THE WORD "ISLAM" MEANS "SURRENDER" or "submission" to God. Followers of Islam are called Muslims. Muslims use the Arabic word for God, "Allah."
Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam is a rigorously monotheistic religion. All three religions trace their history back to Abraham and earlier still to Adam, the first human.
Muslims believe that God sent a series of revelations to Muhammad, an Arabian merchant, over a period of about 23 years, beginning in the common year 610. These revelations were written down by followers and later compiled in a book called the Quran, the Islamic holy scripture.
Muslims accept earlier messages brought by other prophets such as Moses and Jesus, but they believe that only the Quran is God's final and perfect revelation. While Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet, they reject the Christian belief that he is God, believing Allah has no partners or associates who share his divinity. He is the sole creator and sustainer of the universe.
The beginning of the Islamic calendar is marked by the prophet Muhammad's migration from Mecca to Medina in the year 622, known as the Hijrah (Hegira). The Islamic calendar consists of twelve lunar months.
Islam can be viewed as more than a religion; it is a complete way of life held together by religious laws and duties called "shariah" or holy law. Shariah encompasses all aspects of life, from dietary regulations to inheritance laws.
The five key elements of Islam are known as the "Five Pillars:" to have faith, to pray regularly, to give charity, to fast during Ramadan and to make a pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca.
The essence of Islam is summed up in the "Shahada" or testimony of faith: "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Anybody who speaks these words with sincerity is identified as a Muslim.
OK, good research but you messed up in the Coran's paragraph and one of the pillars, pilgrimage is not mandatory, it's only for people who are financially able to do so, and the Coran wasn't compiled and written down by followers, it's not and geography book, those revelations are actually words of God and they were written down accurately, go back and reserach how the Coran was written and by who, then post it again and i'll see if you get it right next time.
Posts: 197 | Location: PA | Registered: 12-16-2003
Whenever a fanatic wants to preach anything, us mere mortals will turn a deaf ear. Idiotuzz is nothing short of a terrorist, nothing short of a extremist, nothing short of wasted air. I am sure if Islam werent twisted to suit the needs of idiot's like Idtuzz, you may perhaps find a religion much like others. Idiotuzz can save his breath and typing fingers, he is a first class tosser. Hey Idtuzz toss my salad !!
Posts: 562 | Location: Tampa, FL, USA | Registered: 09-17-2003
I am proud of my husband being a Muslim! Relating Muslims to terrorism is just like relating Christianity to the Ku Kux Klan.
My husband is a Muslim American, he loves this country and we all agree that no religeon justifying killing innocent human beings in the name of religeon!
Judy, perhaps you are new to this forum and have never heard Idtuzz praise the beheadings, killings of americans and praising the 9-1-1 terrorists. So in this case you are spouting off your mouth before you know the full story. Who cares if you married a muslim? Certainly not me, as long as he is peaceful and doesnt pollute islam than he is OK with me. I was not relating all muslims to terrorism, just Idtuzz as its clear he is a fanatic.
Posts: 562 | Location: Tampa, FL, USA | Registered: 09-17-2003
Oh Julie, Should Muslims on this board respond to Michael in a same way you used to respond to the Idiot-Duzz? I think it is childish, what do you think? It sounds like you don't love me anymore?
Originally posted by Michael: Islam is another word for savage
Between 1530 and 1830 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of North Africa. According to one report, 7000 English people were abducted between 1622 to 1644, many of them ship crews and passengers. But the Corsairs also landed on unguarded beaches, often at night, to snatch the unwary. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were captured in 1631, and there were other raids in Devon and Cornwall. Many of these white, Christian slaves were put to work in quarries, building sites and galleys and endured malnutrition, disease and mistreatment at the hands of their Muslim slave masters. Female captives were sexually abused in palace harems.
Enslavement was a very real possibility for anyone who traveled in the Mediterranean, or who lived along the shores in places like Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and even as far north as England and Iceland. Pirates (called corsairs) from cities along the Barbary Coast in north Africa – cities such as Tunis, Tripolis and Algiers – would raid ships in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, as well as seaside villages to capture men, women and children. The impact of these attacks were devastating – France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. Even Americans were not immune. For example, one American slave reported that 130 other American seamen had been enslaved by the Algerians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic just between 1785 and 1793. The great pirate city Algiers was not in fact thoroughly tamed till its conquest by France in 1830.
The Crimean Khanate, a Crimean Tatar state from 1441 to 1783, was undoubtedly one of the strongest powers in Eastern Europe until the 18th century. Crimean Tatars played an invaluable role in defending the borders of Islam. In a process called "harvesting of the steppe" they enslaved many Slavic peasants, and acquired booty. For a long time, until the early 18th century, the khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. Kefe was one of the best known and significant trading ports and slave markets. Some researchers estimate that altogether more than 3 million people, predominantly Ukrainians but also Russians, Belarusians and Poles, were captured and enslaved during the time of the Crimean Khanate.
Even as late as the 19th Century, it was noted that in Mecca "there are few families, that do not keep slaves, they all keep mistresses in common with their lawful wives." The explorer, Heinrich Barth, recorded that a slave caravan lost 40 slaves in the course of a single night at Benghazi. One caravan with 3000 proceeding from the coast in East Africa, lost two thirds of its number from starvation, disease and murder. In the Nubian desert, one slave caravan of 2000 slaves literally vanished as every slave died. Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) the pre-eminent Islamic medieval historian and social thinker wrote: "The Black nations are as a rule submissive to slavery, because they have attributes that are quite similar to dumb animals."
Slavery in Mauritania persists despite its abolition in 1980 and affects the descendants of black Africans abducted into slavery before generations, who live now in Mauritania as "žblack Moors" or haratin and who partially still serve the "žwhite Moors", or bidhan, as slaves. The number of slaves in the country is not known exactly, but is estimated to be hundreds of thousands. Kevin Bales believes that the percentage of slaves is the highest in the world. A Nigerian study has found that almost 8% of the population are slaves. In Niger, slavery was only criminalised in 2003 - and the local human rights organisation Timidria estimates 870,000 people are still held in bondage there. According to the American Anti-Slavery Group, black Africans in southern Sudan have been abducted for centuries in the Arabian slave trade, but the slave raids by militia armed by the government increased significantly after the 1989 military coup led by General Omar el-Bashir. Christian Solidarity International Claims that there are 200,000 slaves in Sudan.
Islam is the largest non-Christian religion in Canada. According to 2001 census, there were 579,640 Muslims in Canada. In 2006, Muslim population is estimated to be 783,700. In the 1981 census Muslim population was still below 100,000. All political parties in Canada are now cautious about criticising of the high level of immigration, because, as noted by the Globe and Mail, "in the early 1990s, the old Reform Party was branded ˜racist' for suggesting that immigration levels be lowered from 250,000 to 150,000. Canada's Immigration Minister is pushing for major changes to the country's immigration system, according to government sources. If the changes are accepted, Canada will be bringing in more than 300,000 immigrants a year.
Young British Muslims are more likely than their elders to support sharia law and admire al-Qaida. Forty percent of Muslims between aged 16 to 24 said they would prefer to live under sharia law in the UK, compared to only 17 percent of those over 55. Thirty-six percent of the younger group said a Muslim who converted to another religion should be "punished by death". There was also strong support for wearing the veil in public, 74 percent of 16-to-24-year-olds, and Islamic schools, 37 percent. Pollsters questioned 1,003 Muslims, weighted to represent the population across the UK, using Internet and telephone questionnaires.
The survey concluded that British authorities and some Muslim groups have exaggerated the problem of Islamophobia and fueled a sense of victimization among some Muslims. Foreign policy was shown to be a key issue for British Muslims, with 58 percent of respondents saying many of the world's problems were "a result of arrogant Western attitudes." Their knowledge of foreign affairs was sketchy, with only one in five knowing that Mahmoud Abbas was head of the Palestinian Authority. In a poll conducted for the Channel 4 documentary, only half the British Muslims questioned said they thought of Britain as "my country", whereas nearly a quarter said they thought of it as "their country" - meaning someone else's. The younger respondents were, the greater the alienation. Shockingly, one in three British Muslims aged between 18 and 24 said they would rather live under Sharia law than under British law. In a Pew poll of Muslims worldwide, a gob-smacking 81% of British Muslims said they thought of themselves as a Muslim first and a citizen of their country only second. In the Channel 4 poll, nearly one third of young British Muslims agreed with the suggestion that "the July bombings were justified because of British support for the war on terror". That's truly shocking.
Some European cities, such as Marseille in France and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, now have Muslim populations of 25 percent. In others, like Paris, London and Copenhagen, Denmark, the figure is in excess of 10 percent. Within 10 years, Muslims will have an absolute majority in both Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Europe's Muslim population has tripled over the last 30 years, to about 23 million, and experts predict it will double again by 2020. Last year, seven percent of babies born in European Union countries were Muslims. The Europe Union, in 2005, had an overall net gain from international migration of +1.8 million people. This accounts for almost 85 percent of Europe's total population growth in 2005. Muslim birth rate in Europe is three times higher than the non-Muslim one.
A total of 285 300 persons in Norway had per 1.1.2006 immigrant background from a non-western country. The largest immigrant groups by country of origin are Pakistanis, Iraqis, Vietnamese and Somalis. While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background. Non-western immigrants in Norway are shown to rely heavily on welfare transfers for several years after immigration. Ekhaugen's study shows that 50% of the non-western immigrants who settled in Norway in the period from 1966 to 1975 were welfare dependent 25 years later. Ekhaugen concludes that "generally speaking, considering non-western immigrants, [expecting] a stable source of tax-revenue is [...] arguably a tad naive."
Approximately 30% of all the children in the public schools of Copenhagen have a "foreign background", most of them Muslim. 60% of young immigrants dropped out of high school. Especially recent immigrants like Somalis, who came to Denmark in the 1990s, have high unemployment rates, with only 13% employed. In the UK, the unemployment rate among Somali men is estimated to be around 87%.
While much has been written concerning the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, surprisingly little attention has been given to the Islamic slave trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. While the European involvement in the Trans Atlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day. A comparison of the Islamic slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!
While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive. While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth. It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States). However, at least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. While Christian Reformers spearheaded the anti-slavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilised her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.
Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of Karbala expressed the view in 1993 that the enforcement of servitude can occur but is restricted to war captives and those born of slaves. Dr. Abdul-Latif Mushtahari, the general supervisor and director of homiletics and guidance at the Azhar University, the leading institution for Sunni learning in the Islamic world, has said on the subject of justifications for Islamic permission of slavery: "Islam does not prohibit slavery but retains it for two reasons. The first reason is war (whether it is a civil war or a foreign war in which the captive is either killed or enslaved) provided that the war is not between Muslims against each other - it is not acceptable to enslave the violators, or the offenders, if they are Muslims. Only non-Muslim captives may be enslaved or killed. The second reason is the sexual propagation of slaves which would generate more slaves for their owner."
The Bush administration misled the American people into a disastrous war on the false pretense that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction intended for use against the US.
Americans now wonder why the world hates them (us) so? Why US foreign policy "” and therefore American diplomats who represent that policy "” is scorned for being arrogant, stupid and as stupid as the policy is arrogant? No wonder that, as an opinion piece in a recent issue of Time Magazine observed, someone like Hugo Chavez whom Bush hates so much, is overwhelmingly loved in his country Venezuela (see column of Peter Beinart in Time issue of May 21). And the reason too, that, as that piece suggests, US-sponsored democracies are failing.
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