Remnants of mosque from earliest decades of Islam found in Israel

 

Archaeologists in Israel say they have discovered the remnants of an early mosque believed to date to the earliest decades of Islam during an excavation in the northern city of Tiberias.

The foundations of the mosque, excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, point to its construction roughly a generation after the death of the prophet Muhammad, making it one of the earliest Muslim houses of worship to be studied by archaeologists.

“We know about many early mosques that were founded right in the beginning of the Islamic period,” said Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a specialist in Islamic archaeology at Hebrew University who heads the dig. Other mosques dating from around the same time, such as the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, the Great Mosque of Damascus, and Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, are still in use today and cannot be tampered with by archaeologists.

Cytryn-Silverman said excavating the Tiberian mosque provided a rare chance to study the architecture of Muslim prayer houses in their infancy, and the findings indicated a tolerance for other faiths by early Islamic leaders. She announced the findings this month in a virtual conference.

When the mosque was built around AD670, Tiberias had been a Muslim-ruled city for a few decades. Named after Rome’s second emperor in about AD20, the city was a major centre of Jewish life and scholarship for nearly five centuries. Before its conquest by Muslim armies in 635, the Byzantine city was home to one of a constellation of Christian holy sites dotting the Sea of Galilee’s shoreline.

Under Muslim rule, Tiberias became a provincial capital in the early Islamic empire and grew in prominence. Early caliphs built palaces on its outskirts along the lake shore. But until recently, little was known about the city’s early Muslim past.

Gideon Avni, the chief archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, who was not involved in the excavation, said the discovery helped resolve a scholarly debate about when mosques began standardising their design, facing towards Mecca. “In the archaeological finds, it was very rare to find early mosques,” he said.

Since early last year the coronavirus pandemic has halted excavations, and lush Galilean grasses, herbs and weeds have grown over the ruins. Hebrew University and its partners at the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology plan to restart the dig next month.

Initial excavations of the site in the 1950s led scholars to believe the building was a Byzantine marketplace later used as a mosque. But Cytryn-Silverman’s excavations delved deeper beneath the floor. Coins and ceramics nestled at the base of the crudely crafted foundations helped date them to about AD660-680, barely a generation after the city’s capture. The building’s dimensions, pillared floorplan and qiblah, or prayer niche, closely resembled other mosques from the period.

Avni said that for a long time academics were unsure what had happened to cities in the Levant and Mesopotamia conquered by the Muslims in the early seventh century. “Earlier opinions said there was a process of conquest, destruction and devastation,” he said.

Today archaeologists understood that there was a “fairly gradual process, and in Tiberias you see that”, he said.

The first mosque built in the newly conquered city stood cheek by jowl with the local synagogues and the Byzantine church that dominated the skyline. This earliest phase of the mosque was “more humble” than a larger, grander structure that replaced it half a century later, Cytryn-Silverman said. “At least until the monumental mosque was erected in the eighth century, the church continued being the main building in Tiberias.”

She said this supported the idea that the early Muslim rulers who governed an overwhelmingly non-Muslim population adopted a tolerant approach towards other faiths, allowing a “golden age” of coexistence.

“You see that the beginning of the Islamic rule here respected very much the population that was the main population of the city: Christians, Jews, Samaritans,” Cytryn-Silverman said. “They were not in a hurry to make their presence expressed into buildings. They were not destroying others’ houses of prayers, but they were actually fitting themselves into the societies that they now were the leaders of.”

Link

'Not your enemies': Sri Lanka Muslims fear backlash after blasts

Mohamed Hasan has barely left his home in Colombo since a string of deadly blasts struck Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, afraid he could be attacked because he is Muslim.

He has a job at a printing press, but the 41-year-old's family have begged him to stay home.

"They are worried that if I go out, will I be able to come back alive?" he told AFP news agency outside the Jumma mosque in Dematagoda, where he had ventured briefly to pray.


More than 350 people were killed in the carnage unleashed in the Easter attacks against churches and hotels, which have been claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS). The armed group has provided no evidence.

On Tuesday, the country's state minister of defence said the bombings were in retaliation for a recent attack on mosques in New Zealand.

Ruwan Wijewardene made the comment to politicians in parliament without providing evidence or explaining where the information came from about the worst attacks since the country's civil war ended in 2009.

The deaths have horrified Sri Lankans and been condemned by Muslim groups, but many in the community have been left feeling vulnerable.

Zareena Begum, 60, said she had barely slept since the weekend.

"I know people are angry at Muslims," she said in tears outside the mosque. "Infants being carried in the arms of their mothers were killed.

"I never imagined such hatred being there in the hearts of these people (who attacked). Hatred must not sow more hatred."

This is our homeland, it is known as the pearl of Asia. We want it to remain like that.

Wearing a black dress and white headscarf, Begum added: "We have been huddled at our homes. We are scared about going out."

Sri Lanka's population of about 22 million is a patchwork of ethnicities and religions, dominated by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.

Muslims account for 10 percent of the population and are the second-largest minority after Hindus. Around seven percent of Sri Lankans are Christians.

Ethnic and religious tensions abound in the country, which suffered through a decades-long Tamil armed rebellion and more recently has seen outbreaks of sectarian violence.

Muslims have been at the receiving end of sporadic violence and hate attacks since the civil war ended in 2009.

Hardline Buddhist monks have led campaigns against the community and in 2013 and 2018, Muslim businesses came under attack.

Rumours were even spread that Sinhalese could become sterile if they wore underwear bought from Muslim shops, and that food sold by Muslims would cause infertility.

In the wake of the attacks, Sri Lankan leaders including Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have urged calm and solidarity.

"The vast majority of Muslims condemn this and they are as angry as the Tamils and the Sinhalese about what happened," he said on Tuesday, calling for unity.

But at the Jumma mosque there was an atmosphere of anxiety, and several worshippers said they hoped police would "take care of every citizen in such critical times".

Hilmy Ahamed, vice-president of the influential Muslim Council of Sri Lanka, said the community was braced for a backlash, with emotions running high.

"Hundreds of people are being buried (so) there is going to be an emotional outburst and some of it could be justifiable," said Ahamed.

"We have asked the government... to ensure security is maintained. This (attack) has not been carried out by the Muslim community but by some fringe elements."

In fact, Ahamed and other Muslim leaders said they had warned Sri Lankan authorities years earlier about the leader of the National Thowheed Jamath, a group the government says is its key suspect in the attacks.

The group's leader, Zahran Hashim, was well known to Muslim leaders as a hardliner.

"This person was a loner and he had radicalised young people in the guise of conducting Quran classes," Ahamed said.

Back at the mosque, RF Ameer said the community just wanted safety.

"We are living in constant fear because if someone sees us wearing the skull cap they will perceive us to be their enemies," he said, his forehead creased with worry.



Link

Inside the mind of the Indian Muslim

This year, I did not want to serve ‘them’ biryani on Eid. But that is not our ‘tehzeeb’, our culture, my father insisted. So, on June 26, one guest after another – some among them likely BJP voters – visited us and relished the biryani, the qorma, and the kebabs. This, as the image of Junaid haunted me – his body soaked with blood, after he was lynched in front of a silent, complicit crowd of 200 in a train in Delhi.

Our guests on the day of Eid had absolutely nothing to do with what Junaid suffered, and I hate and condemn myself for resenting them. This wasn’t me. This isn’t me. And I wonder at the distance my heart has travelled from exactly a year ago, when I would be filled with excitement at our whole family preparing dishes for our Hindu guests (we have no Muslim guests for Eid as they are busy in their homes). Not too long ago, when I used to work in Delhi, I would sometimes carry a pot of biryani from Lucknow after Eid for my non-Muslim colleagues and friends. The sight of Hindus enjoying Mughlai/Awadhi cuisine at Karim’s in Delhi or Tunday Kababi in Lucknow swelled me with pride at our Ganga-Jamuni culture.

So, why did I now begin to resent a woman with a bindi on her forehead or a man with a kalava tied to his wrist enjoying a kebab at Tunday Kababi? Because I suspect he/she hates me. Hates my people. Hates the Muslim owners and cooks of Tunday even though he/she loves their food. Loves it that they had to shut shop during the crackdown on meat suppliers in UP. Loves it when the business of Muslim butchers is stifled even though he/she buys meat from them. Hates my co-religionists who wear topis and grow beards. Loves it when they are lynched in trains, in the fields, on the highway, inside their homes. Hates women who wear burkhas but pretends to support them on triple talaq. Shares fake videos about ‘evil’ Muslims on WhatsApp. Rejoices at the arrest of 15 Muslims after India’s loss to Pakistan in a cricket match on the basis of a false complaint.

No, I don’t hate them. They hate me. I am only angry they hate me. And I resent them for their hatred towards me. They pretend to fear me and my people, but in reality, it is I, and my people, who fear them. We are 14 per cent, they are close to 80, so we are the ones surrounded by the mob. And I fear that in their hatred, they will support the mob if it lynches yet another Muslim. Or, they will vote for a party that felicitates the killers or those who incite them to such murders by giving them Z-Security or a ticket to contest elections. I dread the plans that such parties may have already drafted for late 2018 or early 2019, a few months before the next general elections.

Full article 

Sikh Harassed In Pakistan Social Experiment!!!

Prophet Muhammad stood for humanity in Medina, while IS tries to destroy it

Here is one of my favourite stories about Prophet Muhammad. It is noted in a hadith that he and several of his companions were sitting down along a street in Medina. Suddenly, a companion spotted a funeral procession approaching the group. In respect of the dead human body, Muhammad stood up as the procession crossed in front of him. At that moment, a companion, who was still sitting down, said to the Prophet, "This is a funeral of a Jew. He is not a Muslim." Upon hearing these words, Muhammad became upset and said to the companion, "Is he not a human soul?" The message here is clear: Prophet Muhammad respected human beings irrespective of their religion. He taught mankind that every human soul is important, whether alive or dead. This is Muhammad’s concept of dignity. He defended humanity.

Unfortunately, the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) militants or their sympathisers do not care about humanity. In fact, they are the antithesis of humanity. In the very city where Prophet Muhammad stood in respect for the Jewish funeral procession, several people claiming to be Muslims blew themselves up at the Prophet’s mosque, one of the two holiest sites in Islam. The suicide attack killed four members of the Saudi Arabian security force. In comparing the two events, we can see that Prophet Muhammad honoured people who have passed away, while IS and their sympathisers are the reasons why funeral processions happen in the first place.

Any person in their right mind understands that there is nothing "Islamic" about blowing yourself up and murdering other people. After all, the Quran is unequivocal: "You shall not kill yourselves" (4:29). Suicide is so far outside the boundaries of "normative" Islam that some people – Muslims and non-Muslims alike - have started to seriously question whether IS and their sympathisers are "anti-Islamic", and not simply "un-Islamic", as they are popularly described. There is a difference between these concepts. "Un-Islamic" means that Muslims are acting in a way that opposes the basic principles of Islam. "Anti-Islam" means that the actions of some Muslims are actually a threat to other Muslims and to the very essence of Islam – mercy, compassion, justice and peace.

We can notice Prophet Muhammad‘s love of humanity in how he instructed his followers to respect the People of the Book, as commanded in the Quran. In the year 622CE, the Prophet produced the Medina Charter, also known as the Constitution of Medina, which contained the rights and responsibilities of the Muslims, Jews and other tribal communities in Medina. As the head of state, Muhammad guaranteed all citizens of the city the rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. The charter declared that Muslims and Jews were equal members of a new political community. Indeed, even polytheists were granted equal rights. Moreover, Muhammad’s constitution did not treat Jews as a monolithic entity; he recognised and respected their ethnic and cultural diversities. All Jews were granted the rights of freedom of movement, freedom of worship and the freedom of assembly.

Some consider the charter to be the first written constitution in the world. Whether or not that is true is besides the point – the document is a 7th century model for religious pluralism and civic rights. Muhammad envisioned a society where people were united not by race or religion, but rather by citizenship rights.

Jews were not the only religious community that Muhammad peacefully reached out to in Medina. In 631CE, he sent letters inviting various communities of the region to his city. One group, the Najran Christians of modern-day Yemen, travelled 450 miles to meet the Prophet and his companions in Medina. The Christian delegation consisted of about 45 scholars and 15 assistants.

After their diplomatic meeting, the Najran Christians needed to pray. They exited Prophet Muhammad’s mosque and headed towards the street, aiming to pray there. Uncomfortable with the idea that his Christian guests had no place to pray, the Prophet told them that they could use his mosque to worship. The Najrans accepted Muhammad’s offer. An important bridge was made that day between Muslims and Christians.

And it is these kind of interfaith bridges that IS and their sympathisers want to destroy.

Full article

Muhammad Ali memorial: Rabbi Michael Lerner

This man is phenomenal alhamdulilah! Muhammad Ali would have agreed with all his words.

Why a Christian Can View Muhammad as a Prophet

This Christian brother is a great friend to Muslims and I find him very fascinating indeed.:)

Basically, me admiring Prophet Muhammad isn’t “enough” for Muslims; in their eyes, I must take a few concrete steps towards Islam to be fully recognized as a “true believer.” Otherwise, I’m just a weirdo Christian who respects Muhammad, but doesn’t recognize him as a “the man.” Christians, on the other hand, have called me “pseudo Catholic” and “infidel” for my positive writings about Muhammad. For these Islamophobes, I’m quite simply a heretic. There’s no way around it. Perhaps my work is irritating to Muslims and Christians because I’m pushing a few traditional boundaries and making people question the very heart of their religious traditions and identities.

Here’s the main issue according to popular narratives: Muslims must recognize Jesus as a prophet of God, as laid out explicitly in the Qur’an. Muslims aren’t at risk of anything when they say “I believe in Jesus.” However, if we switched the situation (“I’m a Christian. I believe in Muhammad as a prophet”), people might start to question my credibility as a self-professed Christian. People might say, “Jesus is the only way. You’ve turned your back on God. You’re no longer Christian.”

I’m writing this piece to explain why I disagree with the idea that Christians can’t recognize Muhammad as a prophet. Really, what is in question here is the definition of “prophet.” “Prophet” can be defined as “a person regarded as an inspired teacher or proclaimer of the will of God.” Outside of the dictionary, I’ve always understood “prophet” to mean a messenger of a Higher Power who works on earth to bring justice and peace to humanity.

Full article

Bosnia's Muslims reopen mosque Serbs blew up during the war

More than 10,000 people gathered for the reopening of a mosque in Bosnia that was blown up by Christian Orthodox Serbs during the 1992-1995 war.

The Ferhat Pasha mosque, also called Ferhadija, was a masterpiece of 16th-century Ottoman architecture and one of the 16 mosques in Banja Luka, or one of the 534 throughout the country, that were destroyed or damaged by Bosnian Serbs in order to erase any traces of those they were expelling or killing.

Their aim was to make that part of Bosnia a part of neighbouring Serbia.

The so-called "ethnic cleansing" project, also targeting Roman Catholic Croats and other non-Serbs, included expelling people from their homes, looting their property, killing some and putting others in concentration camps.

The destruction of their heritage was an essential part of the plan, aimed also at discouraging survivors from returning.

In 1995, after more than 100,000 people were killed, a peace agreement divided the country in two halves - one for the Serbs, where Banja Luka ended up, and the other shared by Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.

The agreement guaranteed refugees the right to return to their pre-war homes and reconstruction of the Ferhadija mosque was to encourage the plan.

An attempt in 2001 to lay a foundation stone was disrupted by a Serb nationalist mob. One Muslim visitor was killed and dozens were injured.

Nato forces had to evacuate foreign ambassadors from the ceremony by helicopters.

Activists located fragments of the mosque that were not thrown into the river or the rubbish dump, separated them and used computers to place the more thanr 3,500 fragments where they belong. Reconstruction took 15 years.

On Saturday, the 23rd anniversary of the Ferhadija destruction, Bosnian Serb authorities deployed more than 1,000 policemen to secure the event, attended by outgoing Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Bosnian leaders, foreign ambassadors and representatives of the Roman Catholic, Serb Orthodox Churches and the Jewish community.

The event symbolised a further push to restore Bosnia's multi-faith and multi-ethnic fabric. Turkey and other international donors as well as Serbs gave funds for the reconstruction.

During the war, Serbs often referred to Muslims as "Turks", explaining their actions as revenge for hundreds of years of Ottoman occupation.

At the ceremony in Banja Luka, Davutoglu said: "We were here once, we are here now and we will always stay here."

Jakob Fincik, leader of Bosnia's Jewish Community, said in his speech that rarely a Jew speaks at the opening of a mosque but in Bosnia it was possible. He, as well as Catholic bishop Franjo Komarica and Serb Orthodox priest Jefrem, welcomed the opening of the mosque and the people who will pray in it.

"Our differences are not a historical mistake," said Husein Kavazovic, the leader of Bosnia's Islamic Community. "They are God's gift, and any violence against those differences is an act against God's will."

Source

A Forgotten Covenant

“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them. Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.

No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.

No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.

No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.

Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (end of the world).”*

Such were the memorable words of Prophet Muhammad  in the year 628 CE, when he granted this historic document, also known as the Charter of Privileges, to the monks of St. Catherine Monastery in Mt. Sinai. It consisted of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights including such topics as the protection of Christians living under Islamic rule, freedom of worship and movement, freedom to appoint their own judges and to own and maintain their property, exemption from military service, and the right to protection in war.

In the spirit of this and numerous other authoritative Islamic texts, one wonders why contemporary policy makers in the West insist on supporting the secular, corrupt, and authoritarian regimes of the predominantly Muslim nations. What is the wisdom of allocating billions of dollars to overthrow, through well-crafted public and covert operations, the popularly and legitimately elected Muslim governments? Have the West’s ‘experts‘ on the Middle East, the Orientalists and the national security advisers hijacked Western political institutions as the latter hijacked the legitimate government of, for example, Iran’s democratic Mosadeq regime, or the Algerian peaceful election that guaranteed Muslim control, and many more cases? Should the predominantly Christian West fear and fight genuine Islamic regimes or should it change its outlook by trusting those who uphold God’s Words and Muhammad’s  commands above secular and cultural values?

Source

15 things I learnt about Islam and British values being a gay boy living opposite a mosque.

 

 

Loved this :)

1. 1. No mosque has enough parking and muslim men love to complain about it. I don’t care how young or trendy they are, within seconds they will be pointing at bits of pavement muttering about the number of cars you could fit in there — like my Granddad from Manchester does at Sainsbury’s
2. 2. You can do that look British people do to each other, when someone near by is making a scene, in a full face veil.
3. 3. Muslims pray a lot.
4. 4. You will be happy they pray a lot when you get stabbed on your door step and are too scared to go outside. So you time your trips to the shops to coincide with these prays as the streets are full of friendly people.
5. 5. Muslims, like all British people have that one problematic uncle that kinda ruins family occasions.
6. 6. When confronted with something out of their comfort zone, like me and my boyfriend in full drag dancing down the road, muslims like all British people get flustered and over compensate with being overly polite — a bit like Hugh Grant.
7. 7. When finding out you have been dating your boyfriend for 5 years your muslim neighbours will be disgusted that you haven’t proposed. You hear “get a civil partnership — for your mothers sake” a lot.
8. 8. Apparently there is usually half a cup of tea next to the pray matt when praying at home — especially for morning prayers.
9. 9. Like in the rest of Britain all muslim fathers think their daughter is smarter than everyone, even though she is only 6 years old…
10. 10.…and that their son is a heartbreaker even though its clear to everyone else that he spends all his time on his Xbox.
11. 11. Young muslim women are really, really, really ambitious.
12. 12. British people’s dry sarcasm works really well when confronting the times the more traditional parts of islam come face to face with modern gay culture. For example when I donated 3 sequined crop tops to the islamic relief Syria clothing drive, one of the older guys their smirked, shaking my hand and saying “our brothers and sisters in Syria thank you for the evening wear.”
13. 13. There is always an Aunt who gets too involved in the wedding planning and annoys the bride.
14. 14. During ramadan and eid there will be so many people on the streets going to mosque that the drugs dealers will have to move to other places — making your area really safe for a while.
15. 15. Mothers will say anything to stop their kids nagging them. I once saw a Muslim mother tell her kid that wanted some fried chicken, after Friday night prayers, that the shop wasn’t halal even though there was a 5ft sq neon halal sign in the window. Reminds me of when my mum told me that the chip shop was closed for a private event as she wanted some peace.

The media stories about islam meant that I was genuinely a little nervous about moving in across the road to a mosque. What I have learnt in the four years since I moved is that the ridiculousness of British culture is universal. We all love tea, are really polite and tut rather than saying something, no matter our religion.

Source

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

When Islam was at its strongest, it was also at its most open-minded.

                      

Ours is the oldest religion in the world,” said the Mandaean high priest to me in 2006, when we met during my diplomatic posting to Baghdad. He did indeed turn out to be the religious leader of an ancient people whose traditions go back to third-century Babylonia; he was also, for me, the man who opened a door to an Aladdin’s Cave of forgotten faiths.

Since then, I have witnessed on a mountaintop in the West Bank a sacrifice of lambs, done by Samaritan priests in precise observance of the Book of Exodus. I discussed Greek philosophy with Druze elders, who regard themselves as a branch of Islam but believe in reincarnation. I searched for the Zoroastrians of Iran, whose founder Zarathustra was among the first to teach (perhaps three millennia ago) that our fate after death might result from the good or evil that we do in our lifetimes. I encountered the Church of the East, which sent the first Christian missionaries to China in the seventh century and once, from its base in Iraq, covered a larger span of the earth than the Pope in Rome or the Patriarch in Constantinople.

These religions have survived fourteen centuries of Islamic rule, and their survival shows not only their own tenacity but also the potential for tolerance within Islam. Now, though, they are vanishing faster than ever before.

The brutal terrorist group called the “Islamic State,” which the U.S. and its allies are now fighting in Iraq, burst onto the front pages in August with a massacre of a little-known people called the Yazidis. The Yazidis are an extraordinary people, who have preserved traditions dating back to the time of ancient Assyria and mixed them with ideas that emerged from the most radical and imaginative of Muslim thinkers. They have faced, by their own tradition, 72 persecutions. That number does not include the Islamic State’s campaign of rape and murder or, in 2007, the world’s second worst terrorist attack, which killed nearly eight hundred Yazidis at Qahtaniyah near Mosul.

When I went back to see the Yazidis in northern Iraq in August, it was like an immersion in a sea of misery. Stranded in tents and dependent on charity, Yazidi refugees saw no future for themselves in Iraq and asked only for asylum in the West. They want to join the 70% of Iraq’s Christians who have already left. As for the Mandaeans, almost all have now sought refuge in Europe, Canada and Australia.

Nor is it only war-ravaged Iraq from which the minorities are fleeing. I could hardly find Zoroastrians in the great cities of Iran, such as Shiraz and Esfahan; instead, I found their fire-temple in north London. I discovered that tens of thousands of Coptic Christians, who keep the language of ancient Egypt alive in their liturgies, now live in the suburbs of Detroit along with more than 100,000 Iraqi Christians.

What amazed me, though, about these religions was that they had survived into the modern era at all. Imagine discovering some island off the coast of Ireland where the Druids still held sway: meeting the Mandaean high priest in Baghdad was similarly a throwback to the distant past. How can a religion conceived in the era of paganism still exist today, after 1400 years of Islam? The answers teach lessons about Islam — and about ourselves.

First, they show the importance of religion. A warped form of religion is what motivated the Islamic State to slaughter the Yazidis. It is also however what helped the Yazidis to survive over the centuries and keep their traditions and their identity. Religion can be a great source of division, but that is intimately linked to its power to gather people and unify them.

Second, when minorities leave, countries are diminished. Islam was the religion of a great world empire, so prestigious that “Islamic State” wants to steal its name: the Caliphate. Islamic State’s brutal and narrow-minded imitation is quite different from the original. The first Caliphs had Christians among their closest counselors; later Caliphs used Jewish astronomers and pagan mathematicians to turn Baghdad into a center of world learning.

When Islam was at its strongest, it was also at its most open-minded. The West’s diversity and its prosperity have similarly gone hand in hand. It is a poor outlook for the Middle East if loses its ancient minorities.

Source

Christmas a time for bridge building

Treating Christmas with Respect

Christmas is an annual Christian religious holiday commemorating the birth of Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. For many Muslims who do not even celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it becomes an issue of what stand they should take.

There have been a number of legitimate criticisms of the holiday from Muslims and non-Muslims based on theological and cultural considerations. However, this cannot be used to disregard the holiday as merely an exercise in ancient pagan practices, for instance, or excessive consumerism. Muslims have to remember that for practicing Christians, Christmas really is about Jesus .

Prophet Muhammad , was so accommodating of Christians that according to the two earliest Islamic historians, Ibn e Saad and Ibn Hisham, the Prophet even allowed a delegation of 60 Byzantine Christians from Najran in Yemen to worship in his own mosque in Madinah. Lead by their bishop (Usquf), they had come to discuss a number of issues with him. When time of their prayer came, they asked the Prophet's permission to perform this in the mosque. He answered, "conduct your service here in the mosque. It is a place consecrated to God."

God expects us to stay away from mocking the religious beliefs of others, no matter how much we disagree with them. He says in the Quran: "And insult not those whom they (disbelievers) worship besides God, lest they insult God wrongfully without knowledge. Thus We have made fair-seeming to each people its own doings; then to their Lord is their return and He shall then inform them of all that they used to do" (Quran, 6:108).

We also have to remember that even if for many nominal Christians, the celebration is not really about participating in religious traditions, Christmas is a time for families to get together. In a number of cases it is the only time of year families get together, either because family members are scattered in different parts of the country or the world, because of communication and relationship problems, or because in America today, the family unit is becoming weaker and weaker.

 Christmas is a great time to relate to our neighbors. We should not forget though, that "relating" does not mean "preaching". Dawa cannot be made in a rude manner. Allah says in the Quran: "Invite (all) to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful advice, and reason with them by ways that are the best and most gracious: because your Lord knows best, (those) who have strayed from His Path, and those who receive guidance " (Quran, 16:125).

In particular, when dealing with Jews and Christians, Allah says: "Do not argue with the People of the Book unless it is in the politest manner, except for those of them who do wrong. Say: 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you. Our God and your God is [the same] One, and we are Muslims before Him'" (Quran, 29:46).

This may not be an occasion to emphasis the differences as much as the commonality of our beliefs, unless someone is really asking you about them.

A starting point for a discussion about Christmas could be the Islamic belief in all Books revealed by Allah and all Prophets sent by Him. In this discussion, special emphasis could be made on Prophet Jesus . Non-Muslims are often surprised to discover that Muslims also believe in this noble Prophet and his great mother Mary (peace be upon her).

Remember that respect does not mean compromise. This article is not asking you to compromise anything. You have freedom of religion given by God to believe in what you believe in. But in a world where conflict is increasing, a Muslim should be a bridge- builder and a peacemaker. It was due to the Muslim practice of Islamic ideals of respect and tolerance that the key of the holiest Christian Shrine in Jerusalem, the church of the Holy Sepulcher, remains entrusted with a Muslim family, as it has been for over 1400 years. 

These are the lessons which need to be learned by those extremists who attack Christians during their worship in Nigeria and those extremists who burn Masjids in the USA.
Source

Respect!!

Coexistance

Taken in South India somewhere....

Heroic Tale of Holocaust, With a Twist

The stories of the Holocaust have been documented, distorted, clarified and filtered through memory. Yet new stories keep coming, occasionally altering the grand, incomplete mosaic of Holocaust history.

One of them, dramatized in a French film released here last week, focuses on an unlikely savior of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France: the rector of a Paris mosque.

Muslims, it seems, rescued Jews from the Nazis.

“Les Hommes Libres” (“Free Men”) is a tale of courage not found in French textbooks. According to the story, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the founder and rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, provided refuge and certificates of Muslim identity to a small number of Jews to allow them to evade arrest and deportation.

It was simpler than it sounds. In the early 1940s France was home to a large population of North Africans, including thousands of Sephardic Jews. The Jews spoke Arabic and shared many of the same traditions and everyday habits as the Arabs. Neither Muslims nor Jews ate pork. Both Muslim and Jewish men were circumcised. Muslim and Jewish names were often similar.

The mosque, a tiled, walled fortress the size of a city block on the Left Bank, served as a place to pray, certainly, but also as an oasis of calm where visitors were fed and clothed and could bathe, and where they could talk freely and rest in the garden.

It was possible for a Jew to pass.

“This film is an event,” said Benjamin Stora, France’s pre-eminent historian on North Africa and a consultant on the film. “Much has been written about Muslim collaboration with the Nazis. But it has not been widely known that Muslims helped Jews. There are still stories to be told, to be written.”

The film, directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi, is described as fiction inspired by real events and built around the stories of two real-life figures (along with a made-up black marketeer). The veteran French actor Michael Lonsdale plays Benghabrit, an Algerian-born religious leader and a clever political maneuverer who gave tours of the mosque to German officers and their wives even as he apparently used it to help Jews.

Mahmoud Shalaby, a Palestinian actor living in Israel, plays Salim — originally Simon — Hilali, who was Paris’s most popular Arabic-language singer, a Jew who survived the Holocaust by posing as a Muslim. (To make the assumed identity credible, Benghabrit had the name of Hilali’s grandfather engraved on a tombstone in the Muslim cemetery in the Paris suburb of Bobigny, according to French obituaries about the singer. In one tense scene in the film a German soldier intent on proving that Hilali is a Jew, takes him to the cemetery to identify it.)

The historical record remains incomplete, because documentation is sketchy. Help was provided to Jews on an ad hoc basis and was not part of any organized movement by the mosque. The number of Jews who benefited is not known. The most graphic account, never corroborated, was given by Albert Assouline, a North African Jew who escaped from a German prison camp. He claimed that more than 1,700 resistance fighters — including Jews but also a lesser number of Muslims and Christians — found refuge in the mosque’s underground caverns, and that the rector provided many Jews with certificates of Muslim identity.

In his 2006 book, “Among the Righteous,” Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, uncovered stories of Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and included a chapter on the Grand Mosque. Dalil Boubakeur, the current rector, confirmed to him that some Jews — up to 100 perhaps — were given Muslim identity papers by the mosque, without specifying a number. Mr. Boubakeur said individual Muslims brought Jews they knew to the mosque for help, and the chief imam, not Benghabrit, was the man responsible.

Mr. Boubakeur showed Mr. Satloff a copy of a typewritten 1940 Foreign Ministry document from the French Archives. It stated that the occupation authorities suspected mosque personnel of delivering false Muslim identity papers to Jews. “The imam was summoned, in a threatening manner, to put an end to all such practices,” the document said.

Mr. Satloff said in a telephone interview: “One has to separate the myth from the fact. The number of Jews protected by the mosque was probably in the dozens, not the hundreds. But it is a story that carries a powerful political message and deserves to be told.”

A 1991 television documentary “Une Résistance Oubliée: La Mosquée de Paris” (“A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris”) by Derri Berkani , and a children’s book “The Grand Mosque of Paris: A Story of How Muslims Saved Jews During the Holocaust,” published in 2007, also explore the events.

The latest film was made in an empty palace in Morocco, with the support of the Moroccan government. The Paris mosque refused to grant permission for any filming. “We’re a place of worship,” Mr. Boubakeur said in an interview. “There are prayers five times a day. Shooting a film would have been disruptive.”

Benghabrit fell out of favor with fellow Muslims because he opposed Algerian independence and stayed loyal to France’s occupation of his native country. He died in 1954.

In doing research for the film, Mr. Ferroukhi and even Mr. Stora learned new stories. At one screening a woman asked him why the film did not mention the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern European origin who had been saved by the mosque. Mr. Stora said he explained that the mosque didn’t intervene on behalf of Ashkenazi Jews, who did not speak Arabic or know Arab culture.

“She told me: ‘That’s not true. My mother was protected and saved by a certificate from the mosque,’ ” Mr. Stora said.

On Wednesday, the day of the film’s release here, hundreds of students from three racially and ethnically mixed Paris-area high schools were invited to a special screening and question-and-answer session with Mr. Ferroukhi and some of his actors.

Some asked banal questions. Where did you find the old cars? (From an antique car rental agency.) Others reacted with curiosity and disbelief, wanting to know how much of the film was based on fact, and how it could have been possible that Jews mingled easily with Muslims. Some were stunned to hear that the Nazis persecuted only the Jews, and left the Muslims alone.

Reviews here were mixed on the film, which is to be released in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. (American rights have been sold as well.) The daily Le Figaro said it “reconstitutes an atmosphere and a period marvelously.” The weekly L’Express called it “ideal for a school outing, less for an evening at the movies.”

Mr. Ferroukhi does not care. He said he was lobbying the Culture and Education Ministries to get the film shown in schools. “It pays homage to the people of our history who have been invisible,” he said. “It shows another reality, that Muslims and Jews existed in peace. We have to remember that — with pride.”

source