The debate over whether Saudi Arabia’s female Judoka should be allowed to wear a hijab during competition has been resolved.

The International Olympic Committee has said Wojdan Shaherkani will now be allowed to wear a headscarf that does not compromise her safety.

It is the first time Saudi Arabia has allowed female athletes to compete at an Olympic Games.

SOURCE: BBC NEWS

Now more than ever, as we drift even further into a gadget-obsessed world of self-indulgence and so called “first world problems,” Ramadan becomes even more important in more ways than one. Let’s face it, the world is becoming an increasingly aggressive place where people either believe more than ever or less than usual, and those in-between are referred to as hippies.

Interestingly, a lot of agnostic people have recently been more “awakened” to New Age spirituality; traveling to hot-spot countries like India and Nepal for guidance or resorting to eating just raw food in order to connect with themselves and everything around. Those people usually reject any formal notion of religion, but still crave or  discover the notion that there is something greater than us. Essentially they fast: Cleansing themselves from all things artitificual in order to purify themselves.

Let’s be honest, whether people choose to use the term “God” or not, they’re basically trying to connect to Him, and whilst mainstream society may refer to New Agers as”froufrou hippies,” they’re on the right path; they just haven’t quite reached the goal yet. You see, it’s not very complicated or difficult – the first step to reawakening your true self is to let go of your self completely. The only thing between you and God is you.

Islam has its own, more rewarding, option of cleansing and detoxifying yourself. The holy month of Ramadan (where Muslims abstain from food and beverage from dusk till dawn) is about fasting in order to sympathise with those who are less fortunate, but there’s another side to the month. Ramadan is a chance for you to disconnect from the bubble of self-importance and selfishness in order to connect to others and ultimately a higher being – God.

Hunger is one of the most powerful feelings. When the pit of your stomach feels hunger, you panic and will do nearly anything and eat everything in order to make that instinctual feeling disappear. So, many of us munch our way trough Ramadan, going from meal to meal until the month is up, and you won’t have to experience that kind of hunger again for a year. As much as Ramadan is about getting closer to God, it is also a continuous wake-up call to remind us that for so many in this world, everyday is a fasting day, whether they like it or not.

Yet, when I look at my grandmother and the way that she used to eat in Somalia, she grew up to become a fertile woman with no issues of heart disease, diabetes, asthma or obesity — although food was at times scarce. Like so many of our grandparents and great-grandparents, although their food options were limited, they ate a diet of fresh local vegetables, pulses, and dairy; and on special occasions, meat, fish and poultry. My grandmother still doesn’t quite understand what lactose intolerant (or any other food allergies, for that matter) mean. She doesn’t get what asthma is or why some people are allergic to the trees and grass –“next time you’ll tell me that someone is allergic to the sun as well,” she’d joke.

Imagine her surprise.

Now, so many of us have unlimited options for food. But the problem is that we’re not eating food anymore, we’re eating food-like products that are adorned to look, taste and smell amazing, moving further away from our grandparents’ heavily plant- and pulse-based diet. How many of our grandparents lived on processed food with ingredients that are barely pronounceable? In our generation and in many parts of the world, we’re now basically overfed and under-nourished. And, with the rush and stress of everyday life, who can really say that they have time to think about food in a meaningful way?

Cue Ramadan.

By connecting the holiest Islamic month of the year with fasting, we begin to realise that, hey, there might be a link between spirituality and hunger; the value of your body and how to take care of it. Ramadan is the time to listen to your body (and not just the hungry growls), because it’s not just about what you’re eating – it’s also about what’s eating you.

Of course, I can’t say for certain that if I eat more like my grandmother, I’ll live a longer and healthier life (no one can). But, what I do know for sure is that Ramadan re-awakens you, it transports you out of your own self-important bubble and ego and forces you to think about things (including, but not only food) in a more conscious way. By eating well and being more aware of our gluttonous and often insatiable hunger for fake food, you give your body and your soul the chance to heal itself.

It’s not a coincidence that Islam’s holiest month is connected with fasting. So the next time iftar comes around you’re rushing to break your fast, take a few minutes to not only think of those less fortunate, but also of how you intend to use your fortune. It cannot be found in just your wallet nor your closet – your fortune is your health, so just think of Ramadan as the never-ending reminder of that.

SOURCE: altmuslim

There are signs that radical Islam has taken root in Russia’s prosperous republic of Tatarstan, east of Moscow, after attacks which left one Muslim leader dead and another severely injured last month.

Russian police have detained seven suspects, officials say. But local security sources told the BBC that more than 100 people had been questioned and according to some Tatar Muslim groups, the number of detainees is as high as 500.

A former pro-Kremlin Muslim leader, Valiulla Yakupov, was shot dead in the republican capital Kazan on 19 July. Later that day the Mufti of Tatarstan, Ildus Fayzov, was seriously wounded when his car was blown up in the city.

One of those arrested ran a body called Idel-Khadzh, organising Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca. He was allegedly in dispute with the mufti.

“The explosions and the gunfire that just rang out are only the beginning,” a well-known theologian, Mufti Farid Salman, told the BBC.

He thinks there are already more than 3,000 radical Islamists in Tatarstan, many of them opposed to peaceful dialogue.Radical Muslim internet forums have already called for the murder of people who frequently and openly criticise the spread of Wahhabism in Russia. Valiulla Yakupov’s name had appeared on one of their lists.

Wahhabism, a strictly conservative form of Islam that demands observance of Sharia law, has become popular among some militants in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus.

But Tatarstan, a mainly Muslim region on the Volga River, has long been seen as harmonious and stable. Even decades ago, in the Soviet Union, Tatarstan was seen as a model of peaceful co-existence for different nationalities and religions.

Paying ‘tribute’ to radicals

The mood has changed now, as extremist militants threaten to start a campaign of violence.

As we walk through a park an acquaintance greets Farid Salman with the words: “Hello, Farid! I’m glad to see you alive”.

Radical Muslims are getting some serious support from the criminal underworld, Russian security sources told the BBC.

Racketeers now encourage the collection of “tribute” at some of Kazan’s markets, exploiting the Muslim custom of paying Zakat (alms) – but donations are allegedly channelled towards militants waging violent jihad.

They also extort money from merchants who do not practise Islam, calling it an “infidel tax”.
‘Peace and quiet’

Radicalised Tatars have been found in the ranks of insurgents in Chechnya and even among the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Some experts say that followers of extremist branches of Islam in Tatarstan have put doctrinal disagreements aside and are combining forces in order to broaden their influence.
“The authorities preferred to maintain the pretence that peace and quiet reign in the region,” says Rais Suleimanov, head of the Volga regional branch of the Russian Institute for Strategy Research.

“They didn’t listen to us and they didn’t let us speak. As a result the situation got out of hand, and now that peace and quiet is no more than an illusion.”

After publishing research in 2010 on the development of Islamic fundamentalism in Tatarstan he was fired from his post at Kazan University’s Centre for Eurasian Research, and soon after that the centre itself was closed.

Mufti Farid Salman says the July attacks were “an overt, bold provocation”.

“It seems we’ve already reached a point of no return. More than one generation of convinced Wahhabis has already come of age in Tatarstan.”

After the assassination attempt on Tatarstan’s Mufti, the head of local interior ministry, Artyom Khokhorin, suddenly acknowledged that “an undeclared war has been going on in the region” for 13 years.

He said hundreds of extremists had been identified and monitored by the police. He added that in the past two years alone four armed rebel groups had been suppressed in Tatarstan.
Pretext for crackdown?

But now Russian security bodies are “using the situation to jail people they wanted to get or were ordered to,” according to a prominent Moscow lawyer, Musa Pliev. The head of a local nationalist organisation, the Azatlik Tatar Youth Union, agrees. Nail Nabiullin alleges that “this is all a provocation, led by Moscow”.

“We do not have Muslims who can commit such an evil crime,” he says.

Mr Nabiullin has already organised several rallies with the head of a Kazan mosque “against the suppression of Muslims”.

The organisers of one such rally on 5 August held it “according to Sharia rules”. All the participants, outsiders and even journalists were asked to stay “strictly in the male or female sections of the square”.

My colleagues and I tried to argue, but felt obliged to comply when four or five tall men with beards and calling themselves “Muslim police of the meeting” told us to follow the rules.

Arab influence dating back to the 1990s played a big part in the region’s radicalisation and there are now many young religious leaders in Tatarstan who were educated in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

In 2011, Chechen insurgent leader Doku Umarov declared that Caucasian mujahideen should move to the Volga region to prepare local Muslims for jihad.

The armed struggle, he said, would result in a new state within a so-called Greater Caucasus Emirate.

On the day of the July attacks in Tatarstan, a video address by “the mujahideen of Tatarstan”, confirming Doku Umarov’s statement, appeared on the internet.

There are fears that if the authorities respond to the threat with tough action, there could be a backlash from Muslims in Tatarstan.

They are likely to find it harder to stem the spread of radical Islam now than they might have done just a few years ago.

SOURCE: BBC NEWS