UstaadKhan Blogs

Assalamoalikum,

I am writing this email with great sorrow and anguish in my heart.
There seems to be no end to the floods, bringing misery, death and
destruction to millions in Pakistan. It has become extremely difficult
to see  women, children, men struggling to keep alive, and the worse
thing is that there seems to be no end in sight.

For some time now, I had my suspicions that Pakistan was/is under a
great calamity from Allah SWT. There has been one calamity after
another, and the earth has been shaking nearly every week (if not
every day ) in Pakistan.

My suspicions were confirmed when I came to know that Mufti Taqi
Usmaani also told a congregation to recite Surah Shams (Surah 91)
excessively to avoid azaab from Allah (SWT). Maulana sahib in his
bayan (24th May 2009), said that one of his respected elders saw
Prophet(SAW) in his dream. Prophet(SAW) told him that Pakistan may
soon be  under azaab from Allah(SWT), and in order to avoid the azaab,
the people of Pakistan should recite Surah Shams 70,000 times.

I have found the bayan. It can be found here
http://www.deeneislam.com/ur/horiz/sotiyat/mufti_taqi_usmani/288_M_M_TAQI_ZIKR_E_KASEER_HAR_JA_AUR_HAR_WAQT_HO_24_05_2009.wma.
He talks about the dream at around 34 mins into the bayan. In his next
speech, he presents the tafseer of Surah Shams. It can be found here
http://www.deeneislam.com/ur/horiz/sotiyat/mufti_taqi_usmani/Tafseer-Surah-Shams-(27-05-2009).wma

Tomorrow is the start of Ramadam, indeed a  blessed month specially to
seek Allah Karim’s mercy. I request that we recite Surah Shams
excessively and include it in our daily supplications.
The condition is Pakistan is very dire.

For those who are not familier with Mufti Taqi Usmaani, he is a
leading fiqh scholar, son of Mufti Shafi Usmaani, and is the current
head of Dar-ul-Uloom Karachi. Among other things, he is also
considered a world authority on Islamic finance. I have personally
benefited from his lectures immensely and recommend him highly.

Assalamoalikum, and as always remember me in your duaas.
Abdul Hannan Ahsan.

Fashion designer Melih Kesmen reads inside a mosque in Witten. His modern brand of Islamic clothing, Styleislam, was born from outrage over the Mohammad caricatures in Denmark three years ago

Whether at his office, on the streets of Frankfurt, or on the music stage, rapper Fouad As-Idi, has no qualms wearing a T-shirt with a special message: “Terrorism has no religion.”

“The motives are super both for Muslims and non-Muslims,” says Mr. Idi, a Moroccan-Italian Frankfurter better known as his stage name, Sayfoudin “It’s a message that speaks to everybody.”

The T-shirt is a product of Styleislam, a new brand of Muslim fashion that has been sweeping through the streets of Europe. Mixing Islamic themes with hip-hop culture in a collection of 35 T-shirts, casual wear, and accessories for men and women, Styleislam products have one main message: Being Muslim and being modern go together.

“T-shirts are a bridge, they are a means to establish a dialogue with mainstream society,” says Melih Kesmen, Styleislam’s creator, whose parents left Turkey in the 1960s to help Germany rebuild its infrastructure after the traumas of World War II. “Our goal is to strengthen the identity of European Muslims, to say that we are a part and parcel of this society – and have been for a long time. And to say that being Muslim can be cool, too,” says Mr. Kesmen from Witten, an industrial city in northwestern Germany.

Styleislam was born out of Kesmen’s outrage at the Mohammad caricatures in Denmark three years ago. “I couldn’t believe that in the name of the freedom of expression, the world was bashing a religion,” says Kesmen. “It can’t be that we always have to be in the position to justify ourselves when only 1 percent of Muslims are radical.”

Unlike thousands of Muslims who resorted to violence to vent their frustration, Kesmen used his creativity, by designing a T-shirt with something special written on it: “I love my Prophet.”

No sooner was he out on the streets with his T-shirt that people started stopping him, asking questions, convincing him of the power of fashion in making people think, and of the existence of a market for his fashion.

Today, his idea has evolved into a designing firm with eight full-time employees selling Muslim fashion with Islamic themes in the world’s four corners, from the United States to Western Europe, from Canada to Turkey. Some T-shirts are for women. One, for instance, refers to the head scarf: “Hijab – my right. My choice. My life.” Others preach tolerance. “Jesus & Muhammad / Brothers in Faith.”

Styleislam sponsored the first tournament of Germany’s Muslim Basketball Association in Frankfurt last year. The players’ T-shirt reads: “Ball Against War!”

“But for us, it’s more important when ordinary people wear the T-shirts and walk around – in the subway, on the streets – when they make their presence visible in society,” Kesmen says.

“We are fighting against the ‘They and Us’ mentality. It is nonsense to say ‘They, the Muslims, and we, Europa,’ ” Kesmen says. “My message is that there is no contradiction in being European, German, and Muslim at the same time.”

One T-shirt at a time, his message seems to be heard.

Just the other day in Frankfurt, rapper Sayfoudin’s co-workers came in with a Styleislam T-shirt, too. It said, in big black letters, “Salam.”

“Salam,” for peace.

TUESDAY was “Quit Facebook” day around the world but especially in Canada. The attempt to scuttle the famous — or infamous — social networking site was, after all, the initiative of two Canadians. Why they became so determined to do in Facebook is not entirely clear, at least to anyone who doesn’t actually use it or any of the other social networking sites — people like myself.

The phrase social networking, in fact, seems to be a bit of an oxymoron. The more addicted to sites like Facebook people become, often the less social they actually are. They may have a thousand Facebook friends but no one to talk to outside of the web. As one faithful Facebook aficionado lamented recently, she had been trying to find someone to talk to for 45 minutes without any luck. This must mean, she concluded, that she had no friends, and she may well have been right. Talking through the ether seems to me to be not much more friendly than passing gas in a crowded elevator.

But none of that seems to be the reason for Quit Facebook day. Its users don’t seem to mind that, for the most part, it is not much more than one huge, collective intellectual fart where people tell total strangers what they had for dinner and what colour underwear they were wearing while they ate.

There are serious issues surrounding Facebook and similar social networks. In Pakistan, Facebook was banned recently because a user urged others to post cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which to Muslims is blasphemy. A Pakistani court this week overturned that ban, saying the government could not limit freedom of speech and then went on to say that freedom did not include contradicting Islam. Facebook has had trouble in other countries as well — its only merit, as nearly as this low-tech Luddite can figure out — is that it is a conduit for free speech, no matter how fatuous most of that speech might be.

Rather, the reason that quitting Facebook was the talk of Twitter this week appears to be the company’s questionable collection of personal and private information from its users that it then sells to anyone who pays. Even that knowledge wasn’t enough to make Facebook users quit on Tuesday — the company won’t say how many did, but the estimate is about 40,000 pledges out 400 million users — and, with the threat of American legislation hanging over its head, Facebook has announced that it is tightening its privacy controls. That’s a step in the right direction, both for Facebook and for keeping government regulators out of the Internet, but it remains a jungle. Go ahead, talk your face off on the Internet if you want, but before you tell the world what you really did last night, give your life a reality check. No one has 1,000 friends.

Western hacks reacting to Muslim sensibilities see a rejection of free expression, but not the oppression of the West, cast in the mould of freedom, writes Ramzy Baroud.

“Any depictions of the prophet are considered blasphemous by Muslims,” readily reported Aljazeera.net English. The above statement is meant to fully summarise the reason behind the outrage that arises in Pakistan and other parts of the Muslim world whenever some provocative “artist” decides to express his freedom of expression and “expose” Muslims as anti-democratic.

Such a simplistic interpretation of such an intricate issue.

There is no denial — and no shame — in the fact that most Muslims hold their prophet in the highest regard. Despite the continued decrease in the number of faithful in increasingly secularised Western societies, Muslims are clinging even tighter to their faith. However, while the outrage over the latest transgression by some Facebook user and his “Everybody Draw Mohamed Day!” may appear as a straightforward news story (that of Western values versus Muslim “narrow-mindedness”) the true underpinnings of the outrage is suspiciously missing.

The naïve depiction by Western media makes it easy for “freedom of expression” enthusiasts to condemn Muslims for yet again failing the democracy test.

The latest Facebook episode is a remake of the same old story. Some ill-intended “artist”, under the guise of freedom of speech, takes on a confrontational mission, knowing fully the response such an act would generate, and perhaps the lives that would be lost. The Muslim masses, predictably, respond through angry protests, burning flags, denouncing America, Israel, Zionism, Facebook, YouTube and so on. Strangely, the very governments that are considered US allies tend to be on the forefront of condemning the “blasphemous” provocations. The Muslim masses are thus exploited on all fronts: by the media, by anti-Muslims, by rightwing forces in the West, and their own governments. (more…)

A group of six young IT professionals from Lahore launched www.millatfacebook.com last week

Pakistanis outraged with Facebook over “blasphemous” caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have created a spin-off networking site that they dream can connect the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims.

A group of six young IT professionals from Lahore, the cultural and entertainment capital of Pakistan, launched www.millatfacebook.com on Tuesday for Muslims to interact online and protest against blasphemy.

The private venture came after a Pakistani court ordered a block on Facebook until May 31, following deep offence over an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” page considered “blasphemous” and “sacrilegious”.

“Millatfacebook is Pakistan’s very own, first social networking site. A site for Muslims by Muslims where sweet people of other religions are also welcome,” the website tells people interested in signing up.

Dubbed MFB, after Facebook’s moniker FB, its founder says professionals are working around the clock to offer features similar to those pioneered by the wildly popular California-based prototype.

Each member has a “wall” for friends to comment on. The site offers email, photo, video, chat and discussion board facilities.

The Urdu word “Millat” is used by Muslims to refer to their nation. The website claims to have attracted 4,300 members in the last three days — mostly English-speaking Pakistanis in their 20s.

The number of aficionados may be growing, but the community is a drop in the ocean of the 2.5 million Facebook fans in Pakistan and there have been some scathing early reviews of the start-up. (more…)

It was just yesterday that Bangladesh blocked Facebook following Pakistan’s move, which came a few weeks ago. This was followed by a couple of arrests and anti-Facebook protests demanding the site be blocked in Bangladesh-.

Today, Pakistan has unblocked Facebook and it is accessible all throughout Pakistan once again. There are two things that arise from here.

Firstly, Facebook has promised Pakistan and the world that no religiously offensive material will be found accessible from Pakistan on Facebook anymore. Now, to what extent can people really trust Facebook after it took it’s user’s privacy on a roller coaster ride. Seriously speaking, for a website which does not care about its users worldwide, I do not see it holding its end of the deal for only a section of its users. Sooner or later some controversial content is going to creep into Facebook again and it will have some technical jargons to throw at us as the reason for the mishap.

Secondly, in the wake of this situation, a new version of Facebook for Muslims worldwide, Millat Facebook was created which gained popularity. Though, Millat Facebook seriously lacks the features of Facebook and its user’s base. Now that Facebook has made amendments, Muslims worldwide have options to use either Millat Facebook or stick to Facebook itself.

This can either prove as a heavy loss for Facebook or a total failure for Millat Facebook. Only time will tell which of these websites appeals more to Muslims. Facebook sure has a lesson to learn from this and needs to bring in more checks on what is going up on its pages and how it is being served in different parts of the world.

News agencies wrote: “Any depictions of the Prophet (peace be upon him) are considered blasphemous by Muslims.”

Denmark is Loosing 

Hope you all know about the Denmark newspaper who made fun of our holy Prophet PBUH and till now they do not regret… let us make them regret for good….The Danish Ambassador, Prime Minister and Denmark National Channel; all are trying to do something just to stop the boycott by Muslims since last month through which their losses have reached 4 billion Euro. If we continue to boycott Denmark products 7 months more it could reach around 80 billion Euro’s loss. Believers do not let this message stop in your PC. Please forward this text to as many Muslims as possible …. Can’t u spare 15 minutes in order to spread this message among Muslims …. ASAP? REMEMBER THE 
PROPHET (SAW) MIGHT ASK YOU ON THE DAY OF JUDGMENT,’ WHAT DID YOU DO 
WHEN THEY MADE FUN OF ME? HOW DID YOU DEFEND ME?’ 

7-up drink, LEGO, Cadbury chocolates, Hall Chewing gums or any product with barcode no. starting with 57 

Please convince all Muslims to circulate this to Muslim ummah to banHolland/Danish made products. 

JAZAKALLAH KHAYR( MAY ALLAHREWARD YOU Inshallah)