The following is the transcript of a circle given on this subject in 2003 so some of the examples are from that time, however the subject is still relavent today.
Allah (swt) says: "They wish to extinguish Allah's Light with their mouths, but Allah will not allow but that His Light is perfected even though the kuffar may detest it." [TMQ 9:32]
¨ Allah Azza wa Jal in this ayah of Quran explains to us how the Kuffar use their mouths in order to blow out the light of Allah.
¨ This attempt to extinguish the light of Allah by their mouths is obvious when we look at the Western media and their propaganda war against Islam.
¨ In the last few weeks 2 incidents took place that sent the media into a frenzy – this week on May 12th simultaneous bombs went off in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the second the incident of 2 Muslims supposedly having been involved in a bombing in Tel Aviv in Israel. This incident was particularly focussed upon by the British media due to the apparent link to British citizens.
¨ We saw headlines like, “Islamic violence: Britons accused”, “British connection to radical Islam” and “MI5 knew of bombers’ ties to Islam” amongst others.
¨ The hatred of Islam could be seen
¨ The Times editorial proclaimed that the bombers, were “British converts to terror” and “young, disaffected Muslim Britons”, had discarded Western clothes and worn robes, grew beards and visited mosques and had adopted the “corrupting message of Jihad”.
¨ One editorial complained that “Sadly, a considerable number of young Britons have two identities: they are Muslim first, British second”.
¨ Referring to the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, the Editorial of the Independent Newspaper said on May 14, “Why are more and more Saudi young men being fed with radical ideas? Who are the people brainwashing them? How are they being radicalised?"
¨ The editorial of New York Post on the same day, May 14 said: “There is no appeasing the ultimate Islamist aim of overthrowing the ... kingdom and restoring the caliphate. This is a war to the death between gerontocracy and theocracy."
¨ This media attack upon Islam and Muslims is not something new. This is not the first time that the Western media has spewed out such anti-Islamic propaganda and neither is it the first time that Islam and Muslims have been in the dock.
¨ We should all remember the malicious attacks on Islam at the time of the Salman Rushdie affair, the Oklahoma bombing and more recently following the events of September 11th.
¨ Steve Dunleavy said in the New York Post journal after the incident of September the 11th: "train assassins, make contract with mercenaries and earmark millions of dollars to hunt the heads and bring them dead or alive, preferably dead. In relation to the cities who host these worms, bomb them with bombs in basketball playgrounds."
¨ This is the type of hatred generated in the Western media
¨ The Western media, alongside Western politicians and governments, has been instrumental in ensuring that the image of Muslims in the Western mind has become connected with terrorism and killing to the extent that every single Muslim has become an object of doubt and suspicion.
¨ The obvious question that comes to mind is – Why? Why do the Western media portray Islam in such a negative manner, what is their motivation?
¨ This is primarily due to 2 reasons:
1. Islam is an ideology that conflicts their own ideology of Capitalism
2. The utilisation of the media by the government
¨ Firstly - Islam radically opposes their thinking and values. They believe in freedom – Islam believes in slavery to Allah. They believe in gaining as much pleasure and material interests that they can – Islam believes in gaining as much reward as we can and the pleasure of Allah (swt).
¨ The Kuffar have a deep hatred for Islam
"O you who believe, take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks; they only desire for you to suffer; rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths, what their hearts conceal is far worse" [TMQ 3:118]
¨ They fear the power of Islam – just as Abu Jahl, Abu Lahab and Al Waleed feared the words of Islam from the lips of the Sahaba – the West too fears the revival of Islam.
¨ They cannot understand what motivates a child in Palestine to stand in front of a tank with a stone in his hand – fearing nothing except Allah. They cannot understand – the bond that binds the Muslims all over the world – such that even after all their propaganda, all their lies – that hatred of the Western colonialists increases in the Muslim world day by day and the bond amongst the Ummah worldwide strengthens – so when the bombs were falling on Baghdad, the Muslims of Nigeria felt it, and when the mother is attacked in Palestine – the Muslims of Indonesia cry out.
¨ They cannot understand how despite all of millions and millions of pounds worth of propaganda– that the people of Iraq themselves demonstrate in the streets of Iraq against the so-called ‘liberators’ demanding their withdrawal from Iraq.
¨ If they wanted to truly challenge Islam – why don’t they challenge it intellectually instead of their slander, propaganda and lies – why don’t they try and refute the miracle of the Quran?
¨ They are like the Quraish who could not refute it and therefore resorted to their propaganda and slander against the Prophet (saw) and Islam.
¨ Secondly, do not believe that the media is totally impartial – the Western media is owned by a few Capitalists who in turn have links with the government.
¨ Rupert Murdoch's The News Corporation owns 132 newspapers, 22 US television stations and the Harper Collins publishing company. This includes Sky and Fox TV.
¨ In Britain, News Corporation has 31.7% share of the print media, the Mirror group has 27.1%, United News has 16.2% and Associated News has 12.7%. The point to note is that only four companies own 87.7% of the whole print industry in Britain.
¨ The broadcast industry is much the same. It does not take a great leap of faith to therefore foresee how the media can be affected by the government who has the capability of giving such companies benefits and legislation to either let them expand or put them out of business; like Blair recently changing the law to allow Murdoch to buy channel 5.
¨ On top of this is a whole host of legislation that ensures that the media is in check by the government. They are supposed to believe in freedom of speech – so why does each article or piece be in compliance with over 40 Act’s of parliament?
¨ On top of this – the government has its own media network, directly owned and controlled – The BBC
¨ So we can clearly see the government agenda of integration – when we look at the media
¨ There is a deliberate campaign to attack political Islam – to paint the picture that all Muslims are terrorists and that including politics in Islam equals extremism.
¨ The media together with the British government has put Islam and Muslims under the spotlight. They are attempting to create a climate of fear, so that the Muslims become apologetic and twist Islam to fit Western tastes.
¨ They want us to adopt their way of life, where the woman is treated as an object and used to sell everything from ice cream to cars. They want us to emulate their society where recently police officers are arrested on charges of being involved in paedophilia and child pornography
¨ They want us to adopt their values, where mothers neglect their children. They want us to follow their mode of relationships where on average 13 or so women who are raped in Britain every single day according to official UK Home Office figures, where adulterous relationships are the norm and where a massive number of marriages end in divorce.
¨ This is what they want us to do, leave our pure and pristine Deen revealed by Allah (swt) to Muhammad (saw) and adopt their way of life.
¨ Unfortunately we have seen how the apologetic Muslim fringe who are used to promote this amongst the Muslims by coming on the airwaves and making statements to the press. Their approach was the sickening defensive approach instead of the brave offensive approach.
¨ They say to the media that ‘Islam is moderate’ instead of showing the hypocrisy and double standards of the West – where they make a big deal about the death of a few people compared to the death of thousands of Muslims in the blitzing of Iraq.
¨ They describe Muslims as terrorists – but who are the ones who terrorise the innocent children of Palestine, who are shot at and killed – whilst they are unarmed? Who are the ones who fire upon innocent crowds in Iraq?
¨ This policy of integration and using sell-out Muslims has been openly stated by the government:
¨ Jack Straw, the foreign secretary of Britain in an article entitled ‘Islam in Europe’, he said, “too many within the younger generation appear to show an unwillingness to integrate into mainstream British society. Together with Muslim leaders, we must do more to counter the influence of fundamentalists over disenchanted Muslim youth. Democrats can never accept that religious injunctions take precedence over temporal laws.” What he means by that last statement is that we must accept that the laws of man are above the laws of Allah.
¨ This idea of countering the so-called extremists by the so called Muslim leaders can be seen throughout the media. After the incident of the recent bombings in Israel, the British paper, The Telegraph wrote, “It is no longer enough for Muslim community leaders to take to the airwaves after every atrocity involving Islamic fundamentalists to argue that they represent a small minority. The fundamentalists need to be confronted directly in their communities by those who represent a law-abiding majority largely cut off from the predominant culture.”
¨ These Muslims who have sold their Deen and started to call for this new ‘Western’ or moderate Islam are deliberately pushed in the media. To attempt to give them prominence and credibility.
¨ Instead of being defensive in the attack against Islam and being afraid of speaking the truth. The Muslims must stand up for Islam, speak the word of truth and be offensive in the argument.
¨ So when they call us terrorists, we need to respond by exposing the Western nations, in particular Britain and America as the greatest terrorists on the face of the earth. It is America and Britain that has occupied 2 countries, Afghanistan and Iraq and killed thousands of civilians.
¨ When they attack the rules of Islam such as the Hudud, the Hijab or any other rules of Islam. We must explain that Islam is the truth, based upon a definite proof that Allah (swt) exists and that the Quran is the word of Allah Azza wa jal.
¨ Then we should turn the tables and attack their ideology of Capitalism, where the objective in life is fulfil your lusts and greed, to live life to the maximum as they say. It is this ideology based on greed and selfishness that has created a society where people put their parents in old peoples homes and only see them on Christmas.
¨ Where the rich Capitalists own the government and dictate policies as the relationship of George Bush’s government with the Oil and defence companies of America clearly demonstrate.
¨ Where crime is at epidemic levels. This is a society where paedophilia, rape and all sorts of perversions are on the rise due to the new secular trinity that they believe in of escapism, consumerism and materialism.
¨ This is a society where the highlight of people’s lives is getting drunk on a Friday night or during Christmas. Today there is a massive spiritual void in the society at large.
¨ We should realise that we have Islam, the only ideological alternative to Capitalism and we must do our best in propagating Islam to both Muslims and non-Muslims to take them away from the depths of darkness into the light of Islam. The Prophet (saw) said, “Even if you know one ayah (verse) propagate it”.
¨ We should be confident in carrying Islam not passive, if homosexuals who follow a perverted way of life can be confident about themselves, who are we as Muslims not be confident in carrying the truth of Islam?
¨ At the same time we should ensure that we stick Islam completely and not compromise it due to fear. If we do this, our reward will be great. The Prophet (saw) said,
“Ahead of you are days which will require endurance, in which he who shows endurance will be like him who grasps live coals. The one who acts rightly during that period will have the reward of fifty men who act as he does.” The hearers said, “The reward of fifty of them, Messenger of Allah! (Peace be upon him).” He replied, “The reward of fifty of you.” [Transmitted by Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah]
¨ Although a climate of fear is attempting to be generated against Muslims who carry Islam confidently and politically. We should realise, that we only fear Allah Azza wa jal and no one else. The Prophet (saw) said:
“Let not the fear of people stop you from speaking the truth when you see or witness something. Verily, speaking the truth or reminding about a great matter will not draw death closer or deprive someone from his provision (rizq).” [Reported by Ahmad]
¨ Whilst we do our best to promote Islam and challenge Kufr, we must realise that true defence of Islam on all levels whether defence from the physical attack or intellectual and the true challenging of Kufr will only come about when we have a state to counter the states of Kufr, an Islamic state, the Khilafah Rashida.
¨ At that time we will then have our own media to challenge their lies and we will utilise it as a means of promoting Islam not deceiving the masses.
2003
Allah (swt) says: "They wish to extinguish Allah's Light with their mouths, but Allah will not allow but that His Light is perfected even though the kuffar may detest it." [TMQ 9:32]
¨ Allah Azza wa Jal in this ayah of Quran explains to us how the Kuffar use their mouths in order to blow out the light of Allah.
¨ This attempt to extinguish the light of Allah by their mouths is obvious when we look at the Western media and their propaganda war against Islam.
¨ In the last few weeks 2 incidents took place that sent the media into a frenzy – this week on May 12th simultaneous bombs went off in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and the second the incident of 2 Muslims supposedly having been involved in a bombing in Tel Aviv in Israel. This incident was particularly focussed upon by the British media due to the apparent link to British citizens.
¨ We saw headlines like, “Islamic violence: Britons accused”, “British connection to radical Islam” and “MI5 knew of bombers’ ties to Islam” amongst others.
¨ The hatred of Islam could be seen
¨ The Times editorial proclaimed that the bombers, were “British converts to terror” and “young, disaffected Muslim Britons”, had discarded Western clothes and worn robes, grew beards and visited mosques and had adopted the “corrupting message of Jihad”.
¨ One editorial complained that “Sadly, a considerable number of young Britons have two identities: they are Muslim first, British second”.
¨ Referring to the recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, the Editorial of the Independent Newspaper said on May 14, “Why are more and more Saudi young men being fed with radical ideas? Who are the people brainwashing them? How are they being radicalised?"
¨ The editorial of New York Post on the same day, May 14 said: “There is no appeasing the ultimate Islamist aim of overthrowing the ... kingdom and restoring the caliphate. This is a war to the death between gerontocracy and theocracy."
¨ This media attack upon Islam and Muslims is not something new. This is not the first time that the Western media has spewed out such anti-Islamic propaganda and neither is it the first time that Islam and Muslims have been in the dock.
¨ We should all remember the malicious attacks on Islam at the time of the Salman Rushdie affair, the Oklahoma bombing and more recently following the events of September 11th.
¨ Steve Dunleavy said in the New York Post journal after the incident of September the 11th: "train assassins, make contract with mercenaries and earmark millions of dollars to hunt the heads and bring them dead or alive, preferably dead. In relation to the cities who host these worms, bomb them with bombs in basketball playgrounds."
¨ This is the type of hatred generated in the Western media
¨ The Western media, alongside Western politicians and governments, has been instrumental in ensuring that the image of Muslims in the Western mind has become connected with terrorism and killing to the extent that every single Muslim has become an object of doubt and suspicion.
¨ The obvious question that comes to mind is – Why? Why do the Western media portray Islam in such a negative manner, what is their motivation?
¨ This is primarily due to 2 reasons:
1. Islam is an ideology that conflicts their own ideology of Capitalism
2. The utilisation of the media by the government
¨ Firstly - Islam radically opposes their thinking and values. They believe in freedom – Islam believes in slavery to Allah. They believe in gaining as much pleasure and material interests that they can – Islam believes in gaining as much reward as we can and the pleasure of Allah (swt).
¨ The Kuffar have a deep hatred for Islam
"O you who believe, take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks; they only desire for you to suffer; rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths, what their hearts conceal is far worse" [TMQ 3:118]
¨ They fear the power of Islam – just as Abu Jahl, Abu Lahab and Al Waleed feared the words of Islam from the lips of the Sahaba – the West too fears the revival of Islam.
¨ They cannot understand what motivates a child in Palestine to stand in front of a tank with a stone in his hand – fearing nothing except Allah. They cannot understand – the bond that binds the Muslims all over the world – such that even after all their propaganda, all their lies – that hatred of the Western colonialists increases in the Muslim world day by day and the bond amongst the Ummah worldwide strengthens – so when the bombs were falling on Baghdad, the Muslims of Nigeria felt it, and when the mother is attacked in Palestine – the Muslims of Indonesia cry out.
¨ They cannot understand how despite all of millions and millions of pounds worth of propaganda– that the people of Iraq themselves demonstrate in the streets of Iraq against the so-called ‘liberators’ demanding their withdrawal from Iraq.
¨ If they wanted to truly challenge Islam – why don’t they challenge it intellectually instead of their slander, propaganda and lies – why don’t they try and refute the miracle of the Quran?
¨ They are like the Quraish who could not refute it and therefore resorted to their propaganda and slander against the Prophet (saw) and Islam.
¨ Secondly, do not believe that the media is totally impartial – the Western media is owned by a few Capitalists who in turn have links with the government.
¨ Rupert Murdoch's The News Corporation owns 132 newspapers, 22 US television stations and the Harper Collins publishing company. This includes Sky and Fox TV.
¨ In Britain, News Corporation has 31.7% share of the print media, the Mirror group has 27.1%, United News has 16.2% and Associated News has 12.7%. The point to note is that only four companies own 87.7% of the whole print industry in Britain.
¨ The broadcast industry is much the same. It does not take a great leap of faith to therefore foresee how the media can be affected by the government who has the capability of giving such companies benefits and legislation to either let them expand or put them out of business; like Blair recently changing the law to allow Murdoch to buy channel 5.
¨ On top of this is a whole host of legislation that ensures that the media is in check by the government. They are supposed to believe in freedom of speech – so why does each article or piece be in compliance with over 40 Act’s of parliament?
¨ On top of this – the government has its own media network, directly owned and controlled – The BBC
¨ So we can clearly see the government agenda of integration – when we look at the media
¨ There is a deliberate campaign to attack political Islam – to paint the picture that all Muslims are terrorists and that including politics in Islam equals extremism.
¨ The media together with the British government has put Islam and Muslims under the spotlight. They are attempting to create a climate of fear, so that the Muslims become apologetic and twist Islam to fit Western tastes.
¨ They want us to adopt their way of life, where the woman is treated as an object and used to sell everything from ice cream to cars. They want us to emulate their society where recently police officers are arrested on charges of being involved in paedophilia and child pornography
¨ They want us to adopt their values, where mothers neglect their children. They want us to follow their mode of relationships where on average 13 or so women who are raped in Britain every single day according to official UK Home Office figures, where adulterous relationships are the norm and where a massive number of marriages end in divorce.
¨ This is what they want us to do, leave our pure and pristine Deen revealed by Allah (swt) to Muhammad (saw) and adopt their way of life.
¨ Unfortunately we have seen how the apologetic Muslim fringe who are used to promote this amongst the Muslims by coming on the airwaves and making statements to the press. Their approach was the sickening defensive approach instead of the brave offensive approach.
¨ They say to the media that ‘Islam is moderate’ instead of showing the hypocrisy and double standards of the West – where they make a big deal about the death of a few people compared to the death of thousands of Muslims in the blitzing of Iraq.
¨ They describe Muslims as terrorists – but who are the ones who terrorise the innocent children of Palestine, who are shot at and killed – whilst they are unarmed? Who are the ones who fire upon innocent crowds in Iraq?
¨ This policy of integration and using sell-out Muslims has been openly stated by the government:
¨ Jack Straw, the foreign secretary of Britain in an article entitled ‘Islam in Europe’, he said, “too many within the younger generation appear to show an unwillingness to integrate into mainstream British society. Together with Muslim leaders, we must do more to counter the influence of fundamentalists over disenchanted Muslim youth. Democrats can never accept that religious injunctions take precedence over temporal laws.” What he means by that last statement is that we must accept that the laws of man are above the laws of Allah.
¨ This idea of countering the so-called extremists by the so called Muslim leaders can be seen throughout the media. After the incident of the recent bombings in Israel, the British paper, The Telegraph wrote, “It is no longer enough for Muslim community leaders to take to the airwaves after every atrocity involving Islamic fundamentalists to argue that they represent a small minority. The fundamentalists need to be confronted directly in their communities by those who represent a law-abiding majority largely cut off from the predominant culture.”
¨ These Muslims who have sold their Deen and started to call for this new ‘Western’ or moderate Islam are deliberately pushed in the media. To attempt to give them prominence and credibility.
¨ Instead of being defensive in the attack against Islam and being afraid of speaking the truth. The Muslims must stand up for Islam, speak the word of truth and be offensive in the argument.
¨ So when they call us terrorists, we need to respond by exposing the Western nations, in particular Britain and America as the greatest terrorists on the face of the earth. It is America and Britain that has occupied 2 countries, Afghanistan and Iraq and killed thousands of civilians.
¨ When they attack the rules of Islam such as the Hudud, the Hijab or any other rules of Islam. We must explain that Islam is the truth, based upon a definite proof that Allah (swt) exists and that the Quran is the word of Allah Azza wa jal.
¨ Then we should turn the tables and attack their ideology of Capitalism, where the objective in life is fulfil your lusts and greed, to live life to the maximum as they say. It is this ideology based on greed and selfishness that has created a society where people put their parents in old peoples homes and only see them on Christmas.
¨ Where the rich Capitalists own the government and dictate policies as the relationship of George Bush’s government with the Oil and defence companies of America clearly demonstrate.
¨ Where crime is at epidemic levels. This is a society where paedophilia, rape and all sorts of perversions are on the rise due to the new secular trinity that they believe in of escapism, consumerism and materialism.
¨ This is a society where the highlight of people’s lives is getting drunk on a Friday night or during Christmas. Today there is a massive spiritual void in the society at large.
¨ We should realise that we have Islam, the only ideological alternative to Capitalism and we must do our best in propagating Islam to both Muslims and non-Muslims to take them away from the depths of darkness into the light of Islam. The Prophet (saw) said, “Even if you know one ayah (verse) propagate it”.
¨ We should be confident in carrying Islam not passive, if homosexuals who follow a perverted way of life can be confident about themselves, who are we as Muslims not be confident in carrying the truth of Islam?
¨ At the same time we should ensure that we stick Islam completely and not compromise it due to fear. If we do this, our reward will be great. The Prophet (saw) said,
“Ahead of you are days which will require endurance, in which he who shows endurance will be like him who grasps live coals. The one who acts rightly during that period will have the reward of fifty men who act as he does.” The hearers said, “The reward of fifty of them, Messenger of Allah! (Peace be upon him).” He replied, “The reward of fifty of you.” [Transmitted by Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah]
¨ Although a climate of fear is attempting to be generated against Muslims who carry Islam confidently and politically. We should realise, that we only fear Allah Azza wa jal and no one else. The Prophet (saw) said:
“Let not the fear of people stop you from speaking the truth when you see or witness something. Verily, speaking the truth or reminding about a great matter will not draw death closer or deprive someone from his provision (rizq).” [Reported by Ahmad]
¨ Whilst we do our best to promote Islam and challenge Kufr, we must realise that true defence of Islam on all levels whether defence from the physical attack or intellectual and the true challenging of Kufr will only come about when we have a state to counter the states of Kufr, an Islamic state, the Khilafah Rashida.
¨ At that time we will then have our own media to challenge their lies and we will utilise it as a means of promoting Islam not deceiving the masses.
2003
Comments
one of the attacks on islam especially recently has been regarding its punishment system and if it is suitable for the 21st century.
For example the recent case of pakistan were women rights groups are attacking the so called "islamic system" whereby a women has to provided 4 witnesses to prove if she was raped and if she can't she herself is punished.
How does Islam deal with issues like these. Can we use modern technology to prove illegal activity rather than relying on a number of witnesses. eg DNA evidence or CCTV footage.
It would be brilliant if you could explain the penal system of islam with the view of the advances in the 21st century e.g. do we still need to rely on the number of witnesses if guilt can be deciesively proven via other means e.g. cctv
" If the assault via rape or ravishment is only proven via a doctor or midwife’s testimony rather than by a Shar’a evidence (bayyina), he is punished with jail up to fifteen years, lashing and banishment."
I will post an explanation of key elements of the Judicial & Punishment Systems in Islam soon inshallah.