Israeli army, settlers, attack Palestinian villages across West Bank.

Miqdaad Versi, Shaista Aziz, Aamna Mohdin and Nosheen Iqbal on the rise of the far right and growing Islamophobia in the UK

The far right is on the rise and much of its messaging is explicitly Islamophobic. In 2024 anti-Muslim hate crimes in England and Wales doubled. Meanwhile, the government has stated that it cannot even agree on a definition of what Islamophobia is.

How does all this make British Muslims feel? Miqdaad Versi, Shaista Aziz and the Guardian’s community affairs reporter Aamna Mohdin talk to Nosheen Iqbal about what’s changed.

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Bismillah

Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wa salatu wa salamu ‘ala Rasoolillah, wa ‘ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. Amma ba’ad.

Allah ﷻ tells us in the Qur’an about Ramadan in verses that many of us recite each year. They begin with:

“يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا”
“O you who believe!”

One of the companions (radiAllahu ‘anhu) said that whenever you hear this phrase in the Qur’an, pay close attention. Why? Because what follows is either a command towards something good—khayr—or a prohibition from something evil—sharr.

The Command to Fast

Allah ﷻ says:

“يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا كُتِبَ عَلَيْكُمُ الصِّيَامُ كَمَا كُتِبَ عَلَى الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِكُمْ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَتَّقُونَ”

“O you who believe! Fasting has been prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may attain taqwa.”

It’s already written, already decreed—fasting is fardh, a compulsory obligation upon us. Just as it was upon those before us.

Fasting Across Faiths

I remember a brother who converted to Islam. During Ramadan, he attended a school gathering with various religious leaders. When he declined the food, someone from another religious group approached him and said:

“I know why you didn’t eat. It’s Ramadan, isn’t it? You’re fasting.”

The brother replied yes. Interestingly, he had converted from that man’s own religion. The man then said something remarkable:

“Fasting is such a noble thing to do. It’s too bad our religion changed it over the years.”

Many religions have remnants of fasting—maybe avoiding certain drinks or foods—but the tradition has been diluted over time.

The “Criticism” of Islam

People often criticize Islam by saying: “You Muslims are still practicing the same Islam from 1400 years ago.”

SubhanAllah. What a beautiful “criticism”! That’s exactly what we want—to follow the Islam practiced by the Prophet ﷺ and his companions.

Ramadan: A Month of Qur’an and Du’a

In the verses about Ramadan, there’s a powerful interjection. Between the verses on fasting, Allah ﷻ says:

“وَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبٌ”
“And when My servant asks you concerning Me—indeed, I am near.”

“أُجِيبُ دَعْوَةَ الدَّاعِ إِذَا دَعَانِ”
“I respond to the du’a of the supplicant when he calls upon Me.”

Allah ﷻ will answer your du’a. Every single time.

The Power of Du’a

You might make du’a for a Cadillac Escalade. And either:

1. You get it.
2. You get something even better.
3. Allah protects you from a harm you didn’t know about.

Even if your du’a isn’t answered in this life, it’s stored for the Hereafter.

The Prophet ﷺ told us: on the Day of Judgment, when people see the stored rewards of unanswered du’as, they will wish that none of their du’as had been answered in the dunya!

The Cost of Du’a and Intention

What does it cost to make du’a? Nothing.

What about making a good intention? Also nothing.

But the reward? If you make a sincere intention to do good, it’s recorded as if you did it. And if you actually do it? You get 10 times the reward.

Imagine the power of simply sitting down and making lofty intentions:

• “I want to build 1,000 masjids.”
• “I want to donate a billion dollars to da’wah.”
• “I want to bring a thousand people back to Allah.”

Even if only 1% of people fulfilled those intentions, our community would be transformed.

Don’t Let Others Deflate Your Intentions

Sometimes when you make big intentions, someone will say, “That’ll never work. Be realistic.”

That kind of mindset deflates ambition. But the Sahaba didn’t think like that. In fact, the Battle of Badr happened during Ramadan. And what did they do? They fasted and fought.

The Prophet ﷺ made du’a:

“O Allah, if this group is destroyed, You will not be worshipped on Earth.”

Ramadan wasn’t just about fasting—it was about striving.

The Spectators and the Participants

Masajid are packed on:

1. The first night of Ramadan.
2. The last 10 nights.

These are the spectators—the ones watching from the sidelines. But the real participants are in the masjid every night. They push through, read Qur’an while others sip tea, and spend time feeding others—not just feeding themselves.

Shahr al-‘It’am vs. Shahr al-Ta’am

Ramadan is Shahr al-‘It’am—the month of feeding others. But many of us have made it Shahr al-Ta’am—the month of eating!

There’s so much pressure, especially on our sisters, to raise food quality. But is that the essence of Ramadan? Going to dinner parties? Eating more than usual?

The Prophet ﷺ performed i’tikaf in Ramadan—not social dinners. In his last Ramadan, he did 20 days of i’tikaf.

No More Excuses

People often say:

• “I can’t go to the masjid daily.”
  But in Ramadan, they show up every night.
• “I can’t pray Qiyam—it’s too hard.”
  Yet during Ramadan, they wake up early for Suhoor and Qiyam.
• “I can’t live without coffee or cigarettes.”
  But in Ramadan? They go cold turkey from dawn to dusk.

The same goes for Qur’an. A person might read nothing all year, but in Ramadan they finish the entire Qur’an.

Training the Soul

Fasting trains the soul to obey Allah. You’re avoiding things normally halal—like food and drink—because Allah said so.

After Ramadan, avoiding haram becomes easier. Ramadan is about developing taqwa through spiritual training.

What Makes a Ramadan Unforgettable?

Try to remember a Ramadan you’ll never forget. What made it unforgettable?

For most people, it’s tied to Taraweeh:

• A special imam.
• A deep focus.
• Consistent attendance.

But what if that imam isn’t there next year? Will you give up? No. You have to be the one who brings the focus—you extract the benefit, not wait for it.

Behind the Scenes: Life of the Imam

Let me take you backstage—what is Ramadan like for the imam?

• After Fajr: Reviewing Qur’an while everyone else sleeps.
• Daytime: Resting intentionally to preserve energy for night prayers.
• Afternoon: More Qur’an review.
• Iftar: Light meal. If he eats too much, he can’t lead Taraweeh. He might literally vomit—no joke.
• Taraweeh: Complete concentration.
• Post-Taraweeh: Brief rest. Then the cycle continues.

Why? Because the Qur’an is his priority.

Be Like the Imam

Whether you’re leading or not, you can live like the imam.

Let Ramadan become a month of:

• Qur’an
• Discipline
• Du’a
• Intention
• Ibadah

You can even aim to memorize 10 ajza’ this Ramadan. It’s not impossible. People have done it.

Final Thoughts

Don’t be the person who shows up at the airport and says, “I haven’t decided where to go yet.”

If you don’t know your destination, you’ll go nowhere.

Make your intention now. Plan your Ramadan today. Prioritize Qur’an and ibadah above all else. And with Allah’s help, you’ll make this Ramadan unforgettable.

Jazakum Allahu Khayran.
May Allah grant us all a truly epic Ramadan. Ameen.

Related:

Ramadan Duaa Series: The Greatest Delight

5 Duas For Ramadan Therapy | Sh Yahya Ibrahim

The post How to Make this Ramadan Epic | Shaykh Muhammad Alshareef appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

A plan to train Gaza’s police will reinforce the occupation.

Former PM called for national register and accreditation for imams, sparking backlash from Muslim leaders

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Leading Islamic community groups have condemned Scott Morrison as “deeply ill-informed” and “dangerous” after the former prime minister demanded a national register and accreditation for imams, and expanding foreign interference frameworks to capture foreign links in religious institutions.

The former Liberal leader, speaking at an antisemitism conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday, claimed the measures were needed in the wake of the Isis-inspired Bondi terror shooting at a Hanukah event, which left 15 people dead. Morrison demanded a focus on “radicalised extremist Islam”, noting the two alleged Bondi shooters “were Australian-made” and demanding local Muslim bodies do more to stamp out hate.

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We talk to journalist Ahmed Al-Najjar in Gaza, where harsh conditions and Israeli attacks belie Davos claims that “war” is over. We discuss Trump’s “Board of Peace” and more.

What does every new Imam need to know about being an imam? What do you do if you’re in a small community with minimal resources? How do you manage joining a new community, learning the ropes, and not biting off more than you can chew? In this episode, Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy shares his advice for new imams, community building, and reflections on his own imam experience.

Shaykh Mohammad Elshinawy is a Graduate of English Literature at Brooklyn College, NYC. He studied at College of Hadith at the Islamic University of Madinah and is a graduate and instructor of Islamic Studies at Mishkah University. He has translated major works for the International Islamic Publishing House, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and Mishkah University.

Related:

Don’t Take For Granted Your Community Imam I Sh. Furhan Zubairi

The Rise of the Scholarly Gig Economy and Fall of Community Development

 

The post [Podcast] The Parts of Being an Imam They Don’t Warn You About | Sh Mohammad Elshinawy appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Innocent people are being frozen out of basic banking services – and it all traces back to reforms rushed through after 9/11

Hamish Wilson lives a few miles away from me, in a cosy farmhouse in the damp hills of mid Wales. He makes good coffee, tells great stories and is an excellent host. Every summer, dozens of Somali guests visit Wilson’s farm as part of a wonderfully wholesome project set up to celebrate their nation’s culture, and to honour his father’s second world war service with a Somali comrade-in-arms.

Inadvertently, however, the project has revealed something else: a deep unfairness in today’s global financial system that not only threatens to ruin the Somalis’ holidays, but also excludes marginalised communities from global banking services on a huge scale.

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A longstanding aspirant statelet in the Horn of Africa shot to international attention this month when Israel announced its recognition of Somaliland, an otherwise unrecognized defacto state in northern Somalia that has existed since war engulfed the region in the 1990s. Because the issue of Somaliland secession is widely unknown to Muslims outside the region, this article will give a short summary of its history.

Colonial Contrasts

Somalis constitute one of East Africa’s major ethnic groups, organized in clans and clan confederations and tracing their history back centuries in the region: major clan confederations included the Isaq, who dwell largely in Somaliland, the Hawiye in central Somalia around Mogadishu, the Rahanweyn in western Somalia, and the Darod, scattered around the region. 

Today, Somalis are split across several countries beyond the eponymous Somalia. In part, this is a legacy of colonialism, when the British, French, and Italian empires waded into the Horn of Africa, where Somali clans and sultanates had already had a long history of opposition with Ethiopia. Djibouti became a French enclave; Somaliland and Kenya were British colonies; and the rest of Somalia was under Italian rule, with the exception of the Ogadenia region, named for the Ogaden clan within the Darod confederation that predominates in a region ruled by Ethiopia as its southeast province.

Italy’s defeat in the Second World War bequeathed most of Somalia to British rule, where it remained for a decade before official independence in 1960. The first British thrust into the region, some fifty years earlier, had been countered by the daring preacher and adventurer Mohamed Hassan, disparaged as the “Mad Mulla” for his twenty-year resistance. Hassan, from the Darod, had a mutual enmity with the Isaq confederation, which, unlike most others, Somalis do not remember him fondly. Somaliland had been a British colony for much longer than the rest of Somalia, and in fact was given independence a few days earlier in the summer of 1960.

Somalilweyn and its Discontents

That independence came after a long period of activism from Somali opposition parties, notably the Somali Youth League, which called for Somali independence and where support for the independence of the Somali peoples at large, not just those under British rule, was widespread in what became known as Somaliweyn or Greater Somalia.

A key roadblock to this idea was not just friction with neighbouring powers, notably an imperial Ethiopia whose rule of Ogadenia was widely unpopular, but also the balance of power within Somalia itself. Somaliland had become independent under its leading colonial politician, Ibrahim Egal, who was soon persuaded to join the rest of Somalia, for which he became prime minister. As a rule, Somaliland was a backwater, and much of the Isaq populace chafed; as early as 1961, there was a coup attempt that was speedily suppressed. In fact, as one of the few parliamentary democracies in 1960s Africa, Somalia’s first decade was generally marked by chaotic factionalism and in 1969 army commander Siad Barre led a coup; prime minister Egal, at the United States at the time, was imprisoned on his return as one of the many elites of his generation purged by the military regime.

Though Siad promised revolutionary change, siding at first with the Soviet Union in the Cold War against a Western-backed Ethiopia; what socioeconomic improvements he oversaw would be drowned by his own recourse to repression and corruption. A change in family law that contravened Islamic law in 1975 was an early flashpoint, and after a momentous war for Ogadenia in 1977-78 failed – where Somalia’s former Soviet allies switched sides to decisively join a newly communist Ethiopia – Siad’s dictatorship began to crumble from within. An early sign of the rupture came when Majerteen officers from Siad’s Darod confederation, led by Abdullahi Yusuf, attempted a coup immediately after the Ogadenia defeat; in its wake, Yusuf fled to Ethiopia, which supported him in a 1982 incursion into Somalia.

Corrosion under Siad

The 1982 campaign came even as Siad repressed another coup and purged his Isaq deputy, Ismail Abukar. Though Abukar was one of a number of cross-clan leaders imprisoned in this period, the Isaq clan in particular objected to Siad’s dictatorship; the previous year, a rebel Somali National Movement or Wadaniya had been founded by exiles in Britain. Though its membership was overwhelmingly Isaq – including former officials such as Ahmed Silanyo, police officers such as Jama Ghalib, army officers such as Abdulqadir Kosar, and clan leaders such as Yusuf Madar – the group importantly claimed to represent Somalia at large and, unlike its heirs today, rejected claims of secession.

Siad, by now bolstered with considerable weaponry by the United States, responded with an outsize cruelty that overwhelmingly targeted Isaq in the north and drove more into the insurgency’s ranks. By the late 1980s, an insurgency was in full swing and had overrun much of Somaliland. In response, in spring 1988, Siad’s son-in-law, Said Morgan, cut a deal with the Ethiopian regime to stop supporting one another’s insurgents before turning on Somaliland with savage ferocity.

The Harrowing of the North

Said Morgan, the “Butcher of Hargeysa”

Morgan’s destruction of Somaliland carries parallels with the Iraqi Baath regime’s meantime harrowing of its own, Kurdish northland, during the same period. Like the Baath’s murderous governor-general, “Chemical” Ali Majid did with the Iraqi Kurds, there is no doubt that Morgan and his lieutenants saw Isaq as a fifth column to be bloodily crushed. As with supposed voice recordings of “Chemical Ali”, there are letters supposedly from Morgan that call for the elimination of the Isaq confederation; whether or not these are genuine, there is no question, and ample reliable evidence, that Morgan and his lieutenants were willing to butcher the population in droves. One particularly infamous call by an officer was to “kill everything but the crows” that came to feast on corpses. In the process, Morgan flattened Hargeysa and killed thousands, particularly through aerial bombardment.

As did Iraqi Kurdish opponents of the Baath regime, Siad’s opponents characterize this massacre as a genocide of the Isaq. It did, however, occur among a general narrowing of the regime where Siad, despite his rhetoric of shunning clan prejudice, narrowed his group of loyalists to not only his clan but his own family; it is no coincidence that his son-in-law, Morgan and son, Maslah Barre, were increasingly prominent in the army. The Isaq clan were the most brutalized but by no means the only victims; Siad had already frozen out the Majerteen clan within his own Darod confederation, and his favouritism also alienated much of the Darod’s Ogaden clan, whose army officers increasingly defected. Similarly, the major Hawiye confederation predominant in Mogadishu was increasingly disconsolate. By the early 1990s, a mixture of revolts and mutinies ousted Siad and helped plunge Somalia into what was unprecedentedly described as a “failed state”.

Freedom and Independence?

In the process, the Wadaniya insurgents managed to capture Somaliland under the leadership of Abdirahman Tur; along with the Isaq confederation, the Darod Dhulbahante clan, led by such cooperative chieftains as Abdulghani Jama, now joined them. Wadaniya was more of a coalition than a fixed group, however, and its constituent camps began to fight for power. That this struggle was not as destructive as that of the remaining Somalia owed largely to the mediating role of chieftains and elders, who organized a number of conferences and elections.

Isaq chieftains such as Ibrahim Madar, son of the former Wadaniya leader Yusuf, were especially important and, with the rest of Somalia in disarray, began to push increasingly for secession. Somaliland was already de facto separate from the rest of Somalia, but the persistent agenda from the mid-1990s onward was for its recognition as a separate country. Since Somaliweyn had collapsed and Somalis were already split between other countries like Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya, the argument ran, there was no point in Somaliland staying in a dysfunctional Somalia either. The moment also seemed propitious; in 1993, Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia after a long, difficult independence war.

Jama Ghalib

Even as the United States was leading a United Nations incursion into the rest of Somalia, Tur was removed in favour of the former Somalia prime minister Egal. Isaq commanders Tur and Ghalib, a former police inspector-general, opposed the secessionists and joined forces with Farah Aidid, Mogadishu’s preeminent commander who had first ousted Siad, and then the United States. However, in 1994-95, Somaliland “loyalists” of Egal managed to bloodily root out these Isaq dissidents in a series of battles at Hargeysa and Burao.

As a former prime minister of Mogadishu who had originally negotiated Somaliland’s addition to Somalia, Egal struggled to convince hardline separatists of his bona fides. Yet as his power increased, sidelining competitors by the late 1990s, he did indeed press toward a separatist agenda, and was even reported to have contacted the infamously anti-Muslim Israeli regime by offering cooperation against “Islamic radicalism”: this despite the fact that the original Wadaniya resistance against Siad had criticized his irreligiosity and dealt heavily in Islamic slogans, styling themselves “mujahids”; indeed, the Somaliland flag retains the Islamic shahadah. Somaliland was nonetheless seen favourably among foreigners wary of the conflict in remaining Somalia, and a considerable foreign lobby grew for its separation from Somalia and its recognition as an independent state. A year before his death in 2002, Egal held a referendum that opted for Somaliland’s secession as an independent state.

Somaliland, Puntland, and the Occupation of Somalia

However, secessionism was unpopular among the Dhulbahante who predominated in the Sool region of northern Somalia, between Somaliland and the coastal region of Puntland. Many Dhulbahante dissidents gravitated east toward Puntland, where Ethiopia’s former vassal Yusuf, had set up his own fiefdom and aimed to form Puntland as part of a federalist but united Somalia. When the American “war on terror” began, Puntland, and Yusuf more specifically, became a favoured client of the United States as a “counterterrorism” partner. In 2006, both the United States and Ethiopia invaded Somalia and ousted Mogadishu’s short-lived Islamist government, installing Yusuf in its place under a foreign occupation.

Yusuf’s place at the helm of an American-Ethiopian-backed regime in Mogadishu ensured that Puntland had Washington’s ear, but Somaliland’s major foreign lobby persistently argued for independence, while periodically cracking down against dissidents who favoured a united Somalia. The fact that the original 1980s Wadaniya resistance had rejected separatism was now conveniently forgotten; the fact that unionist Somalilanders such as Ghalib opposed the 2006 invasion ensured that they could be frozen out of the political elite with little repercussions.

On the other hand, even after Yusuf’s resignation, the Somali government and its Puntland wing attracted largely Dhulbahante dissidents in Sool who wanted their region to be separate from Somaliland and part of Somalia, either as part of Puntland or as a separate region. During the 2010s, when Somalia’s new federalist constitution was arranging new regions, the Sool region pressed its case: led by Ahmed Karash, the Sool region announced its loyalty to Somalia under the name “Khatumo” or finality, with support from both the central government in Mogadishu and the regional government in Puntland. There have been repeated clashes over this region, particularly Lasanod, since 2007.

Regional Rivalries

The replacement of relatively conciliatory Somaliland leaders such as Silanyo with hardline separatists like Musa Bihi, a former Wadaniya commander, helped harden this dispute. So did the attitudes of strongly unionist Somali leaders such as Mohamed Farmajo, who ruled Mogadishu in 2017-22, and Puntland leaders such as Said Deni, who was a rival to both Mogadishu and Hargeysa.

Regional rivalries also played into these disputes. A staunch centralist, Farmajo was long backed by Turkiye and Qatar, and opposed the United Arab Emirates, which was supporting a number of separatist actors in the region. He also tried to cultivate better ties with the new, similarly centralist Ethiopian ruler Abiy Ahmed. Ethiopia, which had a longstanding rivalry with Cairo, had meanwhile long found it convenient to play off the rivalry between Puntland and Somaliland, and the United States did the same. Saudi Arabia initially supported the United Arab Emirates in its dispute with Qatar, but has recently moved closer to Ankara, Cairo, and Doha.

The Somali government’s case was widely recognized abroad, but its own legitimacy was weakened by its reliance on the multipronged foreign occupation that had ousted the Islamists in 2006. Although a compromise brought back many Islamists, including the ousted former ruler Sharif Ahmed and his successor Hassan Mohamud, to the fold in 2009, cyclical squabbles over the makeup of the state and over an unpopular but essential foreign occupation have persisted. At their most extreme, Somali unionists resorted to the untrue claim that Shabaab, the main insurgent group, was a Somaliland agent, because many of its leaders were Isaq northerners. This was fantasy, but the claim’s very existence pointed to the difficulty of legitimation during a foreign occupation.

Road to Disgrace

After returning to power to remove Farmajo, Mohamud managed to secure Lasanod and announced the new Sool-Khatumo region as a separate region, under Abdulqadir Firdhiye. However, Puntland leader Deni, closely affiliated with Abu Dhabi, threatened secession in 2024. And at the end of 2025, Israel, closely linked by now with the United Arab Emirates, followed up its support for secessionists in other Muslim countries by recognizing Somaliland.

In a move whose criticism within Somaliland was swiftly suppressed, Somaliland leader Abdirahman Irro welcomed Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar and oversaw a generally shameless spree of welcomes for this new, supposedly groundbreaking relationship. Like other pro-Israel governments in the Muslim world, Hargeysa evidently supposes that ties to Israel will strengthen its international position, particularly with the United States. It is a disgraceful denouement to a political experiment that began with genuinely valid grievances but has morphed into an autocratically ruled fiefdom.

The fact is that the Somalia regime that ravaged Somaliland in the 1980s ceased to exist decades ago, and that the current Somaliland programme bears little resemblance to the Wadaniya insurgency of that period. Even as its government loudly cites the savagery of a long-extinct dictatorship in the 1980s to justify its separatism, Somaliland cracks down on dissidents and aligns itself with the most vicious regime of the 2020s.

[Disclaimer: this article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of MuslimMatters; a non-profit organization that welcomes editorials with diverse political perspectives.]

 

Related:

– Op-Ed: Understanding The Somaliland Recognition Decision – A Counterargument To The Prevailing Muslim Consensus

– History of the Bosnia War [Part 1] – Thirty Years After Srebrenica

The post Op-Ed: Bitterness Prolonged – A Short History Of The Somaliland Dispute appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.