I went to my first north London derby at the Emirates today. I was running a bit late because i chose a new route to cycle down to the stadium, but found that some of the main roads that i needed to take were blocked off completely because of Olympics construction work. In the end I got there 5 minutes late after asking 10 people for directions along the way then stopping off at to read Zuhr at nearby Finsbury Park Mosque.

The atmosphere was brilliant but still not quite as noisy as last year’s 2-0 home win against Man U.

I’m not going to write a full match report but we completely owned Tottenham. I can’t think of any notable chances falling their way, except a few headers on targe from Crouch, but the you’d expect that from him. Van Persie’s opening goal came with great timing a few minutes before half-time, and all the Arsenal fans were still yelling “who are ya?” to the Spuds fans down in the corner when Fabregas ran straight through three challenges from Tottenham players and put it past their goalie.

GOOOOAAAAAL!

Everyone went crazy and started singing or dancing.

In the end we ran out 3-0 winners comfortably. The only sour point was a sub-standard performance from Abou Diaby who couldn’t seem to put a foot right, or connect a pass until about the 75th minute. I think if we had started with Nasri in place of him, that score line could easily have been 5-0 or 6-0.

Finally, one player who has really improved massive amounts in the last 12 months or so is Alex Song. I remember when he didn’t seem to be playing too well a couple of seasons ago, but he is putting in excellent performances week-in-week-out now. Keep it up Alex!

High point today: Cesc’s goal
Bizarre point today: Walking out of the stadium next to a woman, who looked to be be in her mid-60s, singing: Three nil! We beat the scum three-nil, we beat the scum three-nil!

The more we learn about this case, the more outrageous it makes MM’s article seem. To a number of people the apology posted by Yasir Qadhi sounds less like a full retraction of the article and more like “we still believe what we said but should have used a better choice of words.”

For just a moment, I’d like to ask you to place yourself in my brother’s situation. You have a bright future as a pharmacist earning six figures. You come from a cushy life, no debt, and you have a pretty comfortable future to look forward to. The FBI approaches you and gives you this choice: “help us by informing on people in your community and we’ll reward you very well. Refuse to help us and we will make your life a living hell.”

Think about that for a second. Imagine if you had it made, and all of a sudden your entire future was threatened. My brother is facing life in prison now and his pending conviction means he can never work as a pharmacist in the states again. All he has to do is agree to inform and ALL OF THIS will DISAPPEAR. And yet he CONTINUES to refuse to, because it is flat out wrong. Who knows, maybe if he agreed, it would be YOU that got screwed from it, because as my brother’s case should show you, informants are really good at making stories up. After all, the FBI pays them $60,000 a year + housing and relocation to do it. It really doesn’t matter if you did anything wrong or not anymore. It’s all politics for the FBI, and they’re looking for glory.

My brother’s behavior is the exception in this type of situation. A lot of people end up making deals with the FBI. They figure, who cares, i’ll help them bust somebody I don’t even know, what do I care… it’s my future, gotta look out for #1. I want you to ask yourself if you would have the strength to make the right decision there. My brother did. And it could have been you, one of your close friends, or your family members that was spared this type of experience because my brother made the right decision. But now, he needs you to make the right decision. He needs you to do the responsible thing, and support him for what he is enduring as a result of protecting you. Because if people do not show their support for him after all of this, then the next guy that gets approached by the FBI like this will figure, “Why should I do the right thing? Last guy that did the right thing was thrown to the dogs. I gotta look out for myself.” We simply cannot afford to encourage that kind of behavior in our community. We need to help each other and protect each other. The FBI is not out for justice; they are out for blackmail and their favorite strategy is to turn people against one another. We simply CANNOT afford to be afraid to support each other.

One way or another, Allah will be the final adjudicator in this case, as He is in all cases. I trust in Allah and believe that He will have mercy on us. You just need to decide where YOU stand on things. Tariq has made his choice, and anybody with greater intellect or reasoning capabilities than a 1st grader can see through the RIDICULOUS story that the FBI “alleges.” You need to make your choice now. I urge you to make the right choice, and for the sake of my brother and the good of our communities, whether they be Islamic or non-Islamic, to support us at the upcoming hearing in person. Thanks for reading this.

Here is a related YouTube video.

This is a selection of the insults that have been traded in public and private following MuslimMatter’s article on Tarek Mehanna’s arrest. Unfortunately, this name-calling isn’t something that appeared with the publication of MM’s article (which has now been taken down) but has coloured arguments between the two sides for a while now.

Both sides are responsible for this bad behaviour but the bulk of the name calling quite clearly comes from the anti-MM camp. An MM guy would typically call people on the other side “despicable”, and the other brothers will return the favour with interest by calling him a “despicable sellout donkey” (sometimes monkey).

I wanted to comment on this name-calling from a number of different angles and mainly my words are addressed to the anti-MM brothers.

Cursing & name-calling is just bad character

A few hadith:

The Messenger of Allah said “When I was taken up to heaven I passed by people who had nails of copper and were scratching their faces and their breasts. I asked: ‘Who are these people, Gabriel?’ He replied: ‘They are those who were given to backbiting and who cast aspersions on people’s honor.’

‘Abdullah ibn ‘Amr said, “It is not fitting for a believer to be a curser.”

The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was asked, “Messenger of Allah, invoke a curse for us against the idolaters.’ He replied, ‘I was not sent as a curser. I was sent as a mercy.’”

Think tactically

The bad language of brothers is used as a smokescreen to avoid addressing the valid criticisms and arguments coming from the “anti-MM” camp. It is my firm belief that if the insults were to be stopped the MM guys would be forced to sit up and address them directly, or neutral readers would very quickly see for themselves where orthodox Islamic positions are really being presented.

A foul-mouth is a big turn off anyway. There are people in the middle who might be willing to listen to both sides but would immediately be turned away from the side from which the name-calling is coming. What i’m saying is that name-calling is really shooting yourself in the foot if your hope is to get people onto your side of the argument.

Name-calling is not how we remember our people of knowledge

What are people like Ali al-Timimi remembered for? After being insulted repeatedly for years and years, no one could have blamed him if he had turned to his attackers and started slagging them off. But did he? Or is he a man known for his knowledge, patience and good character?

Big-X culture

One of the characteristics of the salafi-publications lot is that once they labelled someone “off the manhaj” the guy became cast out and despised forever. As though a big-X was put next to his name. So how ironic is it that you find some critics of SP exhibiting similar behaviour? For example, the fact that Tawfique Chowdhury was one of the first people to criticise MM’s article on Tarek is completely lost on those who have had it in for him since he wrote his hugely controversial article last year.

It shouldn’t be the case that we’re operating some sort of 3-strikes and you’re out policy where a brother makes a mistake or a few mistakes and then becomes the target for constant abuse, and everything of good that he does afterwards is disregarded because of his past mistake(s).

Another irony would be if the response to this article was along the lines of “upholding the truth by attacking the deviants” because that is exactly how spubs explain their own actions.

What is your end goal?

What is the point of arguing and debating with people? Is it to establish the truth or just to insult the person in the wrong and validate yourself?

Focussing on an individual

The dumbest thing you can do when you hate someone is to offer them your good deeds – the most precious commodity you have. I’m happy to admit that there is someone i hate (offline) quite alot. But i restrain myself from talking about him because if I say something out of turn about him (and when you get angry that is bound to happen) I will end up putting a big smile on his face on the D/Judgment when he is allowed to take some of my good deeds or leave some of his bad deeds with me. This is probably the most frustrating type of loss you can imagine.

Consider the good deeds that you have earned in supporting brothers like Tarek, and the good deeds you have earned when financially supporting the families of Muslim prisoners. Do you feel safe that your loose tongues won’t land those good deeds into the scales of the very Muslims who you believe are in major error?

When Aisha radiallahu anha took the mick out of Safiyyah’s height, the Messenger of Allah said: “You have said a word which would pollute the sea if it were mixed in it.”

And some of know that what is being said privately in emails and online is going far beyond making a joke of a person’s height.

I do not intend with these comments to gloss over the fact that I and many other Muslims are concerned that for all the good articles that MM put out, when they get it wrong they get it seriously wrong. In particular, issues relating to al-walaa wal-baraa keep on coming up. The name-calling of the anti-MM brigade is a smokescreen that can be used to avoid addressing these issues for only so long.

I’m not against debate but what I’m hoping for is for people to respect certain boundaries when debating. A good example of this is Imam Anwar’s response to a controversial article by Sh. Tawfique. The original article is here, and you can see Imam Anwar’s response here.

Despite being quite scathing of the content of Tawfique Chowdhury’s article, what is notable is Imam Anwar’s constant referral to Tawfique as Shaykh Tawfique. Furthermore, Imam Anwar appears to show his own dislike of pointless verbal attacks when he comments in his next post:

“I try to maintain a level of freedom with the least degree of censorship on this site. So criticism of individuals including myself is generally allowed. But man some people are just plain cruel! I would therefore advise all my brothers and sisters who post comments to show restrain and offer constructive criticism when they do.”

If that is an attitude befitting a man like Imam Anwar who represents a specific strand of Islamic thinking today, i think its also befitting for those who look up to him.

Finally, rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said:

Do not boycott one another, do not turn away from one another, do not hate one another and do not envy one another. Be, O slaves of Allah, brothers.

UPDATE 2: The comments section for the article has closed following a huge outcry from the blog’s readership and forcing MM into an embarrassing climbdown. What remains is working out the identity of the author of this odious piece and those from amongst MM staff who reviewed it and OK’d it. The original and the update to the article use the “we” pronoun indicating that it was the decision of more than one person. I would encourage the brothers & sisters on MM’s staff who disagreed with this article to make it clear that they have nothing to do with it just as Ahmad al-Farsi & Sh. Tawfique have done so, and also to consider their affiliation with this blog which is lurching from one mistake to another.

Yesterday whilst at work i saw a headline on the BBC about a terrorism-related arrest in the US. Another one? I thought. It was only today that i came to know that the person arrested was none other than Abu Sabaya the author of the popular Iskandarani blog.

I’ve looked at some articles around the web on his arrest and found some character references for Abu Sabaya from people who have lived around him. These people describe him as being “a nice and intelligent guy”, “smart, very responsible and … mature”.

And that is probably the conclusion you would draw too if you read his writings. Abu Sabaya doesn’t pull any punches and there is no doubt that he is in favour of a vigorous defence of Muslim countries. At the same time, his words will certainly not leave you with the impression that he is a wacko jihadist. On the contrary, he has eloquently spoken against crimes such as civilian attacks in the name of Jihad.

Now, due to the recent controversies over at MM i had hoped that they would not discuss his arrest because you can’t trust them not to put their foot in it these days. But they issued an article which you can read by clicking here.

The article does a great job of discussing general concepts of the need to apply justice equally to all people. That Abu Sabaya/Tarek should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, yada, yada, yada.

At the same time it puts on a plate several statements which will make very juicy soundbites that can be used against Abu Sabaya by the media and also the prosecution.

Some of these are:

(after pointing out several times that MM is some sort of beacon of orthodox-Islamic thought) they make it known that

“Tarek has commented on our website (and others) a number of times, typically expressing his extreme dissatisfaction with our points of view.”

Quoting Abu Sabaya’s criticisms of (orthodox) MM:

“Since his subsequent release, Tarek Mehanna has distanced himself from our stances by essentially calling us hypocrites on our own website and on other internet forums known for supporting extremist agendas. Mehanna wrote that MuslimMatters was “a place for back-biting, slandering [the mujahidin] and self-comforting whining” in its stance against terrorism.”

Talk about kicking someone when they’re down!!!

The article continuously makes soft-links between Tarek and real extremist activity. For example, the article says:

“To those who have sympathy for or defend organizations that have targeted civilians, we ask that they look at and analyze the situation with more critical awareness.”

If not indirectly referring to Abu Sabaya, then why raise this as a point? And its not just me who feels this way about softly-linking Abu Sabaya to extremist crimes, but also one of MM’s own authors, Ahmad al-Farsi, who came out defending Abu Sabaya against such allegations in the comments section.

Thanks MM. But with brothers like you, who needs Fox news/FBI to make a case against a Muslim.

UPDATE 1: Alhumdulillah, the comments section for the article has started to fill with words expressing outrage at MM’s highly offensive article. If I had any ability to write eloquently or be articulate i would have repeated the comment left by “salafiya” word for word. And i would also call for the author of the article to be named and shamed!

A poem recounted from one of Robert Fisk’s articles from 1994, written by a 21-year old Muslim woman to her father killed in the Bosnian war:

Everything that I ever loved, I loved
  with you.
But all disappeared in the autumn
  night and became strange forever.
That was when sorrow moved in my
  soul and became its eternal inhabitant.
My dear father, only in dreams I am
  happy now because you are in those
  dreams.
Yet it’s all so short because when
  I wake up, the only thing that’s left
  is the mark of the tears and the
  painful truth that you no longer exist.
I’ll keep your dear image forever
  in my soul, although tears are slowly
  suffocating me as I’m writing you
  these lines.
My Mostar fleur-de-lys, I, your
  daughter Lara, will always love you.
Sleep peacefully, soldier of Cernica.
In your interrupted dreams, they killed you.
Keep dreaming your interrupted
  dreams.

Muslim Matters have closed down discussion of their recent post on taking a stand against AlQaeda, which was probably the right thing to do. The discussion had run its course, and the comments area was becoming a bit of a farce with posts being deleted, critical questions not being addressed, and just a general nose dive in the quality of the discussion after an ok start to it.

I hope that MM will now get back to its usual sort of posts which are generally well-written and elicit excellent thought-provoking discussion.

I put up some comments arising from this discussion on a couple of blogs (mainly fans of MM) which have likewise gone unaddressed. One point i raised on the issue of al-wala wal-bara was why did AlMaghrib Institute give a platform to a Muslim woman who had celebrated Muslims in the US army at the Pentagon? What is the ruling on Muslims joining an army of non-Muslims which has invaded two Muslim lands in the first place?

AlMaghrib Institute is a fantastic institute, wal-humdulillah, but they have made a massive error in giving a platform to Dalia Mogahed, and their students must raise this with AMI management instead of whooping about the fact that AMI have finally put a sister in the limelight. Especially the students in the UK where i feel that among the Muslims masses there is a better understanding of where the allegiance of a Muslim ought to be, and to whom disavowal should be shown, than in the US where there is alot more pressure to assimilate.

Here’s hoping!

They did issue a closing post on the subject which you can read here and it isn’t much more than a rant at people who they assume are cheering the bombing of marketplaces, when it seems quite clear they aren’t.

This is a regurgitation of something i posted on the IA forums a couple of weeks back. Its a question about the accountability or steering of our speakers.

In the mid-late 90s there were a number of speakers accessible to us here in the West of varying levels of scholarship. At the top of the tree, in my opinion, were people like Sh. Ja’far Idris.

Then the next level down would include people like Sh. Suhaib Hasan, and then people like Sh. Jamal Zarabozo, Ali al-Timimi and then you would have the regular du’aat who would be visiting Unis giving talks week in and week out.

This “hierarchy” of scholarship was something that seemed to be recognised by the speakers themselves. For instance, several years ago at JIMAS i happened to be in the speakers halls of residence on the day that Sh. Ja’far arrived. He took a nap and then came out of his room and rested in a chair in the lobby. As soon as the other speakers heard of his arrival, they were coming out one by one, to greet him and kiss his forehead, each one of them with a big smile on their face. And i’m talking people like Sh. Jamal and Sh. Salim al-Amry. Likewise, i remember how often Sh. Ali al-Timimi would defer answering a question to Sh. Suhaib Hasan in his presence.

Some of those speakers had a decade of learning behind them, whereas, others had an entire lifetime of learning behind them.

And from my conversations with some of these speakers one thing i remember was that you got a sense that when a speaker was investigating a tricky issue there would be discussions with the “elder” Shaikhs about it.

what concerns me is that post 9/11 the political climate has changed, many of the elder shayookh are not around, and the Muslim community is encountering one tricky situation after another. And what we have is speakers who are relatively recently graduated from Islamic institutes of learning taking decisions and positions which to the general masses like me sometimes look apologetic, and sometimes completely unislamic.

A couple of recent issues include:

Dalia Mogahed at the Pentagon celebrating Muslims in the military and then being invited to AlMaghrib’s Ilmfest.

Sh. Waleed lambasting the 80s Afghani mujahideen in a lecture last year.

Usama Hasan, well where do i start??

In the olden days you felt a sense of speakers being able to govern themselves as a group – the elder advising the younger. But what happens when most of the speakers these days fall into the “younger” category?

Then a compounding factor is the non-dissenting fanbase that has built up around certain speakers thanks to the success of AlMaghrib Institute, AlKauthar Institute, and others like that.

So now you’ve got a situation with young speakers who have a largely loyal and non-questioning fanbase, where dissent is either drowned out (or censored as at Muslim Matters, see previous post), first-hand reports of how the popstar status is getting to the heads of *some* speakers, and very tricky situations which should only be handled with the guidance of an elder hand.

So my concern is that with the absence of elder scholars, we have the following situation described by Imam Anwar:

Since 9-11 and the active involvement of the US in defining what Islam means today there has been a gradual decline in the standard of walaa’ and baraa’, with many scholars and daees in the West lowering the bar further and further.

UPDATE: Sh. Waleed retracted his comment regarding the 80s Afghani Mujahideen in a lecture here (link to the lecture is right at the bottom of the post body).

There is another interesting discussion going on over at MuslimMatters centred on Sh. Salman al-Awdah’s article against Al-Qaeda on IslamToday. Its quite an interesting discussion with some useful comments from people who agree wholeheartedly with the Shaikh, and others who don’t necessarily have differing views, but raise some interesting questions about the nature of the article, and not what it does say, but what it doesn’t say.

From time to time i’ve heard complaints from people about MM being a bit overbearing when it comes to censoring of comments, and i haven’t paid too much attention to it. Because i know we do have some nutters in our midst, and if you gave them free rein, all you’ll get is people being slagged off left, right and centre (and these ppl tend to line up the likes of Sh. Yasir Qadhi & Sh. Tawfique, in their sights). Anyhow, I posted what i believe is a perfectly polite comment twice to the site. Twelve hours later and it still hasn’t appeared, while another 20 comments have appeared since then.

My comment was as follows (i’ll consider giving a prize to the reader who can come up with the most creative reason why MM haven’t published it, haha):

Sh. Salman says…

“Therefore, we must take care not to confuse our message by discussing other wrongdoings at the same time we discuss this matter, tying them in with each other … Indeed, we should not bring up the question of terrorist attacks when we discussing social and political issues, or the media…” (to the end of the paragraph)

Tony Blair couldn’t have said it better himself. In fact, this was TB’s position time and time again when asked whether the 7/7 London bombings had anything to do with a decade of murderous sanctions on Iraq and then an illegal invasion of that same country. His answer was that there was no link, and the two are distinct issues.

Try as you may, you can’t disentangle cause and effect as Sh. Salman here suggests we do. You simply cannot deny that the extremism we’ve seen is linked to Western atrocities.

Next point, I think that Sh. Salman has built up a straw man argument. Who here has heard OBL for instance support the massacring of Muslim civilians? Anyone? Next lets take Imam Anwar who we associate with a pro-jihad stance. Has he ever publicly or privately supported the bombing of marketplaces in Iraq, Pakistan or Afghanistan? No.

As a practising Muslim i see on my screen Muslims in distress all around the world every day, and then i look at Sh. Yasir Qadhi and Sh. Yasir Birjas’s comments. Both these brothers are known primarily for their work for AlMaghrib Institute. The same Institute which recently gave a speakers platform to Dalia Mogahed who this Ramadan celebrated Muslims in the US military at the Pentagon. The same Insitute whose Sh. Waleed last year said that some of the Afghani mujahideen of the 80s were losers and humans unable to fit back into civil society.

If you ask me, these speakers are compromised on this subject and i personally do not feel comfortable with them commenting on topics like these.

PS God knows why Sh. Salman decided to drag the name of the Somali brothers thru the mud in this article!

UPDATE: Now i know my comment has been censored at MM because they’ve even removed the trackback link to this post.

UPDATE 2: The absurdity just continues. A second comment i posted at MM was edited so that the link to this blog on my name-tag was removed.

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Aaron Ramsey’s goal-scoring celebrations resemble that of a certain Frenchman who dazzled the Highbury crowd 5 years ago?

Robert Pires:

 
Aaron Ramsey:

Last season i went to the Emirates stadium a few times to watch Arsenal play. On a couple of those occasions, I knew that maghrib salaah would fall during the match. So i went a bit early and spoke to one of the stewards and asked him if he had a place where i could pray at half-time. He suggested a baby-changing room which turned out to be adequate. When half-time actually came round, i asked for the steward i’d spoken to but he’d already told the steward nearest to me about the situation, and he took me straight to the room. I was fairly impressed with how accommodating they were and its one of the reasons why i decided to buy a full season ticket for this year.