I saw an “anti Israel” post on someone’s Facebook timeline. It was a cartoon of someone stepping in dog poop and saying “aww, I stepped in dog poop”, the next picture in the sequence shows the bottom of the shoe with the aforementioned poop and the word “Israel” on it. Now, I’m all for anti Israel posts, but not pathetic denigratory stuff like this. Continue reading Denigration of enemies
Category Archives: Knowledge of the Deen
Making sense of Woolwich…
After the senseless and barbaric slaying of a young British serviceman by two, supposed “Muslims”, we are getting news of Mosques being attacked and fire-bombed, Muslim women being harassed, spat at, abused and having their headscarves ripped off. The senseless actions of these murderous idiots have placed Muslims under threat and danger here in Britain. I fail to understand why they carried this act out? There is no sanction and justification for it in our religion, none whatsoever. “They do it to us, so we do it to them” is not a valid principle in our religion. They have not helped “our women and children” in “our lands” by this act. They have not furthered any cause, Islamic or otherwise. They have made matters decidedly and emphatically worse for Muslims. They have only acted out of some disease deep down in their soul and psyche, it’s a discourse of anger, it’s reactionary emotionalism, it’s psychopathic.
Fighting a war on a battlefield is one thing, face to face with a well prepared opponent, but to run down an unsuspecting innocent person in the street and then butcher him is psychopathic and cold blooded murder. One does not take the life of an animal without apprehension, but this was a human being, a husband, a father, a son.
I am reminded of the story of Sayyidina Ali, the Prophet’s cousin who, when on the battlefield he had an enemy combatant at the point of his sword and was about to finish him off in the heat of battle when the soldier spat on him. Just as Sayyidna Ali was about to run his sword through for the kill, he hesitated. The thought occurred to him as to whether he was going to finish him off in anger for the sake of himself, having been spat at or for the sake of God. Sayyidna Ali, decided it was the former and spared the soldier. When the soldier later asked him for an explanation he became Muslim due to the example set by this noble and righteous man. What example do these murderers set? They are poles apart, I am not sure what religion these guys are following but it certainly not the path the Sayyidna Ali was on.
The only sense I can make of this act and those like it are that there are some deep rooted mental issues that the perpetrators have. Deluded psychopaths, that’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me.
Learn your tradition first!
Rejecting the practice of the religion of what you are already upon without studying it in detail in favour of more [seemingly] “convincing” arguments is crass stupidity. I am concerned that a lot of youth, without taking the time to study their religion properly [according to their Madhhab], leave the tradition that they were on by default in favour of [blindly] following someone [a non-Madhhabi] who quotes Quran and hadith and makes a “convincing” argument. It is easy to “convince” someone who doesn’t really know much in the first place and thus our youth fall prey to misguidance.
When some young people rediscover their faith they end up rejecting their default religious practices as inherited by them through their parents. Whilst many non-Islamic cultural practices may have crept in, the foundations of what they were already upon are solid and established, rooted in the Quran and Sunnah and should not be dismissed out of hand without serious study and contemplation.
My advice to the youth who rediscover their faith is LEARN YOUR OWN TRADITION PROPERLY before you decide to jump ship. As with most things, appearances can be deceiving and none more so than in religion where you think you are going to something more “authentic” and “true” when in fact it is something with a veneer of authenticity based upon a faulty understanding of the religion.
They should also know that the Madhhabs are based on solid foundations and have stood the test of time and all those people from the élite of this Umma down to the commonfolk have all adhered to one of the four Sunni Madhhabs. The call against following a Madhhab is a new one, a bida that has appeared and which has grown more vocal over the last 100/150 years.
One of the root causes of this phenomenon is that most mosques and local religious authorities do not offer any foundational Islamic education nor do they have any concept of pastoral care. Many kids do not enjoy the mosque experience when they are sent as small children to learn the Quran by rote. Often times they are verbally and physically abused and once completing the Quran they leave the mosque with a negative association. Additionally, many youth are alienated from their local mosques and imams because the mosque is usually run by narrow-minded individuals and imams who have little or no command of the English language and who have no empathy or any idea of what the needs of such young people are. Faced with this, these young people go looking for religious instruction and pretty soon they will come across people who will show them “Quran” and “Sunnah” and quote “sahih” hadith and give them “authentic” aqida and all the while they are feeding them a slow poison that is turning them against their families and communities. We can’t blame these kids, after all, they have reached a stage in their lives where they have concern for their akhira and ultimately this is their driving their motivation and they are sincere, the tragedy is that they are looking in the wrong places for guidance because the right places are barren.
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