A Muslim Convert Once More

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Not many people know, but there is a marble image of Prophet Muhammad ( s.a.w. ) perched above the press seating area inside the U.S. Supreme Court chamber.  The statue is sculpted in a frieze.  It depicts the Prophet ( s.a.w. ) carrying a sword and the Qur’an and stands in the company of more than a dozen other great lawgivers of history.  They range from Moses ( a.s. ) to Confucius to Napoleon to John Marshall.   At one time, it was a controversy among Muslim groups, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and other Muslim groups writing to the court to urge that the statue’s face be sandblasted.  Fortunately, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist refused, issuing a letter that said it would be “unlawful to remove or in any way injure an architectural feature in the Supreme Court building.”   Shaykh Thaha ibn Jabir al-Alwani ( r.a. ), the noted Shafi’i jurist and exegete of the Qur’an, and founder of the Fi...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The irony here is where Nu’man Ali Khan said, “Islam empowers women with honour and dignity” after talking about nikah like a transfer of livestock.   The nikah is not a transfer of responsibilities.   We are not buying cattle, and women are not owned.   The nikah is a contract before God between two equal parties.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The retired bishop of the American Episcopal Church, Bishop John Shelby Spong, said, “All religion seems to need to prove that it is the only truth.   And that is where it turns demonic.   Because that is when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.”   It was said anonymously, “The worst thing you can do to a dogma is give it an empire.”   And that has been much of our experience with every faith.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Jesus ( a.s. ) said, as recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew:   Matthew 15:7-9 7 “You hypocrites, it was a true prophecy Isaiah made of you, when he said, 8 ‘These people do me honour with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.   9 Their worship of me is vain, for the doctrines they teach are the commandments of men.’”   7 ὑποκριταί, καλῶς ἐπροφήτευσεν περὶ ὑμῶν Ἠσαΐας λέγων: 8 ὁ λαὸς οὗτος τοῖς χείλεσίν με τιμᾷ, ἡ δὲ καρδία αὐτῶν πόρρω ἀπέχει ἀπ' ἐμοῦ: 9 μάτην δὲ σέβονταί με, διδάσκοντες διδασκαλίας ἐντάλματα ἀνθρώπων.   7 Hypocritæ, bene prophetavit de vobis Isaias, dicens: 8 Populus hic labiis me honorat: cor autem eorum longe est a me.   9 Sine causa autem colunt me, docentes doctrinas et mandata hominum.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   General Butt Naked is a former commander of forces under the wider control of Liberian warlord Roosevelt Johnson.   His real name is Joshua Milton Blahyi.   He was known for his violence and atrocities during the First Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s.   Blahyi is a member of the Sarpo tribe in Liberia, and claims to have been initiated as a tribal priest at age 11.   He said he participated in his first human sacrifice then, part of a three-day Krahn ritual.   Blahyi said that he had a vision in which he was told by Satan that he would become a great warrior, and to continue to practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power.   He was later appointed a high priest, and the spiritual advisor to Liberian President Samuel Doe.   The Krahn system of beliefs is a syncretic faith of Christianity, and various African remnant religions and spiritual beliefs.   Blahyi’s personal idol was...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   We do not put out fire with fire.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The American news networks are hardly impartial.   Edward Roscoe Murrow said, “Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences.   No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognise them.”   He also said, “No one can terrorise a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Isaac Asimov said, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   All this talk of free speech when Muslims and Islam are insulted is disingenuous.   It is a fact that Muslims are easy targets in places like Europe and the United States.   But why are we in this wretched state?   It is because we do not know how to organise, and how to engage with the non-Muslims, which is particularly important when we are the minority.   And it because we have taken upon ourselves the role of the underdog and are unfamiliar with addressing policymaker and stakeholders.   This state of disenfranchisement delegitimises our leaders and feeds the rhetoric of extremists.   We should learn from the experience of the Jews.   Otherwise, we will learn that lesson through our own Holocaust.   The quote below is from Col. Oliver Laurence North.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ The first photograph is our previous mufti , Syed Esa Semait with his wife.   And the next, are some of the people from Kampung Radin Mas, including many of our religious luminaries and community leaders. Until the 1950 and 1960s, the majority of the women did not wear the hijab .   They included the wives of our scholars, and women who were recognised asatidzah themselves.   In the 1950s, the United States experienced an economic boom brought about by the Baby Boomer generation and society changed and became more open and less conservative.   American fashion began to sweep the world, and this as the era that gave us the bikini, named after Bikini Atoll, where atomic and hydrogen bomb tests were held.   Al-Azhar changed the fatwa on the hijab then to what we are familiar with now in response to this.   They panicked. In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia became a major player in the oil market and a major voice in ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   George Denis Patrick Carlin said, “Never argue with an idiot.   They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Marion Gordon “Pat” Robertson is a former Southern Baptist minister, the son of U.S. Senator A. Willis Robertson.   His father’s influence ensured he never saw combat during the Korean War.   He did claim to have seen combat, but was exposed.   He is the quintessential Christian false prophet, making outlandish claims throughout the years and being proven wrong constantly.   Rather than bring a caller to Christ ( a.s. ), he is a caller to hatred and falsehood.   That never stopped him from amassing tremendous wealth and influence.   Deuteronomy 18:20 20 If anyone is so presumptuous as to prophesy in My Name when I have Given him no message to deliver, or prophesy in the name of alien gods, his life must pay for it.   20 πλὴν ὁ προφήτης ὃς ἂν ἀσεβήσῃ λαλῆσαι ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματί μου ῥῆμα ὃ οὐ προσέταξα λαλῆσαι καὶ ὃς ἂν λαλήσῃ ἐ{P'} ὀνόματι θεῶν ἑτέρων ἀποθανεῖται ὁ προφήτης ἐκεῖνος   20 Propheta autem q...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   The Catholic Church has an excellent pope, a man of God, in Pope Francis.   It has not always been so, particularly in the era of the Papal States.   Pope Alexander VI was born Roderic Borgia, on the 1 st January.   He was Pope from the 11 th August 1492 until his death.   He is one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes, partly because he acknowledged fathering several children by his many mistresses, themselves the wives of other men.   Therefore, his Italianised Valencian surname, Borgia, became a byword for libertinism and nepotism, characterising his pontificate.   This was in the periods when the Catholic Church was corrupted as an institution.   Contemporary accounts suggest that Rodrigo was a handsome, intelligent man with an appreciation for the arts and sciences.   He was a “political priest”.   He was a gifted speaker, extremely eloquent, and “so familiar with Holy Writ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Rev. John James Watson once wrote, “This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched.   It is a fact, however surprising.   And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle; we are bound not to irritate him, nor press hardly upon him nor help his lower self.”   And this somewhat, is echoed in Rev. Martin Luther King’s quote here, with the addition of justice for all.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, on the 16 th April 1953, now called “The Chance for Peace,”.   He said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.   This world in arms is not spending money alone.   It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.   The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.   It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.   It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.   It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.   We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.   We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed mo...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ There is a direct and explicit order of the Prophet ( s.a.w. ), recorded in Sunan ibn Majah , to make tawaswswul upon the Prophet ( s.a.w. ).  It was narrated from Sayyidina ‘Utsman ibn Hunayf ( r.a. ) that a blind man came to the Prophet ( s.a.w. ) and said, “Pray to Allah to Heal me.”   The Prophet ( s.a.w. ) replied, “If you wish to store your Reward for the Hereafter, that is better, or if you wish, I will supplicate for you.”   He said, “Supplicate.”  So, the Prophet ( s.a.w. ) told him to perform ablution and do it well, to pray two raka’at and to say this supplication: “ Allahumma innii as’aluka wa atawajjahu ilayka bi nabiyyika Muhammad, nabiyyi rahmati.  Ya Muhammad inni atawajjahu bika ilaa rabbii fii haajati hadzihi li tuqdhaa lii Allahumma fashaffi’hu fiyya ,” meaning, “O Allah, I ask of You and I turn my face towards You by virtue of the intercession of Muhammad, the Prophet of Mercy.  O Muhammad, I ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Mark Twain aptly said, “Heaven goes by Favour; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Dr. Avram Noam Chomsky said, “Everyone is worried about stopping terrorism.   Well, there is really an easy way: Stop participating in it.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ In a senate enquiry, former American ambassadors to the Middle East struggle to deny that Saudi Wahhabi ideology is the same ideology of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.  In truth, Wahhabism is the underlying foundational doctrine of their “global jihadist movement”, in effect implying correctly that Saudi support of this heretical ideology is the root cause of much of violence and Islamist terrorism.

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Abu Bakr an-Naji might not even be one person, but a committee.   That name is attached to a book, Idarah at-Tawahhush , “Management of Desolation”.   This book sets out the political and military policy of Al-Qaida and its affiliates, such as Jabhat an-Nusrah, and splinter groups such as ISIS.   It states explicitly that the “Salafi Way” is the only and essential way, and expands on what Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab and later, people like Sayyid Quthb Ibrahim Husayn, wrote, dividing the post-caliphate ummah into the “colonised” and the “free”.   Only “true Muslims”, people with their Wahhabi ideology, are free.   Besides indicting foreign powers, extra-national agencies and corrupt civil administrations throughout the Muslim world, blame is given to the Muslims, and especially the scholars of Islam, who “lead people astray”.   It is written, “Notice we say that the masses are the difficult factor.   W...