Change Is Coming To Islam, Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

Ijtihad, Rethinking Islam

Change Is Coming To Islam

By Ziauddin Sardar

26 December 2009, 05:13am IST

Last week, I took the Euro Star from St Pancras International station in London to Paris. Just after clearing immigration, I was stopped by a security officer. Nothing unusual in that, except I was the only one he stopped and questioned in literally thousands of passengers. I had some time to kill so I stood beside him to watch who else he interrogates . In 40 minutes, he only stopped two other people. The first was an old man clearly recognisable as a Muslim: beard, cap, badly-fitted suit, Arab (I guessed Tunisian) origins. The other was a person who strikes terror in the heart of every security officer: a Muslim woman in hijab.

This is perhaps the most noticeable feature of the passing decade for us Muslims. We are now universally regarded as objects of suspicion and subjects for interrogation.

The main reason behind this is the momentous atrocity that began the Noughties: the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. It is hardly surprising that the last decade has been dominated by the consequences of that attack. Most of the negative as well as positive developments in the Muslim world during the last ten years can be traced to that fateful event.

Terrorism, however, was not new to the Muslim world: it had been a problem before 9/11. In Pakistan , Kashmir, Egypt, and in Palestine, the cycle of sectarian and ideological terror and counter terror had already cost innumerable lives. In Chechnya, Bosnia and occupied Palestine, Muslims were victims of what can only be described as state-sponsored terrorism. And the vast majority of the victims of this internal and external violence were Muslims.

http://newageislam.com/change-is-coming-to-islam/ijtihad,-rethinking-islam/d/2307

Why Should Any Muslim Object To Pranab Mukherjee Attending An Ahmadiya Convention?, The War within Islam, NewAgeIslam.com

The War within Islam

Why Should Any Muslim Object To Pranab Mukherjee Attending An Ahmadiya Convention?

New Age Islam has received a press release from some organisation called Shariath Protection Council based in Chennai that says, inter alia: ... “But if the Hon’ble Minister (the Union Finance Minister, Shri Pranab Mukherjee) intends to interact with Qadianis, taking them to be Muslims, then it is incumbent on the Council to correct his wrong assumption and to make known that, his participation in the said Convention, despite their protests, will wound the sentiments of Muslims, as a result of which Muslims will cease to take his Party as their ally.”

I would have thought that we Indian Muslims are not Pakistanis and that we have not declared Ahmadis non-Muslim. In our view anyone is a Muslim who says la ilaha illallah Muhammadur rasoolullah (There is no god other than the one God and Muhammad is his prophet) and Ahmadis do that. Indeed, I had the personal experience of seeing their love for Prophet Mohammad and belief in his finality as a law-bearing prophet when I spent a few years in Suriname, South America where the majority of Muslims are Ahmadis. They differentiate between law-bearing prophets and people who are renewers of Islam (mujaddedeen) coming every new century or so and who are inspired by God to say things that they didn’t know they had in themselves.

Yes, some Ahmadis do call Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani Saheb a prophet, albeit a non-law-bearing prophet below the status of law-bearing prophets like Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Ram or Krishna, etc. We have our differences with them and of course, the majority of mainstream Muslims do not agree with them. Indeed many Ahmadis, the so-called Lahori group of Ahmadis, led by as great a scholar of Islam as Maulana Mohammad Ali, too do not agree with them and merely consider Mirza Saheb a mujaddid (renewer of Islam). Indeed if we go by the logic of Ahmadis we would have to consider not only Mirza Saheb but also people like Ghalib, Iqbal, Shakespeare, Keats, Einstein, etc. as prophets. These people were indubitably inspired to say things that they did not know the source of. They only knew that they did not know the things they said in a clearly altered state of mind – in some cases like that of Ghalib, for instance, an altered state of mind produced by the influence of liquor. Similarly, some of them consider Mirza Saheb a reincarnation of Jesus Christ who is supposed to come back at the end of history. I am sure many Qadianis themselves consider this rather absurd.

http://newageislam.com/why-should-any-muslim-object-to-pranab-mukherjee-attending-an-ahmadiya-convention?/the-war-within-islam/d/2285

Why Can't Muslim Women Also Lead the Whole Community?, Islam, Women and Feminism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam, Women and Feminism

Why Can't Muslim Women Also Lead the Whole Community?

Interview with Zakia Nizami Soman, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan

Q: How did the BMMA start? What made you and your colleagues feel the need for a separate Muslim women's movement?

A: The BMMA was formally inaugurated in Delhi in January 2007, but before that we -- numerous Muslim women -- were working in our individual capacities on issues related to Muslims, particularly Muslim women, in different parts of India. I was working in Gujarat, my home state, before that, with Action Aid, in the wake of the state-sponsored genocidal attacks on Muslims in 2002. In a sense, it was the Gujarat genocide that brought us Muslim women, scattered across India, together. We met at numerous conventions, rallies and public hearings that were held in different parts of the country in the wake of the genocide. We were all Muslim women who were deeply concerned with the plight of the Muslims, including and especially Muslim women, and the enormous danger of Hindutva fascism, and who were trying, in our own ways, to intervene. That was when we decided to form a loose collective of our own. We felt that the issues of Muslim women were somehow being sidelined in a climate of heightened Muslim insecurity. We urgently felt the need for Muslim women to speak out, not just against patriarchy within the community and unjust personal laws, but also against growing anti-Muslim discrimination, against Muslims being treated as second-class citizens in this country and against neglect, indeed, discrimination by the state and other forces. We felt the desperate need for a Muslim women's voice at the national level.

http://newageislam.com/why-can-t-muslim-women-also-lead-the-whole-community?/islam,-women-and-feminism/d/2185

Kashmir: Who are the Jihadis?

Kashmir: Who are the Jihadis?

Prem Shankar Jha

August 17, 2008

The yatra has epitomised the syncretic traditions of Kashmiri Islam and, indeed of all the religions in the Valley, for 140 years. Till the 1980s the shrine was protected, and the yatra managed, by the Gurjjar community who, incidentally, are Muslims. In all that time it was a spontaneous, unorganised and private undertaking. It therefore had no political significance. But the nature of the yatra began to change when the Kashmiri insurgency-cum-proxy war began in 1990. The need to provide security to the pilgrims brought the state into its management. Instead of letting the pilgrims come whenever they wished to, the state Government asked them to come only during a specified 15-day period of time. During this period it kept Kashmiris out of the areas surrounding the two pilgrimage routes. Even the Gurjjars were kept out. The Kashmiris resented this, but understood the need for taking these precautions.

http://www.newageislam.com/kashmir--who-are-the-jihadis?/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/577