Dr Kaukab Siddique | Editor-in-Chief ---------------------------------------------------------
Rabi' al-Thani 17, 1426/May 26, 2005 #40
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Please scroll down to article from St. Louis, Missouri, about made-in-America "Islam."
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Quote of the day:

"The extent to which you resist is the extent to which you are free."
[Imam Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, formerly H. Rap Brown.]
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WAR NEWS: [Collected with brief analysis by New Trend's Media Monitor]

IRAQ: U.S. Losses Rising but are not part of the News any more.

In the nine days between May 17 and May 26, the U.S. admitted the loss of 22 of its best troops killed in action but these were not reported in the news. No longer do the media show specific location of related incidents.

On MAY 26, a U.S. Kiowa helicopter was reported shot down and another damaged by "small arms fire" north of Baquba. Both airmen in the Kiowa were killed.Again no details were provided. U.S. losses are now 1646 troops killed, more than 12,000 wounded.

Is it a Shia-Sunni conflict? U.S. media insist that it is. However the reports of attacks by the mujahideen indicate that the targets are supporters of the U.S., be they Kurdish, Shia, Sunni Arab or Turkoman. The most successful attack last month was on Kurdish recruits hired by the U.S. SIXTY were killed by a martyrdom operator who was himself reported to be from the Ansar al-Sunnah which is Kurdish.

In turn the U.S. is killing all those opposed to it. More than 500 SHIAS in the Moqteda al-Sadr movement were killed by the U.S. in TWO days as we reported late last year. U.S. forces stormed into Najaf. U.S. is launching military operations against POPULATED AREAS [Fallujah, Mosul, Al-Qaim, western Baghdad, Haditha] and labelling opponents as "insurgents."

Complicating the situation further, Moqteda al-Sadr's mujahideen exchanged fire for several hours, a few days back, with the so-called Badr Brigade, Shias trained in Iran.

Meanwhile, the smoke-and-mirrors situation took a new turn with reports that the leader of the Islamic forces, Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi had been wounded in battle. U.S. media are playing with this news. It could be a ploy by the resistance, or it could be real. The U.S. thinks this could be a serious blow for the Muslims, but an American general says it won't reduce the resistance at all. It might also be an American story meant to trick the mujahideen into revealing Zarqawi's location.
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AFGHANISTAN:

TWO IMPORTANT ADMISSIONS BY THE U.S.

  1. An American general admitted that AFTER 3 YEARS of war, the Taliban are stiill a viable fighting force.
  2. In the last two months of fighting, 27 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan.
    [Very briefly mentioned with no details at all.]
  3. [New Trend comment: Both items are from Fox News TV of May 21. If you were watching U.S. TV news, you would think, there have been NO U.S. losses in Afghanistan in recent fighting.]
  4. KARZAI, the American puppet in Kabul, visited Washington May 24-25, and begged America to keep its forces in Afghanistan PERMANENTLY. He calls it a "strategic alliance." The fact is, he would not last a day without those 14,000 American troops.
  5. When the Taliban attack Amererican troops, the U.S.'s best soldiers cannot fight them and call in their jet fighters and helicopter gunships. In one such attack by U.S. helicopters, FIVE PAKISTANI CIVILIANS were killed inside Pakistan.
    [Wide off the target!]
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Jamaat al-Muslimeen News [2 items]

Quick Response by North Carolina Muslims Neutralizes Baptist Minister's Attack on the Qur'an

Immediately after a Baptist Minister put up a sign outside his church supporting the desecration of the Qur'an, Imam Badi Ali led a move to get the minister to remove the sign. The Minister came on MSNBC and was very aggressive but when he realized Muslims within his own state were condemning his move, he changed his tune and too back his message and his sign within two days. Here is Imam Badi Ali's statement, which got wide distribution.

On behalf of Muslims for a Better North Carolina and all persons of the Islamic faith, I strongly protest and condemn the flagrantly hateful and provocative sign in front of the Baptist Church in Forest City on a well-travelled highway that says that the Qur'an, Islam's holy book, "should be flushed."
None of us would say that the New Testament should be flushed because we respect what others believe as well as the spirit that aspires brotherly love among human beings. It is an ugly disgrace that the offending church's pastor intends to continue to foster his church's most inflammatory message.

We recognize religious freedom and freedom of speech, but not to inflame our fellow North Carolinians to stir up ancient biases and political animosities.

Badi Ali
President, Muslims for a Better North Carolina
(336) 988-0818
Badi323@aol.com
May 25, 2005
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RESPONSE to Jamaat's REPORT ON QAZWINI's $14 Million Mosque. These Show Places are the Problem all over USA.

We need more Islamic schools and recreations facilities yet more communities build show place masaajid. Where are the priorities of the Muslims? We can build schools with gymnasiums, pray in the school gym and then build a masjid, etc. We could host entertainment for our young people in the gym and keep them from wanting to be with those who are not practicing Islam and wanting to go with their school friends to parties where all types of activities that will harm them take place.

Our leadership is so gender biased that anything that has to do with or primarily serves women and children does not really matter. Who are in schools? Women are usually the teachers and children the students. When will we learn?

I find it strange that most of them can't find $100 a month to give to any charities not controlled by ISNA, ICNA, WD Mohammed or some other male dominated organization. How blind and so very tragic. When will we learn?

These show place masaajid will not house one program to help anyone and definitely will not house a child or woman in trouble for three days even if they have nowhere else to go.

ma salaam
Hadayai Majeed
Muslim Women's Political Action Committee
MWPACommittee@yahoohgroups.com
(mailto:MWPACommittee@yahoohgroups.com)
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Montreal Perspectives
By Jalaluddin S. Hussain

Spreading fear of "terrorist attacks:" Who is behind this Move?+New Low: Pornography and sex for Mental Patients!

Montreal's day-long simulation of a chemical attack on metro station, on Saturday, May 15, 2005, left me wondering as to who are the initiators of this expensive but fear-striking exercise! What was it really meant to achieve? Apparently, as explained to the media, it was meant to test preparedeness of the Montreal's police and firefighting departments. But was it really that simple or had it some more ulterior and insidious motives also? Was this simulation exercise of a "deadly chemical attack", meant to spread fear and paranoia and reinforce an "international terrorist attack" phobia which perhaps our southern neighbour wants us to suffer from?

Do we care to stop the real terrorist attacks (in Iraq)?

It is ironical, bordering on cynical, that while hundreds of people watched this fake "attack" as spectators, and dozens of Montreal police and fire vehicles, with around 80 fire and police cadets, played the roles of rescuers and victims of "chemical explosion", back in Iraq itself, the very real American Coalition's Operation Matador was killing and maiming hundreds of innocent and defenceless Iraqis, in the Anbar province!

Why in Montreal?

The question is why, of all the places, in Montreal (which is comparatively the safest city in all of North America) this anti-terrorist simulation exercise should take place? Who decided on this wasteful expenditure? Was it a political decision or a bureaucratic decision? In these days of Justice Gomery corruption inquiry, into the ruling Liberal Party's Sponsorship projects, which may even result in early general elections and expenditure of a lot of money, why waste money on these fear-mongering simulations? This is the question which need to be properly addressed by the relevant authorities.

Allowing sex in mental hospitals

What is the world coming to? Daily The Gazette reports in its Saturday, May 21, 2005 issue: "Psychiatric hospital lets patients have sex. They will get access to private rooms equipped with beds." Nicole Gagnon, the ombudswoman of the Centre Hospitalier Robert-Giffard, thinks that, "We want to make sex a positive rather than a negative thing"! Starting from the month of May 2005, approximately 60 of the Quebec City (capital city of Quebec province) 700 long-term in-patients will have access to private rooms that are equipped with beds and televisions. These rooms will also feature pornographic movies and magazines, that do not depict violence and degrading images." It is really cynical and laughable. While all around violence is rampant it is considered important that mental patients should not see violence. However, they can have sex (not necessarily with their spouse) and they they can have their fill of ponographic movies!

A dissenting voice

Dr. Pierre Mailloux , a veteran psychiatrist, in Trois Rivieres, Quebec and an outspoken host of a popular AM radio Talk Show, is however of the opinion: How are these (mentally incompetent) people supposed to give their consent to have sex? If they can, they should not be in a mental hospital. It is crazy." A mentally deranged person, having sex and that too in the safety of a mental hospital! Is it the proper way of stopping "relationships between patients" which are already taking place in absence of this new policy? If Nicole Gagnon thinks that sex is a natural desire and "not banning it" will help, she is wrong. This new pomiscuous policy will only create more problems than it will solve.
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Making Islam in America's Image

Fake Muslim "Reformers:" They Want to "normalize Homosexuality" and "Modernize" Islam.

By Umar ben-Ivan Lee
St. Louis, Missouri

Over the last several months various movements that are attempting to show a new face to Islam have been featured prominently in American media outlets. Some of those faces are less than sincere and are the obvious spawn of those hostile to Islam, and they themselves are an active part of a fraud that seeks to deceive Muslims. Organizations that fit this category are those such as the American Islamic Congress. In other words, this is not a real organization, but one organized by non-Muslims, who found gullible Muslims, that seeks to demonstrate that there is support in the Muslim community for the American agenda in the Muslim ummah.

The next group, which represents a tiny fraction of the Muslim community but are now representing Muslims on Meet the Press and PBS, are the liberal left-wing Muslims. This is a group, made up primarily of second-generation American Muslims from immigrant families, who are acting as a proxy ideological army for America. They are deemed as more credible culture warriors to Muslims and they are being promoted by many in America because they have Muslim names and ideals about the future of Islam.

This group tends to be heavily influenced by the Western cultural left and focuses heavily on sexual issues, such as the normalization of homosexuality, and issues of "modernizing Islam". They are following in the footsteps of reformed and conservative Jews and of some of the mainline Protestant organizations (and both of those movements have been in decline for decades as people are craving authenticity over non-committal gibberish).

Like those Jews and Christians, who think of themselves as too intelligent and modern to follow traditional religion, and do not think that they should be confined to any moral standards or a code of conduct, they seek to maintain their Islamic identities without actually practicing Islam and not only that but they want to become the spokespeople to the West for a faith they do not even practice.

The root of their rebellion is not just their level of Westernization or education; but it is their basic belief in the supremacy of Western values over Islamic values and their desire for the values of the West to infiltrate the world of Islam and reform the Muslim World. In other words, they are a proxy army for the West, whose ideas come from outside of Islam, and they seek to change the Muslim world on behalf of those whom they admire and serve. This contrasts to the traditional methodology of Islam of seeking to spread Islamic values and make Dawah to outsiders. The job of Muslims in fact is to spread the light of Islam to the world and to seek to help America while we are living here and not to be seduced by its false promises of materialism, immorality and usury. We take from the good and leave the bad. If they seek to export American cultural values to the Muslim ummah then they are exporting a faulty product and one that will not sell outside of the bourgeois classes who are already upset they were not born to a Western mother.

These individuals consider themselves Muslims because their parents are Muslims and they have an affinity for Eid celebrations, calligraphy and maybe some stories from Islam. Out of pride they do not seek to leave Islam, and because they are generally secular they would not entertain converting to another faith.

In the current fad of being spiritual and not religious, as many say, these people seek to keep a connection with Islam without praying, fasting, following the Sunnah or any of the things that Muslims are supposed to do. They claim they are Muslims but in the same breath will tell you they don't believe the Quran is from Allah and they don't believe in the Day of Judgment and are not sure how good Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was.

Some of these people, like Irshad Manji, Amina Wadud and the Progressive American Muslim Union, openly know that they are being used as a proxy imperialist force towards Muslims and have thrown their lot in with those who are hostile to Islam to one degree or another. They seek to reshape Islam by using Western philosophy and modern political thought and feel they are too superior to the ignorant masses of Muslims to follow Islam as it has been practiced in the past. Living as immigrants, and the children of immigrants, they seek the constant affirmation from their white role models in this society and crave their acceptance more than anything in the world. The inferiority complex of their parents has been passed to them and they are even more willing to submit to the American elite than to Allah than their parents.

There are others who are slightly more credible such as Reza Aslan and Muslim Wake-Up who have maintained some level of dignity and have some thoughtful commentary on the state of Muslims. But even they make the same catastrophic mistake; they seek to galvanize support for their mission from non-Muslims who are hostile to Islam and get funding from them and have ceded the values of Islam in favor of non-Islamic values and seek to systematically attack traditional Islam on behalf of America. This is not the courage of Bilal Ibn Rabah, who told his master Allahu-Ahad, rather it is the cowardice of Abu Jahil, who out of pride would not accept Islam, they follow.

The fundamental question is who is a Muslim and who represents Islam? Should those who don't practice Islam, for whatever reason, or seek to formulate some make-believe religion under the guise of being progressive and call it Islam, and then seek to push those who follow Islam as it has always been to the side represent Islam?

In order to represent Islam you have to first be Muslim and your name can be Muhammad Ali and you can be a Non-Muslim and your name can be John Brown and you can be a Muslim. Being a Muslim has nothing to do with what country your parents came from, mom plus dad doesn't equal Muslim; being Muslim has to do with your Aqeedah.

If you believe in the oneness of Allah (tauheed) and the finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad (pbuh) and you testify to that, and you believe in His revealed books, the Divine Will of Allah, the Hereafter, and the angels you are a Muslim. And what does a Muslim do? The Muslim follows the Quran, because you accept it as divine revelation, and you give the Quran the supremacy over all other knowledge and when you follow the Quran you will follow the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and that is Islam.

Other than that people can call themselves what they want but that's not what being a Muslim is. If you put three wheels on a bicycle it becomes a tricycle and if someone eats chicken they are not a vegetarian. You cannot say you are a Muslim and you think the Quran is just good literature or Muhammad and Buddha are the same and that praying five times a day is just a suggestion or maybe we should lead prayers in Urdu or whatever. That's not Islam, that's just some stuff you decided to make-up and call it Islam. Islam is about submission, and when you do that you are not submitting to Allah, rather you are seeking to become G_d yourself because you are too arrogant to submit to anyone and anything. The reformers laugh at those who follow the Sunnah and glorify the likes of Nietzsche and Kant and they see Muslims as inferior to those in the cafes and gay bars of the West whether they will openly say it or not and they look down their noses smugly at the sister in hijab and think she is too unenlightened for low-rider jeans.

There is no such thing as a cafeteria Muslim and in Islam you cannot create a G_d you are comfortable with instead of the Allah that does exist. One has to make a decision, do I want to be a Muslim or not, and you cannot have your cake and eat it to.
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Q & A

Wrong Time to Discuss Women's Leadership. Let's first Stop Wife Abuse & the Occupation of our Lands.

Letter from Br. Adam in South Africa.
In response to a letter from Br. Ayub in Zimbabwe.

Assalamu alaykum

This is a sensitive topic which requires an expert which I am definitly not. It is for this reason that I have copied Dr Kaukab on this mail. What follows are my personal views. I am not favourably disposed towards female leadership (and I realise Dr Kaukab will differ with me) because I have not been convinced.

As far as a woman leading men and woman in prayer I am going with the general consensus which has disapproved. There is no precedence from the past which supports a woman leading salaah. I know of women leading women and I have read of an extreme situation wherein a woman can lead men but that is not the norm.

As for women being leaders:

The hadith about a nation not being prosperous was classified as weak (if I can recall from an old issue of New Trend) by Dr Kaukab. If this is the case not much more time should be spent on that particular hadith.

However my problem with evidence supporting women's leadership is as follows:
  1. There have never been women anbiyaa (prophets) amongst the 124 000. In the case of Hadrat Maryam (AS) although the Angel did come to her she did not embark on a prophetic mission as in the case of say Nabi Moosa (AS).


  2. Those who support women's leadership would argue the case of the (Bilqis) Queen of Sheba. My view is that I do not know whether she continued being a leader after she embraced Islam. Also the Shariah was really completed in the time of Rasullullah (SAW) and it is from his utterances (hadith) that we should look for guidance obviously with the Quran being the primary source.


  3. Those who are in support of women as leaders also cite the case of Sayyidinah Aysha (RA) who was an alim and her leadership during the battle of the Camel. My view is that being a scholar does not make her a leader. As far as the Battle of the Camel it is a sad event in our history which I do not understand and it upsets me.


  4. The biological issue such as menstruation result in mood swings which I think impairs the ability to lead. In a corporate situatin I do not like to report to someone who is susceptible to mood swings whether male or female. Also pregnancies cause a break in leadership
I would take it Dr Kaukab would add his views which I am certain will differ from mine but are always interesting since it is supported by Quran and Hadith

Was Salaam
Adam
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Response from Kaukab Siddique:

At this time, America's hegemonistic power drive is attempting to disrupt Muslim countries through exploitation of the issue of women's rights and leadership.

Islam cannot be made real by people backed by anti-Islam forces. Hence the moves made by Irshad Manji, Taslima Nasrin, Asra Nomani and others must be rejected. These, at the mental level, resemble the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which was meant enforce land reform and put Afghan women into skirts.

Islamic priorities at this time are as follows: Within that context, we should work to: As for women's leadership, the instances Br. Adam has given , all support the concept of women's leadership. I reject the four points Br. Adam has made but will not discuss them now. I have looked at the statements issued by funded organizations and anti-woman groups, like ISNA here in America, against women's leadership in prayer. I am afraid these statements only prove the inability of these funded people to think.
There is no teaching in the Qur'an or the Hadith which negates women's leadership in any position. If you can find any, send it to me.
However this is not the time for it. For any cause to emerge successfully, the Muslim ummah has to reach the level of Islam at which such development will be natural and indigenous.
American "Islam" is the greatest threat to our way of life right now. When the Taliban told women to envelop themselves in the burqa, they were providing the best solution in a war ravaged land. Without such a literalist interpretation of Islam, America would have turned Afghanistan into a brothel as it did Vietnam and Germany at one time.
There is a time for everything. There cannot be any women's leadership in a nation where the incidence of wife beating and/or abuse is quite high. Men's minds must be decolonized before women can be liberated.
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2005-05-28 Sat 20:14ct
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