Islam

Apos­ta­sy, appar­ent­ly a human rights relat­ed issue, is high­ly sen­si­tive to the mul­ti-racial and mul­ti-reli­gious char­ac­ter of Malaysia. It tends to be prob­lem­at­ic, unten­able to some, espe­cial­ly when it deals with con­ver­sion into and out of Islam. It is true, the whole ques­tion involves cer­tain legal and social impli­ca­tions. At times, its reper­cus­sions appear to rat­tle the social sol­i­dar­i­ty and reli­gious har­mo­ny of our peace­ful nation. All these threat­en­ing con­se­quences are actu­al­ly caused by igno­rance. This writ­ing is not to incite fur­ther dis­sen­sion. Nei­ther is it intend­ed to sound apolo­getic. On the con­trary it calls for all par­ties direct­ly or indi­rect­ly affect­ed by the sub­ject mat­ter, Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike, to view it with an open heart guid­ed by wisdom.

The fol­low­ing is a doc­u­men­tary pro­duced by a group of stu­dents Mul­ti­me­dia Uni­ver­si­ty Cyber­jaya, Malaysia, fea­tur­ing opin­ions from var­i­ous Mus­lim women about how they feel about the hijab (or the tudung as it is known in Malay) and streamed from YouTube. It por­trays a very good side of Islam that is rarely shown to a West­ern audi­ence. We feel that this doc­u­men­tary does a good job of dis­pelling the mis­con­cep­tion that Mus­lim women are ​“oppressed” when the donn the hijab. Most of the con­ver­sa­tion was done in Bahasa Melayu, but it is sub­ti­tled in English.

The saga of Abdul Rehman’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty may be over but the after­math is far from set­tled. Like a clock­work of hate, the episode has brought upon yet anoth­er wave of crit­i­cisms against Islam and its record for reli­gious tol­er­ance. But what few would realise is that the West has a his­to­ry of reli­gious intol­er­ance and per­se­cu­tions that would put Mus­lim Afghanistan to shame.

There are 1.2 bil­lion Mus­lims in the world, and Islam is the world’s fastest-grow­ing reli­gion. If the evil car­nage we wit­nessed on Sept. 11 were typ­i­cal of the faith, and Islam tru­ly inspired and jus­ti­fied such vio­lence, its growth and the increas­ing pres­ence of Mus­lims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a ter­ri­fy­ing prospect. For­tu­nate­ly, this is not the case.

Dur­ing his years at McGill, Dr. Ismail al-Faruqi?s tal­ent as a dis­putant was rec­og­nized by his peers. His abil­i­ty to pur­sue the opponent?s argu­ment to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion was aug­ment­ed by his mas­tery of the rhetoric. The way he con­duct­ed him­self dur­ing his encoun­ters with peo­ple of oth­er faiths can be seen in the fol­low­ing excerpt from his dia­logue with Bish­op Ken­neth Cragg and Father Michael Fitzger­ald at Chem­besy on June 26, 1976.

Recent­ly we were intro­duced to a new, amus­ing polemic by the mis­sion­ar­ies, name­ly with regard to the word ​“ahad(un)”. To achieve this end, the mis­sion­ar­ies cite an online text from a Chris­t­ian Arab polemi­cist who claims that the word does not mean ​“one”, but ​“one of”. Is it true what they claim ? We seek to answer this alle­ga­tion in the fol­low­ing, insha’allah.

In the usu­al vein of mis­sion­ary tra­di­tion, the mis­sion­ar­ies have made a rather pathet­ic attempt at ​“refut­ing” one of our arti­cles which shows the Bible per­ver­sion in encour­ag­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. Pre­vi­ous­ly, we have shown in anoth­er expo­si­tion how the so-called ​“apos­tle” from Tar­sus had dis­played some homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies. In the lat­er part of this arti­cle, we will pro­vide some exam­ples of how the Chris­tians have prac­tised this par­tic­u­lar teach­ing from the Bible in their day-to-day lives.

In Hans Kung’s address to this con­fer­ence he has once again proven him­self a pio­neer of inter­re­li­gious dia­logue. What he has been doing through­out most of his the­o­log­i­cal career, he was doing again-explor­ing new ter­ri­to­ry, rais­ing new ques­tions in the encounter of Chris­tian­i­ty with oth­er reli­gions. Although Kung made his great­est con­tri­bu­tion in the inner-Chris­t­ian, eccle­sial are­na, he has always real­ized-and increas­ing­ly so in more recent years-that Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy must be done in view of, and in dia­logue with, oth­er reli­gions. As he has said, Chris­tians must show an increas­ing­ly ​“greater broad-mind­ed­ness and open­ness” to oth­er faiths and learn to ​“reread their own his­to­ry of the­o­log­i­cal thought and faith” in view of oth­er tra­di­tions. As a long-time read­er of Kung’s writ­ings, and as a par­tic­i­pant with him in a Bud­dhist-Chris­t­ian con­fer­ence in Hawaii, Jan­u­ary 1984, I have wit­nessed how much his own broad-mind­ed­ness and open­ness to oth­er reli­gions has grown. He has been changed in the dialogue.

This is not the place to review the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian-Mus­lim rela­tions. This his­to­ry may now be read in the eru­dite works of Nor­man Daniel. The read­ing is sad and ago­niz­ing. The con­clu­sion which may be safe­ly drawn from this his­to­ry is that Chris­tian­i­ty’s involve­ment with the Mus­lim World was so full of mis­un­der­stand­ing, prej­u­dice, and hos­til­i­ty that it has warped the West­ern Chris­tian’s will and con­scious­ness. ​“Would to God Chris­tian­i­ty had nev­er met Islam!” will rever­ber­ate in the mind of any stu­dent patient enough to peruse that history.

The fol­low­ing is an excerpt tak­en from ​“Chris­tian­i­ty and World Reli­gions : Dia­logue with Islam”, in Leonard Swi­dler (ed.), Mus­lims in Dia­logue : The Evo­lu­tion of A Dia­logue, vol. 3 (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992) by the Chris­t­ian philoso­pher Hans Kung who con­veys a Chris­t­ian opin­ion on Prophet Muham­mad (P). We do not nec­ces­sar­i­ly agree with every­thing that has been said here.

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi Recent­ly ​“Freethought Mec­ca”, an anti-Islam­ic web­site of athe­ist per­sua­sion, came forth with an arti­cle that claimed to have found at least…

The mis­sion­ar­ies have pub­lished an arti­cle claim­ing that there is no sig­nif­i­cance between the holy city of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) with Islam, while at the same time dis­play­ing their Zion­ist ten­den­cies. We repub­lish an arti­cle from Israeli Watch which rebuts their fatu­ous claims and cements the rela­tion­ship between Islam and Al-Quds.

(I) JESUS IN JUDAISM * LIFE : — Estab­lish­ing the time of the ​“Jew­ish Jesus”: The ref­er­ence to Jesus in the Tal­mud is by the title : ​“Yeshu Ha-Notzri,”…

This great mis­sion is that, among the major signs of the final Hour and among the keys of the huge deliv­er­ance that will dawn upon this Com­mu­ni­ty of Islam there will come a time on this earth when the call to the pre-morn­ing prayer will be raised in Dam­as­cus — at the white minaret East of Dam­as­cus ; the imam will want to step for­ward to lead the prayer when — lo and behold ! — the peo­ple will watch in aston­ish­ment while our liege-lord Jesus descends from the heav­en, his two hands rest­ing on the wings of the angels, his head seem­ing­ly drip­ping with water, wear­ing clothes which our liege-lord Muham­mad — upon him bless­ings and peace — described in great detail. He said that the col­or of his clothes resem­bled saf­fron dye, as if his clothes had been dyed with saf­fron and wars. Our Prophet Muham­mad — upon him bless­ings and peace — described for us the very appear­ance of the clothes in which Jesus would descend ! Such ves­ti­men­ta­ry descrip­tion sig­ni­fies noth­ing oth­er than addi­tion­al empha­sis on reflec­tion, per­cep­tion, and dis­cern­ment (dhawq) for the mean­ing of our con­nec­tion with this great mas­ter who was thus hon­ored by his Lord.

Intro­duc­tion Divorce (talaaq) in Islam ​“is a per­mis­si­ble thing most detest­ed by God”, as stat­ed in a pop­u­larised hadith­See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Mis­ri (transl. Nuh…