Tag : Religion_​Belief

In a recent arti­cle in The Spec­ta­tor mag­a­zine in the UK, the evan­gel­i­cal leader Patrick Sookhdeo takes a swipe at Mus­lims and their reli­gion. Does his case stand up to scruti­ny ? Patrick Sookhdeo’s arti­cle (July 30, 2005) in London’s The Spec­ta­tor, ​“The Myth of a Mod­er­ate Islam” reflects a dan­ger­ous trend in the war on ter­ror. Under the guise of inform­ing West­ern­ers about Islam, he is in fact spread­ing the very same dis­in­for­ma­tion that anti-Islam­ic polemics have been based upon for over 1,000 years. This plays direct­ly into the hands of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zar­qawi and oth­ers, for it encour­ages the ​“clash of civ­i­liza­tions” they so appalling­ly desire. It is indeed of the utmost impor­tance that we learn more about Islam and fight the scourge of extrem­ism with all the tools pos­si­ble. But Sookhdeo and those like him cor­rupt this process, seek­ing to advance their own agen­da by turn­ing the war on ter­ror into an ide­o­log­i­cal war against Islam.

So is it pos­si­ble for the Most Wise to enable a liar to be vic­to­ri­ous, assist him, aid him against his oppo­nents and make the end result in his favour and his fol­low­ers, although this liar con­tin­u­ous­ly invent lies and forg­eries against God claim­ing that He sent him

This arti­cle was writ­ten to pro­vide a schol­ar­ly analy­sis on the ide­ol­o­gy of Zion­ism, its ori­gins and pur­pose, as well as its past ​“achieve­ments” in hav­ing suc­cess­ful­ly dis­plac­ing thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans who sud­den­ly lost their home­land to this group of ter­ror­ists. We seek to con­front and expose the true nature of the ide­ol­o­gy of Zion­ism, often tout­ed as ​“Jew­ish nation­al­ism”. Can Zion­ism be equat­ed with the Jews and Judaism ? Is Zion­ism whol­ly ground­ed on reli­gious grounds as the Zion­ist them­selves try to claim, or just anoth­er name for the sec­u­lar and/​or racist ide­olo­gies that we have seen in the last cen­tu­ry in the likes of Nazism, Fas­cism and Apartheid ? These are the fruits of our research on the Israeli-Pales­tin­ian con­flict, and we leave it to the read­er to form their own con­clu­sions and decide whether Zion­ism should be right­ful­ly con­front­ed and opposed, or otherwise.

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

This paper is intend­ed to respond to athe­is­tic crit­i­cism as pro­posed by Richard Car­ri­er, in a rather large piece that is in my per­son­al opin­ion and under­stand­ing, replete with errors and mis­un­der­stand­ings with regards to basic cos­mo­log­i­cal con­cepts, the Islam­ic view­point, as well as his­to­ry. I also address a few polemics that were put for­ward by Freethought Mec­ca. Their arti­cle con­tains the par­tic­u­lar objec­tions that I shall address Insha’Allah, along with a spu­ri­ous argu­ment for Isa­iah and then a few links to some oth­er polem­i­cal sites ; need­less to say at least for now these few objec­tions are the only ones that are rel­e­vant to this par­tic­u­lar paper.

Recent­ly Sam Shamoun, a well-known bel­liger­ent and provoca­tive Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ary at Answer­ing Islam, issued a chal­lenge to Mus­lims to prove that Jesus (peace be upon him) did not claim to be God, as per the Qur’an­ic state­ment. It is obvi­ous, how­ev­er, that his demands are as pre­pos­ter­ous as it is stu­pid. The Qur’an cer­tain­ly quotes or para­phras­es Jesus as say­ing that he is not God, but in Ara­bic. This is because the Qur’an has affirmed itself to be revealed in Ara­bic text, sent down to an Arab prophet, lest its audi­ence uses the excuse that they will not be able to under­stand the Qur’an if were brought down in a for­eign tongue.

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.

Tran­script of speech at Inter­faith Dia­logue 4, organ­ised by MMU Mela­ka PART 1 Bis­mil­lahir Rohmanir Rohim. In the name of Almighty God, Most Gra­cious, Most Merciful.…

In one of their pages, Answer­ing Islam had made the fol­low­ing claim with the clear inten­tion of ​“poi­son­ing the well” where Mus­lim sites are con­cerned. The rest of the page goes on to either debase or dis­cred­it Mus­lim web­sites for their depen­den­cy on ​“athe­ist” mate­r­i­al and preach­ing about the lack of ​“con­science” on the part of Mus­lims to aban­don athe­ist mate­r­i­al (notwith­stand­ing the fact that most of the links on their page are either bro­ken or no longer exist).

What do the dif­fer­ences between Bible man­u­scripts reveal ? This paper is divid­ed into the fol­low­ing sections : 

1. They require you to pro­duce evi­dence on : WHEN, HOW and WHY was the Bible cor­rupt­ed 2. Once upon a time, there was a myth about Bible man­u­scripts 3. Evi­dence : more than 50 vers­es either omit­ted or added, hun­dreds of oth­ers changed 4. Evi­dences from sec­ond and third cen­tu­ry about Bible cor­rup­tion 5. Do the changes and cor­rup­tions of man­u­scripts affect doc­trine ? 6. ​“For God so loved the world”? 

The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies have been mak­ing a lot of noise about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Banu Qurayzah. It is a won­der that even after…

The Jew­ish Ori­en­tal­ist Ignaz Goldz­i­her claimed that the Umayyad Caliph ​‘Abd al-Malik ibn Mar­wan had built the Dome of the Rock to pre­vent the peo­ple of Syr­ia and Iraq from the Hajj (pil­grim­age) to Makkah and in order to reli­gious­ly jus­ti­fy this act, his friend Al-Zuhri fab­ri­cat­ed the hadith of ​“Do not set out on a jour­ney…” It does not need to be men­tioned that this is indeed one of the won­ders of lying, dis­tor­tion and manip­u­la­tion of his­tor­i­cal facts. Nat­u­ral­ly, the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies get very excit­ed when they see polem­i­cal mate­r­i­al like Goldz­i­her’s, and hence duti­ful­ly par­rot it with­out check­ing for clar­i­fi­ca­tion. Hence, it is left to the Mus­lims to fill in the void of scholas­tic integri­ty left by the missionaries.

The most uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized sym­bol of Jerusalem is not a Jew­ish or Chris­t­ian holy place but a Mus­lim one : the Dome of the Rock, or Qub­bat as-Sakhra as it is known in Ara­bic. When peo­ple see its gold­en dome ris­ing above the open expanse of Haram as-Sha­reef, they think of only one place in the world. The Dome of the Rock is undoubt­ed­ly one of the most cel­e­brat­ed and most remark­able mon­u­ments of ear­ly Islam, vis­it­ed every year by thou­sands of pil­grims and tourists. It is Jerusalem’s answer to Paris’ Eif­fel Tow­er, Rome’s St. Peter’s Square, Lon­don’s Big Ben and Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas twin tow­ers ; daz­zling the minds of Mus­lims and non-Mus­lims alike. The Dome of the Rock is Jerusalem.

Dur­ing the Mi’raj, the Prophet(P) is report­ed to have received from God the com­mand of five dai­ly prayers (salah) that all Mus­lims must per­form. Upon his return to Mec­ca, the Prophet insti­tut­ed these prayers. It is sig­nif­i­cant to note that he made Jerusalem the direc­tion (al-Qiblah) which Mus­lims must face while doing their prayers (nar­rat­ed by al-Bukhari, 41 and by Mus­lim, 525). Jerusalem is thus called Ula al-Qiblatain (the first qiblah). The Prophet (P) and the ear­ly com­mu­ni­ty of Islam wor­shipped towards the direc­tion of Jerusalem dur­ing their stay in Mec­ca. After the Hijra’ (migra­tion), Mus­lims in Med­i­na also con­tin­ued to pray fac­ing Jerusalem for almost sev­en­teen months until God com­mand­ed the Mus­lims to change their direc­tion of prayer from Jerusalem to Mec­ca (Qur’an 2:142 – 150). These estab­lished facts clear­ly sig­ni­fies the impor­tance of Jerusalem in Islam.

The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies are well-known for their decep­tion in order to spread their so-called ​“God-giv­en” pur­pose to spread the Gospel to the world. This approach is not alien to the mis­sion­ary agen­da, for it is found­ed upon the very words of Paul, who laid down decep­tion as the mis­sion­ary approach. It is with this ​“mis­sion” in mind that they have start­ed to infil­trate coun­tries where the major­i­ty of Mus­lims do not habit­u­al­ly read or speak Ara­bic. The mis­sion­ar­ies have begun sell­ing images which mir­rors the cal­lig­ra­phy often found in Qur’an­ic vers­es, but instead of the usu­al Qur’an­ic vers­es, they cite vers­es from the Ara­bic Bible instead. This tru­ly dis­plays the decep­tion of the mis­sion­ar­ies in order to dupe gullible Mus­lims to their cause.