Suburban Capitalist girls love to shop at fancy malls with designer labels, don’t exclude Muslims from that!
For them, and the discerning Suburban Capitalist Muslim man, there are new designer fashions and catwalks to watch. Give them press, coverage, and a spot on the Today Show. American as apple pie.
““Sexy Rediscovered”: Meet the team behind Muslim fashion line, Eva Khurshid”
Tackling yet another field in which Muslims have not – yet – dominated are Nyla Hashmi and Fatima Monkush, the creative forces behind the most buzzed-about fashion line for Muslims, Eva Khurshid…Q: How did your backgrounds prepare you for your career and hands-on involvement (with both the Muslim and American communities)?
A: Because of our mixed heritages, we grew up in non-traditional yet conservative homes. Having American mothers has definitely shaped both of us and helped us take ownership in our American identity. Our Muslim upbringing is a huge part of our lives where it has served us with a strong foundation on how we live our day-to-day lives and conduct our business.Q: Do you think fashion is an area Muslims need to explore and work in?
A: We really encourage Muslims going into the arts; there are not enough of us in this field. If we don’t represent ourselves, who will? It’s so important for Muslims to branch out into non-traditional fields like fashion, even working with other Muslim artists in collaboration to help one another and giving support.”
Soon to appear on your Shop Rite checkout counter
For Muslim fashion designers, the market potential is enormous
Ausma Khan, chief editor for Muslim Girl, a young women’s lifestyle magazine that was started last year in the United States, believes that dedicated brands would have added appeal for many Muslim consumers. “The potential to design Muslim fashion for women and girls and to market to this audience is enormous,” Khan said. “Imagine the clothes you see in most contemporary and popular fashion outlets – Muslim girls and women are buying them and then creatively filling in the gaps. But they would absolutely buy the same clothes with higher necklines, longer hemlines, a more voluminous fit and so on,” she said.
Even in fashion sportswear and activewear, start-up companies like Hasema from Turkey and Ahiida from Australia have tickled market observers with the advent of functional Islamic swimwear. Aheda Zanetti, Ahiida’s founder, trademarked her designs as the “Burqini,” playing off the words bikini and burqa to describe her two-piece loose-fitting tracksuit.
“I think the Islamic fashion market is going to explode in the coming years. There are signs of it already,” said Gulsen Aydemir, editor of Modest Flair, a U.S.-based Web site that sources style trends and news for its Muslim readers.
America.gov shares this video about “American Islam” – Brooke Samad – . A graduate of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, Brooke and her business, Marabo Fashion, were featured in Muslim Girl Magazine in April 2008.
While fashion shows etc are all Western inventions, they aren’t limited to the Americas. Cultural Hegemony predicts we’d find them all across the globe:
Muharram enters tonight, inshaAllah we are asking to be good ones this year and make it a year which helps us improve in sincerity and faith. Sheykh Maulana Nazim Adil al-Hakkani delivered the following sohbet in 1999 on the 10th of Muharram.
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BismillahirRahmanirRahim… It is one of holiest months, Muharram, and tonight is the 1oth, one of holiest nights in Islam… Tomorrow is the 1oth of Muharram, the Ashura-Day. It has a very special situation in the Islamic calendar, and also in the calendar of world-wide historical events, because on this day Allah Almighty just granted to His beloved servants from His endless Mercy Oceans, and His endless Power Oceans, to be victorious…
It was on this day,
* that the Ark of Prophet Nuh a.s. landed on the peak of that mountain and the flood just finished,
* Prophet Ibrahim (AS) was saved from the fire of Nimrod,
* Prophet Musa (AS) passed through the Red Sea and was saved from Pharaoh,
* Prophet Yunus ibn Al-Yasa’a (AS) was saved from the stomach of the whale,
* Prophet Suleiman (AS) , King Suleiman, was granted the kingdom over all Mankind and Jinn,
* Prophet Eyub (AS) became healthy, and more wealthy than before,
* and the Prophet Jesus Christ, Isa (AS) , was taken up to the Heavens…
* And Sayidina Muhammad (SWS). was granted much honour and an opening of the seven Heavens for himself and for his whole nation, and he was saved from his tribe, the Quraish…
And every time that Muslims fell into difficulties, Divine Help and Support just reached them through this holy month, and particularly on a day like tomorrow, on the 1oth of Muharram… Very important…
I was expecting Sayidina Mehdi a.s. to come this year, but yet some signs have not been completed… and I hope, that he may be with us next Muharram, after the year 2ooo. The 3rd millennium should be for Mehdi (AS) ….
So many Heavenly Blessings reached to believers on the 1oth of Muharram, and it is good luck to reach to Muharram 1999. And I hope that it is going to be granted for Sayidina Mehdi (AS) to appear… Tonight, much more power should be granted, perhaps the authority for the whole world… and his sword, now, is taken out a little bit. Tonight it is going to appear…
And, as we said before, one month ago in Dhul Hijjr on the night of Arafat, a change began. There is a new Tajalli, a Divine Appearance, a new power that will continue now without stopping. And miraculous powers from tonight are beginning to come into action step by step, so that when technology is going to finish and vanish, another kind of power is going to be ready for use…
Try to be with Allah and you are going to be victorious. Try to take yourself, step by step, away from the hands of Shaitan and devils. Try to use less of every kind of instrument which Shaitan and his soldiers helped to invent, because everything that is working with electricity is going to stop, and another source of power is beginning to act…
Now, for a few months only, all nations are going to carry very heavy burdens… When that finishes, there will be a new opening for the whole world. No need at that time for electricity, cars, ships, factories…no. Your light, Nur-ul-Iman, the light of your faith, is going to surround you. Your body is shining, so that even in the darkness of the night you may go…
Therefore I am happy and thankful to Allah, that we have reached to this night, and we are asking humbly for our names to be written with Mehdi (AS) . We are not happy with the situation in the world, East and West, because every system, all living systems on earth now, are against the Divine Rules and Laws.
We are happy and proud enough that Allah Almighty makes us happy with Him, with His Awliya, with Sahibu-Zaman Sayidina Mehdi a.s.- not to run after that shaitanic, dirty life… Shaitanic life is the dirtiest. Run away from the dirty life. If not, you may sink in those dirty waters, dirty situations, and you can’t save yourself. Ask for cleanliness and try to be clean, so that you should be clean in the last moment of your life… Fatiha.
01.04.1999
(Mawlana Sheykh standing)
O our Lord! Forgive us and we are saying also a`udhu billahi min ash Shaytani ‘r rajeem, running away from bad sounds, from Satan and its tricks and traps. Keep ourselves. I am ashaming to ask this from Your Heavenly Presence. I may ask from master of this world. O our master, Qutb az-Zaman, who looking after everything on this Earth, on this planet, to be much more honored by the intercession of the Seal of Prophets (s).
(Mawlana sits)
And I am saying Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem. Biggest honor that whole prophets were asking for them, Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem forever. Allah Almighty just granted that much more honor name for Ummati Muhammad (s). And we are saying so easily Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem. Endless honor, endless lightening coming from Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem.
O People! Don’t lose your chance to say more and more and more Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem. That is a countless treasure for people, for creation. And now we are saying a` udhu billahi min ash-Shaytani ‘r-rajeem. Bismillahi ‘r-Rahmani ‘r-Raheem. And as a deeply adab, good manners, top point, we are saying, asking from that one who is the master of this Earth (s). What do you think, O people, about this world? You are thinking that the Lord of Heavens has only one Earth? If He has only one Earth and trying to keep it, it is not our Lord’s Divinely Absolute Powers appearance.
O People! As-salaamu `alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh! Don’t be angry with me, no! I am such a weak one. Everyday such a person coming to a coffee shop and people surrounding that one, because he speaking so many things they like to hear from him and they should be happy. Our Grandshaykh, Allah blessings him with endless Glory Oceans, making such a weak servant to sit here and to address to whole people through east and west. I don’t think that anyone preparing himself when he is going to coffee shop what I am going to speak, no. What coming I may speak and I am here in a little bit different position because it is not a coffee shop or it is not a coffee shop’s meeting, no! We are a handful of people coming and listening and technology of our most proud ones…taking these words through east and west and from north to south.
We are saying, O my Lord! We are endlessly thankful to You for making technology under our command to reach a person from any point of this world to east, up to west. That is a grant from Allah Almighty; if He is not opening no one can find such a thing, but He is saying that, “So many things we are making them on Earth under your (….sound cut…). It is an electricity, it is an appearance from heavenly Power Oceans, such an atom and this atom preparing everything on Earth for the benefit of the children of Adam, giving much more chance for understanding, but they using it for their egoistic purposes. Not using it to find …the beginning of that power, how appeared. It was in secret Oceans of Power from the Lord’s heavenly oceans. Heaven’s oceans. Subhanallah!
Yes, they are making me to speak on such a points that people never hearing it before, and the Lord of Heavens asking to give much more knowledge for His deputies whom they are the children of Adam. He is asking and giving. And it is such a thing that we are speaking on it, so strange! And people never thinking on it, one, line under it, infinity. What is its equal? Say your language, what is going one over infinity? What is it equal? Say! ZERO. One atom, may be changeable up to be zero and infinity with zero, how going to be one? One, if you are dividing that one through infinity, going to be zero, but when you are making one divided by two, it is going to be half or, you may say two. If you are dividing it by two, it is going to be two. That means if you are taking one dividing into infinity, going to be zero. How many zeros if you are calculating? Going to be unknown, finished! One under one, dividing into two going to be half, and two half going to be one! But here one, if divided by infinity going to be zero! How zero going to adding to infinity and becoming something? That means everything in front of one, nothing! Nothing in existence except ONE. No anything else! That is tawheed, to understand the Unity of the Lord of Heavens!
Everything in existence including heavenly oceans, they are finally coming to be… .(Mawlana addresses a mureed who is falling asleep.) Open your eyes, don’t sleep! How many times I am looking if someone making like this in our association, power cutting. Therefore, reminding our listeners, don’t be heedless or sleepy here, no! Open your eyes and give a value what we are saying; listen!!!
To understand some secrets of your being, this world’s showing and proving to whole mindly creatures that you are on the point of zero! You can’t be with One! One never accepting zero! But HE making zero, asking to show from His Endless Power Appearances. Don’t think you are something. You are nothing! As, O our listeners, your level is for understanding such things preliminary, therefore they are making me to shout and to say something to make your understanding, to open, but you can’t understand; impossible for zero to understand mahya, identity, of ONE.
I am asking professors of mathematics, what is your opinion if one divided to infinity coming only zero? You may putting one divided to four, coming to quarter, but divide it, coming to be zero. Zero means nothing. Standing up only one. People they are not understanding because they are so hard-head people!! Therefore, we are saying if you are making (touching) our heads on the walls of Prophet’s holy grave, holy maqaam, they are saying, “Nooo, you are making shirk.” What shirk? Who can be partner to One? No one! But people they are so ignorant ones. And I am saying if that is shirk, what about if you are putting your hands on Ka’bah-e-Mu’azzam, the Holy House of the Lord? What is the difference between this and that? That is material, this is material. Why this is going to be acceptable, but you never going to be saying, “Don’t touch House of the Lord.” But when you are coming to Holy Prophet’s maqaam, they are coming and rushing on people saying, “Don’t put your hands on it.” Why? This is material, that is material. Do you think that the House of the Lord, He is in it? In it or out of it? What do you think, O Salafi people? What you are saying?
They are so jealous people that they never like Sayyidina Muhammad (s). (Mawlana stands) I am standing up on his Holy Name! Yes, for Ka’bah okay, but for rasulu’th-thaqalayn it is haraam???? Who mentioned? Allah Almighty is warning, don’t make haraam what is halaal, haadha haraamun wa haadha halaalun. It is mentioned in Holy Qur’an and those people their language is Arabic, but they are not saying the Lord’s understanding. To touch Ka’bah is halal, (but you say) to touch Prophet’s windows or gates of his maqam is haram? Which verse giving that authority, to make much more haraam, to make haraam as you like? And Prophet (s) is saying al-haraamu bayyinu wa ‘l-halaalu bayyin (what is forbidden is clear and what is permitted is clear). Where is that bayyinun that don’t touch Prophet’s windows?
If Prophet is saying l-haraamu bayyinu, where it is? Show us your proof, haatoo burhaanakum! Allah saying don’t teach people to say that Ka’ba halal to touch and Habibullah’s maqaam to touch is haraam. What is your proof? And they are saying as (if) Rasul (s) (is) saying al-halaalu bayyin. Through which book you are making this halaal or haraam?? Tell me! They may say, or I may say to them, O Salafi people! You are thinking that when we are saying Baytullah,” He needs to have a house to be in it? How you are saying?? Baytullah, they are saying Allah in it, or out of it? How you are saying this? What do you think if you are making salaam to Ka`ba, four walls Allahu akbar, and you are turning, what is your proof? Allah in it or out? Where He is? You can say for Allah’s maqaam standing and I am asking one Salafi person, O Salafi `alim, what do you think?
I am asking so many people a question and they never giving an answer to make my heart tumaaneena, satisfied. “What is your question, O bid`ah Sheykh?” (Mawlana laughing) If I am making bid’ah, what you shall be? I am asking you to answer me, if I am making bid’ah, Allah Subhanahu wa Ta`ala is going to make judgment for me, but I am asking to you, that it is Baytullah, so is Allah in it or out of it, or is Baytullah is empty? If it is empty, for what we are making this salam, Allahu akbar? Sayyidina `Ibrahim built it; how it is going to be? If you are saying Allahu akbar, to Whom we are saying? Why we are not turning our faces to other parts of Haram Shareef and to say Allahu akbar, only we are coming and saying for Ka`ba, Allahu akbar? What is your proof? Allah imprisoning that Ka`ba? If it is empty, for what we are saying Allahu akbar? Say to me!
(Some are saying,) “O Sheykh, you are saying something against Shari`at Allah!” No! I am asking you is the Lord in it or out it? If you are saying Allah is in the Ka`ba, the house of the Lord, Who is LORD? How, if He is not in it, for what we are running to Ka`ba? We may build four walls and may run around in it, may be, may be! But why you are intiqaam, objecting if mu’mins coming to their prophet’s peaceful and holy place where he (s) is buried, why you are saying, “Don’t touch, that is shirk”? What does it mean, shirk? Are we making idols there and bowing to them? But people they are so ignorant ones, they are not understanding hikmah, wisdom, and I was asking him and he was saying, “No, because it is house of the Lord that can’t be that house empty.” Who is in it? Allah Subhanahu wa Ta`ala is in it?
“No no, no, no, no, no, can’t be!”
(Mawlana stands) Do you think that Holy Prophet (s) of His Divinely Presence, Sayyidina Muhammad (s) is in it?
“No, that is shirk; it is empty.”
How you are saying this? But no-mind people are trying to make people to reach kufr and to be thrown into Hells! They are wrong ones, they are wrong ones! They cannot prove themselves, declaring people kafir (unbeliever) or mushrik (idol worshipper) when they are visiting tomb of Holy Prophet (s).
They are making east to west and from west to east, declaring, “You are kafir, you are mushrik.” What is that? Who giving to you that authority to make people kafir or mushrik ?! It is according to your nonsense ideas? Sahaba, after Prophet’s traveling, rising or reaching to his Lord’s Divinely Presence, Sahaba did not visit his tomb or they are never coming and saying as-salaatu wa ‘s-salaam? At the time of Sahaba it was halaal and you are coming after Sahaba 1300 years and you are making haraam? If anyone coming to holy tomb of Prophet (s) and saying as-salaatu wa ‘s-salam, you are saying they are mushrik? Don’t speak! Something coming to your tongue and you may die!
Because Rasulullah (s) had been sent as basheeran wa nadheera and his inheritors are also basheeran wa nadheera, warners and givers of good tidings, all of them! Sometimes that is granted to a very weak one, like myself. I am weakest one through Mankind, but to be nadheer sometimes had been granted to weakest servant. Yawm al ‘azifati, Day of Warning from Prophet to his inheritors. But (Wahabis) never accepting except themselves. No, they are not going to be inheritors for Rasul, but if you are insisting you are going to be inheritors for Shaytan! Allah orders everyone to bow to Adam, Allah looking and ordering, so how you are saying that sajdah is haraam? Through whole Shari’ah haraam, but if Allah is ordering (it becomes) halaal. Therefore, whole angels bowing to Adam in Divinely Presence! Allah Subhanahu wa Ta`ala ordering to angels to bow to Adam. Why He is not saying, “Bow to Me”? No, bow to Adam.
Ya Rabbi! You are so great and mighty, no one can understand Your greatness. O our Lord! YOU, YOU, YOU!
O People! Angels making sajdah, is Allah’s order munkar, wrong? Why not saying to Allah, “Why You make Adam and ordering me to make sajdah to him?”
If to Adam we can bow, if you are going to Sayyidina Muhammad, you are going to be kafir? HASHA!
Allah Allah, Allah Allah, Allah Allah, `Azeez Allah
Ala maa yureed, as He likes He can order. As we are saying that is Baytullah (Allah’s house), that is Habibullah (Allah’s beloved)! And Habeebullah is more valuable that `Ibrahim’s building. This is Baytullah, that is Habeebullah! Which one is more precious in Divinely Presence, that building or Habeebullah? If you are saying Ka`batullah then let Ka`batullah come on Day of Judgment and make intercession! You are kissing Hajjatul Aswad (the Black Stone), but if you are kissing someone’s hand for respect then are going to be kafir? What is that nonsense ideas and fitna through Muslims!!! Divine revenge quickly comes on them. It is halal to kiss a piece of stone because it is from heavens coming. Also, the Seal of Prophets (s) from where coming? From under the Earth coming, or coming from up??!!But no-mind Salafi people, they are asking to make whole Muslims like their thinking, and they are on baatil, falsehood.
Allah Allah, Allah Allah, Allah Allah, `Azeez Allah
Allah Allah, Allah Allah, Allah All
The National – Sheykh Jihad Brown – 01 August 2009
Revisionist history in the Middle East likes to think of the Ottoman years as an episode of Turkish domination. The reality, however, was far from that.
The Ottomans were a diverse group. One of the most powerful positions in the empire, the Sultan’s chief of staff, was always an African. The top ministers and bureaucrats were more often selected from the ranks of the devshirme, Christian children raised in the palace and groomed for high-ranking functions, including military leadership. The language itself, Ottoman Turkish, was written in Arabic script.
There is a tendency in the Middle East to blame all failures in modernisation on the “Turkish Occupation”. The accusation appears moot, however, when we notice that the last Grand Vizier, Said Halim Pasha, was educated at Lausanne, Switzerland in the social sciences. He would be killed by Armenian assassins. If the Ottomans had really been the “sick man of Europe”, the British and their Anzacs would have faired better in the Dardanelles, but it was a rout.
More than anything, what may have contributed to Ottoman decline would be the impatience of the Young Turks to chase the fashion of modernisation. Add to that the intoxicating idea of nationalism, the latest import from Europe, as it spread throughout an ethnically diverse empire.
Istanbul today, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, remains diverse. Although rich in culture and still quite cosmopolitan, it abounds in contradictions: history and modernity; graceful beauty and kitsch; aristocracy and the nouveau riche; tradition and technology; authoritarianism and desire for democracy; conservative culture and moral abandon.
The gift of globalisation, however, has brought to this cosmopolitanism the creep of the uni-culture. The visitor looking to experience all that is unique to Turkey is challenged at every step by American fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, hotel chains and a plethora of other stylised conventions. If one allows oneself to be seduced by the siren song of the familiar, he or she might just forget where they are until they bump into the next monument. The advertisements are fundamentally the same, the banter of the radio jockeys is the same, the commuter traffic to their bedroom communities is the same; and it’s all just boring.
Today’s uni-culture is plastic, one-dimensional, and tastes of polyurethane. The alternative is the “authentic”, but that too is an enigma. “Authentic” is an adjective applied to another thing, like one might apply the “rustic” theme to their screensaver or interior design. We should be conscious that even when visiting a historic sight, we are seeing it through the filter of “presentation”. This is a stylised representation or interpretation of life as it was. It is still not the lived reality of the historical moment of the place and its occupants. They didn’t gaze at the walls and tour the objects as we do; they lived and “did” within that supporting context.
Reality, the third level of experience, is founded on continuity. It is a portal connecting us to the real. Uni-culture and “authentic representation” are temporal and never enduring.
In the narrow streets of the Fatih district and the hills of Uskudar live real Ottomans, who can show you, with the most gracious hospitality, a continuing history that no guidebook could “represent”. The Quran says: “And as for the froth, it will dissipate as if it had never been; but what benefits the people will remain in the Earth.”
The seriousness and persistence with which scribes and scholars in the Islamic world were able during that period to preserve and transmit the text of the most important of all books in that world, the Koran, and, next, the traditional collections of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet of Islam, meant that, once codified, their preservation and transmission could remain free of the many problems besetting the preservation and transmission of most other books, both religious and secular, during the transition from the manuscript age to the age of printed books. In contrast, the disturbing manner in which European printers took liberties with the text of the Koran (when compared to the care taken in printing the Gutenberg Bible, for instance) could not but raise doubts among Muslims regarding the virtues of printing when they first came into contact with the new technology.
One look at the title page of the Koran printed in Hamburg in 1694 (figure 1.1) must have made Muslim readers of the Koran think that only the Devil himself could have produced such an ugly and faulty version of their Holy Book; and the same must have been the impression made on them by Alessandro de Paganino’s Venice Koran printed in the 1530s, where the printer, perhaps following some contemporary Arabic vernacular, did not distinguish between certain letters of the alphabet, such as thedal and the dhal (figure 1.2). One would expect a handbook on medicine and medicaments, such as the Arabic text of Avicenna’s Canon, to be free of printing errors, since errors in a book of this nature can easily lead to unfortunate results. Yet the Medici edition (Rome, 1593) of this work commits a serious grammatical fault, to say nothing of the syntactical infelicities, on the title page itself (figure 1.3).
Unlike a faulty manuscript copy by some ignorant scribe, such printed books involve an orderly organization, extensive financing, and the distribution of a large number of copies with the same errors, making it less easy to dismiss them as unimportant or inconsequential incidents.
ref: Mahdi, Muhsin. The Book in the Islamic World, “From the Manuscript Age to the Age of Printed Books” (1995). State University of New York Press, New York.
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Andrew Hasin on 
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