It’s past midnight, and I’m in a street surrounded by a group of people chatting and laughing as the sharp smell of gunpowder from crackling fireworks wafts over us in the thick night air. A colourfully dressed woman with dark brown eyes is wandering in and out of the crowd holding a plate of delicious nut-based sweetmeats, which she offers around.
“I made them,” she says proudly.
All at once, the hubbub of guttural voices dies down as the sound of a beating drum reverberates from the pavement opposite.
Tak takka tak!
And a man nearby starts playing a high-pitched reed instrument, like a snake-charmer, with slow, whining notes. After a few moments, a woman at his side begins to sing. But this is no sweet melody; it sounds more like a chant or a cry, her voice rising and falling in strange, swooping intervals, almost like a muezzin’s call to prayer. When she finishes, everyone cheers and claps, the drum beats again, and the crowd moves on down the street for more music and sweetmeats.
Though the music, food and atmosphere might make me feel as though I’ve been transported to North Africa for a street festival, I am actually in Valencia, on Spain’s eastern coast, a city that has been my home for the past 10 years. The sweetmeats – indistinguishable from halva – are known as turrón, and I’m witnessing a Nit d’Albaes – a common local fiesta where satirical songs are sung late into the night – but with an obvious Moorish flavour to them.
Valencia is not the first place you tend to think of when Moorish Spain is mentioned. Andalusia, to the south, has that honour, with its magnificent Alhambra Palace in Granada, the Great Mosque at Cordoba, and other picturesque sites. But historically, Valencia is as Moorish as any of these: it was ruled by Muslims for more than 500 years, until 1238, while the very last Moors in Spain, the Moriscos, were concentrated in the Valencia region when the order to expel all 300,000 of them to North Africa came in 1609. Under the Arabs, Valencia was at the centre of what was known as sharq al-andalus – the eastern region of Al-Andalus, while the city itself was known as hadiqat al-andalus – the garden of Moorish Spain, for its wonderful climate and extremely fertile soil.
Despite this heritage, however, you won’t find many mosques or ancient palaces to visit. Yet, although the region may be a less obvious tourist destination than its Andalusian counterpart, it is no less rewarding for it.
Today the city is the third-largest in Spain, a thriving Mediterranean seaport which recently hosted the America’s Cup and has staged two Formula One Grands Prix. From being an oft-overlooked corner of the country, it has arrived as a tourist destination in the past few years with the opening of the spectacularly modern City of Arts and Sciences – a space-age architectural delight comprising an opera house, museums, an aquarium and more – designed by local boy Santiago Calatrava.
Source: The National, Valencia: what lies beneath
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islam. Show all posts
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Stop Wahhabi Indoctrination of Syrian Youth
The Website ALL4SYRIA reported (in Arabic) on July 17, 2010 that private Islamist elementary schools have been proliferating in Syria. The title of the article: Secrets and Background Behind the Decision to Ban the Wearing of the Niqab in Syria’s Schools and Universities Taken by the Office of National Security.
A Summary of the ALL4SYRIA article
Islamist groups in Syria have succeeded in controlling most private elementary schools (up to sixth grade), estimated to be around 200 schools (presumably in Damascus) with approximately 25% to 30% of all elementary schools enrolment. The article revealed that teachers are all women, don the Niqab (black covering of face and body), and belong to Islamist proselytizing groups, typically led and controlled by women. ALL4SYRIA added that classroom teaching material contravenes Ministry of Education curriculum and textbooks, that young children are instructed to insist that their mothers must wear the Niqab so that they avoid burning in hell’s fire, that large amounts of money have been paid by Islamist organizers to purchase secular private schools from their owners; for example, Dar Al-Faraj, Dar Al-Na’eem, Omar bin Al-Khattab, The Arab Islamic College, Ummat Al-Majd, Al-Yaqzah…).
Significance of the article
Such a development is disconcerting. Syria must be vigilant. At the core of Islamist teaching, just like Wahhabi teaching, is indoctrination and brainwashing in fanaticism. Sunni Islamists, Syria’s included, embrace Wahhabi extremism with all their being. Their speech and actions are akin to being members of a religious cult.
It should be noted that the word "Islamist" refers only to the tiny minority among individual Muslims who are extremists in their religious fervor and beliefs; specifically, the Hanbalite Wahhabis. The word "Islamist" does not apply to the 95% of Sunnis who follow the other three schools of jurisprudence (Hanafites, Maliktes, and Shafiates). This great majority is moderate, enlightened, and tolerant. On a macro level, the word "Islamist" refers to extremist Islamic states, not to moderate Islamic countries. While Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Syria, and Turkey, for example, are Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia is an Islamist country.
Source: Daring Opinion, Stop Wahhabi Indoctrination of Syrian Youth
A Summary of the ALL4SYRIA article
Islamist groups in Syria have succeeded in controlling most private elementary schools (up to sixth grade), estimated to be around 200 schools (presumably in Damascus) with approximately 25% to 30% of all elementary schools enrolment. The article revealed that teachers are all women, don the Niqab (black covering of face and body), and belong to Islamist proselytizing groups, typically led and controlled by women. ALL4SYRIA added that classroom teaching material contravenes Ministry of Education curriculum and textbooks, that young children are instructed to insist that their mothers must wear the Niqab so that they avoid burning in hell’s fire, that large amounts of money have been paid by Islamist organizers to purchase secular private schools from their owners; for example, Dar Al-Faraj, Dar Al-Na’eem, Omar bin Al-Khattab, The Arab Islamic College, Ummat Al-Majd, Al-Yaqzah…).
Significance of the article
Such a development is disconcerting. Syria must be vigilant. At the core of Islamist teaching, just like Wahhabi teaching, is indoctrination and brainwashing in fanaticism. Sunni Islamists, Syria’s included, embrace Wahhabi extremism with all their being. Their speech and actions are akin to being members of a religious cult.
It should be noted that the word "Islamist" refers only to the tiny minority among individual Muslims who are extremists in their religious fervor and beliefs; specifically, the Hanbalite Wahhabis. The word "Islamist" does not apply to the 95% of Sunnis who follow the other three schools of jurisprudence (Hanafites, Maliktes, and Shafiates). This great majority is moderate, enlightened, and tolerant. On a macro level, the word "Islamist" refers to extremist Islamic states, not to moderate Islamic countries. While Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Syria, and Turkey, for example, are Islamic countries, Saudi Arabia is an Islamist country.
Source: Daring Opinion, Stop Wahhabi Indoctrination of Syrian Youth
Monday, 19 July 2010
Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Far from the heated debates of Europe, Syria has banned the niqab in classrooms, adding another layer to this complex story
Quietly, away from the fanfare that accompanied the French vote on banning the niqab in public, and calls by Philip Hollobone to impose a ban in Britain, the Syrian government has instituted its own, more limited, ban, removing teachers who wear the full face veil from teaching in public schools.
At first glance, such a move might seem puzzling: Syria, with dozens of religious sects and a nominally secular government, has managed for decades to use a light touch, at least when it comes to personal faith.
But the rise of religion among the population has shaken the leadership: with overt displays of faith on the rise and a rare terrorist attack in Damascus two years ago attributed to Islamists, the government appears to be moving against hardline religious ideas.
The niqab ban in public schools is a fairly blunt instrument but, on such a small scale, it may be intended to send a message. Egypt, too, has instigated a similarly limited ban (for university exams), a move opposed by Islamists but upheld by the courts.
Continue reading Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Source: The Guardian
Quietly, away from the fanfare that accompanied the French vote on banning the niqab in public, and calls by Philip Hollobone to impose a ban in Britain, the Syrian government has instituted its own, more limited, ban, removing teachers who wear the full face veil from teaching in public schools.
At first glance, such a move might seem puzzling: Syria, with dozens of religious sects and a nominally secular government, has managed for decades to use a light touch, at least when it comes to personal faith.
But the rise of religion among the population has shaken the leadership: with overt displays of faith on the rise and a rare terrorist attack in Damascus two years ago attributed to Islamists, the government appears to be moving against hardline religious ideas.
The niqab ban in public schools is a fairly blunt instrument but, on such a small scale, it may be intended to send a message. Egypt, too, has instigated a similarly limited ban (for university exams), a move opposed by Islamists but upheld by the courts.
Continue reading Syria's niqab ban is part of a clash within Islam itself
Source: The Guardian
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Where religion and civil society meet
The US-Islamic World Forum – held this weekend in Qatar – will once again explore the nature and possibilities of the power dynamics between these two entities, one a nation state, the other, ostensibly a religion.
However “Islamic”, or its place holder, “Muslim”, has come to mean more of a region than anything more meaningful.
As a region, “Islamic” would embrace the Christian, the atheist, the Jewish, the Marxist and the non-committed. Adding to the stickiness of the proposition is the prevalence of Islam in regions not designated “Islamic”. Albania and Bosnia are soundly European. Spain was a Muslim country for 700 years. And yes, the US itself has been witnessing its second wave of indigenisation since the turn of the 20th century; the US ambassador to the Philippines converted in 1888 and continued to advocate the Muslim faith among New York’s elite society until his death in 1916. Muslim “buffalo soldiers” fought with the Union army during the 1861-1865 American Civil War.
This weekend’s conference will explore among other things, possibilities for strengthening civil society and non-governmental efforts to fill the “human development” gaps left by beleaguered or otherwise distracted governments.
But what, if anything, has religion to do with this? Quality of life services are socially inclusive and universally perfected by international NGOs that transcend, in their technique, any religious affiliation. It is a shared knowledge, a common effort, and an inclusive pursuit.
So has the utility of religion in the equation been reduced to no more than one among several policy facilitators? Has religion been reduced to an opiate for steering masses with this particular fix?
Here is a case for an expanded consideration that may not have been lost on all the organisers. Barbiturates and intoxicants are forbidden in Islam because of their propensity to cloud the mind, whereas Islam unflinchingly calls for the enhancement and sharpening of the rational faculty.
The contribution that theological reasoning makes to civil society and human development initiatives is unique in its three dimensional approach.
Man is a whole as body, mind, and soul; not body alone. Being is material, spiritual and divine; not material alone.
The effective value-add of theological reasoning to human development initiatives turns upon five themes: First, it brings sense to the confusion stemming from the displacement of the human condition in an alienating modernity.
Second, it assesses the ordering of material and circumstantial priorities in light of an authentic Islamic worldview.
Third, it provides doctrinal grounding for fundamental human development objectives.
Fourth, it can facilitate, advocate and encourage helpful and constructive behaviours for good global citizenship and environmental consciousness.
Fifth, it can potentially contribute to the development of an integrated, engaged and participatory Muslim identity for the 21st century.
Returning to the motif of the opiate. The Muslim poet said: “Our wine is the wine of meaning; it is permissible and not unlawful.” The difference between the wine of the world is that it dulls the senses and shackles you to the ground. But the wine of paradise sharpens the mind and lifts you out of the petty, the mundane, and the unidimensional. It gives life to the life of the mind, to the life of the spirit, and not merely to the life of body alone. It is 360 degrees, in three dimensions, it is whole, and it is vibrant.
Jihad Hashim Brown is director of research at the Tabah Foundation. He delivers the Friday sermon at the Maryam bint Sultan Mosque in Abu Dhabi/
Source: The National: Where religion and civil society meet
Tabah Foundation
However “Islamic”, or its place holder, “Muslim”, has come to mean more of a region than anything more meaningful.
As a region, “Islamic” would embrace the Christian, the atheist, the Jewish, the Marxist and the non-committed. Adding to the stickiness of the proposition is the prevalence of Islam in regions not designated “Islamic”. Albania and Bosnia are soundly European. Spain was a Muslim country for 700 years. And yes, the US itself has been witnessing its second wave of indigenisation since the turn of the 20th century; the US ambassador to the Philippines converted in 1888 and continued to advocate the Muslim faith among New York’s elite society until his death in 1916. Muslim “buffalo soldiers” fought with the Union army during the 1861-1865 American Civil War.
This weekend’s conference will explore among other things, possibilities for strengthening civil society and non-governmental efforts to fill the “human development” gaps left by beleaguered or otherwise distracted governments.
But what, if anything, has religion to do with this? Quality of life services are socially inclusive and universally perfected by international NGOs that transcend, in their technique, any religious affiliation. It is a shared knowledge, a common effort, and an inclusive pursuit.
So has the utility of religion in the equation been reduced to no more than one among several policy facilitators? Has religion been reduced to an opiate for steering masses with this particular fix?
Here is a case for an expanded consideration that may not have been lost on all the organisers. Barbiturates and intoxicants are forbidden in Islam because of their propensity to cloud the mind, whereas Islam unflinchingly calls for the enhancement and sharpening of the rational faculty.
The contribution that theological reasoning makes to civil society and human development initiatives is unique in its three dimensional approach.
Man is a whole as body, mind, and soul; not body alone. Being is material, spiritual and divine; not material alone.
The effective value-add of theological reasoning to human development initiatives turns upon five themes: First, it brings sense to the confusion stemming from the displacement of the human condition in an alienating modernity.
Second, it assesses the ordering of material and circumstantial priorities in light of an authentic Islamic worldview.
Third, it provides doctrinal grounding for fundamental human development objectives.
Fourth, it can facilitate, advocate and encourage helpful and constructive behaviours for good global citizenship and environmental consciousness.
Fifth, it can potentially contribute to the development of an integrated, engaged and participatory Muslim identity for the 21st century.
Returning to the motif of the opiate. The Muslim poet said: “Our wine is the wine of meaning; it is permissible and not unlawful.” The difference between the wine of the world is that it dulls the senses and shackles you to the ground. But the wine of paradise sharpens the mind and lifts you out of the petty, the mundane, and the unidimensional. It gives life to the life of the mind, to the life of the spirit, and not merely to the life of body alone. It is 360 degrees, in three dimensions, it is whole, and it is vibrant.
Jihad Hashim Brown is director of research at the Tabah Foundation. He delivers the Friday sermon at the Maryam bint Sultan Mosque in Abu Dhabi/
Source: The National: Where religion and civil society meet
Tabah Foundation
Saturday, 30 January 2010
Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world
London, England (CNN) -- Think of the origins of that staple of modern life, the cup of coffee, and Italy often springs to mind.
But in fact, Yemen is where the ubiquitous brew has its true origins.
Along with the first university, and even the toothbrush, it is among surprising Muslim inventions that have shaped the world we live in today.
The origins of these fundamental ideas and objects -- the basis of everything from the bicycle to musical scales -- are the focus of "1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Muslim heritage.
"There's a hole in our knowledge, we leap frog from the Renaissance to the Greeks," professor Salim al-Hassani, Chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, and editor of the book told CNN.
"1001 Inventions" is now an exhibition at London's Science Museum. Hassani hopes the exhibition will highlight the contributions of non-Western cultures -- like the Muslim empire that once covered Spain and Portugal, Southern Italy and stretched as far as parts of China -- to present day civilization.
Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt
Here Hassani shares his top 10 outstanding Muslim inventions:
1. Surgery
Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds -- beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to remove sutures. He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of forceps.
2. Coffee
Now the Western world's drink du jour, coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century. In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late nights of devotion. Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon caught on around the empire. By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.
3. Flying machine
"Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and fly," said Hassani. In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to the ground and partially breaking his back. His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later, said Hassani.
4. University
In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco. Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together the complex became the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes the center will remind people that learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire young Muslim women around the world today.
5. Algebra
The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician's famous 9th century treatise "Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala" which translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and Balancing." Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic order was a unifying system for rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes. The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.
6. Optics
"Many of the most important advances in the study of optics come from the Muslim world," says Hassani. Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting off of them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted from the eye itself. This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees images upright due to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.
7. Music
Muslim musicians have had a profound impact on Europe, dating back to Charlemagne tried to compete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba, according to Hassani. Among many instruments that arrived in Europe through the Middle East are the lute and the rahab, an ancestor of the violin. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from the Arabic alphabet.
8. Toothbrush
According to Hassani, the Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600. Using a twig from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath. Substances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.
9. The crank
Many of the basics of modern automatics were first put to use in the Muslim world, including the revolutionary crank-connecting rod system. By converting rotary motion to linear motion, the crank enables the lifting of heavy objects with relative ease. This technology, discovered by Al-Jazari in the 12th century, exploded across the globe, leading to everything from the bicycle to the internal combustion engine.
10. Hospitals
"Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt," explained Hassani. The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo. Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed it -- a policy based on the Muslim tradition of caring for all who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the Muslim world.
For more information on muslim inventions go to: muslimheritage.com. For more information about the exhibition at London's Science Museum go to: science museum.org.uk
Source: CNN: Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world
But in fact, Yemen is where the ubiquitous brew has its true origins.
Along with the first university, and even the toothbrush, it is among surprising Muslim inventions that have shaped the world we live in today.
The origins of these fundamental ideas and objects -- the basis of everything from the bicycle to musical scales -- are the focus of "1001 Inventions," a book celebrating "the forgotten" history of 1,000 years of Muslim heritage.
"There's a hole in our knowledge, we leap frog from the Renaissance to the Greeks," professor Salim al-Hassani, Chairman of the Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilisation, and editor of the book told CNN.
"1001 Inventions" is now an exhibition at London's Science Museum. Hassani hopes the exhibition will highlight the contributions of non-Western cultures -- like the Muslim empire that once covered Spain and Portugal, Southern Italy and stretched as far as parts of China -- to present day civilization.
Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt
Here Hassani shares his top 10 outstanding Muslim inventions:
1. Surgery
Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds -- beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to remove sutures. He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of forceps.
2. Coffee
Now the Western world's drink du jour, coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century. In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late nights of devotion. Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon caught on around the empire. By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.
3. Flying machine
"Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and fly," said Hassani. In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to the ground and partially breaking his back. His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci's hundreds of years later, said Hassani.
4. University
In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco. Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together the complex became the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes the center will remind people that learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire young Muslim women around the world today.
5. Algebra
The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician's famous 9th century treatise "Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala" which translates roughly as "The Book of Reasoning and Balancing." Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic order was a unifying system for rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes. The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.
6. Optics
"Many of the most important advances in the study of optics come from the Muslim world," says Hassani. Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting off of them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy's theories that light was emitted from the eye itself. This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees images upright due to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.
7. Music
Muslim musicians have had a profound impact on Europe, dating back to Charlemagne tried to compete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba, according to Hassani. Among many instruments that arrived in Europe through the Middle East are the lute and the rahab, an ancestor of the violin. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from the Arabic alphabet.
8. Toothbrush
According to Hassani, the Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600. Using a twig from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath. Substances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.
9. The crank
Many of the basics of modern automatics were first put to use in the Muslim world, including the revolutionary crank-connecting rod system. By converting rotary motion to linear motion, the crank enables the lifting of heavy objects with relative ease. This technology, discovered by Al-Jazari in the 12th century, exploded across the globe, leading to everything from the bicycle to the internal combustion engine.
10. Hospitals
"Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt," explained Hassani. The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo. Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed it -- a policy based on the Muslim tradition of caring for all who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the Muslim world.
For more information on muslim inventions go to: muslimheritage.com. For more information about the exhibition at London's Science Museum go to: science museum.org.uk
Source: CNN: Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Amira Bennison on Science and Islam
Cambridge lecturer Dr Bennison says that the scientific tradition in the Islamic world underpinned a lot of things that happened in the European Renaissance, and that Muslim doctors were removing cataracts with hollow needles more than 1,000 years before Western physicians.
Your first choice is Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam.
This book dovetailed with a television programme of the same name last year and looks at different areas of science in which the Islamic world excelled. It uses the word ‘science’ in the medieval sense, including, for example, philosophy working from Aristotelian material. It all started in Baghdad, Iraq, with the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in 750AD, and for about 200 years material was translated from Greek into Arabic. This was called The Translation Movement and it started slowly but was in full swing by about 800AD.
The Arabs particularly excelled at mathematics, and algebra is an Arab innovation from that time, created by the Muslim mathematician al-Khwarizmi (born in Baghdad in 780AD). He also developed the Hindu-Arabic numerical system which is used around the world today and includes the concept of zero which was unknown in Roman mathematics. Al-Khwarizmi worked at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad. The House of Wisdom acquired and translated scientific and philosophic treatises, particularly Greek, as well as publishing original research.
They were also good at geography and astronomy. They weren’t just translating material and leaving it at that – they then had their own ideas, for example to prove Ptolemy wrong. They were brilliant at maps and calculated the circumference of the earth almost exactly in the 9th century – they knew it was a sphere.
Who did?
The Banu Musa brothers in 830AD. They were courtiers of the caliphate but also scientists and patrons themselves. There were three brothers: Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir, Ahmad ibn Musa ibn Shakir and al-Hasan ibn Musa ibn Shakir. The Banu Musa brothers were among the first group of mathematicians to begin to carry forward the mathematical developments begun by the ancient Greeks.
Nearly 50 years before, in 786, not long after the father of the Banu Musa brothers, Musa ibn Shakir, was born, Harun al-Rashid became the fifth caliph of the Abbasid dynasty. Harun ruled from his court in Baghdad over the whole Islamic empire, which stretched from the Mediterranean to India. He tried to establish the intellectual disciplines – an example of this change is seen in the life of Musa ibn Shakir, who was a robber in his youth but then turned to astronomy.
The next caliph, al-Ma’mun, continued the patronage of learning started by his father. Musa ibn Shakir had become a friend and when he died al-Ma’mun became guardian to his sons. The brothers were given the best education in Baghdad, studying geometry, mechanics, music, mathematics and astronomy. Al-Ma’mun built up a library of manuscripts, collecting important works from Byzantium. In addition to the House of Wisdom, he set up observatories in which Muslim astronomers could build on the knowledge acquired by earlier peoples.
In astronomy the brothers made many contributions. They were instructed by al-Ma’mun to measure a degree of latitude and they made their measurements in the desert in northern Mesopotamia. They also made many observations of the sun and the moon from Baghdad. Muhammad and Ahmad measured the length of the year, obtaining the value of 365 days and 6 hours. Observations of the star Regulus were made by the three brothers from their house on a bridge in Baghdad in 840-41, 847-48, and 850-51.
Then there was al-Sarabi, the first Arab philosopher who engaged with translated material, almost certainly Plato’s Republic. With the Translation Movement it’s often tempting to assume people were simply absorbing the translated material, but they were genuinely engaging with it, often disproving what came before.
The book includes a chapter entitled ‘Beyond The Abbasids’, demonstrating that science didn’t die a completely natural death at the end of the Abbasid era. The author does looks at the contemporary myth of Islam being backward and not promoting scientific thought or independent thought of any kind – the idea that Islam is very tradition-bound. People tend to extrapolate from that that there is a contradiction between Islam and science. This attitude is also a product of the enlightenment in Europe, a product of a Christian context not a Muslim one. In the enlightenment the idea did develop that there was this conflict between faith and reason and that you couldn’t really have the two side by side. Obviously that’s an ongoing debate – how do you reconcile faith and science? That kind of discussion is part of a product of the imperial age, where the Islamic world was seen as stagnant and backward.
What about your second book, George Saliba’s Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance?
This again stresses that it’s not just that the Arabs were so nice for translating and preserving a lot of ancient Greek texts, but that there was a great deal of selectivity in the translations and a lot of building on what had been translated. The thriving scientific tradition in the Islamic world underpins a lot of things that happen in the European Renaissance.
So, all these Greek texts were translated into Arabic in the 8th and 9th centuries and then translated back into European languages again in the 12th century European Renaissance?
Continue reading The Browser: Amira Bennison on Science and Islam
Your first choice is Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam.
This book dovetailed with a television programme of the same name last year and looks at different areas of science in which the Islamic world excelled. It uses the word ‘science’ in the medieval sense, including, for example, philosophy working from Aristotelian material. It all started in Baghdad, Iraq, with the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in 750AD, and for about 200 years material was translated from Greek into Arabic. This was called The Translation Movement and it started slowly but was in full swing by about 800AD.
The Arabs particularly excelled at mathematics, and algebra is an Arab innovation from that time, created by the Muslim mathematician al-Khwarizmi (born in Baghdad in 780AD). He also developed the Hindu-Arabic numerical system which is used around the world today and includes the concept of zero which was unknown in Roman mathematics. Al-Khwarizmi worked at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad. The House of Wisdom acquired and translated scientific and philosophic treatises, particularly Greek, as well as publishing original research.
They were also good at geography and astronomy. They weren’t just translating material and leaving it at that – they then had their own ideas, for example to prove Ptolemy wrong. They were brilliant at maps and calculated the circumference of the earth almost exactly in the 9th century – they knew it was a sphere.
Who did?
The Banu Musa brothers in 830AD. They were courtiers of the caliphate but also scientists and patrons themselves. There were three brothers: Jafar Muhammad ibn Musa ibn Shakir, Ahmad ibn Musa ibn Shakir and al-Hasan ibn Musa ibn Shakir. The Banu Musa brothers were among the first group of mathematicians to begin to carry forward the mathematical developments begun by the ancient Greeks.
Nearly 50 years before, in 786, not long after the father of the Banu Musa brothers, Musa ibn Shakir, was born, Harun al-Rashid became the fifth caliph of the Abbasid dynasty. Harun ruled from his court in Baghdad over the whole Islamic empire, which stretched from the Mediterranean to India. He tried to establish the intellectual disciplines – an example of this change is seen in the life of Musa ibn Shakir, who was a robber in his youth but then turned to astronomy.
The next caliph, al-Ma’mun, continued the patronage of learning started by his father. Musa ibn Shakir had become a friend and when he died al-Ma’mun became guardian to his sons. The brothers were given the best education in Baghdad, studying geometry, mechanics, music, mathematics and astronomy. Al-Ma’mun built up a library of manuscripts, collecting important works from Byzantium. In addition to the House of Wisdom, he set up observatories in which Muslim astronomers could build on the knowledge acquired by earlier peoples.
In astronomy the brothers made many contributions. They were instructed by al-Ma’mun to measure a degree of latitude and they made their measurements in the desert in northern Mesopotamia. They also made many observations of the sun and the moon from Baghdad. Muhammad and Ahmad measured the length of the year, obtaining the value of 365 days and 6 hours. Observations of the star Regulus were made by the three brothers from their house on a bridge in Baghdad in 840-41, 847-48, and 850-51.
Then there was al-Sarabi, the first Arab philosopher who engaged with translated material, almost certainly Plato’s Republic. With the Translation Movement it’s often tempting to assume people were simply absorbing the translated material, but they were genuinely engaging with it, often disproving what came before.
The book includes a chapter entitled ‘Beyond The Abbasids’, demonstrating that science didn’t die a completely natural death at the end of the Abbasid era. The author does looks at the contemporary myth of Islam being backward and not promoting scientific thought or independent thought of any kind – the idea that Islam is very tradition-bound. People tend to extrapolate from that that there is a contradiction between Islam and science. This attitude is also a product of the enlightenment in Europe, a product of a Christian context not a Muslim one. In the enlightenment the idea did develop that there was this conflict between faith and reason and that you couldn’t really have the two side by side. Obviously that’s an ongoing debate – how do you reconcile faith and science? That kind of discussion is part of a product of the imperial age, where the Islamic world was seen as stagnant and backward.
What about your second book, George Saliba’s Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance?
This again stresses that it’s not just that the Arabs were so nice for translating and preserving a lot of ancient Greek texts, but that there was a great deal of selectivity in the translations and a lot of building on what had been translated. The thriving scientific tradition in the Islamic world underpins a lot of things that happen in the European Renaissance.
So, all these Greek texts were translated into Arabic in the 8th and 9th centuries and then translated back into European languages again in the 12th century European Renaissance?
Continue reading The Browser: Amira Bennison on Science and Islam
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Early Islamic Medicine by Jonathan Lyons
When the Western European army of the cross brought the First Crusade to the Holy Land in 1096, the Arabs of the Near East were less impressed by the army’s religious zeal than they were appalled by its stench. The disease-ridden body of the Christian host included true believers and righteous folk but also, according to the report of the medieval chronicler Albert of Aix in his Historia Hierosolymita, “adulterers, homicides, thieves, perjurers, and robbers.” Few had any learning at all. Ignorant of even the rudiments of science, mathematics, medicine, philosophy, and sanitation, they knew nothing of the workings of that prince of medieval scientific devices, the astrolabe, which captured the movements of the three-dimensional universe on its bronze faceplate; as a result, they could not even date their most important religious holiday, Easter, nor accurately tell the time of day.
Celestial phenomena—shooting stars, ball lightning, an eclipse of the sun—terrified them. Their forebears had long since lost the ability to read Greek, thus breaking off intellectual relations with the learning of antiquity. Education had all but collapsed, save for a handful of cathedral schools clinging to innovations introduced three hundred years earlier under Charlemagne. The scholar-monks at the West’s leading center of mathematical studies, the cathedral school of Laon, had no grasp of the meaning or use of zero.
Among the greatest affront to Arab sensibilities was the Crusaders’ complete disregard for personal hygiene. Their most noble knights boasted of bathing no more than four times a year; their diet consisted largely of monotonous rations of gruel and whatever else they could forage en route; medical care frequently involved exorcism or the amputation of afflicted limbs. When the Black Death struck Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, it unleashed social chaos. With no real notion of contagion or hygiene, one-third of the population died without knowing why. The mass casualties induced a frenzy of violence, typified by the burning of Jews suspected of having induced the disease through witchcraft.
The Book of Instruction, an informative memoir by the Syrian princeling Usama ibn Munqidh, who came to know the Crusaders in battle and in repose, records two instances in which a local physician’s sound advice was ignored in favor of Christian methodologies. In the first, the Franks simply lopped off a knight’s mildly infected leg with an axe; in the second, they carved a cross into an ill woman’s skull before rubbing it with salt. Both patients died on the spot, at which point the Arab doctor asked, “‘Do you need anything else from me?’ ‘No,’ they said. And so I left, having learned about their medicine things I had never known before.”
For six centuries the authoritative works of St. Augustine of Hippo had directed the Christian faithful to see only God’s mystery in an otherwise unknowable world.
Continue reading Lapham's Quarterly: Early Islamic Medicine
Celestial phenomena—shooting stars, ball lightning, an eclipse of the sun—terrified them. Their forebears had long since lost the ability to read Greek, thus breaking off intellectual relations with the learning of antiquity. Education had all but collapsed, save for a handful of cathedral schools clinging to innovations introduced three hundred years earlier under Charlemagne. The scholar-monks at the West’s leading center of mathematical studies, the cathedral school of Laon, had no grasp of the meaning or use of zero.
Among the greatest affront to Arab sensibilities was the Crusaders’ complete disregard for personal hygiene. Their most noble knights boasted of bathing no more than four times a year; their diet consisted largely of monotonous rations of gruel and whatever else they could forage en route; medical care frequently involved exorcism or the amputation of afflicted limbs. When the Black Death struck Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, it unleashed social chaos. With no real notion of contagion or hygiene, one-third of the population died without knowing why. The mass casualties induced a frenzy of violence, typified by the burning of Jews suspected of having induced the disease through witchcraft.
The Book of Instruction, an informative memoir by the Syrian princeling Usama ibn Munqidh, who came to know the Crusaders in battle and in repose, records two instances in which a local physician’s sound advice was ignored in favor of Christian methodologies. In the first, the Franks simply lopped off a knight’s mildly infected leg with an axe; in the second, they carved a cross into an ill woman’s skull before rubbing it with salt. Both patients died on the spot, at which point the Arab doctor asked, “‘Do you need anything else from me?’ ‘No,’ they said. And so I left, having learned about their medicine things I had never known before.”
For six centuries the authoritative works of St. Augustine of Hippo had directed the Christian faithful to see only God’s mystery in an otherwise unknowable world.
Continue reading Lapham's Quarterly: Early Islamic Medicine
Sunday, 6 December 2009
Europe's waning liberalism
Last year, at a European meeting of intelligence officials from the US and Europe, a Swiss participant commented on a proposed referendum on minarets. He was sure it would go nowhere since, as he said, Switzerland is a very pluralistic society; its Muslim population is relatively small and there are few mosques with minarets.
Enlightened Switzerland has now become part of an "Enlightened Liberal Europe" that is increasingly not all that liberal.
The stunning Swiss vote - 57 per cent - approving a referendum to ban minarets, should not have been all that surprising, considering the growing power of Islamophobia.
In both Europe and the US, right-wing politicians, political commentators, media personalities, and religious leaders continue to feed a growing suspicion of mainstream Muslims by fuelling a fear that Islam, and not just Muslim extremism, is a threat.
In the aftermath of attacks in the US and Europe, the relevance and viability of multiculturalism as a policy was challenged by those who charged that such an approach contributed to domestic terrorism.
They argued that such a policy helped in retarding Muslim assimilation and civic engagement, perpetuated foreign loyalties, and provided a space for militant radicals.
Integration versus assimilation
Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown in several European countries [AFP]
The process of integration, in which immigrant citizens and residents could retain their religious and ethnic differences, was rejected by many, in particular the far-right in Europe, who demand total assimilation.
Modern-day prophets of doom have predicted that Europe will be overrun by Islam - transformed by the end of the century into "Eurabia".
The media, political leaders, and commentators on the right warn of a "soft terrorism" plot to take over the US and Europe.
Bernard Lewis, a Middle East historian and adviser to the Bush administration on its failed Iraq policy, received widespread coverage when he chided Europeans for losing their loyalties, self-confidence, and respect for their own culture, charging that they have "surrendered" to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness," and "multi-culturalism".
Daniel Pipes, a columnist, political commentator and relentless Muslim critic who wrote an article called "The Muslims are coming. The Muslims are coming", also declared: "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene ... All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."
European Muslim mosaic
Fortunately, many Muslim and Christian leaders, and major European politicians and human rights experts have condemned the minaret ban, and the Vatican has denounced it as an infringement of religious freedom.
However, the surprising gains made by Geert Wilders' Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Danish People's Party, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), Hungarian Jobbik, and the British National Party in the recent European parliament elections emboldened many of their leaders to applaud the Swiss vote and encourage similar prohibitions.
Wilders, the leader of the anti-Muslim Freedom Party in the Netherlands, who previously warned that mass deportation of millions of Muslims from Europe may be necessary, called for a vote to stem the "tide of Islamisation" in the Netherlands.
The far-right persistently refuses to face a 21st century reality - to acknowledge and accept the fact that Muslims are part of the mosaic of their nations.
Islam is now a European religion, and, in fact, the second largest religion in many European countries. No longer predominantly first generation immigrants, many are second and third generation citizens.
Despite the acts and continued threat from a very small but dangerous minority of extremists, the majority of Muslims, like their non-Muslim fellow compatriots, are loyal citizens.
The Swiss ban, like some other European countries' policies, highlights a failure of Western liberalism and raises fundamental questions about religious discrimination and freedom of religion.
While there are only four minarets in Switzerland, a country that is home to approximately 400,000 Muslims, supporters of the referendum mindlessly charge that the minaret is a political symbol of militant Islam.
This makes about as much sense as saying that church steeples symbolise militant Christianity.
Dangerous precedent
The Vatican has condemned the ban on minarets in Switzerland [AFP]
So, where do we go from here?
Western political and religious opinion-makers and the media will need to resolutely address the dangers of Islamophobia as aggressively as they do other forms of hate speech and hate crimes, ranging from racial discrimination to anti-Semitism.
European Muslims will need to continue to speak out publicly, demanding their rights as European citizens and residents and also denouncing religious discrimination and violence as well as limits placed on constructing churches in the Muslim world.
Globalisation and an increasingly multicultural and multi-religious West tests the mettle of cherished democratic principles and values.
Islamophobia, which is becoming a social cancer, must be recognised and be as unacceptable as anti-Semitism, a threat to the very fabric of our democratic, pluralistic way of life.
The continued threat and response to global terrorism coupled with the resurgence of xenophobia and cultural racism have contributed to threaten the fundamentals of liberal democracies in the West and their Muslim citizens in particular.
The fine line between distinguishing between the faith of Islam and those who commit violence and terror in the name of Islam, between the majority of mainstream Muslims and the acts of a minority of Muslim extremists and terrorists, must be maintained.
Blurring these distinctions risks the adoption of foreign and domestic policies that promote a clash rather than co-existence of cultures. They play into the hands of preachers of hate (Muslim and non-Muslim), religious and political leaders, and political commentators whose rhetoric incites and demonises, alienates and marginalises.
John L Esposito is a professor of Religion and International Affairs, professor of Islamic Studies and founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
He is the editor-in-chief of the six-volume The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, and has written more than 35 books including 'Who Speaks for Islam?', 'What a Billion Muslims Really Think', and 'The Future of Islam'.
Source: Al Jazeera: Europe's waning liberalism
Enlightened Switzerland has now become part of an "Enlightened Liberal Europe" that is increasingly not all that liberal.
The stunning Swiss vote - 57 per cent - approving a referendum to ban minarets, should not have been all that surprising, considering the growing power of Islamophobia.
In both Europe and the US, right-wing politicians, political commentators, media personalities, and religious leaders continue to feed a growing suspicion of mainstream Muslims by fuelling a fear that Islam, and not just Muslim extremism, is a threat.
In the aftermath of attacks in the US and Europe, the relevance and viability of multiculturalism as a policy was challenged by those who charged that such an approach contributed to domestic terrorism.
They argued that such a policy helped in retarding Muslim assimilation and civic engagement, perpetuated foreign loyalties, and provided a space for militant radicals.
Integration versus assimilation
Anti-Muslim sentiment has grown in several European countries [AFP]
The process of integration, in which immigrant citizens and residents could retain their religious and ethnic differences, was rejected by many, in particular the far-right in Europe, who demand total assimilation.
Modern-day prophets of doom have predicted that Europe will be overrun by Islam - transformed by the end of the century into "Eurabia".
The media, political leaders, and commentators on the right warn of a "soft terrorism" plot to take over the US and Europe.
Bernard Lewis, a Middle East historian and adviser to the Bush administration on its failed Iraq policy, received widespread coverage when he chided Europeans for losing their loyalties, self-confidence, and respect for their own culture, charging that they have "surrendered" to Islam in a mood of "self-abasement," "political correctness," and "multi-culturalism".
Daniel Pipes, a columnist, political commentator and relentless Muslim critic who wrote an article called "The Muslims are coming. The Muslims are coming", also declared: "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene ... All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."
European Muslim mosaic
Fortunately, many Muslim and Christian leaders, and major European politicians and human rights experts have condemned the minaret ban, and the Vatican has denounced it as an infringement of religious freedom.
However, the surprising gains made by Geert Wilders' Freedom Party in the Netherlands, the Danish People's Party, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), Hungarian Jobbik, and the British National Party in the recent European parliament elections emboldened many of their leaders to applaud the Swiss vote and encourage similar prohibitions.
Wilders, the leader of the anti-Muslim Freedom Party in the Netherlands, who previously warned that mass deportation of millions of Muslims from Europe may be necessary, called for a vote to stem the "tide of Islamisation" in the Netherlands.
The far-right persistently refuses to face a 21st century reality - to acknowledge and accept the fact that Muslims are part of the mosaic of their nations.
Islam is now a European religion, and, in fact, the second largest religion in many European countries. No longer predominantly first generation immigrants, many are second and third generation citizens.
Despite the acts and continued threat from a very small but dangerous minority of extremists, the majority of Muslims, like their non-Muslim fellow compatriots, are loyal citizens.
The Swiss ban, like some other European countries' policies, highlights a failure of Western liberalism and raises fundamental questions about religious discrimination and freedom of religion.
While there are only four minarets in Switzerland, a country that is home to approximately 400,000 Muslims, supporters of the referendum mindlessly charge that the minaret is a political symbol of militant Islam.
This makes about as much sense as saying that church steeples symbolise militant Christianity.
Dangerous precedent
The Vatican has condemned the ban on minarets in Switzerland [AFP]
So, where do we go from here?
Western political and religious opinion-makers and the media will need to resolutely address the dangers of Islamophobia as aggressively as they do other forms of hate speech and hate crimes, ranging from racial discrimination to anti-Semitism.
European Muslims will need to continue to speak out publicly, demanding their rights as European citizens and residents and also denouncing religious discrimination and violence as well as limits placed on constructing churches in the Muslim world.
Globalisation and an increasingly multicultural and multi-religious West tests the mettle of cherished democratic principles and values.
Islamophobia, which is becoming a social cancer, must be recognised and be as unacceptable as anti-Semitism, a threat to the very fabric of our democratic, pluralistic way of life.
The continued threat and response to global terrorism coupled with the resurgence of xenophobia and cultural racism have contributed to threaten the fundamentals of liberal democracies in the West and their Muslim citizens in particular.
The fine line between distinguishing between the faith of Islam and those who commit violence and terror in the name of Islam, between the majority of mainstream Muslims and the acts of a minority of Muslim extremists and terrorists, must be maintained.
Blurring these distinctions risks the adoption of foreign and domestic policies that promote a clash rather than co-existence of cultures. They play into the hands of preachers of hate (Muslim and non-Muslim), religious and political leaders, and political commentators whose rhetoric incites and demonises, alienates and marginalises.
John L Esposito is a professor of Religion and International Affairs, professor of Islamic Studies and founding director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
He is the editor-in-chief of the six-volume The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, and has written more than 35 books including 'Who Speaks for Islam?', 'What a Billion Muslims Really Think', and 'The Future of Islam'.
Source: Al Jazeera: Europe's waning liberalism
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
"Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectived'
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday, October 6 th, 2009.
"Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectived' report released
A report which explores the philosophical and theological perspectives on what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today has been published.
The study, entitled 'Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives', is being launched today (Tuesday, October 6th), and can be downloaded at (http://www.cis.cam.ac.uk/CIBP.html).
It marks the culmination of a nine month research project which was hosted by the University of Cambridge in association with the Universities of Exeter and Westminster.
A total of 26 Muslim scholars, academics and activists representing a diverse spectrum of views from Muslim communities in the UK took part in discussions about what it means to live as a Muslim in modern Britain. The report covers a wide range of issues including secularism, democracy, Shariah law, human rights and citisenship.
The report presents the group's conclusions and aims to act as the basis for a wider discussion with other Muslim leaders and communities around the UK. In time, it is hoped that this will lead to the development of a virtual "House of Wisdom", providing space for discussion among both Muslims and non-Muslims on how Islam should function in modern Britain and contribute to wider society.
Continue reading: "Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspective"
Also read an excellent article in Abu Dhabi's 'The National': Islam’s besieged moderates are making themselves heard
Tuesday, October 6 th, 2009.
"Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectived' report released
A report which explores the philosophical and theological perspectives on what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today has been published.
The study, entitled 'Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives', is being launched today (Tuesday, October 6th), and can be downloaded at (http://www.cis.cam.ac.uk/CIBP.html).
It marks the culmination of a nine month research project which was hosted by the University of Cambridge in association with the Universities of Exeter and Westminster.
A total of 26 Muslim scholars, academics and activists representing a diverse spectrum of views from Muslim communities in the UK took part in discussions about what it means to live as a Muslim in modern Britain. The report covers a wide range of issues including secularism, democracy, Shariah law, human rights and citisenship.
The report presents the group's conclusions and aims to act as the basis for a wider discussion with other Muslim leaders and communities around the UK. In time, it is hoped that this will lead to the development of a virtual "House of Wisdom", providing space for discussion among both Muslims and non-Muslims on how Islam should function in modern Britain and contribute to wider society.
Continue reading: "Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspective"
Also read an excellent article in Abu Dhabi's 'The National': Islam’s besieged moderates are making themselves heard
Friday, 16 October 2009
The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings
There have been a number of interesting articles and debates taking place recently concerning women and Islam. Below is an article on Ibn al-Jawzi. You may also be interested to read this article from the BBC: Egypt anger over virginity faking
As well check out these videos via youtube: ابليــــــــس و الحجـــــــــــــــــاب * Satan VS Hijab If you check the right side bar of this youtube video you will find a plethora of Satan related videoes.
Qantara:
The religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi's collection of the prophet's recalled comments on women in Islam, well known in conservative Islamic circles. Does the work confirm our image of Muslim misogyny or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources? By Stefan Weidner
| Bild: Cover 'The Attributes of God' by Ibn al-Jawzi
Bild vergrössern "For most of you are firewood of hell": Ibn al-Jawzi's writings are extremely popular in conservative Islamic circles to this day | Commented collections of hadiths – oral traditions on the prophet's words – on the subject of women have been going around since the Middle Ages. The Book of Rules for Women, written by the Baghdad religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, who died in 1200, is one of the most read works of this type to this day. Hannelies Koloska, a young Arabist based in Berlin, recently translated the book into German.
The most interesting question is: Does the medieval scholar confirm our image of Muslim misogyny, or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources?
Even a brief survey of the headings to the 110 short chapters is enough to raise scepticism. Chapter 60, for instance, bears the astonishing title: "On placing women in fear of sin and instructing them that they make up most inmates of hell". In it we find: "It is delivered from Jabir: 'God's envoy spoke to the women: "Give alms, as most of you are the firewood of hell." A woman with dark-dyed hands from among the women stood up and asked him: "Why, envoy of God?" He answered: "Because you multiply evil or are always cursing and ungrateful to your husbands."'"
Hopeless case?
No one would think badly of a reader if he – or especially she – slammed the book shut at this point and declared the image of women in Islam a hopeless case. They would merely be doing exactly what feminist Muslim researchers do with al-Jawzi – condemning him as an archetype of a patriarchal and misogynist thinker.
Continue reading-Qantara: The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings
As well check out these videos via youtube: ابليــــــــس و الحجـــــــــــــــــاب * Satan VS Hijab If you check the right side bar of this youtube video you will find a plethora of Satan related videoes.
Qantara:
The religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi's collection of the prophet's recalled comments on women in Islam, well known in conservative Islamic circles. Does the work confirm our image of Muslim misogyny or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources? By Stefan Weidner
| Bild: Cover 'The Attributes of God' by Ibn al-Jawzi
Bild vergrössern "For most of you are firewood of hell": Ibn al-Jawzi's writings are extremely popular in conservative Islamic circles to this day | Commented collections of hadiths – oral traditions on the prophet's words – on the subject of women have been going around since the Middle Ages. The Book of Rules for Women, written by the Baghdad religious scholar Ibn al-Jawzi, who died in 1200, is one of the most read works of this type to this day. Hannelies Koloska, a young Arabist based in Berlin, recently translated the book into German.
The most interesting question is: Does the medieval scholar confirm our image of Muslim misogyny, or can we derive a different understanding of women from these sources?
Even a brief survey of the headings to the 110 short chapters is enough to raise scepticism. Chapter 60, for instance, bears the astonishing title: "On placing women in fear of sin and instructing them that they make up most inmates of hell". In it we find: "It is delivered from Jabir: 'God's envoy spoke to the women: "Give alms, as most of you are the firewood of hell." A woman with dark-dyed hands from among the women stood up and asked him: "Why, envoy of God?" He answered: "Because you multiply evil or are always cursing and ungrateful to your husbands."'"
Hopeless case?
No one would think badly of a reader if he – or especially she – slammed the book shut at this point and declared the image of women in Islam a hopeless case. They would merely be doing exactly what feminist Muslim researchers do with al-Jawzi – condemning him as an archetype of a patriarchal and misogynist thinker.
Continue reading-Qantara: The Image of Women in Islam Ibn al-Jawzi's Mysoginist Writings
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Robert Fisk’s World: In a remote corner of China lies a tiny patch of Muslim freedom
Some of the Arabic is misspelled. The "F" has sometimes been written as "R", the gravestones occasionally carrying adjectives in the wrong place. But it's Muslim, no doubt about it.
There are enough half-moons on the cracked concrete to tell you that this little corner of a foreign field owes its existence to a prophet in a far distant land – a desert so far away that when I asked a Chinese security guard for the nearest mosque, he directed me to a Sikh temple. Welcome to Hong Kong, People's Republic of China, home to almost a quarter of a million Muslims.
Yes, we know about the Uighurs – though there are precious few in Hong Kong – and this little democratic bit of the great communist nation boasts a hidden cathedral, an ancient pagoda and the skin of the last wild tiger shot on the island – a black ratty bit of fur, all that's left of the handiwork of Indian policeman Rur Singh who shot the 240lb, 73-inch long, 3ft-high beast after it padded up to the Stanley Police Station, under Japanese occupation in 1942.
But somehow the Muslims of Hong Kong remain even more alien to this unique place than the Brit financiers and brokers and the memorials to a lost empire. And when I ask to see the chief imam of Hong Kong – a title to reflect upon – he turns out to be a Pakistani from Multan, busy arranging residence cards for his flock, happy to extol the delights of his temporary multibillion-dollar homeland. "We are free," he announces. "We are independent. We have a good relationship with the police." When non-locals praise local policemen, I always look at them askance. But Mufti Mohamed Arshad – trained at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, frequenter of Lebanon, Syria and Qatar – insists there are several Muslims in the Hong Kong police force, though they have to speak Chinese.
The first Muslims to reach Hong Kong reportedly from Malaya arrived well over a century and a half ago – fishermen and traders who turned up for a few days and decided to stay, men for the most part whose families originally came from Yemen. After the British arrived on the "barren rock" – this was Palmerston's phrase – in 1841, they brought in their Indian regiments, which contained thousands of Muslims. The first mosque was built in 1896 near the Kowloon barracks.
Haj Mohamed has his own military background; he was religious affairs education officer in the Pakistan air force, serving in Islamabad and Quetta before arriving in Hong Kong in 2001. Indeed, Pakistani pilots used to travel to the People's Republic for training. So Mufti Mohamed is a safe pair of hands. No wonder he gets on with the security forces. But there are good relations between all religions – the mufti holds interfaith meetings – and when demonstrations were held on the island to protest at Israel's ferocious bombardment of Gaza almost 12 months ago, Muslims were outnumbered by non-Muslims. A non-Chinese Jewish businessman told me that many Chinese businessmen knew little about the Middle East "except for five minutes on CNN". He was very, very wrong.
About 100,000 of Hong Kong's Muslims have the right to work and hold residence papers; the same number are domestic helpers and there are a few hundred asylum-seekers from Somalia, Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Thirty thousand are Chinese Muslims, refugees from the mainland during British days or born in Hong Kong to refugee parents. There's a Chinese Muslim imam at the Osman Ramju Sadick Islamic Centre, where I find a brace of outrageously polite children learning the Koran, reciting the "sura" while sitting on a high-pile rug, a weirdly Chinese script from the Koran – a mixture of Arabic characters with Chinese squiggles in the middle – on the wall above them.
"Mosque" doesn't really translate into Mandarin or Cantonese and the best version I got was "qing zhen si", or "pure truth temple" – I guess that's why I got misdirected to the Sikh temple in the first place. "Allah" comes out in translation from Chinese as "True God", "Islam" as "Pure Truth". As Imam Sulieman Wang pointed out to me, "When there are no words in Chinese for 'Koran' or 'Hadith', it was difficult for most Chinese to understand what we believed in."
Source: The Independent, Robert Fisk’s World: In a remote corner of China lies a tiny patch of Muslim freedom
There are enough half-moons on the cracked concrete to tell you that this little corner of a foreign field owes its existence to a prophet in a far distant land – a desert so far away that when I asked a Chinese security guard for the nearest mosque, he directed me to a Sikh temple. Welcome to Hong Kong, People's Republic of China, home to almost a quarter of a million Muslims.
Yes, we know about the Uighurs – though there are precious few in Hong Kong – and this little democratic bit of the great communist nation boasts a hidden cathedral, an ancient pagoda and the skin of the last wild tiger shot on the island – a black ratty bit of fur, all that's left of the handiwork of Indian policeman Rur Singh who shot the 240lb, 73-inch long, 3ft-high beast after it padded up to the Stanley Police Station, under Japanese occupation in 1942.
But somehow the Muslims of Hong Kong remain even more alien to this unique place than the Brit financiers and brokers and the memorials to a lost empire. And when I ask to see the chief imam of Hong Kong – a title to reflect upon – he turns out to be a Pakistani from Multan, busy arranging residence cards for his flock, happy to extol the delights of his temporary multibillion-dollar homeland. "We are free," he announces. "We are independent. We have a good relationship with the police." When non-locals praise local policemen, I always look at them askance. But Mufti Mohamed Arshad – trained at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, frequenter of Lebanon, Syria and Qatar – insists there are several Muslims in the Hong Kong police force, though they have to speak Chinese.
The first Muslims to reach Hong Kong reportedly from Malaya arrived well over a century and a half ago – fishermen and traders who turned up for a few days and decided to stay, men for the most part whose families originally came from Yemen. After the British arrived on the "barren rock" – this was Palmerston's phrase – in 1841, they brought in their Indian regiments, which contained thousands of Muslims. The first mosque was built in 1896 near the Kowloon barracks.
Haj Mohamed has his own military background; he was religious affairs education officer in the Pakistan air force, serving in Islamabad and Quetta before arriving in Hong Kong in 2001. Indeed, Pakistani pilots used to travel to the People's Republic for training. So Mufti Mohamed is a safe pair of hands. No wonder he gets on with the security forces. But there are good relations between all religions – the mufti holds interfaith meetings – and when demonstrations were held on the island to protest at Israel's ferocious bombardment of Gaza almost 12 months ago, Muslims were outnumbered by non-Muslims. A non-Chinese Jewish businessman told me that many Chinese businessmen knew little about the Middle East "except for five minutes on CNN". He was very, very wrong.
About 100,000 of Hong Kong's Muslims have the right to work and hold residence papers; the same number are domestic helpers and there are a few hundred asylum-seekers from Somalia, Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Thirty thousand are Chinese Muslims, refugees from the mainland during British days or born in Hong Kong to refugee parents. There's a Chinese Muslim imam at the Osman Ramju Sadick Islamic Centre, where I find a brace of outrageously polite children learning the Koran, reciting the "sura" while sitting on a high-pile rug, a weirdly Chinese script from the Koran – a mixture of Arabic characters with Chinese squiggles in the middle – on the wall above them.
"Mosque" doesn't really translate into Mandarin or Cantonese and the best version I got was "qing zhen si", or "pure truth temple" – I guess that's why I got misdirected to the Sikh temple in the first place. "Allah" comes out in translation from Chinese as "True God", "Islam" as "Pure Truth". As Imam Sulieman Wang pointed out to me, "When there are no words in Chinese for 'Koran' or 'Hadith', it was difficult for most Chinese to understand what we believed in."
Source: The Independent, Robert Fisk’s World: In a remote corner of China lies a tiny patch of Muslim freedom
Monday, 14 September 2009
Two intriguing and interesting articles on Muslim women covering
The politics of the veil
Robert Fulford, National Post
In the 21st century, the Islamic burka, the full-face-and-body veil, adopted by more women every day, has become the most potent human symbol on earth. But what exactly does it symbolize? Many say it stands for piety. No, that's wrong, says Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Piety has little to do with it; the Koran doesn't even mention the veil. In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.
It also establishes the wearer's extreme distance from the rest of us. We recognize people by seeing their faces and we acknowledge their humanity by reading what their faces tell us. Without that information humans cannot come alive to each other. A woman wearing a mask is a woman declining to be human. Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction. Encouraging a woman to wear the burka is like offering her a portable isolation cell.
In Europe the burka stirs public anger. President Nicolas Sarkozy says it's unwelcome in France: "We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity." Sarkozy understands that he speaks for much of the electorate. Could France actually ban the burka from its streets? That would infringe on individual rights but now begins to seem possible.
Lazreg's fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women's beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation. Lazreg remembers her mother discarding it.
The revival of the veil among Algerians in recent years coincides with economic failure, a regional cultural identity movement and the war between Islamists and the Algerian government. Today's Islamists often coerce women to wear the veil. (Surprisingly, Lazreg doesn't mention the physical harm involved: Women who hide every inch of their skin from the sun often suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and develop early osteoporosis, a syndrome noted by doctors in several countries.)
Source: The National Post, The Politics of the Veil
The chador and feminism don't always fit
Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed
Some romanticize Islamic women's dress as liberating; the case of Lubna Hussein is a reminder of the dark side of the veil.
By Meghan Daum
September 10, 2009
On Monday in Sudan, Lubna Hussein, a 34-year-old journalist, was convicted and jailed for wearing pants (long, loose ones) on the streets of Khartoum. Though she was released the next day and, moreover, avoided the 40 lashes with a plastic whip that is considered a standard sentence under Sudanese law for wearing "indecent clothing," her case made international headlines and attracted protesters outside the courthouse, many of whom were women who wore trousers in solidarity (and some of whom were arrested).
Hussein, who was entitled to immunity because she worked for the United Nations, quit her job and used the arrest as an opportunity to spotlight the punishment for dress code violations in Sudan. Having refused to pay the $200 fine, Hussein said she was glad to go to jail and seemed disappointed when she was released after a journalists union paid her fine. "I am not happy," she told Reuters. "I told all my friends and family not to pay the fine. ... [T]here are more than 700 women still in the prison who have got no one to pay for them."
Hussein isn't the only rabble-rousing feminist journalist who has made waves in sartorial politics. In a column that was published a year ago but has grabbed widespread interest on the Internet in recent days, America's own Naomi Wolf had a revelation. Islamic dress protocol, she says, can be empowering and is infused with feminist dimensions that Westerners, in their Islamaphobia, are too quick to deny. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2008, Wolf talked about visiting Muslim countries and meeting with women in their homes and realizing that "Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband."
Noting (with apparent surprise) that in the privacy of their homes Muslim women avail themselves of body lotions, attractive clothing and Victoria's Secret lingerie, Wolf wonders if Western sexual liberation, at least when it comes to how women are expected to look and dress, offers its own kind of tyranny. In fact, when she donned full-body covering and a chador and visited a Moroccan bazaar, she had something of an epiphany. "As I moved about the market -- the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me -- I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity," Wolf wrote. "I felt, yes, in certain ways, free."
Clearly, Wolf, who is nothing if not a master of taking obvious, not- exactly-original ideas and disguising them as radical inquiry (her name-making and "groundbreaking" book, "The Beauty Myth," offered up the ostensibly novel idea that obsession with physical appearance was damaging to women's progress in other areas) must never have dressed up as a ghost (or a nun or a cereal box for that matter) for Halloween. If she had, she could have saved herself the plane fare to Morocco and figured out what I thought most women -- actually, most human beings -- already know: Invisibility (or at least plainness) has its good points. Sure, it can be fun to get attention -- sometimes for showing skin, if that's your thing -- but it also can be tremendously liberating to bow out of the whole "am I hot?" enterprise altogether.
Source: LA Times, The Chador and Feminism don't always fit.
Robert Fulford, National Post
In the 21st century, the Islamic burka, the full-face-and-body veil, adopted by more women every day, has become the most potent human symbol on earth. But what exactly does it symbolize? Many say it stands for piety. No, that's wrong, says Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Piety has little to do with it; the Koran doesn't even mention the veil. In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.
It also establishes the wearer's extreme distance from the rest of us. We recognize people by seeing their faces and we acknowledge their humanity by reading what their faces tell us. Without that information humans cannot come alive to each other. A woman wearing a mask is a woman declining to be human. Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction. Encouraging a woman to wear the burka is like offering her a portable isolation cell.
In Europe the burka stirs public anger. President Nicolas Sarkozy says it's unwelcome in France: "We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity." Sarkozy understands that he speaks for much of the electorate. Could France actually ban the burka from its streets? That would infringe on individual rights but now begins to seem possible.
Lazreg's fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women's beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation. Lazreg remembers her mother discarding it.
The revival of the veil among Algerians in recent years coincides with economic failure, a regional cultural identity movement and the war between Islamists and the Algerian government. Today's Islamists often coerce women to wear the veil. (Surprisingly, Lazreg doesn't mention the physical harm involved: Women who hide every inch of their skin from the sun often suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and develop early osteoporosis, a syndrome noted by doctors in several countries.)
Source: The National Post, The Politics of the Veil
The chador and feminism don't always fit
Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed Sudanese woman sent to jail for wearing pants is freed
Some romanticize Islamic women's dress as liberating; the case of Lubna Hussein is a reminder of the dark side of the veil.
By Meghan Daum
September 10, 2009
On Monday in Sudan, Lubna Hussein, a 34-year-old journalist, was convicted and jailed for wearing pants (long, loose ones) on the streets of Khartoum. Though she was released the next day and, moreover, avoided the 40 lashes with a plastic whip that is considered a standard sentence under Sudanese law for wearing "indecent clothing," her case made international headlines and attracted protesters outside the courthouse, many of whom were women who wore trousers in solidarity (and some of whom were arrested).
Hussein, who was entitled to immunity because she worked for the United Nations, quit her job and used the arrest as an opportunity to spotlight the punishment for dress code violations in Sudan. Having refused to pay the $200 fine, Hussein said she was glad to go to jail and seemed disappointed when she was released after a journalists union paid her fine. "I am not happy," she told Reuters. "I told all my friends and family not to pay the fine. ... [T]here are more than 700 women still in the prison who have got no one to pay for them."
Hussein isn't the only rabble-rousing feminist journalist who has made waves in sartorial politics. In a column that was published a year ago but has grabbed widespread interest on the Internet in recent days, America's own Naomi Wolf had a revelation. Islamic dress protocol, she says, can be empowering and is infused with feminist dimensions that Westerners, in their Islamaphobia, are too quick to deny. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2008, Wolf talked about visiting Muslim countries and meeting with women in their homes and realizing that "Muslim attitudes toward women's appearance and sexuality are not rooted in repression, but in a strong sense of public versus private, of what is due to God and what is due to one's husband."
Noting (with apparent surprise) that in the privacy of their homes Muslim women avail themselves of body lotions, attractive clothing and Victoria's Secret lingerie, Wolf wonders if Western sexual liberation, at least when it comes to how women are expected to look and dress, offers its own kind of tyranny. In fact, when she donned full-body covering and a chador and visited a Moroccan bazaar, she had something of an epiphany. "As I moved about the market -- the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me -- I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity," Wolf wrote. "I felt, yes, in certain ways, free."
Clearly, Wolf, who is nothing if not a master of taking obvious, not- exactly-original ideas and disguising them as radical inquiry (her name-making and "groundbreaking" book, "The Beauty Myth," offered up the ostensibly novel idea that obsession with physical appearance was damaging to women's progress in other areas) must never have dressed up as a ghost (or a nun or a cereal box for that matter) for Halloween. If she had, she could have saved herself the plane fare to Morocco and figured out what I thought most women -- actually, most human beings -- already know: Invisibility (or at least plainness) has its good points. Sure, it can be fun to get attention -- sometimes for showing skin, if that's your thing -- but it also can be tremendously liberating to bow out of the whole "am I hot?" enterprise altogether.
Source: LA Times, The Chador and Feminism don't always fit.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
The A to Z of Islam
Scholars in Istanbul have been toiling for more than two decades to compile the definitive encyclopaedia of Islam. The 40-volume set will contain 17,000 subject headings based on three to four million documents. Hamida Ghafour reports.
It seems old-fashioned, almost an anachronism in an era of news-driven publishing and carefully orchestrated controversies timed to coincide with glossy book launches.
But for the past 21 years, a small centre in Istanbul has been slowly but methodically publishing one volume after another of the Encyclopaedia of Islam which, when completed in the next five years, is expected to become the definitive source to turn to for all matters of the faith.
Indeed, it is the first time in history that Muslim scholars have embarked upon such a project: a 40-volume set covering all aspects of the religion such as history, philosophy, geography, culture, civilisation, literature, languages of Muslim-majority countries and, of course, theology.
“Today there are conflicting interpretations about Islam,” says professor Recep Senturk, an editor of the encyclopaedia at the Centre for Islamic Studies, a purpose-built block with an open courtyard in the Turkish metropolis. Here, away from the noise and hub of the city, on the Asian side of the Bosphorous, Turkish and western scholars are putting the finishing touches to volume 36.
“We need to provide authentic and reliable knowledge about Islam,” he continues. “This is a service to Muslim countries and the world. There are conflicting claims about what Islam says and so this is the answer.”
Since 1983, when the project was launched by the Turkish Religious Foundation, a semi-governmental organisation which is providing the funding, the Islamic world has seen many moments of turmoil: the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, two wars in the Gulf, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Lebanese civil war and the September 11 attacks on the United States, which led to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.
Following these events, publishers have rushed books out to capitalise on the piqued interest about the catastrophes. For example, since the September 11 attacks in 2001, 4,470 books have been published concerning Islam in the English-speaking world and are available on Amazon.com.
Yet there is an unhurried air about the guardians of the Turkish encyclopaedia. It is as if a subject as ancient and timeless as Islam need not be in any hurry to answer to the whims of the 24-hour news cycle.
It took four years to collect documents, literature, books and other materials and list all the subject titles before the first volume was even published in 1988. Since then more than 2,000 scholars from around the world, each a specialist in his or her area, have contributed articles which are vetted by a board of academics and sent back to the writers for amendments and corrections. They are translated into Turkish before they are published.
There are 17,000 subject headings – from Allah to Zaydism – and, in total, three to four million documents will be used, says Nuri Tinaz, research fellow in social sciences at the centre, rifling through a sheaf of papers about the spread of Islam in Afghanistan in the 8th century that is tucked away in one of the countless rows of filing cabinets in a room of the library.
“It is a long process,” he says. “But this is almost the last phase.”
Source: The National, continue reading 'The A to Z of Islam'
It seems old-fashioned, almost an anachronism in an era of news-driven publishing and carefully orchestrated controversies timed to coincide with glossy book launches.
But for the past 21 years, a small centre in Istanbul has been slowly but methodically publishing one volume after another of the Encyclopaedia of Islam which, when completed in the next five years, is expected to become the definitive source to turn to for all matters of the faith.
Indeed, it is the first time in history that Muslim scholars have embarked upon such a project: a 40-volume set covering all aspects of the religion such as history, philosophy, geography, culture, civilisation, literature, languages of Muslim-majority countries and, of course, theology.
“Today there are conflicting interpretations about Islam,” says professor Recep Senturk, an editor of the encyclopaedia at the Centre for Islamic Studies, a purpose-built block with an open courtyard in the Turkish metropolis. Here, away from the noise and hub of the city, on the Asian side of the Bosphorous, Turkish and western scholars are putting the finishing touches to volume 36.
“We need to provide authentic and reliable knowledge about Islam,” he continues. “This is a service to Muslim countries and the world. There are conflicting claims about what Islam says and so this is the answer.”
Since 1983, when the project was launched by the Turkish Religious Foundation, a semi-governmental organisation which is providing the funding, the Islamic world has seen many moments of turmoil: the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, two wars in the Gulf, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Lebanese civil war and the September 11 attacks on the United States, which led to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions.
Following these events, publishers have rushed books out to capitalise on the piqued interest about the catastrophes. For example, since the September 11 attacks in 2001, 4,470 books have been published concerning Islam in the English-speaking world and are available on Amazon.com.
Yet there is an unhurried air about the guardians of the Turkish encyclopaedia. It is as if a subject as ancient and timeless as Islam need not be in any hurry to answer to the whims of the 24-hour news cycle.
It took four years to collect documents, literature, books and other materials and list all the subject titles before the first volume was even published in 1988. Since then more than 2,000 scholars from around the world, each a specialist in his or her area, have contributed articles which are vetted by a board of academics and sent back to the writers for amendments and corrections. They are translated into Turkish before they are published.
There are 17,000 subject headings – from Allah to Zaydism – and, in total, three to four million documents will be used, says Nuri Tinaz, research fellow in social sciences at the centre, rifling through a sheaf of papers about the spread of Islam in Afghanistan in the 8th century that is tucked away in one of the countless rows of filing cabinets in a room of the library.
“It is a long process,” he says. “But this is almost the last phase.”
Source: The National, continue reading 'The A to Z of Islam'
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
The first Islamic search engine?
I just read a short piece on the Jerusalem Post's Web site about I'm Halal, apparently the world's first Muslim-friendly search engine. I can't decide whether to be alarmed by this news.
I'm Halal uses a three-tiered ranking system to filter out offending haram Web sites, according to the article. If a site is "level one haram" or "level two haram," a user can still click through. Level three sites simply don't show up on the browser.
I tested out I'm Halal with a search for "playboy" (click on the picture to see.) Perhaps I had the engine on the "Saudi sheikh on vacation" setting, because I'm Halal returned some results that appeared haram to my untrained eye.
I'm Halal
I'm Halal was developed by the Amsterdam-based AZS Media Group, led by CEO Reza Sardeha. Sardeha says he came up with the idea after he and his friends kept "bumping into explicit content" on search engines like Yahoo and Google. I'm a believer in the free market and the value of choice, so I don't say I think the option of a halal search engine is inherently bad, but I worry whether I'm Halal might ever begin to screen out foreign Web sites for reasons more political than religious, thus depriving Muslims of diverse points of view. I'd like to know more about the technology behind I'm Halal's search engine - I'll post again after I have a chance to e-mail with Sardeha.
Source: The Majlis, The first Islamic search engine?
More, from the National: Searching the internet the halal way
Sharmila Devi
Reza Sardeha, the man behind ImHalal.com, says “his search engine was not intended to be a political censor”. Maaike Hermes for The National
Most people know that the internet, which is populated not only by websites that offer information, inspiration and wonder, but also thousands that serve up hefty doses of bawdy content, can be a minefield.
This can be especially tricky for Muslims, for whom such sites are haram, or forbidden. With this in mind, an Iranian-Kuwaiti student living in the Netherlands has launched a search engine aimed specifically at ensuring that Muslims do not stumble across such sites.
Unlike Google or other search engines, ImHalal.com will fetch only web pages considered halal, or permitted under Islamic law.
Websites not shown directly are given a “haram” ranking, going up to three stars for the most offensive. “First of all, we have blocked all sexually explicit content,” said its creator, Reza Sardeha. “We are also in talks with imams to determine what might be considered haram and therefore be blocked.”
He stressed that his search engine was not intended to be a political censor, with only extremist websites, such as those of far-right or Nazi groups being blocked.
“Our goal is to create a safe environment for Muslims to search the worldwide web, but we have absolutely no intention of being a dictatorial search engine,” he said.
“So people can freely get informed about other religions if they want.”
I'm Halal uses a three-tiered ranking system to filter out offending haram Web sites, according to the article. If a site is "level one haram" or "level two haram," a user can still click through. Level three sites simply don't show up on the browser.
I tested out I'm Halal with a search for "playboy" (click on the picture to see.) Perhaps I had the engine on the "Saudi sheikh on vacation" setting, because I'm Halal returned some results that appeared haram to my untrained eye.
I'm Halal
I'm Halal was developed by the Amsterdam-based AZS Media Group, led by CEO Reza Sardeha. Sardeha says he came up with the idea after he and his friends kept "bumping into explicit content" on search engines like Yahoo and Google. I'm a believer in the free market and the value of choice, so I don't say I think the option of a halal search engine is inherently bad, but I worry whether I'm Halal might ever begin to screen out foreign Web sites for reasons more political than religious, thus depriving Muslims of diverse points of view. I'd like to know more about the technology behind I'm Halal's search engine - I'll post again after I have a chance to e-mail with Sardeha.
Source: The Majlis, The first Islamic search engine?
More, from the National: Searching the internet the halal way
Sharmila Devi
Reza Sardeha, the man behind ImHalal.com, says “his search engine was not intended to be a political censor”. Maaike Hermes for The National
Most people know that the internet, which is populated not only by websites that offer information, inspiration and wonder, but also thousands that serve up hefty doses of bawdy content, can be a minefield.
This can be especially tricky for Muslims, for whom such sites are haram, or forbidden. With this in mind, an Iranian-Kuwaiti student living in the Netherlands has launched a search engine aimed specifically at ensuring that Muslims do not stumble across such sites.
Unlike Google or other search engines, ImHalal.com will fetch only web pages considered halal, or permitted under Islamic law.
Websites not shown directly are given a “haram” ranking, going up to three stars for the most offensive. “First of all, we have blocked all sexually explicit content,” said its creator, Reza Sardeha. “We are also in talks with imams to determine what might be considered haram and therefore be blocked.”
He stressed that his search engine was not intended to be a political censor, with only extremist websites, such as those of far-right or Nazi groups being blocked.
“Our goal is to create a safe environment for Muslims to search the worldwide web, but we have absolutely no intention of being a dictatorial search engine,” he said.
“So people can freely get informed about other religions if they want.”
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands
Judy Bachrach
Every time I despair of the way women are treated in Muslim countries—and the few syllables Western leaders and op-ed columnists expend on their humiliations, mutilations, harassments, and, yes, murders—I turn to the Web site of Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy spent her formative years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia:
A couple of years after I stopped visiting, a horrific fire broke out in a school in Mecca, home to the Muslim world’s holiest site. Fifteen girls burned to death because morality police standing outside the school wouldn’t let them out of the burning building. Why? Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and abayas, the black cloaks that girls and women must wear in public in Saudi Arabia.
And here is Eltahawy on a girl’s lot in Egypt:
When I was only four years old and still living in Cairo, a man exposed himself to me as I stood on a balcony at my family’s, and gestured for me to come down. At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the hajj pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my body was covered except for my face and hands. I’d never been groped before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my family what had happened.
To anyone who, like me, has lived in a Muslim nation, none of this behavior is either singular or surprising. It is the way men in most Islamic nations prefer things to be. We can talk forever about the nature of culture versus faith: how ancient rites and practices like the circumcision of girls (85 percent of all Egyptian girls have endured this procedure), or the tradition of keeping women ignorant and housebound, can corrupt a religion that never intended for these things to happen.
But it is no coincidence that women who must submit to Sharia law find themselves in a very bad place, wherever those women and those places happen to be. This includes France, where only last year a court in Lille upheld the right of a Muslim man to hold fast to his faith and annul his marriage when he discovered his bride was not a virgin. And it includes Germany, where in Berlin in 2005 there were eight murders of young women of Turkish origin, executed by members of their own families. And Australia, where, after a group of unveiled Muslim women were raped, the succinct Mufti Taj al-Din al-Hilali explained away the crime as an attack on “uncovered meat.” And it includes the United Kingdom, where Scotland Yard has probed 109 suspicious deaths of women, also likely slaughtered by relatives. Islam is an easy rider: it travels everywhere and often brings with it a lot of baggage.
Bet let’s start with Islam as it affects women in their home countries. Last year, in a poll of 2,000 Egyptian men, 62 percent admitted harassing women: an activity most of those interviewed insisted was not really their fault as their advances, however intemperate and offensive to their victims, had after all been provoked by the women themselves.
Nor is this sort of harassment confined to Islamic women in Islamic nations. Western women who find themselves in the Middle East come in for their own fair share of daily insults, owing to their double deficit as women and foreigners. Every step outside the home or hotel is an invitation to a carefully directed barrage of verbal assaults, their components familiar and unvarying: vulgar and offensive remarks, leers and snickers, the occasional shove, all accompanied by grins of triumph. When I lived in Egypt, everyone in Cairo avidly watched the television series Dallas, and as a result became expert on the sexual habits of American women. And not simply expert, but unrepentantly predatory. After all, these were women whose husbands and brothers would not reflexively massacre those who insulted them.
Thus it was that my Egyptian experience marked the only time in my life when the acquisition of the rudiments of a foreign language, far from making life more comfortable, actually ignited rage. The more Arabic we learned, the more xenophobic and sexually explicit trash talk we understood. There was a lot of it around (except, significantly, when we were escorted by our husbands).
Source: World Affairs Journal, 'Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands'
Every time I despair of the way women are treated in Muslim countries—and the few syllables Western leaders and op-ed columnists expend on their humiliations, mutilations, harassments, and, yes, murders—I turn to the Web site of Mona Eltahawy. Eltahawy spent her formative years in Egypt and Saudi Arabia:
A couple of years after I stopped visiting, a horrific fire broke out in a school in Mecca, home to the Muslim world’s holiest site. Fifteen girls burned to death because morality police standing outside the school wouldn’t let them out of the burning building. Why? Because they weren’t wearing headscarves and abayas, the black cloaks that girls and women must wear in public in Saudi Arabia.
And here is Eltahawy on a girl’s lot in Egypt:
When I was only four years old and still living in Cairo, a man exposed himself to me as I stood on a balcony at my family’s, and gestured for me to come down. At 15, I was groped as I was performing the rites of the hajj pilgrimage at Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims. Every part of my body was covered except for my face and hands. I’d never been groped before and burst into tears, but I was too ashamed to explain to my family what had happened.
To anyone who, like me, has lived in a Muslim nation, none of this behavior is either singular or surprising. It is the way men in most Islamic nations prefer things to be. We can talk forever about the nature of culture versus faith: how ancient rites and practices like the circumcision of girls (85 percent of all Egyptian girls have endured this procedure), or the tradition of keeping women ignorant and housebound, can corrupt a religion that never intended for these things to happen.
But it is no coincidence that women who must submit to Sharia law find themselves in a very bad place, wherever those women and those places happen to be. This includes France, where only last year a court in Lille upheld the right of a Muslim man to hold fast to his faith and annul his marriage when he discovered his bride was not a virgin. And it includes Germany, where in Berlin in 2005 there were eight murders of young women of Turkish origin, executed by members of their own families. And Australia, where, after a group of unveiled Muslim women were raped, the succinct Mufti Taj al-Din al-Hilali explained away the crime as an attack on “uncovered meat.” And it includes the United Kingdom, where Scotland Yard has probed 109 suspicious deaths of women, also likely slaughtered by relatives. Islam is an easy rider: it travels everywhere and often brings with it a lot of baggage.
Bet let’s start with Islam as it affects women in their home countries. Last year, in a poll of 2,000 Egyptian men, 62 percent admitted harassing women: an activity most of those interviewed insisted was not really their fault as their advances, however intemperate and offensive to their victims, had after all been provoked by the women themselves.
Nor is this sort of harassment confined to Islamic women in Islamic nations. Western women who find themselves in the Middle East come in for their own fair share of daily insults, owing to their double deficit as women and foreigners. Every step outside the home or hotel is an invitation to a carefully directed barrage of verbal assaults, their components familiar and unvarying: vulgar and offensive remarks, leers and snickers, the occasional shove, all accompanied by grins of triumph. When I lived in Egypt, everyone in Cairo avidly watched the television series Dallas, and as a result became expert on the sexual habits of American women. And not simply expert, but unrepentantly predatory. After all, these were women whose husbands and brothers would not reflexively massacre those who insulted them.
Thus it was that my Egyptian experience marked the only time in my life when the acquisition of the rudiments of a foreign language, far from making life more comfortable, actually ignited rage. The more Arabic we learned, the more xenophobic and sexually explicit trash talk we understood. There was a lot of it around (except, significantly, when we were escorted by our husbands).
Source: World Affairs Journal, 'Twice Branded: Western Women in Muslim Lands'
‘The veil should not be a barrier between women’
The writer and campaigner Rabina Khan talks to Charlotte Kemp about her drive to dispel the myths and stereotypes about the hijab, and how her latest project, which documents the views of Muslim and non-Muslim women on the subject, is helping to promote a new understanding.
With her beautiful face framed by a dusky pink headscarf, Rabina Khan arrives at our rendezvous in east London a slight and seemingly shy figure who looks no more than 20 years old. But as if to prove her mission to challenge people’s perceptions of each other, all is not quite as it seems. For in fact, not only is Khan 37, and married with two daughters, aged 15 and nine, she is far from shy, exuding a calm confidence which pervades her work as a novelist, editor, campaigner and general champion for Muslim women’s rights both in Britain and around the world.
There are more surprises. Though she now thrives in the ethnic diversity of London’s East End, she was born in Bangladesh but grew up in the predominantly white town of Rochester, Kent, in the south-east of England, less than 10 miles from my own childhood home.
“I made the decision to wear the hijab when I moved to London in my early 20s,” she tells me. “I felt the time was right. It was part of my faith – a gift. It enhances me but it doesn’t change who I am, and that is the point. The only identity we should bear is our human identity.”
Hence Khan’s latest projects, an anthology of thought-provoking essays, poems and short stories written by Muslim and non-Muslim women which tackle the contentious issues now surrounding the wearing of the veil.
Entitled Behind The Hijab, the book attempts to unravel the complex politics of the headscarf post-September 11, as well as broaching some uncomfortable questions. Is the veil a symbol of liberation or suppression? Does it free women from sexual harassment and objectification or denigrate them to second-class citizens?
Source: The National, 'The veil should not be a barrier between women.'
With her beautiful face framed by a dusky pink headscarf, Rabina Khan arrives at our rendezvous in east London a slight and seemingly shy figure who looks no more than 20 years old. But as if to prove her mission to challenge people’s perceptions of each other, all is not quite as it seems. For in fact, not only is Khan 37, and married with two daughters, aged 15 and nine, she is far from shy, exuding a calm confidence which pervades her work as a novelist, editor, campaigner and general champion for Muslim women’s rights both in Britain and around the world.
There are more surprises. Though she now thrives in the ethnic diversity of London’s East End, she was born in Bangladesh but grew up in the predominantly white town of Rochester, Kent, in the south-east of England, less than 10 miles from my own childhood home.
“I made the decision to wear the hijab when I moved to London in my early 20s,” she tells me. “I felt the time was right. It was part of my faith – a gift. It enhances me but it doesn’t change who I am, and that is the point. The only identity we should bear is our human identity.”
Hence Khan’s latest projects, an anthology of thought-provoking essays, poems and short stories written by Muslim and non-Muslim women which tackle the contentious issues now surrounding the wearing of the veil.
Entitled Behind The Hijab, the book attempts to unravel the complex politics of the headscarf post-September 11, as well as broaching some uncomfortable questions. Is the veil a symbol of liberation or suppression? Does it free women from sexual harassment and objectification or denigrate them to second-class citizens?
Source: The National, 'The veil should not be a barrier between women.'
Monday, 24 August 2009
Author of 'Cartoons That Shook the World' Grudgingly Agreed With Yale Press Decision
Jytte Klausen, the Brandeis political scientist whose book about the violence that followed a Danish newspaper's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad will be published this fall -- minus the cartoons -- by Yale University Press, told The Boston Globe that she understood Yale's decision to cut the illustrations. The book, The Cartoons That Shook the World, will be published in November with an author's note from Ms. Klausen, who told the Globe, "If I was an administrator at the university, I would have pulled the cartoons." The press feared inciting more violence; the removal of the cartoons was condemned by the American Association of University Professors.
Source: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Author-of-Cartoons-That-Shook/7775/
Source: http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Author-of-Cartoons-That-Shook/7775/
Sunday, 23 August 2009
Holy month is not all fasting for Egyptians
CAIRO // Cairo’s streets, bridges, newspapers and television channels are overflowing with advertisements for soap operas, talks shows and, to a lesser degree, religious programmes that will air during Ramadan. Anticipation for the Ramadan-only series has become such a common feature of popular culture here that it is difficult to imagine what the holy month was like before the advent of satellite television.
More than 500 Arabic satellite channels and scores of local channels are competing for the surge in viewers, and advertising dollars, with new programmes ranging from soap operas to social, historical and religious fare.
Advertisements for new shows in the run-up to Ramadan have replaced the ads for oil and other food products that traditionally dominate broadcasts before and during the month.
Many conservative Egyptians point to the irony of an increase in the promotion of entertainment and consumption during a time that is meant to be dedicated to prayer, introspection, fasting and the poor.
“For many, Ramadan doesn’t mean more than abstaining from eating, drinking and sexual desires during the day, which is accompanied by short tempers and traffic violations, then excessive food and staying late at night at Ramadan tents, which contradicts the month of rituals,” wrote Moustafa el-Bassiyouni in the ruling party weekly al-Watany al-Youm on Tuesday.
“I won’t let despair prevent me from saying that the month of benevolence is not a month of TV series and violations, excessive spending and attrition,” he added.
“OK, Ramadan is at the door, and Egypt will be filled with the appearance of religiosity, which doesn’t mean at all that we’re religious people,” said Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the opposition daily al-Destour.
Yaser Ayoub, an Egyptian writer and TV presenter who has been writing a series about Egyptians’ ethics, disagrees.
He argued in the independent weekly al-Osbou on Tuesday that Egyptians are religious despite some saying otherwise.
A cartoon in the state owned Rose el-Youssef daily on Wednesday showed a family looking very serious and distressed, gathering around what looks like a war map, with one of the sons telling someone on the telephone: “I’m busy right now, we’re planning our Ramadan TV watching plan.”
Foreign satellite channels are also competing for Egyptian viewers.
Continue reading: The National
More than 500 Arabic satellite channels and scores of local channels are competing for the surge in viewers, and advertising dollars, with new programmes ranging from soap operas to social, historical and religious fare.
Advertisements for new shows in the run-up to Ramadan have replaced the ads for oil and other food products that traditionally dominate broadcasts before and during the month.
Many conservative Egyptians point to the irony of an increase in the promotion of entertainment and consumption during a time that is meant to be dedicated to prayer, introspection, fasting and the poor.
“For many, Ramadan doesn’t mean more than abstaining from eating, drinking and sexual desires during the day, which is accompanied by short tempers and traffic violations, then excessive food and staying late at night at Ramadan tents, which contradicts the month of rituals,” wrote Moustafa el-Bassiyouni in the ruling party weekly al-Watany al-Youm on Tuesday.
“I won’t let despair prevent me from saying that the month of benevolence is not a month of TV series and violations, excessive spending and attrition,” he added.
“OK, Ramadan is at the door, and Egypt will be filled with the appearance of religiosity, which doesn’t mean at all that we’re religious people,” said Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the opposition daily al-Destour.
Yaser Ayoub, an Egyptian writer and TV presenter who has been writing a series about Egyptians’ ethics, disagrees.
He argued in the independent weekly al-Osbou on Tuesday that Egyptians are religious despite some saying otherwise.
A cartoon in the state owned Rose el-Youssef daily on Wednesday showed a family looking very serious and distressed, gathering around what looks like a war map, with one of the sons telling someone on the telephone: “I’m busy right now, we’re planning our Ramadan TV watching plan.”
Foreign satellite channels are also competing for Egyptian viewers.
Continue reading: The National
Friday, 21 August 2009
In Ramadan, the best dates in Egypt are 'Obama'
By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI (AP) – 7 hours ago
CAIRO — For the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Egyptian fruit sellers have named their best dates of the year after President Barack Obama in a sweet tribute to the American leader for his outreach to the Muslim world.
Dates are a traditional food for Ramadan — which begins Saturday in most of the Islamic world — since the Prophet Muhammad is said to have used them to break the month's sunrise-to-sunset fast each evening.
In Egypt, shops have created a new tradition of naming their best and worst dates to catch attention and boost sales — giving a little reflection of the political mood.
Obama's vault to the top of the Egyptian date-scale comes after he delivered a landmark address in Cairo in June, saying he wants to improve American ties with Muslims around the world. Those ties were deeply strained under his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was widely resented in the Arab world — and whose name was given to the worst quality dates in Egypt in past Ramadans.
"We love Obama and so we named our best dates for him," said Atif Hashim at his busy shop in downtown Cairo.
Huge barrels in his shop were piled with "Obama" dates, selling for just under $2.50 a pound ($5 a kilogram). For an additional dollar, there is an even better date, labeled on a sign as "Super Obama."
Continue reading Associate Press: By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI (AP) – 7 hours ago
CAIRO — For the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Egyptian fruit sellers have named their best dates of the year after President Barack Obama in a sweet tribute to the American leader for his outreach to the Muslim world.
Dates are a traditional food for Ramadan — which begins Saturday in most of the Islamic world — since the Prophet Muhammad is said to have used them to break the month's sunrise-to-sunset fast each evening.
In Egypt, shops have created a new tradition of naming their best and worst dates to catch attention and boost sales — giving a little reflection of the political mood.
Obama's vault to the top of the Egyptian date-scale comes after he delivered a landmark address in Cairo in June, saying he wants to improve American ties with Muslims around the world. Those ties were deeply strained under his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was widely resented in the Arab world — and whose name was given to the worst quality dates in Egypt in past Ramadans.
"We love Obama and so we named our best dates for him," said Atif Hashim at his busy shop in downtown Cairo.
Huge barrels in his shop were piled with "Obama" dates, selling for just under $2.50 a pound ($5 a kilogram). For an additional dollar, there is an even better date, labeled on a sign as "Super Obama."
"We put a sweet date in Mr. Obama's mouth and a message in his ear," Hashim said. "Please help to bring peace to the world. We have a lot of hope in you."
Hashim named his poorer dates after Israeli Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman, a hard-liner who is particularly disliked in Egypt for once saying its president, Hosni Mubarak, can "go to hell."
Other low-quality dates were named after Lieberman's predecessor, Tzipi Livni, and after Bush. They all go for about 17 cents a pound (36 cents a kilogram).
In 2006, many sellers in Egypt named their best dates after the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, whose popularity soared among Arabs because his militants battled Israel in a devastating war that summer.
During the lunar month of Ramadan, observant Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex from sunrise to sunset. It is believed that God began revealing the Quran to Muhammad during Ramadan, and the faithful are supposed to spend the month in religious reflection, prayer and remembrance of the poor.
It's also a time of celebrations, late nights out with friends and family and elaborate meals for "iftar," the sunset dinner that breaks the fast.
This year, Ramadan starts in August for the first time in 33 years — meaning a long, hot day for those fasting. In a bid to bring up the time for iftar, Egypt went off daylight savings time on Friday.
The fast begins Saturday for most of the Mideast and Asia, although Libya, Turkey, and some Lebanese Shiites began fasting Friday. The month begins when each Muslim country's Islamic authorities sight the crescent moon that marks the beginning of the lunar month — sometimes using only the naked eye, leading to some discrepancies in the timing.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinians decorated their houses with lights in the shape of crescents and stars and shops began preparing special pastries and traditional Ramadan drinks like kharoub, made of carobs. The Israeli military said it would keep checkpoints open longer hours to allow more people to cross.
In Hamas-controlled Gaza City, officials hung signs reading "Welcome Ramadan" and provided mosques with large carpets to accommodate the increased number of worshippers.
Associate Press: In Ramadan, the best dates in Egypt are 'Obama'
Shops sold little electric lamps, a traditional children's toy during Ramadan — made in China and brought through smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border to circumvent the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt after Hamas seized power two years ago.
In Turkey, the mosques were jam-packed and municipalities set up soup kitchens to serve iftar to the poor. Holiday-makers began deserting beach resorts to return home. Newspapers carried recommendations from dietitians and Mehmet Emin Ozafsar, the deputy head of Turkey's department for religious affairs, urged people observing the fast not to use it as an excuse for "aggressive behavior" or abstinence from work.
"Fasting is patience and tolerance," Ozafsar said.
CAIRO — For the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Egyptian fruit sellers have named their best dates of the year after President Barack Obama in a sweet tribute to the American leader for his outreach to the Muslim world.
Dates are a traditional food for Ramadan — which begins Saturday in most of the Islamic world — since the Prophet Muhammad is said to have used them to break the month's sunrise-to-sunset fast each evening.
In Egypt, shops have created a new tradition of naming their best and worst dates to catch attention and boost sales — giving a little reflection of the political mood.
Obama's vault to the top of the Egyptian date-scale comes after he delivered a landmark address in Cairo in June, saying he wants to improve American ties with Muslims around the world. Those ties were deeply strained under his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was widely resented in the Arab world — and whose name was given to the worst quality dates in Egypt in past Ramadans.
"We love Obama and so we named our best dates for him," said Atif Hashim at his busy shop in downtown Cairo.
Huge barrels in his shop were piled with "Obama" dates, selling for just under $2.50 a pound ($5 a kilogram). For an additional dollar, there is an even better date, labeled on a sign as "Super Obama."
Continue reading Associate Press: By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI (AP) – 7 hours ago
CAIRO — For the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Egyptian fruit sellers have named their best dates of the year after President Barack Obama in a sweet tribute to the American leader for his outreach to the Muslim world.
Dates are a traditional food for Ramadan — which begins Saturday in most of the Islamic world — since the Prophet Muhammad is said to have used them to break the month's sunrise-to-sunset fast each evening.
In Egypt, shops have created a new tradition of naming their best and worst dates to catch attention and boost sales — giving a little reflection of the political mood.
Obama's vault to the top of the Egyptian date-scale comes after he delivered a landmark address in Cairo in June, saying he wants to improve American ties with Muslims around the world. Those ties were deeply strained under his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was widely resented in the Arab world — and whose name was given to the worst quality dates in Egypt in past Ramadans.
"We love Obama and so we named our best dates for him," said Atif Hashim at his busy shop in downtown Cairo.
Huge barrels in his shop were piled with "Obama" dates, selling for just under $2.50 a pound ($5 a kilogram). For an additional dollar, there is an even better date, labeled on a sign as "Super Obama."
"We put a sweet date in Mr. Obama's mouth and a message in his ear," Hashim said. "Please help to bring peace to the world. We have a lot of hope in you."
Hashim named his poorer dates after Israeli Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman, a hard-liner who is particularly disliked in Egypt for once saying its president, Hosni Mubarak, can "go to hell."
Other low-quality dates were named after Lieberman's predecessor, Tzipi Livni, and after Bush. They all go for about 17 cents a pound (36 cents a kilogram).
In 2006, many sellers in Egypt named their best dates after the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, whose popularity soared among Arabs because his militants battled Israel in a devastating war that summer.
During the lunar month of Ramadan, observant Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex from sunrise to sunset. It is believed that God began revealing the Quran to Muhammad during Ramadan, and the faithful are supposed to spend the month in religious reflection, prayer and remembrance of the poor.
It's also a time of celebrations, late nights out with friends and family and elaborate meals for "iftar," the sunset dinner that breaks the fast.
This year, Ramadan starts in August for the first time in 33 years — meaning a long, hot day for those fasting. In a bid to bring up the time for iftar, Egypt went off daylight savings time on Friday.
The fast begins Saturday for most of the Mideast and Asia, although Libya, Turkey, and some Lebanese Shiites began fasting Friday. The month begins when each Muslim country's Islamic authorities sight the crescent moon that marks the beginning of the lunar month — sometimes using only the naked eye, leading to some discrepancies in the timing.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Palestinians decorated their houses with lights in the shape of crescents and stars and shops began preparing special pastries and traditional Ramadan drinks like kharoub, made of carobs. The Israeli military said it would keep checkpoints open longer hours to allow more people to cross.
In Hamas-controlled Gaza City, officials hung signs reading "Welcome Ramadan" and provided mosques with large carpets to accommodate the increased number of worshippers.
Associate Press: In Ramadan, the best dates in Egypt are 'Obama'
Shops sold little electric lamps, a traditional children's toy during Ramadan — made in China and brought through smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border to circumvent the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel and Egypt after Hamas seized power two years ago.
In Turkey, the mosques were jam-packed and municipalities set up soup kitchens to serve iftar to the poor. Holiday-makers began deserting beach resorts to return home. Newspapers carried recommendations from dietitians and Mehmet Emin Ozafsar, the deputy head of Turkey's department for religious affairs, urged people observing the fast not to use it as an excuse for "aggressive behavior" or abstinence from work.
"Fasting is patience and tolerance," Ozafsar said.
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