Singer Janet Jackson had a widely celebrated wedding to billionaire Wissam Al Mana just a few months ago. You might have heard that the wedding cost millions of dollars, and since that time, Janet hasn’t done any acting or released any music.
It has since been reported that Janet has moved to the Middle East and converted to Islam. Surprisingly, she also has disavowed music and left the industry entirely. Janet says that part of the reason she wants to leave music is so that she and her husband can live a private life away from the media.
Al Mana made his fortune through the Al Mana Retail group, which is owned and controlled by his family. This is Janet Jackson’s third marriage and her last major media appearance was in a Tyler Perry film, “Why Did I Get Married?”
Janet is now 47-years old and still looking great. She got her big break in 1982 after releasing the album control. We will always love Janet, whether she lives in the US, the Middle East or anywhere else.

Malcolm X’s influence in the world is much greater today than during his lifetime

Malik Al-Shabazz
Malcolm changed his name to Malik Al-Shabazz after leaving the Nation of Islam movement and embracing mainstream Islam, following his Hajj pilgrimage.
After serving as a senior member of the Nation, he fell out with the movement’s leader, Elijah Muhammad, and began endorsing black consciousness as his political philosophy, thereby separating himself from Elijah Muhammad, who had defined the Nation as strictly religious and apolitical.
Malcolm’s travels through the Middle East, Africa and Europe, where he explained the black struggle for justice in the US and linked it with liberation struggles throughout the world, caused his thinking to change dramatically.
“You can’t understand what is going on in Mississippi if you don’t know what is going on in the Congo,” he told blacks in Harlem.

 

“They are both the same. The same interests are at stake.”
At the age of 39 when he died, Malcolm who had renounced his earlier views toward whites, when he denounced them as “blue-eyed devils”, had transformed himself from a street hustler to a man eulogised by Ossie Davis, an American actor, as “our own black shining prince”.
Hagan, known then by the name Talmadge Hayer, was 22 and a radical member of the Nation of Islam when he assassinated Malcolm.
“Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam, separated from the Nation of Islam, and in doing so there was controversy as to some of the statements he was making about the leader,” Hagan said.
“History has revealed a lot of what Malcolm X was saying was true.”
Two other men, Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Kahlil Islam, were also found guilty of murder in 1966 and received 20 years to life.

Hagan has said that he has deep regrets about killing Malcolm X

 

However, they both proclaimed their innocence and Hagan later admitted his part in the murder and testified that both men were innocent. Aziz was paroled in 1985 and Islam was freed in 1987.
He said it was two other men who helped plot plan and participate in the killing but that it was not done under orders from the Nation.
“I can’t say that anyone in the Nation of Islam gave us the idea or instructed us to do it. We did this ourselves for the most part,” Hagan later said.
 
Global influence
Over 45 years later, Malcolm’s influence in the world is much greater today than during his lifetime but many questions about his killing remain.
Malcolm’s trips to Africa and the Middle East had made him a much larger threat to the US government than he had been within his role at the Nation.

 

After meeting with the Organization of African Unity, where he was the only American allowed to be heard, the US government began investigating his activities.
His actions and speeches were of such concern to the government that CIA director Richard Helms instructed his agents to do everything they could to “monitor” the activities of Malcolm X.
Malcolm X was then mysteriously poisoned during a trip to Egypt and barely left the country alive.

Malcolm’s actions and speeches were of great concern to the US government [AP]

 
On his return to the US, and a short while before his assassination, his home was firebombed. The police never caught the perpetrator but blamed Malcolm for firebombing his own house to make it look as if he was being targeted.
Meanwhile, Malcolm had been targeted for heavy surveillance and one of his own bodyguards was an undercover agent for New York City’s organised crime and anti-Communist unit.
 
Conspiracy
Also, James Ali, the then treasurer of the Nation of Islam, was a high-placed informant for the FBI – a fact first discovered by an author who later died when the brakes on his car failed while driving to begin shooting a film documenting the conspiracy surrounding Malcolm X’s assassination.
Ali, openly hostile to Malcolm, was seen at a rehearsal speech just days before Malcolm was killed – at which a scuffle broke out, similar to the one that would break out on the night of the shooting, distracting the crowd just long enough for the killer to walk up and shoot Malcolm X at point blank range.
Interestingly, most of the other speakers that night had cancelled at the last moment, leaving Malcolm to carry the evening.
While it is now clear that nothing could have been done to save him, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, a premier medical institution across the street from the site of the shooting, did not respond to any requests for help.
People at the hall had to go across the street to bring a stretcher and wheel Malcolm back before he received any attention.
One of Malcolm’s top aides went to the FBI shortly after the assassination to report what he felt was a larger conspiracy, incorporating elements of the US government, surrounding Malcolm’s death.
This aide was found dead in his apartment a few days later – his death was initially classified as a suicide, and then changed to a drugs overdose, with natural causes finally recorded as the cause of death.
 
Unanswered questions
With Hagan’s release the prospects of answers being provided to the many questions surrounding the death of Malcolm X may have diminished.
The Audubon ballroom where he was killed has been converted into The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center.
Zead Ramadan, the chairman, said that the centre did not have a position on Hagan’s release but was surprised that it had been allowed.
“I personally find it strange that for a couple decades any person convicted in the assassination of such an iconic figure would be allowed such leniency,” Ramadan said.
He said that there was outrage among some African-Americans that Hagan was released.
“The Malcolm X story has not ended. His popularity has grown in death…. Only God knows why this was allowed to happen.”

Source: Al Jazeera

The Islamic stipulation for women to dress modestly and “cover their jewels” does not apply to the garish and sometimes freakishly human mannequins on display in the shop windows of downtown Cairo. As protests and counter protests continue over Egypt’s draft constitution, which goes to national referendum December 15, it’s tempting to see parts of the debate over religious and secular rights reflected in the way the mannequins are draped and posed—and something haunting in the fixed gazes that can seem confident, playful, and reflective.

 

Mannequins in the Al-Mohatajiba boutique, a store selling fashion abayas.

For local Muslim women who choose to cover themselves fully, daily life means being the target of suspicion — but also sympathy
By Steve Hendrix
Safiyyah Abdullah glided through the produce aisle of the Gaithersburg Giant Wednesday, oblivious to the glances that followed her. She no longer thinks about the startling image she presents to other shoppers: a figure clad hair-to-heel in flowing black, at once anonymous and conspicuous amid the apples and onions.

Safiyyah Abdullah shops in Gaithersburg. She has worn the full veil known as a niqab since shortly after converting to Islam in 1975.
Her face was almost completely covered, only her blue eyes visible through the narrow gap above her black veil. A little boy in the milk aisle took his father’s hand and stared.
“I really don’t notice people’s reactions anymore unless they say something,” said Abdullah, 55.
Which they do, frequently. Abdullah, a Chicago-born, Lutheran-raised social science researcher, has lived in the Washington area for more than 30 years. And in that time, almost no one has seen her face.
She wears a niqab, the same kind of Muslim veil that France earlier this week declared illegal to wear in public. At least one woman there was cited and fined under the new ban, and several others were arrested while protesting it in Paris.
In the United States, some outraged Muslims have called for a boycott of French goods, while others have quietly applauded the prohibition of a garment they see as repressive.
During a round of morning errands Wednesday, Abdullah reflected on her experiences as part of a tiny minority of American Muslim women who go beyond a head scarf and wear the full veil. Since she put on the niqab shortly after converting to Islam in 1975, daily outings have been a mix of harassment and compassion, comfort and alienation.
She never knows when leaving her Gaithersburg townhouse whether this will be one of the times she is called a terrorist, invited to “go back to her own country” or stopped by the police for no apparent reason, which she says has happened “dozens of times.”
“I always get pulled over, but I have never gotten a ticket,” said Abdullah, who is both deeply religious and a buster of stereotypes. “And it’s never just one squad car, it’s always four or five.”
Her experience is a familiar one to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based civil rights group. CAIR has taken about 40 veil-related cases since 2008, including ones in which banks, stores and schools have tried to ban face coverings on their property.
Just this past Friday, a woman called to complain about being hassled at the gates of Andrews Air Force Base when visiting her ill daughter, who lives there. Malikah Amatullah of Houston, who wears a niqab and whose son-in-law is deployed in Iraq, had been using a visitor’s pass for two weeks when one guard said she couldn’t enter the base. Amatullah ended up spending more than six hours in a nearby McDonald’s and the night in a motel until an officer sorted it out, with apologies, the next day.
“I don’t even eat McDonald’s, so I didn’t have any food,” she said. “I even had to make my prayer there.”
 
Under Suspicion
Abdullah once was heading to Montgomery College, where she is studying for a degree in social work, when county police officers stopped her crowded Ride-On bus and told her to get off, she said. There had been a complaint about suspicious behavior, they told her.
“What makes me suspicious,” she demanded. “My clothing?”
But there is sympathy, too. After a drunk man harangued her on the Red Line, three other strangers apologized for his behavior.
“Really, I’m very comfortable here,” Abdullah said. “Maybe 20 percent of the time, something happens, someone says something. But most people are fine. This is a very metropolitan, diverse area.”
Her tastes are diverse as well. She is a fan of Thai food and the Cheesecake Factory, where she has perfected the knack of slipping the fork under her veil.
Airports are always an ad¬ven¬ture. Abdullah knows to arrive hours in advance and that she will inevitably be picked for extra screening. “I’m always the first one to be randomly selected,” she said. “I’ve thought of changing my name to Random.”
She doesn’t mind being asked to lift her veil and show her passport to female security agents, as long as it is done away from prying male eyes. “If it’s a legal request, I’m happy to take my veil down,” she said. “But if you’re just being an idiot, we’ll see who can be more stubborn.”
Abdullah, a poet who does readings at Busboys and Poets and other open-mic venues, boasts a sharp Chicago accent and a ringing laugh that lights up her eyes. If there is a matching smile, only her family and a few female friends have seen it.
She said covering herself to all outsiders lets her interact with the world on her own terms.
“When I dress this way, you are required to deal with me intellectually and that’s it,” Abdullah said.
Abdullah views the veil as a strictly voluntary part of Islam. Her 28-year-old daughter covers her hair, but doesn’t wear the veil. Her husband of 31 years (they divorced five years ago) never liked it, and she once went nearly three years without it when they lived in New York.
She did not like the uncovered life.
“People come up to me and say, ‘This is America, your husband can’t make you wear that,’ she said. “I say, ‘You don’t understand, this is my choice.’”
 
Newly veiled
Romana Kerns-Muhammad, 40, a jewelry designer in Lanham, started wearing a face veil four years ago, about two years after she converted to Islam. At the time she worked as the office manager of a Muslim community center and found it difficult to keep her conversations with men strictly limited to business matters.
“I’m a people person, and that kind of worked against me,” said Kerns-Muhammad, 40. “I prayed about it and decided the niqab would remind me and the brothers to keep our interactions on an appropriate level.”
And so one day at lunch, she went to a shop in College Park and asked the owner to show her a niqab and how to fasten it. She hasn’t shown her face in public since.
She has since met and married a Muslim man, who likes the veil. But her mother still hasn’t got used to it. “For her it’s a vanity thing,” she said. “I tell her that with or without the niqab, I’m Romana. I’m me.”
Asma Hanif, a nurse and midwife, covered her face for years.
“You do feel a sense of protection,” said Hanif, who now runs the Muslimat Al-Nisaa Home Center, a homeless shelter for women in Baltimore. “You feel as if the people recognize you as a religious person, they have respect and regard for you the way they would have respect for a nun.”
But the practice cost her, her first job, a post at the former Columbia Women’s Hospital in Georgetown. Alhough she’d worn the veil to her job interview, the hospital later told her it was interfering with her ability to relate to patients.
She found other medical work, but eventually stopped wearing the full covering when it became too hard to wear sterile scrubs.
Asra Nomani, a local Muslim feminist and author of “Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam,” is seeing more covered women in area malls and dog parks. Most of them, she suspects, are converts to Islam.
“You’d be hard-pressed to find many native-born Muslims who wear niqab,” said Nomani, who would support a ban on religious face coverings here. “It’s been mostly accepted within Islam that women are not required to wear the veil. Even these women who adopt the veil voluntarily are promoting a hard-line ideology.”

The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History is a 1978 book by Michael H. Hart. It is a ranking of the 100 people who most influenced human history. Since publication the book has been hotly debated and its concept widely copied. It is important to note that Dr. Hart ranked the greatest among famous people.
Michael H. Hart, THE 100: A RANKING OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONS IN HISTORY, New York: Hart Publishing Company, Inc., 1978, p. 33.

MUHAMMAD, No. 1
The 100, a Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History
by Michael H. Hart

My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels. Of humble origins, Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the world’s great religions, and became an immensely effective political leader.
Today, thirteen centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive. The majority of the persons in this book had the advantage of being born and raised in centers of civilization, highly cultured or politically pivotal nations. Muhammad, however, was born in the year 570, in the city of Mecca, in southern Arabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from the centers of trade, art, and learning. Orphaned at age six, he was reared in modest surroundings. Islamic tradition tells us that he was illiterate. His economic position improved when, at age twenty-five, he married a wealthy widow. Nevertheless, as he approached forty, there was little outward indication that he was a remarkable person. Most Arabs at that time were pagans, who believed in many gods. There were, however, in Mecca, a small number of Jews and Christians; it was from them no doubt that Muhammad first learned of a single, omnipotent God who ruled the entire universe. When he was forty years old, Muhammad became convinced that this one true God (Allah) was speaking to him, and had chosen him to spread the true faith. For three years, Muhammad preached only to close friends and associates. Then, about 613, he began preaching in public. As he slowly gained converts, the Meccan authorities came to consider him a dangerous nuisance. In 622, fearing for his safety, Muhammad fled to Medina (a city some 200 miles north of Mecca), where he had been offered a position of considerable political power. This flight, called the Hegira, was the turning point of the Prophet’s life. In Mecca, he had had few followers. In Medina, he had many more, and he soon acquired an influence that made him a virtual dictator. During the next few years, while Muhammad’s following grew rapidly, a series of battles were fought between Medina and Mecca. This was ended in 630 with Muhammad’s triumphant return to Mecca as conqueror. The remaining two and one-half years of his life witnessed the rapid conversion of the Arab tribes to the new religion.
When Muhammad died, in 632, he was the effective ruler of all of southern Arabia. The Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia had a reputation as fierce warriors. But their number was small; and plagued by disunity and internecine warfare, they had been no match for the larger armies of the kingdoms in the settled agricultural areas to the north. However, unified by Muhammad for the first time in history, and inspired by their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab armies now embarked upon one of the most astonishing series of conquests in human history. To the northeast of Arabia lay the large Neo-Persian Empire of the Sassanids; to the northwest lay the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople. Numerically, the Arabs were no match for their opponents. On the field of battle, though, the inspired Arabs rapidly conquered all of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. By 642, Egypt had been wrested from the Byzantine Empire, while the Persian armies had been crushed at the key battles of Qadisiya in 637 and Nehavend in 642. But even these enormous conquests, which were made under the leadership of Muhammad’s close friends and immediate successors, Ali, Abu Bakr and ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, did not mark the end of the Arab advance. By 711, the Arab armies had swept completely across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean There they turned north and, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, overwhelmed the Visigothic kingdom in Spain.
For a while, it must have seemed that the Moslems would overwhelm all of Christian Europe. However, in 732, at the famous Battle of Tours, a Moslem army, which had advanced into the center of France, was at last defeated by the Franks. Nevertheless, in a scant century of fighting, these Bedouin tribesmen, inspired by the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empire stretching from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean-the largest empire that the world had yet seen. And everywhere that the armies conquered, large-scale conversion to the new faith eventually followed. Now, not all of these conquests proved permanent. The Persians, though they have remained faithful to the religion of the Prophet, have since regained their independence from the Arabs. And in Spain, more than seven centuries of warfare, finally resulted in the Christians reconquering the entire peninsula. However, Mesopotamia and Egypt, the two cradles of ancient civilization, have remained Moslem, as has the entire coast of North Africa. The new religion, of course, continued to spread, in the intervening centuries, far beyond the borders of the original Moslem conquests. Currently it has tens of millions of adherents in Africa and Central Asia and even more in Pakistan and northern India, and in Indonesia. In Indonesia, the new faith has been a unifying factor. In the Indian subcontinent, however, the conflict between Moslems and Hindus is still a major obstacle to unity.
How, then, is one to assess the overall impact of Muhammad on human history? Like all religions, Islam exerts an enormous influence upon the lives of its followers. It is for this reason that the founders of the world’s great religions all figure prominently in this book. Since there are roughly twice as many Christians as Moslems in the world, it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity. Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical and moral precepts of Christianity (insofar as these differed from Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer of Christian theology, its principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of the New Testament. Muhammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition, he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran, a collection of certain of Muhammad’s insights that he believed had been directly revealed to him by Allah. Most of these utterances were copied more or less faithfully during Muhammad’s lifetime and were collected together in authoritative form not long after his death. The Koran therefore, closely represents Muhammad’s ideas and teachings and to a considerable extent his exact words. No such detailed compilation of the teachings of Christ has survived. Since the Koran is at least as important to Moslems as the Bible is to Christians, the influence of Muhammad through the medium of the Koran has been enormous. It is probable that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity.
On the purely religious level, then, it seems likely that Muhammad has been as influential in human history as Jesus. Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular as well as a religious leader. In fact, as the driving force behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political leader of all time. Of many important historical events, one might say that they were inevitable and would have occurred even without the particular political leader who guided them. For example, the South American colonies would probably have won their independence from Spain even if Simon Bolivar had never lived. But this cannot be said of the Arab conquests. Nothing similar had occurred before Muhammad, and there is no reason to believe that the conquests would have been achieved without him. The only comparable conquests in human history are those of the Mongols in the thirteenth century, which were primarily due to the influence of Genghis Khan. These conquests, however, though more extensive than those of the Arabs, did not prove permanent, and today the only areas occupied by the Mongols are those that they held prior to the time of Genghis Khan. It is far different with the conquests of the Arabs. From Iraq to Morocco, there extends a whole chain of Moslem nations united not merely by their faith in Islam, but also by their Arabic language, history, and culture.
The centrality of the Koran in the Moslem religion and the fact that it is written in Arabic have probably prevented the Arab language from breaking up into mutually unintelligible dialects, which might otherwise have occurred in the intervening thirteen centuries. Differences and divisions between these Arab states exist, of course, and they are considerable, but the partial disunity should not blind us to the important elements of unity that have continued to exist. For instance, neither Iran nor Indonesia, both oil-producing states and both Islamic in religion joined in the oil embargo of the winter of 1973-74. It is no coincidence that all of the Arab states, and only the Arab states, participated in the embargo. We see, then, that the Arab conquests of the seventh century have continued to play an important role in human history, down to the present day. It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.
————————————————–
The following is from Michael Hart’s book and lists Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as the most influential man in History.
Ranking of 100 most influential persons in history:

Pakistani Sunni Muslim devotees returned home on a packed train after attending an annual three-day religious congregation in Multan, Pakistan.

No.

Muslims believe that the original, unchanged message given to Muhammad, Jesus, Moses and all other prophets came from the One same God. This common origin explains their similarities in many beliefs and values.

“Say: We Believe in God and what has been revealed to us, and what was revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord; we do not make any distinction between any of them, and to Him (God) do we wholly give ourselves.” (Qur’an 3:84)

Jews, Christians and Muslims all consider Abraham their Patriarch. Abraham is mentioned in the Qur’an as one of the great prophets. He was blessed by God to be the father of many nations. From his second son, Isaac, descended the tribes of Israel, and through them, Moses and Jesus; and from his first son, Ishmael, came Muhammad (peace and blessings of God be upon all of His messengers).

Abraham was commanded by God to rebuild the place of worship that Adam first built – the Ka’bah, in Makkah (Mecca). The Ka’bah is a simple stone structure, erected as a sanctuary for the worship of the One God. Muslims do not worship the Ka’bah; the cubical building is simply the unified direction toward which all Muslims face in Prayer to God, Almighty.
 
Is Islam respectful of other beliefs?
Yes. The Qur’an states unequivocally:

“There is no compulsion in religion. Truth stands out clearly from falsehood…” (Qur’an 2:256)

Freedom of conscience is an essential tenant of Islam. Truth can only be seen if it is not clouded by coercion. Protection of the rights of non-Muslims is an intrinsic part of Islamic law. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said:

“He who hurts a non-Muslim citizen of a Muslim State – I am his adversary and I shall be his adversary on the Day of Judgment.”

“Beware on the Day of Judgment, I shall, myself, be the accuser against him who wrongs a non-Muslim citizen (of a Muslim State) or Lays on him a responsibility greater than he can bear, or deprives him of anything that belongs to him.”

History provides many examples of Muslims’ respect towards other faiths. For instance, prior to the Spanish Inquisition, Jews and Christians lived and prospered in Spain for centuries under Muslim rule. Another well known example is when Omar, the second successor to Prophet Muhammad, entered Jerusalem. He refused to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He was concerned that some overzealous Muslim in the future might destroy the Church and build a Mosque in his honor.

By Karina Ioffee, Reuters
BERKELEY, Calif – A pioneering U.S. Muslim university has quietly opened in California, aiming to counter hatred and distrust for Islam

 
Although the first class has just 15 students and occupies a rented office space blocks from the University of California campus, Zaytuna College aims to become the first accredited U.S. Muslim university, an equal to academic giants with religious roots like Columbia University and Rutgers.

“Every religious community that comes to the U.S. eventually reaches a level when they need to institutionalize to ensure their survival and our community is at that point,” said Hamza Yusuf, a co-founder of Zaytuna College and a leading scholar of classical Islam in the West.

Debates are still raging over the appropriateness of a mosque near the New York site of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, in what some analysts see as a clear sign of U.S. scepticism of Islam.

More than 30 percent of Americans believe Islam promotes violence, and many argue the religion has no place in a Judeo-Christian country, a new Pew Research Center poll shows.

Zaytuna founders say the discrimination Muslims face in the United States is no different from what Catholics experienced in the 19th century or Jews in the 20th century, and it’s only a matter of time before they are fully accepted.

“Education in general is one of the primary remedies for dealing with ignorance,” said Hatem Bazian, academic affairs chair at Zaytuna College, who also teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.

The four-year program offers classes in Islamic literature, jurisprudence, theology and history and is open to all faiths, although all current students are Muslim, from a variety of backgrounds.

Aiming for the Top

There are other U.S.-based Muslim institutions of higher learning, but Zaytuna aims to be the first to get the accreditation that puts schools in the top tier of universities.

On a recent day, five students were busy translating the Muwatta, a collection of writings on the Islamic jurisprudence from the Sunni school of thought. Men and women shared the classroom, but the women stuck close together and all wore hijab, the traditional head covering.

Sumaya Mehai, 21, came to the school after several years of frustrated study at a junior college. “I couldn’t tie in my religious beliefs with what I was getting in the classroom,” Mehai said. “Bringing religion into any discussion is usually discouraged at other schools.”

There are an estimated six million Muslims in the United States, according to Pew, a growing community that today has more than 2,000 mosques and 500 schools around the country. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of imams and other community leaders, who often have to be sent from abroad.

“The imams who are sent to the U.S. are not prepared to address the issues they encounter here like drug use among teens or pregnancy or gangs,” Bazian said. “It’s like bringing them into a warzone.”

Some graduates will become Imams, while others will go on to work at Islamic cultural centers, schools, and mainstream hospitals and law firms, said Bazian, an American convert to Islam.

Although some conservative bloggers have criticized the school as a “training ground for jihadists,” the local Berkeley community, known for its leftist leanings, has been welcoming, Yusuf said. Nationally too, Islamic scholars have praised the school for its progressive and moderate approach.

“It’s an attempt to bring the rigor of classical Islam and make sure it takes root in American soil,” said Omid Safi, a professor of religious studies at the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill. “If successful, it will be yet another step to making Islam indigenous in this country.”

Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson holds talks with Dr. Muhammad Al-Oqala, president of the Islamic University in Madinah. (AN photo by Yousuf Muhammad)
By YOUSUF MUHAMMAD | ARAB NEWS
 
MADINAH: Former boxing champion Mike Tyson, who embraced Islam while serving a prison sentence in the 1990s, is on his first visit to the Kingdom to perform Umrah. He arrived in the holy city of Madinah on Friday to perform prayers at the Prophet’s Mosque.

While in Madinah, Tyson met Dr. Muhammad Al-Oqala, president of the Islamic University, who briefed the world heavyweight champion on the services being rendered by the university to students from across the world.
From Madinah, Tyson will travel on to Makkah to perform Umrah, press reports said. He will also visit Jeddah, Abha and Riyadh as part of his Saudi tour. His visit to Saudi Arabia was arranged by the Canadian Dawa Association (CDA) as part of visits it organizes for new Muslim celebrities to the Islamic sites in the Kingdom. Shazad Mohammed, president of CDA, was present at Prince Muhammad International Airport in Madinah to receive Tyson.
Mohammed, an ambassador of peace with the United Nations, said Tyson would be in the Kingdom for one week, visiting the holy places as well as important landmarks in the country and meeting with Saudi people to get to know their culture and traditions.

“Call to the way of your Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and argue with them in the best way possible. Your Lord surely knows best who has gone astray from His way, and He knows best who are the rightly guided” (Qur’an 16:125)

A religious fanatic at the University of Ibadan (UI), Miss Seun Bunmi Adegunsoye, went on a public tirade against fasting Muslims at a Jummat service taking place inside the university’s Muslim community central mosque on Friday 13th August, 2010 to preach her hybrid Christianity to the ‘damned Muslims’ in the mosque. She was reported to have disguised herself as a Muslim lady with head-cover in order to gain access to the section of the mosque reserved for women. As she waited for the congregation to stand in prayer- the first Jummat service of the month of Ramadan- she started to scream “Jesus is the way, accept him. He will soon come. Allah is not the way. Except you accept Christ in your life, you are not safe. All of you here, no matter the number of the congregation, accept Jesus Christ. Allah is not God; Jesus is Lord”. This surely was a premeditated plot to provoke violent response from the Muslims. Aside the fact that this Islamophobic delirium shows the increasing frustration these proselytizing warriors feel, the intolerance, bigotry and hostility that Muslims face at their hands knows no bound. It seems so many of them simply think their destiny is to save the Muslims by hating them.

If some of those aggressively offering salvation to the Muslims had known as much of Islam, as Muslims knew of Christendom, this type of mad, adventurous and utterly fanatical outburst could not have taken place. One wonders how on earth the lady expected her extreme actions and religious ignorance to evoke any type of emphatic response from the people she harassed. But in truth, the aim of most of their adventures is not to share the religious belief but confront what they are deceived into accepting as the force of darkness. As Marsden puts it, to these fundamentalists ‘the universe is divided between the forces of light and darkness, spiritually enlightened Christians can tell who the enemy is. In such a war, there can be no compromise. (George M. Marsden, 1991: 24, Understanding Fundamentalism & Evangelicalism). They have obviously singled out Muslims to engage them in perpetual and irredeemable religious war and in order to keep alive the flames of war against Islam and Muslims, lies, myths, irrational and ridiculous tales are used to vilify, demonize and mischaracterize Islam. Campuses across the country are one of the frontiers where the war is being waged against the Muslims and the likes of Miss Adegunsoye, utterly ignorant and zealous, provide fertile minds to plant and nourish hate so they can unleash them on the wider society.

So the problem is much bigger than the assault at UI, and it is widespread. Nigerian Muslims face social or economic biases and there remain media biases that contribute a lot to the general climate in the country which makes Christian fanaticism unreported, tolerable and even acceptable. Many non-Muslims have acknowledged this fact in their writings. A commentator, Life Uzoma, wrote in the Guardian newspaper of 19/08/09, Nigeria and Religious Crisis that “Religious tolerance and our peaceful coexistence will continue to be a problem due to the way and manner some of us have carried on with the expression of our faith and belief. A recent advertisement looking for those who would want to make a career in the Christian Ministry stated the required quality: aggressive. They would need this quality so as to penetrate villages, cities, offices, and wherever people can be found“.

Despite Muslims’ best efforts to isolate the fringe extreme elements within its own rank and contribute positively to promote peace and understanding, Muslims continue to be vulnerable to discrimination, criminal hate, stupid bigotry, innuendos and attacks which have come to be the mainstream view of most Christians in the country. Sadly, such constant demonization and unabated vilification receive media sanction that either misreports or avoid reporting on positive initiatives made by the Muslim community, thus blames are regularly and solely laid on Islam and Muslims, for being the wide-eyed wackos intent on unleashing religion-induced terror on their fellow countrymen. Yet in all of these, vast majority of Muslims continue to call for peaceful co-existence and tolerance.
One of such initiatives that is left unreported was the occasion of the festival of the breaking of Ramadan four years ago when 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals published an open letter titled A Common Word addressed to the leaders of Christian Churches and denominations all over the world. The very first signatory to A Common Word initiative is His Royal Eminence Sultan Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, the 20th Sultan of Sokoto; other Nigerian signatories include Dr. Lateef Oladimeji Adegbite, Justice Ibrahim Kolapo Sulu Gambari, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule and the late Chief Abdul Wahab Iyanda Folawiyo. This initiative to declare the common ground between Christianity and Islam, the first since the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), offers a framework to address religious, historical, social and practical issues between the two world communities. It was established on the premise that since Muslims and Christians make up about 55% of the world’s population; world peace depends to a great extent on establishing peace and common basis between these two groups. That common basis is love of God and love of neighbour! Nothing more, nothing less. This initiative represents an ongoing call to commit to become true ambassadors to the noblest ideals of the two faiths and work together on common grounds locally to contribute to the global agenda to chart a new course for peace, security and understanding in the 21st century. This is a call that is still being ignored by the Nigerian Christiandom. So far, more than 300 Muslim scholars and over 460 Islamic organizations and associations, about 300 leading U.S. Evangelical leaders and hundreds of other Christian leaders across the world have committed to this call. Sadly, no single Christian leader in Nigeria has so far committed to this initiative.
It is now crucial that University of Ibadan makes efforts to assure its whole student population that certain standards of behaviour are simply unacceptable as this sordid incident reflects negatively on it. A university of UI status must be seen as a centre of learning that enables every student broadens his mind and learn tolerance and mutual respect. Not a safe haven for antagonistic bigots and proselytizing warriors. Every religion must have a right and space to share its good message in an atmosphere that recognizes collective rights and promotes peace. Seun made a deliberate choice to commit a premeditated assault on a house of worship and on the worshipers, for these crimes she must face the just consequences of her actions according to the rules of her school. It is a choice she made, and only a just resolution that guarantees total protection and rights of all will prevent recurrence.
At a personal level, she deserves our prayers, sympathy and forgiveness. Her schizophrenic ranting shows clearly that she is a troubled individual in need of true knowledge and real salvation which Islam alone offers. Islam’s history is full of people like her who set off mindlessly attacking Islam and Muslims but ended up being worthy flag-bearers of the faith.
Disu Kamor
Director of Media & Communications
Muslim Public Affairs Centre, MPAC
e-mail: kamor.disu@mpac-ng.org website: www.mpac-ng.org

Read: MPAC Condemns Christian Provocations at University of Ibadan