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Saudi Arabian King Gives Controversial Islamic Cleric Top Award

220px-Dr_Zakir_NaikSaudi Arabia has long been criticized for its extreme religious beliefs as part of its devotion to Wahhabism. Now the Kingdom has generated more controversy by giving one of Saudi Arabia’s most prestigious prizes to Zakir Naik, an Islamic school who said that the Koran (Quran) “allows Muslims to have sex with female slaves” and seemed to support Osama Bin Laden, at least to the extent to which he was “fighting the enemies of Islam.” Saudi Arabia’s new King Salman gave Naik the King Faisal International Prize (KFIP) 2015 personally.

Naik, 49, has been barred from travel to Britain because of what the country cited as “unacceptable behavior.”

The statement on slaves came when the Indian Islamic scholar observed that “There are many verses in the Quran which say you can have sex with your wife and with whatever your right hand possesses. . . . Right hand possesses . . . which means your slaves.”

The King Faisal International Prize recognises the outstanding works of individuals and institutions in five categories — Service to Islam, Islamic Studies, Arabic Language and Literature, Medicine and Science. Naik received his award for awarded the KFIP for his services to Islam for a lifetime’s teaching about Islam, including his work founding of the Peace Channel, a comparative religion TV channel. He was given a handwritten Arabic certificate on the laureate’s achievements, a commemorative 24-carat 200-gram gold medal and a cheque of USD 200,000.

While Saudi Arabia has opposed such extremist groups like ISIS, the country continues to maintain medieval laws that deny women basic freedoms, deny basic freedoms of speech and religion to other faiths, and impose extreme Sharia law on its citizens.

118 thoughts on “Saudi Arabian King Gives Controversial Islamic Cleric Top Award”

  1. You asked for examples of Islamic slavery.
    I gave.
    You danced around it.
    More?
    More:

    Domestic slavery in Britain “worse than Saudi Arabia”?

    “Like Qatar, which came under international pressure last year for labour exploitations in its World Cup development project, Saudi Arabia uses the kafāla system of foreign labour. Kafāla (from the Arabic for ‘sponsorship’) stipulates that migrant workers can only enter Arab Gulf states through a pre-arranged ‘sponsor’ (kafīl). Employees thereafter remain bound to their sponsor for fear of becoming an illegal immigrant.

    Sponsors therefore commonly exercise inordinate control over the recruitment process, working conditions and movement of their domestic staff, who comply for fear of being deported to their home country. Something not dissimilar to the earliest forms of chattel slavery is the result. Asian embassies in Riyadh and Jeddah have recorded thousands of complaints from domestic workers forced to work around 18 hours a day, with no day off, and often without pay.

    Of the overseas domestic workers in the UK who came forward for help last year, 62% were paid no salary at all, compared with 14% on the pre-2012 visa; 96% were not allowed out of the house unsupervised, compared with 44% under the old system; and 74% faced psychological abuse, compared with 28% before 2012.”

  2. Annie, Paul is so in love with his idea of Islamic slavery that he is willing to lose the little left of his credibility in order to rewrite history. With educators like him and NIck, no wonder the schools are in such dire states.

    1. po – ad hominem attack but a failure to overcome what I wrote.

  3. Again Pogo falls back on ISIS to define Islam. Can we use Jim Jones to define Christianity?

  4. UK: Child Sex Slavery, Multiculturalism and Islam

    “The meticulously documented report, entitled, “Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery,” shows how officials in England and Wales were aware of rampant child grooming—the process by which sexual predators befriend and build trust with children in order to prepare them for abuse—by Muslim gangs since at least 1988.

    Rather than taking steps to protect British children, however, police, social workers, teachers, neighbors, politicians and the media deliberately downplayed the severity of the crimes perpetrated by the grooming gangs in order to avoid being accused of “Islamophobia” or racism.”

  5. What a silly hypocrite you are, Pogo 🙂
    This is incredible, you are actually quoting ISL in order to make your case? Have you realized the depth to which you have sunk?
    You are exactly as the extremists who quote the Quran and extrapolate from it to make their case for extremism.
    If I were you, I would not throw stones at Dr naik, for you both are doing the same exact thing.
    Wow!
    Yep, fundamentalists of all stripe unite!

  6. <a href="https://www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/media/Escape_from_hell_-_Torture_and_sexual_slavery_in_Islamic_State_captivity_in_Iraq_-_English.pdf"AMNESTY INTL:

    “As they swept through large parts of northern Iraq, fighters with the armed group calling itself “Islamic State” (IS) systematically targeted members of non-Arab and non-Sunni Muslim communities, as well as Sunni Muslims who oppose them. But even within the context of its persecution of minority groups and Shi’a Muslims, the IS has singled out the Yezidi minority,3 notably its women and children, for particularly brutal treatment.

    In August 2014, IS fighters abducted hundreds, possibly thousands, of Yezidi men, women and children who were fleeing the IS takeover from the Sinjar region, in the north-west of the country. Hundreds of the men were killed and others were forced to convert to Islam under threat of death. Younger women and girls, some as young as 12, were separated from their parents and older relatives and sold, given as gifts or forced to marry IS fighters and supporters. Many have been subjected to torture and ill-treatment, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, and have likewise been pressured into converting to Islam.”

  7. Po, so I guess Muslims were the big plantation owners that owned and abused all those slaves, I guess, if one thinks as they do.

    How the Bible was used to justify slavery and abolition. The Bible, like the Koran, seem to be taken both literally and figuratively, just depends on the person.

  8. From the Economist Oct 18th 2014.

    “…the latest issue of IS’s glossy English-language online magazine, Dabiq. An article titled “The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour” details religious justifications for reintroducing a practice that ended in all but a few Muslim countries more than a century ago. It claims not only that the Koran, the sayings of the prophet and traditional Islamic law all endorse the enslavement of infidel women captured in wartime, but that the abandonment of this right has caused sin to spread; men are easily tempted to debauchery when denied this “legal” alternative to marriage.”

    From the Quran, the article quotes:
    “Put to the sword all the men in it”. As for the women and children, “You may take these as plunder for yourselves.”

  9. Pogo,
    The author of the article came to a different conclusion than what is expressed in the Bible, but I liked the article anyway because it brings up Jesus’s views on slavery. The author does not take what Jesus said literally. If YOU Pogo, take what is in the Koran literally, you must also take what is in the Bible literally or you lose your credibility as a fair minded thinker. Are you a fair minded person?

  10. Pogo
    Where is Islam back into slavery? Why, did another Quran come and said slavery was re-allowed? Are you working on one?
    By the Torah being likely the source for the Quran, are you subscribing to my claim that they are both divinely inspired or are you suggesting something else?
    ————————–
    Paul C. Schulte
    Inga – Christians no longer condons slavery, Islam does. BTW, are you converting to Islam? You have become an apologist for Islam for some time now.
    Paul, this is where a source would be helpful, or is it another one of your claims that ‘are based on everything but facts?

    Are you also saying that all the slaves who found their way to these shores were caught and sold by Arabs?
    Where did you learn history?
    Apparently from the same school as Nick!
    You are letting your hand down, man. Step your game, too lazy lately.

  11. “On June 18, 2010, British Home Secretary Theresa May stated that Dr. Naik, who heads the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), was barred from entering the U.K. under laws that can exclude anyone who “foments, justifies, or glorifies terrorist violence…

    Though he has no official ties to terrorist organizations, his followers and employees have reportedly been linked to the 2006 serial Mumbai bombings and to other terrorist activity,[4] and his lectures, many of which are posted on YouTube, have been blamed for inciting Muslim youth to violence and extremism.

    A review of his lectures and interviews, however, reveals that Naik has spoken in support of Osama bin Laden, saying, “If he is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him.” He has also voiced virulent anti-American views, comparing the Americans to pigs, advancing the view that 9/11 was an inside job planned by U.S. politicians, and calling President George W. Bush “the world’s number one terrorist.” In addition, he has described the Jews as the Muslims’ biggest enemies, and has spoken in favor of polygamy and a husband’s right to beat his wife.

    Naik says in a clip that is currently on YouTube: ‘Beware of Muslims saying Osama bin Laden is right or wrong. I reject them … we don’t know. But if you ask my view, if given the truth, if he is fighting the enemies of Islam, I am for him. I don’t know what he’s doing. I’m not in touch with him. I don’t know him personally. If he is terrorizing the terrorists, if he is terrorizing America the terrorist … I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist.

    Within a week of the U.K. government ban, Canada announced that it too was barring Naik from entering its territory. Naik had planned to be keynote speaker at a conference in Toronto, chaired by Saed Rageah. Regeah is imam of the Toronto mosque that made news last fall when a group of its young members joined the Al-Qaeda-affiliated militant Somali group Al-Shabab Al-Mujahideen.”

  12. “Naik, 49, has been barred from travel to Britain because of what the country cited as “unacceptable behavior.”

    How ironic. I thought this was a civil liberties blog, not an anti-islam blog.

    Naik was banned from the UK and Canada for his speech and ideas, crazy as those may be, it’s still clearly speech. But who cares, he is a crazy muslim, those are the craziest humans. They could affect mine or my kids’ civil liberties (fear mongering of course) so I must warn! The label extreme state beliefs should be developed, in response to the always popular extreme islamic beliefs.

  13. Seriously, Inga, i would have chosen American Christians from the South prior to the Civil War for an example. There were indeed Christians who condoned slavery.

    Your article does not say what you claimed, however.

  15. “The quran is the only holy book I know that makes freeing one’s slave a means of…”

    The Torah did that centuries before that, and is likely the source for the Quran.

    “…perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time.”
    Of the 7th century.
    Then progress stopped, and regressed.
    Now Islam is back into slavery.

  16. Paul, pit bull owners will tell you that their dogs are how they are made to be. If shown love, they only give back love; if trained to kill, they have the means.
    I know of 2 larges pitbulls that were attacked by smaller dogs and would rather run away than fight back. Those are also the friendliest and loving dogs I know.

  17. In case you skip over my link, which you are wont to, here is a summary.
    The quran is the only holy book I know that makes freeing one’s slave a means of atoning for one’s major sins, and a means of reaching higher spiritual states.
    Islam also prohibited the prostitution of female slaves that was common across the globe.
    The Prophet Muhamad required Muslims to treat their slaves as well as they could, to the extent of clothing and feeding them as they did their family.
    Thank you, thank you.

  18. As usual, Paul, throwing darts from afar. Jump into the pit, friend, what is Pogo right about?
    Pogo, regarding Islam and slavery, where will you two quit it? I keep destroying that claim and yet you keep resurrecting it :).
    Thank you for offering me another opportunity to show how little you both know. Sadistic han?! Put it on my tab.
    Thank you
    Thank you

    from wiki:
    “Slavery in the Quran

    “Zakat expenditures are only for the poor and for the needy and for those employed to collect (zakāt) and for bringing hearts together and for freeing captives (or slaves) and for those in debt (or bonded labor) and for the cause of Allah and for the (stranded) traveler – an obligation (imposed) by Allah . And Allah is Knowing and Wise.”[citation needed]

    The Quran includes multiple references to slaves, slave women, slave concubinage, and the freeing of slaves. It accepts the institution of slavery. It may be noted that the word ‘abd’ (slave) is rarely used, being more commonly replaced by some periphrasis such as ma malakat aymanukum (“that which your right hands own”). The Qur’an recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave and the rights of the former over the latter. The historian Brunschvig states that from a spiritual perspective, “the slave has the same value as the free man, and the same eternity is in store for his soul; in this earthly life, failing emancipation, there remains the fact of his inferior status, to which he must piously resign himself.”[2][23] Quran 24:32:[24] “And marry the unmarried among you and the righteous among your male slaves and female slaves. If they should be poor, Allah will enrich them from His bounty, and Allah is all-Encompassing and Knowing” Quran 24:33:[24] But let them who find not [the means for] marriage abstain [from sexual relations] until Allah enriches them from His bounty. And those who seek a contract [for eventual emancipation] from among whom your right hands possess – then make a contract with them if you know there is within them goodness and give them from the wealth of Allah which He has given you.”

    The Quran, Surah 90:13 cleary stated , the act of freeing of a slave [25] will make those people who do such deed to be categorized as the Companions of the Right,[26] a term for the blessed people in hereafter.[27]

    The Quran urges kindness to the slave[28] and recommends their liberation by purchase or manumission. The freeing of slaves is recommended both for the expiation of sins[29] and as an act of simple benevolence.[30] It exhorts masters to allow slaves to earn or purchase their own freedom (manumission contracts).”[31]

    Slaves are mentioned in at least twenty-nine verses of the Qur’an, most of these are Medinan and refer to the legal status of slaves. The legal material on slavery in the Qur’an is largely restricted to manumission and sexual relations.[20] According to Sikainga, the Qur’anic references to slavery as mainly contain “broad and general propositions of an ethical nature rather than specific legal formulations.”[32]

    The Quran accepts the distinction between slave and free as part of the natural order and uses this distinction as an example of God’s grace,[33] regarding this discrimination between human beings as in accordance with the divinely established order of things.[20][34] “The Qur’an, however, does not consider slaves to be mere chattel; their humanity is directly addressed in references to their beliefs,[35] their desire for manumission and their feelings about being forced into prostitution.[36] In one case, the Qur’an refers to master and slave with the same word, rajul. Later interpreters presume slaves to be spiritual equals of free Muslims. For example,[37] urges believers to marry ‘believing maids that your right hands own’ and then states: “The one of you is as the other,” which the Jalaalayn interpret as “You and they are equal in faith, so do not refrain from marrying them.” The human aspect of slaves is further reinforced by reference to them as members of the private household, sometimes along with wives or children.[20] Pious exhortations from jurists to free men to address their slaves by such euphemistic terms as “my boy” and “my girl” stemmed from the belief that God, not their masters, was responsible for the slave’s status.[38]

    There are many common features between the institution of slavery in the Quran and that of neighboring cultures. However, the Quranic institution had some unique new features.[20] Bernard Lewis states that the Qur’anic legislation brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching effects: presumption of freedom, and the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances.[31] According to Brockopp, the idea of using alms for the manumission of slaves appears to be unique to the Quran, assuming the traditional interpretation of verses [Quran 2:177] and [Quran 9:60]. Similarly, the practice of freeing slaves in atonement for certain sins appears to be introduced by the Quran (but compare Exod 21:26-7).[20] The forced prostitution of female slaves, a Near Eastern custom of great antiquity, is condemned in the Quran.[22][39] Murray Gordon notes that this ban is “of no small significance.”[40] Brockopp writes: “Other cultures limit a master’s right to harm a slave but few exhort masters to treat their slaves kindly, and the placement of slaves in the same category as other weak members of society who deserve protection is unknown outside the Qur’an. The unique contribution of the Qur’an, then, is to be found in its emphasis on the place of slaves in society and society’s responsibility toward the slave, perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time.”[20]”

    Now Pogo, what about slavery in the US again? Was Islam behind it? I don’t remember.
    Check mate, brothers, check mate.
    I can do this all day:)

    1. po – that slavery in the US that you ask about? Yes, Islam was behind it. Islamic Arabs captured the slaves, moved them to the coast where Islamic slave traders sold them to slave ships.

    1. Inga – Christians no longer condons slavery, Islam does. BTW, are you converting to Islam? You have become an apologist for Islam for some time now.

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