Islam is a religion of peace and harmony. Islam emphasis on equality and justice. In Islam you will see non Muslims have same rights that Muslims have under the Islamic laws. This can only be found in Islam as Islam doesn’t restrict people of other religion to practice their religion in Islamic states. It is said in the holy Quran in Surat Al-Mumtahanah that Allah orders to be kind and just to those who don’t fight Islam nor drive Muslims out of their homes: for Allah loves those who are just.

The Islamic sharia doesn’t allow Muslim society to stop people of other religions to practice their belief and religion. In another verse of Quran, you can clearly understand the stance of Islam about other religions.

“There is no coercion in religion “{Al-Baqarah: 256}

It has been clearly written in Quran that it is the responsibility of the Muslim state to provide non Muslims with an environment, where they can practice their religion without any fear. It is strictly prohibited in Islam to force non-Muslims to convert to Islam. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said: “Whoever kills a contracting (a non Muslim protected by the state) he will not smell the paradise”.

We can see the example of Fateh-e-Makkah, when prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his troops won the battle; the prophet entered in the city of Makkah and ordered the Muslims not to kill any innocent people (men, women and kids). He further ordered the Muslims to allow non Muslims to practice their religion freely. This act of kindness impressed a lot of non Muslims, and they converted to Islam.

Now, we can see the impact of the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the modern society. People who are living in Muslim societies are free to practice their religion. When talking about Pakistan, India and Bangladesh people have their own churches and temples everywhere. The governments have provided them with security. Islamic sharia and federal courts are there to help the people who feel any injustice. In Pakistan, as an example, there are many institutes and schools that offer separate education to Hindu’s and Christian kids. They are not forced to read Islamic studies, and they can choose subjects of their own religion if they don’t want to read Islam as a subject. This reflects that non Muslims enjoy full rights.

Islam has guaranteed for non Muslims to get funds for their religious affairs. It is strictly prohibited in Islam to seize the funds of non Muslims. Moreover, the non-Muslims have full rights to claim funds from Bait-ul-Mall. Moreover, it is the duty of the Muslim state to provide people with all sorts of protection and security being a Muslim or not.

In short, it is the responsibility of Islamic state to respect every single person and provide them with justice and equality.

About the author

Passionate about writing, Muslim academy is perfect platform to get knowledge and Experience. Looking Forward for your feedback on my work.

View the Original article

The conditions of the Muslims all over the world where they are in minority are worse. These countries are continually denying the basic human rights which are against all the national and international laws. Burma is one of the countries where the conditions of Muslims population are the worst in the world. Even the animals are treated far better than the Muslim minority community.  The homes are burned, the people are burned alive, women are raped and the small children are cut into pieces by the state military. The dictatorship in Burma has crippled the country for the last fifty years. The authorities in the Burma have denied accepting the Rohingya Muslims. They have demanded from the UN mission to take these minorities out of their country as they want to clean the state of these minorities.

As the situation is very critical the people have to carry weapons in order to protect them from the military action. This has made the situation very dangerous.  Police and military are deployed in almost all the cities but the situation is becoming more and worse.  The reason of this unrest was the rape of the Buddhist women. Believing that it was done by the Muslims the Buddhist mob torched the Muslims homes and killed more than 25000 people in just a few weeks.  The Buddhist state has never accepted the Muslims minority and the violence here continues for many years. The state of Rakhine was named after the strong Buddhist group by ignoring the fact that this state has the Muslim majority population. The Rohingya people are also inhabitants of this region. These people are the most ignored and persecuted minorities in the world as stated by the United Nations. The Burma state treats the Rohingya as the foreigners and is expelled from the nation’s ethnic groups.  For most of the Burma people the Rohingya is considered as the illegal immigrants who should be expelled from Burma to other countries.

The Buddhist monks believe that the unrest in the Rakhine states because of the terrorist activities of the Rohingya Muslims. They say that these illegal immigrants should be banned by the countries that are supporting their flow to Burma.  The international community has not taken any strict action to tackle this problem. The reason of this problem is that the Burma authorities have banned the aid workers and the journalists and they are not allowing anyone to have access to the reality. The OIC meeting held in Makkah on 14^th August 2012 is expected to take necessary actions to solve this problem. The King Abullah bin Abdul Aziz has announced aid money of $50 million to minimize the sufferings of the Rohingya Muslims which is a good step. Hope the situation comes under control and the Muslims are granted their due rights.

About the author

I am running a freelance company to provide development, designing, seo and writing services.

View the Original article

Ethnic minorities living in the UK feel more British than their white counterparts, research has revealed.

Muslims are the most likely of all groups to identify with the concept of "Britishness", the Institute for Social and Economic Research found.

The report's authors say the results rubbish suggestions that ethnic groups are unwilling or unable to integrate into British society and show that fears over the negative impacts of immigration on cultural identity are overstated.

The study, named Understanding Society, looked at the socioeconomic circumstances of people living in 40,000 UK households.

Occupants were asked a series of questions, including how important, on a scale of one to 10, being British was to them.

People of Pakistani origin scored the highest with an average of 7.76. Bangladeshi and Indian groups came second and third respectively, while the white population scored the lowest with an average of 6.58.

The study also found that identification with Britishness was higher among the children and grandchildren of migrants.

The research will be presented next week at the Economic and Social Research Council research methods festival by Dr Alita Nandi.

She said: "There is a huge emphasis in public and policy discourse on immigration and its potential challenge to cultural homogeneity and national identity.

"Our research shows that people we might assume would feel very British in fact do not – while others who we might assume would not associate themselves with feelings of Britishness in fact do."

She added: "Many people seem to manage dual identities, and it's interesting to note that in all the ethnic groups we looked at British identity increases from generation to generation, while within the majority white population many maintain strong non-British identities, such as Scots or Welsh."

Press Association, 30 June 2012

See also ISER press release, 30 June 2012

View the Original article

“When the concepts of faith itself are under risk, as during the apartheid era in South Africa, doctrinal variations among beliefs become minor”, said Ebrahim Rasool,South Africa’s ambassador to the US, during a May 14 Symposium on Religious Freedom and the Rights of Minorities in Islam at Georgetown University.

While other scholars and academics at the event, co-sponsored by Georgetown’s Alwaleed  Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and the Islamic Society of North America, described both the mandates of Islamic law, Shari’a, and the traditional treatment of non-Muslims in majority Muslim societies, Rasool, a follower of Islam from a majority non-Muslim nation, offered a counterpoint.

In South Africa, Muslims make up less than 3 percent of the inhabitants, and were long declined basic religious rights, Rasool said, observing that Islamic weddings were not acknowledged until 1990.

“We established ourselves in South Africa without the silver spoon in our mouths,” he said. Yet this community of less than 1 million nevertheless handled to generate “anti-apartheid warriors who went to prison with Nelson Mandela” and have since obtained considerable representation in govt.
How?

Rasool said the Islamic principle of Al-Amin, or trustworthiness, was a factor. (Al-Amin, The Trustworthy, was a nickname given to the Prophet Muhammad.)

“The deficit of trust always detracts from the message,” he said. “Muslims had earned their trustworthiness because they were prepared to die with the majority, to take their hard knocks with the majority.”

Interfaith services during the apartheid era were “places of great danger,” he said. Police were outside,shooting teargas, as the gatherings posed a risk to the current system of government.

In these situations, “your interpretation [of scripture] has to take second place to the preservation of faith itself, because it’s under siege,” Rasool said. “What binds you is the common faith that you have in the face of enormous danger.”

South Africa was less divided by religious belief than by apartheid, he said. Therefore it had people of all faiths who were having difficulties to follow the Aquaba, the step path of righteousness, (described in the Sūrat al-Balad, the Quran’s Ninetieth Sura) who found themselves in the streets protesting apartheid.

View the Original article