Official Islam Thread! - Page 2

"Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." ("Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people.")

...the Nawa-i-Waqt newspaper about a Christian church in Florida, USA that has organized a rally to burn copies of the Holy Quran. This article makes the claim that Western countries have resorted to presumptuous attacks, and reports that some Ulema have condemned the West and the United Nations for their silence.

But the truth is, there has not been a silence on this matter. It has been widely condemned by Christian religious groups in the US and even the the US government and the UN.

Thousands of mostly Muslim protesters rallied around Indonesia Saturday in opposition to an American church's plan to burn copies of the Koran on September 11.
During the weekend rallies in Indonesia, cities protested an event planned by a small Florida church to mark the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks in the United States.

The chairman of the Islamic group Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia that planned the protests, Rokhmat Labib, says the plan to burn the Islamic holy book is a provocation.

He says if the event happens Muslims will certainly fight back, and he cannot predict what form the retaliation will take.

Relations between Christians and Muslims are generally peaceful in secular Indonesia.* But in recent months hardline groups have staged attacks against churches, stirring concerns of escalating conflict that would damage relations between Christians and Muslims in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Seven Questions for the Pastor Who Wants to Burn Copies of the Koran on 9/11
By Rev. John Rankin
Published September 03, 2010

| FoxNews.com

1. How can his proposed action be other than one of reactive fear, not one of proactive confidence? It is foreign to the Gospel.
2. Is not the burning of the Koran seen by Muslim peoples as bad news, and thus a hindrance to Muslims grasping the Good News in the lives of Christians?
3. Is not the burning of the Koran an act of accusation and condemnation? The name of Satan in the Hebrew (hasatan) means the accuser or the slanderer.
4. Does not the burning of the Koran thus burn Muslims in their very souls?
5. Does not the burning of the Koran by professing Christians thus slander the name of Jesus Christ?
6. What happens if people are killed, injured or persecuted as a result, if properties are burned or damaged, due to an inflamed Muslim world as images of a burning Koran flood the Internet? Who will be ultimately responsible?
7.Jesus, in the face of his enemies during Passover Week, embraced their toughest questions in public assembly. Is not the burning of the Koran the opposite of such confidence in communication?

What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents.

Looks like Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who said he wouldn't burn Qurans on Saturday so long as he got a meeting with the Muslim cleric who wants to build an Islamic center near Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, may not have his Saturday meeting after all.

Jones and another evangelical minister came out and gave an ultimatum to Feisal Abdul Rauf, asking for a phone call by 3:20 pm. The two ministers wouldn't answer the question "or else what?"

A Florida pastor says his church will "not today, not ever" burn a Quran, even if a mosque is built near ground zero.

Originally Posted by segovius

I think the perfect reaction to the Qur'an burning would be a 'Book Un-burning' held in a prominent location.

There could be copies of the Qur'an alongside the Bible and alongside Dawkins or anything else anyone likes and the message would be:

"Books are our heritage and the means we have always passed on knowledge - regardless of the content of the books we stand against anyone who wants to prevent the transmission of opinion by burning books - if you want to oppose the Qur'an then WRITE A BOOK ABOUT IT INSTEAD."

I also think that any Muslim who is feeling like taking any violent action in relation to this event if it happens would do better to stand up and say the following:

"This act does not seem to be in accordance with the spirit of Christ as we know it from the Bible - as we respect Jesus and the Bible we then will follow his instructions and turn the other cheek...".

Originally Posted by segovius

The problem is though that some people - Pastor Jones for example and even some posters on here - seem unable to make a distinction between any form of Islam and extremism let alone make alliances with one side to help them defeat extremism.
Oddly, these are often the same people who shout that Muslims 'never condemn or work for reform'.

"He's not burning the Quran. It just paper and ink between cardboard, there is nothing holy about it. The Quaran, a religion steeped in hundreds of years of history, and like Christianity with both good and bad moments, cannot be destroyed by one little narrow minded rabble rouser and a bonfire.

Originally Posted by FineTunes

hobo62

Quote:
"He's not burning the Quran. It just paper and ink between cardboard, there is nothing holy about it. The Quaran, a religion steeped in hundreds of years of history, and like Christianity with both good and bad moments, cannot be destroyed by one little narrow minded rabble rouser and a bonfire.

The rise in anti-Islam rhetoric in the United States is making many of the country's young Muslims feel isolated.

And whilst the furore over the building of a Muslim community centre and mosque close to Ground Zero has calmed a little, the gap between young Muslims and mainstream American society is wider than it's ever been.

Claire Bolderson reports from Virginia.

Seventeen-year-old Jasmin Ullah condemns those who turn to radical solutions but says she understands why some Muslims in America are angry.

With incidents of potentially violent Islamic radicalism rising sharply in the US in the last two years, the BBC's Claire Bolderson looks at the pressures on young American Muslims, and at what is being done to stop them becoming alienated from the mainstream.

Originally Posted by FineTunes


We need to move on from 9/11 and realize that those who perpetrated the tragedy were only a minority extremist group not representative of the whole.

Originally Posted by Nightcrawler

But can the islamic world say the same about the western world's military and economic actions in the islamic world given that the western world's governments were elected democratically to represent its people?

The Prophet Muhammad (s) said: It is better for a leader to make a mistake in forgiving than to make a mistake in punishing.
Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1011.

LAS VEGAS U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle told a crowd of supporters that the country needs to address a "militant terrorist situation" that has allowed Islamic religious law to take hold in some American cities.

Her comments came at a rally of tea party supporters in the Nevada resort town of Mesquite last week after the candidate was asked about Muslims angling to take over the country, and marked the latest of several controversial remarks by the Nevada Republican.

In a recording of the rally provided to The Associated Press by the Mesquite Local News, a man is heard asking Angle : "I keep hearing about Muslims wanting to take over the United States ... on a TV program just last night, I saw that they are taking over a city in Michigan and the residents of the city, they want them out. They want them out. So, I want to hear your thoughts about that."

Angle responds that "we're talking about a militant terrorist situation, which I believe it isn't a widespread thing, but it is enough that we need to address, and we have been addressing it."


Dearborn, Mich., has a thriving Muslim community. It was not immediately clear why Angle singled out Frankford, Texas, a former town that was annexed into Dallas around 1975.

Responding to the same question, she also drew comparisons between the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Nazi Holocaust. She said the property owners behind the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero should move it in deference to the people who died there.


Angle seemed to be referring to a Roman Catholic convent at the Auschwitz death camp that Pope John Paul II ordered moved in 1993 in response to Jewish protests.

Others, including the Anti-Defamation League, the nation's leading Jewish civil rights group, have evoked the relocated convent while voicing opposition to the mosque. But the ADL also has stressed that 9/11 and the Holocaust are separate, incomparable events.

Angle's campaign did not answer questions about her statements.

"I'm pretty sure that she did make it clear that there had been incidents in the news, but there is nothing widespread, and that we have freedom of religion in this country," said spokesman Jarrod Agen in an e-mail.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based advocacy group, called Angle's statements "bizarre."


Dearborn Mayor Jack O'Reilly called Angle's comments "shameful." He said tea party groups inaccurately spread the word that his Detroit suburb was ruled by Islamic law after members of an anti-Islam group were arrested at an Arab cultural festival in June because a Christian volunteer complained of harassment.


Angle, a Southern Baptist, has called herself a faith-based politician. Among her positions, she opposes abortion in all circumstances, including rape and incest and doesn't believe the Constitution requires the separation of church and state.

Angle is in a dead-heat race against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has also said the community center, which would include a mosque, should be built elsewhere. A recent poll showed Reid and Angle tied in the high-profile campaign.

Reid's campaign said Angle's comments advances its ongoing campaign to portray her as outside mainstream America.

Opponents of the veil claim it oppresses women and presents a barrier between those who wear traditional dress and the rest of society.

But in a new report from think-tank Civitas, Alveena Malik, a former faith adviser to the last Labour government, said the test of whether religious symbols are appropriate should be based on whether they are practical.

Politicians in France and Belgium have voted in favour of banning the full veil, or niqab, and other European countries are thought to be considering similar action.

In a new report, Women, Islam and Western Liberalism,
Britain is in a "unique" position to embrace such a public display of faith because of the role the church plays in the affairs of the state and its "multicultural diversity".

Mrs Malik was appointed by last government to a panel of faith advisers for the Department for Communities. She has overseen British Council guidance on intercultural dialogue.

I'm a regular listener of NPR. You might call me an NPR junkie, in fact. One of the few complaints I have ever regularly had about the network was the presence of Juan Williams. By now most readers have a pretty good sense of where I fall on the political spectrum!

However, with the news that Juan Williams was fired from NPR, I find myself more troubled than relieved. What triggered Williams' firing were his comments on Bill O'Reilly's show that he had a visceral fear of Muslims dressed in "Muslim garb" on his airplane flights. This was refreshingly honest, in the context of trying to explain to O'Reilly how making broad brush stereotypes can lead to further injustices. Admitting to fear - bigoted fear - is admirable. Explaining why that fear is bigoted is then required, however.

Unfortunately, Williams failed that last responsibility, insisting that his fear is not bigoted. Let us call a spade a spade. Juan Williams, like all of us, suffers the same bigotry that runs deep in American society, which today centers on Muslims but in the past has targeted Jews, Catholics, and pretty much everyone else. For Muslims, that historical, reactive bigotry is amplified by the tragedy of 9-11, which makes it our responsibility to be patient, to work harder, to show ourselves by our deeds to be different from the other with whom we still are at war.

So, while I do not excuse Williams for his bigotry, I do understand what Williams was trying to say, and I don't think that his error was offensive or even in violation of his professional ethics as a journalist. But this is not why I am troubled by the firing.

My main concern is that NPR had plenty of cause to fire Williams, well before he appeared on O'Reilly. Williams has long leveraged his position at NPR as a sort of cachet to market himself on the pundit circuit, and in so doing has tarnished NPR's own reputation, especially among the liberals like me who make up the core audience. And NPR's leadership has confirmed that this wasn't a "one strike and you're out" situation but rather the last straw.

But these comments, not previous flubs like his comment about Michele Obama, were that last straw. Why is that?

Simply, because it gives NPR the moral high ground. Muslims are convenient, as a cause. Consider how the utterly banal issue of whether or not to build a community center in Manhattan became a flash point for the culture divide, eagerly seized upon by conservatives to lament impending Shari'a but also by liberals determined to use the issue to burnish their constitutional, tolerant bona fides. Lost in the acrimony, ignored by the media, was the simple issue of whether downtown Manhattan needs a community center, whether Muslims in New York need a place to pray, and most importantly, whether or not the rest of the country has any business inserting itself into what is fundamentally a local community decision.

And here's the real problem in a nutshell. Exaggerated political correctness is often a façade that only perpetuates stereotypes rather than combat them. The action by NPR serves a narrative that liberals and Muslims are engaged in a grand conspiracy of censorship against voices that are trying to sound an alarm about an omnipresent threat to freedom from Islam. It also serves a narrative that NPR is a bastion of liberal values and will hold the tide against a rising tide of hatred and intolerance that threatens the foundations of our free society. And Muslims are in the middle, while the forces of freedom battle over our heads.

Ultimately, Muslims are the ones who bear the consequences of this political correctness. Meanwhile, Juan Williams was immediately signed by FOX News for a $2 million contract. The incentive for bigotry against Muslims just increased.

A few weeks ago, the Cardozo School of Law mounted a conference marking the 20th anniversary of Employment Division v. Smith (1990) , a case in which the Supreme Court asked what happens when a form of behavior demanded by ones religion runs up against a generally applicable law a law not targeted at any particular agenda or point of view that makes the behavior illegal. (The behavior at issue was the ingestion of peyote at a Native American religious ceremony.) The answer the court gave, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing for the majority, was that the religious believer must yield to the law of the state so long as that law was not passed with the intention of curtailing or regulating his or anyone elses religious practice. (This is exactly John Lockes view in his Letter Concerning Toleration.)


The conflict between religious imperatives and the legal obligations one has as a citizen of a secular state a state that does not take into account the religious affiliations of its citizens when crafting laws is an old one (Scalia is quotingReynolds v. United States, 1878); but in recent years it has been felt with increased force as Muslim immigrants to Western secular states evidence a desire to order their affairs, especially domestic affairs, by Shariah law rather than by the supposedly neutral law of a godless liberalism. I say supposedly because of the obvious contradiction: how can a law that refuses, on principle, to recognize religious claims be said to be neutral with respect to those claims? Must a devout Muslim (or orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Christian) choose between his or her faith and the letter of the law of the land?

In February 2008, the Right Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, tried in a now-famous lecture to give a nuanced answer to these questions by making what he considered a modest proposal. After asking what degree of accommodation the laws of the land can and should give to minority communities with their strongly entrenched legal and moral codes, Williams suggested (and it is a suggestion others had made before him) that in some areas of the law a supplementary jurisdiction, deriving from religious law, be recognized by the liberal state, which, rather than either giving up its sovereignty or invoking it peremptorily to still all other voices, agrees to share it in limited areas where more latitude [would be] given in law to rights and scruples rooted in religious identities.

Williams proceeded immediately to surround his proposal with cautionary safeguards no supplementary jurisdiction could have the power to deny access to the rights granted to other citizens or to punish its members for claiming those rights but no safeguards would have satisfied his many critics, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who declared roundly that there is only one common law for all of Britain and it is based squarely on British values.

Prompted by Williamss lecture and the responses it provoked, law professors Rex Ahdar and Nicholas Aroney have now put together a volume, to be published in 2011, under the title Sharia in the West, a collection of learned and thoughtful essays by some of the worlds leading scholars of religion and the law. The volumes central question is stated concisely by Erich Kolig, an anthropologist from New Zealand:
This is exactly the question posed by John Rawls in a preface to the second edition of Political Liberalism, his magisterial account and defense of liberal political principles:
With these concepts as the baseline of accommodation, accommodation is going to fall far short of anything that will satisfy the adherents of a religion that encompasses all aspects of public and private law, hygiene, and even courtesy and good manners (A. A. An-Naim). In liberal thought these areas are the ones in which the individual reigns supreme and the value of individual choice is presupposed; but, as Ann Black explains,


And so, perhaps predictably, the essays in Shariah in the West tack back and forth between the uneasy alternatives Williams names in his lecture
These assumptions seem to be standing obstacles to the ability of secular Western states to think through the problem presented by growing Muslim populations that are sometimes militant in their demand to be ruled by their own faiths and traditions.

On the one hand, there is the liberal desire to accord ones fellow human beings the dignity of respecting their deepest beliefs. On the other hand, there is the fear that if those beliefs are allowed their full scope, individual rights and the rule of law may be eroded beyond repair. It would seem, at least on the evidence of most of these essays, that there is simply no way of finding a viable path that accommodates diversity with equality (Ayelet Shachar), that is, accommodates tolerance of diverse religious views with an insistence that, in the last analysis, the rights of individuals cannot be trumped by a theological imperative. No one in this volume quite finds the path.

Except perhaps theologian and religious philosopher John Milbank who puts forward, the editors tell us,
The italicized phrase is key: the respect liberalism can accord Islam (or any other strong religion) is the respect one extends to curiosities, eccentrics, the backward, the unenlightened and the unfortunately deluded. Liberal respect stops short and this is not a failing of liberalism, but its very essence of taking religious claims seriously, of considering them as possible alternative ways of ordering not only private but public life.

Christianity, says Milbank, will be more capable of deeply respecting Islam because the two faiths share a commitment to the sacred and to a teleological view of history notably lacking in liberalism (again, this is not a criticism but a definition of liberalism): A Christian polity can go further in acknowledging the integral worth of a religious group as a group than a secular polity can. Christianity can acknowledge the worth of Islam not merely in an act of tolerance but in an act of solidarity in the same way that Christian sects can acknowledge each other. If you are a Catholic, Milbank explains, and you do not agree with the Baptists you can nevertheless acknowledge that, relatively speaking, they are pursuing social goals that are comparable with, and promote a shared sense of human dignity as defined by a corporate religious identity. Liberalism can acknowledge individual Muslims or individual Baptists or individual Catholics, but the liberal acknowledgment detaches these religious believers from their community of belief and turns them into citizens who are in the things that count (to liberalism) just like everyone else.

Liberal principles, declares Milbank, will always ensure that the rights of the individual override those of the group. For this reason, he concludes, liberalism cannot defend corporate religious freedom. The neutrality liberalism proclaims is itself entirely secular (it brackets belief; thats what it means by neutrality) and is therefore unable to accord the religious perspective [the] equal protection it rhetorically promises. Religious rights can only be effectively defended pursuant to a specific and distinctly religious framework. Liberal universalism, with its superficial respect for everyone (as long as everyone is superficial) and its deep respect for no one, cant do it.

If that is so, then the other contributors to this volume are whistling Dixie, at least with respect to the hope declared by Rawls that liberalism in some political form might be able to do justice to the strongly religious citizens of a liberal state. Milbanks fellow essayists cannot negotiate or remove the impasse he delineates, but what they can do, and do do with considerable ingenuity and admirable tact, is find ways of blunting and perhaps muffling the conflict between secular and religious imperatives, a conflict that cannot (if Milbank is right, and I think he is) be resolved on the level of theory, but which can perhaps be kept at bay by the ad-hoc, opportunistic, local and stop-gap strategies that are at the heart of politics.

[JURIST] The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a lawsuit lawsuit, press release Thursday challenging the constitutionality ofState Question 755[FT Comment: Excerpt below], which amends the state constitution to ban the use of Islamic or international law in state court decisions. The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, seeks to block the Oklahoma State Board of Elections from certifying this week's election results, which approved the measure by a vote of 70 to 30 percent. CAIR argues that the law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The law would prevent Oklahoma courts from "look[ing] to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures," requiring them only to look to legal precedents of other states for guidance, provided that state does not use Islamic law.

The law was sponsored by state Representative Rex Duncan (R), who described it as a preemptive strike against the use of Islamic law in Oklahoma. The necessity of the amendment has been questioned due to the fact that the use of Islamic law in US courts would likely violate the First Amendment prohibition on laws respecting an establishment of religion.

B. Subsection C of this section shall be known as the "Save Our State Amendment".

C. The Courts provided for in subsection A of this section,
when exercising their judicial authority, shall uphold and adhere to
the law as provided in the United States Constitution, the Oklahoma
Constitution, the United States Code, federal regulations
promulgated pursuant thereto, established common law, the Oklahoma
Statutes and rules promulgated pursuant thereto, and if necessary
the law of another state of the United States provided the law of
the other state does not include Sharia Law, in making judicial
decisions. The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other
nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider
international law or Sharia Law. The provisions of this subsection
shall apply to all cases before the respective courts including, but
not limited to, cases of first impression.

Originally Posted by FineTunes

Oklahoma Islamic law ban challenged
Friday, November 05, 2010
Daniel Makosky on November 5, 2010 10:38 AM ET

[JURIST] The Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed a lawsuit lawsuit, press release Thursday challenging the constitutionality ofState Question 755[FT Comment: Excerpt below], which amends the state constitution to ban the use of Islamic or international law in state court decisions. The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, seeks to block the Oklahoma State Board of Elections from certifying this week's election results, which approved the measure by a vote of 70 to 30 percent. CAIR argues that the law violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The law would prevent Oklahoma courts from "look[ing] to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures," requiring them only to look to legal precedents of other states for guidance, provided that state does not use Islamic law.

The law was sponsored by state Representative Rex Duncan (R), who described it as a preemptive strike against the use of Islamic law in Oklahoma. The necessity of the amendment has been questioned due to the fact that the use of Islamic law in US courts would likely violate the First Amendment prohibition on laws respecting an establishment of religion.

B. Subsection C of this section shall be known as the "Save Our State Amendment".

C. The Courts provided for in subsection A of this section,
when exercising their judicial authority, shall uphold and adhere to
the law as provided in the United States Constitution, the Oklahoma
Constitution, the United States Code, federal regulations
promulgated pursuant thereto, established common law, the Oklahoma
Statutes and rules promulgated pursuant thereto, and if necessary
the law of another state of the United States provided the law of
the other state does not include Sharia Law, in making judicial
decisions. The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other
nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider
international law or Sharia Law. The provisions of this subsection
shall apply to all cases before the respective courts including, but
not limited to, cases of first impression.

OKLAHOMA CITY A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking a state constitutional amendment that prohibits state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases.
U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange ruled Monday morning in Oklahoma City following a brief hearing. It prevents the state election board from certifying the results of Tuesday's general election in which the amendment was approved by 70 percent of the voters.

Right wing groups like the English Defence League are turning parts of Britain into recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists, police have said.

The EDL emerged last year and has held demonstrations in a number of towns and cities against radicalisation.

But the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit has told BBC Radio 5 live there is evidence EDL events can encourage extremists.....

Far right extremists were condemned last night over their protests in a North city centre over a planned Islamic school and cultural centre.

Supporters of the English Defence League (EDL) staged a demonstration outside the former Bishop's Palace in Benwell, Newcastle, where the new centre will be. More than 100 people, including one dressed as Osama Bin Laden, marched with St George flags from the Fox and Hounds pub on West Road to the premises on Benwell Lane, where they began to chant "scum" and "no surrender to the Taliban".......

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on Monday extended a temporary restraining order blocking the controversial Oklahoma constitutional amendment (SQ 755) banning the courts from considering foreign or Islamic law. Judge Vicki Miles-LeGrange said sheneeded more time to deal with this issue, which pits the will of the voters against the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Still, she is expected to rule by the end of the month. The case was brought by Muneer Awad, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Oklahoma, claiming the law is a violation of the First Amendment because it disfavors and stigmatizes his religion. Oklahoma voters overwhelmingly approved the measure in the November 2 mid-term elections with 70 percent of the vote.

Miles-LeGrange issued the temporary restraining order just six days after the election, stopping the Oklahoma Board of Elections from certifying the results. SQ 755 would prevent Oklahoma courts from "look[ing] to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures," requiring them only to look to legal precedents of other states for guidance, provided that state does not use Islamic law. It was sponsored by state Representative Rex Duncan (R), who described it as a preemptive strike against the use of Islamic law in Oklahoma. Duncan defended SQ 755 as necessary to protect Oklahoma from an attack on the fundamental Judeo-Christian principles on which he says the US is founded. On the other hand, Haroon Moghul Executive Director of the Maydan Institute has argued that the passage of SQ 755 was done simply out of the "flawed logic" of a fear of everything Muslim.

Washington (CNN) -- A federal judge in Oklahoma has issued an order putting on hold the certification of a ballot measure that forbids state courts from considering or using international laws, as well as Sharia, or Islamic law. That permanent injunction will allow the judge more time to consider the constitutional issues raised by State Question 755, which was approved by voters earlier this month.

Originally Posted by segovius

Some of you may have been following the discussion with Fellows and Camp David and others in the Christianity thread were we discussed posting some threads about various religions - well, welcome to the Islam one!

First a few things - not rules because there aren't any but more an outline of the spirit of the thread. Basically the idea is to post and discuss around the following:

1. Things that are surprising or not widely known about the faith
2. Things that are happening that help foster unity and progression
3. General positive stuff!!

That doesn't mean that this is a promotion of Islam or the other threads I hope people will start will be promotions of a given religion either but more that it is for discussion in a positive way.

I know I've been very negative in the past about Christianity in particular and also atheism but I don't want to do that any more which is one of the reasons I agreed to make this thread -and why I hope I'll be able to be positive in the sister-threads if there are any.

So hopefully we can all find something good and have a positive environment here - Let's all try and respect that, if anyone really wants an argument or to post the negative aspects we all know are out in the world then let's 'take it outside' and do it in a specific thread for that!! I probably won't join in though.

So..enough preamble - I was thinking of posting some elements of common ground between Islam (or more specifically the Middle East) and the West where there are many influences on each other which we don't always realize but I think that can wait till later because while compiling that list I noticed quite a few interesting articles about the growing inter-faith initiatives and moderate Islamic voices coming to the fore.

I really think that now there is a growing renaissance in this 'inter-faith' area - I don't like the term but there is not another one as yes. The Cordoba Initiative in NYC would be an example but there are many, many such things happening.

I noticed this article and video about Pakistanis in NYC voicing the real Pakistan.

These guys in the video are actually Sufis which are the third major sect of Islam along with Sunnis and Shi'i but they are inclusive and tolerant so they could be either Sunni or Shi'i or neither. Sometimes they are even Christians and their doctrinal position is more like Christianity than traditional Islam, they revere Jesus a lot more also.

I don't really want to talk too much about Sufism but those interested can find out I think. This is just to introduce the thread and get it rolling.

I hope people will participate with either questions, ideas they have, discussion of others' contributions or contributions of their own of positive developments in the world or in Islam.

I also hope and encourage other people with interest and knowledge to post their own 'official religion X' threads - we should have as many as poss; Buddhism, Judaism, Atheism - whatever...hopefully we can develop a more positive spirit than the traditional one we kind of got stuck in when discussing each other's beliefs!!

[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia (ACLUGA) filed a lawsuit; press release Tuesday on behalf of a Muslim woman who was arrested for refusing to remove her headscarf, or hijab, in court. Lisa Valentine was arrested in December 2008 and ordered to serve 10 days in jail for contempt of court after she refused to remove her headscarf upon entering a security checkpoint in an Atlanta courtroom. Douglasville Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins found Valentine in contempt for violating a court policy that prohibits wearing headgear in court. Valentine, who also goes by her Islamic name Miedah, was released from jail later in the day after the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the incident, although jail officials did not confirm their reason for letting her go. The ACLUGA claims that the defendants, the city of Douglasville and the arresting officers, violated Valetine's First and Fourth Amendment rights, as well as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. According to the complaint, "[a]s a result of Defendants' conduct, Mrs. Valentine suffered, and continues to suffer, extreme humiliation, shame, mental anguish, and emotional distress."

The wearing of religious attire in courtrooms and other public places has been a controversial subject. In May, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a Muslim woman's religious rights were not violated by police officers when she was forced to remove her headscarf while being detained in a holding cell. In April, a judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan dismissed a lawsuit against a Michigan judge who ordered a Muslim woman to remove her headscarf in court. The suit was filed by CAIR on behalf of Raneen Albaghdady against Judge William Callahan of the Wayne County Circuit Court. Last year, a Spanish lawyer filed a complaint with the General Council of the Judiciary [official website, in Spanish] alleging abuse of power and discrimination after a National Court judge asked her to leave the courtroom for declining to remove her hijab.

Originally Posted by segovius

But....but......those Muzzlims hate Christians.....they want to chop their heads off....

Wait...breaking news........ reports are coming in that Muzzlims hate Christmas and are plotting to blow it up....

Bastards!!

1. Things that are surprising or not widely known about the faith
2. Things that are happening that help foster unity and progression
3. General positive stuff!!

Originally Posted by segovius

Apologies. I was having a sort of brain-storm when I wrote it....no excuse.

I do tend to the hyperbolic sometimes...but yes, is very good news. Although somewhat frustrating that it is not being reported anywhere in the MSM.