Religion

  • Iffat Mirza, Raynes Park It’s very easy to turn our heads to some Islamic nations today and gasp in horror at the lack of tolerance amongst different religions, ethnicities, and cultures. The relentless persecution of Christians or the Yazidi, for example, in the Middle East, is most heart-breaking and worrisome. Anyone who was familiar with…

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  • Nadia Nauman, Bolton In today’s world, when life is full of all sorts of distractions, the struggles of an Ahmadi Muslim woman are challenging. These struggles are the battles fought on a daily basis. Not the battles on the ground. Rather, the battles with one’s own self. Today is the time for jihad (striving) against…

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  • Arfa Yassir, Swindon Just as in the physical world there is also progress and outcomes of our actions in the spiritual world without which everything will lose meaning. A seeker of God derives pleasures from every upgrade and steps ahead towards Him, this ‘progress’ and it’s pleasure never lets a seeker tire of his quest.…

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  • Nadia Ghauri, Oxford The ‘West’ is a nebulous concept; at times glorified as a model of modern civilisation, and at others, denigrated as superficial and morally corrupted. I grew up in a small, rural city in southern England. Naturally, as a Muslim of Pakistani heritage I would feel out of place in a city that…

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  • Zujaja Khan, London The University of al-Qarawiyyin is the oldest continuously operating university in the world. What makes it all the more amazing is the fact that it was founded by a Muslim woman, Fatima al-Firhi, in 859 CE. To this day, the university stands as a symbol of inspiration and a testament to the…

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  • Innovations in Religion

    Maleeha Mansur, Hayes Religion is a means of attaining nearness to our Creator, to be free from the chains of materialism and to see light in the darkness of the world. What can be said of a religion that strips its followers of purity and takes one far from God by indulging in worldly pursuits…

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  • Basma Malik, Roehampton ‘Say, ‘My Prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are all for Allah, the Lord of the worlds.’ (6:163) Sacrifice is a concept that is present in religions and cultures from the Hebrews to the Aztecs notably in the form of animal sacrifice. In the religious context, sacrifice is…

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  • Tooba Khokhar, Cambridge I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils… I still remember encountering this poem for the first time, as many of us will have done, in an age its poet deems “apparelled in…

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  • Arfa Yassir, Swindon History has seen many successful people, from leaders to conquerors of large territories to the ones making ground breaking discoveries and inventions to the ones who have reached out to masses through their intellectual abilities. If we carefully examine their lives we find one thing in common i.e. all of them were focused on…

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  • The Perfect Authority

    Nooresahar Ahmad, Hartlepool In a recent RE class we studied the authority of the Bible in Christianity. The Bible is undoubtedly a most interesting text; at 5 billion copies sold it is the bestselling book in the world1 and holds a lot of fascinating information and wisdom as well as songs, poetry and historical accounts.…

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