What it will take:Malaysians who care enough about their country to be engaged; genuine leaders from all walks of life; dreamers, idealists, poets, and prophets; dedication to the national interest; suspension of cynicism; compassion for and connection with each other; noble journalism; commitment to learning; suspicion of hucksters, political and otherwise; quality before profits in business; praise for innovation in all walks of life; insistence on intelligence in leadership; a sense of history; acceptance of the long view.
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, offered the following advice to a man: "Take benefit of five before five: Your youth before your old age, your health before your sickness, your wealth before your poverty, your free time before you are preoccupied, and your life before your death."
Selangor’s religious authorities have clamped down on the state’s PAS leadership, charging deputy commissioner Khalid Samad over giving a sermon without permission and revoking state chief Rani Othman’s religious credentials.
According toHarakahdaily, Khalid was summoned to the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) today and notified of the charge in relation to a sermon he gave in Klang during therecent fasting month.
The PAS party organ also said that Rani, whose credentials expired during Ramadan, had his renewal application rejected.
“I received the credentials last year and applied to extend them but I received a letter from Jais informing me that my application has been rejected and my credentials revoked,” the Meru assemblyman said of the license which allows a Muslim scholar to give sermons without prior permission.
Khalid was charge under Section 119 of the Selangor Islamic Religious Administration Enactment for giving a sermon in a surau at Taman Seri Sementa, Kapar in Klang on August 16 without prior permission.
The Shah Alam MP will face trial on November 24 in the Klang Syariah court.
He told Harakahdaily today that the sermon had touched on the role of Muslims in the religious affairs of the state.
“I gave a sermon saying Islamic justice is not just for Muslims but also for Jews or even those at odds with Islam itself. I was relating it to how we should hear both sides in the case of Jais’s investigations into the church,” he said, referring to the religious authorities probe into alleged proselytisation last month.
Jais had showed up at a dinner event at the Damansara Utama Methodist Church (DUMC) in Petaling Jaya on August 3, claiming that it was acting on a complaint that Muslims were being converted by Christians at the time.
The church had denied the allegations and insisted that the 12 Muslims present that night were attending a thanksgiving dinner by a local NGO.
The contentious raid has escalated religious conflict between Muslims and Christians in the country, with Malay newspapers highlighting allegations of Christians trying to convert Muslims through welfare work.
Our lives are given to us to make use of. Ramadan taught us our potential, we just have to embrace it.
The Prophet Muhammad said, "Allah is kind and loves kindness and gives for gentleness what He does not give for harshness nor for anything else."
And in another narration, "Whenever kindness is in a thing it adorns it, and whenever it is removed from anything, it disfigures it."
Be good to others and be good to yourself. Be the reason that someone has hope in this world, not the reason that someone dreads it.
If at any point I can be of assistance to any of you feel free to reach out to me. I can be contacted through our Islamic Center's website. If you are ever in New York please feel free to stop by at an event or a program. I'll also be getting married in September, so if you are in the area, it would be great to have each of you there.
May your noble intentions be elevated and life's objectives be facilitated as you continue to do all that you do. May your lives be free of any worry, anxiety, hardship or pain and may peace be the core of your existence. May you honor the rights of others and others honors your's. May you be trusted because you are truthful, praised because you are sincere and elevated because you are someone we can all look up to. May you be protected from hearts that are not humble, from tongues that are not wise and from eyes that have forgotten how to cry. Please do keep me in your thoughts -- I will keep you in mine.
A Malaysian political leader has asked political parties in his country to stop using the word “Islam” in their names so that, “nobody can make use of the religion for their political gains.” This progressive thought is ironically closer to the classical understanding of Islam’s sacred texts. For in the early century of Islam, use of the word “Islamic” (Islamiyyah in Arabic) was limited in its scope. When opining on the permissible (halal) and the impermissible (haram) the classical scholars eschewed the blanket usage of “Islamic” or “un-Islamic” often opting instead to using terms such as “valid”, “accepted”, and “allowable” or their antonyms.
Attaching Islam or Islamic to otherwise secular activities such as politics or art is a newer innovation whose proliferation is traceable to the identity movements that sprang up in the Muslim world in the 1960s and 70s. Even if one were to provide convincing raison d'être for the fields of Islamic Art or Finance, how does one explain Islamic Olympic Games, Islamic Music, Islamic Quizzes, etc.? In their quest to preserve identity, Muslims may have lost sight of the big picture.
The proponents of “Islamic-anything” perform a difficult juggling act. In his book “Islamic Finance”, Mahmoud El-Gamal outlines the dilemma faced by the Islamic finance industry, for example. On one hand the Islamic finance industry tries to be similar to conventional finance so as not to be in any jeopardy of national or international laws. On the other hand, the industry portrays itself to be different by using Arabic words to describe mundane secular contracts and attempting to conform to the sacred texts of Islam, even when such conformity is no more than form over function. This dilemma of being same and yet different is also faced by other Islamized disciplines.
Continuing with the example of Islamic finance, it is common knowledge that Islam prohibits riba (usury), gharar (excessively risky) and maysir (gambling) in financial transactions. But creating a separate industry called “Islamic Finance,” has not eliminated riba, gharar and maysir even in financial transactions branded “Islamic” or “Sharia-compliant.” Moreover, Islamic finance has not led to more equitable distributions of wealth or the elimination of the many vices that plague the finance industry. Thus, even in Muslim majority countries, the success of Islamic finance is limited, because users find little to differentiate it from conventional finance.
Since Islam makes no distinction between the sacred and the secular (defined in Webster as “of or relating to the worldly or temporal”), the rebranding of otherwise secular ideas in religious terms, is a contradiction. A cobbler once asked the Protestant reformer Martin Luther how he could serve God within his trade of shoe making. Luther did not ask the cobbler to make “Christian” shoes. He asked the cobbler to make the best shoe possible and sell it at a fair price. Thus affirming a theme consistently present in the sacred texts of almost all religions, namely that being fair and striving for excellence is part of being religiously righteous.
Islam cannot be of service to all humanity if Muslims confine discussions about Islam to issues related to identity only. Instead of being separate but equal, Muslims should integrate without assimilating. A Muslim women weightlifter is trying to do exactly that. Instead of competing in Islamic Games, she is competing in regular weightlifting competition but petitioning the respective sports bodies to allow her to compete wearing modest clothing including a headscarf.
Islamic games or Islamic political parties limit their participation to Muslims. It is natural for people of other faiths to feel excluded even when the limits are not explicit, much the same way Muslims will feel excluded if someone tried to organize “Christian Games.” The Quran in Chapter 49, verse 13, “We have created you from a male and female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each other,” celebrates the plurality of people having a singularity of purpose - getting to know each. How can we know each other if we use identity to seclude us?
Our global struggles today are not between Islam and the rest but between the forces of divisiveness and the champions of inclusiveness, between general welfare for all and the preservation of privileged status for a handful. In such a struggle, Islam can be a force of moderation as long as Muslims treat Islam more as a system of values that can benefit all humanity and less as a “club” where people with certain cultural habits congregate. It is not coincidental that Turkey’s AKP party has grown in popularity despite practicing Muslims governing a secular state, while the identity-driven Islamists in the rest of the Muslim world struggle to find their voices in democratic politics.
Creating an apartheid system of Islamic versus un-Islamic will not address the bigger issues at stake. Subjecting secular endeavors of politics or finance to parochial tests of religiosity will neither benefit Muslims nor the rest of humanity. Rather Muslims should follow Luther’s advice of honestly making the best possible shoe and selling it at the fairest price possible. Actions that benefit the broadest cross section of people, best fulfills the Prophetic mission of being “rahmatul lil alamim” – a mercy to all humanity (creations to be exact).
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