Covering Islam Quotes

مطلبي هو الإحترام الواجب للتفاصيل الملموسة للخبرة البشرية، والتفهم النابع من النظر إلى "الآخر" نظرة ود وتراحم؛ والمعرفة التي تُكتسب وتُنشر بأمانة أخلاقية وفكرية؛ فهذه بالتأكيد أهداف أفضل وإن لم تكن أيسر تحقيقا في الوقت الحاضر من المواجهة والعداء الذي يختزل الخصوم ويحقّرهم.

When, as happened recently in France, an attempt is made to coerce women out of the burqa rather than creating a situation in which a woman can choose what she wishes to do, it’s not about liberating her, but about unclothing her. It becomes an act of humiliation and cultural imperialism. It’s not about the burqa. It’s about the coercion. Coercing a woman out of a burqa is as bad as coercing her into one. Viewing gender in this way, shorn of social, political and economic context, makes it an issue of identity, a battle of props and costumes. It is what allowed the US government to use western feminist groups as moral cover when it invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan women were (and are) in terrible trouble under the Taliban. But dropping daisy-cutters on them was not going to solve their problems.

Some of us cover to protect our bodies some of us cover to protect our souls in both cases, respect their choices.

عندما جعل علي شريعتي هجرة النبي محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم من مكه إلى المدينة ،فجعلها تنطبق على وضع الإنسان ذاته باعتباره اختياراً وكفاحا وصيروره متواصله ،إنه هجره لانهائية ،هجرة داخل نفسه من الصلصال إلى الإله ،إنه مهاجر داخل روحه نفسها

With my veil I put my faith on display—rather than my beauty. My value as a human is defined by my relationship with God, not by my looks. I cover the irrelevant. And when you look at me, you don’t see a body. You view me only for what I am: a servant of my Creator. You see, as a Muslim woman, I’ve been liberated from a silent kind of bondage. I don’t answer to the slaves of God on earth. I answer to their King.

If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it's to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where's your self-accountability?

It was to these books that I turned for an answer to the question: What is the meaning of la ilaha illa Allah? Again I was disappointed. The books were about Islam, not about Allah. They covered every subject you could possibly imagine except for the one which really mattered.

Murray was still on the floor, praying to any god he could come up with, covering all his bases. In short order, I heard him run through the religions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, and a few I’d never even heard of before.

As he defended the book one evening in the early 1980s at the Carnegie Endowment in New York, I knew that some of what he said was true enough, just as some of it was arguably less so. (Edward incautiously dismissed 'speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings or sabotage commercial airliners' as the feverish product of 'highly exaggerated stereotypes.') Covering Islam took as its point of departure the Iranian revolution, which by then had been fully counter-revolutionized by the forces of the Ayatollah. Yes, it was true that the Western press—which was one half of the pun about 'covering'—had been naïve if not worse about the Pahlavi regime. Yes, it was true that few Middle East 'analysts' had had any concept of the latent power of Shi'ism to create mass mobilization. Yes, it was true that almost every stage of the Iranian drama had come as a complete surprise to the media. But wasn't it also the case that Iranian society was now disappearing into a void of retrogressive piety that had levied war against Iranian Kurdistan and used medieval weaponry such as stoning and amputation against its internal critics, or even against those like unveiled women whose very existence constituted an offense?

I have met many young men, who have the skeletons of the old covered by the garb of youth. On the other hand, I have met many elderly people who are weighed down by age but beneath the cloud there lies the glorious sun of youth.

While I would champion any campaign to support Muslim women who do not wish to cover. I would now also protest vigorously for the right of a woman to wear that covering, if it is what she wants and believes in. Ayatollah Khomeini and Jacques Chirac have much more in common than either of them would care to acknowledge. Each tried to solve overarching social problems by imposing his will on the bodies of women.

Most striking about the traditional societies of the Congo was their remarkable artwork: baskets, mats, pottery, copper and ironwork, and, above all, woodcarving. It would be two decades before Europeans really noticed this art. Its discovery then had a strong influence on Braque, Matisse, and Picasso -- who subsequently kept African art objects in his studio until his death. Cubism was new only for Europeans, for it was partly inspired by specific pieces of African art, some of them from the Pende and Songye peoples, who live in the basin of the Kasai River, one of the Congo's major tributaries. It was easy to see the distinctive brilliance that so entranced Picasso and his colleagues at their first encounter with this art at an exhibit in Paris in 1907. In these central African sculptures some body parts are exaggerated, some shrunken; eyes project, cheeks sink, mouths disappear, torsos become elongated; eye sockets expand to cover almost the entire face; the human face and figure are broken apart and formed again in new ways and proportions that had previously lain beyond sight of traditional European realism. The art sprang from cultures that had, among other things, a looser sense than Islam or Christianity of the boundaries between our world and the next, as well as those between the world of humans and the world of beasts. Among the Bolia people of the Congo, for example, a king was chosen by a council of elders; by ancestors, who appeared to him in a dream; and finally by wild animals, who signaled their assent by roaring during a night when the royal candidate was left at a particular spot in the rain forest. Perhaps it was the fluidity of these boundaries that granted central Africa's artists a freedom those in Europe had not yet discovered.

Why are Muslims being “preserved” in some time capsule of centuries gone by? Why is it okay that we continue to live in a world where our women are compared to candy waiting to be consumed? Why is it okay for women of the rest of the world to fight for freedom and equality while we are told to cover our shameful bodies? Can’t you see that we are being held back from joining this elite club known as the 21st century? Noble liberals like yourself always stand up for the misrepresented Muslims and stand against the Islamophobes, which is great but who stands in my corner and for the others who feel oppressed by the religion? Every time we raise our voices, one of us is killed or threatened. . . . What you did by screaming “racist!” was shut down a conversation that many of us have been waiting to have. You helped those who wish to deny there are issues, deny them. What is so wrong with wanting to step into the current century? There should be no shame. There is no denying that violence, misogyny and homophobia exist in all religious texts, but Islam is the only religion that is adhered to so literally, to this day. In your culture you have the luxury of calling such literalists “crazies.” . . . In my culture, such values are upheld by more people than we realise. Many will try to deny it, but please hear me when I say that these are not fringe values. It is apparent in the lacking numbers of Muslims willing to speak out against the archaic Shariah law. The punishment for blasphemy and apostasy, etc, are tools of oppression. Why are they not addressed even by the peaceful folk who aren’t fanatical, who just want to have some sandwiches and pray five times a day? Where are the Muslim protestors against blasphemy laws/apostasy? Where are the Muslims who take a stand against harsh interpretation of Shariah?7

Remaining for a moment with the question of legality and illegality: United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, unanimously passed, explicitly recognized the right of the United States to self-defense and further called upon all member states 'to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the terrorist attacks. It added that 'those responsible for aiding, supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of those acts will be held accountable.' In a speech the following month, the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan publicly acknowledged the right of self-defense as a legitimate basis for military action. The SEAL unit dispatched by President Obama to Abbottabad was large enough to allow for the contingency of bin-Laden's capture and detention. The naïve statement that he was 'unarmed' when shot is only loosely compatible with the fact that he was housed in a military garrison town, had a loaded automatic weapon in the room with him, could well have been wearing a suicide vest, had stated repeatedly that he would never be taken alive, was the commander of one of the most violent organizations in history, and had declared himself at war with the United States. It perhaps says something that not even the most casuistic apologist for al-Qaeda has ever even attempted to justify any of its 'operations' in terms that could be covered by any known law, with the possible exception of some sanguinary verses of the Koran.

There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world—or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world—I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk.

It was to these books that I turned for an answer to the question: What is the meaning of la ilaha illa Allah? Again I was disappointed. The books were about Islam, not about Allah. They covered every subject you could possibly imagine except for the one which really mattered. I put the question to the imam at the university mosque. He made an excuse and left. Then a brother who had overheard my impertinent question to the imam came over and said: “I have a tafsir of la ilaha illa Allah. If you like, we could read it together.” I imagined that it would be ten or twenty pages at the most. It turned out to have over 5,000 pages, in several books. It was the Risale-i Nur by Said Nursi.

This division is not one by religious affiliation, rather it separates the extremists and the peace-loving people. Therefor I'm optimistic: now a humanistic Islam is getting shaken awake. Moderate Islam needs now to finally break cover and explain how to deal with the violence-glorifying parts of the Quran. The (psychological) repression that this has nothing to do with our belief doesn't work anymore. We have to face this challenge.

From my perspective, it was unforgivable...to deflect criticism of this ideology that has caused so much suffering in the world. Generally, no one in the West cares if Muslim women were being imprisoned or killed in Iran and Saudi Arabia for not covering their hair. No one cared that bloggers in Bangladesh were being hacked to death in the streets because they dared write about humanism. No one cared if university students were beaten to death in Pakistan for questioning Islam. ... I remember feeling that I wanted to speak out. I wanted to shout and scream out. ... However, I was also terrified.

The clandestine alliance between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was grounded in history. Each was a young, insecure nation that saw Islam as central to its identity. Pakistani troops had been hired by the Saudis in the past for security deployments in the kingdom. The Saudi air force had secretly provided air cover over Karachi during Pakistan’s 1971 war with India.4

Since the moment we met, my wife and I have not stopped kissing. I’m Catholic and she’s Islamic, so there were complications. Throughout the delicate negotiations with our families, our lips did not part for a moment. Eventually they accepted our love, so we married. We walked, tongues tangled, down the aisle. Now after six years of marriage, we are still fused. We had our first child without stopping kissing for the conception, pregnancy or birth. Our lips are four broken scabs, and our chins always covered in blood, but we still never stop. We are far too much in love.

لم أستطع أن أكتشف فترة في التاريخ الأوروبي أو التاريخ الأمريكي منذ العصور الوسطى ناقش أحد فيها الإسلام أو فكر فيه خارج إطارٍ صاغته العاطفة المشبوبة، والتعصب، والمصالح السياسية. وقد لا يبدو ذلك اكتشافًا يدعو إلى الدهشة، ولكنه يضم في ثناياه جميع ألوان المباحث العلمية والأكاديمية التي كانت منذ مطلع القرن الثامن عشر تطلق على نفسها اسمًا كُلّيًا هو مبحث الاستشراق أو كانت تحاول، بانتظام، دراسة الشرق. ولن يختلف أحد مع القول بأن أوائل الذين علّقوا لى الإسلام، مثل بطرس المبجل، وبارتليمي دربيلو، قد اتخذوا موقف المجادلة المسيحية المشبوبة فيما قالوه. ولكنّ أمامنا افتراضًا لم ينظر أحد في صحته يقول إنه حين تقدمت أوروبا والغرب فاتخذت خطواتها في العصر العلمي الحديث، وحررت نفسها من الخرافة والجهل، كانت مسيرتها بالضرورة تتضمن الاستشراق. أليس صحيحًا أن سلفستر دي ساسي، وإدوارد لين، وإرنست رينان، وهاملتون جِبْ، ولويس ماسينيون، كانوا من الباحثين والعلماء الموضوعيين، وأليس صحيحًا أن من آثار التقدم الذي شهده القرن العشرون بشتى ألوانه في علم الاجتماع والأنثروبولوجيا واللغويات والتاريخ أن أصبح الباحثون الأمريكيون الذين يقومون بتدريس الشرق الأوسط والإسسلام في جامعات كبرى مثل برنستون وهارفارد وشيكافو، بالضرورة، غير منحازين ولا يمارسون الدعوة إلى شئ فيما يفعلونه؟ أما الإجابة عندي فهي بالنفي. وليس ذلك لأن الاستشراق أكثر تحيّزًا من العلوم الاجماعية والإنسانية الأخرى؛ لكنه وحسب، مثل غيره من المباحث المذكورة، له سماته الأيديولوجية ويتأثر مثلها بالعالم من حوله. أما الفارق الأوحد فهو أن باحثي الاستشراق يبادرون باستخدام مواقعهم، باعتبارهم خبراء، في إنكار (وأحيانًا حتى في إخفاء) مشاعرهم العميقة تجاه الإسلام بلغة الثقات التي تهدف إلى الشهادة "بموضوعيتهم" وكذلك "بحيادهم العلمي".

Once we were on the other side, the driver spoke up. “You know, that bridge we just crossed is covered with IEDs,” he said, “bombs planted by Daesh in case the Iraqis or the Americans try to retake Mosul. I hate driving over it. I feel like it could explode at any moment.

Before the Brotherhood came, you could see everyone's arms and legs. We never used to notice. But now that woman are covering so much, all I can think about is those round calves and silky arms and the hair, smelling of coconut. I never used to think about a neck before, but ooh, a neck is so sexy now.

It is easy to find from the statistics pertaining to crime rate in a country that crimes against women are lowest in Islamic countries where women are dressed modestly and covered in burka (veil) in public places. Appropriate dressing, particularly in public places and before strangers can to some extent prevent crimes against women.

From time to time he consulted books about Islamic jurisprudence, the fikh, in his own collection when confronted with thorny problems in his marriage and his work. But religion did not play a major role in his life. What drove him most was a belief in the power of the written word—the rich variety of human experience and ideas contained between the covers of a book.

All the dilemmas and questions of today were known in ethics more than 2,000 years ago. All the greatest teachers of mankind whether prophets such as Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad or non-prophets such as Confucius , Gautama, Buddha, Socrates, Kant, Tolstoy , and Martin Buber, covering a period from the sixth century BC up to the present ( Martin Buber died in 1965) have taught essentially the same morals. As distinguished from rules about social orders and ways of production , moral truths are constant. The reason for this lies in the fact that the riddle had been established at the moment of creation in the "prologue in heaven" in the act preceding the whole of human history. Intelligence, education, and experience do not in themselves help us approach or better understand all of that. Jesus pronounced his truth when he was a child and was slightly more than thirty when he was condemned. He needed neither knowledge nor experience for his great, capital truths about God and man because these truths could not be reached by knowledge or experience. Are they not "Hidden from the wise and the learned and revealed to the little ?

Swirling a glass of ice splashed with Scotch, the host seemed oblivious to the contradiction between what he’d just finished saying and what he was now showing me. After his second drink, he began to tell me about his failed marriage, to an American. “She insisted on riding around in my Rolls without covering her face. Of course, everyone stared at her,” he said with distaste. After

Shrinking from men, being on guard, avoiding drawing attention to oneself: this is the daily life of women in Africa and the Middle East. As girls growing up in Mogadishu and Nairobi, my sister and I covered ourselves with hijabs to conceal ourselves from public view. Today, women in Europe must consider what manner of dress will best deflect the attention of the increasing numbers of men on the prowl.

Our inner prophet speaks and we mute the voice. We emit and inhale odious fumes of talk. We talk in conferences, we talk in programs, we talk in gatherings, we talk in meetings. For every moment of delusion, doubt, or ignorance, we give a talk. We emit and inhale fumes of talk. We talk to cover the anxiety of guilt and torment of fear. We talk because there is so much to conceal. We talk so that the self may not speak.

Whereas theology is the primary driving force behind Christianity and the great Eastern religions, Islam's backbone is a system of law covering all areas of conduct, including commerce. Thus, the new monotheism from Arabia was especially attractive to those engaged in any organized economic activity that flourished wherever rules were plainly visible and vigorously enforced by disinterested parties—again, as in the more secular English common law.

Is an American citizen more likely to be murdered by a Muslim terrorist or by a Mexican? According to CNN, twenty-nine Americans have been killed in Islamic terrorist attacks in the United States since 9/11.67 I don’t know why they excluded 9/11, so by my count, it’s 3,029. In fact, let’s round it up to four thousand to cover the last several decades. According to the GAO’s extremely conservative figures, Mexicans alone—forget other immigrants—have murdered a minimum of twenty-three thousand Americans in the last few decades.68

What a strange fate for Muslim memory, to be called upon in order to censure and punish! What a strange memory, where even dead men and women do not escape attempts at assassination, if by chance they threaten to raise the hijab that covers the mediocrity and servility that is presented to us as tradition. How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veils? Why does the Muslim man need such a mutilated companion?

We accept and willingly support the subjugation of our sisters to the East, even though we would never accept that for ourselves or our sisters in the West. Here, we demand that women be able to "free the nipple," but we support those in the East who demand that women "cover their head." It is devastating to see this disconnect. ... As much as women in the Muslim world are fighting back, we will only succeed if we work together. Women in the East must work together, and women in the West--please reach back your hand and pull women in the East up the road to equality with you.

Whether we like it or not, Islam has entered its third phase of conquest, towards the ‘Universal Caliphate’. The first two phases happened in the Seventh to the Eleventh centuries, as well as in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth centuries. It is a question of a groundswell that the governments of Islamic countries, which are pro-Western out of temporary calculation, cannot disguise for long. Islam’s principal weapon is its demographic vigour, in the face of Western countries that are experiencing depopulation. This confrontation will cover the planet and will usually take the form of civil war, with episodes of classic war.

Unlike the student protests in the 1960s, by using religion and multiculturalism as a cover, we brought an entirely foreign lexicon to the table. We knowingly presented political demands disguised as religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labelled any objection to our demands as racism and bigotry. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathisers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who were now in middle-career management posts; people like Dave Gomer. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicised religion as ideological agitation, and felt racist if they tried to stop us.

Just as trying to impose sharia law wouldn't make people into good Muslims, imposing the hijab wouldn't automatically confer modesty. Without fear of God and a true submission to Him, these outward displays of Islamic identities were just about showing off an identity, he explained, not about faith. "There could be people who follow sharia law, but they're not believers," he said. "Or they could be someone who doesn't cover, but they are believers," he said. Covering your head required true commitment before it truly worked. "Clothes don't make your pious," he told his students. "If you're pious, the covering can protect you. But trying to force women into the house, or into the hijab, it's not going to make them pious.

To summarize all of this, we have the following: (1) Archaeologists discovered 7 pits for boats around the Great Pyramid. (2) The longest of which is 44 meters; it is called the solar barque. (3) That boat (hypothetically speaking) needs [230/44]*4 steps to complete one single rotation (which looks like a square around the pyramid). (4) It therefore covers a distance which equals to the pyramid's height if it completes seven full rotations around the pyramid's base. (5) This mimics the application of Kaaba; even though the Kaaba has no dimensional merit for its structure (according to pure orthodox Islamic tradition) but the number seven is dominant and serves as an evidence that Egypt tried to plagiarize Adam's heritage and remodeled its theology accordingly.

And thus did We show Abraham the realm of the heavens and the earth that he would be among the certain [in faith] When the night covered him over, He saw a star: He said: 'This is my Lord.' But when it set, He said: 'I love not those that set.' When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: 'This is my Lord.' But when the moon set, He said: 'unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray.' When he saw the sun rising in splendour, he said: 'This is my Lord; this is the greatest (of all).' But when the sun set, he said: 'O my people! I am indeed free from your (guilt) of giving partners to Allah. 'For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah.

On August 10, 1984, my plane landed in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. There were no skyscrapers here. The blue domes of the mosques and the faded mountains were the only things rising above the adobe duvals (the houses). The mosques came alive in the evening with multivoiced wailing: the mullahs were calling the faithful to evening prayer. It was such an unusual spectacle that, in the beginning, I used to leave the barracks to listen – the same way that, in Russia, on spring nights, people go outside to listen to the nightingales sing. For me, a nineteen-year-old boy who had lived his whole life in Leningrad, everything about Kabul was exotic: enormous skies – uncommonly starry – occasionally punctured by the blazing lines of tracers. And spread out before you, the mysterious Asian capital where strange people were bustling about like ants on an anthill: bearded men, faces darkend by the sun, in solid-colored wide cotton trousers and long shirts. Their modern jackets, worn over those outfits, looked completely unnatural. And women, hidden under plain dull garments that covered them from head to toe: only their hands visible, holding bulging shopping bags, and their feet, in worn-out shoes or sneakers, sticking out from under the hems. And somewhere between this odd city and the deep black southern sky, the wailing, beautifully incomprehensible songs of the mullahs. The sounds didn't contradict each other, but rather, in a polyphonic echo, melted away among the narrow streets. The only thing missing was Scheherazade with her tales of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights ... A few days later I saw my first missile attack on Kabul. This country was at war.

I remembered the malangs of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renouncers with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping out their old ID cards to say look, I used to be someone and now I'm no one, I'm so lost in Allah that I've thrown away the whole world. Would that qualify them as Sufis? I didin't know how to measure it. Whether the malangs were Sufi saints or just drugged-out bums didn't really matter. The lesson I took from them was that you're never disqualified from loving Allah, never. And I could see again that what I went through was nothing new, not even anything special in the history of Islam, not a clashing of East and West; it was always there. And that made me feel more Muslim than ever, because fuck it all, CNN, this is Islam too.

(The term Islamist generally refers to people and parties who support a guiding role for Islam in politics and government. It covers a wide spectrum, from those who think Islamic values should inform public policy decisions to those who think all laws should be judged or even formulated by Islamic authorities to conform to Islamic law. Not all Islamists are alike. In some cases, Islamist leaders and organizations have been hostile to democracy, including some who have supported radical, extremist, and terrorist ideology and actions. But around the world, there are political parties with religious affiliations—Hindu, Christian, Jewish, Muslim—that respect the rules of democratic politics, and it is in America’s interest to encourage all religiously based political parties and leaders to embrace inclusive democracy and reject violence. Any suggestion that faithful Muslims or people of any faith cannot thrive in a democracy is insulting, dangerous, and wrong. They do it in our own country every day.)

In 2006, Egyptian bloggers witnessed hundreds of men thronging the streets to celebrate the end of Ramadan, harassing women with or without hijabs, ripping off their clothes, encircling them, and trying to assault them.48 Girls ran for cover in nearby restaurants, taxis, and cinemas. As protests continued in Tahrir Square in 2012, mob attacks against women became more organized. Men formed concentric rings around individual women, stripping and raping them.49 Some Egyptian women spoke out, taking their accounts and video evidence of sexual assaults to police, but little headway was made until laws against sexual harassment were introduced in 2014.50 The rape game crossed the Mediterranean in December 2015. During New Year’s Eve celebrations in Cologne, as we have seen, more than a thousand young men formed rings around individual women, sexually assaulting them.51 When the victims identified the perpetrators as looking “foreign,” “North African,” and “Arab,” they were pilloried as racists on social media.52 The local feminist and magazine editor Alice Schwarzer’s dogged reporting established that the young men had coordinated and planned the attacks that night “to the detriment of the Kufar [infidels].”53 Schwarzer was vindicated twelve months later, when Cologne police chief Jürgen Mathies confirmed that the attacks had been intentionally coordinated to intimidate the German population.

Islam has nothing to do with the acts, actions, and ethics of human beings. We must not blend the actions of Muslims with Islam. Those people misunderstood or misinterpret Islamic religion, or they are subjected to abnormal circumstances in their countries and cultures. So they stigmatize Islam with things that are not relevant or even exist in the religion. Your upbringing and manners represent you, NOT your religion. You are the sum of what you have learned from your parents. For example, sexual jihad or marriage jihad is a phenomenon was created by Syrian culture where they allowed the soldiers in Syria to have sex under the banner of marriage. But this type of marriage doesn’t exist in Islam. Those individuals represent themselves, not their religion. For example, in Catholicism When religious people abused their power and molested young boys, what is important is not the police investigations, but what damage has been done to the young children at the church when catholic priests molested them and then their actions were covered up by the Catholic Church. We should not accuse Catholicism for these crimes, it is the people who committed these actions who are at fault. The police could not prosecute them because of religious protection. So the church allowed them to move to a smaller town where they would not be noticed. Leaving those criminals free, allowed them to molest more boys and to commit more crimes against children.

To hail a religion for its compatibility with a secular society was decidedly not a neutral gesture. Secularism was no less bred of the sweep of Christian history than were Orban's barbed-wire fences. Naturally, for it to function as its exponents wished it to function, this could never be admitted. The West, over the duration of its global hegemony, had become skilled in the art of repackaging Christian concepts for non-Christian audiences. A doctrine such as that of human rights was far likelier to be signed up to if its origins among the canon lawyers of medieval Europe could be kept concealed. The insistence of United Nations agencies on "the antiquity and broad acceptance of the conception of the rights of man” was a necessary precondition for their claim to a global, rather than a merely Western, jurisdiction. Secularism, in an identical manner, depended on the care with which it covered its tracks. If it were to be embraced by Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus as a neutral holder of the ring between them and people of other faiths, then it could not afford to be seen as what it was: a concept that had little meaning outside of a Christian context. In Europe, the secular had for so long been secularised that it was easy to forget its ultimate origins. To sign up to its premises was unavoidably to become just that bit more Christian. Merkel, welcoming Muslims co Germany, was inviting them to take their place in a continent that was not remotely neutral in its understanding of religion: a continent in which the division of church and state was absolutely assumed to apply to Islam

My greatest desire is to be human. In Islam, it is taught we are born man but we must evolve to be Human. To be human is to know compassion for others. to understand Ethics and morality, all of which we are born with but still must learn in practice.Our intellect does not make us human. Intelligence as shown that we separate ourselves more from humanity through our evolution of inventiveness than we have ever before. We depend on our gadgets to tell us to think and what to think. We have become servants of I-Phones and pads and computers and slaves to clocks that have now become our task master. We answer to alarms and "Tweets" and " FB Notifications like pavlovian dogs wagging our tails at each blip of a cybernetic announcement. We are further losing ourselves to technology that we thought would make our lives easier but has simply made it more complicated and filled it with less time for interaction with our fellow man because we have lost sight of verbal communication. Of being in eye contact with each other because our heads are leaning down into video screens and our ears are covered with sound buds.. We have become an extension of our devises when we should be an extension of each other in a real physical world and not the matrix of AI and computer stimuli we have become sadly slaves to. I want to be human and see the true smile of my friends and hear the real voice of their ideas and not typed words of color on a screen. I want to experience the knowledge of seeing my fellow men and woman talking verbally to each other and espousing real IDEAS and not merely replaying sound bytes hey have heard from the latest PROGRAMMING. I want to be HUMAN and know the Humanity of my brotherhood of HUMANS!

When he went closer to investigate, Yahweh had called to him by name and Moses had cried: “Here I am!” (hineni!), the response of every prophet of Israel when he encountered the God who demanded total attention and loyalty: “Come no nearer” [God] said, “Take off your shoes for the place on which you stand is holy ground. I am the god of your father,” he said, “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At that Moses covered his face, afraid to look at God.18 Despite the first of the assertions that Yahweh is indeed the God of Abraham, this is clearly a very different kind of deity from the one who had sat and shared a meal with Abraham as his friend. He inspires terror and insists upon distance. When Moses asks his name and credentials, Yahweh replies with a pun which, as we shall see, would exercise monotheists for centuries. Instead of revealing his name directly, he answers: “I Am Who I Am (Ehyeh asher ehyeh).”19 What did he mean? He certainly did not mean, as later philosophers would assert, that he was self-subsistent Being. Hebrew did not have such a metaphysical dimension at this stage, and it would be nearly 2000 years before it acquired one. God seems to have meant something rather more direct. Ehyeh asher ehyeh is a Hebrew idiom to express a deliberate vagueness. When the Bible uses a phrase like “they went where they went,” it means: “I haven’t the faintest idea where they went.” So when Moses asks who he is, God replies in effect: “Never you mind who I am!” or “Mind your own business!” There was to be no discussion of God’s nature and certainly no attempt to manipulate him as pagans sometimes did when they recited the names of their gods. Yahweh is the Unconditioned One: I shall be that which I shall be.

Islamophobia” as a weapon of jihad The charge of “Islamophobia” is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: “As far as we’re concerned,” said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, “there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.”5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as “Islamophobia” has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, “Islamophobia” has taken a place beside “racism,” “sexism,” and “homophobia.” The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about “Islamophobia,” two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that “Islamophobia” entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia”—at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.7

Islam tells us that on the unappealable Day of Judgment, all who have perpetrated images of living things will reawaken with their works, and will be ordered to blow life into them, and they will fail, and they and their works will be cast into the fires of punishment. As a child, I knew that horror of the spectral duplication or multiplication of reality, but mine would come as I stood before large mirrors. As soon as it began to grow dark outside, the constant, infallible functioning of mirrors, the way they followed my every movement, their cosmic pantomime, would seem eerie to me. One of my insistent pleas to God and my guardian angel was that I not dream of mirrors; I recall clearly that I would keep one eye on them uneasily. I feared sometimes that they would begin to veer off from reality; other times, that I would see my face in them disfigured by strange misfortunes. I have learned that this horror is monstrously abroad in the world again. The story is quite simple, and terribly unpleasant. In 1927, I met a grave young woman, first by telephone (because Julia began as a voice without a name or face) and then on a corner at nightfall. Her eyes were alarmingly large, her hair jet black and straight, her figure severe. She was the granddaughter and greatgranddaughter of Federalists, as I was the grandson and great-grandson of Unitarians,* but that ancient discord between our lineages was, for us, a bond, a fuller possession of our homeland. She lived with her family in a big run-down high-ceiling'd house, in the resentment and savorlessness of genteel poverty. In the afternoons— only very rarely at night—we would go out walking through her neighbor-hood, which was Balvanera.* We would stroll along beside the high blank wall of the railway yard; once we walked down Sarmien to all the way to the cleared grounds of the Parque Centenario.*Between us there was neither love itself nor the fiction of love; I sensed in her an intensity that was utterly unlike the intensity of eroticism, and I feared it. In order to forge an intimacy with women, one often tells them about true or apocryphal things that happened in one's youth; I must have told her at some point about my horror of mirrors, and so in 1928 I must have planted the hallucination that was to flower in 1931. Now I have just learned that she has gone insane, and that in her room all the mirrors are covered, because she sees my reflection in them— usurping her own—and she trembles and cannot speak, and says that I am magically following her, watching her, stalking her. What dreadful bondage, the bondage of my face—or one of my former faces. Its odious fate makes me odious as well, but I don't care anymore.

The Big Picture: From Abraham to Armageddon Down through the ages, the sons of Jacob have survived trials, persecution, and thousands of years in exile from their homeland. The Scriptures foretold the dispersion of the Jews and also of their regathering toward the end of the age. After a long absence from a country left in desolation, the Jews have come home to the land that God promised to Abraham: “…a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety.” (Ezekiel 38:8). The other branch of Abraham’s family—the sons of Ishmael— are the Islamic Arabs that inhabit the lands surrounding Israel. Ishmael’s descendants epitomize the spirit and temperament that the Bible predicted more than three millennia ago: “…his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12). The Prophet Ezekiel tells us that these same sons of Ishmael will be among the enemies who seek to destroy Israel in the end times: “And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land…” (Ezekiel 38:16). The day is soon coming when Ishmael’s descendants will unite as one: “…they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast.” Their ultimate purpose being the fulfillment of a long-held dream: the annihilation of Israel. Muslims have been taught for centuries that the Last Day will not come until they wage a final war against the Jews and rid the world of them once and for all. They believe that only after this is accomplished will Muslims enjoy a golden age of peace, justice, and worldwide Islamic rule. However, the Bible tells us that God has other plans: Before Israel can be destroyed He is going to intervene, and bring to ruin those who seek her destruction. On that day, multitudes of Jews will realize that Jesus is Messiah, and many Muslims will realize that they have made a fateful mistake. Though most are unaware, we, today, are witnessing the fruition of seeds that were planted nearly four thousand years ago with the birth of Abraham’s sons. God promised Abraham that He would make great nations of both Isaac and Ishmael. To be sure, one would be hard pressed to argue that He did not. The Jewish and Arabic peoples have had an immeasurable impact on the world and can now be found at center stage in the arena of world politics and conflict. Thus, the history of mankind will reach its pinnacle, essentially where it began, in a region literally located at the center of the globe; more specifically, Israel and the nations that surround her.

British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria • Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London • They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities • He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan • Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka. He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists. Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh. The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newspapers. He is believed to have arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS, according Monirul Islam - joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police - who was speaking at a press briefing today. Zakaria has openly shared Islamist extremist materials on his Facebook and other social media links. An example of Zakaria Saqib Mahmood sharing Islamist materials on his Facebook profile He targeted Muslims from Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Mr Islam added, before saying: 'He also went to Australia but we are yet to know the reason behind his trips'. Zakaria saqib Mahmood trip to Australia in order to recruit for militant extremist groups 'From his passport we came to know that he went to Pakistan where we believe he met a Jihadist named Rauf Salman, in addition to Australia during September last year to meet some of his links he recruited in London, mainly from his weekly charity food stand in East London, ' the DMP spokesperson went on to say. Police believes Zakaria Mahmood has met Jihadist member Rauf Salman in Pakistan Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was identified by the local police in Pakistan in the last September. The number of extremists he has met in this trip remains unknown yet. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood uses charity food stand as a cover to radicalise local people in Newham, London. Investigators: Dhaka Metropolitan Police believe Zakaria Saqib Mhamood arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS The news comes just days after a 40-year-old East London bogus college owner called Sinclair Adamson - who also had links to the northern city of Sylhet - was arrested in Dhaka on suspicion of recruiting would-be fighters for ISIS. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, who has studied at CASS Business School, was arrested in Dhaka on Thursday after being reported for recruiting militants. Just one day before Zakaria Mahmood's arrest, local police detained Asif Adnan, 26, and Fazle ElahiTanzil, 24, who were allegedly travelling to join ISIS militants in Syria, assisted by an unnamed Briton. It is understood the suspected would-be jihadists were planning to travel to a Turkish airport popular with tourists, before travelling by road to the Syrian border and then slipping across into the warzone.

People Magazine recently paid a movie star $4.1 million dollars. To make a movie? No, $4.1 million dollars was paid for the right to publish pictures of the actor’s new baby. America’s media covered the unfortunate death of singer Michael Jackson non-stop for days on end. We are “mad upon our idols.

Banks have been a frequent target for hackers in recent years, with the vast majority of attacks motivated by financial theft. But not all of them. In the past two years, U.S. banks have been targets of a series of politically motivated attacks from Iran, in which a group of Iranian hackers flooded bank websites with so much online traffic - a method called a distributed denial of service attack - that the sites slowed or intermittently collapsed. Hackers who took credit for those attacks said they went after the banks in retaliation for an anti-Islam video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad. U.S. intelligence officials said the group was actually a cover for the Iranian government. Officials claimed Iran was waging the attacks in retaliation for Western economic sanctions and for attacks on its own systems.

Late on March 17, 1959, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama changed out of his customary maroon robes into khaki pants and a long black coat. Knowing he could carry little, he hastily rolled up a favorite thangka of the Second Dalai Lama and slid it into a small bag. With this in hand, he slipped out the main gates of the Norbulinka Palace under the cover of darkness. Several trusted officials whisked him through the crowds, which had gathered there in an attempt to protect their revered leader, and down to the banks of the Kyichu River where several small coracles awaited to row him and his small group across the river. Early the next morning, having reached the 16,000-foot Che-la Pass overlooking the Lhasa valley, he paused, turned, and cast a long last glance over the Tibetan capital. Implored to hurry by his small guard unit, he quickly began the descent and his march south to the Indian border.1 It would be the last time he would see his city.

It cannot be disputed that glass is manufactured in Nouffi. That previous to the introduction of Islamism in Soudan arts and sciences had reached a respectable attitude, is attested by the ruins of several towns in Bornou, Mariadi, Nouffi and other countries. The ruins of Gambarou, the Bisnia of geographers, covers an immense area, the walls of which were built of burnt clay, extensive palaces, gardens, and other works of art flourished.

where am I going? This society? The whole human race?” These are questions which many of us today are asking urgently, deeply troubled about what we see happening in our world Our concerns may be quite personal ones, centered around our own particular life situation. They may be general ones, related to the state of things as a whole or both. For this is a strange and difficult time, a time when all the old values and traditions seem to have been cut out from under us without anything clear and definitive having been substituted for them. From every direction and every possible source, we’re being bombarded by the newfangled ideas, values and behaviors of the New Age in which we live. The New Age is an age with many interesting features. One of these is confusion. Great numbers of us no longer seem to have a clear sense of right and wrong, good and bad. Under the impact of too much personal freedom and the flood of new ideas and values, we’re falling apart, frightened, uncertain, lost. After all, how is it possible to have certainty about anything when even the most basic, time-honored values are being called into question? In comparison to earlier times, everything around us today seems upside-down and backwards. A great deal of what was previously considered right is now looked upon as outmoded, irrelevant or just plain dumb. At the same time, much of what used to be considered wrong is now accepted as right, normal and okay. Members of the older generation, like myself, still maintain our vision of what things were like in an earlier, simpler, less perplexing period. But when our generation goes, apart from people of strong religious faith, who will be left that still retains a clear vision of a saner, more stable society? That vision will have gone with the winds of change. This turn-about in basic human values and morals has led to a steady unraveling of civilized standards and behavior, not only in the country but worldwide. Brutality, lust and all manner of other evils flourish around the globe; violence, vice and exploitation seem to have become the new order of the day. And fear hangs over the whole world. Those of us who are even slightly sensitive to the currents and energies around us realize that something is wrong-deeply, awfully wrong. And we carry the collective burden of humanity’s pain and turmoil deep within our hearts. Day by day the fear and uneasiness increases. Often we sense that we’re at the edge of a terrible and dangerous abyss, surrounded by intense darkness. As the end of this millennium approaches, predictions of a worldwide Armageddon-like catastrophe haunt our minds. And how can it be otherwise when we sense deep within ourselves that things have gone so wrong that such a crisis is due? For each day, new and deeper holes appear in the social and moral fabric of mankind, and it seem obvious that when the holes become more than the fabric itself, it’s past repair.” source: Suzanne Haneef, Islam: The Path of God, pages 11-12 (PDF Version) Written by an American Muslim, this work presents a brief yet comprehensive survey of the basic teachings on the significance of Islam's central concept, faith in and submission to God. It introduces the reader to how Muslims feel about various aspects of life, how they worship, and how Muslims living in the West practice their religion. Perhaps you have been hearing a lot about Islam and Muslims in the news and are interested in knowing, justifiably, just what this religion is all about. This is the classic English-language book for introducing Islam to non-Muslims in the West. It is a well-balanced book that does an excellent job of covering the basics of belief, practice, and culture, without overwhelming the reader in minutia. This is generally the first book that I recommend to people who are interested in learning about Islam. read her other book: What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims

General Kennedy raised his hand. “Once we’ve destroyed these pigs, are we going to get our payback for their crucifixions?” he asked. The Marine commanders, who were beyond enraged, jumped in. “We found over 153 Marines crucified when we re-secured the Ben-Gurion University campus near Negev the other day,” blurted General Peeler, eyes burning with rage. “I know everyone wants payback for the crucifixions, and I assure you we will have it. Once the battlefields have been secured and the grave registration units move in, they are going to bury the IR forces in mass graves. They will do their best to identify the IR soldiers so that they can be properly marked. Prior to the graves being filled in, they have been instructed to cover all the bodies in pig’s blood, which the Germans and Brits have supplied. We have documented over 5,000 crucifixions of US Forces, so we will bury their dead in pig’s blood in retaliation. They believe that this will prevent them from entering Paradise, so we will test that theory.” A few laughs, snickers and whoops could be heard, mostly from the NCO’s. This was a tactic used by General “Black Jack” Pershing in the Philippines prior to World War One. The US had taken possession of the Philippines during the Spanish American War of 1898. In 1911, a Muslim uprising took place in Mindanao, and General Pershing had the insurgents shot with bullets dipped in pig’s blood and then their bodies were buried with the guts of the pig. This discouraged future Muslim attacks by future Jihadis because they believed they would be prevented from entering Paradise if they were buried with the blood from a pig and its guts. General Gardner’s staff wanted to take a page from history and see if it would make a difference in this war--any small advantage that could be gained was something worth pursuing, no matter how strange or unconventional it may be.

Meanwhile, the constant pressure of Islam was becoming an increasing danger for Europe, and Hungary was in the forefront of the fight; yet this did not awaken the Catholic countries to see the folly of destroying a barrier between them and their most dangerous foe, and the Pope wrote (1325) to the Ban of Bosnia: “Knowing that thou art a faithful son of the Church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate the heretics in thy dominions, and to render aid and assistance unto Fabian, our Inquisitor, forasmuch as a large multitude of heretics from many and divers parts collected, have flowed together into the Principality of Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and to dwell there in safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old Fiend, and armed with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of Catholics by outward show of simplicity and lying assumption of the name of Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheep’s clothing, covering their bestial fury as a means whereby they may deceive the simple sheep of Christ.

As with Lawrence, these other competitors in the field tended to be young, wholly untrained for the missions they were given, and largely unsupervised. And just as with their more famous British counterpart, to capitalize on their extraordinary freedom of action, these men drew upon a very particular set of personality traits—cleverness, bravery, a talent for treachery—to both forge their own destiny and alter the course of history. Among them was a fallen American aristocrat in his twenties who, as the only American field intelligence officer in the Middle East during World War I, would strongly influence his nation’s postwar policy in the region, even as he remained on the payroll of Standard Oil of New York. There was the young German scholar who, donning the camouflage of Arab robes, would seek to foment an Islamic jihad against the Western colonial powers, and who would carry his “war by revolution” ideas into the Nazi era. Along with them was a Jewish scientist who, under the cover of working for the Ottoman government, would establish an elaborate anti-Ottoman spy ring and play a crucial role in creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. If little remembered today, these men shared something else with their British counterpart. Like Lawrence, they were not the senior generals who charted battlefield campaigns in the Middle East, nor the elder statesmen who drew lines on maps in the war’s aftermath. Instead, their roles were perhaps even more profound: it was they who created the conditions on the ground that brought those campaigns to fruition, who made those postwar policies and boundaries possible. History is always a collaborative effort, and in the case of World War I an effort that involved literally millions of players, but to a surprising degree, the subterranean and complex game these four men played, their hidden loyalties and personal duels, helped create the modern Middle East and, by inevitable extension, the world we live in today.

America has been blessed materially beyond all other nations. God has called on our blessed nation for decades to come back to Him. Each year, each day, we have ignored His loving entreaties to repent and be healed. So, what should He do? Cancel His call to repentance? Overlook fifty five million slain innocent children? Ignore America’s betrayal of Israel, when it happens? He actually covered this question in two of the Daughter of Babylon prophetic verses in Jeremiah:             “Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken. Wail over   her! Get balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed.               ‘We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be           healed; let us leave her and each go to his own land,    for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as          the clouds.’ ” (Jeremiah 51:8-9)

as in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where large numbers of women turned out during the June 2009 post-election demonstrations. Clearly, these women’s grievances went far beyond a single rigged election. One explained, “I see lots of girls and women in these demonstrations. They are all angry, ready to explode, scream out and let the world hear their voice. I want the world to know that as a woman in this country, I have no freedom.” This was not surprising, since Iranian law was formulated in scrupulous adherence to the Koran and Islamic tradition and law. Even the Ayatollah Khomeini’s granddaughter, Zahra Eshraghi, declared that under Islamic law, “a woman is there to fill her husband’s stomach and raise children.” And just weeks after President Barack Obama defended the right of women in non-Muslim countries to cover their heads, brave Iranian women were throwing off their head coverings as a sign of protest against the Islamic regime—with no peep of support from Obama. Journalist Azadeh Moaveni, author of the feminist book Lipstick Jihad, noted that “while it’s not at the top of women’s grievances, the hijab is symbolic. Taking it off is like waving a red flag. Women are saying they are a force to be reckoned with.”10

Every house was different. Some had prayer rooms, some did not. Some of the women covered, most did not. Some fasted for Ramadan, some did not. Every one of them shopped. Most had been to that same ball because America was the great place where you could worship many things at once, until now.

Haya', in Arabic, conveys the meaning of shame, though the root word of haya ’ is closely associated with life and living. The Prophet stated, “Every religion has a quality that is characteristic of that religion. And the characteristic of my religion is haya, an internal sense of shame, which includes bashfulness and modesty. Most adults alive today have heard it said when they were children, “Shame on you!” Unfortunately, shame has come to be viewed as a negative word, as if it were a pejorative. Parents are now advised never to “shame a child,” never correct a child’s behavior by causing an emotional response. Instead, the current wisdom suggests that people always make the child feel good regardless of his or her behavior. Eventually, what this does is disable naturally occurring deterrents to misbehavior. Some anthropologists divide cultures into shame and guilt cultures. They say that guilt is an inward mechanism and shame an outward one. With regard to this discussion, guilt alludes to a human mechanism that produces strong feelings of remorse when someone has done something wrong, to the point that he or she needs to rectify the matter. Most primitive cultures are not guilt-based, but shame-based, which is rooted in the fear of bringing shame upon oneself and the larger family. What Islam does is honor the concept of shame and take it to another level altogether—to a rank in which one feels a sense of shame before God. When a person acknowledges and realizes that God is fully aware of all that one does, says, or thinks, shame is elevated to a higher plane, to the unseen world from which there is no cover. In fact, one feels a sense of shame even before the angels. So while Muslims comprise a shame-based culture, this notion transcends shame before one’s family—whether one’s elders or parents— and admits a mechanism that is not subject to the changing norms of human cultures. It is associated with the knowledge and active awareness that God is all-seeing of what one does—a reality that is permanent. The nurturing of this realization deters one from engaging in acts that are displeasing and vulgar. This is the essence of the noble prophetic teachings.

The Prophet (ﷺ) stated that: <> (recorded by at-Tabarâni and graded reliable by al-Albâni) In this hadith, the Prophet (ﷺ) presents an analogy. Our hearts are likened to the moon; just as the moon is sometimes covered by clouds that conceal its light, the heart is sometimes covered by clouds of sin that cover its light. At other times, the clouds go away, and the light shines again in the heart. The light increases when we strive to engage in acts that will increase our eemân.

The Prophet (ﷺ) stated that: «Every heart has a cloud covering it, with the similitude of a cloud covering a shining moon. It suddenly becomes dark when the cloud covers, but its brightness returns once the cloud has passed.» (recorded by at-Tabarâni and graded reliable by al-Albâni) In this hadith, the Prophet (ﷺ) presents an analogy. Our hearts are likened to the moon; just as the moon is sometimes covered by clouds that conceal its light, the heart is sometimes covered by clouds of sin that cover its light. At other times, the clouds go away, and the light shines again in the heart. The light increases when we strive to engage in acts that will increase our eemân.

England: In November 2004, Belmarsh Prison was reported to have plans to spend £1.6 million (equivalent to $2.4 million) on a mosque. The facility already maintained a multi-denominational chapel, but it was rejected for use by the Muslim inmates—some of whom had been convicted on terrorism charges—because the chapel contained crosses, which had to be covered up when the Muslims say their prayers. • Iraq: In April 2007, in the al-Doura Christian area of Baghdad, Muslim militants instructed Christians to remove visible crosses from atop their churches, and issued a fatwa forbidding Christians from wearing crosses.

But rich or poor, educated or not, wearing Western clothes or covered up, they all live, to one degree or another, under the sword of Sharia.

The loss of Abu Talib’s protection was certainly demoralizing, if not detrimental to Muhammad’s physical security. But returning home after one of his painfully violent revelatory experiences, or after suffering another indignity from the Quraysh—his head covered in dirt, his tunic defiled with blood—and not having Khadija there to wrap him in her cloak and hold him in her arms until the terror subsided must have been an unimaginable sorrow for the Prophet.

December 2014, ISIS issued a list of rules for Christians living in the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria. Those who dare disobey risk calling down on themselves the full force of the Islamic State’s brutal enforcement mechanisms—as inhabitants of that tortured city are well aware, accustomed as they have become to public beheadings and crucifixions; the torture of women who are found insufficiently covered or breastfeeding in public; and the stoning of homosexuals (if, that is, they survive being thrown from rooftops). In the ISIS rules, Christians are forbidden to worship in public and to build or repair churches. They are not allowed to pray where Muslims can hear them, to display the cross, or to ring bells. They are not allowed to prevent anyone from converting to Islam. They must not aid the Islamic State’s enemies.

Our media also lavish mega attention on our idols, devoting countless hours of coverage to actors and sports figures, much of the coverage about how they get into trouble. Some networks admit to trying to include some daily snippet of “news” about Britney Spears, or Lindsay Lohan, or some other troubled famous young actor, co-enabled by the coverage and public attention, into their behavior. Some of the nation’s bestselling magazines and weekly newspapers exclusively report on the varied activities of public figures, almost all in the entertainment industry. People Magazine recently paid a movie star $4.1 million dollars. To make a movie? No, $4.1 million dollars was paid for the right to publish pictures of her new baby. America’s media covered the unfortunate death of singer Michael Jackson non-stop for days on end. We are “mad upon our idols.

This evil strategy outlined by ISIS is their true methodology (manhaj) and has no connection whatsoever with the noble character of the Prophet Muhammad who was sent by Allah as a mercy to the whole of mankind and to all of the worlds. This nefarious, power hungry mentality reflects a wicked secular ideology where the means justify the ends, and is impermissible in Islam. This, however, is not surprising, as the whole ISIS project is an attempt at hiding political aims under the cover of Islamic ideology in order to mobilize forces for purely secular and material objectives, such as exacting revenge and seizing power, territory, etc.

Islam means “submission.”1 The faith teaches that Muslims must submit to the will of Allah2 and prepare themselves for the final judgment in order to be able to enter paradise.3 Muslims believe that Allah revealed his will through Sharia, which literally means “path” but is generally translated as “Islamic law.”4 Unlike the traditional Western legal system, which is limited to basic civil and criminal elements, Sharia covers everything from religious rituals and private hygiene to principles of conducting business, criminal punishments, and more. Sharia prescribes, for example, how many times a Muslim must pray, how husbands should treat their wives, and what punishments are to be given for different crimes. It mandates flogging for consuming alcohol,5 stoning adulterers to death,6 cutting off a thief’s limbs,7 and executing apostates and blasphemers.8 Many Muslims around the world do not adhere to the jihadist ideology of terrorists. Most Muslims are moderate, peaceful people who, while following their religious traditions and rituals—attending mosques for worship, fasting, witnessing to others—reasonably coexist with followers of other religions. They do not impose their beliefs on others. They have non-Muslim friends, neighbors, and coworkers with whom they socialize on a daily basis. To these Muslims, Islam is a religion of peace. A small but increasingly significant segment of Muslims (some estimate its size as between 10 and 20 percent),9 however, believe in the supremacy of Islam and Sharia law over any other religion or law and feel obligated to force such beliefs on everybody. This

In the Bible, Ham finds Noah drunk and naked in Noah's tent. He tells his brothers, Shem and Japheth, who proceed to cover their father without gazing at him. When Noah finds out what happened, he curses Ham's son Canaan, saying he shall be “a servant of servants.” Yet, in the earlier biblical account, Noah and his family are not described in racial terms. Before the 16th or 17th century, the racial interpretation of Ham is absent or contradictory. But as the story echoed through the centuries and around the world, variously interpreted by Islamic, Christian and Jewish scholars, Ham came to be widely portrayed as black; blackness, servitude, and the idea of racial hierarchy became inextricably linked. The racist interpretation of scripture was never adopted by the African Coptic Churches, and in Europe, some of the earlier representations of Jesus Christ, Mary, etc. depicted them as being dark-skinned. By the early nineteenth century, many supposed scholars in America supported the belief that African-Americans were descendants of Ham, who were cursed and consequently blackened by their sins, was a primary justification for their enslavement.

Al-Ghazzâlî expectedly takes a rather different approach in the preliminaries of his standard work on the principles of jurispru- dence, the Mustasfâ. His preface (khutbah) sets the tone with a long paean on knowledge. The intellect comes -fi rst, and knowledge fol- lows it. However, knowledge clearly enjoys here much greater esteem and deserves particularly to be stressed in connection with juris- prudence: “Praised be God,” al-Ghazzâlî starts out, “who made the intellect the most desirable of treasures, and knowledge the most prof- itable of merchandise, the noblest of high glories, the most honored of effective and praiseworthy accomplishments, and the most lauded result of everything, so that through its asseveration pens and inkwells have been ennobled, through its study prayer niches and pulpits have been adorned, through the tracing of it pages and fascicles have been embellished, through its nobility lesser men have gained precedence over bigger men, through its splendor secrets and hidden things have been illumined, through its lights hearts and eyes have been -fi lled with light, in its brilliance the sun’s shining brilliance has assumed insignifi cance for the revolving sphere, and in its inner light the outward light of eyes and glances has become puny, so that as a result through its brilliance the armies of the hearts and minds have been enabled to delve into the deepest abysses of obscurities, even though the eyes were too weak for them and they were thickly covered by veils and curtains.” Obedience to God consists of knowledge and intelligence. In this respect, knowledge is again to be rated higher than the intellect.

Islam doesn't ask you to cover your eyes, but to guard them.

It was too embarrassing to admit that a young woman was the most popular politician in the Islamic Republic. In the official tally she came in second, with slightly fewer votes than the older cleric—an injustice that must have riled Hashemi, given the nature of her platform. Hashemi had made her debut in politics by challenging conservative clerics who opposed women’s right to exercise in public. Using her standing as Rafsanjani’s daughter, she argued that there was nothing wrong with fully covered women exercising. An increasing number of old and young women already crowded parks to jog or play volleyball or badminton. But the Basij often harassed and intimidated them to discourage women from exercising. As part of her campaign to defend and expand women’s right to exercise, Hashemi built a bike path for women, increased women’s access to sports facilities such as golf courses and tennis courts, and set up the first women’s soccer and, eventually, rugby teams since the revolution. She also founded the Islamic Women’s Sport Foundation, through which she held games in Tehran involving Iranian athletes and Muslim women invited from other countries.

All during the war we knew that if the Muslim Brotherhood won, our country would become a strict Islamic nation ruled by Sharia Law. This would affect women the most as we would not be able to get jobs, drive or even walk alone in the street. And we’d always have to wear the burka covering our whole body. There was nothing we could do to stop the fighting except pray, so our church, along with many others, fasted for the country’s freedom and for the civil war to end. My pastor felt we needed to pray and fast for our nation for 21 days, so different members of the congregation would take spans of days during this time—some one to three days, some seven, some ten, some the whole 21 days . 

Egypt nevertheless remained socially liberal until the 1970s, when Nasser’s successor, Anwar Al-Sadat, brought the rank-and-file of the Muslim Brotherhood back from exile (they had mostly decamped to Saudi Arabia) and used them to counter the influence of the leftists, who had organized in protest at Nasser’s increasingly despotic rule. During that decade, and throughout the 1980s, Islamic fundamentalism therefore grew in influence in Egypt, and “belly-dancing nightclubs were torched and dancers were barred from television.”36 Today, dancers are free to perform in Cairo’s city center, but they must cover their navels or risk fines or arrest.

Yet Najran was divided. Those in favor of accepting Islam argued that Muhammad was clearly the Paraclete or Comforter whose arrival Jesus had foretold in the Gospels. Those against maintained that since the Paraclete was said to have sons, and Muhammad had no son, it could not possibly be he. Finally they decided to send a delegation to Medina to resolve the matter directly with Muhammad in the time-honored manner of public debate. But Muhammad preempted the need for debate. In a piece of consummate theatricality, he came out to meet the delegation without his usual bevy of counselors. Instead, only his blood family were with him: Ali and Fatima, and their sons, Hasan and Hussein. He didn’t say a word. Instead, slowly and deliberately, in full view of all, he took hold of the hem of his cloak and spread it high and wide so that it covered the heads of his small family. They were the ones he sheltered under his cloak, he was saying. They were the ones he wrapped around himself. They were his nearest and dearest, the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House of Muhammad—or as the Shia would later call them, the People of the Cloak. It was a brilliantly calculated gesture. Arabian Christian tradition had it that Adam had received a vision of a brilliant light surrounded by four other lights and had been told by God that these were his prophetic descendants. Muhammad had certainly heard of this tradition and knew that the moment the Najran Christians saw him spread his cloak over the four members of his family, they would be convinced that he was another Adam, the one whose coming Jesus had prophesied. Indeed, they accepted Islam on the spot.

يجب أن ننتبه فوراً إلى أنّ الغرب، لا المسيحية، هو دائماً في موضع التنافس والعداء ضد الإسلام. لماذا؟ يكمن السبب في افتراض أنّ "الغرب" أكبر من المسيحية، دينه الرئيسي، وقد تجاوز مرحلتها. أمّا عالم الإسلام -على ما فيه من غنى وتعدد وتنوع في تاريخه ومجتمعاته ولغاته - فيقول الافتراض إنه ما يزال غارقاً في الدين والبدائية والتخلف.

The technique was something akin to brainwashing, and slowly it began to work. Natalie packed away her old identity and life and became Leila. She did not know her family name; her legend, as they called it, would be given to her last, after a proper foundation had been poured and a frame constructed. In word and deed, she became more pious, more outwardly Islamic. In the evenings, when she ran along the dusty farm roads, she covered her arms and legs. And whenever her instructors were talking about Palestine or Islam, she wore her hijab. She experimented with several different ways of securing it but settled on a simple two-pin method that showed no hair. She thought she looked pretty in the hijab, but didn’t like the way it focused attention on her nose and mouth.

living the good life does not depend upon believing and obeying Allah at all; it depends upon believing “Allah AND His Messenger” (Sura 9:62, 71, 84, 94; 59:4; 63:5). “The Messenger” refers to the speaker: the speaker is Mohammed. This means that there is no such thing as Islam at all. It is Mohammedanism, but you put Islam there to cover up the fact that the whole religion came from an epileptic, sex-crazy, illiterate, fornicating killer who enjoyed killing people who didn’t accept His religion.

Giustiniani pointed toward the rows of tents. “By my estimations, there are almost two hundred thousand men out there.” Cyprian let out a breath, as though he had been hit in the stomach. “That many?” Radu nodded. “But roughly two men in support for every one man fighting.” “That still leaves sixty thousand? Seventy thousand?” Cyprian covered his mouth with his hand. Radu was shocked to see tears pooling in his gray eyes. “So many. What could Christianity accomplish with a mere fraction of the unity Islam has? How can our God ever withstand the ferocity of this faith?” “Do not blaspheme, young man.” Giustiniani’s tone was sharp, but it softened when he spoke again. “And do not despair. The odds are not so against us as they look.” He patted the stone in front of them with one thick, callused hand. “With a handful of men and these walls, I could hold back the very forces of hell itself.

Shireen Baraka Barghouti lives in a cauldron of hate that often boils over. She’s never been outside the Gaza Strip even though it’s only twenty-five miles long and three miles wide at the narrowest borders, seven miles at the widest. Qasem Soleimani, until his death in 2020, was the major general over Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who invested monstrous sums of Iranian money in the youth of Gaza. In fact, Hamas simply could not exist without the Iranian money he supplied. And to make sure he covered all the bases, Soleimani also funded the rival Islamic Jihad. Shireen doesn’t hold back when speaking about the climate of death and destruction that has helped create. “In Gaza, terrorism is our number-one export,” she said. “How sad that whenever the Gaza Strip is mentioned, people automatically think of radical Islamic terrorists. But how could they not? Our Gaza government is run by them. Iran gives Hamas thirty million dollars a month. “At different times we’ve had al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in charge, to name just a few. New groups form every year, and our young Gaza boys see these ‘freedom fighters’ as heroes to emulate. “In Europe, people idolize soccer players. But not in Gaza. Here, men dressed in green uniforms, toting AK-47s, and shouting ‘death to Israel’ are featured on billboards. “The explosions are enough to cause you a nervous breakdown. A few years ago Hamas fired over ten thousand rockets into Israel in one extended attack over several months. We knew it was just a matter of time before the Israelis responded, and once we heard the drones humming over Gaza, we took cover. “Hamas has done nothing for the people of Gaza. While they line their pockets with millions of dollars, the people go without eating. They are cruel and intentionally keep us in this senseless war with Israel. “You might think because I live in Gaza and grew up Muslim that I hate Israel. But I don’t. I do detest Hamas, however—and all the other terrorist groups that make life unbearable in the Strip.

Imam ‘Ali said, “The Qur’an is but a book between two covers - it is humans who read it, understand it, and implement it.

Islam is unquestionably sexist, patronising, paternal and patriarchal – just look at how it operates. Who has all the power, and who is covered up and left at home? The Koran openly states that women are inferior to men and men are allowed to beat them. Rationally, all Muslim women should reject and denounce Islam. However, no practising Muslim women are rational, so they have to invent all sorts of ways to explain why Islam is wonderful for women. Yes, it’s cognitive dissonance again. Insanely, they claim that wearing a burqa is empowering, liberating, and that they are choosing to wear it rather than being ordered to wear it (although most of them then admit that they interpret the Koran as mandating the wearing of the burqa). They say that they love being in the home rather than in the workplace. They say that they don’t need education because the Koran contains everything they need to know, and so on. People can explain away absolutely anything to themselves! Muslims are the masters at it.

God, we are but a luscious cover of skin punctured by holes. We covet to intake and emit through enthralled skin punctures until we eventually rot our very core. Mesmerized by the pandemonium of senseless noise in life, we are oblivious to the corruption of our mind and soul.

Founded in Buenos Aires in 1974 and relocated to Mexico City after Argentina’s 1976 coup, Tercer Mundo (Third World) covered political events throughout what is today known as the Global South—Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In its first issue (September 1974), the journal discussed Argentina’s nationalist leader, Juan Domingo Perón, events in Peru, the decolonization struggle in Mozambique, dictatorship in Bolivia, and the Middle Eastern conflict. In issue 4 (May 1975), Tercer Mundo analyzed “Islamic Socialism” in Somalia, denounced the U.S. economic “blockade” of Cuba, discussed cultural decolonization in Tanzania, and reported on struggles for economic independence in Angola and Panama. Publishing from Mexico City a few years later, the journal’s issues 20 and 27 (April 1978 and February 1979) trained its anti-imperialist lens on issues commonly affecting Libya, Morocco (Western Sahara), Zaire (Congo), Mexico, Panama, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and Cambodia.

And thus did We show Abraham the realm of the heavens and the earth that he would be among the certain [in faith] When the night covered him over, He saw a star: He said: "This is my Lord." But when it set, He said: "I love not those that set." When he saw the moon rising in splendour, he said: "This is my Lord." But when the moon set, He said: "unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray." When he saw the sun rising in splendour, he said: "This is my Lord; this is the greatest (of all)." But when the sun set, he said: "O my people! I am indeed free from your (guilt) of giving partners to Allah. "For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah.

Many in the West have long proffered that the brain is the center of consciousness. But in traditional Islamic thought – as in other traditions – the heart is viewed as the center of our being. The Quran, for example, speaks of wayward people who have hearts with which they do not understand (7:179). Also the Quran mentions people who mocked the prophet and were entirely insincere in listening to his message, so God placed over their hearts a covering that they may not understand it and in their ears [He placed] acute deafness (6:25). Their inability to understand is a deviation from the spiritual function of a sound heart, just as their ears have been afflicted with a spiritual deafness. So we understand from this that the center of the intellect, the center of human consciousness and conscience, is actually the heart and not the brain. Only recently have we discovered that there are over 40,000 neurons in the heart. In other words, there are cells in the heart that are communicating with the brain. While the brain sends messages to the heart, the heart also sends messages to the brain.

How covered is your body depends on how covered is your heart with Imaan.

Islam was the Marxism of the twenty-first century, a cover for national liberation movements of all stripes. Except that the high priests of Marxism had never promised their followers rewards in the next world in exchange for their deaths in this one.

currently engaged in a systematic campaign to track down and reconvert or kill those who have changed their religion from Islam.”43 Recently, however, having learned a lesson from the Nadarkhani debacle, Islamic authorities couch their charges against apostates in political language, often accusing them of being in cahoots with foreign powers—though human rights organizations monitoring the situation insist that this is just a cover for the apostasy law. While examples of harassment, imprisonment, and even killings of apostates in Iran are many, just a few examples from recent months follow here: In July 2012, a six-year prison sentence for Pastor Farshid Fathi Malayeri was upheld—though, as Barnabas Aid reported, “the political charges [against him] are a pretext for locking up the pastor, a convert from Islam to Christianity, on account of his faith.”44

Khalil seemed to have gotten the communitarianism thing off his chest. Let me ask you something, he said, with mischief in his eye. The American blacks - he used the English expression - are they really as they are shown on MTV: the rapping, the hip-hop dance, the women? Because that's all we see here. Is it like this? Well, I said slowly in English, let me respond this way: Many Americans assume that European Muslims are covered from head to toe if they are women, or that they wear a full beard if they are men, and that they are only interested in protesting perceived insults to Islam. The man on the street - do you understand this expression? - the ordinary American probably does not imagine that Muslims in Europe sit in cafes drinking beer, smoking Marlboros, and discussing political philosophy. In the same way, American blacks are like any other Americans: they are like any other people. The hold the same kinds of jobs, they live in normal houses, they send their children to school. Many of them are poor, that is true, for reasons of history, and many of them do like hip-hop and devote their lives to it, but it's also true that some of them are engineers, university professors, lawyers, and generals. Even the last two secretaries of state have been black. They are victims of the same portrayals as we are, Farouq said. Khalil agreed with him. The same portrayal, I said, but that's how power is, the one who has the power controls the portrayal. They nodded.

Excision of girls, as we have said, was a widely tolerated prac­tice. In principle, it ought to concern only the removal of the lower part of the cap. In fact, as we know, what is involved, except in abnormal cases, is only the semi-prepuce, which covers only the lower part of the clitoris. The excision of girls (khifāḍ) must not therefore be confused with clitoridectomy. The former is tolerated, the latter strictly prohibited. Indeed it is the only indication provided by tradition.

uff! dikhao. Shrutikitaab kheenchti hai. Hamara Pramanik Itihaas. Cover par ishtihaar ke taur par kavitanuma panktiyan hain. Yon: "Islam kee buniyaad pe yah desh Hindustaan mit raha hai. Aa hee jaayega ek din yahan Islam ka dastoor. Ho jaayenge ek din yahan se hindu Kafir kafoor Bandhuon chet jao."" "Bhari-poori Industry chal rahi hai." Shrutiab kitaab pakde hai. "Ekdum se to yeh Industry nahin ban gayee. Hum kahan the, jab yah ban rahee thee?"Hanif poochta hai. Uff, show... Shruti snatches the book: "Our Proven History." On the cover, by way of advertisement, are lines of a rhyme. "Foundation of Islam is wiping out Hindustan One day they will take over And Kafir Hindus thrown out Wake up Brothers" "This is a full-fledged industry," Shruti holds the book. " This industry did not come up just now. Where were we, when it was being put up?" Hanif asks.

throughout Ghazzan’s Empire. Under his successor, Uljaytu Khan (1305–1316), Jews were forbidden to make their annual pilgrimage to the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel. This tomb, located in Kifl, a hundred miles south of Baghdad, was entrusted to the care of a Muslim. Soon the site was covered over by a mosque, from whose minaret the faithful of Islam were called forth to prayer.32

It wasn’t until the first quarter of the twenty-first century when a critical mass of white men began to comprehend that through large scale Islamic immigration, Western civilization once again faced a dire threat from a foreign and entirely masculine adversary. These men of Islam intended nothing less than to seize control of the West from the Westerners under the rainbow cover of multiculturalism and other prevailing tenets derived from that bitch’s brew of white guilt, radical leftism, and the New Testament. Once cannot remain hobbled by feminism when fighting a war against such a loathsome foe. One must be confident of one’s moral and intellectual superiority and not hesitate to be ruthless if one wishes to win. One must remove the flowers in one’s hair, exchange theory for practice, and double down on force. Although Ben was grateful that Sharon seemed to understand this, he knew that didn’t mean she was wrong. - White Like You (2017)

They wore sandy- and light-green-colored camouflage fatigues, carried AK-47s, and wore army boots with red socks topped with white stripes tucked into their trouser legs. Veiled turbans covered their faces, but Issaka could still see the area around their eyes. Though clearly baked by the sun, most of these men had the toffee skin tone of Arabs. They were hell-bent on leaving a wake of destruction as they fled the French army. The trucks stopped and the men in the backs of the trucks held their guns in the air, bouncing the trucks on their tires as they chanted in Arabic, “There is no god but God! We stand up for Islam!” A tall militant in a deep-green turban and camouflage fatigues got out of the driver’s side of the truck closest to the house. He didn’t carry a gun. He pointed a finger at Issaka’s father. “You have some evil things we’ve been looking for, old man.

Ten shockingly arty events What arty types like to call a ‘creative tension’ exists in art and music, about working right at the limits of public taste. Plus, there’s money to be made there. Here’s ten examples reflecting both motivations. Painting: Manet’s Breakfast on the Lawn, featuring a group of sophisticated French aristocrats picnicking outside, shocked the art world back in 1862 because one of the young lady guests is stark naked! Painting: Balthus’s Guitar Lesson (1934), depicting a teacher fondling the private parts of a nude pupil, caused predictable uproar. The artist claimed this was part of his strategy to ‘make people more aware’. Music: Jump to 1969 when Jimi Hendrix performed his own interpretation of the American National Anthem at the hippy festival Woodstock, shocking the mainstream US. Film: In 1974 censors deemed Night Porter, a film about a love affair between an ex-Nazi SS commander and his beautiful young prisoner (featuring flashbacks to concentration camp romps and lots of sexy scenes in bed with Nazi apparel), out of bounds. Installation: In December 1993 the 50-metre-high obelisk in the Place Concorde in the centre of Paris was covered in a giant fluorescent red condom by a group called ActUp. Publishing: In 1989 Salman Rushdie’s novel Satanic Verses outraged Islamic authorities for its irreverent treatment of Islam. In 2005 cartoons making political points about Islam featuring the prophet Mohammed likewise resulted in riots in many Muslim cities around the world, with several people killed. Installation: In 1992 the soon-to-be extremely rich English artist Damien Hirst exhibited a 7-metre-long shark in a giant box of formaldehyde in a London art gallery – the first of a series of dead things in preservative. Sculpture: In 1999 Sotheby’s in London sold a urinoir or toilet-bowl-thing by Marcel Duchamp as art for more than a million pounds ($1,762,000) to a Greek collector. He must have lost his marbles! Painting: Also in 1999 The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting by Chris Ofili representing the Christian icon as a rather crude figure constructed out of elephant dung, caused a storm. Curiously, it was banned in Australia because (like Damien Hirst’s shark) the artist was being funded by people (the Saatchis) who stood to benefit financially from controversy. Sculpture: In 2008 Gunther von Hagens, also known as Dr Death, exhibited in several European cities a collection of skinned corpses mounted in grotesque postures that he insists should count as art.

In the original Orphico-Pythagorean sense, philosophy meant wisdom (sophia) and love (eros) combined in a moral and intellectual purification in order to reach the “likeness to God” (homoiosis theo, [Plato, Theaet. 176b]). This likeness was to be attained by gno-sis, knowledge. The same Greek word nous (“intellect,” understood in a macrocosmic and microcosmic sense) covers all that is meant both by “spirit” (spiritus, ruh) and “intellect” (intellectus, ‘aql) in the Medieval Christian and Islamic lexicon. Thus Platonic philosophy (and especially Neoplatonism) was a spiritual and contemplative way of life leading to enlightenment; a way which was properly and intrinsically intellectual; a way that was ultimately based on intellection or noetic vision (noesis), which transcends the realm of sense perception and discursive reasoning. Through an immediate grasp of first principles, the non-discursive intelligence lead to a union (henosis) with the divine Forms. “Knowledge of the gods,” says Iamblichus, “is virtue and wisdom and perfect happiness, and makes us like to the gods” (Protr.