Swiss Compete with Saudis to Undermine Religious Freedom, Muslims and Islamophobia, NewAgeIslam.com

Muslims and Islamophobia

Swiss Compete with Saudis to Undermine Religious Freedom

The Minaret Ban in Switzerland is one of those incidents that requires some time to process because there are so many threads to the story. Switzerland is the European country that anyone thinks of when they think of neutrality and tolerance. And, yet this is exactly the place where a ban just took place which shows a deep streak of racism towards, fear of, and willingness to discriminate against the 4.5% of the population that is Muslim.

Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country that has a terrible human rights record, is an absolute monarchy, and promotes a particularly rigid and extreme view of Islam that is repressive. In Saudia Arabia churches cannot be built, and it is even illegal to meet for Christian prayers or services. As a Muslim I am absolutely in disagreement with the Saudi position on this and many other issues, and openly state those views, as have many other Muslims. However, any reform movements in Saudi will be a long time coming as the royal family has the strong support of the U.S. government. And because of this no pressure is put on them to do something about their human rights and religious rights situation.

The Saudi situation is deplorable, and yet it seems that in the heart of Europe, the most enlightened country of Switzerland is ready to emulate the Saudi’s and turn its back on the enlightenment, on the best of modernity, and join the Saudi’s by taking the first step down a road leading to a return to a past in which minorities were treated barbarically culminating in the holocaust.

http://newageislam.com/swiss-compete-with-saudis-to-undermine-religious-freedom-/muslims-and-islamophobia/d/2180

Ramadan is the most dangerous time of the year in Eurabia, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Ramadan is the most dangerous time of the year in Eurabia

By Thomas Landen Journalist

August 27, 2009

It is hot in Brussels. Ramadan has begun. The faithful in the predominantly Muslim borough of Molenbeek are not allowed to eat or drink from sunrise until sunset. Non-Muslim policemen, patrolling the streets of Molenbeek in their sweltering cars, are not allowed to eat or drink either. As every year during Ramadan, that they have been told by their superior, Philippe Moureaux, the Socialist mayor of Molenbeek, they have to respect Muslim sensitivities and not to “provoke” Muslims by violating Islamic Ramadan restrictions in public. In effect, Islamic or Sharia law is already applied - for everyone - in the Muslim areas of Brussels.

Barely two miles from Molenbeek lies Brussels’ European district. One of its huge glass and concrete buildings is the European Parliament where the elected representatives from the 27 member’s states of the European Union (EU) convene. The 736 MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) have just returned from their summer break. They are mostly unaware of life in Molenbeek. Most of them never go to that part of the city. It is probably a sensible decision, because Molenbeek is known to be unsafe for non-Muslims. Nevertheless, it is a shame that Europe’s politicians are unaware of day-to-day life just around the corner. It means that most of the 736 MEPs, who make up the second largest democratically elected assembly in the world (after India), do not know what life really is like in an ever growing section of Europe’s urban areas. A walking tour of Molenbeek should be compulsory for every MEP.

http://newageislam.com/ramadan-is-the-most-dangerous-time-of-the-year-in-eurabia/islam-and-the-west/d/1796

Islam’s return to Europe: Assimilation or confrontation, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Islam’s return to Europe: Assimilation or confrontation

Strangers in the Land

By Fouad Ajami

August 2, 2009

A departure and a return: In the legend of Moorish Spain, Boabdil, the last Muslim ruler of Granada, is said to have paused on a ridge for a final glimpse of the realm he had just surrendered to the Castilians. Henceforth, the occasion, and the place, would be known as El Último Suspiro del Moro, The Moor’s Last Sigh. The date was Jan. 2, 1492.

More than five centuries later, on March 11, 2004, there would be a “Moorish” return. In the morning rush hour, 10 bombs tore through four commuter trains in Madrid, killing more than 200 people and wounding some 1,500, in the deadliest terror attack in Europe since World War II. This was not quite a Muslim reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula, but a circle was closed, and Islam was, once again, a matter of Western Europe.

In his “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe,” Christopher Caldwell, a meticulous journalist who writes for The New York Times Magazine and other publications, gives this subject it’s most sustained and thoughtful treatment to date. The question of Islam in Europe has occasioned calls of alarm about “Eurabia,” as well as works of evasion and apology by those who insist Islam is making its peace with European norms. Caldwell’s account is subtle, but quite honest and forthright in its reading of this history. “Islam is a magnificent religion that has also been, at times over the centuries, a glorious and generous culture. But, all cant to the contrary, it is in no sense Europe’s religion and it is in no sense Europe’s culture,” he writes.

http://newageislam.com/islams-return-to-europe--assimilation-or-confrontation/islam-and-the-west/d/1611

An Indian's View of Iqbal, Jinnah and Pakistan, Islamic Culture, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Culture

An Indian's View of Iqbal, Jinnah and Pakistan

By Aakar Patel

Allama Iqbal imagined Pakistan as a utopia in northwest India where Punjabis would do ijtihad and read Nietzsche. The Quaid-e-Azam ordered a Pakistan where religion would cease to be a matter for the state. But both men saw something magnificently dormant in the character of India’s Muslims, which would flower in isolation.

Iqbal returned from Europe in 1908 ashamed by the fall of Islam. He thought its return to glory could come through expelling the polluting influence of Indian culture. Iqbal understood our culture. In 1904, he wrote the song that still defines our culture best (Tarana-e-Hindi), and he translated Gayatri Mantra, the talismanic chant of the Upanishad, from Sanskrit. But Europe taught him that our culture was unable to compete. Muslims needed to break out. In 1910, he wrote Tarana-e-Milli.

Jinnah didn’t understand our culture much, but he thought that Muslims were a separate nation from Hindus, and could become modern once they were separated from India’s archaic culture. Both the poet and the lawyer thought that the solution to progress was to stop being Indian.

Iqbal died in 1938, Jinnah died in 1948. It would be illuminating to see their reaction as they flipped through a current issue of Nawa-i-Waqt (would have to be translated for Jinnah), the guardian of the ideology of Pakistan.

The Pakistan of Iqbal won against the Pakistan of Jinnah. Jinnah’s imaginary Pakistan was sent into the night with a pat on the head by Liaquat and the peerless Shabbir Usmani chanting their Qarardad-e-Maqasid, 60 years ago this month.

http://newageislam.com/an-indian-s-view-of-iqbal,-jinnah-and-pakistan--/islamic-culture/d/1353

Islamic fundamentalism: How Abd Al Wahhab turned a great religion like Islam on its head?, Radical Islamism and Jihad, NewAgeIslam.com

Radical Islamism and Jihad

Islamic fundamentalism: How Abd Al Wahhab turned a great religion like Islam on its head?

The Virulet Virus of Wahhabi Intolerance

By Murad A Baig

March 22, 2009

Wahhab seems to have understood the tremendous power of hatred to unite and inflame its followers in an intensely determined war against its declared enemies. He urged all Muslims to mercilessly exterminate infidels, blasphemers, idol worshippers and Christians and even Muslim apostates like the Shias and Sufis even though the loving Sufi philosophy had been the main agent for conversions to Islam. Wahhabis believed that a secret `Imam’ would miraculously appear to lead them to victory over these infidels. Jihad was only now declared to be a holy war where followers were asked to blindly do their duty with the absolute assurance that Allah and his angels would make them successful with the joys of paradise guaranteed to any who fell as martyrs to the cause. Although they considered all innovations to be heretical the lust for violence soon overcame their inhibitions about guns and they were soon adept at using the latest weapons and technologies of communications.

The seeds of Islamic hatred went back a long way. In its 800 years of glory the followers of Islam had reason to consider themselves as the greatest people on earth. They had liberated women and slaves from many oppressive mediaeval customs, invented algebra, rediscovered the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato and promoted early science at a time when Europe was still in a dark age. Islam had lived peacefully with Jews and Christians in all their kingdoms. Its first defeat was at the hands of the pagan Mongols including the slaughter of 92,000 Muslims at Baghdad in 1258. But Islam not only survived but converted these rough conquerors willingly to its faith. The turning point was the defeat of the Ottoman Turks outside Vienna in 1663 after which the ascendancy of the Christian nations of Europe quickly made them the masters of the world. As in all civilizations the losers blamed their failures as retributions for deviating from the true path and rabid preachers had a fertile field of anger and frustration where they could cultivate their bitter creeds.

http://newageislam.com/islamic-fundamentalism--how-abd-al-wahhab-turned-a-great-religion-like-islam-on-its-head?--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1274

Band Of Fanatics: The Zakir Naik Show

Band Of Fanatics: The Zakir Naik Show

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Dr. Zakir Naik is gradually expanding his influence over a number of media bases in Europe, America and Asia. Recently in Glasgow [UK], a radio presentator named Rev. Mahboob Masih was sacked from a radio station named Awaz FM just because he his co-presenter Afzal Umeed were discussing the views of a prominent Muslim speaker, Zakir Naik, who the Rev Masih accuses of belittling the Christian faith on Peace TV, a digital channel.

http://www.newageislam.com/band-of-fanatics--the-zakir-naik-show-/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/1203

An Introduction to the American Age

An Introduction to the American Age

Imagine yourself now in the summer of 1920. Europe had been torn apart by an agonizing war. The continent was in tatters. The Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German, and Ottoman empires were gone and millions had died in a war that lasted for years. The war ended when an American army of a million men intervened—an army that came and then just as quickly left. Communism dominated Russia, but it was not clear that it could survive. Countries that had been on the periphery of European power, like the United States and Japan, suddenly emerged as great powers. But one thing was certain—the peace treaty that had been imposed on Germany guaranteed that it would not soon re-emerge.

http://www.newageislam.com/an-introduction-to-the-american-age-/current-affairs/d/1114

Catholic–Muslim Dialogue that can change the world

Catholic–Muslim Dialogue that can change the world

The last two meetings, first with the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, are in Europe – the birthplace of Western civilisation. What characterises Western civilisation as distinct from pre-modern Christian civilisation is precisely the shift in the public focus from the sacred to the secular. The Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution – the periods that created the conditions for modernity – represented departures from Europe’s religious orientation. The West became secular as it became modern – so, the question remains, is the Common Word, a discussion between Christians and Muslims, really the appropriate discussion for these times?

http://www.newageislam.com/catholic%E2%80%93muslim-dialogue-that-can-change-the-world--/islam-and-the-west/d/1054

Angry Young Muslims: Perspectives on Radical Islamism

Angry Young Muslims: Perspectives on Radical Islamism

The conflicts continue in the Middle East. But "the West" will also be judged by its efforts towards solving them. Perthes calls for Europe to show "credible action on the political, social and economic front."In the development of states, there is a close link between economic process, educational status, the growth of the middle classes and the chances of anchoring pluralism and democratic processes. That means that promoting the development of new middle classes remains a correct way to lay foundations for change.

http://www.newageislam.com/angry-young-muslims--perspectives-on-radical-islamism--/radical-islamism-and-jihad/d/829