Question: You have talked about degeneration of Muslim society. Now how about regeneration of Muslim society — how can Tawhid help us regenerate Muslim society and bring our intellectual tradition alive?

Dr. Ja`far Sheikh Idris: As I said earlier I think the first thing we have to do is to invite people to Tawhid again. I think we also have to make it relevant to the ideologies that are prevailing in the world today. It seems to me that we Muslim intellectuals have a very big role to play. From my contacts with some Western intellectuals I think that it is only we, the Muslim intellectuals, who can invite people to religion again. Many other theologians who belong to other religions, many of them, I think they are very sincere people but the problem is that the religion, or the kind of concept of God that they have cannot be at all accepted by someone whose mind is shaped by science, or someone who demands, who looks for evidence, for reasoning. Man y people as a function of their religions, I mean they are very intellectual people, but it’s because of their religion they have to say that there is no contact between reason and religion, or that we have to keep science and religion apart. They say religion, but, in fact, they should have said Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism, or whatever, because we Muslims don’t think so, we do not agree with this separation of religion from science. We can argue even with the atheist, with the m materialist, because, again I discover, that the kind of God that they reject is not the . . .

Z.S.: The kind of God of Islam?

J.S.I.: The God whom we believe in.

Read the rest of the interview here

2 posts put some much needed clarity in the chaos of the recent news.

(reading time 3 seconds) Sh. Suhaib Webb: http://www.suhaibwebb.com/blog/general/was-mj-a-muslim/

(Reading time 5 min): Sh. Abu Esa Niamatullah http://alternativeentertainment.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/dealing-with-skeletons-in-the-closet-%E2%80%93-beat-it/

“Its effect is vastly under-estimated which is why many Muslims simply cannot understand why their fellow brothers and sisters are making such a big deal of an artist as talented and masterful as Michael Jackson”

“I feel that Muslim scholars deal with the topic of music very poorly. Many of them simply (and rather fortunately!) cannot appreciate the hold music can have over the hearts of its victims.”