Thursday 28 February 2013

Saudi to apply law for women only to sell lingerie

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia said Monday it will begin enforcing a law that allows only females to work in women’s lingerie and apparel stores, despite disapproval from the country’s top cleric.

The 2006 law banning men from working in female apparel and cosmetic stores has never been put into effect, partly because of view of hard-liners in the religious establishment, who oppose the whole idea of women working where men and women congregate together, like malls.

Saudi women , tired of having to deal with men when buying undergarments , have boycotted lingerie stores to pressure them to employ women. The government’s decision to enforce the law requiring that goes into effect Thursday.

The country is home to Islam’s holiest site in the city of Mecca and follows an ultra-conservative form of the religion known as Wahhabism.

The kingdom’s religious police, under the control of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, enforce Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam, which prohibits unrelated men and women from mingling. Women and men in Saudi Arabia remain highly segregated and are restricted in how they are allowed to mix in public.

The separation of men and women is not absolute. Women in Saudi Arabia hold high-level teaching positions in universities and work as engineers, doctors, nurses and a range of other posts.

The strict application of Islamic law forced an untenable situation in which women, often accompanied by uncomfortable male relatives, have to buy their intimate apparel from men behind the counter.

Over the past several weeks, some women have already begun working in the stores. Although the decision affects thousands of men who will lose their sales jobs, the Labor Ministry says that over 28,000 women, many of them South Asian migrants, have already applied for the jobs.

Saudi’s Arabia’s most senior cleric, Sheik Abdul-Aziz Al Sheikh, spoke out against the Labor Ministry’s decision in a recent sermon, saying it contradicts Islamic law.

“The employment of women in stores that sell female apparel and a woman standing face to face with a man selling to him without modesty or shame can lead to wrongdoing, of which the burden of this will fall on the owners of the stores,” he said, urging store owners to fear God and not compromise on taboo matters.

Saudi Arabia opens its doors to pilgrim tourists for the first time


Home to Islam’s holiest cities of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia regards itself as the guardian of Islam and is often closed off to foreigners. Even though it receives more than five million Muslim pilgrims a year, they are not allowed to travel within the country. Tourist visas are rarely issued and come with many restrictions but this is due to change as Saudi Arabia adopts a new strategy to tap into a niche market of conservative tourism.
Sunshine all year round, a medley of multi-coloured coral reefs beyond its sandy shores and the remains of an ancient desert city make an enticing tourist destination. But don’t pull out your bikini yet.
In Saudi Arabia there are no shorts, no mixing of unrelated men and women, and most significantly, no easy access into the country.
Home to Islam’s holiest cities of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia regards itself as the guardian of Islam and is often closed off to foreigners. Even though it receives more than five million Muslim pilgrims a year, they are not allowed to travel within the country.
Tourist visas are rarely issued and come with many restrictions but this is due to change as Saudi Arabia adopts a new strategy to tap into a niche market of conservative tourism.
“It is about the kind of people that come to Saudi Arabia. It is an Islamic country that is home to Islam’s holiest sites so most people who come here come for Umra and Haj (pilgrimage),” said Abdulla al-Jehani, an official at the Saudi Commission for tourism and Antiquities.
For the past six years the tourism authorities focused their efforts on attracting more locals and Gulf nationals, who are allowed entry to Saudi Arabia without a visa.
“We are working on a new program… called “Umra Plus”, which means “Umra Plus tourism”,” Jehani said, adding that visiting pilgrims will be allowed to extend their stay in the kingdom to visit certain areas that were previously inaccessible to them.
With sites such as the ancient Nabatean city in Madaen Saleh; a 300-year old village of Rijal Alma; and the remains of a famous railway linking the Levant with the holy city of Medina, Saudi Arabia has a lot to offer.
The leading oil exporter says it hopes to raise its tourism contribution to non-oil GDP to 11 per cent within the next 20 years from its current 6.5 per cent as it seeks to diversify away from oil and provide jobs for its 18 million local population.
Perched on the edge of one of Saudi Arabia’s mountains in the Western region, 1,800 kilometres above sea level, the Taif water park resort has become a hub for conservative Gulf tourists who want to have a little fun in the sun while still adhering to their religious principles.
Wearing “Islamic” swimming trunks that cover the area from his belly button to his shins, Mishaal al-Azmi and his family merge well with their surroundings at the water park resort. His wife, clad in black and veiled, sits by his side.
“Abroad they bother us. They look at us with discrimination …because of our Islamic dress. Here we feel like we are free, no one bothers us. Everyone has the same values and traditions,” he said.
Taif, along with other mountaintop destinations in Saudi Arabia, have become alluring summer hot spots for conservative families from the Gulf who are looking to enjoy a holiday in keeping with Islamic values and traditions.
Saudi Arabia follows an austere version of Sunni Islam and religious police patrol the streets to ensure adherence to Islamic Sharia, including a ban on alcohol and often music.
Men must dress modestly and women cover their figures with a loose black garment, called the abaya, while restaurants segregate single men and families into separate sections.
“Saudi Arabia is a conservative country that has its values and principles, making it different than other places, and that may attract some people,” Jehani said.
“Among the principles for the tourism vision for Saudi Arabia is that the country is and will remain conservative, having its own values and principles, and no one will change that,” he added.
Many Saudis choose to travel abroad for a change of scenery and cooler weather, but nearly 1.4 million residents of other Gulf countries visit the kingdom during summer, Jehani said.
One Kuwaiti woman, shopping for herbs in an Al Taif bazaar, said she felt safe in Saudi Arabia, free from what she considered vulgar images seen when travelling abroad.
In order for Saudi Arabia to expand its tourism industry as it aims to capitalise on pilgrim visitors it must first attract investors to build more hotels and facilities which tend to be overcrowded during peak summer times.
Tourism’s development is hampered, however, by lack of interest among investors worried about weak returns, causing a shortage of hotels and other facilities.
“We do not find ourselves in a position to reach out more in terms of leisure tourism. We are not yet ready because of the standard of the industry in terms of the services, the ease of transport between cities in the kingdom. This all needs improvement,” Jehani said.
Even though Taif is one of the most popular summer destinations in the country, it only has 24 hotels and 450 serviced apartments while it receives about 2 million tourists a year, said Ahmad Aljuaid, a local tour guide.
Investors’ main concern is also to have a steady stream of tourist all year long, not just in the summer when more people pour into the country, said Abdulhamid al-Amry, member of the Saudi Economic Association.
Prices of lodging more than double during the summer and some hotels are only open for a few months a year.
Jehani believes that the “Umra Plus” program will be one solution that will help increase demand for tourism throughout the year, and contribute to eliminating the seasonality problem.

Stock markets in Muslim lands rally during Ramadan – study

Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar marked with fasting and prayer, is also an uplifting time for stock markets in predominantly Muslim countries, according to a study by the University of New Hampshire.
Stock markets in Oman, Turkey, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia generated average returns of 38 percent during the month of Ramadan over the years 1989 through 2007, according to the report compared with their average 4.3 percent returns the rest of the year.
Ahmad Etebari, a professor of finance at the university in Durham, New Hampshire, who was lead researcher on the study, said he was surprised by the finding.
“Fasting is quite an ordeal during those long summer days in the Middle East,” said Etebari, who was born in Iran. “I expected to see the opposite.”
Since Ramadan is determined by a lunar calendar, its starting date varies from year to year. Etebari found that the markets he analyzed performed strongly, regardless of the timing of Ramadan.
Etebari concluded that the rally resulted from greater optimism during Ramadan. “This is behavioral,” Etebari said. “It stems from psychology.”
Observance of Ramadan is expected to start on or about Aug. 11 and finish on or about Sept. 10.
In the Middle East, Dubai’s main index and Abu Dhabi’s benchmark are both down so far this year, while stocks in Indonesia, an officially secular country that has the world’s largest Muslim population, are up about 20 percent.
“The implication of our find for investors is obvious,” Etebari said. “Investors seeking fast profits in the Muslim world should try to profit from the fast.”

Saudi wife-beater punished

Amman - A court in the Al Qatif province in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man found guilty of beating his wife to 30 lashes, ten days of community services, and ten days of therapy at a specialized institute, according to a Gulf News report.
The case was brought to the court by the victim whose face was bruised as a result of the abuse.
Gulf News reported that the court said the corporal punishment would be administered in public, after which the convicted abuser would be subject to assessment of his community service and response to the mandated therapy.
More-so than many other Arab states, both the civil and criminal codes of Saudi Arabia draw heavily from pre-colonial era Islamic legal traditions in which corporal and capital punishments play a prominent deterrent role.
The Al Qatif province is home to the largest concentration of the oil-rich nation’s Shia population.

Ramadan demanding for NZ All Blacks first Muslim player

All Black and Muslim convert Sonny Bill Williams is getting support from Australian boxing legend Anthony Mundine to help him through the month of fasting for Ramadan.
Williams converted to Islam two years ago. He is the first Muslim to wear the All Blacks jersey.
Mundine confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that the rugby star was following the rules of the Muslim holy month, which means he should not eat or drink water between sunrise and sunset during August.
New Zealand Academy of Sport nutritionist Dane Baker said he would be having a rough time keeping his energy levels up while fasting throughout the day.
“With someone who hasn’t grown up Muslim, like Sonny Bill, it can be quite hard for their bodies to adapt to the fasting.”
Mr Baker, who worked in Qatar with the national soccer team, said the rugby star would have a finely balanced diet to ensure he had enough energy throughout the day.
“It’s really a science because it’s all about what each individual’s needs are … with a player like Sonny Bill, I’d focus on getting as many carbs into him throughout the night as possible and also increase his fat intake for those extra calories,” he said.
Mr Baker said one of the main concerns was the depleted fluid intake because Muslims were not allowed to drink during the day.
He also said it was difficult to cram in food before sunrise because it was usually a time for prayer, so after sunset was when athletes focused on loading their bodies with energy and carbohydrates.
It was harder for athletes in non-Muslim countries to adhere to the fasting because in Middle Eastern nations event times were changed to suit Ramadan, Mr Baker said.
Two-times world boxing champion Mundine, a middleweight, said he and Williams were supporting each other during their fasting.
He said they had been in constant contact during Ramadan.
“He knows what I am going through and he knows how tough it is. The advice that I give to him is pretty simple and it relates to getting enough fluid in his body because that’s the issue that I have … I hope he gets something out of my support,” Mundine told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Mundine said he had to make changes to his training and combined the two separate sessions into one because he did not have the energy to do two a day. But he said the sacrifice and fasting was worth it.
“I’ve talked to Sonny about it all and the feeling we have is the same – first of all it makes you a stronger person. You learn a lot about yourself and what makes you tick.”
Vodafone Junior Warriors fullback Omar Slaimankhel is also strictly fasting for Ramadan.
RAMADAN
* This year lasts from August 1 until August 29.
* Healthy Muslims meant to fast from sunrise to sunset.
* Participants must refrain from all food, drink, chewing gum, tobacco and sexual contact.
* Those excused from fasting include the elderly, pre-pubescent youngsters, the ill, travellers, pregnant women, nursing mothers and menstruating women.

New Zealand leaders want Sonny Bill in Muslim list

WELLINGTON — New Zealand Islamic leaders are pushing to have All Black and “Muslim superstar” Sonny Bill Williams listed among the world’s 500 most influential Muslims, it was reported Sunday.
They are disappointed the world champion midfield back failed to make the 2011 list and will be writing to compilers — the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Jordan — to have him included next year.
The Centre says its annual list provides a window on the “movers and shakers of the Muslim world”, gives an insight into the ways Muslims impact on the world, and “shows the diversity of how people are living as Muslims today”.
Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand senior vice-president Javed Khan said he will be writing to the centre to tell them about Williams, the Herald on Sunday reported.
“Sonny Bill Williams is probably the most famous Muslim in New Zealand and, in a Rugby World Cup year, has brought the faith to prominence,” Khan said.
“I think the only reason he was not included in the list is because these people are not aware of the existence of New Zealand’s Muslim superstar and we’ll be writing to them to make sure he’s there next year.”
Williams converted to Islam in 2008 after attending prayer services at a Sydney mosque.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah topped the 2011 list of most influential Muslims.

Britain’s most influential Muslim

It was the sight of peach juice dripping from the chin of a teenage French female nudist that led a Cambridgeshire public schoolboy to convert to Islam. Thirty-five years later, Timothy Winter – or Sheikh Abdul-Hakim Murad, as he is known to his colleagues – has been named one of the world’s most influential Muslims.
The hitherto unnoticed Mr Winter, who has an office in Cambridge University’s Divinity Faculty, where he is the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer of Islamic Studies, has been listed ahead of the presidents of Iran and Egypt, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Mahmoud Abbas. “Strange bedfellows,” he concedes.
Tall, bookish, fair-skinned and flaxen-haired, a wiry beard is his only obvious stylistic concession to the Islamic faith.
To the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre (RISSC), which is based at the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought in the Jordanian capital, Amman, Winter is “one of the most well-respected Western theologians” and “his accomplishments place him amongst the most significant Muslims in the world”. Winter is also the secretary of the Muslim Academic Trust, director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe, and director of the Sunna Project, which has published the most respected versions of the major Sunni Hadith collections, the most important texts in Islam after the Qur’an.
He has also written extensively on the origins of suicidal terrorism.
According to the RISSC, the list highlights “leaders and change-agents who have shaped social development and global movements”. Winter is included because “[his] work impacts all fields of work and particularly, the religious endeavors of the Muslim world”.
In the 500 Most Influential Muslims 2010, Mr Winter is below the King of Saudi Arabia – who comes in at number one – but ahead of many more chronicled figures. He is ranked in an unspecified position between 51st and 60th, considerably higher than the three other British people who make the list – the Conservative Party chairman Baroness Warsi; the UK’s first Muslim life peer, Lord Nazir Ahmed, who was briefly jailed last year for dangerous driving; and Dr Anas Al Shaikh Ali, director of the
International Institute of Islamic Thought – making him, at least in the eyes of the RISSC, Britain’s most influential Muslim.
“I think that’s very unlikely,” says Winter, seated in front of his crowded bookshelves. “I’m an academic
observer who descends occcasionally from my ivory tower and visits the real world. If you stop most people in the street they’ve never heard of me. In terms of saying anything that makes any kind of sense to the average British Muslim I think they have no need of my ideas at all.”
The son of an architect and an artist, he attended the elite Westminster School in the 1970s before graduating from Cambridge with a double first in Arabic in 1983. His younger brother is the football correspondent Henry Winter. Tim says: “I was always the clever, successful one. Henry just wanted to play football with his mates. I used to tell him, ‘I’m going to make loads of money, and you’ll still be playing football with your mates.’ Now he’s living in a house with 10 bedrooms and married to a Bond girl.” (Brother Henry insists on the telephone later: “She was only in the opening credits. And it’s not as many as 10.”)
If this seems an improbable background for a leading Muslim academic, his Damascene moment on a Corsican beach is unlikelier still.
“In my teens I was sent off by my parents to a cottage in Corsica on an exchange with a very vigorous French Jewish family with four daughters,” Winter recalls. “They turned out to be enthusiastic nudists.
“I remember being on the beach and seeing conjured up before my adolescent eyes every 15-year-old boy’s most fervent fantasy. There was a moment when I saw peach juice running off the chin of one of these bathing beauties and I had a moment of realisation: the world is not just the consequence of material forces. Beauty is not something that can be explained away just as an aspect of brain function.”
It had quite an effect on him: “That was the first time I became remotely interested in anything beyond the material world. It was an unpromising beginning, you might say.
“In a Christian context, sexuality is traditionally seen as a consequence of the Fall, but for Muslims, it is an anticipation of paradise. So I can say, I think, that I was validly converted to Islam by a teenage French Jewish nudist.”
After graduating, Winter studied at the University of al-Azhar in Egypt and worked in Jeddahat before returned to England in the late eighties to study Turkish and Persian. He says he has no difficulty reconciling the world he grew up in with the one he now inhabits. “Despite all the stereotypes of Islam being the paradigmatic opposite to life in the west, the feeling of conversion is not that one has migrated but that one has come home.
“I feel that I more authentically inhabit my old identity now that I operate within Islamic boundaries than I did when I was part of a teenage generation growing up in the 70s who were told there shouldn’t be any boundaries.”
The challenge, he feels, is much harder now for young Muslims trying to integrate with British life.
“Your average British Asian Muslim on the streets of Bradford or Small Heath in Birmingham is told he has to integrate more fully with the society around him. The society he tends to see around him is extreme spectacles of binge drinking on Saturday nights, scratchcards, and other forms of addiction apparently rampant, credit card debt crushing lives, collapsing relationships and mushrooming proportions of single lives, a drug epidemic. It doesn’t look very nice.
“That is why one of the largest issues over the next 50 years is whether these new Muslim communities can be mobilised to deal with those issues. Islam is tailor-made precisely for all those social prolems. It is the ultimate cold turkey. You don’t drink at all. You don’t sleep around. You don’t do scratchcards. Or whether a kind of increasing polarisation, whereby Muslims look at the degenerating society around them and decide ‘You can keep it’.”
It is not this, though, that contributes to some young Muslim British men’s radicalism, he says, since their numbers are often made up of “the more integrated sections”.
“The principle reason, which Whitehall cannot admit, is that people are incensed by foreign policy. Iraq is a smoking ruin in the Iranian orbit. Those who are from a Muslim background are disgusted by the hypocrisy. It was never about WMD. It was about oil, about Israel and evangelical christianity in the White House. That makes people incandescent with anger. What is required first of all is an act of public contrition. Tony Blair must go down on his knees and admit he has been responsible for almost unimaginable human suffering and despair.”
He adds: “The West must realise it must stop being the world’s police. Why is there no Islamic represenation on the UN Security Council? Why does the so-called Quartet [on the Middle East] not have a Muslim representative? The American GI in his goggles driving his landrover through Kabul pointing his gun at everything that moves, that is the image that enrages people.”
Is there a similar antagonistic symbolism in the construction of a mosque at Ground Zero?
“If the mosque represented an invading power they would have every right. Muslims in America are there as legitimate citizens with their green cards, with jobs, trying to get by. They are there in humble mode.
“Would you oppose the construction of Shinto Shrines at Pearl Harbour, of which there a number? How long must the Muslims of lower Manhattan have to wait to get a place to pray five times a day? With Islam there are certain liturgical requirements. It’s not like a church that you can build on the top of a hill and say, we’ve only got to go once a week and it looks nice up there. Muslims need to pray five times a day, they can’t get the subway out and back. It should be seen as a symbol of reconciliation not antagonism.”
Last year Winter helped set up the Cambridge Muslim College, which offers trained imams a one year diploma in Islamic studies and leadership, designed to help trained imams to better implement their knowledge and training in 21st-century Britain. This year’s first graduating class have recently returned from a trip to Rome where they had an open audience with the Pope.
In an increasingly secular Britain, sociologists suggest with regularity that “football is the new religion”. Winter understands the comparison. “Football has everything that is important to religion,” he says. “Solidarity, skill, ritual, the outward form of what looks like a sacred congregation. Except it’s not about anything.” Just don’t tell his brother.
Converts to Islam
Muhammad Ali
Cassius Clay, widely considered to be one of the greatest boxers, shocked America when he revealed in 1964 that he had converted to the Nation of Islam (becoming a Sunni 11 years later) to discard the name of his ancestors’ enslavement.
Yusuf Islam
Born Steven Demetre Georgiou in London, the singer, best known as Cat Stevens, converted to Islam at the height of his fame in 1977. Two years later he auctioned all his guitars for charity and left his music career to devote himself to educational and philanthropic causes.
Yvonne Ridley
The British journalist was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in September 2001 having crossed the border anonymously in a burqa. After her release 11 days later, she explained that she had promised one of her captors that she would read the Koran and it changed her life. She converted to Islam in the summer of 2003.
Alexander Litvinenko
The ex-Russian agent, who fled to London, fell ill in November 2006 after being poisoned by radioactive polonium-210. Two days before his death on 23 November he told his father he had converted to Islam.

Australian Muslims condemn “Sharia Law” carried out on western Sydney man

Channel seven reported that a man who recently converted to Islam in Western Sydney, was lashed by four men last night.
The man who reportedly converted to Islam recently had allegedly gone out for some alcoholic drinks with some friends. Four men allegedly of middle eastern appearance broke into the man’s apartment last night and lashed him for over half an hour as report by channel seven news at their 6:00PM program.
“There is no place for this criminal act in Islam… I hope those who did this are caught and subjected to the full extent of the law.” Ahmed Kilani, from MuslimVillage.com was shown on channel seven saying.
The 31 year old man was asleep in his apartment in Silverwater, woke up at around 1 am to four bearded men who had broken into his apartment. Three men held him down and the fourth lashed him with a cable 40 times.
The victim said that he believed Islam is a beautiful religion and that he hopes people don’t get the wrong idea about Islam because of this horrific event.
According to the report, the man made a complaint to Burwood police after the attack on Sunday but is now afraid and has since become hesitant to cooperate with authorities.
He told 7News that he believed Islam is a beautiful religion and he hoped what happened did not distort people’s view of the religion.
Forensic officers examined the apartment for evidence and are calling for help to identify the intruders.
The man who allegedly carried out the attack was described as being middle aged, strong build and around 175 cm tall, allegedly of middle eastern appearance, he is also bearded.
Anyone with information that could help the police find or identify these men should call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
UPDATE (10:02am): (from Ninemsn) The man told Auburn police he recognised the men from his local mosque and he believed they were carrying out a form of extreme Islamic punishment.
UPDATE (1:15pm): Ahmed Kilani spoke to 2UE radio station this morning. to listen to the interview click here.

Islam filling Britain’s ‘spiritual vacuum’

A Protestant renewal organization isn’t surprised that a recent study from Great Britain shows that thousands of native-born Brits are converting to Islam, while Anglican Church membership continues to decline.
A blog called The Last Crusade recently reported on a study from the Centre for Migration Policy Research at Swansea University that suggests that even though the media often portrays Islam in a negative light, more people decide to adopt the religion each year. In fact, the study says 56 per cent of the converts are white and 62 per cent are female.
Alan Wisdom, director of the Presbyterian Action committee and vice president for research and programs at The Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD), is not surprised by the report.
“When you have a spiritual vacuum, something is going to fill it. And the Church of England, and Christianity in Great Britain in general, has become very weak in its proclamation of the gospel,” he explains. “On the other hand, Islam comes in through immigration originally, not afraid to call people to conversion, and the result is that numbers of Britons are converting to Islam. [So] it may be now that the numbers of Muslims who worship every week are greater than the numbers of people worshiping in the Church of England.”
So as studies show that 30 Anglican parishes close every year, Wisdom is not surprised that 70 new mosques sprout up throughout Great Britain.

Sydney “Sharia” whipping men found guilty of assault

Four men have been found guilty of giving a Sydney electrician 40 lashes with a cable, which they said was a punishment under Islamic law for drinking alcohol and using drugs.
Zakaryah Raad, Tolga Cifci, Wassim Fayad, and Cengiz Coskun were today convicted of several charges relating to whipping Cristian Martinez, a convert to Islam, in July 2011.
Magistrate Brian Maloney told Burwood Local Court on Thursday it was an extremely unusual case.
“Until now, assaults occasioned in the course of a religious practice involving the mortification of the flesh have not been before any court in any common law country.”
Mr Maloney said that, from the outset, prosecutors were clear the case was not about sharia, or about the Islamic faith.
The court heard Mr Martinez drank alcohol and took drugs on July 15 and 16, 2011, before he called Fayad, who had been his spiritual leader, and said he wanted help to get off drugs and make a fresh start.
Fayad said: “Yeah, it means I’m going to tie you up, brother, that’s what I’m going to do.
“I’m going to tie you up, OK, and that’s what you need brother, because now you need this level because you’re not going anywhere.”
Fayad called Raad and told him to go to Mr Martinez’s western Sydney townhouse to check on him, where Raad sent Fayad a message saying something like: “Allam, the sharia bring right material. It’s important.”
Fayad, Cifci and Coskun then went to Mr Martinez’s unit late on July 16 and Fayad whipped him while the others held him down on a bed.
“Mr Fayad counted out the lashes and when he came up to number 10 … he gave Mr Martinez a break,” Mr Maloney said.
“Mr Martinez went into the bathroom and vomited.
“Mr Martinez was then forced back onto the bed and given 10 further lashes by Mr Fayad. He was given another break and went to the bathroom again.”
After the whipping, Mr Martinez sought advice from Sheikh Omar el Banna, the then Imam of the Omar Mosque in Auburn.
In a statement to the court, the sheikh said the men’s actions were not sanctioned by the Islamic community in any way.
“I said [to Mr Martinez] … ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t apply this ruling, this is wrong. This isn’t what should be happening’,” he said.
Mr Martinez said he consented to the 1st, 11th and 21st lash, but Magistrate Maloney found that his consent had been withdrawn.
Raad was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in company, stealing and two counts of intimidation, while the others were convicted of the assault and stealing charges, related to a CCTV hard drive they took from Mr Martinez’s home.
The men will be sentenced at a later date.
As Fayed left the court and was bundled into a car, he told reporters, “I love him for the sake of Allah”, referring to Mr Martinez.
SEE ALSO:

EXCLUSIVE: “I will never forgive them” – Interview with the victim of the ‘Sharia whipping’

BY: Ahmed Kilani
July 21 2011
MuslimVillage.com has managed to secure an exclusive interview with Chris Martinez the Muslim convert who was the victim of a savage vigilante style attack misguidedly attributed to Sharia Law by a group of 4 offenders.
AK:  Firstly, thanks very much for granting us this interview in these very hard circumstances.  Can I start by asking you, how long have you been Muslim for?
CM: About 3 years, I’ve been reverted to Islam.
AK: I understand that one of the guys that was allegedly involved in the attack was someone that you knew?
CM: Yes that’s true.
AK: Was it someone who helped you convert, and talked to you about Islam?
CM: Yes.
AK: So you were friends with him, in other words?
CM: Yes. 100%. We were friends.
AK: And how do you feel about him now?
CM: Words cannot describe the anger at the moment that I have. I will never forgive him but I guess Allah will judge him on the Day of Judgment, and Allah can forgive him.
AK: Can you describe to me what happened on the night you were lashed?
CM: I have a problem with drinking that I have been trying to overcome. I had been drinking at home with a friend that morning. I am not sure how, but I know that somehow somebody must have seen me drinking. I went to bed at about 7:30.  At 1am in the morning, I was woken up by my so-called friend who had another 3 individuals with him.
CM: What did he say to you?
AK: He told met that basically I would be getting 40 lashes as punishment for drinking alcohol.
AK:  What went through your mind when he said that?

Myths of the “Gay lobby” and its attack on Islam


With what appears to be a global public political debate over civil partnerships – so-called “gay marriages” – underway in many Western countries (eg. US, UK, Aus), the subject of homosexuality is in the spotlight. What is the religious perspective on this and from an Islamic perspective, is this issue being used to attack the fundamentals of Islam.
It was in the 1950s when Sir John Wolfenden popularized the idea that homosexuality could only be a “condition” rather than the result of conditioning. The major difference today is that instead of changing man-made laws, all energies are focused on challenging God’s laws and warnings. This is especially ironic since Wolfenden had defended his recommendation to decriminalize homosexual activity on the grounds that he was only “concerned with crime and not with sin”. Nowadays sin, or the religious stance to homosexuality, seems to have become a primary obsession.
In recent years, the British TV Channel Four ran two prime time documentaries on homosexuality and religion: one on “Gay Muslims” and the other on “Gay Bishops”. In the first programme we were told that, “the chances are, [we] are all related to a gay Muslim and [we] don’t even know it”. So said the president of a support group calling itself “Imaan”. It is interesting to note that the choice of this name, which means “belief”, may have been to pre-empt the likely scepticism among Muslims about its existence.
Following the clip of a “Mr Abdullah” dancing in a gay night club, the Channel Four commentator Sonia Deol informed the viewers that “Mr Abdullah is a practising Muslim… he is well-known on the local Asian gay scene”. He “prays regularly” and he also dances wildly to rock music throughout the gay pride parade. In addition to a string of incoherent reporting, the programme was also offensive to Muslims with its home-grown philosophy and ad hoc exegesis (tafsir) of the Quran.
A “Mr Adnan” declared proudly in the programme that, “the love I offer to my [male] partner is a form of worship,” whilst one Dr Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle argued that “Islam does not address homosexuality as an identity”. According to him, the prohibition of sodomy is merely “a matter of interpretation… when you are talking about the Imams there is just not an acknowledgement that there is a sexual orientation dimension to people’s personality. You have no rational control, but until there is that very basic acknowledgment that people have different inter-dispositions, a straight imam is really not going to be able to deal with a gay Muslim at any level”.
Put bluntly, the underlying assumption is that homosexuality is determined by genetic composition and people should, therefore, be exempted from accountability for acts of sodomy or lesbianism as long as they claim to be gay.
The Natural Selection Trap
If you are wondering why it is that some people are so keen nowadays to change the words and meanings of religious texts to justify their behaviour, in stark conflict with the clear pronouncements of those texts, a simple explanation will suffice. The answer may be found in the fact that, despite the pretence of having solid evidence, those who accept the theory of evolution and claim that sexuality is governed by genes are faced with a colossal consistency problem.
According to the theory of evolution, human beings evolved through a process of natural selection. That selection has chosen sexual reproduction over asexual reproduction as the means to propagate and preserve the genetic make up of the species. In this process, it is necessary to accept that any gene guiding its host away from reproductive sexual activity would have been selected out of existence. The theory depends heavily on the supposition of long periods of time – hundreds of thousands of years – for selective reproduction and this places the gay gene theory in jeopardy. Put simply, according to this logic, if cave men clubbed their fellow men over the head instead of women, or practised abstinence on account of an inability to find same-sex partners, their gay genes could not conceivably be in existence today. Natural selection would have extirpated them from the human genome.
The only satisfactory way out of this conundrum for evolutionists, at least until the 1950s in the UK and the 1970s in the United States, was that homosexuality was predominantly the result of psychosis. Indeed, until 1973, the standard official reference guide for the American Psychiatric Association, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (or DSM), listed homosexuality as a treatable sexual disorder, an illness that was routinely treated by psychiatrists with varying degrees of success. The experts at the time argued that while genetic traits such as skin colour were traceable through identifiable inheritance patterns, homosexuals are only identified by their claims and actions rather than a trait or gene.
Having recognized the futility of reliance on the genetic arguments in a society that accepted natural selection, the queer lobby, building on Wolfenden’s 1957 “condition” argument, diverted the focus of attention from “behaviour” to one of “rights”. Instead of seeking acceptance based on sexual preference, they managed to convince the media and politicians that their genetic assumptions were a foregone conclusion and they were now a “genetic entity” worthy of “minority” status.
By adopting the language and posture of human rights activists, they were able to shift the attention of policy makers and public opinion away from taking the genetic assumption to its theoretical conclusion, i.e. that the gay gene should have been selected out of existence many hundreds of years ago.
The Genetic Evidence Myth
The gay lobby likes to quote sensational, media-spun research. To name a few examples: Kallman’s 1952 research, which all future attempts failed to replicate; Dr Simon LeVay’s (1991) brains research which was grossly misrepresented; and Dean Hamer’s (1993) X chromosome research that could not confirm whether the “gay gene” was present in heterosexuals. However, a major headache for such people is that, among homosexuals of monozygotic (identical) twins, nearly half are paired with heterosexual siblings.
If, as they claim, “this is a condition based on the genetic make up of the individual”, then it becomes necessary to explain how on earth two people with identical genes (monozygotic twins) can have different sexualities? Some studies have placed the concordance rate as low as 38 per cent, which means that in 62 per cent of twins studied, one sibling was not homosexual.
In this area of research there is a large, indisputable body of evidence. For example, in the extensive study conducted by Bailey et al at the University of Queensland in Australia with over 14,000 Australian twin subjects, they found that if one twin was homosexual, 62 per cent of the time his identical brother was heterosexual. For lesbianism, it was 70 per cent (Bailey, JM; Dunne, MP; Martin, NG (2000): Genetic and Environmental influences on sexual orientation and its correlates in an Australian twin sample. J. Pers. Social Psychology 78, 524-536).
If a “homosexuality gene” did exist, then the rate of homosexual orientation in identical twins should be 100 per cent but there is a consensus in the scientific community that sexuality in monozygotic twins has never been found to be so. Indeed, some studies have found that even adoptive brothers shared a concordance rate higher than that of non-twin biological brothers (Byne, William and Bruce Parsons (1993), Human Sexual Orientation. Archives of General Psychiatry, 50:228-239). If there were a significant genetic influence on homosexuality, the result would have been the reverse.
In response to these embarrassing studies of monozygotic twins, the gay lobby has often resorted to claiming that “it is not all about genes”. Environment also plays a part. Our response to this schizophrenic escape should be that they cannot have their cake and eat it.
The scientific community is in agreement that environmental influences on behaviour are, by and large, receptive to therapy. They are not like skin colour, which is identical in monozygotic twins. When the queer lobby campaigns on the basis that homosexual orientation is unchangeable because of genes and declares, “Just as a person cannot help being black, female, or Asian, we cannot help being homosexual. We were all born this way and as such we should be treated equally,” they cannot be allowed to seek refuge with “environmental factors” whenever the genetic evidence proves them wrong.
Environmental influence is a door they have shut upon themselves by promoting this “gay-gene permanence” myth. It is a myth they have used effectively in conjunction with “civil rights” rhetoric to browbeat major mental health associations into condoning the position that “although there is insufficient research on the matter, it is nevertheless unethical to attempt reparative therapy on homosexuals”. “Homophobia as intimidation’ is one of the most pervasive techniques used to silence anyone who would disagree with the gay activist agenda” (Former President of American Psychological Association, Dr Nicholas Cummings speaking in conference at the Marina Del Rey Marriott Hotel, 12 November 2005).
The Numbers Myth
Queer “evangelists” persist in their claims that 10 per cent of the population is homosexual, a figure that is more than double that of the oft-cited Kinsey Institute report (Kinsey et al, 1948, 1953). The most authoritative study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS).
According to the NHSLS statistics, 2.8 per cent of males, and 1.4 per cent of females identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual (Laumann et al, 1994). However, only 0.9 per cent of men and 0.4 per cent of women reported having only same-sex partners since the age of 18.
The 2000 Census revealed that the total number of households in the United States is 106,741,426. Unmarried, same-sex households number 601,209, which translates to 0.42 per cent of the total – less than half of one per cent. So, in order to portray accurately the 2000 US Census Bureau’s ratio of homosexuals in TV sitcoms, you would need 199 heterosexual actors to every one homosexual. In reality today, the ratio in TV sitcoms in the United States (and the UK very soon) is one homosexual among four heterosexuals (Harrub et al 2003, Apologetics Press, Inc.).
The “Impossible to Change” Myth
When children are born with a genetic condition such as Down’s syndrome they remain in that condition for the rest of their lives. Many homosexuals, in contrast, are found to fluctuate between heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual orientations. The fact is that single-sex populations (e.g. prisons and boarding schools) or gender-separated societies with a low or nil marriage rate tend to gravitate towards fulfilling their sexual impulses with same sex partners.
Chaplains and counsellors in prisons routinely report on the trauma of heterosexual inmates realising that they might be turning into homosexuals, only to discover on release from prison that it was the situation that had led them to think and feel that way. Out of prison, not only did their heterosexual orientation return but their revulsion towards sodomy had returned to almost the same intensity that it had been prior to their incarceration.
According to a recent study conducted by Texas Tech University researchers J Travis Garland, Robert D Morgan and Amanda M Beer, despite the fact that 99 per cent of prisoners described themselves as initially heterosexual, the longer a prisoner remained in prison the more likely he was to acknowledge a homosexual orientation. The study found that those serving shorter prison sentences were more likely to maintain a heterosexual orientation.
“[H]owever, inmates currently serving a longer sentence experience a significant shift toward a sexual preference for the same sex” (Garland et al, (2005) Impact of Time in Prison and Security Level on Inmates’ Sexual Attitude, Behavior and Identity, Psychological Services, Vol. 2, No. 2, 151-162).
Evidence for effective rehabilitation therapy in homosexuals is emerging on a regular basis. One study in particular deserves attention because its author, Dr Robert L Spitzer, is a prominent psychiatrist who used to be considered a champion of the gay movement. He had played a major role in the removal of homosexuality from the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM) in 1973.
Rather surprisingly now, after conducting a study of 200 subjects, he says that “mental health professionals should stop moving in the direction of banning therapy that has, as a goal, a change in sexual orientation. Many patients, provided with informed consent about the possibility that they will be disappointed if the therapy does not succeed, can make a rational choice to work toward developing their heterosexual potential and minimizing their unwanted homosexual attractions” (Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 32, No. 5, October 2003, pp. 403-417).
The most significant aspect of Wolfenden’s 1957 Report was not that it was instrumental in decriminalising private homosexual activity in a number of western countries, but rather its role in promoting – despite the testimony of numerous psychiatrists and psychoanalysts to the contrary – the idea that homosexuality was merely a “condition”. We now know that when compiling the report, Sir Wolfenden’s Eton-educated son, Jeremy, informed him that he was homosexual. It would not be unreasonable to explore the emotional and psychological implication of that disclosure upon Sir John Wolfenden at the time of compiling his report. We need to reassess the fundamental assumptions of the 1950s in the light of what we now know from a large body of research on monozygotic twins, prison inmates and reparative therapy.
Seeking Refuge in Religion
Religion has become another distraction device in the gay movement. In 2004, the former Democratic presidential candidate and Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, signed a bill legalising civil unions for homosexuals in his state. He argued: “The overwhelming evidence is that there is a very significant, substantial, genetic component to it. From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people” (Vande Hei, Jim (2004), Dean Says Faith Swayed Decision on Gay Unions, The Washington Post, p. A-1, 08 January).
The attraction of securing legitimacy in the religious (“creationist”) camp is its potential to provide a way out of having to deal with the unnerving inconsistencies inherent in the evolutionist camp, where natural selection poses a problem. All that gays would need to say is “God made me this way”. Period. Unfortunately for them, God happens to be categorical in His condemnation of this activity and His retribution when it is endorsed by society at large.
The Scriptures (the Torah, the Bible and the Quran) are unanimous and unambiguous on this matter. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination” (Torah, Leviticus 18:22). “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Torah, Leviticus 20:13). “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground” (Bible, Genesis 19:24).
“We also sent Lot. He said to his people, Do you commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For you practise your lusts on men in preference to women; you are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds” (Al-Quran, 7:80-81). “What! Of all creatures do you come unto the males, And leave the wives your Lord created for you? Nay, you are people transgressing all limits.” (Al-Quran, 26:165-166). “We also sent Lot, As a Messenger: Behold, He said to his people, Do you do what is shameful though you see (its wickedness), Would you really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay you are people grossly ignorant” (Al-Quran, 27:54-55). “And remember Lot: Behold, He said to his people: You do commit lewdness such as no people in Creation ever committed before you. Do you indeed approach men, and cut off the highway? And practise wickedness even in your councils? But his people gave no answer but this: they said: Bring us the Wrath of God if thou tell the truth!” (Al-Quran, 29:28-29). “When Our decree issued, We turned the cities upside down and rained down on them brimstones hard as baked clay! Spread, layer on layer. Marked as from thy Lord. Nor are they very far from those who do wrong!” (Al-Quran 11:82-83).
There is a difference of opinion on the punishment in Islamic law for individuals involved in rare and isolated homosexual acts, as indeed, there are different rules pertaining to people born with malformed sexual organs. But these differences should not be used, as they have been lately, to blind people from the fact that the Quran and the Scriptures before it are categorical about the sinful nature of this activity, especially if it turns into a mass movement with proselytising proficiency and a mission to claim a significant percentage (10%) of the population.
Piggyback Agenda
What is it that makes people like Dr Scott Kugle in the Channel Four programme and others go out on so weak a limb to try to justify homosexuality and sodomy in Islam when there are so many explicit verses in the Quran warning of dire consequences?
An interesting twist to this story is that these people, despite appearances, are not primarily concerned with gay rights per se. Just as the queer movement adopted the clothing of the civil rights movement to promote its own agenda, people like Dr Kugle and other so-called “Muslim intellectuals” are riding piggyback on the gay and feminist movements to further another agenda. Homosexuality is a crucial component in a coordinated mission to force a reformation on Islam.
Incredible as this may sound, there are groups of such activists who enjoy the backing of governments, academic institutions and large publishing houses. A significant part of what we saw on Channel Four was, in fact, consistent with that agenda to use the gay debate as an excuse to deconstruct the Quran.
The two fault lines through which they hope to shake the foundation of Muslim attachment to the Quran are homosexuality and feminism. Sarah Eltantawi, Communications Director of the Progressive Muslim Union of North Americag, said in an interview on Veer Towards Queer/Radioactive Radio in the US (12/01/2005): “One thing that we realise, many of us, especially the founders [of the PMU], is that what separates progressive Islam from other aspects of the community is along the fault lines of gender and sexuality… sometimes the only thing that is different between progressives and conservatives is gender and sexuality issues… we see that as very central… this is the fault line… as Professor Omid Safi writes, and he is the Chairman of PMU, gender and sexuality need to be used as a measuring stick for broader questions.”
When asked how she would go about convincing Muslims who are reluctant to accept homosexuality in Islam, she responded: “Yes, that’s a really important question. I think one thing that I have just noticed that is really important and something that really works, is to simply incorporate more queers in daily Muslim life so that it becomes extremely hard to discriminate when someone is… praying next to you or standing next to you… so I think incorporating gays and lesbians in daily Muslim affairs would, I think, be a very revolutionary thing to do”.
Muslims will be well advised to remember the words of Paul Wolfowitz at this point: “We need an Islamic reformation and I think there is real hope for one” (Paul Wolfowitz, David Ignatius, The Read on Wolfowitz, The Washington Post, 17 January 2003, p. A230).
In conclusion, I say to members of the support group “Imaan” and all the so-called “Muslim intellectuals” who think they can attack Islam and deconstruct the Quran with postmodern mumbo-jumbo, please remember that it is the Word of God you have chosen as your target, God, Who says: “We have, without doubt, sent down this Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption)” (Al-Quran: 15:9).
Shaykh (Dr.) M. Riyad H. Nadwi is a graduate of Dar al-Uloom, Nadwatul ‘Ulama in Lucknow, India, where he studied the traditional Islamic sciences under the late Shaykh Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi (rh) and other renowned scholars of the Indian sub-continent for a period of twelve years. He has been living in Oxford for the last 20 years where he has served in several academic positions. He also holds a doctorate in Cognitive Science and has published works on a wide-ranging variety of subjects pertaining to Islamic theology, science and politics.