islam

President Barack Obama and many liberal-minded commentators have been hesitant to call this Islamist ideology by its proper name. They seem to fear that both Muslim communities and the religiously intolerant will hear the word __slam_ and simply assume that all Muslims are being held responsible for the excesses of the jihadist few.I call this the Voldemort effect, after the villain in J.K. Rowling__ Harry Potter books. Many well-meaning people in Ms. Rowling__ fictional world are so petrified of Voldemort__ evil that they do two things: They refuse to call Voldemort by name, instead referring to __e Who Must Not Be Named,_ and they deny that he exists in the first place. Such dread only increases public hysteria, thus magnifying the appeal of Voldemort__ power.The same hysteria about Islamism is unfolding before our eyes. But no strategy intended to defeat Islamism can succeed if Islamism itself and its violent expression in jihadism are not first named, isolated and understood. From: Maajid Nawaz's article titled, 'How to Beat Islamic State', December 11th, 2015.

You can't have freedom of religion with a religion that hates freedom!

Most Americans, and indeed most Europeans, would much rather ignore the fundamental conflict between Islam and their own worldview. This is partly because they generally assume that __eligion,_ however defined, is a force for good and that any set of religious beliefs should be considered acceptable in a tolerant society. I can sympathize with that. But that does not mean that we should be blind to the potential consequences of accommodating beliefs that are openly hostile to Western laws, traditions, and values. For it is not simply a religion we have to deal with. It is a political religion many of whose fundamental tenets are irreconcilably inimical to our way of life. We need to insist that it is not we in the West who must accommodate ourselves to Muslim sensitivities; it is Muslims who must accommodate themselves to Western liberal ideals.

I was not always a Muslim, but once I was led into the absorption of prayer and the mysteries of the Qur__n, something troubled in me became still.

....His trust in God was as firm as a mountain. Indeed, mountains might come crashing down, and yet the Prophet__ faith would remain unshaken. At moments of extreme danger, he was full of confidence that the truth he preached would triumph. At the moment of his greatest triumph he showed humility and gave due thanks to the Almighty. With yesterday__ enemies _ the very ones who plotted his assassination and determined to exterminate his community _ at his mercy, he was remarkably magnanimous. The sight that gave him most satisfaction at the end of his blessed life was that of his followers offering a congregational prayer in his mosque. He felt then that he had delivered God__ message and fulfilled his task.

Confronted with such flagrant acts of intolerance__uch abuses of the freedom of speech__ free society must surely do more. For intolerance is the one thing a free society cannot afford to tolerate.

If Layla and Majnoon had seen Rasoolallah and Sayyiduna Abu Bakr, they would have bowed their heads and admitted they knew nothing about love and sacrifice.

Jahan mein ehle-e-imaan soorat-e-khursheed jeetay hain,Idhar doobey, udhar nikley; udhar doobey, idhar nikleyIn this world, men of faith and self-confidence are like the sun,They go down on one side to come up on the other.

The problem is that, when places like Saudi Arabia just implement the penal code, and don__ provide the social and economic justice of the Sharia__he whole package__hey simply engender hatred toward the Sharia.

The gnostic is Muslim in that his whole being is surrendered to God; he has no separate individual existence of his own. He is like the birds and the flowers in his yielding to the Creator; like them, like all the elements of the cosmos, he reflects the Divine to his own degree. He reflects it actively, however, they passively; his participation is a conscious one.

Muslims pursued knowledge to the edges of the earth. Al-Biruni, the central Asian polymath, is arguably the world's first anthropologist. The great linguists of Iraq and Persia laid the foundations a thousand years ago for subjects only now coming to the forefront in language studies. Ibn Khaldun, who is considered the first true scientific historian, argued hundreds of years ago that history should be based upon facts and not myths or superstitions. The great psychologists of Islam known as the Sufis wrote treatise after treatise that rival the most advanced texts today on human psychology. The great ethicists and exegetes of Islam's past left tomes that fill countless shelves in the great libraries of the world, and many more of their texts remain in manuscript form.In the foreword of "Being Muslim. A Practical Guide" by Dr. Asad Tarsin.

In the Muslim world, much of the violence that takes place is due to clashes between Shiites and the other major sect, the Sunni. The differences go back to a dispute over who was in charge of the Muslim faith after Muhammad died 632 years after Jesus, God__ son, walked the earth. I__ oversimplifying, but the Sunnis thought the new leader should be elected, and Shiites thought the leadership should stay within the family of Muhammad. The Sunnis, a larger faction, won the day, and the Prophet Muhammad__ close friend and adviser, Abu Bakr, became the first HMIC, the Head-Muslim-in-Charge. Officially, they called him their caliph and he ruled as sort of a head of state over the caliphate, the name for a Muslim state run by one religious leader. Since then the Shiites have fought the Sunnis for control because they don__ recognize the authority of the elected Muslim leaders__ho for the most part have been Sunnis. That explains why, in a very oversimplified way, religious violence erupts regularly around the world, as each group attempts to seize control from the other . . . in this peaceful religion.

It would be facile, even exculpatory, to call the problem of the Islamic State 'a problem with Islam.' The religion allows many interpretations, and Islamic State supporters are morally on the hook for the one they choose. And yet simply denouncing the Islamic State as un-Islamic can be counterproductive, especially if those who hear the message have read the holy texts and seen the endorsement of many of the caliphate__ practices written plainly within them.

After reading the Qur'an, I realized that I couldn't possibly endorse Islam as a religion, as a philosophy, as a moral standard, as an ethical code, or even as useful fiction. I determined that these philosophies and this image of Allah could only come from an extremely warped and disturbed person who suffered from an aggregation of the most severe and profound human weaknesses.

Terrorism has no religion is a theory, and the religion of terrorism is a real threat and practical thing.

Islam influences every aspect of believers_ lives. Women are denied their social and economic rights in the name of Islam, and ignorant women bring up ignorant children. Sons brought up watching their mother being beaten will use violence. Why was it racist to ask this question? Why was it antiracist to indulge people__ attachment to their old ideas and perpetuate this misery? I read the works of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment__pinoza, Locke, Kant, Mill, Voltaire__nd the modern ones, Russell and Popper,with my full attention, not just as a class assignment. All life is problem solving, Popper says. There are no absolutes; progress comes through critical thought. Popper admired Kant and Spinoza but criticized them when he felt their arguments were weak. I wanted to be like Popper: free of constraint, recognizing greatness but unafraid to detect its flaws.Spinoza was clear-minded and fearless. He was the first modern European to state clearly that the world is not ordained by a separate God. Nature created itself, Spinoza said. Reason, not obedience, should guide our lives. Though it took centuries to crumble, the entire ossified cage of European social hierarchy__rom kings to serfs, and between men and women, all of it shored up by the Catholic Church__as destroyed by this thought. Now, surely, it was Islam__ turn to be tested.

On August 10, 1984, my plane landed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. There were no skyscrapers here. The blue domes of the mosques and the faded mountains were the only things rising above the adobe duvals (the houses). The mosques came alive in the evening with multivoiced wailing: the mullahs were calling the faithful to evening prayer. It was such an unusual spectacle that, in the beginning, I used to leave the barracks to listen _ the same way that, in Russia, on spring nights, people go outside to listen to the nightingales sing. For me, a nineteen-year-old boy who had lived his whole life in Leningrad, everything about Kabul was exotic: enormous skies _ uncommonly starry _ occasionally punctured by the blazing lines of tracers. And spread out before you, the mysterious Asian capital where strange people were bustling about like ants on an anthill: bearded men, faces darkend by the sun, in solid-colored wide cotton trousers and long shirts. Their modern jackets, worn over those outfits, looked completely unnatural. And women, hidden under plain dull garments that covered them from head to toe: only their hands visible, holding bulging shopping bags, and their feet, in worn-out shoes or sneakers, sticking out from under the hems.And somewhere between this odd city and the deep black southern sky, the wailing, beautifully incomprehensible songs of the mullahs. The sounds didn't contradict each other, but rather, in a polyphonic echo, melted away among the narrow streets. The only thing missing was Scheherazade with her tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights ... A few days later I saw my first missile attack on Kabul. This country was at war.

And Moses said, "If you should disbelieve, you and whoever is on the earth entirely - indeed, Allah is Free of need and Praiseworthy.