Bangladesh life

Erdoğan calls execution of Bangladeshi opposition leader a ‘historic mistake'

2013-12-15T06:53:00.003-08:00

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Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks at an event in the western province of İzmir on Friday. (Photo: İHA)

13 December 2013 /İSTANBUL, TODAY'S ZAMAN

The Turkish prime minister has condemned the execution of an opposition leader in Bangladesh, calling it a mistake that “history will not forgive.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he had a telephone conversation with his Bangladeshi counterpart, Sheikh Hasina, just hours before the execution but that the Bangladeshi authorities executed Abdul Quader Mollah despite his call.
Abdul Quader Mollah, convicted of committing war crimes during the country's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, was executed on Thursday just hours after the country's Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal.

Mollah's Jamaat-e-Islami party, which is barred from competing in elections but plays a key role in the opposition movement led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), immediately called a nationwide general strike for Sunday. However, others gathered at a major intersection in Dhaka to celebrate the execution, saying it delivered justice for crimes committed four decades ago.

Concerned over the escalation of violence and the emergence of instability in the country, Turkey had undertaken diplomatic efforts to prevent the execution of the leader.
Erdoğan urged his Bangladeshi counterpart to halt the execution on Thursday, hours after the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the execution of Mollah.
He expressed his regret over the death of Mollah to a crowd of supporters in the Aegean province of İzmir on Friday. He said there are nearly 300 cases similar to that of Mollah stemming from the independence war and spoke about the necessity of putting an end such political cases.

“I want to stress in particular that these kinds of investigations, based on emotions, should end and that everyone expects the realization of justice,” Erdoğan said.
He also called on the Bangladeshi people not to “abandon the political fight.”
“Because withdrawal means leaving the square [battle] to other powers and one needs not to tire of the struggle for democracy,” Erdoğan added.
Meanwhile, Ankara strongly condemned the execution Mollah despite international outcry against the move and said it is concerned that the execution will escalate the already high tension in the country.

Davutoğlu also spoke with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, US Secretary of State John Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague in an effort to prevent the execution of the opposition leader and to discuss ways to help maintain stability in Bangladesh.

Ankara issued a statement strongly condemning the execution soon after it happened.
“The execution of the death penalty sentence given to one of the leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, Abdul Quader Mollah, despite all concerns and suggestions voiced by the international community, including our prime minister, has led to a grave sadness and indignation. We harshly condemn this execution; may God have mercy upon him,” said the statement.

Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ offered Turkey's first reaction. He said: “Justice, human rights and the law have been trampled. History will never remember well those who executed Mollah or had the chance to prevent his execution but did not, just as how Turkey does not remember well those who executed former Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, former Foreign Minister Fatin Rüştü Zorlu and former Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan [who were executed following the May 27, 1960 military coup].”

Recalling a letter sent by Turkish President Abdullah Gül to Bangladeshi President Zillur Rahman, Ankara's statement said that Turkey made all diplomatic efforts at the international level to prevent the execution. Last year, Gül had sent a letter to Rahman asking for “clemency” for the five defendants charged with war crimes, including Mollah, at Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) for the “sake of peace in society.”

“Turkey believes that wounds of the past cannot be healed and social consensus cannot be reached this way. We are concerned that the execution of the penalty and continuation of actions with this mentality will lead to further escalation of the tension in Bangladesh,” added Ankara's statement, saying that Turkey will continue to support the people of Bangladesh and wishes for a peaceful end to these critical times in their country.

Mollah's execution was the first ordered by the special tribunal formed by Prime Minister Hasina in 2010 to judge cases of people suspected of crimes committed during the war of independence.

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Hefajat “Long March” in Dhaka: A single event that changed Awami Government’s Calculations

2013-04-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

By VorerPakhi |Saturday 06/04/2013

Since last night till this evening, Bangladesh underwent a new history of people’s upsurge centering round the heart of Dhaka City and also disseminating to some other remoter cities outside her capital; an upsurge, reportedly a biggest one, ever seen in the history of her independent entity.

Many compared this mammoth gathering to the massive revolutionary demonstrations that brought about ‘max change’ in the Arab world over recent times and, at the same time, many more satirically dubbed it as “Bangladesh Spring” connoting the Arab Spring to some positive extent.

The incredible turnout at the Long March called by Hefajat-e-Islam, an Islamic apolitical and non-partizan Organization set up of late to protest against blasphemous acts and actors belonging to the “Shahbagh Movement”, simply proved that a vast majority of the total citizenry of the whole nation are still at one in terms of countering the blasphemous offenders who are admittedly said to have even dared slang Allah Himself.

In a country like Bangladesh wherein about 90 percent of the sum total nationals are Muslim by birth, it’s very unwise to hurt religious sentiments of the ordinary mortals. It’s something like stoning a beehive in a hostile jungle. To live in peace together in a multiethnic, multi-religious and multicultural community is the true beauty of democracy and this sort of peace in public life-living is really impossible and can hardly find its way forward where/if blasphemous offenders are allowed to rock the societal order by their ill efforts.

Last Year, the flames of violence caused by the angry masses in protest of the repulsive movie “Innocence of Muslims” have engulfed the whole world. The riot run against the Prophet-defying film is a glaring instance showing the fact as to how devastating a situation may be in the long run if the offence of blasphemy is not combated in time.

Now, at a time when it has become a global necessity to combat blasphemous actions to let peace prevail on earth, the bloggers and online activists who are principally behind the “Shahbagh Protest” shook the country once again by defying Allah, Prophet and other elements of Islam. We don’t really know why a blasphemous offender can’t be brought to book for “contempt of God”, “contempt of Prophet” or “contempt of religion” if a person can be punished for “contempt of court” or simply for “defamation”.

Awami regime’s indulgence to and patronage for the Shahbagh Movement have actually given rise to today’s anti-government “Long March” and gathering that vibrated the seat of the alliance currently at the helm. About 2 to 3 million people attended the event despite multiple threats, intimidation and all types of obstacles made by the government itself.

The government has even barred the Dhaka-bound transport facilities countrywide with intent to deactivate the march of the people likely to join the event but all these endeavors have failed very abjectly.

Analysts observed that today’s Hefajat-e-Islam Long March and mammoth gathering at Motijheel in Dhaka has, to a greater extent, changed the Awami government’s calculations. This grand event is a severe blow and plain threat to Awami alliance’s secular agenda, no doubt. Most of the countrymen are now looking forward to seeing what agenda Hefajat-e-Islam announces in the coming days. In fact, the people’s calculations are too difficult to predict, too uncertain to change and too unlikely to go in favor of the oppressors.

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Thomas Carlyle's The Hero As Prophet

2012-10-15T10:20:00.001-07:00

Muhammad (salla-llaahu alayhi wa-sallam)

This article form an extract from Thomas Carlyle’s famous work
‘On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History.’
Having no knowledge in Arabic, he formed his judgment on the Quran from the translations available to him assuming them to be fair and sufficient. Carlyle’s presentation of the life of Prophet Muhammad (salla-llaahu alayhi wa-sallam) in a very positive way stands as a very clear, concise, knowledgeable and fair account. For him the Prophet was a genuine man of insight, a great leader, a devout and humble man, yet the truth of his religion was ‘embedded in a portentous error and falsehood.’ But Carlyle gave Islam the highest accolade when he went so far as to state that Islam was ‘properly the soul of Christianity.’

Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, whose work was highly influential during the Victorian era. Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was expected by his parents to become a preacher, but while at the University of Edinburgh, he lost his Christian faith. Calvinist values, however, remained with him throughout his life. This combination of a religious temperament with loss of faith in traditional Christianity made Carlyle's work appealing to many Victorians who were grappling with scientific and political changes that threatened the traditional social order.

The Hero As Prophet. Mahomet: Islam.
May 8, 1840. Lecture II.

“A great change; what a change and progress is indicated here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men! The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his fellowmen; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet.”---

“Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to anyone. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred years. These hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour, than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition. I will believe most things sooner than that.

One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned here. Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we would attain to knowledge of anything in God's true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are the product of an Age of Scepticism: they indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house! If he do not know and follow truly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else be works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straightway.”---

“I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a very poor matter indeed; —a shallow braggart conscious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere!”---

“It is from the heart of the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal reality of things. God has made many revelations: but this man too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all? The "inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding:" we must listen before all to him.”---

“...an earnest confused voice from the unknown deep. The man's words were not false, nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of Life cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To kindle the world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according to God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one.”---

“These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly a notable people. Their country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. Consider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance; by night the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character.”---

“They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred: but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. They had "Poetic contests" among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, at Ocadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, when the merchandising was done, Poets sang for prizes: —the wild people gathered to hear that. One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the outcome of many or of all high qualities: what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous worshippers, according to their light. They worshipped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural objects, —recognized them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong; and yet not wholly wrong. All God's works are still in a sense symbols of God.”---

“The Koreish were the chief tribe in Mahomet's time; his own family was of that tribe. The rest of the Nation, fractioned and cut asunder by deserts, lived under similar rude patriarchal governments by one or several: herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers too; being oftenest at war one with another, or with all: held together by no open bond, if it were not this meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry assembled in common adoration; —held mainly by the inward indissoluble bond of a common blood and language. In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and fermentation among them. Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever transacted in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all people in the world, had in the course of centuries reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, have produced fermentation there.”---

“It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected with the chief persons of his country. Almost at his birth he lost his Father; at the age of six years his Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense: he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, a hundred years old. A good old man: Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favorite son. He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that was left of Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, They must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was more precious than he.

At his death, while the boy was still but two years old, he left him in charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just and rational man as everything betokens, Mahomet was brought up in the best Arab way.”---

“One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all. The art of writing was but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the true opinion that Mahomet never could write! Life in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his education. What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumour of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him.”---

“But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. His companions named him "Al Amin, The Faithful." A man of truth and fidelity; true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. They noted that he always meant something. A man rather taciturn in speech; silent when there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light on the matter. This is the only sort of speech worth speaking! Through life we find him to have been regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even; —a good laugh in him withal: there are men whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them; who cannot laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty: his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black eyes;...., It was a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear.

A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true-meaning man! Full of wild faculty, fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to the Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one can well understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her gratitude, her regard for him grew: the story of their marriage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and her alone.”----

“A silent great soul; he was one of those who cannot but be in earnest; whom Nature herself has appointed to be sincere. While others walk in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man could not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with his own soul and the reality of things. The great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared in upon him, with its terrors, with its splendours; no hearsays could hide that unspeakable fact, "Here am I!" Such sincerity, as we named it, has in very truth something of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature's own Heart. Men do and must listen to that as to nothing else; —all else is wind in comparison. From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer! It is the thing which all men have to ask themselves; which we too have to ask, and answer. This wild man felt it to be of infinite moment; all other things of no moment whatever in comparison. The jargon of argumentative Greek Sects, vague traditions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry: there was no answer in these.”---

“What could all Arabia do for this man; with the crown of Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and all crowns in the Earth; —what could they all do for him? It was not of the Earth he wanted to hear tell; it was of the Heaven above and of the Hell beneath. All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would they in a few brief years be? To be Sheik of Mecca or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood put into your hand, —will that be one's salvation? I decidedly think, not. We will leave it altogether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us.

Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the month Ramadhan, into solitude and silence; as indeed was the Arab custom; a praiseworthy custom, which such a man, above all, would find natural and useful. Communing with his own heart, in the silence of the mountains; himself silent; open to the "small still voices:" it was a right natural custom! Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Ramadhan, to pass the month in prayer, and meditation on those great questions, he one day told his wife Kadijah, who with his household was with him or near him this year, That by the unspeakable special favour of Heaven he had now found it all out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. That all these Idols and Formulas were nothing, miserable bits of wood; that there was One God in and over all; and we must leave all Idols, and look to Him. That God is great; and that there is nothing else great! He is the Reality. Wooden Idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendour. "Allah akbar, God is great;" —and then also "Islam," That we must submit to God. That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him.”---

"Mahomet is the Prophet of God;" this too is not without its true meaning. —The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him with wonder, with doubt: at length she answered: Yes, it was true this that he said. One can fancy too the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the earnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest.”---

“It is a boundless favour. —He never forgot this good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha his young favourite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, through her whole long life; this young brilliant Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "Now am not I better than Kadijah? She was a widow; old, and had lost her looks: you love me better than you did her?" —" No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: "No, by Allah! She believed in me when none else would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, and she was that!" —Seid, his Slave, also believed in him; these with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts.

He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but the most treated it with ridicule, with indifference; in three years, I think, he had gained but thirteen followers. His progress was slow enough. His encouragement to go on, was altogether the usual encouragement that such a man in such a case meets. After some three years of small success, he invited forty of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and there stood up and told them what his pretension was: that he had this thing to promulgate abroad to all men; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which of them would second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the silence, started up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, That he would! The assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the sight there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly broke up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a laughable thing; it was a very serious thing!

As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood. He died by assassination in the Mosque at Bagdad; a death occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others: he said, If the wound proved not unto death, they must pardon the Assassin; but if it did, then they must slay him straightway, that so they two in the same hour might appear before God, and see which side of that quarrel was the just one! Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. One or two men of influence had joined him: the thing spread slowly, but it was spreading.

Naturally he gave offence to everybody: Who is this that pretends to be wiser than we all; that rebukes us all, as mere fools and worshippers of wood! Abu Thaleb the good Uncle spoke with him: Could he not be silent about all that; believe it all for himself, and not trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger himself and them all, talking of it? Mahomet answered: If the Sun stood on his right hand and the Moon on his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he could not obey! No: there was something in this Truth he had got which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature had made. It would speak itself there, so long as the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, and all Koreish and all men and things. It must do that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered so; and, they say, "burst into tears." Burst into tears: he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got was no soft, but a stern and great one. He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this place and that.

Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one of the dismalest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life.

More than once it seemed all over with him; more than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was not to end so. In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, Mahomet fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some adherents; the place they now call Medina, or "Medinat al Nabi, the City of the Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some two hundred miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome.

The whole East dates its era from this Flight, hegira as they name it: the Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's life. He was now becoming an old man; his friends sinking round him one by one; his path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he could find hope in his own heart, the outward face of things was but hopeless for him. It is so with all men in the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had professed to publish his Religion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone. But now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust men had not only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's message, the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let him live if he kept speaking it, —the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man and Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and all men, they would not listen to these; would trample them down by sheer violence, steel and murder: well, let steel try it then!

Ten years more this Mahomet had; all of fighting of breathless impetuous toil and struggle; with what result we know. Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him.”---

“Here however, in reference to much that there is in Mahomet and his success, we are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, —the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, —has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so.”---

“It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they name Koran, or Reading, "Thing to be read." This is the Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world, Is not that a miracle?”---

“It is true we have it under disadvantages: the Arabs see more method in it than we. Mahomet's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written down at first promulgation; much of it, they say, on shoulder blades of mutton, flung pell-mell into a chest: and they published it, without any discoverable order as to time or otherwise; —merely trying, as would seem, and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original.”---

“Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your eyes were open! This Earth, God made it for you; "appointed paths in it;" you can live in it, go to and fro on it. —The clouds in the dry country of Arabia, to Mahomet they are very wonderful: Great clouds, he says, born in the deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they come from! They hang there, the great black monsters; pour down their rain-deluges "to revive a dead earth," and grass springs, and "tall leafy palm-trees with their date-clusters hanging round. Is not that a sign?" Your cattle too, —Allah made them; serviceable dumb creatures; they change the grass into milk; you have your clothing from them, very strange creatures; they come ranking home at evening-time, "and," adds he, "and are a credit to you!" Ships also, —he talks often about ships: Huge moving mountains, they spread out their cloth wings, go bounding through the water there, Heaven's wind driving them; anon they lie motionless, God has withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir! Miracles? cries he: What miracle would you have? Are not you yourselves there? God made you, "shaped you out of a little clay." Ye were small once; a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts, "ye have compassion on one another." Old age comes on you, and gray hairs; your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, and again are not. "Ye have compassion on one another:" this struck me much: Allah might have made you having no compassion on one another, —how had it been then!

This is a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this man. A strong untutored intellect; eyesight, heart: a strong wild man, —might have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero. To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly is miraculous.”---

“Much has been said and written about the sensuality of Mahomet's Religion; more than was just. The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his appointment; he found them practiced, unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not on one but on many sides. His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy religion.”---
“Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, —nay on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest; his common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth.

They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in him than hunger of any sort, —or these wild Arab men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not have reverenced him so! They were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without right worth and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystery; visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: they must have seen what kind of a man he was, let him be called what you like!

No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself. His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations of a heart struggling up, in trembling hope, towards its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made him worse; it made him better; good, not bad.

Generous things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord." He answered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid had now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over the body; —the old gray-haired man melting in tears! "What do I see?" said she. —"You see a friend weeping over his friend." —

He went out for the last time into the mosque, two days before his death; asked, If he had injured any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, "Yes, me three drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to be paid: "Better be in shame now," said he, "than at the Day of Judgment." You remember Kadijah, and the "No, by Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible through twelve centuries, —the veritable Son of our common Mother. Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from cant.

He is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness; does not pretend to be what he is not. There is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he go much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks plainly to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, about himself, "the respect due unto thee." In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel things could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and generosity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate of his heart; each called for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed man! A candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in him; he does not mince matters!

The War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many of them, to march on that occasion; pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a day. What will become of your harvest through all Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was hot; "but Hell will be hotter!" Sometimes a rough sarcasm turns up: He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the just measure of your deeds at that Great Day. They will be weighed out to you; ye shall not have short weight! —“

“Mahomet insists not on the propriety of giving alms, but on the necessity of it: he marks down by law how much you are to give, and it is at your peril if you neglect. The tenth part of a man's annual income, whatever that may be, is thep roperty of the poor, of those that are afflicted and need help. Good all this: the natural voice of humanity, of pity and equity dwelling in the heart of this wild Son of Nature speaks so. Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: true; in the one and the other there is enough that shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But we are to recollect that the Arabs already had it so; that Mahomet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst sensualities, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. In the Koran there is really very little said about the joys of Paradise; they are intimated rather than insisted on. Nor is it forgotten that the highest joys even there shall be spiritual; the pure Presence of the Highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other joys. He says, "Your salutation shall be, Peace." Salam, Have Peace! —the thing that all rational souls long for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one blessing. "Ye shall sit on seats, facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts." All grudges! Ye shall love one another freely; for each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there will be Heaven enough!”---

"There is no God but God." Allah akbar, Islam, sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, of these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idolaters; —displacing what is worse, nothing that is better or good. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; —glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, —is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.”

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History of Bangla Language

2012-09-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

Bangla, being a member of the Indo-Aryan languages, is derived from Sanskrit, and hence appears to be similar to Hindi. It is written left-to-right, top-to-bottom of page (same as English). Vocabulary is akin to Sanskrit, and whilst it is quite difficult at first, there are to some extent similarities with Latin aswell. [1]

Bangla vocabulary shows many influences. In Bangladesh there is obviously a strong Perso-Arabic influence due to Islam. This is seen in the greetings of "Salaam aleykum" (Peace be unto you) and the reply "Wa aleykum as-salaam" (Unto you also peace) as well as "Khoda hafez" (God protect you), the choice of names (Muhammad, Tanvir, Khaleda, Fatema), the names of family members "abba" (father) and "amma" (mother). Interestingly, the subsequent trade routes between the Arab world and the home of the Moguls led to words such as "dokan" (shop), "tarikh"(date), "kolom"(pen) and "bonduk" (gun) entering Bangla. The etymology of Bangladesh's second city, Chottogram, is of linguistic interest. Known as "Shatt' al-Ganga" (Arabic for "mouth of the Ganges") by the Arab traders who patronized the route prior to the discovery of India by the Europeans, the British anglicized the name to Chittagong.

In West Bengal the language situation is somewhat different. Being predominantly a Hindu state, the Hindu greeting is "Namashkar". The way of addressing family members is somewhat different also: "ma" (mother), "baba" or "pita" (father). However, it is in the case of "dada" that confusion arises. For Muslims "dada" is paternal grandfather whereas for Hindus it is elder brother.
Whilst other cultural differences include "goshol kora" (Bangladesh)/"snan kora" (West Bengal) meaning to bathe, "shathey" (BD)/"shongey" (WB) meaning with, "pani" (BD)/"jol" (WB) meaning water and "lobon" (BD)/"nun" (WB) meaning salt [2], these prove not to be an obstacle to learning Bangla. They are simply something to be aware of just like "lift" (GB English) and "elevator" (US English). A strong influence of English in Bangla is easily noticeable. Primarily, during the days of the Raj many words of English origin such as "tebil" (table), "tiffin" (archaic in modern day English meaning snack box) entered Bangla. In more recent time the ever rising global nature of English has lead to words such as "television", "telephone", "video" and "radio" being adopted by Bangla. However, unlike India, there has never been the need for English as a lingua franca and thus Bangla is the state language of Bangladesh.

Culturally, Bangla is very close to the hearts of Bangladeshis. There is without a doubt many reasons for this: following partition (1947) of India and the departure of the educated Hindu classes in the administration, the Bangladeshi intellectuals felt the need of Bangla as a means of identifying their culture and nationalism. This is exemplified by the fact that Bangla was crucial in precipitating the events of the Bangladeshi War of Independence (1971) for the following reasons.

The partition of British India led to the creation of India and Pakistan. Pakistan - a country made of two regions physically divided by the land mass (1600 kilometers) of India, yet theoretically united by religion (Islam). However, the differences between the predominantly Urdu speaking province (West Pakistan - modern day Pakistan) and that of the predominantly Bangla speaking province (East Pakistan - now the independent state of Bangladesh) were great.

The uniting factor of Islam was to prove not enough to overcome the economic, political and social differences. The differences and inequalities of the West Pakistani administrative centre stirred up a sense of Bangla nationalism which the Muslim League - in its desire to create a Muslim homeland and so end Hindu dominance - had not calculated. The economic, political and social inequalities were exacerbated with time.

The Pakistan government's declaration that `Urdu and only Urdu' would be the national language led to a language movement which quickly became the Bangla national movement. The death of 12 students who were killed by the Pakistani army during the 1952 riots in Dhaka is commemorated by a stark statue (Shohid Minaar - the martyr's tower) in Dhaka near Dhaka Medical College Hospital. The image of which appears on stamps and on the two taka note (See picture).

Bangla, like English, has distinct linguistic tracts. Whilst in English vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon/German stock is much more prevalent in everyday parlance, whereas words of French derivation are more educated and those of Latin stock show a further level of education as exemplified by the words: holy (heilig in German), sacred (sacré in French) and consecrated (consecrãre in Latin) a similar situation arises in Bangla.

As opposed to being a concept of the level of education, the distinct choice of word stock is more to do with a political/religious/social inclination. The words "nobo"/"notun", meaning new, are not interchangeable. "nobo" is used in auspicious circumstances hence to wish someone "Happy New Year" one says "Shubo nobo bosho", whereas "notun" is used in everyday language as exemplified by "I have a new car" renders "Ami notun gari achi". However, the word "victory" can be translated into Bangla in two ways. The choice of the word "joy" in proclaiming independence from Pakistan (1971) was crucial. For "joy" is a very Bangla word as opposed to "zindabad" which with its Urdu roots would have been a most inappropriate choice.

Bangla literature

"Fear not, comes the message from
the direction of the rising sun,
Those that will give life to the last throb

will diminish not, never"

-Rabindranath Tagore-

Bangla literature dates back to the 12th Century. In modern times it was the first Indian language to show the influence of Western literary styles, and in 1913 the Bangla poet and philosopher Rabindrananth Tagore (1861 - 1941) was the first Asian novelist to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The award was for an English translation of his mystical poem "Gitanjali" (Song offerings).

Modern day poets include Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899 - 1976) "bidrohi kobi" (the revolutionary poet) and Jasimuddin (1903 - 1976) "Polli kobi".

Rabindra (Rabindranath Tagore, like all writers from the Indian sub-continent is known by first name, rather than by surname as is the practise in the West) besides being a literary artist, was the Indian subcontinent's greatest artist, an innovative musician (responsible for scores of songs including both the Bangladesh and Indian national anthems) and a social reformer.

Kazi Nazrul Islam's revolutionary poetry and sense of Bengali nationalism developped rapport with the Bengali Language Movement of the 1950's and 1960's which ultimately lead to the estblishment of Bangladesh as a sovereign state. In 1972 he moved from Culcutta to Bangladesh and was made the national poet.
Jasimuddin, is recognized as the embodiment of Bengali folk culture as his inspiration was derived from the life of peasant farmer, fishermen, boatmen and the wandering gypsies.

Bangla alphabet

To start off with Bangla does not have the concept of upper or lower case letters. When learning Bangla it is best to try to get to grips with the alphabet as

(i) the sooner one learns the alphabet, the more aware one is of the complicated sound system which is nearly impossible to represent in Latin script;
(ii) the Bangla alphabet, unlike the Greek and Roman alphabets, is arranged in a logical fashion: Vowels first, then consonants (velars, palatals, retroflex, dentals, labials), semi-vowels and dipthongs and
(iii) transliterations tend to be very poor as most Bangla is transliterated via Hindi. Thus the implicit 'o' (after a consonant) in Bangla, is replaced with the implicit 'a' (after a consonant) of Hindi. This is best demonstrated with the famous Bangla author, film-director Satyajit Rai - a more appropriate transliteration of his name would be Shotojit Rai.

Dr. Hilali's "Learning Bengali" [3] has an introduction to the vowel and consonant system of Bangla, which whilst it is only a few pages, is comprehensive. The following information is intended to be a brief overview of Bangla.

As to the vowels there are eleven vowels in Bengali with seven sounds - long and short. All Bangla vowels can be nasalised by using the nasal sign called "chondrobindu" (meaning moon dot).

All Bangla vowels in the initial position of a word retain their original shape (see table below to see the traditional arrangement of Bangla vowels)

However, with the exception of the first vowel ("a") which has no signature and is always implicit in the consonant , they all change their shape when used with a consonant. The new shape, a signature (known in Bangla as a "kar"), then might proceed, come after, be around or at the bottom of the consonant.
As to consonants Bangla includes 39 characters. However, these 39 characters number no more than 29 sounds.

As one starts to learn words, begins to read letters and newspapers one comes across an array of letters not previously seen - conjuncts. These are the amalgamation of two or three sounds into one specific letter. Whilst in English for example "s" and "t" are two specific letters, which when said together produce one sound "st" and are written as two letters next to each other, this is not the case in Bangla. In the case of the word "London", the conjunct of "nd" is recognizable as the two letters are simply written on top of each other. However, in other cases, for example "bondhu" the resulting conjunct is a character which is hardly recognizable and needs to be learnt.

Bangla grammar

Grammatically, Bangla has some major differences from English. However, if one has previously studied foreign languages and has a concept of grammar we believe it is relatively easy. Like German, there are many impersonal constructions. When expressing coldness/hunger the expression is "amar thaan'da lagch'he" (Mir ist kalt) "amar khidaa legech'he" (Mir ist hungrig), which literally means "to me there is cold"/"to me there is hunger".

Like Slavonic languages there is not a separate word for "the" or "a". Therefore the word "desh" may render country or countries. While it is usually obvious from context/grammatical agreement etc.,. the addition of the suffix "ta" ("deshta") renders "the country". Similarly, if the word "ek" (one) appears before the noun, it is evident that it refers to "one country". However, where it is to be "ekta" ("ek" plus the suffix "ta") this would be indicative that it were this one specific country. Punctuation, with the exception of the full-stop, is the same as English puctuation. The end of a sentence in Bangla is indicated by a "dari" (full-stop) which is a straight line running vertical to the last word of the sentence.

#References
Kenneth Katzner, 'The Languages of the World', Routledge, 1995.
William Radice, 'Teach yourself Bengali', Hodder and Stoughton 1994.
M R Hilali, 'Learning Bengali', Ruposhi Bangla (UK) Ltd., 1990.

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When Imam Malik met Abu Hanifa (R)

2012-09-10T07:02:00.007-07:00

Before Malik and Abu-Hanifa’s encounter, Imam Malik used to say, “Beware of the people of opinion.” Abu-Hanifa’s school was called the “school of opinion.” Before their meeting, there was a lot of talk and exchange of letters but they only met during the rituals of the Hajj.

When they finally met, they chose to address three issues which were viewed differently by each party. The first jurisprudential issue was about how to address hypothetical questions; things that had not taken place yet. In Imam Malik’s juristic school of thought, we should not imagine situations and ask about things that have not happened, as this distracts people from already existing issues and lead to controversy. Imam Malik brought his evidence from various ayahs and ahadith. He stated the ayah where Allah (SWT) says what can be translated as, “They ask you concerning the new moons (Literally: crescents).” (TMQ, 2:189). Such questions are meaningless. Allah (SWT) replies in the ayah, that can be translated as, “Say, “They are fixed times for mankind, and (for) the Pilgrimage.” (TMQ, 2:189)

His other evidence was that Omar Ibnul-Khattab (RA) cursed the one who asked about situations that have not happened and used to say, “Do not engage us with things that have not happened, keep people busy with the truth instead.”

People used to come to Imam Malik and ask him hypothetical questions and he used to get angry and tell them not to ask about things that have not happened yet. Those people were usually from Iraq where Imam Abu-Hanifa was, who supported this kind of questions.

As for Imam Abu-Hanifa, his approach was based on inventing situations that have not happened. He invented 60, 000 such situations.

In their meeting Imam Malik disapproved Imam Abu Hanifa’s view. Abu-Hanifa replied that the circumstances in Iraq are different from Madinah. Iraq is the capital of the Caliphate and everyday there are new things being introduced and they should be prepared, while in Madinah problems are fixed and limited.

Then, he gave an example when he discussed with his students a situation of a woman whose husband traveled and was absent for so long that she thought he was dead and hence she married another man. Suddenly, the man returned. What should be done then? Imam Malik wondered why they would ask about things that have not happened, but Abu-Hanifa said that in Iraq, where soldiers went on conquests, this might occur and they should be ready for such situation. Imam Malik was silent.

Imam Abu-Hanifa reminded him of what the Prophet (SAWS) said when a man came to him saying, “Imagine if a man comes to take my money, what shall I do?” The Prophet (SAWS) told him not to give it to him. The man asked again, “Imagine if he fights me?” The Prophet (SAWS) urged him to fight him too. The man asked, “Imagine if he killed me? The Prophet (SAWS) said that he would be a martyr. The man asked once more “Imagine if I killed him?” The Prophet (SAWS) said that the man killed would go to the hellfire.

Abu-Hanifa said that the Prophet (SAWS) was asked by about a hypothetical situation four times. When Malik said that this was for a purpose, Abu-Hanifa replied, “In Iraq we do it for a purpose too.” Then, Al-Layth Ibn-Sa’ad said, “Glory to Allah. By Allah, you are enriching Islam.” Imam Malik kept people away from indulging in trivial issues and Imam Abu-Hanifa was questioning the future to protect people. That was what the Prophet (SAWS) did. He forbad asking about things that are hypothetical and replied to an important situation that could happen in the future.

Both Imams reached a conclusion of holding on to what they were doing, but to then integrate both approaches for the benefit of Islam.

The four principles previously mentioned certainly to this debate. Their difference of opinion is a natural phenomenon because the minds and environment of Iraq are unlike those of Madinah. Their difference of opinion resulted in an environment that enriched Islam. The calm and honest dialogue helped in presenting the various opinions and truths from all aspects. Meanwhile, the manner of conversation between both men was civilized, polite and outstanding.

The issues they discussed were not petty. Nowadays some people leave the obligatory issues related to the unity of the Muslims and dispute over trivial matters. Both Imams differed on core issues, but there was love and understanding between them.

The second issue which the imams disagreed on was that of the consensuses. In Islam, in order to reach a solution for any question is look it up in the Qur’an. If you did not find it, to look it up in ahadith, if not; then apply the rule of the consensus of the scholars.

Imam Malik believed that the consensus should be that agreed by the people of Madinah only because the companions of the Prophet (SAWS) lived and died there and so did his nine wives who saw all his actions and witnessed all his deeds. They are about 10,000 companions.

A man came to Imam Malik and asked him about disputed matters. The Imam said, “Search for the opinion of the people of Madinah. When you find it, be sure that it is the truth.” He said to another one, “You can find knowledge in Madinah, as Qur’an was not revealed in Euphrates (meaning Iraq and Abu Hanifa’s school).”

Imam Abu Hanifa was 13 years older than Imam Malik, yet he respected him. He replied, “Malik, the conquests during the reign of Omar Ibnul-Khattab distributed the Companions (RA) all over the world. You say that in Madinah there are 10,000 companions. In the last battle of the Prophet (SAWS) there were about 120,000 companions, so where are the rest? You cannot deny that Omar Ibnul-Khattab sent the companions particularly to teach people in different countries.”

He started to numerate some companions such as Mo’az Ibn-Jabal whom the Prophet (SAWS) described to be the most knowledgeable and sent him to Yemen. Also, he mentioned Abdullah Ibn-Mas’od whose way of reciting Qur’an was recommended by the Prophet (SAWS) for the people. He added the names of Abu-Dthar, Zobair Ibnul-A’wam, and Sa’ad Ibn-Abu-Waqqas in Egypt, Hudthayfa Ibnul-Yaman, Abdullah Ibn-Mas’od, and Ali Ibn-Abu-Talib in Iraq, Abu-Ubayda Ibnul-Jaraah, Bilal and Abul-Dardaa’ in Syria, etc.

Then, he narrated the hadith of the Prophet (SAWS) where he said that his companions are like the stars any of which can guide people. Imam Abu-Hanifa went on to say that the brilliance of Omar Ibnul-Khattab is what led him to send the companions all over world and kept some in Madinah to keep a balance. Thus, Imam Abu-Hanifa showed Imam Malik that the distribution of the companions was for the sake of the integration of the ummah.

Al-Layth Ibn-Sa’ad said, “By Allah, this also, is an integration of the ummah.”

When you look from another angle you can see another aspect of the truth. This is the virtue of difference; to help you see the truth from all its aspects. If all people think alike, they will see only one side of the truth, but Allah (TWT) whose name is the Truth wants you to see all the sides.

The third issue tackled in the meeting was about the school of opinion and hadith. Imam Abu-Hanifa expands the explanation of the ahadith to the extent that he concluded 100 lessons from one hadith. Imam Malik saw that it as an exaggeration and overloading the hadith which the Prophet (SAWS) did not want.

Imam Abu-Hanifa replied that in Iraq, Greek, Roman and Persian philosophies and sciences are invading them, so he needs to keep people fixed on the path of the Prophet (SAWS). That is why he was searching in ahadith to counter the new ideas. On the other hand in Madinah, there are none but the companions and their followers, so there is no need for expansion in elaborating ahadith. Al-Layth Ibn-Sa’ad said, “This too is integration” Both Imams complement one another in keeping Islam.

If you discuss your problems calmly and honestly with your wife of husband, many problems will be solved. Similarly, if the politicians in Iraq, Darfur, and Lebanon, the religious scholars and the scientists do the same, many problems will be solved.

After the two Imams left the meeting, Al-Layth Ibn-Sa’ad, an Egyptian Imam whose juristic school of thought was just as superior as the other four Imams but had no students to spread it, was keen on knowing the impression of both sides.

He went to Imam Malik and asked him. Malik wiped his sweat and said, “By Allah, Abu-Hanifa made me sweat. By Allah, he is a true jurist. I’ve never seen a man debating like that. By Allah, if he told you that this iron rod is made out of gold, he would convince you.”

Al-Layth went to Imam Abu-Hanifa who said, “I debated hundreds of men, but have never seen a man accept the truth as fast as him.”

We need to teach the coming generations these manners. This is important for everyone; journalists, politicians, people working in the media, scholars, husbands and wives, parents and children.

What happened after that? First, Imam Abu-Hanifa sent his son Hammaad to Madinah to learn the jurisprudential approach of Malik and his book ‘Al-Mu’ata’. Then, Imam Malik asked for the books of Abu-Hnifa to benefit from them.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Ibnul-Hassan, a student of Abu-Hanifa’s, held a session in Iraq to present the approach of Malik.

Once, Imam Abu-Hanifa sent to Imam Malik consulting him on an issue before announcing his opinion to the public. Abu-Hanifa did not agree about naming a sinful person a disbeliever. Imam Malik agreed, so Abu Hanifa announced it. This did not arise from one meeting only, but there were numerous correspondences which contributed more to their integration.

The Abbassid Caliph Al-Mansour once came to Imam Malik offering him to cancel all other jurisprudential approaches, making Malik’s approach prevail, and also writing his book in gold and keeping it inside the Ka’ba.

Imam Malik who once rejected all other approaches and asserted on the opinion of the people of Madinah told him not to do so because the companions of the Prophet (SAWS) are spread all over the world. Those were Abu-Hanifa’s words from their encounter.

Look at the superb manners and morals of differentiating with someone as well as handling the truth.

The first principle indicates that difference is a universal fact that needs to be respected. You have to respect that variation is a part of our existence. The second principle shows that variation complements us; it is an advantage and not a drawback. You have to look at this as an enriching advantage. The third principle is that at the moment of dispute, calm and honest dialogue helps you see the truth from all perspectives. Truth is one, but it has many aspects and paradigms. The fourth and final principle is that at the moment of conflict; never forget the proper manners of dialogue. You must believe in those four principles as the basis of coexistence.

Source: Amrkhaled.net

Qur'an and Science

Heroes Of Islam

The Amman Message

2012-09-02T08:10:00.002-07:00

www.AmmanMessage.com

Orthodoxy in Islam is based on verse 2:285 of the Holy Qur’an, and has been best defined by the historical 2005 international Islamic consensus on the ‘three points’ of the Amman Message, these points being:

" (a) Whosoever is an adherent to one of the four Sunni schools (mathahib) of Islamic jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i and Hanbali), the two Shi‘a schools of Islamic jurisprudence ( Ja‘fari and Zaydi), the Ibadi school of Islamic jurisprudence and the Thahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence, is a Muslim. Declaring that person an apostate is impossible and impermissible. Verily his (or her) blood, honour, and property are inviolable. Moreover, in accordance with the Sheikh Al Azhar’s fatwa, it is neither possible nor permissible to declare whosoever subscribes to the Ash’ari creed or whoever practices real Tasawwuf (Sufism) an apostate. Likewise, it is neither possible nor permissible to declare whosoever subscribes to true Salafi thought an apostate. Equally, it is neither possible nor permissible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in God, Glorified and Exalted be He, and His Messenger (may peace and blessings be upon him) and the pillars of faith, and acknowledges the five pillars of Islam, and does not deny any necessarily self-evident tenet of religion.

(b) There exists more in common between the various schools of Islamic jurisprudence than there is difference between them. The adherents to the eight schools of Islamic jurisprudence are in agreement as regards the basic principles of Islam. All believe in Allah (God), Glorified and Exalted be He, the One and the Unique; that the Noble Qur’an is the Revealed Word of God; and that our master Muhammad, may blessings and peace be upon him, is a Prophet and Messenger unto all mankind. All are in agreement about the five pillars of Islam: the two testaments of faith (shahadatayn); the ritual prayer (salat); almsgiving (zakat); fasting the month of Ramadan (sawm), and the Hajj to the sacred house of God (in Mecca). All are also in agreement about the foundations of belief: belief in Allah (God), His angels, His scriptures, His messengers, and in the Day of Judgment, in Divine Providence in good and in evil. Disagreements between the ulema (scholars) of the eight schools of Islamic jurisprudence are only with respect to the ancillary branches of religion (furu’) and not as regards the principles and fundamentals (usul) [of the religion of Islam]. Disagreement with respect to the ancillary branches of religion (furu‘) is a mercy. Long ago it was said that variance in opinion among the ulema (scholars) ‘is a good affair’.

(c) Acknowledgement of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence (Mathahib) within Islam means adhering to a fundamental methodology in the issuance of fatwas: no one may issue a fatwa without the requisite personal qualifications which each school of Islamic jurisprudence determines [for its own adherents]. No one may issue a fatwa without adhering to the methodology of the schools of Islamic jurisprudence. No one may claim to do unlimited Ijtihad and create a new school of Islamic jurisprudence or to issue unacceptable fatwas that take Muslims out of the principles and certainties of the sharia and what has been established in respect of its schools of jurisprudence.”

The Amman Message

Summary

The Amman Message started as a detailed statement released the eve of the 27th of Ramadan 1425 AH / 9th November 2004 CE by H.M. King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein in Amman, Jordan. It sought to declare what Islam is and what it is not, and what actions represent it and what actions do not. Its goal was to clarify to the modern world the true nature of Islam and the nature of true Islam.

In order to give this statement more religious authority, H.M. King Abdullah II then sent the following three questions to 24 of the most senior religious scholars from all around the world representing all the branches and schools of Islam: (1) Who is a Muslim? (2) Is it permissible to declare someone an apostate (takfir)? (3) Who has the right to undertake issuing fatwas (legal rulings)?

Based on the fatwas provided by these great scholars (who included the Shaykh Al-Azhar; Ayatollah Sistani and Sheikh Qaradawi), in July 2005 CE, H.M. King Abdullah II convened an international Islamic conference of 200 of the world's leading Islamic scholars 'Ulama) from 50 countries. In Amman, the scholars unanimously issued a ruling on three fundamental issues (which became known as the 'Three Points of the Amman Message'):

They specifically recognized the validity of all 8 Mathhabs (legal schools) of Sunni, Shi'a and Ibadhi Islam; of traditional Islamic Theology (Ash'arism); of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), and of true Salafi thought, and came to a precise definition of who is a Muslim.

Based upon this definition they forbade takfir (declarations of apostasy) between Muslims.

Based upon the Mathahib they set forth the subjective and objective preconditions for the issuing of fatwas, thereby exposing ignorant and illegitimate edicts in the name of Islam.

These Three Points were then unanimously adopted by the Islamic World's political and temporal leaderships at the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit at Mecca in December 2005. And over a period of one year from July 2005 to July 2006, the Three Points were also unanimously adopted by six other international Islamic scholarly assemblies, culminating with the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of Jeddah, in July 2006. In total, over 500 leading Muslim scholars worldwide as can be seen on this website [click here to see the entire list]”unanimously endorsed the Amman Message and its Three Points.

This amounts to a historical, universal and unanimous religious and political consensus (ijma') of the Ummah (nation) of Islam in our day, and a consolidation of traditional, orthodox Islam. The significance of this is: (1) that it is the first time in over a thousand years that the Ummah has formally and specifically come to such a pluralistic mutual inter-recognition; and (2) that such a recognition is religiously legally binding on Muslims since the Prophet (may peace and blessings be upon him) said: My Ummah will not agree upon an error (Ibn Majah, Sunan, Kitab al-Fitan, Hadith no.4085).

This is good news not only for Muslims, for whom it provides a basis for unity and a solution to infighting, but also for non-Muslims. For the safeguarding of the legal methodologies of Islam (the Mathahib) necessarily means inherently preserving traditional Islam's internal 'checks and balances'. It thus assures balanced Islamic solutions for essential issues like human rights; women's rights; freedom of religion; legitimate jihad; good citizenship of Muslims in non-Muslim countries, and just and democratic government. It also exposes the illegitimate opinions of radical fundamentalists and terrorists from the point of view of true Islam. As George Yeo, the Foreign Minister of Singapore, declared in the 60th Session of the U.N. General Assembly (about the Amman Message): "Without this clarification, the war against terrorism would be much harder to fight."

Finally, whilst this by the Grace of God is a historical achievement, it will clearly remain only principial unless it is put into practice everywhere. For this reason, H.M. King Abdullah II is now seeking to implement it, God willing, through various pragmatic measures, including (1) inter-Islamic treaties; (2) national and international legislation using the Three Points of the Amman Message to define Islam and forbid takfir; (3) the use of publishing and the multi-media in all their aspects to spread the Amman Message; (4) instituting the teaching of the Amman Message in school curricula and university courses worldwide; and (5) making it part of the training of mosque Imams and making it included in their sermons.

Allah says in the Holy Qur'an says:

There is no good in much of their secret conferences save (in) whosoever enjoineth charity and fairness and peace-making among the people and whoso doeth that, seeking the good pleasure of God, We shall bestow on him a vast reward. (Al-Nisa, 4:114).

Qur'an and Science

Heroes Of Islam

Yusuf Islam

2012-09-01T05:07:00.003-07:00

Formerly known as Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam is a globally influential British musician and singer-songwriter.

In 1977, he converted to Islam and left the music industry for educational and philanthropic causes.

His international fame and high-regard has probably made him the single most influential figure in the field of arts and culture in the Muslim World.

He made a gradual return to music over the past five years with his latest albums; ‘An Other Cup’ and ‘Roadsinger’.

Yusuf is a vocal opponent of terrorism and extremism and in 2004 was recognized with the “Man of Peace” award by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates Committee.

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Qur'an and Science

Heroes Of Islam

Shahrukh Khan controversies

2012-08-31T20:14:00.000-07:00

Stardom comes at a price and SRK can surely vouch for it. King Khan has become one of the most controversial actors in B-Town owing to either his celebrity status, behaviour or simply for having a muslim name. Here's a look at some of his controversies:

SRK-Priyanka Chopra

Family man Shahrukh Khan has found himself in a link-up controversy for the first time in his career. While SRK is maintaining a dignified silence over the issue, PC isn't taking it too well.

At a camera launch event, when a reporter asked her about her alleged link-up with SRK, the Fashion star lost it and said with a straight face: "By being extremely loud, doesn't mean I'll answer your questions sir. Thank You." At the first look launch of her upcoming film Teri Meri Kahani opposite Shahid Kapoor, Priyanka denied SRK was the man who made her blush. "I never said anything of that sort," she retorted. However, she had admitted it on Karan Johar's talk show Koffee with Karan. Shahid and the filmmaker had even teased her with SRK's name.

She is reportedly not on good terms with his wife Gauri Khan and his pal Karan Johar because of these rumours.

SRK-Airport: Part 1
In August 2009, SRK was detained at the Newark Airport in New Jersey for nearly two hours because of his last name.

The actor was visiting the country to attend a South Asian event where he was the guest of honour and was released after Congress MP Rajiv Shukla spoke to the authorities in the US.

SRK-Airport: Part 2
King Khan was detained again in April at a New York airport by immigration officials after arriving from India in a private plane with Nita Ambani, to address students at Yale University. While Nita, wife of Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, and the rest of their group were cleared immediately, Khan was stopped and was given immigration clearance only after about two hours.

He laughed it off with a generous dose of sarcasm. "Whenever I start feeling too arrogant, I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kicked the star out of stardom," Khan said, addressing the students at the Yale University where he was honoured as a Chubb Fellow.

SRK-Shiv Sena
SRK faced the ire of Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena after he stated that he would like Pakistani cricketers to participate in the third season of Indian Premiere League. The Hindu far-right political party even threatened to stall the release of his film "My Name Is Khan".

SRK reacted on Twitter saying: "Sad my statements are seen as a stand against a group instead of a stand for myself and my individuality. Differences in ideology should be grounds for debates & discussion. A must for freedom of thought. To see it any other way is so unfortunate."

SRK-Abhijeet Bhattacharya
Another addition to SRK's enemy list is Abhijeet Bhattacharya. The singer recently blasted SRK in an interview saying the actor should apologise to him for not giving him due credit in Main Hoon Na and Om Shanti Om.

When asked by a tabloid to comment on what Abhijeet said, SRK quipped: "Isn't it a coincidence that whoever doesn't want to work with me becomes famous?"

OTHERARTICLES

Surge in Britons converting to Islam [The Telegraph]

Ancient mosque unearthed in Bangladesh

2012-08-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

Investigation of remote archaeological site could prove it to be earliest mosque in South Asia.

In a remote village in northern Bangladesh, an amateur archaeologist has discovered the remains of a mosque believed to be built in the 7th century.

Villagers initially stumbled on the site where they found ancient treasures and artifacts of Islamic history, including a stone with Quranic scripture, buried underground.

Further investigation into the findings could prove the site to be the earliest mosque built in South Asia.

There is no doubt about the date that construction work on this remarkable mosque, that connects right back to the earliest days of Islam in East Asia, was completed. A fine piece of terracotta brick, now, finally, in Tajhat Palace museum in Rangpur is enscribed with a Surah, dates backs to 69 years after the death, in 632 CE, of the Holy Prophet (saws) himself.

The location of the ruin, that was uncovered some years ago from jungle overgrowth is perhaps unsurprising.

At the time, the flourishing City states of North Bengal, such as what are now known as Mahasthangarh, Paharpur and Bhitagahr, were centres of the Silk trade that continues to flourish in the region today. They were close to the course of some of the ancient trade caravans routes to China.

Following the foothills of the Himalayas, the land route continues through what is now Assam, and across towards China; an alternative route, by land as far as the great Brahmahputra river which leads to the Bay of Bengal, and the eastern Coast river ports of Bangladesh, such as Chittagong, Ramu, and Cox bazar.

Either way would take the travellers close to Lalmonirhat. The alternative, the sea route around Indian land mass was subject to the seasonal winds; it was, nevertheless, also much used. Indeed, the early Muslim community in Kerala dates from early in the period of Islam, perhaps even the lifetime of the Holy Prophet; and there are recorded landing by Muslim traders on the east seaboard of Bangladesh, also at that period.

The great alluvial plains of Bangladesh, with the annual flooding of the deltaic waters of great rivers such as Ganges and Brahmaputra, are only slowly revealing their hidden secrets to archaeologists. And this revelation came, rather, to villagers in a remote community. As far as we are aware, despite the obvious interest in the discovery, there has, in fact, been no formal excavation at the site.

Instead, the villagers themselves have constructed a new building above the old that they have, in an amateurish way, opened to view. They, clearly, feel the sense of connection with the earliest history of their faith that many other people in their vicinity did not share; they simply looted the site of the more interesting artefacts, including the date inscription which it took senior local official’s pressure to get placed in Tajhat.

There is fine brickwork, made of the characteristic flat, square, terracotta bricks that are a feature of all high status buildings of the period. Above that brickwork, the local people have heaped loose stones and pieces of brick in an innocent attempt at some form of reconstruction. But more impressive, by far, is their determination that this treasure should not be lost again!

All of which could, in some measure, rewrite the history of Islam in this remarkable country, with its vivid background in the three great religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, which is, today, of course, the majority religion of the country. For that reason, alone, perhaps, this mosque bears further investigation. But then, as such an ancient building, in its own right, it deserves better.

"Peaceful" Buddhists commit silent massacre

2012-07-27T17:00:00.001-07:00

Slaughter of Muslims in Burma - June 2012

July 2, 2012 | From zainabslounge.blogspot.com

After reading and watching helplessly the recent massacre of minority Burmese Muslims by the Buddhist majority, let not another hypocrite sing that phoney and repugnant 'song' about Buddhists being "peaceful."

In June 2012, hundreds Burmese Muslims have been butchered, and many more injured and made homeless in Burma as a result religious intolerance by the Buddhist majority. The Burmese military government, far from trying to resolve the problem and protect the minority, has been silently conniving with the rioters by creating greater hardships for the Muslim minority.

The reason of this June 2012 riot is unknown except for the periodical outbursts of the Burmese Buddhists to show their might and vent their anger on the helpless minority. It is commonly accepted that the June 2012 massacre of Burmese Muslims was intentionally orchestrated by the rioters in collaboration with the government. Yet the world, including the UN, is conveniently silent. The brazenly hypocritical and unscrupulous woman, Aung San Suu Kyi, is very prompt at accusing the Burmese military of human rights violations when she is under house arrest. But she finds nothing wrong when the military helps the Buddhist mobs to murder the innocent Muslim minority of her country.

As in India, anti-Muslim riots are nothing unusual in Burma. Violence in Burma against Muslims have been erupting periodically since the 1920s based simply on religious intolerance by the Buddhist majority.

The Muslims of Burma mainly belong to the Arakan state in western Burma. They are known as Rohingya or Burmese Muslims. The term "Rohingya" has been derived from the Arabic word "Raham" meaning sympathy. Muslim settlements began being established in the Arakan province of Burma since the arrival of the Arabs in the 8th century. Presently about 800,000 Rohingya live in Burma. The United Nations describes them as "one of the world’s most persecuted minorities." Yet it has never bothered to help them.

Religious freedom for Muslims in Burma has been systematically curbed. In the post 9/11 era, random accusations of "terrorism" against Muslims have become a common form of persecution and harassment by Burmese Buddhists. Burmese Government does not consider Rohingya Muslims as citizens and they are hated by the Buddhist majority. Rohingya Muslims in Burma have long demanded recognition as an indigenous ethnic group with full citizenship by birthright. But the Government regards them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship.

"Nobel Prize winner," Aung San Suu Kyi, does not consider Muslims as citizens. Speaking at London School of Economics meeting on June 2012 during her visit to the UK, she said "Rohingya Muslims should not be considered citizens." Later during her press conference at Downing Street, she did not condemn the killings of Rohingya Muslims taking place in Burma. Instead, she simply said that this "ethnic conflict should be investigated and dealt with wisdom." It wasn't just an insufficient response but a very shocking one from someone supposed to have won a "Noble Peace Prize."

The notorious master hypocrite and undercover CIA agent, Dalai Lama, continues to globe trot without mentioning a single word of the dangerously growing Buddhist intolerance in Burma, Thailand, Tibet and across the world. Such intolerance and persecution invariably result in resistance by the oppressed. Many Muslims have joined armed resistance groups, fighting for greater freedom in Burma.

On June 3rd 2012, eight Muslims returning to Rangoon in a bus after visiting a Masjid in the Arakan province were attacked by a mob of hundreds of Buddhists and slaughtered brutally. An eye-witness reported that after the mass murder "the culprits were celebrating triumph spitting and tossing wine and alcohol on the dead bodies lying on the road."

"These innocent people have been killed like animals," said Abu Tahay, of the National Democratic Party for Development, which represents the country’s much-persecuted stateless Muslim Rohingya community.

The Rohingya Muslims of Burma have continued to suffer from human rights violations under the Burmese junta since 1970s. Over the years thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled to neighboring countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Bangladesh etc. Even as refugees they have been facing hardships and have suffered persecution by the Thai government. In February 2009, a group of 5 boats packed with Burmese Rohingya Muslims were taken out and abandoned in the open sea by the Thai army. Four of these boats sank in a storm and one was washed ashore near the Indonesian islands. The few survivors who were rescued by Indonesian authorities told horrific stories of being captured and beaten by the Thai military and then abandoned at open sea.

Being "peaceful" or "humble" (as claimed by their biased supporters) is a far cry concerning the Burmese Buddhists. Their vindictive temperament prowls for vendetta, waiting to use even the most insignificant occurrence as an excuse to perpetrate violence on Burmese Muslims. At any time, if there's some ethnic disturbance between Muslims and Buddhists/Hindus in any other country, the Burmese Buddhists waste no time going on a murderous spry killing the Muslim minority in Burma. If there is the slightest of trouble between Muslims and non-Muslims in Indonesia, it's taken as a pretext to kill Muslims in Burma by Buddhist mobs. The destruction of the statues in Bamiyan (Afghanistan), created an immediate excuse to commit violence against Muslims in Burma in 2001. The firebrand Buddhist monks demanded a Muslim masjid to be destroyed in retaliation. Mobs of Buddhists led by monks, vandalized Muslim-owned businesses and property in Burma, and attacked and killed Muslims in Muslim communities.

Gruesome images of murdered Rohingya Muslims in the recent June 2012 riots in Burma have been circulated on websites, resulting in protests in several Muslim countries and by various human rights activists around the world demanding justice & protection in Burma for the minority, but has fallen on deaf ears as usual, getting little or no coverage from mainstream news channels.

PLEASE SEND THIS AROUND. THE WORLD HAS THE RIGHT TO KNOW THE TRUTH.

Ahmed Deedat

2012-07-25T18:40:00.002-07:00

Born in the Surat district of India in 1918, Ahmed Hoosen Deedat had no recollection of his father untill 1926. His father a tailor by profession had emigrated to South Africa shortly after the birth of Ahmed Deedat.

With no formal education and fighting off the extreme pangs of poverty, he went to South Africa in 1927 to be with his father. His farewell to his mother in India in 1927 was the last time he saw her alive for she passed away a few months later.

In a foreign land, a boy of nine with no formal schooling nor any command of the English language he began preparing for the role he was to play decades later without realizing it.

Applying himself with diligence to his studies, the little boy not only was able to overcome the language barrier but excelled in school. His avid passion for reading helped him gain promotions until he completed standard 6. Lack of finance interrupted his schooling and at the early age of about 16 he took on the first of many jobs in retailing.

The most significant of these was in 1936 where he worked at a Muslim owned store near a Christian seminary on the Natal South Coast. The incessant insults of the trainee missionaries hurled against Islam during their brief visits to the store infused a stubborn flame of desire within the young man to counteract their false propaganda.

As fate would have it, Ahmad Deedat discovered by pure chance a book entitled Izharal-Haq, meaning the Truth revealed. This book recorded the techniques and enormous success of the efforts of Muslims in India in turning the tables against Christian missionary harassment during the British subjugation and rule of India. In particular the idea of holding debates had a profound effect on Ahmed Deedat.

Armed with this new found zeal, Ahmed Deedat purchased his first Bible and began holding debates and discussions with the trainee missionaries. When they beat a hasty retreat in the face of his incisive counter arguments, he personally called on their teachers and even priests in the surrounding areas to discuss and debate topical issues of the day.

These successes spurred Ahmed Deedat in the direction of Da’wah. Not even his marriage, birth of Children and a 3 year sohourn to Pakistan after its independence dampened his enthusiasm or dulled his desire to defend Islam .

With missionary zeal to project the truth and the pure clinical beauty of Islam, Ahmed Deedat immersed hiself into a host of activities over the next three decades. He conducted classes on Bible studies and gave numerous lectures. He established the As-Salaam, an institute to train propagators of Islam. He, together with his family, almost single-handedly erected the buildings including the masjid which is still a landmark today.

He was a founder member of the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI) and became its President. He has published over 20 books and distributed milions of copies free of charge. He has delivered thousand of lectures all over the world and successfully engaged Christian Evangelists in public debates. Several thousand people have come into the fold of Islam as a result of these efforts.

In a fitting tribute to this monumental achievement, he was awarded the King Faisal International award in 1986, a prestigious recognition of enormous value in the world of Islam.

No number of awards and honours can truly capture the man’s essence and zeal for Islam. This anthology of books is no exception. It demonstrates Sheikh Deedat’s analytical compilations drawn from personal encounters and experiences against many prevailing distortions.

In 1996 Shaikh Ahmed Deedat suffered from a serious stroke and remained paralysed and bedridden for 9 years. On 8th August, 2005 he passed away. May Allah (swt) bless his soul with Jannatul Firdous for his path-breaking and excellent efforts for Daw’ah of Islam worldwide as well as reigniting the spirit of self-esteem and renaissance amongst millions of Muslims the world over.

Books by Shaikh Ahmed Deedat: The Choice - Between Islam and Christianity - Volume I The Choice - Between Islam and Christianity - Volume II Is the Bible God’s Word? Al Qur’an the Miracle of Miracles What is His Name? Christ in Islam What was the sign of Jonah? What the Bible says about Muhammed (pbuh)? Resurrection or Resuscitation? Arabs and Israel – Conflict or Conciliation? Crucifixion or Cruci-Fiction?

Source: Islamic Research Foundation

Dr Zakir Naik

2012-07-25T18:03:00.002-07:00

A medical doctor by professional training, Dr Zakir Naik is renowned as a dynamic international orator on Islam and Comparative Religion.

Dr Zakir Naik is the president of Islamic Research Foundation, Mumbai. Dr Zakir clarifies Islamic viewpoints and clears misconceptions about Islam, using the Qur’an, authentic Hadith and other religious Scriptures as a basis, in conjunction with reason, logic and scientific facts. He is 46 years old.

He is popular for his critical analysis and convincing answers to challenging questions posed by audiences after his public talks. In the last 15 years (by the year 2011) Dr Zakir Naik has delivered more than 1500 public talks in the U.S.A., Canada, U.K., Italy, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Botswana, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Guyana (South America), Trinidad, Mauritius and many other countries, in addition to numerous public talks in India.

He has successfully participated in several symposia and dialogues with prominent personalities of other faiths. His public dialogue with Dr. William Campbell (of USA) on the topic “The Qur’an and the Bible in the light of Science” held in Chicago, U.S.A., in April, 2000 was a resounding success.

His Interfaith Dialogue with prominent Hindu Guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on the topic "The Concept of God in Hinduism and Islam in the light of Sacred Scriptures" held at Palace Grounds, Bangalore, on 21^st Jan. 2006, was highly appreciated by people of both the faiths.

Dr. Zakir Naik was featured in the Indian Express list of the “100 Most Powerful Indians” in 2009” and again in 2010, amongst the billion plus population of India. In the special list in 2009 of the “Top 10 Spiritual Gurus of India” Dr Zakir Naik was ranked No. 3, after Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, being the only Muslim in the list … and topping them too in the 2010 list.

Dr. Zakir Naik has been placed in the top 62 in the list of “The 500 Most Influential Muslims in the World” published by the George Washington University, USA.

Sheikh Ahmed Deedat, the world famous orator on Islam and Comparative Religion, who had called Dr Zakir “Deedat Plus” in 1994, presented a plaque in May 2000 with the engraving “Awarded to Dr. Zakir Abdul-Karim Naik for his achievement in the field of Da’wah and the study of Comparative Religion. Son what you have done in 4 years had taken me 40 years to accomplish, Alhamdulillah”.

Dr Zakir Naik appears regularly on many international TV channels in more than 200 countries of the world. He is regularly invited for TV and Radio interviews. More than a hundred of his talks, dialogues, debates and symposia are available on DVDs and VCDs. He has authored many books on Islam and Comparative Religion.

The IDEALOGUE and DRIVING FORCE behind Peace TV Network is Dr. ZAKIR NAIK. He launched Peace TV English, in January 2006, it being the largest watched Islamic as well any Religious Satellite TV channel presently in the world, with over 100 million viewership of which 25% are NON-MUSLIMS.

In its footsteps he launched Peace TV Urdu in June 2008 and Peace TV Bangla in April 2011.

Source: Islamic Research Foundation

Khurram Murad

2012-07-24T07:23:00.003-07:00

The architect of current Islamic resurgence

Ustadh Khurram Murad (1932-1996) occupies a place of distinction in the intellectual firmament of contemporary Islam. A thinker, an orator and a prolific writer, he has been one of the architects of current Islamic resurgence.

While his da'wah activities began in Pakistan, he has been involved in the promotion of the Islamic movement in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. As a teacher and a da'iyah his speeches and thoughtful orations have inspired thousands of young men and women all over the world.

As chief of the training departments of the Jamiat, the Jamaat and as an active resource-person in training programmes in the UK and America, he played a key role in the character-building of the youth in the Islamic Movement. He also served as the Director General of the Leicester-based Islamic Foundation and was a household name among British Muslims throughout the seventies and eighties.

An author of over thirty works in Urdu and English, his thoughts have influenced two generations of Muslims all the world over.

Born in Bhopal, India in 1932, and migrated to Pakistan in 1948. He studied civil engineering at the University of Karachi (BEng. 1952), securing 1st place in the University, and went on to study in the University of Minnesota (USA) (MSc. 1958).

He worked as a leading consulting engineer in Karachi, Dhaka, Tehran and Riyadh. Associated Consulting Engineers Ltd., with which he worked as a chief engineer and resident director, was responsible for the initial design and electrification of the extension of the Masjid al-Haram, Makkah and Khurram Murad played an important role in the formulation and implementation of the plans for extension of the Haram.

Khurram Murad's whole life, from early boyhood to his last moment, was dedicated to the service of the Islamic movement . He was initiated in the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bhopal, as a student and joined Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, Pakistan, immediately after his arrival in Karachi in November 1948.

In 1992, he was appointed editor of the monthly Tarjumanal Qur'an, Lahore, (an epoch making journal founded by the renowned Islamic scholar, Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi in 1932).

Over four hundred audio and video cassettes of Khurram Murad are in circulation in Pakistan and different parts of the Muslim World. Khurram Murad was involved in Islamic da'wah and inter-faith dialogue in the West for the last twenty years. In this connection, he addressed dozens of conferences and seminars. His contributions in initiating and promoting strategic thinking on da'wah issues in Muslim countries as well as in countries where Muslims are in a minority have been immense. As a leader of the Islamic Movement of Pakistan, which struggled for the democratic rights of the people, he was detained in prison without trial in 1964 in Dhaka for three months.

His death came on Thursday 19th December 1996 (9th Sha'ban 1417 AH) at the Glenfield Hospital, Leicester.

Some of his works in English are:

Way to the Quran
Key to al-Baqarah
The Quranic Treasures
Islam - The Easy Way
Who is Muhammad
Gifts from Muhammad
Shariah - The Way to Justice
Shari'ah: The Way to God
Interpersonal Relations
In the Early Hours: Reflections on Spiritual and Self-Development
Sacrifice the making of a Muslim
Dawah among Non-Muslims in the West
Islam & Terrorism
The Islamic Movement: Dynamics of Values Power and Change
Islamic Movement in the West: Reflections on Some Issues
Dying & Living for Allah (his last will)

Some of his booklets in Urdu are:

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Sayyid Abul-A’la Mawdudi

2012-07-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

Politician and leader of the righteous vanguard

Sayyid Abul-A'la Mawdudi was the first of the Islamic revivalists to develop a wide-ranging ideology through the Jamaat-e-Islami, the party that he founded in Lahore in 1941 and remained Amir (chief) until 1972.

Jamaat-e-Islami is one of the most prominent Islamic movements of our time. Party branches and student wings now exist in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Kashmir and Sri Lanka.

Maulana Mawdudi was one of the first Muslims of his time to equate religious devotion with political obedience, through Jamaat-e-Islami.

He wished, as did Imam Hasan al-Banna [the founder of Ikhwan in Egypt], to establish a true Islamic society. He agreed with Imam Al-Banna that civilisation was torn between the forces of Islam and jahiliyah, or ignorance, and that Islamic law was central to a just society.

In this quest, Maulana Mawdudi sought a vanguard of religious intellectuals to transform society through education, spreading Islamic teachings as widely as possible. This vanguard became the Jamaat.

After the creation of Pakistan, the party focused its efforts on making sure the Islamic republic lived up to its name.

On the need for Islamic law:

"That if an Islamic society consciously resolves not to accept the sharia, and decides to enact its own constitution and laws or borrow them from any other source in disregard of the sharia, such a society breaks its contract with God and forfeits its right to be called "Islamic".

Abul-A'la Mawdudi was the first recipient of King Faisal International Award for services to Islam.

He devoted his entire life to expound the meaning and message of Islam and to organise a collective movement to establish the Islamic Order.

In this struggle, he had to pass through all kinds of sufferings. Between 1948-67, he was put behind bars on four occasions, spending a total of five years in different prisons of Pakistan.

In 1953, he was also sentenced to death by a Martial Law court for writing a 'seditious' pamphlet, this sentence being later commuted to life imprisonment.

He authored more than one hundred works on Islam, both scholarly and popular, and his writings have been translated into forty languages."

Download English translations of books by Maulana Mawdudi

Download Bengali translations of books by Maulana Mawdudi

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Copyright © 2010 I Bangladesh.Life

Ramadan Reflects Struggle For Democracy In Muslim World

2012-07-22T10:48:00.003-07:00

By Ryan Villarreal

July 20, 2012 6:21 AM EDT

Thousands of Egyptians gather in Tahrir Square after Mohamed Morsi is declared the nation's first democratically elected president on Sunday, June 24. In a nationally televised speech, the longtime member of the Muslim Brotherhood promised to represent all Egyptians.

As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins, the Islamic world will have much to reflect upon this year. In Syria, a civil war looms if it hasn't already arrived. In Egypt, a fledgling democracy is being tested. In Afghanistan, a war led by the United States is coming to a dubious end.

For more than 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, from Mecca to Manhattan, Ramadan is a period of spiritual contemplation and renewal through fasting, prayer and abstinence, but it cannot be separated from the complex realities of the physical world.

"Ramadan is about freeing yourself from your wants, but there is also the purpose of making you aware of the less fortunate," said Safaa Zarzour, general secretary of the Islamic Society of North America, an advocacy group for Muslims in the U.S. "Some of us can withhold [from eating] food, but others do not have that option."

In the U.S., where Muslims of all backgrounds have been born or immigrated to, some from areas ravaged by conflict, there is a unique platform from which to view the diverse expressions of faith throughout the Islamic world, particularly during a time of great transition that is perhaps best characterized by the recent wave of popular democratic uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East known as the Arab Spring.

Zarzour emphasized the parallel between observance of Ramadan through pursuing freedom from physical desires and the overall struggle for freedom from oppression in many parts of the Islamic world.

"They are very connected and should not be divorced from each other," he said. "What's happening now, especially in Syria, there are people with no food, some eating the leaves off trees. It makes Ramadan very real for all of us."

Indeed, Syrians will have a very different experience of the holy month, as violence continues to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis there, while President Bashar al-Assad desperately clings to power.

"There is no illusion about how difficult and painful this will be," Zarzour said of the 14-month ongoing conflict in Syria in which over 9,000 lives are estimated to have been lost. "But there is also no illusion about the people's determination to fight for their freedom."

While events like in Syria and elsewhere in the world have heightened awareness of the meaning of Ramadan for Muslims in America, they have also changed perceptions of Islam for many non-Muslims, as well.

Zarzour spoke of the Arab Spring as dismantling the prejudiced concept of Arab exceptionalism, a belief that people in the Muslim and Arab world are inherently predisposed to accepting oppression.

"Those people long for democracy just as anybody else," he said.

Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager at the U.S.-based Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations, echoed Zarzour's sentiment.

"I think that the Arab Spring humanized Islam and Muslims for many Americans, as people realized that we want the same rights and sovereignty and dignity that all human beings expect," McGoldrick wrote in an email.

"We are at our best when we have true solidarity with all people struggling for justice, moving beyond the dividing lines of nationality, ethnicity, language, class and sect," he added.

Plight of Muslim minority threatens Myanmar Spring

2012-07-08T07:12:00.001-07:00

Myanmar Rohingya people ride on a rickshaw on a road, north of the town of Sittwe in this May 18, 2012 file photo.
Credit: REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/Files

By Andrew R.C. Marshall

TAKEBI, Myanmar | Fri Jun 15, 2012 6:11am EDT

TAKEBI, Myanmar (Reuters) This village in northwest Myanmar has the besieged air of a refugee camp. It is clogged with people living in wooden shacks laid out on a grid of trash-strewn lanes. Its children are pot-bellied with malnutrition.

But Takebi's residents are not refugees. They are Rohingya, a stateless Muslim people of South Asian descent now at the heart of Myanmar's worst sectarian violence in years. The United Nations has called them "virtually friendless" in Myanmar, the majority-Buddhist country that most Rohingya call home. Today, as Myanmar opens up, they appear to have more enemies than ever.

Armed with machetes and bamboo spears, rival mobs of Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists this month torched one another's houses and transformed nearby Sittwe, the capital of the western state of Rakhine, into a smoke-filled battleground. A torrent of Rohingyas has tried to flee Rakhine into impoverished Bangladesh, but most are being pushed back, a Bangladeshi Border Guard commander told Reuters on Thursday.

The fighting threatens to derail the democratic transition in Myanmar, a resource-rich nation of 60 million strategically positioned at Asia's crossroads between India and China, Bangladesh and Thailand. With scores feared dead, President Thein Sein announced a state of emergency on June 10 to prevent "vengeance and anarchy" spreading beyond Rakhine and jeopardizing his ambitious reform agenda.

Reuters visited the area just before the unrest broke out. The northern area of Rakhine state is off-limits to foreign reporters.

Until this month, Myanmar's transformation from global pariah to democratic start-up had seemed remarkably rapid and peaceful. Thein Sein released political prisoners, relaxed media controls, and forged peace with ethnic rebel groups along the country's war-torn borders. A new air of hope and bustle in Myanmar's towns and cities is palpable.

But not in Rakhine, also known as Arakan. It is home to about 800,000 mostly stateless Rohingya, who according to the United Nations are subject to many forms of "persecution, discrimination and exploitation." These include forced labor, land confiscations, restrictions on travel and limited access to jobs, education and healthcare.

Now, even as the state eases repression of the general populace and other minorities, long-simmering ethnic tensions here are on the boil - a dynamic that resembles what happened when multi-ethnic Yugoslavia fractured a generation ago after communism fell.

SUU KYI 'TIGHT-LIPPED'

Even the democracy movement in Myanmar is doing little to help the Muslim minority, Rohingya politicians say.

Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi last week urged "all people in Burma to get along with each other regardless of their religion and authenticity." But she has remained "tight-lipped" about the Rohingya, said Kyaw Min, a Rohingya leader and one-time Suu Kyi ally who spent more than seven years as a political prisoner. "It is politically risky for her," he said.

NLD spokesman Nyan Win wouldn't comment on Suu Kyi's position, but said: "The Rohingya are not our citizens." Suu Kyi is now on a European tour that will take her to Oslo, Norway, to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 1991.

The violence could disrupt Myanmar's detente with the West, however. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on June 11 called for "Muslims, Buddhists, and ethnic representatives, including Rohingya . . . to begin a dialogue toward a peaceful resolution."

The United States suspended some sanctions on Myanmar, including those banning investment, in May as a reward for its democratic reforms. But the White House kept the framework of hard-hitting sanctions in place, with President Barack Obama expressing at the time concern about Myanmar's "treatment of minorities and detention of political prisoners."

The European Union, which also suspended its sanctions, said on Monday it was satisfied with Thein Sein's "measured" handling of the violence, which the president has said could threaten the transition to democracy if allowed to spiral out of control.

ILLEGAL MIGRANTS

Rohingya activists claim a centuries-old lineage in Rakhine, which like the rest of Burma is predominantly Buddhist. The government regards them as illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship. "There is no ethnic group named Rohingya in our country," immigration minister Khin Yi said in May.

Communal tensions had been rising in Myanmar since the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman last month that was blamed on Muslims. Six days later, apparently in retribution, a Buddhist mob dragged 10 Muslims from a bus and beat them to death.

Violence then erupted on June 9 in Maungdaw, one of the three Rohingya-majority districts bordering Bangladesh, before spreading to Sittwe, the biggest town in Rakhine. Scores are feared dead, and 1,600 houses burnt down.

One measure of the pressure the Rohingya are under is the growing number of boat people. During the so-called "sailing season" between monsoons, thousands of Rohingya attempt to cross the Bay of Bengal in small, ramshackle fishing boats. Their destination: Muslim-majority Malaysia, where thousands of Rohingya work, mostly illegally.

Last season, up to 8,000 Rohingya boat people - a record number - made the crossing, says Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Rohingya advocacy group based in Thailand. She has studied their migration patterns since 2006.

BANNED IN BANGLADESH

The violence in Rakhine could cause a surge in Rohingya boat people when the next sailing season begins in October, Rohingya leaders say. "The amount of boat people will increase and increase," said Abu Tahay, chairman of the National Democratic Party for Development, a Rohingya political party.

In what could be the start of a regional refugee crisis, many Rohingya are already attempting the shorter voyage to neighboring Bangladesh.

Bangladesh, like Myanmar, disowns the Rohingyas and has refused to grant them refugee status since 1992. Now, according to a Bangladeshi commander, hundreds have been turned away.

At Shah Pari, a Bangladeshi island on the Naf River dividing Bangladesh and Myanmar, Lieutenant Colonel Zahid Hassan of the Bangladesh Border Guard said the force has sent back 14 wooden country boats since the violence flared in early June, bearing a total of some 700 men, women and children.

Hassan said the boat people were given food, water and medicines before being turned back. His men are now holding back local Bangladeshi villagers and limiting how far fishermen can go out into the river to prevent them from helping would-be "illegal intruders." Peace has been restored since Myanmar imposed its state of emergency, he said, and his men are telling the boat people it is safe to return.

Asked to explain why majority-Muslim Bangladesh did not feel an obligation to take the Rohingyas in, he said: "This is an over-populated country. The country doesn't have the capacity to accommodate these additional people."

WAITING FOR DEMOCRACY

Government officials say they already harbor about 25,000 Rohingyas with refugee status, who receive food and other aid from the United Nations, housed in two camps in southeastern Bangladesh. Officials say there are also between 200,000 and 300,000 "undocumented" Rohingyas - with no refugee status and no legal rights. These people live outside the camps, dependent on local Bangladeshis in a poverty-plagued district for work and sustenance.

Among them is 48-year-old Kalim Ullah, a Rohingya father of three living in an unofficial camp where children bathe in a chocolate-brown pond. He fled here in 1992, after violence that followed the watershed 1990 vote won by Suu Kyi and overturned by the military. He holds up a hand to show a half-stump where his thumb had been before he says it was shot off by a Myanmar soldier.

"They tortured me and I was evicted from my house so we came to Bangladesh," he said. "Now I am waiting for repatriation, I am waiting for democracy in my own country."

Myanmar's neighbors have quietly pressed the country to improve conditions in Rakhine to stop the outflow of refugees. Perhaps as a result, Thein Sein's government this year began easing some travel restrictions, says Rohingya leader Kyaw Min. But these small gains look likely to be suspended or scrapped after the recent bloodshed.

The Rohingya in Myanmar are usually landless as well as stateless, and scratch a living from low-paid casual labor. Four in five households in northern Rakhine State were in debt, the World Food Program reported in 2011. Many families borrow money just to buy food.

Food insecurity had worsened since 2009, said the program, which called for urgent humanitarian assistance. A 2010 survey by the French group Action Against Hunger found a malnutrition rate of 20 percent, which is far above the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization.

UNDER THE 'NASAKA'

The Rohingya are overseen by the Border Administration Force, better known as the Nasaka, a word derived from the initials of its Burmese name. Unique to the region, the Nasaka consists of officers from the police, military, customs and immigration. They control every aspect of Rohingya life.

"They have total power," says Abu Tahay, the Rohingya politician.

Documented human-rights abuses blamed on the Nasaka include rape, forced labor and extortion. Rohingya cannot travel or marry without the Nasaka's permission, which is never secured without paying bribes, activists say.

The former military government has in the past called these allegations "fabrications."

"There are hundreds of restrictions and extortions," says Rohingya leader Kyaw Min. "The Nasaka have a free hand because government policy is behind them. And that policy is to starve and impoverish the Rohingya."

Burmese officials say the tight controls on the borders are essential to national security. Speaking in Myanmar's parliament last September, immigration minister Khin Yi made no mention of alleged abuses, but said the Nasaka was vital for preventing "illegal Bengali migration" and cross-border crime.

'ANNIHILATE THEM'

At Takebi's market, an agitated crowd gathered before the violence erupted to tell a reporter of alleged abuses by the authorities and ethnic Rakhine: a Rohingya rickshaw driver robbed and murdered, extortion by state officials, random beatings by soldiers at a nearby army post. The stories couldn't be verified.

Some Burmese officials have betrayed bias against the Rohingya in public statements. Rohingya people are "dark brown" and "as ugly as ogres," said Ye Myint Aung, Myanmar's consul in Hong Kong, in a 2009 statement. He went on to extol the "fair and soft" complexions of Myanmar people like himself.

Last week, the state-run New Light of Myanmar published a correction after referring to Muslims as "kalar," a racial slur.

The sectarian hatred in Rakhine towns and villages is echoed online. "It would be so good if we can use this as an excuse to drive those Rohingyas from Myanmar," one reader of Myanmar's Weekly Eleven newspaper comments on the paper's website.

"Annihilate them," writes another.

A nationalist group has set up a Facebook page called the "Kalar Beheading Gang," which has almost 600 "likes."

Meanwhile, the Kaladan Press, a news agency set up by Rohingya exiles in the Bangladesh city of Chittagong, blamed the violence on "Rakhine racists and security personnel."

BOUND FOR MALAYSIA

Not far from Sittwe is Gollyadeil, a fishing village with a jetty of packed mud and a mosque that locals say dates back to the 1930s. The stateless Rohingya villagers here face fewer restrictions than their brethren in the sensitive border area to the north. They can marry without seeking official permission and travel freely around Sittwe district.

Even so, jobs are scarce and access to education limited, and every year up to 40 villagers head out to sea on Malaysia-bound boats. They each pay about 200,000 kyat, or $250, a small fortune by local standards. But the extended Rohingya families who raise the sum regard it as an investment.

"If they make it to Malaysia, they can send home a lot of money," says fishmonger Abdul Gafar, 35.

Many Rohingya in Myanmar depend upon remittances from Malaysia and Thailand. A Takebi elder with a white beard tinged red from betel-nut juice said he gets 100,000 kyat ($125) every four months from his son, a construction worker in Malaysia.

Remittances have lent a deceptive veneer of prosperity to Takebi, where a few houses have tin roofs or satellite dishes.

Ask shopkeeper Mohamad Ayub, 19, how many villagers want to leave Gollyadeil, and he replies, "All of us."

For every Rohingya who makes it to Malaysia, hundreds are blocked, or worse.

Many are arrested before even leaving Myanmar waters. Others are intercepted by the Thai authorities, who last year were still towing Rohingya boats back out to sea, Human Rights Watch reported, "despite allegations that such practices led to hundreds of deaths in 2008 and 2009."

"When someone tries to enter the country illegally, it's our job to send them back," says Major General Manas Kongpan, a regional director of Thailand's Internal Security Operations Command, which handles the boat people. "Thailand doesn't have the capacity to take them in, so people shouldn't criticize so much."

Sayadul Amin, 16, set sail in March 2012 in a fishing boat crammed with 63 people, a third of them boys and girls. The weather turned bad, and Sayudul's boat was pounded by waves.

"I felt dizzy and wanted to throw up," he said.

By day five, they ran out of water and his friend, also a teenager, died. They prayed over his body, he said, then tossed it overboard.

THE UNCOUNTED

The boat eventually ran aground somewhere on Myanmar's Andaman coast, where local villagers summoned the authorities to arrest the boat people.

The adults were jailed in the southern Myanmar town of Dawei, while immigration officials escorted Sayadul and the other minors back to Sittwe by bus. The journey took several days and he saw more of Myanmar than most Rohingya ever do. "There were satellite dishes on all the houses," he said with wonder.

On her historic visit to Myanmar last year, Hillary Clinton praised the country's leaders for trying to resolve decades-old wars between government troops and ethnic rebel armies. But the Rohingya stir far greater nationalist passions that could prove even more destabilizing and intractable than conflicts in Kachin State and other ethnic border regions.

Rohingya leaders have long called for the scrapping of the 1982 Citizenship Law, which was enacted by the former dictatorship and rendered stateless even Rohingya who had lived in Myanmar for generations.

"We are demanding full and equal citizenship," says Kyaw Min, the Rohingya leader.

Judging by the inflammatory rhetoric pervading Myanmar, that demand is unlikely to be met before next year's potentially controversial census.

The last one, in 1983, left the Rohingya uncounted.

(Additional reporting John Chalmers in Shah Pari, Bangladesh. Editing by Bill Tarrant and Michael Williams)

Rohingya Muslims, a photo essay

2011-04-10T03:47:00.000-07:00

Without a homeland, without a hope
By Tony Cliff
Southeast Asia, Apr 9, 2011

COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh - Mahamuda Khatur remembers the fateful day three years ago. At dawn her husband had left their Kutupalong refugee camp in southern Bangladesh for the forest to fetch firewood he would sell to other refugees or local people. He never returned.

Mahamuda was told that he had drowned in a river, a claim she has never independently verified. That left her as a 27-year-old widow with two children. Now, suffering from tuberculosis for eight months, Mahamuda is too weak to work and cannot feed herself or her children.

The pallor of her face and the thinness of her arms show the unmistakable signs of severe malnutrition. Now, she has to rely on other refugees' generosity to survive. "But there is not much that the people here can do for us," she says. "Everybody is in the same situation."

Mahamuda is an ethnic Rohingya, a Sunni Muslim community that has fled persecution in its native Myanmar for neighboring Bangladesh and other countries. Throughout this region, on a narrow strip of beach, sparse forest or sandy land squeezed between the Bay of Bengal and the Myanmar border, Rohingya exiles can be seen carrying heavy bags of salt, bundles of firewood, stacks of bricks, baskets of fish, blocks of ice.

Above all, they carry the weight of being one of the largest stateless populations on the planet. Out of an estimated 1.5 to 2 million population, only the 48,800 Rohingya registered as refugees with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Bangladesh and Malaysia have legal status. The one million or so Rohingya living in Myanmar's western Arakan State are not recognized as citizens and the 500,000 to one million others who have chosen exile in other countries are mostly considered illegal migrants.

The Rohingya were not always a pariah in Myanmar, previously known as Burma. Although they have been a constant victim of a chauvinist Buddhist regime animated by anti-Muslim and anti-Indian sentiment dating back to the British colonial occupation, the Rohingya had citizen status in Myanmar until 1982. That year, then dictator Ne Win promulgated a citizenship law that stripped them of their nationality. It was the epilogue of one of the darkest chapters in the country's recent history, the Naga Min Operation ("Operation Dragon King") launched in 1978 in the west Arakan State.

In the name of a crackdown on "illegal migrants", the army killed, raped and arrested scores of people, mostly Rohingya. Villages were burned and looted. Mosques and other religious sites were particularly targeted. That operation forced some 200,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Most of them were repatriated by the end of 1979. In 1991-1992, fleeing the junta's widespread use of forced labor, summary executions, torture and rape, another wave of 250,000 Rohingya left the country. Currently the regime continues repressive practices, although on a lesser scale.

During a discrete visit in a large Rohingya village in Arakan State last year, in the relative safety of an old mosque, an elder detailed the numerous restrictions imposed by Myanmar authorities on the local population. "Even though we have been living here for many generations, we need a special authorization for almost everything: to move out of our area, send our children to the university, marry them, run a business. And, as everyone else in the state, we are constantly submitted to forced labor, arbitrary arrest, land confiscation and other abuses by the authorities."

Rohingya also complain of being targeted by the Rakhine, the predominant Buddhist group in Myanmar's Arakan State. It's a bitter irony considering that the Rakhine themselves are subject to the junta's systematic oppression against ethnic minorities. Violent incidents such as attacks on mosques by Buddhist radicals and retaliation by Rohingya are regularly reported. To justify their stance, both communities have traded endless arguments often founded on biased or reconstructed historical facts.

Xenophobia, fueled by extremists from both sides but also by the ruling junta, which has masterfully used divide and rule tactics to maintain its control, has submerged any hope of a dispassionate debate. Still, arguments forwarded by the Rakhine community, such as the "fear that the Rohingya occupy our land because of their high birth rate and rapidly increasing population", as a Rakhine journalist exiled in Bangladesh put it, have some basis and will eventually need to be properly addressed.

The dramatic situation of Rohingya exiles in Bangladesh, a country more accessible than Myanmar to outside observers, has become the show case for the minority's stateless plight. Some 29,000 Rohingya live as refugees in Kutupalong and Nayapara camps, south of Cox's Bazar, a booming beach resort in Bangladesh. These camps are under the UNHCR's supervision and benefit from the presence of a few international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). With properly built houses, schools, playgrounds and a sewage system, they look like any other adequately administered refugee camps in the world.

But the largest facility, Kutupalong, has a twin brother with a much less amiable face. "Kutupalong makeshift", as it's commonly known, is literally stuck to "Kutupalong registered". Thousands of adobe huts covered with plastic sheets, branches and dried leaves cluster together over a succession of bare hills, sheltering a population of 20,000, according to the latest count by a NGO active in the area.

Here, there is not a single trace of shade. Nor are there latrines or a proper sewage system. Only a few pumps installed by the French NGO Solidarites International provide for basic water needs. In the summer season, the heat inside the huts is sweltering. During the monsoon season, water often dissolves the huts' walls and transforms steep alleys into muddy torrents. In any season, day and night, disease-carrying insects are ubiquitous.

"We don't have enough mosquito nets," laments Karim, the community leader of one of the six blocks dividing the camp. "Many diseases are endemic here, malaria, diarrhea and tuberculosis. And now we have to face an epidemic of chicken pox and measles."

Almost like an indecent exhibit, mothers show the faces of their infants and children marked with chicken pox pustules. More worrisome is the 30% rate of acute malnutrition reported in the camp by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO). Only the NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Holland, in a clinic set out of the camp along the main road, and the French Action Contre la Faim (ACF), has the right to provide medical treatment to the "Kutupalong makeshift" population.

A few kilometers to the south, Leda, the other non-official camp with a population of 13,700, offers a relatively less desperate face. Rattan-built houses are properly aligned along paved alleys, here and there emblazoned with flowers and greenery. Yet restrictions imposed by Bangladesh authorities in the makeshift camps are drastic. Food distribution and education are sharply curtailed. Still, if these rules were strictly enforced then "Kutupalong makeshift" and Leda would have turned into full-blown death camps.

Despite the appalling conditions, refugees manage to bypass these interdictions and organize their survival. In Kutupalong, for instance, as a substitute to a proper schooling establishment, community leaders with the help of outside sympathizers have set up a network of 30 classes inside huts with locally trained teachers.

The restriction on wandering outside the makeshift camps is perhaps the least observed of the restraints. "Many refugees leave them for a few days or a week to work in brick or dried fish factories, salt pans, as rickshaw drivers," says Karim, the Kutupalong community leader. "They usually work for 100 taka a day [about US$1.4], which is not enough to feed a family so often both parents have to work." Continued>>>

Pak army launched genocide

2011-03-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

Friday, March 25, 2011
Syed Badrul Ahsan [The Daily Star]

"the Pakistan army, were let loose. Operation Searchlight had been unleashed. The murder of a nation was underway."

Even sleeping children were not spared on the horrific night of March 25, 1971, when the Pakistani army attacked the Bangalees.Photo: File Photo

Dr Kamal Hossain spent the whole of March 25, 1971 waiting for the call which General Peerzada had promised he would make. He as well as the other leading figures of the Awami League knew that time was running out, that unless a proclamation came from President Yahya Khan chaos would descend on East Bengal and indeed on Pakistan as a whole. Of course, the junta thought otherwise. Throughout the day, senior military commanders helicoptered throughout the province to make sure the plans for a military strike against the democratic movement were in place.

General Yahya Khan told General Tikka Khan that the army should be ready to hit the Bengalis that very night. Tikka passed on the message to his formation commanders all over the province. As dusk fell, President Yahya Khan, in the strictest secrecy, boarded a Pakistan International Airlines plane for the long journey back to Rawalpindi. It was not long before Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman would know of his departure. Even so, he continued to believe that the negotiations would lead to some positive results. Kamal Hossain recalls that as he bade goodbye to Mujib at around 10 pm on March 25, the Awami League chief asked him if he had received any phone call from the regime. Hossain replied in the negative.

As soon as twilight descended on Dhaka, the students of Dhaka University as well as citizens in other parts of the city set up an assortment of barricades --- trees, bricks, stones, etc --- to thwart the movements of the army. With a deepening of the evening, reports began increasingly to circulate of the military's readiness to strike at any moment. The strike came between 11 and 11.30 pm. Tanks, armoured cars and truckloads of soldiers of the Pakistan army fanned out in different directions. Soon the police headquarters at Rajarbagh was under attack by the army and so was the Peelkhana headquarters of the East Pakistan Rifles. The soldiers rushed to the Central Shaheed Minar, which they blew up in minutes. At the same time, they destroyed the well-known Kalibari in the centre of the Race Course (today's Suhrawardy Udyan). But it was at Dhaka University where the soldiers' ferocity came into full, macabre display. They went around shooting anyone on sight, broke into academics' homes and shot them dead. Their ire was particularly reserved for Jagannath Hall, where hundreds of students were killed and their bodies dumped into a mass grave in the hall compound. Bulldozers were then used to level the mass grave. On the streets, the soldiers shot anyone in their sights. Pedestrians, sleeping rickshaw pullers and others were killed without mercy.

From his suite at Hotel Intercontinental (today's Sheraton), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto watched the flames engulf Dhaka. The offices of The People, a newspaper whose militant stridency in favour of the Bangalee nationalist movement could not have been missed by the army, was set on fire by the soldiers. All night long, the sounds of rocket and machinegun fire and the sight of tracer fire kept the citizens of Dhaka awake in a state of fear.

It was a night when evil and horror, symbolised by the Pakistan army, were let loose. Operation Searchlight had been unleashed. The murder of a nation was underway.

Bangladesh gift England quarter-final spot

2011-03-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

March 19, 2011
Bangladesh v South Africa, Group B, World Cup 2011, Mirpur
South Africa; 284 for 8, beat Bangladesh; 78 by 206 runs

Reuters – Bangladesh's captain Shakib Al Hasan rests during the ICC Cricket World Cup group B match against ...

Bangladesh were not favourites to win their virtual pre-quarterfinal against the might of South Africa, especially after the visitors breezed away to 284, but it was the meek manner of their abject batting surrender that would have jarred even their most faithful fan.

Eight overs in to the tall chase, and the heart of their batting line-up had been ripped out by Lonwabo Tsotsobe, causing the substantial crowd at the Shere Bangla Stadium to quickly start dwindling. They never recovered from the initial blows, and all they managed was to beat their lowest total of 58 achieved against West Indies earlier in the tournament by 20 runs, before being put out of their misery by Robin Peterson's fourth wicket.

This was after South Africa came out blazing, and the solid base that the openers gave allowed Jacques Kallis and Faf du Plessis to consolidate and accelerate seamlessly, giving their spin-heavy attack a substantial cushion to stifle Bangladesh and bowl them to the top the group. That they did so with 206 runs to spare was a testimony to how the fight completely went out of Bangladesh, and also confirmed England's qualification for the knockouts.

It was not that South Africa's attack, minus Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, caused a lot of alarm. Tsotsobe did get enough bounce off the slow wicket to trouble the batsmen, and also got it to cut in from a very tight line outside off stump. But it was more a case of poor shot selection by the Bangladesh batsmen under the pressure of a big chase in a must-win game in front of a large home crowd. The first four dismissals were demonstrations of the various ways of how not to play on a low and slow wicket.

Tamim Iqbal was too early into the pull off a short Tsotsobe delivery that was way outside off stump, and was caught behind off a healthy under-edge, as South Africa referred successfully after umpire Daryl Harper missed the deflection. Imrul Kayes shouldered arms to a full Tsotsobe delivery that cut back in to shatter the stumps.

Graeme Smith had started with Johan Botha, and his suffocating lines had Junaid Siddique in absolute uncertainty, not sure whether to go back or forward, and he ended up being trapped in front by one that angled straight on. Shahriar Nafees played on, driving in princely fashion from the crease to one that nipped back in slowly.

Bangladesh's chase was only eight overs old, and already their dream had caved in at 21 for 4. Mushfiqur Rahim pottered around for some time before being snapped up one-handed by an alert Smith at slip off Peterson. Before his dismissal, Bangladesh managed seven runs in the bowling Powerplay, the lowest in the tournament, trumping Kenya - who had made nine runs against Sri Lanka.

Amid all the anti-climax, Shakib Al Hasan displayed his class, straight-driving and pulling Tsotsobe, and caressing and slashing the spinners for boundaries. There were loud cheers as Bangladesh passed 58 but Shakib departed soon after as Bangladesh's party rapidly came to a rude end. Peterson cleaned up the tail as Bangladesh lasted all of 28 overs to bring the curtain down on what was ultimately a chaotic campaign.

Bangladesh's struggles stood out against the contrasting approaches of Hashim Amla and Graeme Smith, which had worked perfectly for South Africa at the top as the duo batted their way to a 98-run opening stand.

It was fascinating to see how the openers went about tackling the spinners in their different styles. While Amla allowed the ball to come to him, and played it as late as possible off the back foot, Smith was very eager to push forward and use his feet frequently in an attempt to meet the ball early.

Amla carried on in the nonchalant fashion that has made him the world's most prolific one-day batsman of late. Anything marginally short was quickly dispatched, even against the turn. Smith was uncertain to start with, but Bangladesh helped him settle the nerves with a couple of freebies on leg stump that he happily put away past short fine leg.

It was only after the drinks break that the openers lost their cool and their wickets. JP Duminy followed and at 141 for 3 with 20 overs to go, Bangladesh were in it. But Kallis and du Plessis started milking the singles calmly. Only four boundaries were hit in the next 12 overs but South Africa still scored at five an over. The duo added 82 risk-free runs inside 15 overs as the Bangladesh attack struggled for penetration.

Peterson did not let South Africa miss the seventh batsman they had left out, clattering 22 in nine deliveries as 83 came off the last eight overs. Even though wickets tumbled late, there was enough spunk in Peterson and Botha to lift South Africa to 284.

It turned out to be much more than sufficient for a Bangladesh outfit that finally lost the spark that had made it come back strongly twice in the tournament after crushing losses to West Indies and India, with wins over England, Ireland, and Netherlands.

Mahmudur freed on bail

2011-03-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

Thu, Mar 17th, 2011 1:02 pm BdST

The Daily Star

Mahmudur Rahman, acting editor of daily Amar Desh, was released from prison yesterday, nine months after his arrest.

He was greeted by a number of leaders and activists of the main opposition BNP, along with his friends and family outside the jail of Gazipur district at about 11:30am.

On August 19, last year the Supreme Court (SC) sentenced him to six months' imprisonment and fined him Tk 1 lakh for committing contempt of court.

The SC convicted him for publishing a report on April 21 under the headline "Chamber manei sarkar er pakkhe stay" meaning “Chamber bench means stay order in favour of the government”.

On June 1, 2010 the government cancelled the declaration of the Amar Desh citing that it has no authorised publisher. However, on July 18, the SC in an order cleared the way for publishing the newspaper.

Mahmudur was arrested on June 2, 2010 and on the same day the SC issued a contempt of court rule against him and four others following a petition.

He was accused in around 40 cases on corruption, defamation, fraud and other criminal charges, but he was granted bail in all those.

After stepping out of jail, Mahmudur alleged that the government only harassed him for “writing the truth”.

“The government used all possible means of torture and even tried to kill me during the remand," he said, adding, “I will continue to write for the welfare of the country.”

Columnist Farhad Mazhar, President of Jatiya Ganotantrik Party (Jagpa) Shafiul Alam Pradhan, human rights activist Adilur Rahman and Amar Desh Director Prof Tasnim Alam were among others present during his release.

Cambodia tells foreign men they should be under 50 to marry local women

2011-03-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

Big News Network.com
Wednesday 16th March, 2011

Male foreigners who arrive in Cambodia will have to be under the age of 50 if they want to marry a Cambodian woman.

New rules, cracking down on sham marriages, have stipulated that men will be stopped from marrying local girls if they have reached 50.

Foreigners who earn less than $2,550 per month will also barred from marrying local women.

The Cambodian Foreign Ministry has said restrictions will not apply to weddings taking place overseas, although a spokesman described marriages between old men and young women as "inappropriate."

Rights groups have often cited incidents of Cambodian women marrying foreign men, only to be sent into prostitution or placed into servitude in the home country of the new husband.

Bangla skipper vows to seek entry into WC 2011 knockout phase

2011-03-12T06:09:00.000-08:00

Saturday 12th March, 2011
Big News Network.com (ANI)
[Getty Images]

Bangladesh cricket captain Shakib Al Hasan has vowed to "fight to the end" to secure an entry into the World Cup knockout phase after his team's dramatic two-wicket win over England on Friday.

The home side restricted England to 225 all out and made a good start to their reply, looking comfortable at 155-3 before a collapse saw them lose five wickets for just 14 runs.

But Mohammad Mahmudullah (21) and Shafiul Islam (24) took the score from a perilous 169-8 to 227-8, guiding Bangladesh to a nervy two-wicket victory.

"It means a hell of a lot to the whole country. We all know we're very emotional about cricket. It was a great win for us and hopefully we'll kick on from here. No matter what happens we'll fight to the end," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Shakib, as saying.

A disappointed England captain Andrew Strauss said: "We struggled a little bit with the bat although I thought 225 was a competitive total. We needed to bowl and field well but didn't do that as well as we would have liked. We got ourselves in a great position to win the game but in the end we couldn't take those final two wickets. We're bitterly disappointed and we have to bounce back well against the West Indies." (ANI)

Deadly tsunami slams into Japan, races across Pacific

2011-03-12T05:48:00.000-08:00

Saturday 12th March, 2011
Big News Network.com

The massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake which struck off the coast of Japan on Friday has caused widespread devastation and sent tsunami waves pounding across the Pacific triggering alerts in Hawaii, and as far away as the U.S. and Canadian West Coasts.

Japan woke to a multi-faceted national disaster scenario Saturday with five nuclear plants in states of emergency, entire towns obliterated by an earthquake-spawned tsunami and fires raging in many areas due to the mammoth earthquake.

A 30-foot tsunami slammed into the eastern coast of Japan following one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded, causing destruction and damage of biblical proportions across the country.

Japan has not experienced such a disaster since the mid 20th century when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Entire towns have been wiped from the landscape, hundreds of acres of farmland have been destroyed and essential public infastructure has been destroyed or badly damaged.

The images broadcast on national television in Japan show apocalyptic scenes of ocean-going trawlers being pushed miles inland by the tsunami, other vessels being pulled into a swirling whirlpool while other footage showed Sendai Airport being entirely surrounded by relentless muddy water.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck at a depth of just 10 kilometres, even shallower than the 6.7-magnitude earthquake that caused staggering destruction in the Haitian capital, Port-Au-Prince in 2010.

Across half the world, tsunami warnings have been issued. Almost every country with a coast on the Pacific Ocean has signalled a tsunami alert and hundreds of thousands of people living in coastal areas were advised to seek higher ground.

Since the quake struck, Japan, along with nearby countries, has been struck by as many as 50 aftershocks, many reaching or exceeding 6-magnitude, leading Japanese authorities to issue further tsunami warnings.

Houses in Natori were cought as a wall of water up to 10m (33ft) high in some places swept inland.

The scale of destruction is extreme. The tsunami swept several miles inshore, swallowing everything in its path. Horrific images on Japanese television showed the wall of broiling water devouring bridges, roads, farms, houses and vehicles, churning into a broth of deadly debris.

According to initial reports, several hundred have already been confirmed killed. Authorities have announced 200 to 300 bodies were found in the north-eastern coastal city of Sendai, with a further 349 people missing. The death toll for the nation is likely to be much higher given the scale of the disaster.

Some media reports put the number of missing people at 88,000.

A tired and strained looking Naoto Kan, the Prime Minister of Japan, told reporters Saturday that he was travelling north to the disaster areas himself to see the scale of the destruction.

Although Japan has experienced powerful earthquakes in the past, it has never endured an 8.9-magnitude one and experts have agreed the situation is unprecedented for the Japanese government, which remained on high alert throughout Friday night.

A nuclear power plant just 170 kilometres outside the capital, Tokyo, was shutdown in the hours after the quake when its cooling system failed, causing the nuclear core to over-heat.

No radiation leak has been reported, but thousands of residents living near the plant have been ordered to evacuate.

At least four other nuclear reactors, two at a second power plant, have reported problems in the aftermath of the quake, though the Japanese government has not released further details.

The national public transport system, world famous for its efficiency and time-keeping, has been brought to its knees, in Tokyo and wider northern Japan, all train services have been suspended, while major roads and highways have been either destroyed or closed due to damage.

The level of disruption and chaos is immense and although the death toll is likely to reach into the thousands, its relatively low level thus far is a testament to the early warning and emergency rescue services in Japan, which moved quickly to evacuate residents from coastal communities in the hours after the quake.

Thrilled fans take over Dhaka, Ctg

2011-03-11T17:15:00.000-08:00

Sat, Mar 12th, 2011 2:00 am BdST
England 225 all out (49.4 overs)
Bangladesh227 for 8 (49.0 overs)

Bangladesh pull off a shock win in the World Cup, inflicting a second defeat on England that leaves their progress to the quarter-finals in serious doubt. Dhaka, Mar 12 (bdnews24.com)

Ecstatic Bangladesh fans rocked Dhaka and Chittagong with colourful processions and slogan-chants to celebrate the two-wicket victory over England on Friday.

The first procession in Chittagong came out from Jelepara, adjacent to the media box of the local Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium.

Shouts of "Bangladesh….Bangladesh" rent air, as the people rejoiced the victory with drums and vuvuzelas until past-midnight.

Two of them—Binu Rani Das and Niru Bala Das—told bdnews24.com that they were very happy as Bangladesh won the match in their 'yard'.

Sixty-year-old Suraja Rani Das said she kept banging a puja cymbal at Sri Radha Gobinda temple out of joy for long.

Children filled the city with the sound of vuvuzelas.

Moreover, the law enforcers on duty in the stadium area were also seen celebrating the victory.

In the capital, the people took to the streets after Mahmudullah hit the final shot.

Frenzied fans shouted with joy. The entire city, especially the Dhaka University area, was taken over by the delighted crowds.

Many of them carried fireworks in their pockets, as they 'knew that Bangladesh would win the match'.

"We are with Bangladesh whether it wins or loses," they shouted a few minutes prior to the close of the match.

Dhaka University student Abul Kalam Azad said the victory seemed to him as 'recovery of a lost property'.

Islam catapults Bangladesh to 27-run victory

2011-02-25T07:57:00.000-08:00

IRE vs BAN, 9th Match, Group B, Dhaka
IRE 178-all out (45.0 Ovs)
BAN 205 (49.2 Ovs)

Bangladesh, spearheaded by fast bowler Shafiul Islam, beat Ireland by 27 runs in the World Cup Group B match at the Shere Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur on Friday.

Bangladesh have really pulled out the rabbit out of the hat. They started off with the spinners and it paid rich dividends as they sent back the openers cheaply. None of the Irish batsmen got going and the Bangladeshi spinners continued to pile on the pressure. Kevin O Brien and Andre Botha strung together a good partnership, but Naeem Islam and Shafiul Islam broke the partnership and ran through the tail to complete a thrilling 27 run victory for the Tigers. This victory was their first against the Irish in all ICC tournaments and they have kept themselves alive in the competition.

Boyd Rankin, on three, is bamboozled by Shafiul Islam's slower delivery, and is caught at short mid-wicket as Ireland is dismissed for 178.

Bangladesh earlier scored 205 runs. The Bangladesh-team celebrates their 27-run victory.

Islam captured 4/21 in eight overs, the best bowling performance by a Bangladesh-bowler in a World Cup match.

It was a sweet revenge for Bangladesh, who lost by 74 runs to Ireland during the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

43rd over: Shafiul Islam takes his third wicket as he traps Trent Johnston in front for 5 and Ireland slips to 171/9. They need another 35 runs, but Islam's inspired spell has taken Bangldesh within striking distance of a famous come-from-behind victory.

41st over: Shafiul Islam produces a beautiful yorker with reverse swing and Andre Botha is bowled for 22 (36 balls, 3x4) as Ireland slips to 168/8. There is another 38 runs needed for a win, but Bangladesh is holding sway.

39th over: John Mooney tries to play an expansive shot and drags a delivery from the spinner Naeem Islam onto his stumps. He is gone for a duck. Ireland needs another 42 runs for victory with 62 balls left. Andre Botha, on 22, is fast running out of batting partners.

37th over: Kevin O' Brien, on 37, is caught on the square-leg boundary by the substitute, Shurawadi Shuvo, off Safiul Islam as he attempts another big shot. He scored 37, faced 40 balls and muscled three fours and a six. He was involved in a 41-run partnership with Andre Botha, on 12.

Ireland needs another 55 runs to win, and Bangladesh is hunting for four wickets.

33rd over: Kevin O' Brien and Andre Botha slams fourteen runs in an over by the off-spinner Mohammad Ashraful. O' Brien moves to 33 off 29 balls, including two fours in that Ashraful-over. Ireland moves to 140/5.

30th over: Andre Botha and Kevin O' Brien battle against the spin of Abdur Razzak and reach 117/5 after 30 overs. The spinners are really turning it, and Ireland needs another 89 runs to win it.

28th over: Niall O' Brien tries to muscle a delivery by Shakik Al Hasan over the mid-wicket boundary, but is brilliantly caught by a diving Tamim Iqbal for 38 (52 balls, 3x4) as Ireland slips to 110/5.

Tamim celebrates wildly and the crowd is in raptures. This could be the turning point, although Kevin O' Brien, on thirteen, is looking in good nick. Ireland is chasing the Bangladesh-target of 205.

25th over: Mohammad Ashraful bowls Andrew White through the proverbial gate between bat and pad for 10 and Ireland slips to 92/4. Niall O' Brien is still there on 34, but Ireland is in trouble.

The ball is starting to turn prodigiously, with both the off-spinner Ashraful and Shakib Al Hasan troubling the batsmen.

19th over: Ed Joyce, on 16, tries to turn a delivery from the spinner Mohammad Ashraful to mid-wicket, but gets a leading edge and is caught and bowled for 16. Ireland is reduced to 75/3, with another 131 runs needed for victory.

18th over: Nial O' Brien drives Rubel Hossain through extra-cover for a boundary, one of the shots of the day. He moves to 27, while Ed Joyce is on 16. Ireland moves to 75/2, with another 131 runs needed to win it. Bangladesh scored 205 in 49.2 overs.

15th over:Ed Joyce and Niall O' Brien prefer to play cautiously against the spin of Mohammad Ashraful, carefully nurtuing the ball through the inner rings for singles without playing risky shots. Ireland moves to 62/2 after fifteen overs, with another 144 runs needed for victory. Joyce has ten and O' Brien twenty.

12th over:Niall O' Brien, on 11, and Ed Joyce, on 8, soldier on, as Ireand reaches 50/2 in that over, bowled by Mohammad Ashraful. O' Brien has slammed two early boundaries and looks to take the attack to the spinners of Bangladesh.

10th over: William Porterfield plays too early and hits it straight to Raqibul Hasan at short mid-wicket off Shakib al Hasan. He is gone for 20, and Ireland slips to 36/2. It was Shakib's first delivery of his first spell.

It is a good sign for Bangladesh, as Shakib is a world-class spinner, and he has tasted early success.

6th over: Paul Stirling tries to hit a full delivery by the spinner Abdur Razzaq, and the ball slips through to the wicketkeeper, Mushfiqur Rahim. He reacts like lightnining with Stirling just temporarily out of his ground, and removes the bails. Stirling is gone for 9 and Ireland slips to 23/1. Bangladesh managed 205 in their fifty overs.

3rd over: William Porterfield, with 10, and Paul Stirling, yet to open his account, have steadily guided Ireland to 11/0 after three overs. Earlier, Bangladesh scored 205 runs in their alloted 50 overs.

Bangladesh innings wrap: Ireland, spearheaded by Andre Botha, strangled Bangladesh and reduced them to 205 in their Group B World Cup match at the Shere Bangla Stadium in Mirpur on Friday.

Bangladesh started like a house on fire and was handily placed on 53/0 after 6.2 overs.

But they could not capitalize on their explosive start.

After Imrul Kayes was stumped expertly by Nyall O’ Brien off John Mooney for 12, the complexion of the match changed.

Tamim Iqbal perished shortly afterward when he was caught at point by the captain, William Porterfield for 44 (43 balls, 7x4) as Bangladesh slipped to 68/3.

Mooney, Botha and the slow bowler George Dockrell changed the pace of the innings. Botha and Mooney used clever variations of pace, the off-cutter and discipline to frustrate the Bangladesh batsmen on an extremely slow track.

Iqbal flayed the bowling to all parts of the ground early on, but once Botha took centre stage, he strangled the batsmen.

He finished with 3/32 from nine overs.

Dockrell captured 2/23 in ten overs and removed Mushfiqur Rahim (36, 66 balls, 1x4) and Mohammed Ashraful in similar fashion, caught at short fine leg.

Rahim and Shaqibal Hasan (38, 69 balls, 1x4) featured in a slow 61-run partnership for the fifth wicket.

But the soft dismissal of Rahim off a bad sweep shot in an attempt to hit a boundary off Dockrell, triggered a mini-collapse.

The Bangladesh team suffered a mid-innings wobble and collapsed from 147/4 to 170/8.

The lack of discipline and the inability to use a Plan B once their flair and fearless stroke play did not materialize, was at the heart of their struggle on a slow pitch that seems to suit the Ireland-attack more than the Bangladesh top-order.

Trent Johnston finished the innings off in style and captured 2/40 in 8.2 overs. Naeem Islam slammed a couple of attractive boundaries and reached 29 off 38 balls before he was caught at short fine leg by Dockrell off Johnston.

The Irish fielding was excellent throughout, and they played with passion and determination.

Dockrell is an 18-year old left-arm spinner, but his line was immaculate, and he got bounce and quite some spin against the dangerous top- and middle-order of Bangladesh.