Ayman al-Zawahiri issues guidelines for jihad // Taliban aims to eliminate Non-Islamic Governance // Editor, New Age Islam denounces Jihadi Literature in the Islamic World
(The) Islamic world needs to clarify to itself and to the world at large what is Islam and what would constitute its defamation. If Islamophobes’ narratives of Islam are defamatory, then so are the narrative of Jihadi groups whose ideology thrives in the Muslim world. As I said before, both are violent, patriarchal, regressive, misogynist and based on sexual fantasies of sick men..': Sultan Shaheen, Editor, New Age Islam
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Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has issued his first specific guidelines for jihad, urging restraint in attacking other Muslim sects and non-Muslims, and in starting conflicts in countries where jihadis might find a safe base to promote their ideas. The document, published by the SITE monitoring service, provides a rare look at al-Qaeda's strategy 12 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States and the nature of its global ambitions from North Africa to the Caucasus to Kashmir. Zawahiri endorsed the right of militants to fight Russians in the Caucasus, Indians in Kashmir and the Chinese in Xinjiang. He spelled out where conflict was inevitable, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. In Pakistan, where he is believed to be hiding, Zawahiri said fighting "aims at creating a safe haven..., which can... be used as a launching pad for the struggle of establishing an Islamic system..." Read more
The third issue of the English-language magazine Azan – Call to Jihad, released by the Taliban in Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, argues for jihad until non-Islamic systems of governance are eliminated from the earth, and celebrates the cause of "an awakened Ummah," citing several new milestones in the global jihadi movement such as the jihad in Syria, Islamists' rebellion in Egypt, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan by 2014. The key argument running throughout the magazine is this: Only an Islamic system of governance will exist, while non-Muslims can live if they pay the jizia (Islamic poll tax).
The magazine was released through a Pakistan-based jihadi Internet forum on August 24, and linked from various file-sharing websites, including the U.S.-based Archive.org, which is emerging as the jihadis' preferred publishing platform. The issue, dated June/July 2013, celebrates the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan which ended August 8 for four jailbreaks executed by the jihadi forces in Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan. A cover story rejects the notion of geographical boundaries between nation-states as contrary to Islam.
The magazine contains several articles and interviews, among them: an address to the Muslims justifying jihad against the West, by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar; a message to Indian Muslims by Al-Qaeda militant Maulana Asim Umar urging jihad; a previously published letter to girls' education activist Malala Yousafzai, written by Taliban commander Adnan Rasheed; a militant's commentary on the Edward Snowden issue and how the U.S. is snooping on and violating the freedom of American citizens; and a round-up of reports from jihadi battlefields in the Middle East, among others. Read more:
Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam, denounces Jihadi Literature in the Islamic World
Oral Statement by Sultan Shahin on behalf of World Environment and Resources Council (WERC); 13 September 2013
Mr. President, We Muslims of the world, at least our governments, have been bludgeoning the United Nations since 1999 in our bid to protect Islam from defamation. But aren’t the states that claim to speak for Muslims the worst defamers of Islam themselves? Linking Islam with terrorism is considered defaming Islam. One would assume that Muslim countries would first prohibit defamation of Islam by ideologies of terror in their own countries. However, the case is quite the opposite. It is media outlets refuting the Islamist terrorist ideologies that are banned, as was a website called New Age Islam a couple of months ago in Pakistan.
The terrorist mouthpiece Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad whose extremist ideas New Age Islam refuted continues to flourish. The Taliban fatwa that New Age Islam refuted was titled: ‘Circumstances in which the killing of innocent people among infidels is justified.’ Anyone would consider such an essay defamatory to Islam. But not the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. It was the web-magazine that sought to refute this that was blocked.
It's time we Muslims made up our minds, Mr. President. What is Islam: a totalitarian, fascist, supremacist and exclusivist political ideology out to conquer the world or a spiritual path to salvation? The international community is supposed to protect Islam from Islamophobes. But the Islamophobes portray Islam exactly in the way the Jihadists do. Jihadists do it approvingly and Islamophobes disapprove and condemn. If Islamophobes’ narratives of Islam are defamatory, as they indeed are, then so are the narratives of Jihadi groups whose ideology thrives in the Muslim world. Both are violent, patriarchal, regressive, misogynist and based on sexual fantasies of sick men. It is this narrative that is taught in most of our madrasas, in schools and colleges.
I hope the UN Human Rights Council will not entertain any defamation of Islam resolution until Islam is protected from defamation by Jihadi literature in the Islamic world first.
Islam is indeed NOT and should NOT be portrayed as a religion of Terror.
But It is Jihadi literature and speeches of terrorist masterminds like Hafiz Saeed with a US 10 million dollar bounty on his head allowed to strut around the country calling for global Jihad that defame Islam the most. According to a BBC Urdu programme Sairbeen broadcast recently, the Islamist militant journals freely distributed in all cities of Pakistan are: “monthly Al-Shariat, Azaan, Nawa-e-Afghan Jihad, Hateen, Murabetoon, Al-Qalam, Zarb-e-Momin, Al-Hilal, Sada-e-Mujahid, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Rah-e-Wafa.
Clearly the countries that come here to lobby for protecting Islam from defamation keep allowing defamation of Islam in their own countries day in and day out while blocking media outlets like the multilingual Islamic website New Age Islam (available at www.NewAgeIslam.com) that is actually seeking to protect Islam from defamation.
As mentioned above, this also gives rise to another pertinent question: If it is right for Jihadis to call Islam a political ideology out to conquer the world, why should it be wrong for Islamophobes to do the same? If Ibn-e-Taimiya, Mohammad Ibn-e-Abdul Wahhab, Abul A'la Maududi and Syed Qutub can be taught in schools, why raise such a hue and a cry over Geert Wilders's Fitna, for instance... Read more:
http://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/sultan-shahin,-editor,-new-age-islam/do-not-entertain-any-defamation-of-islam-resolution-until-islam-is-protected-from-defamation-by-jihadi-literature-in-the-islamic-world-first,-sultan-shahin-asks-un-human-rights-council/d/13507
