SEX EDUCATION: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

“If you tell kids about sex, they’ll do it. If you tell them about VD, they’ll go out and get it. Incredible as may seem, most oppositions to sex education in this country are based on the assumption that knowledge is harmful. But research in this area reveals that ignorance and unresolved curiosity, not knowledge, are harmful. Our failure to tell children what they want and need to know is one reason we have the highest rates of out-of-wedlock teens pregnancy and abortion of any highly developed country in the world.”   [What Kids Need to Know, Psychology Today, October 1986. Dr. Sol Gordon, Professor Emeritus, Syracuse University, and an expert on sex education]

WILL THE SECOND SINKING OF THE EARTH SOON OCCUR?

Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) prophesied that ten major Signs of the Last Day would occur as follows:

1. Dajjal, the false Messiah or Anti-Christ,
2. Gog and Magog,
3. Smoke,
4. The beast of the earth or land (most likely the holy land),
5. That the sun would rise from the west,

RAISING ONE’S HAND DURING SALAAH

In addition to raising one’s hands in prayer when pronouncing Takbir al-Ihraam (the first Takbir), it is Mustahab (i.e. a recommended act) to raise one’s hands at three other times during Salaah (the Muslim prayer):

(i) just before bowing in Rukoo’,

(ii) when rising from Rukoo’,

(iii) when standing up after the first Tashahhud.

The reports of raising of the hands are ‘mutawaatir’, which means they are reported by so many narrators to so many that it is inconceivable that they could all have agreed on a lie.

WOMENS RIGHTS IN ISLAM – MODERNISING OR OUTDATED?

DEFINITION

According to the Oxford dictionary, ‘Women’s Rights are the rights, that promote a position of social and legal equality, of women to men’

According to the Oxford dictionary, ‘they are the rights, claimed for the women, equal to those of men, as regards to suffrage that right to vote, as regards to property, etc’.

‘Modernising’, according to the Oxford dictionary means, ‘to make modern, to adapt to modern needs or habits’.

And according to the Webster’s dictionary it means… ‘To make modern,

THE FEMINIST REVOLUTION AND THE LAST AGE

The Qur’an likened the creation of the male and the female to that of the ‘night’ and the ‘day’, implying that they complement each other “… like twin-halves of a whole.” But they are also functionally different; hence a successful and harmonious male-female relationship requires that the ‘day’ (i.e. the male) must function as ‘day’ and not try to become ‘night’, and similarly the ‘night’ (i.e., woman) must function as ‘night’ (which covers and conceals) and not try to become ‘day’. Prophet Muhammad (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) ordered, “. . when a girl reaches the age of puberty nothing must be seen of her body except this and this (he pointed to the face and hands).” And so Muslim women have always covered themselves in Hijab—concealing arms, legs, bellies, head, hair, etc., in loose-fitting clothing.

A MUSLIM RESPONSE TO SWINE FLU EPIDEMIC

In a Caribbean island of Trinidad that is blessed with a plural society, and which celebrates that plurality with the democratic proclamation “here every creed and race finds an equal place”, we Muslims are grateful that we still have at least that much freedom that we can buy newspaper space to publish a Muslim viewpoint on an issue as critically important as ‘Swine-Flu epidemic’. That appears to be the only way now left for publication of an authentic Muslim viewpoint in the so-called ‘free world’s’ print media.

On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization raised the worldwide

WHEN TIME MOVES FASTER

Among the Signs of the Last Day as disclosed by Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) is that:

“Time would move faster – so that a whole year would pass like a month, a month would pass like a week, a week like a day, a day like an hour, and an hour like the amount of time it takes to kindle a fire.” Why so?

He explained that the perception of time moving faster would be in consequence of the ‘remembrance’ of Allah Most High (Dhikr) departing from the heart, and a preoccupation with the worldly life (Dunyah) taking exclusive possession of the heart. The consequence of this spiritual vacuum would be that:

TEN MAJOR SIGNS OF THE LAST DAY – HAS ONE JUST OCCURED?

LAST DAY MEANS LAST AGE

The term ‘Last Day’ in reality stands for the ‘Last Age’, or the age which would culminate in the end of history—when the true Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary (not son of God), would return to rule the world from Jerusalem with justice and ‘eternal’ rule. It would be ‘eternal’ in the sense that history would end with that event. Life on earth beyond that event, and after Jesus dies a human death and is buried next to Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah Most High be upon them both) in Madinah, would not qualify as history. This would be so since the modern secular rope would have reached its predictable end in total godlessness, and with such a consequent collapse of morals, and of moral consciousness, that people would

SIGNS OF THE LAST DAY AND THE END OF HISTORY

History is more than a mere record of events. History not only records the constant changes that take place in the world but also seeks to interpret that phenomenon of change. An analysis of the historical process, of the movement of history, and of the end of history, emerges from the interpretation of change in the world. It answers many nagging questions.

Is change taking place randomly, or is there a pattern to change? Is the historical process one that would persist unto eternity, or would there be a Last Age and an end to history?

A strange and mysterious Euro-world-order now controls the entire world in its iron grip. It has derived unprecedented power from a

NEW ORLEANS AND THE SIGNS OF THE LAST DAY

Last December’s massive under-water ‘sinking’ of the ocean-bed L in South-East Asia spawned a Tsunami which caused more than a hundred thousand deaths, most of them in the faithfully Muslim province of Aceh in Indonesia. It also provoked me to write an essay entitled “Ten Major Signs of the Last Day – Has One Just Occurred?” That essay directed attention to three ‘sinkings’ of the earth, as prophesied by Prophet Muhammad, that would herald the return of Jesus, the true Messiah (peace and blessings of Allah Most High be upon them both). The first, he said, would occur in the East (i.e., east of the Arabian city of Madina), the second in the West, and the third and last in Arabia itself.