Conservative peer Baroness Warsi of Dewsbury, named Britain's most powerful Muslim woman, has been pelted with eggs during a visit to Luton.
Baroness Warsi was taking part in a walkabout in the predominantly Muslim Bury Park area of Luton when she was confronted by a group of protesters.
The male protesters accused her of not being a proper Muslim and supporting the death of Muslims in Afghanistan.
Baroness Warsi, who was hit by at least one egg, debated with the men.
The shadow minister for community cohesion and social action was then taken into a nearby shop.
'Views challenged'
Baroness Warsi told the BBC that the men were “idiots who did not represent the majority of British Muslims”.
She said these type of protesters “bring Muslims into huge disrepute”.
“I stood up to this group and said I challenge your views,” she told BBC News.
“They just weren't prepared to listen. They shouted. I said if you want to have this debate, listen.”
She continued her walkabout with a police escort.
One of the protesters against Baroness Warsi, Sayful Islam, told the BBC they were “against everything she stands for”.
He said: “She is not a practising Muslim. Clearly by looking at her she does not represent Muslims.”
He said he and his fellow protesters did not throw the eggs at her.
Baroness Warsi was named as one of the most powerful women in The Power List - chosen by a panel led by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The award was set up to celebrate high performers in business, the arts, media, voluntary and public sectors.
Mecca is the centre of the Islamic world and the birthplace of both Prophet Muhammad and the religion he founded. It is decreed that a Muslim is incomplete without a visit there, writes Yusuf Muziransa.
During the month of Dhul Hijjah, a number of Muslims around the globe pack their bags and head for Mecca. Dhul Hijjah is the 12th month of the Islamic lunar year and is the month in which one can make a pilgrimage to Mecca known as Hajj.
Mecca, a city in Saudi Arabia, is the most holy place is Islam and is said to have been developed by Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail. The two built the Ka’ba, which is the centre of Islam. It is because of the Ka’ba that people started building what we today call the city of Mecca.
Going to Mecca is an obligation to every financially and physically able Muslim. It’s a completion of one of the five pillars of Islam. The five pillars are Shahabad (confession of belief in the oneness of God), Salat (prayers), Zakat (giving to the poor and needy), Sawm (fasting 30 days) and Hajj (visiting Mecca).
It’s only those Muslims who have been to Mecca that can be referred to as Hajji for men and Hajat for the ladies. “One is referred to as Hajji or Hajat when they visit Mecca. However, their character also matters. That is why you find some people being called sir or madam even after they have been there,” says Sheikh Abbas Adinan.
When one visits Mecca and his pilgrimage is accepted in the eyes of God, he is forgiven of all his sins. However, Islamic teachers say the Hajj should be an expression of devotion to Allah, not a means to gain social standing. The believer should be self-aware and examine their intentions of performing the pilgrimage. “If you perform your Hajj well, you come back as clean as a newborn baby because your sins are forgiven. But if you go there with other intentions, then the reverse is true,” said Imam Adinan.
In Mecca, pilgrims go around the Ka’ba seven times and also try to touch or kiss the Black Stone, a Muslim relic, which, according to Islamic tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve and, according to Islamic lore, was kissed by Prophet Muhammad.The Ka’ba is where Muslims around the world must face while praying. It’s the centre of Islam.
People also strive to drink from the well of Zamzam to heal their thirst. Zamzam well is said to have been formed by prophet Ibrahim’s son, Ismail. It is said that thousands of years ago, Ismail was thirsty and crying in the desert. Because he was crying while rubbing the ground, water miraculously started coming out of the ground up to today.
The water of Zamzam is believed to be special. Many say it heals people from demonic attacks, diseases and other things. Most pilgrims return from the Hajj with large plastic jerrycans of Zamzam water to give to their people.
During the pilgrimage, Muslims also travel to Mina, a village near the Ka’ba, where they symbolically stone the devil. They then proceed to the hill of Arafat, a spot for prayers, where Prophet Muhammad is believed to have delivered his last lecture.
In Mecca, pilgrims also pray in the Masjid al Haram (Sacred Mosque) which is, according to Islam, the holiest mosque on Earth and is built around the Ka’ba. Abu-Dauda, a philosopher in Islamic studies and a reporter of Hadith, narrates that Prophet Muhammad once said one gets 100,000 rewards for praying in Masjid al Haram than in any other mosque.
Eid al-Adha, also known as the greater Eid, marks the end of Hajj.
Unlike Eid el-Fitri, during Eid al-Adha, Muslims who can afford it sacrifice their best domestic animals (usually sheep, but also camels, cows and goats) as a symbol of Ibrahim’s sacrifice. Ibrahim surrendered his only son Ismail for sacrifice to God, only to be stopped by Him. A few days later, the Hajjis and Hajats go back to their respective places. Here in Uganda, they are welcomed with a lot of joy, drumming and singing.
Pilgrims can also go to Mecca to perform the rituals at other times of the year. This is sometimes called the “lesser pilgrimage”, or Umrah. However, even if they perform the Umrah, they are still obligated to perform the Hajj at some other point in their lifetimes if they have the means to do so.
It is now advisable to get vaccinated against all major infections before travelling to Mecca. Four foreign pilgrims of Hajj died of swine flu, the Health Ministry in Mecca announced the previous Saturday. It identified the dead as a Moroccan woman, a Sudanese man, an Indian man (all aged 75), and a 17-year-old Nigerian girl, the Saudi Press reported on November 22.Eid ul-Adha begins with a short prayer followed by a sermon. The holiday is celebrated with a distribution of food to the needy, the giving of gifts, and social gatherings. During the celebration, Muslims exchange the greeting “Eid Mubarak” or “Blessed Eid.” Chicago Muslim charities will be distributing meat to needy families in and around the city.
WHEN: Friday, November 27th – (Congregational prayers are held in the morning. Festivities continue throughout the day).
WHERE: For a list of prayer locations in the Chicago area, scroll to the bottom of this email. (Eid prayers and festivals are held either in local mosques or in public facilities designed to accommodate large gatherings.)
PHOTO OPPORTUNITY: Each year Muslims from America and many different countries come to prayer in colorful dress. The prayers themselves are quite visual, with worshipers arranged in neat rows and bowing in unison. Participants exchange embraces at the conclusion of the prayers.
NOTE: Because this is a religious service, reporters and photographers of both genders are advised to dress modestly. Photographers should arrive early to get into position for the best shots. Photographers are also advised not to step directly in front of worshipers and to seek permission for close-up shots.
CAIR-Chicago is a chapter of America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.
– END –
CONTACT: Ahmed Rehab, Executive Director, CAIR-Chicago, 202-870-0166, E-Mail: arehab@cair.com; Amina Sharif, Communications Coordinator, CAIR-Chicago, 630-935-5562 or 312-212-1520, E-Mail: asharif@cair.com
I reflected during the weekend on our Muslim brothers/sisters, they had their festival(last 27th, 28th) – the remembrance of when a ram was miraculously provided for father Abraham to use in sacrifice instead of his son.
I had to greet a couple of people, neighbors, passers by around me Happy Holidays, Barka de Sala (thats the only Islamic greeting I know). And especially the Muslims, I watched as they went to pray last Friday, and I quite loved the idea that entire families trooped to the prayer ground near my house, decked in new and colorful outfits. It struck me that I didn’t find any Ibo/Igbos among those trooping to the prayer ground. I began to wonder if there are / if there aren’t any Muslims who are Ibos/Igbos, and vice-versa – or perhaps, if there are, and they are not the serious type.
I’ve done a 3–day(Friday, Saturday, Sunday) question and answer and the general conclusion is that the average Ibo/Igbo is a Christian. With the word ‘average’ quite notable, I asked Why?. “They were colonized as Christians and it has continued since then”. “Colonized as Christians” left me wondering if there has been a conscious passing of Christianity from Ibo/Igbo father to son / mother to daughter since ‘colonization’ – much like the story of the house of the Rechabites in the Bible; or perhaps the ‘average Ibo/Igbo’ is just a Christian by default – the typical /average Pastors kid, who is a Christian from the womb. Not that I doubt their(Ibo/Igbo) profession of Christian faith, I was just curious why there are no Islamics among them.
One of my respondents though gave me an answer I didn;t expect: “if you see Ibo wey say he be Muslim, the guy na guy-man, na money hin dey find. Tomorrow, you go find the guy for Church, he go tell you say he be Pastor.”
While I would take the above answer with a grain of salt, I do not suppose there hasn’t been any Ibos/Igbos who have crossed over from Christianity to Islam – just like there are a lot of Muslims who have become Christians among the Yorubas and Hausas. Perhaps there are, who are in the hiding.
Anyway, I would like to gather more information on my above observation: why are there no Ibo/Igbo Muslims?
your comments are appreciated.
I've been watching this development in Europe with great interest. The Swiss have passed a ban on the building of Islamic Minarets in their country. Check out this article on Fox. I thought the most amazing statement was when an Islamic leader said that with this ban in place, Muslims won't feel safe anymore. Hmmm, welcome to our world. I don't know an American who has felt safe since 9/11. But there's a big difference between a ban on a building and blowing strategic buildings and their innocent occupants sky high.
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The U.N. has by and large proven to be the very same colossal failure that its older brother in the League of Nations had been - however in a suddenly politically incorrect world, we've taken to being accustomed to just letting the world get pushed around, rather than actually physically doing anything to enforce the policies that any of us so stalwartly claim are so important to international law. Even if we omit decades of corruption including the manipulation of entire nations' economies so that certain key individuals could line their pocket books, the very unenforceable idea of “international law” and the international double standard applied by the so called “united” Nations is excuse enough to fully bring about its dissolution.
It can't come as any surprise that an organization that can't decide if it's a confederation, a federation, or simply a pulpit of equal voices with no standing army except those that are contributed to it almost exclusively by non-Western nations has a hard time catching on in a world where it promises to eradicate warfare entirely. The organization loosely follows its predecessor in that it was really set about to prevent another world war, but with its harsh “forced equality” and equal representation without equal contribution while lax methods on enforcing any of its policies, its simply hastening along the next global conflict now that we've all had a chance to catch our breath.
But it can't simply be stated that the U.N. has corroded to this point, as any moral or legal authority that it had was kicked out from underneath it when it really had its first chance to prove itself in the Israel-Palestine issue. To this very day, the U.N. continues to stumble, falter, and ultimately make itself look like the complete waste of blue-helmeted time it is as it remains the proverbial pawn in a kind of international game of chess - that is, a game of chess if you decide that pawns can all move the same as queens, get six moves every turn, and aren't allowed to be taken off the board by any other move.
The United Nations was asked a relatively simple request following the aftermath of World War II - let the Jews find a place where they couldn't be rounded up and shoved into ovens. Where did they pick? The historic homeland from which they were evicted, ironically a place that was instrumental in assisting in their annihilation. Of course this is a controversial statement, because in our highly charged, politically correct world, we're not supposed to link people to Hitler if they're not White Christians, but unfortunately, it's very difficult to escape the title Arab Fuhrer and photographs of high ranking Palestinian Arab officials organizing Arab Waffen-SS.
Of course the entire prospect of the creation of Israel was something of a blunder on the U.N.'s part - it is one thing to grant the Jews their own historic land, but their requests to, when lodged into a virtual sea of hostility, have any kind of buffer zone from Arab invasion was by and large ignored. Somehow, the U.N. could only sarcastically ask “Who in this world hates Jews?”
Naturally, just as the Israelis expected, invasion, after invasion, after invasion was the immediate response to the fact that a nation had been formed in every way by the U.N. playbook. For the first time in history, the United Nations was forming nations, and the Israelis were doing everything right - but apparently, that wasn't quite enough - and every step along the way has allowed itself to get muddled to the point where we're at today, where the very internet is a very dangerous place to stumble around in if you in any way have any kind of Zionist feelings.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about this entire notion is that the Palestinian movement, the proverbial aggrieved status upon which the Arabs consistently play, was not really something that began bothering anyone in the world until 1967, when the Palestinians began to be persecuted by the Hashemite ruling party in Jordan. Due to the crippling defeat suffered by Jordan during the Six Day War, the Palestinian people suddenly became great targets of scapegoating and frustration, and were largely thrown onto the Israelis as a result.
Bafflingly enough, the Jewish state has by and large welcomed these people into their societies, every formidable rumor that the Palestinians can throw at the Israelis is effectively demolished by the existence of Arabs on the Knesset and equal Arab citizenship rights. Naturally, the cameras don't point to these individuals, but rather the areas where Israeli tanks try to put down the unfortunately common rocket attack on Israeli settlements.
Somewhere between 1947, when the Jews attempted to do everything the world asked of them before they were allowed to avoid another extermination ploy, and now we are finding ourselves not only rewriting history to include a people who did not involve themselves in the entire conflict for twenty years after the fact, we are actually supporting the scumbags that launch rockets at preschools.
If there's one real truth to this entire debacle, it's that playing by the U.N.'s rules is just stupid if you're not an underdog Arab terrorist.
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Bat E Bird says:
November 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
They want none of that fonduementalism.
Sorry, I’ll get my coat.
yampster says:
November 30th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
All those swiss army wives
Anorak says:
November 30th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Craters
June says:
November 30th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
They have holes in their cheese, too - oh those naughty Swiss
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