veiled4allah

what is al-Qaeda all about?

Steve Gilliard has a provocative blog entry called Al-Qaeda and you. Some highlights:

Osama Bin Laden is not a fascist. He is not seeking to dominate the world. Attaching islam to it makes no sense. WHy? Because that isn't what they're about. Osama and friends are Islamic revivalists. Which means that they want to return to the 13th Century and the days of the Caliphate. This is not a new movement, but a repeated challenge to state power for at least 200 years, but it is utopian in nature. It has a history predating fascism and little in common with it. It is just a cheap way for chickenhawks to feel they are engaged in some new struggle... ...The fact that Bush and the GOP has shamelessly used Al Qaeda to get reelected has obscured the real threat from Al Qaeda. First, AQ is not some vast network of millions of angry Arabs. Osama is the religious Che. People use his image as a way to stick it to the man. His image basically says fuck the state. While there are hard core supporters of Osama, the reality is that AQ is the new Bader-Meinhoff gang or the Japanese Red Army, disaffected graduate students who are pissed that they do not rule the world. The 19 men who attacked the twin towers were middle class Saudis and Egyptians, people who could have had good lives in their countries or the west, but they were so pissed, that they decided to use violence to create their utopia. Why? Becuase it was a lot more fun to play terrorist than work for a living. There are thousands in their ranks, but the few people who are dangerous are able to hide in the masses of the disaffected. And since we have mangled our relations with the Arab world so seriously, AQ membership is a status symbol, like being a Black Panther... ...Osama Bin Laden has one goal and it isn't the destruction of the United States. It is to replace the Saud family with the Bin Laden family in running Saudi Arabia. No matter how much he cloaks his intentions in religion, his real goal is power. Osama is like so many rich dillitants who tire of a life of rent girls and casinos, and gets attached to a cauise. The life he should have lead would have made him a rich sybarite, with European mistresses and fat bank accounts. But with that life, he would have to obey the Sauds, and coming from the second family of Saudi Arabia, he wondered why it wasn't the first. His plan to overthrow the Sauds comes through the US. If he can weaken the US, then the Sauds have no place to turn. And given the complete corruption of that family, AQ gains in Saudi Arabia have been profound. And of course, Bush has inflated then ignored Osama as it served his purposes. He wanted to overthrow Saddam for any number of reasons, none of which had anything even remotely related to the security of the United States, but when time for the switch came, he told the American people and the Congress that Saddam was the real mastermind behind 9/11. A story only wingnut crackpots believed, but a lie which served their purposes all too well. The only problem was that Iraq was the best thing that ever happened to Saddam Osama. Not only is it a live fire training ground for the motivated, it has trapped a large proportion of the US Army in Iraq. Every soldier patrolling Tikrit is one not patrolling the Hindu Kush. Osama couldn't be happier with this turn of events. Not only are US troops occuiped in a soul-killing, machine-destroying war, one which is shrinking the pool of potential recruits, he has 150,000 targets... ...The only way to protect the American people is to have Muslims realize that Revivalists will harm them more than help them. The racism of American policy shines through. We want freedom in Lebanon, but don't care if Egypt ever has free elections. We talk about elections in Iraq, but never say a word about the disnefranchisement of Saudi women. Arabs are not stupid, they are not blind. They see the hypocrisy and the lies and the abuse of the Palestinians and they treat our words as lies. American policy under Bush has hindered our war on terror not enhanced it. The one greatest thing we could do to enhance our standing within the Arab world would be to ensure justice and stability for the Palestinians. This is the signature issue in the Arab world. They don't care about the farce of the Iraqi parliment or Lebanon. They care about Palestine and as long as Israel tries to deal with the Palestinians as subjects and not equals, AQ will always have a cause to rally around.

Read the whole thing

do not let hatred drive you to injustice

Hesham Hassaballa writes about The Most Profound Statement In The Qur'an. According to him (and I agree), this is probably:

Believers, stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others toward you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear God. For God is well-acquainted with all that you do

He writes:

No matter what has been done to you, God says, you are not allowed to commit injustice. The ends do not justify the means. There can never be a "free for all" against those who hurt us... ...The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) embodied this Divine principle with his actions toward the Meccans after the conquest of the Holy City. He asked the Meccans, "What do you think I am going to do with you?" They replied, "You are a noble brother, son of a noble brother." They were terrified, of course. The Prophet - being the Prophet - told them, "Go about your way in peace." When he heard his companion tell the Meccans, "Today is a day of slaughter! Today, God will abase Quraysh," he became very angry and said, "Today is a day of mercy! Today, God will honor Quraysh!" Never let the hatred of a people toward you move you to commit injustice. Even before the conquest of Mecca, when the Muslims accidentally killed Amr ibn Al Hadrami during one of the Sacred Months, God did not condone injustice. After Amr was killed, Quraysh spread the rumor that the Prophet no longer held the Sacred Months as sacred. God sent down His reply: "They will ask thee about fighting in the sacred month. Say: 'Fighting in it is a big sin..." (2:217). God did not condone the slaying of Amr in the sacred month, despite the fact that the Muslims were unjustly expelled from Mecca, and the property of the Muslims left behind in Mecca was unjustly seized by the Meccans. Just because the Meccans declared all out war against the Muslims, that did not give them the right to kill them during the sacred months. Never let the hatred of a people toward you move you to commit injustice. This principle also needs to be understood by we Americans. Despite what they did to us on September 11, it does not give us the right to kill innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan in revenge. It does not give us the right to torture detainees in Iraq or Afghanistan. It does not give our government the right to trample on the civil liberties of its citizens in the name of "fighting terrorism." Whenever I read about allegations of U.S. soldiers beating or killing Iraqi detainees - or even raping Iraqi women - in the back of my mind, I worry that these actions are being committed in revenge for 9/11. It must never be so. Never let the hatred of a people toward you move you to commit injustice. This is not condoning the injustice committed against Muslims or the acts of terror inflicted upon Americans across the world. But, we can never let those ugly facts lead us to do wrong. As the Qur'an says, "Help ye one another in righteousness and piety, but help ye not one another in sin and rancour." If they kill our women and children, it does not give us the right to kill their women and children. This applies whether the "they" are Muslim terrorists or American soldiers. An "eye for an eye," is not appropriate here. We must always remember the words of 5:8: "never let the hatred of a people toward you move you to commit injustice." It is perhaps the most profound statement in all of the Qur'an.

This is a point that I've made before myself:

It makes me depressed and angry when I see Muslims who commit wrongs to further their causes. They should remember that any victory they might gain in the world that was not by means that God has allowed will be made void by God on Judgment Day, and that is no victory at all but the ultimate loss. The only way to gain true victory is to obey the limits that God has set. Even if a people have been wronged, they need to seek restitution in the right way and not commit further wrongs themselves.

I wish that more Muslims and also non-Muslims (see here) would remember this.

a model of activism for Muslim women

IslamOnline has an excellent article about the life of Aisha (also spelled 'A'ishah), one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad (sAas). The article is called "'A'ishah: A Paragon of Islamic Activism" and describes her active involvement in political and community affairs and her fame and prowess as a scholar, as well as her outspokenness and ever-questioning intellect. Not what many people think of as a "typical" Muslim woman, but certainly a role model worth emulating :)

As a student, she rose from an intelligent youth, with a critical and probing mind to a highly effective and successful teacher, scholar and jurist, who held firm and bold views in all of the vital areas of Islamic knowledge such as tafsir, hadith, fiqh, Islamic history, nuances of Arabic language, etc. One of her hallmarks was being courageous and forthright in expressing these views. 'A'ishah's assertiveness, confidence and outspokenness for standing up for what she believed to be true and right explodes the stereotype prevailing even among Muslims today of the "rightful" role for Muslim women - that of being a silent witness prevented by her femininity from participating in the real live of the community. Her unparalleled insight into the daily life of the messenger of Allah as well as the independence of her thought and character brought her life into sharp focus from other personalities of the time... ...'A'ishah was endowed with an extraordinary intelligence that very few had been endowed with. She was not merely a passive student in understanding and learning religion even from the best and noblest of teachers, the Prophet, peace be upon him. Her trademark was her critical, ever-inquisitive and probing mind. There are numerous examples of her further questioning the Prophet's answers. Once when he found out she had followed him in disguise on his trip to the graveyard to pray for the departed companions in the middle of night, the Prophet asked her, "Why did you do this? Did your Devil visit you?" 'A'ishah asked back, " Does every person have a devil following him or her around?" When he replied to the affirmative, she asked, "Are you included in this?" He answered, "Yes. I am included in this; but my Lord has helped me against him. Thanks to this he has become a Muslim (i..e he has surrendered and thus does not command anything but good!)" Another example of her questioning the Prophet minutely was when the Prophet said that following resurrection people will rise up from their graves as Allah had created them and 'A'ishah asked, "Then they will all be naked and they will see one another?" He replied, "The issues confronting them will be far too grave for them to be looking at each other."... ...Another example of the same critical understanding is her response to the so called report that "Three things that invalidate one's prayer are a dog, a donkey and a woman." When 'A'ishah heard this narration, she asked, "how dare you compare us women with dogs and donkeys when I myself did lie down to sleep and the Prophet having woken up from sleep would pray in front of me, and when it was time for him to prostrate he would push my legs gently to the side!" ... ...Thanks to her assertiveness, 'A'ishah always stood up to what she thought was unjust, unethical and false. When she heard that some individuals were finding faults with Abu Bakr after his death, she gathered them all and spoke to them about his achievements as everyone would readily recognize and then asked them plainly which one of his actions they were critical of. None of his detractors had anything to say. She also stood up to Caliphs such as Mu'awiyah and vocally criticized their policies which she though was unjust and therefore un-Islamic. Another example of her forthrightness is her answer to those who forbade women from visiting cemeteries. On her visit to Makkah, when she stopped by the grave of her brother, someone objected to her and asked how come she was visiting his grave when the Prophet had forbidden women to do so, she replied, "The Prophet had forbidden both men and women from visiting graves in the early years of Islam, and then he lifted that prohibition later." In other words, in her sound understanding the lifting of the ban was applicable to both men and women, for there is no evidence to suggest that it was only applicable to men. It was because of her strength of character that she made the Caliph implement the will of Safiyyah, the mother of the faithful, who had stipulated one third of her estate to her Jewish brother. When the Caliph thought it was against the dictum of the Prophet, peace be upon him, 'A'ishah rejected that and obliged him to fulfil the wishes of Safiyyah... ...'A'ishah serves as the best role model for women's activism in Islam for she never was held back from full participation in any aspect of Islamic life even after the death of the Prophet, peace be upon him. During his life she accompanied the Prophet even to the battle fields to perform essential duties... ...'A'ishah's life is especially remarkable when examined with the lenses of contemporary times. Surrounded by current examples of Muslim women around the world not permitted to fully actualize their God-given potentials, 'A'ishah's life in the 6th and 7th century is a beacon to the inherent justice in Islam. She was reared with authentic Islam from her earliest memories and yet she grew up to be a woman who was confident, assertive and an active participant and leader of her society.

another lesson of Oklahoma City

From the Kansas City Star:

There is no chair for Salam Mohammad. One hundred sixty-eight empty bronze chairs line the grassy field where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building used to stand, each one a solemn memorial to an individual killed in the April 19, 1995, bombing. Salam did not perish on the day of the bombing. Nor did he die anywhere near the Murrah building. His name will not be mentioned on Tuesday morning, when Vice President Dick Cheney and former President Bill Clinton are scheduled to be among the dignitaries who are to speak at a 10th anniversary commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing. But to many here in Oklahoma City's small Muslim community, the 7-month fetus was a casualty of the attack just the same, one of countless collateral victims whose hidden stories have never been told. Salam's pregnant mother, Sahar al-Moswi, was at home in her Oklahoma City apartment on the morning after the bombing caring for her two young children, listening to the news and wondering, like everyone else in America, who could have perpetrated such an awful crime. The radio and television broadcasts were filled with expert opinions confidently asserting that the bombing bore all the hallmarks of a Middle Eastern terrorist attack. Al-Moswi felt a chill. She and her husband, Haidar al-Saidi, both Shiite Muslims, had fled the persecution and torture of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the early 1990s and, thanks to family ties, had landed in the middle American tranquility of Oklahoma City. Like many refugees and immigrants, they had tried to keep a low profile in their new neighborhood, where they stood out as the only Muslims. Suddenly the living room window shattered, sending shards of glass flying across the room. A rock landed on the carpet. "I was scared somebody shooting," recalled al-Moswi, now 35. "I did not see the rock. I heard the noise. The glass is all over the place... "I take the kids, and I go to the bathroom," she continued. "It's hard to move - big stomach and two kids. I go to the bathroom. I thought I might be safe there. I (feared) people that might come" and break into the apartment. Moments later, al-Moswi doubled over in pain and started bleeding. But, terrified that attackers might be waiting outside the bathroom, she waited nearly an hour before sending one of her children to get a portable phone from another room so she could call for help. The next day in the hospital - about the time authorities were discovering that they already had the suspected bomber, Timothy McVeigh, in custody on a traffic charge - al-Moswi suffered a miscarriage. "The doctor, he says because she heard the noise, she jumped, she lost the control of the baby," al-Saidi said. No one was ever arrested in the attack, but the family is certain they were singled out because of the initial surge of suspicion directed at Muslims. They even think they know who threw the rock - a neighbor who had always treated them warily - but they have no proof. Devastated, frightened and unable to bear staying in Oklahoma City, the couple quickly fled with their children, selling their car and possessions at a loss to raise enough money to move to Maryland, near al-Saidi's brother. "No government, no police, no anybody come and help us," al-Saidi said. "Nobody comes and says, `Sorry (for) what happened.'"

The context:

In those first frightening days after the bombing, it was assumed by many that "Middle Eastern terrorists" had carried out the attack. That faulty assumption sparked a wave of anti-Muslim hysteria that resulted in almost 250 incidents of harassment, discrimination and actual violence against American Muslims or those perceived to be Middle Eastern. Incidents ranged from a suspected arson attack on a mosque, to drive-by shootings at Islamic centers and assaults on Muslim students. Many Islamic institutions around America also reported phoned bomb threats, and in one case, a fake bomb was thrown at a Muslim day care facility. Individual Muslims reported a great increase in harassment by co-workers and in public. This harassment led to an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in the Muslim community. The collective realization that the attack was carried out by terrorists from the Midwest, not the Mideast, created a teaching moment in which the entire nation reassessed what it means to be a terrorist, and redefined terrorism to include people who look like "regular" Americans. My organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), documented the anti-Muslim backlash following the Oklahoma City bombing in a report called "A Rush to Judgment." That report was the first of CAIR's now-annual reports on the status of American Muslim civil rights. (CAIR's latest report is due out in May.) Unfortunately, the trend lines in each annual report have been up, not down, with a particularly sharp spike following the 9/11 terror attacks.

And a prayer for the future:

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City attack, let us all remember that the use of violence and terrorism is not the sole preserve of any race, religion or ethnic group. Let us also redouble our efforts to understand one another and promote peaceful resolutions to all conflicts, whether domestic or foreign. The Quran, Islam's revealed text, states: "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other (not that you may despise each other). Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him." (49:13) Indeed, terror knows no faith.

Muslims and Jews - one nation under God

Hesham Hassaballa says:

This is truly amazing. The Prophet (pbuh) made the Jews of Medina one "ummah," or community with the believers. This even though the Jews immediately, almost as soon as he arrived in the city, rejected him as Messenger of God (pbuh). The Prophet (pbuh) did not force them to become Muslim; he did not expel the Jews from Medina after they rejected him; he did not relegate them to a "second-class citizen" status. No. They were equal members of the city, one "community with the believers," with the freedom to practice their religion. At one time in history, Muslims and Jews were one nation under God. I lament the tension between Muslims and Jews both in America and around the world. It makes so much sense for the two faith communities to be very close to each other: we both worship the same God, the God of Abraham; we both honor and revere both Abraham and Moses; Moses and Abraham are both highly honored in the Qur'an, and they are mentioned by name in the Qur'an more than the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself; there are many stories of the Hebrew Prophets in the Qur'an; in fact, the story of Joseph as mentioned in the Bible and the Qur'an are strikingly similar. Like I said before, Muslims and Jews have so much more in common than in distinction, and it pains me to see so much tension between the two faith communities. For far too long, the Holy Land has been poisoned by the blood of the senseless loss of innocent lives. For far too long, Palestinians and Israelis have lost their lives in a vicious and senseless circle of violence. For far too long, the Holy Land has cried out from the pain and death she has to endure day after day after day. It should not be so. Lord God, the Most Holy Lord God on High! Please bring peace to the Holy Land. Please let the choking smoke of guns and bombs lift off the place we Muslims, Christians, and Jews hold sacred. Lord God, this is the Land You have blessed, please let it shine in the light of Your Glory, rather than be smothered in the blood of the innocent. My Most Precious Lord, please bring peace to the Holy Land, so that the constant glorification of Your Most Holy Name is no longer drowned out by the deafening sound of guns, missiles, and bombs exploding. In Your Most Holy Name, O Lord, I do ask these things. Amen.

Amen.

outrageous

Angry Desi points to this very strange and I think very, very troubling story:

For years, the father said, he watched as his daughter, now 16, became more and more drawn to the family's Muslim religion. At 14, she began wearing a full-length veil and teaching religion classes at mosques around the city. A year ago, she withdrew from her Manhattan high school because, a school official said, she felt uncomfortable with typical teenage banter. She told her family she wanted to go to an Islamic all-girls school, and when they could not afford to send her, she chose to study at home. The father, a Bangladeshi watch salesman who describes himself as far more devoted to American education than to prayer after 13 years as an immigrant illegally in the United States, said he pushed for his daughter to return to public school. Then last fall, the daughter he also describes as loving Bollywood soap operas and shopping with girlfriends startled him and her mother by seeking their approval to marry a young American Muslim man they had never met and whom she barely knew. The father refused the marriage overtures, which were made by the young man's father in a call from Michigan. A few months later, when the teenager stayed out overnight for the first time, the father, fearing an elopement, went to the police for help. It is a decision he regrets deeply. His daughter and another 16-year-old girl are now described by the government as would-be suicide bombers and are being held in a detention center for illegal immigrants in Pennsylvania. He is sure that his visit to the police set off the F.B.I. investigation that led to a chilling assertion, in a government document, that the girls are "an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers." Family and friends call that absurd. The document, provided to The New York Times by a federal agent on Wednesday, did not describe the nature of the evidence. Yesterday, after repeated inquiries, officials from several agencies involved in the investigation, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department, would not comment on the case.

Where did this "suicide bomber" claim come from? Since none of the people involved have been allowed to see the evidence against them (um? Is this American?), no one can be sure. However, this editorial suggests where:

The police and federal immigration officials searched her belongings and are reported to have found an essay on suicide. According to the family, the essay says suicide is against Islamic law. But detectives went on to question the girl about her political beliefs before arresting her.

AngryDesi comments:

So maybe you're feeling a little depressed and write something in your journal about how you're feeling a little suicidal. Suicidal Muslims apparently cannot be anything other than suicidal Muslim bombers.

And the story doesn't even stop there because a second girl is caught up in this too. From the news report:

Little is known about the second 16-year-old. The mother of the Bangladeshi girl, conveying her daughter's account, said the two girls met for the first time at 26 Federal Plaza after her daughter's arrest. But when the other girl, a Guinean who was facing deportation with her family, noticed her daughter's veil, she gave her a traditional Muslim greeting, and federal agents seemed to think they were friends. The second girl ended up in the Pennsylvania detention center, too.

AngryDesi again:

I would have thought that the FBI would by now have figured out that when Muslims greet one another, even with ones whom are total strangers, they often say "As sala'amu alaikum" (peace be upon you) and the generally expected reply is "walaikum as sala'am" (and unto you also, peace). This is no different, from a familiarity perspective, than saying 'hello' to someone you see on the street.

What the hell is this? Just pick up some random Muslim who happened to be there and lock her away too? The girls, their families, and their lawyers need to be able to see the evidence against them. They need to be given a fair trial where they are allowed to exercise their rights according to the Constitution. Not this:

There are no firm time limits on immigration detention, so the burden is on the girls to prove that they are not potential suicide bombers, rather than on the government to prove they are. Indeed, the evidence is withheld from the girls and anyone who represents them under a "protective order" that F.B.I. investigators obtained from the immigration court, according to an April 1 motion to continue the secrecy, signed by Jeffrey T. Bubier, assistant chief counsel for the Department of Homeland Security in Philadelphia. "The F.B.I. has an important and substantial interest in safeguarding the information," Mr. Bubier's motion stated, "to protect national security law and enforcement interests." To release it, he said, "places investigative strategies and methods at substantial risk." The girls have no right to a court-appointed lawyer, and according to the government document that described the Guinean girl, her family had not retained one.

As the editorial concludes (rather mildly):

If the evidence isn't there, the arrests are very disturbing. The government will have taken 16-year-olds from their families, branded them as would-be terrorists and put them into a frightening legal limbo for no good reason.

Is that what America stands for these days? Update: Jeanne d'Arc has more and points to bookofdays and a blog set up about the case, Detain This. Update 2: The second girl has been released. The first has not been charged with anything but immigration violations and her family have agreed to leave the country. So now what exactly was the threat here? Update 3: The New York Times has an update on this case. And more from bookofdays and Pacific Views.

while you weren't looking

Juan Cole looks at what Muslims are saying about what is happening in Jerusalem. What's that, you say?

The far-right Israeli extremists who demonstrated in Jerusalem were not just protesting the plan to remove Israeli colonists from Gaza, as was reported in the Western press. Rather, they were threatening to invade the al-Aqsa Mosque. The Muslim world understood this threat as an intention to destroy the third-holiest shrine in the Islamic world... ...So an issue that stirred Muslim fundamentalists to fury and might be a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda was surely intensively covered by the Western press, right? Wrong... ...Now, maybe Revava never threatened to destroy the mosque. I don't know. They don't appear to be humane, level-headed people, so maybe they did make the threat. But it is a gross dereliction of duty for the US press to neglect to even report that this threat is what had alarmed the Muslims around the world. How can we possibly fight al-Qaeda and understand the Muslim world if our press does not even report what Muslims think is at issue in incidents like this? And note that no Western press article appears even to have rounded up the reaction in the Muslim world. They are invisible to our public, even when they are outraged.

Read his full post to learn more.

clarifying Muslim abritration in Canada

Via email, Ikram Saeed let me know about Family Arbitration Using Sharia Law: Examining Ontario's Arbitration Act and its Impact on Women (PDF). This article does a lot to clear up some of the misunderstandings and misrepresentations that surround this issue. Ontario has an Arbitration Act that allows the parties in a civil dispute to use arbitration as a form of alternative dispute resolution rather than taking their case to court. The parties can select anybody they want as an arbitrator and the abitrator can use any method to arrive at a decision on the settlement, as long as the decision is not contrary to law or public policy. The parties may pick an arbitrator who is known to both of them and trust the arbitrator to use their best judgment. Or they can select as an arbitrator someone who promises to make their decision according to certain principles. It is this that makes it possible for the parties to choose as an arbitrator someone who promises to make their decision according to Islamic principles. It is also possible to choose an arbitrator who promises to make their decision according to the principles of Jewish law, and in fact the Jewish Beis Din or religious tribunal has been doing this since 1982. So the problem can hardly be Muslims wanting to resolve their disputes according to religious principles, when Jews have been doing so for more than 20 years (I should also point out that arbitration is a voluntary process and it is completely up to the parties to choose what form the arbitration will take; this is not an attempt to force Canadian courts to use Shari'a law or for non-Muslims to be subject to it, or any such ridiculous claim as I've seen made in some places). Or rather, that would only be a problem if some religions are more equal than others. A more genuine concern is whether some parties, particularly women, may be victimized by Muslim arbitration. Again, a lot of the commentary on this is distorted, assuming that there is one single interpretation of Islam or that all interpretations of Islam are hostile to women. As the article points out, neither of these facts is true. In fact, the real problem is that the Arbitration Act itself does not provide enough safeguards against injustice. It would be equally easy for an unjust decision to be made by a secular arbitrator, or during arbitration according to Jewish or other religious law. The article provides some examples of unjust non-Muslim cases. The solution is not to say that Muslims shouldn't be able to use religious-based arbitration if they want to (or, if religious-based arbitration should be forbidden, it should be forbidden for all religions), but rather to put safeguards in place so that no arbitration, including a Muslim one, can lead to an unjust decision.

the words we use

Motazz Soliman at alt.muslim reflects on How the Use of Adjectives Can be Burdensome and Tedious. What does he mean by that?

When we pick up the newspaper, read a book, watch television, or engage in conversation, we come across the terms "Muslim" and "Islamic" for descriptions of things related to the religion or to its adherents. Often, the two adjectives are used interchangeably as synonyms. They may truly be part-and-parcel of a family of vocabulary in the everyday usage of language. But the question arises as to whether they are one and the same. And here comes the dilemma. If we fuse the two together, as they often are, we risk adding inappropriate or meaningless terminology and connotations that do not belong to the system of codes, values, ethics, beliefs, rituals, bonds, and understandings Muslims know as "Islam." For instance, the mainstream discourse often refers to a particular kind of illegitimate violence committed by some Muslims against civilians as 'Islamic terrorism.' Muslims would take offense at this characterization because the implication here, deliberately or mistakenly, is that fault lies within Islam itself. Using the phrase "Islamic world" to describe the area of the world where Muslims form geographic majorities presents similar problems. First, it risks associating underdevelopment, conflict/warfare/civil strife, inequality and discrimination, and other negativities or "backwardness" with teachings from Islam or with steadfastness to them. Secondly, it risks excluding, or at the very least marginalizing, the contributions, status, and plights of the diaspora of Muslims residing elsewhere (like in the West).

He discusses several related issues as well. The language that we use does often shape how we think about things, so it's good to step back and examine it.

quick link

Serbia's Sandzak: Still Forgotten (PDF), a report by the International Crisis Group about Sandzak, a predominately Muslim region in Serbia. The report has a lot of useful information about the region's history and current situation.