NewsTrust - Islam - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Is the meaning of hajj being lost?

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Syed Neaz Ahmad - Nov. 22 (Opinion) - Hajj is meant to bring Muslims together in brotherhood. But in 2009, more than ever, security is getting in the way "The hajj is one of the great cultural and spiritual events on earth, but one which most of us know far less about than we do about things that happen in outer space and under the sea", says Taran Davies co-producer of Journey to Mecca a new Imax film about the hajj. The hajj, of course, is nothing new. Muslims have been performing this once in a lifetime act of worship for 1430 years. The institution is as old as the Ka?bah itself which according to traditions was established some 4000 years ago in the barren lands of central Arabia. The ceremony is commemorative of Prophet Abraham?s acts of devotion. However, over the centuries perceptions and expectations have changed. This change presents new challenges every year. What with the threat of security, accidents, fire and terrorists, the House of Saud finds every hajj season a bit unnerving and it is not surprising that – ...

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Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Independent - By Johann Hari - Nov. 16 (Opinion) - In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.

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The Missing Link From Killeen to Kabul

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Nov. 15 (Opinion) - THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right. Their verdict was unambiguous: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born psychiatrist of Palestinian parentage who sent e-mail to a radical imam, was a terrorist.

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Why Hillary Clinton babies Indonesia and bullies Pakistan

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By John Hughes - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited Indonesia earlier this year, she said: "If you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity, and women's rights can coexist, go to Indonesia." When she visited Pakistan recently, she was polite but much more critical in her words, basically accusing some government officials of sheltering Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists.

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Does Obama need to speak more harshly about Islam?

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Slate - By Jacob Weisberg - Nov. 14 (Opinion) - Obama's olive-branch strategy may make America safer over the long term. In the short term, there's no empirical evidence that it has done so.

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The Rush to Therapy

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Brooks - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - The well-intentioned public commentary that followed Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood shrouded the role militant Islam played in his actions.

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'Going Muslim'

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By Tunku Varadarajan - Nov. 09 (Opinion) - "Going postal" is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker--archetypically a postal worker--"snaps" and guns down his colleagues. As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we

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Islamic countries push a global 'blasphemy' law

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - Oct. 28 (Editorial) - Remember the Danish "Muhammad cartoons" that set off riots by offended Muslims more than three years ago? The debate pitted freedom of press and speech against notions of freedom from insult of one's religion. It rages still – but now in a forum with international legal implications.

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Which Way for Hamas?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The New York Review of Books - By Nicolas Pelham, Max Rodenbeck - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - Amid the wreckage of Gaza, Hamas's officials struggle to sound upbeat. The burly interior minister, Fathi Hamad, whose predecessor was killed by an Israeli bomb, defiantly shuns security precautions at his makeshift office in Gaza City's main police station. "Claims that we are trying to establish an Islamic state are false," says the minister, who says his preference would be pursuing a degree in media studies. "Hamas is not the Taliban. It is not al-Qaeda. It is an enlightened, moderate Islamic movement."

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Al Qaeda's on its way out

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By C.M. Sennott - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - The image of Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan-born bus driver from Denver and now a terror suspect, embodies the complex truths of where we are right now in the struggle against terrorism.

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The Meaning of Freedom

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Sep. 29 (Editorial) - The question is far from academic, as illustrated poignantly by the case of brothers Bahtiyar Mahnut and Arkin Mahmud. As reported by The Post's Del Quentin Wilber, the brothers are Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who face oppression, intimidation and often

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Last gasp for global Islam

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Prospect - By Robin Yassin-Kassab - Sep. 14 (Review) - Surveying the Muslim world’s social, economic and moral failures, and the terror espoused by certain Islamist groups, Allawi suggests the problem might not be too much Islam, but too little. Islam is a civilisational framework that rests on the tripod of private ritual, public ethics and individual spiritual striving—and the legs of the tripod must balance each other. But, Allawi argues, the current Islamic “revival” is operating only in the field of religiosity: focusing on naked symbols and rules, proclaiming the superiority of Islam while adopting indiscriminately the technology, economics and cultural products of the west. It emphasises Sharia as a set of fixed punishments rather than as a framework of legislative principles. For the revivalists, the public sphere is too often reduced to the state—and their political project is simply to seize control of repressive state apparatuses.

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Interview: Jaswant Singh

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Sep. 02 (Interview) - "Theocentricism", where society is centred on Islam - this is in line whether Pakistan, India or Bangladesh, where faith is of paramount importance. Pakistan is not theocratic in the sense it is not the Mullah that is governing Pakistan ... but Pakistan society is governed by Islam.

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Tumult in Iran Raises Questions About Negotiating Over Nuclear Efforts

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Aug. 27 (Editorial) - THE PROTESTERS have been routed from the streets of Tehran, but the political turmoil in Iran continues unabated behind the scenes. The authority of both the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is being overtly challenged by religious and secular elites. Given the internal tumult and uncertainty, it looks increasingly doubtful that the regime will respond meaningfully to the Obama administration's deadline of late September to discuss curtailing its nuclear program or risk what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called "crippling sanctions."

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How the Grinch Stole Ramadan

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Jamal Dajani - Aug. 21 (Opinion) - The holy month of Ramadan will begin this Saturday in most Muslim countries, a tradition determined by the sighting of the new moon, the exact date of which often divides rival Islamic countries and sects. Muslims celebrate Ramadan by refraining from

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The Taliban and music

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - By Zubeida Mustafa - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - In her latest book, The Case for God, Karen Armstrong describes music as ‘the limit of reason.’ She finds it inseparable from religious expression when religion is at ‘its best.’ We do not get the best demonstration of this connection in the Taliban brand of Islam. The faith practised by the Sufis, however, shows an intrinsic link between the two.

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In the name of religion

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - By Yaqoob Khan Bangash - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - This month we will be commemorating for the 62nd year running the carnage which engulfed the subcontinent in the name of religion — violence in the name of religion refuses to dissipate.

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Negligence or complicity?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - By Naveen Naqvi - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - The lesson is clear; the blasphemy law not only violates fundamental principles of justice, it distorts law into an instrument of sectarian witch-hunts and also of collective and individual reprisal. Its victims have ranged from an innocent Hafiz who was burned to death by a frenzied mob, to Pakistan’s most renowned social engineer Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan who suffered years of harassment, death threats and litigation for unsubstantiated allegations of blasphemy

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Today, I too am a minority

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - By Nadeem F. Paracha - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - why is the Pakistani media referring to the recent attack by Muslims on the Christian community in the Gojra area as ‘communal riots?’ They were not riots, but an attack. An assault by an arrogant majority on a low-lying minority.

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Commenting on the Gojra Burning

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Changing Up Pakistan - By Kalsoom - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - At least seven Christians were burned alive and hundreds injured in an attack in Gojra this past Saturday, after violence erupted in the Punjab town over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran several days before. Dawn reported, “More than 50 houses were set on fire and a place of worship belonging to a minority community was damaged by an angry mob. According to sources, most of the houses were burnt by a group of youths who had their faces covered with veils. They threw petrol bombs and fired indiscriminately.”

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Pakistan's real battle: government vs. Army

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Kathryyn Allawalla - Jul. 25 (Opinion) - A few months ago, Pakistan looked as though it was falling apart. The Taliban were solidifying their hold on territory in the north and staging shocking attacks deeper and deeper in Pakistan's heartland. Though the situation in Swat Valley is improving, the success of the Army is upsetting Pakistan's fragile internal balance of power.

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Europe & Islamophobia

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Link TV - By Jamal Dajani - Jul. 17 (Opinion) - ISLAMOPHOBIA has taken a range of forms in Europe, including the more traditional types of socio-economic discrimination and racist attacks historically suffered by other ethnic minorities. In recent years many high-profile incidents from across Western Europe have exemplified this trend.

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Why isn't the Muslim world speaking up in defense of the Uighurs?

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Foreign Policy - By Moisés Naím - Jul. 14 (Opinion) - ... in different countries, mullahs, imams, and assorted clerics have found the time to issue fatwas condemning among other practices, Pokémon cartoons, total nudity during sex for married couples, and the use of vaccines against polio, not to mention Salman Rushdie. They have yet to find the time to say anything about China's practices toward Uighurs.

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Iran on the brink?

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - By Mark LeVine - Jun. 20 (Opinion) - In 15 years of writing about the Middle East, I have never encountered a situation that changed so fast that one could write an article that becomes outdated in the time it takes to write it.

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Can Iran's Clerics Stop the Protests?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Michael Hirsch - Jun. 17 (Opinion) - The Supreme Leader's clear misreading of the situation—his initial embrace of the election results as a "divine" victory for Ahmadinejad followed by a jittery call for an investigation into the vote—has amply demonstrated his fallibility

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