UstaadKhan Blogs

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.

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.

There’s a misguided race to ban the face-veil in Europe, and France is taking the lead.

On May 19, the French cabinet approved legislation to ban women in France from wearing full Islamic face-coverings, the burqa, and niqab, in public areas. France, which contains Europe’s largest Muslim population, has been headed in this direction for a while.

In 2004, the government banned students and staff from wearing veils in schools. At that time, the rationale was French secularism. This time, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy says, the rationale for the ban is that it saves women from “subservience and debasement.”

But banning women from wearing a veil trespasses on their rights as much as the repressive restrictions that force them to wear a veil.

Historical precedents show that many Muslim women who veil choose to do so. In 2003 when some German states began banning head scarves in the classrooms, the teachers opted to retire instead, stating that wearing a head covering was their personal preference.

Turkey had a series of formal and informal bans, which culminated in the 1990s. But by 2008, thanks to backlash, the government was forced to introduce a constitutional right to wear the veil. (more…)

When hundreds of Pakistanis are protesting against social networking websites Facebook and Youtube for carrying the caricatures of Prophet Mohammed Peace Be Upon Him,there are many in this conservative Muslim country who oppose the decision of banning these sites and believe in tackling this situation by adopting counter measures.

Protesters in major cities of Pakistan Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Multan and Peshawar spent last Friday shouting “Death to Facebook”, “Death to America” and burnt US flags.

But surprisingly and in contrast with the past, the religious leadership, which organized the processions, could not attract big gatherings for the protests.

Around 4,000 people came in the streets to protest against the facebook and Youtube in Karachi, 3,000 turned up in Lahore, around 500 gathered in Multan, up to 400 appeared in Rawalpindi and Islamabad and 250 showed up in North-Western City of Peshawar. In Lahore, protesters burnt US, Norway, Sweden and Denmark flags. In Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Multan and Peshawar, people blocked main roads and shouted death to face book, America and Western Media, which humiliated the holly prophet.

“We have to show unity in this war of the present time,” remarked Farid Ahmed Paracha, a central leader of main opposition religious party Jamaat-e-Islami. “We should tell America that this is the final battle and we are ready to win it,” he told the gathering in Lahore. (more…)

In the name of Allāh, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Assalāmu ῾alaykum wa Rahmatullāhi Wabarakātuh

The issue of Facebook and their latest antics against our Beloved Muhammad sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam has angered and frustrated the Muslim Ummah. The reaction of the Muslim Ummah in the face of such blasphemy is appreciated. This malevolence is not foreign to Islam and the Muslims. During the time of our beloved Muhammad sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam , individuals like Ka’ab Bin Ashraf , Abu Lahab, his wife and others were also guilty of defaming our Prophet sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam. Their fate is known to all.
Our responsibility as Muslims and lovers of our beloved Muhammad sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam is as follows:

1. To delete Facebook accounts and any other media that deems it acceptable to disrespect our beloved Rasoolullah sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam and never to reactivate them again.

2. To inform others of the above as well.

3. Deleting facebook is one form of expressing our love for Rasoolullah sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam . However, objective love of Rasoolullah sallallāhu ῾alayhi wasallam is to inculcate his teachings in our life.

4. Make dua for guidance of the involved individuals.

لو كان حبك صادقا لأطعت

إن المحب لمن يحب مطيع

Had your love been true, then you would have surely obeyed him

For indeed, a lover is most obedient to his beloved

Let’s prove our obedience!!!

Wassalāmu ῾alaykum

Mufti Ebrahim Desai
Dārul Iftā, Madrasah In῾āmiyyah

The Facebook page that led the Pakistan government to ban the entire site was back online Saturday, at least for some users, after it was inaccessible for about two days.

The page was removed Thursday after one of the moderators had his e-mail and Skype account hacked into, and his personal data revealed, according to a post on the page on Saturday. The moderator then got scared and deleted the page, a blog, and e-mails, according to the post.

“This is another scare tactic from the Islamic extremists,” the post said. “We won’t fall,” it added. The moderator who removed the page has however backed out, according to the post.

The page had over 108,000 fans and over 11,700 photos posted on Saturday. Though the Facebook users who created the page put it back up Saturday, some users in India were able to access it for only a brief time before their access was once again blocked. Meanwhile access to Facebook as a whole continues to be blocked in Pakistan.

The page “Everybody draw Mohammed Day!” invites users to post caricatures of Prophet Mohammed, which led a court in Pakistan to order the site to be blocked.

There were also a large number of protests on the streets of Pakistan on Wednesday and Thursday, objecting to the page.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on Wednesday ordered operators to block Facebook on Wednesday until further orders. It also ordered YouTube to be blocked on Thursday for displaying “sacrilegious” content. It said it had also blocked over 450 links on the Internet that contained derogatory material.

“Facebook has not taken any action on this page,” a spokeswoman for the company said earlier on Saturday. The company had said on Thursday that it would not rule out making the content that Pakistan objected to inaccessible to users in Pakistan.

When dealing with user-generated content on global Web sites, there are occasions where content that is illegal in one country is not, or may even be protected, in another, Facebook said on Thursday. Most companies, including Facebook, approach this issue by preventing certain content from being shown to users in the countries where it is illegal, it added.

The PTA has said it would welcome contact from Facebook and YouTube to resolve the issue.

In Karachi, religious parties mobilised hundreds of protesters onto the streets to demand a ban on Facebook

Pakistan has blocked 800 web pages and URLs to limit access to “blasphemous” material, extending a crackdown that has already banned access to Facebook and YouTube, an official said Saturday.

The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) banned access to Facebook, YouTube and other links, which included restricted access to Wikipedia, in view of what it called “growing sacrilegious content” this week.

“At least 800 individual web pages and URLs have been blocked since the government’s orders to shut Facebook and YouTube,” Wahaj us Siraj, a spokesman for the Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan told AFP.

Siraj’s remarks came hours after the Facebook user, who organised an “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” competition to promote “freedom of expression”, evidently took down the page along with a separate blog about the campaign.

The competition sparked angry protests in Pakistan, a conservative Muslim country of 170 million, although members of a well-educated, moderate elite expressed disappointment on the blanket ban on the wildly popular websites.

Islam strictly prohibits the depiction of any prophet as blasphemous and Muslims all over the world staged angry protests over the publication of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in European newspapers in 2006.

Siraj said that any decision to restore Facebook and YouTube access would be taken by the PTA.

The offending Facebook page attracted 105,000 fans – and five pages of crude manipulated pictures and caricatures. Pages denouncing the competition and calling for a boycott of the May 20 competition attracted far more fans.

PTA spokesman Khurram Mehran told AFP on Saturday that the authority would lift the ban only after receiving instructions from the government.

“We are just an implementing authority and we have to act on the orders from the government,” Mehran said.

Pakistan also briefly banned YouTube in February 2008 in a similar protest against “blasphemous” cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

As the whole Muslim world is protesting against Facebook for displaying the caricatures of the Holy Prophet (SAW), a Lahore based lawyer vows to approach the United Nations and also will sue the Facebook admin for hurting sentiments of the Muslims across the globe.

Azhar Siddique Advocate, a public litigation lawyer, while talking to The News said that he would approach the United Nations and would urge the highest forum to take action against those who were responsible for Facebook caricatures. “I will sue the owners of Facebook (Mark Elliot Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz), the writers, the artists (Andy) and the management of Facebook who committed the heinous and serious crime”, said the lawyer.

“Facebook has temporarily been blocked in Pakistan under orders of the Lahore High Court. However this closure does not initiate proceedings for conviction and sentencing the accused under the national and international laws and protocols as well as the Charter of the United Nations. For this reason, as a deeply aggrieved person I have lodged a complaint against Facebook owners in Pakistan and will move to the highest authority in the days to come”, said Azhar Siddique. (more…)