Dr Uthman Latiff gives a haunting insight into the Srebrenica genocide which began on 11th July 1995 and became the worst massacre in Europe since WWll.
Join us this week on our Unscripted Podcast #36 with Sheikh Dr. Uthman Lateef.
The Spectacle of Suffering & Learning to Empathise The image of Aylan Kurdi, of a forlorn three year old boy alone on a beach, flat down on his face as sea water lapped over and around him, appeared to wake the conscience of millions. We were confronted with ourselves, our weakness spoke through our tears and the isolation we saw in him drew us together in communal huddles. We felt. And in feeling we felt ourselves too, we felt for a moment what it meant to be human, to be small and weak, but our humanity extended beyond the exterior.…
What outlook and remedy does Islām provide for some of our darkest and hardest moments?
In the first of this new series of i21c Unscripted podcasts, where Dr Salman Butt talks to various authors about their fields of expertise, we join Dr Uthman Lateef in his home library.
Dr Uthman Lateef's reflections from his recent trip to Auschwitz...
In 2009, a 48 year old unmarried man, George Sodini from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA, walked into a gym aerobics class and began shooting, killing three women and wounding nine others before turning the gun on himself. What police initially believed was a random ‘murder-suicide’ was soon discovered to have been the carefully pre-meditated action of a man who felt spurned by women for decades. Sodini left behind a nine-month diary chronicling his grievances about being unable to find love: "The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends, but not being able to achieve and acquire what I…
It was in the winter of 1967 when a young, bespectacled boy named Steven Shepherd left his home and walked in heavy rain to strawberry fields in Newburgh, Lancashire. The fields were important to Steven. Some months prior, Steven had an unusual and momentary break from a sequence of abuse, physical beatings and theft of property which summed up his time at his school. He had been afforded the chance to travel to the strawberry fields. It was a day of respite. His sister said that she wished she could have stopped time for her young brother as she saw him…
“When they sat by it” Surah al-Buruj in light of Bystanding The place of ‘witnessing’ is a salient motif in Sūrah al-Burūj. At four points within the sūrah Allah draws our attention to forms of shahāda – ‘to witness’. He (subḥānahu wa ta’āla) swears by the shāhid ‘witness’ and mash-hūd ‘what is witnessed’. The criminals responsible for burning alive those who affirmed faith are shuhūd ‘witnesses’ and over all affairs, Allah is the shahīd ‘witness’. We are drawn in the sūrah to deliberate on how transgressions against others are inescapable in both a human and divine frame. Humans remember, memorialise,…
Tell that to the ravens plucking out eyes on the blood-packed sand To fathers cradling the last of their hopes in torn bodies To young girls swelling with the unwanted gifts of swift strong soldiers To mothers and wives pulling on veils of grief as they wash their dead Inform the children who wander dazed with thirst, alone among ruins ‘Clean War' by Patricia Wellingham-Jones The representation of the war in Iraq was reduced to the level of a video game, largely due to a combination of rigid media management by the military, the fact that much of the action…
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