We’ll see. Printed it out to read on the bus ride home (in between the VA Suhba). It does have quite a variety of high level shayook as signatures. Can’t comment on the variety, as I’m not too familiar with most of the top salafi scholars today, but all my favorites are there.
Via Umm Zaid:
 Egypt Today’s cover story on Sh. Hamza, Mufti Gomaa (woo, look at that egyptian jeem) and Amr. Khaled.
In recent years, members of our ulema have come out with quite a few statements and declarations that express opinions on living in the west, relationships between muslims and terrorism.  Unfortunately, I can’t see what effect these declarations have on the ummah.
I’ve previously blogged about the Salaam 100, and I’m sure that most blogosphere muslims have read the Amman Message.  On a more recent blog/online oriented level, we have the Sunni Unity Pledge. These messages are all well and good. In fact, I whole heartedly agree we should be making statements such as these. But, what happens after the statement?
 Just today, I stumbled upon the Topkapi Declaration, which was signed last year at a conference attended by some of the biggest names there are - Sh. Ali Gomma, Sh. Qaradawi, Sh. Hamza Yusuf, Sh. Nuh, Sh. bin Bayah, Mufti Ceric, Tariq Ramadan, among others. How did I find out about this document? Not in some message board exchange about it’s implications, or even an old blog post. No, I found it while looking at pictures of the Shayook at the Muslims in Europe conference.Â
 We remain committed to working to ensure that the voice of the peaceful majority of Muslims overcomes that of the tiny minority who seek to promote distorted misinterpretations of Islam. We join our voices to those of scholars from across the world to say that we reject the cancer of terrorism. We pray for the guidance of those to whom extremism and violence may seem an attractive route.
Why isn’t this document more widely discussed? Why haven’t we worked on some way to get this message out in our words and deeds?Â
In quasi related news, check out this picture. So much ilm in such a small space.
The whited out blob is Sh. Nuh, who doesn’t want to be photographed
 Click here to register.
Before yesterday, I knew that Marmaduke Pickthall was an english convert to Islam and that he had translated the Qur’an. Then I read this biography by prof. Abdal-Hakim Murad (also a spiffy guy). SubhanAllah! If I could accomplish 1/10th of what he did, I would be well satisfied.Â
He died in a cottage in the West Country on May 19 1936, of coronary thrombosis, and was laid to rest in the Muslim cemetery at Brookwood. After his death, his wife cleared his desk, where he had been revising his Madras lectures the night before he died, and she found that the last lines he had written were from the Qur’an:
‘Whosoever surrendereth his purpose to Allah, while doing good, his reward is with his Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them, neither shall they grieve.’
Via Deenport:
Ramadan Health and Spirituality Guide - Print this out and spread it far and wide.  It has some things that aren’t applicable to NA muslims (a 2006 England timetable and UK contacts), but the health info is excellent.
Inner Dimensions of Fasting - from Imam al Ghazali. There’s more to fasting than being hungry and thirsty.
DeenIslam’s Fasting Section - tons of reads and lectures.
Food for Thought - text of a lecture by Sheikh Hamza Yusuf.
To watch when I get home - the Sheikh Hamza ISNA speech from which I quoted earlier.
…is Ingrid Mattson, according to USA Today, which is all right. I suppose if I had to vote for someone to be our face, it would be either Ingrid, Sheikh Hamza or Imam Zaid. Perhaps I’m bias towards muslims born in North America, but if we’re not the majority of NA muslims now, we will be very soon.
She talks of nurturing a genuine American Islam, rooted in the classical faith, which dates back before the theological, political and legal schisms fractured the Ummah, the Muslim world, centuries ago.
Also, on a personal note, a friend of mine is her assistant, lucky duck! *waves to Amera*
Both Tariq Ramadan and Sheikh Hamza Yusuf have recently written pieces on the sad maladies that is anti semetism that infects the muslim ummah.
From Br. Tariq:
The situation is far too serious for one to be satisfied by simple explanations based on current frustrations. In the name of their faith and their conscience, Muslims must take a clear position so that a pernicious atmosphere does not take hold in the Western countries. Nothing in Islam can legitimize xenophobia or the rejection of a human being due to his/her religious creed or ethnicity. One must say unequivocally, with force, that anti-Semitism is unacceptable and indefensible. The message of Islam requires respect of Jewish faith and spirituality as noble expressions of “The People of the Book”.
And Sheikh Hamza:
In our inherent contradictions as humans, and in order to validate our own pain, we deny the pain of others. But it is in acknowledging the pain of others that we achieve fully our humanity. A close friend of mine, a professor of religion in a Muslim country for many years, recently told me that his wife, an English teacher in that country, had wanted to use Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl as a text for her Muslim pupils. But the school administrators repeatedly denied her request because they deemed it inappropriate reading for young Muslims. It is sad that the current political morass in the Middle East has led to this intolerable refusal to confront a people’s collective suffering. Perhaps in acknowledging that immense past of Jewish suffering, in which the Holocaust is only the most heinous chapter, Muslims can better help the Jewish community to understand the current Muslim pain in Palestine, Iraq and other places. In finding out about others, we encourage others to find out about us. It would greatly help our Jewish brethren to know the historical facts of Jewish experience in the Muslim world, which are often heartening and humanizing and very different from their European experience. In our mutual edification, we grow together.
inshaAllah ta’ala one day voices like these will be loudly and publically embraced by the majority of the ummah.
From the Washington Post’s Muslims Speak Out section, Tariq Ramadan answers two questions about jihad and apostacy, as well as the the omni present “treatment of women in Islam” schtick. Can’t say enough good things about this guy. I’m saving his jihad response for future reference in debates against those who insist that it is nothing more than terrorism. Also, I need to find the work of Jalal ad-Dîn as-Suyutî he mentions. That’s one of the things I love about Islam. This deen has such a rich and deep intellectual history, you’re always finding something new to explore
The concept of “jihad†has different meanings and a scholar such as Jalal ad-Dîn as-Suyutî (15th century), while studying its scope, highlighted 80 different dimensions, uses and objectives related to its place in Islamic teachings. Its root “ja-ha-da†means “making an effortâ€, “exerting oneself†in order to promote good or to resist wrongdoing, evil or oppression. Every individual trying to resist her/his own negative temptations is engaged in “jihad†and the first time the word is used in the Qur’an (25:52), it refers to an intellectual and spiritual resistance by the means of the Qur’an itself.
In all its dimensions, the essence of “jihad†is “to resist†in the name of justice and dignity. When there is an armed aggression, Muslims have the right to protect themselves and to defend their rights. Here “jihâd†means “qitâl†(armed struggle). The use of violence and weapons must be adjusted to the nature of the aggression itself: an armed aggression may justify an armed resistance if there is no other way to come to a peaceful agreement. But the use of violence and weapons must be proportionate and never target innocent people, women, children, the elderly, and even fruit trees as Abû Bakr, the first successor of the Prophet, stated following Muhammad’s teachings. Jihad never means “holy war†in order “to impose†or “to propagate†Islam everywhere. In fact jihâd and qitâl mean exactly the opposite of what we commonly think: rather than being the justifying instruments of war, they are the imposed measures to achieve peace by resisting an unjust aggression.
In specific situations – when one faces an army and has no weapons or other means to resist – it may be understandable and justifiable to consider sacrificing one’s life in attempts to reach the armed soldiers. Here we are not far from a kind of suicide but it is related to three specific conditions: 1. It must be in a time of declared war; 2. when no other means of resisting are available; 3. the targets must be exclusively the army of the enemies and its armed soldiers. Today’s suicide bombers who are killing innocent people are not only not respecting the Islamic teachings as to the ethics of war but are in fact indulging in anti-Islamic actions.