One little-noticed story in the international media last month was the reported arrest and interrogation of 40 men in Egypt, allegedly for having links with al-Qa’ida. According to reports first carried in Al-Masry al-Yom, an independent Egyptian daily newspaper, the men were actually arrested in April but news of the arrests was deliberately not released. Subsequent media investigations have unearthed further details, many of them inconsistent.
All creatures learn by example. Although this is a natural process, it can also have negative consequences. There is a well-known hadith of the noble Prophet of Allah, upon whom be peace, to the effect that a person adopts the character of the company he keeps for 40 days.
There has been much written and said and much continues to be written and said about Imam Hosein and the role he played in history. The ancients have explained him one way and the innovating intellectuals in another. But as I realized recently, we cannot know what Imam Hosein has done without understanding what the meaning of martyrdom really is.
The term "martyr," derived from the (Latin) root "mort, "implies" death and dying," "Martyr" is a noun meaning "the one who dies for God and faith." Thus a martyr is, in any case, the one who dies. The only difference between his death and that of others is to be seen in the "cause." He dies for the cause of God, whereas the cause of the death of another may be cancer.
George W. Bush insists that nations who do not support the “war against terrorism” are themselves terrorists: Muslim leaders in Southeast Asia have their own reasons to take the ‘ultimatum’ seriously.
Regardless of which interpretation of Islamic history that we choose to follow there are some basic truths about our history as Muslims, along with the truths of the Qur’an and hadith...
‘Internationalisation’ has become the new buzzword in the post-Kargil environment in Pakistan. Government spokesmen miss no opportunity to put the most positive spin on the Washington Agreement that prime minister Nawaz Sharif was humiliatingly forced into on July 4.
Steven Barboza’s book, American Jihad, is an inversion of the message of Emerson’s ‘Jihad in America’. Barboza uses the idea of jihad and the life of Malcolm X - a combination guaranteed to get most Americans’ attention - as starting-points for a discussion of the different ways American Muslims practise jihad.
What is the meaning of jihad in Islam? How has Islam progressed? How many human casualties were caused by this great intellectual, social, and moral revolution which appeared in the Arabian peninsula? Were the wars of the beginning of the Islamic era defensive or offensive? These questions in themselves are so extensive that if we decided to discuss them all in detail we would not have enough time to focus on the central issue itself.
