Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Unfolding the Rose

2007-07-15 Thread Raihan
Unfolding the Rose
A young, new ustadh (teacher) was walking with an older, more seasoned ustadh 
(teacher) in the garden one day. Feeling a bit insecure about what Allah Ta'ala 
had for him to do, he was asking the older ustadh for some advice.
The older ustadh walked up to a rosebush and handed the young ustadh a rosebud 
and told him to open it without tearing off any petals. The young ustadh looked 
in disbelief at the older ustadh and was trying to figure out what a rosebud 
could possibly have to do with his wanting to know the Will of Allah for his 
life and ministry.
But because of his great respect for the older ustadh, he proceeded to try to 
unfold the rose, while keeping every petal intact...
It wasn't long before he realized how impossible this was to do. Noticing the 
younger ustadh's inability to unfold the rosebud without tearing it, the older 
ustadh began to recite the following poem...
It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of Allah's design; 
But I cannot unfold the petals 
With these clumsy hands of mine. 
The secret of unfolding flowers 
Is not known to such as I. 
Allah opens this flower so sweetly, 
Then in my hands they die. 
If I cannot unfold a rosebud, 
This flower of Allah's design, 
Then how can I have the wisdom 
To unfold this life of mine? 
So I'll trust in Allah for leading 
Each moment of my day. 
I will look to Allah for His guidance 
Each step of the way. 
The pathway that lies before me, 
Only Allah knows. 
I'll trust Him to unfold the moments, 
Just as He unfolds the rose.
And whoever relies on Allah - then He is sufficient for him
[surah at-Talaq; 65: 3]

… And upon Allah rely, if you are true believers
[surah al-Ma'idah; 5: 23] 

… And when you have decided, then rely upon Allah. Indeed, Allah loves those 
who rely [upon Him]
[surah ali-'Imran; 3: 159] 

… And rely upon Allah. And sufficient is Allah as Disposer of affairs
[surah an-Nisa; 4: 81] 

Umar ibn al-Khattab (radiAllahu anhu), narrated that the Prophet (salAllahu 
alayhi wasalam) said,
'If you rely on Allah with due reliance, Allah will provide for you as He does 
for the birds; they leave with empty stomachs in the morning and return full at 
dusk.'
[at-Tirmidhi]

Source: http://www.geocities.com/mutmainaa4/story/047.html


   

Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. 
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545469

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Prophet Muhammad's Last Sermon [Must Read]

2007-07-15 Thread Raihan
Prophet Muhammad's Last Sermon
After praising, and thanking God, he said: 
O People, listen well to my words, for I do not know whether, after this year, 
I shall ever be amongst you again. Therefore listen to what I am saying to you 
very carefully and TAKE THESE WORDS TO THOSE WHO COULD NOT BE PRESENT HERE 
TODAY. 
O People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so 
regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust. Return the 
goods entrusted to you to their rightful owners. Treat others justly so that no 
one would be unjust to you [Golden Rule]. Remember that you will indeed meet 
your LORD, and that HE will indeed reckon your deeds. God has forbidden you to 
take usury (riba), therefore all riba obligation shall henceforth be waived. 
Your capital, however, is yours to keep. You will neither inflict nor suffer 
inequity. God has judged that there shall be no riba and that all the riba due 
to 'Abbas ibn 'Abd al Muttalib shall henceforth be waived. 
Every right arising out of homicide in pre-Islamic days is henceforth waived 
and the first such right that I waive is that arising from the murder of 
Rabi'ah ibn al Harith ibn 'Abd al Muttalib. 
O Men, the Unbelievers indulge in tampering with the calendar in order to make 
permissible that which God forbade, and to forbid that which God has made 
permissible. With God the months are twelve in number. Four of them are sacred, 
three of these are successive and one occurs singly between the months of 
Jumada and Sha'ban. Beware of the devil, for the safety of your religion. He 
has lost all hope that he will ever be able to lead you astray in big things, 
so beware of following him in small things. 
O People, it is true that you have certain rights over your women, but they 
also have rights over you [Men and Women have equal rights]. Remember that you 
have taken them as your wives only under God's trust and with His permission. 
If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and 
clothed in kindness. Treat your women well and be kind to them, for they are 
your partners and committed helpers. It is your right and they do not make 
friends with anyone of whom you do not approve, as well as never to be 
unchaste... 
O People, listen to me in earnest, worship God (The One Creator of the 
Universe), perform your five daily prayers (Salah), fast during the month of 
Ramadan, and give your financial obligation (zakah) of your wealth. Perform 
Hajj if you can afford to. 
All Mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab 
nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no 
superiority over a black nor a black has any superiority over white except by 
piety and good action [No racism and caste system]. Learn that every Muslim is 
a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. 
Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless 
it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do injustice to 
yourselves. 
Remember, one day you will appear before God (The Creator) and you will answer 
for your deeds. So beware, do not stray from the path of righteousness after I 
am gone. 
O People, NO PROPHET OR MESSENGER WILL COME AFTER ME AND NO NEW FAITH WILL BE 
BORN. Reason well, therefore, O People, and understand words which I convey to 
you. I am leaving you with the Book of God (the Qur'an*) and my SUNNAH (the 
life style and the behavioral mode of the Prophet), if you follow them you will 
never go astray. 
All those who listen to me shall pass on my words to others and those to others 
again; and may the last ones understand my words better than those who listen 
to me directly. Be my witness O God, that I have conveyed your message to your 
people.
*The Qur'an: Revealed to Prophet Muhammad during the period from 610-632 AC. 
The first five verses revealed are: (1) Read in the name of your Lord, Who 
created. (2) Created man out of a clot that clings (in the womb). (3) Read and 
your Lord is the Most Bountiful. (4) Who taught by the pen. (5) Taught man that 
which he knew not.
Video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KOm_JVXXAis


 

Looking for earth-friendly autos? 
Browse Top Cars by Green Rating at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center.
http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Bible and the Quran - Women Status

2007-07-15 Thread Raihan
Bible and the Quran - Women Status

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vl-Z9CXjPzU


   

Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.
http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Similarities between Hinduism and Islam

2007-07-14 Thread Raihan
Similarities between Hinduism and Islam 

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=5619946571510310036q=zakir+naiktotal=1027start=0num=10so=0type=searchplindex=0


 

We won't tell. Get more on shows you hate to love 
(and love to hate): Yahoo! TV's Guilty Pleasures list.
http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/265 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] GLASGOW BOMB FRAUD!

2007-07-11 Thread Raihan
GLASGOW BOMB FRAUD!

The Glasgow Bombing was done by nerds who didn't know what they were doing 
despite the fact the Brits say they were trained in Baghdad for this work and 
they were Medical Doctors and therefore quite intelligent. On the surface it 
looks okay, but underneath there may be a seedy false dark side involving the 
British goverment, Israeli Mossad, and America's CIA. The Brits already said 
they'd been watching these Moslems. Were they really watching or putting 
them up to it? ...

Pt 1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6ha0vDDy43w

Pt 2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HtllA9wZpp0mode=relatedsearch=


   

Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, 
photos  more. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Islam in the Bible - by a former Christian youth Minister

2007-07-10 Thread Raihan
A former Christian youth Minister who was studying to be a Bible scholar and 
was to attend Bob Jones University shows how the Bible led him to Islam. And 
how the Message has always been the same from the beginning and that Islam is 
nothing new its what all the Prophets taught (Surrender to the One God). He'll 
show all the evidence that Islam is in the Bible. A must watch video lecture.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8506202078297437216hl=en


   

Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.
http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/index.php

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Not Reform but Return to the Qur'an

2007-07-08 Thread Raihan
Not Reform but Return to the Qur'an
http://www.quranic.org/quran_article/3/not_reform_but_return_to_the_quran.htm
The primitiveness, the ugliness and the contradictions displayed in the name of 
Islam make it indispensable to clarify where we stand and what should be done 
to redirect people who have been diverted from the true path described in the 
Quran. Muhammad Ikbal, ill at ease at the sight of this state of affairs, had 
made the following remark in the 1920s: “If we are resolved to describe Islam 
as a system of superior values, we are obliged, first of all, to acknowledge 
that we are not the true representatives of Islam.” Muhammad Abduh had, before 
him, expressed the same truth in the following words: “If the word ‘Islam’ 
associates in the mind problems, dilemmas and contradictions, this is due not 
to Islam itself, but to the Muslims. So long as the books taught at Al Azhar 
and similar publications exert authority, I see no future for this community. 
The spirit needed to awaken the public is inherent in the Quran. 
Everything remaining outside the sphere of the Quran is but an obstacle 
preventing the Quran from being understood and experienced.” The famous Turkish 
poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy had the following to say to describe the plight of Islam 
that the interpreters had corrupted in total disregard of the clear indications 
of the Quran: “If it is the Quran that is understood by the word ‘Islam’, we 
must be in a position to acknowledge that there is no such thing as Islam, 
since the Quran has been raised back to the heights and the Islam on the earth 
today has lost all contact with it.” An American professor of Arabic origin, 
Ýsmail Faruki, interprets the situation as follows: “Islam is not represented 
by the lifestyle and behavior of Muslims, nor is it represented by any one 
period of history of Islam, nor by any book written on Islam. Islam is the 
Quran.” 
THIS IS NOT A POPULIST MOVEMENT 
The majority of the public among whom the number of thinkers is considerable 
wants to see Islam in its original garb and cleansed from its corrupted state 
of today. This is not a populist movement. In other words what is purported 
here is not to make Islam attractive in the sight of large masses. The origin 
of it lies in the contradictions created between the Quran, which is the only 
source of Islam, and the actual practices developed throughout the ages. The 
objective is not to shape Islam into a new form that will seem attractive to 
the general public, but to reinstate the true Islam as revealed by God. The 
religion propounded in the Quran is, in fact, more gratifying for mankind, in 
which love and tolerance have a larger share. This is why it is generally 
appreciated. The main objective is not to please the public, but it is one of 
the consequences. 

A movement whose origin is mere enjoyment by the general masses would be 
inclined to shape the religious practices as they seem attractive to them, and 
in this design, cultural traits and political ends have a great share. The 
renaissance and the reform movement in the wake of the French Revolution may be 
shown as examples. Whatever is subjective – that is human – cannot be defined 
as religion. 
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN NO SECTS EXISTED 
During the lifetime of the Prophet and the Four Caliphs there was no religious 
source other than the Quran (see Chapter 11). Men were not members of any 
particular sect. They practiced what the Quran prescribed to them and were free 
in points when there was no prescription in the Quran, according to their own 
appreciation, customs and conventions. No opinions were told in the name of 
such schools as Sunni, Hanafi, Shafi, Shii, Alawi or Jafari. They simply called 
themselves Muslims. And this fact satisfied them. Even the most illiterate of 
the Beduoins during the lifetime of the Prophet practiced Islam according to 
their own interpretations and were Muslims. That is what we are after today: to 
be simply a Muslim without having to belong to any particular sect and to abide 
by the Quran’s dictates which never change, which involve no contradictions and 
which are logical and rational as laid down by God. 

One God, one religion and one book will clear up the confusion that the masses 
are suffering at present. The aim is to stick to the Quran exclusively and to 
refuse to acknowledge all other sources. To interpret the elbowroom that the 
Quran recognizes as applied in a particular period is not our objective. 
However, if we conceive the free zone of action about which the Quran is 
reluctant as a place where we are left to our own devices, we can find the true 
path and correct the mistakes we have committed in the name of religion. The 
corruptions have been mostly in points where there is no explicit commandment 
in the Quran (see Chapter 39). 

In realizing this we must be conscious of the fact that it is God’s will. This 
may be established by the views expressed in Chapter 2 of our 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] From Hinduism to Islam

2007-07-08 Thread Raihan
From Hinduism to Islam
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=N-VElnzbcF0
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dUE6je0J644


   

Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, 
photos  more. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Women's Right in Qur'an

2007-07-01 Thread Raihan
Women's Right in Qur'an
04.01: O Mankind! Be careful of your duty to your Lord Who created you from a 
single soul and from it created its mate. 
30.21: He created for you mates from among yourselves, that ye may dwell in 
tranquillity with them, and He has put love and mercy between your hearts. 
3.195:  Their Lord responded to them: I never fail to reward any worker among 
you for any work you do, be you male or female - you are equal to one another.
09.71: And the believers, men and women, are protecting friends one of another. 
2.187: They are your garments and ye are their garments. 
16.72: GOD has made for you mates and companions of your own nature. 
49.13: The noblest among you in the sight of GOD is the most righteous. 
4.124: If any do deeds of righteousness - be they male or female - and have 
faith, they will enter Heaven, and not the least injustice will be done to 
them.  
16.97: Whoever works righteousness, man or woman, and has Faith, verily, to him 
will We give a new Life, a life that is good and pure and We will bestow on 
such their reward according to the best of their actions. 
2.228: Women have rights over men similar to those of men over women. 
04.19: Ye are forbidden to inherit women against their will. Nor should ye 
treat them with harshness. Live with them on a footing of kindness and 
tranquility. 
49.13: O Mankind! We created you from a single pair of a male and a female, and 
made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other not that ye may 
despise each other. 
04.32: To men is allotted what they earn, and to women what they earn. 
04.07: From what is left by parents and those nearest related there is a share 
for men and a share for women, whether the property be small or large - a 
determinate share.
24.04: And those who launch a charge against honorable women, and produce not 
four witnesses to support their allegations - flog them (liars) with eighty 
stripes; and reject their evidence ever after: for such men are wicked 
transgressors.


   

Looking for a deal? Find great prices on flights and hotels with Yahoo! 
FareChase.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Lecture on Jesus: by Sheikh Ahmed Deedat

2007-06-27 Thread Raihan
Lecture on Jesus: by Sheikh Ahmed Deedat

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qZ1IEgZyZj8


   

Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, 
photos  more. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Theist vs. Atheist Debate : Does God not Exist

2007-06-21 Thread Raihan
Theist vs. Atheist Debate : Does God not Exist

Hassanain Rajabali  Michael Corey vs. Dan Barker  Richard Carrier

Part-1: http://youtube.com/watch?v=2j0a4Tkjwpsmode=relatedsearch=
 
Part-2: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_aiAtnTJxRo


   

Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, 
photos  more. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Former Christian Youth Minister's Path to Islam

2007-06-20 Thread Raihan
Former Christian Youth Minister's Path to Islam
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRMfnHZEGMg


  

Luggage? GPS? Comic books? 
Check out fitting gifts for grads at Yahoo! Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mailp=graduation+giftscs=bz

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Who Invented Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and Valentine's Day?

2007-06-15 Thread Raihan
Who Invented Christmas?
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6oj5LcxxFfg
 
Who Invented Halloween?
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-r13CP387sc

Who Invented Easter?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XdxOW3FmlRkmode=relatedsearch=

Who Invented Valentine's Day?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=edUDnGn3I-omode=relatedsearch=


 

Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate 
in the Yahoo! Answers Food  Drink QA.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545367

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Islam Christianity by Dr. Gary Miller and Ahmed Deedat

2007-06-15 Thread Raihan
Dr. Gary Miller's Part:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fp0yP4yN-u8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biDvZ0Dxa_w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5si_9q2WUA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQJQjWSbEJQmode=relatedsearch=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFdxM-l2z3Imode=relatedsearch=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaOOYopmNAQmode=relatedsearch=


 

Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peak at the forecast
with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Latino Convert : From Juan Alvarado to Shafiq Abdullah Muhammad Alvarado

2007-06-09 Thread Raihan
http://www.usislam.org/latinos/converts/shafiq.htm
 
My parents came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the 60’s, 
an era of repression, persecution, and uncertainty. They came looking for 
better opportunities. They landed in the South Bronx at a time when there was 
lots of work available. I was later born in the Bronx, New York. Typical to 
most other Latinos, I was born into the Roman Catholic faith. My parents were 
faithful Catholics, who went to church every Sunday. Likewise, I learned to be 
a faithful Catholic. 

My childhood memories include catechism classes, public school education, and 
lots of family. My immediate family gave refuge to friends and other family 
members who were also immigrants from the Dominican Republic hence I learned 
early on to look out for others less fortunate.

Ever since childhood I always noticed that I was spiritual to say the least. 
For some reason, I found myself unlike the other children around me and because 
of it sometimes felt alienated. At age ten, I even had a vision of what at the 
time I thought was the Virgin Mary. However, looking back I now think the 
vision I had was of a lady in hijaab – the traditional covering of a Muslim 
lady. Could it be a sign?

As a youngster, I went through the motions of what it means to be Catholic. I 
was baptized, did my communion and confirmation. I was even an altar boy at one 
point. But by the times I was a teen; I was growing impatient with Catholicism 
and started exploring different forms of spiritualities. Specifically, I was 
annoyed at the cult of saints but also that there is so much written in the 
Bible that is not followed by that church. By 16, I can confidently say that I 
renounced Catholicism, although I still considered myself Christian. I 
visited different churches of differing denominations but just could not feel 
that sense of belonging. Also, one of the things that I did not like was the 
interdenominational bickering. Another thing was the complexity of 
Christianity, or so it seemed to me. I considered myself “Christian” but I had 
renounced its some of its pagan roots – specifically its practices of Christmas 
and Easter.

During my search, I found an interest in other religions. Specifically, I 
looked into Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Santeria, and various New Age or 
Occult movements. I liked Judaism but could not deal with life without Jesus. 
Buddhism seemed too esoteric and even too bland. Hinduism's caste system and 
vast number of gods/goddesses just repelled me. Both of these religions, 
however, influenced me to become a vegetarian for many years. Santeria was 
interesting in a historical sense but its gods also repelled me and its secrecy 
was annoying. The many New Age movements just seemed too complex. Mostly, 
however, these beliefs did not get a hold of my full interest. 

By the time I was 19, I renounced Christianity once and for all and continued 
my search. This search led me to read on a non-stop basis, something that I 
still do. At 20, a friend of mine gave me a book on Islam or what I thought was 
Islam. He gave me a book that the Ansar cult published. To sum up their ideas, 
I would say that they mix authentic Islam with black-nationalism. After reading 
up on them, I decided to become Muslim at 23. As a matter of fact I do 
consider that I was Muslim then but that I was astray. I believed 
wholeheartedly in the absolute unity of God (tawhid) but had some other ideas 
that were not on a par with authentic Islam. Because of my intense reading 
background, I always noted the many mistakes in the Ansar doctrine but I guess 
I just put up with it because there was something there that I related to. I 
always noted too that the leader of this movement always changed his beliefs 
and doctrines every so often, which I found to be strange. 

My parents did not like the idea that I became Muslim. I don’t think they had 
the idea I was interested in it. My father thought that having gone to college 
influenced me in some way. My mother did not mind so much but was afraid I 
would become the victim of a crime or discrimination. Alhamdullilah, they 
gradually have come to accept my choice. Unfortunately, their acceptance is 
merely an acceptance of convenience – as they still cling to their old ways, 
some of which is haraam.

After about two years going to the Ansar mosque, I started going to mainstream 
mosques as well and noted the differences. One day, while at the Islamic 
Cultural Center of NY on 96th Street and 3rd Ave., I met a Hispanic brother who 
noticed that I was ‘into’ the Ansar movement (he saw that I wore their 
insignia) and cared enough to give me a book by Bilal Philips called “The Ansar 
Cult in America” which set my mind free once and for all. He introduced me to 
some brothers in a Hispanic Islamic movement called Alianza Islamica. They were 
located on Lexington Ave. at the time in the Barrio part of Manhattan. I 
realized my mistaken ideas 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] People reverting to Islam in Texas

2007-06-09 Thread Raihan
People reverting to Islam in Texas

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9184353144432289069hl=en


 

Looking for earth-friendly autos? 
Browse Top Cars by Green Rating at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center.
http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Science Student Finds Peace and Logic in Islam - Steven Byers New Muslim Video

2007-06-09 Thread Raihan
Science Student Finds Peace and Logic in Islam - Steven Byers New Muslim Video

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5897202495636098966hl=en


   

Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's 
Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. 
http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Truth about Trinity

2007-06-07 Thread Raihan
Truth about Trinity

http://www.islamicinvitationcentre.com/audio/Ahmad_Dedat/Truth_Trinity/Truth_Trinity.html


   

Need a vacation? Get great deals
to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.
http://travel.yahoo.com/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Ali, Mexican American, Reading the Quran was like a wake up call

2007-06-07 Thread Raihan
Source: http://www.usislam.org/latinos/converts/Ali.htm
 
My name is Ali, I'm a 32 year old Mexican born in America. I thought I would 
make a webpage to tell my story of how I became a Muslim. I think it will 
Insha'Allah (God willing) help people understand Islam and why it attracted me.
 
People have a wrong perception about Islam and Muslims, what  little they know 
is usually from movies and television which is almost all the time false.
 
My life before was bad I had no direction in life. I was wasting my life away 
by dropping out of school in the 11th grade. I would hang out in the streets 
with my friends partying getting high, drinking and selling marijuana, most 
of my friends were gang members, I myself was never in a gang. 
 
I knew most of them before they turned bad, so it was not a problem. I slowly 
began to use harder drugs, I had dreams but they seemed to far away for me to 
make them reality. The more I became depressed the more I turned to drugs as a 
temporary escape.
 
One day a friend of mine told me that he knew where to get some good marijuana, 
We arrived and went inside this apartment their were a couple of people inside, 
we sat around and talked for a while. My friend and I bought some marijuana and 
were getting ready to leave when my friend said one man there invited us to his 
apartment to give him a book.
 
We left for this man's apartment when we got there, he gave my friend a book 
and asked him to read it, and said that it might help him out with his problems 
in life. On the way home I asked my friend to show me the book that the man 
gave him, it was the Qur'an (Koran).
 
I had never in my life heard of The Holy Qur'an, I began to briefly read some 
pages, while I was reading I knew that what I was reading was true, it was like 
a slap in the face, a wake up call. The Qur'an is so clear and easy to 
understand. I was really impressed and wanted to know more about Islam and 
Muslims.
 
The strangest thing is that I was not looking for a new Religion, I used to 
laugh at  people that went to church and some times said that there was no 
God,a lthough deep down I knew there was. I decided  to go to the Library a 
couple of days later and check out the Qur'an. I began to read it and study it, 
I learned About Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him) and the true story of  
Jesus son of Mary (Peace be upon him). The Qur'an stressed  the fact that God 
was one and had no partners or a son, this was most interesting to me since I 
never understood the concept of the trinity. The Qur'an describes  the birth of 
Prophet Jesus (p.b.u.h ) and his mission. There is also a Sura (Chapter) called 
Maryam (Mary) and tells her story as well.
 
As a child I always went to church, my mother was a Seventh day Adventist and 
took my sister and me every Saturday. I never was really religious and stopped 
going to church when I was about 14 or 15,The rest of my family is Catholic, I 
always wondered why we were Seventh day Adventist and the rest of my family was 
Catholic. when we would go visit my family back in Mexico, we went to a 
Catholic church for weddings and celebrations.

Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the last messenger of God sent to all mankind. 
The Qur'an tells the story's of all the Prophets such as:

Adam, Abraham, Noah, Issac, David, Moses, Jesus (Peace be upon them all) just 
to name a few, told in a clear and understandable manner. I did months of 
research on Islam I bought a Holy Qur'an at a bookstore and studied about world 
history and Islam's contributions to medicine and science.
 
I learned that Spain was a Muslim country for almost a thousand years and that 
when the Muslims were expelled from Spain by the Christian king and Queen 
(Ferdanand and Isabela),the Christian Spainards came to Mexico and forced the 
Aztecs and others to become Catholic, history and my Islamic roots was all 
becoming clear to me.

After months of study and research I could not deny the truth anymore I had put 
it off too long, but was still living the life I was before and knew that if I 
became Muslim I had to give all that up. One day while reading the Qur'an, I 
began to cry and fell to my knees and thanked Allah for guiding me to the 
truth. I found out that there was a Mosque by my house so I went one Friday to 
see how Muslims prayed and conducted their service. I saw that people from all 
races and colors attended the Mosque. I saw that they took off their shoes when 
entering and sat on the carpeted floor. A man got up and began to call the 
Adthan (call for prayer) when I heard it my eyes filled up with tears it 
sounded so beautiful, it was all so strange at first but seemed so right at the 
same time. Islam is not just a Religion but a way of life.
 
After going a couple of Fridays I was ready to be a Muslim and  say my Shahada 
(declaration of faith).

I told the Khatib (person giving the lecture) that I  wanted to be a Muslim, 
the following Friday in front of the community I 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Terrorists and Apostasy

2007-06-06 Thread Raihan
Terrorists and Apostasy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfyvnJxPSdg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOSBeRbGryo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_oKXh2oy8E


   

Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. 
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. 
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545433

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] A Mexican-American finds Islam in Texas

2007-06-06 Thread Raihan
Source: http://www.usislam.org/latinos/converts/juan.htm

In high school, I received a jolt to my long-held belief when a Christian 
friend told me that the Holy Trinity was not true and that Jesus was not God. 
He's wrong, I told myself. Jesus had to be God because God and humanity were 
disconnected by the sin committed by Adam and Eve. God, I reasoned to myself, 
had sent His only 'begotten' son to die because He loved us so much. And 
because only God forgives, Jesus had to be God. I even had the Bible quotes to 
prove it! Indeed, being a devout Roman Catholic, I had read almost the entire 
Bible. In high school, I was a lecturer, usher, Eucharistic minister, Sunday 
school teacher, and the godfather for a nephew and a niece. The idea that Jesus 
was God made sense.

I am a Mexican-American who comes from a modest background. I spent my 
adolescent and teenage years in such small Texas Panhandle towns as Quitaque, 
Turkey, Lakeview, and Memphis. None of them has a mall, a movie theater, or a 
McDonald's. Memphis, TX, population 2,300, proudly proclaims itself The Cotton 
Capital of the World. In Memphis, if you hear a fire truck or police car, 
either your neighbor's house is on fire or your neighbor is being arrested. 
Growing up in small communities gave me much appreciation for the simplicity in 
God's creation.

I graduated from Memphis High School (1994), enrolled in Texas Tech University 
in Lubbock, and graduated with a BA in management information systems from the 
University of Texas at Austin (2001). Not bad for a kid who hoed cotton most of 
his junior high and high school summers to buy clothes and school supplies! My 
dad was a cotton ginner. Now, he is a custodian at a high school in Pampa, TX. 
I had 8 siblings, but in 2000 my 17-year-old sister died in a car wreck.

I have always respected other religions. I often attended other Christian 
churches and joined interfaith Bible study groups. While in one such group, 
when I told my friend Chris that I was Catholic, he blatantly told me that it 
was a false doctrine. As you can imagine, I defended my religion. Chris 
accused me of worshipping Mary, saints, and the Pope, and I argued that we only 
revere them. Around this time, I happened to see a man praying. His knees, 
hands, and forehead were touching the ground, and he was barefoot. After he 
finished, I introduced myself to him. He said his name was Armando, and that he 
was Muslim. I thought to myself: OK, freaky, you're Muslim. You can't be 
Muslim. What's this Hispanic guy doing praying to Allah? He later told me that 
Spain was Muslim for over 700 years and that thousands of Spanish words have 
Arabic roots. The ruins of mosques with Qur'anic inscriptions have been found 
in Cuba, Mexico, Texas, and Nevada. Most importantly, Armando told
 me about Islam. I began to realize that my reverence for Mary and saints was 
much more than mere reverence. Chris was right. However, we were both 
worshipping Jesus! Armando said that Jesus was only a prophet and that no one 
or thing is worthy of worship but Allah.

Many of my questions were answered! What is the purpose of life? How can the 
Father be the Son? Why can't God just forgive anyone He wants? What happens to 
babies who die before baptism? In Qur'an 5:83, Allah states: When they (who 
call themselves Christian) listen to what has been sent down to the Messenger, 
you see their eyes overflowing with tears because of the truth they have 
recognized. They say: 'Our Lord! We believe; so write us down among the 
witnesses.'

Indeed, my eyes overflowed with tears as I read that verse. Yet I did not 
embrace Islam until 3 years after meeting Armando, because I did not want to 
change. A struggle occurs within everyone, everyday, and everywhere. We 
struggle to attain what is most important for us. By embracing Islam, we tell 
Allah that He is most important and that we are prepared to struggle to do what 
is right and to avoid what is wrong.


   
Ready
 for the edge of your seat? 
Check out tonight's top picks on Yahoo! TV. 
http://tv.yahoo.com/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Buddhism and GOD

2007-05-25 Thread Raihan
Buddhism and GOD. Do Buddhists believe in a Creator?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6317066305444907870q=Buddhism+and+Islam


   
Be
 a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. 
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545469

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Journey to Islam : by Maureen McCormick (Canada)

2007-05-23 Thread Raihan
Life is good for Muslim Women
By Maureen McCormick (Canada)
http://www.usislam.org/converts/Maureen.htm
When I was a non-Muslim, I, too, believed that Islam was misogynistic, 
male-dominated and backwards. Imagine my surprise after I read the Qur'an and 
learned Islam is diametrically opposed to misogyny and male dominance, and, in 
fact, is a very progressive and gentle faith which protects women.
I have seen a lot of controversy over the last few weeks about the application 
of sharia law to resolving family disputes between willing individuals in 
Canada. The subject has led to a discussion of the status of women in Islam.
As a Canadian Caucasian woman who recently accepted the Islamic faith, I would 
like to share my thoughts.
There is good and bad everywhere and it is important to stress that not every 
Muslim follows true sharia. Humans are not infallible.
First and foremost, Islam gives a woman more legal rights than she is afforded 
using Canadian law -- the right to keep all of her property, even in a divorce; 
the right to keep her own money; even the right to be sexually satisfied, among 
many other things. Non-Muslim women don't have those rights; they are just 
expected to suck it up.
The concept of a dowry might seem odd in Canada, but it has its merits. Many 
divorced women in Canada live below the poverty line because their ex-husbands 
are unwilling to support them. They pay the least amount of alimony possible 
and transfer their assets to their new wives so that the ex-wife gets nothing.
There are not many divorced women who live at the same standard they had while 
married unless they are professional women. To me, a dowry is like an insurance 
policy -- the just-in-case part of marriage.
(I thought the concept of men being able to have multiple wives was also a way 
for women to be kept safe and protected if their husbands died or they could 
not otherwise marry. I'm not sure whether that is as relevant today; most men 
don't have enough money to support more than one wife and family. Moreover, the 
Qur'an stipulates that what one wife gets, the others must also be provided 
with).
Islam gives women more respect than any other faith. My experiences have shown 
me (for the most part) that Muslim men really respect women and like them for 
who they are. In my opinion, nothing is sexier than a woman who is covered up. 
No woman with any amount of self-respect would walk around looking like she is 
soliciting sex. Too many people have no respect for each other at all. It's 
very sad to see.
Refraining from sex before marriage affords the woman the right to know a man 
first and give the man her mind, heart and soul before she decides to give her 
body (which is completely backwards to the thinking here, where a woman has to 
put out in order to get another date).
The woman is never compromised or coerced in any way in Islam. She is always in 
control of her body and is always provided a safe environment. What a concept.
Women are protected in Islam. Men are responsible for the safety, protection, 
financial support and well-being of their wives and families. Perhaps an 
old-fashioned concept, but it works. Real women want to be with real men. 
Moreover, Islam allows for women to be emancipated and independent.
Islam is easy and fair for both sexes. It is a faith between an individual and 
God. In its story about Adam and Eve, Islam did not mention that Eve encouraged 
Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. The original sin concept led to the 
downgrading of women in the early Christian culture. Islam actually treats 
love-making with ease and Muslims expect to be rewarded for making love to 
their lawful spouses.
Muslim women can do anything that any other woman in the world can do, cultural 
limitations notwithstanding. The only difference is good Muslim women still 
have their honour and respect their husbands.
Generally speaking, my experience has been that Muslim women have more 
self-respect and confidence than non-Muslim women because Muslim women know 
what really counts.


   
Be
 a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows. 
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. 
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545433

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] The Collapse of Atheism

2007-05-22 Thread Raihan
The Collapse of Atheism
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ssKZavFZJE


   
Get
 the free Yahoo! toolbar and rest assured with the added security of spyware 
protection.
http://new.toolbar.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/norton/index.php

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Religion Essential - by Charley Reese

2007-05-21 Thread Raihan
Religion Essential
by Charley Reese
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese77.html
I have come to believe that one can have a successful Christian society, Jewish 
society, Muslim society, Hindu society or Buddhist society, but not an agnostic 
or atheistic society that is successful. 
George Washington, as he so often did, explained it quite well in his farewell 
address: 
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, 
Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim 
the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of 
human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens And 
let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained 
without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined 
education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us 
to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious 
principle. 
Washington was not talking about contentious and doctrinaire people arguing 
about dogma. He always condemned that. He was referring to the basic underlying 
morality that all the great religions teach. 
The basic thing that protects our persons, our property and our liberty is the 
morality that individuals possess in their own hearts. The law cannot be a 
substitute for that. No law can protect you from a dishonest merchant or a thug 
because the law is always, of necessity, applied after the fact, and then only 
on a selective basis. Furthermore, as we have seen, the law and the system of 
justice often degenerate into a tragic farce. 
It's interesting to note that the current debate on a constitution for the 
European Union involves several states that wish the new document to 
acknowledge Europe's Christian heritage. It indeed has one. Europe was once 
known as Christendom. 
Our own country has a Christian heritage. Despite the fact that there were 
non-Christian minorities, during the Colonial and early republic days the 
overwhelming majority of Americans were of the Christian faith. What began 
happily as tolerance for non-Christians has now degenerated into demands by 
some non-Christians that all traces of Christianity be driven from the public 
square. 
Again, Washington said, With slight shades of difference, you have the same 
religion, manners, habits and political principles. It was that sameness of 
religion, manners, habits and political principles that united our ancestors. 
Substituting diversity will disunite us. There is no virtue in diversity per 
se. Experience teaches that the most stable societies are the most homogeneous. 
Experience also teaches us that a society without an underlying private 
morality will degenerate into a corrupt jungle. I surprised some people once by 
saying that I would rather live in a neighborhood of Islamic fundamentalists 
than in a neighborhood of atheists and agnostics. That's true. You can count on 
the morality that Islam teaches; there is no morality for atheists and 
agnostics, except what they arbitrarily choose. 
Some years ago, I inadvertently put this to the test by becoming lost late at 
night in the slums of Cairo, Egypt. Despite being dressed in an American 
business suit and far from any law enforcement, I was never accosted or 
threatened by anyone. I dare say there are American slums where no sensible 
person would wish to go late at night. 
The bottom line is that if we become an immoral people, we will eventually lose 
both our prosperity and our liberty. A free society cannot exist without trust, 
and it is morality that cements that trust. We are drifting toward the abyss, 
and we had all better think seriously about why this is happening.


 

Expecting? Get great news right away with email Auto-Check. 
Try the Yahoo! Mail Beta.
http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/newmail_tools.html 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Journey to Islam : Testimony of Yahya Donald W. Flood

2007-05-20 Thread Raihan
Testimony of Yahya Donald W. Flood
 
http://www.usislam.org/converts/yahya.htm


 

Looking for earth-friendly autos? 
Browse Top Cars by Green Rating at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center.
http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Enough 9/11 evidence exists to hang Bush, imprison thousands - By John Kaminski

2007-05-14 Thread Raihan
Enough 9/11 evidence exists to hang Bush, imprison thousands. - By John 
Kaminski

http://www.serendipity.li/wot/arrest_bush_now.htm

__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] How I Came to Islam : by Abdul Malik Hamidullah

2007-05-01 Thread Raihan
How I Came to Islam
By Abdul Malik Hamidullah
Field Artillery Officer in the U.S. Army
http://www.usislam.org/converts/abdulmalik1.htm
My father was a Jew and my mother a not very religious Christian. With this mix 
I started and ended up taking first communion in the Catholic Church.  I do not 
remember attending church regularly as a child. However, I do remember that 
once when I was very young (perhaps seven or eight years old) having a powerful 
experience in a Catholic church, a feeling that I was suddenly very light; a 
feeling that I was being lifted. Although I was too young to have burdens, it 
was a feeling that the burden of the world was being lifted from me. This was 
my first profoundly spiritual experience. As one of my earliest memories it 
remains with me to this day.
As a teenager, I was really into the psychedelic sixties and all that came with 
it. I looked for a deeper meaning in the lyrics of the Beatles, Cat Stevens, 
and the Moody Blues. I read metaphysical books, some philosophy, Carlos 
Castaneda, and more. I attended a Baptist church, and was even baptized one 
afternoon when I felt that powerful feeling again. I started reading the Bible 
in earnest and found myself reading only the 'red-ink-words' of Christ (as). 
Still, the people and the religion seemed to be lacking something that I knew 
was out there somewhere. 
I continued to read and search. I practiced yoga, joined an ashram of Sikhs, 
read the Guru Granth Sahib; I married a Muslim woman that wasn't practicing 
Islam and began living in an ashram. Even though her father prayed five times a 
day, her parents did not teach her. [Hence, she too was always searching for 
the straight path.] This was a good thing for me. Otherwise, we would not have 
married and I would not have been placed in the life situations that I have 
found myself in that eventually led me to Islam. At any rate, we soon left the 
ashram. Soon I went to India, practiced Krya yoga, and joined SRF (Self 
Realization Fellowship). Still I always had this feeling that something was 
missing. I continued to study Taoism, and Buddhism and other religious 
teachings.  
During much of this period, I was a Field Artillery Officer in the U.S. Army. 
After Desert Storm, and a few days in Iraq fighting the ground war, I attended 
a military school in Pakistan for a year.  Of course, most of my classmates 
were Pakistani Muslims, and several were from other countries: Malaysia, 
Brunei, Syria, and Bangladesh, to name but a few. I became a close friend with 
two officers that were not what we would consider very good examples of Muslims 
[they smoked and drank on occasion!] However, despite their shortcomings, I was 
very impressed with them. And there were several Pakistani Muslims that 
impressed me even more. They were devoted; they had strength and dignity, 
humility and kindness, and many more traits that I had rarely seen in others in 
my travels. And certainly I had never seen so many people at one time with so 
many fine qualities.  I decided that it must be their religion that had made 
them this way.
I read some about Islam and discovered the logic and simplicity that I had 
looked for in other dogmas. I was really struck by the fact that al-Qur'an was 
still in the original unchanged form [If there is a King James Version, then 
I'd like to see the version published before that?!] And that ANYONE could read 
Hadith and learn what the Holy Prophet [PBUH] would have we Muslims do.  One 
does not have to have a Pope, a priest, or a monk tells you what to do; there 
is no guesswork; it's all right there! Hence, towards the end of my year in 
Pakistan, I told two of my close friends that I would like to become a Muslim. 
They were astounded. Nonetheless, they met with two more of our friends that 
were following the Sunnah a bit more closely than they had been, and we 
arranged for me to say Asshadu anlaa ilaaha ilAllah...  Four of us met, I 
became a Muslim, and was taught how make salah. I thank Allah for that glorious 
day and the days that led up to it.
There is a lot more to this, but the bottom-line is that: It was the kindness, 
humility, and excellent manners of Muslims, coupled with the system of 
straightforward Islamic ideals and way of life, which appealed most to my 
reason and my heart. This is why I am a Muslim now. 
And yes, now my wife also practices Islam, as does our grown daughter. Even my 
mother has become a Muslimah! Al hamdu lilLah!

__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] War on Terror?

2007-04-23 Thread Raihan
A bizarre turn in the War on Terror. Reports emerge that the United States is 
funding an Al-Qaeda linked terror group to attack Iran.

http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/17/stories/2007041702131100.htm

__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] A British Neo-Nazi's Journey to Islam

2007-04-18 Thread Raihan
A British Neo-Nazi's Journey to Islam 
By  Abdul Aziz Myatt 
Islam - submission to the will of Allah. I converted to Islam because there 
came a time when both my mind and my heart accepted that there was no god but 
Allah and that Muhammad was His Messenger. All that I had believed and upheld 
before this conversion is at worst wrong, and at best irrelevant. 
My duty now, the purpose of my life, is to do the will of Allah, to submit to 
the will of Allah — to strive, In sha' Allah, to be a good, a devout, Muslim. 
To live as a Muslim in the way that Allah has decreed, through his Prophet and 
Messenger Muhammad. One of the many wonderful things which occurred on the day 
I converted was when the Imam of the Mosque explained that by accepting Islam I 
had begun a new life — Allah had forgiven me my sins, and it was as if I 
started my life again with my Book of Life, the record of my sins, empty.
I have a new life now, a new identity — for I am a Muslim, and all Muslims are 
my brothers, wherever they happen to live, and whatever race they are said to 
belong to.
How was it that I, a Westerner with a history of political involvement in 
extreme right-wing organizations, came to be standing one Sunday outside a 
Mosque with a sincere desire to go inside and convert to Islam? The simple 
answer is that it was the will of Allah — He guided me there. As for my 
political past, it belongs to the past. All I can do now is to trust in Allah, 
the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Lord of all the worlds.
As Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid — a distinguished scholar — has said:
Asking for details of a persons past and wanting to know what sins they might 
have committed when they were ignorant about Islam is not right at all. Allah 
covers peoples' sins and loves to see them covered (i.e. not dragged out into 
the open). So long as a person has repented, his sins have been wiped out. 
Islam deletes whatever came before, so why should we ask questions that will 
only embarrass people? Allah accepts people's repentance without their having 
to confess or expose their sins to any other person. A number of the sahabah 
[companions of the Prophet] had committed adultery and murder repeatedly, or 
had buried infant girls alive, or stolen things, but when they entered Islam 
they were the best of people. No one needs to be reminded of a shameful past; 
it is over and done with, and Allah is the All-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
In terms of the 'Western' explanation that most Westerners will seek in order 
to try and understand my conversion, I suppose my journey toward Islam began 
when I first went to Egypt and, as a tourist, visited a Mosque. The Adhan — the 
call to prayer — had begun and I was struck by its beauty.
It is fair to say my heart responded to it in a way that, at the time, I did 
not understand. Then, I knew little about Islam, but each time I visited Egypt 
I learnt a little more. I talked to several Egyptians about their religion, and 
bought a copy of an English translation of the Qur'an. The little bits I read 
made a lot of sense to me, and the more I learnt about Islam, the more 
admirable it seemed to be. The more Muslims I met, the more I admired them.
But I was still in thrall to my own ego, my own Western way of life, and by two 
other things which prevented me from fully appreciating Islam and investigating 
it further. First, my life-long belief in Nature: the belief that we somehow 
belong to Mother Earth in a special, almost pagan, way and that our own 
consciousness is the consciousness of Nature.
Second, that it was our nation, our national culture, which defined us and 
which therefore, was of supreme importance. But, in my heart, I always felt a 
universal, honorable, compassion, as I always felt the need to be aware of the 
numinous, the sacred. Many times in my life I believed this numinosity 
derived from God, the supreme Being — while at other times I believed it 
derived from Nature, from the cosmos itself: from what I often termed the 
gods.
For decades, I wavered between these two versions regarding the origin of the 
sacred. Because of this awareness, these feelings, I was not as many people — 
and journalists in particular — believed me to be: some sort of fanatical 
political extremist who 'hated' people. And yet it is true to say that I was 
perhaps too arrogant — too sure of myself and the understanding I believed I 
had achieved — to give in to this compassion, this awareness, and accept I was 
simply a humble creation of an all-powerful Supreme Being. Instead, I believed 
I could make if not a significant difference then at least some difference to 
this world, based on my own beliefs and understanding.
Conversion
My conversion really begins when I started a new job, working long hours on a 
farm, often by myself. The close contact with Nature, the toil of manual labor, 
really did restore my soul, my humanity, and I became really aware of the 
Oneness of the Cosmos and of how 

Re: Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Muslim Men in Burqa and Hijab!

2007-04-16 Thread Raihan
Sorry Sister for the confusion. It seems you have missed my point. I wanted to 
mean that although both men and women wear some kind of Burqa and Hijab, yet 
critics only look at women and say that they (women) are oppressed!

Thanks
Raihan


- Original Message 
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: eGroup For Muslims Around The World islamcity@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 8:16:23 AM
Subject: Re: Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Muslim Men in Burqa and Hijab!

Salam,
excuse me but i dont mean to be rude, but did the person who sent this not 
muslim?
because i watched all 3 videos and all i seen was proper islamic attire for the 
man.
thobes  Shmaaghs.  of course feel free to correct me if im wrong.
in the future, please dont post things that are not correct.
 
your sister in islam ~cres~ 

[EMAIL PROTECTED] com wrote:
Muslim Men in Burqa and Hijab!
 
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=kMiMBsiE3Z8
 
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=PFj_aCd61LE
 
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=mk8EwXxvYw8mode=relatedsearch=



Don't get soaked. Take a quick peak at the forecast 
with theYahoo! Search weather shortcut. 




Z  


Ahhh...imagining that irresistible new car smell?
Check out new cars at Yahoo! Autos. 


__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] From Judaism to Islam

2007-04-15 Thread Raihan
From Judaism to Islam
Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss)
http://www.usislam.org/converts/asad.htm
Leopold Weiss (1900-1992), who became famous in the Muslim world as Muhammad 
Asad, was born in a Jewish family in what is now part of Germany. He worked in 
the Middle East as correspondent of prestigious German and Swiss newspapers. He 
traveled widely throughout the world and authored many books on Islam including 
a translation of the Qur'an. He accepted Islam in 1926.
About the author: 
Muhammad Asad, Leopold Weiss, was born in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 
1900, and at the age of 22 made his visit to the Middle East. He later became 
an outstanding foreign correspondent for the Franfurtur Zeitung, and after his 
conversion to Islam traveled and worked throughout the Muslim world, from North 
Africa to as far East as Afghanistan. After years of devoted study he became 
one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. After the establishment of 
Pakistan, he was appointed the Director of the Department of Islamic 
Reconstruction, West Punjab and later on became Pakistan's Alternate 
Representative at the United Nations. Muhammad Asad's two important books are: 
Islam at the Crossroads and Road to Mecca. He also produced a monthly journal 
Arafat. At present he is working upon an English translation of the Holy 
Qur'an. [Asad completed his translation and has passed away. -MSA-USC] 
Let us now turn to Asad's own words on his conversion:
In 1922 I left my native country, Austria, to travel through Africa and Asia as 
a Special Correspondent to some of the leading Continental newspapers, and 
spent from that year onward nearly the whole of my time in the Islamic East. My 
interest in the nations with which I came into contact was in the beginning 
that of an outsider only. I saw before me a social order and an outlook on life 
fundamentally different from the European; and from the very first there grew 
in me a sympathy for the more tranquil -- I should rather say: more mechanized 
mode of living in Europe. This sympathy gradually led me to an investigation of 
the reasons for such a difference, and I became interested in the religious 
teachings of the Muslims. At the time in question, that interest was not strong 
enough to draw me into the fold of Islam, but it opened to me a new vista of a 
progressive human society, of real brotherly feeling. The reality, however, of 
present day Muslim life appeared to be very
 far from the ideal possibilities given in the religious teachings of Islam. 
Whatever, in Islam, had been progress and movement, had turned, among the 
Muslims, into indolence and stagnation; whatever there had been of generosity 
and readiness for self-sacrifice, had become, among the present-day Muslims, 
perverted into narrow-mindedness and love of an easy life. 
Prompted by this discovery and puzzled by the obvious incongruency between Once 
and Now, I tried to approach the problem before me from a more intimate point 
of view: that is, I tried to imagine myself as being within the circle of 
Islam. It was a purely intellectual experiment; and it revealed to me, within a 
very short time, the right solution. I realized that the one and only reason 
for the social and cultural decay of the Muslims consisted in the fact that 
they had gradually ceased to follow the teachings of Islam in spirit. Islam was 
still there; but it was a body without soul. The very element which once had 
stood for the strength of the Muslim world was now responsible for its 
weakness: Islamic society had been built, from the very outset, on religious 
foundations alone, and the weakening of the foundations has necessarily 
weakened the cultural structure -- and possibly might cause its ultimate 
disappearance. 
The more I understood how concrete and how immensely practical the teachings of 
Islam are, the more eager became my questioning as to why the Muslims had 
abandoned their full application to real life. I discussed this problem with 
many thinking Muslims in almost all the countries between the Libyan Desert and 
the Pamirs, between the Bosphorus and the Arabian Sea. It almost became an 
obsession which ultimately overshadowed all my other intellectual interests in 
the world of Islam. The questioning steadily grew in emphasis -- until I, a 
non-Muslim, talked to Muslims as if I were to defend Islam from their 
negligence and indolence. The progress was imperceptible to me, until one day 
-- it was in autumn 1925, in the mountains of Afghanistan -- a young provincial 
Governor said to me: But you are a Muslim, only you don't know it yourself. I 
was struck by these words and remained silent. But when I came back to Europe 
once again, in 1926, I saw that the only logical consequence
 of my attitude was to embrace Islam. 
So much about the circumstances of my becoming a Muslim. Since then I was 
asked, time and again: Why did you embrace Islam ? What was it that attracted 
you particularly ? -- and I must 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Who is Muhammad?

2007-04-13 Thread Raihan
Who is Muhammad? 

A talk given by Shaykh Khalid Yasin, an ex-Christian.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ygQa120nI0Q


   

Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peak at the forecast
with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Jesus (pbuh) in Islam

2007-04-05 Thread Raihan
Yusuf Estes, a former Christian Priest, talks about Prophet Jesus (pbuh) in 
Islamic tradition.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Flh7epISs4


 

Bored stiff? Loosen up... 
Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.
http://games.yahoo.com/games/front

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] A Closer Look at The Qur'an

2007-04-04 Thread Raihan
A Closer Look at The Qur'an

By Dr. Gary Miller

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jxmLVP-FVtU


 

Don't pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Women's Right in Islam

2007-03-28 Thread Raihan
Women's Right in Islam
 
1. Spanish woman Fatimah Milla - Rumayor, a convert to Islam, talks about 
women's rights in Islam. She is educated and bought up in Spain, she works as a 
linguist and is from Spain. She points out some useful information about Islam 
and she addresses the misconceptions that many people have about Islam and the 
role of women in it. Short video.
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=exdCJ_wT9E4

 
2. Women in Islam: Through Western Eyes by Dr. Lisa Killinger, an Amercian 
convert to Islam. Short videos.
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4PXEBro8ymc
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YSCXntOmCl4
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5qZPSBAW9nY
 

3. Aminah Assilmi, an Amercian convert to Islam, speaks in brief on the women's 
rights in Islam. Short video. 
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6oqEpHh73sw


4. Yusuf Estes, an Amercian convert to Islam, speaks on the women's rights in 
Islam. Short Filmed at the Tech University in Virginia to a non-Muslim audience.
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wn0jJJ4qFuEmode=relatedsearch=
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-LKgCvXCNHQmode=relatedsearch=
 

5. Women in Islam are portrayed media to be oppressed and inferior by many 
Westerners. Here Shabir Ally and his Lady guest provides a brief and authentic 
exposition of the teachings of Islam regarding women.
 
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VKnXZB_Jt3Y


 

Food fight? Enjoy some healthy debate 
in the Yahoo! Answers Food  Drink QA.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=listsid=396545367

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] British Catholic Priest Converted To ISLAM

2007-03-28 Thread Raihan
British Catholic Priest Converted To ISLAM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUDxaVXwHbUeurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eturntoislam%2Ecom%2Fforum%2Fshowthread%2Ephp%3Ft%3D10077


 

Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Is Terrorism a Muslim Monopoly?

2007-03-26 Thread Raihan
Is Terrorism a Muslim Monopoly?

- by Dr. Zakir Naik 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8E6RP8w7m64


 

Never miss an email again!
Yahoo! Toolbar alerts you the instant new Mail arrives.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] THE BIG LIE: Iraqis killing Iraqis!!!

2007-03-21 Thread Raihan
Blaming The Victims: Covering Up Terrorism In Iraq

By Ghali Hassan
19 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org

http://countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan180307.htm

A recent cover story in the Time magazine (March, 2007, Europe and Asia) by 
Bobby Ghosh, “Why They Hate Each Other”, aimed at removing the Occupation as 
the generator of violence against the Iraqi people, and portrays the violence 
as “Iraqis killing Iraqis”. This media distortion obfuscates the U.S. monopoly 
on terrorism and allows the U.S. to use Iraq as a laboratory for terror at the 
expense of the Iraqi people.

Nowhere in his story does Ghosh tell the readers that the militias and the 
criminals were the creation of the Occupation and that the violence is the only 
pretext left to justify the ongoing Occupation. Why Iraqis didn’t “hate each 
other” before the illegal invasion of their country is totally ignored by 
Western media and remains a mystery to most Westerners. It is important to 
remember that Time was the leading propaganda organ which promoted the illegal 
aggression against Iraq, and continues to play a vicious role spreading 
Islamaphobia around the world.

To get a clearer picture of what has been done to Iraq and to Iraqi society, it 
is vital to connect the nearly two- decades of Anglo-American violence against 
the Iraqi people. Violence has been the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy and 
its dealing with smaller defenceless nations. Indeed, history has shown that 
all nations who qualified for U.S. violence were defenceless nations inhabited 
by coloured, or nonwhite human beings. 

From 1990 to 2003, Iraq was under 13-year genocidal sanctions enforced by the 
U.S. and Britain. The sanctions were the new weapons of mass killing the West 
used against innocent civilians. The sanctions were in fact a silent genocide 
that was deliberately used to target the most vulnerable of Iraqi society. 
More than 1.6 million Iraqis have died; a third of the victims were infants. 
In addition, the sanctions accompanied by weekly acts of terrorism by U.S. and 
British forces disguised as air raids to “enforce the no-fly zones”. The 
pretext for this long and silent genocide was (the non-existent of) Weapons of 
Mass Destructions (WMDs). As the perpetrators failed to break the will of the 
Iraqi people to survive, they initiated a war of aggression using the same 
concocted pretext as justification for war.

According to Robert H. Jackson, the Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trial, 
Any resort to war—any kind of war—is a resort to means that are inherently 
criminal. War inevitably is a course of killings, assaults, deprivations of 
liberty, and destruction of property. An honestly defensive war is, of course, 
legal and saves those lawfully conducting it from criminality. But inherently 
criminal acts cannot be defended by showing that those who committed them were 
engaged in a war, when war itself is illegal. (Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, 
2nd Day, 21 November, 1945, pp. 145-146). Before the U.S-Britain illegal 
aggression, Iraqis were living in relative safety. Iraq posed no threat to any 
other nation. The primary objectives of the war were the imperialist domination 
of the region by the U.S. and support for Israel’s terror and Zionist policy in 
Palestine. 

A short history is in order. At the outset of the Occupation, Paul Bremer, the 
U.S. Proconsul during the early phase of the Occupation, issued an order 
dissolving the Iraqi State and disbanding the Iraqi Army and Police in order to 
create lawlessness and chaos. Bremer then hand-picked expatriate collaborators 
– most of them involved in crimes and acts of terrorism against the State of 
Iraq – and beguiled others to form the ‘Iraqi Governing Council’ (IGC). The IGC 
was based on ethnic and religious affiliations, and most of its members had 
lived outside Iraq for decades. Bremer’s aim was to divide Iraqis according to 
religion and ethnicity, which made the Iraqi people shiver in their sleep. The 
IGC continues to function today under the name of the “Iraqi Government” 
without any real power, reminiscent of the Nazis-imposed Vichy regime in France.

Furthermore, the U.S.-drafted Iraqi “Constitution” is designed specifically to 
divide the country on ethnic-religious lines. The so-called “federation” is 
euphemism for the geographical divisions of Iraq. The “Constitution” relegated 
women’s rights to the Stone Age and denied them equality. Before the 
Occupation, Iraq had one of the most progressive Constitutions in the Muslim 
World.

In addition, the U.S. launched a campaign of terror and assassinations – as the 
U.S. did in every country it invaded or which backed its military junta. It all 
started with the “Debaathification”; a euphemism for a murderous campaign 
orchestrated by the occupying forces. U.S. Special Forces in collaboration with 
the Israeli Mossad agents trained the pro-invasion militias (the Kurdish 
Peshmerga, the SCIRI Badr Brigades and other 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Jesus: Muslim views on the Christian position

2007-03-18 Thread Raihan
Jesus: Muslim views on the Christian position

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2S1LlDDDNw


 

Looking for earth-friendly autos? 
Browse Top Cars by Green Rating at Yahoo! Autos' Green Center.
http://autos.yahoo.com/green_center/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] 9/11: The Myth and the Reality: Dr. David Ray Griffin

2007-03-07 Thread Raihan
9/11: The Myth and the Reality

- by Dr. David Ray Griffin

http://www.911blogger.com/node/3882


 

Now that's room service!  Choose from over 150,000 hotels
in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Why the Taliban destroyed the Buddhist Statues

2007-03-05 Thread Raihan
Why the Taliban destroyed the Buddhist Statues

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SUGiZshmKUQ


 

Finding fabulous fares is fun.  
Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel 
bargains.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] How Islamic inventors changed the world

2007-02-15 Thread Raihan
How Islamic inventors changed the world
From coffee to cheques and the three-course meal, the Muslim world has given 
us many innovations that we take for granted in daily life. As a new 
exhibition opens, Paul Vallely nominates 20 of the most influential- and 
identifies the men of genius behind them.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article350594.ece
1. The story goes that an Arab named Khalid was tending his goats in the Kaffa 
region of southern Ethiopia, when he noticed his animals became livelier after 
eating a certain berry. He boiled the berries to make the first coffee. 
Certainly the first record of the drink is of beans exported from Ethiopia to 
Yemen where Sufis drank it to stay awake all night to pray on special 
occasions. By the late 15th century it had arrived in Mecca and Turkey from 
where it made its way to Venice in 1645. It was brought to England in 1650 by a 
Turk named Pasqua Rosee who opened the first coffee house in Lombard Street in 
the City of London. The Arabic qahwa became the Turkish kahve then the Italian 
caffé and then English coffee.
2. The ancient Greeks thought our eyes emitted rays, like a laser, which 
enabled us to see. The first person to realise that light enters the eye, 
rather than leaving it, was the 10th-century Muslim mathematician, astronomer 
and physicist Ibn al-Haitham. He invented the first pin-hole camera after 
noticing the way light came through a hole in window shutters. The smaller the 
hole, the better the picture, he worked out, and set up the first Camera 
Obscura (from the Arab word qamara for a dark or private room). He is also 
credited with being the first man to shift physics from a philosophical 
activity to an experimental one.
3. A form of chess was played in ancient India but the game was developed into 
the form we know it today in Persia. From there it spread westward to Europe - 
where it was introduced by the Moors in Spain in the 10th century - and 
eastward as far as Japan. The word rook comes from the Persian rukh, which 
means chariot.
4. A thousand years before the Wright brothers a Muslim poet, astronomer, 
musician and engineer named Abbas ibn Firnas made several attempts to construct 
a flying machine. In 852 he jumped from the minaret of the Grand Mosque in 
Cordoba using a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. He hoped to glide 
like a bird. He didn't. But the cloak slowed his fall, creating what is thought 
to be the first parachute, and leaving him with only minor injuries. In 875, 
aged 70, having perfected a machine of silk and eagles' feathers he tried 
again, jumping from a mountain. He flew to a significant height and stayed 
aloft for ten minutes but crashed on landing - concluding, correctly, that it 
was because he had not given his device a tail so it would stall on landing. 
Baghdad international airport and a crater on the Moon are named after him.
5. Washing and bathing are religious requirements for Muslims, which is perhaps 
why they perfected the recipe for soap which we still use today. The ancient 
Egyptians had soap of a kind, as did the Romans who used it more as a pomade. 
But it was the Arabs who combined vegetable oils with sodium hydroxide and 
aromatics such as thyme oil. One of the Crusaders' most striking 
characteristics, to Arab nostrils, was that they did not wash. Shampoo was 
introduced to England by a Muslim who opened Mahomed's Indian Vapour Baths on 
Brighton seafront in 1759 and was appointed Shampooing Surgeon to Kings George 
IV and William IV.
6. Distillation, the means of separating liquids through differences in their 
boiling points, was invented around the year 800 by Islam's foremost scientist, 
Jabir ibn Hayyan, who transformed alchemy into chemistry, inventing many of the 
basic processes and apparatus still in use today - liquefaction, 
crystallisation, distillation, purification, oxidisation, evaporation and 
filtration. As well as discovering sulphuric and nitric acid, he invented the 
alembic still, giving the world intense rosewater and other perfumes and 
alcoholic spirits (although drinking them is haram, or forbidden, in Islam). 
Ibn Hayyan emphasised systematic experimentation and was the founder of modern 
chemistry.
7. The crank-shaft is a device which translates rotary into linear motion and 
is central to much of the machinery in the modern world, not least the internal 
combustion engine. One of the most important mechanical inventions in the 
history of humankind, it was created by an ingenious Muslim engineer called 
al-Jazari to raise water for irrigation. His 1206 Book of Knowledge of 
Ingenious Mechanical Devices shows he also invented or refined the use of 
valves and pistons, devised some of the first mechanical clocks driven by water 
and weights, and was the father of robotics. Among his 50 other inventions was 
the combination lock.
8. Quilting is a method of sewing or tying two layers of cloth with a layer of 
insulating 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Debunking myths about Muslim Women: YOU THINK YOU KNOW

2007-02-08 Thread Raihan
As Salamu Alaykum. Just a point to ponder:

Hijab is an Arabic word meaning screen, cover or partition. Otherwise it's 
known as the traditional clothing Muslim women wear including the head scarf. 



And what about nuns? They dress almost exactly like Muslim women, but no one 
would ever dare call them oppressed. 


So,why only Muslim women should be compelled to stay apologetic for their 
dress-code?

Thanks
Natasha Cull
 = = = === 

Debunking myths about Muslim Women
YOU THINK YOU KNOW 
Shirien Elmasraya
Last week I conducted a survey about the basics of Islam. Some of the questions 
were Who do Muslims worship? and What do Muslims think of Jesus? The 
results of the survey were depressing to say the least, especially the 
questions regarding women in Islam. 

I asked 200 people how they thought the religion of Islam viewed women. Of 200 
people 97 percent said that Islam viewed women as inferior or subservient to 
men. And when asked if they thought that Muslim women were oppressed, 98 
percent - a rather shocking percentage of people - said yes.

The statistics speak for themselves and further encourage the importance of 
talking about this subject. You may be thinking, Well if the vast majority of 
the people said this, then it must be true. That is the problem; it really 
couldn't be farther from the truth. And most of these people who think this way 
are unaware they hold a double standard. 

First, Christianity, like Islam, reveres the Virgin Mary with high respect. 
Both religions believe she was one of the best women to walk the earth. So let 
us analyze the description of the physical appearance of Mary according to 
Christians. Well usually you see statues of her standing looking down, fully 
covered from head to toe wearing her hijab. 

Hijab is an Arabic word meaning screen, cover or partition. Otherwise it's 
known as the traditional clothing Muslim women wear including the head scarf. 

And what about nuns? They dress almost exactly like Muslim women, but no one 
would ever dare call them oppressed. 

Perhaps you think what makes Muslim women oppressed rather than nuns is that 
Muslim women are forced to wear it. Well, that's wrong. Our male relatives 
don't force us to wear it. Rather, we wear it because it was a commandment in 
the Qur'an, the book that Muslims try to follow to the letter. Muslim women 
choose to wear the hijab because they choose to obey the creator. 

The Qur'an tells the believing women to draw their veils over their bodies. It 
is a form of protection for women. A woman who wears hijab is like an oyster 
with a pearl inside; she only reveals her beauty to a select few who are 
specified in the holy Qur'an, such as her father, brothers, uncles, husband and 
so on.

Second, many think women are looked upon as lower class than men in Islam. Why 
would a huge percentage of those people converting to Islam every year be women 
if that were true? Allah says in the Qur'an, And whoever does righteous good 
deeds, male or female, and is a true believer in the Oneness of God, such will 
enter Paradise and not the least injustice, even to the size of a Naqeera 
(speck on the back of a datestone), will be done to them.

Allah in the Qur'an always addresses both believing men and believing women. 
Spiritually, everyone is the same. People only earn higher ranks in the sight 
of God by their good deeds and piety. 

Everyone knows men and women differ physically. Women can do different things 
like bearing children, and men usually have more physical strength.

The Prophet Muhammad said, O People, it is true that you have certain rights 
with regard to your women, but they also have right over you. If they abide by 
your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do 
treat your women well and be kind to them, for they are your partners and 
committed helpers.

In fact, during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad, a war was waged for the 
honor of one woman who had been violated by a tribe.

Also, a couple of generations later, a woman only had to call the name of the 
caliph Motassim for help, and he sent an army to go rescue her.

Women are treated very well in Islam. These commandments are there to protect 
us. Islam was the religion that blotted out all the injustices done to them. 
Women could vote 1,400 years ago, while women in the United States could only 
vote in the last century.

While it is true atrocities and injustices are done to women both in the Muslim 
world and outside, one needs to recognize these are in no way linked to Islam. 
They are just sick people who like to abuse others. 
I don't need people to look at me with sympathy. I don't want people to think 
that I'm oppressed and I have some rights taken away from me. I have all my 
rights, and I am in no way oppressed. I couldn't be happier with my choice to 
obey the commandments set in the Qur'an and to be an example by showing people 
that I 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] From Darkness to Light - 15

2007-02-04 Thread Raihan
Canadian Catholic Discovers Islam

This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, 
and have chosen for you Islam as your religion... (Holy Qur'an, Surah 5, verse 
3) 

The Roman Catholic religion is dictated by the Pope from the top down to the 
priests at the bottom. If a Muslim were to walk into a Catholic church, it 
would be like walking into a different world. He would find row upon row of 
pews in which the worshipers sit, stained glass windows with perhaps scenes of 
the last supper or the Messiah carrying a cross, etc. On the front wall in all 
churches is the Messiah on a cross and below is an altar where the priest 
delivers his Sunday sermon. In some older churches, you may even find 
magnificent statue figures of Jesus, saints, Mary the mother of Jesus and so 
on. Church services are mainly repetitive rituals, singing, and prayers to 
Jesus or Mary or God and sometimes to saints. This is the type of world in 
which I lived and grew up most of my life.

If you were to ask me why I converted to Islam, my answer would fill volumes. 
However, if you were to ask me what led me to Islam I would have to say, now 
looking back, that it was my first encounter reading the Bible at the age of 
about ten. I used to sit bewildered reading the Bible into a tape recorder. 
After finishing, I would play the tape back in hopes of grasping the meaning of 
what I had just read, usually to no avail. So on Sundays I watched sermons on 
television, ordered free Bibles, and donated as much as I could (which could 
not have been much for a boy of ten) to the television evangelists. I received 
letters of gratitude and blessings and that made me feel good. 

This continued for a year or so until finally I became too frustrated, lost, 
and honestly bored with the whole process. I tucked the Bible away in my 
dresser drawer, and I would only refer to it occasionally throughout my 
childhood and teenage years. I accepted the fact that I would never truly 
understand the Bible. That is, ironically, until later when I became Muslim. 
Only then did I begin to gain a complete understanding of it.

What had confused me reading the Bible then was the contradiction between the 
book and what I had been taught all my life by priests and religious 
pedagogues. I found that almost every aspect of my belief was shaken or simply 
did not make sense at all upon referring to the Bible. The very core of my 
faith, I had learned, was false. This brought me to the point in my life where 
I was pessimistic and cynical toward religion. I mocked my religion in my teens 
by going to church chewing gum and halfheartedly participating in services. I 
would grunt at the mere mention of God or Jesus. I did not know what I believed 
anymore. The only thing I was sure of was that there was a God. All of my 
confusion and disenchantment, starting from the age of ten, would ultimately 
trigger my quest for Truth and finally lead me to the religion called Islam.

My first encounter with Muslim people was through business dealings. Their warm 
and generous hospitality won my heart. Their loyal remembrance of Allah 
intrigued me in phrases like, al-Hamdulillah (all Praise be to God) and inshah 
Allah (God Willing). I have never come upon people in a state of such strong 
faith before. Their kindness, generosity, and compassionate nature, I would 
discover later, were all part of being a Muslim. I wanted to be like them. This 
is what attracts people to Islam; this is what attracted me. 

I began to learn the basics of Islam. The more I learned the more I wanted to 
know. Before long, I was studying Islam through books written by Muslims in 
addition to reading a translation of the Holy Qur'an. Only a select few knew 
that I was studying Islam, since I did not want any interference from Muslims 
and especially from my Christian and Jewish friends. I knew that if anyone was 
going to guide and aid me in my quest for Truth it would be Allah. 

As time passed, my knowledge expanded into realms of Truth hitherto unbeknownst 
to me. Islam became a powerful force like a magnet drawing me closer and closer 
to it. Allah was the only thing on my mind during the day, as I drifted to 
sleep, and the first thought when I awoke. Islam appealed to my intellect as 
well as my heart, and so my passion grew for it. I eventually learned Surat 
Al-Ikhlas (A chapter in the Holy Qur'an called Purity In Faith) and although I 
was not yet Muslim, I began to teach myself to pray using a book and reciting 
the only Surah I knew. I felt an overwhelming need to prostrate in reverence to 
the All Mighty to ask for forgiveness and guidance in the way that made most 
sense to me.

Shortly thereafter, I departed on a holiday taking the Qur'an with me. Four 
days later, alone in a foreign country, I became severely ill. I was bed 
stricken for a month each day losing almost a pound of my body weight. Facing 
my mortality and alone in my agony I remember 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Laws of Physics on 9/11

2007-01-29 Thread Raihan
Laws of Physics on 9/11. 10 minute video -- laws of physics.

See the controlled demolition!

http://snipurl.com/189zm

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6333886887490767906hl=en

Refutation? 

Courtesy: Harold, phone: 1-713-529-2333  e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]


 

TV dinner still cooling? 
Check out Tonight's Picks on Yahoo! TV.
http://tv.yahoo.com/

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Concept of God in Hinduism

2007-01-23 Thread Raihan
Concept of God in Hinduism


http://www.aulia-e-hind.com/koransway.htm#islamnHindus

1. Hinduism is commonly perceived as a polytheistic religion. Indeed, most 
Hindus would attest to this, by professing belief in multiple Gods. While some 
Hindus believe in the existence of three gods, some believe in thousands of 
gods, and some others in thirty three crore i.e. 330 million Gods. However, 
learned Hindus, who are well versed in their scriptures, insist that a Hindu 
should believe in and worship only one God.
The major difference between the Hindu and the Muslim perception of God is the 
common Hindus’ belief in the philosophy of Pantheism. Pantheism considers 
everything, living and non-living, to be Divine and Sacred. The common Hindu, 
therefore, considers everything as God. He considers the trees as God, the sun 
as God, the moon as God, the monkey as God, the snake as God and even human 
beings as manifestations of God!
Islam, on the contrary, exhorts man to consider himself and his surroundings as 
examples of Divine Creation rather than as divinity itself. Muslims therefore 
believe that everything is God’s i.e. the word ‘God’ with an apostrophe ‘s’. In 
other words the Muslims believe that everything belongs to God. The trees 
belong to God, the sun belongs to God, the moon belongs to God, the monkey 
belongs to God, the snake belongs to God, the human beings belong to God and 
everything in this universe belongs to God.
Thus the major difference between the Hindu and the Muslim beliefs is the 
difference of the apostrophe ‘s’. The Hindu says everything is God. The Muslim 
says everything is God’s.


2. Concept of God according to Hindu Scriptures:

We can gain a better understanding of the concept of God in Hinduism by 
analyzing Hindu scriptures.

BHAGAVAD GITA:
The most popular amongst all the Hindu scriptures is the Bhagavad Gita. 
Consider the following verse from the Gita:
Those whose intelligence has been stolen by material desires surrender unto 
demigods and follow the particular rules and regulations of worship according 
to their own natures. [Bhagavad Gita 7:20]
The Gita states that people who are materialistic worship demigods i.e. ‘gods’ 
besides the True God.



UPANISHADS:
The Upanishads are considered sacred scriptures by the Hindus.
The following verses from the Upanishads refer to the Concept of God:
Ekam evadvitiyam
He is One only without a second. [Chandogya Upanishad 6:2:1]1
Na casya kascij janita na cadhipah.
Of Him there are neither parents nor lord. [Svetasvatara Upanishad 6:9]2
Na tasya pratima asti
There is no likeness of Him. [Svetasvatara Upanishad 4:19]3
The following verses from the Upanishad allude to the inability of man to 
imagine God in a particular form:
Na samdrse tisthati rupam asya, na caksusa pasyati kas canainam.
His form is not to be seen; no one sees Him with the eye. [Svetasvatara 
Upanishad 4:20]4

1 [The Principal Upanishad by S. Radhakrishnan page 447 and 448]
[Sacred Books of the East, volume 1 ‘The Upanishads part I’ page 93]
2 [The Principal Upanishad by S. Radhakrishnan page 745]
[Sacred Books of the East, volume 15, ‘The Upanishads part II’ page 263.]
3 [The Principal Upanishad by S. Radhakrishnan page 736  737]
[Sacred Books of the East, volume 15, ‘The Upanishads part II’ page no 253]
4 [The Principal Upanishad by S. Radhakrishnan page 737]
[Sacred Books of the East, volume 15, ‘The Upanishads part II’ page no 253]



THE VEDAS:


Vedas are considered the most sacred of all the Hindu scriptures. There are 
four principal Vedas: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samveda and Atharvaveda.

Yajurveda


The following verses from the Yajurveda echo a similar concept of God:
“na tasya pratima asti
There is no image of Him. [Yajurveda 32:3]5
shudhama poapvidham
He is bodyless and pure. [Yajurveda 40:8]6
Andhatama pravishanti ye asambhuti mupaste
They enter darkness, those who worship the natural elements (Air, Water, 
Fire, etc.). They sink deeper in darkness, those who worship sambhuti. 
[Yajurveda 40:9]7
Sambhuti means created things, for example table, chair, idol, etc.
The Yajurveda contains the following prayer:
Lead us to the good path and remove the sin that makes us stray and wander. 
[Yajurveda 40:16]8

5[Yajurveda by Devi Chand M.A. page 377]
6[Yajurveda Samhita by Ralph T. H. Giffith page 538]
7[Yajurveda Samhita by Ralph T. H. Giffith page 538]
8[Yajurveda Samhita by Ralph T. H. Griffith page 541]

Atharvaveda


The Atharvaveda praises God in Book 20, hymn 58 and verse 3:
Dev maha osi
God is verily great [Atharvaveda 20:58:3]9

Rigveda
The oldest of all the vedas is Rigveda. It is also the one considered most 
sacred by the Hindus. The Rigveda states in Book 1, hymn 164 and verse 46:


Sages (learned Priests) call one God by many names. [Rigveda 1:164:46]
The Rigveda gives several different 

Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Was Islam spread by sword?

2007-01-23 Thread Raihan
Was Islam spread by sword?

by Dr. Zakir Naik

It is a common complaint among some non-Muslims that Islam would not have 
millions of adherents all over the world, if it had not been spread by the use 
of force! Muslims today are weak all over the globe, yet Islam is spreading 
faster than any other religion even in America and Europe. The following points 
will make it clear, that far from being spread by the sword, it was the 
inherent force of truth, reason and logic that was responsible for the rapid 
spread of Islam.
1. Islam means peace. Islam comes from the root word ‘salaam’, which means 
peace. It also means submitting one’s will to Allah (swt). Thus Islam is a 
religion of peace, which is acquired by submitting one’s will to the will of 
the Supreme Creator, Allah (swt).
2. The best reply to the misconception that Islam was spread by the sword is 
given by the noted historian De Lacy O’Leary in the book Islam at the cross 
road (Page 8):
History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping 
through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered 
races is one of the most fantastically absurd myth that historians have ever 
repeated.
3. Muslims ruled Spain for 800 years. Muslims ruled Spain for about 800 years. 
The Muslims in Spain never used the sword to force the people to convert. Later 
the Christian Crusaders came to Spain and wiped out the Muslims. There was not 
a single Muslim in Spain who could openly give the adhan, that is the call for 
prayers.
4. 14 million Arabs are Coptic Christians. Muslims were the lords of Arabia for 
1400 years. For a few years the British ruled, and for a few years the French 
ruled. Overall, the Muslims ruled Arabia for 1400 years. Yet today, there are 
14 million Arabs who are Coptic Christians i.e. Christians since generations. 
If the Muslims had used the sword there would not have been a single Arab who 
would have remained a Christian.
5. More than 85% non-Muslims in India. The Muslims ruled India for about a 
thousand years. If they wanted, they had the power of converting each and every 
non-Muslim of India to Islam. Today more than 85% of the population of India 
are non-Muslims. All these non-Muslim Indians are bearing witness today that 
Islam was not spread by the sword.
6. Indonesia and Malaysia. Indonesia is a country that has the maximum number 
of Muslims in the world. The majority of people in Malaysia are Muslims. May 
one ask, Which Muslim army went to Indonesia and Malaysia?
7. East Coast of Africa. Similarly, Islam has spread rapidly on the East Coast 
of Africa. One may again ask, if Islam was spread by the sword, Which Muslim 
army went to the East Coast of Africa?
8. The famous historian, Thomas Carlyle, in his book Heroes and Hero worship, 
refers to this misconception about the spread of Islam:
The sword indeed, but where will you get your sword? Every new opinion, at its 
starting is precisely in a minority of one. In one man’s head alone. There it 
dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it, there is one man 
against all men. That he takes a sword and try to propagate with that, will do 
little for him. You must get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate 
itself as it can.
9. No compulsion in religion. With which sword was Islam spread? Even if 
Muslims had it they could not use it to spread Islam because the Qur’an says in 
the following verse: Let there be no compulsion in religion: Truth stands out 
clear from error [Al-Qur’an 2:256]
10. Sword of the Intellect. It is the sword of intellect. The sword that 
conquers the hearts and minds of people. The Qur’an says in Surah Nahl, chapter 
16 verse 125: Invite (all) to the way of thy Lord with wisdom and beautiful 
preaching; and argue with them in ways that are best and most gracious. 
[Al-Qur’an 16:125]
11. Increase in the world religions from 1934 to 1984. An article in Reader’s 
Digest ‘Almanac’, year book 1986, gave the statistics of the increase of 
percentage of the major religions of the world in half a century from 1934 to 
1984. This article also appeared in ‘The Plain Truth’ magazine. At the top was 
Islam, which increased by 235%, and Christianity had increased only by 47%. May 
one ask, which war took place in this century which converted millions of 
people to Islam?
12. Islam is the fastest growing religion in America and Europe. Today the 
fastest growing religion in America is Islam. The fastest growing religion in 
Europe in Islam. Which sword is forcing people in the West to accept Islam in 
such large numbers?
13. Dr. Joseph Adam Pearson rightly says:
People who worry that nuclear weaponry will one day fall in the hands of the 
Arabs, fail to realize that the Islamic bomb has been dropped already, it fell 
the day MUHAMMED (pbuh) was born.
14. Sometimes force has to be used to maintain peace. Each and every human 
being in this world is not in favor of maintaining peace and harmony. There