Who is Truly The Poor in the Muslim Ummah

Abu Huraira (Radi allaho anho)may God be pleased with him reported That Allah's Messenger Mohammad (peace be upon him) as saying: Do you know who is poor?
They (the Companions of the Holy Prophet) said: A poor man amongst us is one who has neither dirham with him nor wealth. He (the Holy Prophet) said: The poor of my Umma would be he who would come on the Day of Resurrecton with prayers and fasts and Zakat but since he hurled abuses upon others, brought calumny against others and unlawfully consumed the wealth of others and shed the blood of others and beat others, and his virtues would be credited to the account of one (who suffered at his hand). And if his good deeds fall short to clear the account, then his sins would be entered in (his account) and he would be thrown in the Hell-Fire.
Sahih Muslim Book 032, Number 6251:

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Obama names special envoy to global Islamic group

President Barack Obama on Saturday named a White House lawyer as his special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, part of his continuing effort to repair strained U.S. relations with the world's Muslims.

Obama announced Rashad Hussain's appointment during a video address to the 7th U.S.-Islamic World Forum meeting in Doha, Qatar.

As his liaison to the OIC, the president said Hussain will continue working to repair U.S.-Islamic relations and develop the types of partnerships Obama called for when he addressed the Muslim world during a speech last year in Cairo.

U.S. relations with the Muslim world became strained after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the video address, Obama said he called in Cairo for the U.S. and Muslims to start anew "based on mutual interest and mutual respect" because the relationship had "slipped into a cycle of misunderstanding and mistrust that can lead to conflict rather than cooperation."

He said he looked forward to continuing the dialogue next month when he visits Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Obama also spent several of his childhood years living in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather.

Obama recounted efforts by his administration to foster partnerships with Muslims on education, economic development, global health, and science and technology. He touched on the plan to remove all U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the end of August, and his administration's efforts to return Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table to jump-start stalled peace talks.

Obama also announced a summit on entrepreneurship in April with Muslim business leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world.

The president said Hussain's goal, as special envoy to the OIC, will be to deepen existing partnerships and develop others. The OIC represents nearly 60 Muslim states across four continents and promotes Muslim solidarity in social and political affairs.

Hussain is a deputy associate counsel to Obama who focuses on national security, new media, and science and technology issues. He also has worked with the national security staff to help repair U.S.-Muslim relations. Obama said Hussain is a hafiz of the Quran, meaning Hussain has memorized the Muslim holy book.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was scheduled to speak at the meeting in Doha on Sunday.

Obama is not the first president to name a special envoy to the Islamic conference. In his final year in office, George W. Bush named Texas entrepreneur Sada Cumber, a Muslim, as his special envoy.

Read more: Source

Muslim Students No Terrorists: UK Court

CAIRO — A British court has quashed terrorism charges against five Muslim students accused of downloading "extremist" materials, the Guardian reported on Thursday, February 14.
"The basis upon which the appellants were convicted is shown to have been unsound," the Court of Appeal ruled.

The Muslim students were arrested in July 2006 on charges of downloading "extremist" materials and were sentenced to between two and three years in prison.

The prosecution claimed they had been "intoxicated" by extremism and were planning to go to Pakistan for training before fighting in Afghanistan.

The students denied the charges, saying they were researching ideology, including visiting websites about violence.

The students were prosecuted under section 57 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, which makes it an offence to have books or items inciting terrorism.

The appeal court said the prosecution's case against the Muslim students was weak.

"While they lent support to the prosecution case that the appellants had formed a plan to go to Pakistan to train and then to Afghanistan to fight, there was nothing that evidenced expressly the use, or intention to use, the extremist literature to incite each other to do this."

The ruling was the first to be quashed by the court of appeal since Washington's so-called "war on terror" in 2001.

The Home Office said it would study the ruling carefully.

Nightmare

Usman Malik, one of the student, said his arrest had made his life a hell.

"The last 18 months have been worse than a nightmare," he said through his lawyer, denying charges of supporting violence.

"I was away from home for the first time when I was arrested and accused of being a terrorist.

"I was never a terrorist and have never supported violence."

Imran Khan, the lawyer of student Aitzaz Zafar, said young Muslims seeking to explore the world of their religion should no longer be victimized.

"My client is over the moon. He says it is surreal and cannot see why he has spent the last two years in prison for looking at material which he had no intention of using for terrorism," he said.

"Young people should not be frightened of exploring their world."

The Muslim Council of Britain, the umbrella representation body of British Muslims, has complained that some Muslims are being criminalized under the draconian anti-terror measures in Britain for "silly thoughts."

British Muslims, estimated at nearly two million, have been in the eye of storm since the July 2005 bombings, which killed 56 people, including four Muslim bombers.

The sizable minority has vehemently condemned all terrorist attacks and offered full cooperation with police.

A recent Populus survey found a whooping 98 percent of British Muslims would feel shame if a family member decided to join Al-Qaeda.

Read more: Islam online

Iran launches rocket into space

ran successfully launched a can of worms into space today, prompting a jubilant President Ahmadinejad to brag that the Islamic Republic would soon be sending its own astronauts to orbit Earth.

About a dozen worms joined a rat and two turtles in a research capsule aboard a Kavoshgar-3 satellite-carrying rocket launched this morning as part of an ambitious Iranian space programme that has worried Western experts who fear the same technology could be used to deliver atomic warheads.

France reacted to the rocket launch with "great concern". A Foreign Ministry spokesman said: "This announcement can only reinforce the concerns of the international community as Iran in parallel develops a nuclear programme that has no identifiable civil aims."

Paradoxically, the launch came only a few hours after Mr Ahmadinejad suggested that Iran would be willing to go back to a UN-brokered deal it rejected last year and send its low-enriched uranium for processing abroad. The proposal was given a cautious welcome in Western capitals.

Iranian state television showed footage of the Kavoshgar rocket being fired from a desert launchpad. A few minutes later the grainy images showed the capsule detaching from the rocket and spinning off into orbit – although there were no details of its fate after that. The station reported that the rocket had "the ability to send back empirical data".

State television also carried pictures of Mr Ahmadinejad unveiling another home-built rocket dubbed the Simorgh (phoenix). The milk-bottle shaped rocket, emblazoned in blue with the words "Satellite Carrier Simorgh", is equipped to carry a 100kg (220lb) satellite 500km (310 miles) into orbit.

At the ceremony, at which he also unveiled three home-built satellites, Mr Ahmadinejad hailed the progress Iran was making in its space programme and said that it was only through science that it could "break the global domineering system".

"It is a great job that living organisms can be sent into space – we do experiments on them and they return to Earth," the President said. "We are going to send a satellite 500km up.

"The next steps are 700km and 1,000km. Everyone knows that reaching the 1,000km orbit allows you to reach all orbits.

"This was a huge breakthrough... and we hope we can send our own astronauts into space soon."

Iran launched its first home-built satellite, Omid (hope), in February last year to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution. The previous year it launched two rockets – Kavoshgar (Explorer) and Kavoshgar 2, although neither was carrying any payload.

Tehran has said that it wants to put satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters in the earthquake-prone nation and improve its telecommunications, but it is already locked in a stand-off with the West over its nuclear programme – which it insists is for the generation of electricity – and its technological advances have set alarm bells ringing.

Source : Times Online

Islam in America - Stars and Stripes

Friedman Wrong About Muslims Again

Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot about Islam. Why, then, does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his latest column, "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden."

A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim jurisconsult. Such opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say that is easy, since Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are the leaders of 120 million Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that is one. Tracking these things down is time-consuming, but this should do:
Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden.

So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden?

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. And:

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden.

What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics who are fans of Bin Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But the allegation Friedman is making is that no major cleric has condemned him. Try this: Prominent Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda! See also:
Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda.

There are also substantial Muslim communities in Europe with leaderships that have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.:

Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden. There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain.

High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden. The Russian Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15 percent of Russia's 143 million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in a century Russia may be 50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing here.

A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up by al-Muhajabah.

See also Charles Kurzman's page.

Friedman also does refer to a major conference of Muslim clerics, thinkers and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a powerful statement about religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin Laden stands for. But he seems oddly unaware of the significance of having Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and many other great Muslim authorities sign off on this epochal statement of Muslim ecumenism.

The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another "not a Muslim" if the believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites of Sunnism and Shiism. The whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims." The statement also demands that engineers should please stop pretending to issue fatwas, which should be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para. is also a slam at Bin Laden.

PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong that this is only a Muslim problem. In the global age all problems are everybody's. That's part of flat world, too, Tom. SourceInformed Comment

Islam, Europe and the Political Elite

The European elections draw closer, but we have very few real political choices. It seems to me that Islam, Europe and extreme left all share the same warped values and are determined to force them upon us — whether we want them or not. And whatever party we vote for, citizens seem to get the very same soul-destroying policies with only a slightly different wrapper!

Take the issue of democracy, for example. Islam, the European Union and our political elite all declare their support for freedom of speech — but what they really mean is they support leftist speech. What they really mean is that anything they don’t agree with is not “free speech” but “hate speech” — and this subterfuge allows them to act claiming they are “protecting society” from racism, xenophobia or hate-mongers. So whether we vote Labour, Liberal, Conservative, Green or UKIP we will always get the same! More immigration, more Islamization, more European interference and less and less freedom to decide what we really want.

Islam, the European Union and our political elite all share the same values — they all despise fairness, democracy and justice. Today, Tories as well as Labour, Liberal and the other mainstream parties claim they are “centrist” parties, but this thin wrapper of respectability covers a dangerous neo-Marxist core which lies at the centre of mainstream politics today. Our political elites, whatever the colour of their political wrapper, truly believe that only they are worthy to be the true judges of fairness, justice and law. So when such “liberals” (of whatever party) win an election it is declared “fair”; yet if they lose one it must be due to “xenophobic elements”, “racists”, “fascists” or similar antisocial types sabotaging their rightful inheritance.


Muslims, the European Union and our political elites all wrap themselves in the cloak of liberalism, equality and fairness — but underneath, they all share the same contempt for citizens, abhorrence of duty to their constituents and loathing for the democratic process; they all hate anyone who disagrees with them. The EU, for example, learning in a poll that 60 percent of European citizens (as well as 60 percent of Turks) were against Turkey joining the EU — decided to speed up the process and keep it quiet so as not to attract the attention of citizens. And as you know, this is only one example in many ongoing acts of contempt by the EU for its own citizens.

Muslims, the European Union and modern, left-wing elitist politicians have indoctrinated themselves to believe in their own superiority. They think of themselves so much, and so often, that the idea anyone could hold opposing views seems somehow ridiculous. Likewise, Islam believes, and has always believed, it is above all other religions and openly says so in the Qur’an. And such supremicism easily leads to the justification of violence and hatred for non-Muslims as European political elitism has led to an institutionalized contempt for EU citizens.

The EU believes it has a destiny to implement its vision of a united, federal Europe where the leftist elite sit at the helm dispensing equality, freedom and justice for all. They must do this irrespective of “wrong” referendum results and “meaningless” opinion polls because European citizens are too short-sighted to “see the big picture”, and benefits which will clearly be reaped by all!

Our elitist leaders believe that only they have “nuanced” beliefs and the “insight” necessary to see the true value of a “cosmopolitan society”. They alone have the vision to move beyond outdated ideas like nationalism, patriotism, and religious conflicts. In other words, only the European Union, the United Nations and the leftist elite are intellectual enough to hold objective truths. And that is why the mainstream media is right to accept their truth whilst rejecting “divisive” and “inflammatory” talk and ideas which differ from their utopian ideals.

Today, criticism of Islam, the EU and the leftist dream is treated as heresy — an attack on the very identity of the listener. And our political elites treat any such criticism with the contempt it deserves.

Anyone who challenges them, the EU or Islam does not even warrant a well argued counterargument since such ideas are so “obviously false”. There is clearly “something wrong” with the people who criticize them… so they must be xenophobic, hate-mongers or perhaps just ignorant.

I hope people will learn that a vote for Labour, Liberal Greens or Conservatives is simply a vote for the very same rotten policies in a different coloured wrapper.

Now is the time to use your vote to cause an impact, to send shudders down the spines of the political elitists and Islam-appeasing parties currently ruling over us — treating us as mindless, powerless pawns.

Source:

Leading Muslim cleric killed in suicide bomb attack in Lahore

A prominent Pakistani Muslim cleric who founded a religious alliance against the Taleban was killed today in a suicide bomb attack on his Islamic college in the eastern city of Lahore.

Sarfraz Ahmed Naeemi appeared to have been the target of the blast in his office at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa, which he headed and where he had just conducted Friday prayers.

Dr Naeemi — whose father founded the madrassa and who was well known and respected in Lahore and across Pakistan — died on the way to hospital, according to his son, Waqar.

“I was still in the mosque when I heard a big bang. We rushed towards the office and there was a smell of explosives in the air. There was blood and several people were crying in pain,” Waqar said.

Geo TV showed Dr Naeemi’s body lying on a stretcher, his beard and hair covered in dust and blood stains around his nostrils.

Tariq Saleem Dogar, the Punjab provincial police chief, denounced the attack on the madrassa — which taught maths and computer science as well as Islamic studies — as un-Islamic.

“It could not be an act of a Muslim to carry out an attack in a mosque,” he said.

In another blast at around the same time, a suicide car bomber struck near a mosque in the northwestern town of Nowshera, killing at least three people, police said.

The attacks are the latest in a spate of bombings which local officials say are revenge for Pakistan’s army launching an offensive against the Taleban in and around the northwestern region of Swat last month.

They came the day after the army opened a new front against the Taleban near the tribal region of Waziristan, and the US House of Representatives approved tripling aid to Pakistan to about $1.5 billion a year for the next five years.

Dr Naeemi appears to have been targeted because he had been integral in helping to generate political, religious and public support for the army’s campaign in Swat over the last few weeks.

Last month, he established the Sunni Itehad Council, an alliance of more than 22 Islamic groups and political parties with the explicit goal of opposing the Taleban.

The council claims to represent about 85 million Pakistani followers of the moderate Barelvi school of Sunni Islam, which incorporates music and mysticism and venerates saints and their shrines.

“The Taleban is a stigma on Islam,” Dr Naeemi told The Times in an interview at his madressah last month.

“That is why we will support our Government and our army and their right to destroy the Taleban. We will save Pakistan.” The Taleban preaches an extreme version of the Deobandi school of Sunni Islam, which maintains that many Barelvi practices are un-Islamic and advocates the use of violence against Barelvis and Shia Muslims.

Militants have destroyed several Barelvi shrines in the northwest in recent months.

There are no precise statistics but experts believe that at least half of Pakistan’s 173 million people are Barelvi, and about 20 to 25 per cent Deobandi. Another 20 per cent are Shia. Source

From Darkness into Light. Why we choose Islam

Many people explain why they chose islam as the only right Path to the Truth...