Muslim officers in Scotland Yard are being routinely discriminated against, being overlooked in promotion and are “entirely absent” from specialist operations, an audit has found.
“Muslim officers are being overlooked, potentially discriminated against in promotion, or are failing to receive the necessary training and personal development that would allow them to rise through the ranks,” said the audit cited by The Observer on Sunday, June 29.
On photo: Protest rally in front of Chinese Embassy by Uighurs living in Belgium
A court in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang has sentenced five imams to seven years in Chinese concentration camps for “illegally” organizing Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the World Uighur Congress reported.
The clerics were also charged with illegally providing copies of the Koran at a recent sentencing rally in Xayar County, near Xinjiang’s Aksu City, said the Munich-based spokesman of the Congress.
More than 300 people attended the rally organized by the County People’s Court, said the spokesman.
In a separate report, the World Uighur Congress said authorities in Aksu’s Kalpin County had demolished a mosque, which refused to hang slogans supporting the Beijing Olympics. It happened despite the worldwide response initiated by the report about this incident.
Moreover, Muslims were officially not allowed to show up on the streets during the “Olympic torch-bearing ceremony” for “security purposes”.
State media said that more than 100,000 Chinese people completed pilgrimages to Mecca from 1985 to 2006. An annual record of 10,000 Chinese Muslims were sent to Saudi Arabia from November 2006 to last January, reports said.
There are almost 21 million Muslims living in China. Half of them are from the Huai nation living in Northeastern region.
The largest ethnic community of the Province of Xinjiang consists of Uighurs practicing Islam. Their number is about 7.4 million.
Chinese authorities persecute Muslims on a regular basis, and imams of the mosques are supposed to undergo special “political retraining”.
An Australian court has granted Muslims in the northern city of Cairns the right to build a mosque, ending an eight-year battle for the Muslim worship place, reported The Australian on Friday, June 27.
“It is in the public interest that persons who choose that faith, just as those who choose any other faith, have access to a safe and reasonably comfortable place of gathering and worship,” judge Keith Dodds said.
An American Muslim nuclear physicist has sued the US government over revoking his security clearance because of his faith and criticism of the Iraq war, reported The New York Times on Friday, June 27.
“Our contention is that the reason the D.O.E. (Department of Energy) invoked national security here was to relieve themselves of the responsibility of having to tell us what’s going on,” said lawyer Witold Walczak.
By Nidal Abu Arif, IOL Correspondent
ODENSE — Zainab al-Khatib commanders the attention of the women national soccer team fans not just with her unmistaken talents, dribbling skills and spectacular goals but also her colorful hijab.
On photo: Mosque in Kashgar, which was destroyed after its imam refused to put up signs in support for the Beijing Olympics. The torch-bearing ceremony, whose route was passing near the mosque, took place June 18, 2008.
Continue reading ‘China demolishes mosque for not supporting Olympics: group’
Most religious Americans believe there is more than one road to God, and more than one divine destination, a new report shows.
Continue reading ‘Pew Survey: Americans Religiously Tolerant’
Muslim scholars, politicians, economists, scientists and scholars from around the world are topping the list of the world’s Top 20 Public Intellectuals unveiled on Monday, June 23.
“The top 10 public intellectuals in this year’s reader poll are all Muslim,” the American magazine Foreign policy said announcing the list.
American Muslims are the world’s most diverse community and one of the most successfully integrated minorities in the United States, a US sociologist said on Saturday, June 21.
“US Muslims are a diverse, well-informed group,” Jen’nan Ghazal Read, Associate professor at Duke University, wrote in the Detroit Free Press.
By Nidal Abu Arif, IOL Correspondent
COPENHAGEN — Danish Muslims are planning to take Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten daily to Europe’s highest human rights court over the publication of satirical drawings of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him).
“[Danish] Muslim organizations intend to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights,” Muslim leader Mohammed Khalid Samha told IslamOnline.net on Friday, June 20.
Continue reading ‘Muslims Take Prophet Cartoons to EU Court’
Israel has agreed to a six-month truce with Palestinian armed groups including Hamas, the government’s chief spokesman has confirmed.“Israel has accepted Egypt’s proposals,” Mark Regev, the chief spokesman for the Israeli government, said.
By Emdad Rahman, IOL Correspondent
LONDON — The election of Conservative candidate Boris Johnson, notorious for offending ethnic minorities, as London mayor after defeating incumbent Ken Livingstone has worried many Muslim Londoners.
By Hadi Yahmid, IOL Correspondent
PARIS — At the heart of the French capital, the Saint-Denis arch stands high to symbolically mark the intersection of where St-Denis street changes to Faubourg Saint Denis street.
By Dina Rabie, IOL Staff
CAIRO — Sada Cumber, the first-ever American envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), believes the reason behind the widening gap between the United States and the Muslim world is ignorance of each other.
Makkah – Jamad Al Akher 03 1429/ June 07, 2008 – Wrapping up of their three-day deliberations in the holy city of Makkah yesterday evening, leading Islamic scholars and thinkers from around the world adopted a number of proposals and recommendations aimed at promoting peaceful coexistence among followers of various religions and cultures. Their proposals included creation of a centre that would promote relations among different religions and an award to encourage proponents of interfaith dialogue. The three-day conference, which brought together around 600 Islamic scholars, thinkers, intellectuals and academics from across the world, also urged Muslims to learn about non-Muslims and their cultures. The International Islamic Dialogue Conference was organized by the Makkah-based Muslim World League (MWL) at Al Safa Palace in the vicinity of the Haram Mosque.
In the final communiqué of the conference, which was read by Abdul Rahman Al-Zaid, assistant secretary-general of MWL, at the end of the conference, the scholars urged the creation of the King Abdullah International Center for Cultural Relations” with the aim to disseminate the culture of dialogue as well as the establishment of the King Abdullah International Prize for Cultural Dialogue to be granted to “figures and international organizations that contribute to advancing the dialogue in order to reach its objectives.” The participants also called upon MWL to set up an international Islamic committee to put together a common strategy for the inter-faith dialogue.
The scholars made a plea aimed to encourage Muslims to reach out to people from other monotheistic faiths in order to diffuse conflict and restore tolerance. They called on King Abdullah to bring together specialists from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions and other beliefs “to agree on a format for a fruitful world dialogue that would contribute to solving problems faced today by mankind.” In March, King Abdullah proposed talks among the three largest monotheistic religions in a first for the Kingdom, which is home to two of the three holiest shrines in Islam.
“The difference between nations in beliefs and cultures are God’s will, so they should use their common values as a base for cooperation that would be for their benefit,” the statement said. But the scholars insisted that dialogue should not mean abandoning their principles and their religion’s fundamentals. “Coexistence and cooperation do not mean concessions regarding the fundamental principles nor harmonizing among religions,” the 18-page communique said. The Conference stressed that Islam has viable solutions to those crises, and that the Muslim nation, with the rich civilization it draws on, ought to contribute with others to facing these challenges . The other divine religions and philosophies share with Islam the basics of human ethics and values which they should together protect against injustice, aggression and disintegration of families.
The statement said that the comprehensive dialogue on the investment in shared and mutual humanitarian interests is necessary for cooperation in joint action programs that besiege contemporary problems, and shield humanity against their malevolent effects. It also pointed out that dialogue is a genuine approach in Quran and the traditions of prophets when communicating with their peoples. It signaled Madinah society as an ideal example of the society of coexistence of different cultures under the leadership of the Prophet (peace be upon him). The scholars emphasized that dialogue is one of the most important outlets through which Muslims can perceive the world, and achieve a set of goals, the most important of which is to introduce Islam, its legislations and humanitarian principles, in addition to its rich civilization. “Dialogue also enables Islam to contribute to the march of human civilization and to respond to and correct the erroneous slanders raised against Islam, and to address the challenges facing the world owing to distancing themselves from religion and its values,” they said.
The Conference called on Muslim countries, where there are non-Muslim majorities or minorities, to forge social dialogue with them. The conference urged Muslims in non-Islamic countries to conduct continued dialogue with the people of those countries, respect the host countries’ rules, never neglect their Islamic religious duties, and show cooperation with the governments of Islamic countries and Islamic organizations. The conference also called on the United Nations and international human rights organizations to bring a law making blasphemy of prophets a punishable offence. The statement said the common grounds for a serious dialogue will be based on a belief in the unity of the origin of mankind; that humans are equal in dignity and humanity and in rejection of racism and denunciation of odious claims of superiority.
The conference reviewed the topics of dialogue and called on Islamic and global dialogue institutions to give priority to issues of protection of values and ethics against the calls for demoralization on grounds of defending individual freedom and fighting terrorism, violence, extremism and blasphemy. The conference called for studying the causes and means of eradicating them, and for global cooperation to wipe them out through various means. The conference also refuted the suspicion that Islam and Muslims are responsible for terrorism, extremism and hatred. Also the conference rejected the oppression and exploitation of poor people under the excuse of liberating them or guarding their human rights. The conference called for the provision of the basic elements of families and for helping them financially and morally to bring up responsible generations who care for the world welfare according to the guidance of God.
HI/HA/IINA
Continue reading ‘Scholars urge to reach out to people of other faiths’
MANIS LOR, Indonesia — President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono signed a decree on Monday ordering members of a minority Muslim sect to stop practicing their form of Islam or face arrest.
Continue reading ‘President of Indonesia Restricts Muslim Sect’
Dr. Husam Zarad and nearly 40 other Muslim colleagues are finally having their moment of joy on Wednesday, June 11, opening a free clinic to serve the people of Hernando County in Florida.
“This is our dream coming true,” Zarad told San Petersburg Times.
CAIRO — With a compensation, a letter of praise and a vow to learn lessons from the issue, the British Army has settled the case of a Muslim Major who sued for racial and religious discrimination over lack of appreciation for her role in rescuing British soldiers in Iraq in 2005, the Telegraph reported on Tuesday, June 10.
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