Yazidi survivor: 'I was raped every day for six months' - BBC News

Mehdi Hassan - ISIS & Sectarianism

The twisting of Shariah

Shariah is a word many are terrified of these days. Muslims will be asked do you adhere to Shariah? Are you committed to implementing it? Are you trying to replace our (of course much more civilized laws) with it?

I am married according to Shariah, I eat meat slaughtered by its rules and have a bank account organized on its economical principles. I assure you that is nothing to panic about!

Shariah is simply laws that have been enacted on Islamic principles, they are not uniform, they should be pragmatic and above all justice should be the goal. However miscarriages of justice occur in all  legal systems, human beings are capable of making errors and justice is the casualty. This has occurred in Shariah too. In my homeland of India, triple talaq is upheld as part of Shariah, despite being banned in other Muslim countries. Pakistan unfortunately upholds blasphemy laws which many have argued contradict Shariah. Saudi Arabia refuses to let women drive citing all sorts of pseudo-religious/cultural reasons, none of which the vast majority of Muslims agree with.

Those in power will often twist or misinterpret Islam and its principles for their own benefit/ to suit their agenda. Indeed we must be wary of this and call it out every time. This is an ongoing struggle.

Being a history buff I enjoyed watching some clips/episodes of Turkish historical drama Magnificent Century. One of the most disturbing practices of the Ottomans was fraticide. (I certainly condemn the imperialism, incessant warring and entire concept of the Harem too) However it was quite sad to realize that Fatawa were given by the Ulema of Islam to Sultans to murder of their own brothers/half-brothers. Many Sheikhs argued it was better that a few princes were executed, rather than entire wars be fought between brothers for succession (for example the War of the Roses in Europe). One Sultan murdered nineteen brothers! Another killed his innocent and very capable son in a 'preemptive strike'!

Why the Ulema couldn't stress cooperation between brothers, the need to serve the wider Ummah not the Dynasty, the sanctity of human life, the great sin that is fratricide is a great shame. However it has to be noted many Ulema also opposed this barbaric practice and gave Fatawa against it. For details please read this excellent article.

As enacted in the clip above this particular Sheikh certainly misrepresented the Quran to give Sultan rather bogus reasoning to murder his own friend whom he had sworn to protect. (This may not be entirely historically accurate I am simply using as a possible example).  So Shariah is certainly not safe from being twisted to serve the needs of those in power. Indeed it has been argued quite robustly that Daesh are doing exactly that.

The interpretation of Shariah is dependent on the conscience of the people/scholars/jurists of Islam. Above all Shariah is a means to an end which is paramount. The end that is justice and compassion. That is what we must aspire to.

The Plague Within

By Sh. Hamza Yusuf

According to a good hadith related by Ahmad and al-Tabarani, the Messenger of God, may God’s peace and blessings be upon him, said, “You will never believe until you show mercy to one another.” 

“All of us are merciful, O Messenger of God!” his companions responded.

The Prophet, God’s peace and blessings upon him, explained, “I’m not talking about one of you showing mercy to his friend; I’m talking about universal mercy—mercy towards everyone.” 

For those Muslims and people of other faiths who lost loved ones in the recent tragedies in Baghdad two days ago, in Bangladesh last Friday, in Istanbul the day before that, in Lebanon and Afghanistan last week, and in Yemen and Orlando last month, I am deeply saddened and can only offer my prayers, even as I am painfully aware of my state of utter helplessness at what has befallen our global community. As I write this, I learned about yet another bombing outside our beloved Prophet’s mosque in Medina, as believers were about to break their fast yesterday, unjustly killing four innocent security guards. Fortunately, due to the blessings of the place, the sound of the explosion was thought to be the boom of the cannon used to announce the time has come to break the fast, so the people in the mosque were not frightened nor panicked. The Prophet, God’s peace and blessings upon him, said, “Whoever frightens the people of Medina has the damnation of God, the angels, and all of humanity.” Needless to say, the horror of these atrocities is compounded because they are being carried out—intentionally—in the blessed month of Ramadan.

A plague is upon us, and it has its vectors. Like the brain-eating amoebas that have struck the warm waters of the Southern states in America, a faith-eating plague has been spreading across the global Muslim community. This insidious disease has a source, and that source must be identified, so we can begin to inoculate our communities against it.

New versions of our ancient faith have sprung up and have infected the hearts and minds of countless young people across the globe. Imam Adel Al-Kalbani, who led prayers in the Haram of Mecca for several years, has publicly stated that these youth are the bitter harvest of teachings that have emanated from pulpits throughout the Arabian Peninsula, teachings that have permeated all corners of the world, teachings that focus on hatred, exclusivity, provincialism, and xenophobia. These teachings anathematize any Muslim who does not share their simple-minded, literalist, anti-metaphysical, primitive, and impoverished form of Islam, and they reject the immense body of Islamic scholarship from the luminaries of our tradition. 

Due to a sophisticated network of funding, these teachings have flooded bookstores throughout the Muslim world and even in America, Europe, and Australia. For a case study of what they have spawned, we might look to Kosovo. Our “Islamic” schools are now filled with books published by this sect that lure the impressionable minds of our youth at an age when they are most susceptible to indoctrination. This sect of Islam, however, is not the sole source of our current crisis, and it would be wrong to place all blame on it alone; many of its adherents are peace-loving quietists, who want only to be left alone to practice their faith as they see fit. Their exclusivism is a necessary but not sufficient cause for the xenophobic hatred that leads to such violence. The terroristic Islamists are a hybrid of an exclusivist takfiri version of the above and the political Islamist ideology that has permeated much of the Arab and South Asian world for the last several decades. It is this marriage made in hell that must be understood in order to fully grasp the calamitous situation we find our community in. While the role that Western interventions and misadventures in the region have played in creating this quagmire should not be set aside, diminished, or denied, we should, however, keep in mind that Muslims have been invaded many times in the past yet never reacted like these fanatics. Historically, belligerent enemies often admired the nobility Muslims displayed in their strict adherence to history’s first humane rules of engagement that were laid down by the Prophet himself to insure that mercy was never completely divorced from the callousness of conflict. 

We need to clearly see the pernicious and pervasive nature of this ideological plague and how it is responsible for the chaos and terror spreading even to the city of our Prophet, God’s peace and blessings upon him, in all its inviolability. Its most vulnerable victims are our disaffected youth who often live in desolate circumstances with little hope for their futures. Promises of paradise and easy-out strategies from the weariness of this world have enticed these suicidal youth to express their pathologies in the demonically deceptive causes of “Islamic” radicalism. The pictures they leave behind—showing the supercilious smiles on their faces, even as they hold in their hapless hands their Western-made assault rifles—are testament to the effective brainwashing taking place. 

The damage being wrought is not only within Islam but also to Islam’s good name in the eyes of the world. These now daily occurrences of destructive, hate-filled violence are beginning to drown out the voices of normative Islam, thereby cultivating a real hatred in the hearts of those outside our communities. In the minds of many around the world, Islam, once considered a great world religion, is being reduced to an odious political ideology that threatens global security; that, in turn, is proving disastrous for minority Muslim communities, who now abide in increasingly hostile environments in secular societies. 

What we need to counter this plague are the voices of scholars, as well as grassroots activists, who can begin to identify the real culprits behind this fanatical ideology. What we do not need are more voices that veil the problem with empty, hollow, and vacuous arguments that this militancy has little to do with religion; it has everything to do with religion: misguided, fanatical, ideological, and politicized religion. It is the religion of resentment, envy, powerlessness, and nihilism. It does, however, have nothing to do with the merciful teachings of our Prophet, God’s peace and blessings upon him. Unchecked, we will see this plague foment more such violence, until one day, God forbid, these hateful and vile adherents obtain a nuclear device, the use of which has already been sanctioned by their “scholars,” including one currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. If such a scenario unfolds, it is highly probable that the full wrath of Western powers will be unleashed upon a helpless Muslim world that would make even the horrendous Mongol invasions of the 13th century look like a stroll in the park.

Invariably, some will remark that a fear of Western retaliation is a sign of cowardice. For those zealots, I would recommend turning back to the Qur’an, specifically to reflect on the undeniably brave Messenger Moses, peace be upon him, who unintentionally killed an Egyptian after striking him with his powerful blow, only because he was considered an enemy, and then asked God’s forgiveness and “fled vigilantly out of fear” (28:21). This is a cautionary tale, and it behooves all of us to reflect upon it as a lesson of what not to do when oppressed, especially when we are without political authority or the means to redress our grievances. Imam al-Sahrwardi stated, “To flee from calamities is the Sunnah of Prophets.” It is best not to let our baser self, our lust for revenge, get the better of us.

We would do well to acknowledge that much of what is happening in the Muslim world and to Muslim communities in the West is from what our own hands have wrought. Muslims have been in the West for a long time and have done little to educate people here about our faith; too many of us have been occupied in our wordly affairs, while some of our mosques and schools have been breeding grounds for an ideological Islamism rather than Islam. The Qur’an clearly instructs us that when faced with calamities, we ought to look first at what we may have done to bring them upon us. Introspection is a Qur’anic injunction. Until we come to terms with this Qur’anic truth, we will remain mired in the mirage of denial, always pointing fingers in every direction but at ourselves. “Verily, God does not change the conditions of a people until they change themselves” (Qur’an, 13:11).

As Ramadan comes to a close, let us pray for the oppressed and the guidance of the oppressors, for those who have been killed, and for those who lost their loved ones, and most of all, let us heed our Prophet’s call and want mercy for everyone. 

Professor Jonathan Brown answers 'What caused ISIS?'

Much respect to the Professor!

How Can We Stop ISIS? | Dr. Tariq Ramadan

Ruqia Hassan: the woman who was killed for telling the truth about Isis

 A hero and a martyr: Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un

 

After Hassan’s arrest, her distraught family visited the prison every day, desperate for news. They were never allowed to see her. Rather than shutting down her Facebook page, the militia left it active to entrap her friends – at least five people are thought to have been arrested as a result, according to Abu Mohammed. Months would pass before the family learned of Hassan’s fate. “We hoped that she would be released,” says Ali. “But on New Year’s Day her brother went to see Isis again; they told him they had executed her and five other women. They wouldn’t give the family her body.”

Since then, Hassan’s cousins have been unable to contact the family in Raqqa. In her last Facebook post, Hassan wrote: “I’m in Raqqa and I received death threats. When Isil arrest me and kill me it’s OK, because [while] they will cut [off] my head I will have dignity, which is better than living in humiliation.”

Abdullah says he hopes his cousin will be an inspiration. “She taught many people a lesson they would never forget. She taught us not to fear the tyrant ... I’m sure we will have many other Ruqias from now.”

Ali, too, could not be prouder of his cousin. “She become a hero in our village for her courage and being the voice of the truth. She was fearless ... A little Kurdish girl from Kobani faced a brutal militia and exposed them. She will never be forgotten.”

 Full article 

Star Wars and Daesh

NOTE: Spoilers below. If you intend to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens, please do not continue reading

Apparently every other post on Daesh, I am asked who are they, so here is the link. Most people call them as ISIS, ISIL or just IS but Daesh is the correct name for them.

So we find out in this new movie that Kylo Ren is one of the main villians. Inspired by his grandfather, he is the new man in the iron mask. Even though his parents were instrumental in destroying Darth Vader and the evil Galectic Empire he chose the dark side over the light side.

In addition to his parents, Han Solo and Leia, probably telling him stories about how bad the dark side is and how they defeated the evil villians, he was taught the about the Force by his uncle Luke Skywalker. Luke, as we know believed in the Force whole heartedly and was the reason behind Darth Vader finally bringing the balance to the Force. I am sure he would have recounted hundreds of times how good triumphed over evil. Even after all this, how come a clever young man turn to being a monster and evil?

The Muslim world faces a similar problem. While Islam teaches about compassion, being kind, bringing harmony in the society, working for the greater good, etc., these young men and women are preferring to join Daesh and be merciless killers over being ideal role model in the society. Just blaming the Muslims for not doing enough is not a just reason. In fact many of these young men do not even understand Islam, they just think Google will help answer all their questions. A lot of the sites that Google shows are misleading and contain incorrect information.

Unfortunately there is no easy solution to the problem of young people joining the dark side. We all have to continue our utmost to enjoin the good and forbid the evil. I would like to end this with couple of verses from the Quran

...So whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it, And whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it. - The Qur'an, verses 99:7-8

...Let there arise out of you a band of people inviting to all that is good, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong: They are the ones to attain felicity. - The Qur'an, verses 3:104

UpFront : Why do people join ISIL?

Much respect for the Sheikh.

How We Stop ISIS - Waleed Aly (The Project)

Profound statement from Waleed Ally. Couldn't agree more.

Opposing Extremist Groups in Islam (ISIS, Kharijites,etc) - Dr. Sh. Yasir Qadhi

Did Prophet Muhammad Warn Us of ISIS?

 

In separate attacks last week, ISIS terrorists killed 39 tourists at a beach resort in Tunisia, and close to 30 worshipers at a Shia Mosque in Kuwait. The onslaught came shortly after the group called on its militant Jihadi sympathizers to expand operations in the month of Ramadan.

ISIS has demonstrated an unflinching determination to take out anyone who dares to disagree with it. Its members have slaughtered Yazidis and Christians, but the vast majority of its victims have been Muslims who resist it and refuse to acknowledge its authority. ISIS has even executed Sunni clerics who refused to swear allegiance to it, and Muslim women who did not submit to its worldview.

This feature is shared across all terrorist groups operating in the name of Islam. The vast majority of the victims of the Taliban, for instance, are also Muslims. Hundreds of Shia Muslims have been killed just in the last few years. And I have lost many close friends in similar attacks on the Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and even in America.

So when some anti-Islam critics keep doggedly associating the faith of us Muslims with the acts of our tormentors, we call them out for their insensitivity.

Source

How to talk someone out of joining ISIS

Prominent Islamic Scholar Refutes Claims of ISIS’s Links to Islam

Hamza Yusuf, one such Islamic scholar trained in traditional Islamic theology and jurisprudence, finds both the arguments and the conclusions in Wood’s piece lacking in merit. Yusuf is the co-founder of the first Muslim liberal arts college in the United States,Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, and has studied the Islamic tradition for decades in many countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Mauritania. He has been described as “the Western world’s most influential Islamic scholar” and was ranked 35^th on Jordan’s Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre’s list of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world.

“ISIS is very similar to the Kharijites, who were a toxic off-shoot of Islam,” Yusuf told us. “It’s not Islam; it’s a perversion of Islam, and to label these militant externalities as Islam is to legitimize their actions.” The Kharijites were the 7^th century self-proclaimed Muslims who sowed discord in early Islamic history. They were known for their extremist doctrines and their penchant for declaring other Muslims as disbelievers—an act known as takfir—and engaging in murderous violence against them. Amongst their acts was the assassination of the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who was the first Imam of Shia Muslims and regarded as the fourth and final “rightly guided” Caliph by Sunni Muslims.

Yusuf, who has been declared an apostate by ISIS, further states that Islamic scripture and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (known as hadith) foretold the coming of groups like ISIS. “The Prophet said there will be people who look like us and speak with our tongue, but they are preachers at the gates of hell.” He added, “We’re not denying the fact that these people are motivated by ‘religion,’ but it’s a perversion according to our own tradition.”

 Full article:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's KKK Analogy Sums Up ISIS Perfectly

Today’s Top 7 Myths About Islamic State

 


 By Juan Cole

The self-styled ‘Islamic State’ Group (ISIS or ISIL), the Arabic acronym for which is Daesh, is increasingly haunting the nightmares of Western journalists and security analysts.  I keep seeing some assertions about it that strike me as exaggerated or as just incorrect.

1.  It isn’t possible to determine whether Daesh a mainstream Muslim organization, since Muslim practice varies by time and place.  I disagree.  There is a center of gravity to any religion such that observers can tell when something is deviant.  Aum Shinrikyo isn’t your run of the mill Buddhism, though it probably is on the fringes of the Buddhist tradition (it released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995).  Like Aum Shinrikyo, Daesh is a fringe cult.  There is nothing in formal Islam that would authorize summarily executing 21 Christians. The Qur’an says that Christians are closest in love to the Muslims, and that if they have faith and do good works, Christians need have no fear in the afterlife.  Christians are people of the book and allowed religious freedom by Islamic law from the earliest times.  Muslims haven’t always lived up to this ideal, but Christians were a big part of most Muslim states in the Middle East (in the early Abbasid Empire the Egyptian and Iraqi Christians were the majority).  They obviously weren’t being taken out and beheaded on a regular basis.  They did gradually largely convert to Islam, but we historians don’t find good evidence that they were coerced into it.  Because they paid an extra poll tax, Christians had economic reasons to declare themselves Muslims.

We all know that Kentucky snake handlers are a Christian cult and that snake handling isn’t typical of the Christian tradition.  Why pretend that we can’t judge when modern Muslim movements depart so far from the modern mainstream as to be a cult?

2.  Daesh fighters are pious.  Some may be.  But very large numbers are just criminals who mouth pious slogans.  The volunteers from other countries often have a gang past.  They engage in drug and other smuggling and in human trafficking and delight in mass murder.  They are criminals and sociopaths.  Lots of religious cults authorize criminality.

3.  Massive numbers of fighters have gone to join Daesh since last summer.  Actually, the numbers are quite small proportionally.  British PM David Cameron ominously warned that 400 British Muslim youth had gone off to fight in Syria.  But there are like 3.7 million Muslims in the UK now!  So .000027 percent of the community volunteered.  They are often teens, some are on the lam from petty criminal charges, and many come back disillusioned.  You could get 400 people to believe almost anything.  It isn’t a significant statistic.  Most terrorism in Europe is committed by European separatist groups– only about 3% is by Muslims.  Cameron is just trying to use such rhetoric to avoid being outflanked on his right by the nationalist UKIP.  One of the most active Daesh Twitter feeds turns out to be run by an Indian worker in a grocery chain in Bangalore who lived in his parents’ basement and professed himself unable to volunteer for Syria because of his care giving chores.  Daesh is smoke and mirrors.

4.  Ibrahim Samarra’i’s ‘caliphate’ is widely taken seriously.  No, it isn’t.  It is a laughing matter in Egypt, the largest Arab country.  There are a small band of smugglers and terrorists in Sinai who declared for Samarra’i, but that kind of person used to declare for Usama Bin Laden.  It doesn’t mean anything.  Egypt, with 83 million people, is in the throes of a reaction against political Islam, in favor of nationalism.  It has become a little dangerous to wear a beard, the typical fashion of the Muslim fundamentalist.  Likewise, Tunisia voted in a secular government.

5.  Daesh holds territory in increasing numbers of countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.  But outside of Syria and Iraq, Daesh is just a brand, not an organization.  A handful of Taliban have switched allegiance to Daesh or have announced that they have.  It has no more than symbolic significance in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  These converts are tiny in number.  They are not significant.  And they were already radicals of some sort.  Daesh has no command and control among them.  Indeed, the self-styled ‘caliph’, Ibrahim Samarrai, was hit by a US air strike and is bed ridden in Raqqah, Syria.  I doubt he is up to command and control. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have a new agreement to roll up the radicals, and Pakistan is aerially bombing them.

Even in Syria and Iraq, Daesh holds territory only because the states have collapsed.  I remember people would do this with al-Qaeda, saying it had branches in 64 countries.  But for the most part it was 4 guys in each of those countries.  This kind of octopus imagery is taken advantage of by Daesh to make itself seem important, but we shouldn’t fall for it.

6.  Only US ground troops can defeat Daesh and the USA must commit to a third Iraq War.  The US had 150,000 troops or so in Iraq for 8 1/2 years!  But they left the country a mess.  Why in the world would anybody assume that another round of US military occupation of Iraq would work, given the disaster that was the last one?  A whole civil war was fought between Sunnis and Shiites that displaced a million people and left 3000 civilians dead a month in 2006-2007, right under the noses of US commanders.

In fact, US air power can halt Daesh expansion into Kurdistan or Baghdad.  US air power was crucial to the Kurdish defense of Kobane in northern Syria.  It helped the Peshmerga paramilitary of Iraqi Kurdistan take back Mt. Sinjar.  It helped an Iraqi army unit take back the refinery town of Beiji.  The US ought to to have to be there at all.  But if Washington has to intervene, it can contain the threat from the air.  Politicians should just stop promising to extirpate the group.  Brands can’t be destroyed, and Daesh is just a brand for the most part.

7.  Daesh is said to have 9 million subjects.  I don’t understand where this number comes from.  They have Raqqah Province in Syria, which had 800,000 people before the civil war.  But the north of Raqqah is heavily Kurdish and some 300,000 Kurds fled from there to Turkey.  Some have now come back to Kobane.  But likely at most Daesh has 500,000 subjects there.  Their other holdings in Syria are sparsely populated.  I figure Iraq’s population at about 32 million and Sunnis there at 17%, i.e. 5.5 million or so. You have to subtract the million or more Sunnis who live in Baghdad and Samarra, which Daesh does not control.  Although most of the rest Sunni Iraq has fallen to Daesh, very large numbers of Sunnis have fled from them.  Thus, of Mosul’s 2 million, 500,000 voted with their feet last summer when Daesh came in.  Given the massive numbers of refugees from Daesh territory, and given that they don’t have Baghdad, I’d be surprised if over all they have more than about 3-4 million people living under them.  And this is all likely temporary.  Plans are being made to kick them right back out of Mosul.

Source