Rilek1Corner

Tag: Muslims

  • Walid J. Abdullah: Racism Only Exists When It Is Not Spoken By Them

    Walid J. Abdullah: Racism Only Exists When It Is Not Spoken By Them

    It’s funny how some people are so bent on using anecdotes -parliamentarians especially love to talk about their personal experiences – to display the truly multi-racial nature of Singapore, and to prove racism doesn’t exist.

    ‘My son didn’t want to bring a ham sandwich to school to respect his Muslim friends; see, there is no racism!’

    ‘I saw an Indian man calling an ambulance for a Chinese lady, and a Malay dude was the medic. Singaporean multiracialism ftw!’

    ‘I got into the lift and saw a Malay man, and i smiled and had a conversation with him. Only in Singapore do you get this.’ (somehow, speaking in a polite manner to other humans is uniquely Singaporean, and shows racism is absent!)

    —-

    But when these people come across other anecdotes that actually work against their ‘all is hunky dory’ theory, they will find all sorts of excuses to dismiss them.

    ‘Oh, our MP wasn’t being offensive. She just proposed the fence because it was practical. She gets along well with Indian workers, you know. Her suggestion is nothing like Trump’s.’

    ‘Oh, the portrayal of a hijabi as parking attendant in the children’s book is actually a good thing and does not reinforce stereotypes. Exposes children to the hijab. Good job author!’

    ‘The blackface incident was just something light-hearted. Please don’t be so sensitive. We must learn to laugh at ourselves.’

    ‘Yeah he said Malay and Indian workers cannot speak English properly. But that’s not what he really meant. We must look at the context.’

    And, the get-out-of-jail card for when one cannot perform intellectual gymnastics and is forced to admit that an incident is racist:

    ‘Yes, this was racist. But racism exists everywhere else. So be thankful for what you have here.’

    —-

    Yeah, continue telling yourselves that racism doesn’t exist. Continue glorifying your own experiences as the norm, and continue dismissing others’ encounters with racism as anomalies.

     

    Source: Walid J. Abdullah

  • Habib Hassan Nama Baru Disenaraikan Dalam Buku 500 Muslim Paling Berpengaruh Di Dunia

    Habib Hassan Nama Baru Disenaraikan Dalam Buku 500 Muslim Paling Berpengaruh Di Dunia

    Imam Masjid Ba’alwie Habib Hassan al-Attas menjadi nama baru yang disenaraikan dalam buku baru 500 Muslim paling berpengaruh di dunia.

    Habib Hassan diiktiraf dalam kategori pendakwah dan panduan rohani.

    Beliau digambarkan sebagai tunggak kekuatan dan perpaduan ke arah membina keharmonian agama di Singapura dan Asia Tenggara.

    Habib Hassan juga mengutuk pengganasan dan memainkan peranan utama dalam memupuk persefahaman dengan agama-agama lain di Singapura.

    Turut disenaraikan dalam buku itu ialah mantan Menteri Negara Kanan Ehwal Luar Zainul Abidin Rasheed yang sekali lagi disenaraikan dalam bidang politik.

    Buku ini menyenaraikan 500 orang yang paling berpengaruh dalam dunia Islam.

    Mereka dibahagikan kepada beberapa sektor seperti ilmiah, politik, pentadbiran hal ehwal agama, pendakwah dan panduan rohani, kebajikan dan pembangunan, isu-isu sosial, perniagaan, sains dan teknologi, seni dan budaya, Quran, media, selebriti, bintang sukan dan juga pelampau.

    Senarai ini diumumkan kepada orang ramai setiap tahun sejak 2009.

    Sebelum ini, antara tokoh Singapura yang diiktiraf pada tahun-tahun yang lalu, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Menteri Perhubungan dan Penerangan, yang juga Menteri Bertanggungjawab bagi Ehwal Masyarakat Islam dalam bidang pentadbiran dan Iskandar Jalil, pakar tembikar dalam bidang budaya.

    Buku itu terbitan Pusat Pengajian Strategik Islam Diraja di Amman, ibu kota Jordan, dengan kerjasama Pusat Putera Alwaleed Bin Talal bagi Persefahaman Muslim-Kristian di Washington DC, Amerika Syarikat.

    Source: Berita MediaCorp

  • Orang Islam Di Itali Adakan Bantahan Bagi Kebebasan Bersolat

    Orang Islam Di Itali Adakan Bantahan Bagi Kebebasan Bersolat

    Beberapa ratus Muslim menunaikan solat di luar bangunan Colosseum di Rome sebagai bantahan terhadap apa yang menurut mereka adalah sekatan tidak adil terhadap kebebasan mengamalkan agama Islam di Itali.

    Para penganjur berkata mereka mengadakan bantahan itu semalam (21 Okt) menyusuli penutupan lima masjid sementara di negara itu atas sebab-sebab pentadbiran.

    Ramai rakyat Muslim Itali mengesyaki pihak berkuasa tempatan memberi respons terhadap rasa curiga terhadap orang Islam akibat serangan pelampau baru-baru ini di Eropah, dengan menutup tempat-tempat ibadah disebabkan masalah-masalah yang mudah dihuraikan, seperti jumlah tandas di sesebuah premis tertentu.

    “Kami merasakan orang ramai menuding jari ke arah kami,” kata Francesco Tieri, seorang warga Itali yang memeluk agama Islam yang merupakan penyelaras bagi beberapa kumpulan Islam.

    “Tiada keinginan politik untuk mengiktiraf bahawa kami ada di sini dan kami masyarakat yang aman. Kami terpaksa menyewa tempat untuk solat – yang bagi kami adalah seperti bernafas, jika kami tidak boleh lakukannya, kami akan mati,” katanya lagi.

    Menurut perangkaan rasmi, lebih 800,000 orang Islam tinggal di Itali secara sah dan para pegawai menganggarkan lagi 100,000 tinggal di negara itu secara tetap tanpa dokumen rasmi.

    Ini bermakna masyarakat Islam mungkin membentuk lebih 1.5 peratus penduduk di Itali dan Islam merupakan agama kedua yang paling ramai dianuti di negara yang kebanyakan penduduknya beragama Roman Katolik itu.

    Islam bagaimanapun tidak diiktiraf sebagai agama rasmi di Itali, tidak seperti agama Yahudi atau Mormon, dan ramai orang Islam dari utara Afrika dan Asia Selatan rasa didiskriminasi dari segi kaum dan agama.

    Rome menempatkan masjid terbesar di dunia Barat, namun saranan-saranan untuk membina masjid-masjid bercorak tradisional di tempat lain kerap dibantah majlis-majlis tempatan yang boleh menyekat izin bagi merancang pembinaan atas pelbagai sebab teknikal daripada saranan saiz kemudahan meletak kereta, dan keharmonian seni bina dengan sesuatu kejiranan tertentu.

    Parti-parti berhaluan kanan menyeru agar mengharamkan mana-mana masjid yang dibina dengan dana dari penderma di luar Itali.

    Anggota Parlimen Barbara Saltamartini dari Liga Utara yang anti-imigresen, menyifatkan bantahan itu sebagai “provokasi tidak boleh diterima” yang tidak sepatutnya dibenarkan diadakan di Rome sama sekali.

    Source: Berita MediaCorp

  • Ustaz Abd Al-Halim: Is ARS Just A Mechanism For Asatizahs To Be Controlled By The State?

    Ustaz Abd Al-Halim: Is ARS Just A Mechanism For Asatizahs To Be Controlled By The State?

    AsSalaam’alaikum!

    I recently attended a seminar on making the Asatizah Recognition Scheme mandatory. It is clear that asatizahs are worried that if they resist the ARS scheme i.e. teach even if they are without ARS, they could be arrested and put to jail. One person actually asked that question during the Q & A. Of course, there is as yet no passing of any laws. There is no police force to watch over the asatizahs for now. But the indications that the speakers gave is that there will be law enforcement. One speaker spoke of levying fines upon asatizahs who do not comply. It is one thing to come up with a questionable policy but entirely another to implement it. I wonder if such enforcement is to be done by the government which is, by the way, secular. If so, will we have a secular non-Muslim government sending police officers out to arrest asatizahs who do not have ARS but are nonetheless qualified to teach given that they have been teaching for years and years and that they have been appointed to teach by ulama before ARS came along?

    I spoke to a senior person who is knowledgeable in Islam afterwards. He is not convinced that making ARS mandatory is about stemming “ajaran sesat” (deviant teachings). Instead he, like many others know that this is becoming a draconian mechanism to control the asatizahs. He further quipped that if they are concerned with ajaran sesat, there are many ideas that the religious authorities themselves seem to propagate that can be classified as “ajaran sesat” such as the idea that all religions are the same and that it is ok to praise Lee Kuan Yew who is a non-Muslim (Kafir) in the mosque during Jumaat sermon even though the Jumaat sermon is part and parcel of our ibadah and that the Masjid should not be politicised.

    It is glaring that the President of Pergas had to assure the audience that those behind making ARS mandatory are not agents of the government – pointing to the panelists and making the audience repeat after him several times that they are not agents of the government but instead they are Warathatul Anbiyaa’ (Inheritors of the legacy of the Prophets).

    I was there and those who were there and reading this can verify or debunk what I say here.

    May Allah swt save this ummah from internal and external enemies. Amiin!

     

    Source: Ustaz Abd Al-Halim

  • Saudi Arabia Executes A Prince Convicted In A Fatal Shooting

    Saudi Arabia Executes A Prince Convicted In A Fatal Shooting

    Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed a member of the royal family for murder, the first time in four decades it had done so, after he was convicted of shooting another man to death during a brawl.

    Prince Turki bin Saud bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabeer was put to death in the capital, Riyadh, according to a report by the Saudi state news service. While the report did not detail the method used, most death penalties in Saudi Arabia are carried out by beheading in a public square.

    The rare event rocketed around the kingdom’s social media networks, with some Saudis saying they never imagined such a thing would happen and others arguing that it showed the quality of their justice system, which follows a strict interpretation of Shariah law and is often criticized by human rights groups and Western governments for what they consider harsh and arbitrary punishments.

    “The greatest thing is that the citizen sees the law applied to everyone, and that there are not big people and other small people,” Abdul-Rahman al-Lahim, a prominent Saudi lawyer, wrote on Twitter.

    Other Saudis lauded the monarch, King Salman, on Twitter under an Arabic hashtag that translated as, “Decisive Salman orders retribution for the prince.”

    Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s few remaining absolute monarchies. The thousands of members of the royal family enjoy perks not available to the rest of the country’s 20 million citizens.

    Tuesday’s execution was the first time that a member of the royal family had been put to death for murder by the state since 1975, when Prince Faisal bin Musaid was beheaded in Riyadh for assassinating King Faisal.

    A New York Times article about that event said that some 10,000 people “watched silently as the executioner swung a sword with a golden hilt, but then thousands broke into chants of ‘God is great!’ and ‘Justice is done!’”

    A couple of years later, a princess and her husband were accused of adultery and executed after the princess refused to marry a man selected by the family. The princess, Mishael, was shot as her husband, Khalid Muhallal, watched. He was then beheaded, according to a New York Times obituary of her grandfather, Prince Mohammed Ibn Abdel-Aziz.

    It was unclear how many people watched the execution of Prince Turki on Tuesday or what their immediate reaction was.

    The state news media report did not release his age or provide any other biographical information.

    Another member of the royal family, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, said by telephone from Riyadh that Prince Turki was from one of the most prominent branches of the royal family after that of the direct descendants of King Abdulaziz, who founded the modern Saudi state in 1932.

    That genealogy earned Prince Turki no extra credit with the courts or with the king, Prince Faisal said.

    “The king has always said that there is no difference in the law between princes and others, and I think that this is clear manifestation of the reality of that fact,” he said.

    According to Saudi reports, Prince Turki shot a man during “a group fight” that occurred a few years ago.

    Adam Coogle, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who tracks Saudi Arabia, said the execution of the prince did not affect his organization’s criticisms of the country.

    Saudi Arabia has executed 143 people so far this year, according to a count by the group, which opposes the death penalty in all cases.

    Source: The New York Times