Global halal food industry is said to be worth over  $600 billion.  Japanese food and tourism companies are slowly starting to tap into this huge market for halal food and other halal consumer products for the Muslims all over the world.  As the Japanese population is aging, both the public and private sectors have started thinking of ways to offer halal products to the Muslims living in Japan and elsewhere.

The recent surge in the demand for halal food products in japan is attribbuted to the following .

• Muslim population in the country is slowly but steadily increasing
• Muslim consumers are becoming vocal
• More and more Muslims are visiting japan for business, studies or other purposes
• Due to the sluggishness of the domestic Japanese economy, Japanese food companies are trying to grab

Recently, a member of parliament approached few Muslim organizations based in Tokyo to get basic information about the concept and find out ways Japanese companies could cater to the necessities of the Muslims living in the country. A non-profit organization recently planned to hold the first-ever halal food fair in Fukuoka.

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A legislative aide who joined an anti-Islam group and became obsessed with its mission crossed the line and illegally used state resources to promote its interests, a state ethics panel concluded in a ruling released Friday.

Minutes after the ruling was made public, Karen Sawyer's new boss, state Rep. Shelley Hughes, R-Palmer, announced that Sawyer resigned her job.

Sawyer's activism on behalf of Stop Islamization of America became an issue when she was chief of staff to Palmer Rep. Carl Gatto before his death this year. Hughes was appointed to replace Gatto on May 1.

The House subcommittee of the Select Committee on Legislative Ethics recommended that Sawyer be fired and permanently banned from rehire by the Legislature.

The far-right, anti-Islam group describes its goals as support of human rights, religious liberty and freedom of speech, and opposition to Sharia, or Islamic, law. But the Southern Poverty Law Center calls it an anti-Muslim hate group, as does the Anti-Defamation League.

Sawyer allowed an operative for the anti-Islam group, a man named David Heckert, to set up shop inside the Wasilla Legislative Information Office, where he worked for months, according to one of two reports about the ethical lapses by the ethics panel that were released Friday. Sawyer let Heckert use her personal laptop and Internet card, and provided him a cellphone number under her family plan. She herself used state equipment to plan events for the group. She even gave Heckert her key to the Wasilla LIO so he could get in while she was out of town, the report said.

Anchorage Daily News, 14 December 2012

See also Associated Press, 14 December 2012

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An umbrella organisation representing Muslims in Germany has called for a "denazification" of German state authorities, and demanded they refrain from using the terms "Islamism" and "Islamist" to describe radical Muslims.

The German Muslim coordination council (KRM) presented a dossier on Wednesday on the botched investigation into the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist cell.

German Muslims say the debacle – in which authorities failed to prevent the murders of nine immigrants and one police woman over a decade – was no accident, wrote the Frankfurter Rundschau on Thursday.

The investigation into the murders was prejudiced, said the KRM, a result of a distorted view of Islam in Germany and a widespread stigmatization of Muslims.

The council even went so far as to demand a "denazification" of German state authorities and officials, and that all responsible state authorities and politicians should feel the consequences of their failure to detect the right-wing extremist terrorist cell.

In recognition of the seriousness of the crimes, Germany should hold annual memorials for the victims of the NSU, said the council, and teach children about the murders in school history lessons as "a problem arising out of the Nazi past."

Spokesman Erol Pürlü told the press, "Those who murder Muslims today, will murder those who don't comply with them tomorrow."

Further demands laid out in the dossier included creating a special category for anti-Islamic attacks in crime statistics, and for officials to stop using the words "Islamist" and "Islamism" to refer to radical Islam. 

Pürlü emphasised that the council had no doubt that Germany was a functioning democracy and praised the work of the parliamentary NSU investigation committee tasked with looking into the failure of German authorities in the case.

Meanwhile, Aiman Mazyek, Chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, said he supported a ban on the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD). The heads of Germany's 16 federal states earlier this month backed outlawing the party, but a previous legal challenge failed in 2003.

Mayzek added that the council was concerned about growing racism in German society, and called for the state to co-operate with Muslim organisations in fighting the trend, wrote the paper.

Mayzek said that while he could not deny the existence of radical Muslims in Germany, he felt the surrounding debate was too heated and that it was wrong to play off right-wing extremists against Muslim extremists.

The Local, 13 December 2012

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The first thing that can be done by the Pakistan government is to ensure that they provide support to other nations that are fighting terrorism in their country. This will be the first step that will be used as a stepping stone to eliminate and at the same time suppress terrorism that has been the major reason towards the fail of security and increased political instability in this region. Then in what ways are the citizens and the government be of help?

Then, the Pakistan government can provide relevant information on the operational bases of the terrorists. Of course the government is aware of the different camps of the Taliban, secretariat, and al-Qaeda among other terrorists that are scattered all over Pakistan. Through giving relevant information about the terrorists, it will be pretty easy for the governments such as the US, Europe among other nations that are assisting in fighting terrorism in Pakistan to eliminate terrorists. The government should also ensure that they take close surveillance and watch for any terrorism activities. The citizens should also give information on any suspected incidence or activities of the terrorists.

The only way to ensure that the government is taking the necessary steps and that the nation is heading to prosperity is to fight all the leaders that have taken part in making the government fall. The corrupt leaders, those who supported terrorism, and those who were involved in other scandals that led to insecurity, economic crises, and social stratification should be arrested and get sued in the court of law. New and additional administration posts should be built. Renovations should be made on the government administration. New candidates should be elected to power and the whole governing body should be restructured. The best will be achieved if a constitution can be drafted so that the laws of the country are restated in a better way to safeguard the rights of the citizens.

The next thing that the Pakistan government needs to do is to come up with ways to ensure that the economic status of the country is boosted. First, the factories, industrial sectors, and cooperatives that had been closed down should once again be reopened. Modern facilities for production should be used in the manufacturing sectors. The government should inject more funds for the purpose of making investments within the country. Investors worldwide should be welcomed to run businesses within Pakistan and improve its economy. Means of transport should also be improved to ensure that commodities get easily transported from one part of the country to the other.

The government should not be ashamed of asking for loans and donations from other nations. The donations obtained would be of great importance in assisting the economy of the country grow. Education will be the key to success. New institutions at all learning levels should be started. The ones that are there currently should be assisted to grow. That way, people will be civilized, learn new ways of making an investment, lean of political tolerance, and boost the state of the country.

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A former pupil of Haverstock School is believed to be in an East African prison amid claims he could have operated as an international terrorist.

The Home Office has banned Mahdi Hashi from Britain, listing him as threat to national security.

But his family are demanding answers from the government after what they say is a decade of unexplained "harassment" by the secret services. They say the 23-year-old, who came to Camden Town aged six from Somalia, was plagued by spooks years after he refused to work for them as an "informer".

The Hashi family maintain that Mahdi quit the country after refusing to spy on "practising" Muslims living in Camden. He has not been seen or heard of since the summer – other than a message smuggled out of a prison camp in Djibouti. But the government say it cannot help after Home Secretary Theresa May took the rare step of revoking his citizenship for "Islamicist extremism".

In a frank interview, the Hashi family dismissed the claim and spoke of the prejudice and profiling faced by Somalis living in Camden each day.

Camden New Journal, 22 November 2012

See "Family claim Mahdi is being held in East African prison, so how did this former Camden schoolboy become a 'terror' suspect?", Camden New Journal, 22 November 2012

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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.

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David Schenker the director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute raised worries about the form of the Islamic state which is being formed in Egypt, amid the ongoing conflict over sovereignty between the Islamists and the army.

Schenker said in an article named Egypt’s Islamists Future on the site of the Institute, last Thursday that the election of Mohammed Morsi, being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, as Egypt’s president temporarily puts to rest the debate about whether the nation will be secular or Islamist. Egypt is an Islamist state.

He proved his point of view – that Egypt will become an Islamic state – by highlighting the control of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis of nearly 75% of the Legislative authority before the dissolution of the People’s Assembly by the Military Council last month.

Schenker said that the battle between the Islamists and the army is less important than the political battle about the type of Islamic state that is being formed in Egypt, pointing out that the contest would be between the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood in the degree of militancy and the imposition of Islamic limits, such as cutting off hands of thieves and how soon the penalty should be imposed.

Moreover, the Director offered several evidence and analysis about some of the scenes that took place on the Egyptian political arena and the correspondence of American diplomacy, pointing to a diplomatic cable between the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, published by the site «Wikileaks», showed concern of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and the lack of satisfaction with the tendency by the young and rural members of the group becoming increasingly Salafi-oriented.

Schenker said, you need years to become a full member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but one need only to grow his beard to become Salafi.

He pointed to the hostility during the parliamentary elections between the Salafi Nour Party, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, and even before the presidential elections the friction was clear, when Mohamed Morsi tried to reassure worried Christians, and said that there was no difference in beliefs between Muslims and Christians, the Salafis asked Morsi to «repent to God».

Schenker affirms that the Muslim Brotherhood «were not at any stage of its history a moderate group», and said: «in the group’s general guide issued in 2011, Mohammed Badie, the eighth General Guide (chairman) of the Muslim Brotherhood,

said that the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would lead to a rightly guided caliphate that will instruct the world.” He added that the presence of internal political dynamics is likely to force the Brotherhood to take more radical positions in an attempt to bridge gaps with the Salafists.

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Louisiana Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, is retracting her support for Gov. Bobby Jindal's voucher program, after realizing the money could be applied to Muslim schools, Livingston Parish News reports.

Hodges initially supported the governor's program because she mistakenly equated "religious" with "Christian," according to the report. Jindal's reform package allowsstate education funds to be used to send students to religious schools.

"Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders' religion... We need to insure [sic] that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana," Hodges was quoted as saying in the Livingston Parish News.

Huffington Post, 7 July 2012

See also "Louisiana Republican: When I voted for state funds to go to religious schools, I didn't mean Muslim ones", Patheos, 5 July 2012

And "Republican horrified to discover that Christianity is not the only religion", Jezebel, 6 July 2012

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Last weekend, the Dutch Islamphobic politician Geert Wilders spoke to a conservative conference hosted by a Christian university in Colorado. The anti-Muslim firebrand served up his usual fare: Islam is not a religion but a "totalitarian ideology," multiculturalism must be stopped, U.S. courts must end immigration from Muslim countries and mosque construction must be banned.

According to a report on the event in the Colorado Statesman, conservatives at the conference took Wilders's words to heart, as well as those of fellow anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.

Former Republican State Senate president John Andrews, who heads up an institute at the university that held the event, told the crowd, "After you hear from Frank Gaffney and our friend from across the Atlantic, Geert Wilders, you'll know why I just say 'the threat of Islam'" – as opposed to "radical Islam" or "extremism."

Current Republican State Senator Kevin Grantham took on Wilders's message that the West "should forbid the construction of new mosques." Asked about the proposed ban, Grantham told the Statesman he was for considering it:

You know, we'd have to hear more on that, because, as he said, mosques are not churches like we would think of churches. They think of mosques more as a foothold into a society, as a foothold into a community, more in the cultural and in the nationalistic sense. Our churches – we don't feel that way, they're places of worship, and mosques are simply not that, and we need to take that into account when approving construction of those.

Think Progress, 6 July 2012

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Islam is a complete religion. Our Prophet Mohammad (Peace be Upon Him) has told us and showed us the right way of every aspect of life and we can implement it in this modern world too. So therefore, Islam has also showed us the right way of ruling and how to keep relation with other states.

Islam is a religion of peace and no Muslim State can follow a policy of territorial expansion and unprovoked aggression. The foreign policy of a Muslim state should be such as to advance the cause of Islam and the moral, cultural and political objectives of its society and to preserve and protect its territorial integrity. The Quran and the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) Sunnah provide sufficient guidance to enable a Muslim state to frame its foreign policy.

The first Muslim State in Madinah was established and governed by the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him). It was a confederacy of villages inhabited by Muslims, Jews, Christians and pagan Arabs. Like other aspects of life in Islam, international relations of a Muslim state are based on Divine guidance given in the Quran. They are based on the following principles:

• Belief in the unity of mankind, in origin, in human status and in aims.
• Respect for other people’s interests and rights of life, honor and property, as long as they do not encroach upon the rights of Muslim.
• Maintaining peaceful relations with the exchange of goodwill missions.
• Intolerance of encroachment in international relations. The Islamic state must defend itself and suppress all attempts to violate or disturb its peace, or endanger its security or exploit its peaceful policies.

The law of war and peace in Islam does not allow an aggressive war nor makes the killing of people and animals or the destruction of crops; homes and places of worship its objective. It does not allow the killings of woman, children and aged people nor the torture of war prisoners or the imposition of its teaching on the conquered people. It is only a defensive measure justified as long as wrong, injustice and aggression exists in the world.
Fulfilling the obligation undertaken by the Muslim state and honoring the treaties concluded between the Islamic State and other states. This is binding as long as the other parties remain faithful to their obligation and honor their treaties.

The state does not exist only for itself and its own subjects. It has a wide scope and an important mission in the international field. It has not only to strive for the prosperity and advancement of its own citizens but also makes valuable contributions to humanity on an international level in education, economics, industry, politics and other fields.

Islam seeks to establish a world community, with complete equality among people without distinction of race, class or country. It seeks to convert by persuasion, allowing no compulsion in religion beliefs. According to Islam, it is the duty of every individual to make constant efforts for spreading good and preventing evil.

“You are the best of the nations raised up for (the benefit of) men, you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah.” (Surah Al-Imran 3:110)

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The things that are prohibited in Islam are prohibited for everyone, for an ordinary person as well as the ruler. Same laws are applicable for the ruler as well as the ruled. It is obligatory for everyone to fulfill their duties so that everyone gets their rights. It is duty of the state that the people are asked about who the next political leader should be. The things that are forbidden should not be done to fulfill the rights of others and the duties of you.

In order to learn about Islam and the things that are forbidden in Islam one can join a Muslim academy where he can learn Muslim culture and learn Muslim language. One can learn Islam in detail by studying the Quran. The Quran is in Arabic language so you can even learn Arabic language in such academies. It is better to learn Arabic so that you can understand the Quran by reading it yourself. The Quran explains in detail the rights and duties of everyone. There are many verses in the Quran that explain the duties of a ruler in an Islamic state. The ruler is required to have a simple life even if he has all the resources in his hands.

Most of the duties and rights of the ruler are directly expressed but some of them are expressed indirectly. It is the duty of the state to implement and maintain justice and to maintain the rights of the people. The ruler of an Islamic state works in accordance with the teachings of Islam. It is the duty of the ruler of an Islamic state to look into Islamic teachings for guidance when needed. It is the duty of the ruler of an Islamic state to live his life to for the country, to put the interest of his people above his own interest.

It is the duty of the ruler to maintain the rights of life, property, freedom for conscience, freedom for religion and honor of his subjects.  It is the duty of the ruler of an Islamic state to ensure that the life of an individual or lives of all the groups are safe and are not harmed in any way. Another duty of the ruler is to ensure the safety of the property of his subjects, it should not be taken away with force and the subjects should not get into any frauds regarding his property. The ruler has the duty to ensure that the people have the freedom of expression and they can have the beliefs and opinions they want to keep. The ruler of the Islamic state has the duty to ensure that people of all the religions have the freedom to practice their own religions as long as their practice does not hinder the practice of other religions. The ruler has the duty to ensure that the honor of his subjects is not defamed in public. These are the rights that are also recognized as the universal human rights. The universal human rights are also based on the Islamic teachings.

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