Peace.....


Just a question but why is it no picture I choose for an avatar shows up? sup with that??? <_<


I feel a little slighted people :angry2:


Shamms

Death of religious tolerance in Malaysia


Greg Sheridan, Kuala Lumpur


December 27, 2006


Declaring that one is explicitly free to make personal decisions about the religious faith they embrace is a hallmark of Western liberal democracy. It’s also a hallmark of an ethical and moral society that does not compel that all <i>must</i> Kowtow to any specific religion, In the free world, we often call forced religion <i>eccentric</i> or <i>hateful</i> or even <i>totalitarian</i>. In the happy fun moderate Muslim state™ of Indonesia, freedom of religion is dealt with as an imprisonable offense (or a capital offense, if the right people get their hands on you).


Here in a secular, Christian majority nations, Muslim provocateurs screech with indignation about infidel intolerance for being removed from an airplane after behaving in a provocative and threatening manner. Meanwhile, in states where there is a Muslim majority, there is actually <i>real</i> religious persecution. Places like Malaysia
, among a host of others.

Quote:LAWYER Malik Imtiaz Sawar seems a most unlikely person to attract death threats. A small, softly spoken, friendly man, the impression he gives is above all one of consideration.
What has earned him the death threats is his appearance in court on behalf of Lina Joy, a case that has become a battleground of Malaysian political and cultural identity, and of freedom of religion.


The case highlights what some analysts believe is the Arabisation of Malaysian Islam, a dynamic that can also be seen in Indonesia.


Lina Joy was once a Muslim but has converted to Christianity. She didn't do so to make any broad point or to lead any social movement. It was entirely a private decision. But in Malaysia the state takes official notice of your race and religion.


Lina Joy tried to get herself deregistered as a Muslim and reregistered as a Christian. As a Muslim she is not allowed to marry a Christian man and any children she has must be brought up as Muslims.


When the state authorities refused to accept her conversion she appealed to the courts on the basis of Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion.


The case, in which judgment could be given at any time, has polarised Malaysia. Many Muslims believe apostasy - changing your religion - is not only a sin but should be punishable by death.

Bismillah


"I think Q&A format would be helpful, I really wouldn't know where to start." - newbeginning


"Ok Insh aAllah I will start developing a simple list and post it on another thread. So keep an eye." - Muslimah


As Salam alaikum


In another thread (http://islamsms.com/bb/index.php?showtopic=3858), our sister newbeginning


said that she would answers inquiries into her story of what lead her to Islam. Insha'Allah that invitation is still out there...


But that is the purpose of this thread. Posts that even <i>slightly</i> lead the discussion off track will be DELETED. Please respect this request and the purpose of the thread. If you are not newbeginning, then you are only posting questions. If you are Shaunee, then you may answer each question as completely or concisely as you wish. It's your thread!


Questions are to be posted one at a time in order to allow our guest the time to answer (she has a busy schedule) and will allow her to focus her responses.


Jazakum Allah Khair for everyone's cooperation on this new endevour!


<b>#1 Shaunee, what was your very first introduction to Islam?</b>


As Salam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu

Once again, we are witness to the insidious cavitations of threats to our Western way of life from Moslems who exploit our liberal democracies. It’s truly a sobering thought to envision parts of Europe reduced to third world status, to see the slow downward spiral of European culture and successes as it’s population is overwhelmed by a


politico-religious ideology that crushes the human appetite for knowledge and innovation.


The term <i>freedom</i>, like any other word thrown around carelessly, can sometimes lose all resemblance to its original, intrinsic meaning. Nowhere is this more evident than in the abnormal, retrograde world of a Mullah Krekar and his throwback, hateful world where ignorance is a virtue, where rumor and superstition supplant truth and open investigation, where armed thugs are allowed to roam the streets enforcing draconian religious laws, where genocidal jihad groups participate in governance and where civilization is dragged back into the Dark Ages. Mullah Krekar claims Islam will win
.

Quote:Norway's most controversial refugee, Mullah Krekar, told an Oslo newspaper on Monday that there's a war going on between "the West" and Islam. He said he's sure that Islam will win, and he also had praise for suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
"We're the ones who will change you," Krekar told Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet in his first interview since an uproar broke out over cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims.


"Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes," Krekar said. "Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries are producing 3.5 children.


"By 2050, 30 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim." (<i>and the standard of living and quality of life will be reduced proportionally -ed.)</i>


He claimed that "our way of thinking... will prove more powerful than yours." He loosely defined "western thinking" as formed by the values held by leaders of western or non-islamic nations. Its "materialism, egoism and wildness" has altered Christianity, he claimed.


Krekar, who's been supported by the Norwegian government since arriving as a refugee from northern Iraq in the early 1990s, now faces deportation after violating the terms of his refugee status and being deemed a threat to national security.


Krekar told Dagbladet that he favours Islamic rule where political and religious leaders are one and the same. One such leader he respects, he said, is Osama bin Laden.


"Osama bin Laden is a good person," Krekar said. He claimed Osama bin Laden is considered a terrorist simply because he lacks his own state.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061225/ap_on_...ating_christmas

Quote:By QAIS AL-BASHIR, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Umm Salam draws her curtains across her windows, then settles into an armchair in a living room festooned with colored lights and a portrait of Jesus on the cross. Her Christmas tree glitters in the corner.


One of Iraq's estimated 800,000 Christians, the 56-year-old widow celebrates the holiday quietly with her children and grandchildren, as violence sweeps the country.


"It is very risky to go the church in our neighborhood, so we will have a party at home and some of our relatives will come to celebrate," she said. "They'll have to stay the night at our home due to the security situation and the curfew."


The evening service at the local church was canceled for security reasons.


The spirit of Christmas is still alive in Iraq, but it's tucked away behind the closed doors of Christian families, who represent about three percent of Iraq's 26 million people.


Most of the fighting in Iraq involves Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but Christians have also become targets. Church bombings and other sectarian attacks spiked amid a wave of anti-Christian anger over comments by


Pope Benedict XVI in September that seemed to link the prophet Muhammad's teachings to violence.


In October, a priest in the northern city of Mosul was kidnapped by a group demanding that he retract the pope's statements. He was eventually found beheaded.

Quote:According to the United Nations, more than a million Iraqis have fled since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, with about 3,000 people now leaving daily. About 40 percent of those leaving are Christian, the U.N. says.
Umm Salam, who goes by her tribal name meaning "mother of Salam" out of fear she will be targeted if she reveals her Christian name, said Sunday she has no choice but to keep her religion a secret.

Oh my, infidels. We’re teetering on the edge of a major Moslem seethe fest. It would appear that some are calling for Moslems to bear the scar of discrimination – in other words – Moslems are going to be held to the same standard as everyone else. <i><b>Oh the humanity!</b></i> Muslims forced to lift veil at airports

Quote:VEILED women will be forced to reveal their identities at UK airports under a government plan to tighten security, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.
Home Office insiders last night confirmed that immigration officials will be ordered to impose their legal right to lift the veils of passengers after it emerged a suspected police killer may have escaped the UK dressed as a Muslim woman.

Quote:<b>Ministers have been forced on to the back foot in the past week after it was revealed that asylum seeker Mustaf Jama, wanted for the murder of Pc Sharon Beshenivsky, flew from Heathrow to Somalia using his sister's passport. He is believed to have been wearing a niqab, which has just a slit for eyes</b>

Quote:It subsequently emerged that immigration staff are legally entitled to ask any female passenger to lift her veil to verify her identity against passport photographs. But officers usually wave passengers through because they do not have the time to check everyone.

Quote:Muslim women should be banned from wearing the veil, to improve security and cohesion in Britain, the Church of England's only Asian bishop has said.
The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, urged the Government to introduce legislation that would force Muslims to remove the veil when they are at work or travelling.


In an outspoken attack on the custom of Muslim women to cover their faces, the Pakistani-born bishop said that the Islamic community needed to make greater efforts to integrate into British society.


"It is fine if they want to wear the veil in private, but there are occasions in public life when it is inappropriate for them to wear it," he said.


His call for new laws to control the wearing of the veil in public comes only days after it was revealed that Mustaf Jama, the Somali suspected of murdering WPc Sharon Beshenivsky, is thought to have fled the country by dressing in the niqab, which covers the whole face except the eyes.


"Given that we are facing an unprecedented security situation, legislation needs to be introduced that allows officials to remove the veil," the bishop told The Sunday Telegraph.

Bismillah:


<i>Are you a new Muslim trying to survive Christmas? Are you feeling lonely, cooping yourself up in your room on Christmas Eve? Ignoring all the carols being sung outside your door? Or maybe you’re taking a stroll around the block trying not to notice all the Christmas trees, colored lights, and Santas that stare you in the face.</i>


<i>If all these trials of ignoring Christmas prove a complete failure (which they probably will), why not relax and think deeply whether Islam really prevents Muslims from enjoying their family gatherings? </i>


Full article HERE


Salam


Wael

Bismillah:


I read the following in the Catholic Catechism and I really need some clarification:

Quote:1357 We carry out this command of the Lord by celebrating the memorial of his sacrifice. In so doing, we offer to the Father what he has himself given us: the gifts of his creation, <b>bread and wine which, by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ, have become the body and blood of Christ. Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present</b>.

Quote:1374 The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend."In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, <b>the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained. "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present</b>."

Quote:1376 The Council of Trent summarizes the Catholic faith by declaring: "Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, <b>that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This </b> change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation."

Quote:1380 It is highly fitting that Christ should have wanted to remain present to his Church in this unique way. Since Christ was about to take his departure from his own in his visible form, he wanted to give us his sacramental presence; since he was about to offer himself on the cross to save us, he wanted us to have the memorial of the love with which he loved us "to the end,"even to the giving of his life. In his Eucharistic presence he remains mysteriously in our midst as the one who loved us and gave himself up for us,and he remains under signs that express and communicate this love:

Piece on the Iranian Propaganda Campaign against the evil "Zionists"





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Not that all Muslim nations are doing this...but it is a fact that some spout completely false and insane propoganda teach hate of the Jew. It looks like Nazi Germany all over again.





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When I as a Non-Muslim see this stuff I get chills.


I live in the US. The South in fact. I am sure that there are people who do not like Muslims...but you would NEVER see propoganda like this about Muslims. When a Muslim cleric is preaching that Muslims should "Behead All Zionists"...that makes me worried.


In church every week I hear a message of peace, forgiveness and love. I have never heard anything about beheading Mulims, Non-Christians, or anybody else.


I know having spent many hours reading on this site that many of you do not fall into the catagory of the cleric in the 2nd video. But wow...guys like that give Islam a VERY bad name.


These clips come from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and some other Islamic countries.

Here are some statements made by the Holy Father in an address to Makram Obeid, the new ambassador of Syria to the Holy See (from Zenit):


"You have spoken of your government's concern over the annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel in 1967. With a heavy heart, I note that a wide range of territorial and other disputes have led to armed conflicts in recent times that threaten the peace and stability of the entire Middle East,"


"Repeatedly I have pleaded for a cessation of violence in Lebanon, in the Holy Land and in Iraq," the Pontiff said.


Benedict XVI said: "The world looks on with great sadness at the cycle of death and


destruction, as innocent people continue to suffer and targeted individuals are kidnapped and assassinated."


The Pope said that the Church "emphatically rejects war as a means of resolving international disputes, and has often pointed out that it only leads to new and still more complicated conflicts." The Pontiff added that the solution to the conflict lies within the framework of international law and "the implementation of the relevant United Nations resolutions."