The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence

There's nothing quite so hypocritical as an Evangelical Christian criticizing the Qur'an for (allegedly) advocating indiscriminate violence. In order to participate in this exercise in self-delusion, one not only has to turn a blind-eye to the unambiguous views of 1,400 years of mainstream Islamic scholarship, but it's necessary to pass over quite a number of explicit verses in the Bible and large portions of Christian history as well. This is discussed in a forthright and learned manner by a Yale University scholar in the following article published in the Journal of Biblical Literature:

The Zeal of Phinehas: The Bible and the Legitimation of Violence

However, in spite of the overall merits of this article, it seems that the author couldn't quell the temptation to take a swipe at the scripture of Islam. After informing us of a view that holds that the Bible is the "most dangerous" of all books, the author opines that "…other books, notably the Qur'an, are surely as lethal". Well this statement is "not quite true", regardless of the author's claim, since even though both the Bible and the Qur'an have been abused and misinterpreted, if one looks at history there's no way to justify the statement that the Qur'an is "as lethal". Indeed, in spite of the bloody activities of a vocal and militant fringe element of Islam in recent decades, the violence committed in the name of Islam over the centuries still pales in comparison to the crimes carried out in the name of Christianity. In medieval times, Muslims had nothing on the scale of the Spanish Inquisition or the Wars of Religion that Europe experienced, nor did Muslims ever put the entire population of Jerusalem to the sword or burn large numbers of heretics at the stake. If we look at the post-Enlightenment world after which many formerly Christian and Muslim nations become secularized, the case against the Bible gets even worse. In these years, the Bible was used to justify everything from race-based slavery, colonial imperialism and, until just very recently, racial segregation and apartheid. Even though Muslims have their share of racists and bigots, and ethnic discrimination and rivalries unfortunately aren't unheard of in the Muslim World, these iniquities have never been justified by appeals to the Qur'an. One should also keep in mind that the Holocaust of European Jewry was orchestrated in the same nominally Christian (not Muslim!) country that produced Evangelical Christianity and the Gutenberg Bible. Likewise, Lebanese Philangist Christians, not Muslims, carried out the largest massacre of civilians in the Middle East in recent decades. Similarly, even though Palestinian suicide bombers have caused some to cast a reproachful (albeit ignorant) glance upon the Qur'an, the fact remains that the Bible is the only scripture that contains a God-approved act of suicide in order to kill enemy civilians (Judges 16:26-30).

The true irony in all of this is that the misguided Muslims who have committed horrible acts of violence in the name of Islam in recent years are following a modern Western influenced re-interpretation of Islam which took form during the late colonial period (i.e. after Christian powers invaded Muslim countries and started to exploit them). This undeniable fact has been documented in a number of books and articles, by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

In the end, the actions of a fanatical minority of Muslims today does not prove that the Qur'an is a "lethal" book, rather it only proves that some Muslims have an interpretation of it that flies in the face of over 1,400 years of competent Islamic scholarship. If the Qur'an advocates indiscriminate violence against civilians, isn't it odd that more than a millennium of scrupulous and God-fearing Muslim memorizers, exegetes and jurists failed to realize it?

Shakespeare and Islam

Oh, how I'd love to attend this week-long event, which features special lectures by Dr. Martin Lings, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and others:

The Shakespeare and Islam Lecture Series

During the week,"more than 20 speakers will share their knowledge at the Globe this autumn on subjects ranging from Islamic gardens as paradise on earth to the Three Faiths Forum founded to promote understanding between Islam, Christianity and Judaism". The lectures include titles like The Iago Factor: Obstacles on the Path to Peace, Sufi Reflections on the Shakespeare Sonnet, and Ilm, Islam and the Internet. Insha'llah, one day they'll publish the lectures on CD or DVD.

Lesbian Muslim Reformer is a New World Orderly

Henry Makow, a conservative anti-Zionist Jew, not only offers a humorous and insightful critique of the West's favorite "Muslim Reformer" and pet Islam basher, but exposes the hypocrisy of many of her supporters as well:

Lesbian Muslim Reformer is a New World Orderly

Enjoy...

Help the Democrats - Vote for Bush

At first, the news that Pat Buchanan's magazine, The American Conservative, has decided that Americans ought to elect John Kerry in lieu of George W. Bush kind of surprised me. However, after reading Scott McConnell's article Kerry's the One, I realized that they were just confirming a thought that I had while watching the recent Presidential debates. This thought was that even though I think another four years of the Bush Administration will be an unmitigated disaster, sometimes you need a serious disaster to bring about some substantial change. Thus Scott McConnell and myself came to the same conclusion but for completely opposite reasons. He wants to avoid the long-term damage that George W. Bush is likely to do to American conservatism. I, however, realized that by allowing Bush to be re-elected the Democrats might nearly guarantee four years of disaster, both domestically and abroad, and thus be able to capitalize upon this in the long-run.

As it stands right now, about half of the American population doesn't realize how misguided, irrational and immoral Bush's policies are (not to speak of the fact that they make Americans less safe in an age of global terrorism). As I see it, nothing short of a Texas-sized disaster is going to break the country out of this polarized deadlock—and George W. Bush and his neo-con cronies seem uniquely qualified to deliver in this regard. However, if Bush and company are thrown out of office now, it will just be pass-the-buck attack dog politics and business as usual once Kerry gets into office. Thus if Democrats really want to be successful in the long run, they need to be willing to take a short term setback in the 2004 election, as painful as that may sound. This really won't be much of a sacrifice, since whoever inherits the current economy, Baby Boomer domestic demographics and quagmire in Iraq is going to have a very tough time looking good after four years in office. Thus in reality, by letting George W. Bush stay in office for four more years, Democrats will just be giving him enough rope to hang not only himself but the entire Republican party. As Scott McConnell puts it in the above-mentioned article, "Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations." I think this observation has a good chance of playing out if Bush is re-elected. Another four years of Bush could spell long-term doom for American conservatives.

The Catch-22 in Iraq

I know it sounds trite to say that America is making the same mistakes in Iraq that it made in Vietnam. However, strictly in regards to military strategy, the U.S. military (with President Bush as their Commander-in-Chief) has fallen into the same trap of trying to win a non-conventional (i.e. guerrilla) war by using conventional military forces. Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, American military commanders—whose tactics had been forged on the battlefields of the Second World War and who had to keep one eye on the conventional Soviet juggernaut—were guilty of doing the same thing. For the most part, they became victims of their own set-piece military mindset and their own conventional operational thinking. The military's repeated efforts to objectify their military progress, which included the infamous reliance on "body counts", demonstrated that in spite of their lip service to "winning the hearts and minds" of the South Vietnamese people, they still thought they could "win" by using brute force. The reason that I bring this up now is that I'm astonished at the number of Republican pundits, especially when they were doing post-debate damage control, who just don't seem to get it. They claim that recent "offensive operations" against insurgents in Iraq, in such places as al-Fallujah, al-Najaf and Samarra, have been "successful"—and they predict that there's more military "success" to come. Anyone with a basic understanding of guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency operations should be very dismayed by such statements since they display a complete miscomprehension of not only America's stated goals in Iraq, but a misunderstanding of guerrilla warfare as well.

These pundits, along with many Americans who have been duped by their rhetoric, seem to not understand that the goal of insurgents in a guerrilla war is not to win head-to-head conventional confrontations on the battlefield, but rather to turn the population at large against the occupying forces. This is exactly what the insurgents in Iraq are trying to do, just like the Viet Cong did about forty years ago, and the U.S. military's overbearing and heavy-handed tactics are playing right into their hands. Every time U.S. forces going to an urban area like al-Fallujah, al-Najaf or Samarra and "win" a so-called battle, they are actually contributing to undermining their long term neo-colonial effort. Regardless of the semantics, this is because U.S. military offensives—even so-called "successful" ones—end up turning the population of Iraqi cities against not only the U.S., but against anyone in Iraq who supports them. Is it a surprise that even the Bush Administration admits that almost every major urban area in Iraq, with the exception of the Kurdish regions in the north, is controlled by insurgents? That's what people mean when they say the war in Iraq is "not going well". Indeed, in spite of the Bush Administration's denials, there is quite a bit of evidence that the war is not going well. The fact that the U.S. can bring massive military force to bear almost at will in order to kill insurgents, “win” street battles and “gain control” of hostile areas is meaningless because it’s completely counterproductive to their long-term goals. Every Iraqi insurgent the U.S. forces kill and every Iraqi home they destroy causes the Iraqi resistance to grow. In Vietnam, just as trigger-happy nineteen year olds, seemingly indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas and the general mistreatment of villagers by U.S. forces served as great recruiters for the resistance movement, likewise in Iraq. The analogy that the U.S. is trying to swat flies using a sledgehammer is an apt one—and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the civilians who live in the areas where the hammer has fallen don’t like it too much. Thus the Americans have gotten caught up in a Mesopotamian quagmire where every time they “win” they actually lose. This is the classical dilemma of guerrilla warfare: The harder you try to “win” the more you start to lose.

The How Do We Get Out? question is indeed a difficult one, and even though Pat Buchanan dared to ask it in a recent article, he didn't answer it. Don't get your hopes up, since I'm not going to answer it either. My purpose is only to clarify why finding a solution to America's misadventure in Iraq is going to be exceedingly difficult and expose the misportrayals and misunderstandings of the current situation for what they are. For all the people out there who still don't get it, let me remind you that the goal of the United States is to establish a pro-American Iraq—or at least an Iraq that is not overtly hostile to America. This is because there needs to be a stable environment so that Iraqis can manage their "strategic resources" (i.e. oil)—with the help of U.S. contractors of course. However, in spite of the fact that they claimed "Mission Accomplished" long ago, Iraq remains far too unstable for America to just pull out now. As George W. Bush made clear in his first debate with John Kerry a few weeks ago, admitting policy errors or saying that the war in general was a mistake would only demoralize the troops (not to mention seriously undermine his credentials as Commander-in-Chief). So instead of analyzing the situation and deciding on what's the best way to bring about a satisfactory solution (as difficult as this might be), President Bush seemingly wants to perpetuate the mistake so that the troops don't get demoralized. That's obviously putting the cart before the horse, since proving that the war in Iraq is justified and rigorously defending his policies there is the first hurdle that needs to be cleared. Once that's done in a convincing manner (and we're assuming, purely for argument's sake, that it can be), the morale of the troops will naturally go up as a result. This is because a truly justifiable war that is being craftily fought and well managed would have the support of not only the American people, but much of the world at large. However, since President Bush has neither strong justification nor intelligent policies, his reason for perpetuating the war is that he doesn't want to demoralize the troops. Personally, I think U.S. troops probably find this rather demoralizing.

All of this just begs the question: Why doesn't the U.S. just doesn't start fighting smarter in Iraq? Well there are a number of reasons why they don't. Understand that the way out of the perennial counterinsurgency Catch-22 is to be able to defeat enemy insurgents without making everyone else in the entire country hate you. So far, the U.S. has obviously opted for using ill-conceived tactics that make more Iraqis hate the U.S. every day, just like they did in Vietnam, in their unique stumbling, bumbling and overbearing sort of way. At the start of the war, just after Baghdad fell and Saddam was disposed, most Iraqis were relieved to see the dictator go and rather apathetic about the American presence. For a myriad of reasons (but mostly due to lack of planning and trying to win the war "on the cheap"), the U.S. wasn't prepared to capitalize on this short-lived goodwill. It shouldn't surprise anyone that things quickly spun out of control into near anarchy and then eventually into full-fledged insurgency. You see, when you bring large numbers of trigger-happy, beer-drinking and Humvee-driving American teenagers to a place, this is bound to cause friction with the locals. The likelihood of such friction is exacerbated if these culturally insensitive soldiers are in a proud, nationalistic and conservative Muslim country. Add to this the fact that many of the U.S. troops in Iraq signed up after 9/11 in order to fight the "War on Terror". They've got their heads full of all sorts of anti-Muslim propaganda and many of them have been duped (like almost half of all Americans polled) into believing that Iraq was somehow behind the September 11th attacks. This being the case, anyone with common sense should be able to see that not only are such forces not going to be able to win the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people, but they're going to have just the opposite effect. Every time American forces go into an urban area and "win" a shoot out, they are increasing the likelihood that they'll lose in the long run, since they'll be losing the "hearts and minds" PR battle.

We should keep in mind that there's another factor that drives U.S. forces to use disproportionate force and overwhelming firepower when it engages enemy insurgents. This is the fact that they are under intense pressure to keep American casualties as low as possible. Even though this isn't always easy or completely effective, advanced technology coupled with overwhelming firepower does help to keep the ratio of Americans to insurgents killed rather high. However, disproportional and seemingly unjustified responses with overwhelming firepower in Iraqi urban areas only play into the hands of the insurgents, just like I've mentioned above. The insurgent strategy, as always, is to prompt these overbearing responses by the occupying force, since in the long run they'll turn the general population against the occupiers. Thus the best recruiter for the Iraqi insurgents is American firepower. The more insurgents the Americans kill, the more the insurgent ranks will grow. General Westmoreland, what can George W. Bush do to solve this dilemma?

In the past, one way out of this Catch-22 was to simply get brutal. When the Romans faced insurgencies, they would just go in, massacre or enslave the entire population and raze their cities to the ground. In recent centuries, Western imperialist powers tried using brutality to squash rebellions as well, but usually with mixed results. America certainly wasn't above all this, since in its first days as an imperialist power in the waning years of the nineteenth century, it had some success using brutal tactics against insurgents in the Philippines. Indeed, in a few short years U.S. forces killed an estimated 250,000 Filipinos—mostly civilians. If your only source of information is Fox News, you'll probably never find out the general tactics of the U.S. forces that were trying to "pacify" the Philippines were summary executions, the ransacking of villages, and forced relocation to concentration camps for those lucky enough to survive. However, even though going brutal sometimes led to "success" in the past, it's not so easy to get away with such tactics in the age of mass media, global human rights organizations and world public opinion. So, since the Bush Administration's stated goal is to build a "free and democratic" Iraq, the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" approach isn't much of an option.

There's another dimension to this that most Americans never seem to address or consider, although it's certainly rather clear to most Iraqis. This is the fact that behind all of America's actions is the assumption that American lives are worth more than Iraqi lives. This should come as no surprise, since imperialist powers have historically used feelings of racial and cultural superiority to justify their misdeeds. Most Americans aren't disturbed by what's going on in Iraq (unless, of course, an American is getting killed) because they've been fed a steady stream of Muslim and Arab stereotypes all their lives. Therefore, it's okay for them to laugh and cheer while watching gun-camera footage of missiles and smart-bombs blowing up Iraqis. But if someone in Iraq dares to feel happy about the death of an American (even if that American happens to be a hostile invader), then that's just proof that they're a bunch of barbarians. Thus the U.S. military has no problem dropping 500-lb bombs in a civilian neighborhood in order to knock out "suspected targets". However, if an al-Qa'ida cell was holed up in the suburbs of some American city, rest assured that U.S. aircraft wouldn't be dropping bombs quite so indiscriminately in the suburban neighborhoods. That's because when Americans die, someone will be held accountable. When Iraqi civilians die, however, they're just written off as victims of "collateral damage", even if their deaths are clearly due to the U.S. military's apathetic and overbearing tactics. You can rest assured that this glaring arrogance is in the back of just about every Iraqi's mind, and that's why there'll never be peace in Iraq until American forces leave.

Personally, I don't believe that the Bush Administration is blind to these facts, and the senior military commanders certainly aren't. Thus, as I see it, all of these counterproductive urban offensives simply wreak of the early stages of a face-saving exit strategy. You see, in order to fix this situation in the short term and assure that the current Vichy—I mean Iraqi—government, which understandably has severe credibility problems with its own population, will survive, the U.S. believes it needs to resort to using a certain level of brute force. This militarist attitude comes as much from Bush's so-called "chicken hawk" neo-cons advisors as from his military ones. These advisors all seemingly subscribe to the idea that complex problems, even social ones, can be solved by the employing the blunt-instrument of military force. Even though President Bush won't publicly admit that he's made any mistakes, I like to think that behind closed doors they have at least come to terms with the fact that they severely misjudged how things would unfold in post-Saddam Iraq and the present quagmire that they're in. On the other hand, I also get the feeling that Bush surrounds himself with generals who tell him what he wants to hear. Likewise, generals on the ground want to show some sort of military "progress", even if it's really counterproductive to long term U.S. goals, in order to save their own careers. The big picture and its long term goals are quickly forgotten by military commanders who just want to meet their objectives, have a successful tour and go home with a few new medals. This same type of careerism is what plagued the U.S. military during Vietnam. There are indications that they've already given up on long term success and see Iraq as a mournfully hopeless cause, thus they are only hoping that they can squash the insurgency long enough for the Iraqi government to seem like it's really in control. That way, the U.S. can exit stage left and wash its hands of the whole mess.

The reasons that they don't opt for going the other route is because truly winning a guerilla war is a long term investment that is often devoid of tangible successes like battles won and enemy insurgents killed. Rather, a low-intensity conflict is a cat-and-mouse game that is as much public relations and community involvement as it is military engagement. In order to do this, you need highly trained Special Forces (which are not only expensive but difficult to develop in large numbers) that know the local language and understand the culture. These troops need to be sent into the hostile areas in a very unimposing sort of way so that they can establish rapport and long-term relationships with the people at a grass roots level. These people need to be convinced that they are facing an impending threat and that the U.S. counterinsurgency forces sincerely have their long-term and vested interests at heart. Such tactics might have met with success in Iraq after the 1990-91 Gulf War, but it's far too late for such tactics in Iraq now. The real war in Iraq, or at least it's current and most enduring phase, began the day that President George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier that had the Mission Accomplished banner flying. The shortsightedness of this publicity stunt by Bush is indeed mind boggling. Anyone with a basic knowledge of military history should have seen this disaster coming a mile away, since many credible insurgencies have begun the day after conventional forces declared victory. As it stands right now, Iraq could very well turn out just like Vietnam, where U.S. military forces won all of the head-to-head battles on the ground but still ended up losing the war.

In regards to why conventional military forces had trouble dealing with the guerilla insurgency in the now defunct Republic of Vietnam, Col. David H. Hackworth's About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior is an invaluable study. For stunning and disturbing insights into the European legacy of brutal treatment of dark-skinned "lesser peoples", "Exterminate All the Brutes", by Sven Lindqvist, is certainly worthwhile. And James P. Pinkerton's 7 Habits of Highly Effective Imperialists is a must read for those who can appreciate a somewhat humorous look at why the neo-imperialist effort in Iraq is unlikely to benefit America in the long run.

New Beatitudes Discovered

I came across this interesting piece the other day:

New Beatitudes Discovered

Here's a quote that many jingoist and neo-Imperialist Americans need to reflect on. Keep in mind that it's by a Democrat U.S. President that ordered the dropping of two atomic bombs on civilian population centers, which should earn him at least some credibility in the eyes of contemporary neo-cons:

“The United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the democratic ideal is not so inevitable that we can ignore what the world thinks of us or our record.”

— Harry S Truman.

Bombing Without Moonlight...Terrorism's Western Roots

Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad's latest article was recently posted on Masud Khan's website:

Bombing Without Moonlight: The Origins of Suicidal Terrorism
© Oct 2004 Abdal-Hakim Murad

This is an extremely timely and important article that I encourage everyone to read. Not only does it clearly demonstrate that the plague of militant extremist Islam that the world is now facing has its ideological roots in modern Western thought, but gives some hardy examples of the West's legacy of war against civilians and suicide attacks as well. An underlying theme to all of this is that classical Sunni Islam can only be blamed for the current plague of murderous militancy by those who are either patently ignorant or willfully hypocritical. There seems to be a lot of that going around these days, which is why I highly recommend this article.

Enjoy...

Some Thoughts on Moon Sighting

Well since it seems that it's time again for all of the seemingly unavoidable pre-Ramadan moon sighting controversies, I've been asked to comment what my take is on all of this. So I'll try to explain why I—as an astronomically-challenged and fiqh-unqualified Muslim layman—see things the way I do. Insha'llah, this will be in the interest of making sense of this oft-confusing world. Indeed, we're taught to rely on the opinions of qualified and pious Sunni scholars, but what do we do when we have conflicting opinions of equal validity that threaten to divide our communities?

The most important thing, I feel, is that all Muslims recognize that both opinions (i.e. universal moon sighting and local moon sighting) are valid fiqh opinions that come from qualified Muslim 'ulama with proofs from the Qur'an and Sunnah. Therefore, no one should be condemned for following either one of these equally valid opinions. That having been said, I also know that our scholars place a strong emphasis on following the mainstream majority of the Muslim community where one lives, so that is also to be taken into strong consideration. In the community where I live, the largest Islamic organization, which is pretty much under the umbrella of ISNA, follows the view that Ramadan begins when the moon is sighted somewhere in North America (i.e. local moon sighting). They do not follow the view that Ramadan begins when the moon is sighted anywhere in the Muslim World and any Muslim country (although it's usually Saudi Arabia) declares that Ramadan has begun (i.e. universal moon sighting). Personally, I feel that the latter opinion (i.e. universal moon sighting) is a much stronger fiqh opinion, as I explain below. However, in spite of this, I follow the mainstream majority of Muslims in my community, who opt for adhering to the local moon sighting opinion.

Even though for several years I followed the minority of Muslims in my community who adhered to the universal moon sighting view, I no longer follow this view. The reason for my change of heart (and mind) was not only because I wanted to align myself with the mainstream majority of Sunni Muslims, as described above, but also because of the mentality of those who reject them. It's been my experience that most (though certainly not all) of the groups that opt for following the universal moon sighting (i.e. usually Saudi Arabia), think that their way is the only way. In short, they have a very rigid and narrow view of Islam, thus they are very intolerant of views with which they disagree (or cannot comprehend). Over the years I've come to realize, based upon the wise warnings of our 'ulama, that any group that thinks, "We're right and everyone else is wrong!" is almost certainly a misguided sect (furqa). Indeed, such arrogance, narrow-mindedness and disrespect for the fiqh opinions of highly-qualified and God-fearing 'ulama has no place in Sunni Islam, thus this is one of the main things we should seek to avoid. Please don't misunderstand me here, since there are some Muslims who adopt this view strictly on the merits of the universal moon sighting fiqh opinion and who don't hold any malice towards other Muslims for adhering to the other view.

So the short answer is that I fast based on local (i.e. North American) moon sighting, since that's what the majority of my local Muslim community does—in spite of the fact I think universal moon sighting is a more valid opinion. As I've already said, as long as they're following a valid fiqh opinion, then one should follow the mainstream Sunni majority where one lives. Now if they tried to implement something that no qualified scholar accepts, like claiming that Ramadan this year was only going to be 28 days (or 31 days), then this would be completely unacceptable. However, such situations are very unlikely since the fundamental rules of Ramadan are clear, simple and well-known. However, in regards to why I feel that universal moon sighting is a stronger and more valid opinion, I offer these points:

• Even though there seem to be plenty of authentic hadith and athar which show that early Muslim communities started fasting on different days due to local moon sightings, nothing that I've seen seems to indicate that these communities were in real-time communication with each other and still chose to fast different days. On the contrary, these communities were geographically separated and thus completely incommunicado. Indeed, based on the fact that communication between geographically dispersed communities in the early days of Islam could take days, their situation is not very analagous to ours since we live in an age of real-time, high-speed and very reliable global communication. Keeping this in mind, there is no evidence (as far as I know) to support the idea that one Muslim community was reliably informed that the moon had been sighted by upright and reliable witnesses in another Muslim community, but they rejected this and decided to sight the moon on their own. I've heard scholars make this seemingly very valid point and I'm yet to see anything that undermines it. Much, if not all, of the evidence put forward to justify local moon sighting only proves that different communities, once they came into contact after Ramadan had already begun, maintained their separate dates for Ramadan. However, at the risk of being repetitive, they never knowingly opted to start Ramadan on different dates when in communication with each other. So even though Muslim communities started fasting due to local moon sightings (thus giving local sighting a basic validity), the most logical understanding of this evidence seems to be that this was due to the fact that they could not communicate with each other in a timely fashion. In all cases where the early generations could communicate with each other in a timely fashion, they fasted together. In this day and age, since we can be reliably and quickly informed that upright and pious Muslims somewhere in the world have sighted the moon of Ramadan, we should accept this evidence.

• The Qur'an, the Sunnah and our blessed 'ulama place a great deal of emphasis on the unity of the Muslim Ummah. Therefore, it seems to me that if you have two equally valid fiqh opinions, the one which promotes and encourages the unity of the Ummah should be implemented. I'm still waiting to hear a reasonable answer as to why this isn't the case. To me, it seems that if we fast as one Ummah, then we are more likely to act as one Ummah on other matters as well. In spite of the myriad problems that we face, we still manage to have one Hajj, so we should be able to have one Ramadan as well—which brings me to my final point.

• This debate is nearly forgotten when it comes to Hajj and the month of Dhu ul-Hijja, since the overwhelming majority of Muslims in North America—and throughout the world for that matter—want to fast on the Day of 'Arafat. The Day of 'Arafat, believe it or not, is the day when millions of Muslims are actually standing on the plain of 'Arafat and fulfilling one of the main pillars of Hajj. The sun that is up in the sky over Saudi Arabia on that day is the same sun that can be seen up in the sky over North America, thus it's the same day. Likewise, October 13^th in Saudi Arabia is October 13^th in North America; August 1st in Egypt is August 1st in North America; and May 17th in Jordan is May 17th in North America—and the same goes for any other day (Hijri or otherwise, since days have to do with the sun, not the moon). Thus if we want to be consistent, we should recognize that once it's Ramadan somewhere in the Muslim World, then it's Ramadan everywhere in the Muslim World. To give a practical example, while living on the East Coast of the United States, I can go outside of my house on the morning of 'Arafat Day and see the sun. At the same time, I can whip out my cell phone and call my friend who is standing on the Plain of 'Arafat in Saudi Arabia so that he can inform me that he's looking up and watching the late afternoon sun. Since we're both looking up and seeing the same sun (as if there's more than one!) at the same time, it seems rather nonsensical to claim that it's somehow a different day. Most of the time, we don't do this, but when it comes to Ramadan it seems that things get complicated.

That's how I, an astronomically-challenged and fiqh-unqualified Muslim layman, see it…and God knows best!

Contentions 8

A few days ago, Contentions 8 was posted on the Masud.co.uk website. As usual, Shaykh Abdal-Hakim Murad (a.k.a. T.J. Winter) is brilliant and insightful. If I had to choose my favorites, I'd have to say "The false Salafism: an unsuccessful flight from complexity" and "Modernity has not healed our pain, it has only dried our tears", although I admit that I don't quite get some of them. If you don't understand why the modernist movement called "Salafism", which is the "false Salafism" just referred to, is an "unsuccessful flight from complexity", then I suggest that you get busy doing some research on why a considerable number of Muslim scholars would consider this Contention be very valid criticsim.

Lying About Islam...Yusuf Islam

They're getting pretty slimy out there folks. Last night I couldn't resist watching ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas interview Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens, née Stephen D. Georgiou) on ABC's 20/20. Even though Yusuf Islam repeatedly and unambiguously made it clear that he does not support—and has never supported—terrorism of any sort, it seems 20/20 didn't want to accept that as an answer.

In one of the segments they broke away from the on camera interview and claimed that during the interview, when asked about suicide bombings in Israel, Yusuf Islam refused to condemn these vicious attacks. Well why didn't they show that on the interview? That would certainly have brought down the house, exposed Yusuf Islam as a terrorist sympathizer and given 20/20, and the U.S. Government, the evidence that they're obviously desperately looking for. Well I can tell you why they didn't show it—it's because he didn't say it. If he had, with 20/20's camera sitting right there in front of him, they would have recorded it and we would have seen it. Needless to say, anyone who has followed what Yusuf Islam has been involved in since becoming a Muslim knows that he's regularly condemned all forms of terrorism, both verbally and in publicly released written statements, and has been a tireless advocate for peace. So now we're supposed to believe that in spite of all his claims to the contrary, Yusuf Islam supports suicide bombing because ABC's 20/20 claims he said something, but for some reason they don't want to show this most relevant statement to us? So how gullible do they think we are? I wish they'd at least explain why they don't want to show the one statement by Yusuf Islam that would make the case that they were obviously so desperately trying to make in the first place. Like a lot of things lately, this just doesn't make sense.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if the U.S. had hard and credible evidence that Yusuf Islam was supporting terrorism and posed a legitimate threat, they wouldn't have just put him back on another plane and sent him back to the U.K. Rather, they would have arrested him and held him, just like they do when they catch individuals who are real and credible terrorists. However, this particular alleged threat to U.S. air space was simply released and allowed to fly back into U.K. air space. If they had evidence that he's a terrorist, why'd they let him go? Again, it just doesn't make any sense. Keep in mind that it usually takes bureaucracies awhile to finally come out (or figure out) and admit that they've made a mistake. This recent incident with Yusuf Islam's flight being diverted and him being questioned is just another example of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bungling things up and tripping all over themselves. Even though the Bush Administration voices rhetoric that they want to engage "moderate Muslims" as allies in their "War on Terror", this seemingly has a tough time filtering down into the minds of the average agent working for the DHS, who are fed a steady diet of paranoid analysis and anti-Islamic propaganda. It's too bad that more people don't realize how detrimental this is to winning the "War on Terror" and discrediting militant Islamic extremism. Sometimes it's almost enough to make me think that they really don't want to "win", at least not in the short term.

Do people really believe that the same man—an obviously deeply spiritual man—who so passionately sang songs like "Peace Train" and "Morning Has Broken" back in the 1970s has become a supporter of terrorism and an advocate of mass murder? I remember singing these songs in church as a young boy and I don't think I'd believe these lies about the former Cat Stevens even if I wasn't a convert to Islam—and I think, hope and pray that most people don't believe them either. However, when it comes to Islam, many people's brains are so full of misinformation and hateful propaganda that you can get them to believe just about anything. Believe me, there are certain elements out there that feel they have a vested interest in making this happen. If they can get people to believe that the former Cat Stevens is now some sort of "Islamic terrorist", then they're doing a successful job, albeit in a very sick and clumsy sort of way. If you want more information on the former Cat Stevens, please visit his YusufIslam.org.uk website as well as Mountain of Light Productions.

Almighty God in His Noble Book tells us that the plots and deceptions of the disbelievers are weak, and it's amazing how this is made clearer and clearer everyday. Just when I thought they couldn't be more blundering, shallow and intellectually dishonest, they come up with something new. Based on what I saw last night, I think ABC News needs to rename their show from 20/20 to 20/200 (i.e. legally blind).

One God, Many Names

Everyone needs to read this article (see link below), especially if you're involved in any type of Islamic outreach (a.k.a. da'wah). Based on some inexcusable misconceptions that I've come across, I feel that this is probably the single most important article that Muslims involved in da'wah need to read - and it certainly wouldn't hurt if non-Muslims read it as well. It's a very timely, thoughtful and highly relevant article for Muslims living in an English-speaking country.

One God, Many Names, by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah

This official description of this Nawawi Foundation paper is as follows:

“This paper addresses the primordial origin of the divine names of God in order to establish the equivalency of the Biblical ‘God’ to Islam’s ‘Allah’ and the need for American Muslims to embrace both. While Muslims affirm that they worship the ‘God of Abraham,’ recently America’s religious right has denied this common ground. This point is aided by English-speaking Muslims’ avoidance of the word ‘God,’ due to an erroneous assumption that ‘Allah’ alone carries legitimacy.”

The Bard on the Beard

“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man.”

— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act II, Scene 1