Tag: Islam

Walid J.Abdullah: Iraq Invasion Precipitated ISIS’ Rise, Widespread Condemnation In Order

The Chilcot Inquiry has concluded that Blair’s invasion of Iraq was unjustified, and completely unnecessary. Basically, the report stated the obvious. But it’s still great to have it in black-and-white.

The Iraq War is a direct, enabling factor for the rise of ISIS, and we are bearing the brunt of that perverted group’s rise.

Now, i hope those who have been quick to comment on and condemn terrorism will react with similar alacrity in finally condemning Blair and Bush in engineering the bogus war in Iraq, which have had irreversible consequences for Iraqis and the rest of us.

Source: Walid J. Abdullah

July 8, 2016
Saudi Arabia Identifies Bombers In Two Attacks This Week

Saudi Arabia identified on Thursday suspects in two of the three attacks that struck the kingdom on the same day this week, including one outside the sprawling mosque where the Prophet Muhammad is buried in the western city of Medina that killed four Saudi security troops.

In a statement released by the Interior Ministry late Thursday, authorities said the Medina bomber in Monday’s apparently coordinated attacks was 26-year-old Saudi national Na’ir al-Nujiaidi al-Balawi.

Three suicide bombers behind a botched attack, also Monday, outside a Shiite mosque in the eastern region of Qatif in which no civilians or police were wounded, were identified as Abdulrahman Saleh Mohammed, Ibrahim Saleh Mohammed and Abdelkarim al-Hesni, all in their early 20s.

It was not immediately clear what nationality or nationalities the three carried.

The ministry said investigations following the attacks led to the arrests of 19 suspects, seven Saudi and 12 Pakistani nationals. No other details were immediately available.

On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia identified the suicide bomber who struck outside the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah as a Pakistani resident of the kingdom who had arrived 12 years ago to work as a driver. It named him as 34-year-old Abdullah Qalzar Khan. It said he lived in the port city with “his wife and her parents.” The statement did not elaborate.

In that attack, the bomber detonated his explosives after two security guards approached him, killing himself and lightly wounding the guards, the ministry said. No consular staff were hurt.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but their nature and their apparently coordinated timing suggested the Islamic State group could be to blame.

Pakistan has condemned Monday’s attacks in the kingdom. There are around 9 million foreigners living in Saudi Arabia, which has a total population of 30 million. Among all foreigners living in the kingdom, Pakistanis represent one of the largest groups.

The Saudi ministry said the attacker in the Medina assault set off the bomb in a parking lot after security officers became suspicious about him. Several cars caught fire and thick plumes of black smoke were seen rising from the site of the explosion as thousands crowded the streets around the mosque.

Worshippers expressed shock that such a prominent holy site could be targeted.

The Prophet Muhammad’s mosque was packed on Monday evening, during the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended on Tuesday. Local media say the attacker was intending to strike the mosque when it was crowded with thousands gathered for the sunset prayer.

Saudi Arabia is part of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, and the militant group views its ruling monarchy as an enemy.

The kingdom has been the target of multiple attacks by the group that have killed dozens of people. In June, the Interior Ministry reported 26 terror attacks in the last two years.

Source: abcnews.go.com

July 8, 2016
Dedication To Causes Earns Halimah Yacob NUS Honorary Doctorate

She grew up poor, with her mother struggling to put food on the table after her father died when she was eight, and went on to build a storied career in the labour movement, politics, women’s issues and more.

But Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob, 61, said it would be harder for someone from a similarly poor background today to do the same. While most people started off “at a very low base” in the past, some families can now afford to give better access to opportunities and resources for their children, she said.

Singapore has to “keep an eye on things like making sure our inequality does not continue to widen” through important measures in education, healthcare and housing. “So our job is to make sure that all children are able to access these kinds of resources so they are not disadvantaged,” she said, adding that she was happy that the Government was now investing “upstream” in early childhood development.

The veteran politician was speaking during an interview with the media last week, ahead of her being conferred the Honorary Doctor of Laws by the National University of Singapore (NUS) in recognition of her distinguished career and service, particularly in the public sectors, where she has championed workers’ welfare, women’s issues, and family issues.

At the NUS Commencement main ceremony on Thursday (July 7), Mdm Halimah became the 26th person to be conferred the honour, which is NUS’ highest form of recognition for outstanding individuals who have had a significant impact on the community and NUS.

Other luminaries who have been similarly honoured include former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, and Mdm Halimah, who holds a Bachelor and Master of Laws from NUS, said she was “deeply honoured and also very humbled” by the conferment.

NUS president, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, said: “An NUS Law alumna, Mdm Halimah has made her mark through her commitment and dedication to the labour movement, and her strong advocacy of women’s rights and the Malay community.”

Mdm Halimah worked for three decades in the labour movement, and became the first Malay woman elected into Parliament in 2001, and later the first female Speaker of Parliament in 2013.

As a woman from a minority background, she has been lauded for breaking glass ceilings in Singapore, but Mdm Halimah said this was not something she deliberately set out to do; her focus was on doing her work well.

“Sometimes we worry too much about disadvantages, hurdles, whether you’re a woman or come from a certain family background. Frankly speaking, my life has not been easy … but I never believed that hurdles and obstacles are problems or disadvantages that should be viewed negatively … they help to spur and motivate me,” said Mdm Halimah, who added that adversities help “develop capabilities, resilience and abilities”.

Nonetheless, she acknowledged the “deep-seated prejudices against women” that still prevail in many places, during her speech at the ceremony yesterday. Noting that women politicians in other countries have been criticised on the basis of their gender, such as a woman who was deemed “emotional” because she was unmarried, Mdm Halimah said: “By all means disagree with her policies if you wish to, but don’t try to diminish her by trivialising her role because she is a woman.” The lesson she had learnt, she added, is “never to let anyone or anything define you as that means ceding your choices to others and limiting yourself”.

She also urged graduates to remember to give back to society.

“Remember that we are where we are today because we have the support of so many people along the way,” she said. “Let’s have the humility to accept that not everything that happened to us was because of how smart or how good we are, but because we had a lot of help.”

This year, 10,395 students graduate from NUS, among them 6,491 who will receive bachelor’s degrees. A total of 23 commencement ceremonies will be held at the NUS University Cultural Centre over eight days, from Thursday till July 14.

Source: www.todayonline.com

July 8, 2016
After Attacks On Muslims, Many Ask: Where’s The Global Outrage

In recent days, jihadists killed 41 people at Istanbul’s bustling, shiny airport; 22 at a cafe in Bangladesh; and at least 250 celebrating the final days of Ramadan in Baghdad. Then Islamic State (IS) attacked, again, with bombings in three cities in Saudi Arabia.

By Tuesday, Mr Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris? In a supposedly globalised world, do non-whites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human?

“All this crazy violence has a goal,” said Mr Kilo, who is Christian: To create a backlash against Muslims, divide societies and “make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don’t have any other option”.

This is not the first time that the West seems to have shrugged off massacres in predominantly Muslim countries. But the relative indifference after so many deaths caused by the very groups that have plagued the West is more than a matter of hurt feelings.

One of the primary goals of IS and other radical Islamist groups is to drive a wedge between Sunni Muslims and the wider world, to fuel alienation as a recruiting tool. And when that world appears to show less empathy for the victims of attacks in Muslim nations, who have borne the brunt of IS’ massacres and predatory rule, it seems to prove their point.

“Why isn’t #PrayForIraq trending?” Mr Razan Hasan of Baghdad posted on Twitter. “Oh yeah no one cares about us.”

Ms Hira Saeed of Ottawa asked on Twitter why Facebook had not activated its Safety Check feature after recent attacks as it did for Brussels, Paris and Orlando, and why social media had not been similarly filled with the flags of Turkey, Bangladesh and Iraq. “The hypocrisy in the Western world is strong,” she wrote.

The global mood increasingly feels like one of atavism, of retreat into narrower identities of nation, politics or sect, with Britain voting to leave the European Union and many Americans supporting the nativist presidential campaign of Mr Donald Trump.

The violence feeds a growing impulse among many in the West to fear Muslims and Arabs, which has already prompted a political crisis over immigration that, in turn, has buttressed extremists’ goals. Europe is convulsing over a movement to reject refugees from Syria and Iraq, who are themselves fleeing violence by jihadists and their own governments.

It is in Syria and Iraq that IS has established its so-called caliphate, ruling overwhelmingly Muslim populations with the threat of gruesome violence. The group has killed Muslims in those countries by the thousands, by far the largest share of its victims.

When IS militants mowed down cafe-goers in Paris in November, people across the world adorned public landmarks and their private Facebook pages with the French flag — not just in Europe and the United States, but also, with an empathy born of experience, in Syria and Iraq.

Over the past week, Facebook activated its Safety Check feature, which allows people near a disaster to mark themselves safe, only after the attack on the Istanbul airport.

The flags of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Bangladesh have not been widely projected on landmarks or adopted as profile pictures. (Photographs on social media showed that in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of Europe’s two majority-Muslim countries, the Turkish flag was beamed onto a bridge in Mostar, the scene of sectarian killings in the 1990s.) Some wonder if part of the reason is that three of those flags bear Islamic symbols or slogans.

“More deaths in Iraq in the last week than Paris and Orlando combined but nobody is changing their profile pics, building colours, etc,” Mr Kareem Rahaman wrote on Twitter.

There are some understandable reasons for the differing reactions. People typically identify more closely with places and cultures that are familiar to them. With Iraq, there is also a degree of fatigue, and a feeling that a bombing there is less surprising than one in Europe.

Deadly attacks have been a constant in Iraq after years of American occupation, followed by a sectarian war in which Sunni and Shia militias slaughtered civilians of the opposite sect. Still, while terrorist attacks in Europe may feel more surprising to the West — though they have become all too common there, too — that does not explain the relative indifference to attacks in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh.

“That’s what happens in Iraq,” Mr Sajad Jiyad, a researcher in Iraq who rushed to the scene of the Baghdad bombing and found that one of his friends had died there, wrote on his own blog. “Deaths become just statistics, and the frequency of attacks means the shock doesn’t register as it would elsewhere, or that you have enough time to feel sad or grieve.”

In the Muslim world, the partly sectarian nature of some conflicts shades people’s reactions, producing a kind of internal sympathy gap. People from one sect or political group often discount or excuse casualties from another.

In Iraq, the IS took root within an insurgency against the country’s Shia-led government, and Shia militias fighting it have been accused of brutality as well. In Syria, it is just one menace; many more Syrians have been killed by the government’s attacks on areas held by Sunni insurgents, including rebel groups opposed to IS.

Mr Jiyad added that IS was “hoping to incite a reaction and a spiral into endless violence”, and that Iraqis played into that when they mourned more for their own sect than for others.

In the West, though, there is a tendency in certain quarters, legitimised by some politicians, to conflate extremist Islamist militants with the Muslim societies that are often their primary victims, or to dismiss Muslim countries as inherently violent.

“Either Iraqi blood is too cheap or murder is normalised,” Mr Sayed Saleh Qazwini, an Islamic educator in Michigan, wrote on Twitter.

Mr Kilo, who spent years in the prisons of the Syrian government and opposes both it and the IS, said his life in Paris had changed since November. Speaking Arabic is now suspect. He sees fear in French people’s eyes when they see Syrians.

“I’m afraid, too,” he said. “Someone could blow himself up anytime.”

He has written an article that will be published in the newspaper Al Araby Al Jadeed, titled The Curse Of Syria.

The failure of empathy is broader than IS, he said; it extends to the international community’s unwillingness or inability to stop the slaughter of the Syrian civil war, which began with protests for political change.

“If we lose all humanity,” said Mr Kilo, “if you allow the slaughter of a nation for 5½ years, after all the leaders of the international community declared the right of these people to revolt against their government, then expect Islamic State — and many other Islamic States in other forms and shapes.”

Source: TODAY Online

July 7, 2016
Hungry And Parched, Muslim Converts Find Their First Ramadan The Hardest

Half an hour to go before the ceremony, Hilda Bondoc and Norma Cachola sat quietly among a group of happily chatting women. There was discernible tension in the air, evidenced by Ms Cachola’s tightly folded arms and Ms Bondoc’s repeated dabbing of sweat off her face.

When I approached to greet the two ladies in their 30s, they managed only terse smiles.

The two Filipinas had turned up at about 10am to meet their friends, dressed meticulously in baju kurung and tudung. Every Sunday, they would gather here at Darul Arqam, near the Malay cultural hub of Geylang Serai. The nondescript, three-storey white building is home to the Muslim Converts’ Association (MCAS), which provides free Islamic classes in various languages, including Tagalog. Ms Bondoc and Ms Cachola are students of the beginners’ course on Islam.

I checked the time – just five minutes more before the clock struck 11am. It was almost time. The pair broke away from the group to wait on a bench outside the function room. “Nervous?” I asked. “A bit,” Ms Bondoc replied, while Ms Cachola gave another nervous smile.

Ms Bondoc has been a domestic worker in Singapore for seven years, and Ms Cachola, nine. The cause of their jitters this sweltering Sunday morning: They would be renouncing their faiths and officially declaring themselves Muslims in a conversion ceremony.

I had asked for permission to witness the rather intimate affair. It almost felt like watching a marriage solemnisation take place – with a registration officer guiding the pair and their two witnesses to endorse official documents in the presence of friends and family, and the recitation of the Shahadah – Declaration of Faith – in Arabic. Both women repeated it a few times to get it right.

For the past seven years, the number of Muslim conversions administered in Singapore has stayed fairly consistent at between 600 and 700 a year. More than half of these involve foreigners, some of whom travelled to Singapore just to get converted. The reason for this, according to MCAS deputy manager Iskandar Yuen Abdullah, is Singapore’s unique system.

“The process that we have in place is a very holistic approach. We offer the understanding of Islam, we offer them social network opportunities, and then we have a learning path from foundation courses to the advanced,” he said.

“They also receive an official card at the end of the conversion to show that they’re Muslim, so that there will be no disputes or arguments down the road. It’s unique (to Singapore),” he added.

DEALING WITH “UNEASY” BOSSES

Mr Iskander revealed that Filipinos form a large share of the foreigners who convert here. MCAS began to notice a growing number of Filipino domestic workers visiting Darul Arqam a couple of years ago. To help these newbies grasp the teachings of Islam, they convinced Dr Siti Maryam, an experienced educator in Islamic studies, to conduct classes in Tagalog.

Dr Maryam was born in the 1970s into a Muslim family in Catabato City in southern Philippines, where most of the population is Muslim. As we spoke about her “girls”, the childless trained lawyer oozed motherly warmth. “The Filipinos can speak English, but there are certain things that are better to learn in our own vernacular,” she said.

The OFWs – overseas Filipino workers – are a tight-knit bunch and they look after and influence one another. That, Dr Maryam said, is perhaps why there is growing interest in Islam among them. “A simple thing that I can do is to share the knowledge I have, because sometimes it’s very negative in the media,” she said. “(The religion) is given a very different colour.”

Besides being a teacher, Dr Maryam sometimes plays the role of a counsellor. Many of her students get into problems with employers who feel uneasy with their interest in Islam. Some bosses even threaten to terminate their contracts and send them home.

“Don’t be hurt by that,” she would tell the women. “Make them understand that Islam is not bad, Islam is inclusive.” It may take a few months or up to year, but, she said, employers usually come around so long as the helper continues to “do her job nicely”.

“There is no perfect society,” Dr Maryam offered when asked about the social stigma that sometimes accompanies conversion to Islam. “Negativity breeds negativity. To lessen the stigma, prove (through your actions) that you’re not bad.”

FAINTING ON THE JOB

One major hurdle that all new converts have to overcome is their first Ramadan. Ms Bondoc and Ms Cachola would not be fasting this year, as there were only a few days left to Ramadan. But their friend, Nur Amira Monzon, remembered that first time 11 years ago.

A domestic helper for an Australian family, she spends her days off volunteering as a guide at Darul Arqam. Ramadan is a busy period for the centre, with a constant stream of people coming in to offer zakat, or donations.

Ms Monzon has a smile for anyone who meets her gaze or asks for help. With large eyes that sparkle when she speaks, she looks younger than her 39 years. Imagine my surprise when the single mother told me she has a 17-year-old daughter back in the Philippines. When I asked if she wouldn’t rather rest on her days off, she said: “I’m very happy to help people here. This is my second home.”

She converted to Islam in November 2004 and experienced her first Ramadan the following year. The Chinese family she was working for then had three young children; looking after them was demanding work. On the third day of Ramadan, she felt tired and weak; her brain felt “like there was nothing”. At about 3pm, she fainted. Her employer sent her to the hospital.

“You have to wake up early to suhoor, but I didn’t do that,” Ms Monzon said. Suhoor refers to the pre-sunrise meal that Muslims consume before starting the day’s fast. “You have to adjust yourself to that and it was a bit difficult for me – I had no appetite.” The doctor told her to stop fasting as her body was in shock.

“SO MUCH LOVE” FROM STRANGERS

Of course, not every convert goes through such a dramatic moment during their first Ramadan, especially if they have prepared themselves well. There is a wealth of information online about the kind of food to eat so that the body adjusts quickly to the rigour of fasting at least 12 hours a day.

That was exactly what Shane Hew did – he Googled. The 27-year-old bachelor may be slim but he is a self-confessed big eater. And ever since he embraced Islam in January, he has become even more aware of what and how much he eats. To ready himself for his first Ramadan, he followed instructions he found online.

The Uber driver’s Ramadan breakfast menu looked like recommendations from a women’s health magazine. Suhoor consisted mainly of oatmeal, banana and yoghurt, but no coffee – which dehydrates. The meal plan worked well for the Chinese Singaporean. His stomach only started growling at about 4pm or 5pm. When the hunger pangs hit, he told himself he had “just a few more hours” to go.

Being a chauffeur-on-demand allowed Mr Hew – who took on the Muslim name Ehsan – the flexibility to break fast at a different mosque each day. He enjoyed the time spent with what he called his “food companions” – strangers he sat with for iftar (the meal eaten by Muslims after sunset during Ramadan). “During this whole breaking fast at the mosque, I get to experience so much love from different people,” he said.

He recounted the first day when he queued up for food. “There was a Bangladeshi who was very loving and treated me as if I was his young brother – scooping rice for me and just stuffing me with food. And there was an Indian father with his kid who kept staring at me. The man asked why I converted to Muslim, then said, ‘May God bless you with peace in life.’”

“You definitely cannot see this anywhere else. It makes me feel like I actually belong. There is no awkwardness. That’s the beauty of it,” said Mr Hew.

NIGHTLY PRAYERS

Hunger and thirst aside, another aspect of Ramadan may prove challenging for new converts.

“The fasting part was my greatest worry at the start, but then I realised during Ramadan we have to perform the nightly prayers,” said Ms Li Jinghan, who underwent conversion just before Ramadan last year. “That was difficult,” she recalled.

The bubbly 26-year-old Chinese Singaporean met her Malay Muslim husband Muhammah Aizat Khalis in 2012 while both were studying at university. “Before we even agreed to be together, he made it very clear that for us to even get to the stage of marriage, I would have to convert. But he didn’t pressure me, he was just saying, make the effort to learn, and then we’ll see how it goes.”

After dating for three years, with the blessings of both their families, the couple decided to marry. That was when Ms Li converted, taking on Jihan as her Muslim name.

“I converted about two weeks before Ramadan, so I was just getting used to praying. It was really painful to do the five prayers (a day), and then now (during Ramadan) I have to go to the mosque for extra prayers. After we break fast, we’d be at the mosque at about 8pm and we’d pray until 9pm or 10pm. It was really exhausting,” Ms Li said.

Sometimes, she would break down and cry. Noticing her struggle, her in-laws asked her to take it easy, but Ms Li felt obliged. “I feel bad if I don’t try,” she said.

This year, things got a lot easier. “It’s been a whole year of praying, my legs got used to it. In March I actually went for the pilgrimage and we prayed a lot. That was when I realised, okay, so last year wasn’t so bad,” she said, chuckling.

BEING A BLESSING TO OTHERS

Inspired by her own initial struggles in practising Islam, she recently quit her job at the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) to focus on building an online platform for converts worldwide.

“I realised a lot of Muslims are being marginalised in their own society, they can’t declare their faith like I do in Singapore. And they might not be able to find the products they need easily, be it prayer items, or modest clothing, or even Islamic books to know more about their religion. I’m just hoping I can bring ease and convenience to the lives of Muslims worldwide.” Ms Li said.

She has the full support of her husband, an immigration and customs officer. “She kept thinking about it every night – even after she got home from AVA she would work until 2am, 3am just to pursue her dream,” said Mr Aizat, 28.

I asked Ms Li what Ramadan meant to her. She said: “I’ve seen the way (religion) shaped my husband’s worldview and how he treats his parents. He’s very filial, he loves his siblings a lot, he’s very kind and generous, and I thought all of that came from the guidance of Islam.

“When I understood that, all I want to be is a blessing to others. That’s what I aim to be, as a Muslim.”

Source: ChannelNewsAsia

July 7, 2016