Pilgrims start first day of trouble-free hajj
A massive crowd prays at the Grand Mosque in Mecca
March 25, 1999
Web posted at: 3:23 AM EST (0823 GMT)
MECCA, Saudi Arabia, March 25 (Reuters) - Two million Muslims performing the annual hajj pilgrimage began their journey on foot and aboard buses and cars on Thursday to a vast tent city in Saudi Arabia on the first day of a so-far trouble-free rite.
Wrapped in seamless white sheets and carrying umbrellas against 36 Celsius (97 Fahrenheit) temperatures, pilgrims from around 100 countries began leaving Islam's holy city of Mecca after dawn prayers at the Grand Mosque where they circled the Kaaba seven times, the first hajj ritual.
"The journey to Mena is proceeding successfully despite the huge numbers of pedestrians and cars," a Saudi official said.
Officials said the pilgrimage was trouble free so far, apart from an incident on Tuesday at the Grand Mosque where some pilgrims chanted slogans against the United States and Israel.
Iran's official media said on Wednesday some pilgrims chanted the slogans while circling the Kaaba -- which Muslims around the world face when praying.
A Saudi security official told Thursday's Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that Iranian pilgrims started chanting the slogans and might have been joined by other nationalities.
"The Saudi security intervened...and settled the issue without any confrontation," the official was quoted as saying.
He reiterated Saudi Arabia's policy banning any political activity or slogans during the pilgrimage, but said security authorities would not intervene in any activity by pilgrims inside their compounds.
Iran also said its pilgrims held a memorial service for more than 400 compatriots who were killed in clashes with Saudi police in 1987 during an Iranian-led political rally.
Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has insisted on holding a rally during the haj to denounce Israel and the United States in defiance of the Saudi ban on political activity during the religious occasion.
But amid improving ties between the two regional heavyweights, Iranian pilgrims have in recent years confined their rally to within the confines of their compound.
In another controversy, Saudi newspapers kept up a barrage of criticism against Iraq for recalling 18,000 would-be pilgrims from the border despite a Saudi offer to cover their hajj costs.
The Iraqi pilgrims who had been camped near the border were called back on Saturday in a row over the unfreezing of Iraqi assets held in Saudi banks since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Iraq also said Saudi armed forces had surrounded the group.
Some 6,000 Iraqis have paid their own way to Mecca.
Along the way from Mecca, traffic flowed through tunnels and on bridges and roads to Mena plain where thousands of fire-proof tents await the pilgrims who will spend the night there.
On Friday, they go to Mount Arafat where Prophet Mohammad gave his last sermon 14 centuries ago, marking the end of hajj.
In 1997, 343 people were killed in a fire that swept the tent city. Saudi Arabia has since erected close to 30,000 fire-proof tents in Mena, about 10 km (six miles) from Mecca.
Saudi Arabia is also introducing a new plan to avert congestion on a bridge used by pilgrims on the last day of haj. Last year, 119 people died in a stampede on the bridge.
Walking shoulder to shoulder and carrying bottles of water to quench their thirst and avoid dehydration in the heat, the pilgrims chanted: "I have answered your call, God. There is no God but you," on their way to Mena.
Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars to ensure a safe pilgrimage and has deployed tens of thousands of police, civil defence teams, doctors, nurses and cleaners.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Employers adjust to Muslim customs
Employers adjust to Muslim customs
By Salina Khan, USA TODAY
Taxi driver Farhad Nezami rolls out his prayer rug, removes his shoes and raises his hands to begin the early afternoon prayer.
Facts, figures about Islam
Islam: One of the three biggest religions.
Followers: 1.2 billion worldwide.
Beliefs: One God, called Allah in Arabic; prophets (including Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed); holy books revealed to prophets; angels; day of judgment; life after death - hell and heaven; and predestination.
Five Pillars of Islam: 1. Belief that there is only one God, and prophet Mohammed was the last prophet of God; 2. Pray five times a day; 3. Purifying contribution: To give 2.5% of one's net wealth to the poor and needy; 4. Fasting: No food, liquid or sex from sunrise to sunset in the month of Ramadan; 5. Pilgrimage: To Mecca, Saudi Arabia, if affordable.
Holy book: Koran - word of God revealed to prophet Mohammed through angel Gabriel.
Place of worship: Mosque.
Nezami's not worshipping in a mosque. He's standing in a lot near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that about 300 Muslim cab drivers turn into a makeshift prayer hall several times a day.
They pray there in rain, snow and sleet because Metropolitan Airports Commission has repeatedly denied their request for a room for four years.
Nezami is one of an estimated 6 million Muslims in America - a growing number of whom are demanding flexibility to practice their faith in the workplace.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and expected to soon command the largest following in the country after Christianity.
"There are a lot of Muslims in this country, and they need to be recognized," Nezami says.
Many employers are unfamiliar with Islam, which is practiced by 1.2 billion people worldwide, and often don't know how to handle Muslims' requests.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim rights advocacy group, says it received 135 workplace discrimination complaints for the year ended March 1999, up 13% from the same period last year.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and its affiliates received 440 complaints from Muslims in 1998, up 42% from 1994.
"Our biggest obstacle has been ignorance on the part of employers - not prejudice," says CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper.
While many employers accommodate Muslim workers' needs on a case-by-case basis after they learn more about the religion, CAIR says companies should adopt detailed religious-accommodation codes. Changes in management often bring the same complaints about the same companies.
Some religious customs of Muslims include:
Many Muslim women wear the religiously mandated headscarf or hijab, which serves as a symbol of their modesty.
"She's to be treated in a way that considers her mind above all else," says Sharifa Alkhateeb, vice president of the North American Council for Muslim Women.
Seven Muslim security workers at Dulles International Airport near Washington are back at work after filing an EEOC complaint alleging they were fired because they refused to remove their hijabs.
The complaint said the demand to remove the scarves violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees' religious practices.
Argenbright Security, which employs the women, says the women misunderstood their supervisor and were never fired.
Not all companies protest their employees' choice to don the hijab. Nadia Salem wears a headscarf while on the job at law firm Pembroke and Brown in Park Ridge, Ill.
"She's talented, and she knows what she's doing," says the firm's senior partner, John Pembroke. "I believe people should be hired on merit."
Friday is the holy day for Muslims, and men are required to pray the early afternoon prayer in congregation, or Jum'a.
Mohammad Abdullah of Lincolnshire, Ill., used to come in early or stay late on Fridays to make up for the time he'd be away for prayers.
He was eventually fired but won a $49,000 settlement in 1997 after taking his case to the EEOC.
Many devout Muslim men wear beards in the tradition of Mohammed, the final prophet of Islam who lived in the seventh century.
A recent federal appeals court ruling upheld two Muslim police officers' right to wear beards for religious reasons. Companies that have altered their policies to allow Muslim men to keep facial hair include Coca-Cola and Adirondack Transit Lines.
Discrimination lawyer Kamran Memon says Muslims are suing employers as they learn about their rights.
"More Muslims are willing to come forward because they are feeling more at home in America," says Memon, who's an American-born son of Pakistani immigrants.
Muslim civil rights advocacy groups and lectures by Muslim lawyers at mosques also are propelling changes in the workplace, Memon says.
CAIR provides sensitivity training to businesses and has distributed 15,000 copies of its Employer's Guide to Islamic Religious Practices since 1997.
The recent upswing in Muslim refugees from Bosnia, Somalia and now Kosovo also is changing the face of the U.S. workplace.
A meatpacking plant in Minneapolis set aside a storage area for prayer after a large group of Somalians threatened to quit if they couldn't pray on the job.
Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., says he will introduce a resolution next month supporting religious tolerance toward followers of Islam because "too often, Muslims have been discriminated against simply because of their faith."
Accommodating religious differences also makes good business sense, says Anne McMahon, a professor of management and member of Partners for Workplace Diversity in Youngstown, Ohio.
"Employers have to accommodate religious and cultural values if they want to take advantage of all the talents, contacts and networking opportunities people have to offer," McMahon says.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Salina Khan, USA TODAY
Taxi driver Farhad Nezami rolls out his prayer rug, removes his shoes and raises his hands to begin the early afternoon prayer.
Facts, figures about Islam
Islam: One of the three biggest religions.
Followers: 1.2 billion worldwide.
Beliefs: One God, called Allah in Arabic; prophets (including Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed); holy books revealed to prophets; angels; day of judgment; life after death - hell and heaven; and predestination.
Five Pillars of Islam: 1. Belief that there is only one God, and prophet Mohammed was the last prophet of God; 2. Pray five times a day; 3. Purifying contribution: To give 2.5% of one's net wealth to the poor and needy; 4. Fasting: No food, liquid or sex from sunrise to sunset in the month of Ramadan; 5. Pilgrimage: To Mecca, Saudi Arabia, if affordable.
Holy book: Koran - word of God revealed to prophet Mohammed through angel Gabriel.
Place of worship: Mosque.
Nezami's not worshipping in a mosque. He's standing in a lot near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that about 300 Muslim cab drivers turn into a makeshift prayer hall several times a day.
They pray there in rain, snow and sleet because Metropolitan Airports Commission has repeatedly denied their request for a room for four years.
Nezami is one of an estimated 6 million Muslims in America - a growing number of whom are demanding flexibility to practice their faith in the workplace.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and expected to soon command the largest following in the country after Christianity.
"There are a lot of Muslims in this country, and they need to be recognized," Nezami says.
Many employers are unfamiliar with Islam, which is practiced by 1.2 billion people worldwide, and often don't know how to handle Muslims' requests.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim rights advocacy group, says it received 135 workplace discrimination complaints for the year ended March 1999, up 13% from the same period last year.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and its affiliates received 440 complaints from Muslims in 1998, up 42% from 1994.
"Our biggest obstacle has been ignorance on the part of employers - not prejudice," says CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper.
While many employers accommodate Muslim workers' needs on a case-by-case basis after they learn more about the religion, CAIR says companies should adopt detailed religious-accommodation codes. Changes in management often bring the same complaints about the same companies.
Some religious customs of Muslims include:
Many Muslim women wear the religiously mandated headscarf or hijab, which serves as a symbol of their modesty.
"She's to be treated in a way that considers her mind above all else," says Sharifa Alkhateeb, vice president of the North American Council for Muslim Women.
Seven Muslim security workers at Dulles International Airport near Washington are back at work after filing an EEOC complaint alleging they were fired because they refused to remove their hijabs.
The complaint said the demand to remove the scarves violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires employers to reasonably accommodate employees' religious practices.
Argenbright Security, which employs the women, says the women misunderstood their supervisor and were never fired.
Not all companies protest their employees' choice to don the hijab. Nadia Salem wears a headscarf while on the job at law firm Pembroke and Brown in Park Ridge, Ill.
"She's talented, and she knows what she's doing," says the firm's senior partner, John Pembroke. "I believe people should be hired on merit."
Friday is the holy day for Muslims, and men are required to pray the early afternoon prayer in congregation, or Jum'a.
Mohammad Abdullah of Lincolnshire, Ill., used to come in early or stay late on Fridays to make up for the time he'd be away for prayers.
He was eventually fired but won a $49,000 settlement in 1997 after taking his case to the EEOC.
Many devout Muslim men wear beards in the tradition of Mohammed, the final prophet of Islam who lived in the seventh century.
A recent federal appeals court ruling upheld two Muslim police officers' right to wear beards for religious reasons. Companies that have altered their policies to allow Muslim men to keep facial hair include Coca-Cola and Adirondack Transit Lines.
Discrimination lawyer Kamran Memon says Muslims are suing employers as they learn about their rights.
"More Muslims are willing to come forward because they are feeling more at home in America," says Memon, who's an American-born son of Pakistani immigrants.
Muslim civil rights advocacy groups and lectures by Muslim lawyers at mosques also are propelling changes in the workplace, Memon says.
CAIR provides sensitivity training to businesses and has distributed 15,000 copies of its Employer's Guide to Islamic Religious Practices since 1997.
The recent upswing in Muslim refugees from Bosnia, Somalia and now Kosovo also is changing the face of the U.S. workplace.
A meatpacking plant in Minneapolis set aside a storage area for prayer after a large group of Somalians threatened to quit if they couldn't pray on the job.
Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., says he will introduce a resolution next month supporting religious tolerance toward followers of Islam because "too often, Muslims have been discriminated against simply because of their faith."
Accommodating religious differences also makes good business sense, says Anne McMahon, a professor of management and member of Partners for Workplace Diversity in Youngstown, Ohio.
"Employers have to accommodate religious and cultural values if they want to take advantage of all the talents, contacts and networking opportunities people have to offer," McMahon says.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW ISLAMIC MOVEMENT SEEKS LATINO CONVERTS
NEW ISLAMIC MOVEMENT SEEKS LATINO CONVERTS
by Margarat Ramirez
- Religion Correspondent
LA Times
April 12, 1999
Slipped inside a strip mall across from Exposition Park where the smell of incense mingles with Arabic swirls on the wall, Muhammad Gomez absorbs the message of Allah.
Sitting beside him in this storefront Islamic center, Domy Garcia raises her hand and asks why she and other Muslim women are obliged to cover their heads with the hijab.
Mariam Montalvo takes diligent notes at the Sunday afternoon Islamic lesson with the holy Koran by her side.
Here at the ILM Foundation, a new Islamic movement is being born. Yet it lies far from Mecca, where the faith was founded more than 1,400 years ago. And the language of choice for this group of Islamic followers is not Arabic. These Muslims worship Allah in Spanish.
Montalvo, who immigrated to Los Angeles from Mexico in 1996, left the Catholic faith three months ago, frustrated by what she called contradictions within church teachings and preoccupation with the saints. After research and contemplation, she took the shahada, the simple declaration of faith by which one becomes a Muslim.
"I had a lot of problems with the church. One Bible says one thing, and another Bible says something different. Then there are people who call themselves Catholics and drink and smoke," said Montalvo, 21. "With Islam, it was so pure. I found there were no intermediaries. Everything goes straight to God."
If you were inclined to believe that most Muslims are Arabs, you would be wrong. Over the past 10 years, Islam has become one of the fastest-growing religions, with an estimated 1 billion adherents worldwide and 6 million followers in this nation. About half of the Muslims in the United States are African American converts. But, in recent years, Islamic teaching has begun gaining acceptance among members of the Latino community. Though precise statistics do not yet exist, Islamic leaders estimate that there are at least 15,000 Latino Muslims across the nation.
Last month, about 30 Southern California converts founded the Latino-Muslim Movement with the intent of educating Spanish-speaking Muslims and spreading Islam to other Latinos. After meeting informally for the past seven years, the group appointed officers and elected to meet at the ILM Foundation once a week.
Scores of Latinos throughout the country -- specifically in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Miami -- have fled the church of their birth and embraced Islam as their newfound faith.
In New York, a group of Puerto Rican Muslims opened an Islamic center in the heart of East Harlem called Alianza Islamica, where hundreds of Latinos have converted since 1992. The center, the first of its kind, includes a small mosque where the Friday sermon is heard in Arabic, English and Spanish. Islam has adherents throughout Latin America and the Caribbean as well, with especially strong followings in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama.
Reymundo Nur, a Panamanian who became Muslim at the age of 12 and studied Islam in Saudi Arabia, helped organize the Los Angeles group. Two years ago, Nur co-founded a national nonprofit organization called Asociacion Latina de Musulmanes en las Americas, which focuses on translating Islamic books and literature into Spanish.
He said one of his group's main projects is translating the Koran into contemporary, conversational Spanish. At least two Spanish translations of the Koran exist, but Nur said they use a more formal, Castilian Spanish.
"There have always been Latino Muslims. It's only now that they're coming to the forefront," said Nur, vice president of the Latino-Muslim Movement in Los Angeles. "We have a strong Islamic legacy, and people are rediscovering that part of their heritage. Many learn about it and say, 'Hey, I have more of this in me than I ever realized.'"
Islamic ties to Hispanic culture date back to 711, when the Muslim general Tariq ibn Zayid conquered Spain, and the Christian Visigothic domination of Roderick came to an end. Under Moorish rule, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted in Spain. Conversion was encouraged but never forced. Because the Arabs did not bring women with them, they took Spanish wives, and within a few generations the Muslim population was more Spanish than Arab.
For the next 700 years, Al-Andalus, as the Muslims refer to Spain, enjoyed an era of political and cultural splendor, becoming one of the most intellectually advanced countries in medieval Europe. Islamic influence penetrated almost every facet of Spanish life, especially music, architecture and literature.
But, gradually, Christian armies advanced. After the fall of the last Moorish stronghold in Granada in 1492, the cross replaced the crescent on Spain's minarets and Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity or be exiled. Many Latino Muslims in Los Angeles see their conversion as a return to their Moorish roots.
Today, Southern California has the third-largest concentration of Muslims in the country, including 58 mosques and Islamic centers in Los Angeles County.
Like Christians and Jews, Muslims are monotheists believing in one God known as Allah. They revere biblical prophets including Noah, Isaac, Abraham and Moses. Jesus is also considered a prophet, but unlike Christians, Muslims do not accept him as the son of God. Muhammad is believed to be the last prophet to whom Allah revealed the Koran.
For former Catholics like Guadalupe Martinez, 26, it is this comprehensive set of beliefs that makes Islam appealing.
"In Islam, there is no separation. You accept the Torah and the Bible," said Martinez, who converted in 1997. "We love Jesus, we dress like Mary. It's like we're putting all the faiths together. It really touched me.
"In Catholicism, there are just so many ways to go. Why am I going to pray to the saints?" she added. "When we find Islam, we don't have to waste energy. It's like if I call the operator to get a number, I waste energy. But with Islam, I have the number. I get connected directly to God."
Along with the formation of more Latino Muslim organizations, conversion stories have begun burning up the Internet.
Ali Al-Mexicano, a 25-year-old Pomona computer technician, created his own World Wide Web page account of how he became Muslim that includes the first time he read the Koran.
"It was so clear and written in a simple, understanding way," he said. "It just hit me. This has to be the truth."
Though Al-Mexicano family accepted his conversion, several other young Latinos who have begun searching outside the traditional confines of Catholicism have found conversion to be a heart-wrenching affair, often tearing families apart.
A 1998 Georgetown University study of people ages 20 to 39 found that 8% of the Latinos had joined another denomination or religion. Of those, at least 65% left for evangelical Protestant groups, Pentecostal churches or Mormonism. A smaller percentage accepted other religions, including Islam and Buddhism.
Some relatives see conversion to other faiths as rejecting family and tradition.
Domy Garcia said her family in Mexico was confused and upset by her decision to leave the church. The Buena Park mother converted to Islam two years ago after rejecting the religion she said was forced on her Mexican ancestors. Undeterred by her family's reaction, Garcia said her main concern now is raising her children as Muslims and introducing more Latinos to Islam.
"My family just would not accept it. They said, 'What happened? You've changed so much,' " she recalled. "But it's all right, because on Judgment Day, my family won't be able to help. It will be God."
The Latino-Muslim Movement meets every Sunday afternoon for discussions at the ILM Foundation, a community center managed by Saadiq Saafir, a prominent African American prayer leader, or imam.
About 2 p.m., Elizabeth Chawki, a Native American who is fluent in Spanish, usually begins the sessions, which have focused on women, preparation of food, marriage and Islamic divorce. Despite the perception that all Muslims are Arab, Chawki said, converts see the distinction between religion and ethnicity.
"This is about pure religion, not culture. We still eat our tamales and frijoles," said Chawki, referring to some Latino dishes served after the discussions.
Gomez, a native of Nicaragua with no prior religious affiliations, said it was after reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" that he began to explore Islam. Like several other converts, Gomez spoke with resentment about the Catholic Church's involvement in Latin America.
"Viewing Jesus as a prophet and a political leader, and not a God, made more sense to me," he said.
The Latino-Muslim Movement also aims to bring together Muslims regardless of race. At a recent meeting, Saafir reflected on the emerging phenomenon of Latino conversions as similar to the time when African Americans began accepting Islam 50 years ago. In allowing the group to use the Islamic center, Saafir hopes to tear down the barriers that divide blacks and Latinos.
"We all realize that we're Muslim first," Saafir said. "This religion is going to bring us together."
Nur nodded. "Inshallah," he whispered. "God willing."
by Margarat Ramirez
- Religion Correspondent
LA Times
April 12, 1999
Slipped inside a strip mall across from Exposition Park where the smell of incense mingles with Arabic swirls on the wall, Muhammad Gomez absorbs the message of Allah.
Sitting beside him in this storefront Islamic center, Domy Garcia raises her hand and asks why she and other Muslim women are obliged to cover their heads with the hijab.
Mariam Montalvo takes diligent notes at the Sunday afternoon Islamic lesson with the holy Koran by her side.
Here at the ILM Foundation, a new Islamic movement is being born. Yet it lies far from Mecca, where the faith was founded more than 1,400 years ago. And the language of choice for this group of Islamic followers is not Arabic. These Muslims worship Allah in Spanish.
Montalvo, who immigrated to Los Angeles from Mexico in 1996, left the Catholic faith three months ago, frustrated by what she called contradictions within church teachings and preoccupation with the saints. After research and contemplation, she took the shahada, the simple declaration of faith by which one becomes a Muslim.
"I had a lot of problems with the church. One Bible says one thing, and another Bible says something different. Then there are people who call themselves Catholics and drink and smoke," said Montalvo, 21. "With Islam, it was so pure. I found there were no intermediaries. Everything goes straight to God."
If you were inclined to believe that most Muslims are Arabs, you would be wrong. Over the past 10 years, Islam has become one of the fastest-growing religions, with an estimated 1 billion adherents worldwide and 6 million followers in this nation. About half of the Muslims in the United States are African American converts. But, in recent years, Islamic teaching has begun gaining acceptance among members of the Latino community. Though precise statistics do not yet exist, Islamic leaders estimate that there are at least 15,000 Latino Muslims across the nation.
Last month, about 30 Southern California converts founded the Latino-Muslim Movement with the intent of educating Spanish-speaking Muslims and spreading Islam to other Latinos. After meeting informally for the past seven years, the group appointed officers and elected to meet at the ILM Foundation once a week.
Scores of Latinos throughout the country -- specifically in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Miami -- have fled the church of their birth and embraced Islam as their newfound faith.
In New York, a group of Puerto Rican Muslims opened an Islamic center in the heart of East Harlem called Alianza Islamica, where hundreds of Latinos have converted since 1992. The center, the first of its kind, includes a small mosque where the Friday sermon is heard in Arabic, English and Spanish. Islam has adherents throughout Latin America and the Caribbean as well, with especially strong followings in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Panama.
Reymundo Nur, a Panamanian who became Muslim at the age of 12 and studied Islam in Saudi Arabia, helped organize the Los Angeles group. Two years ago, Nur co-founded a national nonprofit organization called Asociacion Latina de Musulmanes en las Americas, which focuses on translating Islamic books and literature into Spanish.
He said one of his group's main projects is translating the Koran into contemporary, conversational Spanish. At least two Spanish translations of the Koran exist, but Nur said they use a more formal, Castilian Spanish.
"There have always been Latino Muslims. It's only now that they're coming to the forefront," said Nur, vice president of the Latino-Muslim Movement in Los Angeles. "We have a strong Islamic legacy, and people are rediscovering that part of their heritage. Many learn about it and say, 'Hey, I have more of this in me than I ever realized.'"
Islamic ties to Hispanic culture date back to 711, when the Muslim general Tariq ibn Zayid conquered Spain, and the Christian Visigothic domination of Roderick came to an end. Under Moorish rule, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted in Spain. Conversion was encouraged but never forced. Because the Arabs did not bring women with them, they took Spanish wives, and within a few generations the Muslim population was more Spanish than Arab.
For the next 700 years, Al-Andalus, as the Muslims refer to Spain, enjoyed an era of political and cultural splendor, becoming one of the most intellectually advanced countries in medieval Europe. Islamic influence penetrated almost every facet of Spanish life, especially music, architecture and literature.
But, gradually, Christian armies advanced. After the fall of the last Moorish stronghold in Granada in 1492, the cross replaced the crescent on Spain's minarets and Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity or be exiled. Many Latino Muslims in Los Angeles see their conversion as a return to their Moorish roots.
Today, Southern California has the third-largest concentration of Muslims in the country, including 58 mosques and Islamic centers in Los Angeles County.
Like Christians and Jews, Muslims are monotheists believing in one God known as Allah. They revere biblical prophets including Noah, Isaac, Abraham and Moses. Jesus is also considered a prophet, but unlike Christians, Muslims do not accept him as the son of God. Muhammad is believed to be the last prophet to whom Allah revealed the Koran.
For former Catholics like Guadalupe Martinez, 26, it is this comprehensive set of beliefs that makes Islam appealing.
"In Islam, there is no separation. You accept the Torah and the Bible," said Martinez, who converted in 1997. "We love Jesus, we dress like Mary. It's like we're putting all the faiths together. It really touched me.
"In Catholicism, there are just so many ways to go. Why am I going to pray to the saints?" she added. "When we find Islam, we don't have to waste energy. It's like if I call the operator to get a number, I waste energy. But with Islam, I have the number. I get connected directly to God."
Along with the formation of more Latino Muslim organizations, conversion stories have begun burning up the Internet.
Ali Al-Mexicano, a 25-year-old Pomona computer technician, created his own World Wide Web page account of how he became Muslim that includes the first time he read the Koran.
"It was so clear and written in a simple, understanding way," he said. "It just hit me. This has to be the truth."
Though Al-Mexicano family accepted his conversion, several other young Latinos who have begun searching outside the traditional confines of Catholicism have found conversion to be a heart-wrenching affair, often tearing families apart.
A 1998 Georgetown University study of people ages 20 to 39 found that 8% of the Latinos had joined another denomination or religion. Of those, at least 65% left for evangelical Protestant groups, Pentecostal churches or Mormonism. A smaller percentage accepted other religions, including Islam and Buddhism.
Some relatives see conversion to other faiths as rejecting family and tradition.
Domy Garcia said her family in Mexico was confused and upset by her decision to leave the church. The Buena Park mother converted to Islam two years ago after rejecting the religion she said was forced on her Mexican ancestors. Undeterred by her family's reaction, Garcia said her main concern now is raising her children as Muslims and introducing more Latinos to Islam.
"My family just would not accept it. They said, 'What happened? You've changed so much,' " she recalled. "But it's all right, because on Judgment Day, my family won't be able to help. It will be God."
The Latino-Muslim Movement meets every Sunday afternoon for discussions at the ILM Foundation, a community center managed by Saadiq Saafir, a prominent African American prayer leader, or imam.
About 2 p.m., Elizabeth Chawki, a Native American who is fluent in Spanish, usually begins the sessions, which have focused on women, preparation of food, marriage and Islamic divorce. Despite the perception that all Muslims are Arab, Chawki said, converts see the distinction between religion and ethnicity.
"This is about pure religion, not culture. We still eat our tamales and frijoles," said Chawki, referring to some Latino dishes served after the discussions.
Gomez, a native of Nicaragua with no prior religious affiliations, said it was after reading "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" that he began to explore Islam. Like several other converts, Gomez spoke with resentment about the Catholic Church's involvement in Latin America.
"Viewing Jesus as a prophet and a political leader, and not a God, made more sense to me," he said.
The Latino-Muslim Movement also aims to bring together Muslims regardless of race. At a recent meeting, Saafir reflected on the emerging phenomenon of Latino conversions as similar to the time when African Americans began accepting Islam 50 years ago. In allowing the group to use the Islamic center, Saafir hopes to tear down the barriers that divide blacks and Latinos.
"We all realize that we're Muslim first," Saafir said. "This religion is going to bring us together."
Nur nodded. "Inshallah," he whispered. "God willing."
The Question of Good Bidah
I S L A M I C D A ` W A H N E T
==============================================================
"O you who believe! Give your response to Allaah and His
Messenger when he calls you to that which will
give you life, and know that Allaah comes
in between a man and his heart, and it
is He to whom you shall all be gathered."
al-Qur'aan, al-Anfaal (8):24
==============================================================
Bismillaah Ar-RaHmaan Ar-RaHeem
Al-Hamdu Lillaah, was-Salaatu was-Salaamu `ala Rasoolillah
As-Salaamu `Alaikum wa RaHmatullaahi wa Barakaatuh
-----------------------------------------------------------------
`AQEEDAH, Adopted From "A Glimpse at the Way of the Companions",
by Shaikh `Abdul Qaadir al-Arna'oot, published by al-Hidaayah
From the beliefs of the Pious Predecessors is that it is
obligatory to have eemaan (faith) in all that the Qur'aan has
come with, and what Allaah, the Most High, has ordered us with,
and leaving all that Allaah, the Most High, has prohibited us
from, the general and the detailed. We believe in all that the
Prophet, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, has informed us of,
when its transmission from him is authentic, in that which we
witness or do not witness, regardless of whether we comprehend
it, or are ignorant of it or we have not come accross the
reality of its meaning.
We carry out the orders of Allaah, the Most High, and the orders
of his Messenger, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam. We refrain
from what Allaah, the most High has prohibited us from and what
the Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam,
prohibited us from. We stop at the hudood (boundaries) of the
Book of Allaah, and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allaah,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, and that which has come from the
rightly guided Khulafaa. Our duty is to do ittibaa` (following)
of that which the Prophet, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, has
come with: from beliefs, actions and sayings, to follow the way
of Allaah's Messenger, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, and the
four rightly guided Khulafaa', in their beliefs, actions and
sayings. This is the complete Sunnah, as the Sunnah of the
rightly guided Khulafaa' is adhered to like the following of the
Prophetic Sunnah.
`Umar ibn `Abdul `Azeez said:
"The Messenger of Allaah, sallaallahu `alaihi wa sallam, and the
leaders of the Muslims after him set examples (Sunnah), the
taking of which is holding on to the Book of Allaah, the Most
High, and strength upon the Deen of Allaah. It is not for any
one to change or alter it, nor to look at a matter in opposition
to it. Whoever is guided by it then he is truly guided, and
whoever seeks help by it then he is truly helped. Whoever
leaves it and follows a way other than the way of the believers,
Allaah will turn him to what he has chosen and burn him in hell,
what en evil abode!"
This is confirmed by the saying of Allaah's Messenger,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam:
"...and beware of newly invented matters, for verily every
bid`ah is a going astray."
This hadeeth is a great principle from the principles of the
Deen and it resembles another saying of the Prophet,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam:
"Whoever innovates in to this Deen of ours that which is not
from it, then it is rejected."
[Reported by al-Bukhaaree in ta`leeq form (without mentioning
the chain) (4/298) and in the full form (5/221), Muslim (no.
1718), Aboo Daawood in the book of Sunnah (no. 4606), Ibn
Maajah (no. 14).]
In it is a warning from following newly invented matters in the
Deen and worship. The meaning of bid`ah is that which has been
invented and has no root in the Sharee`ah pointing to it. As
for what has a root in the Sharee`ah pointing to it it is not
legally (technically) a bid`ah; even though linguistically the
term bid`ah may be applied to it. Thus whenever something new
is introduced into the Deen, having no root (in the Deen) to
return it to, then it is a misguidance - deviation. The Deen is
free of it, regardless of whether it is connected to issues of
beliefs, actions or sayings.
As for the istihsaan (approval and condoning) of bid`ah, which
occurred in the words of the predecessors, then that is in
relation to bid`ah al-logawee (linguistic use of bid`ah) and not
in the legal (technical) use of the term bid`ah. From these
saying is the saying of `Umar bin al-Khattaab, when he gathered
the people in Qiyaam-ur-Ramadaan - Taraaweeh prayers - behind
one Imaam in the masjid. He went out and saw them praying and
he said: "What a wonderful bid`ah."
This has a root in Sharee`ah. Verily the Messenger of Allaah,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam prayed it (this prayer) in
congregation in the masjid and then he left it, fearing that it
might become obligatory upon his Ummah and that they would be
unable to perform it. Indeed they became free of this fear
after the Prophet, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam. So `Umar
(radiyallaahu `anhu) revived it. As for that which is a matter
confirmed, in worship, then it is not permissible to make
additions to it.
So, for example of the adhaan, remains in the form in which it
was legislated, without addition or subtraction. The Prayer
remains upon the manner it was legislated as the Messenger of
Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam said:
"Pray as you have seen me praying."
This is an authentic hadeeth, reported by al-Bukhaaree in his
Saheeh.
Hajj remains upon the manner in which it was legislated, because
the Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, said:
"Take from me your rites (of Hajj)." [Saheeh Muslim, Book of
Hajj, 1297]
Indeed the Muslims have done things that were not present in the
time of the Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam,
due to them being daroorah (necessities) in preserving Islaam.
Indeed they have permitted it and kept quiet about it. Like the
gathering of the people to one mushaaf (that which the Qur'aan
is written upon), by `Uthmaan bin `Affaan (radiyallaahu `anhu),
fearing the splitting of the Ummah. Indeed it was approved of
by the Companions (radiyallaahu `anhum) and that was for a
maslaha (benefit).
The example of writing down Prophetic traditions (hadeeth)
fearing its loss due to the death of its people. The writing of
Tafseer of the Qur'aan and the Hadeeth. The compilation of `Ilm
an-Nahw (science of grammar) to safeguard the Arabic language,
which is a means of understanding Islaam. The formation of `Ilm
al-Mustalah (science of hadeeth). Thus, these are permissible
to safeguard the Islamic Sharee`ah. Verily, Allaah, the Most
High, has taken the responsability of safeguarding His Law -
from His saying:
"Indeed it is We who sent down the Dhikr (Qur'aan) and surely
We will guard it (from corruption). [al-Hijr (15):9]
The Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, said:
"This `Ilm (Deen) will be carried by the trustworthy of ones of
each generation. Negating from it the tahreef (alterations) of
the ones going beyond bounds, the false assumptions of the
liars, and the ta'weel (false interpretations) of the ignorant."
This hadeeth is hasan due to all its chains and shawaahids
(supporting narrations).
This is the belief (`aqeedah) - of the group of this Ummah (i.e.
the Companions radiyallaahu `anhum) and it is a pure belief like
the purity of fresh drinking water, strong as the firmly fixed
mountains, firm as the firmest of hand holds. It is a flawless
`Aqeedah, a straight way, upon the methodology of the Book and
the Sunnah and the sayings of the Predecessors of this Ummah and
its A'immah (leaders). It is the way which revived the hearts
of the pioneers of this Ummah.
===============================================================
"By Time! Verily man is in loss. Except those who
believe and do righteous deeds and help one
another to the truth and help one another to patience."
al-Qur'aan, al-`Asr (103):1-3
================================================================
==============================================================
"O you who believe! Give your response to Allaah and His
Messenger when he calls you to that which will
give you life, and know that Allaah comes
in between a man and his heart, and it
is He to whom you shall all be gathered."
al-Qur'aan, al-Anfaal (8):24
==============================================================
Bismillaah Ar-RaHmaan Ar-RaHeem
Al-Hamdu Lillaah, was-Salaatu was-Salaamu `ala Rasoolillah
As-Salaamu `Alaikum wa RaHmatullaahi wa Barakaatuh
-----------------------------------------------------------------
`AQEEDAH, Adopted From "A Glimpse at the Way of the Companions",
by Shaikh `Abdul Qaadir al-Arna'oot, published by al-Hidaayah
From the beliefs of the Pious Predecessors is that it is
obligatory to have eemaan (faith) in all that the Qur'aan has
come with, and what Allaah, the Most High, has ordered us with,
and leaving all that Allaah, the Most High, has prohibited us
from, the general and the detailed. We believe in all that the
Prophet, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, has informed us of,
when its transmission from him is authentic, in that which we
witness or do not witness, regardless of whether we comprehend
it, or are ignorant of it or we have not come accross the
reality of its meaning.
We carry out the orders of Allaah, the Most High, and the orders
of his Messenger, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam. We refrain
from what Allaah, the most High has prohibited us from and what
the Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam,
prohibited us from. We stop at the hudood (boundaries) of the
Book of Allaah, and the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allaah,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, and that which has come from the
rightly guided Khulafaa. Our duty is to do ittibaa` (following)
of that which the Prophet, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, has
come with: from beliefs, actions and sayings, to follow the way
of Allaah's Messenger, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, and the
four rightly guided Khulafaa', in their beliefs, actions and
sayings. This is the complete Sunnah, as the Sunnah of the
rightly guided Khulafaa' is adhered to like the following of the
Prophetic Sunnah.
`Umar ibn `Abdul `Azeez said:
"The Messenger of Allaah, sallaallahu `alaihi wa sallam, and the
leaders of the Muslims after him set examples (Sunnah), the
taking of which is holding on to the Book of Allaah, the Most
High, and strength upon the Deen of Allaah. It is not for any
one to change or alter it, nor to look at a matter in opposition
to it. Whoever is guided by it then he is truly guided, and
whoever seeks help by it then he is truly helped. Whoever
leaves it and follows a way other than the way of the believers,
Allaah will turn him to what he has chosen and burn him in hell,
what en evil abode!"
This is confirmed by the saying of Allaah's Messenger,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam:
"...and beware of newly invented matters, for verily every
bid`ah is a going astray."
This hadeeth is a great principle from the principles of the
Deen and it resembles another saying of the Prophet,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam:
"Whoever innovates in to this Deen of ours that which is not
from it, then it is rejected."
[Reported by al-Bukhaaree in ta`leeq form (without mentioning
the chain) (4/298) and in the full form (5/221), Muslim (no.
1718), Aboo Daawood in the book of Sunnah (no. 4606), Ibn
Maajah (no. 14).]
In it is a warning from following newly invented matters in the
Deen and worship. The meaning of bid`ah is that which has been
invented and has no root in the Sharee`ah pointing to it. As
for what has a root in the Sharee`ah pointing to it it is not
legally (technically) a bid`ah; even though linguistically the
term bid`ah may be applied to it. Thus whenever something new
is introduced into the Deen, having no root (in the Deen) to
return it to, then it is a misguidance - deviation. The Deen is
free of it, regardless of whether it is connected to issues of
beliefs, actions or sayings.
As for the istihsaan (approval and condoning) of bid`ah, which
occurred in the words of the predecessors, then that is in
relation to bid`ah al-logawee (linguistic use of bid`ah) and not
in the legal (technical) use of the term bid`ah. From these
saying is the saying of `Umar bin al-Khattaab, when he gathered
the people in Qiyaam-ur-Ramadaan - Taraaweeh prayers - behind
one Imaam in the masjid. He went out and saw them praying and
he said: "What a wonderful bid`ah."
This has a root in Sharee`ah. Verily the Messenger of Allaah,
sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam prayed it (this prayer) in
congregation in the masjid and then he left it, fearing that it
might become obligatory upon his Ummah and that they would be
unable to perform it. Indeed they became free of this fear
after the Prophet, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam. So `Umar
(radiyallaahu `anhu) revived it. As for that which is a matter
confirmed, in worship, then it is not permissible to make
additions to it.
So, for example of the adhaan, remains in the form in which it
was legislated, without addition or subtraction. The Prayer
remains upon the manner it was legislated as the Messenger of
Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam said:
"Pray as you have seen me praying."
This is an authentic hadeeth, reported by al-Bukhaaree in his
Saheeh.
Hajj remains upon the manner in which it was legislated, because
the Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, said:
"Take from me your rites (of Hajj)." [Saheeh Muslim, Book of
Hajj, 1297]
Indeed the Muslims have done things that were not present in the
time of the Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam,
due to them being daroorah (necessities) in preserving Islaam.
Indeed they have permitted it and kept quiet about it. Like the
gathering of the people to one mushaaf (that which the Qur'aan
is written upon), by `Uthmaan bin `Affaan (radiyallaahu `anhu),
fearing the splitting of the Ummah. Indeed it was approved of
by the Companions (radiyallaahu `anhum) and that was for a
maslaha (benefit).
The example of writing down Prophetic traditions (hadeeth)
fearing its loss due to the death of its people. The writing of
Tafseer of the Qur'aan and the Hadeeth. The compilation of `Ilm
an-Nahw (science of grammar) to safeguard the Arabic language,
which is a means of understanding Islaam. The formation of `Ilm
al-Mustalah (science of hadeeth). Thus, these are permissible
to safeguard the Islamic Sharee`ah. Verily, Allaah, the Most
High, has taken the responsability of safeguarding His Law -
from His saying:
"Indeed it is We who sent down the Dhikr (Qur'aan) and surely
We will guard it (from corruption). [al-Hijr (15):9]
The Messenger of Allaah, sallaallaahu `alaihi wa sallam, said:
"This `Ilm (Deen) will be carried by the trustworthy of ones of
each generation. Negating from it the tahreef (alterations) of
the ones going beyond bounds, the false assumptions of the
liars, and the ta'weel (false interpretations) of the ignorant."
This hadeeth is hasan due to all its chains and shawaahids
(supporting narrations).
This is the belief (`aqeedah) - of the group of this Ummah (i.e.
the Companions radiyallaahu `anhum) and it is a pure belief like
the purity of fresh drinking water, strong as the firmly fixed
mountains, firm as the firmest of hand holds. It is a flawless
`Aqeedah, a straight way, upon the methodology of the Book and
the Sunnah and the sayings of the Predecessors of this Ummah and
its A'immah (leaders). It is the way which revived the hearts
of the pioneers of this Ummah.
===============================================================
"By Time! Verily man is in loss. Except those who
believe and do righteous deeds and help one
another to the truth and help one another to patience."
al-Qur'aan, al-`Asr (103):1-3
================================================================
True Love
True Love
Asalamu alaikum warahmatuallah wabarakatuhu
Dear brothers and sisters...I pray that you are all in the highest state of faith and health, and insha allah, your minds and hearts are full of love for Allah subhana wa ta.alaa, His messenger, peace be upon him, and your fellow Muslim brothers and sisters. Alhamdulilaah, as Muslims, we learn that Allah azza wa jal, in His infinite mercy and love for us, asks us to reciprocate that love to Him through obedience, and to spread it among ourselves. In this way, we can strengthen the bonds within our communities and with our Creator. Part of this love entails having mercy and compassion for our brothers and sisters, and loving them regardless of their shortcomings and faults. For, we all know that NO ONE is perfect, save Allah azza wa jal. Allah subhana wa ta.alaa says in suurat al Hujurat, ayat 11-12,
"O ye who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor let some women laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used by one) after he has believed: and those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong."
"O ye who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: and spy not on each other, nor speak ill of each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it...but fear Allah: for Allah is oft-Returning, Most Merciful."
and in suurat an-Nur, ayat 24, Allah azza wa jal says,
"...let them forgive and overlook, do you not wish that Allah should forgive you? For Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful."
The perfect example of this can be seen with the kind and merciful behavior of Abu ad-Darda', May Allah be pleased with him, one of the companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him:
Once Abu ad-Darda was going about in his way, when he came upon a group of people who had gathered around a man whom they were beating and cursing. He asked them what the problem was, and they told him that the man had done something very sinful. Abu ad-Darda' said to them,
"If he had fallen into a well, would you not have pulled him out?"
"Of course we would have" they said.
"Do not curse or beat him then. Instead explain to him and enlighten him, and praise Allah subhana wa ta.alaa for saving you from falling into the same sin," he said.
"Do you not hate him?" they asked Abu ad-Darda'.
"I only hate what he has done and if he repents of it, he is my brother."
When the man whom they were beating heard this, he began to weep, and said that he repented and would not return to his sin.
Subhana allah, his mercy and kindness sets an example for all of us...how many times do we see someone doing something un-Islamic, and the first thing we think or say is something negative and critical about that person, instead of thinking positively, "Oh, my poor brother/sister in Islam, I must help him/her to improve...maybe he/she didn't know that what they did was wrong, maybe I can advise him/her and inshaalah, and help to bring both of us closer to Allah subhana wa ta.alaa."
Like Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, once said,
"You see the believers as regards to their being merciful among themselves and showing love among themselves and being kind, resembling one body, so that, if any part of the body is not well then the whole body shares the sleeplessness (insomnia) and fever with it." Sahih al-Bukhari Vol. 8 : No. 40
The love and mercy shown by the Prophet, peace be upon him and his companions, may Allah be pleased with them, is unmatched to today... and that is why WE must strive to achieve that level of love in our hearts...for Allah subhana wa ta.alaa, for the Prophet, peace be upon him, and for each other...this true love will then manifest itself in ourselves and our communities, and perpetuate the true meaning of Islam
I ask Allah subhana wa ta.alaa to forgive me for any of my shortcomings...all praises are due to Him only, and anything good that has come of this is from Allah azza wa jal and anything bad is from my own shortcomings and shaytan...Please forgive me if I have offended anyone, as that was not my intention...I pray that Allah subhana wa ta.alaa will accept this humble work for his sake...and inshaalah, I hope that all of us will continue to strive for the sake of Allah subhana wa ta.alaa. May we all meet in highest level of paradise... ameen.
May Allah azza wa jal continue to guide and protect us on our journey to the highest level of paradise...
Wasalamu alaikum warahmatuallahi wabarakaatuhu
Sister Khadija Lin
Georgetown University '98
hijrah_to_madinah @ yahoo.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hijrah_to_madinah/
------------------------------------------------------------
GLOSSARY OF ARABIC TERMS:
1.. Asalamu alaykum warahmatuallahi wabarakaatuhu
May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you
2. Insha allah . God Willing
3. subhana wa ta.alaa . Most Glorified and High
4. Alhamdulilaah .All praises are due to Allah
5. azza wa jal . mighty and majestic
6. suurat al Hujurat, ayat 11-12
chapter 49 in the Quran "The Apartments" verses 11-12
7. suurat an-Nur, ayat 24
chapter 24 in the Quran, "The Light" verse 24
8. Subhana allah . Glory be to Allah
9. shaytan . the devil
10. ameen. . amen
11. iman - faith
Asalamu alaikum warahmatuallah wabarakatuhu
Dear brothers and sisters...I pray that you are all in the highest state of faith and health, and insha allah, your minds and hearts are full of love for Allah subhana wa ta.alaa, His messenger, peace be upon him, and your fellow Muslim brothers and sisters. Alhamdulilaah, as Muslims, we learn that Allah azza wa jal, in His infinite mercy and love for us, asks us to reciprocate that love to Him through obedience, and to spread it among ourselves. In this way, we can strengthen the bonds within our communities and with our Creator. Part of this love entails having mercy and compassion for our brothers and sisters, and loving them regardless of their shortcomings and faults. For, we all know that NO ONE is perfect, save Allah azza wa jal. Allah subhana wa ta.alaa says in suurat al Hujurat, ayat 11-12,
"O ye who believe! Let not some men among you laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor let some women laugh at others: It may be that the (latter) are better than the (former): Nor defame nor be sarcastic to each other, nor call each other by (offensive) nicknames: Ill seeming is a name connoting wickedness, (to be used by one) after he has believed: and those who do not desist are (indeed) doing wrong."
"O ye who believe! Avoid suspicion as much (as possible): for suspicion in some cases is a sin: and spy not on each other, nor speak ill of each other behind their backs. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? Nay, ye would abhor it...but fear Allah: for Allah is oft-Returning, Most Merciful."
and in suurat an-Nur, ayat 24, Allah azza wa jal says,
"...let them forgive and overlook, do you not wish that Allah should forgive you? For Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful."
The perfect example of this can be seen with the kind and merciful behavior of Abu ad-Darda', May Allah be pleased with him, one of the companions of the Prophet, peace be upon him:
Once Abu ad-Darda was going about in his way, when he came upon a group of people who had gathered around a man whom they were beating and cursing. He asked them what the problem was, and they told him that the man had done something very sinful. Abu ad-Darda' said to them,
"If he had fallen into a well, would you not have pulled him out?"
"Of course we would have" they said.
"Do not curse or beat him then. Instead explain to him and enlighten him, and praise Allah subhana wa ta.alaa for saving you from falling into the same sin," he said.
"Do you not hate him?" they asked Abu ad-Darda'.
"I only hate what he has done and if he repents of it, he is my brother."
When the man whom they were beating heard this, he began to weep, and said that he repented and would not return to his sin.
Subhana allah, his mercy and kindness sets an example for all of us...how many times do we see someone doing something un-Islamic, and the first thing we think or say is something negative and critical about that person, instead of thinking positively, "Oh, my poor brother/sister in Islam, I must help him/her to improve...maybe he/she didn't know that what they did was wrong, maybe I can advise him/her and inshaalah, and help to bring both of us closer to Allah subhana wa ta.alaa."
Like Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, once said,
"You see the believers as regards to their being merciful among themselves and showing love among themselves and being kind, resembling one body, so that, if any part of the body is not well then the whole body shares the sleeplessness (insomnia) and fever with it." Sahih al-Bukhari Vol. 8 : No. 40
The love and mercy shown by the Prophet, peace be upon him and his companions, may Allah be pleased with them, is unmatched to today... and that is why WE must strive to achieve that level of love in our hearts...for Allah subhana wa ta.alaa, for the Prophet, peace be upon him, and for each other...this true love will then manifest itself in ourselves and our communities, and perpetuate the true meaning of Islam
I ask Allah subhana wa ta.alaa to forgive me for any of my shortcomings...all praises are due to Him only, and anything good that has come of this is from Allah azza wa jal and anything bad is from my own shortcomings and shaytan...Please forgive me if I have offended anyone, as that was not my intention...I pray that Allah subhana wa ta.alaa will accept this humble work for his sake...and inshaalah, I hope that all of us will continue to strive for the sake of Allah subhana wa ta.alaa. May we all meet in highest level of paradise... ameen.
May Allah azza wa jal continue to guide and protect us on our journey to the highest level of paradise...
Wasalamu alaikum warahmatuallahi wabarakaatuhu
Sister Khadija Lin
Georgetown University '98
hijrah_to_madinah @ yahoo.com http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hijrah_to_madinah/
------------------------------------------------------------
GLOSSARY OF ARABIC TERMS:
1.. Asalamu alaykum warahmatuallahi wabarakaatuhu
May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon you
2. Insha allah . God Willing
3. subhana wa ta.alaa . Most Glorified and High
4. Alhamdulilaah .All praises are due to Allah
5. azza wa jal . mighty and majestic
6. suurat al Hujurat, ayat 11-12
chapter 49 in the Quran "The Apartments" verses 11-12
7. suurat an-Nur, ayat 24
chapter 24 in the Quran, "The Light" verse 24
8. Subhana allah . Glory be to Allah
9. shaytan . the devil
10. ameen. . amen
11. iman - faith
The Call of the Creator of Earth and Light
The Call of the Creator of Earth and Light
by Yahiya Emerick
Allah has revealed many verses in the Qur'an which advise us to travel and see the world. (6:11) This, of course, is not a command to go on vacation constantly, rather, it is meant as a learning experience. Allah tells us to look at former civilizations, ruins of ancient days and upon how no people or generation is permanent. When we realize that others have passed away before us, we begin to understand that we, ourselves, will be less than a memory for generations to come after us. (6:6)
It has been a long time since I traveled. Too long, if what I learned is any indicator.
My wife and I arranged to take a trip from New York to Arizona. Yes, the lure of the Grand Canyon found its way into our collective imagination. One brother said to me before we left, "When you go to Mecca, you feel insignificant. When you go to the Grand Canyon you realize you are nothing." Boy was he right.
Our flight from JFK was delayed, of course. From our hard waiting room seats we watched the Saudi Airlines pilots and flight attendants flirting with each other in their nearby lounge quite blatantly. I wonder if they become more Islamic during Hajj season? Insha'llah I'll find out one day.
When we finally arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, we were amazed to see that everything was cast in hues of sandstone and clay: the buildings, the ground, the people and the roads. We were truly in another land. The drive north to the Grand Canyon was pleasant enough. (Our rental car had a great air conditioner.) It was amazing for me to see wide open countryside, baked to a crisp by the sun, with a small house here and there. How could anyone live in this hot place?
When we arrived at the Grand Canyon and looked upon that great pit for the first time, both my wife and myself became nervous inside. I hardly expected that I would feel shaken, but until you look down over a sheer cliff taller than the world's tallest building, you won't understand how we felt. It is truly awe-inspiring. (Not to mention there are no guard rails anywhere so one mis-step and you're history.)
Given that we were over 7,000 feet above sea level, our breathing became difficult and we ran out of breath easily. I often remembered from that point on the verse in the Qur'an where Allah mentions high altitude as related to the difficulty to breathe. In fact, I remembered so many ayat during this trip and gained a greater appreciation of their full import that I might as well have been in school.
The Grand Canyon is truly an amazing sight to behold. A little tiny river carved it out over the course of five million years. The tour guides give you a little paper when you first arrive that describes the age of each exposed layer of rock. The upper layers are only a few hundred thousand years old, while the lowest layers are about two billion years old! Talk about feeling like nothing!
As I gazed over the multi-colored layers, the remembrance of another Qur'anic verse came to mind. Allah tells us that just as our colors and races are different and we can learn from that, so too is the earth filled with many colored layers which are also a sign of His power. Allah is telling us His earth is very old and took many ages to form, even as humans have variations which only time has wrought. (35:27-28)
There are many peaks, plateaus, and geological formations in the canyon. They all have names too. You'd be surprised to know that most of them are named after Hindu gods and such. There is the Brahmin temple, the Shiva Temple, the Vishnu schist, the Buddhist temple, the Zoroaster temple, the Throne of Wotan (a Viking god) and about two dozen others. The non-Muslim American tour guides all said these names as if they were a part of their own heritage.
I reflected on this for a moment. There was no "Muslim Temple" or "Muhammad Peak" or anything connected to Islam. All the names were given about a hundred or so years ago by various explorers and educated men. Did they not know about Islam? Now before you start saying they were enemies of Islam or hated Muslims, consider this: even in our modern world, the average person, nay, even the highly educated person, gives no thought to Islam whatsoever.
In other words, if some professor was going to write a book on global trends, he or she would probably not include any mention of Islam or Muslims whatsoever, other than to say trouble will come from the Middle East one day. The rest of his book will concentrate on Europe, America and East Asia. The people who want to keep Islam from popular society have done an excellent job of keeping Islam hidden behind curtains and many Muslims seem content to pray to Allah from the shadows. But that is another issue.
(I just hope the political-oriented secular "Muslims" don't start a crusade to have some peak in the Grand Canyon named "Crescent Temple" or some other nonsense.)
If you've ever seen one of those prehistoric dinosaur movies then you'll know how we felt when we were at the bottom of the canyon. We took a raft ride down the Colorado river and truly felt we were in "The Land That Time Forgot." (We didn't take a mule ride down the trails because we thought it was cruelty to animals after we saw how miserable the mules appeared in the noon-time 118 degree heat. I wouldn't want to have that mule accusing me on Judgment Day of having pleasure at its expense when there was no real need for me to ride it.)
The water was cold and blackish-green. Our raft pilot was a middle-aged woman who spoke continually of how insignificant the Canyon makes her feel. After an hour of listening to her narrate the tour, both my wife and I realized that this non-Muslim was asking for spiritual direction and felt very empty inside. It was as clear as day. We left the raft a few hours later wishing we had some way to talk to her and some mechanism of follow-up.
A park ranger later led our group to view some rock carvings left by the Anasazi Indians about a thousand years before. To stand there and look upon what was once important to someone from long ago is quite humbling. The hands that made those stick figures and animal carvings are dead and crumbled to dust. What will become of us?
The next leg of our tour took us to the great Navajo Reservation. But first we passed through the Petrified Forest and saw trees that had turned to stone over the course of millions of years. Again, the lessons of our own insignificant existence came to mind. Then we arrived at Canyon de Chelly. A lush labyrinthine valley in the process of re-vegetation still inhabited by the Navajo to this day.
A jeep tour took us to see cliff-dwellings and petroglyphs made over a thousand years before and long since abandoned. "In the traces left by (former peoples) you will learn wisdom" came to my mind. Every time I saw a new set of ruins I tried to imagine what it was like long ago: full of people and life. Real people in real homes. People just like you and me. But a few crumbling bricks are all that remain of those countless souls. What were their Prophets like?
We spent a lot of time on the Navajo Reservation. (We left da'wah literature in every hotel we stayed at.) I was quite surprised to see churches all over the place. Even in the most desolate of areas I would spot some church or another. There were Mormon churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic, Assembly of God, Pentecostal, Baptist and a dozen others. I was quite speechless upon realizing that these people were worshipping the god of those who killed their ancestors en masse.
White Catholics and Protestants, Spanish and American, came to this land and killed almost all of the tribal people they could find. The survivors were then herded onto desolate desert tracts and told to stay there where many others died. Government policies were enacted just a hundred years ago which forcibly removed children from their parents and banned the practice of their native religions.
Now those same Apaches, Hopis and Navajos are going to church and singing "Praise Jesus" all the while white Americans snicker. The brief revival of old Indian ways on various reservations has done nothing more than feed the white New-Age movement by providing Indian souvenirs like Dream Catchers, flute music, artsy paintings and neat quotes from long dead Indian chiefs.
Something tugged inside my soul when I witnessed firsthand the contemporary legacy of a proud people. Many of the men whose faces mirrored the black and white photographs of their noble ancestors revealed the shadows of alcoholism. Most of the Native Americans on the Reservation appeared to have become so assimilated; trading their ancestral solidly grounded spirituality and cosmology for a diffused "do as you want to do" ethic of Western mass culture. I could tell there was a great cultural struggle going on in the society there. Half the Navajos dressed like cowboys (boots, cowboy hats, jeans and short hair) while the other half had traditional long hair and wore less identifiable Western dress.
All the Navajo and Hopi radio stations play country and Western music even though they have their own music. So complete was the assimilation process that it could be said that in some sections of the Reservation Navajo identity is nearly just a quaint New Age feeling rather than a firmly grounded spirituality. In the same way that someone might call themselves Jewish but then have less than ten percent Jewish heritage and ethnicity. (Blond hair and blue eyes does not a Hebrew make.) In fact, I learned that most of the Native Americans in the region have abandoned the Reservations and now live in the big cities doing mostly menial labor. Crazy Horse and Geronimo's legacy had indeed been abandoned-- with only a small percentage still fighting to hold on to the traditions of their ancestors.
My wife and I discussed how a da'wah program might be started for Native American people. The usual short-sighted efforts by our "Islamic workers" would doubly fail here. A group of dedicated brothers and sisters would have to actually come and live on the Reservation permanently, work there and become friends with the local people. (Yes, I know you wouldn't get to be a rich doctor or engineer there, but you would have a good shot towards the highest places in Jennah, the real home.)
A business venture would provide the perfect pretext for such an effort. Local people could be hired and shown how Islam blesses the relationship between boss and worker, a Masjid could be built near the business or in town. Free classes on Islam could be offered, a tight-family atmosphere could unite the Muslims and the new converts. Free housing could be provided to those who need it. Respect for native ways would be expressed in both deed and fact and the Muslims would show what true brotherhood and sisterhood is all about.
For that phase to succeed, however, you would have to face up to a very harsh truth. Most of our "Sheikhs," "Maulanas," "Scholars" and other self-appointed priests are arrogant, devoid of practical knowledge and filled with unIslamic cultural ideas. There I said it. Someone had to. But what do you expect? Such is the condition of "Islamic" education in the Muslim world today that this is what is produced in many cases. Not all cases, but many. (3:159)
Think about it. If you take a five year old kid living in an unIslamic "Muslim" culture, put him in a prison of a school where he is commanded to memorize vast amounts of words that he can't understand or he'll get a beating, don't you think the end product would be less than desirable from the standpoint of the needs of the Islamic movement?
You would need a caring, understanding, knowledgeable and dedicated person or persons to do da'wah among the Indians of Native America. Of course you need that for da'wah to anybody but especially with those who have been crushed completely by America so much so that they now identify with their oppressor. Author Paolo Friere elucidates this strange master-slave process in "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed".
The more I learned of Native American practices and beliefs the more I saw how Islam would be easy to introduce here. Basic American Indian religious practices resemble Hinduism to a great degree. Complete with spirits, gods, mysticism and the like. If the Blessed Prophet Muhammad can eradicate idol- worship in a pagan society, then we can at least attempt the same with a people who have mixed tribal paganism with Christian paganism.
We have advantages as Muslims in this endeavor. Christian missionaries come in and say that all Native American beliefs and practices are from the Devil. Then they command that they must abandon their culture and become like Westerners to be saved.
Islam, however, takes the basic attitude that there is some truth in the beliefs of others which came from authentic Prophets in the past. We don't automatically condemn others but rather seek to understand their beliefs. (6:108) Then we can compare their teachings with Islam and gradually invite them to abandon what people made up in their past and to affirm what truth they have which Islam promotes. The "Great Spirit" is Allah, we would teach, and there is no need for other spirits or gods between us and the Great Spirit. This notion was first fostered during a discussion I had with a Navajo Muslim brother in New Mexico a few years back. This brother stated to me: "The reason I became a Muslim is because Islam takes the traditions and conceptualizations of my people to a purer level. I believe that my Navajo identity is complemented by my Islamic beliefs and practices."
Christianity is never fully practiced anywhere in the world because it is a man-made religion hand-crafted from pagan sources. It never has any impact on the lives of a people or community other than to give them a feel-good ideology they can recall on Sunday. Islam, however, gives a life program which is designed to transform the individual on a day-to-day basis.
Navajo, Hopi and Apache traditional beliefs are filled with rituals that are performed every day. (22:67) Wouldn't it be easier to offer Islam to a people who will then be encouraged to retain their unique cultural characteristics and at the same time joining the community of believers? All it requires is dedicated people. There are already a couple of Muslims from among the Navajos and others. Who will answer the call and set forth united to call these people to Allah's way? (2:143)
There is a unique task for everyone in this life. A small or large part in a larger picture. Beyond our daily affairs of work and family, Islam calls upon us to act on a higher level for the common good of ourselves and all of humanity. There's one thing I learned on this trip and it is that we must all listen to our hearts and answer this call. Only when we act out our faith in the world around us do we become truly happy--we become our faith rather than perform it externally
by Yahiya Emerick
Allah has revealed many verses in the Qur'an which advise us to travel and see the world. (6:11) This, of course, is not a command to go on vacation constantly, rather, it is meant as a learning experience. Allah tells us to look at former civilizations, ruins of ancient days and upon how no people or generation is permanent. When we realize that others have passed away before us, we begin to understand that we, ourselves, will be less than a memory for generations to come after us. (6:6)
It has been a long time since I traveled. Too long, if what I learned is any indicator.
My wife and I arranged to take a trip from New York to Arizona. Yes, the lure of the Grand Canyon found its way into our collective imagination. One brother said to me before we left, "When you go to Mecca, you feel insignificant. When you go to the Grand Canyon you realize you are nothing." Boy was he right.
Our flight from JFK was delayed, of course. From our hard waiting room seats we watched the Saudi Airlines pilots and flight attendants flirting with each other in their nearby lounge quite blatantly. I wonder if they become more Islamic during Hajj season? Insha'llah I'll find out one day.
When we finally arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, we were amazed to see that everything was cast in hues of sandstone and clay: the buildings, the ground, the people and the roads. We were truly in another land. The drive north to the Grand Canyon was pleasant enough. (Our rental car had a great air conditioner.) It was amazing for me to see wide open countryside, baked to a crisp by the sun, with a small house here and there. How could anyone live in this hot place?
When we arrived at the Grand Canyon and looked upon that great pit for the first time, both my wife and myself became nervous inside. I hardly expected that I would feel shaken, but until you look down over a sheer cliff taller than the world's tallest building, you won't understand how we felt. It is truly awe-inspiring. (Not to mention there are no guard rails anywhere so one mis-step and you're history.)
Given that we were over 7,000 feet above sea level, our breathing became difficult and we ran out of breath easily. I often remembered from that point on the verse in the Qur'an where Allah mentions high altitude as related to the difficulty to breathe. In fact, I remembered so many ayat during this trip and gained a greater appreciation of their full import that I might as well have been in school.
The Grand Canyon is truly an amazing sight to behold. A little tiny river carved it out over the course of five million years. The tour guides give you a little paper when you first arrive that describes the age of each exposed layer of rock. The upper layers are only a few hundred thousand years old, while the lowest layers are about two billion years old! Talk about feeling like nothing!
As I gazed over the multi-colored layers, the remembrance of another Qur'anic verse came to mind. Allah tells us that just as our colors and races are different and we can learn from that, so too is the earth filled with many colored layers which are also a sign of His power. Allah is telling us His earth is very old and took many ages to form, even as humans have variations which only time has wrought. (35:27-28)
There are many peaks, plateaus, and geological formations in the canyon. They all have names too. You'd be surprised to know that most of them are named after Hindu gods and such. There is the Brahmin temple, the Shiva Temple, the Vishnu schist, the Buddhist temple, the Zoroaster temple, the Throne of Wotan (a Viking god) and about two dozen others. The non-Muslim American tour guides all said these names as if they were a part of their own heritage.
I reflected on this for a moment. There was no "Muslim Temple" or "Muhammad Peak" or anything connected to Islam. All the names were given about a hundred or so years ago by various explorers and educated men. Did they not know about Islam? Now before you start saying they were enemies of Islam or hated Muslims, consider this: even in our modern world, the average person, nay, even the highly educated person, gives no thought to Islam whatsoever.
In other words, if some professor was going to write a book on global trends, he or she would probably not include any mention of Islam or Muslims whatsoever, other than to say trouble will come from the Middle East one day. The rest of his book will concentrate on Europe, America and East Asia. The people who want to keep Islam from popular society have done an excellent job of keeping Islam hidden behind curtains and many Muslims seem content to pray to Allah from the shadows. But that is another issue.
(I just hope the political-oriented secular "Muslims" don't start a crusade to have some peak in the Grand Canyon named "Crescent Temple" or some other nonsense.)
If you've ever seen one of those prehistoric dinosaur movies then you'll know how we felt when we were at the bottom of the canyon. We took a raft ride down the Colorado river and truly felt we were in "The Land That Time Forgot." (We didn't take a mule ride down the trails because we thought it was cruelty to animals after we saw how miserable the mules appeared in the noon-time 118 degree heat. I wouldn't want to have that mule accusing me on Judgment Day of having pleasure at its expense when there was no real need for me to ride it.)
The water was cold and blackish-green. Our raft pilot was a middle-aged woman who spoke continually of how insignificant the Canyon makes her feel. After an hour of listening to her narrate the tour, both my wife and I realized that this non-Muslim was asking for spiritual direction and felt very empty inside. It was as clear as day. We left the raft a few hours later wishing we had some way to talk to her and some mechanism of follow-up.
A park ranger later led our group to view some rock carvings left by the Anasazi Indians about a thousand years before. To stand there and look upon what was once important to someone from long ago is quite humbling. The hands that made those stick figures and animal carvings are dead and crumbled to dust. What will become of us?
The next leg of our tour took us to the great Navajo Reservation. But first we passed through the Petrified Forest and saw trees that had turned to stone over the course of millions of years. Again, the lessons of our own insignificant existence came to mind. Then we arrived at Canyon de Chelly. A lush labyrinthine valley in the process of re-vegetation still inhabited by the Navajo to this day.
A jeep tour took us to see cliff-dwellings and petroglyphs made over a thousand years before and long since abandoned. "In the traces left by (former peoples) you will learn wisdom" came to my mind. Every time I saw a new set of ruins I tried to imagine what it was like long ago: full of people and life. Real people in real homes. People just like you and me. But a few crumbling bricks are all that remain of those countless souls. What were their Prophets like?
We spent a lot of time on the Navajo Reservation. (We left da'wah literature in every hotel we stayed at.) I was quite surprised to see churches all over the place. Even in the most desolate of areas I would spot some church or another. There were Mormon churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholic, Assembly of God, Pentecostal, Baptist and a dozen others. I was quite speechless upon realizing that these people were worshipping the god of those who killed their ancestors en masse.
White Catholics and Protestants, Spanish and American, came to this land and killed almost all of the tribal people they could find. The survivors were then herded onto desolate desert tracts and told to stay there where many others died. Government policies were enacted just a hundred years ago which forcibly removed children from their parents and banned the practice of their native religions.
Now those same Apaches, Hopis and Navajos are going to church and singing "Praise Jesus" all the while white Americans snicker. The brief revival of old Indian ways on various reservations has done nothing more than feed the white New-Age movement by providing Indian souvenirs like Dream Catchers, flute music, artsy paintings and neat quotes from long dead Indian chiefs.
Something tugged inside my soul when I witnessed firsthand the contemporary legacy of a proud people. Many of the men whose faces mirrored the black and white photographs of their noble ancestors revealed the shadows of alcoholism. Most of the Native Americans on the Reservation appeared to have become so assimilated; trading their ancestral solidly grounded spirituality and cosmology for a diffused "do as you want to do" ethic of Western mass culture. I could tell there was a great cultural struggle going on in the society there. Half the Navajos dressed like cowboys (boots, cowboy hats, jeans and short hair) while the other half had traditional long hair and wore less identifiable Western dress.
All the Navajo and Hopi radio stations play country and Western music even though they have their own music. So complete was the assimilation process that it could be said that in some sections of the Reservation Navajo identity is nearly just a quaint New Age feeling rather than a firmly grounded spirituality. In the same way that someone might call themselves Jewish but then have less than ten percent Jewish heritage and ethnicity. (Blond hair and blue eyes does not a Hebrew make.) In fact, I learned that most of the Native Americans in the region have abandoned the Reservations and now live in the big cities doing mostly menial labor. Crazy Horse and Geronimo's legacy had indeed been abandoned-- with only a small percentage still fighting to hold on to the traditions of their ancestors.
My wife and I discussed how a da'wah program might be started for Native American people. The usual short-sighted efforts by our "Islamic workers" would doubly fail here. A group of dedicated brothers and sisters would have to actually come and live on the Reservation permanently, work there and become friends with the local people. (Yes, I know you wouldn't get to be a rich doctor or engineer there, but you would have a good shot towards the highest places in Jennah, the real home.)
A business venture would provide the perfect pretext for such an effort. Local people could be hired and shown how Islam blesses the relationship between boss and worker, a Masjid could be built near the business or in town. Free classes on Islam could be offered, a tight-family atmosphere could unite the Muslims and the new converts. Free housing could be provided to those who need it. Respect for native ways would be expressed in both deed and fact and the Muslims would show what true brotherhood and sisterhood is all about.
For that phase to succeed, however, you would have to face up to a very harsh truth. Most of our "Sheikhs," "Maulanas," "Scholars" and other self-appointed priests are arrogant, devoid of practical knowledge and filled with unIslamic cultural ideas. There I said it. Someone had to. But what do you expect? Such is the condition of "Islamic" education in the Muslim world today that this is what is produced in many cases. Not all cases, but many. (3:159)
Think about it. If you take a five year old kid living in an unIslamic "Muslim" culture, put him in a prison of a school where he is commanded to memorize vast amounts of words that he can't understand or he'll get a beating, don't you think the end product would be less than desirable from the standpoint of the needs of the Islamic movement?
You would need a caring, understanding, knowledgeable and dedicated person or persons to do da'wah among the Indians of Native America. Of course you need that for da'wah to anybody but especially with those who have been crushed completely by America so much so that they now identify with their oppressor. Author Paolo Friere elucidates this strange master-slave process in "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed".
The more I learned of Native American practices and beliefs the more I saw how Islam would be easy to introduce here. Basic American Indian religious practices resemble Hinduism to a great degree. Complete with spirits, gods, mysticism and the like. If the Blessed Prophet Muhammad can eradicate idol- worship in a pagan society, then we can at least attempt the same with a people who have mixed tribal paganism with Christian paganism.
We have advantages as Muslims in this endeavor. Christian missionaries come in and say that all Native American beliefs and practices are from the Devil. Then they command that they must abandon their culture and become like Westerners to be saved.
Islam, however, takes the basic attitude that there is some truth in the beliefs of others which came from authentic Prophets in the past. We don't automatically condemn others but rather seek to understand their beliefs. (6:108) Then we can compare their teachings with Islam and gradually invite them to abandon what people made up in their past and to affirm what truth they have which Islam promotes. The "Great Spirit" is Allah, we would teach, and there is no need for other spirits or gods between us and the Great Spirit. This notion was first fostered during a discussion I had with a Navajo Muslim brother in New Mexico a few years back. This brother stated to me: "The reason I became a Muslim is because Islam takes the traditions and conceptualizations of my people to a purer level. I believe that my Navajo identity is complemented by my Islamic beliefs and practices."
Christianity is never fully practiced anywhere in the world because it is a man-made religion hand-crafted from pagan sources. It never has any impact on the lives of a people or community other than to give them a feel-good ideology they can recall on Sunday. Islam, however, gives a life program which is designed to transform the individual on a day-to-day basis.
Navajo, Hopi and Apache traditional beliefs are filled with rituals that are performed every day. (22:67) Wouldn't it be easier to offer Islam to a people who will then be encouraged to retain their unique cultural characteristics and at the same time joining the community of believers? All it requires is dedicated people. There are already a couple of Muslims from among the Navajos and others. Who will answer the call and set forth united to call these people to Allah's way? (2:143)
There is a unique task for everyone in this life. A small or large part in a larger picture. Beyond our daily affairs of work and family, Islam calls upon us to act on a higher level for the common good of ourselves and all of humanity. There's one thing I learned on this trip and it is that we must all listen to our hearts and answer this call. Only when we act out our faith in the world around us do we become truly happy--we become our faith rather than perform it externally
The Space Age and the Future of Islam
The Space Age and the Future of Islam
Yahiya Emerick
I had to do it. I'm a science fiction fan and it's been a while since I've seen a good sci-fi flick. Yes, I dragged my wife to the theater and saw a recently released spaceship/action movie. When I viewed the previews of giant insects and battling space marines, I thought for sure I'd like it. But I was definitely unprepared for the visual assault. The special effects were pounding my senses and I felt uncomfortable. I don't recommend taking your children to see most movies these days, for in addition to the gratuitous violence, they almost always throw in unexpected and unnecessary nude scenes. I closed my eyes and was quite annoyed because they normally don't put such filth in science fiction movies. I was raised on Star Wars and other innocent productions. (Society's standards just keep getting more polluted, don't they?)
In my time I've read quite a lot of novels dealing with science fiction, space colonization, aliens, conquering the galaxy, etc... But it never really quite hit me, until seeing this movie, that we as Muslims had better pay attention to more than just what's here on earth.
It's funny, really, when you think about it. Islam is the most suppressed ideology on earth. There is not one single country that is based solely on standard Islamic teachings. There is no society that reflects even a hint of the Islamic ethos and no culture which promotes Islam as a viable way of life, independent of ignorant local customs.
On the contrary, in every country that happens to have a lot of people with Muslim names in it, the national government will do everything in its power to suppress any hint of Islamicity in the people or in politics, even to the point of mass executions, torture and all-out war. (Think of Turkey, Algeria, Syria, Tajikistan, China, etc...)
The only place where Islam, and I mean real Muslims- not those crazy terrorists masquerading as Muslims- can operate freely is in America, Canada and England. Everywhere else, including France and the rest of the world, they're harassed, arrested, denied rights and suppressed. It's pretty sad when you realize that the only thing real Muslims want is peace and justice and obedience to God, while everyone else in the world wants the opposite.
So what direction is the world going in now? Muslims are marginalized completely. Some Muslims get so frustrated with their lack of success in spreading the Islamic lifestyle that they become clandestine rebels in their home countries and fancy themselves an underground "liberation" movement. But they often become deluded and can't pick their agendas well, thus, based on a few short-sighted individuals, the media all over the world can shout about the world-wide "Islamic threat." The unbelievers (and the hypocrites in our ranks) join together and convince the gullible masses that Islam is bad and so the focus of the world must be containment of the "Islamic menace."
The world powers that be have succeeded pretty well. But in lumping all people with Muslim names into one bunch, the world has done a great dis- service. Most of the people with Muslim-sounding names in the world, who are involved in "terrorism," are people acting from political, not spiritual motives and they don't have the support of the Muslim masses anywhere in the world.
Based on published reports and studies, the average Palestinian or Lebanese person doesn't really care about an "Islamic" state. They want Israel out of their lands. (I have enough friends from both ethnic groups who have confirmed this.) The average Pakistani militant or Afghan warlord, likewise, cares little about the ethics of Islam, they have some political, personal or nationalistic agenda to pursue. If it's convenient to use well-known religious phrases and slogans from one's own culture, so be it. Even the Jews fly their, "Star of David" flag but most of them don't follow Prophet David's religion very well.
What the world hasn't realized is that there is a silent majority of Muslims who want an Islamic state that has nothing to do with bombs, repression, censorship, oppression, chauvinism or violence. The Islamic state we envision is actually not too much different from the modern American legal, social and political expression. Among the few differences would be that the basis of the legal code would be derived from the Qur'an, rather than from simple majority rule. After all, it was the opinion of the majority that allowed slavery and oppression of women in this country. (A good presentation of an Islamic government at work can be found in the book, "Al Ahkam as Sultaniyyah" by Abul Hasan al Mawardi. It's in English!)
There would be elected leaders, representatives, an independent judiciary, a tax agency, non-interest based banks, theaters, shopping malls, suburbs, etc... The Qur'an and example of the Prophet would be the basis of cultural and social norms and if you've ever really looked at them, they're very lenient, understanding and beneficial. In addition, laws that forbid indecency would be enforced. And what's so bad about that? In America today, the law books are filled with anti-indecency laws, they just haven't been enforced in a few decades. Look at the social devastation that that has wrought!
The Islamic government would simply enforce the laws that even American courts are supposed to. That's all we want: a government based on eternal principles as revealed by our Creator and a stable and peaceful commonwealth. Those who use Islamic symbols or names, but then do deeds of violence against civilians, are no better than calling the KKK or the Nazis good Christians. We Muslims know the difference between genuine religious seekers and hypocrites, so why is the world so unwilling to recognize that too? Well, we haven't been doing our job of spreading Islamic information very well so I guess this is the situation we deserve.
But while the world has been busy suppressing Muslims, regardless of whether they're "good" or "bad," what else has it been up to? It seems clear that the global trend is towards a more unified and closely linked world, both in political and economic terms as well as in social terms. There seems to be a mono-culture forming all over the place! Whether you're in Botswana, Brazil or Belgium, you drink soda-pop, wear jeans, listen to popular music, surf the net, eat burgers and pizza and wear shirts that say, "DKNY".
Nations are making trade links with each other, establishing free trade zones that cover whole hemispheres and even mutual defense pacts and large alliances. NATO will probably grow to encompass all of North America, all of Europe and Russia, too, within twenty years or so.
Gee, when I read that Libya and Egypt wanted to make a North African trading bloc, I thought, big deal! A bunch of dictators wanting to link their sorry backward economies. But it'll fail like the pan-Arab nation ideas failed in the Fifties and Sixties. It will fail because the leaders of Muslim nations are not interested in the improvement of the lives of their people. After all, the leaders killed and plotted their way to power in the first place and continue to work against the people to maintain their god-like power even now. The armies in Muslim countries don't defend their people from outside enemies, the armies defend themselves, and the dictator who pays them, against their own people! How can you expect benevolent and beneficial actions from them?
Now, back to the main point: A lot has been promoted in the past few years that has resulted in what recent space/action movies such as, "Starship Troopers," "Armageddon," "Deep Impact," and "Alien Resurrection" represent. The setting for the background of "Starship Troopers," for example, is that there will one day be a single world government and that earth will establish many colonies throughout the galaxy. Men and women are completely equal to the point where they even take showers together- in the same locker rooms- and there is no sexual harassment. Everyone in the world speaks English and lives a secular, American-style lifestyle.
The action part of the movie revolves around the idea that a race of giant insects from a far away planet are at war with human civilization. The earth government decides to go on the offensive and the rest of the movie is filled with scenes of tough marines landing on alien "bug" planets and doing battle with giant beetles, soldier bugs and "brain" bugs.
If you put the action and aliens aside for a moment, think about the vision of the future that is presented. The world is united in a benevolent system that is similar to a secular, Western democracy. Everyone has a similar culture based on elements of modern Western culture. Unrestricted sex is the norm and there is no talk of whether morals and values are important. Everyone drinks and everyone is just a good citizen who can live their lives as physically self-fulfilling as possible. And don't forget, people have colonized the stars and taken this way of life with them.
In this vision of the future, there is no Islam, there are no Muslims and a person's values are quite up to themselves. Religion and spirituality are as marginalized and non-existent as they are in current Western society.
Indeed, you can see the beginnings of similar forces taking shape right now. The international space station, humanity's first step to permanent space colonization is scheduled to be built starting next year. America, Japan, Russia and other secular powers are taking the first steps to permanent human colonization of the stars. Meanwhile, back here on earth, the forces arrayed to crush spirituality and allegiance to God have succeeded in destroying Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Shintoism. Those traditions have bowed their heads and become relegated to quaint ceremonies and occasional nationalist sloganeering.
The only real challenge left, Islam, is being suppressed everywhere and unIslamic cultural influences have corrupted almost all the young people in every Muslim country. The Western world has established its hegemony and control over the world's resources, finances, culture and technological direction. China and its "communism" is the only wild card left in the world and there is likely to be conformity there as well, eventually.
What kind of world are we coming into? Even though millions of people convert to Islam every year, millions more, from the Muslim world, are lulled into secularism and become opponents of things related to Islam. Sometimes I almost feel that it seems like a few Westerners are becoming Muslims while most "Muslims" are becoming kaffirs. Interesting thought. But back to the main issue.
Where are Muslims in this coming new world and new frontier of space? Oh sure, a "Muslim" Saudi Prince went up in the space shuttle. Big deal. He didn't design it, his country didn't launch it and he was just a token presence. Anyway, what is so Islamic about a "Prince" coming from a "kingdom"?
Oh, Kazakhstan has the Russian spaceport on its soil, you say? Well, as if Kazakhstan is an Islamic or even a Muslim place! Half the population or more is Russian, the Russian government controls the spaceport and almost all of the so-called Muslims who make up the rest of the country are illiterate in Islam. They live like non-Muslims in their attitudes just like most people from Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey or wherever. There is no Islamic purpose being served there.
Muslims have no space technology, we don't even have any Islamic state here on earth to begin with! Even if Malaysia sent a rocket into space tomorrow, what of it? Malaysia isn't patterned after an Islamic system either. Even the Prime Minister's own daughter goes on television defending the "right" of women to wear bikinis! (See Impact International, Oct, Nov 97.)
Within fifty years, the non-Muslims, mostly of Western heritage, will have not only permanent space stations, but also moon colonies, Martian colonies and perhaps one day, self-sustained colonies on every stable moon in our solar system.
Where will the Muslims be and what will be our position? Will we still be a suppressed movement in the world. Will frustrated people with Muslim sounding names still be planting bombs to achieve political goals in their tiny, backward countries? Will "Muslim" nations still be ruled by the same old kind of small-minded bullies and dictators that we have now, just with new names? Will the armies in "Muslim" countries still have as their primary goal to "protect" themselves against the people?
I know that there are quite a few Muslims who suffer from the same disease that afflicts fundamentalist Christians. That disease is thinking that the end of the world and the Day of Judgment is going to happen tomorrow. I know it can happen anytime and that it is "near" but the Prophet said it was "near" over a thousand years ago! It must be remembered that "near" on Allah's time- scale can mean a long time in earth years. Consequently, Muslims don't think about the future or about where we will be three hundred years from now.
Who cares about whatever "golden achievements" our ancestors made five hundred years ago! The past is dead! This is our present and future! Today, we don't live Islam, we don't make a government based on Islam, in fact, we live worse than the non-Muslims in our desire for wealth, glitter and illusions of power and glory. We don't make progress and we label "ethnic achievements" as progress when they do no service to Islam.
Who cares if Malaysia or Iran or Indonesia or Pakistan has high technology! Those countries don't do any good for the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad! The leaders are corrupt, the systems are unIslamic and the economies are riddled with Riba, corruption and inefficiency. Who cares if this or that Arab nation has a big army and powerful weapons. The government is bad, the leader is a crook and the weapons are usually turned against the people to insure the power of the corrupt elite. Do you see what I'm getting at?
The Blessed Prophet once predicted this situation when he said, "You will be ruled (one day) by men who will kill the Sunnah, violate the orders of Islam and delay the time of Prayer." A man named Ibn Mas'ud asked, "What should we do then?" The Prophet replied, "Don't you know what to do? Whoever disobeys Allah must not be obeyed." (Ibn Majah, Ahmad).
The strength of Islam is to be measured by the standard of Islam: the following of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Who is following it? Where is it being implemented? What has been built that will promote those teachings? Where is an identifiable community living by the Islamic ethos? Since those objectives are not being achieved anywhere in the world, Muslims are making no progress and are completely unprepared for the future with all its globalization, space exploration and challenges.
To reiterate, it doesn't matter if some ethnic group or another is advanced. Who cares if the Arabs, Pakistanis, Turks or Malays have booming, technologically advanced countries? It doesn't serve Islam if those people are not molding their lives, cultures, finances and political systems according to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
There are some good steps here and there, such as the growth in Islamic banking, the rededication to Iman among many and the building of Masjids again in places where they were closed. But these things are merely band-aids on a patient that is having a massive seizure and hemorrhage!
What good even is the making of millions of converts in the West if their own, isolated children will be susceptible to the unIslamic influences of non- Muslim culture which will assault them at every turn. The children of converts most often go back to being the non-Muslims their parents were before converting! (I've taught for ten years the children of "born Muslims" and converts and can attest to this fact.) Muslims don't even make communities here in the West- where they are allowed to and no one will try to stop them!
Something has to give. Something has to be done. I know the problem seems pretty big. What can you or I do about it? Only Allah knows the future. Here's how I envision events. The "Muslim" movements in most of the "Muslim" world are being run and operated by unsophisticated, uneducated people. They may have degrees and PhD's, but they grew up in under developed nations where running water might have been a miracle. They were raised on a mixture of Islam, culturalism, superstitions and simplistic ideas.
Now before you get mad and write angry letters, hear me out. I know of Muslim leaders, who have a lot of power, and who I've met, who believe that it's okay to kill a girl if she "brings shame" on the family. I know a big Imam who believes you have to say Surahs in a new home to drive away the Jinns before you can live in it. I heard a speech by a big Sheikh in which he spoke of Islam as a tree that is fed by flying body parts, running blood and death. (His imagery was so disgusting and gruesome that I couldn't listen anymore.)
I've heard countless big Maulanas expound on the need to seclude women in the home, and even in the recent Qur'an translation being touted by the Salafees, the tafsir (translator's commentary) says that women are not allowed to go to the Masjid and that the face veil (niqab) is required of women. But the sayings of the Prophet tell a different story! So who do you believe?
I know of "Muslim" groups who oppose the formation of battered women's shelters saying that women should stay in abusive relationships no matter what. And then they throw fifty thousand "Fatwas" in your face. (But the Qur'an says that a woman can divorce and leave her husband if she fears cruelty from him! See 4:128) Again, cultural, ethnic Muslims interpret Islam by their backward, cultural standards.
The Taliban, who claim to be totally "Islamic" do the most unIslamic things: they forbid women to work or even to go to school. They beat people with sticks to reprimand them, and, oh, by the way, quite a few heroin growers operate out of their territory. Even before them, the so-called "Mujahideen" of Afghanistan were financing their war against the Soviets with drug-profits. After the Soviets left, the "Mujahideen" have killed more of each other than the Soviets ever did. So where is the example of Islamic enlightenment there?
The Jamati Islami in Pakistan is discredited from too much political game- playing, the secretive Ikhwan is known to be oriented only towards particularly Arab political concerns. (Even their front organizations in America and Canada focus completely on the Middle east and/or Arab culture and concerns.) Moreover, the usual approach to Qur'anic "studies" in most "Muslim" countries is to beat the students with a stick! Is that Islamic enlightenment?
Even worse, in the West, in most Masjids, the boards of directors are usually made up of people who compete with each other in displaying wealth. Hardly an Islamic thing to do. (By the way, according to the Qur'an: 9:107-108, even hypocrites can build a Masjid! A believer is not supposed to go there, either.)
What does it mean when a "scholar" says that having a king is Halal or when an "Islamic" organization is funded by kings and others? What about the so- called "Islamic" movements who have as their objectives merely freeing a bit of land from someone else? Those are political ideas that are not done for Allah. The Blessed Prophet once remarked that if someone associates anything with their deed besides Allah, then Allah will reject the whole thing. So a group may say "Allahu Akbar", but if they're desire is based on the boundaries of their little nation, then they may be in trouble in the next life. Rather, a true "Islamic" movement doesn't stop at the border. It moves on until there is justice, peace and obedience to Allah either over the entire world or until they die- either way they win.
All those "Islamic" movements are inward looking, locally centered and usually ethnically based. The few true believers among them can literally be caught up in the tide. But it's the true believers who must be the leaders! (See Qur'an 3:139)
So if I've made myself clear, we see that there are few movements, groups or "scholars" which operate solely by Qur'an and Sunnah and solely for the sake of Allah in the "Muslim" world. There are too many cultural ideas, too many shifting political goals and too many emotions. (Oh, did I mention, many of these movements publicly allow wife-beating to their followers with "fatwas" saying it's halal. But they're wrong of course.)
Once we realize the hard facts, we can be liberated from illusions and false ideas which will only corrupt us. After all, among Muslim activists in North America, there is also an element of the sicknesses of the wider Muslim world. For example, there is veiled racism among most of the "Islamic" movements in the West. What else can you say when there are Arab, Black, Indian or Pakistani exclusive organizations? No one prevents them from mixing and they usually have branches in most major cities where the other groups operate as well. Culturalism and ethnic exclusiveness are quite pervasive! (I've seen too much of it first hand and I'm sure you have too.)
Now what about change? What can we do that can realistically turn the tide in the favor of true Islam? Firstly, I envision Muslims going on an information offensive on the outside, while conducting a purification campaign on the inside. Outside, we will get serious about teaching Islam. After all, it's one of our main missions in life. Don't focus only on your job or kids or financial goals, because that's not why you're mainly here.
You're here to find Allah before you die and there's not much time left. After you've found Allah then you can take care of your family, job and goals in an Islamically good way. But most of us go in reverse. We try to get rich and have big families first and then we become spiritual when we're old. But by then, our money won't matter much anymore and our kids have become non- Muslims. Quite a strange paradox. I would rather take care of the spiritual part first and then all along I can be doing the other things.
I envision a da'wah headquarters in every state and urban area. A building with dozens of workers whose job it is to organize da'wah programs in the Masjids, communities and especially among the non-Muslims. It will be staffed by dedicated people who are organized into different departments, who design flyers, book speakers, follow up on contacts, design campaigns, visit churches, operate soup kitchens, offer counseling, have housing bureaus, women's shelters and coordinate the activities of Masjids.
The workers will be hired based on their qualifications for this sort of job, not because they happen to have a Muslim name and just got off the plane and need a job. They will be well paid at a living wage and will have job security and a professional, pleasant working environment. The operation will be funded by a waqf set up by all the communities which will provide a permanent income. Not through endless donation, because that dries up and becomes subject to outside pressure. Rather, a gas station or apartment building will be bought and given in trust to the Da'wah center to which all profits will go, forever. (Such an enterprise could provide job search services to needy converts or poor Muslims.)
I could write for hours about how it would be structured and operated and the types of activities it would perform, but why don't you use your imagination? Every major Christian organization has "da'wah" centers in every major and minor urban center all over the world. They are funded by trusts funded by big businesses. Shouldn't we do that? I'm convinced half the country would become Muslim in a few years if the effort was done right. Then all the colonists being sent to the moon base in fifty years would be Muslims!
I also envision internal purification of the community. Forget about the "Muslim" world. Forget about it. It's lost for the time being. There will be nothing but turmoil there for years to come. Our locally available resources are stretched so thin. We want to see Islam grow but our own house is not in order. Until we spend the money here, supporting the establishment of permanent Islam in North America, we'll never make any progress.
We also must live together. What do you think will happen if you're the only Muslim household on the block? Are you really that stupid? You will lose your descendants away from Islam if you don't live with other (believing) Muslims, period. Only then can we begin to practice the community life that we often brag about. Let's stop theorizing and start practicing. If you've had bad experiences around other "Muslims" it's because all of us have forgotten how to live as Muslims in a community. Some of us have never had that opportunity to begin with and so the theories remain big talk.
And don't form communities based on ethnic groups, because if you do, you'll fail in the long run. A Muslim community must be based on Islamic teachings. Everyone is welcome and everyone is a part of the brotherhood. If you have racist feelings, confront them by living around the (Muslim) people you looked down on. Then your racist feelings should soften and eventually disappear. I've visited and had extensive contacts with budding Islamic communities in North America and I tell you it is possible, for I've seen it happening here and there. It must happen in more places!
Muslims can gain control of local town councils, enact laws that are in line with Islam, enforce laws against pornography, etc., and set the curriculum in the local public schools. The Orthodox Jews and Catholic Italians have done this in countless places, especially in New York. Many other ethnic and religious groups are doing it too. Muslims must give up the "every man for himself" attitude and make the sacrifices.
A simple goal for every Muslim family could be to make sure that they live within walking distance of a Masjid. That's a start. If you find a Masjid that is run by hypocrites or culturally oriented people who have no spirit to promote the Islamic lifestyle, (and there are many), then either join with like-minded people and establish a real Masjid or move to a place that has a dynamic, friendly and family-oriented Masjid. Many cities and suburbs have multiple Masjids so your search shouldn't be too difficult.
What if there are few real believers around you and moving far is not an option- and even worse, what if the only Masjid in town is built on hypocrisy? Brothers and sisters! Bypass the whole thing. You can run study groups, classes, counseling, family outings, Salat and other activities right from your own homes! An entire network of good families and professional services can be united completely outside the domain of the hypocrite/backward cultural people.
People will know who is real and they will flock to your orbit. Then you may be able to establish a Masjid and school based on Taqwa. Remember, the Blessed Prophet and the believers had to go thirteen years without a proper Masjid in Mecca! You can do it too if you network like they did. Even the Jum'uah can be instituted in someone's basement or home if there is no Masjid nearby or a corrupt one.
My brothers and sisters, I want to see Islam- not "ethnic or cultural" Muslims- but Islam, survive, strengthen and prosper in the coming centuries. Not because I want "my team" to win, but because Islam is the salvation of humanity. It's the reason why we're alive and it's the only thing that our Creator will care that we picked up in this world. It's the only thing that takes an ordinary person and transforms them into the best of Allah's creation. May you live with faith and open your eyes and orient yourselves towards the task ahead. Amin.
Yahiya Emerick
I had to do it. I'm a science fiction fan and it's been a while since I've seen a good sci-fi flick. Yes, I dragged my wife to the theater and saw a recently released spaceship/action movie. When I viewed the previews of giant insects and battling space marines, I thought for sure I'd like it. But I was definitely unprepared for the visual assault. The special effects were pounding my senses and I felt uncomfortable. I don't recommend taking your children to see most movies these days, for in addition to the gratuitous violence, they almost always throw in unexpected and unnecessary nude scenes. I closed my eyes and was quite annoyed because they normally don't put such filth in science fiction movies. I was raised on Star Wars and other innocent productions. (Society's standards just keep getting more polluted, don't they?)
In my time I've read quite a lot of novels dealing with science fiction, space colonization, aliens, conquering the galaxy, etc... But it never really quite hit me, until seeing this movie, that we as Muslims had better pay attention to more than just what's here on earth.
It's funny, really, when you think about it. Islam is the most suppressed ideology on earth. There is not one single country that is based solely on standard Islamic teachings. There is no society that reflects even a hint of the Islamic ethos and no culture which promotes Islam as a viable way of life, independent of ignorant local customs.
On the contrary, in every country that happens to have a lot of people with Muslim names in it, the national government will do everything in its power to suppress any hint of Islamicity in the people or in politics, even to the point of mass executions, torture and all-out war. (Think of Turkey, Algeria, Syria, Tajikistan, China, etc...)
The only place where Islam, and I mean real Muslims- not those crazy terrorists masquerading as Muslims- can operate freely is in America, Canada and England. Everywhere else, including France and the rest of the world, they're harassed, arrested, denied rights and suppressed. It's pretty sad when you realize that the only thing real Muslims want is peace and justice and obedience to God, while everyone else in the world wants the opposite.
So what direction is the world going in now? Muslims are marginalized completely. Some Muslims get so frustrated with their lack of success in spreading the Islamic lifestyle that they become clandestine rebels in their home countries and fancy themselves an underground "liberation" movement. But they often become deluded and can't pick their agendas well, thus, based on a few short-sighted individuals, the media all over the world can shout about the world-wide "Islamic threat." The unbelievers (and the hypocrites in our ranks) join together and convince the gullible masses that Islam is bad and so the focus of the world must be containment of the "Islamic menace."
The world powers that be have succeeded pretty well. But in lumping all people with Muslim names into one bunch, the world has done a great dis- service. Most of the people with Muslim-sounding names in the world, who are involved in "terrorism," are people acting from political, not spiritual motives and they don't have the support of the Muslim masses anywhere in the world.
Based on published reports and studies, the average Palestinian or Lebanese person doesn't really care about an "Islamic" state. They want Israel out of their lands. (I have enough friends from both ethnic groups who have confirmed this.) The average Pakistani militant or Afghan warlord, likewise, cares little about the ethics of Islam, they have some political, personal or nationalistic agenda to pursue. If it's convenient to use well-known religious phrases and slogans from one's own culture, so be it. Even the Jews fly their, "Star of David" flag but most of them don't follow Prophet David's religion very well.
What the world hasn't realized is that there is a silent majority of Muslims who want an Islamic state that has nothing to do with bombs, repression, censorship, oppression, chauvinism or violence. The Islamic state we envision is actually not too much different from the modern American legal, social and political expression. Among the few differences would be that the basis of the legal code would be derived from the Qur'an, rather than from simple majority rule. After all, it was the opinion of the majority that allowed slavery and oppression of women in this country. (A good presentation of an Islamic government at work can be found in the book, "Al Ahkam as Sultaniyyah" by Abul Hasan al Mawardi. It's in English!)
There would be elected leaders, representatives, an independent judiciary, a tax agency, non-interest based banks, theaters, shopping malls, suburbs, etc... The Qur'an and example of the Prophet would be the basis of cultural and social norms and if you've ever really looked at them, they're very lenient, understanding and beneficial. In addition, laws that forbid indecency would be enforced. And what's so bad about that? In America today, the law books are filled with anti-indecency laws, they just haven't been enforced in a few decades. Look at the social devastation that that has wrought!
The Islamic government would simply enforce the laws that even American courts are supposed to. That's all we want: a government based on eternal principles as revealed by our Creator and a stable and peaceful commonwealth. Those who use Islamic symbols or names, but then do deeds of violence against civilians, are no better than calling the KKK or the Nazis good Christians. We Muslims know the difference between genuine religious seekers and hypocrites, so why is the world so unwilling to recognize that too? Well, we haven't been doing our job of spreading Islamic information very well so I guess this is the situation we deserve.
But while the world has been busy suppressing Muslims, regardless of whether they're "good" or "bad," what else has it been up to? It seems clear that the global trend is towards a more unified and closely linked world, both in political and economic terms as well as in social terms. There seems to be a mono-culture forming all over the place! Whether you're in Botswana, Brazil or Belgium, you drink soda-pop, wear jeans, listen to popular music, surf the net, eat burgers and pizza and wear shirts that say, "DKNY".
Nations are making trade links with each other, establishing free trade zones that cover whole hemispheres and even mutual defense pacts and large alliances. NATO will probably grow to encompass all of North America, all of Europe and Russia, too, within twenty years or so.
Gee, when I read that Libya and Egypt wanted to make a North African trading bloc, I thought, big deal! A bunch of dictators wanting to link their sorry backward economies. But it'll fail like the pan-Arab nation ideas failed in the Fifties and Sixties. It will fail because the leaders of Muslim nations are not interested in the improvement of the lives of their people. After all, the leaders killed and plotted their way to power in the first place and continue to work against the people to maintain their god-like power even now. The armies in Muslim countries don't defend their people from outside enemies, the armies defend themselves, and the dictator who pays them, against their own people! How can you expect benevolent and beneficial actions from them?
Now, back to the main point: A lot has been promoted in the past few years that has resulted in what recent space/action movies such as, "Starship Troopers," "Armageddon," "Deep Impact," and "Alien Resurrection" represent. The setting for the background of "Starship Troopers," for example, is that there will one day be a single world government and that earth will establish many colonies throughout the galaxy. Men and women are completely equal to the point where they even take showers together- in the same locker rooms- and there is no sexual harassment. Everyone in the world speaks English and lives a secular, American-style lifestyle.
The action part of the movie revolves around the idea that a race of giant insects from a far away planet are at war with human civilization. The earth government decides to go on the offensive and the rest of the movie is filled with scenes of tough marines landing on alien "bug" planets and doing battle with giant beetles, soldier bugs and "brain" bugs.
If you put the action and aliens aside for a moment, think about the vision of the future that is presented. The world is united in a benevolent system that is similar to a secular, Western democracy. Everyone has a similar culture based on elements of modern Western culture. Unrestricted sex is the norm and there is no talk of whether morals and values are important. Everyone drinks and everyone is just a good citizen who can live their lives as physically self-fulfilling as possible. And don't forget, people have colonized the stars and taken this way of life with them.
In this vision of the future, there is no Islam, there are no Muslims and a person's values are quite up to themselves. Religion and spirituality are as marginalized and non-existent as they are in current Western society.
Indeed, you can see the beginnings of similar forces taking shape right now. The international space station, humanity's first step to permanent space colonization is scheduled to be built starting next year. America, Japan, Russia and other secular powers are taking the first steps to permanent human colonization of the stars. Meanwhile, back here on earth, the forces arrayed to crush spirituality and allegiance to God have succeeded in destroying Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Shintoism. Those traditions have bowed their heads and become relegated to quaint ceremonies and occasional nationalist sloganeering.
The only real challenge left, Islam, is being suppressed everywhere and unIslamic cultural influences have corrupted almost all the young people in every Muslim country. The Western world has established its hegemony and control over the world's resources, finances, culture and technological direction. China and its "communism" is the only wild card left in the world and there is likely to be conformity there as well, eventually.
What kind of world are we coming into? Even though millions of people convert to Islam every year, millions more, from the Muslim world, are lulled into secularism and become opponents of things related to Islam. Sometimes I almost feel that it seems like a few Westerners are becoming Muslims while most "Muslims" are becoming kaffirs. Interesting thought. But back to the main issue.
Where are Muslims in this coming new world and new frontier of space? Oh sure, a "Muslim" Saudi Prince went up in the space shuttle. Big deal. He didn't design it, his country didn't launch it and he was just a token presence. Anyway, what is so Islamic about a "Prince" coming from a "kingdom"?
Oh, Kazakhstan has the Russian spaceport on its soil, you say? Well, as if Kazakhstan is an Islamic or even a Muslim place! Half the population or more is Russian, the Russian government controls the spaceport and almost all of the so-called Muslims who make up the rest of the country are illiterate in Islam. They live like non-Muslims in their attitudes just like most people from Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey or wherever. There is no Islamic purpose being served there.
Muslims have no space technology, we don't even have any Islamic state here on earth to begin with! Even if Malaysia sent a rocket into space tomorrow, what of it? Malaysia isn't patterned after an Islamic system either. Even the Prime Minister's own daughter goes on television defending the "right" of women to wear bikinis! (See Impact International, Oct, Nov 97.)
Within fifty years, the non-Muslims, mostly of Western heritage, will have not only permanent space stations, but also moon colonies, Martian colonies and perhaps one day, self-sustained colonies on every stable moon in our solar system.
Where will the Muslims be and what will be our position? Will we still be a suppressed movement in the world. Will frustrated people with Muslim sounding names still be planting bombs to achieve political goals in their tiny, backward countries? Will "Muslim" nations still be ruled by the same old kind of small-minded bullies and dictators that we have now, just with new names? Will the armies in "Muslim" countries still have as their primary goal to "protect" themselves against the people?
I know that there are quite a few Muslims who suffer from the same disease that afflicts fundamentalist Christians. That disease is thinking that the end of the world and the Day of Judgment is going to happen tomorrow. I know it can happen anytime and that it is "near" but the Prophet said it was "near" over a thousand years ago! It must be remembered that "near" on Allah's time- scale can mean a long time in earth years. Consequently, Muslims don't think about the future or about where we will be three hundred years from now.
Who cares about whatever "golden achievements" our ancestors made five hundred years ago! The past is dead! This is our present and future! Today, we don't live Islam, we don't make a government based on Islam, in fact, we live worse than the non-Muslims in our desire for wealth, glitter and illusions of power and glory. We don't make progress and we label "ethnic achievements" as progress when they do no service to Islam.
Who cares if Malaysia or Iran or Indonesia or Pakistan has high technology! Those countries don't do any good for the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad! The leaders are corrupt, the systems are unIslamic and the economies are riddled with Riba, corruption and inefficiency. Who cares if this or that Arab nation has a big army and powerful weapons. The government is bad, the leader is a crook and the weapons are usually turned against the people to insure the power of the corrupt elite. Do you see what I'm getting at?
The Blessed Prophet once predicted this situation when he said, "You will be ruled (one day) by men who will kill the Sunnah, violate the orders of Islam and delay the time of Prayer." A man named Ibn Mas'ud asked, "What should we do then?" The Prophet replied, "Don't you know what to do? Whoever disobeys Allah must not be obeyed." (Ibn Majah, Ahmad).
The strength of Islam is to be measured by the standard of Islam: the following of the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Who is following it? Where is it being implemented? What has been built that will promote those teachings? Where is an identifiable community living by the Islamic ethos? Since those objectives are not being achieved anywhere in the world, Muslims are making no progress and are completely unprepared for the future with all its globalization, space exploration and challenges.
To reiterate, it doesn't matter if some ethnic group or another is advanced. Who cares if the Arabs, Pakistanis, Turks or Malays have booming, technologically advanced countries? It doesn't serve Islam if those people are not molding their lives, cultures, finances and political systems according to the Qur'an and Sunnah.
There are some good steps here and there, such as the growth in Islamic banking, the rededication to Iman among many and the building of Masjids again in places where they were closed. But these things are merely band-aids on a patient that is having a massive seizure and hemorrhage!
What good even is the making of millions of converts in the West if their own, isolated children will be susceptible to the unIslamic influences of non- Muslim culture which will assault them at every turn. The children of converts most often go back to being the non-Muslims their parents were before converting! (I've taught for ten years the children of "born Muslims" and converts and can attest to this fact.) Muslims don't even make communities here in the West- where they are allowed to and no one will try to stop them!
Something has to give. Something has to be done. I know the problem seems pretty big. What can you or I do about it? Only Allah knows the future. Here's how I envision events. The "Muslim" movements in most of the "Muslim" world are being run and operated by unsophisticated, uneducated people. They may have degrees and PhD's, but they grew up in under developed nations where running water might have been a miracle. They were raised on a mixture of Islam, culturalism, superstitions and simplistic ideas.
Now before you get mad and write angry letters, hear me out. I know of Muslim leaders, who have a lot of power, and who I've met, who believe that it's okay to kill a girl if she "brings shame" on the family. I know a big Imam who believes you have to say Surahs in a new home to drive away the Jinns before you can live in it. I heard a speech by a big Sheikh in which he spoke of Islam as a tree that is fed by flying body parts, running blood and death. (His imagery was so disgusting and gruesome that I couldn't listen anymore.)
I've heard countless big Maulanas expound on the need to seclude women in the home, and even in the recent Qur'an translation being touted by the Salafees, the tafsir (translator's commentary) says that women are not allowed to go to the Masjid and that the face veil (niqab) is required of women. But the sayings of the Prophet tell a different story! So who do you believe?
I know of "Muslim" groups who oppose the formation of battered women's shelters saying that women should stay in abusive relationships no matter what. And then they throw fifty thousand "Fatwas" in your face. (But the Qur'an says that a woman can divorce and leave her husband if she fears cruelty from him! See 4:128) Again, cultural, ethnic Muslims interpret Islam by their backward, cultural standards.
The Taliban, who claim to be totally "Islamic" do the most unIslamic things: they forbid women to work or even to go to school. They beat people with sticks to reprimand them, and, oh, by the way, quite a few heroin growers operate out of their territory. Even before them, the so-called "Mujahideen" of Afghanistan were financing their war against the Soviets with drug-profits. After the Soviets left, the "Mujahideen" have killed more of each other than the Soviets ever did. So where is the example of Islamic enlightenment there?
The Jamati Islami in Pakistan is discredited from too much political game- playing, the secretive Ikhwan is known to be oriented only towards particularly Arab political concerns. (Even their front organizations in America and Canada focus completely on the Middle east and/or Arab culture and concerns.) Moreover, the usual approach to Qur'anic "studies" in most "Muslim" countries is to beat the students with a stick! Is that Islamic enlightenment?
Even worse, in the West, in most Masjids, the boards of directors are usually made up of people who compete with each other in displaying wealth. Hardly an Islamic thing to do. (By the way, according to the Qur'an: 9:107-108, even hypocrites can build a Masjid! A believer is not supposed to go there, either.)
What does it mean when a "scholar" says that having a king is Halal or when an "Islamic" organization is funded by kings and others? What about the so- called "Islamic" movements who have as their objectives merely freeing a bit of land from someone else? Those are political ideas that are not done for Allah. The Blessed Prophet once remarked that if someone associates anything with their deed besides Allah, then Allah will reject the whole thing. So a group may say "Allahu Akbar", but if they're desire is based on the boundaries of their little nation, then they may be in trouble in the next life. Rather, a true "Islamic" movement doesn't stop at the border. It moves on until there is justice, peace and obedience to Allah either over the entire world or until they die- either way they win.
All those "Islamic" movements are inward looking, locally centered and usually ethnically based. The few true believers among them can literally be caught up in the tide. But it's the true believers who must be the leaders! (See Qur'an 3:139)
So if I've made myself clear, we see that there are few movements, groups or "scholars" which operate solely by Qur'an and Sunnah and solely for the sake of Allah in the "Muslim" world. There are too many cultural ideas, too many shifting political goals and too many emotions. (Oh, did I mention, many of these movements publicly allow wife-beating to their followers with "fatwas" saying it's halal. But they're wrong of course.)
Once we realize the hard facts, we can be liberated from illusions and false ideas which will only corrupt us. After all, among Muslim activists in North America, there is also an element of the sicknesses of the wider Muslim world. For example, there is veiled racism among most of the "Islamic" movements in the West. What else can you say when there are Arab, Black, Indian or Pakistani exclusive organizations? No one prevents them from mixing and they usually have branches in most major cities where the other groups operate as well. Culturalism and ethnic exclusiveness are quite pervasive! (I've seen too much of it first hand and I'm sure you have too.)
Now what about change? What can we do that can realistically turn the tide in the favor of true Islam? Firstly, I envision Muslims going on an information offensive on the outside, while conducting a purification campaign on the inside. Outside, we will get serious about teaching Islam. After all, it's one of our main missions in life. Don't focus only on your job or kids or financial goals, because that's not why you're mainly here.
You're here to find Allah before you die and there's not much time left. After you've found Allah then you can take care of your family, job and goals in an Islamically good way. But most of us go in reverse. We try to get rich and have big families first and then we become spiritual when we're old. But by then, our money won't matter much anymore and our kids have become non- Muslims. Quite a strange paradox. I would rather take care of the spiritual part first and then all along I can be doing the other things.
I envision a da'wah headquarters in every state and urban area. A building with dozens of workers whose job it is to organize da'wah programs in the Masjids, communities and especially among the non-Muslims. It will be staffed by dedicated people who are organized into different departments, who design flyers, book speakers, follow up on contacts, design campaigns, visit churches, operate soup kitchens, offer counseling, have housing bureaus, women's shelters and coordinate the activities of Masjids.
The workers will be hired based on their qualifications for this sort of job, not because they happen to have a Muslim name and just got off the plane and need a job. They will be well paid at a living wage and will have job security and a professional, pleasant working environment. The operation will be funded by a waqf set up by all the communities which will provide a permanent income. Not through endless donation, because that dries up and becomes subject to outside pressure. Rather, a gas station or apartment building will be bought and given in trust to the Da'wah center to which all profits will go, forever. (Such an enterprise could provide job search services to needy converts or poor Muslims.)
I could write for hours about how it would be structured and operated and the types of activities it would perform, but why don't you use your imagination? Every major Christian organization has "da'wah" centers in every major and minor urban center all over the world. They are funded by trusts funded by big businesses. Shouldn't we do that? I'm convinced half the country would become Muslim in a few years if the effort was done right. Then all the colonists being sent to the moon base in fifty years would be Muslims!
I also envision internal purification of the community. Forget about the "Muslim" world. Forget about it. It's lost for the time being. There will be nothing but turmoil there for years to come. Our locally available resources are stretched so thin. We want to see Islam grow but our own house is not in order. Until we spend the money here, supporting the establishment of permanent Islam in North America, we'll never make any progress.
We also must live together. What do you think will happen if you're the only Muslim household on the block? Are you really that stupid? You will lose your descendants away from Islam if you don't live with other (believing) Muslims, period. Only then can we begin to practice the community life that we often brag about. Let's stop theorizing and start practicing. If you've had bad experiences around other "Muslims" it's because all of us have forgotten how to live as Muslims in a community. Some of us have never had that opportunity to begin with and so the theories remain big talk.
And don't form communities based on ethnic groups, because if you do, you'll fail in the long run. A Muslim community must be based on Islamic teachings. Everyone is welcome and everyone is a part of the brotherhood. If you have racist feelings, confront them by living around the (Muslim) people you looked down on. Then your racist feelings should soften and eventually disappear. I've visited and had extensive contacts with budding Islamic communities in North America and I tell you it is possible, for I've seen it happening here and there. It must happen in more places!
Muslims can gain control of local town councils, enact laws that are in line with Islam, enforce laws against pornography, etc., and set the curriculum in the local public schools. The Orthodox Jews and Catholic Italians have done this in countless places, especially in New York. Many other ethnic and religious groups are doing it too. Muslims must give up the "every man for himself" attitude and make the sacrifices.
A simple goal for every Muslim family could be to make sure that they live within walking distance of a Masjid. That's a start. If you find a Masjid that is run by hypocrites or culturally oriented people who have no spirit to promote the Islamic lifestyle, (and there are many), then either join with like-minded people and establish a real Masjid or move to a place that has a dynamic, friendly and family-oriented Masjid. Many cities and suburbs have multiple Masjids so your search shouldn't be too difficult.
What if there are few real believers around you and moving far is not an option- and even worse, what if the only Masjid in town is built on hypocrisy? Brothers and sisters! Bypass the whole thing. You can run study groups, classes, counseling, family outings, Salat and other activities right from your own homes! An entire network of good families and professional services can be united completely outside the domain of the hypocrite/backward cultural people.
People will know who is real and they will flock to your orbit. Then you may be able to establish a Masjid and school based on Taqwa. Remember, the Blessed Prophet and the believers had to go thirteen years without a proper Masjid in Mecca! You can do it too if you network like they did. Even the Jum'uah can be instituted in someone's basement or home if there is no Masjid nearby or a corrupt one.
My brothers and sisters, I want to see Islam- not "ethnic or cultural" Muslims- but Islam, survive, strengthen and prosper in the coming centuries. Not because I want "my team" to win, but because Islam is the salvation of humanity. It's the reason why we're alive and it's the only thing that our Creator will care that we picked up in this world. It's the only thing that takes an ordinary person and transforms them into the best of Allah's creation. May you live with faith and open your eyes and orient yourselves towards the task ahead. Amin.
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