Shi'a Pundit
Devoted to the viewpoint of Islam of Muhammad SAW and Amir ul-Mumineen, Ali ibn Abi Talib SA, in the Shi'a Fatimi Ismaili Dawoodi Bohra tradition.
Devoted to the viewpoint of Islam of Muhammad SAW and Amir ul-Mumineen, Ali ibn Abi Talib SA, in the Shi'a Fatimi Ismaili Dawoodi Bohra tradition.
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The Muslim world as a whole is not well equipped for understanding the Qur'anic text de novo. The vast masses of Muslims in most countries, due to rampant illiteracy, will continue to require orthodox interpretations for quite some time to come. Muslim countries still live intellectually in medieval times though physically they are now in the 21st century. It is quite a task to usher them into the 21st century in an intellectual sense. Thus the orthodox 'ulama continue to have their own relevance, perhaps for many decades to come.
But could you illustrate just one example of how you have personally embraced and reconciled an orthodox interprtation on an intellectual basis.
It certainly is easy to proclaim that your personal route to orthodoxy was intellect. But can you substantiate this process through at least one concrete example where a progressive interpretation is in stark contrast to its orthodox counterpart. And then show how you have intellectually embraced the latter.
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08:42 PM CDT on Thursday, September 2, 2004
By STEVE BLOW / The Dallas Morning News
In case you missed it, this happened at the Cowboys game Monday night.
During a break in the game, Texas Stadium cameras showed various fans and the stadium announcer urged the crowd to select a "fan of the game" by cheers and applause.
The camera first showed three men in military uniform. Naturally, the crowd cheered loudly. Some people stood and clapped. It was a nice tribute to our troops.
Next, a woman with a sign of some sort was shown – to scattered applause.
And then, incredibly, the stadium cameras were trained on a man and woman in Middle Eastern attire of some sort – turban and head scarf, along with Cowboys garb, too. And the crowd began to boo and hiss.
Our letter writer was rightly mortified.
Then, to make matters worse, the whole process was repeated – big cheers for the soldiers, polite applause for the sign-toting woman, boos and hisses for the Middle Eastern couple.
And I want to say: Please tell me that didn't really happen.
Even by the low standards of a football crowd, that is just numskull behavior.
First, how did anyone in the Cowboys organization think it would be fun to match some U.S. troops against an innocent Middle Eastern couple in a crowd popularity contest?
[...]
Are there really so many simpletons who think our enemy is anyone in a headscarf?
If so, our war on terror is doing more harm than good.
So far I haven't found much to like about either campaign in this presidential race. But a real low has been Vice President Dick Cheney's mocking of John Kerry for saying he would wage a more "sensitive" war on terrorism.
Sure, it makes for some easy tough-guy posturing. But as it turns out, Mr. Cheney's boss – the president – has used the very same word in talking about fighting terrorism effectively.
And both the president and Mr. Kerry are right.
It may not be as much fun as booing and hissing, but we're going to need lots of sensitivity to win this war on terrorism.
In the good old days of past wars, it probably made sense to demonize a whole race or nation as our enemy.
When I was growing up in the years after World War II, we spent a lot of time "playing war." And that meant fighting "Krauts" and "Japs."
But we don't have the luxury of such mindless, broad-brush hate this time around.
This war on terrorism is really more about ideas and attitudes than bombs and bullets. It's a war to win hearts and minds, as is often said. And in a way, we're all combatants in that war.
Once, supporting the war effort back home just meant rolling bandages or rationing sugar.
If only it were that easy now. Fighting this war on the home front means digging deep and learning about world affairs and our own foreign policy. It means stretching to understand cultures very different from our own. And it requires real sophistication in understanding who are enemies are and who they aren't.
I'm afraid that in a few thoughtless minutes Monday night, we lost a skirmish in our war on terrorism.
And lots of people proved themselves unfit for combat.
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US warplanes pound Iraq's holy city
From correspondents in Najaf
September 6, 2004
US warplanes spearheaded a massive two-pronged assault to crush a Shiite Muslim uprising in Iraq's city of Najaf.
Jets screeched overhead as massive explosions and tank and machine-gun fire boomed through the city and smoke engulfed its historic centre, home to the Imam Ali shrine, revered by Shiites all over the world.
Thousands of US forces, backed by Iraqi police and national guard, mounted a pincer movement to trap Moqtada Sadr's fighters in the heart of the city, before going on to raid the militia leader's empty home.
Iraqi and US troops sealed approaches to the mausoleum, as hundreds of terrified residents, urged on by attacking forces and the city's mosques, fled through the dusty streets.
"Leave the city. Help coalition forces and do not fire at them," one announcement instructed in Arabic. "We are here to liberate the city."
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The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, denounced and bombed by the US and banned by the Iraqi government, has begun recruiting staff for a channel in English that will show news and documentaries.
"The brief is emphatically not to do an English translation of the Arabic channel," said Nigel Parsons, the project manager. "It will have international appeal and fill a lot of gaps in existing output."
The original Arabic news channel, established in 1996 and funded by the emir of Qatar, not only bucked the trend towards frivolity and light entertainment but broke many taboos, interviewing Israeli politicians and allowing debate of a kind rarely seen on Arab television.
[...]
The English channel's target audience is worldwide - "not just Muslims who don't speak Arabic", Mr Parsons said. "I think we might have a ready audience there, but it is not going to be an anti-western or anti-American channel. Absolutely not."
The aim will be to fill a gap in the market vacated by other channels.
"If you take CNN, in the [United] States, they have been dragged to the right by Fox. Internationally, they definitely had a bad war in the Gulf. They have lost some credibility on the international stage.
"Where the BBC would come into the equation is that there has been a definite retreat ... on the news channels. Levels of coverage of the developing world are 40% of what they were when Michael Buerk first did the Ethiopian famine."
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MWU!: Explain the differences in how the hijab controversy is viewed in Europe as opposed to the US. In France, it seems that most liberal and progressive non-Muslims very much support the law and see it as a protection of secularism.
Tariq Ramadan: Actually, this is an especially French phenomenon, because of the country's very specific history. When you look at the 1905 Reference Law, you find that there is no problem for Muslims to live as Muslims in France. We say that France should just implement this law and enforce it strictly and equally. But this new law is a step backward. In 1989, the State Council said there is nothing in the scarf which is against secularism. We have to be careful about those using secularism as an ideology, confusing secularism with no religion at all. The atmosphere in France is very passionate, as if we are touching the sense of French identity. Becaue there are more than 5 million Muslims in France, their presence raises questions about the future identity of the country. But if you go to other European countries, the scarf is less of an obsession.
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Shi'a Pundit was launched in 2002 during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The blog focuses on issues pertaining to Shi'a Islam in the west and in the Islamic world. The author is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community. Bohras adhere to the Shi'a Fatimi tradition of Islam, headed by the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq, Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin (TUS).
