Islamic Revival

Barack Obama signed the controversial US healthcare bill into law today after months of heated debate. US Healthcare has been under the spotlight in recent years and gained international focus after Michael Moore released his documentary, "Sicko" three years ago. In it, he focused on the failure of the American healthcare system. Particular attention was given to the Insurance Companies and how their purpose was not to help people in need but rather to increase profits. The solution proposed was to have a public healthcare system similar to those in Canada, Britain, France and Cuba. With an economy in disarray and the rising costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars, you may wonder what is wrong with the US's priorities? The debate over health care in the US centers on whether there is a fundamental right to healthcare, or who should have access to healthcare and on the quality achieved for the high sums spent. Medical debt is cited as the single biggest factor in 62% of a...

Secret unit finds Muslims and non-Muslims blaming UK government for using terror attacks to justify aggressive foreign policy The Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), has published for the first time some of the reports from focus groups it has conducted on the attitudes of Muslims and members of the public to terrorism. The unit was started three years ago to provide better information across government departments on how their messages on terrorism have been received. A report, called Understanding Perceptions of the Terms ‘Britishness’ and ‘Terrorism’ found that many in the focus groups could “understand why some UK Muslims resort to extreme violence.” It found that many Muslims believed terrorists were themselves victims who had been manipulated by others into believing it was their religious duty to fight back against British policy in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The research also found that many Muslims believed that the British and US governments are them...

The debt crisis in Greece is ample proof that the world is still reeling from the global financial crisis that occurred in the aftermath of Lehman Brothers' collapse in September 2008. Initially only a handful of governments like Pakistan, Ukraine, Iceland and some Eastern European were affected by the credit crunch. These countries had to borrow money to meet their debt obligations and ensure fiscal stability. But now, the crisis threatens to overwhelm several European countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal and may even spread to countries like Britain and America. Just this week the IMF said that the crisis of the past two-and-a-half years had affected public finances across the globe in a way not seen since the Second World War. In 2007, when the credit crunch began, 40% of countries sampled by the IMF were running budget surpluses, but by 2009 this had dropped to 10%. Countries with deficits higher than 3% of national output (gross domestic product) increased from 20% t...

Hyderabad is being described as sliding back into the Stone Age as a fourth day of riots hits the city. Curfews have been implemented and extended. Reports are emerging of mobs running riot, homes being set alight, looting, with one person stabbed to death. Pedestrians and people in their cars were targeted by the mobs and many of them had their vehicles set alight. India since its creation has been rocked by communal riots, where minority communities have been massacred. The Gujarat massacre in 2002 led to nearly 1000 Muslims being butchered with the help of the local police. This is not the first time events have simmered beyond control in India's Southern city of Hyderabad. Hyderabad saw its worst communal riots in 1989, which were triggered after Marri Chenna Reddy took over as chief minister, frustrating the attempts of another powerful faction in the Congress which wanted to see its leader in power. This latest wave of riots comes at a time when the central government ha...

The 8th March 2010 saw the 100th anniversary of International women's day in which women come together globally to celebrate the political, social and economic inroads that women have made in the last century. It is an official holiday in China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The UN gave it official recognition in 1975. At the turn of the 20th century women began to see the fruits of their battle to gain the right to vote; and following a conference for working women in 1910 in Copenhagen, Clara Zetkin, (leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) spearheaded the launch of a day for the recognition of women's rights. Women globally have made some progress since the industrial revolution when scores of women entered the work place. The discussion of women's rights began to take shape in the early 1800s when women were denied the right to vote, denied the right to own property, they were denied entitled entitle...

In light of the settlement between some Muslim organisations and Politiken on the reprinting of the hateful cartoons of the Messenger صلى الله عليه وسلم, the following points should be clarified: Firstly: The settlement includes a pseudo-apology in which Politiken doesn't apologize for the insult of the Messenger, but for the sore and pain caused to the Muslims by the insult. At the same time the newspaper reserves the right to repeat the same insult as the newspaper insists on what it describes as "the right to reprint the cartoons"! In return, Politiken has demanded that the Muslim organisations abandon prosecuting the newspaper. This ridiculous apology equals saying to a man after beating him: "I will not apologise for beating you, but for the pain that arose subsequently. And moreover, I reserve the right to beat you again, when it suits me. As a condition, you will not get my apology unless you cease to complain about my beating!" Secondly : The subseq...

The Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi in a long running dispute with Switzerland declared "Let us wage jihad against Switzerland, Zionism and foreign aggression. Any Muslim in any part of the world who works with Switzerland is an apostate, is against Muhammad, God and the Koran." Such a declaration is unusual for most of the Muslim rulers who have become accustomed to selling out the Ummah. The response of the international community has been the usual outrage. "Such declarations on the part of the head of state are inadmissible in international relations," said Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the UN chief in Geneva. Philip Crowley, US State Department spokesman said "...a call for jihad against any country or individual has the potential to harm and is not something the United States takes lightly." Whilst the EU said "If these reports are correct, they come at a most unfortunate moment." The international community saw fit to comment on this largely bilat...

NATO forces launched a major offensive in Afghanistan in early February. Despite their claims of bringing peace, justice and security, the reality is that these forces have brought only death and ruin to the people of Afghanistan. Just as they did in Iraq, the Capitalist nations lie about their objectives and the facts on the ground to sell their war to the people of the world. We should be aware of this propaganda and see through the lies. We must realize that at the heart of the war lies their ambition to impose Capitalist system on Afghanistan; a system which has brought ruin and misery to mankind. On February 13th, 2010, NATO forces led by America launched a major offensive, named ‘Operation Moshtarak’, in the town of Marjah located in the Helmand province of Afghanistan. According to Major General Nick Carter, commander of NATO in south Afghanistan, some 15,000 troop are involved in the operation to take control of Marjah, an alleged Taliban stronghold. This operation took pl...

For the one who aims to build and develop the personality it is important to treat everyone according to their level. Therefore, to apply a method of personality development that has achieved results in places where the hadhara (culture) is deep rooted and where the inclinations for the deen are ingrained in the people and use the same process to others brought up surrounded by disbelief and detached from their aqeeda is a mistake and would not achieve the correct development of the personality. This does not mean that the culture that is studied should be different, as the curriculum of study would set the basis for the mentality and the disposition, this is necessary in all cases. However, those responsible for the development such as those amongst the da'wa carriers need to appreciate that those born into societies which have been shaped by disbelief and consequently have little Islamic knowledge, are riddled with negative traits and inclinations and thus require much more tre...

Question The following text is found in the draft constitution: "Article 140 - Every individual from the individuals of the community (ummah) has the right to derive benefit from public ownership. The State has no right to allow any particular individual to possess, own or utilise publicly owned properties to the exclusion of other citizens." In our books we find the hadith, "The Muslims are partners in three..." as well as the hadith, "The people are partners in three..." In light of this, the question is as follows. The article says that benefit from public property is for the individuals of the Ummah, not for every citizen, or for the individuals of the society. As for the ahādith one mentions ‘Muslims' and the other mentions ‘people'. Thus is the case that we have used the principle of interpreting the general in light of the specific and thereby understood that the intent of ‘people' in one of the two narrations is ‘Muslims', ...

The 3rd of March is a date that is etched into the history of the Muslim Ummah as one of its darkest days ever. It was on this date in the fateful year of 1924 CE that the last vestige of legitimate Islamic rule was ended. The office of Khilifah was abolished by the treacherous Mustafa Kamal and the Muslim Ummah has since then been plunged in to darkness and humiliation. Thus any trace of the Uthmani Khilafah was extinguished as the 101st Khaleefah of Islam, Abdul Mejid II was exiled from the now secular Republic of Turkey. His banishment from the land of Anatolia with little more than a suitcase and some cash was the beginning of the humiliation that the Muslim world has suffered to this very day. With what was described as the shield of the Muslims by the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم - now in exile, the Ummah was set to be subjected to numerous tragedies that would involve against it murderous wars, foreign occupation, economic strangulation, political manipulation as well ...