Islam is a noble and peaceable faith which we must all respect, whereas Islamism is a corrosive  and aggressive political ideology, and the two — weirdly — have nothing to do with one another. This is a patent nonsense, a delusion, and while it may work as a form of crowd control, it will not help us win this battle. It is indisputable that the vast majority of British Muslims...

“Killings do not solve anything. We in BiH know that very well as 100,000 people were killed here in only four years. I am not saying dialogue is always the solution, but there is something that we call peaceful protests that have been accepted in all Western developed countries,”…

This has the potential to further undermine the positive work done by the Muslim community and also give ammunition to the far right. Tony Blair took us to a disastrous war against the will of majority British people in 2003 and moreover, according to Prof John Esposito from Georgetown University in Washington, he has misread Muslim terrorism....

The appeal is clear. God’s word is now accessible to all. Young men and women can do religion for themselves without having to defer to elders. The message is there in a book. It is easily portable, and universal – great advantages in a time of mobility and globalisation. And though the message is strenuous, its rewards are great: community with the like-minded, moral certainty and superiority, blessings in this world and salvation in the next…..

So while the NYPD continues to terrorise minority communities and the FBI continues to foil phony Muslim terror plots that it itself devises, plans and funds, rest assured that all the well-armed and well-represented white folks in our noble nation will continue to live free from suspicion, scrutiny, and surveillance no matter how much postal poison they send and mass shootings they carry out....

Throughout history, the sacred scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have been used and abused, interpreted and misinterpreted, to justify resistance and liberation struggles, extremism and terrorism, holy and unholy wars. Terrorists everywhere go beyond classical Islam’s criteria for a just jihad and recognise no limits but their own, employing any weapons or means....

...some 30 percent of interviewees said they had encountered the argument that they were not practising a true form of Islam. Wahhabists (a conservative form of Sunni Islam) have allegedly criticised the brotherhoods for promoting the worship of individual imams - known in Senegal as marabouts - over worship of the Prophet Mohammed, said Sambe....

Thus it can be said that the idea of political Islam is not the creation of some ignoramuses and violent groups among Muslims but has its roots in the rigid and separatist interpretations and thoughts of Islamic thinkers, poets and scholars which over the time and under different political circumstances intensified and the politically violent groups like Al Qaida and Taliban used these thoughts and ideas to provided legitimacy to their own ideology of communal hatred, sectarianism and terrorism in order to establish an Islamic caliphate and annihilate all those groups and sects that do not fit into their definition of Islam. It will also be apt to note here that Iqbal was the first to say that Qadianis were traitors not only to Pakistan but also to Islam....

Separatist unrest continues in Papua, a large area that is thinly populated by over 300 Melanesian tribes. It is the poorest part of Indonesia, with some thirty percent of the population being extremely poor. The Papuans, who were ruled as a Dutch colony for centuries, were granted independence by the Dutch in 1961, but a year later Indonesia invaded and no one went to the aid of the Papuans....

There are several theories to explain the attacks. The philosopher could have been targeted because he is wrongly believed to be related to the ruling Assad family, and is revered by Shiite Muslims for being presumably a member of the family of Imam Ali and therefore a relative of the prophet Mohammed....

“Is it even possible to stop two nut jobs going online and radicalising themselves and then going out to kill someone on the street with kitchen knives?” an exasperated official asked me yesterday morning. “How do you prevent that?” Demonising Islam or Muslims won’t help....

Sami ul Haq, nicknamed ‘The father of the Taliban’, famous within his social circle as ‘Maulana sandwich’. Now that we have learned to accept our Maulana’s religious disorder with equanimity, the reputation can be conveniently kicked aside for the greater cause, so to say. Sami ul Haq is considered to have the clout that can exert pressure on the Taliban to compromise and put their guns down that they have taken up against the state of Pakistan....

The six-month sojourn of the suspect in the Boston bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in the Russian territory of Dagestan last year has drawn unusual attention to the low-boil guerrilla warfare of the North Caucasus. A picture has come together of Mr. Tsarnaev as an outsider feeling his way around the edges of an insurgency that looked very different from the stories of partisan fighting that he had heard growing up among Chechen refugees....

There is a fight going on between Islamism and Islam, the former is extremist, the latter is moderate. Unfortunately the voice of the extremists is more dominating as compared to the moderates. We have to raise our voice. The extremists are brainwashing the innocent, young Muslims into committing heinous acts, it is our time to brainwash them....

The Taliban are running after a mirage. Their dream of establishing an Islamic caliphate is only a pipedream. It can never be realised. Their ideal of an all-inclusive Islamic caliphate is in direct contrast with their exclusivist approach. Their sectarian, rigid and violent outlook can never be able to establish an all-inclusive global Islamic caliphate. They have been using such Utopian lollypops to get the support of the ignorant Muslims of the world just as they did in Afghanistan before capturing power there. They used to go to the common Muslims with a copy of the Quran in hand and say, ‘We want to establish a government based on this Quran, so support us.’ The people were fascinated by the idea of a government based on the Quran. They thought a government based on the Quran would be an ideal government. They will no longer face any difficulty, persecution, injustice and discrimination under such a government. But after the Taliban came to power, they established a government that was mostly in contravention of the ideals of the Quran….

It is important to stress that from the estimated 5,000 converts to Islam every year; almost all of them embrace Islam after being inspired by its monotheistic clarity, its moral guidance and its holistic framework. Conversion to Islam is rarely political, but it is usually connected to personal self-building and spiritual awareness....

Their messages reflected the outrage of the nation and the particular anger of a community that felt the perpetrators had hijacked their religion to justify violence. "The horrific attack in Woolwich had nothing to do with Islam and everything to do with the scum who say they do this in the name of Islam," wrote one Facebook user, Imran Khan. "It's a minority like you, who give Muslims like me who work hard to build interfaith relationships, a bad name. You are a disgrace to Islam...

The cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed has been secretly filmed stating that decapitation of the enemies of Islam was permitted. Today, in comments met with outrage, he told The Independent that he could understand the feeling of rage that had motivated the attackers and that what they had done could be justified under certain interpretations of Islam....

If Maudoodi's exhortations are not enough to motivate Muslims to conduct acts of terror, we have the words of the late Hassan al-Banna being distributed in our schools and universities. Al-Banna makes it quite clear that the word "jihad" means armed conflict. He mocks those who claim jihad is merely an internal struggle. Al-Banna says this redefinition of the term "jihad" to depict it as a non-violent act of self-examination, is in fact a conspiracy so that "Muslims should become negligent."...

That this was a barbaric and horrendous act goes without saying, but given the legal, military, cultural and political significance of the term "terrorism", it is vital to ask: is that term really applicable to this act of violence? To begin with, in order for an act of violence to be "terrorism", many argue that it must deliberately target civilians. That's the most common means used by those who try to distinguish the violence engaged in by western nations from that used by the "terrorists": sure, we kill civilians sometimes, but we don't deliberately target them the way the "terrorists" do....

For 12 years British Muslims have been set upon, pilloried and alienated by successive governments and by the media for things that they did not do. We must say clearly that the alleged actions of these two men are theirs alone, regardless of being informed by the wars, and we should not descend into yet another round of collective responsibility peddling....

At this point in time when Islam is being demonized, Muslims are facing crises throughout the world; when terrorism is identified with Islam, it is imperative for the religious scholars and parties to persuade their followers to abandon the course of extremism. They should focus on seeking knowledge of science and technology, so that they can make their contribution in finding a respectable place in the comity of nations....

The Taliban has begun military operations against two regional parties: the MQM, the front of North Indian refugees, and the Awami National Party of the Frontier. The third enemy is the PPP, which is likely to become a Sindh party after this poll. The Taliban are not talking about defeating them in elections. They are seeking to eliminate them physically…..

Many wonder how have the radical Wahhabi ideologues been able to create an army of suicide bombers in their war against the world to create a global Wahhabi Khilafat. The traditional wisdom is that it is the lure of the hoor in the hereafter that leads young men to find a way of leaving this world in a hurry. This is no doubt true. You just have to read the writings of Maulana Masood Azhar, the terrorist who was freed from an Indian jail in exchange for passengers on the hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 (IC814) and went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammad, the most successful in creating suicide bombers. He describes what goes through the minds of these young men who are on the way to their suicide mission – fantasies of sex with young virgin hooris in Heaven where they will soon be as they have been told by the likes of Maulana Masood Azhar or Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar-eTayyeba.

But it is the Taliban issue that is uppermost in my mind on Election Day. Here, the PPP has unambiguously condemned the terrorists and supported army action against them. The truth is that civilian agencies are hopelessly outgunned by these killers, and only the army has the firepower to take them on. American drones — despite their unpopularity in large sections of Pakistani society — remain the most effective weapon against them.....