Premier Anna Bligh announced the appointment of a council made up of some of the biggest names in the arts, design and architecture worlds – aimed at strengthening the DIA’s vision for Queensland as an Australian destination for design.

"The Queensland Design Council bolsters our ambition to be a design hub for the Asia Pacific region and will advise the Queensland Government on design led solutions to 21st century social, economic and environmental challenges," said Anna Bligh.

The Queensland Design Council (QDC) will be effective in bringing the design sectors together to conceive and to help implement collaborations between designers from different sectors.

It will also link designers to businesses and industries which can benefit economically from better design and innovation (this strategy is about prioritising ‘demand-led design’ over ‘supply-led design’), explained Rayner.

One of the youngest members of the council is Yassmin Abdel-Magied, president of Youth Without Borders, which strives to empower youth to implement positive change in their communities.

“As a young member from a multicultural background, I hope to bring a different perspective to the table,” Abdel-Magied told indesignlive.com.

“Queensland is a state with a large migrant population, and often when looking at usability, creativity and innovation, perspectives from these groups are almost forgotten."

Change might be meet with resistance, Yassmin Abdel-Magied told indesignlive.com, “but the change that the council has the potential to put in motion is quite significant".

“I think when it comes to looking at design and innovation, the biggest issue is the tendency to put ideas in the "too hard" basket, or push creative input aside without really investigating its future potential.”

“I think this is the place for idealism, an arena for all ideas to be put on the table for consideration, said Yassmin Abdel-Magied. “If not here, where else?”

Indesignlive.com
 

Imran Siddiqui, International Speaker and Scholar of Comparative Religion will be coming to Australia for a nation-wide tour, starting with Brisbane!

It is a thought-provoking series of talks and courses that will be he held all around Australia under the theme, "Mission: Global Peace".

Click on the image for details about times and venues.

With the World Cup under a month away, football fever is on the rise across the globe.

Here in Brisbane, the World of Nations Futsal Tournament took precedence last Sunday at Acacia Ridge Indoor centre.

Fourteen teams took part in a tournament that promised excitement, drama and plenty of goals.

The teams brought together people from many different nations, all vying for one trophy (world cup pun anyone).

It was an early start for some with the first game kicking off at 8:30 in the morning, and some players were showing signs of fatigue due to lack of sleep.

The tournament started off with close and low scoring encounters.
 

It didn’t take long for the tournament to get into the swing of things and teams were starting to find the net more often as the games became more intense and more vital.

Goalkeepers were made to work overtime and all the teams were fighting to finish in the top 8 and make the quarter-finals.

The knockout stage lived up to the billing with most games going down to the last whistle and the dreaded penalty shootout.

Four teams eventually marched on to the semi-finals, with the other four teams moving on to play in the Plate.

Four evenly matched teams contested for the plate with the final being contested between Bafana (pictured right) and Matchfixers.

Both teams had met before in the tournament with Matchfixers coming out 3-2 winners.

The final was a different story as the effects of playing a full day took their toll on Matchfixers with Bafana running out 4-1 winners to take the plate comfortably.

All attention then turned to the cup final, as a group of technically gifted Afghanistan boys known as, Ethnic United (pictured below) took on a Saudi Arabian team going by the name of Green Falcons.

The two teams were evenly matched and it was a tight affair.

Each goalkeeper was made to work hard to keep their team in the game, and they were going to be the central figures as the two teams could not be separated at full time and the match went into penalties.

Both teams were successful in their first five attempts, however, at the sixth going, the Ethnic United keeper guessed the right way and sent his team into euphoria as they were declared champions.

Ethnic United were crowned champions and their captain, Roohullah, rounded up the night by winning player of the tournament.

Dynamos, who were knocked out in the semi-finals to Ethnic United saw their shot stopper Jon, pick up Goalkeeper of the tournament.

It was ultimately Ethinic United who took home the cup on a pulsating and draining day for all. The atmosphere for the world cup continues to build, and this tournament was just the thing to get the Brisbane community into full swing.
 

Lawung is a company with an innovative approach to Islamic fashion design. 

The online enterprise boasts offices around the world and according to its Melbourne representative, Karimah, Lawlung has cutting edge products that have "revolutionized the boundaries of Islamic couture".

Tailored designer thaubs (traditional Long men’s garment) have been designed within the United Kingdom to serve as a fashionable functional Daywear.

"We understand the necessity of the modern age and have created clothes with superior tailoring and handpicked fabrics that can be worn in any sphere of the office, a formal function or even whilst you relax in the comfort of your own home,"

Derived from the ancient Chinese lao, meaning Old and wung meaning King, Lawung is about "challenging the rules, making eccentric combinations and maintaining traditional authenticity". 

Karimah told CCN that Lawung "attempts to make the Muslim ummah preserve the sunnah of our beloved prophet (saw), as a lot of our Muslim brothers and sisters have taken up in wearing western clothing. Lawung has created a concept to divert their attention  and we hope to see more brothers moving closer to the sunnah by wearing lawung InshaAllah."

"Navigate your way through the streetz, find yourself and know who you are, Don’t bow down to anyone else," appears to be the message of this enterprise.

Lawlung is offering a free hat valued at $10 with any purchase for Salaam card holders.

The building of the awnings and shoe racks at the Townsville Mosque were recently completed at a cost of around $2000 through the generous contributions of two Gold Coast donors.

The Townsville Muslim community expressed their sincere gratitude to the Gold Coast community for their support.

A MELBOURNE law firm has hired Australia's first sharia consultant - an imam to advise Muslim clients on how to observe Islamic legal codes alongside Australian law.

Sheikh Mohamadu Nawas (pictured left), a member of the Australian National Council of Imams, will work particularly on commercial contracts and disputes between Muslims, plus separation agreements, divorces, wills and pre-nuptial agreements.

Earlier attempts to have Australian law recognise sharia principles or to establish a sharia court in Australia have proved controversial, with Muslim women's groups strongly opposed.

But Sheikh Nawas insists his advice will be fully compatible with Australian law. It will not involve the criminal code.

''In other countries, sharia courts deal with these issues, but here we don't have this, so we are trying to promote sharia-compliance in advance,'' he told The Age.

Sheikh Nawas has been hired as consultant by Logie-Smith Lanyon, which also sponsors a postgraduate degree in Islamic banking and finance at La Trobe University.

According to Hyder Gulam, a senior lawyer with the firm and a board member of the Islamic Council of Victoria, there is rising demand in Melbourne's growing Muslim community for dispute resolution in harmony with sharia principles, as well as Islamic financial products, such as housing finance and investments.

He said: ''It's big business. (Assistant Treasurer) Nick Sherry went to the Middle East recently to promote Australia as sharia-friendly for finance and investment.''

Sheikh Nawas said most Australian Muslims did not know sharia law, but more marriages between Muslims from different communities or with non-Muslims meant more wanted to.

''We are trying to educate people so they can reduce tension in cases of separation or divorce. All these things are available under Australian law.''

Sheikh Nawas, who studied Islamic law in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, said sharia was complex, drawing on both the Koran and the Hadiths (secondary but authoritative sayings of the prophet Mohammed), but fully explained the rights of every husband and wife, parent and children.

''For a will, first the spouse, then the children, then the parents, then other people may come in. If families separate, children should be kept in one house rather than divided between parents, causing harm in their development,'' he said.

The Age
 

The Australian Government will be earmarking millions of dollars to check the spread of radical Islam in the country. The measure comes as part of a Federal Budget package to boost national security.

The Federal Budget to be announced on Tuesday is especially significant as it comes in an election-year. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Government is focusing on strengthening national security to appease Australian citizens.

There has been heightened concern over the security issue following a deluge of asylum-seekers who manage to enter the country unintercepted.

In view of these concerns, the Government will announce "preventative" measures to counter the growth of radical terrorist cells across Australia, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The Government will implement its programmes carefully in order to avoid demonizing the Muslim community and the new measures will tackle potential spread of extremism in the nation's jails, the paper said.

The Budget is expected to outline a national scheme, with religious classes and better contact between inmates and their families. This could minimize interactions that could potentially lead to the formation of radical Muslim caucuses, it added.

BigNews Network

A new study has revealed that the physical act of washing hands can result in a clear mental slate.

"Going beyond prior purification effects in the moral domain, physical cleansing seems to more generally remove past concerns, resulting in a metaphorical "clean slate" effect," the CBS quoted the co-authors of the study, Spike W. S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz, as saying.

According to the research published in the journal Science, the psychological impacts of physical cleansing reach beyond the moral domain.

"Much as washing can cleanse us from traces of past immoral behaviour, it can also cleanse us from traces of past decisions, reducing the need to justify them," the survey says.
 

In a bold new step designed to increase Islamic knowledge across the globe, Dr Bilal Philips has launched the world’s first fee-free, Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Studies in English completely online.
 

The Islamic Online University (IOU) utilises the worldwide presence of the internet and advanced online learning technology to bring Islamic education to virtually anyone on the planet with access to a computer and the internet.
 

Although all classes are free, each semester there is a fixed symbolic registration fee and examination fee calculated on a sliding scale (from $10 to $50) depending on the student’s country of residence.
 

On April 1st 2010, students from around sixty different countries commenced their classes of recorded video lectures and weekly live tutorials.
 

The syllabus is based on the BA in Usool ud-Deen (Religious Foundations) curriculum of Madeenah University, Saudi Arabia, Omdurman Islamic University, Sudan, and other similar institutions.
 

Six subjects are available each semester and the teachers hail from a wide variety of backgrounds and countries Aqeedah (Islamic Creed) is taught by Canadian scholar Dr Bilal Philips, Dr Dawood Abdullah from the United Kingdom teaches the biography of Prophet Muhammad, and Dr James Jones from the USA instructs the students in comparative religion.
 

Other teachers come from as far afield as Malaysia, India, Afghanistan, Egypt, Slovenia, Ghana, Sudan, and Pakistan. Enrolments for semester one have now closed, however from June 1st 2010 enrolments will commence for semester two beginning in September 2010.
 

For those unable to commit to a full schedule of classes the IOU continues to run the short intensive free courses that commenced in 2007.
 

In the past three years, more than 20,000 students from more than 160 different countries have enrolled in the free courses allowing them to pursue quality Islamic knowledge from the comfort of their own homes.
 

The Islamic Society of Algester held a fundraising Mother's Day brunch on last Sunday at the Beenleigh Event Centre.
 

Some 500 guests attended the function and partook of the wonderful brunch delicacies.
 

A special guest appearance by the world famous Qari Sadaqat Ali added to the flavour of the day with his beautiful Qirat and naat recitals.
 

The program ended at 1pm.
 

With the World Cup a few weeks away and many Australians making their way to South Africa, CCN will, over the next few weeks, bring readers, heading out to the Rainbow Nation, up to speed with world cup news, and the local politics, idiosyncrasies, personalities and culture of the country.

This week we look at one of the world’s most magnificent stadiums, built in the coastal city of Durban ahead of the 2010 World Cup.

Durban’s new Moses Mabhida Stadium, named after a hero of the working class people, has been designed as a state-of-the-art, world-class stadium for the 2010 World Cup, and as a multi-functional and easy-to-maintain asset for the city of Durban to enjoy in the future. The creation of this precinct means that Durban will be one of the few African cities able to host most of the Olympic disciplines within a single sporting precinct.

The stadium infield has been designed and built in accordance with the latest international sporting codes. It will have the capacity to hold 70,000 spectators during the World Cup and will then be reduced to 54,000 in legacy mode, once the tournament has ended. This gives the stadium a huge capacity, and it has therefore won the right to host one of the semi-finals during the competition.
 

The stadium is unique in a very special way, with an arch, known as the ‘Arch of Triumph’, going over the stadium in an engineering feat which has been acclaimed worldwide. The grand centre arch, 106m high, will become a world first tourist attraction, thanks to a high-tech cable car designed to take visitors up to its highest point, where they can disembark and take in breathtaking, panoramic views of the city. This 350m long free-span steel arch weighs 2,600 tonnes.

The Moses Mabhida Stadium seeks to be more than just a football stadium, and more still than just a sporting facility. The venue strives to become a cultural, sporting and general events hub, while providing the city with yet another tourist attraction in its own right, with the stunning design and arch which floats high above the city providing visitors with plenty to see.

For a 360 degree view of the stadium click here.
 

WWW.ISLAMTV.COM.AU

Imam Imraan Husain - No Faith without Love
Mufti Zeeyad Ravat - Tafseer at Gold Coast Masjid - Lesson 5
Various National & International Sheikh's - Mercy Mission Melbourne Conference
Sheikh Feiz (Sydney) - Shining Beacons Of Islam
 

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