October issue of Emel OUT NOW

Emel, issue 72.

October's issue takes us to China. The Muslims in China, the mosques in Chine, food, clothes, women, love and pagodas from China.

 这是非常好! (it's very good!)

Feature article on China
"Muslims in China began as traders and soldiers in the seventh century, therefore instilling in the early Muslim settlers a sense of belonging and legitimacy; they were not a burden on the country, but valuable contributors. It was only in the thirteenth century however, after the Mongols conquered China, that these Muslims who were classified as ‘foreign guests’ were allowed to live wherever they chose and granted citizenship."
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Imam Zaid Shakir: The fight against racism is not over; we must redouble our efforts.

"As the level of racially-charged exclusionary politics grows throughout the Western world, Muslims will have to contribute to the developing discourse to counter this problem. Doing so will require a plunge into the murky waters of racial politics. We should not shy away from the challenge. We readily acknowledge that Islam opposes all forms of racism and bigotry. However, sometimes we deny the need for any involvement in a racially defined political arena fearing that by involving ourselves on such a basis, we are somehow implicitly legitimising racial distinctions."
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My favourite part, the editorials by Sarah Joseph: The Religion of the Pure and True

"The notion that Islam – meaning self-surrender unto God – can transcend time and space may be understood in two ways: to replicate 7th Century Arabian society throughout the entire world; or to generate solutions and civilisations based upon a moral, ethical and spiritual framework.

I believe it has to be the latter, and China’s pagoda-style mosques physically manifest that. There was no attempt by those early Arab Muslim traders to China to import a particular mosque construction. Instead, they saw different architectural structures and embraced them, removing only the elements they deemed to be inimical to self-surrender to God."
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