HADITH OF THE DAY: WHEN HONESTY IS LOST

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "When honesty is lost, then wait for the Hour (of Judgment Day)." He was then asked: "How will honesty be lost?" The Prophet replied: "When authority is given to those who do not deserve it."

Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Hadith 503

Dramatic footage of Egypt clashes

Give to others....

"As for the person who gives (to others) and is conscious of God, and believes in the truth of the ultimate good -- for him shall We make easy the path towards (ultimate) ease. But as for the person who is a greedy miser, and thinks that he is self-sufficient, and calls the ultimate good a lie -- for him shall We make easy the path towards hardship."

The Holy Quran, 92:5-10

Killings of newborn babies on the rise in Pakistan

The lifeless bodies of two tiny babies are being given their final bath before burial in Karachi, after they were left to die in the southern Pakistani city's garbage dumps.

"They can only have been one or two days old," says volunteer worker Mohammad Saleem, pointing at the two small corpses being gently washed by his colleagues at a charity's morgue.
In the conservative Muslim nation, where the birth of children outside of marriage is condemned and adultery is a crime punishable by death under strict interpretations of Islamic law, infanticide is a crime on the rise.
More than 1,000 infants -- most of them girls -- were killed or abandoned to die in Pakistan last year according to conservative estimates by the Edhi Foundation, a charity working to reverse the grim trend.
The infanticide figures are collected only from Pakistan's main cities, leaving out huge swathes of the largely rural nation, and the charity says that in December alone it found 40 dead babies left in garbage dumps and sewers.
The number of dead infants found last year -- 1,210 -- was up from 890 in 2008 and 999 in 2009, says the Edhi Foundation manager in Karachi, Anwar Kazmi.

Tragic tales abound.

Kazmi recounts the discovery of the burnt body of a six-day-old infant who had been strangled. Another child was found on the steps of a mosque having been stoned to death on the orders of an extremist imam who has since disappeared, he says.
"Do not murder, lay them here," reads a sign hanging outside the charity's Karachi base where it has left cradles in the hope that parents will abandon their unwanted children there, instead of leaving them to die.
"People leave these children mostly because they think they are illegitimate, but they are as innocent and loveable as all human beings," says the charity's founder, well-known humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi.
Most children found are less than a week old.
Khair Mohammad, 65, works as a watchman in the charity's vast graveyard in the city outskirts. It is dotted with tiny unnamed graves.
"We acquired this land to bury children after another plot was filled with hundreds of bodies," he says.

The death toll is far worse among girls, says manager Kazmi, with nine out of ten dead babies the charity finds being female.
"The number of infanticides of girls has substantially increased," Kazmi says, a rise attributed to increased poverty across the country.
Girls are seen by many Pakistanis as a greater economic burden as most women are not permitted to work and are considered to be the financial responsibilty of their fathers, and later their husbands.
A Pakistani family can be forced to raise more than one million rupees (11,700 dollars) to marry their daughter off.

Edhi says that up to 200 babies are left in its 400 cradles nationwide each year and that it handles thousands of requests for adoption by childless couples.
Abortion is prohibited in Pakistan, except when the mother's life is at risk from her pregnancy, but advocates say that legalisation would reduce infanticide and save mothers from potentially fatal back-street terminations.
According to Pakistani law, anyone found to have abandoned an infant can be jailed for seven years, while anyone guilty of secretly burying a child can be imprisoned for two years. Murder is punishable with life imprisonment.
But crimes of infanticide are rarely prosecuted.
"The majority of police stations do not register cases of infanticide, let alone launch investigations into them," said lawyer Abdul Rasheed.

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Viewpoints: Anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe

Baroness Warsi, the chairman of the main party in Britain's governing coalition, has said that anti-Muslim prejudice has "passed the dinner table test" and become socially acceptable in the UK.
Here are the views of Muslims from around Europe on whether they think anti-Muslim attitudes are now considered acceptable in their countries.

Sweden
Prof Anne-Sofie Roald, professor of religious studies at Malmo University and a Muslim convert
I would say in Sweden there is much more sensitivity around this than, for example, in Denmark. Even when there was a suicide bombing in Stockholm, there was much in the media saying we should not blame Muslims and terrorists. Many were talking about him as one lonely person who was fed up with life and wanted to commit suicide.
In Sweden, there is this negative idea that we haven't integrated immigrants in a proper way, which I think is not accurate. It becomes self-fulfilling, it makes Muslims feel there is no good in integrating.
I used to wear a headscarf but I found that my work was not being accepted or taken seriously. I had put myself in a situation where I isolated myself, whereas when I took my headscarf away and became very secular, I suddenly became part of society in a different way - I let myself be accepted.
Muslims feel accused and stigmatised - that's why they creep into their own minority thinking: that we are discriminated against, they don't like us. It is not only the majority discriminating against the minority, it is the minority isolating themselves from the majority. It's not a coincidence that the [anti-Islam party] Swedish Democrats came about now - they are playing on this anti-Muslim sentiment.

Belgium
Sami Zemni, professor of political science at the University of Ghent
There is nothing new there. This kind of anti-Islamic sentiment has been going here for years with the [anti-immigration party] Vlaams Blok.
They suddenly realised that going on about anti-Islamic sentiment is easier than talking about racism. "We criticise a religion," they say, "not the people themselves." The argument they use has become widespread, and it has spread to all political parties.
There was a study in Flanders a year ago on anti-Islamic views - more than half of the Flemish population said they had no problem with anti-Islamic views. "It's the Muslims' fault because they are uncritical of their religion, which is backward," they say.
"Muslims are anti-'people who think differently'," they say. "It's because of their Islam, it's not adapted to modernity."

Germany
Kubra Yucel Gumusay, freelance journalist and columnist
Ever since Thilo Sarrazin's book [which said Muslim immigrants were a drain on German society], people began to think that a group like Muslims are genetically incapable of being successful and integrating. He was trying to prove scientifically that having prejudice against Muslims was OK. Before this, people could not say those thoughts openly, but now it looks like there's scientific proof for what they think.
My friends have stories of people shouting at them, being spat at, not getting seats in restaurants. A year ago people would have said this is not OK, but these days people just tolerate these situations. This for me is proof that being anti-Muslim is becoming OK in society, even in academic circles.
It does not matter if you are a practising Muslim or not, you just have to look like you're from a country where Muslims are from.
We say racism has now become "salonfahig", meaning it is acceptable in polite society.
I personally do not get upset, because it's my work, even though I received a death threat a couple of days ago. But other Muslims - they feel personally affected. Many of my friends feel like leaving for the UK or Canada where things are better.
Italy
Mario Scialoja, retired Italian diplomat to the UN who converted to Islam, currently with the Islamic Cultural Central in Rome
Apart from in northern Italy, there is very little anti-Islamic feeling and there have been no acts of Islamophobia; it is not socially acceptable. Personally, I have no experience of such acts, but it might be different for immigrants from North Africa.
The absence of anti-Islamic feeling may be because, up to now, there has not been the kind of massive immigration seen in other large European countries such as France. It started much later in Italy than it did in other European countries, and this might explain the situation.
In northern Italy, where the right-wing Northern League is prevalent and they don't like immigrants in general, there may be some anti-Islamic feeling. There have been some isolated incidents, such as when some stones were thrown at the mosque in Treviso, or when someone brought a pig before the mosque in Pisa.

The Netherlands
Laila al-Zwaini, Dutch-Iraqi lawyer specialising in Islamic law
Many of the problems in our society that are related to Muslims and Islam are more often immigration problems, not about Islam as a religion.


At a political level, and with the presence of the Freedom Party (FP), the language on this issue has become very negative and confrontational. The FP speak first and everyone has to react to them. They're looking for guinea pigs, not solutions. Muslims are not treated as individual people - they are treated as a group.
The media don't chose to speak to scholarly Muslims, who speak on behalf of these issues. But also, there are not as many Muslims in Holland as in England who are highly educated and willing to speak on these issues.

The Dutch history of a "pillarisation" of society - where if you are Catholic you vote for one party, if Protestant for another - is the way they now treat Islam, as if it's a pillarisation with a church-like hierarchy, which is not the case.
Dutch society has changed how it looks at me - it didn't used to care if I was Muslim, Catholic, Jewish - but now it matters. Before, I was a Dutch native with an exotic background, but now my identity has changed without me changing at all, putting Islam as my primary identity. It's not a problem, but it is different.
The political language has certainly changed for the worse, with the Freedom Party at the forefront, but still the majority of the public do not accept this language.
It's the minority that is negative, but it's the minority that gets the attention.

Denmark

Naser Khader, MP in the Danish Conservative Party and founder of Democratic Islam Organisation
I do not agreed that we have anti-Muslim sentiment in Denmark. We have it among a few but it is not the general option.
To be anti-political Islam is not the same as being anti-Muslim. Our challenge is to underline that, as a Muslim, you have to accept that your religion is challenged, that any religion should be challenged. Any religion that does not accept criticism is, in my opinion, weak. It becomes stronger if you criticise it.
One of the most positive results of the cartoon crisis in Denmark is that we no longer say "the Muslims". The Danish people discovered that there are different kinds of Muslims - and that the majority supported Denmark.
A well-known Danish company owner told me that before the cartoon crisis, he didn't want to hire any Muslims - it was the same as accepting trouble, he said. The crisis was an eye-opener for him, it showed him that Muslims were Danish and were democrats. It made him more tolerant - before, we were a heterogonous group that only wanted trouble.

I and my friends established the Democratic Muslims Organisation for those Muslims in Denmark who are successful, who are educated, who are loyal to Denmark. Before they cartoon crisis they didn't have a platform, they were not well-organised. But the Islamist groups were, so when the media went to speak to Muslims, they spoke to Islamists who only represented the minority.
I think you need a cartoon crisis in the UK!

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The British hippy who became an imam

Forty years after following the hippy trail to South Asia, John Butt is still living in the region, and still spreading a message of peace and love - though now as an Islamic scholar.

As our car turned around the bumpy Indian road, a gleaming white marble minaret came into view. My fellow passenger, John Mohammed Butt, could barely contain his excitement.

"Can you see it?" he asks. "It's like the Oxford University of Islamic learning. For me these minarets and domes are just like the spires and towers of Oxford.

"It's been almost 30 years since I was last here and I am still getting the same thrill. This is my alma mater."

The alma mater in question is Darul-Uloom Deoband, South Asia's largest madrassa, or Islamic school.

Driving through the madrassa gates, we entered a world rarely seen by Western eyes.

Deoband was built in 1866 by Indian Muslims opposed to the then British rule. Little has changed since - winding streets and tiny courtyards lined with stalls selling fragrant chai, bubbling pots of rice and paintings of Mecca.

Everywhere are the Talibs, religious students, young men with dark-eyed fervent expressions carrying books or quietly reciting the Koran.

And in another scene reminiscent of Oxford, students riding bicycles.

A chai seller recognises John and runs towards him. "John Sahib, John Sahib."

The two had not seen each other in decades, yet the man remembers him instantly. "John Sahib was the only student I ever saw who used to go jogging.

"There was only one John Mohammed - unique," he laughs.

That is perhaps not so surprising, when you learn that John Butt remains the first and only Western man ever to have graduated from Deoband.

He showed me his old dormitory room, a windowless cell where he spent eight years in a life of virtual seclusion, living under a regime of prayer and Koranic study.

Imposing figure

But that is just one facet of this man's extraordinary life.

Aside from his time at Deoband, he has spent most of the past 40 years living among the fierce Pashtun tribes, who inhabit the lawless hinterland between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He went there in 1969, he says, as a dope-smoking young hippy and never came home.

He laughs. "When people call me an ageing ex-hippy, I always reply that I am ageing maybe, but I'm certainly not ex. I'm still a hippy."

John Butt cuts an imposing figure.

At 6ft 5ins (1.9m) tall, he sports a long white beard and alabaster skin that is almost translucent.

Dressed in flowing white ethnic robes, he reminds me of a Benedictine hermit monk or a Victorian explorer, swashbuckling straight out of the pages of an historical novel.

He tells me he adores the Queen, Stilton is his favourite cheese and that football is his passion.

Yet among the border tribes, he is regarded as a native Pashtun and revered as an Islamic scholar.


Home for him, until recently, was a tiny village in Pakistan's Swat valley.

Swat was once a popular tourist destination but is now the scene of regular battles between the Pakistani military and the Taliban.

But back in 1969, the young John was hooked from the moment he saw Swat, describing to me snow-capped mountains, rivers like flowing jewels, forests and alpine pastures.

It was, he says, "like Tolkien's Middle-earth, magical and other worldly" inhabited by tribal people who were "very pleasant, big-hearted, tolerant, easy-going and welcoming".

When his fellow hippies grew up and went home to become accountants and lawyers, John stayed on - becoming fluent in the Pashto language and studying Islam.

But John's world changed in the late 1980s, with the arrival of jihadists, who came to the border areas from all over the world to fight the war against the Russians in Afghanistan.

"I saw the rural, religious Pashtun way of life I had come to love so much being diluted, contaminated and poisoned, in particular by Arabs from the Middle East," he says.

"The way they practise Islam is very different to the tribal areas, but they used money and influence to impose their own set of values."

So he decided to fight for his adopted culture.

Peaceful Islam

In the early 1990s, he joined the BBC World Service Pashtu service and helped to set up New Home New Life, a now Iconic Afghan radio soap opera, known as The Archers of Afghanistan.

“ I've hired some of the best Islamic scholars in the region - pious, good and brave men ”
Six years ago, he set up a radio station which broadcasts across the Afghan-Pakistan border and which tries to promote tribal traditions along with peace and reconciliation.

More recently, John has switched his attentions back to Afghanistan and is spearheading the formation of a new Islamic university in the predominantly Pashtun city of Jalalabad.

"It makes perfect sense. There is currently nowhere in Afghanistan where a young man can do higher Islamic studies. They go to Pakistan, where as we know some of them have become radicalised," he says, emphasising that his university will give a platform to moderates.

But this promotion of peaceful Islam by the English former hippy has set him on a collision course with militants. His beloved Pakistan has now become too unsafe for him.

"Swat is a militarised zone and people I see as foreigners there now treat me like I'm the foreigner, even though I lived there for 40 years.

"It's hard to work out who is who any more - who is Taliban, who is criminal. The waters are very muddy."

Last year, waters of another kind finally put paid to his idyll, when his house was washed away in the floods which devastated the area and killed thousands.

"It was a relief in some ways. When I lost the house, I knew I'd never go back there."

Afghanistan has also become increasingly perilous after Taliban death threats.

The Taliban have delivered so-called night letters - notes hand-delivered in secret and at night for maximum impact - warning students not to study at the university and denouncing John as a Christian missionary or an "orientalist".

Death threats have also been made to his teachers and staff.

"I've hired some of the best Islamic scholars in the region - pious, good and brave men," he says. "They know this is for the benefit of Afghanistan and they insist they will stay working with me despite the dangers."

As I said goodbye, he was planning to travel to Jalalabad on the local bus. We talked about the possibility of him being attacked and he admitted he could easily be killed.

But when I asked if he was scared, he brushed me off with a shrug. "You only die once. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow."

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HIJAB STORY:YaztheSpaz

The fatwa factory

Last night, I happened to watch the most brilliant (and at the same time, disgusting) TV show on a local Urdu news channel. Brilliant, because in an hour it summarised everything that is wrong with this country and our mindset. The show featured our entertainment industry’s starlet Veena Malik and, Mufti Abdul Qawi.

Not that I was expecting anything but vitriol on the show, but even then I was shocked. From the way Veena Malik was introduced to the closing statement of the show, every single minute was filled with chauvinistic and downright derogatory remarks.

The programme started with clips from the Indian reality show (Bigg Boss) that Veena was a part of, a show that has stirred quite a controversy. The subject of controversy being that apparently, Veena did not correctly represent Pakistan or Islam on the Indian TV show.

Throughout the hour-long programme, the host kept attacking Veena by using words such as “oryan,” “fahash” and kept insisting that Veena had brought shame to Islam, Pakistan and our culture. The Mufti on the show was asked to judge Veena’s presence on Bigg Boss in the light of Islam. Here, I must also add that the host tried his best to emphasise that the Mufti had the right to impose a fatwa on Veena for her actions.

I must commend Veena for standing her ground with such grace. Despite the kind of language and slander that was being hurled her way, she braved a response and a commendable one too: “From my wardrobe to everything else, nothing on that show was in anyway different than what we see our actresses doing or wearing in our films. I was representing the entertainment industry of the country. One click on the internet can justify it all.”

Her response to the Mufti and the host, brought to the forefront the harassment women have to face that has conveniently been camouflaged as ‘honour and dignity’. But what really pushed me to write this blog was a question Veena asked Mufti Abdul Qawi: “Why am I being treated this way? Why am I being questioned? What is my fault, Mufti sahab? Because I am a woman? A soft target?”

It is true, no one would have dared to speak in such a way to a man, call him names or even questioned his character or his activities on national television. Not that they should, but has anyone ever questioned Atif Aslam, Ali Zafar, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan or the numerous others who have worked in Indian films, produced music and music videos in India? Has anyone ever scrutinised their actions? We have never discussed if any of their videos merit Islam or our culture. Yet, we consider it our right to slander a woman and make her look like the sole custodian of the country’s ‘honour’.

Those who believe such vehement reactions are justified need to rethink their definition of ‘honour and dignity’. Honour that gets disrupted because of a woman’s appearance on a reality show but remains unscathed when over a 1,000 infants – most of them girls – are killed or abandoned to die. This is nothing short of hypocrisy.

In a country, struggling with insurgencies, poverty, inflation, and failure of governance, what Veena Malik did or said on a reality show should be the least of our concerns. But it seems as though moral policing has become our favourite past time. To be more precise, such slurs are actually called ‘slut-shaming.’ What this means is that when a woman acts in a way that is not considered acceptable in the society she lives in, she is verbally attacked and slandered in order to rule out her credibility; in order to divert focus from the main issue.

Veena Malik is just one example how certain factions of our media have resorted to moral policing and even advocating fatwas on anyone and everyone. Never mind that we have never pushed for fatwas against suicide bombings, honour killings and many other heinous acts justified in the name of Islam.

I recall thinking at one point during the show, how Veena Malik did not represent me and that we should stop making this about the ‘country’s image’. But after watching her response to the slurs being hurled her way, I take it back. Veena Malik represents me and many, many women in this country who have been subjected to moral policing. In a country where rape is justified, murderers glorified and women threatened by fatwas, Veena speaks for me and many others.

At the end of the programme, a teary-eyed Veena questioned the absence of outrage from her fellow countrymen, when she was being abused, bullied and subjected to hate for being a Pakistani on the same show. In those last minutes, she struck at the very heart of hypocrisy that is rampant in this country.

The Moral Police or the Ghairat Brigade conveniently turns a blind eye to horrific incidents like when infants get raped, but creates uproar if a woman dares to make choices for herself. It is my request to my readers and everyone who indulges in such behaviour to please stop; stop this madness, the moral policing and the fatwa factory before it devours us all.

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Sana Saleem is a Features Editor at BEE magazine and blogs at Global Voices, Asian Correspondent, The Guardian and her personal blog Mystified Justice. She was awarded the Best Activist Blogger Award by CIO & Google at the Pakistan Blogger Awards. She can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

I Am a Muslimerican

While standing in line at the airport, it's no longer a question. I approach the counter and immediately tell them to call their manager because they'll need extra approval to allow me on the plane. When finally in my seat answering a phone call, the looks I get from surrounding passengers as I greet with "Asalamu Alaikum" is a type of fear that I've never seen, one that cannot possibly be sustained in the face of all that this nation is up against.

I was raised in Michigan, where I always attended public schools. I was a decent student, played sports, served on student organizations and was even homecoming king. I have always believed in the ideals of this country, and because of that, I beat the odds and followed my dreams of becoming a working film writer and director. But at some point, I and many others who share my faith became the Other. I became one of "them."

When I turn on the TV and see another broadcast displaying Muslim extremism or terrorism, it makes me cringe. This feeling persists primarily because there are people doing these terrible things in the name of Islam. They go against everything Muslims are supposed to represent and make the lives of many people here very difficult. We have to live in fear not only of terrorists but also of being associated with them. To make things worse, there has been an unyielding and unapologetic attempt to push it in our faces for the last decade. If we're talking real numbers here, Al Qaeda represents less than 0.1 percent of the world's Muslim population. How can the actions of such a small percentage serve as the representation of a group so large?

Now this idea has manifested itself in a crucial debate, and the issue on the table has the potential to deny American citizens their basic constitutional rights. There needs to be the recognition of the problem of this argument at its core: by going against the building of a mosque near Ground Zero, you're essentially associating the ideals of extremism and terrorism with every peace-practicing Muslim American. I am appalled by this association and disappointed that so many fellow Americans have taken that stance instead of believing in what this country has represented since its birth. If this freedom is defeated, I fear what's to come.

This is not a plea for sympathy; it is a call to character. It's not a question of whether or not we should or shouldn't. Once we get past the unreasonable debates fueled by emotions and illegitimate accusations, we know what's right. As the leaders of the free world, we cannot afford another embarrassment of this magnitude on our record. It will again, in a crucial time of rebuilding, question our validity for years to come.

When I wrote my film "MOOZ-lum," which speaks about the Muslim-American experience, I had no idea so much would be at stake; I simply wanted to give a voice to a generation that is often drowned out by the heavy volume of extremism. But alas, here we are. And I'm willfully submitting my film into the discussion, hoping that it will be able to shed some light and humanize a group of people who have been demonized for far too long.

When all is said and done, the compelling statement of freedom that the construction of this mosque represents can be an ultimate sign of our country's progression.

I hope you enjoy the trailer.

Salaam (Peace)

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Hindu holy man reveals truth of terror attacks blamed on Muslims

India is being forced to confront disturbing evidence that increasingly suggests a secret Hindu terror network may have been responsible for a wave of deadly attacks previously blamed on radical Muslims.

Information contained in a confession given in court by a Hindu holy man, suggests that he and several others linked to a right-wing Hindu organisation, planned and carried out attacks on a train travelling to Pakistan, a Sufi shrine and a mosque as well as two assaults on Malegaon, a town in southern India with a large Muslim population.

He claimed the attacks were launched in response to the actions of Muslim militants. "I told everybody that we should answer bombs with bombs," 59-year-old Swami Aseemanand, whose real name is Naba Kumar Sarkar, told a magistrate during a closed hearing in Delhi. "I suggested that 80 per cent of the people of Malegaon were Muslims and we should explode the first bomb in Malegaon itself. I also said that during partition, the Nizam of Hyderabad had wanted to go with Pakistan so Hyderabad was also a fair target. Then I said that since Hindus also throng [a Sufi shrine in] Ajmer we should also explode a bomb in Ajmer which would deter the Hindus from going there. I also suggested the Aligarh Muslim University as a target."

Police in India have suspected for some time that Hindus may have been responsible for the attacks carried out between 2006 and 2008, and in November of that year several arrests were made, including that of a serving military officer. But the confession of Swami Aseemanand, obtained by an Indian news magazine, is perhaps the most damning evidence yet that Hindu extremists were responsible. It also suggests those involved were senior members of a religious group that is the parent organisation of India's main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

"The evidence is not conclusive but people have to take notice of this," said Bahukutumbi Raman, a former national security adviser and now a leading regional security analyst. "This could aggravate tensions between India's [Hindu and Muslim] communities. It will create problems."

The revelations in Tehelka magazine, bear added significance following the comments of Rahul Gandhi, widely expected to be a future prime minister, in which he said he believed the growth of Hindu extremists presented a greater threat to India than Muslim militants. According to a cable obtained by WikiLeaks, last year Mr Gandhi told the US ambassador to Delhi, Timothy Roemer: "Although there was evidence of some support for Laskar-e-Taiba among certain elements in India's indigenous Muslim community, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community."

At the time, Mr Gandhi's comments were strongly condemned by the BJP. But the main opposition party has been pushed on to the back foot by the testimony of Swami Aseemanand, which suggests many of those involved in the bombing plots were members of religious organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

The RSS is considered the BJP's ideological parent. This week, the RSS's leader, Mohan Bhagwat, claimed extremists had been forced out. "Elements nurturing extremist views have been asked to leave the organisation," he said. "A majority of the people whom the government has accused... had left voluntarily and a few were told that this extremism will not work here."

Among the incidents initially blamed on Muslim militants was a bomb attack in February 2007 on the Samjhauta Express, travelling between Delhi and Lahore. Of the 68 deaths, most were Pakistani citizens returning home. The attack took place a day before Pakistan's Foreign Minister was due to arrive in India for peace talks.

Swami Aseemanand was arrested in Haridwar last November, having apparently been in hiding for more than two years. In his 42-page confession to the magistrate, he reportedly claimed he had been spurred into action by a series of Muslim attacks on Hindus, in particular the assault on the Akshardham temple in Gujarat 2002 that left at least 29 people dead. "This caused great concern and anger in me," he said.

The attacks under scrutiny

Samjhauta Express

In February 2007, two firebombs exploded on the train commonly known as the 'Friendship Express' which travels across the Indo-Pakistani border. Most of the 68 victims and 50 injured were of Pakistani origin. Three further unexploded suitcase bombs were later found on the train.

Mecca Masjid

An attack on the Mecca Masjid mosque, which is in Hyderabad's old city, left 14 people dead in May 2007 – with five apparently killed by police firing on a furious mob after the incident. Swami Aseemanand apparently said that the site was chosen because the local administrator wanted to be part of Pakistan during partition.

Ajmer

A famous Muslim shrine in the city of Ajmer in Rajasthan, about 350km south-west of Delhi, was targeted by bomb attacks in October later that year. Two people were killed and 17 injured near the scared shrine, which houses the tomb of a 13th-century Sufi saint. Swami Aseemanand said the blast was intended to deter Hindus from going there.

Malegaon

In September 2008, three bomb blasts killed 37 people in the Muslim-majority city of Malegaon, situated about 160 miles north-east of Maharashtra's state capital, Mumbai. Muslims had been attending prayers when the bombs exploded in a sacred burial ground, also injuring more than 125 people.

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Hadith of the Day:Prayer

Narrated Al-Mughira: The Prophet (peace be upon him) used to stand (in the prayer) or pray till both his feet or legs swelled. He was asked why (he offered such an unbearable prayer) and he said, 'should I not be a thankful slave.' [Bukhari, Book 21 Volume 2, Book 21, Number 230]

Ghosts, Spirits, and Demons: The Islamic Perspective

The brutal truth about Tunisia

By Robert Fisk


The end of the age of dictators in the Arab world? Certainly they are shaking in their boots across the Middle East, the well-heeled sheiks and emirs, and the kings, including one very old one in Saudi Arabia and a young one in Jordan, and presidents – another very old one in Egypt and a young one in Syria – because Tunisia wasn't meant to happen. Food price riots in Algeria, too, and demonstrations against price increases in Amman. Not to mention scores more dead in Tunisia, whose own despot sought refuge in Riyadh – exactly the same city to which a man called Idi Amin once fled.

If it can happen in the holiday destination Tunisia, it can happen anywhere, can't it? It was feted by the West for its "stability" when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was in charge. The French and the Germans and the Brits, dare we mention this, always praised the dictator for being a "friend" of civilised Europe, keeping a firm hand on all those Islamists.

Tunisians won't forget this little history, even if we would like them to. The Arabs used to say that two-thirds of the entire Tunisian population – seven million out of 10 million, virtually the whole adult population – worked in one way or another for Mr Ben Ali's secret police. They must have been on the streets too, then, protesting at the man we loved until last week. But don't get too excited. Yes, Tunisian youths have used the internet to rally each other – in Algeria, too – and the demographic explosion of youth (born in the Eighties and Nineties with no jobs to go to after university) is on the streets. But the "unity" government is to be formed by Mohamed Ghannouchi, a satrap of Mr Ben Ali's for almost 20 years, a safe pair of hands who will have our interests – rather than his people's interests – at heart.

For I fear this is going to be the same old story. Yes, we would like a democracy in Tunisia – but not too much democracy. Remember how we wanted Algeria to have a democracy back in the early Nineties?

Then when it looked like the Islamists might win the second round of voting, we supported its military-backed government in suspending elections and crushing the Islamists and initiating a civil war in which 150,000 died.

No, in the Arab world, we want law and order and stability. Even in Hosni Mubarak's corrupt and corrupted Egypt, that's what we want. And we will get it.

The truth, of course, is that the Arab world is so dysfunctional, sclerotic, corrupt, humiliated and ruthless – and remember that Mr Ben Ali was calling Tunisian protesters "terrorists" only last week – and so totally incapable of any social or political progress, that the chances of a series of working democracies emerging from the chaos of the Middle East stand at around zero per cent.

The job of the Arab potentates will be what it has always been – to "manage" their people, to control them, to keep the lid on, to love the West and to hate Iran.

Indeed, what was Hillary Clinton doing last week as Tunisia burned? She was telling the corrupted princes of the Gulf that their job was to support sanctions against Iran, to confront the Islamic republic, to prepare for another strike against a Muslim state after the two catastrophes the United States and the UK have already inflicted in the region.

The Muslim world – at least, that bit of it between India and the Mediterranean – is a more than sorry mess. Iraq has a sort-of-government that is now a satrap of Iran, Hamid Karzai is no more than the mayor of Kabul, Pakistan stands on the edge of endless disaster, Egypt has just emerged from another fake election.

And Lebanon... Well, poor old Lebanon hasn't even got a government. Southern Sudan – if the elections are fair – might be a tiny candle, but don't bet on it.

It's the same old problem for us in the West. We mouth the word "democracy" and we are all for fair elections – providing the Arabs vote for whom we want them to vote for.

In Algeria 20 years ago, they didn't. In "Palestine" they didn't. And in Lebanon, because of the so-called Doha accord, they didn't. So we sanction them, threaten them and warn them about Iran and expect them to keep their mouths shut when Israel steals more Palestinian land for its colonies on the West Bank.

There was a fearful irony that the police theft of an ex-student's fruit produce – and his suicide in Tunis – should have started all this off, not least because Mr Ben Ali made a failed attempt to gather public support by visiting the dying youth in hospital.

For years, this wretched man had been talking about a "slow liberalising" of his country. But all dictators know they are in greatest danger when they start freeing their entrapped countrymen from their chains.

And the Arabs behaved accordingly. No sooner had Ben Ali flown off into exile than Arab newspapers which have been stroking his fur and polishing his shoes and receiving his money for so many years were vilifying the man. "Misrule", "corruption", "authoritarian reign", "a total lack of human rights", their journalists are saying now. Rarely have the words of the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran sounded so painfully accurate: "Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpetings, and farewells him with hootings, only to welcome another with trumpetings again." Mohamed Ghannouchi, perhaps?

Of course, everyone is lowering their prices now – or promising to. Cooking oil and bread are the staple of the masses. So prices will come down in Tunisia and Algeria and Egypt. But why should they be so high in the first place?

Algeria should be as rich as Saudi Arabia – it has the oil and gas – but it has one of the worst unemployment rates in the Middle East, no social security, no pensions, nothing for its people because its generals have salted their country's wealth away in Switzerland.

And police brutality. The torture chambers will keep going. We will maintain our good relations with the dictators. We will continue to arm their armies and tell them to seek peace with Israel.

And they will do what we want. Ben Ali has fled. The search is now on for a more pliable dictator in Tunisia – a "benevolent strongman" as the news agencies like to call these ghastly men.

And the shooting will go on – as it did yesterday in Tunisia – until "stability" has been restored.

No, on balance, I don't think the age of the Arab dictators is over. We will see to that.

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Saudi Women Sue Male Guardians Who Stop Marriage

‘Enough Adhl’

Year after year, the 42-year-old Saudi surgeon remains single, against her will. Her father keeps turning down marriage proposals, and her hefty salary keeps going directly to his bank account.
The surgeon in the holy city of Medina knows her father, also her male guardian, is violating Islamic law by forcibly keeping her single, a practice known as “adhl.” So she has sued him in court, with questionable success.

Adhl cases reflect the many challenges facing single women in Saudi Arabia. But what has changed is that more women are now coming forward with their cases to the media and the law. Dozens of women have challenged their guardians in court over adhl, and one has even set up a Facebook group for victims of the practice.
The backlash comes as Saudi Arabia has just secured a seat on the governing board of the new United Nation Women’s Rights Council — a move many activists have decried because of the desert kingdom’s poor record on treatment of women. Saudi feminist Wajeha al-Hawaidar describes male guardianship as “a form of slavery.”
“A Saudi woman can’t even buy a phone without the guardian’s permission,” said al-Hawaidar, who has been banned from writing or appearing on Saudi television networks because of her vocal support of women’s rights. “This law deals with women as juveniles who can’t be in charge of themselves at the same time it gives all powers to men.”

In a recent report by the pan-Arab Al-Hayat newspaper, the National Society for Human Rights received 30 cases of adhl this year — almost certainly an undercount. A Facebook group called “enough adhl,” set up by a university professor and adhl victim, estimates the number at closer to 800,000 cases. The group, with 421 members, aims at rallying support for harsher penalties against men who misuse their guardianship.

An estimated 4 million women over the age of 20 are unmarried in the country of 24.6 million. After 20, women are rapidly seen in Saudi society as getting too old to marry, said Sohila Zein el-Abdydeen, a prominent female member of the governmental National Society for Human Rights.
Fathers cite adhl for a variety of reasons — sometimes because a suitor doesn’t belong to the same tribe, or a prominent enough tribe. In other cases, the father wants to keep the allowance that the government gives to single women in poorer families, or cannot afford a dowry.

Islam’s holy book, the Quran, warns Muslim men not to prevent their daughters, sisters or female relatives from getting married, or else they will encourage sexual relations outside marriage. But under Saudi judges’ interpretation of Islamic Shariah law, the crime can be punished by lifting the male guardianship, nothing more.
Hardline judges refuse to go even that far. The founder of the Facebook group, who introduced herself only as Amal Saleh in an interview with Saudi daily Al-Watan, said she set up the group after courts let down adhl victims. She said her family threatened her with “death and torture” when she pressed for her right to get married while she was under 30. She is now 37 and still single.

Some judges even punish the women themselves for rebelling against their fathers. In one high-profile adhl case, a young single mother, Samar Badawi, sued her father and demanded he be stripped of his guardianship. She fled her house in March 2008 and spent around two years in a women’s protection house in Jeddah, waiting for the court ruling.

In April, she got it — she was sentenced to six months in prison for disobedience.
She was released late October, under heavy pressure from local rights group. The judge transferred guardianship to her uncle, and it is not yet clear if her uncle will let her get married.
Badawi refuses to speak to the media after her release, but her lawyer, Waleed Abu Khair, said hardline judges hate the protection shelters because they say the shelters corrupt women.

In Saudi Arabia, no woman can travel, gain admittance to a public hospital or live independently without a “mahram,” or guardian. Men can beat women who don’t obey, with special instructions not to pop the eye, break an arm or leave a mark on their bodies.

In the Saudi public school curriculum, boys are taught how to use their guardianship rights.
The concept of guardianship is interpreted in conservative Islam as meaning that men are superior to women. Moderate Islamic schools of thought, however, see the practice as an order for men to protect women, financially, emotionally and physically.

Radwa Youssef, an activist, said the answer is not to abolish guardianship but to redefine it. Since 2009, she has collected 5,400 signatures for a campaign called “Our Guardians Know Best.” She said many women who go against their male guardians’ will marry the wrong men and bring shame on their families.
“I see guardians as bodyguards who are serving women and protecting them; it is a responsibility, not a source of power,” Youssef said. “If there is a male misusing his powers, he should be introduced to rehabilitation sessions to advise and guide him.”

The Medina Surgeon, as the Saudi media tagged her, has been waiting for justice since 2006.

The surgeon, who has Canadian, British and Saudi certification, filed a lawsuit to drop her father’s mandate. But despite a paper trail carrying testimonies from suitors turned away by her father, bank documents that show her father taking over her salary, medical reports showing physical abuse, and the fact that her four other single sisters over 30 face the same destiny, no ruling has yet been issued.
The only answer she gets from the judge is to go back to her father and seek reconciliation.

“He wants me to go to death,” she told The Associated Press over the phone from Medina, speaking on condition of anonymity because she feared family retaliation. “Until when I am going to wait? ...The prophet Mohamed (PBUH) himself wouldn’t have allowed adhl to take place.”

The surgeon lives in a “protection house,” one of dozens scattered around the kingdom for victims of adhl and domestic violence. Under a fake name, she gets escorted to courts accompanied by guards, fearing retaliation from her father.
She recalled her last encounter with her father inside the court: “I kissed his feet. I begged him to let me free, for the sake of God.”
She turns 43 next month.

VERSE OF THE DAY: BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUTH

"Be steadfast in your devotion to God, bearing witness to the truth in all equity, and never let the hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: (for) that is closest to piety..."

The Holy Quran, 5:8-9

Fury over doctor's book on sex education for Muslims

Dr Mobin Akhtar is on a mission to educate Pakistanis in sexual matters, but his latest attempt to do so has caused controversy.

The release of his book - Sex Education for Muslims - aims to teach people about sex in a way that is in keeping with Islamic instruction.
Dr Akhtar, 81, says the fact that sex is not discussed in Pakistan is having serious repercussions. As a psychiatrist, he says he has witnessed them himself, and that is why he felt the need to write his book.

"There's a huge problem in our country," he says.
"Adolescents, especially boys, when they get to puberty, and the changes that come with puberty, they think it's due to some disease.
"They start masturbating, and they are told that is very dangerous to health, and that this is sinful, very sinful."

'Misconceptions'
Dr Akhtar says he has seen cases where teenagers, not understanding what is happening to their bodies, have become depressed and even committed suicide.
"I myself passed through that stage with all these concerns, and there's no-one to tell you otherwise, and that these are wrong perceptions. It was only when I entered medical college that I found out that these were all misconceptions."
He says even now in Pakistan, many doctors do not discuss sexual matters openly, and that teachers and parents are embarrassed about the issues. There is no sex education teaching in government schools.

Dr Akhtar says it is not seen as appropriate to broach the subject of sex in the conservative culture of Pakistan, and that it is also felt that doing so might encourage young people to behave in an "un-Islamic" way.
"They ask me when you should start sex education, and I say as soon as the child can talk. They should be told the names of the genitals just as they are told about hands and eyes and ears, and nose," he says.

"When they get a little bigger and they ask where a child comes from, you can say it. That doesn't make the child sexually active or immoral."

Dr Akhtar says there is also nothing un-Islamic about discussing sex.
He says he felt that the best way to help people understand that was to write a book which brought together basic sex education with information about the Islamic perspective on the subject.

"When I started to study what the Koran, Islamic law and religious scholars had to say about it, I realised there is so much discussion about sex in Islam. One would be surprised.

"There are sayings from the Prophet Muhammad about sexual matters, and historical sources tell us he answered detailed queries on the subject from both men and women."
The writings in Dr Akhtar's book are interspersed with quotes from the Prophet Muhammad, and also from the Koran, like this one: "You are allowed intercourse at night with your wives during the month of fasting. They are as intimate for you as your own clothes, and vice versa." (Koran, Surah Baqra, Verse 187)

'Quack'
Among many other topics, Dr Akhtar writes of the Islamic thinking about masturbation, marital problems and how a man should wash himself after having sex so that he is clean enough to perform prayers.

But many Pakistanis have found Dr Akhtar's book unpalatable.
He tried to tone down the title - Sex Education for Muslims is the name of the English version of the book, in Urdu the title is Special Problems for Young People.
But that has not been enough to appease some.
"I have had threats. Even other doctors have accused me of acting like a maverick, a quack," he says.

"A provincial politician even hauled me into his office and said I was encouraging pornography. I explained I was doing nothing of the sort."
Dr Akhtar says he has found very few bookshops willing to stock his book, or any newspapers that will print paid advertisements for it.
"It is a very sad reaction. Ignorance about sexual matters is causing a lot of our young people unnecessary psychological distress, and we have to change that.
"I am only talking about educating people gradually and sensitively, but at the moment we are not even doing that."

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Say What? Islamic Phrases

Grooming and our ignoble tradition of racialising crime

The British National party's website, its logo still sporting a seasonal sprig of holly, is understandably triumphalist as it proclaims that the "controlled media" has admitted this week that "Nick Griffin has been right all along about Muslim paedophile gangs".

The particular branch of the controlled media the BNP refers to is the Times, which has been running the results of a lengthy investigation into the sexual exploitation and internal trafficking of girls in the north of England. Specifically, the Times has marshalled evidence suggesting that these organised crimes are carried out almost exclusively by gangs of Pakistani Muslim origin who target white youngsters; and it quotes both police and agency sources who refer to a "conspiracy of silence" around the open investigation of such cases, amid fears of being branded racist or inflaming ethnic tensions in already precarious local environments.

This is not the first time that anxieties about the ethnic dimension of child sexual exploitation have been aired by the media. In 2004 the Channel 4 documentary Edge of the City, which explored claims that Asian men in Bradford were grooming white girls as young as 11, sexually abusing them and passing them on to their friends, was initially withdrawn from the schedules after the BNP described it as "a party political broadcast", and the chief constable of West Yorkshire police warned that it could spark disorder.

Anecdotally, as far back as the mid-90s, local agencies have been aware of the participation of ethnic minority men in some cases of serial abuse. But what has not emerged is any consistent evidence to suggest that Pakistani Muslim men are uniquely and disproportionately involved in these crimes, nor that they are preying on white girls because they believe them to be legitimate sexual quarry, as is now being suggested.

The Times investigation is based around 56 men convicted in the Midlands and north of England since 1997, 50 from Muslim backgrounds. Granted, such prosecutions are notoriously difficult to sustain, but, nonetheless, this is a small sample used to evidence the "tidal wave" of offending referred to by unnamed police sources. Martin Narey, the chief executive of Barnardo's, which has run projects in the areas concerned for many years, tells me that, while he is pleased to see open discussion of child sexual exploitation, he worries that "decent Pakistani men will now be looked at as potential child abusers". He insists: "This is not just about Pakistani men, and not just about Asian men. And it is happening all over the country."

While Narey acknowledges that "in the Midlands and north of England there does seem to be an over-representation of minority ethnic men in [offending] groups", he argues strongly that no useful conclusions can be drawn until the government undertakes a serious piece of research into what is a nationwide problem. (Keith Vaz, who chairs the Commons home affairs select committee called for such an inquiry today.) Narey also refutes the allegation that Muslim men are grooming white girls because of cultural assumptions about their sexual availability, as girls from minority backgrounds have been similarly abused.

Thus no official data exists on the ethnic or religious background of perpetrators of this form of child abuse, and local charities have stated publicly that they do not consider it a race issue. But it is worth noting that, when asked by the Times to collate its recent work according to ethnicity, Engage – based in Blackburn and one of the largest multi-agency organisations working on this issue – found that in the past year that 80% of offenders were white.

There is an ignoble tradition of racialising criminality in this country, in particular sexual offences, from the moral panic about West Indian pimps in the 1960s to the statistically dubious coverage of African-Caribbean gang rape in the 90s. But even those who do want further investigation into the apparent preponderance of Asian perpetrators tell me that this is not about cultural expectations regarding the sexual susceptibility of white females but rather about opportunity and vulnerability, especially of young people within the care system. It is certainly admissible to query just how beholden to "the tyranny of custom", as Wednesday's Times leader put it, are these twentysomething males who drive flash cars and ply their victims with alcohol.

Nevertheless, Muslim voices are now being lined up to attest that serial child molestation is not actually sanctioned by the Qur'an. By building an apparent consensus of voices "bravely" speaking out in the face of accusations of racism, it becomes that much harder for a figure from within the Muslim community to offer a more nuanced perspective or indeed state that these allegations are simply not true. The inevitable and distorting consequence of framing the debate around a "conspiracy of silence" is that it effectively shuts down or taints as mealy-mouthed any criticism.

The efforts of the Times to stand up this investigation are certainly considerable: selectively quoting or misquoting some groups, and inventing a category of "on-street grooming" that does not exist in law and was not recognised by any of the agencies I spoke to. It is also worth asking how responsible it is to provide ammunition to the violent racist extremists already active in these areas on such flawed evidence.

Meanwhile, the sunlight of investigative inquiry has yet to shine on our legal system which, all agencies agree, fails to cater to the needs of children who – groomed into acquiescence by practised abusers of all creeds and colours – don't present as the perfect victims our limited version of justice demands.

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VERSE OF THE DAY: MONASTERIES, CHURCHES, SYNAGOGUES, AND MOSQUES

"Had not God repelled some people by the might of others, the monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques in which God's praise is celebrated daily, would have been utterly demolished. God will certainly help those who help His cause ... These are the people who, if We establish them in the land, will remain constant in prayer and give in charity, enjoin justice and forbid evil."

The Holy Quran, 22:40-41

If Israel was on Facebook....

Wearing a Headscarf Can Be a Feminist Choice

"You don't have to wear that" my friend once said looking at my headscarf -- damn it, don't I know it already? I know I don't have to wear it, and I also know my choice was not done independently. Years of research, reading feminist literature, philosophical literature, Islamic literature, catholic literature and spiritual literature led me into choosing to wear a scarf. I didn't wake up one morning wanting to wear a scarf. It took me a long time, but in the end, regardless of all the hurdles and struggles. I knew that for me it wasn't just a feminist choice, and it certainly was not done out of rebellion to my parents, nor culture for that matter. It was a spiritual choice. I believe that God commands both men and women to be modest. Though modesty could be a side-effect of wearing a hijab, the primary reason for wearing one is because I believe it was commanded by God.

Can a feminist wear a headscarf, and stand in solidarity with women that have had their rights violated? In one of my study groups, I was taken by surprise by one of my Muslim colleagues. He argued that wearing a Hijab symbolises subservience to men, and it illustrates a divide between the Muslims that do wear it, and those that do not. It never occurred to me that I would face problems among feminists when trying to justify why I wear a headscarf (referred to as Hijab by Muslims). It did not come to my mind that some would find the wearing of Hijab to simultaneously condone violence against women. Especially since I have been an active speaker for rights of women.

When I wear a Hijab, I don't believe it contradicts me being feminist because feminism is not just a political movement, it is an intellectual movement to empower women through education, self-awareness and self-determination. While Islam acts as an important aspect in my life, wearing Hijab was my choice - questioning how much of a choice I have exercised is to question my intellectual ability as a human being. Of course I was influenced by the literature I read but ask yourself this, is anyone immune from influence? The clothes you wear, choice of make-up, music and people you hand around with -- are they all conscious choices without any influence? The answer is no. We are all influenced by different things, but so long as the influence is not shoved down our throats, and so long as we have the freedom to choose, surely, it doesn't amount to oppression.

So we can establish that wearing a headscarf can be a free choice, a spiritual and feminist one at that. It's evident from the thousands of Muslim women living the West where they have been very vocal about wearing a headscarf. Can we illustrate that wearing a headscarf is not forced upon us intellectually by men who want to conceal our sexuality, and force us to hide it because they're too incompetent to control their desires? The assumption here might be that the headscarf is imposed by men to begin with which is not true, at least not in my case.

Muslims believe that wearing a headscarf is a command from God. A God that is not masculine nor feminised. Their understanding and interpretation is rooted to both the Prophetic precedent and Qur'an. Of course there are Muslim women who do not wear a Headscarf, that doesn't make them any less 'Muslim' and it should not be a means of measuring how pious or God-conscious an individual is because God specifically mentions in the Qur'an that the most righteous is the one that is most conscious of God.

This means, we can't argue that the Hijab is imposed by men because Muslim women reject the notion that the Qur'an was a fabrication of men in the 7th century. They believe it is the unchallenged word of God revealed through an angel to Prophet Muhammad. In addition, the next question is whether it is a means of hiding one's sexuality.

First, what do we mean when we speak of one's 'sexuality'? Is sexuality hidden through how we dress, or is the way we dress a manifestation of our sexuality. The answer is simple, sexuality has nothing to do with wearing a headscarf. The organs which we are born with are not the necessary elements which determine our gender, and therefore wearing a headscarf is not a matter of concealing a woman's sexuality.

What freedom means to women is the ability to choose, and feminism is all about respecting the choices other women make, regardless if we like it or not. I don't particularly like certain feminist choices, but I have to respect them if I want to be true to feminism as an intellectual movement. A movement that seeks to empower women to make their own choices with as little influence, and intimidation possible. What we can't guarantee in our society, or any society for that matter is that the choices which women make are not influenced by anything.

Let's face it. If women make any choice, it must be influenced by something. We don't live in a world of spontaneous meaningless choices. What matters is whether the choice was made consciously, and not under intimidation. This is how we distinguish between what women choose freely, and what they are unfairly forced to do.

In instances where women are forced to dress in a certain way, it could be the social pressures that a teenager goes through in high school, or it could be in certain Muslim dominated countries where the law dictates that women must dress a certain way. Whichever is the case, both are unfair. However we can't say just because some women might be forced, and probably are in certain countries to wear a headscarf that all women that do wear one are forced.

Ruwayda Mustafah Rabar is a second year law student at Kingston law school, having written several articles about gender and Islam, and travelled eastern countries throughout her youth. She has an interest for comparative religion, culture, and effects of globalisation. She's is a British-Kurdish writer based in United Kingdom, and is the CEO of Muslim Cancer Support – A student based community support for those diagnosed with cancer from ethnic backgrounds.

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For The LAST Time.. The Prophet Muhammed (S) Did NOT Marry A Child

The Ancient Myth Exposed
by T.O. Shanavas

A Christian friend asked me once, “Will you marry your seven year old daughter to a fifty year old man?” I kept my silence. He continued, “If you would not, how can you approve the marriage of an innocent seven year old, Ayesha, with your Prophet?” I told him, “I don’t have an answer to your question at this time.” My friend smiled and left me with a thorn in the heart of my faith. Most Muslims answer that such marriages were accepted in those days. Otherwise, people would have objected to Prophet’s marriage with Ayesha.

However, such an explanation would be gullible only for those who are naive enough to believe it. But unfortunately, I was not satisfied with the answer.

The Prophet was an exemplary man. All his actions were most virtuous so that we, Muslims, can emulate them. However, most people in our Islamic Center of Toledo, including me, would not think of betrothing our seven years daughter to a fifty-two year-old man. If a parent agrees to such a wedding, most people, if not all, would look down upon the father and the old husband.

In 1923, registrars of marriage in Egypt were instructed not to register and issue official certificates of marriage for brides less than sixteen and grooms less than eighteen years of age. Eight years later, the Law of the Organization and Procedure of Sheriah courts of 1931 consolidated the above provision by not hearing the marriage disputes involving brides less than sixteen and grooms less than eighteen years old. (Women in Muslim Family Law, John Esposito, 1982). It shows that even in the Muslim majority country of Egypt the child marriages are unacceptable.

So, I believed, without solid evidence other than my reverence to my Prophet, that the stories of the marriage of seven-year-old Ayesha to 50-year-old Prophet are only myths. However, my long pursuit in search of the truth on this matter proved my intuition correct. My Prophet was a gentleman. And he did not marry an innocent seven or nine year old girl. The age of Ayesha has been erroneously reported in the hadith literature. Furthermore, I think that the narratives reporting this event are highly unreliable. Some of the hadith (traditions of the Prophet) regarding Ayesha’s age at the time of her wedding with prophet are problematic. I present the following evidences against the acceptance of the fictitious story by Hisham ibn ‘Urwah and to clear the name of my Prophet as an irresponsible old man preying on an innocent little girl.

EVIDENCE #1: Reliability of Source

Most of the narratives printed in the books of hadith are reported only by Hisham ibn `Urwah, who was reporting on the authority of his father. First of all, more people than just one, two or three should logically have reported. It is strange that no one from Medina, where Hisham ibn `Urwah lived the first 71 years of his life narrated the event, despite the fact that his Medinan pupils included the well-respected Malik ibn Anas. The origins of the report of the narratives of this event are people from Iraq, where Hisham is reported to have shifted after living in Medina for most of his life.

Tehzibu’l-Tehzib, one of the most well known books on the life and reliability of the narrators of the traditions of the Prophet, reports that according to Yaqub ibn Shaibah: “He [Hisham] is highly reliable, his narratives are acceptable, except what he narrated after moving over to Iraq” (Tehzi’bu’l-tehzi’b, Ibn Hajar Al-`asqala’ni, Dar Ihya al-turath al-Islami, 15th century. Vol 11, p. 50).

It further states that Malik ibn Anas objected on those narratives of Hisham which were reported through people in Iraq: “I have been told that Malik objected on those narratives of Hisham which were reported through people of Iraq” (Tehzi’b u’l-tehzi’b, Ibn Hajar Al-`asqala’ni, Dar Ihya al-turath al-Islami, Vol.11, p. 50).

Mizanu’l-ai`tidal, another book on the life sketches of the narrators of the traditions of the Prophet reports: “When he was old, Hisham’s memory suffered quite badly” (Mizanu’l-ai`tidal, Al-Zahbi, Al-Maktabatu’l-athriyyah, Sheikhupura, Pakistan, Vol. 4, p. 301).

CONCLUSION: Based on these references, Hisham’s memory was failing and his narratives while in Iraq were unreliable. So, his narrative of Ayesha’s marriage and age are unreliable.

CHRONOLOGY: It is vital also to keep in mind some of the pertinent dates in the history of Islam:

pre-610 CE: Jahiliya (pre-Islamic age) before revelation
610 CE: First revelation
610 CE: AbuBakr accepts Islam
613 CE: Prophet Muhammad begins preaching publicly.
615 CE: Emigration to Abyssinia
616 CE: Umar bin al Khattab accepts Islam
620 CE: Generally accepted betrothal of Ayesha to the Prophet
622 CE: Hijrah (emigation to Yathrib, later renamed Medina)
623/624 CE: Generally accepted year of Ayesha living with the Prophet

EVIDENCE #2: The Betrothal

According to Tabari (also according to Hisham ibn ‘Urwah, Ibn Hunbal and Ibn Sad), Ayesha was betrothed at seven years of age and began to cohabit with the Prophet at the age of nine years.

However, in another work, Al-Tabari says: “All four of his [Abu Bakr’s] children were born of his two wives during the pre-Islamic period” (Tarikhu’l-umam wa’l-mamlu’k, Al-Tabari (died 922), Vol. 4, p. 50, Arabic, Dara’l-fikr, Beirut, 1979).

If Ayesha was betrothed in 620 CE (at the age of seven) and started to live with the Prophet in 624 CE (at the age of nine), that would indicate that she was born in 613 CE and was nine when she began living with the Prophet. Therefore, based on one account of Al-Tabari, the numbers show that Ayesha must have born in 613 CE, three years after the beginning of revelation (610 CE). Tabari also states that Ayesha was born in the pre-Islamic era (in Jahiliya). If she was born before 610 CE, she would have been at least 14 years old when she began living with the Prophet. Essentially, Tabari contradicts himself.

CONCLUSION: Al-Tabari is unreliable in the matter of determining Ayesha’s age.

EVIDENCE # 3: The Age of Ayesha in Relation to the Age of Fatima

According to Ibn Hajar, “Fatima was born at the time the Ka`bah was rebuilt, when the Prophet was 35 years old... she was five years older that Ayesha” (Al-isabah fi tamyizi’l-sahabah, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Vol. 4, p. 377, Maktabatu’l-Riyadh al-haditha, al-Riyadh, 1978).

If Ibn Hajar’s statement is factual, Ayesha was born when the Prophet was 40 years old. If Ayesha was married to the Prophet when he was 52 years old, Ayesha’s age at marriage would be 12 years.

CONCLUSION: Ibn Hajar, Tabari an Ibn Hisham and Ibn Humbal contradict each other. So, the marriage of Ayesha at seven years of age is a myth.

EVIDENCE #4: Ayesha’s Age in relation to Asma’s Age

According to Abda’l-Rahman ibn abi zanna’d: “Asma was 10 years older than Ayesha (Siyar A`la’ma’l-nubala’, Al-Zahabi, Vol. 2, p. 289, Arabic, Mu’assasatu’l-risalah, Beirut, 1992).

According to Ibn Kathir: “She [Asma] was elder to her sister [Ayesha] by 10 years” (Al-Bidayah wa’l-nihayah, Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, p. 371, Dar al-fikr al-`arabi, Al-jizah, 1933).

According to Ibn Kathir: “She [Asma] saw the killing of her son during that year [73 AH], as we have already mentioned, and five days later she herself died. According to other narratives, she died not after five days but 10 or 20, or a few days over 20, or 100 days later. The most well known narrative is that of 100 days later. At the time of her death, she was 100 years old.” (Al-Bidayah wa’l-nihayah, Ibn Kathir, Vol. 8, p. 372, Dar al-fikr al-`arabi, Al-jizah, 1933)

According to Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani: “She [Asma] lived a hundred years and died in 73 or 74 AH.” (Taqribu’l-tehzib, Ibn Hajar Al-Asqalani, p. 654, Arabic, Bab fi’l-nisa’, al-harfu’l-alif, Lucknow).

According to almost all the historians, Asma, the elder sister of Ayesha was 10 years older than Ayesha. If Asma was 100 years old in 73 AH, she should have been 27 or 28 years old at the time of the hijrah.

If Asma was 27 or 28 years old at the time of hijrah, Ayesha should have been 17 or 18 years old. Thus, Ayesha, being 17 or 18 years of at the time of Hijra, she started to cohabit with the Prophet between at either 19 to 20 years of age.

Based on Hajar, Ibn Katir, and Abda’l-Rahman ibn abi zanna’d, Ayesha’s age at the time she began living with the Prophet would be 19 or 20. In Evidence # 3, Ibn Hajar suggests that Ayesha was 12 years old and in Evidence #4 he contradicts himself with a 17 or 18-year-old Ayesha. What is the correct age, twelve or eighteen?

CONCLUSION: Ibn Hajar is an unreliable source for Ayesha’s age.

EVIDENCE #5: The Battles of Badr and Uhud

A narrative regarding Ayesha’s participation in Badr is given in the hadith of Muslim, (Kitabu’l-jihad wa’l-siyar, Bab karahiyati’l-isti`anah fi’l-ghazwi bikafir). Ayesha, while narrating the journey to Badr and one of the important events that took place in that journey, says: “when we reached Shajarah”. Obviously, Ayesha was with the group travelling towards Badr. A narrative regarding Ayesha’s participation in the Battle of Uhud is given in Bukhari (Kitabu’l-jihad wa’l-siyar, Bab Ghazwi’l-nisa’ wa qitalihinna ma`a’lrijal): “Anas reports that on the day of Uhud, people could not stand their ground around the Prophet. [On that day,] I saw Ayesha and Umm-i-Sulaim, they had pulled their dress up from their feet [to avoid any hindrance in their movement].” Again, this indicates that Ayesha was present in the Battles of Uhud and Badr.

It is narrated in Bukhari (Kitabu’l-maghazi, Bab Ghazwati’l-khandaq wa hiya’l-ahza’b): “Ibn `Umar states that the Prophet did not permit me to participate in Uhud, as at that time, I was 14 years old. But on the day of Khandaq, when I was 15 years old, the Prophet permitted my participation.”

Based on the above narratives, (a) the children below 15 years were sent back and were not allowed to participate in the Battle of Uhud, and (b) Ayesha participated in the Battles of Badr and Uhud

CONCLUSION: Ayesha’s participation in the Battles of Badr and Uhud clearly indicates that she was not nine years old but at least 15 years old. After all, women used to accompany men to the battlefields to help them, not to be a burden on them. This account is another contradiction regarding Ayesha’s age.

EVIDENCE #6: Surat al-Qamar (The Moon)

According to the generally accepted tradition, Ayesha was born about eight years before hijrah. But according to another narrative in Bukhari, Ayesha is reported to have said: “I was a young girl (jariyah in Arabic)” when Surah Al-Qamar was revealed (Sahih Bukhari, kitabu’l-tafsir, Bab Qaulihi Bal al-sa`atu Maw`iduhum wa’l-sa`atu adha’ wa amarr).

Chapter 54 of the Quran was revealed eight years before hijrah (The Bounteous Koran, M.M. Khatib, 1985), indicating that it was revealed in 614 CE. If Ayesha started living with the Prophet at the age of nine in 623 CE or 624 CE, she was a newborn infant (sibyah in Arabic) at the time that Surah Al-Qamar (The Moon) was revealed. According to the above tradition, Ayesha was actually a young girl, not an infant in the year of revelation of Al-Qamar. Jariyah means young playful girl (Lane’s Arabic English Lexicon). So, Ayesha, being a jariyah not a sibyah (infant), must be somewhere between 6-13 years old at the time of revelation of Al-Qamar, and therefore must have been 14-21 years at the time she married the Prophet.

CONCLUSION: This tradition also contradicts the marriage of Ayesha at the age of nine.

EVIDENCE #7: Arabic Terminology

According to a narrative reported by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, after the death of the Prophet’s first wife Khadijah, when Khaulah came to the Prophet advising him to marry again, the Prophet asked her regarding the choices she had in mind. Khaulah said: “You can marry a virgin (bikr) or a woman who has already been married (thayyib)”. When the Prophet asked the identity of the bikr (virgin), Khaulah mentioned Ayesha’s name.

All those who know the Arabic language are aware that the word bikr in the Arabic language is not used for an immature nine-year-old girl. The correct word for a young playful girl, as stated earlier, is jariyah. Bikr on the other hand, is used for an unmarried lady without conjugal experience prior to marriage, as we understand the word “virgin” in English. Therefore, obviously a nine-year-old girl is not a “lady” (bikr) (Musnad Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Vol. 6, p. .210, Arabic, Dar Ihya al-turath al-`arabi, Beirut).

CONCLUSION: The literal meaning of the word, bikr (virgin), in the above hadith is “adult woman with no sexual experience prior to marriage.” Therefore, Ayesha was an adult woman at the time of her marriage.

EVIDENCE #8. The Qur’anic Text

All Muslims agree that the Quran is the book of guidance. So, we need to seek the guidance from the Quran to clear the smoke and confusion created by the eminent men of the classical period of Islam in the matter of Ayesha’s age at her marriage. Does the Quran allow or disallow marriage of an immature child of seven years of age?

There are no verses that explicitly allow such marriage. There is a verse, however, that guides Muslims in their duty to raise an orphaned child. The Quran’s guidance on the topic of raising orphans is also valid in the case of our own children. The verse states: “And make not over your property (property of the orphan), which Allah had made a (means of) support for you, to the weak of understanding, and maintain them out of it, clothe them and give them good education. And test them until they reach the age of marriage. Then if you find them maturity of intellect, make over them their property...” (Quran, 4:5-6).

In the matter of children who have lost a parent, a Muslim is ordered to (a) feed them, (b) clothe them, (c) educate them, and (d) test them for maturity “until the age of marriage” before entrusting them with management of finances.

Here the Quranic verse demands meticulous proof of their intellectual and physical maturity by objective test results before the age of marriage in order to entrust their property to them.

In light of the above verses, no responsible Muslim would hand over financial management to a seven- or nine-year-old immature girl. If we cannot trust a seven-year-old to manage financial matters, she cannot be intellectually or physically fit for marriage. Ibn Hambal (Musnad Ahmad ibn Hambal, vol.6, p. 33 and 99) claims that nine-year-old Ayesha was rather more interested in playing with toy-horses than taking up the responsible task of a wife. It is difficult to believe, therefore, that AbuBakr, a great believer among Muslims, would betroth his immature seven-year-old daughter to the 50-year-old Prophet. Equally difficult to imagine is that the Prophet would marry an immature seven-year-old girl.

Another important duty demanded from the guardian of a child is to educate them. Let us ask the question, “How many of us believe that we can educate our children satisfactorily before they reach the age of seven or nine years?” The answer is none. Logically, it is an impossible task to educate a child satisfactorily before the child attains the age of seven. Then, how can we believe that Ayesha was educated satisfactorily at the claimed age of seven at the time of her marriage?

AbuBakr was a more judicious man than all of us. So, he definitely would have judged that Ayesha was a child at heart and was not satisfactorily educated as demanded by the Quran. He would not have married her to anyone. If a proposal of marrying the immature and yet to be educated seven-year-old Ayesha came to the Prophet, he would have rejected it outright because neither the Prophet nor AbuBakr would violate any clause in the Quran.

CONCLUSION: The marriage of Ayesha at the age of seven years would violate the maturity clause or requirement of the Quran. Therefore, the story of the marriage of the seven-year-old immature Ayesha is a myth.

EVIDENCE #9: Consent in Marriage

A women must be consulted and must agree in order to make a marriage valid (Mishakat al Masabiah, translation by James Robson, Vol. I, p. 665). Islamically, credible permission from women is a prerequisite for a marriage to be valid.

By any stretch of the imagination, the permission given by an immature seven-year-old girl cannot be valid authorization for marriage.

It is inconceivable that AbuBakr, an intelligent man, would take seriously the permission of a seven-year-old girl to marry a 50-year-old man.

Similarly, the Prophet would not have accepted the permission given by a girl who, according to the hadith of Muslim, took her toys with her when she went live with Prophet.

CONCLUSION: The Prophet did not marry a seven-year-old Ayesha because it would have violated the requirement of the valid permission clause of the Islamic Marriage Decree. Therefore, the Prophet married an intellectually and physically mature lady Ayesha.

SUMMARY:

It was neither an Arab tradition to give away girls in marriage at an age as young as seven or nine years, nor did the Prophet marry Ayesha at such a young age. The people of Arabia did not object to this marriage because it never happened in the manner it has been narrated.

Obviously, the narrative of the marriage of nine-year-old Ayesha by Hisham ibn `Urwah cannot be held true when it is contradicted by many other reported narratives. Moreover, there is absolutely no reason to accept the narrative of Hisham ibn `Urwah as true when other scholars, including Malik ibn Anas, view his narrative while in Iraq, as unreliable. The quotations from Tabari, Bukhari and Muslim show they contradict each other regarding Ayesha’s age. Furthermore, many of these scholars contradict themselves in their own records. Thus, the narrative of Ayesha’s age at the time of the marriage is not reliable due to the clear contradictions seen in the works of classical scholars of Islam.

Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the information on Ayesha’s age is accepted as true when there are adequate grounds to reject it as myth. Moreover, the Quran rejects the marriage of immature girls and boys as well as entrusting them with responsibilities.

T.O. Shanavas is a physician based in Michigan. This article first appeared in The Minaret in March 1999.

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Necessity Pushes Pakistani Women Into Jobs and Peril

Karachi, Pakistan — Dinner at Rabia Sultana’s house is now served over a cold silence. Her family has not spoken to her since May, when Ms. Sultana, 21, swapped her home life for a cashier’s job at McDonald’s.

Her conservative brother berated Ms. Sultana for damaging the family’s honor by taking a job in which she interacts with men — and especially one that requires her to shed her burqa in favor of a short-sleeved McDonald’s uniform.

Then he confiscated her uniform, slapped her across the face and threatened to break her legs if he saw her outside the home.

Her family may be outraged, but they are also in need. Ms. Sultana donates her $100 monthly salary to supplement the household budget for expenses that the men in her family can no longer pay for, including school fees for her younger sisters.

Ms. Sultana is part of a small but growing generation of lower-class young women here who are entering service-sector jobs to support their families, and by extension, pitting their religious and cultural traditions against economic desperation.

The women are pressed into the work force not by nascent feminism but by inflation, which has spiked to 12.7 percent from 1.4 percent in the past seven years. As a result, one salary — the man’s salary — can no longer feed a family.

“It’s not just the economic need, but need of the nation,” said Rafiq Rangoonwala, the chief executive officer of KFC Pakistan, who has challenged his managers to double the number of women in his work force by next year. “Otherwise, Pakistan will never progress. We’ll always remain a third-world country because 15 percent of the people cannot feed 85 percent of the population.”

Female employment at KFC in Pakistan has risen 125 percent in the past five years.

Several chains like McDonald’s and the supermarket behemoth Makro, where the number of women has quadrupled since 2006, have introduced free transit services for female employees to protect them from harassment and to help persuade them take jobs where they may face hostility. “We’re a society in transition,” said Zeenat Hisam, a senior researcher at the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research. “Men in Pakistan haven’t changed, and they’re not changing as fast as our women. Men want to keep their power in their hand.

“The majority of the people here believe in the traditional interpretation of Islam, and they get very upset because religious leaders tell them it’s not proper for women to go out and to work and to serve strange men.”

More than 100 young women who recently entered service jobs told of continual harassment.

At work, some women spend more time deflecting abuse from customers than serving them. On the way home, they are heckled in buses and condemned by neighbors. It is so common for brothers to confiscate their uniforms that McDonald’s provides women with three sets.

“If I leave this job, everything would be O.K. at home,” Ms. Sultana said. “But then there’d be a huge impact on our house. I want to make something of myself, and for my sisters, who are at home and don’t know anything about the outside world.”

So far, the movement of women into the service sector has been largely limited to Karachi. Elsewhere across Pakistan, women are still mostly relegated to their homes, or they take jobs in traditional labor settings like women-only stitching factories or girls’ schools, where salaries can be half of those in the service industry. Even the most trailblazing of companies, like KFC, still employ 90 percent men.

Pakistan ranked 133rd out of the 134 countries on the 2010 Global Gender Gap Report’s list of women’s economic participation.

While there is no reliable data on the number of women who specifically enter the service sector, Pakistan’s female work force hovers around 20 percent, among the lowest of any Muslim country.

Some women, like Saima, 22, are forced to lead secret lives to earn $175 a month. Her father’s shopkeeper’s salary does not cover the family’s expenses. Without a university degree, the only job Saima could find was at a call center of a major restaurant’s delivery department. But she impressed the manger so much that he offered her a higher-paying waitress job at a branch near her home.

She reluctantly agreed, but pleaded to be sent to a restaurant two hours away so she would not be spotted by family members and neighbors.

After three years, her family still thinks she works in the basement of a call center. On several occasions, she served old friends who did not recognize her without a head scarf. Her confidence has soared, but she is overwhelmed with guilt.

“I’ve completely changed myself here,” she said in the corner booth of her restaurant before her co-workers arrived. “But honestly, I’m not happy with what I’m doing.”

The women interviewed said they had to battle stereotypes that suggested that women who work were sexually promiscuous. Sometimes men misinterpret simple acts of customer service, like a smile. Fauzia, who works as a cashier at KFC, said that last year a customer was so taken with her smile that he followed her out the door and tried to force her into his car before she escaped.

Sunila Yusuf, a saleswoman who wears pink traditional clothes at home but skintight jeans at the trendy clothing boutique in the Park Towers shopping mall, said her fiancé had offered to pay her a $100 monthly wage if she would stay at home.

“He knows that Pakistani men don’t respect women,” she said.

Hina, who works the counter at KFC, said her brothers, who also work fast-food jobs, worried that she had become “too sharp and too exposed.”

“They can look at other people’s girls,” Hina said with a grimace. “But they want their own girls hidden.”

Mr. Rangoonwala, the KFC Pakistan executive, said: “Unfortunately, our society is a hypocritical society. We have two sets of rules, one for males and one for females.”

For Fauzia, the hardest part of the day is the 15-minute walk through the narrow alleys to reach her home. She wears a burqa to conceal her uniform, but word of mouth about her job has spread. Neighbors shout, “What kind of job is this?” as she briskly walks by with her head down.

As a solution, some companies spend up to $8,000 a month to transport their female workers in minivans.

A federal law, citing safety concerns, prohibits women from working after 10 p.m. It was extended from a 7 p.m. deadline last year.

Most companies, however, are unwilling to absorb the extra cost of employing women. Even most stores that sell purses, dresses, perfumes and jewelry do not employ women.

Kamil Aziz, who owns Espresso, the city’s most popular coffee chain, said he made it a point not to hire “the other gender” because women could not work the late shift and the turnover rate among women was higher. He said he also did not want to invest in separate changing rooms.

Nearly all of the 100 women interviewed said marriage would end to their careers. But many of them saw benefits along with the hazards.

Most women said that they had never left the house before taking a job. Many spent the first five months missing buses and getting lost. When they first arrived at work, they stuttered nervously in the presence of men.

Now they know better.

“I’ve learned never to take what husbands say at face value,” said Sana Raja Haroon, a saleswoman at Labels, a clothing boutique where men sometimes slide her their business card.

But the employed women are also approached by admiring young women who want to follow their lead.

“Girls envy us,” said Bushra, a KFC worker. “We are considered the men of the house, and that feels good.”

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