Seeking to become a publicity hound before contesting elections in Sweden, scheduled for September,  the right-wing Danish-Swedish politician Rasmus Baludan has apparently decided to recruit supporters and fans by resorting to an unlikely and un-classical method: Setting copies of the Holy Quran on fire.

Rasmus Baludan, the racist hoodlum, hoped and probably still hopes that by showing off his Islamophobia by provoking Muslims and offending their religious sensibilities, he would woo supporters and potential voters in Sweden. To his chagrin,  the vast majority of people in Denmark and Sweden ignored him.  In the Swedish city of Jonkoping,  A priest named Reverend Fredrik Hol drowned out an inflammatory anti-Islam rally by Baludan by ringing his church bells.

The feat succeeded in shutting up the racist harangue for some time. On behalf of nearly 1800 million adherents of Islam, I would like to salute Reverend Hol and thank him for his sublime gesture and noble behaviour.

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 Moreover, a special expression of gratitude goes to our Christian brothers and sisters in Sweden and Denmark who refused to allow the good name of Jesus Christ to be besmirched by the germ of bigotry, racism, and fanaticism. Jesus wouldn’t stir up fitna ( tumult and turmoil) to attract voters and get elected.

Baludan reportedly intends to run in the upcoming Swedish elections, scheduled for next September. However,  he seems to have failed to secure enough signatures to run for office, prompting observers to suggest that he may have taken the provocative act of burning copies of the Holy Quran, in order to woo Swedish voters.

In the 2018 elections in Denmark, Rasmus Baludan’s party “Straam Cox”,failed to win a single seat in Parliament, He was imprisoned in 2020 in Denmark for one month reportedly after being convicted of racism.

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I  believe setting the religious scripture of Islam on fire, besides being an uncivilized and outrageous act, is an expression of extreme ignorance and intolerance.

After all, there is absolutely nothing in the Quran that denigrates Jesus and his immaculate chaste mother, Mary.” The opposite is true, Jesus is celebrated in the Quran as one of the five greatest messengers of God, who include beside him, Noah,  Abraham Moses and Muhammed.

  Interestingly, the fool of Copenhagen or Stockholm invoked the mantra of freedom of expression to justify his repulsive misdeed.

Well, what about the right to be free from being insulted and offended?

Doesn’t one’s freedom end, when another person’s freedom begins? In Matthew 5:29 we read “If thy right eye offends thee, pluck it out and cast it away from you.”

Thus, freedom of speech and expression is not absolute, otherwise, words soon morph into bullets and bombs,  and bloodshed is the inevitable outcome of this folly.

Furthermore, life is not a straightforward mathematical equation. Besides the proscribed rights and privileges, there are other paramount values in life that are not recorded in a law book,  such as respect, humility, kindness,  tolerance, love, and wisdom.

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Rasmus Baludan, instead of behaving like Peter the hermit who incited  Europe against the Muslim near East, about a thousand years ago, causing the death of millions of people in the infamous Crusades, should behave like a messenger of love and peace. The Prophet Muhammed (may the peace and blessing of God be upon him) said in the authentic Hadith: You will not be able to win the hearts of people with your money, so win them with your love, kindness, and sound morality.

Also Read: Why Humanity Should Be Thankful to Prophet Muhammad

Finally, a few words to my Muslim brothers and sisters

Don’t be provoked by fools like Rasmus Baludan. Don’t lose your calm and composure, for this is his exact aim. This is because once you lose your mental equanimity, you let Satan take over you.

Remember this Aya “And do not insult those who invoke other than Allah, lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge. Thus We have made pleasing every community their deeds. Then to their Lord is their return, and He will inform them about what they used to do.” [6:108]

I am not suggesting that we should succumb to apathy and passivity and do nothing. But we should do much more than just vent our frustration and indignation. For the sake of Islam, and in order to triumph over such fanatic ignoramuses, we often need to suppress our frustration.

More to the point, we must exhaust all efforts to cooperate with people of goodwill regardless of creed and ethnicity. Needless to say,  this is undoubtedly a vital and crucial dimension for our

Success.

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Moreover,  remember that every people under the sun has their own bran, and Rasmus Baludan should be viewed as the bran of his people. And yes, we are not perfect ourselves as we do have people like him or even worse!

In fact, it is absolutely unwise and immensely damaging for Muslims, especially Muslim expatriates in the West, to erupt in fury every time an anti-Islam villain provokes Muslims by making a stupid, offensive slur, or desecrating Islamic symbols, or even burning a copy of Islam’s Holy Book.  The Quran is preserved in our hearts, and no idiot or little man can extricate the word of Allah from a believer’s heart.  Indeed, instead of displaying convulsive rage, and shouting meaningless and pugnacious slogans, we should behave with serenity, calm, and dignity lest we inadvertently convey to the world a damaging message about ourselves and about our great religion. And if we don’t behave, we will have only ourselves to blame, since the vast majority of non-Muslims don’t distinguish between what Islam says and what some Muslims do.

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So, let the dogs keep barking, and the caravan keep going. For if stones are thrown at the barking dogs, they will only bark more loudly and become more aggressive and ferocious.

Remember, nothing, absolutely nothing would hurt and disappoint these hoodlums more than your self-composure and non-violent reactions, and nothing would please them more than your screams and indulgence in violence, verbal and otherwise.

Display Islam’s glorious message, and never act on your primitive impulses and defensive reflexes for revenge.

After the great poet Muhammad Iqbal’s poem “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua” was recited by students during the morning assembly, a video of the event went viral, leading to the arrest of the principal of a government school and a Shiksha Mitra in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh. The Education Department has also placed Shiksha Mitra Wazeeruddi under investigation and suspended the school’s principal, Nahid Siddiqui. “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua”, also known as “Bachche Ki Dua” (A child’s prayer), is an Urdu language dua, or prayer, in verse form authored by Muhammad Iqbal in 1902. The poem has been set to music and sung in morning school assemblies in Pakistan as well as India.

While far-right groups have been using this and similar incidents in order to demonize Iqbal for quite some time, Muhammad Iqbal has become a contentious figure in India for many more reasons. Muhammad Iqbal is also known for writing the most popular patriotic song of India “Saare Jahan se acha Hindustan humara” (Better than the entire world, is our Hindustan), which he also called “Tarana-e-Hind” (Song of India).

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School Principal booked in UP

A First Information Report was filed against Siddiqui and Wazeeruddin at the Fareedpur police station in response to a complaint made by Sompal Singh Rathore, a local Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) official, who claimed that a “religious prayer” was recited at the public school in an effort to convert the children. He also alleged that the principal “made” the students recite the Islamic prayer with the purpose of offending Hindu sensibilities. Police have filed the FIR against the two instructors under sections 298 (deliberate intention to wound religious sentiments) and 153(provocation with intent to cause riot) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) after taking notice of the complaint.

The complaint was lodged by Sompal Singh Rathore, a local leader of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), an Indian right-wing Hindu organization based on Hindu nationalism. According to Rathore, students should be made to recite the Indian national anthem and “Saraswati Vandana” (a Hindu mantra for goddess Saraswati that is recited for music, knowledge, and wisdom). Instead, they were forced to chant “Mere Allah Burai Se Bachana Mujhko” (O Allah, protect me from evil) by the headmaster.

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Controversy over Iqbal- The Second Incident in Four Years

This is not the first time that a school head has been terminated because of a prayer. This is the second time in four years that a local VHP worker filed this type of complaint. Three years ago, in October 2019 a VHP worker alleged that the headmaster of a government primary school in the Bisalpur neighborhood of Pilibhit had forced students to recite a religious prayer that is typically recited in madrasas. As a result, the headmaster was subsequently suspended. The students also recited “Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua” by Allama Iqbal in that instance. Later, the headmaster was reinstated but moved to a different institution.

Soon after the complaint was lodged and the incident made it to the news, BJP spokespersons took to social media to support the FIR. Anyone who called out the absurdity of the complaint started to get trolled by BJP spokespersons and supporters who called these people anti-nationalists and supporters of a communal leader like Iqbal. Right-wing groups started demonizing Iqbal by calling him a bigot and father of the two-nation theory and a staunch advocate for the creation of Pakistan.

When a popular Indian journalist Rajdeep Sardesai took to his Twitter handle to express his disappointment with the incident, he was severely trolled. One BJP supporter and journalist even wrote an article dedicated to “demystifying” the myth of Iqbal’s pedestalization by the Indian left and Indian Muslims.

“While the nation and especially those advocating secularism know Iqbal only for writing ‘Sare Jaha Se Accha, Hindustan Hamara’, there’s much more to him that they conveniently sweep under the rug, which includes Tarana-e-Milli and the formation of Pakistan . . . The Islamic fundamentalist nature of Muhammad Iqbal became entirely evident as he wrote, ‘Cīn o-ʿArab hamārā, Hindūstāṉ hamārā, Muslim haiṉ ham, wat̤an hai sārā jahāṉ hamārā’ ”, the article mentioned.

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Who is Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) ?

Iqbal, one of the most prominent figures in Urdu literature during the first three decades of the 20th century, transitioned from writing about subjects that were specifically Indian and reflective of pluralism and multiculturalism to using worldwide realities to arouse, stimulate, and encouraging the imagination of Indian Muslims. Through his stirring poetry, he was one of the first to teach socialism and the socialist movement to young people in India. In addition, he added contemporary philosophical ideas that he had learned about while studying in Europe and greatly expanded the range of the educated Muslim intellectual discourse while keeping it bound to their essentially Islamic roots. He advocated “socialism” cloaked in Islam in his fiery rallies against the powers of capitalism and imperialism.

Poems like “Masjide-e-Qartaba” (The Mosque at Cordoba) and “O Ghafil Afghan” (O Heedless Afghan), written by a celebrated and lauded poet like Muhammad Iqbal, fueled a rising fear that a “grave disaster” was waiting to strike the Muslims of the sub-continent. Iqbal was one of the first to notice the struggles that the Indian Muslims were experiencing on account of their religion, and to include it in his poetry. The fate of his fellow Muslims in various colonized lands seemed to foretell even worse things for Muslims in India, who were a minority in a colonized Hindu majority population.  

Upon the formation of Pakistan, he was honored as its national poet, as well as earning the titles ‘Mufakkir-e-Pakistan’ (thinker of Pakistan), Hakeem-ul-Ummat (sage of the Ummah), and Shayar-e-Mashriq (poet of the east).

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The Vilification of Muhammad Iqbal

The most well-known of Iqbal’s many works is the timeless “Saare jahan se achcha Hindustan hamara,” which he wrote in 1904 and which became one of the songs that propelled Indian independence fighters against British authority. The right-wing groups vilifying Iqbal keep reinforcing that after writing “Tarana-e-Hind” (song of India) in 19004 he went on to write “Tarana-e-Milli” (song of the community) in 1910. They use this example to display the contradiction between the India-loving patriot that he is thought of instead of the Muslim bigot and the father of the two-nation theory that he turned out to be.

The Tarana-e-Hind and the Tarana-e-Milli show the progression from “Hindi hain hum watan hai Hindustan hamara” (We are the people of Hind and Hindustan is our homeland) to “Muslim hain hum watan hai sara jahan hamara” (We are Muslim the whole world is our homeland). However, it might be worthwhile to consider his body of work as a whole to try and understand the movement in his poetic thought. Iqbal’s history and poetic career can be split into three phases. The first one is his patriotic poetry dedicated to the Indian nation and patriotism from 1901 to 1905, after which he did philosophical poetry from 1905 to 1908, and eventually, his work and poetry focused on the Muslim community from 1908 to 1938.

Iqbal is considered to have given the vision for the creation of Pakistan, whereas Jinnah is considered to be the one who shaped this vision. 

While Iqbal’s “Tarana-e-Milli” is a poem that talks about the notions of Islamic universalism, it has no offensive hints at the Hindu community. Therefore, using this poem to call Iqbal a Muslim bigot seems absolutely absurd.

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Hindu Right Wing Group’s blind hatred for Muhammad Iqbal

Soon after his death, Iqbal (1877–1938) was denounced as the creator of the “two-nation theory,”, a follower of pan-Islamism, and a fervent supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. After being hailed as Pakistan’s “national poet,” this criticism gained momentum in the years following the 1947 partition. However, people of India should pause and think about BJP’s hatred for the same poet who gave India “Saare Jahan Se Achha Hindustan hamara,” a song that, incidentally, is used as the marching theme by not just one but multiple military bands of different regiments of the Indian armed forces.

BJP’s and other Hindu right-wing groups’ tendencies to perceive India through a starkly black or white lens, has led the Indian people towards majoritarianism and vilifying any belief system that differs from their own. The mindless loathing for Iqbal and everything he stands for seems unsurprising and even inevitable given the intensely volatile and polarizing times we live in. 

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It is with great sadness that I write about the latest shocking news from Afghanistan where the Taliban regime has decided to suspend college education for women.

A number of utterly unconvincing excuses were given to explain the sorry decree. These excuses ranged from the need to observe Hejab and modesty rules to financial hardships.

However, these justifications seemed too feeble and rickety to be taken seriously by friend and foe alike.

Predictably, traditional enemies of Islam in several Western countries wasted no time in lambasting Taliban in the strongest language and hurling all sorts of insinuations and innuendos at  Islam itself as if the Taliban regime were the ultimate paragon of God’s final testament to mankind.

I will not allow myself to be swayed or unduly influenced by the vindictive waves of Islamophobia coming from Washington, London and Paris. But the US, for example, is absolutely unfit to give humanity lectures on human rights. Indeed, the American empire needs hundreds of years to atone for its crimes against humanity,  carried out, with malice aforethought,  against the thoroughly savaged, thoroughly tormented and thoroughly impoverished people of Afghanistan. The American Yankees, whose ancestors, such as Andrew Jackson,  exterminated millions of native Americans and then had the audacity to  call the gargantuan genocide “Manifest Destiny,” and  designate a special day to celebrate the “victory” calling it a “Thanks-giving Day“

Nor am I eager to further demonize Taliban, in which case, I would be effectively joining the ranks of Afghanistan’s many enemies.

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However, consistent with the lofty Islamic ideal of “al-Amr Bilma’ruf Wan-nahye Anel Munkar” (Propagation of Virtue and Prohibition of Vice), I feel compelled to address our Afghani brothers: “Brothers, you have made a grave mistake, education for women is not only perfectly compatible with all schoobls of Islamic thought and Jurisprudence,  it is actually an outstanding commandment in the Sharia of Muhammed (S) who said in the authentic Hadith ” Seeking knowledge (through education) is a duty incumbent upon every Muslim (man and woman). Again I am not invoking this Hadith to appease anyone. I am only trying to tell the truth for its own sake.

Suspending college education for women is incompatible with Islam   

This writer has consulted all major Muslim schools of thought, especially the Four Sunni schools of Jurisprudence (Hanbali, Hanafi, Maliki and Shafie) but couldn’t find a single text or credible opinion supporting the Taliban’s decision.

The opposite is true. There are compelling and overwhelming evidences showing that Islam accords ample attention to education for men and women alike.

The Prophet of Islam (S) said in the authentic Hadith “seek knowledge from cradle to grave.” This Hadith alone should be sufficient to prompt the Taliban leadership to reconsider this unfortunate decision, which has made Muslims a laughingstock around the world.

Azhar: Suspension college education for women violates the Rules of Islam

The Grand Imam of Azhar, Ahmed Tayeb reacted angrily to the Taliban’s decision to suspend college education for women, saying” the decision is manifestly erroneous and is a product of Ignorance.”

He cited a Major classical reference of Fiqh, namely Ketab “Tahtheeb-ul-Tahteeb” (roughly translated as  “Refining the Refined”),  which mentioned more than 30 Muslim women from the  Sahaba era (Companions of the Prophet), Tabi’in (the immediate generation after Sahaba) and the following generations,  who were Sharia scholars, theologians, historians, literary writhers, and poets.

Tayeb cited two other books titled ” Prominent Women”, the first by Zaynab Ameli, and the second by Omar Reda Kahala, which explained Muslim women’s contributions in various fields of knowledge. Tayeb added that the Taliban’s strange feat didn’t represent Islam in any way and actually violated the rules of the Quran itself.

Concluding his remarks, Tayeb appealed to Taliban to “immediately cancel the unfortunate decision and reopen colleges and universities for Afghan women.”

Islam is moderation and  moderation is Islam   

There are some Islamic groups who mistakenly think extremism and excessive radicalism make a Muslim a better Muslim. This is not true at all. Extremism is as harmful as indulgence and laxity.

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According to the authentic Hadith, three men came to the Prophet to ask about religious obligations. One said: I fast every day, and never eat (in day time). The second man said: I devote myself to worshipping God and remain celibate. The third said: As for me, I pray all night long and don’t sleep. After the Prophet heard them, he said: As for me, I fast and eat, pray and sleep, and marry. He that shuns my Sunna (Way) is not my follower.

A moderate Umma   

The claim of moderation is not a public relations stunt intended to enhance Islam’s image as some westerners might be prompted to think. It is actually enshrined in the Quran and was encapsulated by the Prophet in his life.

In Surat al Baqara, verse143 (first part), we read:

وكذلك جعلناكم أمة وسطا لتكونوا شهداء على الناس ويكون الرسول عليكم شهيدا

“And thus we have made you a moderate community that you will be witnesses over humanity and the Messenger will be a witness over you.”

I believe the ball is now in the Taliban’s court, and I hope and pray that they will heed the sincere advice of Muslim Ulema to reconsider this un-Islamic feat. After all, this is not a controversial matter, and doing the right thing would dignify, not disgrace or embarrass, the Muslim movement. Doing the right thing is always right.

A final world 

 The decision by the Taliban regime to suspend college education for women in Afghanistan is apparently a symptom of a deeply stressful situation facing the country.

Afghanistan is being severely punished by the US, Britain and a number of other Western countries. The US is withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of Afghani funds  in American banks as a bargaining chip to force the Taliban regime to revolve in the American orbit and meet certain American demands. The money is urgently needed to overcome the harsh financial crisis facing Kabul.

Hence, the latest decision to suspend college education for women should be viewed as a  desperate SOS call by the radical Islamic group.

In light, Muslim states are strongly advised to offer Afghanistan every possible form of assistance to enable the country to stand up on its feet once again. Qatar has been generously helping the Taliban government ever since the movement came to power anew following the defeat and collapse of the American puppet regime earlier this year. 

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