from Photographers Blog:
A convert to Islam
By Danish Siddiqui
London to me, as a photographer, is a uniquely diverse place to capture on camera in terms of its people and their stories. It amalgamates a lot of complexities that make for compelling narratives.
A couple months back I went to London from Mumbai as part of a short assignment, to get some experience out of my usual domain. I worked closely with the Reuters UK team and specifically Andrew Winning on the production of a multimedia piece that would tell the story of young Muslim converts in London.
In an age where there is a lot of skepticism around Islam, empirical evidence has proved otherwise. A study, for instance, has suggested that more than 100,000 people converted to Islam in the last decade. London is one such melting pot. And the city made for an interesting background to follow the life of one such convert.
But it wasn’t easygoing from the start. People in London aren’t that forthcoming, especially if there is a camera involved. The contacts that Andrew had lined up for me backed out without warning. Upon landing in London, I’d have to start all over again.
from Tales from the Trail:
Obama hosts Iftar dinner marking Ramadan
Three dozen foreign diplomats, two Muslim American members of Congress and some 9/11 families were among the guests invited to join President Barack Obama for what has become a White House tradition -- an Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan.
"Tonight is part of a rich tradition here at the White House of celebrating the holy days of many faiths and the diversity that define us as a nation," Obama said in his welcome remarks.
"Like so many faiths, Islam has always been part of our American family, and Muslim Americans have long contributed to the strength and character of our country, in all walks of life. This has been especially true over the past 10 years," Obama said.
The president said Ramadan was a time for reflection for Muslims and noted that this year it fell near the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Obama recognized Muslim Americans who died in the attacks, others who responded in the aftermath and members of the military fighting in the wars that followed.
"In one month, we will mark the 10th anniversary of those awful attacks that brought so much pain to our hearts," Obama said. "It will be a time to honor all those that we've lost. And tonight, it's worth remembering that these Americans were of many faiths and backgrounds, including proud and patriotic Muslim Americans," Obama said.
This was Obama's third Iftar dinner at the White House. Former President Bill Clinton started the tradition of hosting an Iftar dinner which was continued under President George W. Bush.
Didn’t even take “actual” taxpayer an hour to pop up with his nativist tripe
Iran-born writer “kills” ayatollah in novel
GIJON, Spain – Nairi Nahapetian gets her own back on the Iranian regime which forced her into exile by writing a novel about the murder of a powerful religious leader.
Nahapetian returned to Iran as a journalist in 2005 but says that she had to turn to fiction to fully describe the complexities of the homeland she fled when she was nine.
“Thanks to fiction I can, for example, kill an ayatollah, which is something you cannot do in real life,” Nahapetian said at the “Semana Negra” crime-writing festival, attended by a million people every year in Gijon, northern Spain.
In “Qui a tue l’Ayatollah Kanuni” (Who killed Ayatollah Kanuni), Narek, an exiled journalist who returns to Iran, is in the wrong place at the wrong time when a religious leader is found dead.
Reuters photo credit Raheb Homavandi
Seeds of Arab Spring sown in Islam’s past, Turkish author says
Eight year-old Mustafa Akyol was looking at a book in his grandfather’s library when he saw something that shocked him: a passage advising parents to beat impious children. Now, Akyol is a journalist in Turkey, and he hopes the Arab Spring shows a different side of Islam: one where there is no conflict between Islam and political freedom.
His new book, “Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty,” which is being released in the United States on July 18, aims to tell people that there is a long history of freedom in the Islamic world. “The fact that so many Arab countries have been run by dictators fostered the myth that it’s the only type of government that those countries can produce,” Akyol told Reuters. “The current uprisings are showing that this is wrong.”
With news of the Middle East dominated by suicide bombers, violence and despotic leaders, Akyol worries that it’s easy to get the wrong idea about his religion. In his book, he argues that Islam has a rich history of supporting freedom and tolerance. Harkening back to a time when Muslims were more open than European Christians, he highlights many examples of progressive thought from Islamic history.
Recounting a record of religious tolerance under Muslim rule, Akyol traces this tradition to the time of the Prophet. In 7th century Medina, for instance, Jews were allowed to openly practice their religion with the protection of their Muslim rulers. People in Syria, Yemen and other countries who are campaigning for democracy today, can look to history for inspiration, Akyol said. He offers up the notion that the governmental ideas of one respected 10th century Muslim thinker, Al-Farabi, sound almost identical to modern democracy.
Read the full story by Andrea Burzynski here.
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In Ahmadis’s desert city, Pakistan closes in on group it declared non-Muslim
At the office of what claims to be one of Pakistan’s oldest newspapers, workers scan copy for words it is not allowed to use — words like Muslim and Islam. “The government is constantly monitoring this publication to make sure none of these words are published,” explains our guide during a visit to the offices of al Fazl, the newspaper of the Ahmadiyya sect in Pakistan.
This is Rabwah, the town the Ahmadis built when they fled the killings of Muslims in India at Partition in 1947, and believing themselves guided by God, chose a barren stretch of land where they hoped to make the Punjab desert bloom. Affluent and well-educated, they started out camping in tents and mud huts near the river and the railway line. Now they have a town of some 60,000 people, a jumble of one- and two-storey buildings, along with an Olympic size swimming pool, a fire service and a world class heart institute.
Yet declared by the state in the 1970s to be non-Muslims, they face increasing threats of violence across Pakistan as the country strained by a weakening economy, an Islamist insurgency and internecine political feuds, fractures down sectarian and ethnic lines.
“The situation is getting worse and worse,” says Mirza Khurshid Ahmed, amir of the Ahmadi community in Pakistan. “The level of religious intolerance has increased considerably during the last 10 years.”
The town, renamed Chenabnagar by the state government since “Rabwah” comes from a verse in the Koran, is now retreating behind high walls and razor wire, awaiting the suicide bombers and fedayeen gunmen who police tell them are plotting attacks. Last May, 86 people were killed in two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore, capital of Punjab; others were attacked elsewhere in the province. Many fled to Rabwah where the community gives them cheap housing and financial support.
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Islam is intolerant to criticism and this has been demonstrated time and time again throughout history. It is most evident in the recent past as demonstrated by fatwa’s against the Danish cartoonist who drew your mighty prophet followed by attempts on his life by peace-loving Muslims. The “religion of peace” is responsible for virtually all terrorist attacks of today.
Even the most tolerant countries like Sweden and Denmark are realizing that Islamists will not treat them like in the same inviting and accepting manner that they have been accepted into western society.
Most immigrants are grateful for having the privilege of being accepted into such a society, but the Islamists turn back and join jihadists, donate money to their causes and further the destruction of the very countries that took them in. It is time to stop immigration of Islamists.
Their hypocrisy of peace has been evident for centuries but they still continue to insist that they are peace-loving.
Music therapists shake off Islamic clerics’ taboo to heal disabled Iranians
As Sadeq Jafari switched on his electric piano, his students shunted their wheelchairs enthusiastically around him to rehearse new songs. Music therapy, a common practice in large parts of the world, is extremely rare in Iran, where conservative clerics outlawed pop music after the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Jafari, 33, is one of a handful of therapists in the Islamic state who use music to help severely disabled people find their voices, risking the ire of his conservative family and censure from religious authorities.
Kahrizak Charity Foundation, in a leafy campus on the outskirts of the capital Tehran, is home to hundreds of physically handicapped people, young and old, who lack financial support. Each Monday, dozens wait impatiently for Jafari to walk through the door.
“I haven’t learned music in an academy, but through practice and experience,” Jafari told Reuters in an interview. “My initial goal was to make them get out of bed.”
Jafari grew up in a religious family which found all forms of music unacceptable. His relatives initially cut ties with him, but their stance softened when they saw the impact of his work on the lives of his patients.
Iran’s musical restrictions have eased over the past decade and pop music has become increasingly common in some parts of society. But the idea of female artists singing or dancing in front of male audiences is still completely taboo.
“We have been told that music is haram (not religiously acceptable) … I used to be so depressed, but now I have high morale,” said 35-year old Masoumeh Salim Sediqi.
Preaching good sex, Muslim-inspired Obedient Wives Club spreads in Asia
Indonesian Gina Puspita traded a career in aircraft engineering for a mission to preach Islam and help young women build happy marriages through good sex. The French-educated mother of three hosts religious programmes through the Obedient Wives Club which is based on the belief that a fulfilling sex life is the cure for “Western-style” social problems such as divorce and abuse.
“Wives must obey the husbands in all aspect of life, such as serving food and drinks, giving calm and support for the husband, as well as in sex relations,” Pusipita, who shares her spouse with three other women, told Reuters.
A Muslim group which espouses good sex as a foundation for healthy marriages and a strong society, the Obedient Wives Club is gaining converts in the world’s most populous Muslim country after setting up in Jordan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
Founded by Global Ikhwan, a Malaysian firm involved in businesses ranging from laundromats to pharmacies, the club was initially intended to help the company’s female staff to be good wives as well as productive employees. Global Ikhwan’s officials have been linked to the now-defunct Malaysia-based Al-Arqam religious sect which was banned by the government in 1994. Before the Obedient Wives Club, Global Ikhwan had earlier established the Polygamy Club which encourages polygamy among Muslims.
The Obedient Wives Club is open to women of all faiths but says its teachings are based on the edicts of Islam which require wives to submit to their husbands and meet their needs. “When men cannot get satisfaction at home, they will seek it elsewhere,” said Nurul, an Obedient Wives Club spokesperson. “When your wife is cool towards you because your wife is busy and has no time to attend to you whereas you need it that day, what are you going to do?”
Read the full story by Olivia Rondonuwu and Razak Ahmad here.
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It is not the teaching of Quran or Prophet Muhammad. This group is misleading people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Arqam ~I have wrote a report to JAKIM.
Will the Arab Spring bring U.S.-style “culture wars” to the Middle East?
Where is the Arab Spring leading the Middle East? What will be the longer-term outcome of the popular protests that have shaken the region since the beginning of this year? Of course, it’s still too early to say with any certainty, even in countries such as Tunisia and Egypt that succeeded in toppling their authoritarian regimes. Some trends have emerged, however, and they’re on the agenda at a conference in Venice I’m attending entitled “Medio Oriente verso dove?” (Where is the Middle East heading?). The host is the Oasis Foundation, a group chaired by Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Roman Catholic patriarch of this historic city, and guests include Christian and Muslim religious leaders and academics from the Middle East and Europe.
In one of the most interesting — and hotly debated — presentations, the French Islam specialist Olivier Roy described the Arab Spring as “a break with the culture and ideologies that dominated the Arab world from the 1950s until recently.” It marks a clear change in the demographic, political and religious paradigms operating there, he said. The old dichotomy of the authoritarian regime or the Islamist state has broken down, he argued, and Islam is taking on a new role in the political process. In the end, the region — or at least the states where the Arab Spring brings real change — could see democratic politics marked not by major efforts to establish an Islamic state but by Muslim “culture war” controversies not unlike the way hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage emerge in U.S. political debates.
The first trend Roy cited to back up this thesis is the sharp drop in fertility levels in the Arab world since the late 1980s and the 1990s. Several Arab countries, especially those in North Africa, now have birthrates of around two children per woman, close but still above the European average. Tunisia’s birthrate is actually lower than France’s. “The generation that is now on the job market is the last generation of big families,” said Roy, who is now director of the Mediterranean Programme at the European University Institute in Florence. “It’s a generation that has many fewer children and marries much later.”
There is also more equality between men and women because they’ve all been educated, he said, often to a university level. Even with the high unemployment in many countries, this generation of 20- and 30-somethings has less economic pressure to care for their ageing parents (because there are still many siblings) or for their own families (because they’re not having as many babies).
For these young Arabs, the older generation is no longer a model to follow. The system they set up has failed. So, Roy said, the younger generation “feels in a sense superior to its parents. It’s a generation that’s not fascinated by the patriarchalism that dominated political and social life until now. It doesn’t believe in charismatic personalities. We are no longer in a period of charismatic leaders like (Iranian Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini or (Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal) Nasser.” Added to that are factors such as the new mobility and access to information that young Arabs have, which means they are no longer subject to the information monopoly formerly enjoyed by the political and religious authorities.
“This will translate into a change in the political paradigm,” Roy said. “Today the protesters are asking for full rights as citizens, which is an individualist demand … There are no more sacred causes. Islamism was not mentioned in the protests. Pan-Arabism not mentioned. Support for the people of Palestine not mentioned. At the moment, they want liberty and democracy for themselves.” Because protesting youths want their individual rights, they’re not forming political parties. “That’s a problem because if one wants to institutionalise democracy, one needs political parties. But we see that these youths are not interested in creating a political party.”
The parties that are operating in Tunisia and Egypt are the ones that already existed, including the Islamist parties Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood. But they do not attract that many youths, said Roy (who foresaw this development in his 1992 book The Failure of Political Islam). Why not? “The Islamic revolutions aren’t working. They can take power but, as we can see in Iran every day, they have not succeeded in creating social justice, happiness and prosperity. Whatever the form of Islamic state — Islamic revolution in Iran, sharia in Pakistan, sharia in Saudi Arabia — it doesn’t work and the people know it.”
President Obama also raised the specter of short-changing recipients of federal benefits, telling CBS’s Scott Pelly in an interview that “there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”
More than 80 million Americans who receive benefits payments from the government each month could be at risk, the Treasury Department said. Most of those checks cover Social Security recipients, veterans and civil service retirees.
Islamic reality TV show in Malaysia seeks best women preachers
A forthcoming Islamic reality television show in Malaysia aims to find the best women preachers and change conservative mindsets on the role of women in Muslim societies. The 13-episode prime time program titled “Solehah,” an Arabic word meaning “pious female,” is a talent contest that will feature charismatic young Muslim women judged by clerics on their religious knowledge as well as their oratory skills and personality.
Although Islam allows both men and women to preach the religion to society, the field remains dominated by males in most Muslim countries, something the show’s producers in this mainly Muslim but multi-religious Southeast Asian country hope to change.
“If American Idol can help their contestants develop as singers, our show aims to help Muslim women develop as Islamic preachers,” said Zulkarnaen Mokhtar, brand manager at the private television station which produces the show. It will start airing in October and follows on the heels of the hit Islamic themed show “Imam Muda,” or Young Imam, which is shown on a rival TV station and seeks the best Imam or male Muslim leader. Imam Muda is set to enter its second season.
The television station said earlier in a statement that it had seen there was a dearth of reality TV shows catering to women and religion. “Solehah aims to be a show that provides religious education informally while acknowledging the role of women in the development of Islam,” it added.
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Pakistan’s booming female madrassas feed rising intolerance
Varda is an accountancy student who dreams of working abroad. Dainty and soft-spoken, the 22-year-old aspires to broaden her horizons, but when it comes to Islam, she refuses to question the fundamentalist interpretations offered by clerics and lecturers nationwide.
Varda is among more than a quarter of a million Pakistani students attending an all-female madrassa, or Islamic seminary, where legions of well-to-do women are experiencing an awakening of faith, at the cost of rising intolerance. In a nation where Muslim extremists are slowly strengthening their grip on society, the number of all-female madrassas has boomed over the past decade, fueled by the failures of the state education system and a deepening conservativism among the middle to upper classes.
Parents often encourage girls to enroll in madrassas after finishing high school or university, as an alternative to a shrinking, largely male-orientated job market, and to ensure a girl waiting to get married isn’t drawn into romantic relationships, says Masooda Bano, a research fellow at the British-based Economic and Social Research Council.
But, like Varda, many students at the 2,000 or so registered madrassas are university students or graduates looking for greater understanding of Islam, as well as housewives who, like others in Pakistani society, feel pressured to deepen their faith.
Asked about the killing of a governor earlier this year because he opposed the country’s controversial blasphemy law, Varda, without hesitation, said Salman Taseer’s murder by his own bodyguard was the right thing to do. “If people … call themselves Muslims and they are members of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, then they should not be criticizing this law,” she said. “I am sorry to say this, but this is what he deserved.”
Read the full story by Rebecca Conway here.
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Resident FaithWorld Expert
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Sigh…Reuters comments pages are extremely buggy. Only half my post made it last time.
You wrote “In an age where there is a lot of skepticism around Islam, empirical evidence has proved otherwise.”
This sentence has so many problems with it I’m having difficulty knowing where to begin.
You do not mention why (Oh why?) would anyone think we live in an “age of skepticism around Islam.” Were your intention to compose a straw man argument, you’d still need to introduce a Mr. Straw here, say an unreasonable bigot with no ability to be objective. You don’t even make that much effort.
You then counter your non-existent straw man (thin air man?) by saying “empirical evidence has proved otherwise.” Whereas you do provide anecdotal evidence, you do not in fact provide any empirical evidence. Yes, empirical refers to observation, but only in the context of a scientific experiment whereby actual evidence is obtained.
I would like to conclude by assuring you that my diatribe is not directed at your faith, but rather your writing skills. I know and respect many Muslims, and I have lived in Muslim countries.
To become a better writer, debater, and yes thinker, please look to a search engine for the dozen most common fallacious arguments (you’ll find a definition of “straw man” among them).
Salaam.