Islam News @ NYTWould you like your own blog hosted at Talk Islam? Email the admin at "salaam at talk islam dot info" !
Talk Islam uses Wordpress MU and the Prologue theme by Automattic
DISCLAIMER: Please see the About Talk Islam page for fair use issues and our privacy policy.
DONATE: Talk Islam needs your support!
I found this on a thread at DeenPort:
“Civil society is the deodorant of kufr.”
It is a ‘contention’ (see #70) by Timothy Winter. Sadly, there wasn’t much of a follow up discussion at DeenPort to the initial posting.
What do readers of Talk Islam make of this? The implications seem quite severe on the face of it, if you follow through on the argument being proposed.
Syria’s first lady calls for civil activism.
Syria’s first lady has called for the country’s citizens to play a more active role in the country’s social and economic life.
Syrian First Lady Asma Al-Assad encouraged her fellow Syrians to become more involved in non governmental organizations (NGOs) during a recent conference in the Syrian capital Damascus, according to local media outlets.
Civil society organizations are relatively rare in Syria due to the lengthy and difficult process involved in securing permission from the government to establish an NGO.
“There is a maturation of the whole trend in Syria towards the empowering of what we call civil society,” Dr Samir Al-Taqi, Director of the Orient Center for International Studies in Damascus, told The Media Line.
“Previously the use of civil society in Syria has been used not as a link to empower [social or environmental] aims but rather used on a political basis,” he said. “Syrian society is now elaborating on a new trend towards the formation and multiplication of civil society bodies.”
I’m tagging this ‘nonprofits’ because in the US that’s the term used instead of ‘NGO.’
The defense minister of Pakistan was leaving the country on official business to China when he discovered he was barred from traveling abroad because of revived corruption charges resulting from yesterday’s Supreme Court action.
Right-wingers in that country might be thinking right now that any day the Pakistani people will be begging for military rule…
In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Washington deployed money and rhetoric in a big push to bolster “moderate” Muslims against what Bush called the “real and profound ideology” of “Islamo-fascism.” Obama, promising a “new beginning between America and Muslims around the world,” has avoided dividing Muslims into competing theological camps. He has denounced “violent extremists” but, in a June speech in Cairo, stated that “Islam is not part of the problem.”
North, the USAID mission chief, said the best way to help “champions of an enlightened perspective win the day” is to avoid theology and help Indonesia “address some of the problems here, such as poverty and corruption.” Trying to groom Muslim leaders America likes, he said, won’t help.
Rethinking post-9/11 tack
This is a sharp retreat from the approach taken right after the Sept. 11 attacks, when a raft of U.S.-funded programs sought to amplify the voice of “moderates.” Hundreds of Indonesian clerics went through U.S.-sponsored courses that taught a reform-minded reading of the Koran. A handbook for preachers, published with U.S. money, offered tips on what to preach. One American-funded Muslim group even tried to script Friday prayer sermons.
Such initiatives mimicked a strategy adopted during the Cold War, when, to counter communist ideology, the United States funded a host of cultural, educational and other groups in tune with America’s goals. Even some of the key actors were the same. The Asia Foundation, founded with covert U.S. funding in the 1950s to combat communism, took the lead in battling noxious strands of Islam in Indonesia as part of a USAID-financed program called Islam and Civil Society. The program began before the Sept. 11 attacks but ramped up its activities after.
This could be interesting: Scottish Muslims create a new group to play greater role in civil life.