Light at the end of the tunnel - An insight to Islam through poetry

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He says you are sexy but that you open yourself in all the wrong places. As a child he followed snakes to their holes cut them in two pieces. True evil is only a little rationalization away from the commonplace. Turzillo has a knack for bizarrely apt images. In other poems, the nitty-gritty of frustrated sexuality becomes obsession: Nature and human nature: With a few exceptions, the early poems are generally dreadful, mostly rhyme-driven quickies with see-saw iambics.

The later poems show more quality, including a few that are even good from head to toe, but they are lost in the pages. Besides the awkwardness such as the defeat phrase and the smash-mouth rhyming, there is a misogyny in this—and many other poems—which I find problematic.

Strange Meeting

Loads of death in here, too, which by itself is all right. The poems in this collection are gothic, mostly imitations of macabre 17th- and 18th-century rhymes, especially of a poet named Beddoes. There are nice moments here and there, even in the early poems. There is cleverness in many poems, but it tends to be superficial and to talk down to the reader. Kind of like the narrator in a spooky B-movie, but without the deliciousness.

John Amen is a friend to genre poetry. His e-zine, The Pedestal, is one of only a handful of non-genre outlets that regularly publishes spec work, even having Bruce Boston and Marge Simon as guest editors on a periodic basis. That may be one of the reasons he sent us a review copy of his new book, The New Arcana, co-authored by Daniel Harris. There is an odd, dream-like quality in the work, with a jaggedy, dense post-modern irony running throughout. The book is divided into five sections, each with a pastiche of drama, commentary and illustrations.

For example, the book opens with a few lines about a stripper and then says this:. A hot wind whips across the eternal landscape; archaic symbols are sold at auction north of Disneyland to diehard antique mongers and melancholy pedants. Pretty cool and poetic, eh? But if you want to dig deeper and not just enjoy what seems like poetic gloss, I think it paraphrases like this: Disneyland, one deconstructionist said, exists only in order to persuade us that everything else is real.

One of the things that makes this book ironic is that academic talk is one of the main objects of its satirie. But I should say that even during the parts where you have to stop digging and abandon the left side of your brain for awhile, just taking in the words can be a kind of pleasant, irrational gush.

Has anyone seen my favorite identity? Logic does stiffen, though, doesn't it?

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And curiosities become apprehensions. If not, well, maybe not so much. I only spent a handful of hours with this book, and it may be the case that spending a few dozen hours with it would unlock a treasure trove of genius. I want you to know there are tons of great lines in here. Overall, my impression of the book is that it is a faint-hearted struggle for certainty, with shreds of mathematics and residues of religion the arcana amidst a bustling population, all swirling in the post-modern dream of to-know-and-not-to-know.

In any event, go see The Pedestal for one of the best e-zines going. Bruce Boston is a legend among speculative poets, well-known for his groundbreaking books and individual poems for well over twenty-five years. He earned a Grandmaster Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association with over 50 books behind him and publication in almost every science fiction, fantasy and horror magazine that accepts poetry. So, understandably, our expectations are running high when we see his latest, Notes from the Shadow City, a collaboration with Gary William Crawford, who is also no slouch when it comes to writing.

Individually, both poets have the chops to produce an interesting work around the theme of a shadow city, but does something interesting happen when they work in concert? Crawford opens the scene for us with "Few have heard of the Shadow City. Some say it existed thousands of years ago. Most of the experience of reading this collection is akin to a waking dream, albeit with all of the boring fat flensed by a stranger's clean blade, a scalpel the color of ink.

Each poet's voice remains distinctive when reading the collection, with neither radically overpowering the other. Each has their own particular themes and strategies to address the shadows, rarely conflicting and more frequently harmonized. You welcome both voices in such a daunting cityscape, never wanting to push one or the other guide under a Shadow City bus.

Over the course of 84 pages, including Boston's illustrations, we're given a meandering visit through the different corners and landmarks of a labyrinthine city that may be a section of hell, a timeless dystopia where the geography is familiar and unfamiliar all at once. It's a one-way stop into the Shadow City. People get left there, but they don't find a way out. It's not an artless place. Poets seem to thrive there, living frantic lives among the horrors. Shadow City is a bleak zone where crime, rebellion, heartbreak and decrepit transport abound.

The majority of poems are written with parsimonious but evocative economy. I wouldn't declare the Shadow City a space devoid of hope, but hope comes in small moments. Minor gestures of humanity, mimicking another life it seems almost best to forget, if you're truly stranded here. The poems are typically a page or two, rarely more than that, but each piece is sufficient for its task: To suggest what might be known, without outwearing its welcome. Is this the American Inferno? The "last" word in dystropolis poetry?

I might not go that far, but Notes From The Shadow City presents a solid text for 21st-century speculative poets to consider. For fans of Boston or Crawford, this is a must-add. Gothic Readers Book Club review. And, unfortunately, it looks a bit like our world, too, to the extent that our world has the tone of a horror movie. A horror movie with Kafkaesque and bizarre qualities. You won't come across a crowd of yellow daffodils in this place. I mean, you know how zombie mythology is, in part, a comment on us as individual humans, how we've gone brain dead in our materialism and consumer culture, etc.?

Well, what if a whole city, as an entity, went through that same spiritual death? Imagine that, and you will have a sense of their Shadow City. There's no brain gnoshing, no zombies in here, but imagine a city sunk into oblivion, stinking of death and cruelty and futility. There are rats everywhere. I am trapped in this psychological experiment station in Shadow City where there are no doors or windows and nothing to eat but the rats. Most of these poems are well-crafted and effective, and some I am very enthusiastic about. Some of them, as you can get hints of in the above sample, tell the story, but sometimes get kind of prosaic and lose their poetic fizz.

A few poems are, well, not as strong as others, and the book wouldn't have suffered if they'd missed the bus. The other thing that I didn't enjoy was the frequent ritual oration of the name 'Shadow City' in the poems, which was supposed to be kind of an ominous gong, but after a while, due to overuse, the gong went limp, and didn't resonate much. Some of this book is the ontological unmooring we face as the consequence of our philosophy, and parts of it are perhaps more permanent qualities of life.

I think there is a sense in which the world is half buried in death, sunk into the perishing part of time, and that we who exist above this vanishing are rendered somewhat ghostlike by the constant disappearance of things. And from this point of view, then, the pessimism of a Shadow City would seem quite natural. This book is a pleasant, creepy entertainment, as well as a contemplation of the dark side.

John Philip Johnson review. And by the way, because 50 of these poems are new, they are eligible for the Rhysling award. Dumars wears many hats, ranging from the academic to the practical. She can teach you how to write or marry you. Also, she writes poetry. The book is organized into two parts. The first part is about exploring the Undiscovered Country; i. The second part is specifically about New Orleans and its mythology about death. There is an idea, commonly expressed by fantasy writers at least, that ghosts are not really entities.

Instead they are some kind of recording of any motion, or state of mind, or some other essentially static aspect of one who is no more. They merely present themselves in the same way that a sunset would. We are free to interpret what and how we like. Dumars describes a sort of hybrid between this idea and the contrary one that has ghosts exhibiting some semblance of free will. But what about ghost hearts? Confused, rooted to the spot sensing an absence but not remembering exactly what is missed.

It isn't only ghosts making an appearance in this book, but gods as well. These are gods specifically responsible for dealing with humans when they are finished with this world. And after you have done I must see that your answers are carefully recorded in the book of your heart. When religions become cosmopolitan, are their gods left behind? Or do they go along, dealing with the needs of their followers wherever they might find them?

In other poems, Dumars deals with ghosts that are real, ghosts that are both real and viewpoint characters, ghosts that are former lovers, the Day of the Dead, dead pets, mythological creatures, even the undead. I smile, and when she smiles, I see the inch-long incisors just a moment or two too late. New Orleans, Vodou, above-ground cemeteries—they get their own section. Contracts with the Devil, Marie Laveau, spirits and those who can see them. New Orleans has its own chimeric death mythology, built from pieces of various traditions. In fact, it is a big part of the New Orleans tourist industry.

An Indian in a ribbon shirt with shiny braided hair is sitting in the Cajun dance pavilion looking at me. He sees the Shadow Man. Dumars is in love with the paranormal. That's obvious from the attention she pays to every aspect of the unseen world. In tone, her work ranges from dour to tongue-in-cheek, though she is more often serious than silly.

Some of these poems are obviously about particular people or events, and are very personal. Others explore our interactions with and thoughts about what comes after this life more dispassionately. But then, how comprehensive can one be, when the subject matter is that place from which no one ever returns?

Here's hoping that will change; in the meantime, we have this book. This collection is actually two books in one, Cartographie of the Undiscovered Country, comprised of 38 poems, and Traversing the Kalunga, comprised of 16 poems, each with an intriguing introduction. This section provides a list of books, television shows, periodicals, films, websites, and New Orleans ghost tours. While the title indicates these are romance poems, or poems that romance the paranormal, there are multiple levels, or dimensions, to this tome. As Dumars shares in the introduction: The poems in both collections inscribe a simultaneously amorphous and distinct geography.

At times, it is unclear where one realm ends, the other begins, so like breath and madness. Maps are unveiled by ever-so-helpful guides or not, as the case may be who will accompany you on your journey, cautioning how to travel, what not to say, what to pack, and yes, urging you what to leave behind.

I have quite a few favorites in this tome, but wanted to point to a few to which I was compelled to return. Dumars knows her characters as well as her readers and how to bring out the best and possibly worst in them—especially those not-so-endearing traits that seem to endure into the afterlife.

Does Aunt Shirley have a gentleman caller? Traversing the Kalunga was of particular interest, as I, too, have roots in New Orleans, and am descended from a few illustrious and not-so-illustrious characters from its past. The tone definitely shifts in this second book for me. While the humor is there, caution reigns as well. In Phantom Navigation, Frazier shows us why that honor is deserved. Science, whether it is physics, astronomy, biology, or psychology, serves as the prime meridian from which each of these 49 poems start.

Five of the poems are new to this volume and, as you might expect from the section titles, most of those appear in the final section of the book. Frazier opens the collection with the title poem, and it sets the tone for what follows. The poem suggests a certain phantom-like quality to light, ideas, and love even as they are rooted in a reality that allows these nebulous qualities to be navigated. Like the poems, they challenge the reader to see ideas and qualities as part of the overarching, measurable reality we inhabit. When one thinks of "steampunk," images of an anachronistic Victorian England pop into mind.

Men in tight-fitting frock coats with waistcoats fly through the city of London on small zeppelins. Corseted women in tea gowns sip tea while steam-powered robot servants work around them. Dockworkers haul goods with the use of artificial limbs that sweat oil, the gears in the elbows straining beneath every load. This is the case with David S. Pointer's chapbook, Sinister Splashplay. In attempting to jump on the steampunk bandwagon, Pointer writes poems that, on the surface, read as steampunk but carry no rebellion, critique or challenging of the status quo within them.

His poems are thus all steam with no punk to give them substance or definition. Often, they merely describe a character, a musician for example, and what's happening to them without exploring their psychology or the cultural context that makes them who they are. This entire poem is mere description, often abstractly so, of a band and its audience.

The reader receives little if any emotion from the piece, no understanding of the band or the audience, and thus despite the vague picture that Pointer has made, there's no depth behind it to make it successful. Derivatives of cyberpunk, one key aspect is the approach and consideration of social themes within the larger context of the work. However, society is rarely mentioned, and when it is, it is rarely considered nor criticized.

Pointer also seems to be lacking in general craft techniques overall. This, coupled with his relatively short lines, would ideally create a clipped, aggressive rhythm in the poems, propelling them forward at a stuttering, anxious pace. However, in the case of Pointer, because the technique is used so haphazardly, with no regard for the poem or its topic, it comes across merely as an irrelevant series of weak line breaks with little purpose or artistic merit. Considering this alongside the use of abstract or vague imagery and grammatical inconsistencies, Pointers poems fail to enthuse.

On top of that, the outrageous double-digit cover price makes this book something that simply isn't worth pursuing. When I first cracked open the pages of Evan J. This is augmented by the wonderfully gruesome drawings, many from the 14th century. I began very neatly [the camera loves me] but then assimilation fusion with the exoskeletal zoo If film is made of silver, what is video?

A doctor turning baboons inside out They always turn experiments on themselves Cue swollen violins,. In fact, the poems and artwork within these pages are strongly reminiscent of the body politics employed by the films of Cronenberg. Although many of the poems focus on specific films, there is also an overall theme of film and the industry in general as seen through the eyes of both the horror-film auteur and the poet:.

All hail the miracle of 3-D! Then nipples reaching out for you. Once I realized that the tarot also played an important role in the collection, with a few pictures of old, macabre tarot cards and references to the tarot in several poems, realization of the brilliance of the use of 21 poems in the collection dawned on me.

All is quiet in the sleepy little town of your body, when—out of the blue— a threat beyond reckoning: Your own body, the Enemy! Your cavity, a Black Lagoon! Nanozombies out to eat your brains! Creeping like the Blob, a Colour Out of Space! This collection is not for the faint of heart, but if you are a true horror aficionado, it is well worth the price of admission. It envisions a world of ecstasy and longing, all the while emphasizing how verse itself enables profound expression of the twin experiences of erotism and death.

The book constructs a single narrative across fifteen poems. The poems constitute an extended dialogue, with speakers alternating between vampires and their victims. The approach is ambitious, and it pays off in this very compelling volume. In the afterword, Peralta notes T. Eliot and Pablo Neruda as influences.

Each of the poems here shows this close attention to language and merits this degree of unpacking to reach its deeper operations. Indeed, this collection has much to offer a diverse group of readers.

In addition to being a set of narrative poems about vampires and victims, the sequence considers each of the seven deadly sins as embodied in a speaking vampire. It should be no surprise that Peralta could pull off as impressive a volume as this one. Buy this book, but also get to know this poet and his work via his blog at samuelperalta. This slim volume of speculative poetry, 12 poems in all, revolves around a woman robot named Steelyard Sue. The poems are set in a post-human world, one where everything is deteriorating and rusting away, the robot Sue included.

Steelyard Sue wanders through the human ruins of her world. Records everything in her electronic memory. Steelyard Sue is an innocent left behind in a ruined world longing to become human. It has heart and soul, and it sings. It is billed as a cooperative enterprise of Speculative Technologies, a writers group from Wisconsin who are, apparently, surrounded by beer and serial killers.

And when a book gets that kind of billing, I defy anyone to not pick up a copy and take a peek inside. Although nothing is particularly long in this book, the shorter the piece is the stronger it seems to get, especially the pieces with a leaning towards horror. No one knew where the stuff had come from, but its pink, fluffy fibers had filled all the air ducts with clouds of fuzz and were beginning to festoon the tunnel ceilings with rosy stratocumuli.

These stories are intriguing and entertaining, as fulfilling as they are ambiguous; and this group of authors, in amongst the beer and serial killers, always find something to pique the interest. Compiled by a collective of Madison, Wisconsin, poets, Tendrils and Tentacles is unexpected in a number of ways. As the title suggests, overall there is an addictive, yin-yang dynamic juxtaposing realms of light-bright with icy-dark. Last year, when Marge Simon and Sandy DeLuca decided to meld their particular brands of artistry, many of us ducked for cover.

Surely, locking these two giants of the independent press in the same room together was a dangerous idea; surely, it would lead to some world-cracking, cataclysmic event. Well, the end result of that collaboration was the majestic imagery and poetry of The Mad Hattery. But can this book live up to their first effort? Viewed through the eyes of innocence, this poem is narrated by the voice of a young girl who is happy in her family life, despite its irregularities.

The things she perceives as normal can only be seen as such with the naivety of youth. And we are best friends, because. One certainly hopes this is true, and that there will be more besides. I should probably check my enthusiasm and not say this is a landmark anthology, but I believe it is a major one. What a treasure trove to come across! Gee, the quality is solid. I mean, really good. The book is divided into four thematic sections, with a poem by Morgan to start each one: Each section is rich and diverse, full of surprises and good ideas. I was hoping to like the book when I looked at the title.

I love rockety science fiction. I love space and stars and aliens, and I miss those days when science fiction was expansive, outward and optimistic. Did the book give me that? Well, yes, actually, to some degree, it did. There are some aliens, and the poems tend to be up. And it gave me a whole lot more. It would be wrong to expect a book from to be s-retro, not and still be any good.

Let me give you some rockety stuff first, and then some other samples to show you the range:. I suspect it is exposure to the doppler shift that paints my lover red the way it does. Once, the subdued winking of the ion drive would play about her cheeks like rouge …. Some might argue that many selections are mainstream, not genre. They have a discussion, and she agrees, but the poem concludes with her worry:.

And, moreover, it fulfills what Steve Sneyd talks about in his opening essay, of SF consciously working with Philip K. Skin space-age blue in the TV light, a good cup of tea like a phaser in his fist; his glasses thick as telescope lens. Both are just reality. But even the SF purist, I don't think, would mind the inclusion of so many poems that, while maybe not fitting on strict definitional grounds, are in the ballpark at least, and certainly of interest to SF poetry readers. Besides, the use of a broader definition will help attract more people to our genre.

There are too many good poems to go into here. I love tons of the poems in here. I could go on and on. This book, at almost pages, is a generous helping. This is a poet who always surprises in terms of technique but also remains consistent in terms of quality. This volume collects more than 30 poems, most of which fall squarely within the science-fiction genre. Speculative poetry has come to encompass so many different kinds of expression—fable, myth, horror, fantasy, and often just an embrace of the weird.

At the same time, it is a joy to find someone playing with familiar and less-familiar SF tropes. The poems range across different types of form, and many pieces show a subtle sense of humor. These finely crafted objects contain nods to the classic SF elements upon which Clark draws. Clinging to the past, he rakes the Martian sands, stoically waiting for the tides of time to liquefy his castles made of hope. It should be no surprise that Clark is so confident a poet. He is the author of nine volumes of poetry.

It is nice to see him back with this new collection. Imagine the smell of autumn in a test tube, cloning sickly trees, with nowhere to go, leaflessness. The obvious reference brings a smile, and McCray uses this technique often. But she has the ability to reach beyond the easy, and I wanted to see a few more examples of that ability. Children of algebra, you must work through my binary lies with your questions and your hypotheses of discontent— all your lives adding up to fractals. Count on your fingers—if it calms you.

Such swings may leave the reader feeling a little off-balance, and perhaps that is her goal. The book is in mostly themed sections: Although Kaveney does split her sonnets into stanzas, they keep very, very strictly to the rhyme and metrical format expected. The Orpheus myth consumes the first part of the book. I would argue that this is formalist writing at its best, in which rhyme and meter contribute to the emotional impact of the poetry in ways that free verse might not.

She died because she fled the Satyr. Chaste and faithful to your bed. I find the taste of faithful wives the same as those who lied. Yet they never seem cliched, probably because Kaveney is just so damn good at what she does. At first they dug with picks, and then the great steam drills were made.

The navvies, who had carved their way through living rock, sickened or starved or died of bends. Small zeppelins were parked outside the ball, moored to the gaslights. Out of the shadows crept the monocled adventuress, who stepped up to the door and had announced to all,. These are the sorts of poems one reads again and again, seeing something a little more each time, marveling at how easily the format reads, yet knowing how difficult it is to write a sonnet well. The last section is quite personal, a series of poems dedicated to particular writers. Russ seemed to understand what I was going through when I read her books when I was a young college student and SF writer.

She lived to see women whose lives grew through and past her books. Love, Life, and Death on Mars: Epitaphs by Mary Jo Rabe. One speaks of death pallor and preciousness Another of debts and recriminations gone his fist a tight-wound reminder Alrighty then…I think we get the picture. I can feel a birth a bloodletting rising from a gore-littered ground of echoes and death The book is recommended for horror and dark mythology fans. The Boviniad by Nathan Jerpe.

Take, for example, the lines: For that was who it was that floated up, the frizzled white wilderness of his hair beneath his helm outspreading like a sponge and at his flank a pair of assistants Both the first and third lines of this stanza are clearly iambic, but the meter slips unnecessarily in the second and fourth, and could easily be fixed with minor variations to the lines, or simple word substitutions that would not alter the tone or the piece at all.

Enslaved by Moon frog-folk Still they keep faith with the Distant, cold, Sleeping God Creatures crushed beneath chaos I shouldn't write more about such a slim publication. Inspired by a quote from J. Throughout, birds provide effective metaphors for the apogee and perigee of human emotion: Archeopteryx to crow to hummingbird, birds all reveal something essential about human nature, our desire for divinity and our ultimate failure to achieve it, but that does not hinder the author from imagining godhood, flight to the edge of the solar system and beyond.

This book is too good to pass up. A person who reverts to protoplasmic gel Ancient hidden races, secret of the ages One thing I like about Codex Nodens is its unification of far-ranging subjects. Cthulhu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness , ed. Lester Smith, , Popcorn Press , perfect-bound. The Edible Zoo by David C. For ages 8 and up.

Collected Poems by Michael A.

Wilfred Owen and Strange Meeting

Your past becomes legend far too quickly. William Montgomery Watt , in response to a question about Western views of the Islamic Law as being cruel, states that "In Islamic teaching, such penalties may have been suitable for the age in which Muhammad lived. However, as societies have since progressed and become more peaceful and ordered, they are not suitable any longer. Some contemporary Islamic jurists from both the Sunni and Shia denominations together with Quran only Muslims have argued or issued fatwas that state that either the changing of religion is not punishable or is only punishable under restricted circumstances.

Montazeri defines different types of apostasy. He does not hold that a reversion of belief because of investigation and research is punishable by death but prescribes capital punishment for a desertion of Islam out of malice and enmity towards the Muslim. According to Yohanan Friedmann , an Israeli Islamic Studies scholar, a Muslim may stress tolerant elements of Islam by for instance adopting the broadest interpretation of Quran 2: Similarly neither Judaism nor Christianity treated apostasy and apostates with any particular kindness".

Analysis of Poem "Strange Meeting" by Wilfred Owen

The real predicament facing modern Muslims with liberal convictions is not the existence of stern laws against apostasy in medieval Muslim books of law, but rather the fact that accusations of apostasy and demands to punish it are heard time and again from radical elements in the contemporary Islamic world. Some widely held interpretations of Islam are inconsistent with Human Rights conventions that recognize the right to change religion. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion of his choice. The right for Muslims to change their religion is not afforded by the Iranian Shari'ah law, which specifically forbids it. In , the Iranian representative to the United Nations , Said Rajaie-Khorassani , articulated the position of his country regarding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by saying that the UDHR was "a secular understanding of the Judeo-Christian tradition", which could not be implemented by Muslims without trespassing the Islamic law.

The prosecution of converts from Islam on the basis of religious edicts that identify apostasy as an offense punishable by death is clearly at variance with this obligation. Abul Ala Maududi , the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami , [] wrote a book called Human Rights in Islam , [] in which he argues that respect for human rights has always been enshrined in Sharia law indeed that the roots of these rights are to be found in Islamic doctrine [] and criticizes Western notions that there is an inherent contradiction between the two. The September 11 attacks on the United States, and various other acts of Islamic terrorism over the 21st century, have resulted in many non-Muslims' indictment of Islam as a violent religion.

On the one hand, some critics claim that certain verses of the Quran sanction military action against unbelievers as a whole both during the lifetime of Muhammad and after. The Quran says, "Fight in the name of your religion with those who fight against you. Orientalist David Margoliouth described the Battle of Khaybar as the "stage at which Islam became a menace to the whole world. Jihad , an Islamic term , is a religious duty of Muslims.

Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving for the sake of God al-jihad fi sabil Allah ". A minority among the Sunni scholars sometimes refer to this duty as the sixth pillar of Islam , though it occupies no such official status. The Quran calls repeatedly for jihad, or holy war, against unbelievers, including, at times, Jews and Christians. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip. But they plan, and God plans.

And God is the best of planners. But if they return [to hostility] - then the precedent of the former [rebellious] peoples has already taken place. Another aim and objective of jihad is to drive terror in the hearts of the [infidels].

Criticism of Islam

Did you know that we were commanded in the Qur'an with terrorism? Allah said, and prepare for them to the best of your ability with power, and with horses of war. To drive terror in the hearts of my enemies, Allah's enemies, and your enemies. And other enemies which you don't know, only Allah knows them So we were commanded to drive terror into the hearts of the [infidels], to prepare for them with the best of our abilities with power. Then the Prophet said, nay, the power is your ability to shoot. The power which you are commanded with here, is your ability to shoot.

Another aim and objective of jihad is to kill the [infidels], to lessen the population of the [infidels] David Cook, author of Understanding Jihad , said "In reading Muslim literature — both contemporary and classical — one can see that the evidence for the primacy of spiritual jihad is negligible. Today it is certain that no Muslim, writing in a non-Western language such as Arabic, Persian, Urdu , would ever make claims that jihad is primarily nonviolent or has been superseded by the spiritual jihad.

Dennis Prager , columnist and author, in responding to a movement that contends that Islam is "a religion of peace," wrote: It began as a warlike religion and throughout its history, whenever possible, made war on non-Muslims — from the polytheists of North Africa to the Hindus of India, about 60 to 80 million of whom Muslims killed during their thousand-year rule there. Neuman, a scholar on religion, describes Islam as "a perfect anti-religion" and "the antithesis of Buddhism. Most international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International , condemn Islamic laws that make homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime.

In May , the sexual rights lobby group Lambda Istanbul based in Istanbul, Turkey was banned by court order for violating a constitutional provision on the protection of the family and an article banning bodies with objectives that violate law and morality. In 10 Muslim-majority countries homosexual acts may be punishable by death, though in some the punishment has never been carried out.

The ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq has noted that the Quran's condemnation of homosexuality has frequently been ignored in practice, and that Muslim-majority countries were much more tolerant of homosexuality than Christian ones until fairly recently. The duration of this type of marriage is fixed at its inception and is then automatically dissolved upon completion of its term.

For this reason, nikah mut'ah has been widely criticised as the religious cover and legalization of prostitution. Ibn Kathir writes that "[t]here's no doubt that in the outset of Islam, Mut'ah was allowed under the Shari'ah". No other school of Islamic jurisprudence allows it. According to Imam Jafar as Sadiq , "One of the matters about which I shall never keep precautionary silence taqiyya is the matter of mu'tah.

For example, it has been narrated from Muhammad al-Baqir and Ja'far al-Sadiq that they said "regarding the [above] verse, and there is no blame on you about what you mutually agree after what is appointed. Most Sunnis believe that Umar later was merely enforcing a prohibition that was established during Muhammad's time. Misyar has been suggested by some western authors to be a comparable marriage with Nikah mut'ah and that they find it for the sole purpose of "sexual gratification in a licit manner" [] [] According to Florian Pohl, assistant professor of religion at Oxford College , Misyar marriage is controversial issue in the Muslim world, as many see it as practice that encourages marriages for purely sexual purposes, or that it is used as a cover for a form of prostitutuion.

For Al-Albani , misyar marriage may even be considered as illicit, because it runs counter to the objectives and the spirit of marriage in Islam, as described in the Quran: The children raised by their mother in a home from which the father is always absent, without reason, may suffer difficulties. Ibn Uthaymeen recognized the legality of "misyar" marriage under Shariah , but came to oppose it due to what he considered to be its harmful effects. Due to the way domestic violence is handled in some modern-day Muslim states, a few organizations have suggested ways to modify Shari'a-inspired laws to improve women's rights in Islamic n ations, including women's rights in domestic abuse cases.

Shari'a is the basis for personal status laws in most Islamic majority nations. These personal status laws determine rights of women in matters of marriage, divorce and child custody. In legal proceedings under Shari'a law, a woman's testimony is worth half of a man's before a court. Except for Iran, Lebanon and Bahrain which allow child marriages, the civil code in Islamic majority countries do not allow child marriage of girls. However, with Shari'a personal status laws, Shari'a courts in all these nations have the power to override the civil code. The religious courts permit girls less than 18 years old to marry.

As of , child marriages are common in a few Middle Eastern countries, accounting for 1 in 6 all marriages in Egypt and 1 in 3 marriages in Yemen. However, the average age at marriage in most Middle Eastern countries is steadily rising and is generally in the low to mid 20s for women. Sharia grants women the right to inherit property from other family members, and these rights are detailed in the Quran.

Islamic law grants Muslim women many legal rights, such as the right to own property received as mahr brideprice at her marriage, [] that Western legal systems did not grant to women, according to Jamal Badawi. Slave women under sharia did not have a right to own property, right to free movement. However, manumission required that the non-Muslim slave first convert to Islam. Starting with the 20th century, Western legal systems evolved to expand women's rights, but women's rights under Islamic law have remained tied to Quran, hadiths and their faithful interpretation as sharia by Islamic jurists.

The immigration of Muslims to Europe has increased in recent decades and conservative Muslim social attitudes on modern issues have caused controversy in Europe and other parts of the world. Scholars argue about how much these attitudes are a result of culture rather than Islamic beliefs, while some critics consider Islam to be incompatible with secular Western society.

Some also believe that Islam positively commands its adherents to impose its religious law on all peoples, believers and unbelievers alike, whenever possible and by any means necessary. Statements by proponents like Pascal Bruckner [] describe multiculturalism as an invention of an "enlightened" elite who deny the benefits of democratic rights to non-Westerners by chaining them to their roots. They also state that multiculturalism allows a degree of religious freedom [] that exceeds what is needed for personal religious freedom [] and is conducive to the creation of organizations aimed at undermining European secular or Christian values.

In , speaking to the Acton Institute on the problems of "secular democracy", Cardinal George Pell drew a parallel between Islam and communism: Writers such as Stephen Suleyman Schwartz [] and Christopher Hitchens , [] find some elements of Islamism fascistic. Malise Ruthven , a Scottish writer and historian who writes on religion and Islamic affairs, opposes redefining Islamism as " Islamofascism ", but also finds the resemblances between the two ideologies "compelling". French philosopher Alexandre del Valle compared Islamism with fascism and communism in his Red-green-brown alliance theory.

Raymond Leo Burke , a Cardinal-Deacon of the Catholic Church has stated that Islam is not a religion but a totalitarian political system with religious elements which is dedicated to the conquest of the whole world. John Esposito has written a number of introductory texts on Islam and the Islamic world. He has addressed issues including the rise of militant Islam , the veiling of women, and democracy.

He thinks that "too often coverage of Islam and the Muslim world assumes the existence of a monolithic Islam in which all Muslims are the same. William Montgomery Watt in his book Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman addresses Muhammad's alleged moral failings. Watt argues on a basis of moral relativism that Muhammad should be judged by the standards of his own time and country rather than "by those of the most enlightened opinion in the West today. Karen Armstrong , tracing what she believes to be the West's long history of hostility toward Islam, finds in Muhammad's teachings a theology of peace and tolerance.

Armstrong holds that the "holy war" urged by the Quran alludes to each Muslim's duty to fight for a just, decent society. Edward Said , in his essay Islam Through Western Eyes , stated that the general basis of Orientalist thought forms a study structure in which Islam is placed in an inferior position as an object of study.

He claims the existence of a very considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the scholars' cultural make-up. He claims Islam has been looked at with a particular hostility and fear due to many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons, all deriving from a sense "that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity.

Cathy Young of Reason Magazine claims that "criticism of the religion is enmeshed with cultural and ethnic hostility" often painting the Muslim world as monolithic. While stating that the terms " Islamophobia " and "anti-Muslim bigotry" are often used in response to legitimate criticism of fundamentalist Islam and problems within Muslim culture, she claimed "the real thing does exist, and it frequently takes the cover of anti-jihadism. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see Anti-Islam disambiguation. This article relies too much on references to primary sources. Please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources. December Learn how and when to remove this template message. This article contains too many or too-lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. Please help improve the article by presenting facts as a neutrally-worded summary with appropriate citations.

Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote. Profession of faith Prayer Fasting Alms-giving Pilgrimage. Historiography of early Islam. Criticism of Muhammad Aisha and Child marriage. Criticism of the Quran and Islamic ethics. Islamic views on slavery. Quran and violence and Islam and war. LGBT topics and Islam. Islam and domestic violence. Islam portal Religion portal. Patrologia Graeca , vol. The New York Times. Retrieved 16 January Retrieved April 22, Retrieved April 16, Prometheus, , The New York Review of Books.

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Race, gender, and culture conflict", by Alamin M. Mazrui, Willy Mutunga, p. The Politics of Representation", p. From the Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved January 21, Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. The development of exegesis in early Islam: History of the Christian church. Why I am Not a Muslim. Archived from the original on Guillaume translator , , p. Volume 1 , London, , p. The Origins of the Koran. Religious Studies and Theology: New York University Press. Maqam-e Hadith Archived at the Wayback Machine. The Succession to Muhammad: A Study of the Early Caliphate.

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Archived from the original PDF on Toward an Islamic Reformation: The Oxford dictionary of Islam. Untitled review of "The Rise of Colleges. Retrieved April 25, Ahmad Shafaat on apostasy. Religious freedom under Islam: Human Rights in Islam. Islamist Discourse on Human Rights". Both Tabandeh and Mawdudi proceed to develop a synthesis between human rights and traditional shari'a that conceals the conflicts and tensions between the two.

Hashmi, David Miller, Boundaries and Justice: The Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement. Mohammed and the Rise of Islam Third Edition, pp. Putnam's Sons; The Knickerbocker Press. This was a great advance from the early days of Medinah, when the Jews were to be tolerated as equals, and even idolators to be left unmolested, so long as they manifested no open hostility. Now the fact that a community was idolatrous, or Jewish, or anything but Mohammedan, warranted a murderous attack upon it: Mohammed and the Rise of Islam Third Edition, p. Retrieved 5 January Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions.

The Straight Path, p. University of Chicago Press, , p. The Legacy of Jihad:

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