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| Rama and Ayodhya, by Meenakshi Jain Aryan Books International; 2013 edition (ISBN: 8173054517, 978-8173054518) |
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"UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States."
"And the number of terrorists who have come roaring out of these polluted British waters is startling. UK-based terrorists have carried out operations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kenya, Tanzania, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, Russia, Spain and the United States. The roll call includes Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, killer of the journalist Daniel Pearl and disaffected, brilliant son of Pakistani immigrants; Dhiren Barot, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Qaisar Shaffi, British citizens and al-Qaeda members who plotted to attack major financial centers in the United States; Mohammad Bilal from Birmingham, who drove a truck loaded with explosives into a police barracks in Kashmir; the "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid, who was converted to Islam at Brixton Mosque in south London; Sajid Badat from Gloucester, a putative second shoe-bomber but who was also caught and is now in jail; and Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Mohammed Hanif, the British boys who helped bomb a Tel Aviv bar in 2003 and killed three Israeli civilians. And let’s not forget Azahari Husin or the "Demolition Man," the Malaysian engineer who belonged to the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah ( JI). He had studied at Reading University in the 1980s, honed his bomb-making skills in Afghanistan in the 1990s, helped mastermind the terrorist attacks in Bali (twice) and finally blew himself up in a gun battle with Indonesian police in November 2005."
"One of the world’s most radical Islamist organizations, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in many countries where it is considered a major threat, has its headquarters in Britain."
"Scarcely less significant is the European headquarters of the radical proselytizing movement Tablighi Jamaat at Dewsbury in Yorkshire."
"Al-Sunnah, the Islamist magazine that calls repeatedly for human-bomb terror operations against the United States, is published from London,"
"Indeed, one could say that it was in Britain that al-Qaeda was actually formed as a movement."
"Many of Osama bin Laden’s fatwas were first published in London."
"The foiled millennium plots of 1999 and 2000, when al-Qaeda planned a series of attacks in Europe, the United States and the Middle East, all led back to London."You know things were bad when Egypt "denounced Britain as a hotbed for radicals" after "Abu Hamza welcomed the massacre of fifty-eight European tourists at Luxor in October 1997". Abu Hamza was "an Egyptian-born former engineering student and nightclub bouncer, who had lost an eye and an arm in Afghanistan and sported a hook instead of a hand", and was allowed to live and preach in Britain for several years, till he was finally jailed in "February 2006 for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred"
"A poll conducted by the Guardian newspaper found that 61 percent of British Muslims wanted to be governed by Islamic law, operating on Sharia principles - "so long as the penalties did not contravene British law." A clear majority wanted Islamic law introduced into Britain in civil cases relating to their own community. In addition, 88 percent wanted to see British schools and workplaces accommodating Muslim prayer times as part of their normal working day."This is perhaps by no means unsurprising - if a community wants more elements of its traditional jurisprudence to be integrated into their adopted country. Perhaps. But what about taking offence at the slightest pretext? What about self-censorship because of fear of causing offence to the easily-offended by vocal minority among Muslims?
"Novelty pig calendars and toys were banned from a council office in case they offended Muslim staff. Ice creams were withdrawn from the Burger King chain after complaints from Muslims that a whorl design on the lid looked like the word "Allah." Various councils banned the concept of Christmas, on the grounds that it was "too Christian" and therefore "offensive" to peoples of other faiths"Or
"There are now more than 140 housing associations in England catering to ethnic minorities; one of them, the Aashyana in Bristol, provides special apartments for Muslims with the toilets facing away from Mecca."So, why not debate this issue? After all, these are fairly existential questions for British society, one would assume. But here one has to tread carefully. It is easy for such debates to get hijacked by extremists on both sides, and for stereotype-driven accusations to fly fast and furious.
"One of the reasons why people shy away from acknowledging the religious aspect of this problem is, first, the very proper respect that should be afforded to people’s beliefs and, second, the equally proper fear of demonizing an entire community. There is indeed a risk of such a discussion exposing innocent Muslims to attack."If the majority of Muslims in Britain do not agree with or subscribe to the extremist views of those within their community, then they need to be more vocal about it. Which they are not. "If "moderation" includes reasonableness, truthfulness and fairness, the reaction by British Muslims to the London bombings was not moderate at all. Yes, they condemned the atrocities. But in the next breath they denied that these had had anything to do with Islam. Thus they not only washed their hands of (sic) any communal responsibility but - in denying what was a patently obvious truth that these attacks were carried out by adherents of Islam in the name of Islam - also indicated that they would do nothing to address the roots of the problem so as to prevent such a thing from happening again."
"In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe published a book called Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States, which explained the Islamic Agenda in Europe. When Muslims lived as a minority, it said, they faced theological problems, because classical Islamic teaching always presupposed a context of Islamic dominance. The book told Muslims to organize themselves with the aim of establishing a viable Muslim community, to set up mosques, community centers and Islamic schools. The ultimate goal of this strategy was that the Muslims should become a majority and the entire nation be governed according to Islam."This is a deliberately and dangerously confrontationalist approach to take, and its effects can be seen even in the beliefs slowly gaining ground among Muslims in Britain.
"Labour was traditionally the party that appealed most to new immigrants, and Britain’s Muslims were no exception. Many Labour MPs, including the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, found themselves representing constituencies with significant Muslim populations. This had a number of consequences, one of which was that some Labour politicians allowed Pakistani politics to influence British politics." And thus you come across the concept of "vote-banks" in Britain. "On the day of the 2005 British general election, Faisal Bodi wrote in the Guardian: "Labour politicians have cultivated the "community leader", the modern-day equivalent of the village chief, whose unique selling point is that he can bring in the vote of the particular ethnic sub-category he belongs to, be it by fair means or rigged postal votes." This seeking of votes goes beyond the shores of the island nation. "According to the bishop of Rochester, Dr. Michael Nazir-Ali, himself of Pakistani origin, a number of Labour MPs with large numbers of Muslim voters need the support of various Islamic leaders in Pakistan who tell their followers in Britain how to vote."
"What makes these fragile egos yet more vulnerable still, moreover, is the pathological inferiority complex that afflicts Muslim society, the exaggerated notions of shame and honor which mean that every slight turns into a major grievance, disadvantage morphs into paranoia, and Islam itself is perceived to be under siege everywhere."One gets the impression that she really wanted to take a sledgehammer at all of Asian Third World, but perhaps thought it more politically correct, in a manner of speaking, to direct this broadside against Muslim society, obligatory refrains of avoiding stereotyping notwithstanding.
"They made the farmer kneel and watch as they disemboweled his wife, cut out the unborn infant, and ran it through with a sword. Then they cut off the farmer’s head."Wahb's reply to Ali's demand that they surrender the killers was typical. "All of us are their killers. And all of us say: Your blood, Ali, is now halal - permitted - for us."
"...the Syrian soldiers carried out their revenge for Othman on the man who had led his assassins. Ignoring orders to take Abu Bakr alive, they sewed him into the rotting carcass of a donkey, then set it on fire. Some accounts have it that he was already dead by then; others, that he was still alive and burned to death."If the brother was a demon, the sister was no less sadistic. "Muawiya’s sister Umm Habiba", sent Aisha a "'condolence gift' of a freshly roasted leg of lamb, dripping with bloody juices. The accompanying message read: 'So was your brother cooked.'"
"And do not inflict mutilation on this man, for I heard the Messenger of God say, 'Avoid mutilation, even on a vicious dog.'"As per Ali's last wishes, Ali's sons set his shrouded corpse on his favourite camel, and "gave it free rein". The camel "knelt some six miles east of Kufa, atop a barren, sandy rise - najaf in Arabic - and there his sons buried the man"
"So when Aisha rode out onto that battlefield outside Basra on her red camel, it was the first time a Muslim woman had led men into war. It was also to be the last."Actually, this particular bit is not quite true, since Razia Sultan, Sultana of Delhi from 1236 to 1240 CE, led her army in battle against Malik Altunia, her childhood friend and governor of Bhatinda. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razia_Sultan)
"Hand-to-hand combat was utterly and horribly visceral."In the end, the battle was fought around Aisha's camel, with Ali's soldiers appealing to her to surrender, and Aisha sent soldier after soldier to his death. "Seventy men were cut down as they held the reins of Aisha’s camel," and Aisha's own armoured howdah was peppered with so many arrows it "bristled like a porcupine."
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"Hardened warriors swore the rest of their lives that they had never seen so many severed arms and legs. It lasted from early morning to midafternoon, and by the time it was done, three thousand men, most of them from Aisha’s army, lay dead and dying."
"Caliph, Muawiya had ruled Syria for close to twenty years, and the whole province - nearly all the land now known as Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine - had become his own personal fiefdom, a powerhouse in its own right."While Muawiya lived in a luxurious palace, he had however escaped any resentment from the people, thanks to his exquisite cunning. He "prided himself on being exactly as generous and precisely as ruthless as he needed to be."
"“If there be but one hair binding someone to me, I do not let it break,” he once said. “If he pulls, I loosen; if he loosens, I pull.” As for any sign of dissent: “I do not apply my sword where my whip is enough, nor my whip where my tongue is enough.”When Ali recalled all governors appointed by Othman, all but Muawiya complied. Ali rejected sage advice from his advisers, who asked Ali to play the same devious political games as Muawiya. Ali would have "nothing to do with such underhand schemes". His advisers assured Ali that he would not have had to do any of the dirty work required to secure allegiance from Muawiya. His aides would do that for him.
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As one of his senior generals put it, “Whenever I saw him lean back, cross his legs, blink, and command someone ‘Speak!’ I had pity on that man.”
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“I do not come between people and their tongues,” he said, “so long as they do not come between us and our rule.""
"...one of his top generals had promised. “I swear I will take him to the desert after a watering, and leave him staring at the backside of things whose front side he has no idea of."Four months later Muawiya replied to Ali's missive with an "openly hostile" letter. Ali's inevitable response was to lead "his battle-tested army north out of Basra to Kufa, a hundred and fifty miles closer to Damascus," This would also lead to Iraq becoming the cradle of Shia Islam. Muawiya, in the meantime, set about manipulating popular opinion in his favor, and this included "a carefully staged campaign to present himself as loath to take action. He would have to be forced into it by the outraged conscience of the people."
""My sons," he said, "the fateful day will inevitably come for your father. Going fast will not make it come later, and going slow will not make it come sooner. It makes no difference to your father whether he comes upon death, or death comes upon him.""As the battle progressed, it was clear that Ali's armies were gaining the upper hand, and it was a matter of perhaps only hours before the war was won. But Muawiya was not defeated. He had a masterstroke up his sleeve. Parchment copies of the Quran were distributed to the army's top cavalry, "with orders for each horseman to spear a single parchment sheet on the tip of his lance and then ride into the enemy lines."
"every time Omar left Medina on one of his many military campaigns, Ali stood in as his deputy. It was a clear sign, understood by all to mean that when the time came, Ali would succeed Omar as Caliph."Omar as the caliph actually "discouraged conversion. He wanted to keep Islam pure - that is, Arab". This would be seen as an affront by the Persians, and who "would convert in large numbers after his death." This reluctance on Omar’s part to discourage conversions also had an economic angle.
"Omar had set up the diwan, a system by which every Muslim received an annual stipend, much as citizens of the oil-rich Gulf state of Dubai do today."More the number of Muslims, lower would be the share of the stipend in each Muslim’s hands. Ergo the policy towards conversions.
"On the one hand was Ali, now in his mid-forties, the famed philosopher-warrior who had been the first man to accept Islam and who had served as deputy to both Muhammad and Omar. On the other was Othman, the pious and wealthy Umayyad who had converted early to Islam but had never actually fought in any battle and, at seventy, had already survived far beyond the average life span of the time."The other men in the room announced, rather pre-empted Ali by announcing, Othman as the third Caliph, and Ali "pledged allegiance to yet another man as Caliph."
"Muhammad had wrested control of Mecca from Othman’s Umayyad clan, but with one of their own now in the leadership of Islam, the Umayyads seized the chance to reassert themselves as the aristocracy, men of title and entitlement, and Othman seemed unable - or unwilling - to resist them."The loudest voice to protest Othman came from Aisha, who called the Caliph a "dotard". She was to do more, but before that, Walid, one of Othman’s half-brothers harboured a not unfamiliar aristocratic disdain for the "residents under his control", and dismissed them as "worth "no more than a goat’s fart in the desert plains of Edom."
"As the whole mosque erupted in condemnation of the Caliph, people took off their own sandals and brandished them in Aisha’s support."History had been created. George Bush, US President, would be at the receiving end of this fourteen hundred years later.
"Abu Bakr was the first to strike, the son of the first Caliph leading the assassins of the third. His dagger slashed across the old man’s forehead, and that first blood was the sign that released the others. As Othman fell back, they piled in on him, knives striking again and again. Blood splashed onto the walls, onto the carpet, even onto the open pages of the Quran—an indelible image of defilement that still haunts the Muslim faithful, both Sunni and Shia."Thus, on June 16th, 656 CE, Ali was crowned "Commander of the Faithful", since he refused to take the title of Caliph.
"Ali was destined to be the only man aside from Muhammad himself whom both Sunnis and Shia would acknowledge as a rightful leader of Islam."However, the bloodsoaked shirt of Othman and the severed fingers of his wife Naila were "on their way to Damascus", while Aisha remained in Mecca.
"Aisha and Ali, the two people closest of all to Muhammad on a daily basis, had barely been able to speak a civil word to each other for years, even in his presence."That the Prophet left behind no son, who could have been seen and accepted by all as his legitimate successor also complicated matters. "though Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, had given birth to two sons alongside four daughters, both had died in infancy, and though Muhammad had married nine more wives after her death, not one had become pregnant." As the author writes, "Or as Sunni theologians would argue in centuries to come, perhaps this late-life childlessness was the price of revelation." The closest the Prophet had come to designating Ali his successor was when, in 632 CE, he had raised Ali’s "hand high in his own" and said, "of whom I am the master, of him Ali is also the master," ". But never did Muhammad clearly designate Ali, or anyone else, as his formal successor. Maybe he knew the fate that awaited his successors, for on his deathbed, the Prophet,
"with his dying breath, repeat his chilling last words three times: "Oh God, have pity on those who will succeed me.""Apart from Ali, then, there were Abu Bakr and Omar, who were the Prophet’s in-laws, who were claimants to the Prophet’s legacy, his "khalifa"
""There are many women like her," he said. "God has freed you from constraints. She is easily replaced.""Now, can you blame Aisha for harbouring a lifelong animosity against Ali? Anyway, to complete the story, Muhammad went into a "prophetic trance" while at Abu Bakr, Aisha’s father’s, house, and uttered words that are "now part of Sura 24 of the Quran", where it was ordained that people slandering a woman would need to produce four witnesses for corroboration.
"Unless there were four witnesses to an illegal sexual act, it said, the accused was blameless, and the false accusers were the ones to be punished. For a wronged woman, there could have been no better outcome, yet the form of it would be cruelly turned around and used by conservative clerics in centuries to come to do the opposite of what Muhammad had originally intended: not to exonerate a woman but to blame her. The wording of his revelation would apply not only when adultery was suspected but also when there had been an accusation of rape. Unless a woman could produce four witnesses to her rape—a virtual impossibility—she would be considered guilty of slander and adultery, and punished accordingly."There was one more chapter in this particular episode, the twisted consequences of which Islamic women wear to this day.
"The sight of her riding into Medina on Safwan’s camel had branded itself into the collective memory of the oasis, and that was the last thing Muhammad needed. In due course, another Quranic revelation dictated that from now on, his wives were to be protected by a thin muslin curtain from the prying eyes of any men not their kin. And since curtains could work only indoors, they would soon shrink into a kind of minicurtain for outdoors: the veil.Upon the Prophet’s death, by "noon of that Monday, June 8 in the year 632", started the task of selecting, perhaps electing, his successor. Whether he would come from the Hashimis or the Ummayads in the Quraysh tribe was a thorny one. A "shura", "a traditional intertribal forum", was called for, which was gate-crashed by Abu Bakr and Omar. After more than twenty-four of debates and speeches, when all were at the point of exhaustion, Abu Bakr and Omar made their "closing move", with Abu Bakr proposing Omar as the "new leader of Islam", Omar in turn proposing Othman’s name (an aristocrat from the Umayyad tribe), and Omar, after there had been a fist-fight in which Ibn Obada, the convener of the shura, was beaten unconscious, Omar proposed Abu Bakr as the caliphate. Abu Bakr, the father of the Prophet’s youngest wife, Aisha, a strong-willed and headstrong woman.
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The Revelation of the Curtain clearly applied only to the Prophet’s wives, but this in itself gave the veil high status. Over the next few decades it would be adopted by women of the new Islamic aristocracy—and would eventually be enforced by Islamic fundamentalists convinced that it should apply to all women."
