Showing posts with label Qur'an. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Qur'an. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: Rick Santorum, the Republican presidential hopeful, has accused Afghans of "overreacting" over the burning of the Koran, as he criticised President Barack Obama for apologising for the incident.
Mr Santorum said there was "no deliberate act ... of disrespect" when US authorities at Bagram airbase north of Kabul apparently disposed of the Islamic holy books in a fire.
The United States rushed to condemn the burnings, and Mr Obama apologised to the Afghan people for what he said was a mistake.
President Hamid Karzai went on television Sunday to appeal for calm, after an explosion of outrage over the burning resulted in dozens of deaths, including two US military advisers killed in Afghanistan's interior ministry.
Mr Obama's apology in itself had "made it sound like there was something that you should apologise for, and there was no act that needed an apology," Mr Santorum told NBC's "Meet the Press" talk show.
"I think the response needs to be apologised for, by Mr Karzai and the Afghan people, for attacking and killing our men and women in uniform, and overreacting to this inadvertent mistake. That is the real crime, not what our soldiers did." » | Sunday, February 26, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: An apology by Barack Obama over the accidental burning of Korans in an American airbase failed to prevent a fourth day of violent protest in Afghanistan with at least nine killed.
Thousands took to the streets after Friday prayers in towns and cities across the country, shouting anti-Western slogans and threatening violence against international and government targets.
In the worst of the day’s violence six protestors were killed and 65 wounded when a mob attempted to storm the American consulate in the Western city of Herat.
Mohiuddin, spokesman for the provincial governor, said the protests had been initially peaceful, but at 3pm shots had been fired by protestors and a police car pick-up truck had been fired.
He said: “They started trying to attack the American consulate. A police car was destroyed and there were many casualties.”
In Kabul hundreds marched on the palace of Hamid Karzai before they were dispersed by shots fired over their heads. » | Ben Farmer, Kabul | Friday, February 24, 2012
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NZZ ONLINE: Deutsche Bundeswehr gibt Lager in Afghanistan auf: Stützpunkt in Taloqan nach gewaltsamen Protesten komplett geräumt » | Reuters | Freitag, 24. Februar 2012
Verwandt »
Thursday, February 23, 2012
"I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident," Obama wrote in the letter delivered to Karzai today, and released by the Afghanistan government. "I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies."
"The error was inadvertent," the letter added. "I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible."
The burning incident triggered anti-U.S. riots that have killed at least 14 people, including two American soldiers. » | David Jackson | USA TODAY | Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Eight demonstrators were killed and 30 wounded across Afghanistan as violent protests erupted for a second day following the inadvertent burning of Korans in main American airbase north of Kabul.
Police and security guards fired into a crowd gathering on the eastern outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, leaving at least three with gunshot wounds witnesses said.
Volleys fired over the protestors heads as they massed near Camp Phoenix, a military base on the main eastern road into the city, failed to dent the crowd’s strong anti-Western anger and protestors said they would march to the city centre.
Police said they had burned shops and cars and smashing windows as they progressed.
Embassies in Kabul locked their gates and forbade staff from leaving as they braced for violence.
Protest paralysed the eastern city of Jalalabad and a doctor at one hospital said it had admitted ten wounded. A doctor said he had seen one young man shot dead in Jalalabad. » | Ben Farmer, Kabul | Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Isn’t this the kind of mayhem we in the West can expect in the future, as the Muslim population grows and grows? Isn’t it true to say that Western politicians have endangered our way of life and our peace in their quest to make our societies multi-cultural? And aren’t the politicians endangering our peace, tranquility, and way of life by their very cowardice to address the problems here at home? Imagine what life will be like in Europe when the indigenous population is outnumbered?– © Mark
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Tuesday, February 21, 2012
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Furious protesters firing petrol bombs and slingshots have besieged the largest US-run military base in Afghanistan after reports that Nato troops had set fire to copies of the Koran.
The enraged crowd shouted "Death to Americans" and "Death to infidels" at guards at Bagram airbase, north of Kabul. The guards responded by firing rubber bullets on the crowd, said an AFP photographer, who was hit in the neck.
US helicopters fired flares to try to break up as many as 2,000 demonstrators who massed outside several gates to the base.
Hundreds of other people protested in the Afghan capital as security forces dispatched reinforcements in a bid to stop the demonstrations from spiralling out of control in the fiercely conservative Islamic country.
The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, apologised and ordered an investigation into a report that troops "improperly disposed of a large number of Islamic religious materials which included Korans". » | Source: agencies | Tuesday, February 21, 2012
THE GUARDIAN: 'Qur'an burning' at Bagram base sparks protest – in pictures » | Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Qur'an, lent by the British Library, will be part of the exhibition, "Hajj: Journey To The Heart Of Islam:, the first-ever major collection dedicated to the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in what is today Saudi Arabia.
The copy of the Qur'an is thought to date from the 8th century AD, according to the British Library.
Known as the Ma'il Qur'an, it was probably copied in Mecca or Madinah. The script is known as Ma’il, meaning sloping, on account of the pronounced slant to the right, and it is one of a number of scripts developed in the early Islamic period for the copying of the Qur'an. » | Islam Today/Agencies | Saturday, January 14, 2012
Monday, March 21, 2011
AFP: GAINESVILLE, Florida — A controversial US evangelical preacher oversaw the burning of a copy of the Koran in a small Florida church after finding the Muslim holy book "guilty" of crimes.
The burning was carried out by pastor Wayne Sapp under the supervision of Terry Jones, who last September drew sweeping condemnation over his plan to ignite a pile of Korans on the anniversary of September 11, 2001 attacks.
Sunday's event was presented as a trial of the book in which the Koran was found "guilty" and "executed."
The jury deliberated for about eight minutes. The book, which had been soaking for an hour in kerosene, was put in a metal tray in the center of the church, and Sapp started the fire with a barbecue lighter.
The book burned for around 10 minutes while some onlookers posed for photos. » | AFP | Monday, March 21, 2011
Saturday, January 22, 2011
BBC: A man has been arrested after police received reports that a copy of the Koran was being burned in the centre of Carlisle.
Cumbria Police said they attended an incident in the city's English Street on Wednesday afternoon.
A spokesman said a 32-year-old man was arrested at the scene and the remains of a book seized.
The man was arrested on suspicion of using racially aggravated threatening words or behaviour.
The spokesman added: "A member of the public reported the incident.
"The man remains in police custody where he is helping officers with their inquiries." [Source: BBC] | Thursday, January 20, 2011
BBC: Men arrested in Gateshead over suspected Koran burning: Six Tyneside men have been arrested after filming themselves apparently burning copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. >>> | Thursday, September 23, 2011
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
ARAB NEWS: JEDDAH: Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal has highlighted the significance of learning and memorizing the Holy Qur’an.
“There is no objective higher than the learning of Qur’an,” he said, adding that the memorizers of the holy book are among the most honored near God.
Prince Khaled made this comment while addressing a ceremony at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Sunday night, which was held to honor 25 winners of the King Abdul Aziz International Qur’an Recitation and Memorization Contest.
“The Qur’an is the guide to success in this life and the hereafter,” Prince Khaled said. “It’s the divine constitution for the whole humanity.”
He said King Abdul Aziz established the Kingdom, which reached the peak of its progress during the rule of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, on the basis of the Qur’an and Sunnah. >>> Arab News | Monday, January 03, 2011
Thursday, October 07, 2010
THE TELEGRAPH: Western democracies have been "outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised" by violent Islamist extremists, Tony Blair has claimed.In a speech in New York, the former prime minister said that warnings over the past week of terrorist plots against Europe should remind people that they remained under threat.
Mr Blair said a "narrative" that Muslims were under attack from the US and its allies, who acted out of support for Israel, had been allowed to take hold, aided by "websites and blogs".
A fresh confrontation was needed because it would be impossible to defeat extremism "without defeating the narrative that nurtures it", he said.
"The practitioners of extremism are small in number. The adherents of the narrative stretch far broader into parts of mainstream thinking," Mr Blair told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"It is a narrative that now has vast numbers of assembled websites, blogs and organisations."
Mr Blair said it was "absurd" that some people were surprised at how powerful Islamist extremist groups were, given the amount of funding they received and indoctrination they spread.
"Measure, over the years, the paucity of our counter-attack in the name of peaceful coexistence," he said. "We have been outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised." >>> Jon Swaine in New York | Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Blair said that we can't defeat radical Islam until we defeat the narrative that nurtures it. That's totally right. And what is that narrative that nurtures it? The Qur'an, of course. So let the battle commence. – © Mark
This comment also appeared here
Sunday, September 05, 2010
NPR: About 3,000 Muslims marched Saturday through Indonesia's capital to the U.S. Embassy to protest plans by a Florida church to burn the Quran on Sept. 11.
Protesters from the hard-line Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir marched with banners and placards denouncing the burning set for Wednesday. Similar rallies were held in five other cities across Indonesia. >>> NPR Staff and Wires | Saturday, September 04, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
NEW ZEALAND HERALD: You'd think in America's bible belt there wouldn't be a big demand for copies of the Koran. But you can bet in Gainesville, Florida, they're flying off the shelves as fast as pregnancy tests after the school prom.
Because despite being denied a fire permit by the local fire chief, the Dove World Outreach Centre is planning a book burning session to mark the September 11, 2001 attacks. That's right, the church is hosting "International Burn a Koran Day".
It's anti-Islamic but it's not an isolated case. Muslims, who make up only about 2 per cent of the nation's population, are seeing their right to practise their religion challenged across the United States. And nowhere more than in New York's Lower Manhattan where plans to build a 13-storey Islamic centre have set off street protests and given Republicans a grandstanding opportunity that is too hard to resist.
Opponents, who say it is offensive to those who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks, have labelled the centre the ground-zero mosque, even though it is more a centre with a prayer room and is two blocks away from the World Trade Centre site.
The American Muslims behind the project have given it the name Park51. No doubt opponents will point out that you only need to change a few of the letters around for it to read Death To America.
The Islamic centre will cost US$100 million ($142 million) and feature, among other things, a swimming pool and basketball court. If bomb-making facilities are planned, they've so far kept that quiet.
The driving force behind the project has been the Kuwaiti-born Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who has been used by the Bush and Obama administrations to spread a message of religious tolerance in Muslim countries.
But to Republican Newt Gingrich he is an extremist trying to spread "moral confusion about the nature of radical Islamism". Continue reading and comment >>> Duncan Gillies | Saturday, August 28, 2010
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Sandow Birk's 'American Qur'an,' heading to San Francisco and Culver City galleries, breaks away from Islamic tradition to examine the faith through contemporary images.
There's a long tradition of illustrating scenes from the Bible -- even a version of Genesis by alternative comics master R. Crumb. But the Koran, which Muslims consider to be the holy word of God, has never incorporated images of people or animals, according to Linda Komaroff, curator of Islamic art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
"It simply wasn't the kind of thing that would come up," she said, "In Islam, like Judaism, there's one invisible god that's everywhere, that can't be seen and can't even be comprehended." As a result, there was no need to develop figurative imagery for religious purposes. The Koran, said Komaroff, is regularly decorated with geometric or vegetal patterns, but she has seen only one example that contains more representational imagery. It depicts the facade of a mosque.
Now, Long Beach artist Sandow Birk has challenged that centuries-old tradition. His series of works on paper, "American Qur'an," is an English-language version of the central text of Islam, illustrated with scenes from contemporary American life. Selections from the project, which is ongoing and will eventually include over 300 pages, will be on view at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco starting Sept. 5 and at Koplin Del Rio gallery in Culver City as of Sept. 8.
Executed in ink and gouache in an understated, realist style, many of the 16-by-24-inch works depict everyday sights -- urban street life, office workers in their cubicles, a pregnant couple in their frontyard. Others represent more historic moments, such as the smoking towers of the World Trade Center or a funeral with a casket draped in a U.S. flag. In the center of each image are two neatly framed boxes containing the text, hand-lettered in a font reminiscent of graffiti writing.
Although the Koran does not prohibit the creation of images, it does contain an injunction against the making of idols, and the faith's second most important text, the hadith, includes additional restrictions on the use of figurative imagery, said Komaroff. Whether "American Qur'an" violates these decrees seems to be a matter of interpretation. >>> Sharon Mizota | Sunday, August 23, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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