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Robert Worth meets the woman upholding Muslim values ... as a sex counsellor

Wedad Lootah does not look like a sexual activist. A Muslim and a native Emirati, she wears a full-length black niqab - with only her brown eyes showing through narrow slits - and sprinkles her conversation with quotes from the Qur'an. Yet she is also the author of what for the Middle East is an amazingly frank new book of erotic advice.

Top Secret: Sexual Guidance for Married Couples is packed with anecdotes from Lootah's eight years as a marital counsellor in Dubai. It has caused controversy in the Emirates, where it is published in Arabic, drawing praise from liberals and death threats from conservatives.

Lootah is a strong-willed and talkative 45-year-old, one of a small but growing number of Arabs pushing for more openness and education about sex. Unlike earlier generations of women who couched their criticism in a western language of female emancipation, Lootah and her peers are harder to dismiss. They're often religious Muslims, their message rooted in the Qur'an. Lootah, for instance, studied Islamic jurisprudence in college, not western psychology, and her book is studded with religious references. She submitted the text to the Mufti of Dubai before publishing it, and he gave his approval (though he warned her that Arab audiences might not be ready for such a book, especially by a woman).

"People have said I was crazy, that I was straying from Islam, that I should be killed," Lootah says. "Even my family ask why I must talk about this. I say: 'These problems should not be ignored. This is the reality we are living.'"

Lootah sees about seven cases a day, individuals and couples. Most of them are native Emiratis, but in the multicultural world of Dubai where about 90% of the population is foreign she has also counselled Europeans and Asians.

"Some people are amazed I can work with people with only my eyes showing," she says with a ripple of laughter. "Maybe it's because of the way I move my hands! But people come here, and they speak very frankly with me." She reels off the stories she's heard: the Emirati military officer whose wife had an affair because he was away from home too much; the woman who thought fellatio was against Islam (not true at all, Lootah notes); the wife who discovered her husband dressing up as a woman and going out to gay bars.

She is not a liberal by western standards. One of the themes of her book is the danger of anal sex and homosexuality because they are banned by the Qur'an. But her openness about the issue was in itself a shock to many. According to Lootah, in Saudi Arabia and other countries where the genders are separated, many men have their first sexual experiences with other men. "Many men who had anal sex with men before marriage want the same thing with their wives, because they don't know anything else," she explains. "This is one reason we need sex education in our schools."

She is also emphatic about the importance of female sexual pleasure. One of the cases that impelled her to write the book, she said, was a 52-year-old client who had grandchildren but had never known satisfying sex with her husband. "Finally she discovered orgasm!" Lootah says. "All that time she did not know."

One of the themes of the book is the breakdown of families and an increase in infidelity. According to Lootah, the prevalence of foreign women in Dubai and the ease of email and text-message communication has made cheating easier. The divorce rate has risen to 30%. "Before, people lived in one place and the community was like one big family," she says. "Now people have spread to different areas, and traditions have changed."

One result is the family guidance section in the Dubai courthouse, which opened in 2001. Lootah never expected to become part of this debate. One of nine children born to an illiterate water-seller in Dubai, she married early and was a teacher for years. Later she took a job working for an Islamic endowment, where her efforts to introduce education and family-reunion days in prison earned her two government-service awards. When Dubai introduced the family guidance section of its courthouse in 2001, Dubai's ruler, Sheik Muhammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked her to be the first counsellor (there are now six others, all men). The family guidance section was established in part to comply with Islamic precepts calling for couples who want a divorce to try to work out their problems first. In practice it has become an all-purpose therapy destination for people with marital problems.

Her father supports the book, but other family members wonder why she is so public about it all. After it was published, a man called her office telephone and threatened to kill her. There have been threats which have appeared on the internet. She brushes them off, saying that she has declined an offer of protection from the government. Besides, she adds, educating the public is worth all the risks.

"A few days ago a woman asked me if it is OK to kiss the man all over his body," Lootah says.

"I told her: 'Read my book!'"

• Relationships
• Women
• Islam
• Religion

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Swine flu is threatening to turn this year's hajj into a viral hot zone. Are fever-detecting cameras enough ensure pilgrims' safety?

Swine flu has hit the hajj and the Saudi health ministry is telling the unfit to stay away to avoid catching it, but performing the pilgrimage is an obligation for Muslims. What should they do?

Earlier this week Saudi health minister Abdullah al-Rabeeah called for the old, the infirm, the pregnant and the very young to stay away from the hajj in order to minimise their risk of being exposed to swine flu.

The announcement follows a prevention and precaution workshop in Jeddah ahead of a busy pilgrimage season, kicking off with Ramadan next month and then going full throttle in November with hajj.

Thrillingly, there are at least a dozen "fever-detecting" cameras at Jeddah airport, the kingdom is boosting its reserves of Tamiflu and encouraging people to have a seasonal vaccination before the pilgrimage season begins in earnest. In all, several million people will be eating, sleeping, praying, coughing, sneezing and wheezing cheek by jowl. Nice. The dilemma at the heart of all of this is: what course of action should observant Muslims take? Chances are that if they're going, they're already paid up for the trip of a lifetime. Hajj can cost thousands of pounds. The hygiene factor is low – although face masks are very popular. But just how responsible is it to exacerbate a global pandemic by proceeding with their plans, knowing they are heading to the centre of what could turn out to be a gigantic incubator for the virus? They might consider a bout of flu to be a small price to pay for a purified soul.

Off the top of my head, I don't know that Muslims would rather stay at home, instead of exposing themselves to swine flu, catching it and taking the illness back with them. I got really ill while I was out there and I was a young and healthy women dosed up on vitamins and minerals and anti-bacterial wipes. A photographer got pneumonia, someone else I know got bronchitis and the British Clinic – which provides a mobile medical service for UK pilgrims – was inundated with people suffering from cold and flu symptoms. At one point the press corps was a chorus line of temperatures and runny noses and chestiness. Some, but not all pilgrims, leave hajj until their twilight years, knowing that should they die while performing the fifth and final pillar they will go to heaven. I have read that people should not pray to die on hajj.

While some of you will not care for Muslims or hajj, despairing at people's fascination with superstitious ritual, there are interesting ethical questions involved. It might be blasphemous to suggest this, but in the interests of global health, perhaps hajj should close for 2009.

• Religion
• Islam
• Saudi Arabia

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Noam Chomsky says that from its very founding, the US has been shaped not by a pluralistic ideal, but by fear of the other

"America is a very frightened country." It was last October, and I was sitting face to face with Noam Chomsky at MIT, a man the New York Times has called "arguably the most important intellectual alive". Chomsky was answering a question posed by Akbar Ahmed, American University's chair of Islamic studies, that he described as "striking": What is American identity?

As a young American brought up to believe I'm part of a superpower, Chomsky's identification of fear as essential to what it means to be American caught me off guard. Privileged to be witnessing a conversation between two world-renowned academics in the fields of anthropology and linguistics, I listened. Chomsky continued:

From the very beginning there's a strong element of fear. You find it, it's been studied in popular literature, literature for the masses. Now it'd be television or movies or something, but for a long time, it was magazines and novels. The theme that runs through them from the 18th century, the theme is we're about to be destroyed by an enemy, and at the last minute, a super weapon is discovered or a hero arises – Rambo or something – and somehow saves us. The Terminator or high school boys hiding in the mountains defending us from the Russians. This goes right back to the 18th century.

A secondary theme underlying it, is that the great enemy that's about to destroy us is somebody we're crushing. So in the early years, the great enemy was the Indians. You know the great population – we're exterminating them, but they're about to exterminate us. Then it was the blacks, the black slaves. There's going be a slave uprising, all they want to do is rape white women and so on and so forth. And then, you go later on in the century and it was the Chinese. You think they're coming in here to start laundries, but in fact they're planning to take over the country and destroy us.

The progressive writers like [Jack] London were writing novels about how we have to kill everyone in China with bacteriological warfare to stop this nefarious plot before it goes too far. Then the Hispanics, and now it's Muslims, but the theme runs right through and very typically. It's some group that we're crushing, which is about to destroy us. And the paranoia is very real.

Professor Ahmed and I were in Boston as part of an unprecedented project in search of an answer to the very question that had agitated Chomsky. Over nine months and 75 cities we travelled to Indian reservations and corporate boardrooms, inner city street corners and affluent suburbs. A documentary we filmed, Journey into America, which includes our interview with Chomsky, is premiering at the Islamic Film Festival in Washington DC on 4 July.

The project had begun as a study of American Muslims headed by Ahmed, a man the BBC has called "the world's leading authority on contemporary Islam". But in order to find out if Muslims could be American (some people we met told us they could not) we had to find out what "American-ness" actually was.

Many Americans believe the US is a white Protestant country, or at least a country where people should act like white Protestants. When I asked a member of the evangelical Church of Christ in Austin, Texas what the greatest threat to America was he said: "Pluralism."

Chomsky was speaking about the fear the white Protestants – a group that gradually grew from the original English to include people from the UK and then other European countries – had of people who weren't like them. In effect, they excluded these other groups from being American.

Chomsky spoke with some bitterness about his Jewish experience in particular. He told us about his father's struggles in a "sweatshop" and his childhood fear of Catholics, another group once persecuted by white Protestants who then, in turn, took out their frustrations on the Jews and others. In the Wasp-dominated Harvard of the 1950s, Chomsky said, you could "cut the antisemitism with a knife."

Chomsky's experience as a Jew in America influences his perception of the country. Chomsky's America is a tyrannical behemoth which exploits and terrorises, forcing its will on its own citizens and the rest of the world. His views have struck a chord with millions worldwide who have experienced that side of the US.

I can appreciate Chomsky's bitterness at what his community and others have experienced at the hands of white Protestant America. Yet there is a contradiction in Chomsky's argument.

Chomsky's bitterness simultaneously affirms the virtues of a group he did not mention: America's founding fathers. These extraordinary men – all from white Protestant backgrounds – passionately believed in a pluralistic America that protects human rights and upholds civil liberties.

On a visit to Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia, I was inspired to find a Jefferson statue with an inscription reading: "Religious Freedom, 1786 – God, Jehovah, Brahma, Atma, Ra, Allah". George Washington spoke of his compassion for the Jews and people of the "stock of Abraham". Benjamin Franklin wrote of his desire to see the Mufti of Istanbul preach Islam to Americans from a pulpit in Philadelphia.

These men embraced the best of white Protestant America like the work ethic and Oxbridge-influenced education but strove to be more inclusive than many of their white Protestant countrymen were, and continue to be. The founding fathers were speaking not just to Americans, but to the world.

Perhaps Chomsky would lump the founding fathers with American history's predatory Protestants. I believe this would be a mistake. These men and their spiritual descendents – names like Lincoln, Kennedy, King and, some would say, Obama – form an American identity that builds on the primordial Protestant but is distinct from it. Yet both identities are alive and well.

This Fourth of July all Americans should think about what it means to be American. Is it the fear of "different" people we are crushing like Muslims, or is it the uncompromising inclusiveness of the founding fathers? It cannot be both. If we can rediscover the principles on which this great nation was founded, Chomsky's objections will be nullified. The alternative is something neither America nor the world can afford.

• US domestic policy
• US immigration
• Islam
• United States
• Religion

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_N4BcaIPY 375 313] Look at how the media maligns groups of people and brainwashes the masses into thinking how bad they are. Are Muslims still going to keep silent?

The Government has banned a book (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/02/andy-hayman-terrorist-hunters-banned) by the retired Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, which gives a behind-the-scenes account of the 7 July attacks, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and the fight against terror.

December 1998.
12 Years Old.
2789 miles away.

Continue reading "Operation Desert Fox"

A man who threatened to blow up Glasgow Central Mosque has been ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment. Neil MacGregor also threatened to kill a Muslim a day until all mosques in Scotland were closed.

At Glasgow Sheriff Court, Sheriff Andrew Mackie told the 36-year-old he appeared to be suffering from mental illness. McGregor will appear again in four weeks time after being assessed at Murray Royal Hospital in Perth.

MacGregor admitted telephoning and e-mailing Strathclyde Police to make the threats from a flat in Pollokshaws Road, Glasgow, between January and February 2007. The court heard that the e-mail read:

"I'm a proud racist and National Front member. We as an organisation have decided to deal with the current threat from Muslims in our own British way, like our proud ancestors. Our demands are very small. Close all mosques in Scotland. If our demands aren't met by next Friday, we'll kidnap one Muslim and execute him or her on the internet, just like they did to our Ken Bigley."

MacGregor then followed up the e-mail with a call threatening to blow up Central Mosque.

Ordering McGregor to undergo a psychiatric assessment, Sheriff Mackie told him: "It has been clear for some time your mental health has been causing concern. This may be related to you having previously served in the forces, although doubt has arisen as to whether you actually served in a combat zone."

BBC News, 3 July 2009

Meanwhile the Financial Times reports that Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire police, has told a security conference in London: "There is a growing right-wing threat, not just Al-Qaeda." And a spokeswoman for Searchlight is quoted as saying that police forces were paying increased attention to the threat but courts too often dismissed those caught as deluded loners. "Far-right terrorism is a serious problem. The courts have not always treated it so," she said.

A dentist who told Muslim patients he would treat them only if they wore Islamic dress can still practise, the General Dental Council ruled today. While working at a clinic in Bury, Greater Manchester, Dr Omer Butt told two women to wear head scarfs before he would see them and their families. The GDC concluded he sought to impose a dress code on Muslim patients between April 2005 and June 2007. Butt "discriminated" against people and "did not act in the best interests of his patients" but it said the events took place "a considerable time ago" and he had not repeated the conduct since. PA

• Health
• Islam

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Apparently our great ex war leader Tony Blair turned up to today's Labour Friends Of India Annual bash with a black eye.

Unfortunately, London Muslim cant claim credit.

We must learn from the bitter experiences of the past, if we are to avoid history repeating itself

Iran is a land of recurrence. In the Middle East, it is a unique country. In 1905, Iran was the first country in the region where a revolution for democracy and freedom, the constitutional revolution, took place. Yet, in the aftermath of that revolution, we Iranians came to face a new breed of dictatorship.

Following the ensuing era of suppression and oppression, we again revolted and we were again repressed. In 1953, through a coup d'etat orchestrated by the United States, the shah deposed our elected prime minister and champion of nationalising the country's oil industry, and we lost the greatest opportunity to become versed in democracy. The coup d'etat was followed by a new era of repression and executions. And, of course, in the years that followed we had other uprisings, which were also quashed.

Soon, the best and the brightest of our university students joined opposition groups and guerrilla factions, and many were executed. Then we arrived at the 1979 Islamic revolution. We knew what we didn't want, but we didn't know what we did want. During the shah's regime, we didn't suffer severe economic issues – we simply wanted freedom.

We therefore revolted and changed the regime. But freedom was just a word to us, a slogan that we liked. We had no real concept of freedom. Soon, hundreds of political parties proclaimed their existence and, because we did not fully comprehend democracy, each was quick to accuse the other of affiliations with foreign governments. None of these political factions had a plan for the future. In tandem, hundreds of politically oriented magazines and newspapers were founded, each of which would publish articles in opposition to another publication or political party. It all escalated to the point at which opportunists grabbed control of power. And it all became what it all became.

Today, history is again repeating itself in Iran. My generation, all of whom are over 50, have witnessed our dreams falling by the wayside one by one. Now, the next generation bravely demonstrates in the streets. They are beaten up, arrested and tortured, and, when they are killed during police attacks, the government does not easily release their bodies to their families, who are often banned from holding funerals for their children.

The problem we Iranians have is that there has always been a gap, a great divide, between our generations. The new generation does not learn from the bitter experiences of the older generation and only winds up repeating them.

Perhaps the reason for this repetition is the severe censorship that has taken root in Iran. To erase people's memories of their history, each regime that has come to power has immediately set out to change the history books taught in schools and universities. They have banned previously published books from being reprinted and have gone as far as changing the names of streets that the previous regime had named after notable people and important events. Perhaps the reason for this repetition is that independent journals and newspapers have been banned and the older generation cannot convey its own experiences to the next generation.

Perhaps the reason for this repetition is that Iranians read very little – despite a population of more than 70 million, the print run of books published in Iran by independent publishers has dwindled to 700 copies. We seem to have regressed to pre-Gutenberg times. Perhaps the reason for this repetition is that we cling to our past and rarely look to the future. We are forever proud of our glorious ancient history and are satisfied by it. We have adopted only a thin veneer of modernity. We drive the latest models of Mercedes and BMWs down our avenues. We use postmodern architectural designs in the construction of our homes, shopping centres and boutiques. Yet many of us still have a culture of religious zeal and fanaticism in our blood. And perhaps the reason for this repetition is also that Iran has not experienced a renaissance.

Today, another movement is under way in Iran. The country's riot police, armed with the most modern paraphernalia purchased from European countries, stifle and subdue Iranian protesters. With the aid of one of the most advanced kinds of software, also bought from the west, thousands of websites and weblogs are filtered. Internet speed has been deliberately reduced, and as a result news is spread mostly by word of mouth in a country that boasts the greatest number of blogs in the Middle East. Iranian literature, which despite censorship had flourished during the 1980s and 1990s, has been afflicted by asphyxiation and hopelessness during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, because censorship is being practised in a most senseless and severe fashion.

Iran has the potential of being one of the wealthiest and most cultured countries. But today, according to government statistics, more than half its population lives below the poverty level, and I suspect the actual figure is even greater than this.

Consequently, Iranians are angry. For almost 30 years, political, social, and economic pressures have been imposed on them. They have not even had the freedom to choose their own manner of dress. Many work two shifts a day to earn a pittance for their family to get by on. It is no surprise that they now demonstrate in the streets. The problem, however, is that they lack an earnest leader, something they have always needed. Most of those who could, under these circumstances, lead this movement have been assassinated or crushed in solitary confinement, or have grown old in isolation in the corner of their homes. It is for these reasons that I believe history in Iran will again repeat itself. Let us assume that the Iranian people succeed in changing or reforming the current regime – what then? What do we want to do next? And there is no answer to this question.

These nights Iranians shout "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) and "Death to the dictator" from their rooftops. These are the same phrases repeated on the nights of the revolution against the shah's rule. However, a new and encouraging twist in this new uprising, whether it succeeds or is again quashed, is that in street demonstrations they walk in silence. There is no sign of those clenched fists and shouts of death to this and that. And in this silence lies a secret, which at some time in the future Iran, with all its paradoxes, will reveal to the world.

• Iran
• Middle East
• Islam

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Paul Richards, former advisor to Hazel Blears at DCLG, and defender of Blears' disgraceful decision to sever links with the Muslim Council of Britain, now takes issue with the reinstatement of suspended civil servant Azad Ali, which Richards takes as "further proof that there are sections of the British establishment that simply fail to comprehend the true nature and intent of some of the organisations of political Islam".

Jewish Chronicle, 2 July 2009

Ruling parties that do not practise the strict forms of Islam that they preach will end up hoist by their own petard

The murderers of John Granville, an American who was working for USAID in Sudan, were sentenced to death in Khartoum earlier this week. Granville was gunned down along with his driver in 2008 in the wake of UN troop introduction in Darfur and his bearded assassins received the verdict with jubilation and cries of "God is Greatest".

This was the second of two incidents that have shocked the Sudanese capital in the past few years. In a gruesome episode in 2006, Mohammed Taha, a journalist who had made remarks perceived to be insulting towards Islam was abducted and beheaded.

This score-settling by religious free agents is one sign of change in a city that historically has been one of the safest in Africa. Khartoum had managed to avoid the fate of other vulnerable African cities despite the long-running civil war in the south and the conflict in Darfur, a nonchalant police force, an unsophisticated security network and a deluge of disenfranchised migrants from impoverished provinces.

While Sudan is predominantly Sunni Muslim, its political culture and the nature of religious practice have traditionally been a symbiotic blend of Arab and African influences with a preference for a more peaceful spiritual Sufi-based form of observance.

Throughout the several mutations of government, military ones established after coups and civil ones on the back of civil uprisings, the National Islamic Front (NIF), headed by Hassan al Turabi, strove to gain power. The NIF-sponsored military coup in 1989 saw the religious vision brought to life, and the government embarked on an intense propaganda campaign demonising the west and injecting an alien strain of Islam, one that "othered" non-Muslims, into the political culture of the country.

In the 1990s, a popular television show called The Fields of Sacrifice updated the nation on those north Sudanese felled in the war with the south, profiled pious "martyrs" and generally employed Qur'anic recitation and moving images to illustrate the war in the non-Muslim south and naturally, with the west, as some grand Islamic crusade against infidels. The terms "jihad" and "martyrdom" were introduced into Sudan's political lexicon.

The hijab was enforced in all public areas and male youths were enlisted in mandatory military training which focused heavily on religious themes. Apart from Jaafar Nimeiri's brief fickle fling with sharia in the 1980s, this was the first time since independence that the country had fallen under a heavy shroud of arbitrary Islamic law. This approach served as a proxy agenda and identity for a government that had to establish itself at all costs. With a vacuum of support for a fledgling regime, religion was a convenient galvanising agent and a siege mentality was fostered.

It was during this time that Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden, who took up residence in Khartoum and reportedly even married one of the locals. As the Salvation Front established itself in power and the military junta purged Islamic elements from its ranks, the hardline approach was diluted and tempered as foreign investments and oil exports flourished, but the extremism of those years is now resurfacing.

This is not an unfamiliar story. Governments elsewhere have also employed religion cynically to imbue their dictatorships with some gravitas – but have then become haunted by the very conditions they sought to create.

In Saudi Arabia, local terrorists who are a thorn in the side of the authorities are referred to as "the misguided" by newscasters and officials. No link is made between the very specific permutation of Wahhabi Islamic culture imposed and encouraged by the authorities and the phobia and intolerance inculcated by years of indoctrination via state school curriculums and media messaging.

While "foreign hands" and influences are conveniently blamed for most terrorist incidents, the fact that government policies may have made youths susceptible to the approach of fundamentalist organisations is never confronted. Most Arab ruling parties do not in fact remotely practise what they preach (whether it's their co-operation with western governments or the corruption and irreverent lifestyles of those in power) and so it is often not long before the potency of an almost infinitely exclusive Salafi interpretation of Islam is turned against those who used it to garner public support. As with western governments that promote an unapologetic commitment to democracy and human rights, and then betray them for political exigency, they end up hoist by their own petard.

With the uncharacteristically harsh and relatively swift justice meted out to Granville's killers, the Sudanese government is perhaps hoping to put the genie of extremism it reared back in the bottle. It may prove to be too little, too late.

• Islam
• Sudan
• Religion

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Belief in evolutionary varies around the world, but there's some evidence that Darwin-scepticism may have an Islamic flavour

When the public theology think tank Theos published its study into evolution and theism in the UK earlier this year, it found that people in London were consistently more ignorant of and hostile towards Darwinism than those who lived elsewhere.

Although Londoners were more likely to know that 2009 was Darwin's big anniversary (28% vs. 21% nationally), they were less likely to know what he was famous for (63% said evolution vs 70% nationally), more likely to believe that humans had been created by God at some point in the last 10,000 years (20% vs 17%), and less likely to agree that "evolution is a theory so well established that it's beyond reasonable doubt" (28% vs 37%).

These findings have been supported by a recent British Council/Ipsos-MORI (pdf) study which reports that "nearly a quarter of those who live in London believe in creationism … compared to a nationwide average of 16%." Similarly, a fifth of Londoners said they had never heard of Darwin and his theory of evolution and less than a half (48%) "agreed that there was enough scientific evidence to support his evolutionary theory."

The British Council survey interviewed 973 respondents, the Theos one 2,060 – neither, sadly, large enough to allow for statistically significant analysis by region. The British Council did, however, conduct their study internationally (pdf), interviewing around 1,000 people in each of Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, the US and Great Britain. The full results are not yet published but topline findings show that South Africans were most ignorant about Darwin (only 27% had heard of him) and his theory (8% said they knew a good/fair amount), whilst Americans were most antagonistic (24% said they did not think there was scientific evidence for evolution). The reasons for American antagonism are well known but why is South Africa so disproportionately ignorant?

Interestingly, Egypt followed closely behind in both instances, 38% having heard about Darwin, 14% knowing a lot/fair amount about his theory, and 19% rejecting its scientific validity. Egyptians were also most likely to say that they thought belief in God and evolution were incompatible.

As Egypt was the only Islamic country studied it is not possible to say whether its level of hostility reflects a general antagonism to Darwinism across the Muslim world. But the odds are that it does. According to the Theos survey, UK Muslims were twice as likely to be young earth creationists as the general public (35% vs 17%) – although, again, the sub-sample was small.

If there proves to be clear correlation between Islamic belief and evolution rejection, it is likely to be for its own distinct reasons. A forthcoming Theos/ESRO qualitative research report analyses a series of one-to-one interviews with anti-evolutionary opinion-formers in the UK in order to understand in greater detail why they reject Darwinism. The majority were Christians but a number were Muslims, and the report, to be published this autumn, recognised that there were subtly different reasons for their respective reactions.

For the Christians, the position and significance of the Genesis creation stories presented origins as a defining, theological issue. Muslim respondents, on the other hand, argued that the fact that the account of creation in the Qur'an was not as significant or prescriptive as the biblical account had implications for their theology of creation. Accordingly, they did not propose new kinds of science based on the Qur'an (after the fashion of "creation science") and many sought to distance themselves from Christian creationism.

A more significant problem for them was the supposed degradation of human nature intrinsic to a theory of chance and purposelessness. The issue was not so much the science or even the hermeneutics (respondents were open to a flexible reading of the relevant verses). Rather it was "the perceived amorality of the evolutionary narrative as compared with the Islamic understanding of the accountability of man to God". For those Muslims who rejected evolution, it was the way the theory had become tangled up with anthropological (and social) suppositions that was the problem.

It is early days in the study of Muslim attitudes to evolution and it is certainly false to say, as someone said to me recently, that the majority of "creationists" in Britain were Muslims. But both the British Council and the Theos studies suggest there is the potential for the evolution-scepticism of the 21st century to be marked with distinctively Islamic concerns, and these must be understood and not simply dismissed or ridiculed if we are to avoid having this debate on the next big Darwin anniversary.

• Religion
• Evolution
• Charles Darwin
• Creationism
• Islam
• Christianity

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Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said identity cards will not be compulsory for UK citizens. Here's a guide to what it means for the multi-billion pound identity scheme. What did Mr Johnson actually say?

The question of how free people really are to express themselves and their sexual orientation in particular is a complex one. In the UK at least it seems like a very long time ago that it was actually against the law to be gay although as we know prejudice and discrimination never seem to go away that easily, and Amnesty continues to campaign for peoples right to express themselves freely and ra

Two British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan taking the number killed to 171.

Next of kin have been informed.

The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan's worsening conflict jumped 40 percent to a new high last year, A record 2,118 civilians died from violence last year, up from 1,523 the previous year.

Next of kin have yet to be informed.

Jesus and George Galloway get in a Ford… An interview for Muslim Matters

Parliamentarian and YouTube sensation George Galloway made time during his jam-packed tour schedule, promoting the Viva Palestina US convey, to answer Muslim Matters readers’ questions and to offer advice for activists in the US and the UK.

A note to our readers:

This interview was conducted in transit from one speaking event to another and was done from the backseat (Iesa Galloway) to the front seat (George Galloway) of a Ford Explorer. Due to this setup there are minor sound quality issues and two audio interruptions (One in the introduction and the other in question number seven). Our solution is to write the questions for our readers then allow you to hear his responses.

Q1) Please describe your first exposure to the issue of Palestine and what differentiated the person who introduced the issue to you and made his effort so effective?

Q2) How do you recommend that activists who work on the Palestinian Issue do so when speaking to people who have very little exposure to the issue or exposure only to one side?

Q3) Can you speak to the BNP (British National Party) and what Muslims in the UK should do to marginalize or counteract their influence? Is this a wise use of time and energy?

Q4) The majority of our readers are Muslim minorities in the west, are there any activities that you feel Muslims should be doing that we are not pursuing aggressively?

Q5) Many people asked if you felt that public demonstrations, rallies and marches are an effective use of time? Are there more effective ways to win friends and influence people?

Q6) Many “Religious” Muslims debate how effective or if it is even allowable to vote in the non-Muslim democratic system, can you speak to civic participation and its importance in your view?

Q7) Can you share your analysis on Obama’s address in Cairo and its significance to Palestine and to US Muslim relations?

NOTE: During this question we were interrupted and some audio was lost. In the missing audio, George Galloway mentioned Obama recognized that some Palestinians support Hamas, and in George Galloway’s view that Obama was “issuing Hamas a ticket,” the lost audio states – I am paraphrasing here – that if Hamas has support from some Palestinians in the electorate that they have to be dealt with as a representative of the people who elected them. He then mentioned that Obama compared the Palestinian people’s suffering to that of the black people in South Africa under apartheid.

Q8) As a final comment would you like to discuss Viva Palestina and its goals?

A few points, thoughts and observations:

I did not ask George Galloway any questions about his religious beliefs. I did preface the first question as follows, “To help activists learn from other’s successes please share with us how, you a non-Muslim, non-Palestinian, non-Arab, with no vested interest in Palestine have come to be such a passionate activist for Palestine?” To which he responded with audio file above, mentioning a young Palestinian who lobbied him in a local, district political office in the UK. It is apparent that George Galloway sees himself as wholeheartedly on the side of Muslims, in the several instances when asked for advice to the Muslim community’s activists he uses the word, “we.”

While we (the interviewer and the interviewee) share the same last name there is no relation between us.

About George Galloway, I found him very down to earth, in the sense that he spoke to people as his equals. He was goal oriented and business minded, yet he was still very personable. I saw him holding and kissing babies, taking photos with all who asked – he is a politician after all.

To secure the interview, I met him twice at two different events in Houston, each nearly a month apart. The first event, when I was introduced to George Galloway he said “Wal’llah you’re a Galloway?” My kneejerk thought was he has been hanging out with too many Arabs.

He was also very sharp witted. He mentioned portions of this interview and my off-the-record questions and debating during his speaking engagements. For example, before the interview I asked him if he was being overly optimistic about the significance of President Obama’s speech in Cairo. During his next public speaking event he said to the audience, while looking squarely at me, “Earlier, I was accused of being over opportunistic,” and he went on to offer similar points about the significance of Obama’s Cairo address that are recording above.

He truly knows how to work an audience. Each of George Galloway’s speaking engagements had a vastly different attendance. With each group he referenced hot topics that won him points with their particular demographic.

At one point he described himself as a “political idealist” as opposed to “other” politicians whose motivations were based on “winning elections.”

Lastly, I was struck by the audiences’ response to George Galloway. He had a sort of rock-star/sage status. This held true with the youth and the elders alike.

This khutbah was delivered at the Islamic Society of Delaware. Shaykh Abdul Hadi Al-Azhari studied with Shaykh Abu Ishaq Al-Huwaynee in Egypt.

(download)

I just wanted to come back to an old issue. Things are still not actually clarified with the “halal bond” of two cultures, or rather said getting married to someone from a different culture. More and more people leave their own boys and girls aside and choose to be with someone from a strange culture. But this process doesn’t run smoothly. Just imagine, you’re a Pakistani and you come home with an Indian, believe me, this is where all the trouble begins, and there are not much people who will accept this with a big smile on his or her face. These two cultures are very close together and have much in common and still it isn’t accepted. What will happen if you bring home a Englishman and yes he is converted. If we’d go into details, then the youth would not find anything wrong with it.

Continue reading "Halal Bond"

Recently Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded a Free Gaza Movement boat, names the Spirit Of Humanity on its progress to Gaza to give humanitarian aid. The Israeli Navy, forcibly dragged and abducted 21 activists who originated from 11 different countries. A delegation of UK students were among those who were abducted.