Islamic Clothing Update

Well I've finally become an affiliate of Shukr Islamic Clothing, which means I'll now get a small percentage of the sale if you make a purchase via the links on my blog. Check them out since they regularly have interesting new items.

I recently purchased a few of the Naqshabandi Hats from Barakah, so get yours while they last. They're located in the UK, but shipping is included in the price and mine arrived rather quickly. One thing that I can thank both them and Shukr for is carrying kufis that are big enough for my big noggin, since I normally have trouble finding ones that fit.

Awhile back I saw that Al-Rashad Books was selling Zipperless Leather Socks (i.e. khuffs), so I sprung for a pair. Here's the review that I wrote after trying them out:

These are great! I'm always a bit uneasy when I purchase items of clothing on-line, since you never know how they're going to fit. Also, with these khuffs, I was worried by the fact that they don't have a zipper on the side and whether I would be able to squeeze my feet into them. However, they've now arrived and they fit great! I wear a size 13 (US) and ordered the khuffs in size 12, since I wanted them to be fairly tight. This worked out just right. They're not too tight, but tight enough that I can wear them with shoes over them (which is great when traveling). The leather, lining and stitching are of very good quality, so I expect these to last quite a long time. I couldn't be happier with this purchase, thus I recommended them highly.

Each order includes two pairs—one black pair and one white pair. I'm not crazy about the white ones, so looking back on it I wish I'd asked for two black pairs. Not sure if they entertain such requests, but probably worth a try if you don't want to be stuck with a pair that you'll probably never wear. Unless I end up getting asked to fly on the Space Shuttle, and thus need some white khuffs to match my space suit, mine will very much remain in the closet.

Then there's Jaan J., the home of non-silk halal neckties. A great idea that's been a long time coming, so I got me a couple of them too. I hate wearing ties and, thank God, I don't have to do it very often, but it's nice having a decent looking halal one when you do. Their cuff links and lapel pins are pretty cool too, but enter the lapel pin controversy at your own risk.

Finally, a couple of months ago I saw The Sandal pendant at Uns Fine Crafts and thought it was great. I got one for my wife and she loved it. I didn't take long before our five year old son broke the chain, but The Sandal pendant itself survived. Now that I think about it, I wish they made a bigger one so that could hang it from the mirror of my car.

Enjoy...

SunniPath’s 5-year Anniversary Program

SunniPath.com’s 5-year anniversary program is coming up at 2 pm EST today, so if you have time please attend by clicking here (keeping in mind that the link won't work until just a few minutes before the event is scheduled to begin).

Their summer semester is scheduled to start on June 3rd, insha'llah, so please check out their full list of courses. This semester they're even offering a study circle option for those who have five or more students in their local area and want to cut costs by registering as a group.

SunniPath.com is no doubt a great outlet for those seeking to obtain traditional Islamic knowledge from reliable scholars, but don't happen to have any in their area. They are an "Online Islamic Academy for those that want to learn Islam online by way of distance courses. SunniPath has developed an extensive curriculum in several subjects areas such as basic and advanced Arabic language, foundational Islamic sciences, and advanced-level Islamic sciences. Our distance courses utilize unique online learning tools, and combine both ancient and modern methods of teaching"...so check them out.

I notice that this semester they're offering some new (?) courses which sound very thought-provoking, such as The Peak of Eloquence - Tasting the Linguistic Miracle of the Quran, Hadith or Fiqh? - The Relationship Between Hadiths and the Four Schools of Law, The Muslim Scholarly Tradition - Distinguishing the Gold from the Glitter, Introduction to Classical Logic - Deprogram Your Mind & Learn How to Think and Finding the Straight Path - Maintaining Identity without Extremism.

Deen on...

Contentions 12, a New Seasons and More...

I'm happy to announce that Contentions 12, by Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad, was recently posted at Masud Khan's website.

Likewise, the Nawawi Foundation website has posted Living Islam with Purpose, by Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, which is the sixth of the Nawawi Foundation Papers to be published so far. The paper emphasizes the need for American Muslims as a whole to become directly involved in their self-definition and the construction of their future as individuals and communities, and offers an operational framework for accomplishing the task.

The Zaytuna Institute has published the most recent (Vol. 4, No. 1, Autumn 2007) issue of the Seasons Journal. Their first Seasons Conversation, which features Seasons writers Zaid Shakir and William Shepard discussing socialist influence on Muslim thought, Sayyid Qutb's relationship to Islamist violence, and modern Muslim activism can be found and downloaded here.

Additionally, Imam Zaid Shakir has submitted an expanded version of The “Teddy Bear” Crisis, which can be found at his New Islamic Directions and is well worth a read.

Deen On...

Favorite Posts and Frustrating Comments

I'm going to use the fact that Umm Zaid, of the acclaimed Sunni Sisters blog, mentioned three of my previous postings in the Favorite Posts section of her Islami Blaghies 2007 posting to do some self-promotion. The three she mentioned are The Face Veil...Let's Be Honest, Remembering the Veterans of "The War to End All Wars", and Khaled Abou El Fadl - "I follow...the Mutazila". I very much appreciate her positive feedback on this, and I guess I should add these articles to my PLEASE READ section on the sidebar.

Yes, on the right sidebar, below my website links, there's a box entitled PLEASE READ which contains links to the postings, guidelines and other articles that I feel are most essential to understanding the outlook, purpose and policies of this blog. These include my oft-ignored Comment Guidelines, two articles [(1)(2)] that touch upon my reasons for selecting "Mere Islam" as the title of this weblog, a lengthy rant against morally depraved Muslims and My Favorite Sufi Aphorism, as well as a tirade against a typical example of Islamophobic bigotry.

Also, for those of you who may not have noticed, I maintain an ARCHIVE INDEX for each year—2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007—that this blog has been in operation. These list all Mere Islam blog postings in sequential order, thus making it much easier to browse through the titles of all of our various postings.

Speaking of my oft-ignored Comment Guidelines...well lately a lot of comments have been sent to the rubbish bin without ever actually appearing on this blog. One thing that I wish readers would take note of is the fact that all comments are moderated. That means they will not show up right away, but only after I, the benevolent dictator of Mere Islam, read and approve them. Due to that, there's no need to submit them multiple times in a misguided attempt to get them to immediately show up.

Other than getting lots of duplicates, the main reason that comments get rejected is that they are, as my Our Guidelines for Comments put it, "completely lacking in merit". For example, one Bilal Iddinn chastised me for "Calling a fellow believer a grave worshipper" and of "outright slander" because he completely misread my comments regarding an email that I received from a "Salafi" (i.e. he thought it was me—Abdurrahman R. Squires—that was saying the things that the "Salafi" actually said). I rejected these comments because I didn't want them to confuse the matter nor distract from the issue at hand. Please read the comment in question, since I'm disappointed that it hasn't generated more feedback. I guess, however, that I shouldn't be surprised, since what else can they really say? Ha!

On another tack, I get comments from people who are seemingly perturbed by comments I've made on DeenPort.com (and all of my DeenPort.com postings can be found here), but instead of refuting—or even trying to refute—them, they send me links to long articles coupled with a challenge for me to "Refute this!"...so hopefully the non sequitur nature of this fallacious thinking is rather obvious.

And then there was the long comment from Abu Musa, in response to my Yusuf Al-Qaradawi Exposed posting, in which he says that my "exposiotion" [sic] was "nothing more than an attempt to ridicule, character assasinate and mock" although I'm not the author...which is not to say that I don't standby my posting of it. However, keep in mind that I'm just the messenger here—a mere promoter, rather than the author, of the painful truth (at least in this case). Anyway, Abu Musa then goes on to say that "Shk Qaradawi has not been a member of the Ikwaan for many a decades, nor does he form part of their shura", as if one has to be an official member of the Brotherhood in order to adhere to their outlook and methodology! That's like saying that one isn't a Marxist unless one is a card-carrying member of an official Marxist party. Sigh. The rest of Abu Musa's comments were just inflamed...yawn...rhetoric that I had a lot of trouble...snore...remaining attentive to while wading through. Typical of the methodology of doing everything possible except address the issues that Shaykh Gibril's article put forward was his saying that "Shaikh Gibril is an unknown in the scholastic world"...which just shows how out-of-touch he is. So are we to believe that al-Qaradawi's views are correct just because he's more well-known than Shaykh Gibril? Finally, he confused liking the "al-Halal wal-Halal" joke because the humorous way that such an artful quip passes judgment on many Islamically questionable opinions with "mocking of a Old Man" [sic]...and then threw in a brief diagnosis of my nafs to boot. Now there's a topic of interest—which is about as close as Abu Musa managed to come to hitting upon one.

Well that's the current state of affairs on Mere Islam, other than the fact that we're having an interesting discussion on the Theory of Evolution in the comments section of the O'Reilly Shamefully Ignorant of the Bible post, so feel free to join in. Things are becoming contentious and even a little rude, but so far the dialogue has been quite thought-provoking and interesting. I'm no expert on this subject, although I'm becoming increasingly well-read on it. I certainly feel that there are tons of misconceptions about what this theory means, coupled with a lot of misinformation about it written by religious people who obviously see it as a challenge to their faith. My call on this subject is for honesty and integrity, since misrepresenting the views of others gets us nowhere. Rather, Muslims should spend our time developing solid and coherent answers, from the Islamic point-of-view, that address the challenges that Darwinism presents (in theory or in fact) to religious belief. So far, I don't think that the religious side, whether Jew, Christian or Muslim, has done a very good job, since most of the anti-Evolution books and papers out there are a mixture of pseudo-science and bad theology written for popular, rather than scholarly, consumption. Which is not to say that some of the pro-Evolutionist, like Richard Dawkins, aren't guilty of taking their conclusions too far. Actually, that's one of the main points that I try to make: both sides, the scientific and the religious, have often stepped outside the bounds of their expertise on this issue...but that's a long story better left for that forum.

On a side note, while doing some reading on various aspects of Darwinism, I came across Luke vs. Matthew on the Year of Christ's Birth, by Richard Carrier, which is a detailed discussion of what appears to be a clear historical error in the New Testament.

Deen on...

Support Shaykh Salek's Mauritanian School Project

Several weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me some pamphlets intended for helping to raise funds for Shaykh Salek bin Siddina's Mauritanian School Project. This is a very worthwhile fund raising effort, so please do what you can to support the spread of traditional Islamic knowledge in West Africa.

The website of this Islamic educational effort, the Dar-as-Salam Mahdara - Oasis of Sacred Learning, has been up for a few weeks now, so please check it out. I've put a new banner on the top right-hand side of the sidebar in an attempt to remind my readers to visit this website, on which they describe their mission statement as follows:

The Dar al-Salam project was established in 2003, to enhance the teaching effort of Shaykh Saleck bin Siddina, near the city of Kiffa, in Mauritania, West Africa.

The school (Mahdara) follows the traditional way of learning which includes time-tested methods of transmitting all the branches of the shari'ah. Men and women of all ages are trained with the utmost care to become excellent students, and later, teachers of sacred knowledge.

The school was initially run by Shaykh Saleck out of his home until the school was able to have its own property and housing.

Since Dar al-Salam opened, the number of students has increased and continues to grow steadily. The project is now in its final phases, and with your generous help can soon be brought to completion.

In addition to posting the banner, I've also scanned one of the pamphlets, converted it to Adobe Acrobat format and uploaded to here, so please feel free do download it, print it and distribute it.

Shaykh Salek, currently a teacher and resident scholar at the Zaytuna Institute, "is respected and widely regarded amongst his peers as a scholar of the highest caliber," whose knowledge, humbleness, warmth and spiritual presence is likely to make a deep impression on anyone blessed enough to spend time with him...so please help contribute to keeping the great tradition of traditional Islamic learning alive in Mauritania and all of West Africa, insha'llah.

Deen On...

The Radical Middle Way

Some traditionally-orientated Muslim websites deserve to be more well-known, especially ones that are dedicated to stemming the tide of extremism within our communities, thus The Radical Middle Way is certainly worthy of a dedicated blog posting so that it, insha'llah, will get wider recognition.

As described on their website, “The Radical Middle Way project is a Muslim grassroots initiative aimed at articulating a mainstream understanding of Islam that is dynamic, pro-active and relevant, particularly to young British Muslims. The project is managed by young British Muslims themselves, in a unique partnership between FOSIS, Mahabba Unlimited, Q-News and YMOUK. The project will make every attempt to answer questions pertinent to what it means to be young British and Muslim. The project has its roots in Islamic history, being an organic response by traditional Islam to challenges poised by extremist ideas. The project seeks to combat ignorance by spreading and empowering arguments for the 'middle way' and by the consolidation of the mainstream Muslim community.”

Please try to check out this site regularly, since that have regular events in the United Kingdom and a lot of good content on the website as well.

Deen On...

Imam Suhaib Webb Live on the Web - Tomorrow

At 12:00 Noon EDT on Saturday, July 8th (i.e. Tomorrow!!!), SunniPath will be conducting a free live online event with Imam Suhaib Webb. Yes, the previous sentence did contain the key word FREE, so no one has an excuse in that regard.

The name of the lecture will be The Qur'an and You: Reconnecting with the Beauty and Wisdom, and I encourage everyone to sign up and attend. The Qur'an is a blessing that we often forget and I'm quite certain that most of us don't have as much of it in our life as we need. Insha'llah, this lecture will assist in awakening our souls to the Qur'an, which is a healing (shifa'), light (nur) and guidance (huda) for us—and ultimately our path to salvation.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Imam Suhaib Webb, he's a very gifted speaker and very much an "up and coming" American Muslim scholar, insha'llah. Currently, he's studying at al-Azhar in Egypt, but I have high hopes for the benefit he will be to American Muslims once he returns to the States, insha'llah. However, thanks to the blessings of technology, Muslims all over the world can continue to benefit from his wisdom and advice even at this time...so please make an effort to do so.

I first met Imam Suhaib Webb when he visited Kuwait while I was living there back in the mid-1990s. Needless to say, in spite of his somewhat intimidating size that even dwarfed me—and I'm 6'3"—he was humble, friendly and made quite a positive first impression. Since then, his Islamic knowledge has increased immensely—and I pray that Allah gives it even more increase both for his benefit and ours—to the extent that he's left slackers like me in the proverbial dust. Indeed, it seems that Allah has blessed Sidi Suhaib Webb with numerous gifts and qualities, which include offering insights into the Qur'an, Sunnah and Sirah, an aptitude for motivating others, fine oratory skills, a knack for relating to the Muslim youth and a well-placed sense of humor. So please make du'a for this noble teacher of ours and do your best to listen in on the lesson tomorrow, insha'llah.

Deen On...

Saleel.com — Exposing the Heresy of Our Age

I recently came across a nice website called Saleel.com which contains quite a few articles related to taqlid (i.e. trusting in the opinions of qualified scholars), following a madhhab (i.e. school of Islamic law) and various errors of the so-called "Salafis". Although the site contains some of the well-known articles on these subjects from the Masud Khan and other websites, quite a few of the articles are not so well-known.

Indeed, I don't recall ever seeing close to a dozen of the articles which Saleel.com has under the category of "Salafis"—or if I have seen them previously, it's been awhile. So in order to share this wealth of useful knowledge, I'll let my readers know that the titles to some of the articles that I found most interesting include Taqleed, The Legal Status of Following a Madhab, Taqleed or Following an Imam in the Matters of Shari‘ah, Salafiyya, The Feet In Salaat - The Salafi Error, The Deception of the Devious Salafis, A Note on the Absurd Fatwa of al-Albani Regarding Palestine, Al-Albani - A Concise Guide to the Chief Innovator of Our Time, Verdict on Taqleed and the exquisitely titled Asking for "Evidences" is a Clear Daleel of Your Ignorance.

Enjoy and Deen On...

SunniPath - Summer 2006 Registration

Today is the last day to register for Summer 2006 Online Courses at SunniPath.com, a complete list of which can be found here. Without doubt, SunniPath.com is the premier website for learning Islam online, and its features include:

• 18 courses, including several new courses and teachers
• Variety of subjects and difficulty levels
• Improved eLearning tools and features
• Opportunity to learn Islam no matter where you are

Attending these SunniPath.com courses also provides one with the opportunity to gain knowledge directly from true spiritual masters, such as Habib 'Ali al-Jifri and Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller. This includes not only the ability to listen to live lessons, but the opportunity to ask questions as well.

Also, in case anyone missed the official June 24th deadline, registration for all of the courses will remain open until July 10th. Most, if not all, of the lessons are recorded, so you'll be able to listen to any of the ones that you missed, insha'llah. However, for the final word on course availibility (and some of them, like the Arabic language courses, do fill up since they only take a limited number of students), please visit the SunniPath.com website and check with them.

Deen On...

Updates, Links and More...

I just want to let our readers know that not only is this weblog back in business in regards to new postings, but we've added about fifty new links to our Links Page, removed a couple of dead links from it, refined our Blog Roll, and added a few new Reading Lists on the side bar as well. Expect to see a lot more of these Reading Lists in the near future, insha'llah. I've got most of them almost built—or ready to be built—and hope to have them completed soon. We've also uploaded our new OPML file, which allows you to quickly subscribe to all of the RSS/Atom feeds on our Blog Roll—and we've pasted an OPML icon for this near the bottom of our side bar as well.

For those of you who are new to all of this, the purpose of an OPML file is to make it quick and easy to subscribe to a bunch of blog feeds, which is done by importing the OPML file into an RSS Feed Reader (a.k.a. News Aggregator). One of the great things about this is that once you've got your RSS (or Atom) Feed Reader—and NewsCrawler is the one I use—installed and configured, then you no longer have to waste time checking your favorite blogs one-by-one to see if they've been updated. Rather, by simply launching your RSS Feed Reader, you'll receive automatic notification of which blogs have been updated—and there are web-based RSS/News Aggregators which can do this as well, such as Bloglines.com and NewsGator.com. Most RSS Feed Readers work for podcasts as well, so make sure you subscribe to the Alhambra Productions and Zaytuna Institute podcasts so you can keep up with their latest audio and video releases.

Moving along...I've selected Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, by Bart D. Ehrman, to be our new Book of the Month—although due to our lack of activity over the past few months, maybe I should call it the Book of the Quarter. However, we'll try to remain optimistic and determined in regards to how much time we'll have for blogging...so hopefully such a long posting famine won't happen again.

The reasons that I chose Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code this month are twofold: 1) the much acclaimed release of the film based on Dan Brown's blockbuster book; and 2) a couple of ill-informed and potentially embarrassing articles that I read, which were written by some Muslim doctors, demonstrated to me that some members of our Ummah are in dire need of a history lesson. In the not too distant future, insha'llah, I plan to post an angry tirade exposing the numerous factual errors and ignorance contained in these articles, since the slanderous and sloppy claims which they put forward are totally inexcusable...so please be on the lookout for that.

And by the way, for anyone who wants to know what Dan Brown got right in The Da Vinci Code and what he got wrong—whether by design or otherwise, Bart Ehrman's is the best book on the subject that I've found. Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code is relatively short, written for the layman, and—due to its academic perspective—relatively free from bias and an overt agenda. This stands very much in contrast to many, although certainly not all, of the responses written by Roman Catholics, Evangelicals and other Christians...not to mention those on the other side who try to lend credence to some of the themes in Brown's book in order to serve their own ulterior motives.

You also might want to drop by this blog again in order to read some responses I've written in regards to following one of the four traditional madhhabs...or not. I had a lot of pent up ideas, as well as some older writings that I've done, on this subject, some of which I released in a rather lengthy comment that I posted the other day on Higher Criticism—which is a blog that I hold in very high regard. I hope to have the new pro-madhhab rants posted soon, insha'llah, so keep an eye out.

Also, please don't forget to visit our Links Page, since I admittedly get a bit frustrated when there aren't a lot of hits on it after all of the trouble that I've gone to. And because in the past some people seemed to have missed the point of the somewhat cryptic format of our Links Page ...I'll explain that you're not necessarily supposed to know what all of the links go to. If the site's logo inherently makes it clear what the website's name or purpose is, I certainly don't fight it or try to hide it. However, in the case that it's just a logo that doesn't really tell you what the site is all about...well do some exploring and find out for yourself. That's the real purpose of the Mere Islam links page: To encourage exploring to various websites which are largely, but not exclusively, related to traditional Islam. For those who just want our "A-List" of useful links, well that's always on the sidebar of our blog pages in the cell entitled Website Links.

We thank all of our readers for their continued support. Please read, reflect, comment, enjoy and...Deen on.

Environmentally Friendly Web Hosting

I thought this was interesting news on a couple of future-looking companies that are taking some steps in the right direction:

Web Hosters Go Green
One customer boasts: 'Site hosted with 100% solar energy.'
By Jennifer Mears, Network World, 06/05/06

Here are some key excerpts:

"Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO) isn't your typical hosting service provider...Instead of drawing energy from traditional power sources, AISO is one of a growing number of hosting firms that is thinking green when it comes to power consumption. And it's one of just a very few that, despite running businesses that depend on always-on service, actually produces all the energy it needs on-site."

"In 2001, AISO invested $100,000 in the solar panels. Two huge arrays - which contain dozens of 2-foot-square solar panels and are each about 10 feet wide and 70 feet long - generate about 60 kilowatts of electricity per day, enough to power the company's operations."

"AISO is like most companies today in that it is always looking for ways to reduce energy consumption. It is migrating away from Intel servers, and now 99% of its systems run on lower-power-consuming AMD Opteron processors."

And then there's Sustainable Websites, who manages to "offset 100%" of their energy usage with Certified Wind Power. The article clarifies that the company "gets its electricity the traditional way, but purchases wind power through renewable energy certificates to ensure that its hosting business is '100% carbon neutral'".

Both Affordable Internet Services Online, Inc. and Sustainable Websites offer competitive rates for their Web Hosting plans, so check them out and consider making a switch. We all need to start thinking green before The Party's Over.

Deen On...

Does God Love War?

I just found out about this interesting event when I visited the Zaytuna Institute website:

As described on the Zaytuna site, Chris Hedges is "a reporter for The New York Times and has spent 15 years covering crises in many conflict-ridden locations including El Salvador, Nicaragua, Algeria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Iraq, Sarajevo and Kosovo. His debut book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, has been reviewed by the Times,The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award."

Well not only has War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning been reviewed in the above mentioned newspapers, but the Mere Islam blog has a review of it as well. A direct link to this review can be found here [138 KB Adobe Acrobat file] and it is linked to in our Book of the Month section as well.

I've been looking forward to reading Chris Hedges' What Every Person Should Know About War, but just haven't gotten around to it. His latest book, which came out in May of last year, is entitled Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America and seems to be a sobering look at the dismal state of morality in amongst common Americans and what some Divinely revealed objective morality can do to help. Although it's certainly not the type of book that I would have expected Chris Hedges to have written as a follow up to his books focusing on war. However, upon reflection, it's unsurprising that his traumatic combat experiences have motivated him to try to encouraged people to treat their fellow human beings more morally and compassionately...and that's certainly a step in the right direction.

Deen On...

Free the CPT - Appeal for the Christian Hostages in Iraq

I recently received a request to publicize an appeal, included in full below, for the release of Tim Fox and the other three Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) members currently being held hostage in Iraq. Even though I'm unable to translate it into Arabic as requested, I did manage to find an Arabic version of a similar appeal for these four hostages, which can be found here. I encourage everyone, especially my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters, to please make an effort to make as many people aware of this appeal as possible and to pray for the safe release of these well-intentioned, innocent and clearly anti-war and non-combatant hostages.

To those who are holding these four Christians hostages in Iraq, I would like to appeal to them both as fellow human beings and as Muslims by saying the following:

• We recognize the suffering and death that has been caused in Iraq by the unjust and unlawful invasion by the United States and her allies. However, the four people that you are holding hostage were and are completely opposed to the invasion of Iraq and the on-going war that it brought about. Due to this, it would be unjust to make them pay the penalty for crimes that others committed. Indeed, Almighty God says in the Qur'an: "No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another" (39:7), so please take this into heartfelt consideration. Punishing innocent people for the crimes of others is something that the Zionists do in Palestine, thus no Muslim would never want to emulate such unjust actions. Rather we should seek to emulate the teachings of our noble Prophet—salla Allahu 'alayhi was salam—who taught that mercy and forgiveness are always better, even when justice is called for. In contrast to a case where guilty criminals are detained for their crimes, in this case there's no real question of what justice demands, since punishing these four people who only wanted to promote peace in Iraq would be a grave injustice.
  


• Please realize that the four Christians that you are holding hostage are certainly not spies, since they went to Iraq on their own free will in order to help promote peace and bring an end to the war. Please know that in the United States, in spite of the current Bush administration and some of this country's other shortcomings, people here are allowed to openly oppose their government and its policies. Thus there can be no doubt that these four members of a Christian Peacemaker Team would be able to travel to Iraq on their own accord and without cooperation from the U.S. government. You may have concluded that by the mere fact they were in Iraq that they must have somehow been cooperating with, or were being assisted by, the United States government—but this certainly isn't the case.
  

We pray that you take these words to heart, as well as the following words from a close friend of one of the four men that you are holding hosage:

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An Open Letter to our Brothers holding Tom Fox and other CPT members in Iraq:

Dear Brothers in the one God:

It is early morning in America. I am a Quaker and I am trying to find words to stay your hand. I can only say that hatred is blind and love is unconditional.

Many people from our nation have come to your nation in blind hatred and killed innocent people. Tom Fox is not one of these people. He came to your nation with all his human fears, because his love was unconditional. He came to ask his own people not to kill you. He came not to judge you, innocent or guilty, but to say live together in peace and find a better way. He did not come to change your government, but to change our own people's hearts towards you.

He came to your country in the same light that Rachel Corrie went to Palestine to stand in the way of Israeli tractors destroying Palestinian homes. To spare Tom Fox and his companions is to show the Israeli people that it was wrong take the young life of Rachael Corrie.

I ask you to stay your hand, because we will still love you, no less or no more, if you break our hearts by taking the life of these good people who love you.

I ask you to stay your hand because you can. When you stand before your God, next to the American who wore an army uniform, next to the one who drove the tractor that killed Rachael Corrie, and our God asks each of you, why have you taken the lives of innocents, what difference will there be in your answer? When, some day, and I pray after a long life of loving works, Tom stands before our God and is asked why he placed his life in your hands, I think you know his answer. Because hatred is blind and love is unconditional.

"Whoever has saved a life, it will be as if he has saved the life of all mankind" (Quran 5:32)

Gods love and mercy to thee

In unmovable Friendship

Lorcan Otway
A member of the committee of Ministry and Counsel for the New York Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers)

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More information and appeals in Arabic can be found here: