The unity of the Muslim ummah is a reality proclaimed in the Qur’an, in the ayaat above and numerous others like them; it is one of the key strengths of the Ummah at many levels, from the cultural to the political. It is the unity of the ummah, the common understanding that all Muslims are brothers and sisters in faith, that makes Muslims feel at home wherever they may go in the Muslim world.
There is also a problem between dichotomizing between Islamic and Western, since many Muslims, for all intents and purposes, are following the modern Western lifestyle, including in their expections of what purpose schools should serve. So, is it the job of an Islamic school to teach Islamic to non-Muslims?
From that day when Muhammad (PBUH) left Mecca after thirteen years of anguish and continuous struggle and went to Medina, he knew that the period of weakness and concealment of Islam had ended and that he must, with the help of his loyal and valiant followers, lay the foundation of a civilisation with the glory of an Islamic organization, and construct the basis of his political regime in the way which God desired.
My Lord, inspire me with the piety of rebellion so that I may not stumble in the grandeur of my responsibilities. And save me from the piety of avoidance so that I may not be wasted in the corner of solitude.
On the day of Ashoura, Horr made a huge decision. Right before the battle started, he left his position and the army he was commanding, and joined Imam Hussein, and was the first to be killed in the way of Allah, by the army he used to be a commander of just a few hours earlier. The name "Horr" means free, freeborn, noble, freeman.
I would recommend exploring the work being done around turning schools into something more like community centers, that would be open all year round, and in the evening and on weekends, providing a range of services not just for children but with community needs in mind. This is a way of keeping the system intact but redistributing the money and power among those who the system is supposed to serve, not just distant and detached bureaucrats, politicians and business men.
Education is about a process of becoming, and so the education one seeks is a crucial factor in what one will become. However, it is also important to broaden the definition of education beyond formal schooling, to include all the informal ways we learn. In this context, Islamic education is the process of becoming a Muslim, which can include learning a vocation or various forms of abstract knowledge, but first and foremost it is becoming a Muslim.
The quality of the school will depend on the quality of the community it serves. But the majority of them are just cesspools. There’s no way your children can go to these, without getting ‘soiled’, not to mention that it could even be very dangerous for them.
1Colonization, as you know, is often formally seen as a period of history when the European and American powers forcibly and physically held colonies throughout what is now called the Third World, and from which they drew fabulous wealth. This organized plunder by the Western powers began with Spain, whose adventure in the Americas was ironically funded by gold from the Islamic caliphate they had just destroyed. Spanish colonial power soon gave way to other powers, so by the end of the 19th century, most of the world was physically colonized by Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Holland and America (which was a British colony that itself became a colonizing power).
Imagery is the key to understanding TV, and there are several angles we could select in order to evaluate the impact of this imagery on our lives. We could look at biological or physiological impacts, or we could look at cultural or social impacts, even political and economic.
1Schooling is a relatively new phenomenon in human history, really only extant for about a century in most of the world, less in some places and more in others, but relatively new. It is an institutional response to several social needs, such as the need for social order, the need for acquiring marketable skills, the need for passing down one or another state ideology or identity.
Culture is nothing more than the way we live our lives, and it can be informed by religion or not. If you are asking about a more monolithic entity like "civilization" then maybe we can say that Muslim civilization has declined, but that is nothing new. All civilizations rise and fall, including the Western civilization. It is somehow natural, and civilization is what we make it. Culture, on the other hand, is more local and regional, more amorphous and less linked to material objects like monuments and cities, which are what we usually use to judge civilization.
Generally speaking, there can be no single culture, since culture, as understood by social scientists today, refers to the way of life of a particular people at a particular time and place. Culture also has two dimensions, the material dimension and the symbolic dimension.
The title is a way to get us rethinking the simplistic notions of globalization being Americanization, which is endlessly, and often fruitlessly, debated. In a way, framing a discussion in terms of going "beyond" Americanization, is way to encourage thinking about globalization as a complex topic. Many of those who say globalization is Americanization miss the positive aspects of globalization - with our without America.
Understanding mental illness in the modern world entails grasping two issues: 1) how mental illness is defined over time and across cultures and who does the defining, and 2) accepting the recent evidence that the causes of many mental problems lie outside a person's head, e.g. in the realm of culture and society.
It is important to recognize the possibilities of globalization as well as the challenges. As a business venture, it does not bode well for most of humanity, if the WTO and other trade agreements are any indication. One way to combat this is to "go global" with a resistance movement, that is create or link up with movements that are already identifying the problems of economic globalization and join their efforts.
TV has provided a way for people to consume images and ideas that the ordinary person would not have access to in the course of a typical life. However, while this might sound like a benefit -- and we are constantly reminded of this alleged benefit by the industries themselves -- TV is not simply about seeing new things. It is primarily about selling.
What makes a particular sound art "Islamic." I have to say that any comments I make on this are indebted to the late scholar of music, Lois Lamya al-Faruqi, who really helped to define an Islamic epistemology of music. Rather than using Western categories of analysis, she developed categories that were descriptive of the sound arts based on Islamic principles and proceeding from the Quran.
There is an effort afoot all over the world to "reform" education. The overall message is "west knows best, we lead and you follow." More specifically, practically everyone in the West has realized that the old factory schooling system they have been using for a hundred years is obsolete intellectually. Socially, the move away from government to corporate control calls for privatization.
US needs some one now, as it has needed in the past, to position as an "evil other" in opposition to its good self. The "evil other" in history has taken on many names and shapes, from despots, to pirates, to bandits, to terrorists. In Western civilization, which is ferociously dichotomous, there is a necessity to define through opposition, and therefore a "terrorist" or some other nefarious character -- real or imagined -- is actually necessary for the maintenance of a western self image.
