A synopsis of the variant views and opinions, chock-full of quotes, and ended with the more logical of reasonings behind the “2 women to 1 man” in testimony rule.
More can be said on the reasoning behind the last opinion stated, but for that stay tuned.
Tradicionalista @ Women and Testimony in Traditional Islamic Law
After reading these two articles, I haven’t really thought through the whole process (issuing a bond for charity instead of investment), but it is an interesting idea nonetheless for “Financing Reform”
Find it from David Wolman of Wired Here:
The eco-capitalists are coming, and they aren’t wielding Thoreauvian platitudes about the sanctity of nature. Their jargon is far less lyrical: ecological assets, environmental markets, ecosystem services, natural capital. For these guys, biofuels and long-lasting lightbulbs are fine but they’re nothing more than a short-term play. The real money is in nascent markets indexed to the health of Mother Nature.
People understand the economic value of nature’s goods because we constantly pay for them: seafood, timber, copper, cut flowers, natural gas. But nature also provides services that stabilize spaceship Earth. Insects pollinate crops, wooded hillsides purify water, trees sequester CO2, and wetlands buffer cities against storm surges. How much are those services worth? Who knows. They’ve always been free, or treated as such. Nature has never submitted an invoice.
and from Sohail Mamdani of PI Here:
True, there’s no profit in activism – at least not in the kind of activism that has, in the past, relied on donations and championed causes centered on theological and philosophical reform. No one makes any money at rallies (except the halal hot dog vendors) and there is no mechanism in place for getting a return on investment on women-led prayer.
But there is potential for getting a return on investment by focusing financing efforts on the ancillary industries that help organizations…
As a Muslim American, one of the most constant abuses that I face is the insinuation that absolutely no Muslim leader, layman, or organization has condemned terrorism, the 9/11 attacks, or those that perpetrate them.
As a Muslim and an American, I personally condemn all acts of terror regardless of who commits them. Here are a few sites that contain a large number of links to Muslims (individuals and organizations) denouncing extremism and terrorism (including some from my alma mater, the Islamic University of Madinah):
I’ll conclude with an interesting quote by former Secretary of State Colin Powell:
“What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it’s terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?”
God Bless America
JAKARTA, Indonesia — When HSBC Holdings launched its Islamic finance business in Indonesia last month, it opted for a decidedly un-Islamic advertising campaign.HSBC Amanah, the bank’s Islamic finance arm here, put out print ads featuring images of Jakarta’s National Monument, the Empire State Building in New York and London’s Big Ben. Only the curved Middle Eastern-style window framing the ads, designed by WPP Group-owned JWT, hinted at the product’s Islamic roots.“Shariah banking [complying with Islamic law] doesn’t only have to be in Mecca,” says Agung Laksamana, a spokesman for HSBC in Jakarta. “We’re trying to show this product…
Read the rest here
While reading on the NYPD Report on “Homegrown terrorists”, I came across this post @ “Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts“:
Blood from a Stone II
As previewed by ABC News, the report warns of over two dozen population “clusters” in the northeastern U.S. “on a path” to terrorism.
In a report to be made public today, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly concludes the 9/ll attacks were an “anomaly” and the most serious terror threat to the country comes from clusters of “unremarkable” individuals who are on a path that could lead to homegrown terror.
The report by the NYPD intelligence division, “Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat,” plots “the trajectory of radicalization” and tracks the path of a non-radicalized individual to an individual with the willingness to commit an act of terror, multiple sources say.
“The threat is real; this is not some bogey man we are creating here. There are individuals who are proselytizing, inciting angry young men to go down this path,” said [Rand Corporation terrorism expert Brian] Jenkins, who reviewed and contributed to the NYPD report.
It’s not entirely clear what a “cluster” means here. ABC reports that the NYPD identifies specific “mosques, bookstores, cafes, prisons and flop houses” as incubators of jihadism, but the 90-page report seems to attempt to craft a psychological and sociological understanding of the conditions that may set American Muslims on a radical path.
my bold.
Tehre is a basic statistical problem here. The NYPD is attempting to analyze the phenomenon of USA grown Islamic terror with essentially no data on USA grown Islamic terror. This is like the NSA “data mining” effort to determine patterns of electronic communication typical of Islamic terrorists in the USA with essentially no data on Islamic terrorists in the USA (hence the II in my title).
This is really very simple — no statistical technique can enable you to understand a phenomenon without data on the phenomenon. A huge pile of other data which you guess might be related is as useful as your guess. Data analysis can’t add anything to the original guess. The fact that computers crunch numbers according to sophisticated algorithms can’t make data on terrorist appear without data on terrorism.
A few USA grown Islamic radicals have fantasized about acts of terror. It is not easy to draw reliable inference from such a small sample. Also they were all comically inept. The USA may be incubating competent Islamic terrorists but there is no information whatsoever on their characteristics or experiences.
I think that people are irrationally impressed by analysis and especially analysis of massive amount of data by a computer. If the data do not include the variable of interest — US based or US bred Islamic terrorists, the analysis can not add to the uniformed guesses behind the algorithms.
update:
Spencer Ackerman read the report so I don’t have to. He finds that “Contrary to its billing, the report doesn’t identify actual Muslim population clusters in the U.S. that incline toward terrorism.” and that “NYPD intelligence analysts Arvin Bhatt and Mitch Silber try to construct a model, based on prominent European Muslim and U.S. Muslim terrorists and would-be terrorists, that isolates patterns indicating radicalization.” That is to say that Bhatt and Silber looked for patterns in the tiny amount of relevant data. Unsurprisingly they found nothing useful and concede
There is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization. Rather, the individuals who take this course will begin as “unremarkable” from various walks of life.
Which shows that they are admirably honest. Given the size of their data set there is no way Bhatt and Silber could have obtained results worth a Baht.
Not only is the data that Silber and Bhatt use irrelevant to the American context, but based on its irrelevant database it is, necessarily then, grossly inaccurate in its characterization of the terms “Salafi” and “Jihadi”.
The European usage of those words will carry more “Algerian” or “Moroccan” overtones than say the NE American usage of those terms which will probably be more Egyptian. Mid-Western and Western American Usages will probably have more Saudi and Levant overtones; all variant usages of one or two words, they are all understood in vastly different ways by different groups based on differences in their variant geographical, ethnic, and ideological backgrounds; much in the way the word “Sufi” carries connotations ranging from that of piety, to mild invariance to society, and even to deviance with some; all based upon the same variance caused by geographical, ethnic, and ideological backgrounds. Yes cookie cutter solutions are for kindergarten.
The paper’s conclusion as quoted above…
“There is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization. Rather, the individuals who take this course will begin as “unremarkable” from various walks of life.”
TMPMuckraker astutely notes:
Each step adequately describes the road taken by the extremists profiled by Bhatt and Silber. But that’s largely because the process is itself a generic description of the process of joining any identity-oriented group.
The Arabs say:
كأننا والماء من حولنا ، قوم جلوس حولنا الماء
It’s as if, while there was water around us, we were a people sitting with water around us!
So after 90 pages we now know that unless we get put some pre-cogs in a wading pool and wire plasma screen HDTV’s with DVR to their heads (no need for someone as cool as Tom Cruise to operate it though), there will be no way we can know/guess/guestimate which person will be the next homegrown terrorist, and we will have then the difficult duty of acting like human beings and not prejudicially condemning people based on race, ethnicity, or religious affiliation.
“In this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.”
George Washington
A somewhat interesting presentation on the psychology of religious conversion by Lewis Rambo, San Francisco Theological Seminary; delivered at the International Coalition for Religious Freedom Conference on Religious Freedom and the New Millenium” Berlin, Germany, May 29-31, 1998
I know nothing about the presenter nor the conference at hand, but some of his statements are very interesting. Here are a few excerpts:
Unfortunately, the psychology of religion has probably been influenced too much by the Protestant—and perhaps to some extent the Catholic—ethos which emphasizes the priority of belief. Many social scientists are saying that, in many cases, it is belief that follows practice, and not practice that follows belief. There’s always a debate about the sequence, but I think one could argue that, in many groups, learning to behave in certain ways, and to affiliate in certain ways, often takes priority over some sort of belief system. The belief system is often something that people acquire much later, at least in its more sophisticated terms.
and…
More and more people who are studying the actual religious movements in question are coming to the realization that most people who become involved are in fact active agents, and not passive victims….What I’m arguing for is an approach to these issues that is fair and honest to both sides, and has the courage to say that there are some methods that we as religious people need to debate among ourselves. Are they legitimate? Do they respect the sacred status of an individual, or a human being who should not be manipulated?
as well as…
Psychologists have been working on what are the roots of human motivation, or the springs of action that drive us. The motivational structures to experience pleasure and pain, to have conceptual systems, to enhance self-esteem, and to establish and maintain relationships, are fundamental human needs. I stress this because, when people ask me why people convert, my response is, “Let me count the ways.” There is usually no single motivation that drives people
Question: What changes when a person converts?
People ask me, “What it is that changes when a person converts?” I’ve struggled with that over the years. Drawing upon my own observations, as well as the literature, I’ve tried to put together four major things that happen in a conversion process.
…changing to a new religious orientation takes place through what the sociologists call kinship and friendship networks … people who convert or change religions usually do so through personal contact, and not through impersonal methods of communication, although that happens sometimes.
Secondly, what is very clear is that virtually all religious groups emphasize the importance of relationships with the leader of the group, and with members of the group….
…we have denigrated the role of ritual. …what we do has a powerful impact on what we believe, and what we experience. These things just don’t drop from heaven, but rather are engaged in actively. I use a term, which I take very seriously, that rituals are the “choreography of the soul.” It seems to me that they invite people into a new way of being. [emphasis added]
The third thing that happens when people become converts, is that the way in which they interpret life—their rhetoric—changes….When a person converts, their whole strategy of attribution has changed.
The fourth thing that changes is the notion of role. … it’s really in some ways rather a mystery. For example, if I were sitting in this audience as an auditor, the likelihood of me asking a question in this group is probably one in a thousand. Because my role is to be a presenter, I get nervous about it, but I can do it, and I would probably talk too long. Role is very powerful in shaping peoples’ perceptions and behaviors. When people become a member of a new religious movement, or when they become a passionate Roman Catholic, they have a new perception of themselves that often empowers them to do things, to believe things, and to feel things that they have not have been able to prior to that time. [emphasis added]
and…
But, I also want to argue in terms of what I’ve been pushing for, and that is honesty. There are some conversions in which one could argue that the convert has psychologically regressed. Now, in some cases, converts temporarily regress, psychologically speaking, but as they are involved in a group over a longer period of time, through the structure of the group, through new disciplines, through new behaviors and so forth, they shape a new personhood. So, it has a lot to do with when the person is evaluated, and how far they’ve come from where they were before.
Prabhu Guptara talks about how the charging of interest exacerbates the difference between the rich and poor. The technical term for this is usury – usually understood to mean the charging of excessive rates of interest by loan sharks. Traditionally, however, the term meant the lending of money at any rate of interest, high or low. The practice was forbidden by most major religions and by many societies and cultures throughout history and with good reason, Guptara says. It widens the wealth gap, encourages growth without regard for environmental consequences and creates a culture of short term investor commitment.
Ibn ‘Ashur, who was arguably one of the greatest scholars of the past century, followed in the tradition of al-Shatibi and al-’Izz with his book Maqasid al-Shari’ah.
Maqasid al-Shari’ah, a concise and intriguing work in its original Arabic, it is now available in the English from IIIT. For a review of the translation look here. Hat tip to Dr. Mahmoud El-Gamal who posts on reinvestigating legal objectives. He links to this article by Dr. Robert Crane, which mentions a bit about Ibn ‘Ashur and the Maqasid. The author cites the edition of al-Maqasid in Arabic saying:
“…His major work, first published in Arabic in 1946, was translated and annotated for a modern reader with incredibly thorough footnotes by Mohamed el-Tahir el-Mesawi under the title Ibn Ashur, Treatise on Maqasid al Shari’ah…”
While al-Mesawi’s edition is probably one of the better prints of the book, the footnotes are hardly “incredibly thorough”. There is however a another edition of this book which fits this description; the one annotated by Shaykh Muhammad al-Habib Bin Khujah and printed by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Qatar.
Bin Khujah (to my knowledge one of the last living students of Ibn ‘Ashur) has done an impeccable job of presenting the Maqasid of his teacher; servicing his knowledge, memory, and legacy.
This edition is printed in three volumes:
The third volume of this set services the knowledge of the Imam; in doing so Bin Khujah depends on two of the earliest prints of this work, as well as the personal notes of Ibn ‘Ashur himself. He compares the two prints (in that the original manuscripts were not available to him), adds the author’s personal notes to the marginalia, as well as adding his own notes to issues he sees pertinent.
One of the major contributions that this edition make is the attribution of the texts referenced by Ibn Ashur back to their sources, including al-Shatibi’s al-Muwafaqat, al-Qurtubi’s Jami’, Ibn ‘Arabi’s Ahkam, as well as various works in fiqh and Usul. Ibn Ashur’s other seminal works are referenced as well, such as his tafsir al-Tahrir wa ‘l-Tanwir and his “Usul ‘l-Nizam ‘l-Ijtima’i fi ‘l-Islam”. At times Bin Khujah will even relate verbatim some of these referenced texts, in an attempt to give the reader more context of the original. This is in addition to explaining some of the terminology found in the book that might be lost on the non-specialist.
For those concerned with the area of business, finance, and economics, one of the latter portions of the book would be of interest “Maqasid ‘l-Tasarrufat ‘l-Maliyyah”. To give you an idea of the importance of this chapter he says:
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the most important objective here is preservation and economization of this nation’s wealth. This nation’s wealth, whence viewed as a whole, is preserved through regulating the manners by which it is managed generally, in addition to the manners in which individual wealth is preserved and managed. Preservation of the whole depends on preservation of its components; the majority of Islamic legal principles dealing with wealth relate directly to the preservation of individual wealth, which in turn preserves the wealth of the nation; there being a direct correlation between the benefit of personal wealth and the benefit of public wealth in relation to the prosperity of the nation.
This section of the book is deserving of further analysis by Muslim economists, in that (in the eyes of this non-specialist) it presents a far better survey of Islamic views related to economics than what has been presented so far.
In conclusion this is probably the best print of Maqasid al-Shari’ah so far, and an indispensible one at that in light of the value added by Bin Khujah’s service to the book.
Here are some resource links as well:
This is a possible first in the industry, and a good sign…
From IHIblog:
The State Bank of Pakistan, Pakistan’s central bank, has issued new qualifications and restrictions on Shari’ah advisors. The new regulations require Shari’ah advisors to have a postgraduate degree in Shari’ah law, four years of experience and limits the degree to which Shari’ah scholars can hold executive or non-executive positions with Islamic banks other than Shari’ah scholars. The new regulations do allow Shari’ah scholars to oversee multiple Islamic financial institutions as long as they are not involved outside of the Shari’ah compliance role and do not have significant financial interests in any organization to which they provide oversight.
