"Verily my solats, my ibadah, my life and my death I surrender to Almighty Allah, Creator and Lord of all the worlds. Never will I associate anything with Him. So am I commanded and I am of those who are Muslims."
Surah An Nahl (Chapter 16 Verse 125) Holy Al Quran Al Kareem.
" Invite(all Mankind) to the Way of your Lord (Islam) with Wisdom and Beautiful Preaching and Reason (discuss, argue, debate) with them ( Non Muslims and Muslims -deviant, innovators, liberals, alike) in a Way that is better. Truly, your Lord knows best who has gone astray from His Path, and He is the Best Knower of those who are guided."
Israelis who wanted fair treatment for the mistreated Palestinians demonstrated against the Zionist regime in Jerusalem.
This protest however was blacked out from the Israeli and international media! As such, the whole world didn't know that even the Jews there didn't like to see Palestinians being massacred, their homes demolished and lands annexed by the Tel Aviv regime!
Allahyarham Sheikh Ahmed Deedat's predictions about the situation today in Palestine before the blessed sheikh became unwell due to his old age.
The reality of the Gaza Massacre as predicted by Almarhum Sheikh Ahmed Deedat has come home to roost.
Watch this courageous girl try her best to stop Israeli Zionist terrorist from shooting at the Palestinian youths who were throwing rocks at the Zionist terrorists to stop the Zionists from entering their areas.
May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala bless each and everyone of us with the best of Iman and accept our amals!
I pray that He will open up your hearts and shower you with His Guidance and Blessings.
To my brothers and sisters, fellow Children of our Father, the Prophet Adam Alaihis Salam and our Mother Sayyidatina Hawwa Radhiallahu Anha, I invite you to learn about the Life of the Last Messenger of Allah, Almighty Lord and Creator of us all, by watching this full length movie produced by the late Moustapha Akkad and starring amongst others legends of Hollywood like the late Anthony Quinn who takes on the role of Sayyidina Hamzah, the Prophet's uncle.
The movie's storyline is approved by the Islamic scholars of the world to be accurate and in accordance with historical facts.
The portrayal of the person of Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam is not shown as forbidden by the Blessed Messenger Rahmatulil Alamin.
In this movie, it is shown how things were during the advent of the last of Allah's messengers to Mankind.
Contrary to what many uninformed people would have you believe, Islam did not come into being with the arrival of Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam.
It started with the creation of the Nur of Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam from which Allah Azza Wa Jalla then created everything else that we now perceive and when Allah Rabbul Alamin created Adam our Father Alaihis Salam, Islam was revealed to him way back then1
Muhammad Khatamun Nabiyyi came to complete the revelation of Islam through the 124,000 prophets and messengers of God over Time.
Islam is not the newest faith on Earth.
It is the only Faith revealed from God Almighty Himself. The rest is just human imagination and the work of those who have vested interests of creating grandeur for themselves and their imagined deities.
This movie tells the story of the Greatest Messenger of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Only those whose hearts are not blinkered by pride and prejudice or vain ego will come to recognize and appreciate what Muhammad al Mustafa, Rahmatulil Alamin has conveyed to us, his ummah, the last of Mankind.
May Allah Azza Wa Jalla bless and guide us to discover the Truth of Islam and what Allah's Noblest Messenger has left for us!
In our lives, we come across many challenges and situations where at times we might feel inadequate and lacking in something compared to those whom we might consider to be perfect in their beings, etcetera.
The reality is that each and every one of us are unique and created by Almighty Allah with our plus and minuses.
Watch this video and marvel at this classic example where looks do not matter but what talent is unearthed from this humble looking fellow who astonishes even the ever critical Simon Cowell, the notorious critic infamous for his sharp tongue lashings at the talent show contestants!
Verily there is a champion in each one of us that needs to be nurtured and discovered.
Believe in yourself!
Strive hard and remain committed to achieving whatever it is that you aim for!
Never give up for the second that you do, you will have lost your chances at making it!
I wonder if there will remain anyone watching this who doesn't get moved to tears listening to this outstanding person, who despite not having the looks reminiscent of the heartthrobs of the music or movie industry still manages to evoke in us a sense of marvel at what extraordinary talent and capabilities that The Almighty has imbued in him?
It's heartening to see the British general population arise and demand that the British Broadcasting Corporation stop its propaganda in helping the Zionist Israeli occupying terrorist regime and to instead highlight the plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip which has been turned into the world's largest open air prison but walled up and closed the borders to Egypt and blocked by the sea where the Zionist Navy patrols at will, bombing any aid vessel that dares to sail ashore!
The BBC gets whacked by the noble hearted British peace activists and MPs like Jeremy Corbin and George Galloway leading the protests.
See MP George Galloway greet the crowd with the Islamic Salam!
I obtained a medical doctor's permission to republish this content in a forum where Kugan's probable causes of death was being discussed by the said doctor.
Here are his views.
"I would like to thank Mr.Poobalan for his wonderful posting of the video clip taken in the mortuary . After watching that clip I had a restless night and could not sleep the whole night . Adding to that horror I had to company my wife in watching the Horror movie in Star Movies last night . Driving to my other clinic in Butterworth, Penang this morning , the whole event kept running in my mind . As a Surgical Medical officer, I have done many postmortems. I have assisted in doing postmortems in murder cases too.
The postmortem always gives a clue on what caused the death and the estimated time of death based on the rigor mortis that has set in . As a student in medical college I have always been fascinated in Forensic Medicine .
Looking at Kugan's dead body and the wounds inflicted on him gives a very good clue on what the probable cause of death would be?
The most clearest indication of the cause of death is the froth seen coming out of his mouth . Death due to asphyxia ( suffocation ).
The video clip must have been taken before the postmortem .
I did not see any mid line incision on the chest and abdomen . This is my assertion from what we call as external postmortem .
Based on my experience , I did my own external postmortem from the video clips and the photos that I have received .
I wish there was a closer picture of the wound . I managed to zoom in to enlarge the picture to get a better view. We usually start the external postmortems from top to down but in this case I like to take it from the bottom .
First of all , Lets look at the legs . You will notice that below both the knees , the colour was darker then the thigh . That is due to pooling of blood in the lower limbs .
At the time of his death the blood did not have a chance to return back to the heart .
When a person dies in a lying down position on his back , you will notice this pooling of blood on the dependent sides of the back . In this case it was noticed on his lower limbs .
My assumption here is that he had died on a sitting position or was lying down with his feet hanging down . The blood did not have time to return back to the heart .
Moving up to the back . There is a huge bruising at the hypochondriac areas of both sides of his abdomen( near the kidney ) . This bruising is caused by the rupture of the capillary veins and arteries , which is probably due to repeated punching or kicking on the area .
The wounds on the back are not so fresh . In certain areas , there are granulation tissue showing healing . This are injuries inflicted probably 2 to 3 days prior to his death .
The wounds is most probably caused by a blunt object tearing into the skin due to pressure. Probably he was made to lie down on some rough surface and dragged on it ..
Moving to the chest . There are some amount of bruises on the chest indicating trauma to the chest . The chest wall appear sunken in . He probably has couple of rib fractures . Postmortem of the chest will confirm .
Next interesting thing clearly noticed was the abrasion on the neck with a semi circle bruise .
This is probably due to strangulation on the neck probably with a rope which caused the abrasion.
The abrasion and the bruise is position exactly on the cricoids cartilage . Probably the force would have caused the cartilage to break .
The face did not have any gross deformities . There was no signs of the 'Raccoons eyes' ( Black Eye ). He was probably slapped but not punched on his face . The absence of the Raccoons eyes indicates that there was no serious injury to the head .
There was no bleeding from the ears which also rules out any head injuries. What interests me most is the blood oozing out of the mouth and the froth .
The blood is fresh and appears as if it was coughed out. The blood is most probably from the tracheal injury .
That would have caused choking . The choking had triggered bronchospasm causing his air passages to constrict and caused difficulty to breathe .
The froth is not blood stained . That shows there was no injury to the lung tissue . Froth is usually seen in death due to asphyxia .
Another thing , when there is a tracheal injury, when a person drinks cold water , the water moves down into the trachea instead of the oesophagus causing vaso vagal inhibition and thus causing broncho spasm. Fluid accumulation in the lung also explains the white froth .
Overall I can see the body is already in rigor mortis . Rigor Mortis takes place after 6 hours after death and completes in 12 hours .
So at the time the video was taken, Kugan was already dead for more than 18 hours .
No sign of any active resuscitation is noted . His body was most probably discovered after he had died . The cause of death is due to asphyxia but most definitely not due to asthma. Historically, law enforcement officials were rarely if ever held to account.
Today, despite increased legal safeguards, law enforcement officers who flout them can still enjoy effective impunity when they are alleged to have abused or even unlawfully killed their suspects @ victims . Racist Law officers are always brutal and most brutal officers are always racist. The opinion expressed above is not the expert opinion of a Forensic Specialist . It is based on the observation and the knowledge of medicine .
The opinion here is not prejudiced towards the Police either. I hope someone from (xxxxx forum) can provide me further details of the death and what was in the postmortem report?
Does anybody have the statistics of deaths in the police lockups of Malaysia? Kugan, was just a car thief . A waste in the society . Probably a drug addict and a disgrace to our community . Some might say that he deserved to die .
If he was caught by the public and beaten to death, the public would have not made so much noise.
Some said it was his karma . He had to die a violent death due to his violent life style. Whatever is being said or done, a human is still a humanbeing . No human has the right to take another man's life .
No matter how cruel a man is, or no matter how gruesome a man's crime is , we have to respect the Law .
That separates us from those who live in the jungles . The Law was created not only to protect the innocent but also to deliver justice .
No man has the right to take the Law unto himself .
The Law punishes the criminal based on the crime committed .
Even when a person is sentenced to death, it is by death hanging and based upon the crime committed and the intention to commit such a crime . There have been deaths in the police lock up before . This death received the public's attention because we had the chance to see the dead body for our self and others through the internet .
This has become possible because of the growing unity in the Indian community .
Kugan's death is an eye opener for everyone .
The community should realize that this should not be happening in Malaysia .
A prisoner has his rights and we have to know them .
Why was Kugan questioned without the presence of a lawyer?
He should have had a lawyer present to advise him. I hope anybody who is a lawyer will explain regarding the rights of an individual when he is arrested . The community today is very upset with what they have seen recently with Kugan's death .
Are we going to prevent such incident from occurring or prevent others from sharing the same fate as Kugan or are we going to join hands in preventing those unfortunate from becoming someone like Kugan?
Who are we going to blame ?
Is the MalaysianGovernment responsible for depriving our Indian community the basic education ?
Are they responsible for the increase in poverty amongst our community ?
Why have our great leaders chosen by us , in the last 30 years not done anything to eliminate our misery and instead are busy elevating their assets?
Are we to be blamed for electing the wrong leaders ?
Do we blame Kugan's parents for their failure to nurture the son to be a good citizen ? Kugan is not a hero . He was a thief.
His death is of no great loss to society . He is not a saint or fit to be glorified and made into a statue .
However he is a part of us . He represented our failure and represented our suffering .
His death should bring about a greater unity among our community .
For the sake of our future we should thrive forward to prevent another soul from taking an early departure .
We have to educate the next generation in order to prevent another Kugan from appearing .
Let Kugan's death be a lesson to all of us and let Kugan be the Ghost of our past .
Let us thrive to build unity and prosperity in our community for the sake of our future generation . What happened to Kugan was a sad tragedy .
Whether it was his choice to choose the wrong path or was it society that drove him to choose such a path only he could have answered but those who were responsible for his early departure although they were eager to solve the case had no right to torture another human being to death! My sympathies to the family who have to live with this traumatic experience for the rest of their lives .
All we can do is to pray to God to forgive Kugan for his crimes for he has paid his dues dearly by undergoing a tremendous torture and eventually paid with his life.
As for our community, the Ghost of Kugan will remain to haunt us constantly and remind us of our sufferings whilst our elected political and society leaders sleep peacefully dreaming about their bank balances get bigger .
Justice Has Still Not Been Served.
Dr.Sreedharan
* Minor grammatical errors and typos have been corrected by me. The gist of Dr.Sreedharan's article remains untouched.
Referring to the late Kugan A/L Ananthan's death at the hands of the police in the Subang Taipan Police Station's lockup, there have been conflicting views about his death.
I came across this comment asking why people are protesting about the death of a car thief?
The details of the forum will not be disclosed due to security reasons but the gist of this forumer's views merits consideration for publishing.
Here are the contents of the comment @ from a Malaysian Indian lady.
I don't even understand why there was a protest?
The police just savedthe country from a hooligan? It's their job done well.
How many times do we actually see the police doing a good job. We should be rejoicing???
I couldn't be more happier that this scumbag had died. He has nothing to dowith me, of course. He died of natural causes. Period.
These idiots are drunkards and drug addicts and most of their internal system is almost ruined. A little whack is enough to cause death. Even if he died due to excessive beatings and torture, he deserves it.
He was a thief and there was proof. Even if there is no proof, he was watched and monitored for some time before he getting caught. That is enough.
Imagine at 22, he is already a thief.
He probably did other petty crimes at home, school, housing area before graduating to other states.
He'll just stay in prison for a couple of years "training" for other crimes and eventually come out and probably rob a bank, start raping, killing and whatever other crimes as he age and he will know how to escape without being charged.
These kind of people never change. It's their basic character.
Of course, in this case the only person who should be sad is the mother for not bringing up her son properly and causing harm to the society.
Stealing cars not a harm, eh?
Wait till you get your car(s) stolen and then not being able to get loan due to high commitment or other reasons and get into chronic depression after that?
For the other's, you should be glad and thank God he is dead!
You andyour family are saved from being raped or robbed or slaughtered ordismembered or whatever in the future. Think of that. Please be positive and look at the bright side.
If you are afraid of your kids ending up like him, then bring them upwell, give more love and less money, be with them, provide not only more academic tuition's but also send to religious classes, talk to them more instead of letting them talk to their friends, don't let them watch Tamil movies which contain excessive sexual acts and fighting's (Tamil movie's are best known for that), check out their friends and their friend's family background.
If you have to, check their caste as well. Not to be an extremist, the caste system was created for a reason. Go figure.
Most importantly strengthen the family bond and your children will not end up like this garbage Kugan.
It's a great thing a thief had died. He was meant to die that way. It's his Karma.
Having said all that, nevertheless, we should be careful of innocentpeople being tortured to death.
Police shouldn't be able to abuse their power and over torture suspects.
The suspect could have admitted due to the torture and so, without the torture, they will keep mum because he is tied to some pact made to the other members of the gang.
Apparently, they take turns to go into jail. Most of the time police can't do anything because they use protection spells (pukau as well), no witness, no proof, no evidence but they are very sure the suspect is the person who committed the crime.
Sometimes, they use some "special" officers to settle the case silently. They have to, in order to keep the peace in the country.
In a recent case, the police didn't even lay a finger on the suspect who caused armed robbery due to lack of evidence.
He was later linked to some other petty theft and will be out soon to commit greater crimes.
Thanks to this "nice" Malay Inspector.
Another Indian ASP wanted to settle a case out of court between 2 parties where one person was threatened to be killed because both were Indians.
He said that since we are Indians, we shouldn't be fighting even knowing the fact, one party were gangsters and the other is a female?
So, imagine we have Indian policeman who can't even be bothered of the life of another Indian..can we really blame the government or the Home Minister?
Just accept if anyone says there are more Indian gangsters..we are the only race having extremely violent Tamil movies being watched by all age.
Vijay takes aruval @ 'machete' to save the city but our gangsters take the aruval @ 'machete' to kill someone or rob them.
Probably they should kill all suspects after he admits to the crime tosave the world from his future crimes.
I know mothers who insists their child is innocent just to protect them even knowing they have committed the crime.
If truly an innocent person is caught, then it's best to get a lawyer immediately after he is being arrested.
If your son is really a thug and by accident he dies, then be thankful he is not alive to kill you in the end to pay for his drinks or drugs.
Then again, as usual people will argue on the above statements. Waittill you are the one affected and unjustly treated by the police (because sama bangsa), then you would know the pain of the other.
Tillthen, go on defending crap ministers, thugs and gangsters. Geez!
Praise the Lord for taking Kugan's life.
If police kills, it's theirjob. If you kill, it's murder.
Watch Professor Avram Noah Chomsky, Author, Peace Activist, Critic of US Foreign Policy, Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speak about the US backed and financed Israeli regime's atrocities against the Gaza population of Palestinians in the 20 day onslaught and butchery that has been actually planned well in advance by both the Americans and Israelis.
13th January 2009
Part 1/6
Part 2/6
Part 3/6
Part 4/6
Part 5/6
Part 6/6
Questions & Answer Session
Q & A Part 1/7
Q & A Part 2/7
Q & A Part 3/7
Q & A Part 4/7
Q & A 5/7
Q & A 6/7
Q & A 7/7
Professor Chomsky's views on President Barack Obama, Israel & Palestine : 23rd January 2009 -
Barack Obama is recognized to be a person of acute intelligence, a legal scholar, careful with his choice of words.
He deserves to be taken seriously - both what he says, and what he omits. Particularly significant is his first substantive statement on foreign affairs, on January 22, at the State Department, when introducing George Mitchell to serve as his special envoy for Middle East peace.
Mitchell is to focus his attention on the Israel-Palestine problem, in the wake of the recent US-Israeli invasion of Gaza.
During the murderous assault, Obama remained silent apart from a few platitudes, because, he said, there is only one president - a fact that did not silence him on many other issues.
His campaign did, however, repeat his statement that "if missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that."
He was referring to Israeli children, not the hundreds of Palestinian children being butchered by US arms, about whom he could not speak, because there was only one president.
On January 22, however, the one president was Barack Obama, so he could speak freely about these matters - avoiding, however, the attack on Gaza, which had, conveniently, been called off just before the inauguration.
Obama's talk emphasized his commitment to a peaceful settlement. He left its contours vague, apart from one specific proposal: "the Arab peace initiative," Obama said, "contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts.
Now is the time for Arab states to act on the initiative's promise by supporting the Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all."
Obama is not directly falsifying the Arab League proposal, but the carefully framed deceit is instructive.
The Arab League peace proposal does indeed call for normalization of relations with Israel - in the context - repeat, in the context of a two-state settlement in terms of the longstanding international consensus, which the US and Israel have blocked for over 30 years, in international isolation, and still do.
The core of the Arab League proposal, as Obama and his Mideast advisers know very well, is its call for a peaceful political settlement in these terms, which are well-known, and recognized to be the only basis for the peaceful settlement to which Obama professes to be committed.
The omission of that crucial fact can hardly be accidental, and signals clearly that Obama envisions no departure from US rejectionism.
His call for the Arab states to act on a corollary to their proposal, while the US ignores even the existence of its central content, which is the precondition for the corollary, surpasses cynicism.
The most significant acts to undermine a peaceful settlement are the daily US-backed actions in the occupied territories, all recognized to be criminal: taking over valuable land and resources and constructing what the leading architect of the plan, Ariel Sharon, called "Bantustans" for Palestinians - an unfair comparison because the Bantustans were far more viable than the fragments left to Palestinians under Sharon's conception, now being realized.
But the US and Israel even continue to oppose a political settlement in words, most recently in December 2008, when the US and Israel (and a few Pacific islands) voted against a UN resolution supporting "the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" (passed 173 to 5, US-Israel opposed, with evasive pretexts).
Obama had not one word to say about the settlement and infrastructure developments in the West Bank, and the complex measures to control Palestinian existence, designed to undermine the prospects for a peaceful two-state settlement.
His silence is a grim refutation of his oratorical flourishes about how "I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security."
Also unmentioned is Israel's use of US arms in Gaza, in violation not only of international but also US law.
Or Washington's shipment of new arms to Israel right at the peak of the US-Israeli attack, surely not unknown to Obama's Middle East advisers.
Obama was firm, however, that smuggling of arms to Gaza must be stopped.
He endorses the agreement of Condoleeza Rice and Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni that the Egyptian-Gaza border must be closed - a remarkable exercise of imperial arrogance, as the Financial Times observed: "as they stood in Washington congratulating each other, both officials seemed oblivious to the fact that they were making a deal about an illegal trade on someone else's border - Egypt in this case.
The next day, an Egyptian official described the memorandum as `fictional'." Egypt's objections were ignored.
Returning to Obama's reference to the "constructive" Arab League proposal, as the wording indicates, Obama persists in restricting support to the defeated party in the January 2006 election, the only free election in the Arab world, to which the US and Israel reacted, instantly and overtly, by severely punishing Palestinians for opposing the will of the masters.
A minor technicality is that Abbas's term ran out on January 9, and that Fayyad was appointed without confirmation by the Palestinian parliament (many of them kidnapped and in Israeli prisons).
Ha'aretz describes Fayyad as "a strange bird in Palestinian politics. On the one hand, he is the Palestinian politician most esteemed by Israel and the West.
However, on the other hand, he has no electoral power whatsoever in Gaza or the West Bank."
The report also notes Fayyad's "close relationship with the Israeli establishment," notably his friendship with Sharon's extremist adviser Dov Weiglass.
Though lacking popular support, he is regarded as competent and honest, not the norm in the US-backed political sectors.
Obama's insistence that only Abbas and Fayyad exist conforms to the consistent Western contempt for democracy unless it is under control.
Obama provided the usual reasons for ignoring the elected government led by Hamas. "To be a genuine party to peace," Obama declared, "the quartet [US, EU, Russia, UN] has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel's right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements."
Unmentioned, also as usual, is the inconvenient fact that the US and Israel firmly reject all three conditions.
In international isolation, they bar a two-state settlement including a Palestinian state; they of course do not renounce violence; and they reject the quartet's central proposal, the "road map."
Israel formally accepted it, but with 14 reservations that effectively eliminate its contents (tacitly backed by the US).
It is the great merit of Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, to have brought these facts to public attention for the first time - and in the mainstream, the only time.
It follows, by elementary reasoning, that neither the US nor Israel is a "genuine party to peace." But that cannot be. It is not even a phrase in the English language.
It is perhaps unfair to criticize Obama for this further exercise of cynicism, because it is close to universal, unlike his scrupulous evisceration of the core component of the Arab League proposal, which is his own novel contribution.
Also near universal are the standard references to Hamas: a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of Israel (or maybe all Jews).
Omitted are the inconvenient facts that the US-Israel are not only dedicated to the destruction of any viable Palestinian state, but are steadily implementing those policies.
Or that unlike the two rejectionist states, Hamas has called for a two-state settlement in terms of the international consensus: publicly, repeatedly, explicitly.
Obama began his remarks by saying: "Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel's security. And we will always support Israel's right to defend itself against legitimate threats."
There was nothing about the right of Palestinians to defend themselves against far more extreme threats, such as those occurring daily, with US support, in the occupied territories. But that again is the norm.
Also normal is the enunciation of the principle that Israel has the right to defend itself. That is correct, but vacuous: so does everyone. But in the context the cliche is worse than vacuous: it is more cynical deceit.
The issue is not whether Israel has the right to defend itself, like everyone else, but whether it has the right to do so by force. No one, including Obama, believes that states enjoy a general right to defend themselves by force: it is first necessary to demonstrate that there are no peaceful alternatives that can be tried. In this case, there surely are.
A narrow alternative would be for Israel to abide by a cease-fire, for example, the cease-fire proposed by Hamas political leader Khaled Mishal a few days before Israel launched its attack on December 27. Mishal called for restoring the 2005 agreement.
That agreement called for an end to violence and uninterrupted opening of the borders, along with an Israeli guarantee that goods and people could move freely between the two parts of occupied Palestine, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The agreement was rejected by the US and Israel a few months later, after the free election of January 2006 turned out "the wrong way." There are many other highly relevant cases.
The broader and more significant alternative would be for the US and Israel to abandon their extreme rejectionism, and join the rest of the world - including the Arab states and Hamas - in supporting a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus.
It should be noted that in the past 30 years there has been one departure from US-Israeli rejectionism: the negotiations at Taba in January 2001, which appeared to be close to a peaceful resolution when Israel prematurely called them off.
It would not, then, be outlandish for Obama to agree to join the world, even within the framework of US policy, if he were interested in doing so.
In short, Obama's forceful reiteration of Israel's right to defend itself is another exercise of cynical deceit - though, it must be admitted, not unique to him, but virtually universal.
The deceit is particularly striking in this case because the occasion was the appointment of Mitchell as special envoy.
Mitchell's primary achievement was his leading role in the peaceful settlement in northern Ireland. It called for an end to IRA terror and British violence. Implicit is the recognition that while Britain had the right to defend itself from terror, it had no right to do so by force, because there was a peaceful alternative: recognition of the legitimate grievances of the Irish Catholic community that were the roots of IRA terror.
When Britain adopted that sensible course, the terror ended. The implications for Mitchell's mission with regard to Israel-Palestine are so obvious that they need not be spelled out. And omission of them is, again, a striking indication of the commitment of the Obama administration to traditional US rejectionism and opposition to peace, except on its extremist terms.
Obama also praised Jordan for its "constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel" - which contrasts strikingly with US-Israeli refusal to deal with the freely elected government of Palestine, while savagely punishing Palestinians for electing it with pretexts which, as noted, do not withstand a moment's scrutiny.
It is true that Jordan joined the US in arming and training Palestinian security forces, so that they could violently suppress any manifestation of support for the miserable victims of US-Israeli assault in Gaza, also arresting supporters of Hamas and the prominent journalist Khaled Amayreh, while organizing their own demonstrations in support of Abbas and Fatah, in which most participants "were civil servants and school children who were instructed by the PA to attend the rally," according to the Jerusalem Post. Our kind of democracy.
Obama made one further substantive comment: "As part of a lasting cease-fire, Gaza's border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime..."
He did not, of course, mention that the US-Israel had rejected much the same agreement after the January 2006 election, and that Israel had never observed similar subsequent agreements on borders.
Also missing is any reaction to Israel's announcement that it rejected the cease-fire agreement, so that the prospects for it to be "lasting" are not auspicious.
As reported at once in the press, "Israeli Cabinet Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who takes part in security deliberations, told Army Radio on Thursday that Israel wouldn't let border crossings with Gaza reopen without a deal to free [Gilad] Schalit" (AP, Jan 22); ‘Israel to keep Gaza crossings closed...
An official said the government planned to use the issue to bargain for the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held by the Islamist group since 2006 (Financial Times, Jan. 23);
"Earlier this week, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that progress on Corporal Shalit's release would be a precondition to opening up the border crossings that have been mostly closed since Hamas wrested control of Gaza from the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority in 2007" (Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 23); "an Israeli official said there would be tough conditions for any lifting of the blockade, which he linked with the release of Gilad Shalit" (FT, Jan. 23); among many others.
Shalit's capture is a prominent issue in the West, another indication of Hamas's criminality.
Whatever one thinks about it, it is uncontroversial that capture of a soldier of an attacking army is far less of a crime than kidnapping of civilians, exactly what Israeli forces did the day before the capture of Shalit, invading Gaza city and kidnapping two brothers, then spiriting them across the border where they disappeared into Israel's prison complex.
Unlike the much lesser case of Shalit, that crime was virtually unreported and has been forgotten, along with Israel's regular practice for decades of kidnapping civilians in Lebanon and on the high seas and dispatching them to Israeli prisons, often held for many years as hostages. But the capture of Shalit bars a cease-fire.
Obama's State Department talk about the Middle East continued with "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan... the central front in our enduring struggle against terrorism and extremism."
A few hours later, US planes attacked a remote village in Afghanistan, intending to kill a Taliban commander.
"Village elders, though, told provincial officials there were no Taliban in the area, which they described as a hamlet populated mainly by shepherds. Women and children were among the 22 dead, they said, according to Hamididan Abdul Rahmzai, the head of the provincial council" (LA Times, Jan. 24).
Afghan president Karzai's first message to Obama after he was elected in November was a plea to end the bombing of Afghan civilians, reiterated a few hours before Obama was sworn in.
This was considered as significant as Karzai's call for a timetable for departure of US and other foreign forces.
The rich and powerful have their "responsibilities."
Among them, the New York Times reported, is to "provide security" in southern Afghanistan, where "the insurgency is homegrown and self-sustaining." All familiar. From Pravda in the 1980s, for example.
The damage the Bush/Cheney neo-conservative war mongering American administration inflicted onto the cause of liberals in the third world cannot be overstated.
Here comes Obama and deflates the Obama mania in the Middle East and Muslim world as well as, I would argue, many in the liberal western quarters in his first speech on the Middle East. That will surely be a reality check to the Palestinians.
United States is a country of institutions that is biased to the core when it comes to the Palestinian question.
Over 1300 Palestinian dead, hundreds of whom are children, thousands injured, lives chattered... are not worth even a fictitious empathy by the first African American president.
Obama's words and action so far seem to condone the Israeli massacres and support their approach of subjugating the Palestinians in Gaza.
A first class lesson in democracy to the Middle East from the United States of America...
Hey Carl, I agree with what you say, but I think you're missing the point. Israel isn't (and has never been) an entity on its own. As you say, it's financially supported by the US.
As such, it is morally supported by the US. I'm an Israeli citizen- I hear the talk in the street. When Israelis (government and citizens) talk about the UN or international law, they do it with arrogance- they learned from the best. In regards to the US, the question on on every ignorant reporter's mind is "will they side with us, this time?".
The answer is of course "Yes they will, they always do". Even when international relation blunders occur, such as PM Olmert braggin' to the boys about him being THE reason why "Condolisa" voted the way she did in the UN.
Chomsky said it, and I believe it to be true, the only way a boycott on American funds to Israel will happen, is if there is pressure from the people.
So I support you, in your call to cut off the money- let's hope you manage to somehow drown out the barrage of dribble from Fox news and other networks. Good luck.
Like all US presidents, Obama now has the blood of innocents on his hands.
We know what needs to be done about Iraq and Afghanistan--'Out Now!--and we need to continue insisting on it, not only because it is just, but because doing anything else will end up destroying anything positive he wants to do.
But I admit to the sin of despair on the Middle East. I'm not nearly as certain as Noam Chomsky about the prospects for a two-state solution or Ali's one-state solution either.
I can't see a positive role for Mitchell or anyone from the outside in the face of Israeli arrogance. Sane voices in their press are a small minority.
I think the most positive thing the US can do it cut off the subsidy to Israel, starting with the military support.
That's not likely at the moment, but all that's left for us here at this point is to build the support among organized voters to cut off the money.
It's a long, tough road, but the Israelis don't really give a damn about anything else we might do or say, and without some organized clout on this topic, neither does Congress or the White House. They're marching to their own drummers on the road to perdition.
According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar during the 1980–92 period, and was the eighth most-cited source.[13][14][15] He is also considered a prominent cultural figure.[16] At the same time, his status as a leading critic of US foreign policy has made him a controversial figure.[17]'
It's heartening to know that not everyone is blinded by the euphoria over the American President is now Barack Obama and no longer the murderous fool who presided before him.
Yet, even as we know that the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinian land is wrong and that the USA and Britain are the ones behind this open robbery of a once sovereign people, treachery of the Arab leaders and their disunity over this rampant occupation, massacre and continued occupation of Palestine before the very eyes of the world's so called United Nations entity, makes me not hold any hopes for the world body to be able to do anything about this injustice towards the Palestinians.
When the Israeli regime can blatantly disregard the countless resolutions passed by the UN Security Council against it and the USA veto any such resolutions, it makes the UN redundant and the continuous participation of all other countries in the UN, a clear waste of time and money!
There is no other alternative but for Muslim nations to force Israel out by force but in actuality, the leaders of these so called Muslim countries are plain cowards who do not abide by what Allahu Ta'ala commands them and they fear death exactly as what the Holy Prophet Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam prophesied 1400 over years ago?
I for one do not have an iota of respect anymore for anyone of these Organisation of Islamic Conference tricksters who put up a facade of being the leaders of the Muslims.
To hell with these munafiks for they do not stand up or protect the lives of all oppressed and persecuted Muslims worldwide.
The UN, OIC, Arab League, etc. are all useless organisations that do not have the balls to stand up to the rogue regime of Israel for behind Israel stands the USA and Britain, the world's imperialists and colonialists who are behind most of the world population's troubles ever since they came into being.
We might not be able to do much for the Palestinians physically being bloggers but we can help spread the message about the deceit being carried out by smooth talkers such as Obama.
In short, the honeymoon is over!
Here are some videos of Obama for what he truly is? An American President who is actually a kowtowing to Israel Zionist stooge.
There are many more videos proving American President Barack Hussein Obama Jr.'s obesiance to the powerful Israeli Zionist lobby in the determining of who gets to be the American President?
Without the Zionist Israeli seal of approval, Barack Obama Jr will never get even to be considered for nomination of the Democratic Presidential candidate for the most powerful political seat in the whole wide world.
So, Barack Obama Jr. has no option but to kowtow and kiss the Zionists ass if he wants to continue being the American President?
Knowing the treacherous way that the Zionists operate, if he ever gets out of line from his oath of allegiance to the State of Israel, there is no guarantee that he'd not end up as the assassinated late President John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
So there you have it folks.
Palestine will still be in deep shit for as long as any of the cowardly so called world organisations in the form of the UN, OIC and Arab League continue to shiwer and cower before the oh so mighty Zionist entity!
As far as I am concerned, sure I was happy that the bastard George W.Bush Jr. is no longer the USA's President but my happiness over the ascension of Barack Hussein Obama Jr. as the current US President is however shortlived in realising that the plight of the world's Muslims as well as other faith adherents are in no better position today than what it has been since America took over the role of colonial imperialists from Britain and are now oppressing the rest of the world to kowtow to them or else?
Maybe Hizbut at Tahrir have been right all along!
It's high time that Muslims wake up to the reality that if they remain disunited, they will surely perish by being eliminated a people at a time as what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and the Messenger Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam have been telling us all along?
Syeikh Yusuf Estes, the American Missionary who embraced Islam and went on to become one of the current Muslim world's dynamic Da'ee was here in Malaysia last November, 2008.
His sense of humor during his lectures can be likened to another ustaz here in Malaysia who almost always likes to joke and have fun during his ceramahs @ religious lectures here.
That ustaz being Ustaz Ismail Kamus or as some people jokingly refer to him as Ustaz Ismail Dictionary for 'kamus' is what the dictionary is known as in Malay?
Well, to each their own. Hehehehe.
In between those jokes and humor intervals, are juicy morsels of factual information that explains Islam to the masses.
Here are the introductory series of videos taken during his tour, here in Malaysia.
To all my readers of Chinese descent and who are celebrating the coming of the Chinese New Year, my heartfelt wishes for you and your families!
May the 'Year of the Ox' bring us all a better, more prosperous and harmonious year where we can all benefit by co-operating better with one another and uphold the concept of 'prosper thy neighbour' as well as our own selfs.
There are many who have emailed me and asked me as to whether Islam allows those of us who are Muslims to congratulate or wish well those of you who aren't Muslims or have yet to be on your auspicious days according to your social and cultural norms and those of your beliefs?
Well, here is our Islamic scholar's fatwa @ decree about it?
Title : Congratulating Non-Muslims on Their Festive Occasions
Question :
"Dear scholars, As-salamu `alaykum.
Would you please shed light on the ruling of congratulating non-Muslims on their festive occasions?
Please explain this issue in detail, such as congratulating them for their different festivities including national ones as well as exchanging gifts. Jazakum Allah khayran".
Topic : Social Manners, Customs & Traditions, Da`wah to Non- & New Muslims Answer :
Wa`alaykum As-SalamuwaRahmatullahiwaBarakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Dear brother in Islam, we would like to thank you for the great confidence you place in us, and we implore Allah Almighty to help us serve His cause and render our work for His Sake.
First of all, we stress that Muslims are commanded to deal justly and kindly with their non-Muslim neighbors or friends.
Therefore, there is nothing wrong in exchanging gifts with them.
Muslims are allowed to congratulate non-Muslims on their festive days and this becomes more of an obligation if the non-Muslims offer their greetings on Islamic festive occasions.
Allah Almighty says: (When you are greeted with a greeting, greet in return with what is better than it, or at least return it equally…) (An-Nisa’ 4: 86)
However, Muslims are not to celebrate or participate in the religious festivities of non-Muslims, but they can participate in national celebrations and festivities as citizens of those lands while observing Islamic manners and controls in all matters.
In response to the question you raised, the European Council for Fatwa and Research issued the following fatwa:
There can be no doubt as to the importance and the sensitivity of this issue, specially to Muslims residing in the West.
The Council has received numerous questions and queries from those who live in these countries and interact with the non-Muslims.
Indeed, between the Muslims and the non-Muslims are strong and integral links stipulated and deemed necessary by the means and manner of life itself, such as neighborly relations, friendship at work or study.
In fact, a Muslim may actually feel indebted toward a non-Muslim in particular circumstances, such as toward a hardworking and selfless supervisor or lecturer, a sincere and skillful doctor, and others.
A famous Arab said that one is enslaved by others’ favors.
Thus, what is the position of the Muslim to such people who are non-Muslims, who do not actually hold any animosity towards Muslims, do not fight them due to their religion, and did not actively seek to expel Muslims from their homes and lands?
The Holy Qur'an stipulates regulations as to how relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim are to be governed and carried out in Surat Al-Mumtahinah, which was essentially revealed to address the pagan polytheists.
Allah Almighty says: (Allah does not forbid you to deal justly and kindly with those who fought not against you on account of religion and did not drive you out of your homes.
Verily, Allah loves those who deal with equity.
It is only as regards those who fought against you on account of religion, and have driven you out of your homes, and helped to drive you out, that Allah forbids you to befriend them.
And whosoever will befriend them, then such are the wrong-doers.) (Al-Mumtahinah 60: 8-9)
Thus the verse stipulates that there is a clear difference between those who fight Muslims and treat them as enemies, and those who interact and deal with Muslims in peace.
We are commanded to treat the latter well and in a just and beautiful manner, not merely give them what is duly theirs by right and to take from them what is duly ours.
Indeed, the command is to treat them beyond that and to deal with them in beautiful and ideal ways.
As for the other group — to whom the verse clearly forbids any allegiance or support offered in their favor — they are those who chose to become enemies of Islam and Muslims and worked actively to expel them from their homes and lands for no reason other than that they proclaim that Allah Almighty is their Lord, as did the Quraysh and the infidels of Makkah to the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and his Companions.
Al-Bukhari and Muslim both reported on the authority of Asma’ bintAbiBakr (may Allah be pleased with her), that she came to Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and said:
"O Messenger of Allah! My mother, who is a mushrik (a polytheist), has come to visit me and she desires to be close to me and to give me gifts. Shall I greet her and treat her well?”
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) stated: “Greet your mother and treat her well.”
This, while the woman was a mushrik, and the Qur’an clearly states that the People of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) are far closer to Islam and Muslims than mushriks.
Indeed, the Qur’an gives allowance to eat from the food of the People of the Scripture and to marry them.
Allah Almighty says: (...The food of the People of the Scripture is lawful to you and your is lawful to them, lawful to you in marriage are chaste women from the believers and haste women from those who were given the scripture before your time…) (Al-Ma’idah 5: 5)
Also, if marriage is permissible with them, then it goes without saying that marriage implicitly and necessarily decrees love and closeness.
Allah Almighty states: (And amongst His signs is this, that He created for you wives from among yourselves, that you may find repose in them, and He has put between you affection and mercy…) (Ar-Rum 30: 21)
Indeed, how can a man despise his wife, who is ultimately his partner in life, his spouse, the mother of his children? Almighty Allah says: (...they are body cover for you and you are the same for them…) (Al-Baqarah 2: 187)
Moreover, an important consequence and result of marriage is the coming together of two families to form blood bonds and relationships, a natural human form of relating to one another.
Allah says: (And it is He Who has created man from water, and has appointed for him kindred by blood, and kindred by marriage…) (Al-Furqan 25: 54)
Also, there are the feelings and affections of maternity, and the clearly stipulated and emphasized rights of a mother upon her children in Islam.
One asks in this context: is it an acceptable act according to these stipulations that one does not greet or congratulate his or her non-Muslim mother on a day of festivity that she celebrates?
What about relatives from the mother’s side, such as grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins?
All those have rights upon a Muslim clearly stated in the Holy Qur'an, where Allah states: (But kindred by blood are nearer to one another regarding to inheritance in the decree ordained by Allah…) (Al-Anfal 8: 76), and also: (Verily, Allah enjoins justice and perfect mannerisms and giving to kith and kin…) (An-Nahl 16: 91)
Thus, if maternity and blood relation rights are obligatory upon a Muslim, in a way that exemplifies the beautiful manners of Islam and Muslims, it is also obligatory upon a Muslim to pay the due rights that work towards showing Muslims as people of beautiful character.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) advised Abu Dharr (may Allah be pleased with him) saying:
“Be aware of Allah wherever you are, and follow up a sin that you have committed with a good deed, so that sin may be erased, and treat people with beautiful manners.” (Reported by Ahmad, At-Tirmidhi, Ad-Darmi, and Al-Hakim) As is evident, the emphasis is upon “…and treat people with beautiful manners” not “…treat Muslims”.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) also strongly advised us to deal with non-Muslims in a mild and gentle manner, not using stern and terrorizing methods.
It was reported that when a group of Jews approached the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and greeted him with twisted pronunciation, and thus uttered “Assam`alaykum, O Muhammad!” (meaning “death and destruction come upon you”) instead of “as-salamu `alaykum”, `A'ishah (may Allah be pleased with her) heard them and responded by saying, ‘assamu `alaykum also and the curse and wrath of Allah!”
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) rebuked `A'ishah for what she had said.
She told him, “Did you not hear what they said?”
He said, “I did, and I responded by saying, ‘And upon you,’” (i.e., that death will come upon you as it will come upon me.)
He went on to say, “O `A'ishah! Allah loves gentleness in all matters.” (Reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim)
Indeed the permissibility of congratulating non-Muslims on their festive days becomes more of an obligation if they offer their greetings on Islamic festive occasions, as we are commanded to return good treatment with similar treatment, and to return the greeting with a better one or at least with the same greeting.
Allah Almighty says: “When you are greeted with a greeting, greet in return with what is better than it, or at least return it equally…” (An-Nisa' 4: 86)
A Muslim must never be less charitable or pleasant or indeed of lesser manners than any other, as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) stated in the hadith: “The most perfect believers in terms of their iman are those who possess the most beautiful manners.” (Reported by Ahmad, At-Tirmidhi, Ad-Darmi, and Abu Dawud), and he (peace and blessings be upon him) also stated: “Verily I have been but sent to perfect the most noble of manners.” (Reported by Ahmad, Al-Bukhari in Al-Adab Al-Mufrad and Al-Bazzar in KashfulAstar)
The significance of this increases dramatically if we are interested in inviting them to Islam and making them like Muslims, which is an obligation upon us all, as this cannot be achieved by treating them roughly, sternly and violently, but rather by beautiful manners and sublime ethics.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) dealt with the polytheists of Quraysh in the most beautiful of ways and manners throughout his life in Makkah despite their animosity, persecution, oppression and extreme insult of him (peace and blessings be upon him) and his companions.
This was epitomized by the fact that due to the incredible trust they had in him, they deposited their wealth and possessions with him, in fear that they may be lost or stolen.
When the Prophet fled Makkah to Madinah, he left behind `Ali (may Allah be pleased with him), whom he commanded to return the deposits and trusts that were with him (peace and blessings be upon him).
Thus, there is nothing to prevent a Muslim or an Islamic center from congratulating non-Muslims, either verbally or by sending a card that contains no symbols or icons of religious implications that may contradict Islamic faith and principles, such as a cross, for the concept of the crucifixion is totally outlawed and denied by Islam.
Allah states in the Holy Qur'an: (...but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the resemblance of Jesus was put over another man…) (An-Nisa' 4: 156)
Indeed, one finds in the customary words of congratulations nothing that carries any explicit or implicit recognition of any aspects of their faith or belief, nor any condoning thereof.
There is also no objection to accepting gifts and presents from them, and to return their gifts in kind, on condition that these gifts are not unlawful in themselves, such as being alcohol or pork.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) accepted the gift of the King of Egypt and several others (See: At-Tahawi'sSharhMushkil Al-Athar).
We also wish to mention that some jurists, such as IbnTaymiyah and his student the great scholar Ibn-ul-Qayyim, adopted stringent measures and restricted the permissibility of this issue and the participation of Muslims in the celebrations of non-Muslims.
We adopt this same stance, advising Muslims not to celebrate the festivities of non-Muslims, whether mushriks or People of the Scripture, as we find some ignorant Muslims celebrating Christmas as they would normally celebrate `Eid Al-Fitr and Al-Adha, and maybe even more so.
This is unlawful, as we Muslims have our unique festivities.
But we see no objection to congratulating others on their festivities if there is some relationship or fellowship link that deems positive social interaction and beautiful exchange a must according to our sublime and noble Islamic Shari`ah.
As for patriotic or national celebrations and festivities, such as Independence Day, Union Day, Mother’s Day, Childhood Day and the such, there is no objection whatsoever to a Muslim congratulating others in those regards, and indeed to participate therein as a citizen of those lands, while observing Islamic manners and controls in all matters.
As long as the greeting does not involve any recognition or respect towards a deity or icon or religious object or figure of worship which is not Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, Islam does not stop Muslims from wishing our Non Muslim friends well on their celebrations such as this Chinese New Year.
Read the above fatwa in depth and understand that Islam is the Way of Life that Almighty Allah, our God and Creator has revealed for us so that we may live in peace and harmony with our fellow Mankind.
There are many who misunderstand us out of their own ignorance and even many more from within our Ummah itself.
Study and learn about the true faith of Islam in order to be able to live as best as we can here on Earth and when we die, to have our souls be in a better position to face the Afterlife.
Life here on Earth is what we make it to be based upon our acquired and accumulated sense of right and wrong based upon our own individual perceptions based upon what we feed our minds and take them to be true?
As long as our intentions are to live according to what we perceive Allah the Almighty to have shared with us, His Servants, then we will Insya Allah be able to spend the rest of our lives in peace and tranquility.
Those who choose otherwise will just unfortunately simmer in their souls which will be restless and dissatisfied all through their temporal lives here on Earth and continue to be miserable eternally in the Hereafter.
So choose wisely as to what you feed your mind here on Earth and do what you are created to do which is to worship Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala as a human being, who can be the best of Allah's Creation if we choose to be or be amongst the worst there is both here in this physical world and in the spiritual realm as well?
It is heartening to see the way President Barack Hussein Obama Jr. has very efficiently started to do his job as the world's superpower's Chief Executive Officer in a manner that speaks volumes of the USA's President drive, energy, enthusiasm and professionalism.
If only our nation's Prime Minister and the rest of the Malaysian Cabinet Ministers were just as dedicated to their jobs and are firm and strong enough to undo all the mistakes from the previous administrations to get Malaysia's economy off the plateau it currently seems to rest upon or on the brink of economical chaos?
There are yet to be substantiated news or blog reports of American industries based here folding up and moving either back to the USA or shifting their operations elsewhere.
If this news is proven to be true, then the Malaysian Government ought to look very seriously of providing alternative employment to the tens if not hundreds of thousands of Malaysians who will soon be jobless.
President Barack Obama's proactive running of the American Government in a no nonsense, 'let's get cracking' work attitude promises of a new era for the American people and for his country as a whole.
Not bowing to his detractors complaints that he seems to be in a mighty hurry to do this and that, the faultfinders there in the USA obviously must be diehard George Wacko Bush Jr's lovers beyond words to not know or realise a good thing when they have it right before their crossed eyes!
Isn't President Barack Obama's earnestness to do his job exactly as he said and promised that he will do proof of the man's integrity and as dreamed of by Americans nationwide?
His approval ratings have shot way past 70% from his presidential win of just 53% to clinch the American Presidency over his rival Senator John McCain!
More and more Americans are waking up to the reality that their life's might just truly be changing for the better from now on?
President Barack Hussein Obama Jr. is delivering what he said that he' do from day one of his presidential campaign.
I do not apologize for my trust in him that he will help bring about a better scenario for the whole wide world with his decisive policies which he has come to sign into law since taking office 5 days ago!
His decision to order the closure of the Guantanamo Detention Camp in Cuba is a very good move to redeem America in the eyes of the world.
His wise intellect shines forth through the manner by which he seems to know exactly what he is speaking about and when in need or doubt, asks his Cabinet members to explain clearly to the watching media.
This professional, educated, firm, decisive President is what America needs.
Question is whether he will also be good for the whole wide world at the same time?
My deepest condolences and sympathies to the family members of Kugan Ananthan, 23, who died in police custody recently after being what appears to be a very brutal lethal end to his young life at the hands of his captors.
I am really sad to see this happening right here in our nation where we are supposed to be a model Islamic nation but which in reality I know to be nothing but a sham!
It's easy to concoct a story saying that Kugan died of asthma etcetera as claimed by the senior police officers of the Taipan Police Station in USJ, Selangor.
Reality is that the injuries very clearly visible on the deceased body shows signs of excessive physical bloody trauma and signs of excessive force that has been afflicted upon him causing his death!
As a Muslim who believes in the rule of law and abiding to the Laws of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, I condemn such barbaric treatment of the deceased.
We are quick to condemn Israeli atrocities upon our Palestinian brethren and are enraged beyond words to see our fellow Muslims killed mercilessly by the zionist bastards!
As a Muslim, I am duty bound to proclaim that all Creation has been and are still being created by Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala!
It is He who gave life to Kugan Ananthan and anyone who doubts otherwise clearly needs to have his or her aqeedah examined!
The Police Department are held to trust by us the citizens of this country and I as well as millions of other Malaysians hope that justice will be upheld in this clear case of police brutality!
Whomsoever are responsible for his death must be brought before the justice system.
I am sure that our nation has yet to descend into the Law of the Jungle and that the authorities of the Malaysian government especially the Ministry of Internal Security and Home Affairs will be looking into this crime!
Kugan Ananthan might have been arrested for crimes that he is alleged to have committed. That however does not warrant taking his life in a police lockup.
Whatever religious conflicts we might have with members of Hindraf etcetera should not result into such a murder of an accused!
If he was arrested for car theft as reported in the papers, where does it state that he must be beaten and tortured to death in the police lockup for such a crime?
The most that a car thief should get is a jail term not be beaten to death in custody.
I join all other concerned bloggers in asking that the Police Department seriously investigate this murder and bring to trial those who are guilty of killing Kugan Ananthan!
Remember, the murderer or murderers might get away with their crime here on Earth but in the Yaum al Akhirat, the killer or killers will have to face Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala for their taking of a life unnecessarily!
On behalf of the Muslim Bloggers Alliance, I express my deepest sympathies and condolences once again to the parents and family members of the murdered Kugan Ananthan.
May his ruuh rest in peace.
Ameen.
* Just to show the audacity of one of this nation's mainstream newspaper report on this matter ; please read this :
Deputy Minister to be quizzed over mortuary mob attack
A deputy minister is expected to be called up by police for his alleged involvement in the mob attack at the Serdang hospital mortuary on Tuesday night.
Post-mortem revealed no foul play in the death of police detainee A. Kugan at the Subang Taipan police station.
The mob had allegedly pushed out a medical assistant and his two staff before conducting their own checks on the body.
** I wonder what kind of a medical examiner or coroner can come up with such a blatant lie stating that there was NO FOUL PLAY in the death of police detainee A.Kugan?
After all the graphic proof of physical trauma as a result of such vicious beatings, which bloody blind clueless idiot calling himself or herself as a medical doctor or coroner has the audacity to give such a medical report?
Bismillahirrahmannirrahim. In the Name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful.
Assalamualaikum.
Muslims worldwide are today mostly in a state of lethargy, diminishing whatever spirit of enterprise or creative energy within them, causing them to grow dismissive and aloof to the plight of their fellow ummah in almost everywhere on this planet.
From the far ends of Canada to the tiny islands of the Pacific Oceans, Muslims are today sort of caught in a whirlpool of apathy towards the misfortune of others especially the long suffering people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, most African countries and in almost every other country here on Earth where the Muslim populations suffer from political, economical, social, cultural and most menacingly religious persecution from those who are in power and authority over them.
Why did this lethargy set in?
It could be due to the way that Muslims generally are oppressed and downtrodden right from the moment they begin to understand the meaning of living in a world full of 'do as I say and not do as I do' mentality.
Hesitation of the Muslims to advise and counsel one another when they see their fellow Muslim brother or sister doing wrong gives way to a sense of couldn't care less'ness or apathy in the ummah resulting in a 'mind your own business' mentality.
Problem is that such a mentality breeds a society that won't help one another and as a result the human caring society that we hear our nation's misguided leaders speak of become redundant in the truest sense of the word for neither do they themselves really care or give a damn about the ills that the society in general is suffering from?
It then becomes sort of a domino effect where parents don't care about their children, husbands don't give a hoot about their wives, children don't respect or listen to their parents, brothers to their sisters and vice versa.
The spirit of human love and care for one another disappears overnight and our general society becomes devoid of compassion and love for one another.
In times of disaster, such a mentality of minding one's own business reveals the uglier side of human character when it will almost always result in a scramble or melee of the fittest will survive!
Not that many will bother to stop and help another because everyone has been slowly but surely been trained in their daily lives to only care about one person. Themselves.
As a result, the framework of a caring society as espoused in our government's information ministry campaigns will ring hollow for the substance will simply not be there.
People seldom listen to leaders who in actuality do not practice what they preach!
When the current Malaysian Prime Minister starts to speak, one has just got to observe the reactions of those around him to know that they don't care or on the reversal when he is seated there before the public or guests of any symposium, forum or seminar that he himself attends, chances are that he will soon doze off to lalaland.
I am not creating fitnah here but if you do a search about this online, the proof or evidence of such a happening will definitely turn up.
It all boils down to care. Do we care ...anymore?
When we turn our eyes away from a maksiat that takes place before us, technically we become accomplices to that sin for we have seen it with our eyes but we chose to ignore it.
I am sure that most of you remember the hadith of the Prophet Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam telling us to stop sin if it takes place before us with our hands if we can; to speak out against it ( with wisdom) if we can't or to hate it (in our hearts) if we can't even do that ( speak out) and that hating the sin in our hearts will be a sign of the weakest state of faith that a Muslim can ever have which is on the brink of disbelief @ kuffur. May Allah protect us from that situation.
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Muslims.
If we want to see the Ummah get out of the rut of lethargy, metaforically speaking, then we need to seriously start doing our part.
We might be simple, ordinary citizens but if we set our hearts and minds to it, we can snowball that concern and care into a huge globe of common interest and restore some sense of dignity to our going crazy society.
Social and cultural norms which used to hold the community in check are fast being blown out of the daily life's of so many of our world's communities that today anyone who comes across as decent and pure are viewed upon as oddities and are often ridiculed by society!
It's not cool to not be a fool, eh?
When decency and commonsense end up becoming something to be mocked at and joked about, that is a clear sign that the human society is fast slip sliding its way towards the murky cesspools of human degradation and the breakdown of all things and values that are accepted as good and worthy of appreciation.
This corruption of human basic courtesy and moral high grounds in time eats away at the very fabrics of our commonly celebrated human ideals and accepted standards of civilized living.
Today, every major human community is burdened with rising levels of crime in all forms and violence is fast becoming too commonplace and a nightmare for peace seeking folks.
The Malay Muslim youths known as 'Mat Rempits' today are fast turning out to be the worst delinquents in our nation's history for they rampage as they please on our nation's highways, rob, rape, assault, beat up, attack even policemen and have proved themselves to be the scourge of this misguided country that fools itself to be a model Islamic nation!
We have unprincipled corrupt leaders amongst those who claim to be our 'Ulul `Amri when in reality they are the ones who are undermining the Muslim society by their lethargy in upholding the true tenets and governance according to the principles of Islam as commanded by Allah, God Almighty and through the Sunnah @ Example of Allah's Final Messenger to Mankind, the Holy Blessed Prophet Muhammad ibni Abdullah, Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam.
When these corrupt, misleading irresponsible lethargic leaders of today's Muslims from Malaysia to the the rest of this whole wide world refuse to rule by the Holy Kitab of Allah, the Holy Qur'an Al Karim, the result is a destructive facade of Islamic nation in Name Only and the emergence of watered down concepts of manmade versions of the Syariah Laws where these lethargic Muslim rulers pretend to impose Islamic laws upon their nations.
Reality proves otherwise that these traitors to the Islamic Nation have instead caused the human society to disregard the true Shariah of Islam as nothing that is constructive or contributive to the development of a society that is fair and just as what would be the end result if these treacherous leaders had followed the Laws of Allah to the letter in running their countries or states?
The Hudud Laws of Islamic Shariah are commanded upon us by Almighty Allah.
When Mankind especially these betrayers of our trust do not follow what Allah Azza Wa Jalla prescribed for us Mankind to live by, the resulting calamities and breakdown of order in our human societies gives Islam a bad name.
Frustration amongst those who have been shortchanged by the watered down Syariah Courts system here in Malaysia gives rise to a group of dissatisfied Muslims especially the womenfolk who face discrimination in our 'Islamic legal system' which almost always does not rule according to what the Quran says but more according to what the manmade laws dictate?
The solution to end this lethargic malady amongst Muslims is for us to return to the true Way of Allah and not break our society up into so many factions and schools of thought but to go back to the roots of Islam which is 'La ila ha ill lall Laah ; Muhammad dar Rasulullah!'
We need to get back to what Allah the Almighty God commands us and obey the Prophet Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam's enjoinments to the letter!
There's no point for us to blindly or obsessively follow this imam, this syeikh, this ustaz and that maulana or maulavi if such followings only tends to draw us further away from the Rope of Allah and the Sunnah of Rasulullah!
I am not saying that you as a Muslim must not follow any of the Islamic ulamaks here but am only reminding you to what the Blessed Messenger enjoined us to be moderate in all that we do?
There's whole world of difference between asking you not to follow anyone per se and of asking you to go it slow, take it easy, tread carefully in whatever path of Islamic study that you choose to?
Dear Muslims,
There are many out there who often take advantage of those who come seeking their leadership and have often been proved to turn deviant when power and authority gets to their head.
We have many classic examples of such deviant teachings taking place here in Malaysia with the likes of the Al Arqam Movement which was once the most dynamic movement of Malaysia's Muslims in wanting to bring about an Islamic society that was mostly made up of Islamic academics and learned individuals who yearned for a Darul Islam only to be taken for a ride by its leader and his lieutenants.
As a result, the movement was banned by the Malaysian authorities when they got too big for their breeches and word started to come out of the Ak Arqam leadership that they could do a better job in running this country than the prevalent UMNO based BN Federal Government.
The problem of steeping on too many official toes and unbridled displays of lust for power often spells of a quick response from those officials being challenged and as a result, the movement was officially branded as a deviant movement and its leaders arrested and taken into custody.
They tried resurfacing as the Rufaqa Corporation after being released from custody and incarceration but again got their movement nipped in the bud by the relevant authorities who never closed their eyes on them and to this day keep them under surveillance.
There are many others such as the infamous Ariffin @ Ayah Pin's Sky Kingdom, a wayward cult of hodge podge beliefs all mixed up and promising this and that to his diehard followers.
We can learn from the ulamaks, all those imams, syeikhs, ustaz's and ustazah's, maulana's and maulavi's but at the end of the day, we must obey Allah and His Messenger!
Period.
By returning to live according to what Allah Ar Rahman Ar Rahim commands us to and by obeying the Messenger, Muhammad ibni Abdullah, the Seal of the Prophets, to the letter in all that we do or live by, we get to return to a common, unifying bond and in the process, overlook our differences, and forge a stronger, more vibrant, more cohesive, strong society of Muslims under one banner!
One unifying banner that stands true to the Kalima Shahadah and Ikrar ul Muslimin.
La ila ha ill lall Laah = There is no (other) god but Allah! Muhammad Rasul Allah = Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.
As Muslims, it does not mean that we are to forsake the goodness of this world and shun earthly pursuits of joys.
No. Far from it. We are in fact enjoined to work hard for the goodness of this life and prepare for the next by fulfilling our religious and social obligations, in order to make the best of this opportunity of living well, both here on Earth and in the Yaum al Akhirat.
This earthly life is one of the realms of our existence where we are given a time frame by Allah to utilize to the best of our capabilities.
Be the best Muslim that you can ever be and be a source of inspiration and strength to the ummah and our friends in the yet to be Muslims category.
Be willing to adopt and adapt to circumstances but never give up on our principles of Islamic living and do not compromise on the basic standards of our faith. Be a capable Muslim no matter what profession you choose to be in or work as?
Those capabilities must be learned and put to practice by us according to our own personal pursuits and endeavors in our lifetime of opportunity.
Learn about Islam in the truest sense of the word and put it into practice daily in our lives.
Be knowledgeable Muslims and always be in the company of positive, dynamic, energetic, proactive Muslims and learn to lead when you are ready and capable. Stop being ordinary.
Some of us excel in this grabbing all the chances and correct timings of our own individual decisions and culminates in us achieving certain successes in our own private and also public lives.
Those of us who fail to capitalize on such moments often always lay the blame on others as if being taken care of and waited upon is one's birthright?
No sirree!
Unless one is born with a silver or golden spoon in one's mouth figuratively speaking, since day one, our own individual's cry of hunger often brings one's parents or caretaker scrambling to meet our needs.
Failing which, it becomes a natural journey of survival to make it in this vast world fraught of all kinds of dangers and challenges which if not met or handled correctly will mark the end of our temporal existence here on this mortal world.
The Muslims of today need to weigh all these and consider the various choices that are laid out before them?
Lethargy of the Muslims to unite as one and make efforts to improve themselves will only see them be phased out bit by bit like the plight of the Palestinians who from being a people who once lived relatively in peace amongst themselves today have been robbed of their lands, displaced and turned into refugees in their own homelands and helplessly being massacred and slaughtered by the invading Zionist Israeli terrorist regime as a result of their own divided leaderships and often warring factions in the form of Fatah and Hamas freedom fighters.
Muslims today ought to waste no time in getting up from their seats and work industriously to add to their knowledge, return to their sense of innovative science and make inroads into the field of knowledge as did their forefathers in the era of Islamic Glory and Golden Age of Achievements which once brought even Europe from out of its gloomy Era of Depression.
Will Muslims heed this call or will they remain uninterested to change their future out of their apathy towards the plight of their fellow Muslims suffering and dying in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc as a result of the lethargy gripping the entire Muslim ummah today?
We will have to see what takes place next?
In the meantime, I invite you to watch one of the current Muslim world's great Callers to Islam or Da`ee's as we call them in Arabic, Syeikh Abdur Rahim Greene, an articulate, clear talking icon amongst those of us who are doing what we are ordered to by God Almighty Himself in Surah An Nahl Chapter 16 Verse 125 in the Holy Quran.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3 - Final
Obey Allah and Obey the Rasul!
Period!
No but's or if's about it!
No excuses!
Stick to the above and we will see change taking place here amongst the Muslims.
Bacaan Qunut merujuk kepada doa yang dibaca di dalam solat pada tempat yang khusus sewaktu berdiri.
Qunut Nazilah merupakan salah satu daripada tiga jenis qunut yang sunat dibaca dalam solat mengikut Mazhab Syafie selain qunut dalam solat subuh dan qunut pada separuh malam kedua terakhir dalam solat witir di bulan Ramadhan.
Qunut nazilah sunat dibacakan ketika umat Islam didatangi bala bencana atau ditimpa musibah seperti ketakutan, ditimpa wabak, diserang belalang dan sebagainya.
Qunut ini tidak dibacakan jika umat Islam tidak didatangi dengan cubaan-cubaan seperti ini.
Bacaan Qunut Nazilah di zaman Rasulullah sallallahu`alaihi wasallam
Qunut ini pernah dibacakan oleh Rasulullah ketika kejadian pembunuhan beramai-ramai 60 orang penghafaz al-Quran selama sebulan berdasarkan hadis berikut:
Maksudnya: Sesungguhnya Nabi sallallahu`alaihiwasallam telah membaca doa qunut pada waktu selain dari Subuh ketika turunnya sewaktu pembunuhan sahabat sahabatnya penghafaz-penghafaz al-Quran.
-Diriwayatkan oleh Bukhari dan Muslim-
Tatacara Bacaan Qunut Nazilah
1. Qunut ini boleh dibacakan pada tiap-tiap sembahyang fardhu jika kedatangan bala atau sebarang cubaan dari Allah SWT.
Maksudnya: Dari Abi Hurairah radhiyallahu `anhu beliau berkata : "Demi Allah, sesungguhnya aku akan mendekatkan kamu cara solat Rasulullah S.A.W. Maka Abu Hurairah melakukan qunut pada solat Zuhur, Isya' dan Subuh. Beliau mendoakan kebaikan untuk kaum mukminin dan memintakan laknat ke atas orang-orang kafir".
Maksudnya: Abu Hurairah radhiyallahu `anhu meriwayatkan bahawa sesungguhnya Nabi S.A.W tidak membaca qunut melainkan apabila beliau berdoa untuk kebaikan seseorang atau mendoakan kehancuran seseorang.
Apabila baginda berkata: "Sami'Allahu liman hamidah" Baginda berkata “Rabbana lakalhamd dan Baginda S.A.W membaca doa”.
2. Qunut ini dibacakan pada waktu iktidal selepas ruku’ pada rakaat terakhir.
Diceritakan kepada kami Asim berkata, aku bertanya pada Anas bin Malik tentang qunut, lalu dia berkata sememangnya qunut itu ada.
Aku bertanya samada sebelum rukuk atau selepasnya? Anas berkata selepas rukuk.
Aku berkata lagi, sesungguhnya seseorang telah mengkhabarkan kepadaku bahawa engkau memberitahunya selepas rukuk.
Anas berkata dia berdusta, sesungguhnya Rasulullah S.A.W membaca qunut selepas rukuk selama sebulan dan diperlihatkannya ketika mengutus satu kaum yang dikatakan mereka itu baik bacaannya seramai 70 orang kepada kaum mushrikin yang telah melakukan perjanjian dengan Rasulullah S.A.W (mengikut riwayat hadis yang lain, 70 orang al-qura’ yang diutuskan oleh Rasulullah tersebut telah dibunuh). Lalu baginda berqunut selama sebulan mendoakan kecelakaan ke atas mereka.
3. Lafaz Do`a Qunut Nazilah adalah seperti berikut:
Maksudnya “ Ya Allah, sesungguhnya kami bermohon pertolongan Mu, kami meminta ampun kepada Mu, kami memohon petunjuk dari Mu, kami beriman kepada Mu, kami berserah kepada Mu dan kami memuji Mu dengan segala kebaikan, kami mensyukuri dan tidak mengkufuri Mu, kami melepaskan diri daripada sesiapa yang durhaka kepada Mu.
Ya Allah, Engkau yang kami sembah dan kepada Engkau kami bersalat dan sujud, dan kepada Engkau jualah kami datang bergegas, kami mengharap rahmat Mu dan kami takut akan azab Mu kerana azab Mu yang sebenar akan menyusul mereka yang kufur.
Ya Allah, Muliakanlah Islam dan masyarakat Islam. Hentikanlah segala macam kezaliman dan permusuham, Bantulah saudara-saudara kami di mana sahaja mereka berada. Angkatlah dari mereka kesusahan, bala, peperangan dan permusuhan.
Ya Allah, selamatkanlah kami dari segala keburukan dan janganlah Engkau jadikan kami tempat turunnya bencana, hindarkanlah kami dari segala bala kerana tidak sesiapa yang dapat menghindarkannya melainkan Engkau, ya Allah.”
4. Sunat ditambah bacaan doa ini selepas bacaan qunut harian.
5. Disunatkan kepada Imam untuk membacanya secara kuat dan di aminkan oleh makmum dalam solat yang berjemaah.
6. Sebagai peringatan, qunut nazilah hanya dibacakan apabila manusia ditimpa sesuatu musibah. Maka, solat fardhu selain solat subuh tidak dibaca qunut melainkan jika berlaku sesuatu perkara buruk berdasarkan hadis:
Maksudnya: Sesungguhnya Nabi sallallahu`alaihiwasallam telah membaca doa qunut pada waktu selain dari Subuh ketika turunnya sewaktu pembunuhan sahabat-sahabatnya penghafaz-penghafaz al-Quran.
Sesungguhnya senjata orang orang Mukmin adalah dengan berdo`a dan kemudiannya dengan usaha yang tepat dan bersesuaian.
Dikala ini umat Islam ternyata sedang alpa dengan segala tuntutan agama dan lupa terhadap sebahagian besar pesanan dan peringatan Nabi Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam.
Kita kini berhadapan dengan suasana genting dimana jumlah umat Islam diseluruh dunia memang ramai tetapi tidak ada penyatuan ummah didalam ertikata sebenar benarnya!
Kita bersolat secara berjamaah tetapi sebilangan besar dari jamaah itu bingkas bangun sebaik sahaja selesai memberi salam terakhir pada kedua Malaikat dikanan dan dikiri bahu kita.
Secara zahiriah, mereka yang bingkas bangun tadi berfikir sudah selesai tuntutan solat bagi mereka tetapi hakikatnya batiniah mereka kosong.
Mereka tidak khusyuk dan menghayati erti solat mereka tadi.
Kebanyakan manusia Muslim terutamanya mereka didalam negara kita terlalu gopoh didalam mengerjakan solat dan amal ibadat lain.
Asar tadi disebelah saya ada melihat seorang tua solat secara ekspres. S
Bagaikan burung belatuk yang cergas mematuk. Ruku tidak sampai dua saat bermakna amat laju sekali bacaan didalam rukuknya itu atau cuma sekali bacaan sahaja sebab mustahil didalam satu saat beliau sudah boleh melafazkan 'Subhana Rabbiyyal Azhimi Wabihamdih' x 3 kali ?
Belum sempat saya mahu pergi bertegur sapa dengan beliau, sudah bingkas bangun pergi meninggalkan masjid.
'Mungkin ada darurat?' begitulah membisik hati kecil saya. Wallahu `alam bissawab.
~~~~~~~
Tuan tuan dan puan puan yang mulia.
Bertukmaninah iaitu berhenti sebentar di antara rukun rukun solat itu amat dianjurkan Nabi Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam.
Terkejar kejar didalam solat cuma perbuatan yang sia sia kerna ada saya terbaca tentang Nabi Sallalahu alaihi Wassallam menyuruh seorang Muslim supaya ia mengulangi solatnya tetapi kali ini dengan lebih cermat dan berhati hati kerna solat awalannya itu tidak diiktiraf Nabi sebagai solat yang sempurna!
Apa lah sangat kita hendak terkejar kejar begitu?
Jika sekiranya ditakdirkan Allah, kita meninggal sebaik sahaja kaki kita melangkah keluar dari pintu gerbang masjid atau surau, siapakah yang boleh melewatkan saat kematian atau ajal kita?
Semoga kita lebih berhati hati didalam mengerjakan amal ibadat kita.
Assalamualaikum dear fellow Children of Our Father the Blessed Prophet Adam Alaihis Salam.
Come let's make a virtual visit to the Holiest site on Earth, the Sacred Holy Ka`abah located in the middle of the Holy Masjidil al Haram in in Makkah al Mukkarramah, Arabia.
A Muslim brother has smuggled a video camera recording all that there is to be seen in the most sacred masjid in Islam.
Masya Allah! Feels like we are really walking along with him.
Can't wait to make my pilgrimage there myself!
Please do pray for me that I will be able to do so soon myself and bring my darling spouse together to make the Hajj!
President Barack Hussein Obama has signed an Executive Order to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba and also ordered the closure of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret prisons worldwide within a year from yesterday.
Praise be to Almighty Allah for this decisive measure by the current President of the United States of America as a proof of his keeping to his presidential campaign promises to the American people and to the world.
I am quite relieved to see President Obama practicing what he has preached!
If he keeps on revoking all the destructive measures of the previous American administration and works to undo the damage that President George W.Bush Jr. has done throughout the last 8 years, I am confident that restoring the United States of America's honor, integrity and position in the world won't be a matter too hard to achieve within President Barack Obama's term and I am sure in the next one to come, Insya Allah!
It's not an easy task for President Obama to help heal the world after the heartless incompetent war criminal in the form of George Wacko Bush Jr destroyed the lives of millions of innocent people and their families in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon through his complicity with the Zionist terrorist regime of illegal Israel in the Middle East.
It's not going to be a breeze for President Obama to undo the wrongs done to the world by Bush Jr. and those in his misadministration.
In fact if President Barack Hussein Obama succeeds in bringing about the very change that he has been speaking about during the last 2 years of his presidential campaign, I am confident that his name will be entrenched in the Halls of Fame of great leaders of the entire human race for times to come!
As I have said before to one of my readers, let's give President Barack Hussein Obama his space and allow him to work fulfilling his promises and bring about a better world, that is just and will unite the entire world as we all wish him to be able to!
President Obama,
As a Muslim from Malaysia, I thank you for what you are doing and what you have promised us that you will do.
WASHINGTON — Saying that “our ideals give us the strength and moral high ground” to combat terrorism, President Obama signed executive orders Thursday ending the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret overseas prisons, banning coercive interrogation methods and closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year.
But even as he reversed the most disputed counterterrorism policies of the Bush years, Mr. Obama postponed for at least six months difficult decisions on the details. He ordered a cabinet-level review of the most challenging questions his administration faces — what to do with dangerous prisoners who cannot be tried in American courts; whether some interrogation methods should remain secret to keep Al Qaeda from training to resist them; and how the United States can make sure prisoners transferred to other countries will not be tortured.
As Mr. Obama signed three orders in a White House ceremony, 16 retired generals and admirals who have fought for months for a ban on coercive interrogations stood behind him and applauded. The group, organized to lobby the Obama transition team by the group Human Rights First, did not include any career C.I.A. officers or retirees.
“We intend to win this fight,” Mr. Obama said, “We are going to win it on our own terms.”
One of Mr. Obama’s orders requires the C.I.A. to use only the 19 interrogation methods outlined in the Army Field Manual, ending President Bush’s policy of permitting the agency to use some secret methods that went beyond those allowed for military interrogators.
“We believe we can abide by a rule that says, we don’t torture, but we can effectively obtain the intelligence we need,” Mr. Obama said.
The orders, and Mr. Obama’s televised statement, marked an abrupt break with the Bush administration. Critics for years have accused Mr. Bush of permitting torture and damaging the country’s moral standing in the world, while Dick Cheney, the former president and vice president, insisted that all their programs were lawful and had prevented a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
John D. Hutson, a retired admiral and law school dean, was at the signing ceremony “He really gets it,” Mr. Hutson said of Mr. Obama in an interview a few minutes after the ceremony. “He acknowledged that this isn’t easy. But he is absolutely dedicated to getting us back on track as a nation. This is the right thing to do morally, diplomatically, militarily and Constitutionally. But it also makes us safer.”
Democrats in Congress and human rights groups largely hailed Mr. Obama’s moves, while some Republicans said they were unrealistic.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close Guantánamo by a year from now “places hope ahead of reality — it sets an objective without a plan to get there.”
He said that in briefings for Congress on Wednesday, administration officials “could not answer questions as to what they will do with any new jihadists or enemy combatants that we capture.”
“What are we to do with these people, bring them to the very place they hoped to attack: The United States? What do we do with confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow terrorist conspirators, offer them jail cells in American communities?”
By contrast, Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “Today is a great day for the rule of law in the United States of America,” adding: “America is ready to lead again — not just with our words, but by our example.”
Mr. Obama’s order closing Guantánamo assigns the attorney general to lead a review of what should happen to the remaining detainees and does not rule out the possibility of trying some of them using military commissions, as has the Bush administration, though possibly with different procedures.
One task force, with the attorney general and secretary of defense as co-chairmen, will study detainee policy and report to the president in six months. A second task force, led by the attorney general, and with the secretary of defense and director of national intelligence as vice co-chairs, will study whether the Army Field Manual should remain the only standard for interrogators and review the practice of extraordinary rendition, in which captured terrorist suspects are transferred to other countries.
One more order directed a high-level review of the case of Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a suspected terrorist — Mr. Obama called him “dangerous” — who is currently being held in a military jail in South Carolina.
The new White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military.
But the executive order on interrogations is certain to be received with some skepticism at the C.I.A., which for years has maintained that the military’s interrogation rules are insufficient to get information from senior Qaeda figures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Bush administration asserted that the harsh interrogation methods were instrumental in gaining valuable intelligence on Qaeda operations.
The intelligence agency built a network of secret prisons in 2002 to house and interrogate senior Qaeda figures captured overseas. The exact number of suspects to have moved through the prisons is unknown, although Michael V. Hayden, the departing director of the agency, has in the past put the number at “fewer than 100.”
The secret detentions brought international condemnation, and in September 2006, Mr. Bush ordered that the remaining 14 detainees in C.I.A. custody be transferred to Guantánamo Bay and tried by military tribunals.
But Mr. Bush made clear then that he was not shutting down the C.I.A. detention system, and in the last two years, two Qaeda operatives are believed to have been detained in agency prisons for several months each before being sent to Guantánamo.
A government official said Mr. Obama’s order on the C.I.A. would still allow its officers abroad to temporarily detain terrorism suspects and transfer them to other agencies, but would no longer allow the agency to carry out long-term detentions.
Since the early days after the 2001 attacks, the intelligence agency’s role in detaining terrorism suspects has been significantly scaled back, as has the severity of interrogation methods the agency is permitted to use. The most controversial practice, the simulated drowning technique known as water-boarding, was used on three suspects but has not been used since 2003, C.I.A. officials said.
But at the urging of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 authorized the agency to continue using harsher interrogation methods than those permitted for use by other agencies, including the military. Those exact methods remain classified. The order on Guantánamo says that the camp, which received its first hooded and chained detainees seven years ago this month, “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.”
The order calls for a cabinet-level panel to grapple with issues including where in the United States prisoners might be moved and what courts they could be tried in. It also provides for a new diplomatic effort to transfer some of the remaining men, including more than 60 that the Bush administration had cleared for release.
The order also directs an immediate assessment of the prison itself to ensure that the men are held in conditions that meet the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Convention. That provision appeared to be a pointed embrace of the international treaties that the Bush administration often argued did not apply to detainees captured in the war against terrorism.
The seven years of the detention camp have included four suicides, hunger strikes by scores of detainees, and accusations of extensive use of solitary confinement and abusive interrogations, which the Department of Defense has long denied. Last week a senior Pentagon official said she had concluded that interrogators at Guantánamo had tortured one detainee, who officials have said was a would-be “20th hijacker” in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The new administration late Tuesday night ordered an immediate halt to the military commission proceedings for prosecuting detainees at Guantánamo and filed a request in Federal District Court in Washington to stay habeas corpus proceedings there. Government lawyers described both delays as necessary for the administration to make a broad assessment of detention policy.
The cases immediately affected include those of five detainees charged as the coordinators of the 2001 attacks, including the case against Mr. Mohammed, the self-described mastermind.
The decision to stop the commissions was described by the military prosecutors as a pause in the war-crimes system “to permit the newly inaugurated president and his administration time to review the military commission process generally and the cases currently pending before the military commissions, specifically.”
More than 200 detainees’ habeas corpus cases have been filed in federal court, and lawyers said they expected that all of the cases would be stayed.
Mr. Obama had suggested in the campaign that, in place of military commissions, he would prefer prosecutions in federal courts or, perhaps, in the existing military justice system, which provides legal guarantees similar to those of American civilian courts.
William Glaberson contributed reporting from New York.
*All rights of the report and photo above belong to The New York Times.
Barack Obama's becoming US President has also caused a windfall for Ilham Anas, an Indonesian photographer who bears a canny resemblance to the world's most powerful political leader today!
Some people have just all the luck in the world, eh?
Whatever it is, I just hope that he is protected from any untoward incidents as well for we all know how crazy some other people can be when it comes to celebrities.
Maybe the Ad Agency employing Ilham Anas ought to provide him Secret Service like protection too ?
Remember reading about how Rasul Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam used to just be accessible to all without any form of protection except the Mercy of Allah and the protection of His Malaikats!
Anyway, Ilham Anas!
Cash it in eh for the next 8 years..
Who knows?
The White House might just call on you....as a possible decoy for President Barack Hussein Obama?
Let's watch President Barack Hussein Obama speak. America's 44th President and for the record, it's first African American President.
Listening to him, raises much hope in our hearts and gives us a renewed sense of respect to what America can be?
America used to be respected and accepted by the global community as a caring nation but after President William Jefferson Clinton's unfortunate scandal and subsequent resignation from office, America has slowly but surely descended to being nothing but an Israeli's errand boy and with the likes of George W.Bush Jr's inept and bungling mismanagement of the United States of America, the mightiest nation on Earth has till yesterday lost its place in the hearts and minds of most of the global population!
President Obama raises some hope for global betterment and his words sort of inspire those of us who have given up on human goodwill and the promise of justice for all mankind within our lifetime.
We need to see whether President Barack Hussein Obama has it in him to bring about the very change that he so articulately promises us and the entire world?
May Almighty Allah bless and guide him if he really is sincere in his words here.
Ameen.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The idiot @ Bush Jr. has left the building!
Obama's got to clean up the White House from all the crap that the Texas yellow bellied chicken shit has left stinking up Capitol Hill and the entire planet.
Let's wish President Obama well!
********************************************************************************* Transcript of President Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech :
PRESIDENT BARACK : Thank you. Thank you.
CROWD: Obama! Obama! Obama! Obama!
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation...
(APPLAUSE)
... as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.
(APPLAUSE)
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
(APPLAUSE)
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
(APPLAUSE)
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality...
(APPLAUSE)
... and lower its costs.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
All this we can do. All this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.
MR. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
(APPLAUSE)
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
(APPLAUSE)
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.
With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.
And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
(APPLAUSE)
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
To those...
(APPLAUSE)
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
(APPLAUSE)
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.
And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.
We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.
And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.
It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.
It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.
These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
(APPLAUSE)
So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled.
In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.
The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Now to some folks who have some sort of bias in their assessment of this first ever African American President of the United States of America, they will look at his speech in the negative manner.
Some might even say that he is threatening the Muslim world with his words but from my personal point of view what Obama says has its points.
He is in fact saying that America has been in lousy hands and much has been wasted on unnecessary conflicts and misguided positions of the former Bush Jr.'s Administration!
Let's do a recap on these :
" That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood.
Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.
Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights."
Now to those who choose to look at Obama with disapproving eyes, naturally they will misread his intentions and curse him like hell but for those of us like me, I prefer to see it from a positive perspective.
Obama is clearly laying it all out blaming and whacking the clueless idiot preceding him about all the screw ups and the terrible economic, social and military mess that Bush Jr's saddling him with?
To the Muslim world, he is offering an olive branch and asking for mutual respect and co-operation.
Why is it that people still misread him?
He has just taken office.
Give the man a break and let's see what he does in the next crucial 100 days?
Go easy on Obama and let the man start spring cleaning the White House.
After all, the whole world was complaining like hell over the last 8 bloody years that the Texas moron was screwing up the whole bloody world as he damn well pleased and sent two Middle Eastern countries back to the Stone Age not counting Palestine which America and Britain sold out decades ago to the Zionist Jewish occupying terrorists!
Let Obama rule and do his work before critics out there go overtime with their faultfindings!
When was the last time you saw Americans hating their President so much ( well the one leaving the White House so to speak @ George Wacko Bush Jr. the 43rd and most incompetent idiot ever to set foot in the US Capitol ) and to such a stage that they are throwing their shoes at an inflatable figure of him at Dupont Circle in Washington DC, USA?
When the idiot went to Iraq to say his goodbyes to the country that he ordered to be devastated, he was forced to dodge two shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi TV journalist as a sign of how much hatred he has evoked in the Iraqi people!
Well, now his own people are throwing shoes at him and if left to the true American people's choice, I am pretty sure that this vermin would have long been lynched and burnt at a stake for his crimes against the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, etc.
There is now a movement there in America calling for his arrest and to charge him for WAR CRIMES and for making America lose its honor, integrity and suffer the worst economic depression since the last major depression that America had to go through.
ARREST BUSH!
Before I end this article, listen to how the outgoing chicken shit moron from Texas has tried to cover his sorry ass by cramming through a Bill to pardon himself and his corrupt bunch of useless no good Republican Cabinet from being prosecuted for his war crimes?
I'm just speechless!
All that swagger and macho struttings that the bastard put forth ending up with this chicken shit cover his ass evasive measure!
No wonder America is left in such deep shit waiting for Obama to redeem the world's mightiest nation from its worst ever maladministration under this war criminal turned coward!
Go get him folks and string the fella up!
I'd say that there is no point talking about world peace , justice, freedom, bla bla bla if America lets this fella get to slip slide his way to enjoy his ill gotten gains after massacring millions of innocent people of the countries that he and dick Cheney have now devastated!
Israel may face war-crimes case for alleged atrocities
Tim Butcher in Zeitoun, Gaza January 21, 2009
THE sight of her dead four-year-old son's blood splashed on a breeze-block wall was enough to start Zinad Samouni sobbing.
But the 35-year-old Palestinian mother of eight then composed herself to give the most complete allegation yet of atrocities committed by Israeli forces when they occupied the village of Zeitoun on the outskirts of Gaza City.
Standing in the wreckage of her home, she described the cold-blooded shooting of her 46-year-old husband, Atiyeh, and her son, Ahmed, in an incident that could form the core of a war crimes investigation against Israel.
The United Nations commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, has already said Israel should be investigated for what happened in Zeitoun on January 4 and 5.
So far dozens of bodies, mostly women, children and elderly, have been recovered, almost all from the same extended family.
The 48th corpse was found on Monday but there are fears others lie under the rubble.
"We had been in our houses for days worried about the air strikes when the soldiers came early on the morning of Sunday, January 4," Zinad Samouni said.
"There was shooting outside and we were all afraid so we all hid in this one room."
There were her husband, his first wife, Zahwe, 42, with her seven sons, a cousin, Hamdi, and herself, with her eight children.
"We were terrified as shells hit the roof in other parts of the house but we thought we were lucky because they did not hit our room.
"Eventually we heard soldiers banging on the door at around 6.30am. Atiyeh went to the door with his hands raised holding his ID but they shot him in the doorway and he fell forward."
Faraj Samouni, 22, Zahwe's son, said the children started to scream as Israeli soldiers entered.
"I shouted 'children, children' in Hebrew but they started shooting," he said. "Ahmed was hit two times. His sister Amal was hit in the head and is still in hospital."
Zinad Samouni pointed at a lick of blood on the wall and then turned over the mattress the children had been sitting on to show more.
"I carried him [Ahmed] in my arms, still bleeding, and we had to step over the body of his father," she said.
"We had to leave Atiyeh but I hoped to save Ahmed. He died as I carried him."
Atiyeh's body lay where he had been shot for almost two weeks while Israeli soldiers occupied a four-storey house next door, leaving a collection of racist graffiti.
Most was written in Hebrew but Israeli soldiers had also marked the walls in English, with messages such as "ARabs need 2 die", "Arabs are pieces of shit" and "1 is DOWN 999,999 TO GO".
The house was the only large property that the Israeli army allowed to stand. All the other buildings in Zeitoun, including dwellings, the mosque and a chicken farm, were flattened.
They used the house as an observation post from which to watch the open ground around Zeitoun, which guards the southern approach to Gaza City.
What happened in the house of Wael Samouni, 39, almost opposite the four-storey structure, is also likely to figure in any war crimes investigation.
Survivors allege that Israeli forces shepherded about 110 members of the Samouni family inside and then shelled it. At least 30 bodies were recovered.
Flattened by the Israelis, the wreckage is barely recognisable as a building.
Ambulance drivers, when they first tried to reach the dead and wounded in the village, were shot at by Israeli forces. In the end the ambulance crews made four visits, collecting 48 bodies as of Monday night.
When the crews found children clinging to their mothers' corpses, the International Committee of the Red Cross reminded Israel of its obligations to civilians under the rules of war.
The children had been out in the open for two days and nights but Israeli forces, less than 90 metres away, allegedly did nothing.
The Israeli army has denied acting improperly in Zeitoun.
Respecting American and British pacifist resisters (such as American Rachel Corrie)
And others.
And if you are not satisfied, now, with the truth the following pictures are war crimes as defined by the UN, The Hague and the Geneva Convention.
Using images of your enemy dead or alive (violation)
Human shields (violation)
Live Burial Torture (violation)
And as a last res ort, Execution (violation)
These IDF soldiers have faces... I can clearly see them...Can't you? Why are they not being prosecuted?
Because it is a systematic process that is driven by the government designed to force the people of Palestine into exile so Israel can claim all the land and resources.
Congratulating each other for a massacre well carried out! These War Criminals must be hauled to the International Courts of Justice and made to pay for each and every Palestinian and every other life that they caused to be taken and also injured the hundreds of thousands of people over the years!
Another War Criminal who needs to be made to pay for his decisions that caused millions of lives to be lost in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. is the former President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush Jr.
Criminals like these must not be allowed to be left free to enjoy the rest of their lives for through their criminal actions, they have destroyed and massacred millions of people's lives and precious families.
No matter that they be President's or Prime Minister's!
Justice must not discriminate or pick as to whom it should prosecute or punish for their inhumane actions against a people wronged and robbed of their life's , freedom, homes, properties and their homelands.
I await to see what America's newly inaugurated 44th President and the first African American Commander in Chief, President Barack Hussein Obama is going to do about this current day genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people by America's pet, the rogue terrorist Zionist Regime masquerading illegally as the State of Israel, occupying Palestine?
Will President Obama deliver what he has promised or is he going to be another ' Do as I say or else' threatening American President?
That remains to be seen but for now I think that the global action and focus must be in getting the World Court to make Israel pay for their war crimes!
This question was posed to the late Syeikh Ahmed Deedat ( May Allah be pleased with him) by a Christian woman in a jam packed forum out of South Africa.
Watch the video below and listen to what Allahyarham Sheikh Ahmed Deedat answered that woman with facts and figures and in a way that I am sure no one worth considering will dare to refute the Sheikh for it is the truth and a fact of life.
Learn from Allahyarham Syeikh Deedat whom no one could defeat in a debate while he was still alive.
Through these videos however, the whole world can still learn from this wonderful human being who continues to be a source of inspiration to Callers to Islam like me and my millions of fellow Da'ee's around the world.
May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala reward As Syeikhul Islam, Almarhum Ahmed Deedat with the best of Jannahtul Firdaus for his efforts.
Ameen.
We who are men will always be allured by the beauty of the women for they are what Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has created for us and adorned them with all the natural physical attractions to make us be interested in them!
Men who do not get turned on by women are simply not real men in the truest sense of the word.
They who pretend to be women and go about dressed like them and fool themselves are the last of their individual family's lineage.
Yup. No beating about the bush with it!
Each homosexual or lesbian are the last in their own individual family tree. Their lineage ends with them unless they repent and return to being who they ought to be as God Almighty decreed!
Here Syeikh Ahmed Deedat explains about the way our world has come to deteriorate to the stage where the word 'gay' which used to describe someone who was happy and cheerful has been corrupted to replace the word or term 'sodomite' by people who love to fool themselves?
Watch another dynamic Da'ee of Islam, Sheikh Khalid Yassin from America talk about the way women wearing the Hijab or Veil are ostracised whilst women who walk around stark naked or wearing skimpy G-strings or bikinis are applauded by this gone stir crazy society of the so called modern world?
It's just preposterous for the idiots amongst us to bad mouth God fearing women and men!
The whole wide world needs to take stock of this situation and avoid falling into the pits and cesspools of sin which caused many before us to perish and be obliterated as a result of their wrongdoings!
'Thou shall reapeth what thou soweth!' goes the wise saying that whatever goes around comes around to haunt us and kick us in the ass if we fail to toe the line!
Whose line?
The line that God Almighty, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, our Lord and Creator decreed for us!
Muslimin na wal Muslimat, Mukminin na wal Mukminat.
Ikhwanul Insaniyah.
Dear brothers and sisters.
It is heartening to come across this presidential address from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to all true Christians or as he puts it appropriately, those who follow the Abrahamic faith.
As Muslims we are taught by our faith to have the highest respect for all of Allah's Prophets and Messengers.
A Muslim is not to mock or insult any of Allah's Prophets and Messengers ( May peace be upon all 124,000 of them all) but is to accord to them the highest honor and respect that he or she can muster with all their capabilities.
Eesa ibni Maryam Alaihis Salam or Isa Al Masih is a mighty Messenger of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala and our Noblest Prophet and Chief of all of Allah's Messengers, the Chosen One @ Muhammad al Mustafa, Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam spoke well of his brother messengers and has taught us to respect and honor all of them.
The teachings of Hazrat Eesa Alaihis Salam to worship Allah the Almighty was forgotten by his disciples and instead various personalities who came after his lifetime started to create and invent this faith that is accorded to him called Christianity.
Till Yaum al Akhirat, those who claim to be the followers of Jesus Christ the Messiah will continue to believe in all the books of the Bible which has now come to be written and revised as the so called scholars of Christiandom saw fit to be nothing as to what the original Gospels of Isa Alaihis Salam was?
Thus eminent Muslim Da'ee`s such as the beloved Servant of Allah, Allahyarham Sheikh Ahmed Deedat took it upon himself to expose all the errors contained in what the Christians of today take to be the Holy Bible.
In his lectures, the honorable Sheikh Ahmed Deedat clearly explained that what the Christians have with them today in the form of the revised and still being revised Bible can't be the true Book of God for the misleading contents it has and all the 'According to's' being ascribed to this and that so called disciple of Isa Alaihis Salam.
For thinking people or those who have the intelligence within themselves, the crystal clear explanations of the Sheikh ought to awaken them from their delusions of believing in something that is clearly not entirely the whole words or recollections of the sayings of the Prophet Jesus or those that are attributed to God Almighty Himself.
The problem lies in the reality that people who choose to blinker their mindsets from not looking at the clear proofs being shown to them with regard to the Prophethood of Isa ibni Maryam is wasted upon those who chose to humanise the Almighty into thinking that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala would deem it proper to create all Mankind and then come down to Earth in human form and 'beget' Hazrat Isa Alaihis Salam by having sexual intercourse with the Virgin Maryam binti Zakaria !!!
Na`uzubillahiminzalik !
To those who want to learn and increase their knowledge about Islam and Christianity, I suggest that you watch this whole video in completion and then reflect on all that the late Syeikh Ahmed Deedat has shared with us about the subject? It runs for 1 hour 29 minutes plus.
The truth will prevail to those who have it in them to comprehend the reality and are able to see through the deceptions of those who have being fooling and misleading the masses over the centuries for their own vested interests.
Open up your hearts and your minds and the truth shall set you free!
The more I watch British 'RESPECT' MP Mr.George Galloway, the hardhitting smack you down Scottish hero give it to the biased Western media especially news organizations such as SKYNEWS owned by Rupert Murdoch, the more I come to respect this man!
SKYNEWS whose media channel blatantly try their level best to paint the picture to the Zionist advantage by turning the Palestinians and Lebanese Freedom Fighters into 'terrorists' and portray the real terrorizing Israeli Zionist rogue occupying armies into saints!
Imagine the preposterous way SKYNEWS tries to make the Israeli Demonic Forces look like angels when they are actually heartless, murdering bastards who have no qualms in massacring innocent children, babies and women along with unarmed civilians in their quest to rob those people of their lands!
I feel so inclined to applaud MP George Galloway for the way he rips to shreds this obviously biased news reporter and host of SKYNEWS over the Israeli assault against the Hezbollah in South Lebanon!
Watch Mr.George Galloway in action where he righteously whacks the reporter based in Occupied Jerusalem for trying to pull a fast one on him!
If only the people of Britain can see the gem of a man they have in this Scotsman, they will stop at nothing to make him their Prime Minister and undo all the wrongs that their current and previous rulers have been perpetrating in the name of freedom and all that bullshit that the UK and the USA have been unleashing upon the helpless countries of the entire world?
I was using Google Earth 4 to roam virtually around our planet Earth and what should I find?
A tropical paradise in the form of Phoenix Islands, off the Republic of Kiribati, right smack in the middle of the blue tropical Pacific Ocean waters.
Here's an excerpt of what the Visual Wikipedia has to share about these tropical paradise:
'The Phoenix Islands are a group of eight atolls and two submerged coral reefs, lying in the central Pacific Ocean east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands.
They are a part of the Republic of Kiribati.
During the late 1930s they became the site of the last attempted colonial expansion of the British Empire (the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme).
The islands and surrounding areas are home to some 120 species of coral and more than 500 species of fish.
On January 28, 2008, the Government of Kiribati formally declared the entire Phoenix group and surrounding waters as a protected area, making its 410,500 square kilometres the world's largest marine protected area.
The group is uninhabited except for a few families on Kanton Island (41 people according to the 2005 census).
The United States unincorporated territories of Baker Island and Howland Island are often considered northerly outliers of the group, in the geographical sense.
Howland and Baker are statistically grouped with the United States Minor Outlying Islands, however.
The Phoenix Islands (not including the reefs) were all claimed by the United States at some point, but most came under British dominion prior to Kiribati independence.
At various times, the islands were considered part of the Gilbert group (once also known as "Kingsmill").
The name "Phoenix" for this group of islands seems to have been settled on in the 1840s, after an island of that name within the group.
Phoenix Island was probably named after one of the many whaleships of that name plying these waters in the early nineteenth century.'
I love watching the crystal clear waters of the Phoenix Islands, teeming with all kinds of fishes and other creatures.
It is good to know that there are still unpolluted islands such as these compared to the various lands around the globe which are choking and gasping for a breath of fresh air and a drink of cool, clean crystal clear drinkable water.
Our nation, Malaysia was once as pristine as these lovely tropical paradises but over the years, our rivers are dying one by one and our seawater's are turning murky with pollution as a result of apathy by our country's idiots at large.
How I wish to be able to go holiday in islands such as these.
I hear that even our nation's Tioman Island which was once hailed and heralded as one of the world's most beautiful island has now started to lose its charms as a result of creeping pollution resulting from uncontrolled dumping of rubbish and refuse from its now numerous resorts and hotels set up to cater to the tourists and travellers making their way over to the island?
What a shame!
If only Malaysians can learn to care about our country's tropical treasures and not end up like me yearning and sighing to be able to visit tropical paradises such as these precious Phoenix Islands?
May the Phoenix Islands remain pristine and unspoiled for all future generations to come.
Ameen.
Yet, even tropical paradises such as these Kiribati Islands are now in danger of being swamped by the rising ocean waters as a result of global warming.
The icecaps of the Arctic Ocean area and also those of the Antartic are slowly but surely melting down and the result is more volume of seawater swamping the low lying just above sea level islands of the world such as the islands here in the Pacific Ocean.
The threat of these low lying islands going under water is growing by the day as a result of the world's major developed nations not giving a hoot to the ecological disaster that overlogging, hill levelling and other forms of manmade disasters affecting the rest of the planet in a falling domino situation.
The Earth as a whole needs to be saved from an early extinction and the rampant abusive ways of certain greedy, couldn't care less countries are just driving the Earth to an early Armageddon @ Doomsday.
Already so many species of creatures are now history, driven to an early death as a result of Mankind's ruthlessness.
The recent recurring spate of landslides and so called natural disasters are only the handiwork of such irresponsible quarters amongst Mankind.
We need to start more proactive measures to save the Earth and what Almighty God, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has bequeathed to us?
Let's all do our bit.
Do not pollute!
Recent studies by environmentalists and oceanographers have to their dismay, found dead and dying coral reefs around Phoenix Islands.
Isn't these proof of what reckless human behavior causes other forms of life to wither and die away without anyone noticing it until its just too damn late!
Mankind need to stop killing the planet!
Preserve our environment so that future generations of Mankind can continue to enjoy Allah's gift to us such as these Phoenix Islands.
Assalamualaikum ya ikhwanul Muslimin na wal Muslimat, Mukminin na wal Mukminat.
Saudara saudari seIslam dengan ku.
Ada diantara pembaca blog saya ini memohon saya menyiarkan bacaan 'Sayyidul Istighfar' untuk dijadikan pedoman dan panduan untuk mereka bertaubat sepertimana di anjurkan Nabi Muhammad ibni Abdullah, Khataman Nabiyyi al Mustafa, Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam.
Maka tuan tuan dan puan puan yang saya hormati, ini dia apa yang dapat saya gali dari keterangan kitab kitab hadis dan do'a yang berada didalam simpanan koleksi saya.
Semoga Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala memberkati kita semua dan sudi mengampuni kesekelian dosa dosa kita yang kita lakukan secara sedar mahupun tidak?
Amin Ya Rabbal Alamin.
Bismillahirrahmannirrahim.
Astaghfirullah hal adzhim!
Astaghfirullah hal adzhim.
Astaghfirullah hal adzhim.
Alladzi la ila ha ill laa huwal hayyul qayyum wa `aatubu ilaih
Min qulli dzanbii adznab tuhu amdan `au khaatan
Sirr ran `au `alaa niyyatann shaaghirann au kabirran
Innaka anta ghaafarr ruudzunu bi fattahul `qulub
Sattaarul `uyuub
Kaasyifuul `qurub
Wa'aatubu ilaih
Minaadzunubil latii
`A'lamu Wadz Dzunubil lath laa `alam
Innaka antaa `allamul ghuyuub.
~~~@~~~
Laa haula wala quwwata illaa billaa hil `aliyyil adhzim
Allahumma `inni nadiimun `alaa `qulli
Mashii`atin irrtaa kabtuhaa war zuqni shaadiqan
Fii dzalika wa inni barii `un `an kulli dii niin
Yukha liifuu diinal Islam.
~~~@~~~
Allahumma in dakha lasyh syhirku
Wasyh syhakku fii imani
Wa Tauhiddii
Tubtu ilaika waghfirlii
Wa qultu anaa
Asyhadu allaa ila ha illal Laah; Wa Asyhadu anna Muhammadar Rasulullah!
~~~@~~~
Ertinya:
Saya meminta ampun kepada Allah yang Maha Besar
Saya meminta ampun kepada Allah yang Maha Besar
Saya meminta ampun kepada Allah yang Maha Besar
Tidak disembah yang lain
Hanya Tuhan yang Maha Hidup dan Berdiri sendiri.
Aku bertaubat dari segala dosa yang aku telah kerjakan
Sengaja atau tidak sengaja; dengan sembunyi atau secara terang terangan
Baik dosa kecil ataupun dosa besar
Kerana Engkau Ya Allah Maha Pengampun akan dosa
Engkaulah yang membuka hati untuk bertaubat!
Engkau Penutup ke`aiban.
Engkau melenyapkan segala kedukaan.
Dan aku bertaubat dari segala dosa yang aku ketahui atau yang tidak aku ketahui.
Hanya Engkau Ya Allah yang Maha Mengetahui semua yang tersembunyi.
Tidak ada daya dan kekuatan melainkan dengan Allah yang Maha Tinggi dan Maha Besar!
Ya Allah!
Sesungguhnya aku menyesali atas semua perbuatan maksiat yang aku lakukan!
Berilah aku petunjuk agar aku dapat benar benar dalam hal ini!
Aku melepaskan diri dari semua agama selain dari Agama Islam!
Ya Allah!
Jika sekiranya pernah aku syirik dan syak dalam ke`imananku dan peng`esaanku terhadap Engkau, aku bertaubat!
Ampunilah kesalahanku!
Akhirnya aku mengucapkan dan mentasdiqkan bahawa :
Tiada Tuhan melainkan Allah dan Nabi Muhammad adalah Pesuruh Allah!
~~~~~@~~~~~
Saudara saudariku Muslimin dan Muslimat sekelian.
Pohon faham bahawa penyiaran Sayyidul Istighfar diatas ini bertujuan membantu mereka yang tidak mahir didalam membaca Do`a Taubat Nasuha ini didalam Bahasa Arab.
Mungkin penulisan rumi ini tidak berapa tepat didalam nahunya tetapi saya telah berusaha sedaya upaya saya untuk permudahkan mereka yang mengirim emel kepada saya dan diminta saya terbitkan Sayyidul Istighfar ini didalam Bahasa Rumi.
Seandainya anda berkemampuan untuk melakukan yang lebih baik dan sempurna lagi, maka saya persilakan anda lakukan demikian dan memaklumkan saya tentang alamat laman web atau blog anda untuk saya memaklumkan pembaca blog saya ini.
Segala kesempurnaan itu hanya milik Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala dan usaha hambanya ini hanya untuk membantu sesama Islam dengan saya.
Ketahulah bahawa pintu taubat bagi kita sentiasa terbuka selagi ajal kita belum sampai.
Bilamana sudah hadir Sayyidina Izra`il Alaihis Salam datang untuk menjemput kita kembali ke Rahmat atau Murka Allah Azza Wa Jalla, maka sudah terlambat bagi kita untuk bertaubat Nasuha begini.
Saya do`akan anda supaya sempat meminta ampun kepada Allah Malikul Mulk selagi masih terdaya dan semoga kita semua di ampuni Ar Rahman Ar Rahim sebelum matinya kita nanti!
George Galloway, British Member of Parliament socks it to the British Government in a way that has never been seen before in British History!
He is truly a champion of peace and justice, courageous beyond what is normally expected to be seen from the British politicians, surpassing any other current British leader, worth our respect and honor.
He whacks the traitors of the Arab world in the form of the treacherous Arab leaders in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and all the entire Middle East for selling out the Palestinians by doing nothing to save or defend them from the Israeli onslaught!
He takes to task the British and American leadership for supporting the rogue Israeli Zionists who are confiscating and occupying the Palestinian lands.
He calls for a total boycott of Israeli produce grown on occupied lands and shipped for sale in Britain and other European countries.
This man is speaking what many of us feel all over the world.
Being a British Member of Parliament speaking the truth of what billions of human beings feel all over the world, he stands out as a pillar of fair play and as a symbol of the Voice of Truth in a sea of treachery against the Palestinian entity.
May God bless George Galloway and all those alike him.
Ameen.
Here's a transcript of his showdown with the US Senate over the scandalous UN 'Oil for Food in Iraq' program.
CNN 18th May 2005
WASHINGTON — British Member of Parliament George Galloway returned to the UK Wednesday confident he won a fiery showdown with U.S. senators who have accused him of profiting from the U.N.'s defunct oil-for-food program in Iraq.
Galloway said he was "absolutely" convinced he had been vindicated from allegations that he received vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein's regime.
"These people think they can smear people without them having the right to speak back and this time I got that right and I knocked them for six," he told reporters before leaving the U.S.
He said after his appearance before the Senate panel Tuesday that his accusers had little credibility "outside of Washington."
But the panel's Republican chairman, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, hit back, telling media after the session that Galloway's credibility was "very suspect."
Galloway told CNN that while Saddam's regime shared a "lot of responsibility" for deaths in Iraq, so too did the policies of Washington and London.
Galloway, an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, called the Senate panel's investigation the "mother of all smokescreens" used to divert attention from the "pack of lies" that led to the 2003 invasion.
"I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11, 2001," he told Coleman.
"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives — 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies, 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever, on a pack of lies."
He added: "Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported."
The Respect MP said he would continue to demand the withdrawal of U.S. and UK forces from Iraq following his fiery appearance in Washington.
He told CNN the U.S. and British governments were no longer believed in their statements on Iraq and that their forces could not be part of any solution there.
Galloway's appearance before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee was the first by a politician allegedly involved in the oil-for-food corruption scandal.
In a report last week, the subcommittee stated that deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam granted Galloway vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil between 2000 and 2003.
Galloway strongly disputed that allegation Tuesday.
"I am not now or ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one, and neither has anybody on my behalf," Galloway testified.
He also said he did not own a company that trades in oil.
"If you had any evidence of that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this (committee today)," Galloway said.
Coleman, a former district attorney, told Galloway before his sworn testimony that "senior Iraqi officials have confirmed that you, in fact, received oil allocations and that the documents that identify you as an allocation recipient are valid."
Galloway challenged that accusation in his opening statement.
"Now, I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Coleman.
Rumsfeld comparison Galloway, 51, is a leading critic of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his alliance with U.S. President George W. Bush in the war in Iraq. He was re-elected on an anti-war platform earlier this month.
He said he was "friendly" with former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and met him many times but that he met with Saddam only twice — in 1994 and in 2002 — the last time to persuade Saddam to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into the country.
He said he had met with Saddam "exactly as many times as Donald Rumsfeld has met with him."
"The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and give him maps," Galloway said in his heated opening statement.
"I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second occasion, I met him to try and persuade him to allow Hans Blix and U.N. inspectors back into country."
Rumsfeld visited Baghdad to meet Saddam as President Reagan's Middle East envoy in the 1980s, when the U.S. sided with Iraq in its war with Iran. Blix was chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq before the war.
Galloway complained that the panel had determined his guilt without speaking to him.
"You have my name on lists provided to you... by the convicted bank robber and fraudster and con man Ahmed Chalabi, who many people, to their credit, in your country now realize played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq," Galloway told the panel.
Other allegations reportedly came from Iraqi detainees.
"In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Air Base [Afghanistan], in Guantanamo Bay — including, if I may say, British citizens being held in those places — I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances," he said.
The Senate subcommittee has alleged in recent days that a number of European politicians were rewarded by Saddam for supporting Iraq's bid to lift economic sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Europeans implicated In addition to Galloway, the panel also implicated former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua, who allegedly was allocated 11 million barrels.
"I wrote to Mr. Coleman," Pasqua said Sunday, "and I told him that all allegations about myself are false."
Russian Deputy Parliament Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who was accused Monday of receiving 76 million barrels of Iraqi crude oil, denied the accusation.
"I've never signed any contract and never received a cent from Iraq," Zhirinovsky told a Russian TV interviewer.
Its heartening to know that such a man exists in the Western world!
Behold before you, the British House of Commons Member, George Galloway sock it to the US Senate, in a way that not that many has ever done before?
George Galloway is a symbol! A symbol of someone who stands for justice and peace, straight up!
Someone who has the courage and the integrity to speak the truth and nothing but the truth without beating around the bush as is the usual case with politicians who have a twisted agenda and vested interests.
I wish that there are more George Galloway's in the whole wide world today for surely then we would have a more balanced and just society.
As someone commented in the comments section, George Galloway has 'ehem ehem' the size of watermelons! :P
What a Scotsman!
The Scottish people ought to be proud of their kin here in the form of George Galloway!
A true Scottish warrior worth celebrating for his gallantry and chivalry for world peace.
Almost the entire whole world is outraged to see how the illegal Zionist Terrorist State of Israel has been wantonly killing thousands of unarmed Palestinian civilians whom they have corralled into an open prison which is what the Gaza Strip has been turned to be by bombarding the Palestinians non stop with outlawed chemical weapons and to the satge of even not sparing hospitals and schools or even the UN buildings there since the last 21 days?
I say open prison because if anyone tries to enter Gaza through the sea, the rogue Israeli Navy will attack and ram any vessel that tries to go ashore to send in much needed medical and food supplies for a people who have been imprisoned and kept incarcerated from the outside world or allowed to leave the area because the neighbouring Arab countries have closed their borders to the fleeing Palestinian families!
Let's watch what has been taking place in all these lands where the mighty trample upon and brutally violate and extinguish the lives and honor of unarmed defenseless people in the name of 'fighting against terrorists'!
Who is it really who is terrorizing the whole world? Civilians or rogue armed to the teeth regimes masquerading as the freedom fighting countries of this lopsided world?
How many of you have heard of Rachel Corrie?
She was an American peace activist who was martyred standing up to the Israeli Regime who were and still are demolishing Palestinian homes!
Rachel Corrie the brave young American soul had more balls than all the Arab leaders of the world today who are cowering with their tails between their sorry butts in their fortified palaces in the Middle East!
Rachel Corrie died there in the holy land of Palestine, standing up against the terrorizing Israeli regime's bulldozers.
She surely must be in the Mercy of Ar Rahman for sacrificing her life for the sake of the oppressed people of Palestine.
May Allah Azza Wa Jalla enter her Ruuh in Jannah Al Firdaus for it is He who created her Ruuh.
Amin.
Watch how Israeli bulldozers demolish Palestinian homes, lives and taken the life of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist and now a Palestinian martyr?
The ongoing Gaza Holocaust being perpetrated by the rogue State of Israel against the original inhabitants of the State of Palestine needs to be understood for what it truly is?
It's a case where the Zionists who are occupying and robbing the lands of the Palestinians and destroying Palestinian houses under guise of fighting against the Hamas freedom fighters are exposed by the Neturei Karta, Jews United against Zionism, a group of Orthodox Jewish Rabbis to be not true Jews as what their Judaism faith entails ?
Watch the video below where Professor Harold Channer who has his own talk show on television speaks to Rabbi Israel Domb from London in a one hour program called 'Conversation' which was produced in 1989.
Rabbi Israel Domb was a Spiritual Leader of the Neturei Karta and discusses about the origins and the philosophy of the Neturei Karta and also speaks about the way the Zionists who are behind the creation of the rogue State of Israel are going against the dictates of the Torah which does not allow any creation of a State for the people of Israel!
Orthodox Jews such as the Rabbis of Neturei Karta put their own lives at risk by standing up to the violent ways of the Zionist Israelis. At times, these noble Jews are assaulted, attacked and even killed by the Zionist terrorists who do not spare even their fellow Jews!
Watch the videos below and witness for yourselves how the Zionists attack the Orthodox Jewish Rabbis?
Watch the video below to learn about the reasons why the Orthodox Jewish Rabbis are against the State of Israel?
Watch the video below and see how former President of the United States of America, President Jimmy Carter clearly speaks of his opposition to the Israeli's continuing occupation of Palestine:
It's sad to see how the ongoing massacre of Palestinians is being protested by people such as the Neturei Karta Rabbis and even President Jimmy Carter but the cowards of the OIC are so blatantly silent about it?
The prophecy of Prophet Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam that in the Last Days, the affairs of the Muslims will be run by the worst amongst them has clearly come to pass.
The Prophet said that in the Last Ages, the Muslims will be in large numbers but as weak as the froth upon the ocean waves as evidenced by the helplessness exhibited by the world's so called Muslim leaders today?
In the meantime, Israeli illegal settlers continue to steal more Palestinian lands as they please by putting up fences and occupying Palestinian properties at will.
Will Palestinians ever get to reclaim their holy lands from the clutches of these Zionist Israelis?
I am disappointed with the way the OIC leaders have failed to protect and defend our Palestinian brothers and sisters from the attack and continuing assault by the Zionists against them, a people who have been betrayed by those who are supposed to be their brethren and defenders of Islam?
Watch a piece of history and reflect as to what is going on in the Holy land of Palestine? Can we afford to just let the Palestinians be killed and massacred to oblivion? Think!
I've run out of curses to heap upon the traitors of the Muslim Ummah in the OIC.
I leave them to Allah! Let Him teach them a lesson!
“And why should you not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated men, women, and children, whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from you one who will protect; and raise for us from you one who will help.” [TMQ 4-75]
The Zionist Israeli Regime willfully has been carrying out open genocide and massacre of the Palestinian population of Gaza right before the very eyes of the whole wide world and not one bloody coward amongst the so called Muslim leaders has even has the balls to step up and condemn the atrocities being perpetrated by the Israeli bastards!
O so called Leaders of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, Arab League and every bloody idiot who calls himself as the President, Emir, King, Sultan, Prime Minister of any country that claims to uphold the Kalima of 'La ila ha ill lall Laah ; Muhammadar Rasul Allah'!
In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,
We, the Member States of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, determined : to acknowledge the Conference of Kings, Heads of State and Government of the Member States convened in Rabat from 9 to 12 Rajab, 1389 H, corresponding to 22 to 25 September 1969, as well as the Conference of Foreign Ministers held in Jeddah from 14 to 18 Muharram 1392 H corresponding to 29 February to 4 March 1972;
to be guided by the noble Islamic values of unity and fraternity, and affirming the essentiality of promoting and consolidating the unity and solidarity among the Member States in securing their common interests at the international arena;
to adhere our commitment to the principles of the United Nations Charter, the present Charter and International Law;
to preserve and promote the lofty Islamic values of peace, compassion,tolerance, equality, justice and human dignity;
to endeavour to work for revitalizing Islam’s pioneering role in the world while ensuring sustainable development, progress and prosperity for the peoples of Member States;
to enhance and strengthen the bond of unity and solidarity among the Muslim peoples and Member States;
to respect, safeguard and defend the national sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all Member States;
to contribute to international peace and security, understanding and dialogue among civilizations, cultures and religions and promote and encourage friendly relations and good neighbourliness, mutual respect and cooperation;
to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms, good governance, rule of law, democracy and accountability in Member States in accordance with their constitutional and legal systems;
to promote confidence and encourage friendly relations, mutual respect and cooperation between Member States and other States;
to foster noble Islamic values concerning moderation, tolerance, respect for diversity, preservation of Islamic symbols and common heritage and to defend the universality of Islamic religion;
to advance the acquisition and popularization of knowledge in consonance with the lofty ideals of Islam to achieve intellectual excellence;
to promote cooperation among Member States to achieve sustained socioeconomic development for effective integration in the global economy, in conformity with the principles of partnership and equality;
to preserve and promote all aspects related to environment for present and future generations;
to respect the right of self-determination and non-interference in the domestic affairs and to respect sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of each Member State;
to support the struggle of the Palestinian people,who are presently under foreign occupation, and to empower them to attain their inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination, and to establish their sovereign state with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital, while safeguarding its historic andIslamic character, and the holy places therein;
to safeguard and promote the rights of women and their participation in all spheres of life, in accordance with the laws and legislation of Member States;
to create conducive conditions for sound upbringing of Muslim children and youth, and to inculcate in them Islamic values through education for strengthening their cultural, social, moral and ethical ideals;
to assist Muslim minorities and communities outside the Member States to preserve their dignity, cultural and religious identity;
to uphold the objectives and principles of the present Charter, the Charter of the United Nations and international law as well as international humanitarian law while strictly adhering to the principle of non-interference in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State;
to strive to achieve good governance at the international level and the democratization of the international relations based on the principles of equality and mutual respect among States and non-interference in matters which are within their domestic jurisdiction;
Have resolved to cooperate in achieving these goals and agreed to the present amended Charter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~@@@@~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cursed be you who take the oath of office or kingdom by placing your filthy cowardly hands upon the Holy Al Quran Al Karim, promising to protect and guard the lives of the Muslims under your rule and swore to see to it that you will do so with all the powers that you have under you!
Cursed be all of you O bloody spineless cowards masquerading as the Keepers of Islam when you are nothing but fat, ugly parasites who live off the wealth and riches that Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala entrusted you with!
Cursed be all you spineless vermin who sit in your palaces and ignore the bloodshed that is taking place in Gaza where the Muslims of Palestine are being killed at random without any of you so called Muslim leaders having the balls to command your armies to go wage war against the Israeli bastards!
Cursed be all you so called Champions of the Arab world when you close your eyes before the carnage taking place before you!
Never will I pray for your well being anymore in the Friday Khutbah's when you have betrayed the trust of us Muslims who are damned to be under your so called patronage!
I pray that Almighty Allah will give us other leaders who have it in them to defend the lives, honor and sanctity of the Ummah!
All you cowardly bastards do not deserve even a jot of our well wishes for each and every one of you cowardly vermin do not deserve to be respected anymore after you have done nothing! Not a bloody thing for the Palestinians except whimper in cowardly sympathy for them from your fortified walls of your sprawling palaces!
Damn you all to hell!
Watch a true Jewish Rabbi expose the Zionists for what they truly are?
Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss is much more of a man than any of the OIC leaders !
Read and learn about the true Orthodox Jewish people who want to see Palestine returned to the Muslims and who want to see the State of Israel be dismantled!
Rabbi Yisroel and all the Neturei Karta leaders ought to be hailed for their stand!
These are among the last surviving kampongs of Singapore. Soon to be demolished to make way for concrete jungles to be built up to complete the urbanisation of the Republic of Singapore.
Sad isn't it?
The kampong. A heavenly place which we kampongites treasure no matter where they are?
I am sure that the kampong folks of Kg Buangkok, Singapore are gonna miss these places like hell!
Nothing can beat a kampong! Especially historical ones like these...
Please be aware that there is a website dedicated to misleading the Ummah from acknowledging the Holy Al Qur'an Al Karim as the preserved Kalam of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Brothers and Sisters,
The enemies of Islam come in many shapes and sizes and in many guises.
Whomsoever set up this misleading site has many covert agendas.
Amongst which is to sow doubts and worries in the hearts and minds of Muslims who are not that well informed about the Deen of Islam and in the hearts of those who have just embraced the Birthright of All Mankind, Islam Al Haqq.
Does any Muslim or Muslimah, worth your name and Iman, subscribe to this laknatullah's claim that Al Quranul Kareem contains such grievous errors? Na'uzubillahiminzalik!
Allahyarham Sheikh Ahmed Deedat ( May Allah be pleased with him) during his lifetime successfully exposed the 50,000 over errors in the Bible and explains clearly here in the following videos about such errors:
Brothers and Sisters, fellow Muslims.
I implore you to watch these videos in full and understand what Allahyarham Syeikh Deedat has taught about the True Scriptures of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala which is none other than the Holy Al Qur'an Al Kareem and not the Bible as the Christians would have the uninformed believe?
Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2
I am sure that those of you who are well versed with the Holy Qur'an will be able to figure out that this site is not right and must not be trusted.
Please spread the word around and highlight our fellow Ummah about this misleading and mischievous site.
May those who set up this site receive their just dues both here in this Duniya and in the Yaum al Akhirat!
Sumber rujukan: Solat Taubat (Panduan Penjernihan Jiwa) Muhammad Isa Selamat
ALLAH swt sentiasa memerintahkan kita supaya bertaubat, sebagaimana firman-Nya yang bermaksud: “Hai orang-orang yang beriman, bertaubatlah kepada Allah dengan taubat yang sebenar.” (At-Tahrim: 8.)
Allah telah membuka pintu harapan kepada hamba-hambaNya: “Katakanlah; wahai hamba-hambaKu yang melampaui batas terhadap diri mereka sendiri janganlah kamu berputus asa dari rahmat Allah. Sesungguhnya Allah mengampunkan dosa-dosa semuanya. Sesungguhnya Dialah yang Maha Pengampun lagi Maha Penyayang.” (Az-Zumar: 53)
Syarat-syarat taubat:
Ikhlas ingin bertaubat
Tidak akan mengulangi perbuatan dosa itu lagi
Menyesal atas perbuatan yang telah dilakukan
Harus mempunyai tekad di dalam hati tidak akan melakukan dosa itu untuk selama-lamanya
Dikerjakan sebelum ajal tiba
Jika salah satu syarat tidak dipenuhi, maka taubat yang dilakukan itu tidaklah sah. Jika dosa berkaitan dengan manusia yang lain, maka syaratnya ditambah lagi, iaitu harus dapat membebaskan diri dari hak orang yang berkaitan. Contohnya jika hal itu berbentuk harta, harus dikembalikan. Jika berbentuk hukuman, ia harus menyerahkan diri mohon dimaafkan. Jika hal berupa cacian dan sebagainya, maka ia harus memohon keredhaannya.
Waktu melaksanakan taubat:
Taubat tidak boleh diundur-undur atau ditunda. Kerana jika demikian ia sangat berbahaya bagi hati manusia. Jika tidak segera menyucikan diri sedikit demi sedikit, maka pengaruh dosa itu akan bertompok-tompok, dan akhirnya akan merosakkan hati sehingga tertutup dari cahaya kebenaran.
Di antara penyebab yang akan membangkitkan jiwa bertaubat seseorang itu adalah jiwa yang selalu mengingati hari kematian dan hidup bersendirian di dalam kubur. Kata-kata mati adalah sesuatu yang sangat menakutkan kebanyakan manusia. Mati beerti berpisah dengan segala yang disayangi atau dicintai. Hari terputusnya segala nikmat. Sedangkan berpisah sebentar sahaja dengan anak atau isteri, dapat mengalirkan air mata kesedihan, apa lagi berpisah untuk selamanya
Firman Allah: “Sesungguhnya kamu akan mati dan sesungguhnya mereka akan mati pula.” (Az-Zumar: 30)
Di samping mengingat tentang azab penderitaan yang bakal dihadapi oleh orang-orang yang berdosa mengingat kenikmatan syurga yang bakal ditempati oleh orang-orang yang soleh juga akan dapat membangkitkan keinginan jiwa untuk melakukan taubat dengan segera.
Cara melaksanakan solat taubat:
Cara melaksanakan solat taubat ini sama dengan solat biasa, iaitu setelah berwuduk dengan sempurna, lalu berdiri di tempat yang suci, menghadap kiblat;
Waktu di lakukan - bila-bila masa merasa telah berbuat dosa (kecuali waktu makruh tahrim utk melakukan solat)*. Sebaik-baiknya 2/3 malam (pukul 2 pagi ke atas), semasa Qiyamullail
Lafaz niat: “Sahaja aku mengerjakan solat sunat taubat dua rakaat kerana Allah Ta’ala.” (Cukup di dalam hati, ada perbahasan ulama’ tentang lafaz niat dlm ibadah - sila rujuk kpd pakar feqah)
Rakaat pertama membaca (disunatkan membaca doa Iftitah) kemudian surah Al-Fatihah. Selepas itu mana2 ayat atau surah dalam al-Quran.
Rakaat kedua membaca surah Al-Fatihah. Selepas itu mana2 ayat atau surah dalam al-Quran.
Semasa sujud akhir rakaat kedua, ucapkanlah Doa Nabi Yunus sebanyak 40 kali (bersungguh-sungguh di dalam hati memohon keampunan dari Allah Ta’ala),
Ertinya: “Tidak ada Tuhan selain Engkau. Maha Suci Engkau Ya Allah, sesungguhnya aku adalah termasuk orang-orang yang zalim.”
Bacaannya : ' La ila ha illa anta . Subhanaka inni kuntum minadh dhaalimin!'
Selepas salam, perbanyakkan istighfar seperti,
Ertinya: Ampunilah hamba Ya Allah. Tuhan yang Maha Agung. Tiada Tuhan yang lain melainkan hanya Engkau. Dialah Tuhan yang Maha Hidup lagi Maha Perkasa dan hamba bertaubat kepada Engkau ya Allah.
dan berdoa dengan Penghulu Istighfar,
Ertinya: “Ya, Allah Engkaulah Tuhanku, Tidak ada Tuhan selain Engkau, Engkaulah yang menjadikan aku. Sedang aku adalah hamba-Mu dan aku di dalam genggaman-Mu dan di dalam perjanjian setia ( beriman dan taat ) kepada-Mu sekuat mampuku. Aku berlindung kepada-Mu dari kejahatan yang telah ku lakukan. Aku mengakui atas segala nikmat yang telah Engkau berikan kepada ku dan aku mengaku segala dosaku. Maka ampunilah aku. Sesungguhnya tidak ada yang dapat mengampuni segala dosa kecuali Engkau.”
Kemudian boleh juga berdoa mengikut luahan hati dan munajat masing-masing ke hadhrat Allah.
*Makruh tahrim - Petikan dari “170 Solat-Solat Sunat”, Abd Rahman Mukhlis, Terbitan Jasmin Enterprise, ms 8-9 ;
Fuqaha Syafi’iyah berpendapat bahawa makruh tahrim hukumnya melaksanakan sembahyang sunat tanpa sebab, dan sembahyang itu dipandang tidak sah jika dilakukan dalam lima waktu berikut:
Selepas sembahyang Subuh yang dilaksanakan secara tunai (bukan sembahyang qadha’), hingga matahari menyingsing sepenggalah.
Ketika matahari terbit hingga menyingsing seperti galah.
Selepas melakukan sembahyang Asar yang dilaksanakan secara tunai sekalipun ia dijamak dengan Zuhur pada waktu Zuhur (jamak taqdim).
Ketika matahari berwarna kuning, hingga terbenam seluruhnya.
Ketika matahari benar-benar berada di atas kepala (di tengah-tengah langit) hingga gelincir ke Barat. Kecuali waktu Istiwa’ (matahari berada di tengah-tengah langit pada hari Jumaat.
Bagaimanapun, jika sembahyang yang dilakukan itu ada sebab yang mendahuluinya seperti sembahyang Tahiyyatul Masjid, walaupun khatib sudah berada di atas mimbar, sembahyang Sunat Wuduk dan sembahyang Sunat Tawaf sebanyak dua rakaat.
Begitu juga sembahyang yang mempunyai waktu terkait (muqayyad), seperti sembahyang Istisqa’ dan sembahyang Gerhana Matahari. Maka hukumnya adalah sah tanpa dimakruhkan, sebab ia terkait dengan turunnya hujan dan terhalangnya cahaya matahari.
Adapun melaksanakan sembahyang sunat ketika bilal qamat adalah makruh tanzih, kecuali ketika qamat sembahyang Jumaat. Sembahyang sunat yang dilakukan ketika bilal sudah qamat pada sembahyang Jumaat adalah haram hukumnya.
I am not that happy to know that TmNet has once again failed to ensure that its broadband service is kept up and running for just out of the blue, here we are suffering from another system crash due to its inefficient operations and failure to see to it that this frequent system malfunction does not occur!
It's sickening to have our national telecommunications provider fall short of providing our much needed broadband internet service to be kept running without these getting to be quite a nuisance to us, its paying customers!
I am using my Celcom Mobile Broadband now to post this article. Lucky that I had the urge to purchase this Sierra Wireless Aircard and subscribe to Celcom Broadband when I had my funds come in recently.
Looks like if we need to remain online, we can't just depend on TmNet Streamyx for time and time again, the nation's main broadband services provider keeps screwing us up by having these frequent breakdowns in their services yet have the audacity to advertise themselves as the best broadband provider, bla bla bla...
The reality is that TmNet should be embarrassed to know that they are without a doubt the nation's most frequently breaking down in service broadband providers.
I thought it was my modem or what acting up but when I called them at 100, a pre recorded voice tells me that their service in the Klang Valley is down from the 10th to the 12th of January, 2009!
So much for grandiose promises!
TmNet should recompense us who are its subscribers for connection airtime loss in our next bills!
When are we ever going to get stable, secure broadband connections in this Multimedia Super Corridor touting country?
The invective of certain world leaders has grown louder as the Israeli invasion of Gaza continues.
They've been joined by voices here at home eager to pin the blame for the tragic loss of life solely on Israel.
Fortunately, most Canadians have little difficulty understanding why Israel has resorted to such harsh actions.
For years, that country has been pummelled by rockets that place one-eighth of its population at mortal risk.
Cries for Israel to now back off and calls for an immediate ceasefire ignore the fact that when Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, the violence only increased. Or that Hamas used a previous six-month truce to double the range of its rockets.
While the bloodshed of innocent civilians is deplorable, we cannot forget that the Palestinians who chose Hamas in a democratic election weren't unaware of that organization's intent to destroy Israel and its predilection for terrorist tactics to achieve that aim.
Hamas hides amongst its own people to launch its implements of death toward Israel, then screams murder when Israel retaliates to protect its own citizens.
Yet this bloodshed is Israel's fault, according to fanatics such as Ontario CUPE president Sid Ryan, who is calling for a ban on visiting Israeli academics in response to a Dec. 29 bombing that damaged a university in Gaza. If that site was used as an arms storehouse, Ryan should aim his vitriol at the academics who run that institution.
The moderator of the United Church of Canada called for an immediate ceasefire, in a statement suggesting Israel is chiefly to blame. "Peace cannot be achieved through violence," said David Giuliano.
The good reverend should tell that to Hamas, which could employ the non-violent methods of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi to win sym-pathy for the legitimate grievances of its people.
The cowardly terrorist tactics of Hamas show it is interested neither in peace nor improving the lot of Palestinians.
The world should direct its enmity accordingly.
POSTED BY: Roy Clancy, london POSTED ON: January 7, 2009
EDITORS NOTE: As published in The London Free Press on Jan. 7, 2009.
Comments
middle East It is clear that there are a great deal of uninformed Canadians like Roy Clancy who have no idea what has transpired to create this tragic event. First HAMAS was created by Israel and the MOSSAD to battle against the PLO. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ZER403A.html Secondly, Israel has blockaded GAZA to punish the people for electing a democratically elected government that won in a fair election. They did not like the results, so they shut down the borders and did not allow food, medicine, electricty and fuel into GAZA. Let's see how you would react under those circumstances. POSTED BY: Kanwal
Why are we arguing about fault? So what you're saying is that the Palestinians should have to pay? You don't think perhaps that Israel is over reacting just a bit? You know like the death toll is much, much, much, higher in Gaza (Gaza 700), I don't know what to think because there's no way that the 40% of the death toll (Children) can be a threat to Israel from schools and hospitals, especially if they're UN hospitals. Speaking about rights to defend your country, GAZA WAS UNDER SIEGE- Israel controlled all the ports and roads letting the bare necessities in. Why doesn't this "right" apply to the Palestinians? In the end does it matter who's fault it is? Shouldn't it just stop? POSTED BY: Briget Leblanc
middle east 650 death, over 3000 injured in 12days, 60% of these death are children! not to mention years back how palestinians were tortured by ISREAL, and now when they're hitting isreal they're being called TERROIST! you expect them to sit and watch ... Isreal is defending herself..defending what.. they're in PALESTINE that's not their LAND... I'm sorry, but you looking after the wrong INFO.. POSTED BY: for your knowledge
Israel's remote, unmanned gunships are brave? The concept of courage and fairness usually includes a balance of power. Any reading of history knows it's an old tactic to starve the populace on which an assault is planned, in order to weaken them and hopefully create internal divisions and chaos. Then the overall strategy is to find the right timing to move in with wholesale assault. But even then, it was usually man to man. Instead your vision of cowards are those who are not covered in armor, or who are not sitting securely in armored tanks and firing on civilians and children. Your vision of courage is to sit safely at a distance with a remote control an operate un-manned gunships to rein down death and destruction. I hope those who have the power to inflict their hostilities on you do not someday show you the effects of your vision of "courage". Terrorism is a word with the roots in "terror". Who is more likely to inflict terror -- the brave guy hidden with a remote control death device or the children and civilians, unarmed, not protective suits and helmets, but utterly exposed an helpless. Brave guy you are! You must be on the Conservative letter-writing, or propaganda list. Keep trying. Normal thinkers know the difference even if you do not. POSTED BY: Leila Paul
really? IF you look at what Kanwel said and look at Human nature itself you can see that the people of Gaza acted out of desperacy when they elected Hamas. I was not there, and im sure neither where you so i can't really say for 100% but logically thinking if the area you live in is in total ruins and a group of people offer to help but at a price you would take it. isn't that just what the people of Germany did when they elected Hitler (they had no idea he would turn out to be a deranged lunatic). This is beside the point though, for you people to condem one side completely is to be hipocrytes of yourselves. If i do remember Canadians were once called "Peace Keepers" and we stood along side the UN for peace not faught with the US for "democracy". It is NOT RIGHT to support one side who kills even once, and condem the others who do the same, you are not solving any problems by pointing fingers. Even if you put Patriotism aside, morally, picking a side in a fight is like giving that person a gun because they both tell that person that what they are doing is okay; in this case the useless killing of innocent people. Another thing that I would like to address is that Religion and politics should not be put in the same room. Doing something in the name of God is wrong whether your a Christian, Muslum, or Jewish; it even says at least once in all of those books. POSTED BY: mk
middle east If you have any knowledge. Palestinian people lived on their land for thousand of years and all of sudden 60 years ago Israel came and clam it as their promised land. Leave them live in Peace and have them run their own life. Israel as an occupiers no humanitarian legislation justify their doing to the Palestinian people POSTED BY: Wafa Dawoud
hamas hamas is a terrorist organization, plain and simple.their only goal is the annihilation of israel.these are some of the most hateful people i have ever seen.they sacrifice their own brothers and sisters to further their cause and their propaganda.any palestinian that 'democratically' voted for these people brought this on themselves. the palestinians that live and work in israel have one of the highest standards of living in the whole arab world,yet we have these murderous few who endanger this whole population with their hate filled rhetoric.these are the same people who strap hand grenades to the foreheads of 4 year old girls and send them to die.these people understand only one thing, and that is violence.i believe israel has the right to defend itself and should bomb hamas back into the stone age, then make peace with the rational leaders of the palestinian people POSTED BY: k jones
Refutation :
First let me commend the London Free Press for publishing a wide variety of opinions on its letter page on the current crisis in Gaza. However, the London Free Press published a Point of View "Don't Blame Israel for tragedy in Gaza," By Roy Clancy, on January 7, 2008.
This opinion piece is full of nonsense, historical inaccuracies and factual errors that it is not fit to be published in a responsible news paper.
However, given the bias and lack of knowledge of many Canadians and in particular journalists like Roy Clancy it passes as informed opinion when in fact it greatly misleads readers who expect that there is a at least some factual basis for the published opinion.
However, even uniformed opinions have a right to be expressed.
There is, however, a duty for the media to allow contrary opinions be provided and that factual errors be corrected.
For example, contrary to what Mr. Clancy alleges, and while Israel formerly withdrew its 8,000 illegal Jewish settlers and soldiers, Israel has never ended its control and its siege of Gaza.
Virtually all authorities still consider Gaza Israeli controlled occupied territory that functioned as an open air prison for 1.5 million Palestinians.
Clancy asserts that that when Israeli soldiers withdrew the violence increased in Gaza.
The facts speak for themselves.
In the three years after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire.
On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.
Not a single Israeli was killed by Hamas rocket fire in the year preceding the current Israeli onslaught.
The continuation of Israeli siege, the denial of sufficient food, medicine and fuel supplies to allow Gaza to survive and the collective punishment of over one million civilians in Gaza was in itself a violation of the truce.
Israeli soldiers attacked Gaza on the 2nd, 5th and 8th of November, 2008.
It was Israel that broke the truce.
On November 15, 2008 Hamas retaliated for numerous Israeli attacks and provocations and only after Israeli forces had killed many members of Hamas and other Palestinian civilians.
Hamas honoured the truce it had signed with Israel and in fact offered to extend it but wanted Israel to lift the siege and allow food, fuel and medical supplies and to end the starvation of Gaza .
Hamas also called for an end to Israeli attacks in the West Bank.
It was Israel that refused to extend the truce as its current political leaders were behind in the polls and they wanted to show how tough they were by killing defenseless Palestinians.
Clancy's claims are false yet he has the gall to attack church and labour leaders who have criticized Israel's attack as "fanatics."
Clancy also quotes Mahatma Gandhi oblivious to the fact that Gandhi was anti-Zionist and would no doubt be appalled by Israel's violent behavior.
Gandhi said, "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct."
I wish people would also inform themselves of the views of Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, Arnold Toynbee and Nelson Mandela on Palestine and Zionism. The uninformed would be in for a rude awaking.
To provide balance the argument I suggest that the the London Free Press publish an opinion piece from Professor Avi Shlaim, a Jewish and Israeli Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and author of numerous books on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, "How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe," published in highly respected Guardian in Britain, which provides much need factual information and opinions contrary to the uninformed opinions of Mr. Clancy and other individuals who unquestioningly support Israel.
There are numerous other Jewish and Israeli exerts including Dr. Richard Falk, Professor Noam Chomsky, Dr. Norton Mezvinsky, Dr. Jeff Halper, Dr. Neve Gordon, Dr. Jennifer Loewenstein, Professor Oren Ben-Dor, to name a only a few, who provide contrary informed opinions.
Those who unquestioningly condemn the Palestinians to a brutal existence of living under Israeli military occupation for 42 years, support continued theft of Palestinian land and deny Palestinians even the most basic political and human rights should carefully examine their conscience and the reasons for holding such views.
Assalamualaikum wahai Muslimin dan Muslimat sekelian.
Semoga anda berkeadaan sihat sejahtera dan selamat bersama ahli keluarga anda.
Do'a saya agar umat Islam di Palestin dan Wilayah Gaza yang sedang diserang rejim pengganas Zionis Israel akan dibantu segera oleh pihak pihak Mujahidin Muslim dari negara negara Teluk dalam kadar waktu terdekat.
Amin Ya Rabbal Alamin.
Tuan tuan dan puan puan, saudara saudari seIslam dengan saya sekelian.
Saya bersaksi tidak ada Tuhan yang layak disembah kecuali hanya Allah,dan saya bersaksi bahwa nabi Muhammad adalah utusan Allah.
Saudara-saudariku yang semoga senantisa selalu didalam bimbingan serta perlindungan Allah Ta'ala,
Banyaknya mazhab/ firqah yang dianut umat Islam berakibat buruk bagi perkembangan kaum muslimin. Islam yang seluruh ajarannya mengandung kemurahan, belas kasih, menyeru kepada perdamaian dan persaudaraan, telah dinodai oleh penganutnya dengan darah sesamanya akibat dari adanya khilafiyah mazhab. Dan pertumpahan darah itu berlangsung dalam kurun waktu yang sangat panjang. Peperangan itu sendiri memberikan luka tak tersembuhkan pada jiwa para pengikut mazhab yang bertikai itu.
Pertumpahan darah sesama muslim itu pertama kali dilakukan oleh khawarij yang menamakan diri denganAsy Syuraat. Mereka berkeyakinan Islam tidak akan sempurna kecuali dengan membunuh setiap orang yang tidak sejalan dengan fikiran mereka. Setelah khawarij muncullah firqah Qaramithah. Mereka menjelajahi seluruh wilayah Islam dengan menebarkan rasa takut dan kecemasan. Darahpun memercik diwilayah Iraq, Syam, Hijaz dan wilayah-wilayah lainnya.
Tak terbilang kaum muslimin yang telah dibantai oleh Khawarij dan Qaramithah, penyebab itu semua karena fanatisme mazhab. Dan Islam terbebas, tidak ada kaitannya sedikitpun dengan perbuatan mereka. Diantara peperangan yang terjadi karena fanatisme mazhab adalah antara syi’ah dengan Ahlus Sunnah, karena kedua mazhab ini yang paling banyak dianut oleh sebagian besar umat Islam.
Semua pertumpahan darah yang diakibatkan oleh pertikaian antar Mazhab/ firqah tidak memberikan manfaat bagi Islam, bahkan telah melemahkan semua kekuatan yang dimiliki umat Islam dan menjerumuskannya kedalam kehinaan dibawah cengkeraman para kufar.
Karena itu pertikaian semacam itu adalah suatu bahaya yang harus diwaspadai setiap muslim pada zaman sekarang ini. Kita harus memiliki tanggungjawab dan keinginan kuat untuk mempertahankan keutuhan agama Islam.
Perlu diwaspadai bahwa benih dari semua pertikaian itu tidak ditebarkan oleh tangan umat Islam, tetapi oleh tangan orang-orang yang mengaku Islam, padahal tidak pernah seharipun cahaya Islam memasuki jiwanya. Diantara mereka adalah kelompok yahudi yang paling besar peranannnya dalam memecah belah umat Islam.
Pada masa kekuasan Daulah Fathimiyah, Yahudi tercatat berkali-kali melakukan usaha merusak kemurnian Islam dan memecah belah persatuan umat, diantaranya adalah Ibnu Kulais dan Nasykatain Ad Durzi. Karena kelihaiannya, keduanya berhasil menduduki jabatan menteri dam memanfaatkan posisi itu untuk merusak keutuhan umat.
Seperti kita ketahui, perpecahan selalu mengarah pada kelemahan dan membuahkan kehinaan, dan semua itu semua itu semakin memantapkan kekuasaan kaum kufar diwilayah Islam. Hampir semua wilayah Islam, yang merupakan Negara-negara yang kaya dengan berbagai hasil bumi, telah mengalami cengkeraman penjajah. Mereka mengadu domba kekuatan-kekuatan muslim. Mereka membina hubungan dengan penganut firqah yanq berjiwa lemah dan hampa dari ghirah Islam. Selanjutnya para ahli strategi kufar menanamkan fanatisme dan berbagai pemikiran dusta, sehingga akhirnya penganut firqah itu keluar dari barisan kesatuan Islam dan bahkan menjadi perusak dan penghancur bagi keutuhan Umat.
Dengan cara seperti itulah wilayah-wilayah Islam dari Andalusia sampai Palestina, jatuh ketangan kaum kufar, tidak jauh penyebab jatuhnya Andalusia, pertikaian antar firqahlah yang juga menyebakan umat Islam palestina Rapuh, sehingga terusir dari dari negaranya sendiri. Dan senantiasa ada sekelompok umat Islam yang justru memihak musuh. Dipakistan dan India misalnya, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad dengan terang-terangan menyatakan fatwa dibatalkannya kewajiban jihad dan menyatakan dukungan kepada colonial Inggris, akibatnya Inggris mampu menguasai wilayah yang dihuni oleh lebih dari seratus tiga puluh juta umat Islam.
Di Syria, Perancis memperalat umat Islam pengikut Alawiyyin. Di Iraq, Inggris menyulut api pertikaian antara Sunni dan Syi’ah, sehingga umat Islam disibukkan dengan pertikaian dan perselisihan, sementara Inggris dengan leluasa mengeruk hasil bumi dan kekayaan negeri itu. Dan Israel laknatullah mampu menghimpun pengikut Ad Duruz yang lemah kepribadiannya dan bahkan merekrut mereka kedalam jajaran tentara zionis untuk menggempur saudara mereka sesama bangsa arab dan sesama muslimin.
Diakhir tulisan ini, saya yang fakir mengingatkan saudara-saudaraku sekalian, bahwa betapa besar petaka yagn menimpa umat Islam, betapa hina, terbelakang, dan lemahnya umat Islam, karena mereka tercerai berai dalam firqah-firqah, apalagi bagi mereka yang menganut firqah-firqah itu dengan tanpa ilmu dan fanatisme buta. Padahal,kebaikan, kemajuan, kemuliaan dan kejayaan yang pernah diraih umat Islam, adalah karena mereka selalu bersatu.Dan mereka selalu mengimani dan mengamalkan hadits Rasulullah SAW :
“Matsalul mu’miina fi tawadihim wa taatufihim kamatsalil jasadil hidi idzasy takaminhu udhwun tada a lahu sa ‘irul jasadi bissahri walhuma”
“Perumpamaan kaum mu’miniin dalam kecintaan belas kasih dan sayang mereka seperti satu tubuh. Apabila salah satu anggota tubuh sakit, maka seluruh tubuh memgalami kesulitan tidur dan rasa demam”
Mereka senantiasa berada dalam satu barisan yang rapih dan kokoh. Dan lebih dari itu, mereka memiliki aqidah yang satu dan sumber yang satu, yaitu Allah Ta’ala dan Rasulullah SAW.
Mohon maaf bila khilaf…………
Mohon nasehat bila tersesat……………
Subhanakallahuma wabihamdika, Asyhadu ala illaha ila anta astaghfika waatubuilaika
Saya sendiri sudah lama memikirkan dan berpendapat yang serupa bahawa keadaan kita hari ini yang berpecah ke pelbagai mazhab dan aliran Islam menjadi punca ujudnya ketidaksefahaman diantara kita dewasa ini.
Apa guna kita mengaku kita ini umat Islam yang sepegangan bahawa Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala adalah Tuhan kita dan bahawa Muhammad ibni Abdullah Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam itu Rasul dan Nabi kita bila kita secara realitinya berbeza pandangan dan tidak seia sekata didalam menangani masaalah ummah?
Negara negara yang kononnya memperjuangkan Islam berperang dan bercakaran sesama sendiri di Timur Tengah dan akibatnya kini umat Islam Palestin di Semenanjung Gaza dan Tebing Barat Palestin sedang digempur dan dibunuh secara ganas oleh Rejim Pengganas Zionis Israel tanpa ada sebarang reaksi dari kesekelian negara negara Arab disekeliling mereka!
Hanya pejuang kebebasan Palestin seperti Hamas di Gaza dan Hezbullah di Lubnan sahaja yang berani mengangkat senjata dan memerangi pengganas pengganas Zionis Israel disana!
Pertubuhan Negara Negara Islam atau OIC seperti biasa bersikap bacul dan tidak ada sebarang reaksi untuk membela warga Palestin yang seagama dengan mereka!
Tidak ada usulan untuk mengumpul bala tentera Muslimin untuk memerangi musuh musuh Islam.
Tidak ada sebarang usaha mengirim bantuan makanan atau ubat ubatan kepada mangsa mangsa kekejaman Israel di Gaza mahupun di Tebing Barat!
Mesir menutup sempadannya supaya tidak ada pelarian warga Palestin yang boleh masuk mencari perlindungan bagi diri sendiri dan ahli keluarga mereka semasa Rejim Zionis Israel rakus membunuh mereka dengan melepaskan bom bom yang menghancur musnahkan kediaman mereka dan sehingga kini telah mengorbankan lebih dari 800 nyawa umat Islam Palestin dan mencederakan beribu ribu lagi warga Palestin dengan sewenang wenangnya!
Semuanya ini berpunca dari ketidaksatuan didalam hati dan nurani umat Islam sedunia!
Maka saya tidak menyangkal bahawa hakikat perpecahan diantara umat Islam sedunia ini berpunca dari perbezaaan mazhab yang diperkenalkan oleh keempat empat Imam dan diteruskan oleh fanatik fanatik mazhab sehingga ke hari ini!
Kehancuran umat Islam bermula bilamana mereka membeza bezakan diantara kaum itu dan ini bila mengamalkan ajaran ajaran Islam.
Selagi umat Islam berpecah ke mazhab itu dan ini, selagi itulah musuh musuh Islam mudah memporak perandakan penyatuan ummah dan hari ini terbukti mereka tidak menghadapi sebarang masaalah membunuh dan merogol ummah ini sesuka hati mereka manakala setiap ketua atau pemimpin negara Islam terbukti pengecut dan dayus ; gagal membela maruah dan melindungi umat Islam yang dibawah perintah dan kekuasaan mereka didalam setiap negara yang mendabik dada sebagai 'negara Islam'!
Selagi umat Islam tidak kembali kepada ajaran asal Nabi Muhammad Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam dan berpegang teguh kepada Tali Allah iaitu Al Qur'an Al Karim dan tetap berpegang kepada Ajaran ajaran Nabi Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam berpandukan Hadis Hadis Sahih Baginda dan Sunnahnya, maka selagi itulah kita akan terus melihat nyawa nyawa dan maruah umat Islam ini melayang bagaikan bunga bunga lalang yang tidak dihargai.
Apakah puncanya hati hati kita sudah tidak kasihan atau terasa terkesan bila melihat bukti bukti pembantaian kaffir zionis terhadap sesama ummah?
Apakah kerana mereka itu berada jauh beribu batu dari kita dan kehancuran kehidupan mereka tidak ada kena mengena dengan kehidupan kita ini dibumi Malaysia yang secara relatifnya masih aman damai dan selesa?
Bukankah memang benar seperti yang disabda Nabi Sallalahu Alaihi Wassallam bahawa pada Akhir Zaman (sekarang ini) umat Islam akan dikerjakan musuh musuh Islam laksana menghadapi talam makanan untuk diratah sesuka hati mereka?
Bukankah memang benar bahawa keadaan kita ini tidak ubah bagaikan buih buih kosong dan lemah dihujung ombak lautan?
Ramai tetapi tidak ada sebarang kekuatan.
Kaya tetapi kekayaan itu tidak dipergunakan untuk melindungi keselamatan ummah!
Bijak tetapi kebijaksanaan itu disalah guna untuk tujuan berperang dan bermusuh sesama sendiri dan berhibur sepanjang masa.
Berbakat tetapi bakat itu disalah guna untuk tujuan memakmurkan budaya hedonisma dan melacurkan maruah wanita wanita dan remaja Islam.
Cantik tetapi kecantikan itu cuma dipersia-siakan untuk tujuan noda dan dosa. Maksiat semakin subur dibumi bumi negara negara yang bertopengkan Islam.
Ramai dan banyak sekali bilangan kita tetapi adanya perbezaan mazhab dan fikrah membuatkan kita lemah dan lesu diserang musuh musuh Islam.
Usah melihat terlalu jauh ke Timur Tengah.
Di bumi Malaysia ini sendiri ada berbagai macam perpecahan diantara umat Islam yang pada dasarnya terdiri dari majoriti bangsa Melayu dan segelintir India dan China Muslim.
Bangsa Melayu yang merupakan bangsa majoriti beragama Islam sendiri berpecah pecah menjadi pelbagai jamaah dan parti Islam.
Parti politik seperti UMNO dan PAS rata ratanya terdiri dari satu bangsa dan sama agama mereka iaitu bangsa Melayu dan beragama Islam.
Namun permusuhan diantara UMNO dan PAS seolah olah tidak akan lenyap sampai ke hari Kiamat!
Dengki mendengki dan hasad tetap subur membara membakar sebarang usaha menyatukan Ummah di bumi bekas Tanah Melayu ini.
Iya! Bekas Tanah Melayu!
Kerana apa?
Kerana manusia manusia berbangsa Melayu di Semenanjung Tanah Melayu ini berhasad dengki diantara mereka sejak zaman berzaman.
Kelainan pendapat menjadi punca para ketua orang orang Melayu yang ada sebahagian dari mereka itu bergelar ulamak dan sebagainya tetap degil, keras kepala, sombong dan bongkak, tidak mahu beralah atau berkompromi sesama Melayu sehingga pada hari ini ujud berpuluh puluh mahupun beratus ratus jamaah dan aliran umat Islam sehingga timbul bermacam macam sengketa dan perang dingin sesama manusia manusia berbangsa Melayu dan kononnya beragama Islam di bumi Malaysia ini.
Apakah nasib umat Islam di Malaysia ini akan turut sama menjadi seburuk nasib warga Palestin dibumi Timur Tengah sana akibat perbezaan pendapat dan mungkin mazhab pegangan mereka kini?
Wallahu'alam bissawab!
Yang ternyata, sampai ke hari ini umat Islam didalam parti UMNO dan PAS masih terus bermusuh dan kata mengata diantara mereka sementara musuh musuh Islam semakin berani berkurang ajar terhadap institusi agama Islam dinegara ini!
Kerana apa?
Kerana mereka melihat umat Islam di bekas Tanah Melayu ini memang degil dan terus bermusuh sesama Islam!
Maka ini peluang terbaik bagi mereka untuk menghentam retak supaya terbelah!
Menimbulkan perpecahan diantara ummah dengan menjanjikan pelbagai macam gula gula politik berasaskan pengongsian kuasa dan diadu dombakan sesama agama.
Siapakah yang bersalah didalam keadaan ini?
Setiap mereka yang bergelar Sultan, Raja, Presiden dan Perdana Menteri mahupun Ketua Kampong sekalipun.
Selagi manusia Melayu dan India atau China Muslim tidak bersatu sebagai satu jamaah yang bertuhankan Allah yang Esa dan berNabikan Muhammad al Mustafa didalam ertikata sebenarnya, tidak ada sebarang jaminan bahawa malapetaka yang sedang menimpa warga Palestin disana tidak akan turut berlaku disini!
Well, one thing for sure is the hatred that the Israeli Zionist Regime have unearthed towards themselves from people all over the world for their brutal, murderous, relentless assault against the unarmed Palestine population suffering in the occupied Gaza strip!
The videos above show people from all ethnic origin and various creeds gather in protest against the Israeli continuing massacre of innocent Palestinians especially the killing of Palestinian children, women and men who have nothing to do with the HAMAS freedom fighters!
That's what HAMAS are doing? Trying to free their fellow Palestinians from Israeli Occupation and retaliate against Israeli for massacring their families and demolishing their homes and taking over their lands for illegal Israeli Zionist occupiers whom they mislabel as settlers!
One does not merit being regarded as 'settlers' of a land or country when one goes in illegally breaching the borders of a once free nation, kill the original inhabitants and owners of homes and lands. demolishes their homes and then erect an illegal settlement upon Palestinian lands and then pretend to be 'settlers'!
If anyone believes that kind of bullshit, then that someone is clearly a clueless idiot who does not understand the truth and all that it stands for?
Would we allow anyone to come invade our home, kill our loved ones and occupy our residences?
No way! We would fight them with all that we have or die trying!
That's just a natural instinct and right that we have, regardless of where we are currently living, in whichever country, city, suburb or rural area!
The Palestinians have had their lands taken from them as a result of British and American treachery!
The whole world has not been able to do anything against this theft of a sovereign nation because they do not have the means to face up against the world's super terrorists and occupiers in the form of the British Colonials and now the humongous world's # 1 super bullying country - the USA under their worst warmongering idiot of a President, George Wacko Bush Jr.!
Even the incoming US President Elect Barack Hussein Obama is seen as being collaborative with the Zionist Regime by saying that he would do the same that Israel is now doing if someone were to lob rockets into his home where his two daughters are sleeping?
Obama conveniently forgets or overlooks the fact that those who are retaliating against Israel are only doing so because their homes, their lands, their families are being killed systematically every bloody day by the Israeli regime and their occupying forces and that retaliating against that kind of attack is only a natural humanly thing to do?
Obama speaks of his two daughters but overlooks the fact that hundreds of thousands if not millions of Palestinian sons and daughters have been massacred by the Israeli Zionist whom he seems to so love and says that he is with them in this massacre!
Where is the change that Obama was trumpeting all along in his Presidential campaign recently which he has won by duping the whole wide world who rallied to his support after getting sick and tired of Bush Jr's waging war upon helpless countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.?
Obama can't claim not to know about the massacre of Palestinians there in Gaza or even in the West Bank which is the work of none other than the Zionist terrorists masquerading as the poor innocent victims of Hamas rocket attacks!
Is Obama that damn stupid?
I surely hope not for if he is, then God help us all!
Today, several rallies and protests against Israel are scheduled to take place here in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and I am sure will take place all over the world after the Friday prayers around 2.00pm onwards.
I have an inkling that many people are going to be wounded and assaulted by the police wherever these protests are going to take place for it is only the norm for the police to attack their own citizens in the name of law enforcement, bla bla bla...disregarding the very reasons why the people are protesting in the very first place?
Take care of yourselves and be safe or street smart when you do go protest against the Israeli Zionist bastards wherever you are?
Free Free Palestine! Stop Stop the Killings!
Damn Damn Israel! Damn Damn their Patrons!
You know damn well who they are!
*Latest Update of the Anti Israeli Protest in front of the American Embassy at Kuala Lumpur, check out http://layarangkasa.wordpress.com/
WHEN I came across the article “Tudung-clad teens who are hooked on sex” (The Star, Jan 5), I was left shocked, appalled and outraged to read about the adolescent females who unashamedly admitted that they find having sex at a young age fun.
My heart breaks for them, and I cannot help but wonder what drove them to behave in such a way.
Just when I thought sex-saturated culture among teens only happens in Western and so-called advanced societies, I learn that it is now happening in the country.
However, I would like to argue that this problem does not just affect Muslim, tudung-clad girls but also other girls in Malaysia, regardless of skin tone, appearance, ethnicity, socio-economic status, family background or religion. It could be any girl, be it a straight-A student or even the neighbour’s sweet daughter.
To read about a 15-year-old girl confessing that the terms “pure” and virgin do not exist among her friends, and also having the gall to say “What is wrong if my friends and I want some fun and have sex while we are still young?” is unacceptable and frightening.
These girls think they have grown up enough to indulge in pre-marital sex when in actual fact, they are children who are abused and exploited as sex objects.
Do they not realise that they are being used and they have been robbed of their innocence as well?
Why are they so stupid to think that having teen sex is ‘cool’ by ostracising their peers who are still virgins?
To the girls who stand their ground by not bowing to peer pressure and sex, I salute you for sticking to your principles. Keep it up and ignore those who make fun of you for sticking to your guns.
And to those who think having teen sex makes them ‘cooler’ and more beautiful, they are just too stupid to realise they are actually ruining their own future.
It does not take a rocket scientist to tell us that when a teenaged girl indulges in sex, she is not only vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases but also to chauvinistic males who could take advantage of her.
If we want to combat the growing issues of promiscuity among adolescents, we should not blame the media and Western celebrities for glorifying the sex-saturated culture. Nor should we blame our Western counterparts for introducing this unacceptable behaviour as well.
Isn’t it time we took a look at ourselves and did something to combat this problem?
We should be the ones to teach our children that they are human beings with dignity and self-respect and not mere sex objects.
Unless we do something right now, our younger generation will become sex-obsessed adults who will only bring downfall to our society.
Well, that was a letter to the editor of The Star Online from a concerned Non Muslim Malaysian, currently living in Auckland, New Zealand.
She raises her concern for the ignorant teenagers of our country who are destroying their own selfs and their future by engaging in pre marital sex out of their own misguidance and stupid choices.
In a way, Steffie Yin is speaking up about something that I am sure most of us feel strongly about and worry as to what the hell is going on with our Malaysian youth?
Where did we go wrong?
Can we afford to just mind our own business and let the future generations of Malaysians live a life that is devoid of moral responsibility and just watch our going crazy young Malaysians go to waste as a result of their foolhardiness now or stop the rot from spreading amongst the masses?
Even though she's living in New Zealand, Steffi Yin still cares about our going wayward Malaysian girls that she has written to the editor expressing her sorrow about what she is witnessing?
Problem is, do these youths care?
Or does anyone in authority give a shit about the future of these impressionable girls screwing up their life's, literally?
Does Malaysian society in general worry about the rot that is taking place in our nation?
Why are Malaysians turning into a heartless, couldn't care less society?
Communicating with Israelis may leave one bewildered. Even now when the Israeli Air Force is practicing murder in broad daylight of hundreds of civilians, elderly persons, women and children, the Israeli people manage to convince themselves that they are the real victims in this violent saga.
Those who are familiar intimately with Israeli people realise that they are completely uninformed about the roots of the conflict that dominates their lives.
Rather often Israelis manage to come up with some bizarre arguments that may make a lot of sense within the Israeli discourse, yet make no sense whatsoever outside of the Jewish street.
Such an argument goes as follows: ‘those Palestinians, why do they insist upon living on our land (Israel), why can’t they just settle in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon or any other Arab country?’ Another Hebraic pearl of wisdom sounds like this: ‘what is wrong with these Palestinians? We gave them water, electricity, education and all they do is try to throw us to the sea’.
Astonishingly enough, the Israelis even within the so-called ‘left’ and even the educated ‘left’ fail to understand who the Palestinians are, where they come from and what they stand for.
They fail to grasp that for the Palestinians, Palestine is home.
Miraculously, the Israelis manage to fail to grasp that Israel had been erected at the expense of the Palestinian people, on Palestinian land, on Palestinian villages, towns, fields and orchards.
The Israelis do not realise that Palestinians in Gaza and in refugee camps in the region are actually dispossessed people from Ber Shive, Yafo, Tel Kabir, Shekh Munis, Lod, Haifa, Jerusalem and many more towns and villages.
If you wonder how come the Israelis don’t know their history, the answer is pretty simple, they have never been told.
The circumstances that led to the Israeli Palestinian conflict are well hidden within their culture. Traces of pre-1948 Palestinian civilisation on the land had been wiped out.
Not only the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians, is not part of the Israeli curriculum, it is not even mentioned or discussed in any Israeli official or academic forum.
In the very centre of almost every Israeli town one can a find a 1948 memorial statue displaying a very bizarre, almost abstract, pipe work.
The plumbing feature is called Davidka and it is actually a 1948 Israeli mortar cannon. Interestingly enough, the Davidka was an extremely ineffective weapon. Its shells wouldn’t reach more than 300 meters and would cause very limited damage. Though the Davidika would cause just minimal harm, it produced a lot of noise.
According to the Israeli official historical narrative, the Arabs i.e., Palestinians, simply ran away for their lives once they heard the Davidka from afar.
According to the Israeli narrative, the Jews i.e., ‘new Israelis’ did a bit of fireworks and the ‘Arab cowards’ just ran off like idiots.
In the Israeli official narrative there is no mention of the many orchestrated massacres conducted by the young IDF and the paramilitary units that preceded it.
There is no mention also of the racist laws that stop Palestinians[1][1] from returning to their homes and lands.
The meaning of the above is pretty simple. Israelis are totally unfamiliar with the Palestinian cause. Hence, they can only interpret the Palestinian struggle as a murderous irrational lunacy. Within the Israeli Judeo- centric solipsistic universe, the Israeli is an innocent victim and the Palestinian is no less than a savage murderer.
This grave situation that leaves the Israeli in the dark regarding his past demolishes any possibility of future reconciliation.
Since the Israeli lacks the minimal comprehension of the conflict, he cannot contemplate any possible resolution except extermination or cleansing of the ‘enemy’.
All the Israeli is entitled to know are various phantasmic narratives of Jewish suffering. Palestinian pain is completely foreign to his ears. ‘Palestinian right of return’ sounds to him like an amusing idea.
Even the most advanced ‘Israeli humanists’ are not ready to share the land with its indigenous inhabitants. This doesn’t leave the Palestinians with many options but to liberate themselves against all odds. Clearly, there is no partner for peace on the Israel side.
This week we all learned more about the ballistic capability of Hamas.
Evidently, Hamas was rather restrained with Israel for more than a long while. It refrained from escalating the conflict to the whole of southern Israel. It occurred to me that the barrages of Qassams that have been landing sporadically on Sderot and Ashkelon were actually nothing but a message from the imprisoned Palestinians.
First it was a message to the stolen land, homes fields and orchards: ‘Our beloved soil, we didn’t forget, we are still here fighting for you, sooner rather than later, we will come back, we will start again where we had stopped’.
But it was also a clear message to the Israelis. ‘You out there, in Sderot, Beer Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Aviv and Haifa, whether you realise it or not, you are actually living on our stolen land. You better start to pack because your time is running out, you have exhausted our patience. We, the Palestinian people, have nothing to lose anymore’.
Let’s face it, realistically the situation in Israel is rather grave. Two years ago it was Hezbollah rockets that pounded northern Israel.
This week the Hamas proved beyond doubt that it is capable of serving the South of Israel with some cocktail of ballistic vengeance. Both in the case of the Hezbollah and the case of the Hamas, Israel was left with no military answer. It can no doubt kill civilians but it fails to stop the rocket barrage.
The IDF lacks the means of protecting Israel unless covering Israel with a solid concrete roof is a viable solution. At the end of the day, they might be planning just that (link).
But this is far from the end of the story. In fact it is just the beginning. Every Middle East expert knows that Hamas can seize control of the West Bank within hours. In fact, PA and Fatah control in the West Bank is maintained by the IDF.
Once Hamas takes the West Bank, the biggest Israeli population centre will be left to the mercy of Hamas. For those who fail to see, this would be the end of Jewish Israel. It may happen later today, it may happen in three months or in five years, it isn’t matter of ‘if’ but rather matter of ‘when’.
By that time, the whole of Israel will be within firing range of Hamas and Hezbollah, Israeli society will collapse, its economy will be ruined. The price of a detached villa in Northern Tel Aviv would equal a shed in Kiryat Shmone or Sderot. By the time a single rocket hits Tel Aviv, the Zionist dream will be over.
The IDF generals know it, the Israeli leaders know it. This is why they stepped up the war against the Palestinian into extermination. The Israelis do not plan upon invading Gaza. They have lost nothing there. All they want is to finish the Nakba. They drop bombs on Palestinians in order to wipe them out. They want the Palestinians out of the region. It is obviously not going to work, Palestinians will stay. Not only they will they stay, their day of return to their land is coming closer as Israel has been exploiting its deadliest tactics.
This is exactly where Israeli escapism comes into play. Israel has passed the ‘point of no return’. Its doomed fate is deeply engraved in each bomb it drops on Palestinian civilians. There is nothing Israel can do to save itself. There is no exit strategy. It can’t negotiate its way out because neither the Israelis nor their leadership understand the elementary parameters involved in the conflict. Israel lacks the military power to conclude the battle. It may manage to kill Palestinian grassroots leaders, it has been doing it for years, yet Palestinian resistance and persistence is growing fierce rather than weakening. As an IDF intelligence general predicted already at the first Intifada. ‘In order to win, all Palestinians have to do is to survive’. They survive and they are indeed winning.
Israeli leaders understand it all. Israel has already tried everything, unilateral withdrawal, starvation and now extermination. It thought to evade the demographic danger by shrinking into an intimate cosy Jewish ghetto. Nothing worked. It is Palestinian persistence in the shape of Hamas politics that defines the future of the region.
All that is left to Israelis is to cling to their blindness and escapism to evade their devastating grave fate that has become immanent already. All along their way down, the Israelis will sing their familiar various victim anthems.
Being imbued in a self-centred supremacist reality, they will be utterly involved in their own pain yet completely blind to the pain they inflict on others. Uniquely enough, the Israelis are operating as a unified collective when dropping bombs on others, yet, once being slightly hurt, they all manage to become nomads of vulnerable innocence.
It is this discrepancy between the self-image and the way they are seen by the rest of us which turns the Israeli into a monstrous exterminator.
It is this discrepancy that stops Israelis from grasping their own history, it is that discrepancy that stops them from comprehending the repeated numerous attempts to destroy their State. It is that discrepancy that stops Israelis from understanding the meaning of the Shoah so can they prevent the next one. It is this discrepancy that stops Israelis from being part of humanity.
Once again Jews will have to wander into an unknown fate.
To a certain extent, I myself have started my journey a while ago.
This article was sent to Debbie Ducro, a American-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. She published it, and was fired the next day.
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I am a Jew. I was a participant in the Rally for the Right of Return to Palestine. It was the right thing to do.
I've heard about the European holocaust against the Jews since I was a small child. I've visited the memorials in Washington, DC and Jerusalem dedicated to Jewish lives lost and I've cried at the recognition to what level of atrocity mankind is capable of sinking. Where are the Jews of conscience? No righteous malice can be held against the survivors of Hitler's holocaust. These fragments of humanity were in no position to make choices beyond that of personal survival. We must not forget that being a survivor or a co-religionist of the victims of the European Holocaust does not grant dispensation from abiding by the rules of humanity.
"Never again" as a motto, rings hollow when it means "never again to us alone." My generation was raised being led to believe that the biblical land was a vast desert inhabited by a handful of impoverished Palestinians living with their camels and eking out a living in the sand. The arrival of the Jews was touted as a tremendous benefit to these desert dwellers. Golda Meir even assured us that there "is no Palestinian problem".
We know now this picture wasn't as it was painted. Palestine was a land filled with people who called it home. There were thriving towns and villages, schools and hospitals. There were Jews, Christians and Muslims.
In fact, prior to the occupation, Jews represented a mere seven per cent of the population and owned three per cent of the land.
Taking the blinders off for a moment, I see a second atrocity perpetuated by the very people who should be exquisitely sensitive to the suffering of others. These people knew what it felt like to be ordered out of your home at gun point and forced to march into the night to unknown destinations or face execution on the spot. The people who displaced the Palestinians knew first hand what it means to watch your home in flames, to surrender everything dear to your heart at a moment's notice. Bulldozers levelled hundreds of villages, along with the remains of the village inhabitants, the old and the young. This was nothing new to the world.
Poland is a vast graveyard of the Jews of Europe. Israel is the final resting place of the massacred Palestinian people. A short distance from the memorial to the Jewish children lost to the holocaust in Europe there is a levelled parking lot. Under this parking lot is what's left of a once flourishing village and the bodies of men, women and children whose only crime was taking up needed space and not leaving graciously. This particular burial marker reads: "Public Parking".
I've talked with Palestinians. I have yet to meet a Palestinian who hasn't lost a member of their family to the Israeli Shoah, nor a Palestinian who cannot name a relative or friend languishing under inhumane conditions in an Israeli prison. Time and time again, Israel is cited for human rights violations to no avail. On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the refugee camps inhabited by a people who have waited 52 years in these 'temporary' camps to go home. Every Palestinian grandparent can tell you the name of their village, their street, and where the olive trees were planted. Their grandchildren may never have been home, but they can tell you where their great-grandfather lies buried and where the village well stood. The press has fostered the portrait of the Palestinian terrorist. But the victims who rose up against human indignity in the Warsaw Ghetto are called heroes. Those who lost their lives are called martyrs. The Palestinian who tosses a rock in desperation is a terrorist.
Two years ago I drove through Palestine and watched intricate sprinkler systems watering lush green lawns of Zionist settlers in their new condominium complexes, surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire in the midst of a Palestinian community where there was not adequate water to drink and the surrounding fields were sandy and dry. University professor Moshe Zimmerman reported in the Jerusalem Post (30 April, 1995), "The [Jewish] children of Hebron are just like Hitler's youth."
We Jews are suing for restitution, lost wages, compensation for homes, land, slave labour and back wages in Europe. Am I a traitor of a Jew for supporting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees to their birthplace and compensation for what was taken that cannot be returned?
The Jewish dead cannot be brought back to life and neither can the Palestinian massacred be resurrected. David Ben Gurion said, "Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves...politically, we are the aggressors and they defend themselves...The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country...".
Palestine is a land that has been occupied and emptied of its people. Its cultural and physical landmarks have been obliterated and replaced by tidy Hebrew signs. The history of a people was the first thing eradicated by the occupiers. The history of the indigenous people has been all but eradicated as though they never existed. And all this has been hailed by the world as a miraculous act of God. We must recognise that Israel's existence is not even a question of legality so much as it is an illegal fait accompli realised through the use of force while supported by the Western powers. The UN missions directed at Israel in attempting to correct its violations of have thus far been futile.
In Hertzl's 'The Jewish State' the father of Zionism said: "We must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means of every modern expedient." I guess I agree with Ehud Barak (3 June 1998) when he said, "If I were a Palestinian, I'd also join a terror group." I'd go a step further perhaps. Rather than throwing little stones in desperation, I'd hurtle a boulder.
Hopefully, somewhere deep inside, every Jew of conscience knows that this was no war; that this was not G-d's restitution of the holy land to it's rightful owners. We know that a human atrocity was and continues to be perpetuated against an innocent people who couldn't come up with the arms and money to defend themselves against the western powers bent upon their demise as a people.
We cannot continue to say, "But what were we to do?" Zionism is not synonymous with Judaism. I wholly support the rally of the right of return of the Palestinian people. here.
One of my blog readers emailed me these video links. I figure that these videos hosted on You Tube are worthy of your attention.
Watch and discover the truth that not that many know about?
STOP THE LIES!
Tim Ryan, the Democrat Representative from OHIO, USA lets fly with all that he had been keeping pent up in his heart unleashing a verbal assault against the most hated President in American history for all the lies that George Wacko Bush Jr has been spewing all through his stint at the White House.
This rare public display of an official of the American Government's displeasure against America's Commander in Chief is just absolutely precious.
Those who have been swallowing hook, line and sinker what the American Government has been dishing out all these while need to recheck their assumptions and conclusions as to the real perpetrators of the crisis in the Middle East?
Here's another disturbing confession coming from an American soldier who was based in Iraq telling all about the true American Policy in Occupied Iraq!
KILL EVERYBODY IN IRAQ POLICY:
Sheeesh!
With policies like these, is there any wonder as to why America is now just a faint shadow of what it once was as far as its international image is concerned?
Whom should we blame?
George Wacko Bush Jr. or the majority of the American voting public who gave him two stints in destroying their reputation?
In the meantime, the Israeli Zionist regime willfully massacres the Palestinian population of Gaza with full American blessings!
Obama seems to have spurred the current onslaught by his tacit approval of the Tel Aviv regime's murderous campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
You are invited to attend this special public forum:-
'NOT JUST ANOTHER WAR MYTH AND REALITY IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE'
DATE
FRIDAY 9th JANUARY 2009
TIME
8:00 -10:00PM
VENUE
BAR COUNCIL AUDITORIUM, BAR COUNCIL BUILDING, JALAN LEBUH PASAR, KUALA LUMPUR
Speakers:
Dr Rosli Omar
Hishamuddin Rais
Dr Farish A Noor
Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar
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Jointly Organized By
The Malaysian Bar & The Malaysian Social Research Institute (MSRI)
together with the Cakap-Rakyat Group
The death of hundreds of people in Gaza brought into limelight once again the happenings in the Occupied Territories . But the final solution to the conflict evades analysts and political observers particularly those working within the Western media whose portrayal of the issue has always been on this assumption: that it is a result of competing national aspirations of the Jews and Muslims for their own state.
In order to understand any issue, a knowledge of its origin and background is vital.
The Palestinian conflict has been given the utmost coverage, only to cover the truths and give recognition to the myths surrounding its very nature.
So what is the nature of the conflict?
Who are the interested parties in the Palestinian question?
What are the pitfalls of the countless solutions coming out from Arab and Western capitals?
Why have the continued killings of Palestinians generated so much passion among the Arab masses but only statements of regret from their governments?
How does it differ from other contemporary wars between nations?
This forum aims not only to dispel the myths and false premises which have together created a flood of analysis on the so-called ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict, but also aims to give an overview, historical and current perspective, on the issue. Who are the speakers?
Dr Rosli Omar was trained for his Phd at Imperial College London and is now an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Malaya’s Engineering Faculty.
His areas of research are mainly on Artificial intelligence, global warming and environment etc. Even though not formally trained politically he has always been interested in humanitarian issues, especially those concerning imperialism and oppression.
Due to his deep understanding and extensive reading, he had regularly contributed in various discussions and debates among fellow academicians and youth circles on issues such as globalization, global warming and the Middle East conflict.
Hishamuddin Rais is still best known for his stewardship of the student movement in the tumultuous 1973-4 demonstrations on subjects like American imperialism and Israeli expansionism, plus the more local concerns of Kedah peasants and Johore squatters – “Baling Incident”.
Throughout his 20 years in self-imposed exile, he remained the Malaysian rebel with a series of adventures in Iraq , Palestine , India , Australia , Moscow , Belgium and finally England . Since his release from 2-year ISA detention during the Reformasi Era, Hisham is now busy writing, teaching and directing plays, films etc.
Dr. Farish Ahmad Noor is a Senior Fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technical University (NTU), Singapore where he is Director of Research for the Research Cluster on Transnational Religion in Southeast Asia .
He is also a Guest Affiliated Professor at both Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta (UMS) and the Sunan Kalijaga Islamic University, Jogjakarta . He is the author of ‘Writings on the War on Terror’ (2006), ‘From Majapahit to Putrajaya’ (2005) and ‘Islam Embedded: The Historical Development of PAS’ (2004).
Professor Gurdial Singh Nijar – (to be confirmed) obtained his tertiary qualification in law at King College , London and the University of Malaya .
He is a Barrister-at-Law, Middle Temple and a registered Advocate and Solicitor in Victoria New South Wales, Australia .
He specializes in professional proactive and his current research interest includes many aspects of biodiversity law.
He is a professor at the Law faculty and Director of the Centre for Biodiversity Law. He has represented Malaysia and the legal profession at numerous international forum
Iya..betul.
