Islam's Green

Salvation in Kochi

In mid May (how time flies) I made a short trip to India to attend and speak at an exhibition there organised by Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen. Now I must admit that I was rather concerned about the mujahideen part, and was beginning to think that I had inadvertently accepted an invitation from some extremist entity, or perhaps they were a throw back to days of resistance to the British Empire! When I arrived after a thirteen hour flight at Kochiairport and was met by the brothers there it was one of the first questions I asked on the forty five minute drive from the airport to the hotel Abad Plazain the the town centre. I was reassured with a laugh. The term was meant in the broadest sense, and that they worked with the full co-operation of the Indian government. When the organisation was established in 1950 they had to fight a sea of ignorance, mostly with in the Muslim community. Apart from the call to worship Allah alone, and to abandon the shirk of grave and saint worship, they had to combat the prevalent attitude that women should not be educated. In fact according to "Imams" of that time, they did not even allow women to read the Quran! They spearheaded the education of Muslims in Kerela, which now has one of the most educated Muslim populations in India.

Kochi is the commercial hub of the state of Kerela, but not the capital. That honour goes to Thiruvananthapuram. Kerela itself is pitched as a tourist destination, and certainly if tropical humidity and palm trees is your thing, this might be the place to go, not that I had the time or energy to explore much. The exhibition itself was was very similar in concept and layout to the Peace exhibition in Chenia and Bombay, however the emphasis here was on the lectures. Also staying in hotel was Hussein Ye and two brothers from a dawa centre in Bahrain which whom I spent most of my time.

The exhibition was massive and very well attended. On Sunday the queue to get into it was two and a half kilometers long! My two llectures where not so well attended. One was on the Seerah of the Prophet and the other on Dawa.

There were occasional moments of confusion as I was shuttled back and forth to the hotel, but on Saturday we had some time free whilst waiting for my lecture, so we took the car for a quick drive round the city. Our driver was a Christian named, and decided that he would take us to a local Catholic shrine. When I told him that I used to be Catholic he became some what subdued. He told the brothers with me that he had no idea, but it was the start of some conversations that took place as we drove back and forth from the hotel to the exhibition. He asked a very intelligent question: "What is faith?" I was momentarily taken aback by this, and was not expecting it in the least, but was in fact delighted by it, because it allowed me to get to the very heart of the discussion straight away.

This is of course a very important matter that many people involved in discussions about different religions, and indeed with atheists ignore. You see what Jude (the driver) and I understood by faith was something quite different. I explained that for a Muslim, for someone who was Muslim by conviction rather than fate of birth, faith meant believing something quite believable with proof. That there is a Creator, and God is One and Unique, is entirely rational and believable. That the Quran is word of God and that Mohammed is the Prophet is also something that can be established through some objective evidences. Through this we can have faith that is truth. Jude's understanding of faith was somewhat different. It meant to believe in something completely without question, or doubt. That was fine, I responded, but how do you know your faith is true, what criterion or means do you use to know that your faith is right and another wrong? The discussion went back and forth through translation, and became quite animated. Jude could only keep affirming his faith, and I just kept going back to the point, but how did he know?

We we soon arrived at the hotel and he had to go, but Ahmed Shaz, the translator between us, phoned me later in the hotel room saying that Jude wanted to talk to me and he was going to convert me back to Catholicism!

Well, we met in the hotel lobby that evening and had a long discussion. It emerged that he and his wife had been trying for a child for many years and then one day he prayed to Jesus and then his wife conceived. This is what his faith was based upon. Well of course I said that that was fantastic, but the problem here was what did it really prove, because a Muslim or Hindu might, and in fact do claim exactly the same type of experience. So who is right?

Then I explained about the Oneness of Allah. Why this and this alone had to be the basis of faith. That faith should be reasoned this way, and how the idea that Jesus is God contradicts this basis by asking one to believe an impossibility, that something is Eternal and mortal, finite and infinite, needy and sufficient both at the same time.

Well he didn't take shahada, but we certainly left on good terms, and he admitted that he had a lot to think about!

 

Really scary Americans!

Just keep watching this until the end.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gtwKRM1fOFY

The Cursed Generation

I found the article below under the title of "The cursed generation."

It is amazing how much we are still rooted in our past, despite the elightenment and the industrial revolution and the pretence of democracy, we still seem to live in a version of feudalism. Certainly the great land owners and feudal lords have had their powers whilted away, but it has only become possible through decreasing dependance on agriculture. There was a time when most people in the West were serfs. A serf was in everything but name a slave, tied to the land and his or her fuedal Lord. Their life was spent working and indeed fighting on behalf of the feudal Lord.  The land could never produce enough to free them selves from the dept to the Lord, and indeed in time of trouble he was the only recourse they had. Thus they became more and more indepted and tied to the master. The indusrial revolution saw serfdome replaced by something perhaps even more permicious, the mill and factory worker. For them the company owner became the new, master. The wages they earned was often not enough to pay for accomadation and food, and an increasing dept cycle enslaved them to the factory. This method of control is of course still going on in third world sweat shop facories. Perhpas we thought that we had escaped such control. It seems not. These days a knew variation of the feudal Lord has taken over. The Bank!

All praise is due to Allah who has warned us and kept us away from riba and all its derivatives, and from dept and its snares. May He guide us to a live a life within our means, and upon gratitiude to Him, the Exhailted.

read these verses if you like:

"Those who eat Riba (usury) will not stand (on the Day of Resurrection) except like the standing of a person beaten by Shaitan (Satan) leading him to insanity. That is because they say: "Trading is only like Riba (usury)," whereas Allah has permitted trading and forbidden Riba (usury). So whosoever receives an admonition from his Lord and stops eating Riba (usury) shall not be punished for the past; his case is for Allah (to judge); but whoever returns [to Riba (usury)], such are the dwellers of the Fire - they will abide therein.

Allah will deprive usury of all blessing, but will give increase for deeds of charity: For He loveth not creatures ungrateful and wicked."  Quran 2:275-6

Worse off than ever before

By Naomi Caine

June 10 2008

With our fast cars, handheld computers and digital television sets, it's easy to feel better off than the previous generation. But there's more to prosperity than electrical goods - and in many ways today's 30 and 40-somethings are worse off than their parents.

A quick glance at house prices helps you understand why. Property values have soared by 171% over the past 10 years. The average house now costs £191,556, up from £70,696 a decade ago. It's a lot of money on any measure, but especially when you consider that wages have not kept pace, rising an average of 50% over 10 years.

High price for family homes
High house prices put the squeeze on family finances. The typical house now costs more than six times the typical salary, according to figures from the Halifax. If you look back a generation, the average property was worth about 2.8 times the average earnings.

If you earn below the average income, it's a struggle. More than 70% of towns are unaffordable to key sector workers. First-time buyers are also finding it hard to get onto the housing ladder. The average house is now beyond the financial reach of a first-time buyer in 466 out of 483 towns in the UK. No wonder the number of first-time buyers fell to about 300,000 in 2007 - the lowest level since 1980 and a 44% drop on 2002's figure of 532,000.

Mortgage slaves
Soaring house prices equal big mortgages. So people in their 30s and 40s are slaves to their home loan. And that makes them slaves to their jobs. But the job market has changed over the past 25 years. Unemployment is thankfully low at below 800,000, a drop of 125,000 over the past year.

But we don't enjoy the same occupational certainty as our parents, many of whom took a job for life. Nowadays we work on the edge, where short-term contracts, freelancing and part-time work are the norm. The lack of job certainty makes us financially precarious. It also means that many of us must forgo the comfort of sick pay, holiday pay and maternity benefits.

Few final salary schemes
We can't even look forward to a decent pension when we retire. Our parents are probably the last generation to enjoy the gold standard of pensions - a final salary scheme. Only about a third of final salary schemes are now open to new members, a figure that is expected to decline. So, our pension won't be linked to our earnings and underwritten by our employers. No, we will have to rely on the stock market to fund our old age.

That's if we bother saving into a pension. More than half of adults don't contribute to any kind of pension, according to the Prudential 2008 Retirement Savings Report. People who choose to save, have halved their contributions over the past 12 months to an average of £144.57 a month.

Inflation issues
If that were not bad enough, it's getting harder to make ends meet because prices are rising. The government's official rate of inflation jumped to 3% in April and is expected to stay above the target of 2% for at least the next two years.

The driving forces behind the rising inflation rate are higher energy and food costs. Wholesale gas prices, for example, have more than doubled since the middle of 2007, prompting the big energy companies to announce gas and electricity price hikes at the beginning of the year. Then there's food. World agricultural prices rose by more than 40% in the year to January 2008. Over the past 12 months, average prices for bread, biscuits and cereals have shot up 8.5%, an all-time record.

Higher taxes
Bigger tax bills don't help. The typical council tax bill, for example, has risen more than 90% over the past decade. In fact, total tax receipts have almost doubled over the past ten years from £289 billion in 2006-07, when Labour came to power, to £520 billion in the last tax year. The increase in the tax take means that families on average paid £5,600 more in tax in real terms in 2007-8 compared with 1996-7, according to figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

What's our solution to our financial problems? We borrow money to make ends meet. So, we take out a bigger mortgage to unlock some of the equity in our home. We run an overdraft, arrange a personal loan or spend on a credit card. We even turn to our parents for help. More than 10 million adult children have "sapped" their parents' savings, according to a report from Scottish Widows. The average amount given by parents to their offspring is £12,300, causing a total savings sap of £55 billion.

Debt mountain
It all adds up to the biggest debt mountain on record. It also adds up to a whole lot of trouble for the next generation. If we have big debts but little or no savings, what's left for our children? How can we give them a financial leg up if we are already on our knees? And they might need our help.

We have lived through an economic boom. But the storm clouds are gathering. The credit crunch dragged growth down to 0.4% in the first three months of the year, the slowest pace for three years, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. The annual growth rate is now about 2.5%, compared with 2.8% in the last three months of 2007.

Official Treasury forecasts suggest the economy will grow by between 1.75% and 2.25% this year. But its predictions are more optimistic than those of most economists. The Bank of England predicts annual growth could drop to as low as 1% over the next two years.

It could get very bloody if house prices continue to fall and unemployment starts to rise.

No legacy worth having
It's not much of a legacy is it? It seems our children will pay the price for our debt-fuelled consumer spending spree. But if they won't inherit any wealth from their cash-strapped parents, at least they might inherit a more responsible attitude to money. Let's hope so, for all our sakes.