Page 3 The Islamic Bulletin Issue 4 2645 Embrace Islam in Riyadh Jeddah - A total of 2645 people from 39 different countries embraced Islam during the last four years, according to a study conducted by the faculty of Social Science at the Imam Muhammed Ibn Saud Islamic University. Of the sample survey conducted, 83% were Christians before embracing Islam. The remaining 17% consisted of Hindus, Buddhists and other minority religions. The survey also reflected, 41 % embraced Islam through colleagues, 34% embraced through one of their friends who themselves embraced Islam at some point in life and 12% embraced Islam through one of their family members. Reading Islamic books led to the embracing of Islam by 40%, while scenes of the prayers at mosques and performing of the pilgrimage at Mecca observed on television convinced 13%. Seminars and lectures conducted by the Islamic organizations all over the world led 30% to Islam. - Reported by Al-Muslimoon. And Here in the US..... Muslims in America Fight Stereotypes It is unfortunate that some teachings of Islam have been distorted and misrepresented in the West and the Communist world. The main distortions relate to the status of women, marriage, divorce, Jihad (holy war), the authenticity of the Prophethood of Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him), and the distinctions between the Holy Qur’an and the Ha’dith. Shabbir Mansuri, a Muslim educational reformer from California, is working diligently in conjunction with other Muslims to change the image of the Muslims in the United States. Muslims are misrepresented by stereotyping them as terrorists, as Bedouins, and quite other negative images in the American school books, movies, newspapers and the marketplace. Such negative images are fueled not only by the main events, like the gulf war, but also by an abiding ignorance of the Muslim culture. Scott Easton of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington D.C. said, “We are concerned now about more subtle forms of discrimination that have been there all along , like the anti-Arab jokes on the radio. The 25,000 member civil rights organization marked the start of the holy month of Ramadan by petitioning the U.S. Secretary of Education for a task force on the treatment of Islam and the Arab world in the elementary and the secondary school system in United States.” Former teacher Audrey Shabbas of Berkeley believes the war opened a “window of opportunity” to learn more about Islam and the Middle East. Books on the Middle East are selling briskly, enrollment in a UC-Berkeley class on Muslims in America is 50 percent, and calls requesting information flood in to nonprofit groups like Arab World and Islamic Resources in Berkeley and Muslim mosques like our Islamic Center. See also The S.F. Examiner Sunday March 31, 1991 Page B-1. Geography One of the factors that stimulated geographical research among the Muslims was the annual pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca (Hajj). The Muslims conceived Mecca as the central point of the world and tried to find easily accessible routes, and the distances and directions of different cities and towns from the central point. It was also necessary to find the correct direction of each place from Mecca so that Muslims could offer their daily prayers facing the direction of Mecca. As the Muslims influence and faith spread to far distant places in the north, east, west, and south, efforts to find direction and location of each region from Mecca became all the more necessary. This led to the determination of points of longitude and latitude of hundreds of towns and cities with greater exactness and accuracy than before. The invention of the compass was also made possible by this urge to find the correct direction of Mecca from different parts of the world. Again, the daily prayers necessitated the proper timing of each prayer and proper times of fast. This urge to worship God at the proper times and to fast for His pleasure during the correct timing of the day in the different parts of the world led to great efforts and research into these subjects. Philop K. Hitti, “History of the Arabs”, rightly admits the influence of worship and the Ka’bah in stimulating scientific studies by the Muslims in the field of geography. “The institution of the Holy Pilgrimage, the orientation of the mosques towards Mecca and the need for determining the direction of the Ka’bah at the time of prayer gave religious impetus to the Muslims’ study of geography. Astrology, which necessitated the determining of the latitudes and longitudes of all places throughout the world, added its scientific influence. Muslim traders between the 7th and 9th centuries reached China on the east both by sea and by land, attained the island of Zanzibar and the farthest coasts of Africa on the south, penetrated Russia on the north and were checked in their advance westward only by the dreaded waters of the ‘Sea of Darkness’ (the Atlantic).” The main stimulus to acquire knowledge of everything, including geography, came from the Quran and the Hadith of the Prophet, which led the Arabs to find knowledge from the four corners of the world. In this search they found instruments and tools in Greek literature which proved very useful to them in their quest for geographical knowledge. As they advanced in geographical knowledge, these tools enabled them to make their studies more systematic and scientific. But this in no way means that their geographical studies were stimulated by the Greeks, because the stimulus to knowledge had already been provided by the Revelation which encouraged them to acquire all the existing knowledge through translating useful works of other peoples. However, they continued their studies of different regions and lands and discovered new fields of geographical knowledge unknown to previous nations, including the Greeks and the Romans.
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