The Islamic Society of Algester Incorporated is continuing towards completion of Stage 1 of the Mosque complex.

 

In November 2011, construction was stopped when funds ran out.

 

"Continuing to move toward the finalisation of Stage 1, of the two stages for our approved centre, the society has not stood still," Mr Rahman Deen told CCN.

 

The anticipated cost for Stage 1 finalisation and occupancy is $1, 950, 000.00. To date $1, 200,00.00 has been collected from within the community, leaving a shortfall of $750,000.00 to complete the project.

 

"In view of this and whilst building costs are at a lower than usual rate, we the committee have decided to ask for assistance in our fundraising efforts to complete what is an urgent requirement. Inshallah we are in the process of contacting all the societies in and around Brisbane, the Gold Coast and other areas for financial support, it is the first time we have requested this type of assistance since our inception and hopefully with everyone’s prayers and duaas we will succeed Inshallah," Mr Deen said.

 

"We anticipate support from other Mosques to do a weekly collection and Juma we have also confirmed a full fundraising dinner auction for Friday 25th April, 2014, (long weekend Anzac Day Holiday) at the Islamic College of Brisbane, Karawatha, starting after Maghrib salaah at approximately 6pm for 6.30pm."

 

The first collections will start on Friday 21 March at Holland Park and Logan City Mosques with the other Mosques to follow soon after.

Request is also being made for auction items for the fund raising dinner.
 

 

Bank Details for Direct Deposits / Transfers:
Bank: Commonwealth Bank of Australia
A/C Name: Islamic Trust of Algester
BSB: 064 001 Account Number: 1049 4681 Branch: Adelaide Street, Brisbane

For more information contact:
1. Treasurer – Hajji Yusuf Hussein – 0409 746 786
2. Secretary – Hajji Mahmoud Osman – 07 3344 7477
3. President – Masood Ayoob – 0438 750 786
4. Coordinator – Hajji Abdul Rahman (Ray) Deen – 07 3879 9492

 

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If you are seeking to be amongst one of these very privileged women whose contact and experience in this spiritual retreat will be life-changing with this dynamic speaker, please join us at the second Australian Ladies Retreat.
 

Please view the flyer for more information or call: Fathima 0490 342 480 or Nadia 0433 277 622.

The parents' committee (CPAC) of the Islamic College of Brisbane held a Family Movie Night on Friday at which over 1000 parents, children, school staff and friends and relatives attended.   Families came armed with blankets for a night out in the great outdoors to see the Disney movie, Brave.   Monies raised will go to improve play facilities for the Primary School.   The event was also supported by the Brisbane Lord Mayor's Suburban Initiative Fund and Councillor for Karawatha Ward, Ms Kim Marx.

 

 

The second Muslim Youth Forum with the Queensland Police Services (QPS), Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland (ADCQ) was held with representatives of Muslim Youth organizations at the Islamic College of Brisbane recently.

 

The forum was conducted under the theme of Respect and we all belong. the Queensland Police Commissioner, the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commissioner and senior police were at hand to answer questions.

 

"The attendance was small, but fairly robust and frank discussion took place," forum facilitator, Mr David Forde told CCN.

Proceedings were described as frank and honest on a range of issues, both domestic and international.

 

An initial evaluation of the forum found the participants had a higher degree of satisfaction with the second forum when compared to the first.

 

Amongst the guests at the World Arts & Multi-Culture Harmony Day Festival held at the MacGregor State School was Ms Sohair Elbagir from IWAQ (second from right)

 

The British “debate” about meat, animal cruelty and ritual slaughter has become a proxy for deeper fears.

 

 

UK: I am sitting in one of London’s finest Indian restaurants, Benares, in the heart of Mayfair. I’ve just placed an order for the “Tandoori Ratan” mixed-grill appetiser – a trio of fennel lamb chop, chicken cutlet and king prawn.

I’ll be honest with you: I’m pretty excited. Most of the upmarket restaurants in London do not cater for the city’s burgeoning Muslim population. Benares is one of the few exceptions: all of the lamb and chicken dishes on its menu are halal.

The restaurant opened in 2003 and its owner, Atul Kochhar, is a Michelin-starred chef. “Right from day one, we’ve kept our lamb and chicken halal,” Kochhar says. “It was a very conscious decision because I grew up in India, a secular country, where I was taught to have respect for all religions.” Kochhar, who is a Hindu, says Muslims make up “easily between 10 and 20 per cent” of his regular diners. It isn’t just a taste for religious pluralism that has dictated the contents of his menu; serving halal meat makes commercial, as well as cultural, sense.

To other, perhaps less tolerant types, however, the rise and rise of halal meat in the west and here in the UK, in particular, is a source of tension, controversy, fear and loathing. British Muslims are living through a period of halal hysteria, a moral panic over our meat. First there came 9/11, 7/7 and the “Islamic” terror threat; then there was the row over the niqab (face veil) and hijab (headscarf); now, astonishingly, it’s the frenzy over halal meat.

Last month, MPs in the Commons rejected a ten-minute-rule bill that would have made it mandatory for retailers to label all of the halal and kosher meat on sale and make it clear on the packaging that the animals were “killed without stunning”. The bill’s proponent, the Tory backbencher Philip Davies, claimed that the meat was being “forced upon” shoppers “without their knowledge”. It was defeated by the narrowest of margins – 73 votes to 70.

As is so often the case, the right-wing press is behind much of the fear-mongering and misinformation. “Britain goes halal . . . but no one tells the public,” screamed the front-page headline in the Mail on Sunday on 19 September 2010. The paper claimed that supermarkets, restaurants, schools, hospitals, pubs and big sporting venues such as Wembley Stadium were “controversially serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic law to unwitting members of the public”.

The following week, readers were treated to two more stories suggesting a sinister plot to inflict halal meat on innocent, animal-loving, non-Muslim Britons. “How 70 per cent of New Zealand lamb imports to Britain are halal . . . but this is NOT put on the label”, said the Daily Mail on 25 September 2010. “Top supermarkets secretly sell halal: Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose and M&S don’t tell us meat is ritually slaughtered,” proclaimed the Mail on Sunday the next day.

With the threat from terrorism receding, Britain’s Islam-baiters have jumped on the anti-halal bandwagon, and not just the neo-fascists of the British National Party and the English Defence League, which has a page on its website devoted to its (anti-) “halal campaign”, but mainstream commentators, too. The Spectator’s Rod Liddle – who once wrote a column entitled “Islamophobia? Count me in” – has demanded that halal meat be banned and called for a boycott of Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and the rest until they agree to stop stocking halal products. “I will buy no meat from supermarkets,” he wrote, rather melodramatically, back in 2010.

In this year’s French presidential election, candidates seemed to spend more time discussing halal meat than rising unemployment or the ballooning budget deficit. Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National, alleged that “all the abattoirs in the Paris region sell halal meat without exception”, while the outgoing president, Nicolas Sarkozy, claimed that the halal issue was a “central concern” for French voters. (For the record, halal constitutes 2 per cent of all the meat sold in Paris.)

Last year in the Netherlands, the lower house of parliament approved a bill, introduced by the Party for the Animals (PvdD) and backed by the Islamophobe Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, to have all ritually slaughtered meat, including halal and kosher, banned. The Dutch government refused to sign off on the bill but agreed to appoint a commission to consider tighter procedures for slaughter.

Stun guns

So, what is it about halal that provokes such anger and hysteria? The word literally means “lawful” and refers to any object – not just food – or action or behaviour that is deemed permissible under Islamic law.

For meat to be considered halal, three conditions must be met:

1) The animal must be healthy and uninjured and, crucially, it must be killed with a cut.
2) All the blood must be drained from the animal’s body.
3) The slaughterer must recite the appropriate Islamic prayer at the time of slaughter.

Islam, like Judaism, prescribes a single-cut method of slaughter: the animal is killed with a quick cut to the throat using a sharp knife. This allows the blood to drain out and, it is believed, makes the meat cleaner.

Naturally, the image of blood flowing out from the slit throat of a dead cow or sheep doesn’t help. But Muslims, like Jews, insist that so-called ritual slaughter is humane and pain-free because the animal quickly loses consciousness. “There is no time to start feeling any pain,” in the words of Dr Majid Katme, a former spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain.

In contrast, modern western non-ritual methods of slaughter demand that the animal be rendered unconscious before it is killed – usually by means of stunning, with a bolt gun, or electrocution. The stunning of livestock before slaughter has been compulsory in the EU since 1979 but most member states, including the UK, grant exemptions to Muslims and Jews.

So, for the moment, non-stunned halal meat is available in Britain, but contra the Mail on Sunday, there’s not enough of it to satisfy the growing demand. As a Muslim, I often have great difficulty in deciding where to eat out, given the lack of halal restaurants (hence my excitement at Benares). One recent survey suggested nine out of every ten UK Muslims adhere to the strict rules on halal eating – that is, they reluctantly opt for the salmon, and not the steak, when eating out.

Nonetheless, even though they represent just 3 per cent of the population, Britain’s two million Muslims tend to eat much more meat, on average, than their non-Muslim counterparts. Reports suggest that British Muslims consume a fifth of all red meat sold in the UK.

I have British Muslim friends who book their holiday flights on Emirates, whatever their end destination, specifically in order to be able to stop off in transit in Dubai and buy a Big Mac from the airport’s halal McDonald’s. Some Muslims, it seems, will travel to the corners of the earth in pursuit of halal food.

Is it any wonder that the UK halal meat market is estimated to be worth £3bn? Or that fast-food chains in the UK such as McDonald’s and Domino’s Pizza are working on trials offering halal meat?

Nando’s, the Portuguese mid-market restaurant chain, has perhaps gone furthest and fastest. One in five of its branches in the UK now serves halal-certified chicken, and I never cease to be amazed by the sea of hijabs among the diners at the Nando’s in south Harrow that has been my “local” for the past decade.
 

Many of those attacking religious slaughter have no clue as to what is happening. It is more of an Islamophobic issue, not an animal well-being issue. Compared to modern, secular methods of slaughter the traditional or Prophetic method might actually be equal or possibly superior because the initial pain of the throat cut results in the animal releasing large quantities of endorphins, putting it in a state of euphoria and numbness.   Joe Regenstein

Then there’s KFC, which has responded to the raft of halal fried-chicken franchises (see Sophie Elmhirst’s piece on page 28) by running a halal trial in a hundred of its restaurants nationwide. On its UK website, KFC promises its customers that “our food is just as tasty and finger lickin’ good as it has always been”. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also includes a list of defensive answers to “frequently asked questions” such as “Why have you chosen my store?” and “Does this mean your animal welfare standards have changed?”.

Protecting animals is the cover behind which critics of halal meat often hide. This month, Professor Bill Reilly, a past president of the British Veterinary Association, condemned the rise in the number of animals killed in ritual slaughter as “not acceptable”. “[I]f we cannot eliminate non-stunning, we need to keep it to the minimum,” he wrote in the Veterinary Record. “This means restricting the use of halal and kosher meat to those communities that require it for their religious beliefs and, where possible, convincing them of the acceptability of the stunned alternatives.”

Opponents of ritual slaughter cite a raft of scientific studies that condemn the practice as painful and abusive. In a much-discussed report published in 2003, the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), an independent body that advised the UK government until its dissolution last year, argued that ritual methods of slaughter resulted in “significant pain and distress” for the animal and recommended that Muslims and Jews be banned from slaughtering livestock without stunning the animals first.

The FAWC’s findings were backed by a major EU-funded study “on issues of religious slaughter”, which concluded in 2010: “. . . it can be stated with the utmost probability that animals feel pain during the throat cut without prior stunning”.

Case closed? Not quite. Ruksana Shain, of the Muslim consumer group Behalal.org, says the scientific evidence against halal slaughter “isn’t conclusive”. But she would say that, wouldn’t she? OK. Well, consider the verdict of Joe Regenstein, professor of food science at Cornell University in the United States, who leads the university’s Kosher and Halal Food Initiative.

“Many of those attacking religious slaughter have no clue as to what is happening,” he tells me. “It is more of an Islamophobic issue, not an animal well-being issue.” Compared to modern, secular methods of slaughter, he says, “the traditional or Prophetic method might actually be equal or possibly superior” because the initial pain of the throat cut results “in the animal releasing large quantities of endorphins, putting it in a state of euphoria and numbness”. The cut thus serves as its own stun. The scientific evidence against halal slaughter, Regenstein says, “is extremely weak and has often been done poorly with an agenda driving a desired outcome”.

Missing defence

To pretend that Muslims do not care about animal welfare is unfair. There are several Quranic verses and sayings of the Prophet warning Muslims not to harm livestock; mistreatment of animals is considered a sin by the vast majority of Islamic scholars. In fact, advocates of halal slaughter can call on their own slew of scientific studies for support.

In 1978, research led by Wilhelm Schulze of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover showed that “the slaughter in the form of a ritual cut is, if carried out properly, painless in sheep and calves according to EEG [electroencephalography] recordings and the missing defensive actions [of the animals]”. The German Federal Constitutional Court based its 2002 verdict permitting ritual slaughter on this study.

Then there are the writings and research of Temple Grandin, professor of animal sciences at Colorado State University and one of America’s leading experts on the humane treatment and slaughter of livestock. She sees no difference between stunned and non-stunned slaughter if both are conducted properly and professionally. When a ritual slaughter is “done really right”, Grandin has said, “the animal seemed to act like it didn’t even feel it – if I walked up to that animal and put my hand in its face I would have got a much bigger reaction than I observed from the cut, and that was something which really surprised me”.

Remember, the “secular ways of slaughter”, as Regenstein points out, also have their downsides: “If the public were to discover that animals were subject to a pre-slaughter intervention – like having their skull cracked open, [being] electrocuted, or put in a gas chamber – they might not really like that either.” Shouldn’t consumers have a right to know which of these methods were used? Shouldn’t they be told about the danger of “mis-stunning”, which leaves the animal conscious and in pain, and occurs “relatively frequently”, according to a 2004 report by the European Food Safety Authority? Why not label all meat with detailed explanations of how exactly the animal in question was killed, and let consumers decide? “Why only pick on halal?” Ruksana Shain asks.

In the Commons debate on food labelling on 24 April, the Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, who is Jewish, criticised Philip Davies for singling out Muslims and Jews, saying he had “picked on two small minorities who share the way in which the meat they eat is killed”. However, Kaufman added that he would not have expressed his “total opposition to this bill” if it had cast its net wider to include other animals such as chickens that had been kept in “dreadful conditions”.

Preventing animal cruelty goes far beyond the “debate” about stunning or not stunning. And ironically, not all Muslims are opposed to stunning. There are two main organisations that regulate the halal food industry in the UK – the Halal Monitoring Committee, which has a “blanket ruling disallowing stunning in any form”, and the Halal Food Authority, which allows controlled stunning where the “animal or the birds do not die prior to slaughtering”, and which has certified KFC’s stunned chicken as halal.

Thus, most Muslim, and non-Muslim, participants in the heated debate over halal meat are ignoring a critical point. Data produced by the Meat Hygiene Service in 2004 suggested that roughly 90 per cent of halal slaughter in the UK involved stunning. In September 2011, the Food Standards Agency reported that “the majority of animals destined for the halal trade in both the red and white meat sectors are stunned before slaughter”. So what’s all the fuss about?

Consider the scare stories from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, which automatically assume that all halal meat derives from the traditional, non-stunned method of slaughter. What drove both papers’ coverage of the story? Are we seriously expected to believe that either the Mail or the Mail on Sunday gives a damn about animal rights? I struggle to recall the last occasion on which either tabloid splashed on the abuse or neglect of animals. More often than not, Mail columnists reserve rather harsh words (“deranged fanatics”, to quote Richard Littlejohn) for animal rights activists.
 

It’s being used as a political issue, especially by xenophobic and Islamophobic folks, to whip up a backlash against ‘the other’   Joe Regenstein

Crucially, if the hysteria over halal meat in Britain isn’t the product of Islamophobia, how do halal-obsessed politicians and journalists explain their silence on the subject of kosher meat? The 2003 Farm Animal Welfare Council report condemned both halal and kosher methods of slaughter. Yet, for instance, the Mail on Sunday, despite referring to “ritually slaughtered meat” in the headline of its “Britain goes halal . . .” report, went on to discuss only halal meat for the first 24 paragraphs of the piece before mentioning kosher meat – in passing – in the 25th paragraph.

The truth is that halal has become a proxy for much deeper fears and concerns about the presence of a growing and vocal Muslim population in our midst. “It’s being used as a political issue, especially by xenophobic and Islamophobic folks, to whip up a backlash against ‘the other’,” Regenstein says.

To pretend otherwise is naive, if not disingenuous. If this was a debate about animal welfare, it would be about all forms of slaughter; if it was a debate about ritual slaughter, it would address kosher, and not just halal, meat.

“Why only pick on halal?” It’s an important question in need of an urgent answer.
 

Source: Newstateman

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's top Islamic body said on Thursday the big budget Hollywood biblical epic "Noah" starring Russell Crowe was irreligious and should not be screened in the country.

Al-Azhar institute, one of the region's main Sunni Muslim authorities, said the movie, slated to open in Egypt on March 26, violated Islam by portraying a prophet.

The film has already angered some Christian institutions in the United States, with Crowe's reportedly unconventional portrayal of Noah.

Al-Azhar can play an advisory role on censoring movies and books in Egypt, but does not have the final say.

Portraying a prophet "contradicts the stature of prophets and messengers... and antagonises the faithful," the institution said in a statement.

Egypt's censorship board must approve any movie before it is shown, but it was not immediately clear whether it has approved "Noah" yet.

The Paramount Pictures website said the film would be released on March 26 in Egypt, and a day later in other Middle Eastern countries.

Egypt has censored other movies in the past, including the blockbuster "The Da Vinci Code" after protests from the Orthodox Coptic Church.

But it did allow the screening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ", which depicts Jesus being crucified.

Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet and was not crucified.
 

Source: Yahoo

 

As we prepare to mark the centennial of the outbreak of the First World War this summer, many still see it as primarily an inter-imperial struggles within the European continent, with the scenes of trench warfare on the Western Front.

 

It is often forgotten that this war was as much about the political destiny of what was then and now called “the Muslim world” as it was about Europe, with Muslim soldiers fighting on both sides of the imperial alliances.

The declaration of jihad by the Ottoman caliph, the revolt of Sherif Hussein of Mecca and the eventual end of Ottoman rule in Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem marked the important turning points, followed eventually by the abolishment of the caliphate during the post-war restructuring of Turkey.

Moreover, the persistence of a debate on a pan-Islamic “threat” to the West and Islamophobia seems one of the surprising continuous themes from the time of the First World War to today, after a passage of a century during which the world of empires gave way to a world of nation states.

There are important lessons to be learned from the Muslim question of that time for both Muslim leaders of today as well as for United States and European politicians.

What ties our contemporary world to the climate of opinion at the time of that war is the continuing debate on the question of “the Muslim world” and “the West”, two imagined civilisational and geopolitical entities.
 

 

The National

 

Community leaders have renewed calls to address discrimination after Sydney FC player Ali Abbas was allegedly villified on Saturday night.

 

It has arguably become one of the most heated A-League matches this year, with Sydney FC beating Western Sydney Wanderers 3-1 in the weekend derby.

But the Sky Blues' sensational performance has been overshadowed by allegations of racial and religious abuse towards Iraqi mid-fielder, Ali Abbas (pictured above right, being calmed down by fellow player).

Abbas says he was racially and religiously attacked during the Sydney Derby against the Wanderers.

Iraqi Asian Cup Ambassador Abrar Al Salah says the task of eliminating racial discrimination in the A-League is ongoing.

"They are role models and especially in the field of soccer and sport, it is a field that geographically crosses all boundaries. You have teams from different cultures, backgrounds, and religions and each person holds their values very close to heart, they don’t need that pointed out to them," Ms Al Salah said.

Meanwhile, Football Federation Australia boss David Gallop says there will be a thorough investigation into the alleged racial abuse against Sydney FC player Ali Abbas.

The comments come after Sydney FC lodged a formal complaint against an un-named Western Sydney player.

David Gallop told Fox Sports that despite the serious nature of the complaint there is a process to be followed.

"It's obviously a serious allegation, something that we'll treat seriously. It's an alleged comment that he took offence to, and it's important that we look at that carefully.

"It's dealt with under our member protection policy, we obviously need to investigate the matter, it's important to make the point that it is an allegation and we need to go thorough a process."
 

Source: SBS

 

AUSTRALIAN INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC COLLEGE

We are seeking a qualified and experienced Teacher for our

GOLD COAST CAMPUS

 

ESL Teacher (TESOL Qualifications)

 

Please forward CV to

Australian International Islamic College

ATTENTION PRINCIPAL

Email: admin@aiic.qld.edu.au

Applications close by 21^st March 2013

PH: 3372-1400

Myth No. 9: Muslims in the West cheer for terrorist violence
 

While it might seem chilling to learn that 8% of American Muslims feel that violence against civilian targets is “often or sometimes justified” if the cause is right, you have to compare that to the response given by non-Muslim Americans, 24% of whom said that such attacks are “often or sometimes justified.”

This is reflected in most major surveys. When a large-scale survey asked if “attacks on civilians are morally justified,” 1% of the French public, 1% of the German public and 3% of the British public answered yes; among Muslims, the responses were 2%, 0.5%, and 2%. Asked if it is “justifiable to use violence for a noble cause,” 7% of the French public agreed, along with 8% of French Muslims; 10% of the German public and fewer than 2% of German Muslims; 10% of the British public and 8% of British
Muslims. This may well be because 85% of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims. 
 

Next week: Myth No. 10

 

(Sourced from Doug Saunders' The Myth of the Muslim Tide)

 

13. The Kanoo family $6.1bn ($6.26bn) UAE (Bahrain)       
 

The biggest family firm in Bahrain, the Kanoo Group has now been in existence for over 120 years. Established in Bahrain in 1890 by Haji Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo, it has grown from its early trading and shipping business to become one of the most diversified and highly regarded business houses in the Gulf region and beyond.

 

After the death of chairman and CEO Abdulla Ali Kanoo, Yusuf Ahmed Kanoo has stepped up to take the top role in the organisation. Mishal Kanoo, one of the region’s most recognisable executives, remains as deputy chairman. It now has fourteen divisions in total, and employs 4,000 staff, with another 6,000 employed in its various joint venture operations.

 

The company’s joint venture division was established over 25 years ago and has been linked to high profile names such as Axa Insurance, Norwich Union, Maersk and BASF.

 

 

NEXT WEEK: The Number 14 richest Arab in the world.
 

Source: ArabianBusiness