Tragedy in New York – 9/11

*Most independent studies exonerated Muslims of any role:

* Demonization of Islam and Muslims continues:

 

In the US, and indeed in much of the western world, the attacks of 9/11 have been declared as the most catastrophic event ever to occur in history. The attacks being dramatic is not in doubt; what is less well established is the identity of the perpetrators as well as the manner in which the buildings collapsed and why.

 

There is a growing body of skeptics worldwide that does not buy into the official version. This group includes many family members of the victims as well. We are not concerned here with discussing the what, how and whys of the attacks. Rather, we want to focus on how these attacks have been used to launch military invasions of Muslim countries and the manner in which civil liberties have been severely curtailed in the name of security.

 

 

In the aftermath of the 9/11 events at the World Trade Centre in New York, a global campaign was unleashed in the United States led West against Islam and the Muslims. The campaign spearheaded has been so comprehensive that it strikes at the very root of political, military, economic, financial, social, religious and even cultural life of Muslims all over the world.

Under the guise of ‘hunting down terrorists’, the hysteria created was such that even to suggest that the 9/11 attacks were a response to American policies in the Muslim world was met by the US with outrage and condemned as ‘unpatriotic’, ‘treacherous’, or as ‘appeasement’ of terrorism.

 

Under this campaign all Muslim countries, individuals, Islamic banking and financial institutions, organizations, charities, mosques, religious schools and anything and everything related to Islam and Muslims have become objects of suspicion and hatred. Calls for the elimination of these Islamic Institutes have been echoed by the Western media in servitude helping to stem the spread of Islam in the US and Europe.

Today, Muslim men with beards and women with head scarves are afraid to move freely in many countries, especially in the West. Exploiting the global political climate in the aftermath of 9/11, Muslim Governments were blackmailed by the US and forced to explain their innocence and disclose details of Islamic organization activities on the pretext of investigating links to the Al Qaeda organization in their countries. Many Muslim countries and almost every country in the Middle East supplied plane loads of documents to the US giving detailed accounts of all Muslim Associations, their activities and the people involved in their respective countries. In doing so, these regimes tried to ensure their own survival rather than the interests, the dignity or security of their countries.

 

Muslim countries were also pressurized to alter syllabuses in their schools and university curriculum. Fearing the wrath of the sole super power, these rulers in Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia obediently complied with this request and introduced changes.

Every Muslim religious school was under close scrutiny and the age-old religious schools have been deliberately subjected to unwanted and unnecessary harassment. Unable to withstand the pressure, many Islamic religious schools in different parts of the world were closed down or forced to downsize their operations.

 

The menacing manoeuvre to target such schools was no less an insidious design to strike at the very core of Islamic society. The primary intention was to snuff out the spread of a great and gentle faith by conveniently employing the hobgoblin of terrorism as a smokescreen.

 

 

The campaign also covered the fast-growing Islamic economies, bringing all such banking and financial institutions under close scrutiny, under the ruse that they were closely linked to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Islamic banking and finance industry, estimated at around US$600 billion and showing an annual growth rate of 15 percent was obviously considered a threat to conventional banks. As a result several large global investors turned to the new banking industry, an ominous move which posed a serious threat to the mostly Western-owned conformist interest-based banks.

 

Many of these institutions had to run the disruptively bullying gauntlet of having their transactions closely monitored and their assets unfairly frozen on grounds that they had accepted ‘terrorist deposits’.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed Al Faisal Al Saud, one of the main architects of the Islamic finance industry, lashed out at the US-led Western nations for their smear campaign against Islamic institutions and individuals, accusing them of supporting terrorism without any substantial evidence.

 

Prince Mohammed Al Faisal, warned of a deliberate campaign to harm Islamic banks, financial institutions and Muslim investors in the West on the grounds that they are supporting terrorism without a fragment of proof to support these allegations.

 

He said, “We all condemn the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon as a crime, which has nothing to do with Islam or Muslims as a whole. But the West also should know that this has not given them the license to undertake an indiscriminate smear campaign against the Arab and Islamic institutions and organizations aimed at harming their interests.”

 

He added that the overall smear campaign, had successfully managed to turn the Western world against the Muslims, and hijacked even the legitimate freedom struggle of Muslims portraying them as ‘Islamic’ terrorists. The word of Islam, which means peace, has been tarnished by the Western media to such lengths that it is now inextricably linked it to terrorism.

 

 

 

A call by Pastor Terry Jones of a non – denominational church in Gainesville, USA to burn the Quran won swift condemnation from all over. Columnist Liz Goodwin said, “It’s increasingly looking as though the only spiritual or political figure who will not denounce Florida pastor Terry Jones’ plan to burning copies of the Quran is Jones himself .Even the church Jones founded in Germany in the 1980s is condemning the upcoming Quran-burning.

“We are surprised and shocked at the extreme radicalism being displayed (by Jones) right now on this issue,” Christian Community of Cologne Stephan Baar told the Associated Press. The 60-member church kicked out Jones in 2008. Jones’ estranged daughter says the eviction arose from her father’s reported penchant for dipping into the church’s till to pay his own expenses.

Indeed, so many high-profile people have spoken out against the plan that they may now outnumber the fringe church’s 50-member congregation, raising the question of whether the condemnations are magnifying the cause of a very small group of extremists.

Here’s a partial list of people who have condemned the planned bonfire – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said as an act of patriotism, the media should not cover the burning. She also said, “It’s regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, with a church of no more than 50 people can make this outrageous and distressful, disgraceful plan, and get the world’s attention”

 

The terrorist attacks of 9/11, says the Vatican, cannot be counteracted by an outrageous and grave gesture against a book considered sacred by a religious community.

 

”It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” top commander in Afghanistan General David Petraeus told the media. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems.

 

Attorney General Eric Holder called the plan “idiotic and dangerous.”

The National Association of Evangelicals, the nation’s largest umbrella evangelical group, issued a statement urging the church to cancel the event, warning it could cause worldwide tension between the two religions.

 

 

Who is burning the Quran? A Christian pastor? Ask a question, if I write the name of Jesus Christ on a piece of paper 29 times and give it to him to burn it, will he burn it? If I write the name of Moses on a piece of paper and give it to a Jew, will he burn it? What they intend to burn is the same.

 

In the Quran the name of Jesus Christ is mentioned with great honour 29 times and the name of Moses with dignity 129 times, while the name of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon all of them) is mentioned just 4 times. In addition all the 24 prophets mentioned in the Quran are there in the Bible. Make them aware that they are burning the names of Jesus Christ, Moses and all 24 prophets.

 

The problem is none of them have ever cared to read the Quran. My request to them is to read the Quran’s translation in their own language (easily available for free in mosques and in Islamic Centers) and then decide whether burning the Quran is justified or not. I may assure them that they will highly regret in their lives when at a later date they read it.

All the immoral allegations on Mother Mary, Jesus Christ and other prophets mentioned in different books have been very neatly refuted in the Quran. The popular question raised is, how was Jesus Christ born without a father? The answer given in the Quran is “how were Adam and Eve born without a father and a mother? How difficult could it be for the Creator of such a big universe?

 

Mother Mary has been given the highest honour amongst all the women of the World in the Quran. Read it and you will be enlightened.

Birth of Moses and his marriage has been described in the most respectful manner. Not a single derogatory word has ever been used any where in the Quran for any of the prophets those mentioned in the Bible. Criticism based on purely hatred is irrational.

 

Paterson Cooper in an interview on CNN asked Rev. Terry Jones, “In whose memory are you burning the Quran?” He said, “Those who died on 9/11?” When asked their names, he said, “I do not know,” and then Paterson Cooper gave few of the names of Muslims who died that day, and said, “In the memory of those Muslims you are protesting then?”

Same is the case here, without reading, without knowing what is written in it, he is burning the Quran? Why burn the Quran? Burn those books in which baseless allegations have been put on many of the prophets of God.

 

That will be fully justified. Once you read its translation, you will be convinced that it is the best book on earth; every word is of God, the God of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the last prophet Mohammed (peace is upon them all). Not a word has changed in 1431 years. Two of its original copies are preserved in Turkey and in Leningrad museums. One can obtain a copy and compare it with the one that we have today. Not a word has changed.

 

It is totally a wrong concept that it was written by the prophet Mohammad. How can a person who did not know how to read and write, write a book of over 600 pages without any mistake, describing the advance theory of science and space?

 

He could not even put his signature on the letters which he sent to the heads of states, take a little time and search ‘letters of the Prophet Mohammad’, he used to stamp all his letters with a seal of his name.

Moreover the Quran is in the highest literary form of Arabic language which he did not speak – he used to speak colloquial Arabic. How can an illiterate man write a book which describes embryological development of a fetus, space science, oceanography of which no one had any knowledge? In over 1400 years no one has found any contradiction or any mistake?

 

Every word of the Quran is the word of God – the same God of Adam, Abraham Moses and Jesus Christ. How can anyone even think of burning the words of your own God?

 

What is radical about Islam or the teachings of the Quran? Without reading it you call it radical!

 

Appeals were made to the Muslims worldwide to not even think of burning a single copy of the Bible in retaliation because the Bible has the names of our 24 prophets whom we all respect from the core of our hearts.

 

Religion of Islam is not complete without having faith on all the prophets, those in the Bible as well as in the Quran, just read it at least once in your life.

 

 

 

 

An old American Muslim lived on a farm in the mountains of eastern Kentucky with his young grandson. Each morning Grandpa was up early sitting at the kitchen table reading his Quran. His grandson wanted to be just like him and tried to imitate him in every way he could.

 

One day the grandson asked, “Grandpa! I try to read the Quran just like you but I don’t understand it, and what I do understand I forget as soon as I close the book. What good does reading the Qur’an do?”

The Grandfather quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and replied, “Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water.

 

The boy did as he was told, but all the water leaked out before he got back to the house. The grandfather laughed and said, “You’ll have to move a little faster next time,” and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again.

This time the boy ran faster, but again the basket was empty before he returned home. Out of breath, he told his grandfather that it was impossible to carry water in a basket, and he went to get a bucket instead. The old man said, “I don’t want a bucket of water; I want a basket of water. You’re just not trying hard enough,” and he went out the door to watch the boy try in.

 

 

At this point, the boy knew it was impossible, but he wanted to show his grandfather that even if he ran as fast as he could, the water would leak out before he got back to the house. The boy again dipped

the basket into river and ran hard, but when he reached his grandfather the basket was again empty. Out of breath, he said, “See Grandpa, it’s useless!”

 

“So you think it is useless?” The old man said, “Look at the basket.” The boy looked at the basket and for the first time realized that the basket was different. It had been transformed from a dirty old coal basket and was now clean, inside and out.

 

Son, that’s what happens when you read the Qur’an .

You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, you will be changed, inside and out when you read time by time . That is the work of Allah in our lives.