??? ?????

Eid Mubarak to you, Mrs M, and little ?????? with a K.

Arsalan.

Thank you. Whether he’s Cameron or Kamran depends on which country he is in! Nadira is bringing him up as a Muslim, you will be glad to hear. Jamie and Emily were brought up as Christians, so we are a pleasant example of inter-communal harmony!

Eid Mubarak to you and family

Eid Mubarak to you and the family

Khair Mubarak, Craig! Hope you and yours have a good one!!

Oh dear! No – I am not glad to hear that. Why can’t you let the poor little thing grow up religion-free and make his own choices when he reaches the age of discretion?

anticant

Oh I don’t doubt he’ll have his own mind. But I received a very good ethical grounding from my own religous education which did me no harm, and made up my own mind on the theology later.

what happened to my last post?

I have to spell it with a K because when ever I see it with a C I see this image:

http://www.davidosler.com/cameron,%20david.jpg

I tried to think of a way of adding sea in to that sentence but I couldn’t think of anything.

Craig, you seem very muddled about the relationship of faith and ethics. They don’t go together like a horse and carriage. At the very least teach him Sufism, not Wahabbi’ism!

Id sa’id

my best wishes as well. here is a little reminder of a conversation we once had. http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tBrand=EDPOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=NOED27%20Nov%202009%2020%3A48%3A01%3A683

Craig you do know I was joking about the Kamaran thing don’t you?

Sorry Craig, for hijacking your Eid Greeting thread with the following response but I really feel I need to make it.

anticant

With all due respect, what you said crossed the lines between joking and ignorance.

So I’m going to have to put you straight.

There is no sect called Wahabism, no one calls themselves a Wahabi.

It is simply used as an insult, or a label to justify imprisonment, torture and execution, when those in power want the wider community to assume that they are not targeting the1/4 of the world’s population who are Muslim but instead only targeting a minority amongst them.

It is used in Uzbekistan and China to get rid of people who pray, fast or have beards. Things which are universal amongst all Muslims, not just a tiny minority who really do not even exist.

Secondly, the likes of Karimov and the neocon gang state Sufism is the acceptable form of Islam. They describe it as an Islam without rules as opposed to what they label as Wahabism which they state is an Islam full of rules. This is blatantly untrue, true Sufis are people who follow all the rules of Islam diligently, and on top of that they do other good deeds such as dhiker(remembrance of God) and abstaining from worldly pleasures to get closer to God. That is actually where the word Sufi(Suf means wool) comes from! They were known to wear coarse woollen garments as a means of sacrificing the comforts of this world.

The word Wahabi comes from the name of a 18th century Arabian reformer called Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab. He is mainly known for attacking the practice of visiting the graves of saints and asking help from them. So the term Wahabi is often used to attack those who condemn local practices which may have no bases in the scripture. But it is used by the Neocons/Karimov gang to attack any Muslim who practices Islam to any extent. It is used in the same way the Zionists use the word Antisemitic to describe anyone who attacks Israel in anyway, or even people who defend Israel, but not sufficiently to please the more rabid Zionists.

Anyway I really don’t want to talk about this. I just posted to return Craig’s Eid Greetings. Just encase you don’t know this already, this is the bigger of the two Eids. In this one Muslims celebrate Abrahams great sacrifice when God told him to Sacrifice his son. This is the holiest day in the Muslim calendar. So I will end my response to you anticant by wishing you a very Happy Eid, Eid Mubarak!

If you want to know more about so called Wahabism, Here is his book:

http://islamicweb.com/beliefs/creed/abdulwahab/

You can read it if you can be bothered. But no one including people accused of being Wahabi consider it as a Holy book.

It is just considered as a book written by a Human, all readers whether they like or hate the author agree with somethings and disagree with others things in it.

The Book ALL Muslims consider as holy, and believe in every part of it, including both Sufis and so called Wahabis is this one:

http://quran.com/

Thanks for the greetings Craig and the same to you and family.

Interesting but not the slightest bit surprizing was anticants first comment which expressed disappointment about Cameron but nothing about Jamie and Emily.

Completing the square then, best not bring Cameron up with the morality that says it’s wrong to have sex with ones parents hey!

Still on the theme of Islam. he then applies his vision of life and religion to sit in judgement about Craig’s. Lastly sufiism is ok because anticant’s endorsed it.

I appalud Craigs lack of fear of Islam. Pity others can’t learn from it.

To all those above who know my mind so much better than I do myself, I simply think it is socially divisive – especially in these feverish days – to teach small children that any one faith is “the truth” as opposed to all the others, or to having no religious beliefs. This is indoctrination, not education.

Children should be taught the history (too often bloody, alas) of ALL major religions and traditions, and then be allowed to make their own free choice, as young adults, which (if any) they choose to adhere to.

What is “anti-Muslim” – or “anti-Christian” or “anti-Jewish” – about this?

I’m not religious myself, but religion can be tolerant or intolerant. When it’s tolerant it’s not as bad as teaching school-children that they should be proud to be British/American/whatever and that their country is inherently good and can do no wrong. There are plenty of secular ideologies – nationalism and others – that have caused as many wars as any religion when taken to extremes, as they often are by governments looking for excuses to do something they know is wrong.

Sorry, the dodge didn’t work. It was you who illuminated your perceptions, here and elsewhere, like when you said you hope not to live for the day if the people of the UK becomes a Muslim country. It’s obvious to anyone who knows something about you as to why one particular faith is a lot more bitter to you than others.

To someone who doesn’t like religion and in particular Islam, of course you will think religious faith is socially divisive when people follow it. It’s YOU causing the division!

Isn’t it the responsibility of any parent to give their kids a grounding in what they think is the truth? Look at it from the other way around… One believes, rightly or wrongly, that one holds ‘the truth’ pertaining to life and various standards of ethics. What then of the person who DOESN’T teach that to ones children? How terrible, how negligent! And to believe there aren’t many levels of indoctrination (I use the word in it’s un-hijacked form) in a parent-child relationship, or that there shouldn’t be any, is simply stupid. It is the clear hope of some, that by denying a moral compass to the child, and for many, childhood sets their personal foundations, that they will continue to be aimless in the future. All this betrays the advocate as having a hopeful planted seed of a long term ulterior socio-political motive to blossom in the future.

The Protestant churches have Confirmation do they not? I was pressured to partake of Confirmation, but I avoided it, but to those young people who do take confirmation fair dos.

Who said children are NOT taught about all religions?

I like Duncans (29/11/2009 3:16 AM) comment as the secular beliefs are hardly ever focused on at the expense of the religious ones. Strange that huh?.

Building on his comment, I’d say that wars in the name of religion will most often NOT actually be grounded properly in religion, like Bush being told by God to invade Afghanistan etc.

How many of these were -actually- religious wars:

ECW/US war if independence / US CW / Waterloo / Crimean / Boer / WW1 / Russian CW / WW2 / Vietnam / Cambodia / Laos / Iraq-Iran/Desert-storm / enduring freedom(>pukes) / Rwanda / Angola / Liberia and so on…

And the ‘showing’ of religion isn’t good enough I’m afraid, e.g. The Iran-Iraq wasn’t a religious war.

From my experience, almost every human being will see it as normal/acceptable that other parents encourage their kids to follow their traditions. Society has a role to play in moderation/buffering of that e.g. Satanism, child sexual abuse among clearly recognised cults etc.

Do people who say teaching children about religion, e.g. Dawkins –really– believe it’s child abuse?? or do they believe they’ve found a ‘clever’ way, difficult to argue against [have you stopped beating your wife] way of making it appear teaching children religion or one particular religion os the truth is wickedly wrong?

Religion like all communally held social beliefs and traditions are cohesive. The brotherhood between Japanese Muslims, African Muslims, European Muslims, and American Muslims is fantastic (when the self interest serving politics doesn’t poke its poison laced claws into the equation)

The only realistic path to a more peaceful world is the cultivation of greater religious and social tolerance and a spirit of “live and let live”. Religions which claim that theirs is the only ‘truth’, and that those who don’t accept their beliefs are ‘infidels’, inferior, and so on, make no contribution to this aim. They are socially divisive. They cannot all be right, and their pointless squabbles resemble bald men fighting over a comb.

Religion is a large part of the problem ?” not the answer. (And, I agree with Duncan, so is nationalistic patriotism, the last refuge of scoundrels.)

Some telling replies to my past points anticant.

In a similar fashion that I pointed out your hijacking and spin on the word indoctrination, I’m going to do the same with ‘infidel’. Infidel means disbeliever. The term is neutral. You seek to impose a nasty aura around it, resembling colonial terminology. You should know better, but when you’ve got a corner to fight ‘n all…

Just wondering when you’ll start throwing the word Jihad around.

I think every religion proclaims itself as being the truth as so all non-religious philosophies. So what? And that they can’t all be right is another ‘so what’? The HUGE majority of people who choose to follow a religion DO actually respect those choose something different – within wide societal norms of course. As such, your words “Their pointless squabbles resemble bald men fighting over a comb” shows ghastly ignorance of the tolerances of people of faith and the thousands of interfaith groups across the planet. Well, it serves your purposes to project false divisions doesn’t it.

Stop trying to give the spurious impression taht not being religious your existence is some kind of dangerous enterprise.

Lets not forget that you too believe your ultra-liberal views are the truth offering the way forward for the profession of man.

Fact is as Europe’s belief/practice of religious ethics has weakened, occurrence of social problems has increased.

The belief that man can rule over man better than God is laughable, but heck, don’t let that stop you picking out handfuls of men in positions of power who abused religion, to demonise religion itself and blow things out of all proportion.

What people do matters more than what they say. We all of us – religious and non-religious alike – stand or fall by that test. I have never said there are no good religious people. I’ve known some quite saintly ones. As well as some most benevolent non-religious people.

What I object to is the “We’re OK – you are not OK” stance that is quite explicit in the pronouncements and actions of some prominent religious leaders – especially, these days, Muslims – who pronounce fatwas, death threats etc. aqainst writers like Salman Rushdie and the Danish cartoonists. Was the murder of Theo Van Gogh not inspired by religious fanaticism? Are the fulminations of primitive bigots like Al Qaradawi against gays, adulterers and apostates not prompted by their religious faith?

If you want to convince me that Islam really is a gentle religion of peace, and that all these incidents are the work of a few deluded mavericks or prompted solely by misguided Western foreign policy, you really must try harder.

Anticant, isn’t your lack of religion your religion?

It looks like you are claiming your beliefs are the only truths too!

And you look down on those who do not share your beliefs, such as the people you call Wahabis?

Your idea that people should all be without belief has already been tried, and Communism died!

Anyway, this thread was meant to be a happy thread.

Just someone wishing others a Happy Eid.

I’m so glad I don’t know you in the real world and I feel really sorry for your friends and family.

Anticant’s Mum: Merry Christmas Anticant

Anticant: Religion is the opium of the masses! Christmas is religious indoctrination, to brainwash children in to followers of religion!

Like Craig my family is mixed as well. Very mixed!

the Muslims of my family consists of people you would call Sufi and people you would call Extreme Wahabi, but they are all what I call Uncles. In weddings we make sure there is enough veg because of our Hindu and Buddhist friends.

The last two funerals I want to were those of the husband’s of two of my aunts.

They were both converts to Islam. in the first one we did the Islamic rights and someone in his family said a catholic prayer. In the second the aunt’s husband had a very large number of brothers and sisters, half chose Islam the other half chose Christianity. In that one everybody took part in the Islamic prayer(janaza). I actually gave my place at the front row to one of his brothers.

Anticant, that is the key to people getting along. It isn’t removing every body’s beliefs. it is recognising differences and accommodating the differences.

I am what you would call a Muslim extremist as opposed to what you might call the acceptable face of Islam. I believe in what I believe completely, and yes I believe others are wrong. And do you know what?

So do you!

Everyone does.

That is the difference between a person of religion and an agnostic. I am a Muslim and not an agnostic.

If you want kids to be brought up the way you would like. No one is stopping you. have a bunch of kids and bring them up how every you want to bring them up. And I will bring my kids up the way I want to.

And Anticant, One last thing, Happy Eid!!!!

Now you see, arsalan, one difference between you and me is that you are “so glad you don’t know me in the real world”, and that you – so patronisingly! – feel “really sorry” for my friends and family.

I’d be happy to know you in the real world – you sound really nice, and so do your family, and I wish a Happy Eid to you and them, and to everyone else on this thread.

If you did know me in the real world, you might shed some of your misconceptions about me. I do not at all look down on those who have religious belief. I am simply saddened and dismayed by all the hatred, violence and harm that is unleashed and perpetrated in the name of religion.

Quite honestly, I think it is the responsibility of you, and others posting here who deem themselves to be religious, to face down the ignorance, the violence and the hatred within your own ranks, and to restore religion to what it professes to be its true purpose: Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all Men (and Women).

My Mum, alas, has been dead for quarter of a century. In her later years she found much comfort in attempting to comprehend the opaque ramblings of Mrs Eddy, the founder of ‘Christian Science’. I would not have dreamed of trying to undermine her faith in this intellectual crap, because I knew it helped her to cope better with her life and she made some very nice friends through it.

Scepticism, by the way, isn’t another religion: it is lack of conviction that religious doctrines are true, or even probable. But all honest sceptics are willing to be convinced by credible evidence.

Apologies to Craig for hijacking a festive thread. Roll on Christmas…..

Anticant

I didn’t mean those lines literally. That was my figurative way of explaining your first post on this thread.

The traditional Eid greeting was to give some of the meat from the animal slaughtered Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son and God replacing that human sacrifice with a Sheep.

I can’t give you any mutton but I did have to goats slaughtered so I can give you some chevon, and that goes to you to Craig that is unless your vegetarian?

Anticant I think I need to mention again, I’m not a part of one of those those liberal trends in Islam. I am one of those wild eyed fanatical fundamentalist extremist types that are always in the media.

What I was trying to say in the previous post is whatever peoples views or opinions, everyone can behave decently. Just because someone believes he is right and others are wrong it doesn’t mean there ever needs to be conflict. People always have and always will use any excuse for conflict. For example the riots between Algerians and Egyptions, both Arabs, both Muslims, African over a football match!!!

@ anticant.

“If you want to convince me…”

Be honest, is such a thing really possible?

“I think it is the responsibility of you, and others posting here who deem themselves to be religious, to face down the ignorance”

I tried: 10:59 AM, 7:18 AM, 11:41 AM

Getting back to the topic of Eid:

Traditionally people used to keep the Eid Animal in their homes as a pet. Sometimes for a whole year! That way when it became time to slaughter it, it became easier to visualise what Abraham went through when he had to slaughter his son. In Bosnia they buy a calf a during the previous Eid, raise it as a pet for a year and slaughter it in the next, My friend’s wife says she used to cry every time her family calf was slaughtered.

A friend of mine told me when he was a boy he was sitting amongst his family who were talking about how cruel the Muslims in India were because the Muslims keep a sheep as a pet and treat it like one of their children, then on Eid they slaughter it.

I actually believe that is the best way of doing it. Because if you just go to an abattoir and do it, it isn’t much different to going to a butcher the way you do every other day of the year.

Eid is the day when Abraham went to slaughter his son, but God had mercy on him and replaced his son with a ram. I don’t think going to a butcher and picking up some meat quite does that justice?

Oh ,,,,

My mum just phoned, I need to drive around distributing meat to friends and family for her.

Bye, and Eib Mubarak everybody

lwtc247, how typical of you to deliberately misquote me out of context. Your first comment is just insulting and doesn’t deserve a reply.

Thanks for the meat offer, arsalan – but no, thanks. I don’t approve of halal slaughter methods, which are inhumane.

And pleased tell me what sort of a god is it who commands his followers to slaughter their own children as a fitting sacrifice? Oh dear me….

the sort that replaces it with a ram.

anticant: oh dear, might this help? It is probably useful to remember that all three of the great Middle Eastern monotheistic faiths are but variations on the ‘pagan’ mystery religions from which they arose. All those blood-curdling references to slaughter, sacrifice, crucifixion and resurrection are but metaphors by which an initiate is encouraged to achieve personal spiritual growth and transendence. Those who insist on a literal interpretation of the fairy-tales are missing the point rather drastically and are sadly unlikely to progress beyond square one of their spiritual journey.

The difference between someone with a religion and someone without is that people of religion judge according to their scripture. While people without religion judge according to what usually is the dominant culture, judge according to their whims and desires or judge in a confused manner by taking bits from here and there and ending up with a contradictory mess. That is why couples in mixed marriages usually choose one of their religions for their children.

A judge according to my scripture so I see what Abraham did is the ultimate sacrifice, and what God did as a message to all of us, that he doesn’t want Human sacrifices like the Idols of pagan religions, what he wants from us is much less.

To answer your question, what sort of God demands that, the answer is the only God asked him for that.

And the only God has every right to that because everything belongs to the only God.

The only God is the one who created Abraham and his children.

He is the one who created every life that lived and killed every life that died. He is the one who has given every pleasure and every pain. And because everything was created by him and belongs to him, he has every right to do that.

So to show our love for him, we don’t sacrice a son. He hasn’t asked us to do that. We sacrice a sheep and share its meat.

“lwtc247, how typical of you to deliberately misquote me out of context.” – and how typical for you to talk gibberish and dodge examination of your islamophobia and hypocrisy.

Out of context?? Where? (awaits dodge or non-response)

Out of context? What I said was: “I think it is the responsibility of you, and others posting here who deem themselves to be religious, to face down the ignorance, the violence and the hatred within your own ranks, and to restore religion to what it professes to be its true purpose: Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all Men (and Women).” You carefully omitted everything after “ignorance”, thereby implying that it was MY ignorance you needed to combat.

I don’t talk gibberish, and I don’t insult you or anyone else here by calling them hypocrites. I leave the mudslinging to you.

You were ignorant about many things mentioned here, inc. the pluralism shown by people who follow a religion. I had addressed you previously and I had tried three times to face down that ignorance.

I failed.

Quite simple really.

Don’t see anything out of context there.

The Sun is God.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1543831119879192379&ei=6dUSS-7bAZjD-QbZtsCuBg

anticant – “halal slaughter methods..are inhumane”.

sorry, but:

(28 Aug 2009) National campaigning group Animal Aid has today released footage taken secretly at three randomly chosen abattoirs, which offers an unprecedented close-up of the true inner workings of typical British slaughterhouses that kill pigs, sheep and cattle. The film convincingly disposes of the myth of stress- and pain-free ‘humane slaughter’. The 40 hours of footage shows more than 1,500 animals being stunned and more than 1,000 being killed.

Animal Aid filmed:

Pigs and sheep going to the knife without adequate stunning

Pigs and sheep stunned and then allowed to come round again

Pigs, sheep and calves crying out and struggling to escape

Pigs being kicked in the face and sheep thrown to the floor

Pigs falling from the slaughter line into the blood pit and being dragged out and re-shackled

and more.

as I said, sorry. but there’s no real reason to point the finger at halal, unless you are going to kill something yourself, or know the person who’s doing it for you.

The sun is a tiny star, a yellow dwarf.

a tiny speck in our Galaxy filled with much greater stars. And our Galaxy is a tiny speck in a Universe full of Galaxies.

And our Universe is just a tiny insignificant speck in all that was created by God. And all that was created by God is nothing compared to God.

And here we are looking up in the sky, And God only knows how many others are looking up in to the sky in our planet, in all other planets in all other galaxies in all other universes and in the rest of creation along with us.

It isn’t that tiny yellow ball of nuclear fusion that warms this speck of galactic dust that we live on who is God, God is the Creator of that tiny yellow ball along with all the hydrogen inside it and it is God alone who makes that hydrogen fuse in to helium, there by warming our tiny little rock that we call our world.

Whatever we are God is greater, to God we belong and to him we will return.

compared to all that is, we and as far as we can see in to the night sky is of less significance then a tiny neutrino. And all that is is nothing in compareson to the creator of all that is, was and will be.

I’ve slaughtered my own. And I’ve been in slaughterhouses where both Hallal method and Harram method are used.

So when I make a judgement that the Halal method is less painful, I am not talking from ignorance, because I am talking from experience. The only one more qualified to give a verdict on this issue would be an animal that was slaughtered according to the Islamic method, was reborn and then slaughtered according to the stunning/bolting method, and then was reborn as a human. But I don’t believe in reincarnation so don’t believe such a person exists.

I can not understand the thought process of these people who think receiving a electric shock is painless or pain relief? In places like Uzbekistan and Guantanamo bay electric shocks are used by America and its puppets as a method of causing pain.

Craig did your bosses at the home office use the example of animals being electrocuted to as pain relief to justify what their friends were doing in Uzbekistan? Did they say Karimov was electrocuting people with beards to relieve the pain of being beaten?

As the brother mentioned earlier, not all animals are knocked out by electrocution and bolting. I’ve seen sheep electrocuted, hung upside down, regain consciousness, start kicking so hard that the leg which they are hung from snaps, wait there turn to get slaughtered. I have even seen the skinning process start before the animal is slaughtered! This happens because the animal is often assumed to be dead after bolting/electrocution. But as mentioned before not all animals die and some regain consciousness.

If electrocution was really such a painless method of causing sleep, don’t you think hospitals would use it before operations?

Why do you think America has removed the electric chair in favour of lethal injection? Don’t you think animals feel the pain we feel when electrocuted?

Compare that to the Islamic method where the sheep is slaughtered, and not hung until after death.

Antican, have you been to a slaughterhouse? Have you seen the Islamic method of slaughter first hand and seen the factory method to make your comparison?

Or are you relying on the words of others to make you judgment?

If electrocution and bolting really reduced the pain of the animal instead of increasing it, Muslim would not have a problem with it. But it is not about reducing pain, it is about saving time, money and man hours in a conveyorbelt factory slaughter system.

Now look what has come of a positive greeting to the end of a religious tradition.

For all it is worth, religious education should ideally encompass all major religions, not prefer one or the other in religious asemblies.

It does not just educate children to whats good or bad, it teaches them the basics for future strife in life.

I despise those clergy who preach morals and then are failing their own standards, rather do away with all RE education and teach citizenship values and communitarian principles as they exist, here and abroad, lessons from a more diverse poor and developing nation can only improve the spoiled lifes of our little darlings.

ingo, the “spoiled lives of our little darlings”? you obviously haven’t seen the east end recently. if we are going to compare those children with the children dying of starvation then of course they are lucky, but if we are going to compare everything to the lowest most awful denominator, we are not going to get v far in this society.

surely the point about teaching religion is not that you have to exhibit the morals necessarily, you just have to say what Jesus (or whoever) did. thus giving out ideas to inspire, rather than a stick to beat people with.

arsalan: beautiful meditation, and very appealing self description. do you, though, i wonder, have a point of view on the burkha?

technicolour, would you like to teach your child about a moral subject that has been regenerated to suit a certain brand of thinking, regurgitated from other religions and played as the true gospel?

The bible has been re written some 26 times, not counting the fact that its basic commandments were copied from earlier religious text and amalagamated?

jesus is a figment of the imagination, an emotional clutch engaging morals that are not helping in todays world.

To base one’s morals on religious scripts is like asking the devil to open the purly gates, but thats just my opinion. Religious freedom has got us to this point in time, where politicians have the gall to say that religion is the new politics.

Thats when it has been the old politics for hundreds of years.

Sorry, but I don’t follow your logic and we just have to agree to differ.

I shall now go and sit at the frog pond, watching a very successfull specie is a good start for meditation and contemplation.

dear ingo (i think it was ingo) I do follow your logic. It doesn’t change the fact that I know religious people who live by good textual advice – “seek not to overcome evil with evil, seek only to overcome evil with good”, for example.

They would have doubtless done so anyway. But the fact that they had backing and a sense of belonging helped them, I think. In any case, if you dispose of all religious and philosophical texts (I think religions are philosophy) you’d just have to write new ones. “Think about not nicking your mate’s PS4, in case he jacks your ipod” maybe.

I agree that people who try & impose prescribed morals are on a hiding (often literally) to nothing.

Have fun with the frogs!

technicolour

To be honest I’ve never actually thought about whether I should wear one or not(Do you think it will bring out my eyes?).

Now that I have thought about it I can categorically tell you I will never wear one because it is not allowed in Islam to be a transvestite.

But if you are asking me what Islam says on this issue. My answer will be more vague, because there is a difference of opinion on this issue, which has existed from the earliest days of Islam.

I don’t know how knowledgeable you are about Islam, so I will assume you have no knowledge to try and make my answer as comprehensive and clear as possible.

The two Primary sources of Islam are the Quran and Sunnah(words and actions of the Prophet). The Sunnah has been collected in to various compilations, called Hadith. Bukhari(9 volumes, I have this) is the most famous one which was collected by someone from a city in Uzbekistan called Bukhara. Muslim(4 volumes I have that too) is the second most well known, and was collected by a student of Imam Bukhari called Imam Muslim. Looking up at my bookshelf which is just above this computer there are a lot of others, such as Riyad us Suliheen, Nawawi, Tarmedi, al Muwata and loads of others.

The Quran was revealed verses at a time. The way we follow the verses of the Quran is the way the Prophet Mohummed pbh followed them. Because the words and actions of the Prophet are within themselves revelation.

When the verse concerning what women should cover was revealed, women covered themselves with whatever came to hand. The female members of the Prophet Mohummed’s pbh family covered everything except an eye to see with.

The key issue on whether Niqab is compulsory or not is whether this dress code was for the female family of the Prophet pbh or for all Muslim women.

Some Muslim Scholars of Islam say it was only for the female family members of the Prophet pbh and the dress code for other Muslim women allows them to show face and hands because there are Hadith that says women are allowed to uncover the face in Huj and allowed to uncover it to be identified for signing a business contract.

Others who say the dress code of the Prophet’s female family members is for all Muslims state the same Hadith, but say the very fact that women are allowed to uncover their faces in those circumstances means they aren’t in other circumstance.

Now if what you meant by your question was which of the two opinions do I believe is correct. My answer will have to be I DON’T KNOW!

Greater men than me differed on the issue, so who am I to say who is right and who is wrong?

I don’t need to decide on which opinion I believe is stronger because I am never going to wear one anyway.

Just as I don’t need to learn about how long after a women’s period ends does she have to take a bath and when does praying and fasting become compulsory on her,again because I have never had a period and I never will.

Just as if you ask me what I think of always ultra and whether I think it is better than supermarket own brands, I don’t know and I have no reason to find out.

If you meant what I think of others wearing Niqab, Everywhere and in none Muslim countries such as this one in particular.

I have to say whether it is compulsory or not I respect them for copying the dress of My Prophet pbh’s family, because I love my Prophet pbh and I love my Prophet PBH’s family. When it comes to non-Muslim countries where such a dress results in discrimination, insults and even attacks, I have to say I respect them more.

When following a religion results in worldly reward, it is very easy to follow one, and the out word signs of following a religion do not indicate in word piety. but when following a religion result in no worldly benefit and much harm in this life, I think it is clear those people only do what they do for God. And that sort of conviction has to be respected by people of all religions.

It seems to me that even the most erudite discourses on religion often end up sounding like guys in the local pub arguing over which team is best, and why. ‘The Life of Brian’ contains so many excellent vignettes on this topic, it’s worth a re-viewing anytime: “I was here first even though you were here before me and anyway, my beard’s longer than your beard!”. Even Ernie Ray’s highbrow BBC Radio Four programme, ‘Beyond Belief’ ended up all-too-often sounding like this. Well-intentioned ‘Encounters of Faiths’ make me groan. None of us need to, or can, know the definitive account of, or possess, either history or absolute good. However, we ignore the histories of others at our peril – or rather, at theirs. Basically, rather than being intelligent beings perching on the shoulders of giants, really at times it seems to me that really we are worms with tongues, feeding off the minds of the dead. Now, listen-up, worms, the key question, it seems to me, is this: Does Richard Dawkins dwell in an aubergine, or a flat iron? One, two, three… go!!

Look all this over someone saying Eid mubarak?

I am going to click on this web page again on the 25th of December to see if any of the people who had a problem with Eid Mubarak have the same problem with Merry Christmas?

Anyway, to answer the latter posts about religion and morality.

People who believe in a religion don’t believe in it because the morality contained within its scriptures, they implement the morality contained within its scriptures because they believe in the religion.

It isn’t a chicken and egg scenario.

Firstly someone decides whether or not they believe in a God, a great spirit, a supreme being, whether you want to call it, Allah Bagwan or Yahweh.

This thought process is independent of scriptures but knowledge is always a useful tool in this contemplation. Astronomers, might look at the night sky, geologist might look at the earth beneath us, I’m more of a Materials Engineer so like meditating over macro molecules while contemplating the infinite complexity of creation. I think about simple molecules I work with such as PP, or something more complicated such as PET and PC then start thinking about really complicated structures such as those contained within liquid crystalline polymers. I know the complexity if synthesizing something as simple as PP, and if the monomers and joined together in the wrong way it would end up like a putty instead of like the rigid plastic used to make the glass I am drinking out of while I type this. I think about how thinks get harder with Pet and PC and really difficult when synthesizing LCPs.

Then I compare the polymers made by us, with the polymers God has made and I know even when I look at a simple protean used to metabolise glycogen, that this isn’t by chance.

Those of you are don’t have knowledge on this subject do have knowledge on other subjects. so all of us can think about what we know about when we decide whether their is a creator or not.

If you decide their is a creator then you decide whether their is a message from the creator to us, if there is which set of scriptures is the creators message to us.

(Notice that I didn’t tell everyone to follow my religion, and how mine is right and everyone elses is wrong)

If you have made a choice, That is when you start looking for morality within them to implement upon yourselves.

Not before. Actions come after belief, not before belief.

I have just read what I wrote.

I have a B in GCSE English but I wrote ‘their’ instead of ‘there’ at least twice!

I’m going to bed, Eid Mubarak everybody.