The Islamicity Indices, compiled by the Islamicity Foundation, a US-based nonprofit, measure world governments by how well they adhere to the Islamic principles set forth in the Qur'an.

The indices measure four key areas — economy, law and governance, human and political rights, and international relations.

The indices don't include the personal duties required of Muslims, like prayer, fasting and pilgrimages.

New Zealand scored high in several areas tracked by the index, including anti-corruption laws and provisions to alleviate poverty.

No Muslim-majority country made it into the top 40. The highest-ranking country with a Muslim majority is the United Arab Emirates at No. 45.

The lowest-ranked country is Yemen, where Islam is the state religion.

The survey was conducted by Hossein Askari, an Iranian-born professor of International Business and International Affairs, and Scheherazade Rehman, director of the EU Research Center at George Washington University.

Askari launched the index with a controversial motivation: "Soon after the death of the prophet, Islam was hijacked by clerics and rulers acting in their own interest," he says.

Critics say that no one interpretation of the Qur'an is accepted widely throughout the world so any ranking is subjective.

"There's somewhat of a progressive bias … of an index which has New Zealand at the top," says Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute.

"Liberalism, as the West understands it, is not embraced by many of the world's Muslim-majority countries," he said.

The critics, don't faze Askari. "Countries have looked at this data and it becomes very clear why they perform badly and it bothers them," he says.

He added that data compiled by the Islamic Development Bank in response to the first indexes "vindicated" the Islamicity project.

Askari, who teaches at George Washington University, told the Tehran Times that "Our mission is to stimulate peaceful reform in Muslim countries by encouraging effective institutions, in the context of Islam and its recommended rules."

Source

• ozy.com
• islamicity-index.org
• ahvalnews.com
• tehrantimes.com
• Image: aboutislam.net

Judge Jocelyn Matta ordered them to memorise verses from the holy Qur'an's Surat Al-Omran. This chapter glorifies Our Lady and Jesus.

One of the verses featured hails the Virgin Mary as one of the most esteemed women in the world.

The Virgin is the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur'an and she is among only eight people to have a Quranic chapter named after them.

Mary is honoured in several Islamic texts, including the Al-Omran surah, which reads: "And [mention] when the angels said, 'O Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds'".

Although Islam does not consider Jesus a deity nor the son of God, it holds Christ in high esteem. He is regarded as Prophet Muhammad's precursor and one of God's most prominent messengers.

Islam considers Jesus a Messiah. Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad came to complete Jesus' message, rather than to refute it.

Judge Matta said her sentence aimed to educate the young men on Islam's reverence for the Virgin Mary. She said she wanted them to learn about Islam's reverence for the mother of Christ, calling the law 'a school and not just a prison'.

The sentence was so unexpected it has "gone viral" on social media.

This is because Lebanon has strict religious contempt laws: anyone accused of offending a religion or belief can face up to three years in jail.

Lebanon's prime minister Saad Hariri said the sentence was the "epitome of justice" and promotes co-existence between Muslims and Christians together through the "teaching of common ideas".

Source

• Christian Today
• Variety
• Step Feed
• Image: Walsingham

Columns by my co-religionists have appeared in newspapers ranging from the Toronto Star to The Independent in London and on CNN.com, where they avoid any reference to Sharia laws that permit Muslims to take non-Muslim female prisoners of war as sex slaves.

The fact is Muslim armies throughout history have been permitted under Islamic law to make sex slaves of non-Muslim prisoners.

Here is chapter 33, verse 50 of the Qur'an:

"O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee."

When asked for a clarification, A Saudi cleric issued a fatwa permitting sex slavery.

He said: "Praise be to Allaah. Islam allows a man to have intercourse with his slave woman, whether he has a wife or wives or he is not married … Our Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) also did that, as did the Sahaabah (his companions), the righteous and the scholars."

In the eighth century, when Arab armies invaded India, they took thousands of Hindu POWs as slaves back to the Caliph Walid in Damascus, who distributed the women as gifts to the newly emerging Arab nobility.

The ninth-century Persian historian al-Baladhuri writes in his book The Origins of the Islamic State that when the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim invaded India in the year 711AD, the non-Muslim prisoners taken were given a choice of death or slavery. Continue reading.

Tarek Fatah is a Pakistani-born Canadian writer and broadcaster. He is Muslim, and often comments on Islam for the Toronto Sun.

Source: Toronto Sun

Image: Baloch Hall

The Prince is on record as saying that "Islam can teach us today a way of understanding and living in the world which Christianity itself is poorer for having lost".

The prospective head of the Church of England was on a visit to the Qatari capital of Doha when a royal aide confirmed he has been taking lessons in Arabic for six months.

This would enable him to read the Qur'an in its original form as well as decipher Arabic script on visits to mosques and museums.

He already speaks good French, some German, and has also had lessons in Welsh.

The news that the Prince is learning Arabic so he can undertake a deeper study of the Qur'an has led Religion News Service contributor Omid Safi to speculate on his fascination with Islam.

Safi is a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina in the United States.

Examining statements Prince Charles has made about Islam, Safi says he approaches that faith "not primarily through the lens of security threats and international crises, but rather as a body of spiritual teachings".

Safi says: "Much of his attractions to Islam actually comes from the insights of the Qur'an that come to identify the natural cosmos as a site where God is revealed and experienced."

Safi goes on to say that the Prince's deep concern for environmental crises is strongly reminiscent of the writings of contemporary Muslim philosophers, such as the Iranian scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

According to Safi, Prince Charles "seems to be reiterating Nasr's view that the solution to the environmental crisis is in recovering a sense of integration, of wholeness, both inside humanity and with nature".

Sources:

Daily Mail

Religion News Service

Image: Religion News Service

Rimsha Masih is the first minor to be charged with blasphemy in Pakistan. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Witnesses claim she burnt 10 pages of a booklet used to learn basic Arabic and the Qur'an.

Continue reading

Part of the tension causing the present conflict is the fact that Assad and his supporters belong to the minority Shia Alawite sect, about 10 per cent of the population, which lords it over the majority Sunni Muslims who make up 75 per cent of Syria's citizens.

Assad represents a very secularised stream of politicians now being challenged and overthrown in many Arab countries. His motivation is not religious, and is largely to do with a ruthless maintenance of political power which is at odds with the ideals of his religion.

Among Muslims worldwide, roughly 85 per cent are Sunni, and the remaining 15 per cent are Shia. Most Shia live in Iran and Iraq. The divide between these two 'denominations' of Islam is poorly understood by non-Muslims.

The scholar featured in this interview is a Shia Muslim who belongs to the Ismaili branch of Shi'ism. Dr Reza Shah-Kazemi typifies the blend of intellectual and spiritual approaches to faith that is a mark of progressive Shia Islam. He speaks about his vision for tolerance and dialogue with other faiths based on Quranic texts.

The divide between Sunni and Shia dates back to the early years following the death in 632 CE of the Prophet Mohammed. The dispute was over who could lead the Muslim community and had little to do with basic beliefs and practices. Sunni and Shia Muslims believe the same basic tenets, and worship and pray in the same way.

From the beginning the Sunni majority held sway, arguing that any close companion of the Prophet could be Caliph (leader). The Shia minority argued that only those of the Prophet's blood lineage could lead, and, like him, they would have special powers of inspiration and interpretation of the faith. Continue reading

Sources

• Peter Kirkwood in Eureka Street
• YouTube
• Image: It Happenz

Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore condemned the desecration of the Qur'an. He described it as an act of "extreme intolerance and bigotry."

Catherine Jones, Chair of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops' Committee for Interfaith Relations said, "We can affirm that the Catholic church respects the sacred books of other religious traditions, and does not condone violence done to believers of other faiths, or towards objects or places they hold sacred, e.g. books, places of worship and pilgrimage, religious symbols, language"

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