Dear All
I have always been very confused about the idea of Insurance in Islam and its credibility. Recently, I had a discussion on this topic with three of my very close friends and have got some more insight from them. Two of my friends were in favour of Insurance in some form and had their own views about the topic, please note that these two have good knowledge of Islam. I would not call them molvis, they are moderate muslims but have good knowledge on various subjects in Islam (although this is no yardstick). I will put down my reservations, their answers and a few other views here and would like to have views from the rest of the users here. Please do participate in the discussion with your own understanding (whatever that may be) and please be open in your views as this might clarify some ambiguities they you or others might have. Thanks.
What is Sood (Interest) that is stated as Haram (forbidden) in Islam ?
My understanding is that any income that falls under the following criteria
1. Is fixed
2. Is definitely profit (no risk of loss)
3. Does not involve any effort/ work
Savings account in a Bank
To me a savings account in bank is the purest form of interest and is Haram. It gives a fixed return over an year, is always a profit over the deposited money and it does not require any work or any effort from me. No risk.
There are two other viewpoints on the bank deposits in savings accounts.
If a family does not have any sources of income and they don't know how and what business to invest in, the interest money from the bank is Halal (allowed). Just to give you an extreme example, if say a women is a widow and her children are young, and there is just the cash that they have and nothing else, the interest money from the bank is HALAL (allowed).
In early days of Islam, when interest was made Haram (prohibited), the currency used to be of GOLD and thei value did not use to depreciate. Gold used to appreciate with rising inflation and people could buy the same amout of goods even after many years of price hike. In modern times, with currency notes in fashion and value of currency depreciating everyday with rising inflation, people cannot buy the same amount of goods after one year with the same money that they have now. Keeping money in savings accounts of the banks only safeguards against the possible devaluation of money in the form of interest. So it is actually not interest and is justified.
Insurance
Now let’s talk about insurance. There are two forms of insurances, insurance of a product (object/ material) and life insurance of humans.
Product Insurance
If a person or company owns some product (e.g. car or house or goods) and wants to insure it against any possible harm (e.g. theft, fire, accident etc.), the person or company would get the product insured by some insurance company. There will be some fixed payment in the form of insurance fee that the person or company will pay to the insurance company and in-turn the product would be insured. Now if any harm is inflicted upon the product, the insurance company bears the cost to the tune it is insured. But the key point is that the payment money in the form of insurance fee is not returned, if there is no claim.
Life Insurance
Life insurance of a human is a somewhat newer concept as compared to product insurance, which has been there for many centuries (so it is known). In life insurance, a person keeps on making a certain amount of payment for a certain number of years (we have 20 years normally offered by State Life and EFU) and it covers three areas.
1. If the person dies within those 20 years, his family (beneficiaries) receives a handsome sum of money, already decided at the time of signing the insurance contract.
2. If the person does not die within those 20 years, a handsome some of money is given to him as profit incurred on the yearly installments of payments he had been making to the insurance company.
3. In some cases, in addition to one of the above, if the person falls ill, his medical expenses are borne by the insurance company during those 20 years.
Now my question specifically relates to the first 2 points. If the person dies, the family gets a fixed amount of insurance money (as is the case with product insurance). However, in life insurance, if a person does not die, he still gets a fixed profit on his actual installment payments in addition to the total actual amount paid to the insurance company.
Now this is a win-win situation and this income somewhat falls under my definition of interest i.e. Is fixed, Is definitely profit (no risk of loss), Does not involve any effort/ work.
taken from:http://www.buzzvines.com/concept-insurance-islam
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Multiculturalism and Islam: Sharia vs European constitutions
Multiculturalism and Islam: Sharia vs European constitutions
by Samir Khalil Samir, sj
Problems in Holland and Denmark. Great Britain as an example: decades of multiculturalism that have lead to ghettos, closure, radicalism of Islamic communities. Women ever penalized. Being European citizens involves having the duty to integrate. Third in a series of articles.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Multiculturalist ideology, i.e. the blind tolerance of any culture or tradition, is destroying Europe and standing in the way of any positive development of Islam. Such ideology has been condemned by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali intellectual and parliamentarian who, having received death threats from Muslims for her defence of women’s rights and tired of European multiculturalism, left Holland to go work in the United States at the American Enterprise Institute. She accused Holland of excessive acquiescence, of encouraging the immobility of Muslim communities and even of letting itself be conquered by Islam and Islamic law.
In making room for Sharia, there is the risk of conflict with European constitutions. An interesting thing is taking place in Denmark, a country which is at the forefront of multi-culturality. The SIAD Party has recently been founded and it proposes the following: anyone who cites Koranic verses contrary to the Danish constitution must be punished because the constitution is superior to all other laws.
And they quote articles 67-69 of the Danish Constitution which says, “We authorize freedom of worship, as long as it is exercised within the framework of Danish laws without disturbing public order.”
All this is a clear signal that people are beginning to reflect on the possible contrast that exists between the constitutions of European countries and certain laws of the Koran. In Demark too, there exist two trends: the “left”, or the “do-gooders”, who want to respect the culture of others, saying that ours is not an absolute, or suggest that we must be tolerant and give Muslims time to take this step; and those who make no allowances, and who say that if a person is not able to integrate, he is better off going elsewhere.
But the most significant and problematic case is that of Great Britain: here, after decades of multiculturalism, instead of integrating and coexisting, Islamic communities are increasingly closing themselves into ghettos, and fundamentalistic behaviours, dangerous for all society, are emerging.
State schools and Islamic morals
The most representative association of British Muslims, the Muslim Council of Great Britain, has asked that Muslims be recognized the right to apply Islamic morals in state schools. On February 21, it published a 72-page document and presented it to the government in the name of 400,000 Muslim students attending the country’s state schools. They ask that the government accept the demands of Muslim parents and youngster on the grounds of faith concerns.
Taking their cue from their concept of modesty, they say that female students:
a) have the right to wear headscarves or the hijab (there is no mention however of the niqab);
b) have the right to not take part in physical education lessons, because Islam prohibits contact between the sexes in public and because there is the risk of girls exposing bare skin, which is prohibited by Sharia.
They also demand separate classes for girls and boys; the refusal of dancing and of sex education (which is a family matter and not a topic for school); drawings and anatomy textbooks must not show genital organs. As for faith and history, they ask for a revision of the entire teaching system in the name of Islamic morals.
The Education Ministry has not yet replied officially, but has already said that these requests will be a step backwards in terms of the tolerance that already existed.
British and Muslim
The tendency towards closure – the fruit of multiculturalism! – is apparent also at another level. Last February 19, a public survey in the Sunday Telegraph shows that 40% of British Muslims are favourable to the introduction of sharia. This demonstrates the radicalization of a substantial part of the country’s Islamic community. Forty percent feels foreign to British society and deems that it is necessary and normal to lead a lifestyle in line with the most radical of Islamic ethics.
Another element which is emerging is the detachment of these people from British society. Asked “How do you feel about the victims of conflicts in the world?”, the reply was “compassion”, “solidarity” and even “anger” with reference to conflicts involving Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, they feel closer to Muslims than to Great Britain, which is directly involved in some of these conflicts.
From the sociological point of view, it should be said that they come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India and belong to traditional families, but it is also worth noting that they have been in Great Britain for at least two generations. It seems clear to me that the reactions to 9/11, instead of creating more global solidarity around the idea of the fight against terrorism, have instead radicalized Muslims who are siding with each other to defend their brothers in faith.
September 11 created or reinforced, in the entire Islamic world, an identity crisis: Islam and Muslims are under scrutiny. Faced with this situation, there are those who stop to reflect on what must be reviewed in Islamic teaching behaviour, and there are those whose reaction is closure and aggressiveness so as to affirm more forcefully the radical diversity of Islam vis-à-vis the surrounding culture. This second kind of behaviour is typical of many young people of second or third generation, who fully recognize themselves neither in Islamic nor in Western tradition (despite having perfectly assimilated the latter).
In any case, this study and the requests regarding schools show that Muslims in Great Britain are increasingly identifying themselves with their religion, more than with local society and culture.
Modesty for males and citizenship
The problems raised by Muslims, for example those in Great Britain, are real. There does exist a problem of ethics in society, and thus also in the school system. An exaggerated liberalism which allows young people everything, especially at the sexual level, on the grounds that they must learn to make their own choices, is certainly unacceptable to both the Muslim and Christian communities, as well as to the human community tout court. But preventing contact between boys and girls, or preventing the teaching of all things related to sexuality is an entirely different matter. Here, it is not a question of ethics, but of customs and traditions, and this is no longer acceptable. In any given country, the norms of that country must be observed, not those of the homelands of a few parents!
Furthermore, one might ask oneself why, on the question of the relationship between sexes, it is always the woman who must be hidden or “observe modesty”, as is still said. If modesty is a virtue – and in fact it is – it applies to males as it does to females. And since modesty seems to be more spontaneous in females, it would seem more necessary to impose it upon males! In other terms, despite the best intentions, Muslims tend to confuse customs with ethics. Customs are tied to determined groups (ethnic, geographic, religious…) and do not apply to the national civil society. Ethics dictate principles which are valid for every human person, independent of their sex or religion, and therefore are worth defending and fighting to defend. It is time that we learn to defend ethics that are respectful of the human person, by starting to teach and practice them in schools, to everyone. As for special treatment for a particular group, in the name of their different culture, this is a deformation of what should be “authentic multiculturalism,” which learns to evaluate different cultures and improve one’s own on the basis of comparison.
The question behind this problem is: what does citizenship mean? Is it a piece of paper, useful to acquire so as to have advantages and few obligations? Or is it a profound reality, the result of a pondered choice, which can also demand even big cultural sacrifice?
And more: what is the identity of an Italian citizen of Egyptian or Moroccan or Chinese or Albanian origin? If it is Egyptian, Moroccan, Chinese, Albanian, then I ask: what is the sense of having requested and obtained Italian citizenship? It is not perhaps to enjoy the advantages that a country offers and then return to live in one’s country of birth or that of one’s parents? In that case, I am just an exploiter. But if it means a conscious choice, which implies changes in behaviour, the desire to build with other citizens a more just society etc, then, yes, I deserve citizenship. I think that society must help each person to make such pondered choices, helping and facilitating efforts to integrate.
taken from:bsimmons.wordpress.com
by Samir Khalil Samir, sj
Problems in Holland and Denmark. Great Britain as an example: decades of multiculturalism that have lead to ghettos, closure, radicalism of Islamic communities. Women ever penalized. Being European citizens involves having the duty to integrate. Third in a series of articles.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Multiculturalist ideology, i.e. the blind tolerance of any culture or tradition, is destroying Europe and standing in the way of any positive development of Islam. Such ideology has been condemned by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali intellectual and parliamentarian who, having received death threats from Muslims for her defence of women’s rights and tired of European multiculturalism, left Holland to go work in the United States at the American Enterprise Institute. She accused Holland of excessive acquiescence, of encouraging the immobility of Muslim communities and even of letting itself be conquered by Islam and Islamic law.
In making room for Sharia, there is the risk of conflict with European constitutions. An interesting thing is taking place in Denmark, a country which is at the forefront of multi-culturality. The SIAD Party has recently been founded and it proposes the following: anyone who cites Koranic verses contrary to the Danish constitution must be punished because the constitution is superior to all other laws.
And they quote articles 67-69 of the Danish Constitution which says, “We authorize freedom of worship, as long as it is exercised within the framework of Danish laws without disturbing public order.”
All this is a clear signal that people are beginning to reflect on the possible contrast that exists between the constitutions of European countries and certain laws of the Koran. In Demark too, there exist two trends: the “left”, or the “do-gooders”, who want to respect the culture of others, saying that ours is not an absolute, or suggest that we must be tolerant and give Muslims time to take this step; and those who make no allowances, and who say that if a person is not able to integrate, he is better off going elsewhere.
But the most significant and problematic case is that of Great Britain: here, after decades of multiculturalism, instead of integrating and coexisting, Islamic communities are increasingly closing themselves into ghettos, and fundamentalistic behaviours, dangerous for all society, are emerging.
State schools and Islamic morals
The most representative association of British Muslims, the Muslim Council of Great Britain, has asked that Muslims be recognized the right to apply Islamic morals in state schools. On February 21, it published a 72-page document and presented it to the government in the name of 400,000 Muslim students attending the country’s state schools. They ask that the government accept the demands of Muslim parents and youngster on the grounds of faith concerns.
Taking their cue from their concept of modesty, they say that female students:
a) have the right to wear headscarves or the hijab (there is no mention however of the niqab);
b) have the right to not take part in physical education lessons, because Islam prohibits contact between the sexes in public and because there is the risk of girls exposing bare skin, which is prohibited by Sharia.
They also demand separate classes for girls and boys; the refusal of dancing and of sex education (which is a family matter and not a topic for school); drawings and anatomy textbooks must not show genital organs. As for faith and history, they ask for a revision of the entire teaching system in the name of Islamic morals.
The Education Ministry has not yet replied officially, but has already said that these requests will be a step backwards in terms of the tolerance that already existed.
British and Muslim
The tendency towards closure – the fruit of multiculturalism! – is apparent also at another level. Last February 19, a public survey in the Sunday Telegraph shows that 40% of British Muslims are favourable to the introduction of sharia. This demonstrates the radicalization of a substantial part of the country’s Islamic community. Forty percent feels foreign to British society and deems that it is necessary and normal to lead a lifestyle in line with the most radical of Islamic ethics.
Another element which is emerging is the detachment of these people from British society. Asked “How do you feel about the victims of conflicts in the world?”, the reply was “compassion”, “solidarity” and even “anger” with reference to conflicts involving Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, they feel closer to Muslims than to Great Britain, which is directly involved in some of these conflicts.
From the sociological point of view, it should be said that they come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India and belong to traditional families, but it is also worth noting that they have been in Great Britain for at least two generations. It seems clear to me that the reactions to 9/11, instead of creating more global solidarity around the idea of the fight against terrorism, have instead radicalized Muslims who are siding with each other to defend their brothers in faith.
September 11 created or reinforced, in the entire Islamic world, an identity crisis: Islam and Muslims are under scrutiny. Faced with this situation, there are those who stop to reflect on what must be reviewed in Islamic teaching behaviour, and there are those whose reaction is closure and aggressiveness so as to affirm more forcefully the radical diversity of Islam vis-à-vis the surrounding culture. This second kind of behaviour is typical of many young people of second or third generation, who fully recognize themselves neither in Islamic nor in Western tradition (despite having perfectly assimilated the latter).
In any case, this study and the requests regarding schools show that Muslims in Great Britain are increasingly identifying themselves with their religion, more than with local society and culture.
Modesty for males and citizenship
The problems raised by Muslims, for example those in Great Britain, are real. There does exist a problem of ethics in society, and thus also in the school system. An exaggerated liberalism which allows young people everything, especially at the sexual level, on the grounds that they must learn to make their own choices, is certainly unacceptable to both the Muslim and Christian communities, as well as to the human community tout court. But preventing contact between boys and girls, or preventing the teaching of all things related to sexuality is an entirely different matter. Here, it is not a question of ethics, but of customs and traditions, and this is no longer acceptable. In any given country, the norms of that country must be observed, not those of the homelands of a few parents!
Furthermore, one might ask oneself why, on the question of the relationship between sexes, it is always the woman who must be hidden or “observe modesty”, as is still said. If modesty is a virtue – and in fact it is – it applies to males as it does to females. And since modesty seems to be more spontaneous in females, it would seem more necessary to impose it upon males! In other terms, despite the best intentions, Muslims tend to confuse customs with ethics. Customs are tied to determined groups (ethnic, geographic, religious…) and do not apply to the national civil society. Ethics dictate principles which are valid for every human person, independent of their sex or religion, and therefore are worth defending and fighting to defend. It is time that we learn to defend ethics that are respectful of the human person, by starting to teach and practice them in schools, to everyone. As for special treatment for a particular group, in the name of their different culture, this is a deformation of what should be “authentic multiculturalism,” which learns to evaluate different cultures and improve one’s own on the basis of comparison.
The question behind this problem is: what does citizenship mean? Is it a piece of paper, useful to acquire so as to have advantages and few obligations? Or is it a profound reality, the result of a pondered choice, which can also demand even big cultural sacrifice?
And more: what is the identity of an Italian citizen of Egyptian or Moroccan or Chinese or Albanian origin? If it is Egyptian, Moroccan, Chinese, Albanian, then I ask: what is the sense of having requested and obtained Italian citizenship? It is not perhaps to enjoy the advantages that a country offers and then return to live in one’s country of birth or that of one’s parents? In that case, I am just an exploiter. But if it means a conscious choice, which implies changes in behaviour, the desire to build with other citizens a more just society etc, then, yes, I deserve citizenship. I think that society must help each person to make such pondered choices, helping and facilitating efforts to integrate.
taken from:bsimmons.wordpress.com
Multiculturalism and Islam: Sharia vs European constitutions
Problems in Holland and Denmark. Great Britain as an example: decades of multiculturalism that have lead to ghettos, closure, radicalism of Islamic communities. Women ever penalized. Being European citizens involves having the duty to integrate. Third in a series of articles.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Multiculturalist ideology, i.e. the blind tolerance of any culture or tradition, is destroying Europe and standing in the way of any positive development of Islam. Such ideology has been condemned by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali intellectual and parliamentarian who, having received death threats from Muslims for her defence of women’s rights and tired of European multiculturalism, left Holland to go work in the United States at the American Enterprise Institute. She accused Holland of excessive acquiescence, of encouraging the immobility of Muslim communities and even of letting itself be conquered by Islam and Islamic law.
In making room for Sharia, there is the risk of conflict with European constitutions. An interesting thing is taking place in Denmark, a country which is at the forefront of multi-culturality. The SIAD Party has recently been founded and it proposes the following: anyone who cites Koranic verses contrary to the Danish constitution must be punished because the constitution is superior to all other laws.
And they quote articles 67-69 of the Danish Constitution which says, “We authorize freedom of worship, as long as it is exercised within the framework of Danish laws without disturbing public order.”
All this is a clear signal that people are beginning to reflect on the possible contrast that exists between the constitutions of European countries and certain laws of the Koran. In Demark too, there exist two trends: the “left”, or the “do-gooders”, who want to respect the culture of others, saying that ours is not an absolute, or suggest that we must be tolerant and give Muslims time to take this step; and those who make no allowances, and who say that if a person is not able to integrate, he is better off going elsewhere.
But the most significant and problematic case is that of Great Britain: here, after decades of multiculturalism, instead of integrating and coexisting, Islamic communities are increasingly closing themselves into ghettos, and fundamentalistic behaviours, dangerous for all society, are emerging.
State schools and Islamic morals
The most representative association of British Muslims, the Muslim Council of Great Britain, has asked that Muslims be recognized the right to apply Islamic morals in state schools. On February 21, it published a 72-page document and presented it to the government in the name of 400,000 Muslim students attending the country’s state schools. They ask that the government accept the demands of Muslim parents and youngster on the grounds of faith concerns.
Taking their cue from their concept of modesty, they say that female students:
a) have the right to wear headscarves or the hijab (there is no mention however of the niqab);
b) have the right to not take part in physical education lessons, because Islam prohibits contact between the sexes in public and because there is the risk of girls exposing bare skin, which is prohibited by Sharia.
They also demand separate classes for girls and boys; the refusal of dancing and of sex education (which is a family matter and not a topic for school); drawings and anatomy textbooks must not show genital organs. As for faith and history, they ask for a revision of the entire teaching system in the name of Islamic morals.
The Education Ministry has not yet replied officially, but has already said that these requests will be a step backwards in terms of the tolerance that already existed.
British and Muslim
The tendency towards closure – the fruit of multiculturalism! – is apparent also at another level. Last February 19, a public survey in the Sunday Telegraph shows that 40% of British Muslims are favourable to the introduction of sharia. This demonstrates the radicalization of a substantial part of the country’s Islamic community. Forty percent feels foreign to British society and deems that it is necessary and normal to lead a lifestyle in line with the most radical of Islamic ethics.
Another element which is emerging is the detachment of these people from British society. Asked “How do you feel about the victims of conflicts in the world?”, the reply was “compassion”, “solidarity” and even “anger” with reference to conflicts involving Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, they feel closer to Muslims than to Great Britain, which is directly involved in some of these conflicts.
From the sociological point of view, it should be said that they come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India and belong to traditional families, but it is also worth noting that they have been in Great Britain for at least two generations. It seems clear to me that the reactions to 9/11, instead of creating more global solidarity around the idea of the fight against terrorism, have instead radicalized Muslims who are siding with each other to defend their brothers in faith.
September 11 created or reinforced, in the entire Islamic world, an identity crisis: Islam and Muslims are under scrutiny. Faced with this situation, there are those who stop to reflect on what must be reviewed in Islamic teaching behaviour, and there are those whose reaction is closure and aggressiveness so as to affirm more forcefully the radical diversity of Islam vis-à-vis the surrounding culture. This second kind of behaviour is typical of many young people of second or third generation, who fully recognize themselves neither in Islamic nor in Western tradition (despite having perfectly assimilated the latter).
In any case, this study and the requests regarding schools show that Muslims in Great Britain are increasingly identifying themselves with their religion, more than with local society and culture.
Modesty for males and citizenship
The problems raised by Muslims, for example those in Great Britain, are real. There does exist a problem of ethics in society, and thus also in the school system. An exaggerated liberalism which allows young people everything, especially at the sexual level, on the grounds that they must learn to make their own choices, is certainly unacceptable to both the Muslim and Christian communities, as well as to the human community tout court. But preventing contact between boys and girls, or preventing the teaching of all things related to sexuality is an entirely different matter. Here, it is not a question of ethics, but of customs and traditions, and this is no longer acceptable. In any given country, the norms of that country must be observed, not those of the homelands of a few parents!
Furthermore, one might ask oneself why, on the question of the relationship between sexes, it is always the woman who must be hidden or “observe modesty”, as is still said. If modesty is a virtue – and in fact it is – it applies to males as it does to females. And since modesty seems to be more spontaneous in females, it would seem more necessary to impose it upon males! In other terms, despite the best intentions, Muslims tend to confuse customs with ethics. Customs are tied to determined groups (ethnic, geographic, religious…) and do not apply to the national civil society. Ethics dictate principles which are valid for every human person, independent of their sex or religion, and therefore are worth defending and fighting to defend. It is time that we learn to defend ethics that are respectful of the human person, by starting to teach and practice them in schools, to everyone. As for special treatment for a particular group, in the name of their different culture, this is a deformation of what should be “authentic multiculturalism,” which learns to evaluate different cultures and improve one’s own on the basis of comparison.
The question behind this problem is: what does citizenship mean? Is it a piece of paper, useful to acquire so as to have advantages and few obligations? Or is it a profound reality, the result of a pondered choice, which can also demand even big cultural sacrifice?
And more: what is the identity of an Italian citizen of Egyptian or Moroccan or Chinese or Albanian origin? If it is Egyptian, Moroccan, Chinese, Albanian, then I ask: what is the sense of having requested and obtained Italian citizenship? It is not perhaps to enjoy the advantages that a country offers and then return to live in one’s country of birth or that of one’s parents? In that case, I am just an exploiter. But if it means a conscious choice, which implies changes in behaviour, the desire to build with other citizens a more just society etc, then, yes, I deserve citizenship. I think that society must help each person to make such pondered choices, helping and facilitating efforts to integrate.
taken from:http://www.asianews.it
Beirut (AsiaNews) – Multiculturalist ideology, i.e. the blind tolerance of any culture or tradition, is destroying Europe and standing in the way of any positive development of Islam. Such ideology has been condemned by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali intellectual and parliamentarian who, having received death threats from Muslims for her defence of women’s rights and tired of European multiculturalism, left Holland to go work in the United States at the American Enterprise Institute. She accused Holland of excessive acquiescence, of encouraging the immobility of Muslim communities and even of letting itself be conquered by Islam and Islamic law.
In making room for Sharia, there is the risk of conflict with European constitutions. An interesting thing is taking place in Denmark, a country which is at the forefront of multi-culturality. The SIAD Party has recently been founded and it proposes the following: anyone who cites Koranic verses contrary to the Danish constitution must be punished because the constitution is superior to all other laws.
And they quote articles 67-69 of the Danish Constitution which says, “We authorize freedom of worship, as long as it is exercised within the framework of Danish laws without disturbing public order.”
All this is a clear signal that people are beginning to reflect on the possible contrast that exists between the constitutions of European countries and certain laws of the Koran. In Demark too, there exist two trends: the “left”, or the “do-gooders”, who want to respect the culture of others, saying that ours is not an absolute, or suggest that we must be tolerant and give Muslims time to take this step; and those who make no allowances, and who say that if a person is not able to integrate, he is better off going elsewhere.
But the most significant and problematic case is that of Great Britain: here, after decades of multiculturalism, instead of integrating and coexisting, Islamic communities are increasingly closing themselves into ghettos, and fundamentalistic behaviours, dangerous for all society, are emerging.
State schools and Islamic morals
The most representative association of British Muslims, the Muslim Council of Great Britain, has asked that Muslims be recognized the right to apply Islamic morals in state schools. On February 21, it published a 72-page document and presented it to the government in the name of 400,000 Muslim students attending the country’s state schools. They ask that the government accept the demands of Muslim parents and youngster on the grounds of faith concerns.
Taking their cue from their concept of modesty, they say that female students:
a) have the right to wear headscarves or the hijab (there is no mention however of the niqab);
b) have the right to not take part in physical education lessons, because Islam prohibits contact between the sexes in public and because there is the risk of girls exposing bare skin, which is prohibited by Sharia.
They also demand separate classes for girls and boys; the refusal of dancing and of sex education (which is a family matter and not a topic for school); drawings and anatomy textbooks must not show genital organs. As for faith and history, they ask for a revision of the entire teaching system in the name of Islamic morals.
The Education Ministry has not yet replied officially, but has already said that these requests will be a step backwards in terms of the tolerance that already existed.
British and Muslim
The tendency towards closure – the fruit of multiculturalism! – is apparent also at another level. Last February 19, a public survey in the Sunday Telegraph shows that 40% of British Muslims are favourable to the introduction of sharia. This demonstrates the radicalization of a substantial part of the country’s Islamic community. Forty percent feels foreign to British society and deems that it is necessary and normal to lead a lifestyle in line with the most radical of Islamic ethics.
Another element which is emerging is the detachment of these people from British society. Asked “How do you feel about the victims of conflicts in the world?”, the reply was “compassion”, “solidarity” and even “anger” with reference to conflicts involving Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply put, they feel closer to Muslims than to Great Britain, which is directly involved in some of these conflicts.
From the sociological point of view, it should be said that they come from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India and belong to traditional families, but it is also worth noting that they have been in Great Britain for at least two generations. It seems clear to me that the reactions to 9/11, instead of creating more global solidarity around the idea of the fight against terrorism, have instead radicalized Muslims who are siding with each other to defend their brothers in faith.
September 11 created or reinforced, in the entire Islamic world, an identity crisis: Islam and Muslims are under scrutiny. Faced with this situation, there are those who stop to reflect on what must be reviewed in Islamic teaching behaviour, and there are those whose reaction is closure and aggressiveness so as to affirm more forcefully the radical diversity of Islam vis-à-vis the surrounding culture. This second kind of behaviour is typical of many young people of second or third generation, who fully recognize themselves neither in Islamic nor in Western tradition (despite having perfectly assimilated the latter).
In any case, this study and the requests regarding schools show that Muslims in Great Britain are increasingly identifying themselves with their religion, more than with local society and culture.
Modesty for males and citizenship
The problems raised by Muslims, for example those in Great Britain, are real. There does exist a problem of ethics in society, and thus also in the school system. An exaggerated liberalism which allows young people everything, especially at the sexual level, on the grounds that they must learn to make their own choices, is certainly unacceptable to both the Muslim and Christian communities, as well as to the human community tout court. But preventing contact between boys and girls, or preventing the teaching of all things related to sexuality is an entirely different matter. Here, it is not a question of ethics, but of customs and traditions, and this is no longer acceptable. In any given country, the norms of that country must be observed, not those of the homelands of a few parents!
Furthermore, one might ask oneself why, on the question of the relationship between sexes, it is always the woman who must be hidden or “observe modesty”, as is still said. If modesty is a virtue – and in fact it is – it applies to males as it does to females. And since modesty seems to be more spontaneous in females, it would seem more necessary to impose it upon males! In other terms, despite the best intentions, Muslims tend to confuse customs with ethics. Customs are tied to determined groups (ethnic, geographic, religious…) and do not apply to the national civil society. Ethics dictate principles which are valid for every human person, independent of their sex or religion, and therefore are worth defending and fighting to defend. It is time that we learn to defend ethics that are respectful of the human person, by starting to teach and practice them in schools, to everyone. As for special treatment for a particular group, in the name of their different culture, this is a deformation of what should be “authentic multiculturalism,” which learns to evaluate different cultures and improve one’s own on the basis of comparison.
The question behind this problem is: what does citizenship mean? Is it a piece of paper, useful to acquire so as to have advantages and few obligations? Or is it a profound reality, the result of a pondered choice, which can also demand even big cultural sacrifice?
And more: what is the identity of an Italian citizen of Egyptian or Moroccan or Chinese or Albanian origin? If it is Egyptian, Moroccan, Chinese, Albanian, then I ask: what is the sense of having requested and obtained Italian citizenship? It is not perhaps to enjoy the advantages that a country offers and then return to live in one’s country of birth or that of one’s parents? In that case, I am just an exploiter. But if it means a conscious choice, which implies changes in behaviour, the desire to build with other citizens a more just society etc, then, yes, I deserve citizenship. I think that society must help each person to make such pondered choices, helping and facilitating efforts to integrate.
taken from:http://www.asianews.it
Full report on Political Islam, Sharia Law and Civil Society
On 10th October 2008, the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) celebrated its first anniversary by holding a conference at Conway Hall in London on Political Islam, Sharia Law and Civil Society [1].
An audience of ex-Muslims and freethinkers were welcomed to Conway Hall by Giles Enders, who chairs the South Place Ethical Society, the oldest freethought community in the world, founded in 1793. He claimed that Conway Hall was the “last bastion of free speech in the UK”, since free speech in Parliament was constrained by the Speaker, the whips and various interest groups, rendering parliamentarians unwilling to pass laws against threats to apostates or the issuing of threatening fatwas. The BBC was hardly supportive of free speech either, employing much self-censorship and steadfastly refusing to allow the voices of the non-religious to be heard on Thought for the Day (a regular interlude on the otherwise popular news and current-affairs radio programme Today).
Documentary about the Councils of Ex-Muslims
Zia Zaffar, Treasurer of CEMB, then introduced a short documentary film by Patty Debonitas about the Councils of Ex-Muslims set up fairly recently in a number of European countries. The documentary featured an interview with Mina Ahadi, the founder of the movement. She said that the movement marked a renaissance: it had broken an important taboo.
The film then featured Maryam Namazie, one of the founders of the CEMB. She said that religion ought to be a personal matter. She would never have wanted to be tied to the label “ex-Muslim”, but it was necessary to break the taboo.
Footage was shown of a pro-hijab demonstration in France in 2004 that was opposed by a pro-secularism counter-demonstration against political Islam. The counter-demonstration featured veiled women being led in chains through the streets.
In a further interview, Mina Ahadi told how in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, women came onto the streets to demonstrate against forced veiling. After the first demonstration, they came back again but were attacked by bearded men who beat them. They still came back again, but this time were attacked by men with knives. When they came back again, they were attacked by men with Kalashnikovs. So fewer and fewer women came back to demonstrate.
The documentary ended with Maryam Namazie saying that they were a vast political movement that was bringing the regime in Iran to its knees, and they were going to bring the same energy to fighting political Islam in Europe.”??
Opening address
Maryam Namazie, the CEMB's spokesperson, then gave an opening address, saying that the political Islamic movement used rights and anti-racist language for western consumption so that it could go about its business as usual. While Islamic organisations in the UK talked in public relations terms, they, their courts, their schools, their leaders were nothing but extensions of Islamic states. In the end, political Islam mattered to people because it affected their lives, their rights, their freedoms. And that was why only a movement that put people first could mobilise the force needed to stop it.
Panel on Apostasy Laws and the Freedom to Renounce and Criticise Religion
Caspar Melville, editor of the New Humanist, chaired the next session, a discussion on Apostasy Laws and the Freedom to Renounce and Criticise Religion. The distinguished panel consisting of Mina Ahadi, founder of the German Council of Ex-Muslims, Professor A.C. Grayling, the eminent philosopher, Ehsan Jami, a young Dutch politician and Ex-Muslim activist, Fariborz Pooya, head of the Iranian Secular Society, Hanne Stinson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, and Ibn Warraq, the well-known scholar of Islam. Each of the panel made a short opening statement and then they replied to questions from the floor.
Professor Grayling began by explaining that the idea of punishing apostasy was very old and a familiar feature of monolithic control. In ancient Rome it had taken a quasi-secular form, where failure to observe community rites brought punishment. Within historical Christianity, apostasy had been regarded as one of the worst possible crimes: “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”.
Ibn Warraq pointed out that the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had insisted on the inclusion of the right to change one’s religion (given in Article 18) particularly to protect Muslims who converted to Christianity. Islamic states had always objected to this part of the article.
Fariborz Pooya declared that Islam had been imposed on the people of Iran by the Iranian Revolution. Beforehand, many Iranians had lived without Islam. The Islamic regime used apostasy laws as a means to control the population. Any criticism of the administration led to an accusation of apostasy.
Ehsan Jami mentioned that many people in the Netherlands needed police protection because of Islamist threats.
Mina Ahadi reminded those present that the conference was being held on the International Day against the Death Penalty, and that those victims who had been killed for apostasy should be remembered. Thirty years beforehand in Iran she had been able to say openly that she was no longer a Muslim. In Germany in 2006, such a declaration had evoked death threats. It should be kept in mind that Islamism was a political movement, and the death penalty for apostasy was a tool of repressive government.
Ehsan Jami felt that immigrants to Europe who retained dual nationality had dubious loyalty to their country of residence. Even some members of the Dutch Parliament had dual nationality. Immigrants to Europe should follow his example and become fully committed to their new countries.
Professor Grayling suggested that there was a parallel between the divided loyalties of some European Muslims and the situation in 16th-century Europe when there could be a conflict between loyalty to one’s country and loyalty to the Pope.
Hanne Stinson emphasised the need for a secular society if freedom and democracy were to flourish. All the Abrahamic religions, and not just Islam, were strongly against apostasy.
Mina Ahadi declared that, unrecognised by most people in the West, there was a huge secular movement within Islamic countries, although it was savagely repressed. In the West, however, people were often given unwanted religious labels. When she had first travelled to Europe, people like her had been seen simply as a “foreigners”. Since 9/11, however, governments tended to label them as “Muslims”. The struggle between the Councils of Ex-Muslims and organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain was a struggle between those who supported human rights on the one hand and fascism on the other.
The panel was divided on the issue of whether to co-operate with Muslims or not. Ehsan Jami was strongly against it, but Fariborz Pooya suggested that there were Muslims with whom they could work for a secular society where religion was a private matter.
A.C. Grayling said that the one thing that could not be tolerated was intolerance. Religions wanted to encroach more and more on the public domain and demanded more and more privileges. They had to be told that they were just one interest group among many. His attitude could be summed up as, “You may believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, but don’t bother other people about it!”
Ibn Warraq stated that freedom of expression was absolute: no-one had a right not to be offended. However, in response to an objection from the floor, he agreed that there were limits in international law, under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) [2]
Speaking from the floor, an Iranian refugee from Denmark said that the struggle was one of freedom against fascism. Governments in the West should put pressure on countries such as Saudi Arabia to improve their position on human rights.
Mina Ahadi said that there was a political problem in the West, where the Left was often pro-Islam and tolerant of human rights abuse by Muslim groups and regimes, but the Right was often exploiting the issue for its own purposes. The ex-Muslims from Islamic countries were a third force, against political Islam and for human rights. A.C. Grayling suggested that although this was true, there was also a “decent Left”, who did care about these issues.
Hanne Stinson posed the question of why governments who were theoretically in favour of human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of belief did not demonstrate this in their actions. She thought that the answer was that they were in fear of speaking out.
Ehsan Jami stressed that the campaign against the death penalty should encompass a campaign against laws that punished apostasy or homosexuality.
Hanne Stinson felt that the UK Government had run into problems in its commitment to religious freedom. The New Labour Government was a very religious one and saw so-called “religious leaders” as representing communities; they tended to support group rights at the expense of individual rights.
A.C. Grayling explained that apostasy from Christianity was not well received. In Britain, it meant that it was difficult for apostate parents to obtain entrance to good schools for their children. In the USA, politicians could not get elected unless they paid lip service to religion.
Ibn Warraq was worried by the huge amount of self-censorship in western society. It was evident among scholars of Islam. Biblical criticism had been an important force in producing the Enlightenment. Koranic criticism could do the same.
Finally, Mina Ahadi reminded everyone that the councils of Ex-Muslims were fighting for the universality of human rights.
Starting the afternoon with comedy
Opening the afternoon session, Fariborz Pooya called on everyone to remember that we must be the voice of the voiceless.
As a prelude to the serious business that was to follow, the audience was treated to some quick-fire humour about religion from the comedian Nick Doody, well known from his work on TV and radio in the UK and appearances further afield in much of Europe. A few sample jokes:
• “I was raised Catholic. My brother is training to be a priest – and he doesn’t even like kids!”
•
• “Religion is like an enormous dog. If it’s yours, you love it, but it is terrifying to everyone else. Above all it should be kept away from children.”
•
• (Referring to the implications of male Muslims’ desire to keep women covered up and to forbid alcohol consumption) “I know what I’m like – if I have a pint of booze or see a lady’s chin, it’s rape, rape, rape!”
•
He finished with a true story from the time of the 7/7 terrorist bomb attacks in London. A young couple were in Tavistock Square when the bus blew up. They took refuge in the nearest building, which happened to be a pub. The pub quickly filled up with people fleeing from the carnage. After about 45 minutes an armed policeman came in and ordered the landlord to keep serving free drinks. Nick Doody’s comment was:
“That’s why we shall never have Sharia law in Britain – the response in our capital to a national emergency was a lock-in!”
Panel on Sharia Law and Citizenship Rights
The serious business of the afternoon began with a discussion of Sharia Law and Citizenship Rights. This was chaired by Andrew Copson, Director of Education and Public Affairs at the British Humanist Association. Discussion was led by another distinguished panel. Its members were Mahin Alipour, an Iranian refuges living in Sweden, where she heads Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran, the International Campaign in Defence of Womens Rights in Iran and the Scandinavian Committee of Ex-Muslims; Roy Brown, past-President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) and IHEU’s main representative at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva; Johann Hari, an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for The Independent, and from time to time for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, The New Republic, El Mundo, The Guardian, The Melbourne Age, The Sidney Morning Herald and South Africa’s Star; Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson of the CEMB, and Ibn Warraq, as before.
Mahin Alinpour told her personal story. A qualified engineer, she had been prevented from working because her then husband had refused permission for her to do so. Later, she was again refused permission to work as an engineer, on the grounds that “it was not suitable work for a woman”. Finally she was employed because of a shortage of suitably qualified men, but she was forbidden from interacting with her fellow workers because they were all men. She was obliged to wear a hijab and chador and had to have a driver to take her to work – her male colleagues could drive themselves.
In the end she escaped to Sweden, where she obtained a divorce and custody of her children. Nonetheless, even in such a supposedly advanced country, she still encountered discrimination against ethnic minority women, living in ghettoes and at risk of so-called “honour killings”. Foreign women could be married at the age of 15, even though this was not allowed for native Swedes. As a result of her struggles and that of other women, this law had eventually been changed. But the Swedish Government continued to make many compromises with Islamists, such as establishing special health clinics for Muslim women.
Maryam Namazie pointed out that Sharia was not just an issue for women: it affected everyone.
Ibn Warraq explained that there were two groups who suffered most from Sharia: women, and non-Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadis, Bahais and Zoroastrians. The Sharia regime introduced in Pakistan had had a huge impact on women. The female prison population had rapidly soared by 300 per cent.
Maryam Namazie said that in Iran and some other Islamic countries the state was promoting child abuse by insisting on the veiling of young children. Imagine a young girl of seven forced to wear enveloping garments – never allowed to let sunlight touch her body, never allowed to play with boys of the same age.
Roy Brown pointed out that Islam was not just another religion. Over the past 50 years mainstream Islam had become far more radical. Saudi Arabia had poured billions into promoting its extreme form of Islam. He did not believe that the Muslims of West Ham needed a £600 million mosque. It was clear that the purpose of this mosque, which would dwarf the 2012 Olympic site, was to proclaim to the world “We are the masters now” They are not and we must not let them get away with it.
Johann Hari expressed the view that in Britain there was a problem that an immigrant was put into a box labelled “Muslim” and expected to behave in a certain way for life, instead of being seen as a human being entitled to the same rights as other citizens.
Accepting certain human rights abuses on the grounds that they were part of someone’s culture was akin to excusing slavery by claiming that it was part of the culture of the deep South. There were a lot of people from the deep South called “slaves” who had not agreed with it. They were supported by other people, and eventually they won.
An Egyptian Copt in the audience told how non-Muslims were denied justice in Egypt. A Muslim who murdered a Christian received a suspended sentence of one year. Non-Muslim lives had lower value than Muslim lives.
It was mentioned that Gordon Brown had expressed a wish that Britain should be the capital of Sharia-compatible finance. However, Baroness Cox had spoken out against the acceptance of parallel legal systems.
Johann Hari maintained that Islam could only be modernised if we could criticise it and ridicule it, but Maryam Namazie said that Islam would not be modernised unless it were deprived of power. Many women in Britain who were dealt with by Sharia courts did not know that they had another choice. The women who went to Sharia courts were those in most need of secular courts. Sharia law was heavily weighted against women. For example, in a divorce case, a father would automatically gain control over his sons when they reached the age of seven, even if he had been abusive and violent. It was not racist to oppose Sharia law; it was racist to want to drag people back to mediaeval laws.
Mahin Alipour said that Sharia was a platform for poltical Islam and was a Trojan horse within Western society. In pre-1979 Iran, Sharia law had been used for political aims. Political Islam was fighting for more power and was using Sharia as a tool to this end. The USA had been responsible for the growth of political Islam, by supporting Khomeini, the Taleban and other Islamist regimes and movements. The West was turning a blind eye to ongoing abuses such as the stoning of women and execution of children.
Ibn Warraq said that it was helpful in discussing Islam to distinguish between what he called Islam I, Islam II and Islam III. Islam I was what was in the Koran and what the Prophet was supposed to have said. Islam II was the hadith and traditions and the theological construction developed by Islamic scholars. Islam II was what Muslims actually did do, as opposed to what they should have done.
In history, Islam had not been a relentless series of philosophies. Until the 1930s, Islam III had sometimes been more tolerant than Europe, for example with respect to homosexuality. And multiculturalism, like cholesterol, came in two forms, one good and one bad. The good aspect was a respect for different cultures. The bad led to ghettoisation.
Roy Brown argued that we must not abandon Muslims to their fate. We should not fight against Muslims. We should recognise that our strongest potential allies in the fight against Sharia courts because they were Islamic, but because we stood for equal rights. And we must make it clear that there was a distinction between criticism of Islam and incitement of hatred the Sharia and political Islam were liberal Muslims and Muslim women. We could never eliminate Islam; our objective should be to push it out of politics and the law and back into the private sphere.
Ibn Warraq thought it was important to assert the positive achievements of Western civilisation, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Johann Hari warned that there was a growing prejudice against Muslims. We must not project our own good intentions onto Western governments, who were only too happy to get into bed with evil regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia.
Maryam Namazie concluded this session by explain that “ex-Muslim” was not an identity. CEMB was for citizenship and humanity. Political Islam was not just a problem for Muslims and ex-Muslims; it was a problem for everybody. And political Islam and US militarism were not in opposition to one another: they were two sides of the same coin.
We should not accept an attitude equivalent to saying “We already have slavery” or “We already have apartheid” and “therefore we have to accommodate it and work round it”. The state had a duty to treat people as equal citizens and not hand over power to backward imams.
She called on those present to help organise a mass demonstration against Sharia. It would be appropriate to hold it in March on International Women’s Day.
Short film: Fitna Remade
The next item was a showing of a film entitled Fitna Remade. This was an adaptation of the notorious film by Gert Wilders, Fitna, edited by Reza Moradi to make it a better reflection of reality.
Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation
Professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, The Selfish Gene and many other best sellers, then analysed the widely distributed book, Atlas of Creation, by Harun Yahya. He began by saluting the CEMB, which could become the nucleus of thousands of even hundreds of thousands of like-minded people.
Adnan Oktar (pen name Harun Yahya) was a naive Turkish creationist who worked hard to give the impression that the whole Muslim world was taken in by creationist nonsense. He had produced a lavish book which had been widely given away in an attempt to influence opinion formers. Professor Dawkins had asked a contact at the Oxford University Press to estimate the cost of Harun Yahya’s book, and the answer was about £500 000 for 10 000 copies.
Harun Yahya was also offering a £4.4 trillion prize to anyone who could come up with an “intermediate fossil”. Professor Dawkins calculated that this sum was about 36 times the GNP of Turkey! Since there was a sense in which all fossils were “intermediate”, it was a little hard to understand what Yahyah was looking for.
Professor Dawkins then showed a number of slides taken from illustrations in Yahyah’s book, to illustrate Yahya’s thinking and misunderstanding, or as he put it, “ the depth of his erudition”. Harun Yahya was what is known as an old-Earth creationist. He accepted the great age of the Earth as determined by science, but he believed that animals had been created by God and that there were no differences between ancient and modern animals.
One of the slides showed that Yahyah thought a crinoid (a deuterostome [3]) was equivalent to a modern annelid worm (a protostome [4]). They could not be more different! Another slide showed him equating a 95-million-year-old fossil eel with a totally unrelated modern sea snake. Then there was the brittle star that was supposed to be the same as a modern starfish. The room erupted in laughter when Professor Dawkins showed an illustration where Yahya had compared a 25-million-year-old caddis fly preserved in amber with a man-made tied fishing fly with fish-hook still attached. Perhaps Yahya really thought that caddis flies had hooks!
After reading Yahyah’s book, Professor Dawkins had finally come to understand what Yahya was looking for when he offered the prize for an “intermediate fossil”. He apparently thought it should be an animal like a “fronkey”, half frog and half monkey, or half crocodile and half squirrel, or half fish and half lizard or half lizard and half bird. But, of course, no such creatures could possibly exist according to the Theory of Evolution.
People believed in creationism because of childhood religious indoctrination. An example was Kurt Weiss, who, despite first-class scientific studies at Chicago and Harvard, declared that, if all the evidence in the universe contradicted the scriptures, he would have to choose the scriptures. There was no defence against that sort of thinking.
Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahyah) had claimed that Richard Dawkins had assaulted his rights and as a consequence a Turkish court had banned the Dawkins website [5], although Professor Dawkins had received no official notification of this. Despite the ban, Professor Dawkins had many Turkish supporters who had found ways to continue access to the site.
Keith Porteous Wood, General Secretary of the National Secular Society, spoke from the floor to say that the EU Enlargement Commissioner had been asked to refer to the court decision against the website in relation to Turkey’s wish to join the European Union.
Panel Discussion on Creationism, Religious Education and Faith Schools
The last panel of the day was chaired by Keith Porteous Wood. Panel members were Richard Dawkins; Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, who is a journalist and human rights and gay rights activist; Joan Smith, well known as a columnist in The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and the Evening Standard, who also writes in The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times and is also known as a novelist, human rights activist and former chairman of the English PEN Prison Committee; Bahram Souresh, a founding member and Executive Committee Member of CEMB, and political and social analyst and commentator; and Hamid Taqvaee, social commentator and analyst and current leader of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, who has played an important role in opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Keith Porteous Wood started by attacking the dangerous development of publically funded minority faith schools.
Joan Smith said that the National Curriculum should insist that all publically funded schools met minimum standards, did not segregate children and had proper sex education.
Terry Sanderson referred to a publication by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) that outlined what they wanted for Muslim pupils: no singing, no dancing, no figurative drawing, no swimming, etc. There was political pressure for the National Curriculum to comply with this agenda and, for example, to supply segregated education for girls. The only solution was the complete secularisation of the state education system. Research in a Muslims girls’ school had shown that creationism was being allowed into biology lessons: first the scientific explanation would be supplied and then the koranic explanation.
Hamid Taqvaee maintained that religious schools were a contradiction: education was about truth and religion about faith. He objected to the labelling of people as Muslims. He came from an Islamic country; he was not a Muslim.
Bahram Soroush said that just as we protected children from sexual abuse, so we should protect them from mental and emotional abuse. Faith schools should be dismantled.
Richard Dawkins thought that calling a child a “Muslim child” or a “Christian child” was evil – a form of child abuse. Demographic projections sometimes stated that by some particular date a specified proportion of the population would be Muslim. This betrayed a hidden assumption that a child would grow up in the faith of its parents. He hoped it would be possible to demand that religious education must be about religion and not be indoctrination.
Joan Smith thought it was wrong to impose the veil or hijab on little girls of six or seven. It was dreadful that UK taxpayers were paying to force little girls to wear the hijab. And might faith schools be a way of re-introducing anti-homosexual measures by the back door?
Terry Sanderson felt that it was essential to strip the power of indoctrination in schools from all clerics.
Hamid Taqvaee said that it was not just children but also adults who unthinkingly adopted the religion of their parents. Joan Smith suggested that there was a need for research into what students thought when they emerged from faith schools.
Bahram Soroush said that religion was an industry like a huge multinational company that evaded public scrutiny. We fought against disease, tobacco, drugs and organised crime; we needed to fight against religion.
Hamid Taqvaee pointed out that in the arts, science and politics we chose our own beliefs. It was only in the case of the religion of our parents that we received a label for life. It was the 0
taken from:http://www.iheu.org
An audience of ex-Muslims and freethinkers were welcomed to Conway Hall by Giles Enders, who chairs the South Place Ethical Society, the oldest freethought community in the world, founded in 1793. He claimed that Conway Hall was the “last bastion of free speech in the UK”, since free speech in Parliament was constrained by the Speaker, the whips and various interest groups, rendering parliamentarians unwilling to pass laws against threats to apostates or the issuing of threatening fatwas. The BBC was hardly supportive of free speech either, employing much self-censorship and steadfastly refusing to allow the voices of the non-religious to be heard on Thought for the Day (a regular interlude on the otherwise popular news and current-affairs radio programme Today).
Documentary about the Councils of Ex-Muslims
Zia Zaffar, Treasurer of CEMB, then introduced a short documentary film by Patty Debonitas about the Councils of Ex-Muslims set up fairly recently in a number of European countries. The documentary featured an interview with Mina Ahadi, the founder of the movement. She said that the movement marked a renaissance: it had broken an important taboo.
The film then featured Maryam Namazie, one of the founders of the CEMB. She said that religion ought to be a personal matter. She would never have wanted to be tied to the label “ex-Muslim”, but it was necessary to break the taboo.
Footage was shown of a pro-hijab demonstration in France in 2004 that was opposed by a pro-secularism counter-demonstration against political Islam. The counter-demonstration featured veiled women being led in chains through the streets.
In a further interview, Mina Ahadi told how in Iran after the Islamic Revolution, women came onto the streets to demonstrate against forced veiling. After the first demonstration, they came back again but were attacked by bearded men who beat them. They still came back again, but this time were attacked by men with knives. When they came back again, they were attacked by men with Kalashnikovs. So fewer and fewer women came back to demonstrate.
The documentary ended with Maryam Namazie saying that they were a vast political movement that was bringing the regime in Iran to its knees, and they were going to bring the same energy to fighting political Islam in Europe.”??
Opening address
Maryam Namazie, the CEMB's spokesperson, then gave an opening address, saying that the political Islamic movement used rights and anti-racist language for western consumption so that it could go about its business as usual. While Islamic organisations in the UK talked in public relations terms, they, their courts, their schools, their leaders were nothing but extensions of Islamic states. In the end, political Islam mattered to people because it affected their lives, their rights, their freedoms. And that was why only a movement that put people first could mobilise the force needed to stop it.
Panel on Apostasy Laws and the Freedom to Renounce and Criticise Religion
Caspar Melville, editor of the New Humanist, chaired the next session, a discussion on Apostasy Laws and the Freedom to Renounce and Criticise Religion. The distinguished panel consisting of Mina Ahadi, founder of the German Council of Ex-Muslims, Professor A.C. Grayling, the eminent philosopher, Ehsan Jami, a young Dutch politician and Ex-Muslim activist, Fariborz Pooya, head of the Iranian Secular Society, Hanne Stinson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, and Ibn Warraq, the well-known scholar of Islam. Each of the panel made a short opening statement and then they replied to questions from the floor.
Professor Grayling began by explaining that the idea of punishing apostasy was very old and a familiar feature of monolithic control. In ancient Rome it had taken a quasi-secular form, where failure to observe community rites brought punishment. Within historical Christianity, apostasy had been regarded as one of the worst possible crimes: “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit”.
Ibn Warraq pointed out that the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had insisted on the inclusion of the right to change one’s religion (given in Article 18) particularly to protect Muslims who converted to Christianity. Islamic states had always objected to this part of the article.
Fariborz Pooya declared that Islam had been imposed on the people of Iran by the Iranian Revolution. Beforehand, many Iranians had lived without Islam. The Islamic regime used apostasy laws as a means to control the population. Any criticism of the administration led to an accusation of apostasy.
Ehsan Jami mentioned that many people in the Netherlands needed police protection because of Islamist threats.
Mina Ahadi reminded those present that the conference was being held on the International Day against the Death Penalty, and that those victims who had been killed for apostasy should be remembered. Thirty years beforehand in Iran she had been able to say openly that she was no longer a Muslim. In Germany in 2006, such a declaration had evoked death threats. It should be kept in mind that Islamism was a political movement, and the death penalty for apostasy was a tool of repressive government.
Ehsan Jami felt that immigrants to Europe who retained dual nationality had dubious loyalty to their country of residence. Even some members of the Dutch Parliament had dual nationality. Immigrants to Europe should follow his example and become fully committed to their new countries.
Professor Grayling suggested that there was a parallel between the divided loyalties of some European Muslims and the situation in 16th-century Europe when there could be a conflict between loyalty to one’s country and loyalty to the Pope.
Hanne Stinson emphasised the need for a secular society if freedom and democracy were to flourish. All the Abrahamic religions, and not just Islam, were strongly against apostasy.
Mina Ahadi declared that, unrecognised by most people in the West, there was a huge secular movement within Islamic countries, although it was savagely repressed. In the West, however, people were often given unwanted religious labels. When she had first travelled to Europe, people like her had been seen simply as a “foreigners”. Since 9/11, however, governments tended to label them as “Muslims”. The struggle between the Councils of Ex-Muslims and organisations such as the Muslim Council of Britain was a struggle between those who supported human rights on the one hand and fascism on the other.
The panel was divided on the issue of whether to co-operate with Muslims or not. Ehsan Jami was strongly against it, but Fariborz Pooya suggested that there were Muslims with whom they could work for a secular society where religion was a private matter.
A.C. Grayling said that the one thing that could not be tolerated was intolerance. Religions wanted to encroach more and more on the public domain and demanded more and more privileges. They had to be told that they were just one interest group among many. His attitude could be summed up as, “You may believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, but don’t bother other people about it!”
Ibn Warraq stated that freedom of expression was absolute: no-one had a right not to be offended. However, in response to an objection from the floor, he agreed that there were limits in international law, under the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) [2]
Speaking from the floor, an Iranian refugee from Denmark said that the struggle was one of freedom against fascism. Governments in the West should put pressure on countries such as Saudi Arabia to improve their position on human rights.
Mina Ahadi said that there was a political problem in the West, where the Left was often pro-Islam and tolerant of human rights abuse by Muslim groups and regimes, but the Right was often exploiting the issue for its own purposes. The ex-Muslims from Islamic countries were a third force, against political Islam and for human rights. A.C. Grayling suggested that although this was true, there was also a “decent Left”, who did care about these issues.
Hanne Stinson posed the question of why governments who were theoretically in favour of human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of belief did not demonstrate this in their actions. She thought that the answer was that they were in fear of speaking out.
Ehsan Jami stressed that the campaign against the death penalty should encompass a campaign against laws that punished apostasy or homosexuality.
Hanne Stinson felt that the UK Government had run into problems in its commitment to religious freedom. The New Labour Government was a very religious one and saw so-called “religious leaders” as representing communities; they tended to support group rights at the expense of individual rights.
A.C. Grayling explained that apostasy from Christianity was not well received. In Britain, it meant that it was difficult for apostate parents to obtain entrance to good schools for their children. In the USA, politicians could not get elected unless they paid lip service to religion.
Ibn Warraq was worried by the huge amount of self-censorship in western society. It was evident among scholars of Islam. Biblical criticism had been an important force in producing the Enlightenment. Koranic criticism could do the same.
Finally, Mina Ahadi reminded everyone that the councils of Ex-Muslims were fighting for the universality of human rights.
Starting the afternoon with comedy
Opening the afternoon session, Fariborz Pooya called on everyone to remember that we must be the voice of the voiceless.
As a prelude to the serious business that was to follow, the audience was treated to some quick-fire humour about religion from the comedian Nick Doody, well known from his work on TV and radio in the UK and appearances further afield in much of Europe. A few sample jokes:
• “I was raised Catholic. My brother is training to be a priest – and he doesn’t even like kids!”
•
• “Religion is like an enormous dog. If it’s yours, you love it, but it is terrifying to everyone else. Above all it should be kept away from children.”
•
• (Referring to the implications of male Muslims’ desire to keep women covered up and to forbid alcohol consumption) “I know what I’m like – if I have a pint of booze or see a lady’s chin, it’s rape, rape, rape!”
•
He finished with a true story from the time of the 7/7 terrorist bomb attacks in London. A young couple were in Tavistock Square when the bus blew up. They took refuge in the nearest building, which happened to be a pub. The pub quickly filled up with people fleeing from the carnage. After about 45 minutes an armed policeman came in and ordered the landlord to keep serving free drinks. Nick Doody’s comment was:
“That’s why we shall never have Sharia law in Britain – the response in our capital to a national emergency was a lock-in!”
Panel on Sharia Law and Citizenship Rights
The serious business of the afternoon began with a discussion of Sharia Law and Citizenship Rights. This was chaired by Andrew Copson, Director of Education and Public Affairs at the British Humanist Association. Discussion was led by another distinguished panel. Its members were Mahin Alipour, an Iranian refuges living in Sweden, where she heads Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran, the International Campaign in Defence of Womens Rights in Iran and the Scandinavian Committee of Ex-Muslims; Roy Brown, past-President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) and IHEU’s main representative at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva; Johann Hari, an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for The Independent, and from time to time for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, The New Republic, El Mundo, The Guardian, The Melbourne Age, The Sidney Morning Herald and South Africa’s Star; Maryam Namazie, Spokesperson of the CEMB, and Ibn Warraq, as before.
Mahin Alinpour told her personal story. A qualified engineer, she had been prevented from working because her then husband had refused permission for her to do so. Later, she was again refused permission to work as an engineer, on the grounds that “it was not suitable work for a woman”. Finally she was employed because of a shortage of suitably qualified men, but she was forbidden from interacting with her fellow workers because they were all men. She was obliged to wear a hijab and chador and had to have a driver to take her to work – her male colleagues could drive themselves.
In the end she escaped to Sweden, where she obtained a divorce and custody of her children. Nonetheless, even in such a supposedly advanced country, she still encountered discrimination against ethnic minority women, living in ghettoes and at risk of so-called “honour killings”. Foreign women could be married at the age of 15, even though this was not allowed for native Swedes. As a result of her struggles and that of other women, this law had eventually been changed. But the Swedish Government continued to make many compromises with Islamists, such as establishing special health clinics for Muslim women.
Maryam Namazie pointed out that Sharia was not just an issue for women: it affected everyone.
Ibn Warraq explained that there were two groups who suffered most from Sharia: women, and non-Muslim minorities such as the Ahmadis, Bahais and Zoroastrians. The Sharia regime introduced in Pakistan had had a huge impact on women. The female prison population had rapidly soared by 300 per cent.
Maryam Namazie said that in Iran and some other Islamic countries the state was promoting child abuse by insisting on the veiling of young children. Imagine a young girl of seven forced to wear enveloping garments – never allowed to let sunlight touch her body, never allowed to play with boys of the same age.
Roy Brown pointed out that Islam was not just another religion. Over the past 50 years mainstream Islam had become far more radical. Saudi Arabia had poured billions into promoting its extreme form of Islam. He did not believe that the Muslims of West Ham needed a £600 million mosque. It was clear that the purpose of this mosque, which would dwarf the 2012 Olympic site, was to proclaim to the world “We are the masters now” They are not and we must not let them get away with it.
Johann Hari expressed the view that in Britain there was a problem that an immigrant was put into a box labelled “Muslim” and expected to behave in a certain way for life, instead of being seen as a human being entitled to the same rights as other citizens.
Accepting certain human rights abuses on the grounds that they were part of someone’s culture was akin to excusing slavery by claiming that it was part of the culture of the deep South. There were a lot of people from the deep South called “slaves” who had not agreed with it. They were supported by other people, and eventually they won.
An Egyptian Copt in the audience told how non-Muslims were denied justice in Egypt. A Muslim who murdered a Christian received a suspended sentence of one year. Non-Muslim lives had lower value than Muslim lives.
It was mentioned that Gordon Brown had expressed a wish that Britain should be the capital of Sharia-compatible finance. However, Baroness Cox had spoken out against the acceptance of parallel legal systems.
Johann Hari maintained that Islam could only be modernised if we could criticise it and ridicule it, but Maryam Namazie said that Islam would not be modernised unless it were deprived of power. Many women in Britain who were dealt with by Sharia courts did not know that they had another choice. The women who went to Sharia courts were those in most need of secular courts. Sharia law was heavily weighted against women. For example, in a divorce case, a father would automatically gain control over his sons when they reached the age of seven, even if he had been abusive and violent. It was not racist to oppose Sharia law; it was racist to want to drag people back to mediaeval laws.
Mahin Alipour said that Sharia was a platform for poltical Islam and was a Trojan horse within Western society. In pre-1979 Iran, Sharia law had been used for political aims. Political Islam was fighting for more power and was using Sharia as a tool to this end. The USA had been responsible for the growth of political Islam, by supporting Khomeini, the Taleban and other Islamist regimes and movements. The West was turning a blind eye to ongoing abuses such as the stoning of women and execution of children.
Ibn Warraq said that it was helpful in discussing Islam to distinguish between what he called Islam I, Islam II and Islam III. Islam I was what was in the Koran and what the Prophet was supposed to have said. Islam II was the hadith and traditions and the theological construction developed by Islamic scholars. Islam II was what Muslims actually did do, as opposed to what they should have done.
In history, Islam had not been a relentless series of philosophies. Until the 1930s, Islam III had sometimes been more tolerant than Europe, for example with respect to homosexuality. And multiculturalism, like cholesterol, came in two forms, one good and one bad. The good aspect was a respect for different cultures. The bad led to ghettoisation.
Roy Brown argued that we must not abandon Muslims to their fate. We should not fight against Muslims. We should recognise that our strongest potential allies in the fight against Sharia courts because they were Islamic, but because we stood for equal rights. And we must make it clear that there was a distinction between criticism of Islam and incitement of hatred the Sharia and political Islam were liberal Muslims and Muslim women. We could never eliminate Islam; our objective should be to push it out of politics and the law and back into the private sphere.
Ibn Warraq thought it was important to assert the positive achievements of Western civilisation, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Johann Hari warned that there was a growing prejudice against Muslims. We must not project our own good intentions onto Western governments, who were only too happy to get into bed with evil regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia.
Maryam Namazie concluded this session by explain that “ex-Muslim” was not an identity. CEMB was for citizenship and humanity. Political Islam was not just a problem for Muslims and ex-Muslims; it was a problem for everybody. And political Islam and US militarism were not in opposition to one another: they were two sides of the same coin.
We should not accept an attitude equivalent to saying “We already have slavery” or “We already have apartheid” and “therefore we have to accommodate it and work round it”. The state had a duty to treat people as equal citizens and not hand over power to backward imams.
She called on those present to help organise a mass demonstration against Sharia. It would be appropriate to hold it in March on International Women’s Day.
Short film: Fitna Remade
The next item was a showing of a film entitled Fitna Remade. This was an adaptation of the notorious film by Gert Wilders, Fitna, edited by Reza Moradi to make it a better reflection of reality.
Harun Yahya’s Atlas of Creation
Professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, The Selfish Gene and many other best sellers, then analysed the widely distributed book, Atlas of Creation, by Harun Yahya. He began by saluting the CEMB, which could become the nucleus of thousands of even hundreds of thousands of like-minded people.
Adnan Oktar (pen name Harun Yahya) was a naive Turkish creationist who worked hard to give the impression that the whole Muslim world was taken in by creationist nonsense. He had produced a lavish book which had been widely given away in an attempt to influence opinion formers. Professor Dawkins had asked a contact at the Oxford University Press to estimate the cost of Harun Yahya’s book, and the answer was about £500 000 for 10 000 copies.
Harun Yahya was also offering a £4.4 trillion prize to anyone who could come up with an “intermediate fossil”. Professor Dawkins calculated that this sum was about 36 times the GNP of Turkey! Since there was a sense in which all fossils were “intermediate”, it was a little hard to understand what Yahyah was looking for.
Professor Dawkins then showed a number of slides taken from illustrations in Yahyah’s book, to illustrate Yahya’s thinking and misunderstanding, or as he put it, “ the depth of his erudition”. Harun Yahya was what is known as an old-Earth creationist. He accepted the great age of the Earth as determined by science, but he believed that animals had been created by God and that there were no differences between ancient and modern animals.
One of the slides showed that Yahyah thought a crinoid (a deuterostome [3]) was equivalent to a modern annelid worm (a protostome [4]). They could not be more different! Another slide showed him equating a 95-million-year-old fossil eel with a totally unrelated modern sea snake. Then there was the brittle star that was supposed to be the same as a modern starfish. The room erupted in laughter when Professor Dawkins showed an illustration where Yahya had compared a 25-million-year-old caddis fly preserved in amber with a man-made tied fishing fly with fish-hook still attached. Perhaps Yahya really thought that caddis flies had hooks!
After reading Yahyah’s book, Professor Dawkins had finally come to understand what Yahya was looking for when he offered the prize for an “intermediate fossil”. He apparently thought it should be an animal like a “fronkey”, half frog and half monkey, or half crocodile and half squirrel, or half fish and half lizard or half lizard and half bird. But, of course, no such creatures could possibly exist according to the Theory of Evolution.
People believed in creationism because of childhood religious indoctrination. An example was Kurt Weiss, who, despite first-class scientific studies at Chicago and Harvard, declared that, if all the evidence in the universe contradicted the scriptures, he would have to choose the scriptures. There was no defence against that sort of thinking.
Adnan Oktar (aka Harun Yahyah) had claimed that Richard Dawkins had assaulted his rights and as a consequence a Turkish court had banned the Dawkins website [5], although Professor Dawkins had received no official notification of this. Despite the ban, Professor Dawkins had many Turkish supporters who had found ways to continue access to the site.
Keith Porteous Wood, General Secretary of the National Secular Society, spoke from the floor to say that the EU Enlargement Commissioner had been asked to refer to the court decision against the website in relation to Turkey’s wish to join the European Union.
Panel Discussion on Creationism, Religious Education and Faith Schools
The last panel of the day was chaired by Keith Porteous Wood. Panel members were Richard Dawkins; Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, who is a journalist and human rights and gay rights activist; Joan Smith, well known as a columnist in The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and the Evening Standard, who also writes in The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times and is also known as a novelist, human rights activist and former chairman of the English PEN Prison Committee; Bahram Souresh, a founding member and Executive Committee Member of CEMB, and political and social analyst and commentator; and Hamid Taqvaee, social commentator and analyst and current leader of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, who has played an important role in opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Keith Porteous Wood started by attacking the dangerous development of publically funded minority faith schools.
Joan Smith said that the National Curriculum should insist that all publically funded schools met minimum standards, did not segregate children and had proper sex education.
Terry Sanderson referred to a publication by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) that outlined what they wanted for Muslim pupils: no singing, no dancing, no figurative drawing, no swimming, etc. There was political pressure for the National Curriculum to comply with this agenda and, for example, to supply segregated education for girls. The only solution was the complete secularisation of the state education system. Research in a Muslims girls’ school had shown that creationism was being allowed into biology lessons: first the scientific explanation would be supplied and then the koranic explanation.
Hamid Taqvaee maintained that religious schools were a contradiction: education was about truth and religion about faith. He objected to the labelling of people as Muslims. He came from an Islamic country; he was not a Muslim.
Bahram Soroush said that just as we protected children from sexual abuse, so we should protect them from mental and emotional abuse. Faith schools should be dismantled.
Richard Dawkins thought that calling a child a “Muslim child” or a “Christian child” was evil – a form of child abuse. Demographic projections sometimes stated that by some particular date a specified proportion of the population would be Muslim. This betrayed a hidden assumption that a child would grow up in the faith of its parents. He hoped it would be possible to demand that religious education must be about religion and not be indoctrination.
Joan Smith thought it was wrong to impose the veil or hijab on little girls of six or seven. It was dreadful that UK taxpayers were paying to force little girls to wear the hijab. And might faith schools be a way of re-introducing anti-homosexual measures by the back door?
Terry Sanderson felt that it was essential to strip the power of indoctrination in schools from all clerics.
Hamid Taqvaee said that it was not just children but also adults who unthinkingly adopted the religion of their parents. Joan Smith suggested that there was a need for research into what students thought when they emerged from faith schools.
Bahram Soroush said that religion was an industry like a huge multinational company that evaded public scrutiny. We fought against disease, tobacco, drugs and organised crime; we needed to fight against religion.
Hamid Taqvaee pointed out that in the arts, science and politics we chose our own beliefs. It was only in the case of the religion of our parents that we received a label for life. It was the 0
taken from:http://www.iheu.org
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Best Islamic Investment Bank (Global Finance) : Unicorn Investment Bank
Founded in 2004 and headquartered in Bahrain, Unicorn Investment Bank (Unicorn) is an Islamic investment bank, with an international presence in the United States, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Pakistan. Unicorn seeks to deliver exceptional value to clients and shareholders through a focus on innovation, professionalism and integrity – the shared values that drive the Bank’s endeavour to be a leading global provider of Shari’ah-compliant investment banking products and services.
Unicorn’s integrated business model is built around six core business lines: Capital Markets, Private Equity, Corporate Finance, Asset Management, Strategic Mergers & Acquisitions and Treasury. The Bank leverages its resources and expertise across each of these business lines to provide clients with a broad range of investment solutions tailored to meet their specific requirements.
The Bank’s integrated product offering and financial structuring skills are coupled with an ability to distribute Unicorn products and services to a broad client base across the GCC region, and the Bank is now developing the capability to do so across the wider Middle East region, Turkey and Southeast Asia.
In every aspect of its business and through every level of the organisation, Unicorn is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate governance and transparency. The Bank’s innovative products and transactions are fully compliant with Shari’ah principles and we believe that they are consistent with international financial best practice. The Unicorn Shari’ah Supervisory Board ensures that all investment policies, structures, products and financial services and activities that the Bank is involved in are in conformity with Shari’ah principles, while the Bank’s stringent corporate governance standards seek to ensure that the Bank, its directors and its employees follow high standards of ethical conduct and adhere to the principles of fairness, transparency, accountability and responsibility in all day-to-day operations.
Unicorn has achieved uninterrupted growth since its inception and has received widespread industry recognition for excellence and vision. The Bank intends to continue to build on its track record by delivering innovative and attractive investment products and services in a professional and transparent manner.
taken from: http://globalislamnews.blogspot.com
Unicorn’s integrated business model is built around six core business lines: Capital Markets, Private Equity, Corporate Finance, Asset Management, Strategic Mergers & Acquisitions and Treasury. The Bank leverages its resources and expertise across each of these business lines to provide clients with a broad range of investment solutions tailored to meet their specific requirements.
The Bank’s integrated product offering and financial structuring skills are coupled with an ability to distribute Unicorn products and services to a broad client base across the GCC region, and the Bank is now developing the capability to do so across the wider Middle East region, Turkey and Southeast Asia.
In every aspect of its business and through every level of the organisation, Unicorn is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate governance and transparency. The Bank’s innovative products and transactions are fully compliant with Shari’ah principles and we believe that they are consistent with international financial best practice. The Unicorn Shari’ah Supervisory Board ensures that all investment policies, structures, products and financial services and activities that the Bank is involved in are in conformity with Shari’ah principles, while the Bank’s stringent corporate governance standards seek to ensure that the Bank, its directors and its employees follow high standards of ethical conduct and adhere to the principles of fairness, transparency, accountability and responsibility in all day-to-day operations.
Unicorn has achieved uninterrupted growth since its inception and has received widespread industry recognition for excellence and vision. The Bank intends to continue to build on its track record by delivering innovative and attractive investment products and services in a professional and transparent manner.
taken from: http://globalislamnews.blogspot.com
Monday, November 10, 2008
Internal and External Environment Analysis 2
Global Threat
globalization and free market really supposed as efforts increases global
efficiency. trade globally help many countries to bloom quicker. also be assumed to make developing Country to get erudition access unobtainable. globalization likely be progress that must be developing country accepted, if they want to bloom and fight against poverty effectively. but for many people in developing Country, globalization doesn't bring economy profit (stiglitz, 2002: 6).
practice globalization in developing countries must finance world efficiency by developed countries welfare. south finance global efficiency for profit in north. market failures happen everywhere, bot even be caused by demand conditional to realize market self-regulating can not be fulfilled (because assumption to realize pure free computation to form free market proved not empirik-realistik), but also caused by economy importance and non economy that must be reachesed and defended to pass efforts distortion market manifestly (swasono, 2003: 83).
Joseph E. Stiglitz
difference more wider between rich and poor show more and more person at third world has been more poorer. in 1990,2.718 billion alive citizen with money less than 2 per day, while in 1998 poor citizen totals alive with money less than 2 per day is estimated 2.801 billion. this matter happens with reference to world income total enhanced recently as big as average 2,5 % every year it (world bank, 2000: 29).
Office World Bank at Washington
globalization not yet success decrease poverty and not yet success guarantee stability. crisis at asia and latin america has threatened economics and developing country stability , even crisis 1997 and 1998 be a threat for all worldwide economy.
taken from: msuyanto.com
translated by: danang
globalization and free market really supposed as efforts increases global
efficiency. trade globally help many countries to bloom quicker. also be assumed to make developing Country to get erudition access unobtainable. globalization likely be progress that must be developing country accepted, if they want to bloom and fight against poverty effectively. but for many people in developing Country, globalization doesn't bring economy profit (stiglitz, 2002: 6).
practice globalization in developing countries must finance world efficiency by developed countries welfare. south finance global efficiency for profit in north. market failures happen everywhere, bot even be caused by demand conditional to realize market self-regulating can not be fulfilled (because assumption to realize pure free computation to form free market proved not empirik-realistik), but also caused by economy importance and non economy that must be reachesed and defended to pass efforts distortion market manifestly (swasono, 2003: 83).
Joseph E. Stiglitz
difference more wider between rich and poor show more and more person at third world has been more poorer. in 1990,2.718 billion alive citizen with money less than 2 per day, while in 1998 poor citizen totals alive with money less than 2 per day is estimated 2.801 billion. this matter happens with reference to world income total enhanced recently as big as average 2,5 % every year it (world bank, 2000: 29).
Office World Bank at Washington
globalization not yet success decrease poverty and not yet success guarantee stability. crisis at asia and latin america has threatened economics and developing country stability , even crisis 1997 and 1998 be a threat for all worldwide economy.
taken from: msuyanto.com
translated by: danang
internal and external environment analysis
Operational Environment and New Industrial
organization must change for accustom with competitive environment. change related to event makes a certain with other. technology, rivalry, economy shock, social change, ecology change, work force and world policies is strength that stimulate change. sophisticated information technology can change manner compete, so that can increase superiority compete to company. internet existence makes to make geographical limits almost meaningless.
in industrial, does industrial domistik or international, what produce goods or service, covered rivalry rule in five rivalry factors, that is enter it bew comer, substitution product threat, purchase dicker power, supplier dicker power and rivalry between existing competitors (porter, 1985). rivalry in the style of porter this is necessary changed with bew rivalry rule necessary guarded, first new economy or digital economy, make market is gnawed to company revolutionary, for example amazon. com formerly it only bookstore, but now berjualan diverse product. ebay formerly only auction at internet, but now various product is being being sold.
formerly amazon bookstore
second, the free best workers, erstwhile employee for example works at company big, like AT&T, IBM, XEROX move to Google, Amazon, Ebay and as it. Third, company revolutionary seize best asset, for Example ebay erstwhile only company little, now is caning akusisi butterfield butterfield that be third biggest auction house at united america. vodafone aged bew 12 year can to buy to company eldest, biggest and most make proud at german.
vodafone office
Perhaps we do not know company like akamai technologies, imergent, palomar medical technologies, intergital communications, cybersource, perficient, lam research, ceradyne, f5 networks and armor holdings. While company be 10 company with quickest;fastest growth at world.
taken From msuyanto.com
translated by danang
organization must change for accustom with competitive environment. change related to event makes a certain with other. technology, rivalry, economy shock, social change, ecology change, work force and world policies is strength that stimulate change. sophisticated information technology can change manner compete, so that can increase superiority compete to company. internet existence makes to make geographical limits almost meaningless.
in industrial, does industrial domistik or international, what produce goods or service, covered rivalry rule in five rivalry factors, that is enter it bew comer, substitution product threat, purchase dicker power, supplier dicker power and rivalry between existing competitors (porter, 1985). rivalry in the style of porter this is necessary changed with bew rivalry rule necessary guarded, first new economy or digital economy, make market is gnawed to company revolutionary, for example amazon. com formerly it only bookstore, but now berjualan diverse product. ebay formerly only auction at internet, but now various product is being being sold.
formerly amazon bookstore
second, the free best workers, erstwhile employee for example works at company big, like AT&T, IBM, XEROX move to Google, Amazon, Ebay and as it. Third, company revolutionary seize best asset, for Example ebay erstwhile only company little, now is caning akusisi butterfield butterfield that be third biggest auction house at united america. vodafone aged bew 12 year can to buy to company eldest, biggest and most make proud at german.
vodafone office
Perhaps we do not know company like akamai technologies, imergent, palomar medical technologies, intergital communications, cybersource, perficient, lam research, ceradyne, f5 networks and armor holdings. While company be 10 company with quickest;fastest growth at world.
taken From msuyanto.com
translated by danang
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Intact Leader
Intact Leader
“Since 1918, when world war I introduce test use IQ massly towards united state army candidates. Score IQ average at united State has increased 24 points and similar increase also recorded at developed countries whole world. increase reason range from nutrition better, more many children that have a time to finish higher education stage. existence game computer and riddle game that help children dominates crafts with vision of up to more the so small family member total, usually correlation with score height iq in children. from research result on a large scale towards teacher and parents shows that generation children now a more regular is experiencing emotion problem is being compared earlier generation. children now according to average is growing desolately and depression, angry easier and difficult regulated, nervous and inclined worried, more impulsive and aggressive ” word Daniel Goleman.
beginning 1970, top of protest student university the whole world defy war Vietnam, a librarian at a office us. Information agency beyond the sea get job's news. a student university group will threaten will burn the library. by accident librarian has several friends among student university that take outside threat. the reaction at first foolish appear or naive or both. he invites group use library for a few their meeting. he also invites America member country concerned with present to listen them, so roger dialog rather than confrontation. librarian demonstrate the skill as negotiator, or peace agency very great, can to read situation and that's one of [the] ability that be emotion intelligence (eq).
Follow Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, IQ and eq apart or together, insufficient to explain overall human intelligence complexity and also imagination. Computer has High IQ, because can detect rule and follow it without wrong. Many animal has high EQ, because can identified situation that occupied and detect manner receives situation correctly. But computer and animal never ask why we have rule or situation, or does rule or that situation can be changed or repaired. leader want intelligence spiritual (SQ) that can streamline iq and eq. intelligence spiritual intelligence to face and break meaning problem and value, that is intelligence to laid behavior and alive a leader in meaning context broader and rich, intelligence to evaluate that action or has meaning is compared with another person
.
spiritual values spiritual general, among others: truth, honesty, modesty, kepedulian, agreement, freedom, peacefulness, love, explanation, good charity, responsibility, care, integrity, taste believes, heart cleanliness, humility, troth, neatness, glory, courage, unitary, taste thanks god, joke, willpower, patience, justice, similarity, balance, sincere, knowledge, and persistence
.
love affection is used mahatma Gandhi to lead 3 billion Indians people to get independence. he loves class Sudra that suffer, get them as family member, even he is willing bet soul struggles to wipe off caste difference and inspire Indians nation so that fair towards fellow. Gandhi like children and always plays with children padepo, he also likes to carry baby, kiss and coddle them like the heart fruit self. after pray evening children likes to surround it. after adult this children is difficult gets fact that this audience parents actually Indians independence father. he also loves enemy and believe that everyone basically good only still closed. he is of opinion, when does words not can to soften opponent, so at least plainness, humility, and honesty will make person touched so opponent will put moved on patience, then throw away far wrong idea and not will happen mutual will kill. besides doesn't want to kill enemy, gandhi’s opinion better self that suffer so that hostile both parties mutual compassionates. the death very ironic inform us that veracity and heart kindness not will can to help fellow keeps away pressure, colonial, mutual kill, hate and action sadist. country that gandhi loved cracking to slit, farmer that payed poor permanent. battle fire under the sun not lessened, luxury giant foot treads on the poor that groan. love that really there, only better part for another person and a little for self. such write kwok yuen ming in the book mahatma gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi
Umar bin Abdul Azis be great leader with High intelligence spiritual. besides as caliph (country leader), also as religious teacher. he is a success leader in leads country and society. After Muhammad s. a. w. and Khulafaur rasyidin, Islam never Practised in its for pure and true, except at the government time. he is success change status quo in leadership revolution with change country is ”Heaven” in short time. country realize welfare, harmony and peacefulness. the secret lays in the personality enchantment as simple builder driver in eats, dress and riding. to do pilgrim. when he see his child out house feast day with very simple clothes even torn, even if clean, among children other that fiddle around with cheerful happy with their clothes is new, out his tear is because touched. When died only 17 diners, in his matter is wealthy noble breed. five diners for the shroud cloth, 2 diners for the cemetery soil and the rest 10 diners that's that distributed to 11 the sons. when people come to their house between two lights to talk individual problem, so in advance turn off lamp that financed with country money, and turned oil from the pocket self. this is to watch over don't until used people money for matter outside official importance, bot at all permitted. umar bin abdul azis dismiss ruthless official (oppress)s, return ownership that seized, defend the people is not treated fair at court, and return church to class christian. when distributing apple to the people. suddenly little the child takes that apple then is putted into to the mouth. umar even also pat hand takes apple at that the child mouth, so that the child cries and take to the mother. final the wife goes to market buys apple. at mosque, umar jog that man, spontaneous man says ”are you crazy? ”. umar answer ”No”. hear man word, angry the guard moves to strike it, but umar prohibit the guard ”that man is no doing anything, he only ask are you crazy? I answer No. ” umar be heart low caliph, never lie and fear to hereafter torment.
SQ make possible leader to be creative, change rule and situation. SQ give leader ability to distinguish, bound moral, ability accustoms stiff rule With comprehension and love with ability equal to see to when to love and comprehension comes the limit. Leader uses sq to distinguish which good and which unrighteous, with shadow possibility not yet materialized to dream and make leader low heart. SQ make leader genuinely intact intellectually, emotional and spiritual.
Taken from msuyanto.com
Translated by danang hamdani
Original Title : “Pemimpin yang Utuh”
“Since 1918, when world war I introduce test use IQ massly towards united state army candidates. Score IQ average at united State has increased 24 points and similar increase also recorded at developed countries whole world. increase reason range from nutrition better, more many children that have a time to finish higher education stage. existence game computer and riddle game that help children dominates crafts with vision of up to more the so small family member total, usually correlation with score height iq in children. from research result on a large scale towards teacher and parents shows that generation children now a more regular is experiencing emotion problem is being compared earlier generation. children now according to average is growing desolately and depression, angry easier and difficult regulated, nervous and inclined worried, more impulsive and aggressive ” word Daniel Goleman.
beginning 1970, top of protest student university the whole world defy war Vietnam, a librarian at a office us. Information agency beyond the sea get job's news. a student university group will threaten will burn the library. by accident librarian has several friends among student university that take outside threat. the reaction at first foolish appear or naive or both. he invites group use library for a few their meeting. he also invites America member country concerned with present to listen them, so roger dialog rather than confrontation. librarian demonstrate the skill as negotiator, or peace agency very great, can to read situation and that's one of [the] ability that be emotion intelligence (eq).
Follow Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, IQ and eq apart or together, insufficient to explain overall human intelligence complexity and also imagination. Computer has High IQ, because can detect rule and follow it without wrong. Many animal has high EQ, because can identified situation that occupied and detect manner receives situation correctly. But computer and animal never ask why we have rule or situation, or does rule or that situation can be changed or repaired. leader want intelligence spiritual (SQ) that can streamline iq and eq. intelligence spiritual intelligence to face and break meaning problem and value, that is intelligence to laid behavior and alive a leader in meaning context broader and rich, intelligence to evaluate that action or has meaning is compared with another person
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spiritual values spiritual general, among others: truth, honesty, modesty, kepedulian, agreement, freedom, peacefulness, love, explanation, good charity, responsibility, care, integrity, taste believes, heart cleanliness, humility, troth, neatness, glory, courage, unitary, taste thanks god, joke, willpower, patience, justice, similarity, balance, sincere, knowledge, and persistence
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love affection is used mahatma Gandhi to lead 3 billion Indians people to get independence. he loves class Sudra that suffer, get them as family member, even he is willing bet soul struggles to wipe off caste difference and inspire Indians nation so that fair towards fellow. Gandhi like children and always plays with children padepo, he also likes to carry baby, kiss and coddle them like the heart fruit self. after pray evening children likes to surround it. after adult this children is difficult gets fact that this audience parents actually Indians independence father. he also loves enemy and believe that everyone basically good only still closed. he is of opinion, when does words not can to soften opponent, so at least plainness, humility, and honesty will make person touched so opponent will put moved on patience, then throw away far wrong idea and not will happen mutual will kill. besides doesn't want to kill enemy, gandhi’s opinion better self that suffer so that hostile both parties mutual compassionates. the death very ironic inform us that veracity and heart kindness not will can to help fellow keeps away pressure, colonial, mutual kill, hate and action sadist. country that gandhi loved cracking to slit, farmer that payed poor permanent. battle fire under the sun not lessened, luxury giant foot treads on the poor that groan. love that really there, only better part for another person and a little for self. such write kwok yuen ming in the book mahatma gandhi.
Mahatma Gandhi
Umar bin Abdul Azis be great leader with High intelligence spiritual. besides as caliph (country leader), also as religious teacher. he is a success leader in leads country and society. After Muhammad s. a. w. and Khulafaur rasyidin, Islam never Practised in its for pure and true, except at the government time. he is success change status quo in leadership revolution with change country is ”Heaven” in short time. country realize welfare, harmony and peacefulness. the secret lays in the personality enchantment as simple builder driver in eats, dress and riding. to do pilgrim. when he see his child out house feast day with very simple clothes even torn, even if clean, among children other that fiddle around with cheerful happy with their clothes is new, out his tear is because touched. When died only 17 diners, in his matter is wealthy noble breed. five diners for the shroud cloth, 2 diners for the cemetery soil and the rest 10 diners that's that distributed to 11 the sons. when people come to their house between two lights to talk individual problem, so in advance turn off lamp that financed with country money, and turned oil from the pocket self. this is to watch over don't until used people money for matter outside official importance, bot at all permitted. umar bin abdul azis dismiss ruthless official (oppress)s, return ownership that seized, defend the people is not treated fair at court, and return church to class christian. when distributing apple to the people. suddenly little the child takes that apple then is putted into to the mouth. umar even also pat hand takes apple at that the child mouth, so that the child cries and take to the mother. final the wife goes to market buys apple. at mosque, umar jog that man, spontaneous man says ”are you crazy? ”. umar answer ”No”. hear man word, angry the guard moves to strike it, but umar prohibit the guard ”that man is no doing anything, he only ask are you crazy? I answer No. ” umar be heart low caliph, never lie and fear to hereafter torment.
SQ make possible leader to be creative, change rule and situation. SQ give leader ability to distinguish, bound moral, ability accustoms stiff rule With comprehension and love with ability equal to see to when to love and comprehension comes the limit. Leader uses sq to distinguish which good and which unrighteous, with shadow possibility not yet materialized to dream and make leader low heart. SQ make leader genuinely intact intellectually, emotional and spiritual.
Taken from msuyanto.com
Translated by danang hamdani
Original Title : “Pemimpin yang Utuh”
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