Category: Op-Ed
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Beware The Happy Clappies
I am growing increasingly frustrated at the mealy-mouthed, apologetic bunch of Muslims paraded across our TV screens these days. And just when one lot suddenly wake up, smell the coffee and begin to disagree with US and British foreign policies, another bunch take their place.
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Our Allegience Is Only To Islam
The real religious extremists who pose the greatest threat to radicalizing our youth are the Christian Fundamentalists in the White House and Downing Street. Bush and Blair have become al-Qaeda’s finest recruiting officers. More and younger Muslims are waking up with the realization that it is not terrorism or extremism that is being targeted but…
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Pope Benedict, Islam and Violence
But why did the Muslim react in such a manner when Pope Benedict repeated something that we are already accustomed to hearing from not so friendly western public figures? After all flamboyant televangelists like Jerry Falwell have said worse things than the Pope –- calling the Prophet of Islam a paedophile and terrorist – yet…
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We cannot afford to maintain these ancient prejudices against Islam
In the 12th century, Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, initiated a dialogue with the Islamic world. “I approach you not with arms, but with words,” he wrote to the Muslims whom he imagined reading his book, “not with force, but with reason, not with hatred, but with love.” Yet his treatise was entitled Summary of…
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Islam on Freedom of Religion
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…
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What I Did Not Say And The Missionary Myopia
There are those who say that lying and deceiving is at the soul of all crime and that Christianity epitomizes these traits more than any other faith. As proof of their assertion they often quote Paul of Tarsus, arguably the true founder of Christianity, who is recorded to have said, "But if through my falsehood…