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Audio Torrent: Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad’s Conversion to Islam

This is an audio rip of the BBC Radio 3 show Belief in which Joan Bakewell interviews various people about their beliefs. In this show, she interviews Cambridge Don Tim Winter (aka Abdal Hakim Murad) who converted to Islam as a teenager. First broadcast Friday 2nd January 2009 - to read articles by Tim Winter see http://www.masud.co.uk

Joan Bakewell Interviews Cambridge Don Tim Winter about his conversion to Islam

You will need to install a torrent software if you don’t have one. IslamCrunch recommends uTorrent.com (for Windows and Mac).

Once you have downloaded the file, please allow the file to seed so others can grab it quickly.

Much thanks to Sidi Mas’ud Khan for directing us to this audio gem.

Bedtime Music: The Edgar Winter Group - Frankenstein

Originally I was going to use the theme of "instrumentals" this week; however, I've found a couple of other videos that I want to use so the new theme is "music from the 70s." When I originally thought of "instrumentals," one of the first songs that came

LaillahaillAllah & Qasida

Audio of Zikr Brought to you by the Osmanli Naksibendi-Hakkani Tariqat with ijazaat and instruction from Maulana Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani under the direction of Shaykh Abdul Kerim al-Kibrisi

“And Give Glad Tidings To The Believers”

In the name of the Palestinians - by Tariq Ramadan

Startling—and stomach turning : where Palestinians are involved, memory and sense of proportion fail us. The Jewish conscience, justifiably, has long called upon the world’s powers and upon their citizens to remain vigilant, never to forget -in the name of “the duty of memory”- the atrocities, massacres and genocides of the past. But where the State of Israel is involved, we are expected to set all sense of proportion aside, to leap to conclusions. Suddenly, it would be assumed that these are two equally powerful belligerents. After a six-month ceasefire, one of the two parties to the conflict (the Palestinians) is said to have broken the truce by unleashing its rockets. The victim of aggression (Israel) is acting solely in self-defense—if we are to believe the version sold to the world by Israel, and relayed by complacent and complicit Western media with the full support of the Bush administration and of many European governments. The bravest among them can barely bring themselves to point out Israel’s “disproportionate” reaction. What courage!

And, most of all, what lies ! For decades—long before Hamas came to power—the Palestinians have seen their dignity trodden underfoot, their legitimate rights denied. From the Oslo “peace” accords to a succession of negotiations (more frequently compromises), from the repeated broken promises to media circus withdrawal schemes, the Palestinian representatives have achieved nothing for their people. Israeli governments, whether of the Left or the Right, stall for time, resort to lies, summarily execute their adversaries, and dismiss Palestinian civilian deaths as collateral in the name of Israel’s security while continuing to expand illegal settlements and pursue a policy of “facts on the ground.” Many experts, including Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, have confirmed that Israeli policy fails to respect the Geneva Convention ; that it has, by default, made the two-state solution almost impossible.

The Israeli government has fenced in the population of the West Bank (in complete disregard for United Nations General Assembly resolutions and the International Court) ; it has subjected the population of Gaza to a siege coupled with a blockade that has brought hunger, a shortage of medical supplies and care, and mass unemployment ; it has created a state of despair. International humanitarian relief organizations are sharply restricted in their activities ; badly needed food supplies are not getting through. The June 19 - December 19 truce was conditional on an end the siege and the blockade of Gaza, and partial opening the Egyptian border crossing. Neither Israel (nor Egypt) has respected these conditions ; the Palestinian population has been the victim of inhuman treatment, for weeks, months and years now. Are we to ignore these realities in order to justify the massacres now unfolding before our eyes ? Are the Palestinians responsible for their own misfortune because rockets were launched from Gaza ? The failure of memory is compounded by a loss of all sense of proportion : the number of Israeli victims is now multiplied by a factor of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred Palestinian civilians murdered by Israeli government fiat.

Israel flaunts its contempt for the self-styled “international community”, secure in unilateral support of the United States and the silence—in silent complicity—of European governments. An efficient communication strategy and a complacent media establishment (accompanied with the usual dose of predictable disinformation) allows the Israeli government to play for time, to inflict upon a population of one and one-half million human beings an inhuman siege, and now, a full-scale massacre. We have been reduced to spectators and our “neutrality” should have to protect us from our guilty conscience. Cynicism is at its paroxysm when we understand that the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian civilians depend upon the political calculations of Israel’s leaders, eager to demonstrate their strength and determination with a view to the upcoming elections. The Lebanese disarray during summer 2006 should be rectified. Mission accomplished : 80% of Israelis support the murderous operations in Gaza ! Frightening !

Can we expect anything better from the “international community” of governments and states as we observe their reactions, both East and West ? Theirs is the guilty silence of the accomplice ; the hypocrisy ; the waiting game ; contempt for Palestinian lives—for whom the ideal solution would be Jordan, Lebanon, or some “permanently temporary” refugee camps. The time has come to create an international, global non-violent resistance movement against the violent, extremist policies of the State of Israel. We must mobilize world opinion by keeping the Palestinian issue in the public eye through ongoing, scrupulously accurate information ; by writing articles, organizing conferences and demonstrations in support of the Palestinians, and by improving synergy between the efforts and activities of existing organizations. We know this much : the Palestinians may bend, but they will not break. We must continue to defend their legitimate rights on the ground. Around the world, we must support their resistance in a determined, peaceful way. Israel, for all its awesome firepower, has not won the conflict ; Israeli society faces deepening crises. It is a matter of utmost urgency that the State and the people of Israel realize that, for them, there can be no secure future, and ultimately, no survival, without recognition of the legitimate rights and the dignity of the Palestinians. The strategy of playing for time, of willful blindness, of “shock and awe”, of bloodshed and massacre offers no assurance of victory. On the contrary, it is a formula for defeat.

__________

Source: Tariq Ramadan’s website

Motorbikes in bus lanes: where's the beef?

Today an experimental scheme comes into operation in London, allowing motorcyclists to use bus lanes on "red routes" (main roads with stopping restrictions for all or part of the day). They have been allowed to use them in Bristol for some time, but such a measure has been delayed in London for want of a "feasibility study", which is now happening. Naturally, cyclists' groups have complained, because they don't want to share their "special lane" with motorbikers.

Normally, I would agree with them - as a cyclist (and not a motorcyclist) myself, I have personally complained about people motorcycling through a subway under the A3 near my home, which is open for pedestrians and cyclists (who do not have to dismount), but not to motor vehicles of any kind. They have to use the main roads, i.e. the A3 and Malden Road. There is a good reason for banning motorcycles from narrow subways like that one, namely that visibility is restricted as it's a short subway with a sharp dip in the middle. Bus lanes are not like that; you do not cycle in them expecting not to meet motor vehicles, because it's a bus lane, and in London black cabs are allowed to use them as well. So I do not see what the cyclists are complaining about.

Besides which, motorcyclists are also vulnerable, because they are easily knocked off and can suffer worse injuries than cyclists, so they are best off away from other motor vehicles - especially cars (buses and trucks accelerate much more slowly than either cars or motorcyclists). If they are in a bus lane, they will cause far less delay than cyclists might (I recall driving along the side of Clapham Common in a truck, and getting stuck behind a cyclist because the road's lanes were narrow and the pavement was too wide). While some have claimed that the new measure encourages overtaking on the left, I would prefer this to having them coming down the narrow gaps between cars, as they commonly do on the A40; there is plenty of room in a bus lane, and besides, overtaking on the left is legal when there is a slow-moving queue of traffic on the right, as is common near junctions. Motorcycling also causes less congestion and pollution than cars, being smaller and (usually) with smaller engines, and everything should be done to encourage commuters towards less congesting and polluting forms of transport.

The BBC's report says that bikers "have been advised to make sure they know which lanes are open to them as the trial applies only to TfL [Transport for London] bus lanes". You can find that information here, as it's not directly linked off the BBC's website, in five PDF maps and one PDF summary, and it turns out that very few lanes are affected as most bus lanes are not on red routes, but on local main roads, and some of the lanes were already open to motorcyclists, such as the one on the A23 through Brixton. Most are in what TfL strangely calls the "central" area, which covers Hackney, Islington and Lambeth boroughs (yes, all the way to Stamford Hill and Streatham) as well as the City and Westminster (but not Kensington and Chelsea or Southwark), and huge parts of Greater London are unaffected or barely affected. Their maps should really contain information on which routes are not affected, since some bikers would expect the M4 bus lane to be included, but it's not (at least, it's not on the map as motorways are not under TfL control), and since most bus lanes are in fact unaffected.

Finally, there are other problems with bus lanes in London, among them the fact that some of them operate at times when vehicles are parked on the other side of the road, causing traffic to swerve from the other side into your lane, and some are intrusive, cutting in at the apex of a bend (e.g. the start of the northbound bus lane in Mitcham Lane, Streatham) or narrowing the other lanes making it difficult to avoid either the bus lane or the oncoming lane at normal driving speed. I would also advocate colour-coding the parts of signs which advertise operation times, so that 24-hour bus lanes are obviously distinct from peak-hour ones, for example. I am all for making the buses run faster, but not at the expense of danger for other road users, or making them a "fine trap".

M M and M (contd.)

This will probably be the last exchange, Mendacious Mel wrote: I'm sorry but I really don't have time to correct all your grievous misapprehensions -- save to say that yes, the Jews you name are indeed all utterly mendacious on this issue, as is the far left to which they subscribe. I'd really ...

Mendacity Mel and me

Got a reply to my reply and then I replied again: Oh dear, I'm afraid you are just recycling mendacious propaganda. Israel has been under attack from the Arab and Muslim world for the past six decades. Hamas is a genocidal organisation pledged to destroy Israel and murder every Jew. These ...

Melanie Phillips - Gaza

I was incensed by Ms. Phillips' comment that most of those who have been killed by Israel are "terrorists" and so I emailed her: Melanie, I hope you have seen this, your disgraceful comments recently about most of the casualties being "terrorists" is a bare faced lie. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=3b3_1230864719 This morning, I then sent How ...

Muslim bank manager to sue HBOS

A Muslim bank manager who claims she was accused of trying to sleep her way to the top is suing Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) for damages of £16.7m for sex, race and religious discrimination.

Mona Awad, a married 29-year-old corporate manager, says that two of her bosses falsely accused her of having sex with a client, mocked her religion and made sexist remarks.

At an employment tribunal in Nottingham on Wednesday, she will claim one senior employee warned that he would only stop humiliating her in front of colleagues if she had sex with him. A second man allegedly hurled a string of lewd taunts, including a comment that she could not "handle two men".

He allegedly searched for her in the ladies' toilet when she took a break and suggested that cleaning was women's work. She claims he slapped another female employee's bottom at a horse racing event in front of clients.

She also alleges one of the men mocked her fasting during the month of Ramadan as "ridiculous" and said that he did not want to work with Asians.

Awad, who is British-born but of Egyptian origin, claims a third colleague asked her at a Christmas party whether she was an "active Muslim". When she asked what he meant, he allegedly replied: "Do you carry bombs on trains?"

Guardian, 5 January 2008

We keep hearing that Israel is after Hamas; but WE are the targets here

From the blog Raising Yousuf and Noor: diary of a Palestinian mother: "My father last night tried to communicate a single message: We keep hearing that Israel is after Hamas; but WE are the targets here; Civilians are the targets here, not Hamas. An entire refugee family in one fell swoop was ...

War is a Bitter Reality

Ours is a society full of denial.  We like to tell ourselves that we are a peaceful people, but — taken as a whole — no population on the planet has as much blood on its hands within its borders as we do.  And, not population has as much blood of others on its hands [...]

Islam and the Environment: A Conversation

Recently at Talk Islam, we've been having a discussion about the Islamic attitude toward environmental conservation. It started when blogger Umar Lee, an anti-conservationist, posted this entry at his blog. When Talk Islam blogger Thabet called Lee's attitude "ignorance dressed...

It Works Both Ways

By Sujata Chakrabharti, "Moods of the Himalayas, by artist Neena Singh" - Daily News & Analysis - Mumbai, India
Friday, January 2, 2009

Artist Neena Singh has a problem with the way her paintings are interpreted by people.

While Neena loves to paint landscapes, natural surroundings, mountains and the deep blue sea, she is not too happy that people who often don’t have the technical knowledge about art do not look beyond the obvious on the canvas.

In her current series titled Echoes, she has depicted the Himalayas in its different shades and moods.

“I have almost taken for granted that the audience will not go beyond the contours on the canvas and delve deeper into the soul of the mountains,” she says.

To help the layman interpret it better, Neena has also borrowed verses from Rumi, who is considered the Sufi poet of love, as an explanation of the thoughts that have gone behind creating each painting.

Neena’s trips to the foothills of the Himalayas have been her inspiration for the current series. She says, “The mystery of this massive mountain range has made me pay visits several times. Every time after I return, I get a sudden rush of emotions that have to be unburdened on the easel.”

Due to her intense passion for Rumi’s poetry, Neena has learnt several of his verses by heart, and everytime she comes up with a painting, she spontaneously tries to find an explanation in the poet’s works.

So do the verses inspire her paintbrush? She laughs, “It works both ways. Rumi’s poems are very visual. After you read his lines, you can start drawing images out of them. But it can work both ways; often I paint a picture and then suddenly find a connection to an old poem I might have read.”

While Neena says her works are in private collections of many prominent people, her recent admirer is film-maker, Govind Nihlani. Govind, who incidentally also inaugurated Neena’s current exhibition, wrote to her expressing his admiration for her works.

An ecstatic Neena says, “Govind-ji had chanced upon the catalogue of my last collection and told me that my works reminded him of the imagery that is observed in the Japanese Haiku poems.”

Neena’s solo-exhibition is on at the Indusvista Gallery, Fort till January 4.

as the new islamic year begins in nigeria...

Daily Trust: As the new Islamic year begins by AbdulFattah Olajide

georgia judge jails muslim woman over head scarf

60 minutes for Gaza

Click here to take action.  If you didn’t or couldn’t do anything at all, then check out this post here from MuslimMatters.org on some things you can do!

Shaykh Abdul Kerim Sohbet - Friday 28 Dhul al-Hijjah 1429 - 12/26/08

Cast: Yursil

Spiked Online’s Best and Worse of 2008

Spiked-Online runs through their best and worst of 2008, and it’s good to see our Prime Minister gets a mention:

Voted in on a groundswell of post-Iraq War disgust towards former Australian PM John Howard, Kevin Rudd has proven even worse than his despised predecessor. In February he did what Howard had infamously failed to do; he apologised to the Aborigines for the ‘stolen children’ policy. Well, who needs employment and healthcare when you can get an apology from the prime minister? In that shift from the BC to the AD eras (that’s Before Clinton and After Diana), Rudd personifies the replacement of proper socially concerned politics with apologetic performances of emotional correctness.

If reducing the Aborigines to objects of special pleading wasn’t degrading enough, he also set out to implement the Great Australian Firewall, an attempt to block unsuitable online content from the presumably all too easily influenced, monkey-see-monkey-do Australians. Both more patronising and more censorious, Rudd outstrips Howard at every step – and is a lesson in not allowing our understandable fury with the Iraq War to blunt our critical political faculties.