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FAMILY UNITY DURING WAR TIME: Islam Forbids
Domestic Violence
"Qur'an
only" Concept Hurting Rights of Women
by
Kaukab Siddique
The violence which our power structure
carries out all over the world
often starts at home. More than 4,000,000 women
are battered every year in
the
U.S.
As an overflow of this culture of
violence, numbers Muslim men too
indulge in physical and psychological
mistreatment of their wives. Some of
these Muslims use a verse of the Qur'an to
justify their behavior. This
misunderstanding of the Qur'an is difficult to
deal with owing to an
important reason:
1. Attempts to interpret the Qur'an without the
help of the
Hadith.
2. Without the Hadith, one cannot know that the
Qur'an's revelation was
progressive, not static. It is a mistake to
interpret the Qur'an without the
concept of "abrogation" which the Hadith
provides.
3. In all matters, the Prophet's (pbuh)
interpretation of the Qur'an is
FINAL. The Qur'an itself does not permit
interpretation which ignores what
the Prophet (pbuh) said about it.
4. THE PROPHET (pbuh) HAS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN
ALL VIOLENCE AGAINST women in
general and wives in particular. As hazrat
'Ayesha (r.a.) reports: The
messenger of Allah (pbuh) never raised his hand
against a woman.
5. Even rough behavior, without intent to do
violence or to hurt, directed
towards women, was forbidden by the Prophet
(pbuh). As he told a reckless
camel driver who was transporting women:"Be
careful, Anjasha, these are
vessels of glass which might break easily."
Domestic violence is widespread.
Fortunately, an Islamic program has
been successfully initiated to help the victims
of such violence in Atlanta.
Great work is being done by BAITUL SALAAM. To
send your help, by way of
donations, gifts etc., contact:
haleem1@aol.com
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A DIFFERENT VIEW OF THE COMING BATTLE IN IRAQ
[by Br. Eric Mueller in Texas]
Dear Brother Kaukab,
as-Salam `alaykum wa-rahmat Allah wa-barakatuh!
I have enjoyed the two parts of your editorial
tremendously.
As regards the war on Iraq, I would like to
observe
that we must not be discouraged if the
Imperialists
seem to make spectacular troop advances in the
first
days of fighting. Much of Iraq is open country
and
with US air superiority, it would be stupid for
the
Iraqis to try to hold on to that territory.
German General Erwin Rommel in World War II said
that desert fighting was like fighting at sea -- you
take one point and then cross lots of open country
before the next place of resistance and the next battle.
If you look at the campaigns in North Africa during
the Second World War, you see that the German Afrika
Korps penetrated into
Egypt
twice and were driven back
by the British across most of Libya twice. That is
how fluid the fighting on such a battlefield is. And
of course Rommel and the British were fighting a
conventional war and were technologically about
equal.
Iraq will be fighting very much an unconventional
war.
So let no one be discouraged if we quickly hear
that the Americans have penetrated deep into the
country.
The real battle will still be in store for them.
Similarly just as the Americans had no hesitation
in 1990 about trotting out the daughter of the
Kuwaiti ambassador to invent stories of "Iraqi
atrocities" that she "witnessed" even though she hadn't even
been in Kuwait recently, So today the Americans are
certain to bring up all sorts of people, probably many of
them already trained and rehearsed, to complain about
torture and abuse at the hands of the Iraqi
regime.
The regime in Iraq has been the object of an unceasing
campaign for its overthrow for more than 12 years
by the richest, most powerful states on earth. The
only way that any government could stay in power in
the face of that intense pressure is with extremely
tight security. The Americans even admit to having
tried to get Saddam Husayn assassinated 12 times. So his
need to take strict security measures cannot be
questioned by any reasonable person.
And while we're on the subject of torture, how about
the treatment that the US troops give to those whom
they captured in Afghanistan? Stripping all their
clothes off, often in the presence of women,
taping them to boards, and leaving them naked for days,
lying in their own waste, with no medical care for
injuries.
That was the fate of the American Muslim known as
John Walker Lindh.
What of the Muslims who didn't
carry a US passport? Can we imagine that they were
given better treatment? Many of those who have been
arrested in the US speak of beatings as well --
and most of the detainees in the US have NOT been
released.
Rest assured that
CBS,
FOX,
WB,
NBC,
ABC,
CNN
and
the rest of them are not going to report how the
Americans treat the Iraqi prisoners, unless it is some sort
of sanitized report. So when they bring up
"torture," think of the brothers in Guantanamo!
Today, 18 March 2003, President Saddam Husayn
told his cabinet: "This battle will be Iraq's last battle
with every dirty, arrogant power (kull mutajabbir
la'eem) for some period of time, and it will be the last
aggressive battle that America undertakes against
the world for some time too. Victory is assured for
you, in sha' Allah, and the collapse of falsehood
(al-Baatil). Your enemy is going to collapse, by
the help of God because he is in falshood (`ala
baatil)."
It may appear to the imperialists that they can
win a win a quick victory, occupying land and even
stationing troops in cities. Even a half victory
will be hailed by the imperialists as some great
triumph, and they will crow about how powerful their
weaponsare. But this will be deception -- an attempt to
deceive us and at the same time a real deception
of themselves.
In the 1920s the Iraqis met the British invaders
with an armed revolt every year on average, even
though they carried muskets against machine guns and
even though the British dropped poisoned gas from
airplanes. But all their technology in the end
couldn't preserve the British empire, and the
same fate is in store for the evil empire with its
headquarters in Washington!
Allahu Akbar! wa-l-yakhsa' al-khasi'oun!
God is Greatest, and may the despicable be driven
off!
wa-s-salam!
Eric Mueller
Texas
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2003-03-19 Wed 07:04ct