Archive for category Islam
Muslim scholar calls for the end to Middle East Christian exodus
Mohammad Sammak, a Sunni Muslim who is secretary general of Lebanon’s Christian-Muslim Committee for Dialogue, told a synod of bishops the declining number of Christians in the region was a concern for all Muslims.
“The emigration of Christians is an impoverishment of the Arabic identity, of its culture and authenticity,” said Sammak, who is an adviser to Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri. He added that maintaining the Christian presence in the Middle East was a “common Islamic duty.”
Christian exodus hurts Middle East: Muslim scholar – Yahoo! News.
Flip Benham doesn’t speak for me or Jesus
This is a story from before the Muslim Community Center…
About a dozen right-wing Christians, carrying placards and yelling “Islam is a lie,” angrily confronted worshippers outside a Fairfield Avenue mosque Friday.
“Jesus hates Muslims,” they screamed at worshippers arriving at the Masjid An-Noor mosque to prepare for the holy month of Ramadan. One protester shoved a placard at a group of young children leaving the mosque. “Murderers,” he shouted.
Police arrived on the scene to separate the groups, but said no arrests were made.
Flip Benham, of Dallas, Texas, organizer of the protest, was yelling at the worshipers with a bullhorn.
…but it shows what is happening out there almost daily…
Do you really like that Jesus hates Muslims? Or do we stand with the Scriptures and read as Paul wrote,
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Rom 5:8 NLT)
Now, I’m not sure about others, but as a sinner, I was worse than a Muslim… because I pretended to know Christ, pretended to speak for Him, and used His name as weapon, all the while being nothing more than a sinner. This is not the model of Christianity that I seek to know, or seek to instill in myself, my children, and others.
A group of western New York teenagers have been accused of harassing members of a mosque in Carlton, New York, during their evening Ramadan prayers, according to authorities. The teens allegedly yelled obscenities and insults at members of the mosque on Monday, and sideswiped a worshiper with a vehicle and fired a shotgun outside the mosque last Friday. The Times says it is “unclear” whether there is any connection between these incidents and that other little mosque story in the news these days. The county’s D.A. says these provocations are more intense than any they’ve seen before: “We’ve had minor incidents, but nothing of this magnitude in the past.” The teens have been charged with disrupting a religious service, a misdemeanor.
Teenagers Charged in Harassment at Mosque [NYT]
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- Mary Ann West: Standing In Solidarity Against Islamophobia (huffingtonpost.com)
Let’s Kill the Muslims
Because, you know, WWJD and all –
A man has been arrested on charges he repeatedly stabbed a New York City cab driver after asking the driver if he was Muslim and the driver said yes. Police arrested Michael Enright Tuesday night on charges including attempted murder as a hate crime. He was expected to appear in court in Manhattan on Wednesday. Police say the 21-year-old suspect from suburban Brewster, N.Y., was drunk when he hailed the cab on Manhattan’s East Side. Police say he attacked the driver with a folding knife before jumping out a rear window. An officer found Enright slumped on the sidewalk and arrested him. The driver was treated for multiple lacerations.
Are we as Christians, as Americans, ready to stand up against this garbage? Or do we sit by and allow this to go on and on…?
Do we allow the hate in this country to become personalized? To become loud and out in the open? Or do we stop it? We have to do more than pray about, don’t you think?
The Founding Fathers and Islam
Posted by Joel in Islam, Religion and Politics on August 14, 2010
Thought this might be interesting in today’s discussion –
In his seminal Letter on Toleration (1689), John Locke insisted that Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England. Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.”
In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature “rejected by a great majority” an effort to limit the bill’s scope “in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan.” George Washington suggested a way for Muslims to “obtain proper relief” from a proposed Virginia bill, laying taxes to support Christian worship. On another occasion, the first president declared that he would welcome “Mohometans” to Mount Vernon if they were “good workmen” (see page 96). Officials in Massachusetts were equally insistent that their influential Constitution of 1780 afforded “the most ample liberty of conscience … to Deists, Mahometans, Jews and Christians,” a point that Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons resoundingly affirmed in 1810.
The Founding Fathers and Islam (May 2002) – Library of Congress Information Bulletin.
The Righteous Muslims in the Holocaust
Muslims… booo evil…hisss Muslims, bad.
But, leaving the ungodly Rhetoric behind, there are tales of Muslims risking their lives for Jews during Hitler’s reign of terror,
In April 1941, members of the Kavilio family of Sarajevo fled their house as Nazis rampaged through the city destroying Jewish homes. As they ran toward the mountainside, a Muslim friend of the family, Mustafa Hardaga, spotted them and offered shelter.
Shortly after, when Josef Kavilio thought the family could be moved to safety, the Kavilios relocated to Mostar, an area under Italian control, but Josef stayed behind. He was arrested by the Nazis and held captive in chains in the freezing snow.
Hardaga’s wife, Zejneba, found Kavilio and smuggled him food until she could help him escape to safety, where he stayed with the Hardaga family again. Kavilio later rejoined his family, but their relative security did not last. When the area fell under German control, the Kavilios again sought refuge with the Hardagas.
Decades later the Kavilios, by now living in Israel, petitioned the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem to recognize the Hardagas’ bravery and name them Righteous Gentiles.
Later, when Yugoslavia broke up and the region descended into war in the 1990s, the Hardaga family was rescued from Sarajevo and brought to Israel in 1994.
Muslim Heroism in the Holocaust.
We can continue to see all Muslims through the lens of Osama B to the L, but in reality, that is not the case.
Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani
Posted by Joel in Gender Issues, Islam on July 6, 2010
A veteran Iranian human rights activist has warned that Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, a mother of two, could be stoned to death at any moment under the terms of a death sentence handed down by Iranian authorities.
Only an international campaign designed to pressure the regime in Tehran can save her life, according to Mina Ahadi, head of the International Committee Against Stoning and the Death Penalty.
“Legally it’s all over,” Ahadi said Sunday. “It’s a done deal. Sakineh can be stoned at any minute.”
“That is why we have decided to start a very broad, international public movement. Only that can help.”
Ashtiani, 42, will be buried up to her chest, according to an Amnesty International report citing the Iranian penal code. The stones that will be hurled at her will be large enough to cause pain but not so large as to kill her immediately.
Read the rest here:
Human rights activist tries to stop death by stoning for Iranian woman – CNN.com.
John Adams was a Muslim
Posted by Joel in Islam, Religion and Politics on June 23, 2010
No, seriously because if we use the same standards which we apply to the current president and reapply those to other presidents, then John Adams was a Muslim.
“It has pleased the Providence of the first Cause, the Universal Cause, that Abraham should give religion not only to Hebrews but to Christians and Mahomitans, the greatest part of the modern civilized world.”
– John Adams to M.M. Noah, July 31, 1818.
See what I mean here:
For a little of the view of Muslims among the Founding Fathers and early Americans, see here.
You may also want to check out this post which deals more expressly with the World Nut Daily’s article.
