Then Things Every Muslim Must Do

I've often been confronted with people who are really motivated to do something for Islam, but who were aimless. You know what I'm talking about. Sometimes we are so filled with feelings of wanting to help but we don't really know where to begin.
Doesn't it seem like there's just too much that needs to be done? Muslims are starving in war zones all over the world, kings and dictators rape our lands, misinformation about Islam is rampant, our children are succumbing to the non-Muslim way of life, maybe half our family members don't practice Islam, even if they say they're Muslim, the Masjid needs funds, Muslims need to be taught the difference between what's Islam and what's cultural, etc...
I'm sure many of you could add endlessly to this list. Have you ever felt like the problems are just too great to solve? Have you ever blocked it out of your mind because if you really thought about it you would become depressed? If so, then you're not alone. I've met tons of believers, real sincere people, who lament that they don't know what to do or how they can really help.
Of course, there are some people who will make one specific issue their focus and they'll work to help in that direction. For example, someone might make the support of the local Masjid their cause. Another person may support whole-heartedly an Islamic school or the activities of a relief agency, etc... But most of us don't have time to do justice to those types of goals like we should.
But the alternative, sitting at home and watching TV is hardly worth our time when there are real Muslims out there who need us, and a cause that we must support. So in view of all the variables that affect most of our lives in the modern world, I've come up with a list of ten easy things that every Muslim family should do so that they can contribute to the betterment of Muslims and the establishment of Islam in the West.
Anyone can do these ten things and I've selected activities that are not overly time-consuming, nor expensive. I expect that you'll agree and will tape a cut out of these ten "to do's" to your refrigerator door. (Before grabbing that snack you can be reminded about what is more important than filling your belly!)
#1 Sponsor an Orphan. Before anything else, there are hungry Muslim children everywhere who have needs right now. There are several reputable relief agencies who offer orphan sponsorship programs that only cost from $20-$40 a month. You and I know that's nothing expensive on your part - so do it. Some agencies even offer automated withdrawal so you can send a letter once with a voided check and never have to fill anything out again. Doing this can make you close to the Prophet in Paradise.
#2 Subscribe to at least three Muslim magazines. This is practically the only way you can keep abreast of issues important to the Muslims in the West. It also supports the budding Muslim media. Even if you don't intend to read the magazines, subscribe anyway. Someone around you will read or you can leave them with others. Make it at least three and try to subscribe for 2-3 years at a time.
#3 Go to the Masjid at least once a week for Salat. In the West today, nearly all of us have a Masjid within driving distance. Even if you don't go to the local Masjid for Jum'uah because of your job, then go for at least one Maghrib a week or for Zuhr on Sunday. Whatever, just go at least once a week- WITH YOUR FAMILY. It's the only way that you and your family will consider the Masjid to be your place.#4 If your children go to public school, and there is no Islamic school nearby, then make sure they either get into some Sunday school program, or, if the local Masjid doesn't run it right, then pool together with some like- minded families and run your own program at somebody's house every Saturday or Sunday and conduct it the way you think it should be done. This is the minimum requirement for not losing your children to secular Christianity.
#5 Buy at least one book, audio or video produced by a Muslim company or author per month. Have you ever wished that there were better items for you and your family's pleasure? Unfortunately, Muslims don't support their own writers and artists very well. No one can make even a decent living if they want to write or produce for the Muslim market. That must change if you want to see wonderful products for you and your children. Just buy one thing per month. Either out of a catalog or from your local Muslim bookstore. For you it's only $5-$10 bucks, but collectively, it can encourage our creative and talented brothers and sisters to do more.
#6 If you see any new Muslims at your Masjid, then partially "adopt" them into your family. The convert experience is basically one of isolation and loneliness. You'd be surprised to know that most converts are outright ignored by the people in the Masjid. Beyond a few pleasantries and handshakes, they are usually never made to feel welcome or accepted. They are often cut off from their non-Muslim friends and relatives so they are doubly vulnerable. A new convert should be invited into various peoples home for dinner a minimum of six times a month. Get together with others and make sure you all put the new convert on your guest list for any sort of gathering.
#7 Keep three extra Qur'an translations and some literature in your home at all times. You never know when you'll find someone interested who wants to know more. Besides, your children read only and understand only English. (You wouldn't believe how many Muslim families don't have an English Qur'an translation in their homes! How will the child read it if they don't understand Arabic, and they never understand Arabic, even if their parents are Arabic speaking!)
#8 Go to one convention a year. Even if you have given up on them, you have to go. It's the only way your children will feel a part of a greater community of believers. Think about it and realize that you don't just go to a convention for your personal enrichment. It's about Muslim solidarity. Go to at least one every year. Couple it with your vacation plans or something. Just go.
#9 Eat only Halal or Kosher Food. Besides all the religious aspects I could mention, which are the most important, by the way, there is another advantage. You solidify your identity and introduce to your family the concept that animals should not die cruelly (like they do in all American slaughterhouses) and that Muslims eat cleaner food. If there are no Halal meat stores nearby, you'll probably find a Kosher store. At least many of the Jews are not shy about Allah's commandment there and have established kosher markets everywhere.
#10 Lastly, make sure you and your family have cultural-type items in your home in abundance that are associated with Islam or Islamic culture. Everyone in your home should have prayer beads, prayer rugs, kufis, Hijabs, (even if they're worn only for prayer), gowns, posters, wall plaques, stickers, logo- shirts, Islamic screen-savers on the computer, and on and on. You want to establish an identity in your home. Everything outside is totally un-Islamic. At least let the Islamic flavor be present inside.
Originally, there were only ten things on this list, but then a very important item came to mind but I just couldn't bring myself to delete any of the preceding items. But in the interest of simplicity, I'll keep the upper ten intact and mention this item as a separate issue because it's something that you don't really need to list with the other things.
This is extremely crucial: Resolve to raise your family as Muslims. Don't be passive. Don't sit around and watch your spouse and children drift further and further away into disbelief and kufr. Would any of you like to be on their deathbed and then realize that they only left non-Muslims behind them? Imagine entering the great sleep with that realization on your heart!
These ten things can be done, with minimal trouble and fuss, by each and every Muslim family. Through these ten points nearly every purpose of Islam is served and you can finally feel that you're doing something in an organized fashion to help promote your healthy way of life and also to fulfill your responsibility to your Creator. Give it a try and see how easy these things really are. Then stick with it. You have no excuses for inaction anymore.

How To Write A Successful Press Release

If you’re planning an event you want publicity, and if you just carried out some activity where no one from the media was there, you still want people to know what happened. To achieve this, you issue a press release. But you’re not alone: editors receive hundreds of press releases every week, and most end up in the bin. You're up against formidable competition, often by professional public relations firms, so no matter how relevant the issues you want to draw attention to, if your press release doesn’t grab the editor’s attention, the public will never hear any of it.

Before you get down to writing and sending your press release, there are a few other points to consider. Whom are you aiming at? It is obvious that a motoring magazine doesn’t want to hear about computing technology, but often the choice is not quite that straight forward. You may have two local papers, but they often want exclusives and don’t want to print what the other one has already covered. So you have to decide which paper to send your release to unless you feel it is important enough to get picked up by both. You should also consider how and when to send it. If you send your release by email, don’t use attachments but put everything in the body of the message. Often fax is still a more effective way of sending a release. You should time your release such that it fits the paper’s publishing deadlines and you need to consider whether the issue you are writing about is already being discussed in public or relatively unknown and needs better introduction, whether already too much has been said about it, and it might need a different and fresh angle. Finally, before you send the release, make sure that you have people ready to deal with interviews and follow-ups and that they all sing from the same hymn sheet. There is no point sending a good press release and then letting yourself down once the paper or radio station has picked up on the news.

Another caution is that if the media want the story you told them about, they will call  you (provided you have included your contact details). Don’t follow it up with your own call on whether they got your release; it will definitely get you in their bad books.

When writing your press release it must both be a short summary of your story as well as substantial enough for the media to take and quote directly from it, even if they don’t want to talk to you for further comments. Technical jargon should be avoided unless for a specialist publication, and you must avoid sounding like you’re selling yourself or your ideas. There is no point either in stating the obvious or making value judgments, like that your event was unique or the greatest ever. Unless you or your group are known well, a brief introduction to who you are must also be included, but not the whole history of previous activities.

A good press release should be two pages at most, but one should do for most cases, and it must start with a meaningful headline. As with a newspaper headline this grabs the attention of the editor and helps him/her make up their mind whether to read on or not. The headline, in about ten words or less, should summarise the contents of the press release in an exciting way, and is then followed by the first paragraph which sets out your stall. As much as possible all the who, what, when, where, why and how should be crammed in the first paragraph of the body of your press release. From there onwards, you add additional relevant information in the order of the most important first, so that the editor can cut the release from the end without losing any critical information. In this section you can include quotations, personalise the story, or include anything which makes the item more newsworthy for the reader. Here you will also include photo opportunities, reactions, or anything which links the item you write about to other events.

Finally, in the third part of your press release you may repeat the essential points very briefly, if the release is of the more lengthy type, and must add complete contact details to enable the paper to get in touch with you, that is contact name, address, phone number, email address, website URL. Make sure that the people at the other end of, let’s say the phone, know that the media might call and are both able and willing to answer questions. Again, the timing is important. There is no point issuing a release shortly before you are about to leave for a meeting and will be unavailable for comments.

In this last section you can also mention and photo material you might have for publication. If you send a report of a past event, you should, of course, already include pictures, but if you fax or email, then simply have them ready should they be called for.

Lastly, your press release should be proof-read carefully, and you might want to check with somebody who was not involved in writing it how it comes across. There is nothing worse than a release with apparent mistakes or, perhaps, a misprinted contact number. It will have you sitting at the end of the phone for hours wondering why nobody calls back.

Issue on Islamic Government

Let me start with this article by asking which is better:  a government that allows individuals unrestricted freedom to do whatever they please and enjoy or to live under umbrella of government that imposes a strict law and order?  Which would be better:  to let teachers, business and private sector to choose their way of doing things or to pass laws that require them admit and serve everyone, regardless their race and sex?

For many of us, none of these options are appropriate as it pose a difficult scenario of choices. But the legitimate question can be what do we mean by a government? What is the purpose of government? Academically, according to Dahl, Robert (1989) government can be defined as the legitimate use of force –including imprisonment and execution- within territorial boundaries to control human behavior. All governments require citizens to surrender some freedom in the process of being governed.  By doing so, the citizens in return will enjoy benefits that governments gives them. 

The purposes of the governments are firstly, to maintain order and secondly to provide public goods and finally to promote equality.  In his focus on the life, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) saw the government as the essential mechanism for survival, he argued that without rules, people would live like predators, stealing and killing for personal benefits.  Other theorists, likes of John Lock believed that government must morally and legally protect the “unalienable rights “of individuals such as life, Liberty and Property. According to Lock if the government cannot protect and guarantee these fundamental rights, it loses its legitimacy and therefore, any upraising against it morally is justifiable. Indeed, Lock’s theory inspired many in America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

The government can pursue other ends when it is a position to handle the fundamental order. It can provide a public goods such as education, health, road buildings etc. these public goods are all in beneficial to all citizens. The another purpose of the government is to ensure and promote the equality principle between the individuals by redistributing income, and implementing justice to all in order to improve quality of the life for whole people.

Ideology and the scope of the Islamic Government

 People hold different opinions about governmental policies, based on their beliefs and values. However, Islamic ideology of governing incorporates activities in the Universe with those of Here After (Akhiro). Islamic conservative of thought relates to the government’s role in every sector of the society including education, business, labor, sports. This school of thought regulates every aspect of individual behavior through wide range of Islamic jurisdiction. The proponents of this camp base their argument on that only ALLAH is the creator, sustainer, and master of the universe and of all that exists in it. He alone has the right to command or forbid.  Hence, we must act according to ALLAH’s teaching, furthermore, Allah alone is the Ruler and his commandments are the laws that govern our daily activities politically, economically, and legally independence of human being.  Similarly,  they point at concept of prophethood(RISALAH) which states that Mohamed( PBUH) is the messenger of Allah and the authoritative interpreter of his BOOK(The Qur’an) and it is him- the Prophet -who give us a model for the Islamic way of life by implementing the law and providing necessary details where required. Also, conservative school of Islamic thought developed the concept of Khalifah as the only legitimate political body.  The Khilafah concept does not recognize the boundaries between nations as the boundaries of morality. Therefore, according to this camp in respect to the Khalifah principle, boundaries are arbitrary determinant to the answer of morality question.

Modernists school of  Islamic thought, in contrast contend that Islam does not ban every thing and that Islamic ideology can be divided into two possible distinctions; one distinction is that of static provision such as Prayer, Fasting, Zakah, and going to Makah for Hajj.  This type of Cibaada (worship) is straight and immune from human being thinking. They are explicitly mentioned in the Qur’an and Sunna and they remain unchangeable.  The other distinction is that type of dynamic provision which encompasses all other aspects of the life.  And although this school of thought acknowledges the fact that all our activities must be shaped in way that does not contradict with the origins of Qur’an and Sunna, nevertheless, they argue that Islam gave us ample room for decision making in respect to many issues, particularly, when it comes to restructuring of social order.

Most of that debate between the two camps, however, is mainly concentrated on the interpretations of the Qu’ranic verses and the narrated Hadiths from the Prophet (PBUH). To this point our discussion of jurisdictional ideology has centered on conflicting views about how islamically a government   can be pursued?