Review of “Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography” by Ali Sina

For those who are familiar with the extremist Islamophobic website called “Faithfreedom International”, the name of its founder Ali Sina (a pseudonym) is synonymous with the bigotry and vile rhetoric often displayed against Muslims and Islam. This was a person who openly advocated for the atomic bomb to be used on Muslim populations and have many times declared that he will “wipe out” Islam within 30 years. Now this relatively unknown figure within academic circles — apart from becoming the self-appointed hero for the cause of Islamophobia, bigotry and the new emerging school of lay-people and pseudo-scholars — has moved beyond the world that he is more accustomed with on the internet. Like his predecessors, such as the infamous Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, Ali Sina is now attempting to make his name within the world of published authors with the publication of his book Understanding Muhammad: A Psychobiography. Whilst it is true that over the course of years he has gathered a large following of largely misled haters, Ali Sina still has had to resort to self-publishing with a relatively small publishing press where anyone with anything to rant about can publish their own.

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This is an old issue but I feel that this audio lecture is still worth putting up as it not only refutes the Pope but also anyone who have the tendency to malign the Prophet (P). For a background of the attack by the Catholic Pope Benedict XVI on the Khatamul Nabiy, Muhammad al-Mustafa, see this article repudiating the Pope for it.

This audio lecture is a response by Imam Zaid Shakir in a Friday khutbah in response to the allegations made by the Pope.

Many things have changed and developed since the last time I posted on this blog. I am ashamed to admit that I haven’t been updating this blog regularly as I should, or kept in tandem with the pledge that I made a long time ago when I first started this blog. The reason behind that is simple. Not too long ago, the contents of this blog was wiped out in a severe server crash which caused all data to be lost. I managed to restore the blog from an older version of the backup, but the images and some files are pretty much gone forever. Some posts will contain broken links to these same images and files. I think I will leave it as they are until I figure out a way to restore them.

In any case, I certainly aim to renew my vow to keep to the main theme of Ittaqullah!, which is to “provide posts for the Muslims to benefit from and strengthen their faith in this beautiful deen“, as Allah SWT wills it, insha’allah.

Like the phoenix, Ittaqullah! is reborn from the ashes.

Title: We Will Not Go Down
Artist: Michael Heart

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they’re dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who’s wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

The ban on headscarves which has been a feature of secular Turkey ever since its inception has been overturned.

Turkey’s parliament has approved a constitutional amendment that would ease the ban on women wearing Islamic headscarves in universities.

Headscarves were banned from campuses after pressure from the staunchly secularist military ousted a government seen as too Islamist in 1997.

Wednesday’s vote was carried by 397 in favour to 113 against. Final approval is expected in a vote on Saturday.

The Islamist-rooted AK Party has a safe majority in the Turkish parliament.

It is very good news indeed and alhamdulillah, I am very happy with this outcome. It will not be long before the scourge of Kemalism is wiped out from the annals of Turkish history. We hope that this vision will come sooner rather than later.