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Good
Things in Arabic (or by Muslims)
Female Circumcision Soon To End!
"As far as I'm concerned there is no argument any more -
if you are gay, you are born gay" -
Dr Qazi Rahman, Queen Mary, University of London , BBC
report |
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We can't hide in our labs and leave the talking to Dawkins
by Prof. Jim Al-Khalili |
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My Life as a Muslim Terrorist |
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BBC Sky at Night magazine
Nov 2006 |
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WikiIslam |
Iranian Richard Dawkins site |
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End 'cruel' religious slaughter, say scientists
Beasts should be stunned before their throats are slit, Jews
and Muslims are told. Religious slaughter techniques practised by Jews and
Muslims are cruel and should be ended, says a scientific assessment from the
Government's animal welfare advisers.
June 22, 2009
The Independent
The Farm Animal Welfare Council says that slitting the throats of the
animals most commonly used for meat, chickens, without stunning, results in
"significant pain and distress". The committee, which includes scientific,
agricultural and veterinary experts, is calling for the Government to launch
a debate with Muslim and Jewish communities to end the practice.
One Muslim organisation, the Halal Food Authority, already insists on the
slaughterhouses it regulates stunning animals first on welfare grounds, as
long as they are still alive when their throats are slit. But in other halal
and almost all kosher slaughterhouses, animals have their throats slit
without prior stunning which would render them insensible to the pain.
Religious groups say that doing so would be against their interpretation of
religious texts.
They are granted an exemption to the Welfare of Animals (Slaughter or
Killing) Regulations 1995, which stipulates that creatures such as cows,
goats and chickens be stunned first.
In a report into the slaughter of white meat, the Farm Animal Welfare
Council (Fawc) said evidence suggested that chicken and turkeys were likely
to be conscious for up to 20 seconds as blood seeped out of them. The
animals are killed by a transverse incision across their neck, cutting skin,
muscle, trachea, oesophagus, carotid arteries, jugular veins and major
nerves.
"Such a large cut will inevitably trigger sensory input to pain centres in
the brain," the council said. "Our conclusions ... are that such an injury
would result in significant pain and distress ... before insensibility
supervenes. Fawc is in agreement with the prevailing scientific consensus
that slaughter without pre-stunning causes pain and distress. On the basis
that this is avoidable and in the interests of welfare, Fawc concludes that
all birds should be pre-stunned before slaughter."
While recognising the difficulties of reconciling scientific findings with
matters of faith, it urged the Government to "continue to engage with
religious communities" to make progress. In a 2003 report on red meat, Fawc
called for ministers to repeal the religious groups' legal opt-out.
The Shechita Council, which oversees kosher meat, was contacted but did not
supply a comment. Massood Khawaja, president of the Halal Food Authority,
insisted that its animals were stunned, unlike those regulated by another
group, the Halal Monitoring Committee. "The Koran says use your brain,
ponder about things and that's what we are doing," he said. "It's a question
of animal welfare."
The Government no longer keeps statistics on religious slaughter, but five
years ago, the Meat Hygiene Service suggested 114 million animals were
killed under halal and 2.1 million under kosher methods each year in
Britain.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it would not
change its "long-standing policy of religious tolerance" by ending the
opt-out. "And while the Government would prefer to see all animals stunned
before slaughter, we will continue to ensure that required standards of
animal welfare are effectively monitored and enforced in all
slaughterhouses," it said in a statement.
Last year, Lord Rooker , a minister in the department, called for meat
slaughtered without stunning to be labelled for the public's benefit, since
some cuts were considered unacceptable to eat, and sold back into the food
chain.
The Government no longer keeps statistics on religious slaughter, but five
years ago the Meat Hygiene Service suggested 114 million were killed under
halal and 2.1 million under kosher methods each year.
Last night, the vegetarian organisation Viva!, Tom Lane, said: “How many
times does the Government's own advisory committe on animal welfare have to
ask for a ban on slaughter without pre-stunning before action is taken?
Viva! embraces multiculturlism and all religious faiths, but the suffering
of these animals is so extreme that a line has to be drawn somewhere.”
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Egypt clerics back woman's Koran
The highest authority of Sunni Islam, al-Azhar University
in Cairo, says it has approved the first interpretation of the Koran by a
woman.
BBC Online
23 Dec 2008
A senior cleric told an Egyptian daily that the new book respected
established tradition, adding that gender was irrelevant to interpretation.
Liberal Muslim women have been critical of established interpretations,
saying they are patriarchal.
The author says she wanted to make Koran accessible for the young.
Sheikh Ali Abdelbaqi Mitwali told the daily al-Masri al-Youm that al-Azhar
has approved the interpretation (tafseer) submitted by Kariman Hamza, a
former broadcaster.
Sheikh Mitwali said there was no such thing as a "male" or "female" reading
of the holy book and that "what mattered for us was that the interpretation
was in line with the text of the sacred Koran and that it did not contradict
the rulings of Sharia".
Ms Hamza - who is a former presenter of religious programmes on radio - said
she was delighted by al-Azhar's decision.
She said she wanted to write a book that simplified and clarified the Koran
for the young and that she had no commercial motive.
Books in Egypt dealing with the Koran or Islamic tradition have to secure
the approval of al-Azhar before publication.
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Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts
Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a
revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical
modernisation of the religion.
Robert Pigott, Religious affairs correspondent
BBC News
26 Feb 2008
The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a
team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision
of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran.
The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the
Prophet Muhammad.
As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and
the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia.
But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative
influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it
responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.
It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by
Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.
'Reformation'
Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order
to effect a radical renewal of the religion.
Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its
foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could
represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.
Turkish officials have been reticent about the revision of the Hadith until
now, aware of the controversy it is likely to cause among traditionalist
Muslims, but they have spoken to the BBC about the project, and their
ambitious aims for it.
The forensic examination of the Hadiths has taken place in Ankara
University's School of Theology.
An adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, says some of the sayings - also
known individually as "hadiths" - can be shown to have been invented
hundreds of years after the Prophet Muhammad died, to serve the purposes of
contemporary society.
"Unfortunately you can even justify through alleged hadiths, the Muslim - or
pseudo-Muslim - practice of female genital mutilation," he says.
"You can find messages which say 'that is what the Prophet ordered us to
do'. But you can show historically how they came into being, as influences
from other cultures, that were then projected onto Islamic tradition."
The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by
various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for
various forms of social control.
Leaders of the Hadith project say successive generations have embellished
the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad himself.
Revolutionary
Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a
form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the
Prophet.
But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent.
Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been
altered and reinterpreted.
Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs
and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example.
"There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or
more without their husband's permission and they are genuine.
"But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time
it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has
passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary
ban for safety reasons."
The project justifies such bold interference in the 1,400-year-old content
of the Hadith by rigorous academic research.
Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed
for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone".
So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.
Original spirit
Yet, until now, the ban has remained in the text, and helps to restrict the
free movement of some Muslim women to this day.
There's also violence against women within families, including sexual
harassment... This does not exist in Islam... we have to explain that to
them
Hulya Koc, a "vaize"
As part of its aggressive programme of renewal, Turkey has given theological
training to 450 women, and appointed them as senior imams called "vaizes".
They have been given the task of explaining the original spirit of Islam to
remote communities in Turkey's vast interior.
One of the women, Hulya Koc, looked out over a sea of headscarves at a town
meeting in central Turkey and told the women of the equality, justice and
human rights guaranteed by an accurate interpretation of the Koran - one
guided and confirmed by the revised Hadith.
She says that, at the moment, Islam is being widely used to justify the
violent suppression of women.
"There are honour killings," she explains.
"We hear that some women are being killed when they marry the wrong person
or run away with someone they love.
"There's also violence against women within families, including sexual
harassment by uncles and others. This does not exist in Islam... we have to
explain that to them."
'New Islam'
According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London,
Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a
religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of
people in a modern secular democracy.
He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam.
"This is kind of akin to the Christian Reformation," he says.
"Not exactly the same, but if you think, it's changing the theological
foundations of [the] religion. "
Fadi Hakura believes that until now secularist Turkey has been intent on
creating a new politics for Islam.
Now, he says, "they are trying to fashion a new Islam."
Significantly, the "Ankara School" of theologians working on the new Hadith
have been using Western critical techniques and philosophy.
They have also taken an even bolder step - rejecting a long-established rule
of Muslim scholars that later (and often more conservative) texts override
earlier ones.
"You have to see them as a whole," says Fadi Hakura.
"You can't say, for example, that the verses of violence override the verses
of peace. This is used a lot in the Middle East, this kind of ideology.
"I cannot impress enough how fundamental [this change] is."
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UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office |
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International Centre for Scientific Research |
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Muslim
Heritage |
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Discover the Muslim
Heritage in our world |
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Language
Identification Chart
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From: Galileo's
Children, science fiction short stories edited by Gardner Dozois:
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