Fareena Alam | |
---|---|
Born | 1978 London, England |
Occupation | Editor, journalist |
Spouse | Abdul-Rehman Malik (m. 2002) |
Fareena Alam (born 1978) is a British journalist and program designer. She was formerly the editor of Q News .
Alam was born in London, England to Bangladeshi Chittagonian parents. She spent her childhood and formative years in Singapore where her father was a civil servant. [1] During this time she was elected as the vice-president and then president of the United Nations Students' Association, National University of Singapore, for which she organised a six-month awareness campaign called ‘The Children of Bangladesh.’ The campaign highlighted the plight of the street children and she then took the campaign a stage further by leading a student delegation of 20 to carry out relief work in Bangladesh for three weeks in 1998.
After graduating from university and returning to England, [2] from 2003 [3] to 2007, [4] she was editor of Q News . [5] She was a freelance contributor to British and international media outlets until 2017. Her major works include a cover story for Newsweek International. [6]
She was a co-founder of the Radical Middle Way Project [7] which is a revolutionary grassroots initiative aimed at articulating a relevant mainstream understanding of Islam that is dynamic, proactive and relevant to young British Muslims. The project was funded by the British government under the early years of its Prevent scheme and by 2009 is said to have received approximately £1.2 million. The RMW's partnership with the government ended in 2010 after the changes made to the Prevent scheme by the newly elected Conservative government.
In 2005, Alam was named Media Professional of the Year by Islamic Relief. In 2006, she was named Media Professional of the Year at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards. [8]
She was raised as a Muslim. [9] In June 2002, she married Abdul-Rehman, a Canadian-born teacher of Punjabi-Pakistani heritage. They met in June 2001 whilst attending a conference organised by the Zaytuna Institute in San Francisco. [10]
Civilisational history of Bangladesh previously known as East Bengal, dates back over four millennia, to the Chalcolithic. The country's early documented history featured successions of Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms and empires, vying for regional dominance.
Deobandi is a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam, adhering to the Hanafi school of law, formed in the late 19th century around the Darul Uloom Madrassa in Deoband, India, from which the name derives, by Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, and several others, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58. The movement pioneered education in religious sciences through the Dars-i-Nizami associated with the Lucknow-based ulema of Firangi Mahal with the goal of preserving Islamic teachings under colonial rule. The Deobandi movement's political wing, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, was founded in 1919 and played a major role in the Indian independence movement through its propagation of the doctrine of composite nationalism.
Jamaat-e-Islami, or Jamaat as it is simply known, is an Islamist political party which is based in Pakistan and it is the Pakistani successor to Jamaat-e-Islami, which was founded in colonial India in 1941. Its objective is the transformation of Pakistan into an Islamic state, governed by Sharia law, through a gradual legal, and political process. JI strongly opposes capitalism, communism, liberalism, and secularism as well as economic practices such as offering bank interest. JI is a vanguard party: its members form an elite with "affiliates" and then "sympathizers" beneath them. The party leader is called an ameer. Although it does not have a large popular following, the party is quite influential and considered one of the major Islamic movements in Pakistan, along with Deobandi and Barelvi.
Islam is the state religion of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. According to the 2022 census, Bangladesh had a population of about 150 million Muslims, or 91.04% of its total population of 165 million. The majority of Bangladeshis are Sunni, and follow the Hanafi school of fiqh. Religion is an integral part of Bangladeshi identity. Despite being a Muslim-majority country, Bangladesh is a de facto secular state.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, is a Bangladeshi-born British physicist, writer, teacher, and community leader. He is a former secretary of Muslim Aid, a former chairman of the East London Mosque, a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and has served as the president of the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) in its early years when it was formed to organize Bangladeshi diaspora professionals in Europe. In addition to consultancy work, he has written for publications including The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, and has authored numerous books.
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami is a Pakistani Islamic fundamentalist Jihadist organisation affiliated with Al-Qaeda and Taliban.
Rizwan Hussain is a Bangladeshi-born British television presenter, barrister and an international humanitarian worker. He is also a former Hindi music singer and producer and is best known for presenting Islamic programs and charity events on Islam Channel and Channel S. Hussain was CEO of the east London-based Global Aid Trust (GAT) education charity, until his resignation in response to the broadcast of Exposure: Charities Behaving Badly, an episode investigating charities allegedly promoting extremist views.
Bangladeshi nationalism is an ideology that promotes the territorial identity of Bangladeshis. The ideology emerged during the late 1970s, popularized by former Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman. The history of nationalism in the country dates back to the colonial era, when the region started witnessing anti-colonial movements against the British Empire. Soon, a sense of religious nationalism began to emerge which was later revolutionised into ethnolinguistic nationalism. Following independence of Bangladesh in 1971, leaders like Ziaur Rahman began to promote Bangladeshi nationalism which was based on territorial attachment of Bangladeshis. Politically, Bangladeshi nationalism is mainly professed by the center-right and rightist political parties in Bangladesh, led by Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
Abdur Rahman Peshawari, also known as Abdurrahman Bey, was a Turkish soldier, journalist and diplomat who was born in Peshawar in British India.
Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, shortened as Maulana Bhashani, was a Bengali politician. His political tenure spanned the British colonial India, Pakistan and Bangladesh periods.
During the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, members of the Pakistani military and Razakars raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bengali women and girls in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. Most of the rape victims of the Pakistani Army and its allies were Hindu women. Some of these women died in captivity or committed suicide while others moved to India. Imams and Muslim religious leaders declared the women "war booty”. The activists and leaders of Islamic parties are also accused to be involved in the rapes and abduction of women.
Bengali Muslims are adherents of Islam who ethnically, linguistically and genealogically identify as Bengalis. Comprising about two-thirds of the global Bengali population, they are the second-largest ethnic group among Muslims after Arabs. Bengali Muslims make up the majority of Bangladesh's citizens, and are the largest minority in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.
Islamism has existed in the United Kingdom since the 1970s, and has become widely visible and a topic of political discourse since the beginning of the 21st century.
Q-News is a defunct British monthly magazine organised around themes mostly pertinent to Muslims.
Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain is the British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a transnational, pan-Islamist and fundamentalist group that seeks to re-establish "the Islamic Khilafah (Caliphate)" as an Islamic "superstate" where Muslim-majority countries are unified and ruled under Islamic Shariah law, and which eventually expands globally to include non-Muslim states such as Britain.
The Maizbhandari, or sometimes Maijbhandari, order or tariqa of Sufism within Sunni Islam was founded in the late 19th century by the Bengali Sufi saint Ahmad Ullah Maizbhandari. It is the only Sufi order to have originated from within Bengal, and, as a movement, it has continued to enjoy significant popularity in the 21st century.
Abul Faraḥ Muḥammad ʿAbdul Ḥaque Farīdī was a Bangladeshi educator and author. In recognition of his contributions in the field of linguistics, he was awarded a Bangla Academy Fellowship. Faridi was the founder of Islamic Foundation Bangladesh's Islami Bishwakosh project and also worked closely with Bangladesh Scouts.
Nūr Quṭb ʿĀlam was a 14th-century Islamic scholar of Bengal. Based in the erstwhile Bengali capital Hazrat Pandua, he was the son and successor of Alaul Haq, a senior scholar of the Bengal Sultanate. He is noted for his efforts in preserving the Muslim rule of Bengal against Raja Ganesha and pioneering the Dobhashi tradition of Bengali literature.
|