New Age Islam gives a completely different face to the Muslim faith: KUDOS and a big THANK YOU

Letter to the Editor

New Age Islam gives a completely different face to the Muslim faith: KUDOS and a big THANK YOU

Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 09:58:11 -0800 [17/12/09 23:28:11 IST]

From: MARK CARPENTER

To: SULTAN SHAHIN Editor@NewAgeIslam.com

Subject: Kudos for New Age Islam!

Dear Mr. Sultan Shahin:

I'm a Lutheran Christian in the United States, and I just wanted to send you kudos and a big "THANK YOU" for your publication, "New Age Islam".

New Age Islam gives a completely different face to the Muslim faith, especially here in the United States where our conservative-dominated media portrays Islam as a medieval religion where its adherents go about blowing themselves up or beheading people willy-nilly.

New Age Islam is a badly-needed publication which shows the world that Muslims are reasonable, rational, intelligent people who would like to live in peace -- just as Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. by and large are reasonable, rational, intelligent people who would like to live in peace.

I don't think Christians would be happy to be associated with the ugliness which is a part of

Christian extremism such as in Uganda, or Westboro Baptist Church (Fred Phelps' church in Topeka, KS), or the xenophobic Christian Identity movement in the Western Hemisphere but many of us seem all-too-willing to overlook these groups as "aberrations" while using a very broad paintbrush to paint all Muslims as "terrorists" based on the actions of a few.

Thank you for this publication. It's one of the pieces of incoming email which I make a point of reading when I receive it.

http://newageislam.com/new-age-islam-gives-a-completely-different-face-to-the-muslim-faith--kudos-and-a-big-thank-you/letter-to-the-editor/d/2239

Afghanistan: Flawed occupation, War on Terror, NewAgeIslam.com

War on Terror

Afghanistan: Flawed occupation

By Andrew Small

September 2009

There’s not much to show for the last eight years of Western presence in the country and there’s little time to turn things around.

Hamid Karzai's inevitable election results ground towards an inevitable outcome last month the real verdict on his governance was being played out on the streets and the dusty hamlets of Afghanistan.

In the official tally Karzai was showing a modest plurality but the more important figures were the horrendous body counts among innocent Afghan citizens and the Western soldiers sent to 'rescue' the country from what has been its destiny over the centuries — a faction-ridden melange of tribes and warlords all of whom seem to have little interest in the rest of the world unless their intervention helps them pursue their own interests.

The West is bent on replicating the model of democracy in Afghanistan that it has already tried to apply in both Pakistan and Iraq — find a moderate figure to act as leader and attempt to wrap a unified nation around their chosen one before taking the fight to the perceived foe. The problem is that once the chosen figure establishes some sort of a following in said state, with or without Western help, then that leader tends to pursue a nationalist agenda — not surprisingly — that is not necessarily in accord with the original game plan. That has already happened to some degree with the Maliki government in Baghdad. In Pakistan there remains a good deal of doubt over whether the Americans are really in control of what is happening in the northern reaches of the country where the fight is being taken to the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements there.

http://newageislam.com/afghanistan--flawed-occupation/war-on-terror/d/1777

In spite of Islam: Can Muslims ever join the democratic mainstream?, Islam and Politics, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Politics

In spite of Islam: Can Muslims ever join the democratic mainstream?

Moataz-Bellah Abdel-Fattah

Moataz-Bellah Abdel-Fattah explains to Gihan Shahine why democracy is severely lacking in Muslim-majority countries even though its principles are deeply-rooted in the basic tenets of Islam

As a firm believer in the benefits of democracy, Moataz-Bellah Abdel-Fattah attempts to find answers to the tough question of whether the attitude of ordinary, educated Muslims constitutes a barrier to the adoption of democracy. Abdel-Fattah is the author of eight books and several academic and journalistic articles in Arabic and English, but what is interesting about Democratic Values in the Muslim World -- and was probably the reason why the study was chosen as one of the most outstanding books in 2006 by Choice Academic Review -- is the fact that Abdel-Fattah allowed Muslims to speak for themselves rather than draw conclusions about them by equating all Muslims to "a group of extremists and anti-modernity radicals" who, according to Abdel-Fattah, "have been very vocal in their criticism of democracy".

"I used several empirical tools, such as survey and focus-group discussions, to colour a picture that has been brush-stroked in black and white in the West thanks to the Western neo-orientalist scholarship that does not distinguish between different Muslim sub-cultures and societies," Abdel-Fattah said. "Colouring the picture of Muslims' perception of democracy is analogous to breaking down the big stereotypical picture into its original components."

http://newageislam.com/in-spite-of-islam--can-muslims-ever-join-the-democratic-mainstream?/islam-and-politics/d/1821