Search Results : jihad

Akram Diya al ​‘Umari informs us about the back­ground of the Mus­lim con­di­tion in Mad­i­nah that led to the leg­is­la­tion of jihad and its permission.

Sir Thomas W. Arnold defends, with extra­or­di­nary tal­ent, the the­sis that the basic mean­ing of ​“jih?d”, is : ​“the using or exert­ing one’s utmost pow­er, effort, endeav­or or abil­i­ty, in con­tend­ing with an object of dis­ap­pro­ba­tion”, and that pri­mar­i­ly the word bears no ref­er­ence to war or fight­ing, much less to fight­ing against unbe­liev­ers or forcible con­ver­sion of them, but derives its par­tic­u­lar appli­ca­tion from the con­text only.

Nabeel Qureshi died at the age of 34 years old in 2017 from a ​“rare and dead­ly form of stom­ach can­cer” on 16th of Sep­tem­ber 2017 with mixed reactions. 

For those who are famil­iar with ​“Faith­free­dom Inter­na­tion­al”, the name of its founder Ali Sina (a pseu­do­nym) is syn­ony­mous with the big­otry and vile rhetoric often dis­played against Mus­lims and Islam. He open­ly advo­cat­ed for the atom­ic bomb to be used on Mus­lims and declared that he will ​“wipe out” Islam with­in 30 years. 

It has become a habit for some to pub­lish respons­es to any paper deal­ing with the issue of Islam, its truth­ful­ness and the false­hood of oth­er reli­gions. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true of the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies as such peo­ple do not care whether they pro­vide an effi­cient respons­es or not ; all they care about is to respond, regard­less of the out­come. Is this reac­tion an idi­ot­ic one ? Well, we can­not claim that it is a stu­pid strat­e­gy ; because it is always use­ful to show your fol­low­ers that you are able to respond and speak loud­ly, drown­ing oth­er voic­es. The psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tor is after all always impor­tant here. But what is glar­ing indeed are the con­tent of such ​“respons­es” because the writer tries to show that he is com­pe­tent in the field when in actu­al fact he is total­ly unqualified.

There is an ongo­ing slan­der cam­paign against Islam, claim­ing that it is a reli­gion that pro­motes vio­lence and hint­ing that it seeks world con­quest. Before you buy the malarkey that is being pro­duced by peo­ple with their own agen­das or prej­u­dices or who are just plain igno­ra­mus­es, fol­low these few suggestions.

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.

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 Islam itself. It is up to the Ummah to lead and inspire our youth, just as the Prophet (P) led and inspired mil­lions and con­tin­ues to do so.

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 we nev­er asked for an apol­o­gy. In the mod­ern era, not least because of the late Pope John Paul II, Mus­lims have a gen­uine respect for the head of the Catholic church. The Cru­sades, the Recon­quista, the Inqui­si­tions were far behind us. The Catholic Church with its long his­to­ry and tra­di­tion, its large num­ber of faith­ful and the author­i­ty of its lead­er­ship, its unam­bigu­ous moral pre­cepts and its litur­gies and rites rep­re­sent what con­sti­tutes Chris­t­ian ortho­doxy to ordi­nary Mus­lim eyes, as the last bas­tion against the inex­orable march of sec­u­lar­iza­tion of west­ern society.

In the 12th cen­tu­ry, Peter the Ven­er­a­ble, Abbot of Cluny, ini­ti­at­ed a dia­logue with the Islam­ic world. ​“I approach you not with arms, but…

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 God’s truth­ful­ness abounds to his glo­ry, why am I still being con­demned as a sin­ner ? Any why not do evil that good may come ? – as some peo­ple slan­der­ous­ly charge us with say­ing. Their con­dem­na­tion is just.” (Romans 3:7 – 8)

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.

Euro­pean crit­i­cism seems to have lost its sense of jus­tice in deal­ing with the Prophet(P). All the rates of that crit­i­cism seem to be sub­ject to the one con­sid­er­a­tion that what­ev­er is unfavourable and dam­ag­ing to the Prophet’s rep­u­ta­tion must be accept­ed as true. For exam­ple, Answer­ing Islam, a web­site which is full of lies and decep­tion fol­lows in this tra­di­tion as per the meth­ods of their satan­ic apos­tle from Tar­sus by col­lect­ing a series of so-called ​“assas­si­na­tion” orders. Not the least attempt has been made on their part to con­sid­er them crit­i­cal­ly before base­less­ly con­demn­ing a man who is looked upon as a mod­el of virtue and kind­ness by 1.4 bil­lion Mus­lims around the world.

The Mus­lim schol­ars hold three views with regard to this inci­dent. The sor­cery whom the Prophet (peace be upon him) was exposed to is mere­ly a usu­al dis­ease and a tran­sient ill­ness, this is pos­si­ble in regard to the Prophets as is to any human being. It does not dis­prove prophet­hood or dis­turb the mes­sage or rev­e­la­tion. God the Exalt­ed pro­tect­ed His Prophet from what­ev­er inter­feres with the mis­sion of con­vey­ing the mes­sage and from being killed, not from tran­sient phys­i­cal diseases.

Edward W. Said (We do not nec­ces­sar­i­ly agree with every­thing that is said by the author ? Ed. ) The media have become obsessed with something…