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Understanding the Quran – Juz’ 23 – Surah Ya Sin (V.28) – Surah Az Zumar (V.31)
Today Insh’Allah we’ll take a detailed look at (section) Juz’ 23 from the Qur’an which takes in Surah’s (36-39):
36. Ya Sin
37. As Saaffat (Those who set the ranks)
38. Saad
39. Az Zumar (The Troops)
Surah Ya Sin was covered in yesterdays post.
In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
37. Surah As Saaffat (Those who set the ranks)
The name is derived from the word was saaffat with which the Surah begins.
Period of Revelation
The subject matter and the style show that this Surah probably was sent down in the middle of the Makkan period, or perhaps in the last stage of the middle Makkan period. The style clearly indicates that antagonism is raging strong in the background and the Holy Prophet and his Companions are passing through very difficult and discouraging circumstances.
Subject Matter and Theme
The disbelievers of Makkah have been severely warned for their attitude of mockery and derision with which they were responding to the Holy Prophet’s message of Tauhid and the Hereafter and for their utter refusal to accept and acknowledge his claim to Prophethood. In the end, they have been plainly warned that the Prophet whom they are mocking and ridiculing will overwhelm them in spite of their power and self and they will find the army of Allah encamping in the very courtyards of their houses (vv. 171-179. This notice was given at a time when there appeared no chance whatever of the Holy Prophet’s success and triumph. The Muslims (who have been called Allah’s army in these verses) were being made the target of severe persecution. Three- fourth of their population had already emigrated and hardly 40 to 50 of the Companions were left with the Holy Prophet in Makkah who were experiencing all sorts of the excesses with utter helplessness. Under such circumstances, in view of the apparent conditions, no one could believe that the Holy Prophet and the handful of his ill equipped Companions would ultimately attain dominance. The people rather thought that the new movement would end and be buried in the ravines of Makkah. But hardly 15 to 16 years had passed when on the conquest of Makkah precisely the same thing happened of which the disbelievers had been forewarned.
Along with administering warnings, Allah in this Surah has done full justice also to the theme of inducement and instruction in a balanced way. Brief but impressive arguments have been given about the validity of the doctrines of Tauhid and the Hereafter. Criticism has been made of the creed of the mushrikin to show the absurdity of their beliefs; they have been informed of the evil consequences of their deviations, which have been contrasted with the splendid results of the faith and righteous acts. Then, in continuation of the same, Precedents from past history have been cited to show how Allah had been treating His Prophets and their followers : how He has been favoring His faithful servants and punishing their deniers and rejectors.
The most instructive of the historical narratives presented in this Surah is the important event of the pious life of the Prophet Abraham, who became ready to sacrifice his only son as soon as he received an inspiration from Allah. In this there was a lesson not only for the disbelieving Quraish, who waxed proud of their blood relationship with him, but also for the Muslims who had believed in Allah and His Messenger. By narrating this event they were told what is the essence and the real spirit of Islam, and how a true believer should be ready to sacrifice his all for the pleasure and approval of Allah after he has adopted it as his Faith and Creed.
The last verses of the Surah were not only a warning for the disbelievers but also a good news for the believers who were passing through highly unfavorable and discouraging conditions on account of their supporting and following the Holy Prophet. In these verses they were given the good news that they should not be disheartened at the hardships and difficulties they had to encounter in the beginning, for in the end they alone would attain dominance, and the standard bearers of falsehood, who appeared to be dominant at the time would be overwhelmed and vanquished at their hands. A few years later the turn the events took, proved that it was not an empty consolation but an inevitable reality of which they had been foretold in order to strengthen their hearts.
38. Surah Saad
The Surah takes its name from the alphabetic letter Suad with which it begins.
Period of Revelation
As will be explained below, according to some traditions this Surah was sent down in the period when the Holy Prophet had started calling the people openly to Islam in Makkah, and this had caused great alarm among the chiefs of the Quraish. If this be true, its period of revelation would be about the 4th year of the Prophethood. According to some other traditions, it was sent down after Hadrat Umar’s embracing Islam, and this happened, as is well known, after the migration to Habash. Another chain of the traditions shows that the event which occasioned the revelation of this Surah took place during the last illness of Abu Talib. If this be correct, the period of its revelation would be the 10th or 11th year of the Prophethood.
Historical Background
Here is a resume of the traditions related by Imam Ahmad, Nasa’i, Tirmidhi, Ibn Jarir, Ibn Abi Shaibah, Ibn Abu Hatim, Muhammad bin Ishaq and others:
When Abu Talib fell ill, and the Quraish chiefs knew that his end was near, they held consultations and decided to approach the old chief with the request that he should solve the dispute between them and his nephew. For they feared that if Abu Talib died and then they subjected Muhammad (upon whom be Allah’s peace) to a harsh treatment, after his death, the Arabs would taunt them, saying, “They were afraid of the old chief as long as he lived now that he is dead they have started maltreating his nephew.” At least 25 of the Quraish chiefs including Abu Jahl, Abu Sufyan, Umayyah bin Khalaf, As bin Wa’il, Aswad bin al-Muttalib, ‘Uqbah bin Abi Mu’ait, Utbah and Shaibah went to Abu Talib. First, they put before him their complaints against the Holy Prophet as usual, then said, “We have come to present before you a just request and it is this : let your nephew leave us to our religion, and we shall leave him to his. He may worship whomever he may please: we shall not stand in his way in this matter; but he should not condemn our gods, and should not try to force us to give them up. Please tell him to make terms with us on this condition”. Abu Talib called the Holy Prophet and said, “Dear nephew, these people of your tribe have come to me with a request. They want you to agree with them on a just matter so as to put an end to your dispute with them.” Then he told him about the request of the chiefs of the Quraish. The Holy Prophet replied, “Dear uncle: I shall request them to agree upon a thing which, if they accept, will enable them to conquer the whole of Arabia and subject the non-Arab world to their domination. “Hearing this the people were first confounded; they did not know how they should turn down such a proposal. Then, after they had considered the matter, they replied: “You speak of one word: we are prepared to repeat ten others like it, but please tell us what it is.” The Holy Prophet said: La ilaha ill-Allah. At this they got up all together and left the place saying what Allah has narrated in the initial part of this Surah.
Ibn Sa’d in his Tabaqat has related this event just as cited above, but, according to him, this did not happen during Abu Talibs last illness but at the time when the Holy Prophet had started preaching Islam openly, and the news of the conversion of one person or the other was being heard almost daily in Makkah. In those days the Quraish chiefs had led several deputations to Abu Talib and had asked him to stop Muhammad (upon whom be Allah’s peace and blessings) from preaching his message, and it was with one of those deputations that this conversation had taken place.
Zamakhshari, Razi, Nisaburi ond some other commentators say that this deputation went to Abu Talib at the time then the chiefs of the Quraish had been upset at Hadrat Umar’s embracing Islam; but no reference to its basis is available in any book of the traditions, nor have these commentators cited the source of their this information. However, if it be true, it is understand able. For the unbelieving Quraish had already been bewildered to see that the person who had arisen from among themselves with the message of Islam had no parallel in the entire tribe as regarded nobility, purity of character, wisdom and seriousness. Moreover, his right hand man and chief supporter was a man like Abu Bakr, who was well known in and around Makkah as a gentle, righteous and brilliant man. Now when they might have seen that a brave and resolute man like Umar also had joined them, they must have felt that the danger was growing and becoming intolerable.
Subject Matter and Topics
The Surah begins with a review of the aforesaid meeting. Making the dialogue between the Holy Prophet and the disbelievers the basis, Allah says that the actual reason with those people for their denial is not any defect in the message of Islam but their own arrogance, jealousy and insistence on following the blind. They are not prepared to believe in a man from their own clan as a Prophet of God and follow him. They want to persist in the ideas of ignorance which they have found their ancestors following. And when a person exposes their this ignorance and presents the truth before them, they are alarmed and regard it as an oddity, rather as a novel and impossible thing. For them the concept of Tauhid and the Hereafter is not only an unacceptable creed but also a concept which only deserves to be ridiculed and mocked.
Then, Allah, both in the initial part of the Surah and in its last sentences, has precisely warned the disbelievers, as if to say, “The man whom you are ridiculing today and whose guidance you reject will soon overpower you,and the time is not far when in this very city of Makkah, where you are persecuting him, he will overwhelm you completely.”
Then describing nine of the Prophets, one after the other, with greater details of the story of the Prophets David and Solomon; Allah has emphasized the point that His Law of Justice is impartial and objective, that only the right attitude of man is acceptable to Him, that He calls to account and punishes every wrongdoer who. ever he be, and that He likes only those people who do not persist in wrongdoing but repent as soon as they are warned of it, and pass their life in the world keeping in mind their accountability in the Hereafter.
After this, the final end that the obedient servants and the disobedient people will meet in the Hereafter, has been depicted, and two things have been especially impressed on the disbelievers:(1) That the leaders and guides whom the ignorant people are following blindly in the world, on the way of deviation, will have reached Hell even before their followers in the Hereafter, and the two groups will be cursing each other there; and (2) that the disbelievers will be amazed to see that there is no trace whatever in Hell of the believers whom they used to regard as contemptible in the world and will themselves be involved in its torment.
In conclusion, mention has been made of the story of Adam and Iblis (Satan), which is meant to tell the disbelieving Quraish that the same arrogance and vanity which was preventing them from bowing before Muhammad (upon whom be Allah’s peace) had prevented Iblis also from bowing before Adam. Iblis felt jealous of the high rank God had given to Adam and became accursed when he disobeyed His Command. Likewise, “You, O people of Quraish, are feeling jealous of the high rank God has bestowed on Muhammad (upon whom be Allah’s peace) and are not prepared to obey him whom God has appointed His messenger. Therefore, you will be doomed ultimately to the same fate as will be met by Satan.”
39. Surah Az Zumar (The Troops)
The Surah derives its name from verse 71 and 73 in which the word zumar has occurred.
Period of Revelation
In verse 10 (wa ardullah-i-wasi atun: and Allah’s earth is vast) there is abundant evidence that this Surah was sent down before the migration to Habash. Some traditions provide the explanation that this verse was sent down in respect of Hadrat Ja’far bin Abi Talib and his companions when they made up their mind to emigrate to Habash.(Ruh al-Maani, vol. XXII, p. 226).
Theme and Subject matter
The entire Surah is a most eloquent and effective address which was given some time before the emigration to Habash, in an environment filled with tyranny and persecution, ill-will and antagonism, at Makkah. It is a sermon whose addressees mainly are the unbelieving Quraish, although here and there the believers also have been addressed. In it the real aim of the invitation of Muhammad (upon whom be Allah’s peace and blessings) had been enunciated, which is this:Man should adopt Allah’s servitude sincerely, and should not pollute his God worship with the service of any other. Presenting this cardinal principle in different ways over and over again, the truth of Tauhid and the excellent results of accepting it, and the falsehood of shirk and the evil consequences of following it, have been explained in a most forceful way, and the people exhorted to give up their wrong way of life and return to the mercy of their Lord. In this very connection, the believers have been instructed, as if to say:”If a place has become narrow for the worship and service of Allah, His earth is vast: you may emigrate to some other place in order to save your faith: Allah will reward you for your patience.”On the other hand, the Holy Prophet has been encouraged, so as to say:”Tell the disbelievers plainly that they may do whatever they like, but their persecutions and tyrannies will never deter you from the way of Islam; that they may go on doing their worst to obstruct your way, but you will continue to perform your mission in spite of the adverse conditions and circumstances.”
Sweden: Immigrants Now Paid To Learn Swedish
Via SR:
On Wednesday, a new law takes effect in Sweden that will pay immigrants taking state-funded Swedish language classes up to almost 2,000 U.S. dollars, tax-free, for completing the program within a year.
Running this incentive program is expected to cost over 10 million U.S. dollars and has come under strong criticism from teachers and researchers for patronizing students.
But Sweden's integration minister, Nyamko Sabuni, defends the new law. According to her, there is a culture of staying in the classes for a long time, but the new law will encourage students to move through quickly.
Paying the Price For Our Lack of Vision – Marc Manley
Cross-posted with author’s permission
One of the most memorable lines from the Star Wars franchise was Emperor Palpatine’s cruel admonishment of Luke when he cackled, “you shall pay the price for your lack of vision”. This chastisement was swiftly followed by searing bolts of blue lightening. If it weren’t for the timely intervention of Luke’s at-one-time sinister father, Darth Vader, Luke may have met a very unfortunate fate. In what has also become now a cruel twist of fate, American Muslims are now paying their own price for lack of vision, as the United States now increasingly turns on Muslims, demonizing and terrorizing them, not unlike this recent incident in New York, where a mosque was attacked by a small pack of marauding teens. Similarly to Luke’s blunder, American Muslims simply did not adequately prepare, in this case, for life in America. Where is our Darth Vader in our time of despair?
Sadly, Islam in American, in its heretical inception—referred to as the First Resurrection via The Nation of Islam—did a far better job of indigenizing Islam. The Second Resurrection [Islam 2.0?], consisted of both immigrant Muslims and new orthodox converts, who were initially unconcerned with the dominant culture’s views of Islam, and thus chose to either live anonymous lives in their new found homes—vis-a-vie through the door of whiteness—or in the case of Blackamerican Muslims, chose to live new lives that had little to do with the existential realities as colored folks living in a post-Jim Crow America. Both groups lived in a fantasy; a bubble. Of particular interest to immigrant Muslims, whiteness has been the gateway that many if not most immigrants have successfully integrated into the American social landscape. This created a dichotomy in American Islam in which immigrant Muslims increasingly turned a blind eye to the underside of assimilation: whiteness, and all of the unearned privilidges it entails. Blackamerican Muslims, having no such option, opted to simply limp along, paroting their immigrant counterparts without the Players Club incentives. Much to the dismay of [immigrant] Muslims, the 9/11 attacks did away with any hopes of Muslims being considered white/American, and thus we arrive back at our “price” for “lack of vision”. In another twist of ironic fate, blackness and its legacy of civil rights engagement [i.e., its holy protest against white domination and supremacy] seems to be the last bastion of hope for both communities. It is the only social modality that is seen and recognized as viably America: out of immigrant and indigenous Muslims, it’s the only one that’s socially acceptable, if not preferred. Perhaps if immigrant Muslims had not uncritically flocked to the banner of whiteness [I can hear Admiral Akbar shouting now, “it’s a trap” - or “it’s a twap”, however you prefer your phonetics] and Blackamerican Muslims had not been so quick to abondon blackness, we might very well be in a completely different situation today.
The Nation of Islam, and subsequently its splinter group, led by the courageous Warith Deen Muhammad, charted a vision of Islam [by Islam here, I mean as it was socially expressed by the NOI, and not by the normal rigors of classical Muslim theology] that sought to place the cares, concerns, and proclivities of [Black] American Muslims at the heart of its agenda. And while the WD movement has also fallen on hard times, it still alludes to the crux of the current social predicament.
In many ways, Muslims in America were afforded a tremendous blessing post-9/11. Public sentiment towards Muslims was somewhat tarnished but by and large, the cloud of negative perceptions of Islam were held at bay, only occasionally making their way in to the public arena. In fact, there was a notable calling amongst non-Muslims that the 9/11 attacks were perpetuated by a few terribly misguided souls and that Muslims and Islam were not to blame. American Muslims, instead of capitalizing on this opportunity to push forward efforts to indigenize [not assimilate] themselves to their social, cultural and political landscapes, simply rested on their laurels. Both sides of the indigenous/immigrant isle have been equally to blame. Native-born Muslims still continued to favor a brand of Islam that was more about cultural acting than getting down to brass tax and most immigrant Muslims were so devastated at the quandary of being abandoned on the doorstep of whiteness that most of the efforts out of that community have been mostly assimilationist at best, if not simply down-right floundering. So again, where is our Darth Vader in our time of need?
Simply put, it is my belief that if Muslims do not solve this issue [if it is already not too late], then Islam will suffer a fate worse than persecution: irrelevancy. And by issue, I mean to address what is at the heart of mainstream America’s growing resentment towards Islam. I believe this to be mainly aesthetic: people simply do not like the way Islam looks and feels as a result of not knowing what Islam’s story is, or more precisely, what the American Muslims’ story is. And American Muslims have failed in telling their own story because they have yet to craft one. Narrative is crucial to survival in America; if you don’t have one, you don’t belong. Perhaps it’s not too late to stop, reflect, and take stock of our condition, our situation. Let us look at examples from our common cultural past that have succeeded: the Nation of Islam as well as the American Jewish community, who have critically understood the necessity of story and narrative as a primary means of not only survival but also of flourishing. To delay any longer would be akin to another favorite Star Wars quote: “almost there … almost there …” – and we all know what happened next after that.
Original article appeared here: Tumbled Thoughts On American Muslim Life 9/1/10
FPÖ faces police probe over anti-Muslim video game
Members of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), once the political home of the late right-wing populist politician Jörg Haider, sparked outrage this week in the form of an anti-Muslim video game released as part of a political campaign in the state of Styria, where parliamentary elections will take place at the end of September.
In the game, players must try to halt the erection of minarets and mosques using a "stop" sign. If a player fails to stop the construction, then bearded muezzins issue calls to prayer against an Alpine backdrop.
At the end of the "Bye Bye Mosque" game, which has been online since Monday, players are told: "Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So vote for Dr. Gerhard Kurzmann and the Freedom Party on September 26 so that this doesn't happen."
Members of the Green Party in the state filed a legal complaint over the game. But Kurzmann remained unmoved, saying that the game was intended to raise awareness among youth in the state about the supposed problem of minarets and mosques. At a press conference on Wednesday, Kurzmann described the controversy as a "tempest in a teapot" and, riffing off the debate in Germany, said: "We'd rather have Sarrazin than a muezzin."
On Thursday, the public prosecutor in the city of Graz, the state capital, issued a statement saying that it had opened an investigation into the game after receiving the Green Party complaint. Sedition or disparagement of religious teachings is a crime in Austria that can be punished with up to two years of imprisonment.
The president of an organization representing Muslims in Austria, Anas Shakfeh, also filed a legal complaint on Wednesday. "This is unparalleled animosity towards a religion and foreigners," he said, according to the Die Presse newspaper. The bishop of the Catholic diocese in Styria also criticized the game, saying it violated respect between religions and that it represented a danger to understanding between different faiths in society.
The game itself is actually recycled from a 2009 campaign for a referendum to ban minarets in Switzerland. So far, at least, no Ground Zero version of the game has been released.
See also "FPÖ boss wants minarets referendum", Austrian Independent, 31 August 2010
Still the best Bliar in the business. Reviewing Tony Blair’s Autobiography – The Iraq chapter
I couldn’t help but comment on Tony Blair’s new book, A Journey, extracts of which have been published online here.
But for me, it’s the extracts from the Iraq chapter that caught my sleepy eyes (and not just became A Journey is being published on the day after the last US combat troops left that war-torn country). TB continues to distort, evade, pretend and mislead on the issue of Iraq. He is the ultimate Bliar — and so I couldn’t help but fisk the available extracts from his Iraq chapter.
“I can say that never did I guess the nightmare that unfolded, and that too is part of the responsibility”
Never did you guess?
But why did you have to “guess”?
Six of the country’s top academic experts on Iraq and international security warned TB, in a face-to-face meeting in November 2002, that the consequences of an invasion could be catastrophic. Cambridge University’s George Joffe, one of the six invited to Downing Street, got the impression of “someone with a very shallow mind, who’s not interested in issues other than the personalities of the top people, no interest in social forces, political trends, etc”. Meanwhile, the Joint Intelligence Committee warned TB in February 2003 that the threat from Al Qaeda “would be heightened by military action against Iraq”.
“Why should Saddam keep the inspectors out for so long when he had nothing to hide?”
TB knows perfectly well that Saddam did not “keep the inspectors out”, and nor did he expel them, as TB claimed in the run-up to war in early 2003. The truth is that the UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 on the orders of the chief weapons inspector, Richard Butler, in anticipation of the US/UK air attack on Baghdad. Jane Arraf’s CNN report, filed on December 16, 1998, said: “This is the second time in a month that UNSCOM has pulled out in the face of a possible US-led attack. But this time there may be no turning back. Weapons inspectors packed up their personal belongings and loaded up equipment at UN headquarters after a pre-dawn evacuation order. In a matter of hours, they were gone, more than 120 of them headed for a flight to Bahrain.” “Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad,” said the Washington Post on December 18, 1998. While it is true that relations between the Saddam regime and the UN weapons inspectors had already broken down, TB glosses over the fact that the inspection teams had been infiltrated by US and UK intelligence agencies and, in the words of the former inspector and hawk-turned-dove Scott Ritter, “Inspectors were sent in to carry out sensitive inspections that had nothing to do with disarmament but had everything to do with provoking the Iraqis.”
“Even when he let them in, why did he obstruct them?”
Obstruct them?
That wasn’t the view of Hans Blix, the top UN weapons inspector in Iraq, or Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. Verifying Iraqi disarmament, said Blix on 7 March 2003, “will not take years, nor weeks, but months.” ElBaradei offered a less specific forecast but nonetheless pointed out that “the recently increased level of Iraqi cooperation should enable us in the near future to provide the Security Council with an objective and thorough assessment of Iraq nuclear-related capabilities.”
“Why bring war upon his country to protect a myth?”
Saddam did not “bring war upon his country” — the US and the UK invaded Iraq, in defiance of international law. And the Iraqi dictator, as we now know, made several desperate, last-ditch attempts to avoid war, including the use of back-channel approaches to (of all people!) Richard Perle.
“The caveats entered by Dr Kay were largely overlooked, including his assertion that Saddam was possibly a greater threat than we had known, a remark seen at the time as inexplicable, given the primary finding.”
Dr David Kay? TB looks for support from a man who, as the Guardian’s Julian Borger once pointed out, was far from impartial: “Before the war, Kay was one of the most fervent supporters of military action.”
“The second report from Charles Duelfer was not published until September 2004. It received far less attention, yet this was the complete analysis”
Yes, and the complete analysis from Duelfer’s Iraq Survey Group concluded that, at most, Saddam’s Iraq had been engaged in “WMD-related programme activities”. Get that, Tone? Not WMDs. Not even WMD programmes. But “WMD-related programme activities”, whatever they happen to be. I wonder: can a WMD-related programme activity be activated within 45 minutes of an order to do so?
“The constraint became even tougher when revelations from Saddam’s son-in-law about his continuing interest in development of WMD were broadcast to the world in 1996.”
TB, like George Bush, trumpeted the alleged “revelations” from Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, in the run-up to war as well (for example, in a speech to the Commons in February 2003). But TB conveniently omits to mention here what Kamal told UN weapons inspectors in 1995, while being debriefed in Jordan (and first reported in Newsweek on 24 February 2003, three weeks before the invasion): “All chemical weapons were destroyed. I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons – biological, chemical, missiles, nuclear were destroyed.”
“This conclusion on nuclear weapons was actually endorsed by the Butler Report of July 2004, though that was written prior to the full ISG Report of September 2004. The Butler Report concluded…”
TB chooses to selectively quote the Butler Report. Surprise, surprise! No mention from our former PM of the Butler Report’s conclusions that “more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear”, and that judgements had stretched available intelligence “to the outer limits”. No mention of the view expressed by Lord Butler himself, in the House of Lords, in February 2007, that TB was, at the very minimum, “disingenuous” about the Iraqi “threat”.
“As Saddam came to power in 1979, Iraq was richer than either Portugal or Malaysia. By 2003, 60 per cent of the population was dependent on food aid.”
No mention here of the sanctions on Iraq, imposed by the United Nations, and enforced by the United States and the United Kingdom. Those sanctions caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, and were described by the former UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq, Dennis Halliday, as a form of “genocide”. As even the Humanitarian Panel of the Security Council noted in March 1999: “Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of the war”.
“Millions were malnourished, and millions were in exile.”
How is that different to the situation produced by TB and GWB? The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq produced, at the height of the conflict, the Middle East’s largest refugee crisis since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948. Inside Iraq itself, according to the UN, more than 1.5 million people remain displaced.
“One statistic above all tells us what Saddam’s Iraq was like. According to the UN, by 2002 the number of deaths of children under the age of five was 130 per 1,000, a figure worse than that for the Congo.”
Again, no mention of the impact of UN sanctions.
“Before anyone says ‘Ah, but it was sanctions’, it should be remembered that Saddam was free to buy as much food and medicine as he wanted”
This is untrue. As Professor Karol Sikora, then the chief of the cancer programme of the World Health Organisation, wrote in the British Medical Journal: “Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee]. There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical or other weapons.” Professor Sikora added: “The saddest thing I saw in Iraq was children dying because there was no chemotherapy and no pain control. It seemed crazy they couldn’t have morphine, because for everybody with cancer pain, it is the best drug. When I was there, they had a little bottle of htmlirin pills to go round 200 patients in pain.” As Benon Sevan, the executive director of the UN Office of the Iraq Programme, said in 2001: “The improvement of the nutritional and health status of the Iraqi people . . . is being seriously affected as a result of [the] excessive number of holds placed on supplies and equipment for water, sanitation and electricity.”
“In the Kurdish area, despite Saddam and despite sanctions covering them too, the death rate for children was half that of central and southern Iraq.”
Apples and oranges, Tony, apples and oranges. As a Unicef document in August 1999 on the differences in the levels of child mortality between the autonomous northern governorates in the Kurdish areas and the rest of Iraq pointed out: “… the difference in the current rate cannot be attributed to the differing ways the Oil-for-Food Program is implemented in the two parts of Iraq… We need to look at longer-term trends and factors including the fact that since 1991 the north has received far more support per capita from the international community than the south and center of Iraq. Another factor maybe that the sanctions themselves have not been able to be so rigorously enforced in the north as the border is more “porous” than in the south and center of Iraq.” And as Hans Von Sponeck, the former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, pointed out in 2001: “The northern part of Iraq, where the Kurds live, is getting a disproportionate amount of oil revenue for the humanitarian program. Thirteen percent of the population living in that area is getting 20 percent of the oil revenues.”
“The origins of this figure lie in the Lancet report published in October 2004 which purported to be a scientific analysis of deaths in Iraq. The figure they gave – 600,000 – led the news and became dominant, repeated as fact.”
“Purported to be”?
What does that mean?
That the Lancet authors were pretending to offer “scientific analysis”? Sorry, are we now supposed to take the word of our former prime minister, a law graduate from Oxford, over the word of a peer-reviewed study produced by world-renowned epidemiologists and published in Britain’s most prestigious medical journal?
“Later the methodology on which this report was based was extensively challenged; its figures charged with being inaccurate and misleading; and the assessment made comprehensively questioned by other publications.”
Eh? Did John Rentoul ghost-write this portion of the chapter? “Extensively challenged”? Here’s Lila Giterman writing on the first Lancet report in the Columbia Journalism Review: “I called about ten biostatisticians and mortality experts. Not one of them took issue with the study’s methods or its conclusions. If anything, the scientists told me, the authors had been cautious in their estimates.” Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University who worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method “tried and true,” and added that “this is the best estimate of mortality we have.” In a letter to The Age, 27 epidemiologists and health professionals defended the methods of the study, writing that the study’s “methodology is sound and its conclusions should be taken seriously.” But, best of all, the chief scientific adviser to TB’s own Ministry of Defence said the survey’s methods were “close to best practice” and the study design was “robust”. Did Number 10 not get his memo?
“Friends opposed to the war think I’m being obstinate; others, less friendly, think I’m delusional.”
No, I just think you’re being dishonest, Tony. Seven years on from Iraq, nothing has changed.
Courtesy of Mehdi Hasan’s blog on the New Statesman
SF Chronicle cluelessness about Afghan paedophilia
Fareena Alam flagged up this article — Afghanistan’s dirty little secret — which is about the Pashtun custom known as bacha bazi, in which boys dress as girls and dance for grown men who then take them home and sexually abuse them. According to the article, when US soldiers kept noticing local men walking with young boys and behaving in ways unlikely for a father, they hired an investigator who came out with a report titled “Pashtun Sexuality”, the contents of which startled nobody in Afghanistan but appalled Western forces. Some research suggests that half of Pashtun “tribal members” in southern Afghanistan are involved.
These claims are nothing new — there was a documentary on the subject (on Channel 4) in this country a few months ago, and I have seen claims about such practices in tourist guidebooks (on Pakistan, I believe) — but what sticks out about this article is the ridiculous justification for the practice, which I don’t believe could possibly come from any Muslim:
Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can’t even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.
“How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face,” 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. “We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful.”
Even after marriage, many men keep their boys, suggesting a loveless life at home. A favored Afghan expression goes: “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.” Fundamentalist imams, exaggerating a biblical passage on menstruation, teach that women are “unclean” and therefore distasteful. One married man even asked Cardinalli’s team “how his wife could become pregnant,” her report said. When that was explained, he “reacted with disgust” and asked, “How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?”
That helps explain why women are hidden away - and stoned to death if they are perceived to have misbehaved. Islamic law also forbids homosexuality. But the pedophiles explain that away. It’s not homosexuality, they aver, because they aren’t in love with their boys.
Afghanistan is far from the only place where women cover their faces, and you get paedophilia everywhere but on nothing like this scale. Furthermore, people in Afghanistan marry young and they will have seen girls when growing up, so they will have some idea of how they will look as women. There is simply no possible Islamic justification for this: there are hadeeths about how devils follow “beardless youths”, i.e. boys of precisely the age of those involved in this custom, more than they follow women, and books by Deobandi scholars (and the Taliban were strongly influenced by the Deobandis in Pakistan) warning men against looking lustfully at boys.
The claim about a “biblical passage” obviously reflects the ignorance of the author. The Bible as it exists today has no relevance to Muslims, and its laws are not taken into account at all. What the Bible says about menstruation doesn’t apply to Muslims who get their law from the Qur’an and the Sunnah, which principally consists of the sayings of the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) and how they were acted on and interpreted by the early generations of Muslims. Muslims actually don’t regard menstruating women as unclean and, while they are barred from ritual activity, they are not prohibited from touching people or food, or from being touched, as they are in other religions such as Orthodox Judaism and some branches of Hinduism. It’s forbidden to have sex with a woman who currently has her period on, but it is not forbidden for her husband to touch or sleep with her during that time.
This could well be a custom that pre-dates Islam in that region — after all, similar customs existed in ancient Greece and are referred to in such texts as Plato’s Republic. I studied that at A-level and was puzzled by the lead character, named Socrates, talking about his companions being “bitten with a passion for boys in the bloom of youth” as if that was somehow normal. There is simply no way you can twist any Islamic text to show that it’s OK for a man to have sex with a young boy. It just isn’t.
Denmark: Ramadan celebration in Parliament
The Danish People's Party and Christian Democrats are trying to stop a controversial end-of-Ramadan meal to be held in Parliament.
In a joint complaint to the Parliament chairman, Thor Pedersen (V), the two parties say that the parliament building shouldn't be used for such thins, and that the event conflicts with the constitution, which says that Denmark has freedom of religion, not equality of religions.
Kristian Thulesen Dahl of the Danish People's Party said that the meal was 'sheer provocation against Danish society".
Kristian Thulesen Dahl says it's natural to celebrate after Ramadan and the fast, but that most of Parliament did not fast over the past month. It's absurd and a provocation to have the Ramadan meal in parliament and parliament should not allow its premises to be used for provocations.
Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (V) was invited to the end of Ramadan event as well.
The event is organized by the newspaper Zaman Scandinavia and Özlem Sara Cekic of the Socialist People's Party.
Özlem Sara Cekic says that if the Prime Minister would come to the event, it would be a strong signal that there is freedom for differences in society and there is place for everybody, regardless of ethnic, religious or cultural background.
Turkey's Family Affairs Minister Selma Aliye Kavaf, Danish Social Affairs Minster Benedikte Kiær (K) and former Chief Rabbi Bent Melchior already announced they would come to the event, September 6th.
Sources: Berlingske Tidende, Kristeligt Dagblad (Danish)
Germany: two polls on public attitudes towards Sarrazin controversy
German public opinion is deeply split over the fate of a central banker whose disparaging comments about Muslim immigrants have triggered a heated debate on race and integration, surveys showed on Wednesday.
Over the past week and a half, Thilo Sarrazin has dominated headlines with criticism of Germany's large Muslim community, and contentious remarks asserting that Jews have a particular genetic makeup.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and a host of leading politicians have rebuked the 65-year-old Sarrazin, who has said immigrants of Turkish and Arab origin refuse to integrate, sponge off the state and make the country less intelligent on average.
Germany's Central Council of Jews and others have urged the Bundesbank to dismiss Sarrazin, but the bank said on Wednesday it had put off a decision over his fate until at least Thursday.
A survey by pollster Emnid for N24 television showed 51 percent of respondents saw no need for the Bundesbank to fire board member Sarrazin, with 32 percent taking the opposite view.
But another poll by YouGov for Bild newspaper said 42 percent considered Sarrazin no longer acceptable for the job, with 34 percent seeing him as still acceptable and 25 percent undecided. Both surveys polled around 1,000 Germans.
The Emnid poll people showed more disagreeing with than backing the views of the banker. Some 35 percent of respondents said they "rather rejected" his theories, which have been applauded by far-right parties at home and abroad, with only 30 percent taking the opposite view.
Still, 56 percent of those polled said migrants were to blame for their integration problems, while only 11 percent held the opinion that Germans were responsible for the difficulties.
Germany: Public split on fate of race row banker
Via Reuters:
German public opinion is deeply split over the fate of a central banker whose disparaging comments about Muslim immigrants have triggered a heated debate on race and integration, surveys showed on Wednesday.
Over the past week and a half, Thilo Sarrazin has dominated headlines with criticism of Germany's large Muslim community, and contentious remarks asserting that Jews have a particular genetic makeup.
(...)
A survey by pollster Emnid for N24 television showed 51 percent of respondents saw no need for the Bundesbank to fire board member Sarrazin, with 32 percent taking the opposite view.
But another poll by YouGov for Bild newspaper said 42 percent considered Sarrazin no longer acceptable for the job, with 34 percent seeing him as still acceptable and 25 percent undecided. Both surveys polled around 1,000 Germans.
(more)
Sweden: Hijab a problem for getting a job
Employers are skeptical about employing women with a hijab, according to an experiment by Swedish radio station P3 Nyheter.
Two fictional job-seekers - Emma Svensson and Evin Ziadi - applied for the same jobs with 200 different employers in Sweden. The girls' CVs were similar.
Emma was contacted by 35 employers, and Evin only by 8. The employers couldn't explain why they contacted Emma and not Evin.
According to the Swedish study, 70% of the companies said they didn't want employees to wear the hijab or turban on the job. Small companies were most skeptical about the idea of employees wearing religious headdress. The study asked 1300 small and medium large companies what they preferred and disliked about potential employees. 40% said it was unthinkable they'll employ somebody with religious headdress, 32% said they preferred not to employ such people.
Sources: Aftenposten (Norwegian), Metro Jobb (Swedish)
Interview with Taliban spokesperson
The Saudi-owned international Arabic newspaper, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat yesterday carried a detailed interview with a Taliban spokesperson, Mullah Qari Yusuf Ahmadi (pictured above) which can be read in full here in English. As far as the current conflict goes and the recent call from US General Petraeus to hold talks with the Taliban, the most relevant part from the interview appeared to be this:
[Asharq Al-Awsat] What is your opinion on the statement made by General Petraeus, the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, that they are prepared to negotiate and that there is a strategy for reconciliation?
[Ahmadi] This is another US trick to change the character of the struggle between us. Our first and last demand is the expulsion of the occupation before discussing any other topic. Our goal is not negotiations; our goal is to expel the occupiers. Moreover, there is no reconciliation with the occupiers; there is armed struggle and relentless resistance until the occupiers withdraw their forces from our country. Negotiations under the shadow of occupation lead to continued occupation. When the Americans invaded our country they did not negotiate with anyone; therefore, they should not negotiate with us when they withdraw from Afghanistan. They want our surrender under the guise of negotiations; this is impossible to happen. Also, if they mean reconciliation between the Islamic Emirate and the ruling regime in Kabul, this is impossible as well because we are not fighting the occupation in order to reconcile with its lackeys. Either these lackeys surrender to the emirate and thus win the general amnesty proposed to those that collaborated with the occupiers or they withdraw with their masters on top of the same tanks that brought them. The fate of communist president Najibullah [he was hanged from a street lamppost in Kabul in 1996] still revives the memory from atop the lampposts in Kabul.
Ramadan 2010: MM Poetry Contest | Semifinalists, Day 5
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5
Welcome to day five! Now that we’re almost done publishing the semifinalists and the voting process is also underway, please do check out day 3 onwards’ poems and cast your vote.
Note: Voting for poems published on Day 3 closes today! Cast your vote if you haven’t yet!
A quick recap on how it’s going to be:
1) We’re going to publish four shortlisted poems a day, for five days.
2) Each day, you, the public, vote for the poem that you like best out of the four published.
3) The poems with the most votes from each day will go on to the final round, where a second poll will decide the winner and runners up.
Simple, eh?
As beautiful as the poems all are, and we are indeed experiencing the Holy month of Ramadan, the spirit of the competition can be pretty overwhelming. That’s why here’s a simple reminder to keep it clean, and wholesome, healthy competitiveness that adds to the fun but does not hurt anyone in anyway.
Without further ado, here’s the fifth group of semifinalists for your pleasurable reading.
Please don’t forget to vote!
__________________________________________________________________________
Ramadan Oh Ramadan
By: Zuha Mirza
Ramadan oh Ramadan how I miss thee
You come for one month and leave us for an 11 month spree
You bring us both blessings and control from the shaytaan,
But eventually leave us, anticipating next year’s Ramadan.
Ramadan oh Ramadan how I miss thee
Waking up with tired eyes for suhoor and some tea
Frying samosas and filling up our plates in time for iftaar with glee
The sweet and savory taste of the kajoor
Keeps me filled from iftar to suhoor
Ramadan oh Ramadan how I miss thee
Taraweeh and ibadaah, I perform with Allah’s decree
I make dua with immense faith and concentration
Hoping this Ramadan’s fasts will be accepted without any hesitation
Ramadan oh Ramadan how I miss thee
I hope to meet you this year, so I can welcome you contently
Ramadan oh Ramadan how I miss thee
I hope I can meet you the next year, so I can keep fasts in honor of HE
Ramadan oh Ramadan how I LOVE thee
That I keep missing you, even when you’re not here with me
_______________________________________________________________________
Where hope lies
By: Miriam Islam
Engulfed in the blackness of despair, drowning with deeds beyond repair
The sinner walks a lonely path
A desperate effort to heal the wounded aftermath
Chased by the demons of desire
The dunya led him closer to the fire
The glitter of pleasures and death never pending
Threw him into sins never ending.
So great is the shame, marred with emotions unnamed
How can he dare to call upon his lord again?
With a heavy heart and eyes downcast
Dreams of carefree days go past
A time when it was so easy to raise up hands and freely request
Innocent pleas and simple decisions, praying Allah would ease the rest.
Requesting from his Lord most high, most bountiful
Who made all good things seem possible, and the evil unthinkable.
So when did the light of goodness fade into darkness?
Was it through the extinguish of the conscience
Or did it diminish with the weak voice of reason
When overshadowed by the shout of Satan?
So the sinner walks a lonely path,
No longer seeking wrong or right, only hoping for a ray of light.
A light of purpose, a light of redemption
A lamp of guidance, leading to the road of salvation.
A way to repent for the time unspent
For the obligations unfulfilled and the book unread
The deeds which rendered the weak heart dead.
So what can revive the stricken heart?
Allah set a month apart.
A time of healing, a time of hope
A time when everyone can grasp a lifeline boat.
Drifting to Allah’s mercy, escaping to the plains of tranquillity
Wherein lies a night, better than a thousand nights.
Containing beauty and power concealed from sight.
A time to walk through a new door and emerge with vows of “no more”
And so the sinner walks a lonely path
Towards renewal and amendments for the past.
Through doors of repentance and levels of submission
Allah’s mercy leads him to the doors of admission
The promise of two gardens for taqwa for a lord unseen
In the prevention of a fearful deed.
For O son of Adam if your sins reached the sky
But you called on your lord just one time
You would be forgiven as if you had never turned to transgression.
So never despair of the mercy of Ar Rahman, turn the key in Ramadan.
Reignite the former glory of Eemaan.
_______________________________________________________________________
Untitled
By: Umm Anas
Today my pen truthfully writes,
And my heart through it speaks,
The gift of Rafeeqal ‘Ala,
In this blessed Ramadan it seeks.
The lips and throat may be parched,
The tongue’s dry yet under control,
O Allah! I need this Ramadan,
To ransom back my lost caged soul.
It trailed off knocking door to door,
Into the Ghostly Town of Desires,
Seeking happiness with security,
And a safe place to retire.
O Allah! My soul became Shaytan’s Puppet,
Jumping to whatever ‘advice’ he gave,
Dear Allah! Let me reach Laylatul Qadr,
To show you that I’m a worthy slave.
Mountains of sins stand threateningly united,
Blocking my view of Your Paradise,
O Allah! Your slave’s trapped in a Well of Darkness,
Pull her out before her spirit dies!
Tarawih’s heavy on the body,
Yet so light and refreshing for the burning soul,
O Allah! Help me cash out all my nights,
So that I can redeem all the nights my sleep stole.
In crowds of excited Muslims at Iftaar,
In a certain anxiousness I feel alone,
Wondering whether You granted me forgiveness,
For the sins in my Past’s Emotional Cyclone…
I admit! Drenched I am in Your Blessings,
I realize that everyday soon after Suhoor,
For it’s easy to pacify the growls in the stomach with the hope of an upcoming Iftar,
Unlike the many ever-fasting needy and poor.
A genuine smile can glue broken ties,
A hug can extinguish the hate,
The currency of Jannah is Ikhlaq,
Which ensures a clean slate.
But the motivation in me vanishes,
As I flick through the pages of my Past,
Ink of failure blackens them,
And also the blame of being a spiritual outcast.
Out of frustration:
My soul knocks at the door of Ramadan,
Hoping to benefit from its company,
It takes my hand and consoles my restless heart,
With words Promising of His Mercy:
“He directs the Creation in their matters,
He pardons the Seeker in the 3rd part of the night,
You think He cannot forgive YOU?
Or give you the Ability to fight?
Do not doubt His Promises,
And do not doubt His Might,
Enter the Paradise of Dunia,
By remembering Him in times of plight!
Increase in reciting the Quraan,
Ponder but Increase not in speed,
For the Plant of Taqwa grows slowly,
When you with the Quraan nourish it’s seed.
READ in the Name of Thy Lord,
Who created you and that girl who’s deaf and mute,
She memorized Quraan merely by reading lips,
Why does your Faith in Allah then lack resolute?
Control the Rein of your Nafs with His Words,
Devote a portion of it to memorize,
Do you not want to be clothed with the Heavenly ‘Robe of Honor’,
and majestically crowned In His Beautiful Paradise?”
At this my eyes moistened,
And I knew those forgotten words are true,
Has Allah gifted me with this Ramadan,
to start my journey anew?
As my pen finishes dutifully writing,
The narrations of my strengthened heart,
It suggests that if the browser of your spiritual life seems stuck,
Then it’s only YOU stopping YOU from a ‘restart’!
________________________________________________________________________
The Blanket
By: Mahfara Bakht
Ramadan
appears
When my soul
is hungry
Like a blanket made of
the softest wool,
It wraps itself
around me;
Whispers to me,
“I am here now,”
And I hold onto
This embrace
My heart—
Battered
From the blows of sin
Uncovers, and
in the light,
Feels safe again.
“Turn now,”
says Ramadan
To me
“Turn to Him
And His Mercy,”
I do.
I turn and feel
A load—
so heavy,
Rise up and
Burst
From my well
of tears:
Relief.
And then,
A sensation,
Like water down
A parched throat
The heart’s thirst—
Quenched;
The soul’s hunger—
No more.
It now rests
In Ramadan’s embrace
Like nectar at
A flower’s core
And so it is
That my Lord knew
I needed Him
Before I
knew it myself.
_____________________________________________________________________
View PollEnjoyed Day 5? There’s more! Check out: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | The Finals
Links will activate as each day arrives!
New York Muslim groups support Park51, condemn promotion of 'ethnic and religious hatred'
It is "unethical, insensitive and inhumane" to oppose the planned mosque near ground zero, more than 50 leading Muslim organizations said Wednesday as they cast the intense debate as a symptom of religious intolerance in America.
Leaders of the Majlis Ash-Shura of Metropolitan New York, an Islamic leadership council that represents a broad spectrum of Muslims in the city, gathered on the steps of City Hall to issue a statement calling for a stop to religious intolerance and affirming the right of the center's developers to build two blocks north of the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
"We support the right of our Muslim brothers who wish to build that center there," said Imam Al Amin Abdul Latif, president of the Majlis Ash-Shura. "However, the bigger issue and the broader issue is the issue of ethnic and religious hatred being spread by groups trying to stop the building of mosques and Islamic institutions across the country."
This is the first time that the council as a body has spoken out on the weeks-old debate over the proposed center. "When the issue became hotter and hotter, and people made more statements against the mosques, then we decided to get involved in it," said Syed Sajid Husain, secretary general of the council. He said the process of bringing together the leaders to agree on a statement also took a handful of meetings.
Leaders of the council said they were calling attention to what they claimed was an anti-Islamic climate, and that the development of a center near ground zero is simply one example.
They also cited a suspicious fire that damaged construction equipment at the site of a future mosque in Tennessee that is being investigated by the FBI, and the successful opposition to the proposed conversion of a property owned by a Catholic Church into a mosque and community center on Staten Island, a New York City borough off the southern tip of Manhattan.
Islamic leaders on Wednesday said they would support a move to another location, if that's what the imam and his supporters choose to do. But they emphasized that Muslims also were killed in the terrorist attacks and were first responders.
"We declare unethical, insensitive and inhumane, the notion that our co-religionists are not entitled to the respect of a place of worship according to their faith, near the location where men and women of our religion worked, lived and died – just like other people," the group's statement said in part.
The group is not associated with the planned Islamic center but is representative of a significant number of New York Muslim leaders.
Associated Press, 1 September 2010
See also ABNA, 2 September 2010
How to Kill Goyim (Non Jews) & Influence People!
Leading fundamentalist rabbis gather in Israel to defend the publication of a book, Torat Ha’Melech, that attempted to provide halakhic justification for the killing of non-Jews, including innocent children and families.
The gathering exposed not only the ferocious racism of a swath of Israel’s pro-settlement rabbinate, but the powerlessness of the government to stop a bunch of genocidal theocrats.
As soon as it was published late last year, Torat Ha’Melech sparked a national uproar. The controversy began when an Israeli tabloid panned the book’s contents as “230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew.”
According to the book’s author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, “Non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature” and should be killed in order to “curb their evil inclinations.” “If we kill a gentile who has has violated one of the seven commandments… there is nothing wrong with the murder,” Shapira insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source (or at least a very selective interpretation of it) he declared: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The full article appears on Max Blumenthal’s blog
Riz Khan on Afghan Women
The recent cover of Time magazine featuring the photo of Aisha has sparked debate about the US presence in Afghanistan and what it means for women’s rights there. Here at MMW, the overwhelming sentiment seems to be that the image is yellow journalism at its finest, reinforcing the antiquated rhetoric of “saving women” and exploiting Afghan women by intimating that US occupation has kept Afghan women safe.
Riz Khan of Al Jazeera seems to be cognizant of the sensationalistic effects of the image. In a recent episode of his self-titled show, he addresses “Women’s Rights in Afghanistan.” Khan discusses the Time image as well as whether the foreign military presence in Afghanistan is helping or hurting Afghan women.
Viewers are introduced to Khan’s two guests: Wazhma Frogh and Gayle Lemmon. Wazhma Frogh is an Afghan activist who received the U.S. State Department’s 2009 International Woman of Courage Award for her work on human rights in Afghanistan.
Also there to weigh in was American author Gayle Lemmon, who has written a book on Afghanistan titled: The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, which tells the story of an Afghan girl whose business created jobs for more than 100 women in Kabul during the Taliban years.
The first half of the show discusses the Time cover image as Riz Khan poses the question of whether the picture hurts the image of Afghan women. Frogh believes that
“By showing images as such we actually detach the social realities that deteriorate the situation of Afghan women on the ground; we actually remove the situation of Afghan woman from a social perspective [and] from a governance perspective. The more accountability is fading from Afghanistan, the more we see that such acts are happening so I don’t know how much it can help. It might help one person to get her out of Afghanistan, but what happens to the hundreds of Afghan women who go through the same or worse situation on a daily basis.”
Then, the much debated question of whether U.S. military occupation is helping or hurting Afghan women is posed. Lemmon expresses the idea that the American public must come to terms with the fact that there is a pressing need for U.S. presence in Afghanistan as a means for our security. She reminds viewers that it was not the plight of Afghan women that lead to the invasion but, it was instead, the result of 9/11.
However, I recall that this wasn’t the requiem trumpeted by Laura Bush shortly after the occupation, when she began spouting Western Feminist rhetoric, lamenting the forced wearing of burqas and the prohibition of nail polish by the Taliban.
In fact, a few months after the invasion, in his 2002 State of the Union address, Bush announced, “The last time we met in this chamber, the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free and are part of Afghanistan’s new government.”
Maybe the warmongering seemed justified and continued military presence seems justified if people believe that women are being rescued from oppression because of it?
In Lemmon’s opinion, troops cannot bring Afghan women equality, but U.S. presence creates a safe space where women can begin to help themselves? I guess she missed the recent news of U.S. soldiers digging bullets out of women’s bodies and then stabbing them to cover up civilian deaths as a result of an American Special Operations assault gone bad.
Frogh, in contrast, says that the presence of international troops is helping the stability of the country to some extent, but it does not translate into women’s rights being improved. She says that tying the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan to the state of women in Afghanistan is a big mistake. For her, it is not as easy as posing women’s rights vs. foreign presence. This rhetoric, which has framed the debate on Afghan women, needs to be deconstructed.
Frogh also notes that we must distinguish between rural and urban areas with respect to how women are treated. The achievements and progression made in the past nine years of occupation are focused mainly on urban women, who are easily reached and helped. While, women in the rural areas are not getting education, literacy rates are plummeting and their situation is worsening, as they continue to be subject to a masculine interpretation of religion.
One thing that Riz Khan’s program brought to light is that the damage done to women’s rights is not just a result of Taliban rule nor is it just a result of occupation. The problems have preceded both the Taliban’s rule and U.S. occupation and thus cannot be expected to be solved in just nine years of occupation. What is clear is that neither the Taliban’s supposed “religious” rule, nor the occupational force’s supposed “saving” tactics have provided both rural and urban Afghan women with the stability and infrastructure necessary to improve their situation.
Austria: Prosecution investigating FPÖ muezzin-shooting game
Via Austrian Times:
The Styrian Greens have reported the Freedom Party (FPÖ) for agitation over a computer game in which the player must shoot at mosques and kill muezzins [ed: with little stop signs].(more)
The FPÖ’s Styrian branch is identified as creator of the online game called "Moschee ba ba" (Bye, bye mosque). After the gamer has demolished a sufficient number of mosques a statement appears saying: "Styria is full of minarets and mosques. So that this doesn’t happen (in reality): Vote Gerhard Kurzmann and the FPÖ!"
(...)
The online game urges the player to stop green and red muezzins – a possible hint to the Greens and the Social Democrats (SPÖ) which comes just days after federal FPÖ leader Heinz-Christian Strache called the SPÖ an "Islamist party".
FPÖ Styria boss Gerhard Kurzmann defended the controversial PC competition by claiming it was making people aware of a situation "existing in Europe for a long time."
Update: New CNN Interviews | Ilm Summit 2010 Recap: July 28-29 | The Media and the FBI
Recap Posts:
- July 23
- July 24-25
- July 26-27
- July 28-29 (This post)
- July 30-Aug 1
The CNN interview that’s described in this post can be found here and just aired this morning, September 2nd, 2010:
Each year, Shaykh Yasir adds a new wrinkle to Ilm Summit to “raise the bar” so to speak. This year was no different, except instead of inviting speakers that could tell us all about speaking to the media if in the unlikely event it were to happen or how to speak in a of roundtable discussion that the media was watching and the FBI would be a part of, we were now in the midst of it.
A number of brothers and sisters had the opportunity to speak with reporters from two prominent national news organizations. The questions raised related to how Muslims felt they were perceived, what difficulties they were encountering, and their take on why the crazy neo-con right hated us so much.
Perhaps the irony of ironies was our beloved Shaykh Jamaal, who we’ve been looking for forever, was all of a sudden interviewing on TV, and if the story airs, showing up on national tv to speak out against extremism. Shaykh Yasir’s elder brother ‘Ubaid (a student of Shaykh Jamaal’s from back in the day as well) said that if this kept up, he was going to start calling him “diva” from now on =)
As for the roundtable discussion, Abu Noor AbdulMalik Ryan (you’ve seen his comments on here before), Mohammed Elibiary (the guy rooting for McCain back in ’08), ‘Iesa Galloway (moderator), sister Rana al-Dabagh, Shaykhs Yasir and Waleed, as well as yours truly sat down with Supervisory Special Agent Brad Deardorff to have a discussion about issues Muslims are facing with law enforcement. There should be a video on it somewhere out there, not sure who has it, but eventually, it’ll be an MM video, and you can see for yourself what we discussed, and if it was substantive or touchy-feely fluffy PR posturing (or a combination thereof =)
In all honesty, the media was a distraction for me personally, and I think it was so for a lot of students between Tuesday and Thursday. In the past, Ilm Summit was this isolated iman bubble where we’d disconnect from the rest of the world to focus on just seeking knowledge for two weeks. Having it abbreviated to 10 days, and then adding all the other noise on top, did take away from the experience a bit.
The good thing about the media was that was that they weren’t obnoxious jerks looking for gotchas (unless you’re Sarah Palin, and asking about what magazines you read is “gotcha-doncha-know?” journalism) and they were in fact the exact opposite – they were empathetic and looking for our perspective from our perspective. So while their presence was distracting, it was most definitely not unwelcome, and I was glad they came, especially one of the videographers (because I was able to talk to him later about his experiences filming the humanitarian crisis in Haiti).
The Ramadan Tafseer Series: Repentance | AbdulNasir Jangda
Link to videos by clicking on button below (new videos will have this tag)
The Ramadan Tafseer Series: Repentance By Shaykh Abdul Nasir Jangda
Click here to view the embedded video.
