Word: islamics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...1900s, when King Mohammed Zahir Shah ruled Afghanistan, wealthy women strolled Kabul's streets in jeans and Western dresses. The Soviets, although brutal in their occupation of the country, maintained women's rights during their decade-long rule. But when the Islam-inspired mujahedin government took over in 1992, life began to change. Women still could attend university, especially to study in the medical and educational fields, but many started wearing head scarves to appease the mullahs. When the Taliban came to power in 1996, its fanatical clerics erased all remaining rights: women are forbidden to leave the house without...
...Western man, she looks around furtively. It is the same motion countless Afghan women make every day, the rapid adjusting of veils to cover their faces or the eyes quickly downcast when men enter the room. To help empower women, Nazir runs workshops that include reading the Koran, Islam's holy book. "If women can read the Koran themselves," she says, "they will learn there is nothing in Islam that says women do not have the same rights...
...with Islam, argue a growing number of pundits, but we should be. As exemplified by Ross G. Douthat in his editorial published in this paper, these writers and pseudo-intellectuals have eschewed the labor of informing themselves about other cultures and religions for the easy but shallow polemics and stereotypes reminiscent of 19th-century racist colonial literature. By perpetuating the myths of inescapable conflict and clashes of civilizations, they become the unwitting pawns of the Osama bin Ladens of this world who are itching for such a fight...
These writers allege that violence is fundamentally written into the ideology of Islam, and thus a clash of civilizations is inevitable between Islam and the West. From Douthat, we learn that this ideology comes from the Prophet of Islam himself, “a Prophet who makes war—in self-defense, arguably, but with a glad heart, a war-like spirit...a spirit that divides the world into the House of Islam and the House of Unbelief, and declares irrevocable enmity between them.” Where, in all that we know about the life of the Prophet...
...hallmark of the Prophet’s dealings with the peaceful non-Muslim communities around him. So impressed, for example, were the Jews of Medina with the fairness of the Prophet that they often asked him to resolve their disputes according to Jewish law. The tolerance inherent in Islam lived on long after the Prophet. When the Spanish Inquisition drove the Jews (and Muslims) out of Spain, they found refuge in the Ottoman Empire, where many served in high official positions...