DOHA (AFP) - Prominent Qatar-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi has sparked controversy by issuing a religious edict allowing Muslims to consume tiny amounts of alcohol, which is banned in Islam.

“The latest fatwa caused confusion among people… We could have done without it,” the editor of the Qatari daily Ash-Sharq, Abdullatif al-Mahmud, wrote on Thursday.

In his fatwa published on Tuesday in the Qatar’s Al-Arab newspaper, the Egyptian-born Qaradawi said that consuming drinks containing small quantities of alcohol that is “constituted naturally through fermentation” did not violate Islamic teachings. (more…)

This is an astounding figure. Not to mention the loss of over 1 million civilians, the sectarian blood-baths, the destruction of a civilisation and reduction of a country to rubble..

And, this economic cost is just a little part of this sordid, ugly tale of our times. Naomi Spencer writes:

Stiglitz said the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be somewhere between $5 trillion and $7 trillion for the US alone. Another estimated $6 trillion will be borne by other countries, he said.

…More than a million civilians have been killed in Iraq alone. Some 4.5 million more have been displaced by the violence, with thousands of refugees fleeing the country into Syria, Jordan and elsewhere every day. With $3-5 trillion, the US government has destroyed an entire society. (more…)

I am grateful to Saadi to have forwarded me the this amazing ancient text.

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The Letter of Prophet Muhammad

Below is the English translation of the extra-ordinary letter by Prophet Muhammad as a Charter of Privileges to Christians monks of St. Catherine Monastery at Mt. Sinai. It consists of several clauses covering all aspects of human rights including such topics as the protection of Christians, freedom of worship and movement, freedom to appoint their own judges and to own and maintain their property, exemption from military service, and the right to protection in war. It bears the hallmark of Islam and Prophet’s attitude about the right[s] of other religious practitioners. (more…)

Khaled Ahmed in a recent review writes:

 The scholar fears that his own religious validity may be destroyed through political contact. The king is usually keen to establish contact with the scholar for his legitimacy, not because he wants to correct his political behaviour

This volume on The Arabian Nights or Alf Laila wa Laila is the result of a conference held in Japan in 2002 to celebrate 300 years of the French version of the Arabic masterpiece done by Antoine Galland. Through it, the Japanese orientalists put on record their nation’s contact with Orientalism and revealed in the process some remarkable facts about the Nights hitherto unknown to most Muslim scholars. (more…)

 I am a child whose teacher is love.
surely my master won’t let me grow
to be a fool* (more…)