Islam is the religion of peace, and there is no doubt towards it. It guides humanity towards peaceful relationships. We can understand this clearly, if we look at the pre-Islamic condition of Arabia. The pre-Islamic period was full of brutal wars and killing of innocents. Islam came and ended all these forms of killing of innocent and disrespecting the rights of women. It’s called people towards peace.

However, some people are of the view that Islam is not a religion of peace because it allows war. Such people do not get deep into the meaning of things.  Islam allows wars under certain conditions. Looking into the past, at the time of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him), we see that a number of wars were fought between Muslims and non-Muslims. So what was the reason behind that? The reason was that they were allowed to go to war with their enemies when their enemies forced them into it. Looking at the Battles of Badr, Uhad, Trench, and many more we see that it was the Kuffar of Quraysh who forced the Muslims into battle

Apart from that, we also witness the battles of Muslims at the time of Prophet Mohammad ( peace be upon him) with the Jews. Each time the Muslims went into battle with the Jews, the main reason was that the Jews broke the treaty. They started it, and forced the Muslims into it.

After the time of the Prophet (Peace be upon Him), if we look into the reign of Abu-Bakr, we see that Muslim armies were sent to different places, to fight against those who refused some basic principles of Islam. Apart from that, some false prophets also arose, and Muslim armies were dispatched to fight against those false prophets.

After that, Muslims invasions were made. However, in all that, a few principles were kept in mind. Every leader of the army was reminded a few principles. When the Muslim army went to any land for the invasion, they first gave them three options. They gave them the option to accept Islam, or pay Jizya tax or to fight. Those who accepted one of the first two options were dealt peacefully. However, those that chose the third option, to fight were fought. Apart from that during the fighting, the Muslim army was always instructed to avoid cutting of trees, and disturbing the old, the women, and the children. The Muslim army was even instructed not to disturb the monks from their worship. When the lands were captured, all the non-Muslims were given their due rights to worship their own religion. Their lives and properties were protected under Muslim rule.

Thus, even though Islamic history speaks about Islamic wars, but their purpose for the war was to establish peace in the world. They never meant to bring terrorism and disunity in the world. They only fought when they were forced into it. They fought when they were cheated and when the treaties were broken. The Conquest of Makah is the best example to show how peaceful Muslims were and how much Islam cares about people’s rights,

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I love to write creative articles. I have been writing on different social and religious topics for 2 years now. Give me a creative topic and I will write it for you.

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FAMILY PLANNING

Pakistan tried to introduce population control program several times, but failed to effectively implement or develop an understanding among the people. The government faced tremendous backlash from the people. Some of the main reasons are listed below:

1.Conservative society:

We live in a society where people are not open about topics relating to sex. Even education couldn’t help them to come out of their nutshells.  As far as family planning goes, most of the people aren’taware of the the idea of a limited size of  family. Commercials, being advertised, are not watched amongst families and no one provides advice to the people for having a control system on the growth of population. This leads to the ignorance of such plans.

2.Rivalry amongst the government officials within the government:

There were many projects being implemented simultaneously. Due to a breakdown in communication amongst the officials involved in the family planning campaign and also constant rivalry, not much progress was achieved.

3. Perfect family – a boy and a girl:

All the commercials showed an image of a perfect family as having a boy and a girl., which led to the concept of having a perfect family with a gender balance, means one can not have two daughters or two sons ? In view of the traditional preference for a male child, and also to help raise the status of the female child, some of the advertising, at least, could have shown two female children as comprising the “ideal family”. The planners now need to move beyond the “Two children= happy family” syndrome. It is time to confront the fears and misgivings associated with the use of contraceptive products.

4. Celebrity endorsing:

As no famous faces was attached to the campaign, such as a cricketer, it failed to grasp much needed attention from the people. Hence, normal advertisement couldn’t create the hype as required.

5. Funding:

Most of the projects which get a set back are due to the irregular funding from the government. One of the main causes for the failure of this campaign in Pakistan was also due to the lack of funds to conduct its activities; several employees were not given their proper dues.

6.Target audience:

There has been also a fair deal of misuse of media. For example, funds spent in placing ads in the expensive English press could be better utilized on non-traditional media. While English newspaper readers do need to be reached, the kind of messages being placed miss their target audience by a mile.

7. Censor issues:

The only product to be promoted in the mass media was “Saathi” condoms. Distributed by Wood-wards (Pakistan) Limited, as part of an US AID-funded project, the advertising campaign was launched on T.V. Even then, PTV censored the product pack, while NTM which, till then, was independent of PTV’s censor board, showed the commercial with the pack.

 

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▶▶▶▶▶▶ https://twitter.com/Momo_khanTweets ........ ❤(◕‿◕)❤º•○º•○º•○º•○

Life has given you wings to fly, why to crawl through your life !!
Freelance writer and an agony aunt to my friends.
Dreamer, Love my family and certainly a peaceful creature until pinched :) !!

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The recent years have shown an expanding number of people want to learn the Arabic language. These people range from: sightseers, historians, personnel, grad students etc. There are many western corporations that have established their businesses in Arabic countries. The first things that needs to be learned are the essential Arabic terms and reading the Arabic Script.

But this proves to be a challenge, when westerners decide to learn Arabic. The Arabic Script looks rather strange to most westerners because it’s made up of completely different signs, which also do not occur in the enunciation of American or North Western nations. This makes enunciating and reading an Arabic phrase quite challenging for westerners. One of the most important issues is that the Arabic words and phrases are read from right to left. The fact that every single letter appears to be totally different if it’s in the beginning, the middle, or the finish is also a reason why it’s hard to learn Arabic.

Another specific issue is that the words from the regular scripts are not written, because only consonants are written. For one to be able to read through a real textual content, he should gain a particular expertise along with some practical knowledge. This will be a very challenging aspect if one meets with the Arabic Language terminology for the first time. As such, the common belief is that the Arabic alphabet and Arabic language is rather hard to sit and learn. One will be surprised to find out that inside the European Union, more specifically, inBosnia and Herzegovinathere is a wonderful solution to mastering the Arabic script.

This method has been transferred for years and years in numerous educational facilities of the Bosnian Muslims. This approach is very effective because it focuses on the Arabic capital characters in a straightforward technique through the point of view of a Western individual that is used to use the Latin Script. Many men and women have benefited from this technique and have become fluent enough to read the Quran and have also built a great foundation for gaining knowledge of Arabic language that can be applied to day to day living, literary works and newspapers and TV.

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As promised in my last blog, I will discuss the reasons for the cultural misconceptions like the ones i  I mentioned in my last blog post that was in the form of questions and answers. These misconceptions are due to the image that the West has of us Arabs of the Middle East. I’ll talk specifically on Egypt, of course since I am an Egyptian.

I will start with the cultural misconceptions that the west have about us regarding the culture and the country itself, I’ll leave aside any religious or terrorism related misconceptions, because this is a whole other story and will need a post of its own.

One of the main reasons is the media, and I’m not talking about the govt. or the news, I’m talking about simpler media, movies and shows. All the movies show the Middle East or especially Egypt as this huge desert that has the Pyramids and the Sphinx in the middle of it, which nomads living in tents riding camels. This, as discussed in the last post is false. The first movie that comes on the top of my head is Transformers 2, I have nothing against the movie, I am a big fan of Optimus Prime, I am just talking about how they viewed Egypt, all what they showed is a desert with palm trees. So this is a pretty good example of why the West thinks that got is just a big desert. Another movie is Jumper, when he was jumping to different places, Paris, they brought the Eiffel tower, Italy the coliseum, and of course when it came time for Egypt, a huge desert with the Sphinx standing the middle.

So it is no mystery why Western people see Egypt this way, it is what the media gives them, as for the reason behind this, I doubt that it is because the movie creators don’t have the knowledge that Egypt is a civilized country with more than a desert. It can be probably this is the image that western people have, so they don’t want to change it, I don’t know. But the media should start to show the Middle East and Egypt in a more truthful point of view. So I don’t really blame the Western people about having these cultural misconceptions, but I certainly blame the media for delivering this picture to the viewers in the West. But this is the case for most countries; it is a known fact that the media is the basic source of stereotyping anywhere, whether is cultural or religious stereotyping, in our case, Arabs of the Middle east, it is both.

But as for the religious and terrorism related misconceptions, it is not only movies, it’s the whole political system and news system of the West, but as I said it is a whole other story, so tune in on the next blog. I will discuss these misconceptions, the reasons behind them alongside the real facts behind these misconceptions.

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