If Islam is Foreign, so is Christianity and Judaism
By Dr. Aslam Abdullah, TMO Editor-in-Chief
A Jewish attorney supported by a few pro-Republican Christian religious fanatics and fueled mainly by some top notch neo-con hawks are behind the movement to stop the so called Islamic Sharia being applied in the United States. In several states the anti-Sharia bill has been introduced as anti-foreign law. In other words, when someone talks of foreign law, he or she is referring to Islam.
There is so much venom against anything that is related with Islam, specially after our withdrawal from Iraq, that not many have bothered to explain or understand the Sharia as defined in Islam’s main source of guidance, the Quran as Hadith (the sayings of the Prophet (s)), which is often described as the second source of the Islamic guidance is based on and controlled by the Quran. Many Muslims are defensive, often apologetic on this issue and the opponent of Islamic Sharia are deceptive and provocative. Politicians find in it a vote-grabbing opportunity without any relevance or sense to what they are saying and talking about.
Often labelled anti-foreign law, the so called anti-sharia bill, inadvertently claims that Islam is foreign to the US, hence, laws rooted in Islam are also foreign. However, they do not realize that ant-foreign law bills (anti-Sharia bill) goes against Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and almost every religion with the exception of the religion followed by the native Indians before Christianity imposed itself on America and Mormonism. Christianity or Judaism were not born in Washington or Kansas, not even in Europe. They have their origins in what we now call the Arab lands such as Iraq, Egypt and Hijaz (known as Saudi Arabia).
Thus, under what is defined anti-foreign law, family laws having their roots in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism or any other religion may fall under its preview. The oath of allegiance to the Pope that Catholic nuns and priests take can be considered its part. The allegiance to the state of Israel expressed strongly by over 6 million Jewish American population can be described a practice based on foreign laws. Not only Eid ul Fitr or Eid ul Adha, but Christmas, Hanuka, Diwali or Buddha Jayanti can be termed as foreign. Circumcision based on Semitic religious laws can also be a foreign law as well as the practice of non-circumcision. There is no limitation in describing what is foreign.
A Hindu wearing a sacred thread around his waist can be described a foreign practice. A Jew wearing a cap can be considered a foreign tradition. A Christian baptizing a child can also be described as foreign. A husband having legitimate physical intimacy after the wedding in a Hindu or Buddhist temple can be considered violating the anti-foreign law. Perhaps, the Mormons may qualify to be one of the few indigenous religions as Joseph Smith seems to have initiated this tradition in America. Perhaps, the practice of polygamy by a few of them can be considered real patriotic as it is based on ideas that were evolved endogenously. But the irony is that Mormonism is not even considered a religion by many mainstream Christian churches.
To save the nation from such crazy people specially insane politicians and Christian and Jewish fanatics, the founding fathers specially had the first amendment saying, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.â€
Fearing that states governed by fanatics who through political manipulation may capture the power, the founding fathers also passed the 10th amendment saying that, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.â€
Matters pertaining to freedom of religion, definition of religion and foreign and native religions do not fall under the jurisdiction of states. Hence any state law related to religions that overrides the constitutional guarantees can and must be thrown out.
What is happening in Michigan as well as other states is anti-constitution and anti-people. It is happening because a few religious wolves wearing the garb of patriotism are inciting people who do not share their religion. The struggle against such people is no different than the struggle for freedom and civil rights.
These legislation must be challenged by those who take their pledge of allegiance seriously. Besides political action, one must be prepared to challenge these legislative initiatives legally. A movement against anti-Sharia bill is not Muslim, it is American and national.
For Muslims the debate about Sharia is yet another opportunity to explain to the country what the Sharia is about. However, this is an alley, which is not very illuminated. Most Muslims naively feel that the answers to all the issues that Muslims and non-Muslims have been facing in modern world, have already been answered by scholars born in 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries. They do not find any room for any new ideas or arguments in understanding the divine guidance.
Seemingly, those Muslims who have spoken on the media on behalf of Islam have often come up with half cooked explanations based on their understanding of the stagnant jurisprudence of medieval Muslim states and outdated historical anecdotes promoted by a sectarian understanding of Islam.
Even though most Muslim leaders and groups continuously speak about Sharia, few attempts have been made in our modern times to develop an understanding that can be understood not only Muslims but by non-Muslims too. As usual, the Sharia issue has become a fund collecting means on behalf of those who want to present the Sharia opponents as yet another danger to Islam and Muslims.
The opportunity presented by hate mongers should be used by thinking Muslims to develop a better understanding of Sharia through discourses among all sections of educated Muslim American community. Since the Sharia is mainly be defined by the Quran and since this last and lasting divine book of guidance is meant to give guidance to all Muslims, everyone who can contribute to this debate should be involved to ensure that no viewpoint is missed. If the divine message is dynamic in its essence so is be the definition of sharia. If the divine guidance is applicable in all times, so is its sharia.
(A separate article as to how the Quran defines the sharia will follow)
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Dr. Teepu Siddique’s team discovers cause of ALS
CHICAGO,IL–Northwestern University researchers have discovered the cause of the Lou Gehrig’s disease (also known as ALS). The study’s lead author is Dr. Teepu Siddique, of Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial hospital.
The study published in the prestigious Nature journal reveals that in the disease the protein ubiquilin2 isn’t doing its job. As a result, the damaged proteins and ubiquilin2 loiter and accumulate in the motor neurons in the spinal cord and cortical and hippocampal neurons in the brain resembling twisted skeins of yarn and cause the degeneration of the neurons.
The researchers found ubiquilin2 in these skein-like accumulations in the spinal cords of ALS cases and in the brains of ALS/dementia cases.
Dr. Siddique has devoted his career as a clinician-scientist to the study and treatment of neuromuscular diseases, especially amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He has directed the Neuromuscular Disorders Program/Neurogenetics Laboratory and the Les Turner ALS Foundation Laboratory at Northwestern since 1991.
Dr. Siddique led an international team that was the first to identify genes responsible for familial (inherited) forms of ALS: the SOD1 gene in 1993 and the ALS2, or alsin, gene in 2001. His laboratory also developed the first successful genetic mouse model of ALS in 1994. In 2008, his lab verified the existence of an X chromosome-linked gene (X-ALS) that may be involved in both ALS and ALS/dementia.
For his seminal work in ALS neurogenetics, Dr. Siddique received the first Sheila Essey Award from the American Academy of Neurology. Other honors include the Hope Through Caring Award from the Les Turner ALS Foundation, the Third Annual Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Award from the Columbia University College of Physician and Surgeons, and the Forbes Norris Award from the International Alliance of ALS/MND (Motor Neurone Disease) Associations.
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Stand Up for Palestine
The Testimony of Lauren Booth, Tony Blair’s Sister-in-law
By Geoffrey Cook, TMO
Lauren Booth speaks to her audience. |
Newark, CA–August 14th–Ms. Lauren Booth of the United Kingdom came to this town in the Northeast Silicon Valley region of the South Bay just above San Jose to attend the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) Annual Ramadan Iftar Banquet.
Ms. Booth is amazing for many reasons; not the least of which, by any means, is her conversion and commitment to Islam.
Lauren Booth is an exceptional journalist and activist, and the poignancy of her conversion resides in the fact that she is the Sister-in-Law of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is presently a Special Envoy to the Quartet (of four non-Middle Eastern political entities plus the U.N.) who have an interest in settling the Arab-Israeli imbroglio.
Ms. Booth route to Islam and this Sunday night’s dais in Northern California at this well-touted San Francisco Bay Area Indo-Pakistani Restaurant, Chandani, were circuitous.
Lauren Booth is mother to two, and sister to Cherrie Blair (the wife of the UK’s former Prime Minister); her brother in law also, has been quoted expressing pro-Palestinian views.
Lauren Booth is the sixth daughter of the actor Anthony (Tony) Booth and Pamela Smith (Cohen). Although Booth had Jewish antecedents, she was not raised in that tradition.
She has a C.V. (Curriculum Vitae) which your resident journalist here on these pages can only look upon with jealousy.
She has worked on such prestigious English Newspapers as the New Statesman, The Mail on Sunday (for which she served on as a feature writer and columnist).
Further, she has been a panelist on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC’s) “Have I got the News for You,†and is a broadcaster on other radio and television outlets. Additionally, she is a regular reviewer of the U.K. print news media on Sky, a satellite television network.
She remarked to our audience on the West Coast of the U.S.A. here that “The right-wing press has enabled my left-wing credentials!†One of the most courageous stands she has taken was to publicly oppose the Iraq War while being a close relative by marriage of the architect of the British envolvement in that War, PM Tony Blair.
She began her speech by talking about the grave aggression by the Israelis in the Occupied Territories that she had beheld as a reporter. “Something inside me [changed]… [when] I was sent to Palestine to cover the elections [there].†An Israeli soldier from Brooklyn (Sic!) who examined her passport said, “Hey, a Brit, we love you!†She realized something was askew in her country’s policies!
She came with what she described as Arabphobia, but she had to overcome a lifetime of propaganda within seventy-two hours.
She was told “Don’t comfort the children because they won’t [can’t] cry…!†She asked several Palestinian children what they would like to be as adults. One young precocious girl replied, “I want to be a psychotherapist because we all are suffering [here].â€
The Israeli press undoes its photographic documentation [of the West Bank and Gaza] through its accompanying prose.
She told us about her first relief trip to Gaza, and how the citizens there were unaware of their arrival.
During Operation Cast Iron (the Israeli brutal assault on the mini-country during the last month of 2009 through the first month of 2010) the Israeli soldiers went as far as to loot the bodies of their Gazan victims!
From reports directly from Gaza last month from doctors documenting abuses through their mobile phone cameras, she saw a boy wrapped by Israeli soldiers in barbed wire! Also, a baby born with her intestines outside her body without the means for further emergency treatment! She saw graphic images of Israeli mistreatment of the doctors themselves – even a M.D. being shot in the back! There has been reported mass rape of Arab women, also.
She quotes a Palestinian boy replying to: “What did you do when they kicked you? I got up, and I threw stones [at them]!â€
She ended her comments in Newark (California) with “Thank you for listening. Stand up for Palestine!â€
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Wajahat Ali Tackles Islamophobia
By Matt O’Brien
Playwright, lawyer and humorist Wajahat Ali is known to fellow Fremont residents as a man of many projects. As we meet for an interview downtown, a passer-by interrupts to ask Ali, in Urdu, “What are you working on now?†One answer is scripting an HBO pilot, with novelist Dave Eggers, about a Muslim cop in San Francisco. Ali, 30, has made a career of writing about ordinary Muslim Americans with humor and candor. Another project marks Ali’s first big dive into political advocacy, with a report (due out this week) he has co-authored with researchers at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. Ali says it exposes how a small network of anti-Muslim activists transformed a fringe movement into a mainstream cause.
Q So your report hasn’t even come out yet, but the anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller has already called you a “stealth jihadist.†Are you offended?
A Not at all. Pam Geller attacked me because I pretty much exposed her and her agenda on a radio station in New York, because she and her allies were mentioned more than 200 times in (Norwegian mass shooter) Anders Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto. … He was ideologically inspired by people like her and her allies.
Q What made you get into this political project?
A My whole life I’ve been the unintentional token spokesman for all things Muslim and Pakistani. It was not by choice. I call myself the accidental activist. When I was a young kid I was, like, the only open practicing Muslim, and I knew a lot about my Pakistani roots. So inevitably I gave dozens of impromptu lectures about all things Muslim and Pakistani. And (for) a lot of my friends in the Bay Area, I was their only Muslim or Pakistani friend. So they were like, Hey, Waj, what’s up with Pakistan? … The Center for Progress thought, why not go to a non-D.C. guy and think outside the box. I realized, as a student of American history, the current boogeyman is American Muslims.
And I wanted to help turn the tide toward civil discourse, in which we wouldn’t divide Americans based on ethnicity and religion.
Q What do you think of the depiction of Muslim Americans on TV?
A It’s usually framed through the lens of national security, terrorism, violence and fundamentalism. A recent report says Americans have a negative image of Muslims (for) two reasons: ignorance, in the sense that a lot of Americans say they don’t know a Muslim; … and they say the media frames their perceptions of Muslims. … The hope is to move beyond that frame, to show the nuances. We need authentic Muslim American storytellers telling authentic Muslim American narratives.
Q On a blog post you mentioned the Ramadan State of Mind. What’s that?
A On the blog I try to remove what I call the “ascetic monk lens†from which both Muslim Americans and average Americans view Ramadan — Muslims being this spiritual, superhero monk type who have this insane biological system that allows them to fast without water and drink.
We’re like Ivan Drago from “Rocky IV,†right? It’s very inhuman almost, the presentation of Ramadan and Muslims fasting. … I just try to talk like a normal person, to expose my whiny-ness, the fact that sometimes it sucks being Muslim. Sometimes I’m spiritually elevated, sometimes spiritually defeated. Sometimes I just want to eat food.
Q You’ve talked about how kids who grew up in the shadow of 9/11 are helping to push a new narrative. What is that narrative?
A The narrative is: “I am both Muslim and American; one cannot coexist without the other. My values from both identities complement one another and intersect. I am living proof that there is no conflict between the West and Islam. Proof that there needs not be an Armageddon or a clash of cultural values.†Just go talk to these people. They fast during Ramadan and listen to Jay-Z’s latest album. They eat their mom’s dal but then they also eat pho. Their best friend is African-American or Vietnamese-American, and they’ll invite them over for Eid. That’s as American as apple pie, or maybe as American as falafel and hummus.
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Hazare-Team: Dictatorial & Undemocratic?
By Nilofar Suhrawardy, TMO
NEW DELHI: Whom do social activist Anna Hazare and members of his team really represent? The seating capacity at Ramlila Maidan, the public ground selected by his team to display their protest against corruption and demand for a legislation, that is Lokpal bill, is approximately 50,000. Though there have been reports of people displaying their support in different parts of country, numerically except in Delhi and Mumbai, they have not crossed or even touched the number 1,00,000. In context of India being home to 1.21 billion, Hazare’s supporters do not represent a significant percentage of the country’s population, statistically. Nevertheless, the fact that Hazare’s protest dominates the media-news, including the headlines cannot be ignored. Statistics suggest that there is a major gap between what is being projected by the media and the actual story. Even if the number of Hazare’s supporters across the country adds up to several millions, they do not constitute even five percent of the nation’s population. In other words, it is as yet too early to accord Hazare the stature of a national leader even though media-hype gives this impression. The same is suggested by reports of numerous people donning caps and T-shirts with the slogan, “I am Anna.†Statistically, they don’t represent the entire country.
Understandably, the country’s citizens -including Hazare- have the freedom and right to raise their voice and also protest against what they feel disturbed by. In fact, it is the democratic duty of each and every citizen to display his/her stand against problems or evils they feel concerned about. There is no denying that corruption is one of the many problems, the Indian citizens are aggrieved about. At the same time, democratically speaking, while Hazare and his team have the right and duty to make suggestions regarding corrective measures and legislation, they cannot “dictate†their demands to an elected government. The course that Hazare-team gives the impression of taking, going on hunger-strike, organizing marches, planning “sit-in†demonstrations outside legislators’ residences and other such activities, is not in keeping with the democratic and socialist spirit of the Indian Constitution. Rather, considering that an elected government is in power and the country has measures available to enact new laws and amend old ones to ensure effective anti-corruption legislation, the Hazare-team is expected to be duty -bound to respect the country’s Constitution.
Politically, socially, constitutionally and even statistically, the Hazare-team is not representative of any segment or institution of the country to have the authority to dictate its terms to an elected government. In fact, if an elected government yields to this group, it would not only be abuse of the country’s constitutional system but also be bad precedence, which must not be permitted to take roots. It cannot be ignored that India is home to many religions, with most marked by a pronounced caste-system. The ethnic division in the Indian society is also responsible for emergence of numerous political parties. Can Hazare-team be held as representative of all the Indian socio-political groups? No. And therein lies the fear. Howsoever strongly Hazare-team may raise voice against corruption and even threaten the elected government with more demonstrations, their “strength†rests more on hype raised about them than actual issues. Corruption is not the only issue bothering Indian society. Have they talked of assuring action against female infanticide, dowry-deaths, the sufferings faced by Indian minorities- including Muslims, Christians and Hindus belonging to lower castes? Hardly.
Please note Hazare’s words: “If you (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) cannot get the bill, I ask you to leave the chair.†Legally and ethically, it is not appropriate for any authority to dictate such terms to an elected leader. Even the country’s President is not legally authorized to dismiss the Prime Minister till he and his party lose support in the Parliament. Against this backdrop, one is prompted to raise the question as to what has led the Hazare-team to assume their role as greater than that of the country’s elected government and the Constitution? Legally and ethically, it is more like a blot on country’s political image than suggestive of Hazare-team heading for a second freedom struggle. The latter may have carried some relevance if India was not a free country.
Not surprisingly, Muslims in general seem fairly critical of Hazare-team’s course of action. Questioning its “democratic legitimacy,†they fear that it may lead to communal polarization and encourage extremist Hindu leaders to gather crowds to pursue their anti-Muslim agenda. “The Anna Hazare phenomenon is leading us to the rejection of representative democracy itself. The movement is an upper-caste uprising against India’s political democracy. That apart, vesting so much power in the Lokpal, a non-elected person, could lead to a dangerous situation,†according to Dalit columnist Chandrabhan Prasad. In the opinion of Kancha Ilaiah, a Dalit-Bahujan thinker, “The Anna movement is an anti-social justice, manuvadi movement. The Dalits, tribals, OBCs (Other Backward Classes) and minorities have nothing to do with it. We oppose it.â€
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Going Gaga for ‘Ghabqas’
By Sumayyah Meehan, TMO
It sounds like some trendy new product to hit the market or the latest fad that will improve all aspects of life. However, a ‘ghabqa’ is nothing of the sort although it does unite people. By definition, a ‘ghabqa’ is a social and gastronomical event that brings people together to celebrate during the Holy Month of Ramadan. It is a cultural tradition of the minuscule Gulf nation of Kuwait. Kuwaitis have been putting on their own ghabqas for centuries.
The timeframe for most ghabqas is during the second half of Ramadan. However, the last ten days of Ramadan is when most people hold their ghabqas as the race to the end of the holy month has already begun. By all appearances, the ghabqa is an elaborate feast that features a buffet-style menu with all of the traditional trappings of local cuisine. A ghabqa is only as good as the entertainment, food and beverages served.
It use to be that families would host ghabqas either at home or in a large rented hall much to the delight of their friends and relatives. These days’ large Kuwaiti companies and corporations are also getting in on the act. Managers throw elaborate ghabqas at five-star hotels for their employees and their families. Special invitations are also given out to preferred clients and their families as well. Reporters, and even local bloggers, are often invited to ensure that the event is covered in the press as well as social-media.
Unfortunately, corporate ghabqas are nothing more than marketing ventures used to entice brand loyalty within the country. Large placards, marketing materials and anything else emblazoned with the company logo is splattered all over the tables and amongst the buffet platters. The bright side of a corporate ghabqa is that guests are often treated to lavish gift bags that might contain an expensive watch, perfume or even pricey jewelry. The entertainment at a corporate ghabqa is second to none. Many corporations hire regional celebrities to perform on stage for the benefit of ghabqa guests.
The best place, however, to enjoy a ghabqa is with a private family. The event is much more relaxed and guests don’t have to compete with one another or spend the night networking. The best part of a private ghabqa held by a family is, of course, the children. Kids have the chance to spend time with their cousins or make new friends with the children of other guests. Special treats and tiny toys offered expressly for the smallest guests is what make a family-held ghabqa truly an event to remember.
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Understanding the Basics of Medicaid Planning
By Adil Daudi, Esq.
It has become quite evident that more and more aging Americans are beginning to rely on governmental assistance for their health care needs. In fact, Medicaid is officially the country’s largest health program when it comes to recipients – serving approximately 56 million Americans.
Although the laws of Medicaid continue to evolve each year, the planning and focus given should also adjust accordingly to ensure the recipients are keeping up-to-date. It is always important to learn the new laws in the event you have a loved who is considering being entered into a nursing home.
The following are three (3) basic questions that are often misunderstood when it comes to planning for Medicaid:
Do I have to give up all of my assets to qualify for Medicaid?
No. With careful planning, you can help increase the number of assets you are allowed to keep. Medicaid applies differently depending on the marital status of the applicant. However, in general terms, any applicant applying for Medicaid is allowed to keep the following “exempt assetsâ€:
Vehicle
Home
Personal belongings
$2000 cash
Life insurance with total face value of $1500 or less.
Prepaid irrevocable funeral contract
Exempt asset are assets that are not countable for Medicaid eligibility purposes. Any remaining assets are considered “non-exempt†assets, and these must be “spent down†in order to become eligible for Medicaid. However, it is always advised to consult with a professional when applying for Medicaid as any experienced attorney would be able to guide you and recommend ways for you to increase your “exempt†assets.
What does it mean to “spend down†my assets?
Once you’ve determined your “exempt†assets, anything remaining is considered “non-exempt†and thus counted towards your eligibility. However, with crafty planning and proper advice, there are ways to lower your “non-exempt†assets and that is by spending down the value you carry. For example, purchasing a home, renovating your home, buying personal property, buying a new vehicle, purchasing an SBO trust (“Sole for the benefit ofâ€) or a single premium immediate annuity. These are all permissible ways of “spending down†your countable assets.
What does Medicaid pay for?
The average cost of a nursing home in Michigan is approximately $6500 a month. A person who enters into a nursing home Medicaid certified, the government will cover the cost of the care, less the patient-pay amount, which is based on a formula.
The formula itself begins with the Medicaid beneficiary’s monthly income that they receive from Social Security and any possible pension. In addition, the beneficiary can keep $60 for their personal needs and any money needed to pay for private health insurance.
Please note that the above information is simply a guide providing you with the basic understanding of Medicaid. It is always advised to seek professional advice when applying as you would learn how to maximize the assets you can keep and receive assistance in spending down the assets you can’t. Despite the government’s generousity in providing such assistance, it is always best to find ways to preserve your own money for your benefit.
Adil Daudi is an Attorney at Joseph, Kroll & Yagalla, P.C., focusing primarily on Asset Protection for Physicians, Physician Contracts, Estate Planning, Business Litigation, Corporate Formations, and Family Law. He can be contacted for any questions related to this article or other areas of law at adil@josephlaw.net or (517) 381-2663.
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In Libya, the Cellphone as Weapon
By Nick Carey
MISRATA, Libya (Reuters) – When Muammar Gaddafi’s government shut off the cellphone network in Misrata in the early days of Libya’s uprising, it wanted to stop rebel forces communicating with each other. But the power of a modern phone goes beyond its network.
Both rebels and government soldiers have used their phones to take pictures and videos of the conflict, a digital record of fighting from both sides. With the rebels now in Tripoli, the capital, and Gaddafi’s whereabouts unknown, those gigabytes of potential evidence may play a role in any war crimes cases.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo made an appeal in February for “footage and images to confirm the alleged crimesâ€, after the United Nations Security Council referred the Libyan uprising to the court. A court filing applying for arrest warrants listed video evidence, mainly from media, but also from unspecified sources, in support of its claim.
In the Mediterranean city of Misrata, in particular, a group of rebel-allied lawyers has worked to gather evidence of what it calls war crimes committed by Gaddafi forces.
“In the beginning when there were snipers we had to move around carefully,†said Omar Abulifa, a former prosecutor and head of the Misrata-based Human Rights Activists Association. “It was hard to get the evidence, but we did what we could.â€
As the rebels gained control of more of the city in April and May, the association set up a system to gather evidence after every incident, especially the continued bombardment of the city with Grad rockets by Gaddafi loyalists, which killed and injured many civilians. The footage they gathered includes videos taken from the cellphones of rebel fighters and from those of government troops captured or killed during the fighting. Other video and photographs came from citizens of the town.
Some of that film can be used as evidence, Abulifa says. “But not all of it because to be used as evidence it has to be from a trusted source and it has to be clear what is happening.â€
Around 150 gigabytes of video gathered by the city’s media committee, which was set up after the uprising, has been provided to the association. A member of the committee gave a Reuters reporter who was in Misrata in July a large volume of that material.
“Everyone has stuff like this,†said Ali, 21, an off-duty rebel fighter, as he showed a Reuters reporter videos on his touch-screen phone, including one of government tanks entering Misrata and one showing a man he says was an unarmed doctor who had been shot by Gaddafi troops and bled to death in the street.
Hair slicked back, and impeccably turned out in western jeans, shirt and shoes, Ali speaks in the weary tone of a young man explaining modern technology to someone older.
“Just ask anyone and they’ll show you,†he said.
Grilled Fish
Technology has been vital to Misrata’s uprising since the beginning.
When his closest childhood friend invited him to a dinner in a fisherman’s hut on the beach last December, Ayman Al Sahli was puzzled. As the 31-year-old lawyer and six other men tucked into grilled fish, their friend, Mohammed Al Madani, explained why he had called the group together.
The accountant brought out a photograph of the old Libyan flag, which predates Muammar Gaddafi’s seizure of power in a 1969 coup. The red-black-and-green flag with its white crescent moon and star is now ubiquitous in the rebel-held city and other parts of Libya. But in December it was forbidden so a small, easily hidden photograph had to do.
Al Madani then used his mobile phone to play Libya’s old national anthem. The song dates back to the country’s independence in 1951 and was banned after Gaddafi seized power. None of the men present had ever heard it before.
“We spent the rest of the evening talking about the unrest in Tunisia,†al Sahli says, “and about what Libya would be like without Gaddafi.â€
In the six months since they rose against Gaddafi, the 500,000 or so residents of Libya’s third largest city have remained close to one of the fiercest frontlines of the Arab Spring. The rebels seized Misrata in May after a bloody, three-month long battle against well-armed government militia and in the past few weeks forced the government troops west toward Tripoli.
With the rebels on the verge of victory, much is likely to be made of the NATO bombing raids, which have hammered Gaddafi’s forces since March, and the role of Qatar, which has financed the rebels. But just as important have been two things on show that night in the Misrata beach hut: a low-tech, make-do resourcefulness and mobile phones.
Facebook “Eventâ€
A few days before Misrata’s first street protest on February 17, Mohammed Agila, 32, a bespectacled bank employee, took his heavily pregnant wife and two children to her parents’ house. He withdrew all the money from his bank account and gave it to his father-in-law.
“I did not know exactly what would happen when we went out in the street,†said Agila, one of 70 or so participants in that initial demonstration. “But I knew I could be arrested.â€
In the preceding months, Agila and Jamal Sibai, who also took part in the first protest, joined small group meetings like the one at the fisherman’s hut.
“People met in groups of 10, 11, 12 and talked about going into the streets to demonstrate,†said Sibai, 25, a slender, bearded art student and now a writer for a new newspaper called Free Libya. “We talked about freedom and the need for a constitution. We talked about how we wanted a president who could only serve for four or eight years and then, ‘Thank you, goodbye.’
“We didn’t talk about fighting,†he added. “We just wanted the things a normal country should have.â€
In January, two Facebook pages — “Amal Libya†or Hope Libya, and another calling for a “day of anger†on February 17 — helped protesters like Sibai and Agila realize they were not alone.
“Before the Facebook pages, we did not know exactly when or where we should go out into the streets,†Agila said. “But they told us when and where to do it. We didn’t create the revolution in Misrata,†added Agila, now a radio announcer as well as working at a bank. “Everyone here wanted to do what we did. We just happened to do it first.â€
By this time Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak had already been toppled and protests were underway in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and other countries. Protests began in Benghazi on February 15, because of fears Gaddafi was preparing to send in his militia.
When protesters, most of them strangers to each other, showed up in the parking lot of Misrata’s technological college on February 17, they noticed cars carrying Gaddafi’s secret police and militia waiting for them. All the protesters were arrested.
“I was afraid,†Sibai said. “But I knew I had to do this anyway.â€
Taking It In Turns
The first protests sparked off a series of increasingly large demonstrations in the city, Libya’s commercial and industrial heart some 200 km (124 miles) east of Tripoli. Government forces opened fire on protesters on February 19. Rebels armed with Molotov cocktails, hunting rifles and crude, home-made blades, took control of the city within a few days, but barely.
On March 17, the same day a United Nations resolution ushered in a NATO bombing campaign, Gaddafi forces began an artillery bombardment. Within a few days government tanks backed by snipers firing from tall buildings on Tripoli Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, had forced the rebels to hole up in the city’s seaport.
“We had no weapons, so we fought with what we could find,†says Abu Youssef, 55, a former caterer who recalls his amazement when he saw a teenager take out a tank in the early days of the uprising with just a Molotov cocktail.
On the ground, men like Youssef, 37, a former truck driver on the city’s southern front, joined small groups of men. The group Youssef joined had just one gun between them, a common situation in the opening days of the war before the city’s entrepreneurs, and mass fundraising efforts, brought weapons and ammunition.
Some weapons came from the temporary rebel capital of Benghazi in the east, but the fact that most were bought by locals is both a source of pride and a bone of contention with Benghazi.
“We would take it in turns to fire the gun,†Youssef says while taking shade from the fierce late July sun with his comrades. “The rest of us would help the man with the gun.â€
Another fighter called Alim, 21, said rocket-propelled grenade launchers, a much-needed weapon against Gaddafi’s more heavily armed forces, were in particularly short supply. When a group without a launcher needed one for an attack they would ask other groups in the neighborhood to borrow theirs.
“Once we fired it, we returned it as promised,†Alim said as he sped toward the front line last month in a Chinese-made pickup, one of several thousand commandeered from the city’s port during the uprising.
Imported by the government a few years ago to sell to Libyans, the Toyota-lookalikes were rejected by consumers as too shoddy and sat idle at the port. Now they are a hot commodity. The trucks have to be hotwired to start, because no one knows where the keys are, and have a notoriously loose tailgate that pops open at inopportune moments.
“I’d rather have a Toyota,†Alim says, as he hotwires the truck. “Or any other half-decent truck. But I’ll make do with this.â€
Dog Fight
The citizens of Misrata made do with whatever came to hand in a battle where, perhaps surprisingly, tanks were not the biggest threat the rebel fighters faced. “In the city, we could use the houses and buildings to get close to tanks,†says Ali, 29, a dentist on the western front line. “We found out that we could take out a tank at 80 meters.â€
Far worse were the snipers.
On a tour around the damaged University of Misrata’s Faculty of Medical Technology, medical management lecturer Mahmoud Attaweil pointed to the holes knocked by government snipers in the roof of a five-storey building. Holes along the side of the building were caused by rebels trying to dislodge the snipers, said Attaweil.
“You can’t get a sniper out of a building with small arms,†he said. “The only way to persuade him to leave is to make him believe you will bring the whole building down if you have to.â€
One group of rebel fighters attached flashlights to the heads of dogs at night then released them near buildings where they suspected a sniper was hiding. The sniper would open fire, almost invariably missing the fast-moving target presented by the running dog. Once the sniper had given away his position, the rebels would open fire with rocket-propelled grenades.
Gigabytes of Evidence
Mobile phones also became a weapon.
Much of the footage of fighting and its aftermath held by the rebels is too graphic for Reuters to show.
In one sequence, people run toward a car and open the door. The vehicle’s driver slumps out of the door, shot through the head by a sniper, his brains spilling out of a hole in his forehead. Many others, from the city’s hospitals and clinics — a trusted source of information — show injured children. One clip shows a bombed incubator room for infants where nurses pull glass out of the bloodied bodies of crying babies.
Another video, purportedly taken from the phone of a captured government soldier, shows what appear to be uniformed Gaddafi loyalists in the back of a truck trying to force a group of men mainly in civilian clothes to “Say Muammar!†and “Say something!â€. Two of the civilians are assaulted — the first, a bearded man, is repeatedly slapped in the face, and pushed against the side of the truck by a man in a black coat. The second is slapped in the face. The men then all begin to chant “Long Live Muammar’s lions!â€
The Misrata group says it has already started work on 150 war crimes cases against the Gaddafi regime, and Abulifa says it will add many more.
Gaddafi’s government has denied anything beyond firing at the “armed gangs†and mercenaries, and in June angrily rejected charges of crimes against humanity filed by the International Criminal Court against the Libyan leader, his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi.
While Abulifa says he welcomes the ICC’s war crimes charges, if the country’s longtime ruler is captured he says he wants him to stand trial in Libya. When asked why, he pauses, then leans forward in his chair and speaks slowly.
“The ICC does not have the death penalty,†he says. “Libya does. We want Gaddafi brought to trial. We want the world to see what he has done. And then we want him brought to justice.â€
The ICC said the possible admissibility of mobile phone footage as evidence would be decided on a case-by-case basis. “If there is a conversation from the defense about certain evidence it is up to the judges to decide the admissibility of that evidence,†ICC official Fadi el-Abdallah said.
“The Revolution Did Not Kill Himâ€
The rebel flag flies everywhere in Misrata now. It is painted on lamp posts, empty oil drums and even the old cargo containers that serve at increasingly irrelevant checkpoints in the city. The people of Misrata boast of how quickly law and order has been restored to the streets — a feat more elusive for Benghazi, Libya’s second city and home to the National Transitional Council, the ruling body for the parts of the country under rebel control.
Today, too, everyone knows Libya’s old national anthem.
But while Ayman Al Sahli, who first heard that anthem on the mobile phone of his friend Mohammed Al Madani last December, says he still backs the revolution, he mourns the loss of his friend, who was killed near the frontline on April 27.
When the fighting began, the accountant who had arranged the beach hut dinner began working for the rebel-run radio station in Misrata, making frequent trips to the station to report on the latest events at the frontline. Al Sahli was sitting with him and other friends when a mortar fired by Gaddafi loyalists struck, killing Al Madani instantly.
“The revolution did not kill Al Madani, Gaddafi did,†Al Sahli said. “More than anything, I want Libya to be free. But I lost my joy the day my friend died.â€
(Nick Carey reported from Misrata in July; additional reporting by Aaron Gray-Block in Amsterdam; Edited by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith)
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Lessons from a Medina Graveyard
By Fahad Farruqui
One can learn many lessons at a graveyard. I once found myself helping carry the corpse of a stranger, an old woman, to its final abode. At the time, I was a 20-year-old on a family trip to the Holy City of Medina in Saudi Arabia.
Following the ish’a (night) prayers at the Prophet’s Mosque (Al-Masjid al-Nabawi) and the recitation of obligatory funeral prayer, I came across a middle-aged man searching for help to transport the coffin of the woman, who I later learned was his mother. She had passed away a few hours earlier and her son was eager to fulfill her final wish: to be buried immediately after death.
The son was the only family member present. He was anxious to hastily transport the steel coffin, containing the corpse of his mother wrapped in a white shroud, to the Garden of Heaven or, as it is called in Arabic, Janatu l-Baqi’, a graveyard adjacent to the Prophet’s (s) Mosque.
Since it was late at night, the mosque had emptied quickly and there weren’t many eager beavers to lend a hand. A few men on their way out of the mosque regrettably declined the man’s pleas for assistance, saying they had far travel before reaching home. I wanted to help, but I was unsure if I would be able to carry the coffin all the way to the grave situated a couple of hundred meters away.
After a handful of men gathered to move the coffin, four men including me lifted it in unison and rested each corner on the shoulder. As we proceeded toward the graveyard, the coffin was tilted toward my side since I was relatively shorter than the other three.
“She isn’t heavy,†I thought to myself in relief.
A man behind me yelled blessings to the dead as we commenced our walk towards the Medina graveyard. We all joined in enthusiastically, chanting blessings to the dead.
Our voices started to get dimmer as we ran out of breath. The farther we moved away from the mosque, the darker it became. In the sunlight, the sands of Medina graveyard vary in color from orange to a shade that borders on red, with volcanic rocks scattered throughout the grave marking the grave. But at night, it was pitch-black. Our pathway was lit only by the light illuminating from the towering minarets atop the mosque, where Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, rests along with Abu Bakr, the first caliph, and Umar ibn Al-Khattab, the second caliph, may God be pleased with both.
After a few uneven steps, the buckle of one of my sandal’s broke, forcing me to push it aside as we continued forward. The ground was warm, even at this late hour. I could barely see where my feet were stepping in the wide graveyard around us. I was granted some relief when a man volunteered to help, seeking only reward from the Creator.
We walked aimlessly for a bit, trying our best not to trample over the other graves as we searched for the woman’s resting spot. Once we located it and rested the coffin beside the dugout, I took a peak at the grave. It was remarkably dark — the darkest shade of black that I have ever seen.
As I stood among these strangers with death before my eyes, and a six-foot deep grave that felt suffocating from above, the importance of my worries drifted away, and I began reflecting on the temporality of life.
It dawned on me how near we are all to death, our inevitable fate, although many of us think about death very rarely.
Quite out of the blue, I felt I was granted clues and answers to questions that had been filling my mind: Why am I here? And where will I go from here?
I had little to no sense of time. My startled parents went out looking for me when they saw all the doors of the Prophet’s Mosque closed from the window of our hotel room. I arrived back at the hotel more than an hour later than usual, yet the impression the experience left on me has been lasting. It was a moment of clarity, an hour that changed the very foundation of my existence.
“A moment of true reflection is worth more than ages of heedless worship,†Faraz Rabbani, a leading Islamic scholar, said recently on Twitter.
His words reminded me of that night. At certain points in our lives, we have experiences that shake us to the core and compel us to question our outlook on existence and, if we cultivate them properly, bring us nearer to the Almighty. Even many years later, in times when anger, distress, tribulation or temptation has attempted to sway me, my mind returns to that graveyard.
When you become mindful of death, you think and act differently. It becomes difficult to lash out in anger when we know how near death could be. A person conscious of death would think twice before defrauding and deceiving another human being.
By remembering that we will all perish and be buried in dirt, taking none of our possessions with us, it becomes undesirable to wrong or hurt someone intentionally. But one has to realize that death is inevitable.
My recollection of the funeral procession that night is vivid. I remember how time seized for me in the midst of that graveyard. I recall the haunting feeling of suffocation and discomfort that kept me awake that night.
Back in the hotel, as I rested my head on the plush pillow, in an arctic air-conditioned room, I thought of the rock-hard walls encircling that meager grave.
We need not reflect on death at all times to keep us on track. Paying attention to life — to the wondrous creations of the universe around us — can always draw us near to God and prompt us to be grateful. But also reflect on death, since it turns you away from the superficiality of the world and curbs your ego.
I would not say I am a man of immense knowledge. I haven’t spent an adequate amount of time fully uncovering the miracles of the Quran as deeply as I should. I have my ups and down. My faith, at times, dangles, and then I have to realign my thoughts. It happens more often than I am ready to confess here.
Yet I find remembering the inevitability of death from time to time is one way to stay grounded. During a course on Buddhist ethics I took a decade ago with Robert Thurman, the professor related a tale of a newlywed royal couple who went to a celebrated monk, Atisha, for marriage advice.
Initially hesitating to offer any since he had never been married himself, the monk finally yielded, giving some of the soundest marital advice I have heard: “Eventually, husband and wife, each will die. So now while alive, you should strive to be kind to each other.â€
Thoughts of death need not flood our minds with sorrow and negativity, as we should understand that death is a natural part of the journey of life.
If we work on making every prayer count as if it’s our last and set aside time from our busy schedules, including the social media that consumes a measurable chunk of our day, to unwind the thoughts and worries entangled in our minds, we may become better humans and will indeed have a greater chance of living with peace.
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Obama Job 1: Create Jobs
By Fareed Zakaria
Democrats are finally up for a fight — with President Obama. Having despaired that Obama gave in to the Tea Party on the debt deal, they now criticize him as too cautious in his proposals to boost American jobs. They’re right that Obama should present a sharp distinction to the public between his efforts and the Republican Party’s utter passivity in the face of a national employment crisis. But perhaps Obama realizes that the most important factor that will help his reelection — and Democratic prospects more generally — is a rise in employment. And to have any impact on the actual economy, Obama needs proposals that can get through Congress, not ones that sound good on TV.
The problem before the country is more acute than people realize. It goes beyond the indebtedness issues that are surely depressing the recovery. In June, the McKinsey Global Institute published an eye-opening report called “An economy that works: Job creation and America’s future.†It points out that for 20 years, America has had huge difficulties creating jobs. After every recession since the Second World War, once gross domestic product recovered to pre-recession levels, employment also returned to pre-recession levels within about six months.
Until 1990. In the recession that began in 1990, it took 15 months for jobs to come back after GDP had recovered. In the recession of 2001, it took 39 months for jobs to come back.
And now? Since the start of this year, American GDP has returned to its pre-crisis levels — but with 6.8 million fewer workers. At the current rate of job creation, it will take 60 months — five years! — before employment returns to pre-recession levels.
Even these numbers mask the problem. The Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence has found that of the 27 million jobs created between 1990 and 2008, 40 percent were in government and health care — sectors that can’t keep growing at their previous pace. Meanwhile, employment in the tradable sector of the U.S. economy, the sector that produces goods and services that can be consumed anywhere, such as manufactured products, engineering and consulting services — which accounted for more than 34 million jobs in 1990 — grew by just 600,000 jobs over the same 18-year period.
Why is this happening? Nobody knows for sure, but it does seem as though the timing coincides with the two great tidal waves that have been powering the global economy since 1990. The first is information technology, which expanded from a narrow, data-processing function in the 1980s to streamline every aspect of every business. Today, computer programs that do conceptual searches are used at law firms to read and code documents, replacing the dozens of young associates who used to be hired and paid handsomely to do the same job.
The second big shift is, of course, globalization, which has created a worldwide supply that allows companies to make new investments in regions where labor is cheap and newly emerging middle classes are eager for their products. The results have been great for American companies, but these same forces place enormous pressures on the American worker. The decline in American education has left Americans less able to compete in a world in which skills are the only path to high-wage jobs. As Bill Gross, the founder of the world’s largest bond fund, Pimco, succinctly put it, “Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today’s marketplace.â€
If we’re going to solve this problem, it will take a determination to make jobs Job One. Everything we do as a country should be geared toward the central task of boosting employment. Some of this will involve government spending. An infrastructure bank that uses current low interest rates, includes the private sector and chooses projects based on merit rather than patronage is one of the best ideas to come out of Washington in years. Obama should take his proposals to the country and press for a project to rebuild America.
But there are many cost-free policies that could boost jobs. Tourism is one of the largest growth industries in America, and yet because of exaggerated fears of terrorism, bureaucracy and politics, we have lost market share in global tourism over the past decade. We should make it much easier for tourists to get visas and work hard to make them feel welcome. They are, in the words of Starwood Hotels CEO Frits van Paasschen, a walking stimulus program.
The key is to subordinate politics to a national goal of job creation.
Right now, a smart program to rationalize the patent process, which could unleash thousands of start-ups, is languishing in Congress not because of some principled opposition but because of turf battles between congressional committees. We can’t keep doing this.
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Two Americas
By Azher Quader
Executive Director, Community Builders Chicago www.mycommunitybuilders.com azherquader@yahoo.com
The preamble to the US Constitution reads:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Some 223 years later America is still searching for that perfect union as it struggles to find unity within its ever expanding diversity.
Senator John Edwards during his presidential campaign of 2004 alluded to this growing division in these words:
Today there are two Americas, not one: One America that does the work, another America that reaps the reward. One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks. One America that will do anything to leave its children a better life, another America that never has to do a thing because its children are already set for life.
One America — middle-class America – whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America – narrow-interest America – whose every wish is Washington’s command. One America that is struggling to get by, another America that can buy anything it wants, even a Congress and a President.
We see the two faces of America frowning at each other more and more these days. Be it the fight to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, or to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act enacted recently, or to change the immigration law to accommodate the undocumented. The divide in the country is sadly much deeper than what might appear to be on the basis of partisan politics.
What started as a friendly encounter between the pilgrims and the natives when they first landed at Plymouth ended up a few years later in the horrific tragedy that came to be recorded in American history as the trail of tears. When slave owners in the south refused to give up their white privilege, we fought a bloody civil war that pitted family against family and neighbor against neighbor. Subsequently laws were passed against slavery. Civil rights for Afro Americans were later restored. Yet years later the racial divide still continues to haunt us. When nineteen terrorists brought down the twin towers in Manhattan killing over three thousand innocent Americans we went to war again, this time against terror. Although Muslim Americans had nothing to do with the attacks, a decade later over half the nation eyes them with suspicion, doubting their loyalty.
This goal for a more perfect union is obviously not so easy to reach.
In over two hundred years we have not learnt to let go our prejudices, overcome our phobias, and subdue our bigotry.
We clearly live in two Americas.
In one the Muslims are respected, in the other they are hated.
In one live the rich and powerful steeped in privilege. In the other are the poor and powerless living from paycheck to paycheck.
In one are the hardworking. In the other those that hardly work.
In one are the passionate whose passion is big business. In the other are the committed, whose commitment is big government.
In one are those who believe in the power of self. In the other are those who believe in the strength of the state.
In one are those who believe in the compassion of owners. In the other are those who believe in the bargaining rights of the workers.
In one are those who believe charity corrupts the soul, stunts its growth. In the other are those who believe charity elevates the spirit and renews hope.
In one live those who understand the power of Wall Street. In the other are those only familiar with the ways of Main Street.
One America believes in marriage. The other America believes in civil union.
One asks for condoms in schools. The other says let there be abstinence.
One wants abortion on demand. The other says stop the killings.
One wants drugs legalized. The other wants drugs outlawed.
One claims health care is a right. The other says no it is a privilege.
One believes Medicare is a mistake and needs to be ended. The other knows it is a blessing, needs preserved.
One seeks solutions for the 12 million undocumented. The other says no deal, deport all.
One asks for gun laws that save lives and curbs violence. The other quotes the constitution and refuses to budge.
One seeks energy options that are cleaner and greener for the future.
The other refuses to let go the polluting ways of the past.
How then can we bridge these many divides? Whence will come about that more perfect union?
Perhaps our scriptures hold the secret. Where reason fails to show the way, why not give revelation a chance.
Revelation tells us to be humble not arrogant, to provide for the welfare of others, not remaining absorbed with the concerns of our self interests, that people are to be judged by the nobility of their deeds, that compassion freedom and justice are to be practiced as a lifestyle, not transcribed on paper and hung on a wall, that anger, hate and fear can be overcome by the power of belief, that compromise is not a sign of weakness or failure but a means to heal many a wounds of dissent and mistrust.
Our constitution bars the state from imposing any one religion on the people, but does not deny us the right to practice the guidance of our revealed truths. If our understanding of worship ever travels beyond the narrow confines of the rituals that bind it, then some day we can yet rise as a people of faith to bridge our divides. That more perfect union which eludes us can perhaps come within our grasp only through a life of faith. Not faith defined by dogmas and traditions, but faith inspired by reason and revelations anchored in universal principles that transcend our ideological divides.
For Muslim Americans in the midst of yet another blessed month of Ramadan, what better time than this, to go beyond the punishing schedule of praying and fasting each day, to practice their faith as it is meant to be. Letting go of arrogance to embrace humility, embracing love in place of hate, promoting justice in place of prejudice, showing courage in place of fear, adopting patience in times of adversity, demonstrating integrity in the face of temptations.
As a community of faith, maybe we can do our part in bringing the two Americas together. To do that would mean not only working on our inner dimension, but also on our outer. Our spiritual journey cannot take us to a mountain top where we find peace and tranquility away from the turmoil in the valley. Our faith is incomplete without engagement in the problems of the world we live in. It is not enough to write a check and go to sleep when we can do much more. For from those who are given much, much is expected. Our busy social calendars cannot excuse us from the demands of political engagement Our alluring love for travel to distant exotic destinations cannot exempt us from serving the needy within our backyards. There is much for us to do. The two Americas we live in are waiting for our involvement.
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Community News (V13-I35)
Mosque parking lot decision delayed
SAMMAMISH,WA–The City of Sammamish has delayed its decision on the construction of a parking lot next to a mosque, the Sammamish Review reported.
Senior Planner Evan Maxim said the city has given the Sammamish Muslim Association until November 11 to reply to the city’s request for more information on their project.
The group is seeking to install a 38-stall parking lot and officially convert their single-family home into a religious use facility for 50 to 80 families who worship there.
Maxim said the city has asked the group for more information on the potential uses of the building, landscape designs near the proposed parking lot and the amount of people coming and going at given times of the day.The group has been operating on a temporary agreement with the city since buying the property in 2009.
Woodland’s mosque holds Iftar for community
WOODLAND,CA–Woodland’s Muslim Mosque held a community iftar open to everyone last week. About 300 people attended the event.
Among those attending the breaking of the fast were Woodland Mayor Art Pimentel, Vice Mayor Skip Davies, Yolo Sheriff Ed Prieto, Woodland Police Chief Dan Bellini and Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada.
Yamada used the occasion to note it was the Japanese in America who were discriminated against as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor some 70 years ago, which generated a great deal of sympathy today when American Muslims were vilified immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
As such, she said, Japanese Americans were the first to support American Muslims being discriminated against after the 911 attacks.
“This country made a mistake†70 years ago when Japanese were imprisoned, lost their property and possessions as a result of discrimination, Yamada said. “But it admitted to that mistake, made reparations and apologized.â€
“We have learned that we can take the high road,†Yamada continued. “We can build peace and community together.â€
Yolo Sheriff Ed Prieto and Woodland Mayor Art Pimentel talked about the importance of family structure and a sharing of cultures.
Buffalo Mosque organizes parking lot Bazaar
BUFFALO,NY–A Buffalo mosque opened its parking lot to provide opportunity for underemployed Queen City residents.
Muhammad’s Mosque welcomed inner-city neighbors to a community market and international bazaar.
It gives up to 50 people a chance to make and sell items and give buyers a place to get what they need without heading out to the suburban malls or factory outlets.
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Encouraging Program For Young Ones By Masjid At-Taqwa
It all started with the volunteers like Mahmood Marfani, Irfan Ibrahim, & Hanif Samana; and tireless efforts of Hafiz Tauqer Shah and Abdur Rahman Siddiqui, that the first Quran Qirat Competition for young boys and girls, could become a reality By the Grace of Allah SWT. First time in the history of MasjidAttaqwa at Synott Road, in Sugar Land near Houston, on the 21st Night of Qadar, more than seventy talented and amazing young boy’s and girl’s participated in this Quran Qirat Competition and recited one after another in a beautiful voices – the verses of the Holy Quran which they have memorized by heart.
Masjid was filled up with parents and others, who love Quran and want to encourage the young stars, who were shinning until 3:30am. The Judges, Hafiz Tauqer Shah and Hafiz Arsalan Majid, were following the criteria of memorization, pronunciation, and tajweed to choose the winners of the competition.
Parents and children were excited and anxiously waiting as Abdur Rahman Siddiqui pronounced the results of the competition. The Qirat Competition came to an end with twelve winners, who were awarded 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes in four groups.
First place was awarded with a cash price of $100, second place was $50, third was $25, and every participant was awarded with a cash price of $10 each. The program ended with Tahjjud Prayer and Suhoor.
Administration of Synott Masjid want to thank Allah SWT and the generosity of the Brothers who supported this event financially and morally. InshaAllah, They will have more Quran Qirat Competition in the near future. For comments/suggestions, please visit www.masjidattaqwa.com
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Samir Nasri Goes to Manchester City
By Parvez Fatteh, TMO, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com
The Sheikh of Abu Dhabi has been trying to secure this deal all summer, and he finally got his man. Manchester City football club of the English Premier League have finally secured the services of French Muslim footballer Samir Nasri from his former club, fellow English League rivals Arsenal.
The Abu Dhabi-owned football club reportedly obtained Nasri for a transfer fee of £24million. The 24-year-old midfielder subsequently signed a four year contract with Manchester City. This would be the fourth major signing this summer for City, but it would only be the second most expensive, after the club record £38million purchase of Sergio Aguero. Nasri will likely make his Man City debut this Sunday against Tottenham.
Nasri had just one year remaining on his contract at Arsenal, whom he joined in 2008, and the London club have agreed to sell now rather than risk losing him on a free transfer next summer. English Premier League rivals Manchester United had also shown interested in the Frenchman. And in recent weeks, there was growing tension at Arsenal with the common knowledge that Nasri wanted out. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger even included Nasri in the starting lineup this past weekend against Liverpool even after it was apparent that the club was close to a sale. He was, however, left off of the roster for Arsenal’s midweek Champions League qualifying match against Udinese.
This was a rough week for Arsenal, who were forced to sell captain Cesc Fabregas to Barcelona the week before, followed by a home loss to Liverpool. Now they have been strong-armed into parting with another of their young talents.
Nasri came up in the Marseille youth system and made his debut for the French club at the age of 17. He came to Arsenal in 2008 for £15.8million. But he struggled for a couple of years, and was even left off of the 2010 French World Cup team. But he finally broke through last year with 15 goals and a nomination for Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year.
Manchester City manager, Roberto Mancini told www.mcfc.co.uk: “He’s a fantastic player because he has technique, he has mentality. I knew him when he played for Marseille. I followed him when I was at Inter and we wanted to take him five years ago. But I think in the last few years in the Premier League he’s improved a lot. Now I think he’s a top player.â€
Nasri now joins a Muslim-laden squad in Manchester City. The Ivorian brothers Kolo and Yaya Toure are there, as well as fellow Ivorian Abdul Razak, and Somalian midfielder Abdisalam Ibrahim, not to mention the Emirati ownership.
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Malouda and Anelka Lead Chelsea to Opening Day Victory
By Parvez Fatteh, TMO, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com
File: Florent Malouda |
It was an all-Muslim score-sheet for Chelsea Football Club this past weekend as they won their opening English Premier League match 2-1 over West Brom. French striker Nicolas Anelka scored the equalizer, before French midfielder Florent Malouda knocked home the winning goal with seven minutes left in the second half.
This was the first match for new Chelsea manager Andres Villas-Boas, and it looked to be an easy time, with Chelsea having beaten West Brom in all 10 of their English League meetings. But Chelsea started poorly after falling behind 1-0 in the first half, leaving the faithful at Stamford Bridge a little nervous heading into half-time. Malouda had lost his starting place in the midfield, but was inserted into the line-up in the second half.
The home fans screamed for a penalty two minutes later when West Brom goalkeeper Foster clattered into Anelka but referee Lee Mason felt the goalkeeper had got a bit of the ball. There was little improvement from Chelsea at the start of the second half but a slice of luck helped them equalize in the 53rd minute.
Frank Lampard went down in the box laying the ball back to Anelka, who cut inside and unleashed a shot which took a telling deflection off the heel of Jonas Olsson and nestled in the far corner. The goal sparked the game to life, Scharner heading James Morrison’s cross over the bar and Malouda seeing a half-volley blocked before Lampard played in Anelka, whose shot hit the legs of Foster and rebounded to Malouda, only for Steven Reid to throw his body at the ball.
Lampard and Anelka were linking up well, the latter hooking over under pressure before Drogba just failed to control a great ball from Ivanovic. Anelka wasted a great breakaway chance with eight minutes left, steering the ball into the sidenetting from 35 yards after Foster had come racing off his line. It did not matter as the winner arrived a minute later, Bosingwa skipping too easily between Morrison and Nicky Shorey down the right and producing the ball of the match, swept home by Malouda at the far post.
Villas-Boas had not lost a league match with his former team, Porto, in the Portuguese league in over 16 months. Thanks to Florent Malouda and Nicolas Anelka, his unbeaten streak continues.
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Franck Ribery Enjoying Soccer Again
By Parvez Fatteh, TMO, Founder of http://sportingummah.com, sports@muslimobserver.com
Bayern Munich star midfielder Franck Ribery is having fun plying his trade out on the pitch after a long time. He praises new head coach Jupp Heynckes for the faith he has shown in him, and added that he is full of confidence again. Ribery has been active and impressive in both of Bayern’s wins thus far in the German Bundesliga season. The French Muslim midfielder international stated that he is enjoying his football again, for the first time in a long while.
He spoke to Kicker, “I really had a lot of fun in today’s game [against Hamburg]. I’m brimming with confidence again. The coach has a lot of faith in me and I really like the way he treats the players,†Ribery was quoted as saying. “I haven’t had fun on the pitch for two years. I had had more than enough of it. I can’t play the way I want to play when I’m not having fun out there. I need to enjoy myself to be at my best.â€
Ribery has endured a difficult time on and off the pitch over the past two years. He was involved in a personal scandal that tested the resolve of his marriage. He was also struck by a number of injuries. And, he was also a part of the controversial French World Cup team last season that dealt with poor play and divisiveness in the locker-room. Bayern currently is tied for third place in the Bundesliga standings with six points from three games. The club has scored six goals and given up only one so far.
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Study: Kashmir Mass Graves Hold Thousands
By Lydia Polgreen
NEW DELHI — Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in a brutal insurgency.
The inquiry, the result of three years of investigative work by senior police officers working for the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, brings the first official acknowledgment that civilians might have been buried in mass graves in Kashmir, a region claimed by both India and Pakistan where insurgents waged a bloody battle for independence in the early 1990s. The report sheds new light on a grim chapter in the history of the troubled region and confirms a 2008 report by a Kashmiri human rights organization that found hundreds of bodies buried in the Kashmir Valley.
Tens of thousands of people died in the insurgency, which began in 1989 and was partly fueled by weapons, cash and training from Pakistan.
According to the report, the bodies of hundreds of men described as unidentified militants were buried in unmarked graves. But of the more than 2,000 bodies, 574 were identified as local residents.
“There is every probability that these unidentified dead bodies buried in various unmarked graves at 38 places of North Kashmir may contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances,†the report said.
The report catalogs 2,156 bodies found in graves in four districts of Kashmir that had been at the heart of the insurgency. It called for a thorough inquiry and a collection of DNA evidence to identify the dead, and, for the future, proper identification of anyone killed by security forces in Kashmir to avoid abuse of special laws shielding the military from prosecution there.
Thousands of people, mostly young men, have disappeared in Kashmir.
Some went to be trained as militants in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir and were killed in the fighting. Many others were detained by Indian security forces. The wives they left behind are known as half-widows, because the fates of their husbands are unknown. Parents keep vigil for sons who were arrested two decades ago.
Parveena Ahanger’s son Javed was taken away by the police on Aug. 18, 1990, and never seen again. An investigation found that he had been killed by security forces, but they have not been prosecuted, she said.
“I never got any response from the government,†she said. “I never got his dead body.â€
After years of fighting in the courts to find out what happened to Javed, Ms. Ahanger was skeptical that the human rights report would get her son’s body back, or bring her justice.
“If the high court doesn’t give any justice on this issue, what will the state human rights commission do?†she said.
Zahoor Wani, an activist who works with the families of people who disappeared during the insurgency, said that the report was a welcome first step but that the government must identify the dead and allow families to bury their relatives.
“It is a very good thing that they acknowledge it,†Mr. Wani said.
“These families have been living in a hope to see these people again.
“They are neither dead nor alive,†he said. “We need to move them to one pole or the other.â€
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
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Mostafa El-Sayed
By Syed Aslam
Mostafa El-Sayed was born in the year 1933 at Zifta, Egypt. He graduated with bachelor of science degree from Ein Shams University, Cairo, and completed PhD. in chemistry at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida in1958. He held Research Associate positions at Harvard, Yale and the California Institute of Technology. He was appointed to the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California at Los Angeles, where he worked till 1994. At present he is the Julius Brown Chair and Regents Professor and Director of the Laser Dynamics Laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Dr. Mostafa El-Sayed have contributed to many areas of physical and materials chemistry research, including the development of new techniques such as magnetophoto selection, picosecond Raman spectroscopy and phosphorescence microwave double resonance spectroscopy. Using spectroscopic techniques, they have been able to answer fundamental questions regarding ultrafast dynamical processes involving molecules, solids and photobiological systems. His work earned him a 2007 US. National Medal of Science award in Chemistry for his seminal and creative contributions to our understanding of the electronic and optical properties of nano-materials and to their applications in nano-catalysis and nano-medicine. His work has opened a brand new method to understand nanoparticles which can be used in nano-technology.
Dr. Mostafa El-Sayed’s group were the first to synthesize metallic nanoparticles of different shape. It would be quite profitable if one can determine the type of reactions each shape would catalyze. Selectivity in catalysis saves a great deal of energy and money in reducing the need for exhaustive and expensive separation costs. Different nanocrystal shapes have different facets and so it can be used for different catalytic functions. The El-Sayed’s group is also studying different techniques to stabilize the nanocrystal shapes, which can be used for a particular catalytic effect.
Mostafa El-Sayed is an internationally renowned nanoscience researcher whose work in the synthesis and study of the properties of nanomaterials of different shape may have applications in the treatment of cancer. He has a spectroscopy rule named after him, the El-Sayed rule. He has over 300 publications in the areas of spectroscopy and molecular dynamics. He uses short pulsed lasers to understand relaxation, transport and conversion of energy in molecules, in solids and in photosynthetic systems. He supervised the research of 50 PhD. students, 30 postdoctoral fellows and 15 visiting professors. Among his other many honors are the 2009 Ahmed Zewail Prize in Molecular Science.
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