Williams, 32, and Laguerre Payen, 27, --I heaved a sigh of relief. Phew! For once a group accused of terrorism was not Muslim--at least judging from their names.
However, my relief was short-lived. It turned out the four were 'brothers' who had embraced my faith at the hands of prison chaplains. Could these men be the first jihadis who owe their existence to the American tax payer?
At a news conference outside the Bronx temple Thursday, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly quoted one of the men as saying, "If Jews were killed in this attack ... that would be all right."
The four Muslim converts, who face charges of plotting to bomb Jewish sites and shoot down military planes, were arrested after planting what they thought were explosive devices near a synagogue and community centre, authorities say. Three of the defendants are U. S. citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.
The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside a temple in the Bronx neighbourhood of Riverdale and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said. The defendants planned to "destroy a synagogue and a Jewish community centre with C-4 plastic explosives," Acting U. S. Attorney Lev Dassin said.
While apologists for America's well organized Islamist network immediately rolled out the predictable press releases condemning the four accused and asking Americans to not judge Islam by the actions of these jihadis, they missed one more opportunity to distance themselves from the Islamic doctrine of Jihad. Nowhere in the statement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic organization labelled as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Texas Terror Trial by the U. S Justice Department, was there any inkling of a message that said "jihad is a medieval doctrine that is ill-suited and inapplicable in the world of the 21st century."
The usual gobbledygook of "inter-faith dialogue" was dished out without acknowledging the fact that anti-Jewish and anti-Christian rhetoric is part of the vocabulary of most clerics and chaplains who serve the Muslim community, both inside and outside prisons.
What is interesting is that most of America's prison chaplains that serve the Muslim inmate population are trained to varying degrees at the Islamic Chaplaincy Program of the Hartford Seminary. Guess who has been the leading force behind this program, including its curriculum? None other than Ingrid Mattson who today heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) another group labelled as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Texas Terror Trial.
The question is often asked: What should be done?
To answer this question requires that we first agree that this is a battle of ideas and values before it becomes a war of weapons and terror. To fight the ideology of jihad and Islamism, we need to challenge it as a medieval construct and expose Islamism and its supporters as a threat to the separation of religion and state, which has been a cornerstone of Western democracy and liberalism and for which countless people have toiled and died for nearly 400 years.
Not until we stand up to the carriers of soft-jihad will we succeed in stopping the suicide bombers and terrorists who take the ideology of Islamism to its logical extreme.
Tarek Fatah is founder of the Muslim Canadian congress and author of chasing a mirage: the tragic illusion of an Islamic state (Wiley 2008).
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Ameri ... story.html
By Tarek Fatah, For the Calgary HeraldMay 23, 2009
As if we North American Muslims have not had enough scrutiny of our community due to the actions and words of the Islamists among us, a new group of jihadis has emerged, this time from inside the U. S. prison system, a product of the extremist teaching of Islam by some Islamic chaplains.
Earlier this week, New York Police arrested four ex-convicts, all African Americans who converted to Islam inside prison and charged them with a plot to bomb a Jewish synagogue, blow up planes and in general wage jihad against the United States. When the politically correct media simply reported the names of the accused--James Cromitie, 44; David Williams, 28; Onta Williams, 32, and Laguerre Payen, 27, --I heaved a sigh of relief. Phew! For once a group accused of terrorism was not Muslim--at least judging from their names.
However, my relief was short-lived. It turned out the four were 'brothers' who had embraced my faith at the hands of prison chaplains. Could these men be the first jihadis who owe their existence to the American tax payer?
At a news conference outside the Bronx temple Thursday, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly quoted one of the men as saying, "If Jews were killed in this attack ... that would be all right."
The four Muslim converts, who face charges of plotting to bomb Jewish sites and shoot down military planes, were arrested after planting what they thought were explosive devices near a synagogue and community centre, authorities say. Three of the defendants are U. S. citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.
The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside a temple in the Bronx neighbourhood of Riverdale and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said. The defendants planned to "destroy a synagogue and a Jewish community centre with C-4 plastic explosives," Acting U. S. Attorney Lev Dassin said.
While apologists for America's well organized Islamist network immediately rolled out the predictable press releases condemning the four accused and asking Americans to not judge Islam by the actions of these jihadis, they missed one more opportunity to distance themselves from the Islamic doctrine of Jihad. Nowhere in the statement by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic organization labelled as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Texas Terror Trial by the U. S Justice Department, was there any inkling of a message that said "jihad is a medieval doctrine that is ill-suited and inapplicable in the world of the 21st century."
The usual gobbledygook of "inter-faith dialogue" was dished out without acknowledging the fact that anti-Jewish and anti-Christian rhetoric is part of the vocabulary of most clerics and chaplains who serve the Muslim community, both inside and outside prisons.
What is interesting is that most of America's prison chaplains that serve the Muslim inmate population are trained to varying degrees at the Islamic Chaplaincy Program of the Hartford Seminary. Guess who has been the leading force behind this program, including its curriculum? None other than Ingrid Mattson who today heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) another group labelled as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Texas Terror Trial.
The question is often asked: What should be done?
To answer this question requires that we first agree that this is a battle of ideas and values before it becomes a war of weapons and terror. To fight the ideology of jihad and Islamism, we need to challenge it as a medieval construct and expose Islamism and its supporters as a threat to the separation of religion and state, which has been a cornerstone of Western democracy and liberalism and for which countless people have toiled and died for nearly 400 years.
Not until we stand up to the carriers of soft-jihad will we succeed in stopping the suicide bombers and terrorists who take the ideology of Islamism to its logical extreme.
Tarek Fatah is founder of the Muslim Canadian congress and author of chasing a mirage: the tragic illusion of an Islamic state (Wiley 2008).
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Ameri ... story.html
August 13, 2009
Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book
By PATRICIA COHEN
It’s not all that surprising that Yale University Press would be wary of reprinting notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a forthcoming book. After all, when the 12 caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images — which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb — blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least 200 people were killed.
So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.
The book’s author, Jytte Klausen, a Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., reluctantly accepted Yale University Press’s decision not to publish the cartoons. But she was disturbed by the withdrawal of the other representations of Muhammad. All of those images are widely available, Ms. Klausen said by telephone, adding that “Muslim friends, leaders and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it.” The book is due out in November.
John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.
He noted that he had been involved in publishing other controversial books — like “The King Never Smiles” by Paul M. Handley, a recent unauthorized biography of Thailand’s current monarch — and “I’ve never blinked.” But, he said, “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”
Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and the author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” is a fan of the book but decided to withdraw his supportive blurb that was to appear in the book after Yale University Press dropped the pictures. The book is “a definitive account of the entire controversy,” he said, “but to not include the actual cartoons is to me, frankly, idiotic.”
In Mr. Aslan’s view no danger remains. “The controversy has died out now, anyone who wants to see them can see them,” he said of the cartoons, noting that he has written and lectured extensively about the incident and shown the cartoons without any negative reaction. He added that none of the violence occurred in the United States: “There were people who were annoyed, and what kind of publishing house doesn’t publish something that annoys some people?”
“This is an academic book for an academic audience by an academic press,” he continued. “There is no chance of this book having a global audience, let alone causing a global outcry.” He added, “It’s not just academic cowardice, it is just silly and unnecessary.”
Mr. Donatich said that the images were still provoking unrest as recently as last year when the Danish police arrested three men suspected of trying to kill the artist who drew the cartoon depicting Muhammad’s turban as a bomb. He quoted one of the experts consulted by Yale — Ibrahim Gambari, special adviser to the secretary general of the United Nations and the former foreign minister of Nigeria — as concluding: “You can count on violence if any illustration of the prophet is published. It will cause riots, I predict, from Indonesia to Nigeria.”
Aside from the disagreement about the images, Ms. Klausen said she was also disturbed by Yale’s insistence that she could read a 14-page summary of the consultants’ recommendations only if she signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from talking about them. “I perceive it to be a gag order,” she said, after declining to sign. While she could understand why some of the individuals consulted might prefer to remain unidentified, she said, she did not see why she should be precluded from talking about their conclusions.
Linda Koch Lorimer, vice president and secretary of Yale University, who had discussed the summary with Ms. Klausen, said on Wednesday that she was merely following the original wishes of the consultants, some of whom subsequently agreed to be identified.
Ms. Klausen, who is also the author of “The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe,” argued that the cartoon protests were not spontaneous but rather orchestrated demonstrations by extremists in Denmark and Egypt who were trying to influence elections there and by others hoping to destabilize governments in Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya and Nigeria. The cartoons, she maintained, were a pretext, a way to mobilize dissent in the Muslim world.
Although many Muslims believe the Koran prohibits images of the prophet, Muhammad has been depicted through the centuries in both Islamic and Western art without inciting disturbances.
Rather than sign a joint editor’s note for the book and the removal of the images, Ms. Klausen has requested instead that a statement from her be included. “I agreed,” she said, “to the press’s decision to not print the cartoons and other hitherto uncontroversial illustrations featuring images of the Muslim prophet, with sadness. But I also never intended the book to become another demonstration for or against the cartoons, and hope the book can still serve its intended purpose without illustrations.”
Other publishers, including The New York Times, chose not to print the cartoons or images of Muhammad when the controversy erupted worldwide in February 2006.
Ms. Klausen said, “I can understand that a university is risk averse, and they will make that choice” not to publish the cartoons, but Yale University Press, she added, went too far in taking out the other images of Muhammad.
“The book’s message,” Ms. Klausen said, “is that we need to calm down and look at this carefully.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/books ... nted=print
Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book
By PATRICIA COHEN
It’s not all that surprising that Yale University Press would be wary of reprinting notoriously controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a forthcoming book. After all, when the 12 caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images — which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb — blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least 200 people were killed.
So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí.
The book’s author, Jytte Klausen, a Danish-born professor of politics at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., reluctantly accepted Yale University Press’s decision not to publish the cartoons. But she was disturbed by the withdrawal of the other representations of Muhammad. All of those images are widely available, Ms. Klausen said by telephone, adding that “Muslim friends, leaders and activists thought that the incident was misunderstood, so the cartoons needed to be reprinted so we could have a discussion about it.” The book is due out in November.
John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, said by telephone that the decision was difficult, but the recommendation to withdraw the images, including the historical ones of Muhammad, was “overwhelming and unanimous.” The cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words, Mr. Donatich said, so reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.
He noted that he had been involved in publishing other controversial books — like “The King Never Smiles” by Paul M. Handley, a recent unauthorized biography of Thailand’s current monarch — and “I’ve never blinked.” But, he said, “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”
Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and the author of “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam,” is a fan of the book but decided to withdraw his supportive blurb that was to appear in the book after Yale University Press dropped the pictures. The book is “a definitive account of the entire controversy,” he said, “but to not include the actual cartoons is to me, frankly, idiotic.”
In Mr. Aslan’s view no danger remains. “The controversy has died out now, anyone who wants to see them can see them,” he said of the cartoons, noting that he has written and lectured extensively about the incident and shown the cartoons without any negative reaction. He added that none of the violence occurred in the United States: “There were people who were annoyed, and what kind of publishing house doesn’t publish something that annoys some people?”
“This is an academic book for an academic audience by an academic press,” he continued. “There is no chance of this book having a global audience, let alone causing a global outcry.” He added, “It’s not just academic cowardice, it is just silly and unnecessary.”
Mr. Donatich said that the images were still provoking unrest as recently as last year when the Danish police arrested three men suspected of trying to kill the artist who drew the cartoon depicting Muhammad’s turban as a bomb. He quoted one of the experts consulted by Yale — Ibrahim Gambari, special adviser to the secretary general of the United Nations and the former foreign minister of Nigeria — as concluding: “You can count on violence if any illustration of the prophet is published. It will cause riots, I predict, from Indonesia to Nigeria.”
Aside from the disagreement about the images, Ms. Klausen said she was also disturbed by Yale’s insistence that she could read a 14-page summary of the consultants’ recommendations only if she signed a confidentiality agreement that forbade her from talking about them. “I perceive it to be a gag order,” she said, after declining to sign. While she could understand why some of the individuals consulted might prefer to remain unidentified, she said, she did not see why she should be precluded from talking about their conclusions.
Linda Koch Lorimer, vice president and secretary of Yale University, who had discussed the summary with Ms. Klausen, said on Wednesday that she was merely following the original wishes of the consultants, some of whom subsequently agreed to be identified.
Ms. Klausen, who is also the author of “The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe,” argued that the cartoon protests were not spontaneous but rather orchestrated demonstrations by extremists in Denmark and Egypt who were trying to influence elections there and by others hoping to destabilize governments in Pakistan, Lebanon, Libya and Nigeria. The cartoons, she maintained, were a pretext, a way to mobilize dissent in the Muslim world.
Although many Muslims believe the Koran prohibits images of the prophet, Muhammad has been depicted through the centuries in both Islamic and Western art without inciting disturbances.
Rather than sign a joint editor’s note for the book and the removal of the images, Ms. Klausen has requested instead that a statement from her be included. “I agreed,” she said, “to the press’s decision to not print the cartoons and other hitherto uncontroversial illustrations featuring images of the Muslim prophet, with sadness. But I also never intended the book to become another demonstration for or against the cartoons, and hope the book can still serve its intended purpose without illustrations.”
Other publishers, including The New York Times, chose not to print the cartoons or images of Muhammad when the controversy erupted worldwide in February 2006.
Ms. Klausen said, “I can understand that a university is risk averse, and they will make that choice” not to publish the cartoons, but Yale University Press, she added, went too far in taking out the other images of Muhammad.
“The book’s message,” Ms. Klausen said, “is that we need to calm down and look at this carefully.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/books ... nted=print
President Barack Obama's message from the White House to the Muslim World - see new video and press release
http://www.amaana.org/ISWEB/ramadan.htm
Ramadan Mubarak!
****
Minister Kenney Issues Statement on the Month of Ramadan
OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Aug. 21, 2009) - The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, issued the following statement recognizing the start of the month of Ramadan:
"The holy month of Ramadan, which begins tomorrow, takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the month in which the Qur'an is believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Mohammed.
"It is a time of great reflection for Muslims as they are called upon to fast, worship, pray, and read the Qur'an. Fasting during the month of Ramadan is, in fact, one of the five pillars of Islam.
"Such observance is intended to foster generosity and understanding, as Ramadan is also a month of giving, sharing, and socializing.
"I encourage all Canadians to use this month as an opportunity to learn about Islam, and to reflect on the tremendous contributions that Muslims have made to this country's rich and diverse heritage.
"As Prime Minister Harper has said, 'Our government considers diversity one of this country's greatest assets and we are committed to strengthening both our pluralism and our national unity.'
"As Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I wish a solemn and peaceful Ramadan to all Muslims.
"Ramadan Mubarak."
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release ... 34258.html
http://www.amaana.org/ISWEB/ramadan.htm
Ramadan Mubarak!
****
Minister Kenney Issues Statement on the Month of Ramadan
OTTAWA, ONTARIO--(Marketwire - Aug. 21, 2009) - The Honourable Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, issued the following statement recognizing the start of the month of Ramadan:
"The holy month of Ramadan, which begins tomorrow, takes place during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, the month in which the Qur'an is believed to have been revealed to the Prophet Mohammed.
"It is a time of great reflection for Muslims as they are called upon to fast, worship, pray, and read the Qur'an. Fasting during the month of Ramadan is, in fact, one of the five pillars of Islam.
"Such observance is intended to foster generosity and understanding, as Ramadan is also a month of giving, sharing, and socializing.
"I encourage all Canadians to use this month as an opportunity to learn about Islam, and to reflect on the tremendous contributions that Muslims have made to this country's rich and diverse heritage.
"As Prime Minister Harper has said, 'Our government considers diversity one of this country's greatest assets and we are committed to strengthening both our pluralism and our national unity.'
"As Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, I wish a solemn and peaceful Ramadan to all Muslims.
"Ramadan Mubarak."
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release ... 34258.html
City of Vancouver proclaims October as Islamic History Month More…
http://proclamations.islamichistorymonthbc.ca/
http://proclamations.islamichistorymonthbc.ca/
There is a nice youtube video about MHI's interview on Islam at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROg_XUtU ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROg_XUtU ... re=related
Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think
Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a new documentary film from Unity Productions Foundation, explores the expertly gathered opinions of Muslims around the globe as revealed in the world’s first major opinion poll, conducted by Gallup, the preeminent polling organization.
* Synopsis
* Screen this Film in your Community
* Policy Makers Screening Information
* List of Film Premieres by City
* Dr. Madeleine Albright Keynote from World Premiere
http://www.upf.tv/upf06/Films/InsideIsl ... fault.aspx
Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a new documentary film from Unity Productions Foundation, explores the expertly gathered opinions of Muslims around the globe as revealed in the world’s first major opinion poll, conducted by Gallup, the preeminent polling organization.
* Synopsis
* Screen this Film in your Community
* Policy Makers Screening Information
* List of Film Premieres by City
* Dr. Madeleine Albright Keynote from World Premiere
http://www.upf.tv/upf06/Films/InsideIsl ... fault.aspx
-
From_Alamut
- Posts: 666
- Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 8:22 am
Islam: Empire of Faith. Part 1: Prophet Muhammad and rise of Islam (full; PBS Documentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX3UHNhQ1Zk
Islam: Empire of Faith. Part 2: The Awakening (full; PBS Documentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PxJomy ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX3UHNhQ1Zk
Islam: Empire of Faith. Part 2: The Awakening (full; PBS Documentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1PxJomy ... re=related
November 29, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
America vs. The Narrative
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?
Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”
What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.
The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.
Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.
Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you’d never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America’s unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy.
Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders.
The Narrative was concocted by jihadists to obscure that.
It’s working. As a Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said to me: “This narrative is now omnipresent in Arab and Muslim communities in the region and in migrant communities around the world. These communities are bombarded with this narrative in huge doses and on a daily basis. [It says] the West, and right now mostly the U.S. and Israel, is single-handedly and completely responsible for all the grievances of the Arab and the Muslim worlds. Ironically, the vast majority of the media outlets targeting these communities are Arab-government owned — mostly from the Gulf.”
This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto America all of their people’s grievances over why their countries are falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn’t need much organization anymore — just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan.
“Liberal Arabs like me are as angry as a terrorist and as determined to change the status quo,” said my Jordanian friend. The only difference “is that while we choose education, knowledge and success to bring about change, a terrorist, having bought into the narrative, has a sense of powerlessness and helplessness, which are inculcated in us from childhood, that lead him to believe that there is only one way, and that is violence.”
What to do? Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking honestly at themselves. But none of their leaders dare or care to open that discussion. In his Cairo speech last June, President Obama effectively built a connection with the Muslim mainstream. Maybe he could spark the debate by asking that same audience this question:
“Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, ‘This is not Islam.’ I believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn’t. You need to tell us what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/opini ... nted=print
Op-Ed Columnist
America vs. The Narrative
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
What should we make of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who apparently killed 13 innocent people at Fort Hood?
Here’s my take: Major Hasan may have been mentally unbalanced — I assume anyone who shoots up innocent people is. But the more you read about his support for Muslim suicide bombers, about how he showed up at a public-health seminar with a PowerPoint presentation titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam,” and about his contacts with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni cleric famous for using the Web to support jihadist violence against America — the more it seems that Major Hasan was just another angry jihadist spurred to action by “The Narrative.”
What is scary is that even though he was born, raised and educated in America, The Narrative still got to him.
The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.
Yes, after two decades in which U.S. foreign policy has been largely dedicated to rescuing Muslims or trying to help free them from tyranny — in Bosnia, Darfur, Kuwait, Somalia, Lebanon, Kurdistan, post-earthquake Pakistan, post-tsunami Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan — a narrative that says America is dedicated to keeping Muslims down is thriving.
Although most of the Muslims being killed today are being killed by jihadist suicide bombers in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, you’d never know it from listening to their world. The dominant narrative there is that 9/11 was a kind of fraud: America’s unprovoked onslaught on Islam is the real story, and the Muslims are the real victims — of U.S. perfidy.
Have no doubt: we punched a fist into the Arab/Muslim world after 9/11, partly to send a message of deterrence, but primarily to destroy two tyrannical regimes — the Taliban and the Baathists — and to work with Afghans and Iraqis to build a different kind of politics. In the process, we did some stupid and bad things. But for every Abu Ghraib, our soldiers and diplomats perpetrated a million acts of kindness aimed at giving Arabs and Muslims a better chance to succeed with modernity and to elect their own leaders.
The Narrative was concocted by jihadists to obscure that.
It’s working. As a Jordanian-born counterterrorism expert, who asked to remain anonymous, said to me: “This narrative is now omnipresent in Arab and Muslim communities in the region and in migrant communities around the world. These communities are bombarded with this narrative in huge doses and on a daily basis. [It says] the West, and right now mostly the U.S. and Israel, is single-handedly and completely responsible for all the grievances of the Arab and the Muslim worlds. Ironically, the vast majority of the media outlets targeting these communities are Arab-government owned — mostly from the Gulf.”
This narrative suits Arab governments. It allows them to deflect onto America all of their people’s grievances over why their countries are falling behind. And it suits Al Qaeda, which doesn’t need much organization anymore — just push out The Narrative over the Web and satellite TV, let it heat up humiliated, frustrated or socially alienated Muslim males, and one or two will open fire on their own. See: Major Hasan.
“Liberal Arabs like me are as angry as a terrorist and as determined to change the status quo,” said my Jordanian friend. The only difference “is that while we choose education, knowledge and success to bring about change, a terrorist, having bought into the narrative, has a sense of powerlessness and helplessness, which are inculcated in us from childhood, that lead him to believe that there is only one way, and that is violence.”
What to do? Many Arab Muslims know that what ails their societies is more than the West, and that The Narrative is just an escape from looking honestly at themselves. But none of their leaders dare or care to open that discussion. In his Cairo speech last June, President Obama effectively built a connection with the Muslim mainstream. Maybe he could spark the debate by asking that same audience this question:
“Whenever something like Fort Hood happens you say, ‘This is not Islam.’ I believe that. But you keep telling us what Islam isn’t. You need to tell us what it is and show us how its positive interpretations are being promoted in your schools and mosques. If this is not Islam, then why is it that a million Muslims will pour into the streets to protest Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, but not one will take to the streets to protest Muslim suicide bombers who blow up other Muslims, real people, created in the image of God? You need to explain that to us — and to yourselves.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/opini ... nted=print
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published on Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 12:00AM EST
Last updated on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010 3:49AM EST
.Canadians queuing for the latest, most invasive airport screening measures may not take a lot of succour from an anti-terror religious ruling signed by 20 Islamic leaders. But terror and acute perversions of religion are inextricably linked. The fatwa is a welcome intervention by a moderate clerical leadership which has, by its relative silence, too often ceded ground to overseas extremists.
The fatwa was issued by imams associated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. It deserves praise and a wider audience not just for its existence, but for its contents. Its denunciation of attacks against Canada and the United States is unequivocal and unconditional. There is no attempt to cite scripture to find reasons to condemn murder; rather, it is a given that murder is evil.
The emphasis, rather, is on the duty to stop violence, and in the service of this aim, the writers quote one of the sayings of Mohammed: "When people see a wrong-doer and do nothing to stop him, they may well be visited by God with a punishment." They remind their audience that Muslims in Canada and the U.S. are more free to practice their religion than those in many majority Muslim countries, and that "there is no conflict between the Islamic values of freedom and justice and the Canadian / U.S. values of freedom and justice."
The number of Islamic leaders who spew hate in Canada is small. But young Canadian Muslims are still vulnerable to international recruitment by terrorist entrepreneurs with Internet savvy. And trouble-makers who claim to speak for Islam may live in their midst, as the case of the Toronto 18 shows.
Muslim leaders cannot turn a blind eye to these threats, and cannot assume that what is good and right will win the day. Nor can they neglect the reality that most recent terrorist plots against North American targets have been formulated by Muslims in the name of religion.
It is too easy for a minority, extremist view to drown out the reasonable majority. Repeated, public statements by Muslim leaders that terrorist attacks are against Islam are necessary to inoculate against the hateful few.
In that endeavour, the fatwa is an unusually potent tool of political outreach and persuasion: Islam is a multi-faceted, decentralized religion, with many streams of thought and forms of practice. Authority is diffuse, and many adherents respect no single terrestrial power. If enough leaders sign on to this one, more potential extremists will hear the message, choose the right path and dissuade others from choosing the wrong path. North America will be safer for all.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le1431871/
Published on Friday, Jan. 15, 2010 12:00AM EST
Last updated on Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010 3:49AM EST
.Canadians queuing for the latest, most invasive airport screening measures may not take a lot of succour from an anti-terror religious ruling signed by 20 Islamic leaders. But terror and acute perversions of religion are inextricably linked. The fatwa is a welcome intervention by a moderate clerical leadership which has, by its relative silence, too often ceded ground to overseas extremists.
The fatwa was issued by imams associated with the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. It deserves praise and a wider audience not just for its existence, but for its contents. Its denunciation of attacks against Canada and the United States is unequivocal and unconditional. There is no attempt to cite scripture to find reasons to condemn murder; rather, it is a given that murder is evil.
The emphasis, rather, is on the duty to stop violence, and in the service of this aim, the writers quote one of the sayings of Mohammed: "When people see a wrong-doer and do nothing to stop him, they may well be visited by God with a punishment." They remind their audience that Muslims in Canada and the U.S. are more free to practice their religion than those in many majority Muslim countries, and that "there is no conflict between the Islamic values of freedom and justice and the Canadian / U.S. values of freedom and justice."
The number of Islamic leaders who spew hate in Canada is small. But young Canadian Muslims are still vulnerable to international recruitment by terrorist entrepreneurs with Internet savvy. And trouble-makers who claim to speak for Islam may live in their midst, as the case of the Toronto 18 shows.
Muslim leaders cannot turn a blind eye to these threats, and cannot assume that what is good and right will win the day. Nor can they neglect the reality that most recent terrorist plots against North American targets have been formulated by Muslims in the name of religion.
It is too easy for a minority, extremist view to drown out the reasonable majority. Repeated, public statements by Muslim leaders that terrorist attacks are against Islam are necessary to inoculate against the hateful few.
In that endeavour, the fatwa is an unusually potent tool of political outreach and persuasion: Islam is a multi-faceted, decentralized religion, with many streams of thought and forms of practice. Authority is diffuse, and many adherents respect no single terrestrial power. If enough leaders sign on to this one, more potential extremists will hear the message, choose the right path and dissuade others from choosing the wrong path. North America will be safer for all.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opi ... le1431871/
An exhibition that has just opened at the Science Museum is celebrating 1,000 years of science from the Muslim world.
There is a related video at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8472111.stm
Advertisement
A look around the Science Museum exhibition, '1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World'.
From about 700 to 1700, many of history's finest scientists and technologists were to be found in the Muslim world.
In Christian Europe the light of scientific inquiry had largely been extinguished with the collapse of the Roman empire. But it survived, and indeed blazed brightly, elsewhere.
From Moorish Spain across North Africa to Damascus, Baghdad, Persia and all the way to India, scientists in the Muslim world were at the forefront of developments in medicine, astronomy, engineering, hydraulics, mathematics, chemistry, map-making and exploration.
A new touring exhibition, hosted by the Science Museum in London, celebrates their achievements.
There is a whole area of science that is literally just lost in translation
Dr Susan Mossman, Science Museum
Salim Al-Hassani, a former professor of engineering at Umist (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) is a moving force behind the exhibition, 1001 Inventions.
He calls it "edutainment": a series of displays devoted to different aspects of science meant to be both educational and entertaining.
"We hope to inspire the younger generation to take up a career in science and technology and to be interested in improving the quality of societies," he says.
Mix of cultures
Visitors to the exhibition will be greeted by a 20 ft high replica of a spectacular clock designed in 1206 by the inventor Al-Jazari.
It incorporates elements from many cultures, representing the different cultural and scientific traditions which combined and flowed through the Muslim world.
Young people took the chance to explore the interactive exhibits
The clock's base is an elephant, representing India; inside the elephant the water-driven works of the clock derive from ancient Greece.
A Chinese dragon swings down from the top of the clock to mark the hours. At the top is a phoenix, representing ancient Egypt.
Sitting astride the elephant and inside the framework of the clock are automata, or puppets, wearing Arab turbans.
Elsewhere in the exhibition are displays devoted to water power, the spread of education (one of the world's first universities was founded by a Muslim woman, Fatima al-Fihri), Muslim architecture and its influence on the modern world and Muslim explorers and geographers.
There is a display of 10th Century surgeons' instruments, a lifesize model of a man called Abbas ibn Firnas, allegedly the first person to have flown with wings, and a model of the vast 100 yard-long junk commanded by the Muslim Chinese navigator, Zheng He.
Outside the main exhibition is a small display of exhibits drawn from the Science Museum's own collection.
They include a 10th Century alembic for distilling liquids, an astrolable for determining geographical position (and the direction of Mecca - important for Muslims uncertain which way to face when praying).
Also on display is an algebra textbook published in England in 1702, whose preface traces the development of algebra from its beginnings in India, through Persia, the Arab world and to Europe.
Dr Susan Mossman, project director at the museum, says: "There is a whole area of science that is literally just lost in translation.
"Arabic and Muslim culture particularly is a little-known story in Britain. This is a real opportunity to show that hidden story."
She says the hands-on exhibition suits the museum's style, which she describes as "heavy-duty scholarship produced in a user-friendly way and underpinned by academic research".
She adds: "We are opening people's eyes to a new area of knowledge - a cultural richness of science and technology that has perhaps been neglected in this country."
Intellectual climate
There is one big question the exhibition does not address: why, after so many centuries, did the Muslim world's scientific leadership falter? From the 16th Century onwards it was in Europe that modern science developed, and where scientific breakthroughs increasingly occurred.
Visitors are able to get close up to the replica of the 13th century clock
Prof Al-Hassani has his own theory, though there are others. Science flourished in the Muslim world for so long, he believes, because it was seen as expanding knowledge in the interests of society as a whole.
But in the later Middle Ages, the Muslim world came under attack from Europeans (in the Crusades) and the Mongols (who sacked Baghdad in 1258) and the Ottoman Turks overran the remnants of the Byzantine empire, setting up a formidably centralised state.
The need for defence against external enemies combined with a strong centralised government which put less value on individuals' scientific endeavour resulted in an intellectual climate in which science simply failed to flourish, he says.
The free exhibition runs from 21 January to 25 April with a break between 25 February and 12 March.
There is a related video at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8472111.stm
Advertisement
A look around the Science Museum exhibition, '1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World'.
From about 700 to 1700, many of history's finest scientists and technologists were to be found in the Muslim world.
In Christian Europe the light of scientific inquiry had largely been extinguished with the collapse of the Roman empire. But it survived, and indeed blazed brightly, elsewhere.
From Moorish Spain across North Africa to Damascus, Baghdad, Persia and all the way to India, scientists in the Muslim world were at the forefront of developments in medicine, astronomy, engineering, hydraulics, mathematics, chemistry, map-making and exploration.
A new touring exhibition, hosted by the Science Museum in London, celebrates their achievements.
There is a whole area of science that is literally just lost in translation
Dr Susan Mossman, Science Museum
Salim Al-Hassani, a former professor of engineering at Umist (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) is a moving force behind the exhibition, 1001 Inventions.
He calls it "edutainment": a series of displays devoted to different aspects of science meant to be both educational and entertaining.
"We hope to inspire the younger generation to take up a career in science and technology and to be interested in improving the quality of societies," he says.
Mix of cultures
Visitors to the exhibition will be greeted by a 20 ft high replica of a spectacular clock designed in 1206 by the inventor Al-Jazari.
It incorporates elements from many cultures, representing the different cultural and scientific traditions which combined and flowed through the Muslim world.
Young people took the chance to explore the interactive exhibits
The clock's base is an elephant, representing India; inside the elephant the water-driven works of the clock derive from ancient Greece.
A Chinese dragon swings down from the top of the clock to mark the hours. At the top is a phoenix, representing ancient Egypt.
Sitting astride the elephant and inside the framework of the clock are automata, or puppets, wearing Arab turbans.
Elsewhere in the exhibition are displays devoted to water power, the spread of education (one of the world's first universities was founded by a Muslim woman, Fatima al-Fihri), Muslim architecture and its influence on the modern world and Muslim explorers and geographers.
There is a display of 10th Century surgeons' instruments, a lifesize model of a man called Abbas ibn Firnas, allegedly the first person to have flown with wings, and a model of the vast 100 yard-long junk commanded by the Muslim Chinese navigator, Zheng He.
Outside the main exhibition is a small display of exhibits drawn from the Science Museum's own collection.
They include a 10th Century alembic for distilling liquids, an astrolable for determining geographical position (and the direction of Mecca - important for Muslims uncertain which way to face when praying).
Also on display is an algebra textbook published in England in 1702, whose preface traces the development of algebra from its beginnings in India, through Persia, the Arab world and to Europe.
Dr Susan Mossman, project director at the museum, says: "There is a whole area of science that is literally just lost in translation.
"Arabic and Muslim culture particularly is a little-known story in Britain. This is a real opportunity to show that hidden story."
She says the hands-on exhibition suits the museum's style, which she describes as "heavy-duty scholarship produced in a user-friendly way and underpinned by academic research".
She adds: "We are opening people's eyes to a new area of knowledge - a cultural richness of science and technology that has perhaps been neglected in this country."
Intellectual climate
There is one big question the exhibition does not address: why, after so many centuries, did the Muslim world's scientific leadership falter? From the 16th Century onwards it was in Europe that modern science developed, and where scientific breakthroughs increasingly occurred.
Visitors are able to get close up to the replica of the 13th century clock
Prof Al-Hassani has his own theory, though there are others. Science flourished in the Muslim world for so long, he believes, because it was seen as expanding knowledge in the interests of society as a whole.
But in the later Middle Ages, the Muslim world came under attack from Europeans (in the Crusades) and the Mongols (who sacked Baghdad in 1258) and the Ottoman Turks overran the remnants of the Byzantine empire, setting up a formidably centralised state.
The need for defence against external enemies combined with a strong centralised government which put less value on individuals' scientific endeavour resulted in an intellectual climate in which science simply failed to flourish, he says.
The free exhibition runs from 21 January to 25 April with a break between 25 February and 12 March.
German director depicts Muslims' struggles with challenges to faith in Berlin fest film
http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/enterta ... -fest-film
BERLIN - A first-time German director's film about Muslims struggling to come to terms with unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality and other challenges to their beliefs debuted Wednesday at the Berlin film festival.
"Shahada," or "Faith," is one of 20 movies in the festival's main competition. The first feature film from Burhan Qurbani, a 29-year-old German Muslim, it is competing alongside offerings from more established figures including Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer."
Qurbani said the movie is meant as "a call to dialogue."
Set in Berlin, it has three interlinked episodes - following the daughter of an imam who turns radical following an illegal abortion; a young Nigerian who struggles, in the end successfully, to reconcile his faith with feelings for another man; and a policeman racked by guilt over an accident in which he shot a woman.
"I wanted to show in my film that Muslims and Islam are not only one face, Arabic, (with a) beard, but it's really colorful," the director said of the variety of characters in his film.
The liberal imam of the movie, who preaches that the Qur'an is a book of love and is keen to reconcile with his daughter, is "designed as an ideal," Qurbani said. "He's what I would like to have as an imam in my ideal mosque."
He seeks reconciliation with his daughter, who starts out as a very Westernized young woman but "moves into total radicalism out of a feeling of isolation, out of a feeling of not being seen and accepted," said Maryam Zaree, who plays her.
Qurbani said his aim was to explore "stories that take our figures to the extreme limit of what is bearable for them."
The Berlin festival's top Golden Bear prize and other winners will be announced Saturday.
__._,_.___
http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/enterta ... -fest-film
BERLIN - A first-time German director's film about Muslims struggling to come to terms with unwanted pregnancy, homosexuality and other challenges to their beliefs debuted Wednesday at the Berlin film festival.
"Shahada," or "Faith," is one of 20 movies in the festival's main competition. The first feature film from Burhan Qurbani, a 29-year-old German Muslim, it is competing alongside offerings from more established figures including Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer."
Qurbani said the movie is meant as "a call to dialogue."
Set in Berlin, it has three interlinked episodes - following the daughter of an imam who turns radical following an illegal abortion; a young Nigerian who struggles, in the end successfully, to reconcile his faith with feelings for another man; and a policeman racked by guilt over an accident in which he shot a woman.
"I wanted to show in my film that Muslims and Islam are not only one face, Arabic, (with a) beard, but it's really colorful," the director said of the variety of characters in his film.
The liberal imam of the movie, who preaches that the Qur'an is a book of love and is keen to reconcile with his daughter, is "designed as an ideal," Qurbani said. "He's what I would like to have as an imam in my ideal mosque."
He seeks reconciliation with his daughter, who starts out as a very Westernized young woman but "moves into total radicalism out of a feeling of isolation, out of a feeling of not being seen and accepted," said Maryam Zaree, who plays her.
Qurbani said his aim was to explore "stories that take our figures to the extreme limit of what is bearable for them."
The Berlin festival's top Golden Bear prize and other winners will be announced Saturday.
__._,_.___
There is an interesting and related photo at:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... cmpid=rss1
Muhammad gets a makeover
A British campaign peddles the softer side of Islam
Globe and Mail Update
Published on Thursday, Jun. 10, 2010 7:08PM EDT
Last updated on Friday, Jun. 11, 2010 7:11AM EDT
.Which multinational brand has the biggest image problem these days? BP? Toyota? Goldman Sachs?
How about Islam? Say what you will about those other entities: They don’t have to deal with the public’s fear of terrorism.
Last month, an opinion poll conducted by the online research firm YouGuv found 50 per cent of Britons associate Islam with terrorism, 69 per cent believe the religion encourages the repression of women and 41 per cent don’t feel Muslims have a positive impact on British society.
While the specific numbers might vary from one country to another, the impressions are similar across the West. Last Sunday, during a rally in lower Manhattan opposing a mosque planned for the former World Trade site, protesters held up signs that read, “All I need to know about Islam, I learned on 9/11.” Sure, that’s like saying, “All I need to know about Christianity, I learned during the Crusades.” But it points to a bald fact: Islam has some work to do.
Which is why this week large posters began appearing on the London Underground and at city bus stops featuring three Britons who are seeking to put a different face on the religion. In the most genre-busting ad, a blonde woman without a head covering smiles prettily from the shores of a lake, accompanied by text which reads: “I believe in protecting the environment. So did Muhammad.” The woman is Kristiane Backer, a former MTV Europe host and convert to Islam who is identified as an “eco-Muslim.”
Another ad features a female barrister in a veil with the text, “I believe in women’s rights. So did Muhammad.” A third has a man who is identified as a worker with a homeless charity, stating, “I believe in social justice. So did Muhammad.” The campaign extends to a handful of taxis painted colourfully with quotes from the prophet. The ads point to a Website, InspiredByMuhammad.com, where a dozen short videos offer a progressive Islamic take on subjects such as animal welfare, charity, education, health, and coexistence.
“We wanted to highlight areas that are buzz terms at the moment,” explained Remona Aly, a spokesperson for the Exploring Islam Foundation, the small group of young Muslim professionals which created and is sponsoring the campaign. “The environment is a really hot topic at the moment, and people are not aware Muslims are encouraged to care for the environment by the prophetic teachings and also the Koranic teachings.”
Noting the Foundation’s motto is “mainstreaming Islam,” she added that the campaign uses bright colours – hot pink, orange, pastel blue – to counter the religion’s usual image. “We wanted it to be attractive and accessible. Often people associate negativity – gloom, gloomy colours, black – with Islam, so we purposefully made it colourful so it would be more attractive.”
If the campaign’s goal – rehabilitating the battered reputation of an ancient religion – is unusual, its tactics are torn from the pages of contemporary marketing textbooks. Most marketers these days try to appeal to consumers by leveraging shared values: In recent months, Coca-Cola has heavily promoted its environmental bona fides while Pepsi is sponsoring community improvement projects around North America.
“You can’t throw a brick without hitting a cause-marketing campaign,” noted Mara Einstein, an associate professor of media studies at Queens College in New York, and the author of Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age. “At this point, it’s the price of admission.”
The approach of InspiredByMuhammad fits in that mould. “You could have been selling Dawn dishwashing liquid or you could have been selling Islam, it’s all the same thing,” she said.
“You’re using the same emotional needs of people wanting to do good, but you’re using that to sell almost any product, and I consider religion to be a product.”
This is not the first time a mainstream ad campaign has tried to persuade Britons that Islam isn’t dominated by terrorists. After the July, 2005, London bombings, an ad-hoc organization quickly responded with a campaign known as “Islam is Peace.” A video in that effort inter-cut the smiling faces of children with text stating: “Islam is not about hostility … Islam is not violence.”
Mentions of hostility and violence are absent from the new campaign, which is designed to be upbeat, confident and optimistic. Asked to name the root causes of the misconceptions about Islam, Ms. Aly replied: “We’re not really into the blame game. Obviously, the nature of media is that it talks about crises or bad news, so because of that, unfortunately some tiny extremist elements have been highlighted in the press.”
While some believe the best way to repair Islam’s image is to reform the religion itself, Ms. Aly said the foundation is not interested in debating hardliners. “We haven’t entered into any dialogue with extremists, because we reject any extremism and we reject violence along with our fellow Britons, because they’re against the values of Islam or against the prophetic values.”
But if the campaign’s aim is to educate people about Islam’s progressive values, Ms. Einstein believes it’s missing the mark. “I never would have read those ads that way. I read those ads as proselytizing, as evangelism,” she said.
“By putting a person on it, saying ‘I believe in social justice and so did Muhammad,’ you’re giving the viewer of that advertising someone to connect to, and that’s how you sell a faith,” she explained. “If you wanted to change the impression of Islam, I’d think you’d actually show the good work, and not the person who believes in it.”
Ms. Einstein cited a campaign by the United Methodist Church in the United States that shows members working in underdeveloped countries. “If you actually showed Muslims going to Haiti, and helping with the earthquake, that would say to me you’re trying to change the image of the faith.”
Ms. Aly replied: “We do not seek to preach or proselytize. We simply wish to provide accurate and accessible information about Islam for a mainstream audience in order to foster better understanding between the diverse communities in Britain.”
But as it seeks to clean itself up, Islam may face the same sort of problem as BP: that advertising alone can’t fix an image until the core reason for that bad impression – be it an oil spill or terrorism – is solved.
In an e-mail discussion, Islamic critic Irshad Manji scoffed at the British campaign. “Mainstream Muslim behaviour is the reason so many Brits have a negative view of Islam,” she wrote. “They have not adequately challenged their spokespeople – the Muslim Council of Britain, for example – to become inclusive and pluralistic [or less insular and dogmatic]. Posters and videos don’t change that situation; they only seek to spin a happy image of a corrupt reality. I say it of British Muslims no less than of BP: don’t tell me what you believe. Show me what you do, and that tells me what you believe.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o ... cmpid=rss1
Muhammad gets a makeover
A British campaign peddles the softer side of Islam
Globe and Mail Update
Published on Thursday, Jun. 10, 2010 7:08PM EDT
Last updated on Friday, Jun. 11, 2010 7:11AM EDT
.Which multinational brand has the biggest image problem these days? BP? Toyota? Goldman Sachs?
How about Islam? Say what you will about those other entities: They don’t have to deal with the public’s fear of terrorism.
Last month, an opinion poll conducted by the online research firm YouGuv found 50 per cent of Britons associate Islam with terrorism, 69 per cent believe the religion encourages the repression of women and 41 per cent don’t feel Muslims have a positive impact on British society.
While the specific numbers might vary from one country to another, the impressions are similar across the West. Last Sunday, during a rally in lower Manhattan opposing a mosque planned for the former World Trade site, protesters held up signs that read, “All I need to know about Islam, I learned on 9/11.” Sure, that’s like saying, “All I need to know about Christianity, I learned during the Crusades.” But it points to a bald fact: Islam has some work to do.
Which is why this week large posters began appearing on the London Underground and at city bus stops featuring three Britons who are seeking to put a different face on the religion. In the most genre-busting ad, a blonde woman without a head covering smiles prettily from the shores of a lake, accompanied by text which reads: “I believe in protecting the environment. So did Muhammad.” The woman is Kristiane Backer, a former MTV Europe host and convert to Islam who is identified as an “eco-Muslim.”
Another ad features a female barrister in a veil with the text, “I believe in women’s rights. So did Muhammad.” A third has a man who is identified as a worker with a homeless charity, stating, “I believe in social justice. So did Muhammad.” The campaign extends to a handful of taxis painted colourfully with quotes from the prophet. The ads point to a Website, InspiredByMuhammad.com, where a dozen short videos offer a progressive Islamic take on subjects such as animal welfare, charity, education, health, and coexistence.
“We wanted to highlight areas that are buzz terms at the moment,” explained Remona Aly, a spokesperson for the Exploring Islam Foundation, the small group of young Muslim professionals which created and is sponsoring the campaign. “The environment is a really hot topic at the moment, and people are not aware Muslims are encouraged to care for the environment by the prophetic teachings and also the Koranic teachings.”
Noting the Foundation’s motto is “mainstreaming Islam,” she added that the campaign uses bright colours – hot pink, orange, pastel blue – to counter the religion’s usual image. “We wanted it to be attractive and accessible. Often people associate negativity – gloom, gloomy colours, black – with Islam, so we purposefully made it colourful so it would be more attractive.”
If the campaign’s goal – rehabilitating the battered reputation of an ancient religion – is unusual, its tactics are torn from the pages of contemporary marketing textbooks. Most marketers these days try to appeal to consumers by leveraging shared values: In recent months, Coca-Cola has heavily promoted its environmental bona fides while Pepsi is sponsoring community improvement projects around North America.
“You can’t throw a brick without hitting a cause-marketing campaign,” noted Mara Einstein, an associate professor of media studies at Queens College in New York, and the author of Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age. “At this point, it’s the price of admission.”
The approach of InspiredByMuhammad fits in that mould. “You could have been selling Dawn dishwashing liquid or you could have been selling Islam, it’s all the same thing,” she said.
“You’re using the same emotional needs of people wanting to do good, but you’re using that to sell almost any product, and I consider religion to be a product.”
This is not the first time a mainstream ad campaign has tried to persuade Britons that Islam isn’t dominated by terrorists. After the July, 2005, London bombings, an ad-hoc organization quickly responded with a campaign known as “Islam is Peace.” A video in that effort inter-cut the smiling faces of children with text stating: “Islam is not about hostility … Islam is not violence.”
Mentions of hostility and violence are absent from the new campaign, which is designed to be upbeat, confident and optimistic. Asked to name the root causes of the misconceptions about Islam, Ms. Aly replied: “We’re not really into the blame game. Obviously, the nature of media is that it talks about crises or bad news, so because of that, unfortunately some tiny extremist elements have been highlighted in the press.”
While some believe the best way to repair Islam’s image is to reform the religion itself, Ms. Aly said the foundation is not interested in debating hardliners. “We haven’t entered into any dialogue with extremists, because we reject any extremism and we reject violence along with our fellow Britons, because they’re against the values of Islam or against the prophetic values.”
But if the campaign’s aim is to educate people about Islam’s progressive values, Ms. Einstein believes it’s missing the mark. “I never would have read those ads that way. I read those ads as proselytizing, as evangelism,” she said.
“By putting a person on it, saying ‘I believe in social justice and so did Muhammad,’ you’re giving the viewer of that advertising someone to connect to, and that’s how you sell a faith,” she explained. “If you wanted to change the impression of Islam, I’d think you’d actually show the good work, and not the person who believes in it.”
Ms. Einstein cited a campaign by the United Methodist Church in the United States that shows members working in underdeveloped countries. “If you actually showed Muslims going to Haiti, and helping with the earthquake, that would say to me you’re trying to change the image of the faith.”
Ms. Aly replied: “We do not seek to preach or proselytize. We simply wish to provide accurate and accessible information about Islam for a mainstream audience in order to foster better understanding between the diverse communities in Britain.”
But as it seeks to clean itself up, Islam may face the same sort of problem as BP: that advertising alone can’t fix an image until the core reason for that bad impression – be it an oil spill or terrorism – is solved.
In an e-mail discussion, Islamic critic Irshad Manji scoffed at the British campaign. “Mainstream Muslim behaviour is the reason so many Brits have a negative view of Islam,” she wrote. “They have not adequately challenged their spokespeople – the Muslim Council of Britain, for example – to become inclusive and pluralistic [or less insular and dogmatic]. Posters and videos don’t change that situation; they only seek to spin a happy image of a corrupt reality. I say it of British Muslims no less than of BP: don’t tell me what you believe. Show me what you do, and that tells me what you believe.”
There is a related photo at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/us/08 ... &th&emc=th
August 7, 2010
Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.
In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.
In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.
In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.
At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.
In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.
These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.
“What’s different is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility,” said Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky. “It’s one thing to oppose a mosque because traffic might increase, but it’s different when you say these mosques are going to be nurturing terrorist bombers, that Islam is invading, that civilization is being undermined by Muslims.”
Feeding the resistance is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America.
But they have not gone unanswered. In each community, interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members of other faiths have defended the mosques. Often, they have been slower to organize than the mosque opponents, but their numbers have usually been larger.
The mosque proposed for the site near ground zero in Lower Manhattan cleared a final hurdle last week before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hailed the decision with a forceful speech on religious liberty. While an array of religious groups supported the project, opponents included the Anti-Defamation League, an influential Jewish group, and prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.
A smaller controversy is occurring in Temecula, about 60 miles north of San Diego, involving a typical stew of religion, politics and anti-immigrant sentiment. A Muslim community has been there for about 12 years and expanded to 150 families who have outgrown their makeshift worship space in a warehouse, said Mahmoud Harmoush, the imam, a lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino. The group wants to build a 25,000-square-foot center, with space for classrooms and a playground, on a lot it bought in 2000.
Mr. Harmoush said the Muslim families had contributed to the local food bank, sent truckloads of supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and participated in music nights and Thanksgiving events with the local interfaith council.
“We do all these activities and nobody notices,” he said. “Now that we have to build our center, everybody jumps to make it an issue.”
Recently, a small group of activists became alarmed about the mosque. Diana Serafin, a grandmother who lost her job in tech support this year, said she reached out to others she knew from attending Tea Party events and anti-immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended a meeting of the local chapter of ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.
“As a mother and a grandmother, I worry,” Ms. Serafin said. “I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.”
“I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion,” she said. “But Islam is not about a religion. It’s a political government, and it’s 100 percent against our Constitution.”
Ms. Serafin was among an estimated 20 to 30 people who turned out to protest the mosque, including some who intentionally took dogs to offend those Muslims who consider dogs to be ritually unclean. But they were outnumbered by at least 75 supporters. The City of Temecula recently postponed a hearing on whether to grant the mosque a permit.
Larry Slusser, a Mormon and the secretary of the Interfaith Council of Murietta and Temecula, went to the protest to support the Muslim group. “I know them,” he said. “They’re good people. They have no ill intent. They’re good Americans. They are leaders in their professions.”
Of the protesters, he said, “they have fear because they don’t know them.”
Religious freedom is also at stake, Mr. Slusser said, adding, “They’re Americans, they deserve to have a place to worship just like everybody else.”
There are about 1,900 mosques in the United States, which run the gamut from makeshift prayer rooms in storefronts and houses to large buildings with adjoining community centers, according to a preliminary survey by Mr. Bagby, who conducted a mosque study 10 years ago and is now undertaking another.
A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.
Radicalization of alienated Muslim youths is a real threat, Mr. Bagby said. “But the youth we worry about,” he said, “are not the youth that come to the mosque.”
In central Tennessee, the mosque in Murfreesboro is the third one in the last year to encounter resistance. It became a political issue when Republican candidates for governor and Congress declared their opposition. (They were defeated in primary elections on Thursday.)
A group called Former Muslims United put up a billboard saying “Stop the Murfreesboro Mosque.” The group’s president is Nonie Darwish, also the founder of Arabs for Israel, who spoke against Islam in Murfreesboro at a fund-raising dinner for Christians United for Israel, an evangelical organization led by the Rev. John Hagee.
“A mosque is not just a place for worship,” Ms. Darwish said in an interview. “It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.”
Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, lamented that people were listening to what she called “total disinformation” on Islam.
She said her group was stunned when what began as one person raising zoning questions about the new mosque evolved into mass protests with marchers waving signs about Shariah.
“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There’s no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn’t be living here.”
In Wisconsin, the conflict over the mosque was settled when the Town Executive Council voted unanimously to give the Islamic Society of Sheboygan a permit to use the former health food store as a prayer space.
Dr. Mansoor Mirza, the physician who owns the property, said he was trying to take the long view of the controversy.
“Every new group coming to this country — Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Japanese — has gone through this,” Dr. Mirza said. “Now I think it’s our turn to pay the price, and eventually we will be coming out of this, too.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/us/08 ... &th&emc=th
August 7, 2010
Across Nation, Mosque Projects Meet Opposition
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
While a high-profile battle rages over a mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, heated confrontations have also broken out in communities across the country where mosques are proposed for far less hallowed locations.
In Murfreesboro, Tenn., Republican candidates have denounced plans for a large Muslim center proposed near a subdivision, and hundreds of protesters have turned out for a march and a county meeting.
In late June, in Temecula, Calif., members of a local Tea Party group took dogs and picket signs to Friday prayers at a mosque that is seeking to build a new worship center on a vacant lot nearby.
In Sheboygan, Wis., a few Christian ministers led a noisy fight against a Muslim group that sought permission to open a mosque in a former health food store bought by a Muslim doctor.
At one time, neighbors who did not want mosques in their backyards said their concerns were over traffic, parking and noise — the same reasons they might object to a church or a synagogue. But now the gloves are off.
In all of the recent conflicts, opponents have said their problem is Islam itself. They quote passages from the Koran and argue that even the most Americanized Muslim secretly wants to replace the Constitution with Islamic Shariah law.
These local skirmishes make clear that there is now widespread debate about whether the best way to uphold America’s democratic values is to allow Muslims the same religious freedom enjoyed by other Americans, or to pull away the welcome mat from a faith seen as a singular threat.
“What’s different is the heat, the volume, the level of hostility,” said Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky. “It’s one thing to oppose a mosque because traffic might increase, but it’s different when you say these mosques are going to be nurturing terrorist bombers, that Islam is invading, that civilization is being undermined by Muslims.”
Feeding the resistance is a growing cottage industry of authors and bloggers — some of them former Muslims — who are invited to speak at rallies, sell their books and testify in churches. Their message is that Islam is inherently violent and incompatible with America.
But they have not gone unanswered. In each community, interfaith groups led by Protestant ministers, Catholic priests, rabbis and clergy members of other faiths have defended the mosques. Often, they have been slower to organize than the mosque opponents, but their numbers have usually been larger.
The mosque proposed for the site near ground zero in Lower Manhattan cleared a final hurdle last week before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hailed the decision with a forceful speech on religious liberty. While an array of religious groups supported the project, opponents included the Anti-Defamation League, an influential Jewish group, and prominent Republicans like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker.
A smaller controversy is occurring in Temecula, about 60 miles north of San Diego, involving a typical stew of religion, politics and anti-immigrant sentiment. A Muslim community has been there for about 12 years and expanded to 150 families who have outgrown their makeshift worship space in a warehouse, said Mahmoud Harmoush, the imam, a lecturer at California State University, San Bernardino. The group wants to build a 25,000-square-foot center, with space for classrooms and a playground, on a lot it bought in 2000.
Mr. Harmoush said the Muslim families had contributed to the local food bank, sent truckloads of supplies to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and participated in music nights and Thanksgiving events with the local interfaith council.
“We do all these activities and nobody notices,” he said. “Now that we have to build our center, everybody jumps to make it an issue.”
Recently, a small group of activists became alarmed about the mosque. Diana Serafin, a grandmother who lost her job in tech support this year, said she reached out to others she knew from attending Tea Party events and anti-immigration rallies. She said they read books by critics of Islam, including former Muslims like Walid Shoebat, Wafa Sultan and Manoucher Bakh. She also attended a meeting of the local chapter of ACT! for America, a Florida-based group that says its purpose is to defend Western civilization against Islam.
“As a mother and a grandmother, I worry,” Ms. Serafin said. “I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented. My children and grandchildren will have to live under that.”
“I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion,” she said. “But Islam is not about a religion. It’s a political government, and it’s 100 percent against our Constitution.”
Ms. Serafin was among an estimated 20 to 30 people who turned out to protest the mosque, including some who intentionally took dogs to offend those Muslims who consider dogs to be ritually unclean. But they were outnumbered by at least 75 supporters. The City of Temecula recently postponed a hearing on whether to grant the mosque a permit.
Larry Slusser, a Mormon and the secretary of the Interfaith Council of Murietta and Temecula, went to the protest to support the Muslim group. “I know them,” he said. “They’re good people. They have no ill intent. They’re good Americans. They are leaders in their professions.”
Of the protesters, he said, “they have fear because they don’t know them.”
Religious freedom is also at stake, Mr. Slusser said, adding, “They’re Americans, they deserve to have a place to worship just like everybody else.”
There are about 1,900 mosques in the United States, which run the gamut from makeshift prayer rooms in storefronts and houses to large buildings with adjoining community centers, according to a preliminary survey by Mr. Bagby, who conducted a mosque study 10 years ago and is now undertaking another.
A two-year study by a group of academics on American Muslims and terrorism concluded that contemporary mosques are actually a deterrent to the spread of militant Islam and terrorism. The study was conducted by professors with Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy and the University of North Carolina. It disclosed that many mosque leaders had put significant effort into countering extremism by building youth programs, sponsoring antiviolence forums and scrutinizing teachers and texts.
Radicalization of alienated Muslim youths is a real threat, Mr. Bagby said. “But the youth we worry about,” he said, “are not the youth that come to the mosque.”
In central Tennessee, the mosque in Murfreesboro is the third one in the last year to encounter resistance. It became a political issue when Republican candidates for governor and Congress declared their opposition. (They were defeated in primary elections on Thursday.)
A group called Former Muslims United put up a billboard saying “Stop the Murfreesboro Mosque.” The group’s president is Nonie Darwish, also the founder of Arabs for Israel, who spoke against Islam in Murfreesboro at a fund-raising dinner for Christians United for Israel, an evangelical organization led by the Rev. John Hagee.
“A mosque is not just a place for worship,” Ms. Darwish said in an interview. “It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.”
Camie Ayash, a spokeswoman for the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, lamented that people were listening to what she called “total disinformation” on Islam.
She said her group was stunned when what began as one person raising zoning questions about the new mosque evolved into mass protests with marchers waving signs about Shariah.
“A lot of Muslims came to the U.S. because they respect the Constitution,” she said. “There’s no conflict with the U.S. Constitution in Shariah law. If there were, Muslims wouldn’t be living here.”
In Wisconsin, the conflict over the mosque was settled when the Town Executive Council voted unanimously to give the Islamic Society of Sheboygan a permit to use the former health food store as a prayer space.
Dr. Mansoor Mirza, the physician who owns the property, said he was trying to take the long view of the controversy.
“Every new group coming to this country — Jews, Catholics, Irish, Germans, Japanese — has gone through this,” Dr. Mirza said. “Now I think it’s our turn to pay the price, and eventually we will be coming out of this, too.”
August 16, 2010
The Muslims in the Middle
By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
New Delhi
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.
We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.
Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”
The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.
For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.
The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.
While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.
This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.
Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”
THEN, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.
“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”
Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.
The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.
Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.
“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”
There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”
Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opini ... &th&emc=th
The Muslims in the Middle
By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
New Delhi
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S eloquent endorsement on Friday of a planned Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center, followed by his apparent retreat the next day, was just one of many paradoxes at the heart of the increasingly impassioned controversy.
We have seen the Anti-Defamation League, an organization dedicated to ending “unjust and unfair discrimination,” seek to discriminate against American Muslims. We have seen Newt Gingrich depict the organization behind the center — the Cordoba Initiative, which is dedicated to “improving Muslim-West relations” and interfaith dialogue — as a “deliberately insulting” and triumphalist force attempting to built a monument to Muslim victory near the site of the twin towers.
Most laughably, we have seen politicians like Rick Lazio, a Republican candidate for New York governor, question whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the principal figure behind the project, might have links to “radical organizations.”
The problem with such claims goes far beyond the fate of a mosque in downtown Manhattan. They show a dangerously inadequate understanding of the many divisions, complexities and nuances within the Islamic world — a failure that hugely hampers Western efforts to fight violent Islamic extremism and to reconcile Americans with peaceful adherents of the world’s second-largest religion.
Most of us are perfectly capable of making distinctions within the Christian world. The fact that someone is a Boston Roman Catholic doesn’t mean he’s in league with Irish Republican Army bomb makers, just as not all Orthodox Christians have ties to Serbian war criminals or Southern Baptists to the murderers of abortion doctors.
Yet many of our leaders have a tendency to see the Islamic world as a single, terrifying monolith. Had the George W. Bush administration been more aware of the irreconcilable differences between the Salafist jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the United States might never have blundered into a disastrous war, and instead kept its focus on rebuilding post-Taliban Afghanistan while the hearts and minds of the Afghans were still open to persuasion.
Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative is one of America’s leading thinkers of Sufism, the mystical form of Islam, which in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists. His videos and sermons preach love, the remembrance of God (or “zikr”) and reconciliation. His slightly New Agey rhetoric makes him sound, for better or worse, like a Muslim Deepak Chopra. But in the eyes of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, he is an infidel-loving, grave-worshiping apostate; they no doubt regard him as a legitimate target for assassination.
For such moderate, pluralistic Sufi imams are the front line against the most violent forms of Islam. In the most radical parts of the Muslim world, Sufi leaders risk their lives for their tolerant beliefs, every bit as bravely as American troops on the ground in Baghdad and Kabul do. Sufism is the most pluralistic incarnation of Islam — accessible to the learned and the ignorant, the faithful and nonbelievers — and is thus a uniquely valuable bridge between East and West.
The great Sufi saints like the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi held that all existence and all religions were one, all manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque, church, synagogue or temple, but the striving to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart: that we all can find paradise within us, if we know where to look. In some ways Sufism, with its emphasis on love rather than judgment, represents the New Testament of Islam.
While the West remains blind to the divisions and distinctions within Islam, the challenge posed by the Sufi vision of the faith is not lost on the extremists. This was shown most violently on July 2, when the Pakistani Taliban organized a double-suicide bombing of the Data Darbar, the largest Sufi shrine in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city. The attack took place on a Thursday night, when the shrine was at its busiest; 42 people were killed and 175 were injured.
This was only the latest in a series of assaults against Pakistan’s Sufis. In May, Peeru’s Cafe in Lahore, a cultural center where I had recently performed with a troupe of Sufi musicians, was bombed in the middle of its annual festival. An important site in a tribal area of the northwest — the tomb of Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a Sufi persecuted under British colonial rule for his social work — has been forcibly turned into a Taliban headquarters. Two shrines near Peshawar, the mausoleum of Bahadar Baba and the shrine of Abu Saeed Baba, have been destroyed by rocket fire.
Symbolically, however, the most devastating Taliban attack occurred last spring at the shrine of the 17th-century poet-saint Rahman Baba, at the foot of the Khyber Pass in northwest Pakistan. For centuries, the complex has been a place for musicians and poets to gather, and Rahman Baba’s Sufi verses had long made him the national poet of the Pashtuns living on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “I am a lover, and I deal in love,” wrote the saint. “Sow flowers,/ so your surroundings become a garden./ Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet./ We are all one body./ Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.”
THEN, about a decade ago, a Saudi-financed religious school, or madrasa, was built at the end of the path leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they see as the un-Islamic practices of Rahman Baba’s admirers. When I last visited it in 2003, the shrine-keeper, Tila Mohammed, described how young students were coming regularly to complain that his shrine was a center of idolatry and immorality.
“My family have been singing here for generations,” he told me. “But now these madrasa students come and tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women to stay at home. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems.”
Then, one morning in early March 2009, a group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn and placed dynamite packages around the squinches supporting the shrine’s dome. In the ensuing explosion, the mausoleum was destroyed, but at least nobody was killed. The Pakistani Taliban quickly took credit, blaming the shrine’s administrators for allowing women to pray and seek healing there.
The good news is that Sufis, though mild, are also resilient. While the Wahhabis have become dominant in northern Pakistan ever since we chose to finance their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan, things are different in Sindh Province in southern Pakistan. Sufis are putting up a strong resistance on behalf of the pluralist, composite culture that emerged in the course of a thousand years of cohabitation between Hinduism and Islam.
Last year, when I visited a shrine of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in the town of Sehwan, I was astonished by the strength and the openness of the feelings against those puritan mullahs who criticize as heresy all homage to Sufi saints.
“I feel that it is my duty to protect both the Sufi saints, just as they have protected me,” one woman told me. “Today in our Pakistan there are so many of these mullahs and Wahhabis who say that to pay respect to the saints in their shrines is heresy. Those hypocrites! They sit there reading their law books and arguing about how long their beards should be, and fail to listen to the true message of the prophet.”
There are many like her; indeed, until recently Sufism was the dominant form of Islam in South Asia. And her point of view shows why the West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”
Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.
William Dalrymple is the author, most recently, of “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opini ... &th&emc=th
In Search of the Real Islam
Weekly commentary
A new book on the early years of Islam paints a more complex portrait of the movement's beginnings.
VIDEO
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/ ... es_id=1190
Weekly commentary
A new book on the early years of Islam paints a more complex portrait of the movement's beginnings.
VIDEO
http://www.americamagazine.org/content/ ... es_id=1190
Islam: The Next American Religion?
MICHAEL WOLFE
From Western Minaret
The U.S. began as a haven for Christian outcasts. But what religion fits our current zeitgeist? The answer may be Islam.
Americans tend to think of their country as, at the very least, a nominally Christian nation. Didn't the Pilgrims come here for freedom to practice their Christian religion? Don't Christian values of righteousness under God, and freedom, reinforce America's democratic, capitalist ideals?
True enough. But there's a new religion on the block now, one that fits the current zeitgeist nicely. It's Islam.
Islam is the third-largest and fastest growing religious community in the United States. This is not just because of immigration. More than 50% of America's six million Muslims were born here. Statistics like these imply some basic agreement between core American values and the beliefs that Muslims hold. Americans who make the effort to look beyond popular stereotypes to learn the truth of Islam are surprised to find themselves on familiar ground.
Is America a Muslim nation? Here are seven reasons the answer may be yes.
Islam is monotheistic. Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians. They also revere the same prophets as Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham, the first monotheist, to Moses, the law giver and messenger of God, to Jesus--not leaving out Noah, Job, or Isaiah along the way. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition only came to the fore in the 1940s in America. Now, as a nation, we may be transcending it, turning to a more inclusive "Abrahamic" view.
In January, President Bush grouped mosques with churches and synagogues in his inaugural address. A few days later, when he posed for photographers at a meeting of several dozen religious figures, the Shi'ite imam Muhammad Qazwini, of Orange County, Calif., stood directly behind Bush's chair like a presiding angel, dressed in the robes and turban of his south Iraqi youth.
Islam is democratic in spirit. Islam advocates the right to vote and educate yourself and pursue a profession. The Qur'an, on which Islamic law is based, enjoins Muslims to govern themselves by discussion and consensus. In mosques, there is no particular priestly hierarchy. With Islam, each individual is responsible for the condition of her or his own soul. Everyone stands equal before God.
Americans, who mostly associate Islamic government with a handful of tyrants, may find this independent spirit surprising, supposing that Muslims are somehow predisposed to passive submission. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dictators reigning today in the Middle East are not the result of Islamic principles. They are more a result of global economics and the aftermath of European colonialism. Meanwhile, like everyone else, average Muslims the world over want a larger say in what goes on in the countries where they live. Those in America may actually succeed in it. In this way,America is closer in spirit to Islam than many Arab countries.
Islam contains an attractive mystical tradition. Mysticism is grounded in the individual search for God. Where better to do that than in America, land of individualists and spiritual seekers? And who might better benefit than Americans from the centuries-long tradition of teachers and students that characterize Islam. Surprising as it may seem, America's best-selling poet du jour is a Muslim mystic named Rumi, the 800-year-old Persian bard and founder of the Mevlevi Path, known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes. Even book packagers are now rushing him into print to meet and profit from mainstream demand for this visionary. Translators as various as Robert Bly, Coleman Barks, and Kabir and Camille Helminski have produced dozens of books of Rumi's verse and have only begun to bring his enormous output before the English-speaking world. This is a concrete poetry of ecstasy, where physical reality and the longing for God are joined by flashes of metaphor and insight that continue to speak across the centuries.
Islam is egalitarian. From New York to California, the only houses of worship that are routinely integrated today are the approximately 4,000 Muslim mosques. That is because Islam is predicated on a level playing field, especially when it comes to standing before God. The Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, "under God") and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (all people are "created equal") express themes that are also basic to Islam.
Islam is often viewed as an aggressive faith because of the concept of jihad, but this is actually a misunderstood term. Because Muslims believe that God wants a just world, they tend to be activists, and they emphasize that people are equal before God. These are two reasons why African Americans have been drawn in such large numbers to Islam. They now comprise about one-third of all Muslims in America.
Meanwhile, this egalitarian streak also plays itself out in relations between the sexes. Muhammad, Islam's prophet, actually was a reformer in his day.
Following the Qur'an, he limited the number of wives a man could have and strongly recommended against polygamy. The Qur'an laid out a set of marriage laws that guarantees married women their family names, their own possessions and capital, the right to agree upon whom they will marry, and the right to initiate divorce. In Islam's early period, women were professionals and property owners, as increasingly they are today. None of this may seem obvious to most Americans because of cultural overlays that at times make Islam appear to be a repressive faith toward women--but if you look more closely, you can see the egalitarian streak preserved in the Qur'an finding expression in contemporary terms. In today's Iran, for example, more women than men attend university, and in recent local elections there, 5,000 women ran for public office.
Islam shares America's new interest in food purity and diet. Muslims conduct a month long fast during the holy month of Ramadan, a practice that many Americans admire and even seek to emulate. I happened to spend quite a bit of time with a non-Muslim friend during Ramadan this year. After a month of being exposed to a practice that brings some annual control to human consumption, my friend let me know, in January, that he was "doing a little Ramadan" of his own. I asked what he meant. "Well, I'm not drinking anything or smoking anything for at least a month, and I'm going off coffee." Given this friend's normal intake of coffee, I could not believe my ears.
Muslims also observe dietary laws that restrict the kind of meat they can eat. These laws require that the permitted, or halal, meat is prepared in a manner that emphasizes cleanliness and a humane treatment of animals. These laws ride on the same trends that have made organic foods so popular.
Islam is tolerant of other faiths. Like America, Islam has a history of respecting other religions. In Muhammad's day, Christians, Sabeans, and Jews in Muslim lands retained their own courts and enjoyed considerable autonomy. As Islam spread east toward India and China, it came to view Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism as valid paths to salvation. As Islam spread north and west, Judaism especially benefited. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after centuries as outcasts, only came about after Muslims took the city in 638. The first thing the Muslims did there was to rescue the Temple Mount, which by then had been turned into a garbage heap.
Today, of course, the long discord between Israel and Palestine has acquired harsh religious overtones. Yet the fact remains that this is a battle for real estate, not a war between two faiths. Islam and Judaism revere the same prophetic lineage, back to Abraham, and no amount of bullets or barbed wire can change that. As The New York Times recently reported, while Muslim/Jewish tensions sometimes flare on university campuses, lately these same students have found ways to forge common links. For one thing, the two religions share similar dietary laws, including ritual slaughter and a prohibition on pork. Joining forces at Dartmouth this fall, the first kosher/halal dining hall is scheduled to open its doors this autumn. That isn't all: They're already planning a joint Thanksgiving dinner, with birds dressed at a nearby farm by a rabbi and an imam. If the American Pilgrims were watching now, they'd be rubbing their eyes with amazement. And, because they came here fleeing religious persecution, they might also understand.
Islam encourages the pursuit of religious freedom. The Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock is not the world's first story of religious emigration. Muhammad and his little band of 100 followers fled religious persecution, too, from Mecca in the year 622. They only survived by going to Madinah, an oasis a few hundred miles north, where they established a new community based on a religion they could only practice secretly back home. No wonder then that, in our own day, many Muslims have come here as pilgrims from oppression, leaving places like Kashmir, Bosnia, and Kosovo, where being a Muslim may radically shorten your life span. When the 20th century's list of emigrant exiles is added up, it will prove to be heavy with Muslims, that's for sure.
All in all, there seems to be a deep resonance between Islam and the United States. Although one is a world religion and the other is a sovereign nation, both are traditionally very strong on individual responsibility. Like New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die," America is wedded to individual liberty and an ethic based on right action. For a Muslim, spiritual salvation depends on these. This is best expressed in a popular saying: Even when you think God isn't watching you, act as if he is.
Who knows? Perhaps it won't be long now before words like salat (Muslim prayer) and Ramadan join karma and Nirvana in Webster's Dictionary, and Muslims take their place in America's mainstream.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Wolfe is the author of books of poetry, fiction, travel, and history. His most recent works are a pair of books from Grove Press on the pilgrimage to Mecca: "The Hajj" (1993), a first-person travel account, and "One Thousand Roads to Mecca" (1997), an anthology of 10 centuries of travelers writing about the Muslim pilgrimage. In April 1997, he hosted a televised account of the Hajj from Mecca for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" on ABC. He is currently at work on a four-hour television documentary on the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad.
Reprinted from Beliefnet.com
http://www.amaana.org/islam/islamamer.htm
MICHAEL WOLFE
From Western Minaret
The U.S. began as a haven for Christian outcasts. But what religion fits our current zeitgeist? The answer may be Islam.
Americans tend to think of their country as, at the very least, a nominally Christian nation. Didn't the Pilgrims come here for freedom to practice their Christian religion? Don't Christian values of righteousness under God, and freedom, reinforce America's democratic, capitalist ideals?
True enough. But there's a new religion on the block now, one that fits the current zeitgeist nicely. It's Islam.
Islam is the third-largest and fastest growing religious community in the United States. This is not just because of immigration. More than 50% of America's six million Muslims were born here. Statistics like these imply some basic agreement between core American values and the beliefs that Muslims hold. Americans who make the effort to look beyond popular stereotypes to learn the truth of Islam are surprised to find themselves on familiar ground.
Is America a Muslim nation? Here are seven reasons the answer may be yes.
Islam is monotheistic. Muslims worship the same God as Jews and Christians. They also revere the same prophets as Judaism and Christianity, from Abraham, the first monotheist, to Moses, the law giver and messenger of God, to Jesus--not leaving out Noah, Job, or Isaiah along the way. The concept of a Judeo-Christian tradition only came to the fore in the 1940s in America. Now, as a nation, we may be transcending it, turning to a more inclusive "Abrahamic" view.
In January, President Bush grouped mosques with churches and synagogues in his inaugural address. A few days later, when he posed for photographers at a meeting of several dozen religious figures, the Shi'ite imam Muhammad Qazwini, of Orange County, Calif., stood directly behind Bush's chair like a presiding angel, dressed in the robes and turban of his south Iraqi youth.
Islam is democratic in spirit. Islam advocates the right to vote and educate yourself and pursue a profession. The Qur'an, on which Islamic law is based, enjoins Muslims to govern themselves by discussion and consensus. In mosques, there is no particular priestly hierarchy. With Islam, each individual is responsible for the condition of her or his own soul. Everyone stands equal before God.
Americans, who mostly associate Islamic government with a handful of tyrants, may find this independent spirit surprising, supposing that Muslims are somehow predisposed to passive submission. Nothing could be further from the truth. The dictators reigning today in the Middle East are not the result of Islamic principles. They are more a result of global economics and the aftermath of European colonialism. Meanwhile, like everyone else, average Muslims the world over want a larger say in what goes on in the countries where they live. Those in America may actually succeed in it. In this way,America is closer in spirit to Islam than many Arab countries.
Islam contains an attractive mystical tradition. Mysticism is grounded in the individual search for God. Where better to do that than in America, land of individualists and spiritual seekers? And who might better benefit than Americans from the centuries-long tradition of teachers and students that characterize Islam. Surprising as it may seem, America's best-selling poet du jour is a Muslim mystic named Rumi, the 800-year-old Persian bard and founder of the Mevlevi Path, known in the West as the Whirling Dervishes. Even book packagers are now rushing him into print to meet and profit from mainstream demand for this visionary. Translators as various as Robert Bly, Coleman Barks, and Kabir and Camille Helminski have produced dozens of books of Rumi's verse and have only begun to bring his enormous output before the English-speaking world. This is a concrete poetry of ecstasy, where physical reality and the longing for God are joined by flashes of metaphor and insight that continue to speak across the centuries.
Islam is egalitarian. From New York to California, the only houses of worship that are routinely integrated today are the approximately 4,000 Muslim mosques. That is because Islam is predicated on a level playing field, especially when it comes to standing before God. The Pledge of Allegiance (one nation, "under God") and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (all people are "created equal") express themes that are also basic to Islam.
Islam is often viewed as an aggressive faith because of the concept of jihad, but this is actually a misunderstood term. Because Muslims believe that God wants a just world, they tend to be activists, and they emphasize that people are equal before God. These are two reasons why African Americans have been drawn in such large numbers to Islam. They now comprise about one-third of all Muslims in America.
Meanwhile, this egalitarian streak also plays itself out in relations between the sexes. Muhammad, Islam's prophet, actually was a reformer in his day.
Following the Qur'an, he limited the number of wives a man could have and strongly recommended against polygamy. The Qur'an laid out a set of marriage laws that guarantees married women their family names, their own possessions and capital, the right to agree upon whom they will marry, and the right to initiate divorce. In Islam's early period, women were professionals and property owners, as increasingly they are today. None of this may seem obvious to most Americans because of cultural overlays that at times make Islam appear to be a repressive faith toward women--but if you look more closely, you can see the egalitarian streak preserved in the Qur'an finding expression in contemporary terms. In today's Iran, for example, more women than men attend university, and in recent local elections there, 5,000 women ran for public office.
Islam shares America's new interest in food purity and diet. Muslims conduct a month long fast during the holy month of Ramadan, a practice that many Americans admire and even seek to emulate. I happened to spend quite a bit of time with a non-Muslim friend during Ramadan this year. After a month of being exposed to a practice that brings some annual control to human consumption, my friend let me know, in January, that he was "doing a little Ramadan" of his own. I asked what he meant. "Well, I'm not drinking anything or smoking anything for at least a month, and I'm going off coffee." Given this friend's normal intake of coffee, I could not believe my ears.
Muslims also observe dietary laws that restrict the kind of meat they can eat. These laws require that the permitted, or halal, meat is prepared in a manner that emphasizes cleanliness and a humane treatment of animals. These laws ride on the same trends that have made organic foods so popular.
Islam is tolerant of other faiths. Like America, Islam has a history of respecting other religions. In Muhammad's day, Christians, Sabeans, and Jews in Muslim lands retained their own courts and enjoyed considerable autonomy. As Islam spread east toward India and China, it came to view Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism as valid paths to salvation. As Islam spread north and west, Judaism especially benefited. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem, after centuries as outcasts, only came about after Muslims took the city in 638. The first thing the Muslims did there was to rescue the Temple Mount, which by then had been turned into a garbage heap.
Today, of course, the long discord between Israel and Palestine has acquired harsh religious overtones. Yet the fact remains that this is a battle for real estate, not a war between two faiths. Islam and Judaism revere the same prophetic lineage, back to Abraham, and no amount of bullets or barbed wire can change that. As The New York Times recently reported, while Muslim/Jewish tensions sometimes flare on university campuses, lately these same students have found ways to forge common links. For one thing, the two religions share similar dietary laws, including ritual slaughter and a prohibition on pork. Joining forces at Dartmouth this fall, the first kosher/halal dining hall is scheduled to open its doors this autumn. That isn't all: They're already planning a joint Thanksgiving dinner, with birds dressed at a nearby farm by a rabbi and an imam. If the American Pilgrims were watching now, they'd be rubbing their eyes with amazement. And, because they came here fleeing religious persecution, they might also understand.
Islam encourages the pursuit of religious freedom. The Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock is not the world's first story of religious emigration. Muhammad and his little band of 100 followers fled religious persecution, too, from Mecca in the year 622. They only survived by going to Madinah, an oasis a few hundred miles north, where they established a new community based on a religion they could only practice secretly back home. No wonder then that, in our own day, many Muslims have come here as pilgrims from oppression, leaving places like Kashmir, Bosnia, and Kosovo, where being a Muslim may radically shorten your life span. When the 20th century's list of emigrant exiles is added up, it will prove to be heavy with Muslims, that's for sure.
All in all, there seems to be a deep resonance between Islam and the United States. Although one is a world religion and the other is a sovereign nation, both are traditionally very strong on individual responsibility. Like New Hampshire's motto, "Live Free or Die," America is wedded to individual liberty and an ethic based on right action. For a Muslim, spiritual salvation depends on these. This is best expressed in a popular saying: Even when you think God isn't watching you, act as if he is.
Who knows? Perhaps it won't be long now before words like salat (Muslim prayer) and Ramadan join karma and Nirvana in Webster's Dictionary, and Muslims take their place in America's mainstream.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Wolfe is the author of books of poetry, fiction, travel, and history. His most recent works are a pair of books from Grove Press on the pilgrimage to Mecca: "The Hajj" (1993), a first-person travel account, and "One Thousand Roads to Mecca" (1997), an anthology of 10 centuries of travelers writing about the Muslim pilgrimage. In April 1997, he hosted a televised account of the Hajj from Mecca for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" on ABC. He is currently at work on a four-hour television documentary on the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad.
Reprinted from Beliefnet.com
http://www.amaana.org/islam/islamamer.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opini ... &th&emc=th
September 18, 2010
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.
I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.
So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apology for being too respectful of Muslims. “We sincerely apologize,” wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: “we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.” As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: “Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human.”
I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn’t reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be “balanced” by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?
Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?
I interrupt this discussion of peaceful journalism in Maine to provide some “balance.” Journalists can also be terrorists, murderers and rapists. For example, radio journalists in Rwanda promoted genocide.
I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn’t about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.
Granted, the reason for the nastiness isn’t hard to understand. Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole. Threats by Muslim crazies just in the last few days forced a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, to go into hiding after she drew a cartoon about Muhammad that went viral.
And then there’s 9/11. When I recently compared today’s prejudice toward Muslims to the historical bigotry toward Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Asian-Americans, many readers protested that it was a false parallel. As one, Carla, put it on my blog: “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.”
That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.
Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.
But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos videos and follow me on Twitter.
September 18, 2010
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.
I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.
So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apology for being too respectful of Muslims. “We sincerely apologize,” wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: “we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.” As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: “Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human.”
I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn’t reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be “balanced” by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?
Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?
I interrupt this discussion of peaceful journalism in Maine to provide some “balance.” Journalists can also be terrorists, murderers and rapists. For example, radio journalists in Rwanda promoted genocide.
I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn’t about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.
Granted, the reason for the nastiness isn’t hard to understand. Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole. Threats by Muslim crazies just in the last few days forced a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, to go into hiding after she drew a cartoon about Muhammad that went viral.
And then there’s 9/11. When I recently compared today’s prejudice toward Muslims to the historical bigotry toward Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Asian-Americans, many readers protested that it was a false parallel. As one, Carla, put it on my blog: “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.”
That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.
Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.
Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.
In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.
But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.
I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos videos and follow me on Twitter.
Interesting videos on the image of Islam....
World without Islam
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/ ... &ch=224106
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http://www.youtube.com/1001inventions#p/u/0/JZDe9DCx7Wk
a look into the real trajectory of the world of science and progress...
World without Islam
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/ ... &ch=224106
______________________________
______________________________
http://www.youtube.com/1001inventions#p/u/0/JZDe9DCx7Wk
a look into the real trajectory of the world of science and progress...
Video of Shafique Virani’s Lecture – Global Islam, Garbled Impressions: Fostering Understanding in a Divided World
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... ilimail%29
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2011/0 ... ilimail%29
March 5, 2011
Is Islam the Problem?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
CAIRO
A wise visitor from outer space who dropped in on Earth a millennium ago might have assumed that the Americas would eventually be colonized not by primitive Europeans but by the more advanced Arab civilization — and that as a result we Americans would all be speaking Arabic today.
Yet after about 1200, the Middle East took a long break: it stagnated economically, and today it is marked by high levels of illiteracy and autocracy. So as the region erupts in protests seeking democracy, a basic question arises: What took so long? And, a politically incorrect question: Could the reason for the Middle East’s backwardness be Islam?
The sociologist Max Weber and other scholars have argued that Islam is inherently a poor foundation for capitalism, and some have pointed in particular to Islamic qualms about paying interest on loans.
But that doesn’t seem right. Other experts note that Islam in some ways is more pro-business than other major religions. The Prophet Muhammad was a successful merchant and much more sympathetic to the wealthy than Jesus was. And the Middle East was a global center of culture and commerce in, say, the 12th century: if Islam stifles business now, why didn’t it then?
As for hostility toward interest on loans, similar teachings are found in Jewish and Christian texts, and what the Koran bans isn’t interest as such but “riba,” an extreme form of usury that could lead to enslavement for failing to pay debts. Until the late 18th century, Muslims were as likely to be money-lenders in the Middle East as Christians or Jews. And today paying interest is routine even in the most conservative Muslim countries.
Many Arabs have an alternative theory about the reason for the region’s backwardness: Western colonialism. But that seems equally specious and has the sequencing wrong. “For all its discontents, the Middle East’s colonial period brought fundamental transformation, not stagnation; rising literacy and education, not spreading ignorance; and enrichment at unprecedented rates, not immiserization,” writes Timur Kuran, a Duke University economic historian, in a meticulously researched new book, “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.”
Professor Kuran’s book offers the best explanation yet for why the Middle East has lagged. After poring over ancient business records, Professor Kuran persuasively argues that what held the Middle East back wasn’t Islam as such, or colonialism, but rather various secondary Islamic legal practices that are no longer relevant today.
It’s a sophisticated argument that a column can’t do justice to, but for example, one impediment was inheritance law. Western systems most commonly passed all property intact to the eldest son, thus preserving large estates. In contrast, Islamic law stipulated a much fairer division of assets (including some to daughters), but this meant that large estates fragmented. One upshot was that private capital accumulation faltered and couldn’t support major investments to usher in an industrial revolution.
Professor Kuran also focuses on the Islamic partnership, which tended to be the vehicle for businesses. Islamic partnerships dissolved whenever any member died, and so they tended to include only a few partners — making it difficult to compete with European industrial and financial corporations backed by hundreds of shareholders.
The emergence of banks in Europe led long-term British interest rates to drop by two-thirds leading up to the Industrial Revolution. No such drop occurred in the Arab world until the colonial period.
These traditional impediments are no longer a problem in the 21st century. Muslim countries now have banks, corporations, and stock and bond markets, and inheritance law now isn’t an obstacle to capital accumulation. So if Professor Kuran’s diagnosis is correct, that should bode well for the region — and Turkey’s boom in recent years underscores the potential for a renaissance.
Yet one challenge is psychological. Many Arabs blame outsiders for their backwardness, and cope by rejecting modernity and the outside world. It’s a disgrace that an area that once produced outstanding science and culture (giving us words like algebra) now is an educational underachiever, especially for girls.
The crisis in the Arab world provides a chance for a new start. I hope we’ll have some tough, honest conversations on all sides about what went wrong — as a starting point for a new and more hopeful trajectory.
The Muslim Brotherhood has often used the slogan, “Islam is the solution.” And to the West, the unstated feeling upon looking across the bleak Middle East landscape has often been: “Islam is the problem.” Professor Kuran’s research suggests that, at least looking forward, the more correct view is: Islam isn’t the problem and it isn’t the solution, it’s simply a religion — meaning that the break is over, there are no excuses, and it’s time to move forward again.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/opini ... nted=print
Is Islam the Problem?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
CAIRO
A wise visitor from outer space who dropped in on Earth a millennium ago might have assumed that the Americas would eventually be colonized not by primitive Europeans but by the more advanced Arab civilization — and that as a result we Americans would all be speaking Arabic today.
Yet after about 1200, the Middle East took a long break: it stagnated economically, and today it is marked by high levels of illiteracy and autocracy. So as the region erupts in protests seeking democracy, a basic question arises: What took so long? And, a politically incorrect question: Could the reason for the Middle East’s backwardness be Islam?
The sociologist Max Weber and other scholars have argued that Islam is inherently a poor foundation for capitalism, and some have pointed in particular to Islamic qualms about paying interest on loans.
But that doesn’t seem right. Other experts note that Islam in some ways is more pro-business than other major religions. The Prophet Muhammad was a successful merchant and much more sympathetic to the wealthy than Jesus was. And the Middle East was a global center of culture and commerce in, say, the 12th century: if Islam stifles business now, why didn’t it then?
As for hostility toward interest on loans, similar teachings are found in Jewish and Christian texts, and what the Koran bans isn’t interest as such but “riba,” an extreme form of usury that could lead to enslavement for failing to pay debts. Until the late 18th century, Muslims were as likely to be money-lenders in the Middle East as Christians or Jews. And today paying interest is routine even in the most conservative Muslim countries.
Many Arabs have an alternative theory about the reason for the region’s backwardness: Western colonialism. But that seems equally specious and has the sequencing wrong. “For all its discontents, the Middle East’s colonial period brought fundamental transformation, not stagnation; rising literacy and education, not spreading ignorance; and enrichment at unprecedented rates, not immiserization,” writes Timur Kuran, a Duke University economic historian, in a meticulously researched new book, “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East.”
Professor Kuran’s book offers the best explanation yet for why the Middle East has lagged. After poring over ancient business records, Professor Kuran persuasively argues that what held the Middle East back wasn’t Islam as such, or colonialism, but rather various secondary Islamic legal practices that are no longer relevant today.
It’s a sophisticated argument that a column can’t do justice to, but for example, one impediment was inheritance law. Western systems most commonly passed all property intact to the eldest son, thus preserving large estates. In contrast, Islamic law stipulated a much fairer division of assets (including some to daughters), but this meant that large estates fragmented. One upshot was that private capital accumulation faltered and couldn’t support major investments to usher in an industrial revolution.
Professor Kuran also focuses on the Islamic partnership, which tended to be the vehicle for businesses. Islamic partnerships dissolved whenever any member died, and so they tended to include only a few partners — making it difficult to compete with European industrial and financial corporations backed by hundreds of shareholders.
The emergence of banks in Europe led long-term British interest rates to drop by two-thirds leading up to the Industrial Revolution. No such drop occurred in the Arab world until the colonial period.
These traditional impediments are no longer a problem in the 21st century. Muslim countries now have banks, corporations, and stock and bond markets, and inheritance law now isn’t an obstacle to capital accumulation. So if Professor Kuran’s diagnosis is correct, that should bode well for the region — and Turkey’s boom in recent years underscores the potential for a renaissance.
Yet one challenge is psychological. Many Arabs blame outsiders for their backwardness, and cope by rejecting modernity and the outside world. It’s a disgrace that an area that once produced outstanding science and culture (giving us words like algebra) now is an educational underachiever, especially for girls.
The crisis in the Arab world provides a chance for a new start. I hope we’ll have some tough, honest conversations on all sides about what went wrong — as a starting point for a new and more hopeful trajectory.
The Muslim Brotherhood has often used the slogan, “Islam is the solution.” And to the West, the unstated feeling upon looking across the bleak Middle East landscape has often been: “Islam is the problem.” Professor Kuran’s research suggests that, at least looking forward, the more correct view is: Islam isn’t the problem and it isn’t the solution, it’s simply a religion — meaning that the break is over, there are no excuses, and it’s time to move forward again.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/opini ... nted=print