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1,500,000,000/7,000,000,000 are terrorists???? or people are just believe TV a bit too much? http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0222/p99s01-duts.htmlTags: americans, islam, poll, terrorism, us
Current Location: still here
Current Mood:  I am sweet
Current Music: and TV is still on
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Islamic artists were 500 years ahead of Western scientists By Steve Connor, Science Editor Published: 23 February 2007 Islamic artists were exploiting a mathematical principle to decorate buildings with complicated patterns of tiles more than 500 years before its discovery in the West. The decorative tilework that adorns some medieval Islamic buildings has been found to use basic geometric shapes that form a complex and highly intricate tiling pattern which does not repeat itself. In modern mathematics the principle of non-repeating patterns on a flat surface is known as quasicrystal geometry, and the most famous example is known as Penrose tiling, after the Oxford mathematician Roger Penrose, who was thought to have discovered it 30 years ago. However, two American mathematicians believe that near-perfect quasicrystal geometry was used by Islamic scholars earlier than the 15th century to decorate the walls of important buildings. Peter Lu, of Harvard University, and Paul Steinhardt, of Princeton University, said advanced quasicrystal geometry based on 10-sided shapes is seen in the tiling patterns of mosques and madrasas of the Middle East and central Asia, predating its discovery by Western mathematicians by 500 years. "It could be proof of a major role of mathematics in medieval Islamic art, or it could have been just a way for artisans to construct their art more easily," said Mr Lu. "At the very least it shows us that a culture we often don't credit enough was far more advanced than we thought before." In keeping with the Islamic tradition of not depicting images of people or animals, many religious buildings were decorated with geometric star-and-polygon patterns, often overlaid with a zigzag network of lines. Lu and Steinhardt show in a study published in the journal Science that by the 13th century Islamic artisans had begun producing patterns using a small set of decorated, polygonal tiles which they call "girih" tiles. Art historians have until now assumed that the intricate tilework had been created using straight edges and compasses, but the study in Science suggests the Islamic artisans were using a basic toolkit of girih tiles made up of shapes such as the decagon, pentagon, diamond and hexagon. "Straight edges and compasses work fine for the recurring symmetries of the simplest patterns we see, but it probably required far more powerful tools to fully explain the elaborate tiling with decagonal [10-sided] symmetry," Mr Lu said. "Individually placing and drafting hundreds of decagons with a straight edge would have been exceedingly cumbersome. It's more likely these artisans used particular tiles that we've found by decomposing the artwork," he said. The scientists found that by 1453, Islamic architects had created overlapping patterns with girih tiles at two sites to produce near-perfect quasicrystalline patterns that did not repeat themselves. "The fact that we can explain so many sets of tiling, from such a wide range of architectural structures throughout the Islamic world with the same set of tiles, makes this an incredibly interesting universal picture," Mr Lu said.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2296841.ece Tags: arabs, art, civil, islam, science, west
Current Location: Kitechen
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: smelling my lunch actually
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What does a standard pray (namaz?) consist of? Any verses and then improvising as you wish?
Salat (also salah and other spellings, Persian: namāz), meaning to pray, or to bless, generally refers to prayers that Muslims offer to God (Allah) and most commonly refers to the five daily ritual prayers in Islam. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. As such, it is compulsory (fard) upon every Muslim. It is quite commonly known with the Persian word namāz in Iran and Central and South Asian languages such as Urdu, Hindi and Turkic languages.
Five times salah: Fajr or Subh (Dawn Prayer) takes place before sunrise. At moderate latitudes, it begins approximately one hour and twenty minutes before sunrise and ends about ten minutes before sunrise. Dhuhr (Noon Prayer) begins just after the sun has passed the meridian. It lasts until shortly before the ‘Asr Prayer begins. ‘Asr (Afternoon Prayer) begins when the length of the shadow of an object is equal to the object’s length plus the shadow’s length at noon. It ends about 10 minutes before sunset. Maghrib (Sunset Prayer) begins immediately after sunset. At moderate latitudes, it ends before complete darkness approaches. ‘Isha’ (Night Prayer) begins, at moderate latitudes, when the sky is completely dark and ends just before the Dawn Prayer.
To see a flash teaching salah visit the link below: http://www.jannah.com/learn/flashprayer1.html
Who are the Sufism? Sufism is a form of practicing an ascetic way of life. Such an act of worship is recognized by all religions though the way of practicing it differs from one religion to another.
For instance, in India, the Hindus’ lower class tend to go to extremes by inflicting tortures on themselves just with the aim of reaching an exalted level of spirituality. The same applies to Christianity, especially to celibacy.
Also in Persia, there is a sect known as Manism, while in Greece there is another sect known as "Ar-Ruwakiyeen" (People who reject life luxuries). In fact, in many other countries, there are similar groups who are somehow extremist in their beliefs. In a sharp contrast to all this, Islam came with a moderate approach to life and man’s relation with his Lord. It views man as a human being of mind, soul and body, and it has made it clear that all these components need a special care.
This is what the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) made clear to one of his Companions, who took to extremes in worshiping Allah, to the extent that he gave up eating, sleeping and even his conjugal right. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) warned him against that saying: “...Your eyes have a right on you, and your body and your family (i.e. wife) have a right on you. Give everyone his due right.” also he said in another place “By Allah, I am more submissive to Allah and more afraid of Him than you; yet I fast and break my fast, I do sleep and I also marry women. So he who does not follow my tradition in religion, is not from me (not one of my followers).” This shows that Islam maintains moderation in everything. You remember when they dervish group from Syria came to Yerevan, they were so called Sufis ... rotate around themselves as role of praying or being in direct contact with God in doing that!! In all Quran and Hadith you will not see any reference to their behaviors nor methods. Although they appeared in the 8th century as Muslim sector, colonial governments had supported them and spread their teachings in the Muslim countries make it easy to conquer the Muslim countries, simply because Sufis tend to worship God(pray and fast and any sort of basic practices)and live with that not caring what is going on around them, so they do not stand against invaders. (and this is not what God has told us)
Who are the wahabbis? Wahhabism is an Orthodox Islamic movement, named after Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab (1703–1792). It is the dominant form of Islam in most of Arabia Wahhabis see their role as a movement to restore Islam from what they perceive to be innovations, superstitions, deviances, heresies and idolatries. There are many practices that they believe are contrary to Islam such as : Invoking any prophet, Sufi saint, or angel in prayer, other than God alone, Wahhabis believe these practices are polytheistic in nature) . Which is true according to Islam. Celebrating annual feasts for the Muhammad or Sufi saints. (which actually are not allowed in Islam) Wearing of charms, and believing in their healing power. ( all Power is to almighty Allah) Innovation in matters of religion (e.g. new methods of worship, such as many sufi methods).
Sheikh: In language it is the old man. In religion it is the person who has the better knowledge of the basics and details of the religion. You can meet this word nowadays in the Arabian peninsula (Saudiaarabia, UAE, Qatar and so on) in a sense of the “noble”.
Imam: means Leader come from the Arabic root to lead “Amma”, which the same root for the word mother “um”. So the imam can be the leader of the Ummah (Nation) or can be the leader of Salah in a mosque.
Mullah: is not Arabic word used to call the person who has the knowledge of Islam, so he can be the imam or the sheikh in Arabic .
What is the real meaning of jihad and how do you personally understand jihad? How do most modern Muslims understand the word Jihad? meaning to strive or struggle in the way of God. Jihad has a wider meaning in Islamic literature. It can be striving to lead a good Muslim life, praying and fasting regularly, being an attentive spouse and parent or working hard to spread the message of Islam. Jihad is also used in the meaning of struggle for or defense of Islam.
Jihad has been classified either as the greater jihad, the struggle against one's soul , or the lesser jihad), the external, physical effort. Muslim scholars explained there are five kinds of jihad fi sabilillah (struggle in the cause of God): Jihad by the tongue is a struggle of good against evil waged by writing and speech, such as in the form of dawah (inviting people to Islam by telling them about it), Khutbas (speaches), et al. Jihad by the pen and knowledge (jihad bil qalam/ilm) is a struggle for good against evil through scholarly study of Islam, ijtihad (legal reasoning), and through sciences (such as medical sciences) as long as all is in the way of Allah or for the sake of Allh nothing else. Jihad by the hand (jihad bil yad) refers to a struggle of good against evil waged by actions or with one's wealth, such as going on the Hajj pilgrimage, taking care of elderly parents, providing funding for jihad, political activity for furthering the cause of Islam, stopping evil by force. Jihad by the sword (jihad bis saif) refers to qital fi sabilillah (armed fighting in the way of God), where Muslims defends their lands from enemies of Allah by fighting according to Shariaa.
Note that Jihad is not jihad if it is not for God, like taking care of the parents because they give me money or fight enemies to take their land. This can be implemented to any sort of Islamic practicing. My own understanding to jihad is fighting evil especially the inner one, like fighting the temptation of being rich by lying or stealing. Fighting the desire of eating while fasting, or avoid lying to gain something I do not deserve and so on. And of course protect my religion, family, land from enemy attacks and occupation.
Shari'a: refers to the body of Islamic law. The term means "way" or "path"; it is the legal framework within which public and some private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Muslim principles of jurisprudence. Sharia deals with many aspects of day-to-day life, including politics, economics, banking, business law, contract law, sexuality, and social issues. So in few words Sharia is the Islamic law the comes from Quran (word of Allah almighty) and Hadith (the prophet Muhammad's teachings and traditions).
Tags: allah, imam, islam, jihad, prayer, shari'a, sheikh, sufi, wahabi
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Mohammed's Sword By URI AVNERY Since the days when Roman Emperors threw Christians to the lions, the relations between the emperors and the heads of the church have undergone many changes. Constantine the Great, who became Emperor in the year 306--exactly 1700 years ago--encouraged the practice of Christianity in the empire, which included Palestine. Centuries later, the church split into an Eastern (Orthodox) and a Western (Catholic) part. In the West, the Bishop of Rome, who acquired the title of Pope, demanded that the Emperor accept his superiority. The struggle between the Emperors and the Popes played a central role in European history and divided the peoples. It knew ups and downs. Some Emperors dismissed or expelled a Pope, some Popes dismissed or excommunicated an Emperor. One of the Emperors, Henry IV, "walked to Canossa", standing for three days barefoot in the snow in front of the Pope's castle, until the Pope deigned to annul his excommunication. But there were times when Emperors and Popes lived in peace with each other. We are witnessing such a period today. Between the present Pope, Benedict XVI, and the present Emperor, George Bush II, there exists a wonderful harmony. Last week's speech by the Pope, which aroused a world-wide storm, went well with Bush's crusade against "Islamofascism", in the context of the "Clash of Civilizations". * * * IN HIS lecture at a German university, the 265th Pope described what he sees as a huge difference between Christianity and Islam: while Christianity is based on reason, Islam denies it. While Christians see the logic of God's actions, Muslims deny that there is any such logic in the actions of Allah. As a Jewish atheist, I do not intend to enter the fray of this debate. It is much beyond my humble abilities to understand the logic of the Pope. But I cannot overlook one passage, which concerns me too, as an Israeli living near the fault-line of this "war of civilizations". In order to prove the lack of reason in Islam, the Pope asserts that the prophet Muhammad ordered his followers to spread their religion by the sword. According to the Pope, that is unreasonable, because faith is born of the soul, not of the body. How can the sword influence the soul? To support his case, the Pope quoted--of all people--a Byzantine Emperor, who belonged, of course, to the competing Eastern Church. At the end of the 14th century, the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus told of a debate he had--or so he said (its occurrence is in doubt)--with an unnamed Persian Muslim scholar. In the heat of the argument, the Emperor (according to himself) flung the following words at his adversary: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
These words give rise to three questions: (a) Why did the Emperor say them? (b) Are they true? (c) Why did the present Pope quote them? * * * WHEN MANUEL II wrote his treatise, he was the head of a dying empire. He assumed power in 1391, when only a few provinces of the once illustrious empire remained. These, too, were already under Turkish threat. At that point in time, the Ottoman Turks had reached the banks of the Danube. They had conquered Bulgaria and the north of Greece, and had twice defeated relieving armies sent by Europe to save the Eastern Empire. In 1453, only a few years after Manuel's death, his capital, Constantinople (the present Istanbul) fell to the Turks, putting an end to the Empire that had lasted for more than a thousand years. During his reign, Manuel made the rounds of the capitals of Europe in an attempt to drum up support. He promised to reunite the church. There is no doubt that he wrote his religious treatise in order to incite the Christian countries against the Turks and convince them to start a new crusade. The aim was practical, theology was serving politics. In this sense, the quote serves exactly the requirements of the present Emperor, George Bush II. He, too, wants to unite the Christian world against the mainly Muslim "Axis of Evil". Moreover, the Turks are again knocking on the doors of Europe, this time peacefully. It is well known that the Pope supports the forces that object to the entry of Turkey into the European Union. * * * IS THERE any truth in Manuel's argument? The pope himself threw in a word of caution. As a serious and renowned theologian, he could not afford to falsify written texts. Therefore, he admitted that the Qur'an specifically forbade the spreading of the faith by force. He quoted the second Sura, verse 256 (strangely fallible, for a pope, he meant verse 257) which says: "There must be no coercion in matters of faith". How can one ignore such an unequivocal statement? The Pope simply argues that this commandment was laid down by the prophet when he was at the beginning of his career, still weak and powerless, but that later on he ordered the use of the sword in the service of the faith. Such an order does not exist in the Qur'an. True, Muhammad called for the use of the sword in his war against opposing tribes--Christian, Jewish and others--in Arabia, when he was building his state. But that was a political act, not a religious one; basically a fight for territory, not for the spreading of the faith. Jesus said: "You will recognize them by their fruits." The treatment of other religions by Islam must be judged by a simple test: How did the Muslim rulers behave for more than a thousand years, when they had the power to "spread the faith by the sword"? Well, they just did not. For many centuries, the Muslims ruled Greece. Did the Greeks become Muslims? Did anyone even try to Islamize them? On the contrary, Christian Greeks held the highest positions in the Ottoman administration. The Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians, Hungarians and other European nations lived at one time or another under Ottoman rule and clung to their Christian faith. Nobody compelled them to become Muslims and all of them remained devoutly Christian. True, the Albanians did convert to Islam, and so did the Bosniaks. But nobody argues that they did this under duress. They adopted Islam in order to become favorites of the government and enjoy the fruits. In 1099, the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, in the name of the gentle Jesus. At that time, 400 years into the occupation of Palestine by the Muslims, Christians were still the majority in the country. Throughout this long period, no effort was made to impose Islam on them. Only after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the country, did the majority of the inhabitants start to adopt the Arabic language and the Muslim faith--and they were the forefathers of most of today's Palestinians. * * * THERE IS no evidence whatsoever of any attempt to impose Islam on the Jews. As is well known, under Muslim rule the Jews of Spain enjoyed a bloom the like of which the Jews did not enjoy anywhere else until almost our time. Poets like Yehuda Halevy wrote in Arabic, as did the great Maimonides. In Muslim Spain, Jews were ministers, poets, scientists. In Muslim Toledo, Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars worked together and translated the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific texts. That was, indeed, the Golden Age. How would this have been possible, had the Prophet decreed the "spreading of the faith by the sword"? What happened afterwards is even more telling. When the Catholics re-conquered Spain from the Muslims, they instituted a reign of religious terror. The Jews and the Muslims were presented with a cruel choice: to become Christians, to be massacred or to leave. And where did the hundreds of thousand of Jews, who refused to abandon their faith, escape? Almost all of them were received with open arms in the Muslim countries. The Sephardi ("Spanish") Jews settled all over the Muslim world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, from Bulgaria (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in the north to Sudan in the south. Nowhere were they persecuted. They knew nothing like the tortures of the Inquisition, the flames of the auto-da-fe, the pogroms, the terrible mass-expulsions that took place in almost all Christian countries, up to the Holocaust. WHY? Because Islam expressly prohibited any persecution of the "peoples of the book". In Islamic society, a special place was reserved for Jews and Christians. They did not enjoy completely equal rights, but almost. They had to pay a special poll-tax, but were exempted from military service--a trade-off that was quite welcome to many Jews. It has been said that Muslim rulers frowned upon any attempt to convert Jews to Islam even by gentle persuasion--because it entailed the loss of taxes. Every honest Jew who knows the history of his people cannot but feel a deep sense of gratitude to Islam, which has protected the Jews for fifty generations, while the Christian world persecuted the Jews and tried many times "by the sword" to get them to abandon their faith. * * * THE STORY about "spreading the faith by the sword" is an evil legend, one of the myths that grew up in Europe during the great wars against the Muslims--the reconquista of Spain by the Christians, the Crusades and the repulsion of the Turks, who almost conquered Vienna. I suspect that the German Pope, too, honestly believes in these fables. That means that the leader of the Catholic world, who is a Christian theologian in his own right, did not make the effort to study the history of other religions. Why did he utter these words in public? And why now? There is no escape from viewing them against the background of the new Crusade of Bush and his evangelist supporters, with his slogans of "Islamofascism" and the "Global War on Terrorism"--when "terrorism" has become a synonym for Muslims. For Bush's handlers, this is a cynical attempt to justify the domination of the world's oil resources. Not for the first time in history, a religious robe is spread to cover the nakedness of economic interests; not for the first time, a robbers' expedition becomes a Crusade. The speech of the Pope blends into this effort. Who can foretell the dire consequences?
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Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
Tags: allah, christian, islam, jew, middle east, muhammad, peace, quran, uri avnery
Current Mood: grateful
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