Dr Kaukab Siddique | Editor-in-Chief ---------------------------------------------------------
Zulqi'dah 29, 1425/January 10, 2005 #3
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PALESTINE! O PALESTINE!
"ELECTIONS" UNDER OCCUPATION ARE A FARCE

New Trend contacted Badi Ali, our expert on Palestine and well known peace activist in North Carolina, and questioned him about the elections held on January 9, 2005. Here are the points he made which can help our readers understand what has happened. --------------------------------------------------------
Q & A

Why do Muslim Women pray differently from Men?

Question from Sis. L... in Pakistan [name withheld on request]

Dr. Siddique, you have not been in Pakistan for long time, otherwise you would not talk about equality between men and women in Islam. Here the Hanafi school is the majority. It says that women should not go to mosque and not to Juma either. Most important: the women here are taught to pray differently from men. Women are taught different way of praying, in every part of prayer, from raising hands in Takbir, to the ruku, to sajda. The differences are slight but Hanafis insist on it and want women to behave in prayer as if they don't exist and even their sajda has to be all sqeezed down and pressed to the ground . So, on what basis do you write about equality?

Answer by Dr. Kaukab Siddique:
"The believers, men and women are each others protecting friends and guardians ..." [The Qur'an] Islamic Law doesn't differentiate between men and women. The punishment for both is the same, be it in adultery or theft or robbery. The Qur'an does not use gender as a standard for merit. Instead the Qur'an bases its recognition of merit and superiority on TAQWA or God-consciousness.

Here is an example: If a woman knows the Qur'an more than a man, the man must listen to the woman. The same applies to every aspect of life.
[ I don't know of ANY scholar who would be shameless enough to say: Don't listen to a woman who knows more Qur'an than a man.]

Same way in Hadith: Can you imagine a male sahabi [companion of the Prophet, pbuh) who would dare say to Ayesha, r.a.: you are a woman, so I won't listen to the Hadith you are narrating!

The HANAFI school was not developed by Imam Abu Hanifa himself. It is an ultra- passive school of thought which developed under the aegis of kings and emperors. Its attempts to subjugate women are linked to the whole structure of repressive rule and institutionalized slavery which developed under Muslim kings.

As far as the five daily prayers and juma' prayers are concerned, their forms and structures are not given in the Qur'an but in the Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN PRAYERS BY MEN AND WOMEN as given in Hadith. The Prophet (pbuh) made a general statement when he was teaching new Muslims how to pray. He said:
"... Pray as you have seen me praying." [Sahih Bukhari, vol. I, Hadith # 604, kitab abwab al-azaan.]

He never said that for women it is different. You'll not find any difference in prayer for women in any Sahih Hadith, be it in the collections of Bukhari and Muslim, or the rest of the Sihah Sittah, be it Abu Dawud, Ibn Majah, Nasai or Tirmizi. They narrate Hadith about every aspect of prayer, in minute detail, but never say that a woman's prayer is different from a man's.

On the contrary, one narration says about one of the great female companions:

"Um Ad-Darda used to sit in the prayer like men and she was a woman well-versed in Islamic law. [faqiha]." [Sahih of Bukhari, volume I, chapter 63, Abwab sifaat as-salaat.]

If there had been any difference between prayers for men and women, 'Ayesha, r.a., who is the leader of Islamic scholars, would have known it and narrated it. She has not.

There are increasing numbers of Ahl-e- Hadith scholars in Pakistan. I suggest that you find one of them. At least they will be able to give you the Islamic texts for their actions unlike the Hanafis who follow Qiyas and plain opinion [Rai] from a school of thought which belonged to another age and time. There is no alternative to the study of the Qur'an and the Hadith to know the real Islam. Pakistan is in transition. Increasingly, inshallah, Pakistanis will open the Qur'an and books of Hadith and study them. At this time most of them do not.
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Tsunami Politics by New Trend's Media Monitor

Zionist Media Take Aim at Islamic relief and at Arabian donations: Fail on Both Counts.
Governments vs Masses is the Reality of the Muslim World.

After the discovery of the Islamic relief teams in "inaccessible" areas of Aceh [Indonesia], America's media showed their Zionist colors. On January 7, these media, without exception, attacked the Islamic relief effort being carried out by LASHKAR MUJAHIDIN.. The media pundits were quite chagrined at Islamic movement's announcement that Islamic Law [SHARIA] would be implemented in the camps where they were helping the people. These Zionists are so muddle headed, they can't understand that Islamic people would want Islamic Law.

The story was also floated by the Zionists that this LASHKAR had attacked Christians at one time. This blatant lie did not deal with well-known Indinesian facts that Christian missionaries, emboldened by massive finances from Europe, often moving around in helicopters, initiated hostilities. In a vast Muslim population, the missionaries, owing to the support of the U.S.-backed government in Jakarta felt that they could get away with murder. Only after they attacked mosques, was there an armed response by the mujahideen.

The tsunami reports on U.S. media repeatedly showed video of an Indonesian wearing an Osama bin Laden shirt. The attitude was: how dare he! It's the media's own fault that they have not informed Americans that most Muslims, be it in Indonesia or Nigeria, consider Osama their hero and the leader of global Islam at this time. [The only exception is Iran.] That's simply a fact.

By January 8, probably someone higher up informed CNN, FOX, etc that Lashkar Mujahidin and other Islamic militants are deeply rooted in the Indonesian soil. It is fruitless to attack them when they are serving the masses better than anyone else. Thus the media blitz lost steam.

The SECOND politicization of the Tsunami tragedy was an attempt by the Zionists to drive a wedge between Arab and non-Arab Muslims. The claim was made, and it gradually grew shrill, that the Arabs don't care for the South Asian Muslims. No attempt was made to differentiate between Arab rulers [who are America's friends and agents] and the Arab masses. This too didn't work when after a few days of frenzy, the Zionists discovered that actually "Saudi" Arabia's Islamic Development Bank donated $500 million for Tsunami victims. Then in a ONE NIGHT TELETHON, the Saudi people donated $97 million.

It is true that the donation of the corrupt Saudi regime is a paltry $30 million. This regime has most of its money [Muslims' money] stashed away in Chase Manhattan and other American and Swiss financial institutions.

There is a clear distinction between the Saudi regime and the Arabian people. The regime, one of the most corrupt in the world, with the EXCEPTION OF ISRAEL which has the RECORD NUMBER OF BROTHELS IN TEL AVIV, is firmly in the pocket of the United States. By contrast, the Arabian people are integral to the international brotherhood/sisterhood of Islam.

The Arabian people oppose the U.S. war in Iraq while the regime supports it. This CLEAR DIVISION is true of Muslim countries around the world including Iran: THE GOVERNMENTS ON ONE SIDE, THE PEOPLE ON THE OTHER.

By the end of January 8, the "Saudis don't care for the South Asian Muslims" story too petered out. Now the Zionists are using Clinton to assure Muslims that "we really love you. Didn't we help you in Kosovo?"
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If God Loves People, then Why Tsunami?

By Kaukab Siddique

This might surprise you dear reader but real Muslims don't ask questions like this. For Muslims, Allah's QADR [destined power] is not to be questioned but to be accepted. ["No misfortune can happen on earth or in your souls but is recorded in a Book before we bring it into existence. That is truly easy for Allah." The Qur'an 57:22]

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) lost all his children early, with the exception of Fatima [r.a.]. Especially at the loss of his male children, the oppressors mocked him, saying that he is "ubtar" [that is his root has been cut].

Muslims become stronger in their faith as their suffering increases. In the ultimate sense, everything is from God and hence there is no point in crying about it.

The anthropomorphic God of Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity is rejected by Islam. When Muhammad's [pbuh] son from his African wife, Maria, [r.a.] died, there was an eclipse of the sun. People said that even Allah is sad at Muhammad's sorrow, but the Prophet, pbuh, rejected this idea and told Muslims that the heavens follow the laws of Allah regardless of human fortunes and misfortunes.

Thus no Muslim would blame God for the Tsunami. [Look at the women of Indonesia, as seen on U.S. T.V, clinging to their Islamic dress and identity even in this most dire of circumstances. They are not weakened in their faith by this colossal disaster.]

There are Muslims who believe that the disaster is a punishment from God. That too is not true. Punishment and reward will be IN THE HEREAFTER. ["...And the earth will shine with the light of of its Lord: And the Record (of deeds) will be placed (open). The prophets and the witnesses will be brought forward, and a just decision pronounced between them. And they will not be wronged in the least." The Qur'an 39:69]

If we look at the Islamic texts, evil people are allowed to continue in their ways. [Sharon and Bush flourish.] Only if there is HARDLY ANYONE GOOD LEFT IN A SOCIETY does God destroy that society. If there is no hope for improvement in a society, a punishment could come in which the good and the bad would be destroyed together. Well known stories of the destruction of the people of Lot [where homosexuality was the norm], and other incidents given in the chapter call Al-'Araf in the Qur'an, indicate that just about everyone in those societies had taken to evil ways.

Most of the people in the Tsunami disaster are the POOR and the OPPRESSED, and large numbers of them are devout Muslims, as well as the poor and the downtrodden among Hindus, Christians and Buddhists. It would be very presumptuous of us to claim that we know why they suffered. We must not pretend to be God and claim that we can understand everything.

God enters our lives through revelation [the Qur'an], through God's messengers [culminating in Muhammad, p, ] and through our prayers and our acceptance of God's Will.

Personally, I would say that tragedy should help us become more aware of the world we live in and MOVE OUT OF OUR EGOS to EMBRACE OTHER HUMAN BEINGS. If we constantly focus on ourselves, our own little lives, our desires and problems, we limit our humanity and the best in us. It's a well known phenomenon in America, that the richer the people, the unhappier they are. One important reason for this steady state of unhappiness in America [notice spousal abuse, divorce, drugs, crime, sexual perversions, child neglect, rampant consumerism, eating disorders] is the focus on the ego. Other humans don't matter.

In that personal sense, tragedy on the Tsunami scale can be helpful in giving us the jolt we need to snap out of our little worlds and to focus on the real world.

Let us use science and our resources to make the world a better place to live in. Hurricanes strike Florida and very few people are killed. A cyclone strikes Bangladesh and thousands are killed. Why? I don't know at the micro level of each individual and family, but at the macro level I can see that Florida takes care of its citizens to a greater degree than Bangladesh does. So, in that limited sense, the issue we need to deal with urgently is that of oppression connected to exploitation of the downtrodden people by the rich. [Here the thousands of European tourists in Thailand and Sri Lanka fit in.] This principle of struggle to put an end to oppression, by force if necessary, is called Jihad and is central to the Qur'an and the Hadith of the Prophet [pbuh]. See what God is telling us?
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2005-01-10 Mon 17:55ct
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