Articles

There are two aspects to every act of ‘ibadah in Islam: its physical (ritualistic) form, and its higher spiritual, communal, social, and moral purpose. The salah, for instance, is performed in a certain way but its true import lies in the fact that it is our direct link (sila) with Allah (swt).

The city of Istanbul is among the world’s most popular destinations among Muslims, largely because of the legacy of the Ottoman period and the numerous mosques and other monuments that survive there, through which Muslims can relate to a golden period of Islamic culture.

Deep down inside the recesses of the Islamic movement there is what one may call a dichotomy — two mutually exclusive subclasses of the worldwide Islamic movement. One of them is centered on Islamic Iran and the other around what is today called “Saudi” Arabia.

Each new session of the United General Assembly in September opens with much fanfare. Not much is achieved at the UN except that leaders of different countries get an opportunity to talk about their pet subject. Few people, whether inside or outside the assembly chambers, pay the slightest attention.

There is no clearer example of this than the deafening silence and paralysis inflicting the Muslims of the world when it comes to defending oppressed Muslims of Africa, and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa, or “Black Africa”.

A Palestinian-American, Ghassan Elashi was one of the founders and then chairman of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)

A fresh development in this schizophrenic saga is the return of Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf to the political arena

At the other end of the country, violence has periodically erupted between different ethnic and political groups in Karachi

Nine years and tens of thousands of deaths later, it is the Americans that are begging the Taliban for talks

True to their aggressive nature, the Zionists resumed illegal construction on Palestinian lands as soon as their own declared deadline of September 26 expired. Israeli Prime Minister Ben-jamin Netanyahu had the temerity to say that