The All-White Elephant in the Room By Frank Rich 04/08/07 "New York Times" -- Bored by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for "John Hagee Roman Church Hitler," and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive. What you'll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is "the Great Whore," Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking "the blood of the Jewish people." That's because the Great Whore represents "the Roman Church," which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust. Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives' favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race. Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee's views? This particular YouTube video - far from the only one - was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops. Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it's true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled "homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came." Mr. Hagee didn't make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He broadcast it on one of America's most widely heard radio programs, "Fresh Air" on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as "nonsense" and the preacher retract it. Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee's calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright's. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee's church. That defense implies, incorrectly, that Mr. McCain was a passive recipient of this bigot's endorsement. In fact, by his own account, Mr. McCain sought out Mr. Hagee, who is perhaps best known for trying to drum up a pre-emptive "holy war" with Iran. (This preacher's rantings may tell us more about Mr. McCain's policy views than Mr. Wright's tell us about Mr. Obama's.) Even after Mr. Hagee's Catholic bashing bubbled up in the mainstream media, Mr. McCain still did not reject and denounce him, as Mr. Obama did an unsolicited endorser, Louis Farrakhan, at the urging of Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton. Mr. McCain instead told George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago that while he condemns any "anti-anything" remarks by Mr. Hagee, he is still "glad to have his endorsement." I wonder if Mr. McCain would have given the same answer had Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted him with the graphic video of the pastor in full "Great Whore" glory. But Mr. McCain didn't have to fear so rude a transgression. Mr. Hagee's videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright's. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn't have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man. Perhaps that's why virtually no one has rebroadcast the highly relevant prototype for Mr. Wright's fiery claim that 9/11 was America's chickens "coming home to roost." That would be the Sept. 13, 2001, televised exchange between Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, who blamed the attacks on America's abortionists, feminists, gays and A.C.L.U. lawyers. (Mr. Wright blamed the attacks on America's foreign policy.) Had that video re-emerged in the frenzied cable-news rotation, Mr. McCain might have been asked to explain why he no longer calls these preachers "agents of intolerance" and chose to cozy up to Mr. Falwell by speaking at his Liberty University in 2006. None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama's long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama's judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn't a double standard operating here. If we're to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates - and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them - we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick. When Rudy Giuliani, still a viable candidate, successfully courted Pat Robertson for an endorsement last year, few replayed Mr. Robertson's greatest past insanities. Among them is his best-selling 1991 tome, "The New World Order," which peddled some of the same old dark conspiracy theories about "European bankers" (who just happened to be named Warburg, Schiff and Rothschild) that Mr. Farrakhan has trafficked in. Nor was Mr. Giuliani ever seriously pressed to explain why his cronies on the payroll at Giuliani Partners included a priest barred from the ministry by his Long Island diocese in 2002 following allegations of sexual abuse. Much as Mr. Wright officiated at the Obamas' wedding, so this priest officiated at (one of) Mr. Giuliani's. Did you even hear about it? There is not just a double standard for black and white politicians at play in too much of the news media and political establishment, but there is also a glaring double standard for our political parties. The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks. A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of "political correctness" or "reverse racism." An all-white Congressional delegation doesn't happen by accident. It's the legacy of race cards that have been dealt since the birth of the Southern strategy in the Nixon era. No one knows this better than Mr. McCain, whose own adopted daughter of color was the subject of a vicious smear in his party's South Carolina primary of 2000. This year Mr. McCain has called for a respectful (i.e., non-race-baiting) campaign and has gone so far as to criticize (ineffectually) North Carolina's Republican Party for running a Wright-demonizing ad in that state's current primary. Mr. McCain has been posing (awkwardly) with black people in his tour of "forgotten" America. Speaking of Katrina in New Orleans, he promised that "never again" would a federal recovery effort be botched on so grand a scale. This is all surely sincere, and a big improvement over Mitt Romney's dreams of his father marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Up to a point. Here, too, there's a double standard. Mr. McCain is graded on a curve because the G.O.P. bar is set so low. But at a time when the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll shows that President Bush is an even greater drag on his popularity than Mr. Wright is on Mr. Obama's, Mr. McCain's New Orleans visit is more about the self-interested politics of distancing himself from Mr. Bush than the recalibration of policy. Mr. McCain took his party's stingier line on Katrina aid and twice opposed an independent commission to investigate the failed government response. Asked on his tour what should happen to the Ninth Ward now, he called for "a conversation" about whether anyone should "rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is." Whatever, whenever, never mind. For all this primary season's obsession with the single (and declining) demographic of white working-class men in Rust Belt states, America is changing rapidly across all racial, generational and ethnic lines. The Census Bureau announced last week that half the country's population growth since 2000 is due to Hispanics, another group understandably alienated from the G.O.P. Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there's any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it's that this nation's perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin

Call for inquiry into US role in Somalia By Steve Bloomfield in Nairobi Wednesday, 7 May The Independent, UK. Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes. The human rights group yesterday listed abuses carried out by Ethiopian and Somali government forces, and some committed by al-Shabaab, an anti-government militia which the US designated a terrorist group. According to the report, based on the testimonies of refugees who have fled Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, in recent weeks, Ethiopian troops have killed civilians by slitting their throats. Ethiopian and Somali forces were also accused of gang-raping women and attacking children. A refugee, named Haboon, accuses Ethiopian troops of raping a neighbour's 17-year-old daughter. When the girl's brothers – aged 13 and 14 – tried to help her, Ethiopian soldiers gouged out their eyes with a bayonet. The Ethiopian government last night issued a statement strongly rejecting the Amnesty allegations and criticising the organisation's "uncritical use of sources." Amnesty called for an international commission of inquiry into allegations of war crimes and said the role of other countries that have given military and financial support to perpetrators should also be investigated. US troops trained Ethiopian forces involved in military operations in Somalia, and the US government supplied military equipment to the Ethiopian military. "There are major countries that have significant influence," said Amnesty's Dave Copeman. "The US, EU and European countries need to exert that influence to stop these attacks." After attacks by Ethiopian and Somali forces on civilian areas in Mogadishu last year, European lawyers considered whether funding for Ethiopia and Somalia made the EU complicit. The results of their deliberations were never made public. The Amnesty report detailed a pattern of attacks. Refugees who fled the violence said al-Shabaab would launch an attack from a residential area. Ethiopian troops would respond with a security sweep, often going from door-to-door attacking civilians. Those who did not flee faced further reprisals. Increased military activity has turned Mogadishu into a ghost town. About 700,000 people have fled – out of a population of up to 1.5 million. The UN estimates that 2.6 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance – more than one quarter of the population. Peace talks between the Somali government and the main opposition alliance are scheduled to begin later this month.

"Any individual who values truth more than lies, who keeps truth alive in his or her heart, despite all efforts to dislodge it from its ethical moorings, is more powerful than even the most advanced weapons systems. Truth emerges unscathed from the rubble of fallen empire as immutable as an inviolable law of nature. Nothing can bring it down because it is real." Charles Sullivan "Truth Matters"

Northern Brother The western Media has its tail between its legs in shame, the internet is exposing all that was swept under the criminal rugs, history is recording through this medium all the attrocities the "civilized" countries are conducting in the "develping" countries, its pathetic and sick, how corrupt politicians and the meida has turned to become of late. Nur

Isseh bro. Here is a good link for a complete set of Holy Quraan recitation By Sheikh Muhammad Al Muxaysini. http://audio.islamweb.net/audio/index.php?page=souraview&qid=480&rid=1

Our real task... is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity [u.S. military- economic supremacy]... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization... we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning. U.S. State Department. 1948. U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948: Somalia: a victim of Bush’s recklessness How the West ended Somalia’s brief flirtation with stability By Matthew Carr 02/05/08 "First Post" -- - One of the forgotten battlegrounds of George Bush's 'war on terror' jumped sharply into focus yesterday, with the announcement that a pre-dawn US missile strike had killed the Islamist militia leader Aden Hashi Ayro and at least 10 other people in the town of Dusamareb in Somalia. The Americans claim Ayro was a key al-Qaeda figure in East Africa. There is no way of objectively assessing these claims, but his assassination is certain to fuel the ongoing conflict in a country that Oxfam recently described as Africa's worst humanitarian crisis. To much of the Western public, violent mayhem has long been synonymous with the failed state depicted in Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down. But the violence that is currently ripping Somalia apart is a direct consequence of the Bush administration's reckless military adventurism and the Manichean fantasy world of the 21st century's terror wars. The present conflict can be traced to Christmas Day 2006, when the Ethiopian dictator Meles Zenawi invaded Somalia in order to topple a grassroots Islamic movement, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). During their six-month ascendancy in the south of the country, the Islamic Courts earned themselves some kudos amongst the war-weary Somali population, who were prepared to tolerate their literalist interpretation of Sharia in exchange for the freedom to walk the streets without being robbed, shot or raped by warlord militias. It was a period in which many analysts, such as John Prendergast, a former Clinton official, saw 'the beginnings of governance' after nearly two decades of relentless civil war. However, the xenophobic Zenawi regime did not regard the triumphant Islamists in Somalia with any enthusiasm. Nor did the Bush administration, which saw the Islamic Courts as an incipient Taliban and accused its leaders of sheltering "half a dozen or less" al-Qaeda leaders and an unknown number of lesser operatives. The UIC denied these allegations and even made some conciliatory overtures to the West, but these efforts were not reciprocated. Instead the Bush administration gave what one US official called a 'yellow-green light' to an invasion that the Zenawi regime presented as its own 'war on terror'. From its bases in Kenya and Djibouti, the Pentagon's newly-created Africa Command also provided military support for the invasion, in the form of special forces and helicopters. In January 2007 US helicopter gunships carried out 'rinse and repeat' attacks on fleeing refugees near the Kenyan border, who were believed to include al-Qaeda terrorists. The main casualties in these attacks appear to have been nomads and their livestock, though few people were counting. But the Islamists appeared to have been routed and Ethiopia promptly set about establishing a puppet government, headed by the warlord Abdullahi Yusuf. Since then, resistance to Ethiopian occupation has grown exponentially and Somalia has sunk ever deeper into a vortex of violence. More than one million people have been displaced, thousands have been killed and the country's fragile food supply once more placed in jeopardy. Was all this done in order to eliminate "half a dozen or less" al-Qaeda operatives who may never have been in the country in the first place? Did the US hope to gain access to Somalia's rich oil fields? Or was the Bush administration so blinded by its association between 'Islamism' and 'terror' that it chose to shoot first and ask questions later? We cannot know what the Islamic Courts might have become had the US engaged them diplomatically or offered aid instead of rinse and repeat free fire zones. But the consequences could hardly have been much worse than they are now. In its bloody attempt to rescue Somalia from 'fundamentalism' the US and its Ethiopian proxy have paved the way for the violent political fragmentation in which al-Qaeda thrives. While Western politicians dream of further humanitarian interventions elsewhere, it is salutary to pause and reflect on the catastrophe inflicted on yet another country that had to be destroyed before it could be saved. -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ A Year and a half ago, The following article appeared! -------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------ CIA with Ethiopia vs Somalia: another U.S. proxy war by Henk Ruyssenaars - Ex Africa correspondent Thursday December 28, 2006 at 02:06 AM US: " The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia ,” The same violations as the US junta is guilty of in neighboring Sudan which still refuses an invasion by twenty-two-thousand (22.000) US troops, so called "peace keepers". THE LAWLESS U.S. WITH ETHIOPIA IS VIOLATING THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF SOMALIA Henk Ruyssenaars FPF - Dec. 27th 2006 - Today The New York Times in it's daily stream of propaganda confirms the support of the US junta's CIA for this new war against Somalia, another inhuman atrocity by the US managers using the usual and ****** and worn out pretext of their own* al Qaeda: "American intelligence officials theorize that the Islamists, who wrested control of Mogadishu in June from a coalition of warlords supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, have ties to a Qaeda cell based in East Africa that is responsible for the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998." No evidence, only by the CIA etc. themselves fabricated 'proof' is ever offered. No names, dates, nothing! And if that wasn't enough to enlarge the usual pack of lies there's more 'hot air' produced by Washington for their propaganda media: "A spokeswoman for the State Department, Janelle Hironimus, said Ethiopia was trying to stem the flow of outside arms shipments to the Islamists. Ms. Hironimus added that Washington was concerned about reports that the Islamists were using child soldiers and abusing Ethiopian prisoners of war." This is absolutely baloney, scare mongering propaganda. None of this is true of course but the US propaganda mill grinds on against better human judgement and against human intelligence. THE PRESS MUST NOT BE ALLOWED... According to the New York Times: "On Tuesday, a day after an Ethiopian jet strafed the airport in Mogadishu, the capital, the State Department issued internal guidance to staff members, instructing officials to play down the invasion in public statements. “Should the press focus on the role of Ethiopia inside Somalia,” read a copy of the guidelines that was given to The New York Times by an American official here, “emphasize that this is a distraction from the issue of dialogue between the T.F.I.’s and Islamic courts and shift the focus back to the need for dialogue.” T.F.I. is an abbreviation for the weak transitional government in Somalia. “The press must not be allowed to make this about Ethiopia, or Ethiopia violating the territorial integrity of Somalia,” the guidance said.* The same violations as the rogue US junta is guilty of in neighboring Sudan which still refuses an invasion by twenty-two-thousand (22.000) so called "peace keepers": an illegal occupation by heavily armed US/UN troops in oil rich Darfur to get the natural resources there. Also there the US junta makes the 'civil wars' and other conflicts which are than used by them - and they 'run' United Nations - to fix some 'UN resolution' to solve the (US made) problem so it can start the full scale killing and drilling under a UN fig leaf of humanitarian help to cover US interests. ETHIOPIA HAS HAD THIS FALSE "HUMANITARIAN HELP" BY THE US, IT'S IMF, THE WORLD BANK, THE FAKE NGO'S AND SIMILAR KILLING AND ROBBING GROUPS FOR TEN YEARS AND THE LIFE EXPECTANCY HAS BEEN LOWERED TO FORTY-FIVE (45) YEARS. WHICH HELP? THEY KILL PEOPLE DAILY AND BY THE MILLIONS! In a comment called "Somalia: in a hole and digging faster," David Seaton writes: "If you thought Bush was going to "go quietly" you are in for another think. Perhaps Bush's only chance to avoid his own personal humiliation is to widen and deepen the crisis. He is looking at a level of failure, exposure to ridicule and universal repudiation that few human beings will ever have to face. Although he makes much of his Christianity he doesn't seem to cultivate the Christian virtues of meekness, humility, repentance and truthfulness. The failure of conspicuously Christian, Jimmy Carter's presidency is nothing beside Bush's and if I can't imagine Bush resigning himself to a lifetime of redemption through good works... is this a failure of my imagination? So be prepared for universal collapse, catastrophe and war. Bush is his own little apocalypse." DS* "IN SOMALIA, A RECKLESS U.S. PROXY WAR." In a comment even published by the 'International Herald Tribune' Salim Lone writes from Nairobi about this new incredible breach of all laws* and decency by the US junta in an article: "Undeterred by the horrors and setbacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With full U.S. backing and military training, at least 15,000 Ethiopian troops have entered Somalia in an illegal war of aggression against the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls almost the entire south of the country. As with Iraq in 2003, the United States has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism, but its real goal is to obtain a direct foothold in a highly strategic region by establishing a client regime there. The Horn of Africa is newly oil-rich, and lies just miles from Saudi Arabia, overlooking the daily passage of large numbers of oil tankers and warships through the Red Sea. General John Abizaid, the current U.S. military chief of the Iraq war, was in Ethiopia this month, and President Hu Jintao of China visited Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia earlier this year to pursue oil and trade agreements. The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme. Unlike in the run-up to Iraq, independent experts, including from the European Union, were united in warning that this war could destabilize the whole region even if America succeeds in its goal of toppling the Islamic Courts. THOUSANDS OF NEW ANTI-U.S. MILITANTS AND TERRORISTS An insurgency by Somalis, millions of whom live in Kenya and Ethiopia, will surely ensue, and attract thousands of new anti-U.S. militants and terrorists. [FPF: globally!] With so much of the world convulsed by crisis, little attention has been paid to this unfolding disaster in the Horn. The UN Security Council, however, did take up the issue, and in another craven act which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body, bowed to American and British pressure to authorize a regional peacekeeping force to enter Somalia to protect the transitional government, which is fighting the Islamic Courts. The new UN resolution states that the world body acted to "restore peace and stability." But as all major international news organizations have reported, this year Somalia finally experienced its first respite from 16 years of utter lawlessness and terror at the hands of the marauding warlords who drove out UN peace keepers in 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed. Since 1993, there had been no Security Council interest in sending peacekeepers to Somalia, but as peace and order took hold, a multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary — because it was the Islamic Courts Union that had brought about this stability. Astonishingly, the Islamists had succeeded in defeating the warlords primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of Shariah law, which Somalis universally practice. DOMINATED BY THE WARLORDS AND TERRORISTS The transitional government, on the other hand, is dominated by the warlords and terrorists who drove out American forces in 1993. Organized in Kenya by U.S. regional allies, it is so completely devoid of internal support that it has turned to Somalia's arch- enemy, Ethiopia, for assistance. If this war continues, it will affect the whole region, do serious harm to U.S. interests and threaten Kenya, the only island of stability in this corner of Africa. Ethiopia is at even greater risk, as a dictatorship with little popular support and beset also by two large internal revolts, by the Ethiopian Occupied Western Somalis and Oromos. It is also mired in a conflict with Eritrea, which has denied it secure access to seaports. The best antidote to terrorism in Somalia is stability, which the Islamic Courts have provided. The Islamists have strong public support, which has grown in the face of U.S. and Ethiopian interventions. As in other Muslim-Western conflicts, the world needs to engage with the Islamists to secure peace.

Dear Awakener In continuation of our discussion on Who Is Muslim, I am reposting the uncomplete answer to your question, later, inshaAllah I will add more meat, so be patient as we take on this interesting question: Awakener walaal You write: Who is Muslim ? In the most general terms, everything in the heavens and earth are Muslims. Allah SWT after the creation asked : ( Itiyaa tawcan ow karhaa, qaalataa, ataynaa taaiciin) Meaning : Surrender willingly or unwillingly , they said we surrender willingly. So, the heavens and the earth are Muslims ( surrendered), and they follow a law ( Sharia) so precise if the sun shifts centimeters, our electric bill for air conditioning or heating will skyrocket, earth and and sun are following the code of their creator, to give us sustanance, under unhospitable void of space. Man on the otherhand, was given free will to choose, to either surrender or not to surrender, a person who surrendered has no choice over his affairs, that is why Allah refvers to everybody as a slave, a slave or a prisoner has no right to choose, they must hear and obey. So, the realtionship has two ways: 1. From man to Allah is Tawajjuh, you seek Him. love him, and beacuse you truly love him, you obey him, it does not make sense to claim that we love Allah and we disobey him or free ourselves from his worship. Its thus an exclussive activity. 2. From Allah to us, is two things: a. Akhbaar, information that we should believe in order to: b. Fulfil the Amr, His orders If we deliver on His orders as a sign of belief of his akhbaar ( info) relayed to us through our Prophet SAWS, then we have met the general requirements of a Muslim. Now, by default, all humans are born Muslims, because they have taken a covenant with Allah, their maker SWT before incarnation, that He is their Sovereign Lord. It is only when they are embodied on earth that some will walk their talk and follow their fitrah aka Defualt settings, (Islam) and respond favorably to Islam as soon as they hear its message like Deja vu, while others reject it as they favor this life more than the promised life in hearafter. The Prophet SAWS, said that Allah said : I have created my servants Hunafaa ( seeking only Allah), then the Satans have got them lost" Alllah also says: Wa low ittabaca al xaqu ahwaa'ahum, la fasadatil samaawaatu wal ard. Meaning : If the absolute (Justice, Truth) follows their( human) desires, The heavens and the earth would have been corrupted" InshAllah, I will come back to discuss in detail the following points and more: 1) What conditions you have to fullfil to be a Muslim? a. Acceptability Criteria as a "Muslim" In This temporal Life.( Good enough for government work) b. Acceptability Criteria as a "Muslim" in the day of Judgement. ( Mre rigorous and exhaustive) 2) What nullifies to be muslim ? Any Contract has clauses that nullify its effectiveness, just like Salat's readiness is nullified by a simpe call of nature, so is Islam. 3) Can a third person tell another person that he/she is NOT a muslim while the first person is claiming that he is muslim ? The legal context of what is known as TAKFEER ( certifying other person to be out of the Islam fold) Nur

Reverend Jeremiah Wright Religious Freedom Versus State Religion, Ethics, Politics and Strategy By James Petras Introduction 21/04/08 'ICH" -- -- The sustained vituperative attack and the feeble apologetic defense of Reverend Wright’s brilliant, eloquent and substantive sermon in defense of human dignity speaks to the basic ethical, political and strategic issues of our epoch. For Reverend Wright was not merely ‘commenting’ on an ethical omission of our day but raising fundamental principles about the behavior of states, the role of individual conscience in the face of crimes against humanity and the need to give name and take action in the face of evil. The entire spectrum of politicians, the mass media and, in particular, the political parties and two (and a half) of the presidential candidates raise, by their hostile reaction and the substance of their criticism, vital issues of the relation between the State and Religion. “They know what they say”, (to paraphrase and re-state Jesus Christ’s comments on his persecutors) applies with a vengeance to the barrage of mindless screeds which were intentionally launched against the Reverend’s brilliant analysis and dissection of the immoral means in pursuit of the great crimes of our epoch. Of course, the verbal assault of Reverend Wright was directed explicitly to discredit and disqualify Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barak Obama, a long time member of Wright’s United Church of Christ Chicago parish. Many were, and continue to be, vile accusations charging that his sermon was ‘incendiary’, ‘anti-American’, ‘racist’ and ‘politically extremist’. Phrases critical of US empire-building were dubbed the “God Damn America’ sermon. Moral condemnations of ‘war and money’ were decontextualized to accuse Reverend Wright of being ‘a man of hate’, ‘a hate monger’ and a ‘racist extremist’. The insults and verbal assassins came from both liberal and conservative politicians, writers, mass media pundits and commentators. Barak Obama’s ‘defense’ of Wright was based on separating the benign and respected avuncular ‘person’ (or personality) of the Reverend from his brilliant, substantive, historical analysis, political diagnosis and profoundly ethical moral judgment. By defending the messenger but condemning the profound message, Obama ultimately sided with the political defenders and apologists of a brutal, militaristic, imperial order, thus enabling him to continue his electoral campaign. Key Theoretical and Analytical Insights Wright’s speech is informed by four profound theoretical and conceptual insights: First, Wright’s central idea is that repeated large-scale, long-term offensive imperial wars and military actions lead to military reactions or counter-attacks on US property and lives, military and civilian, outside and inside the United States. Given the authoritarian political environment and the hostile mass media, Wright cites the utterances of a former US Ambassador and long-time member of the State Department Establishment, Edward Peck to corroborate his observation. Contrary to the pro-empire political scientists who predominate in the prestigious Ivy League universities, and ignore the historical framework of critical readings of empire building, Wright’s theoretical argument is grounded in a wealth of historical experiences, which he enumerates to reinforce his central point. His theoretical argument is woven around the 9/11 Muslim-Arab attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He cites the colonial and post-colonial savaging of the Middle East, including the military attacks and economic boycott of Iraq, the bombing of Sudan, the US support of state terrorist regimes and the Israeli destruction of Palestinian and Lebanese lives. Imperial action and anti-imperial re-action – Wright algebraic formulation refutes the Ivy League professors’ propagandistic arguments, which extrapolate the violence of the anti-imperial reaction from its preceding bloody imperial historical framework in order to present the subsequent imperialist action as a defensive response. Wright’s theoretical-historical correction of the false premises of orthodox academics and mainstream politicians regarding the source of violence in the international system lays the groundwork for a detailed commentary and moral judgment of the principal conflicts of our time. By bringing to the fore a succinct enumeration of the sequence of US violent military actions from the violent seizure of Indian lands to the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima, to the colonial wars in Africa to the invasion of Panama and the bombing of Grenada, Wright establishes the historical basis for his judgment that the driving force of US foreign policy is ‘militarism and money’. His critics, unable or unwilling to challenge his historical narrative, resort to ad hominum attacks, relying on labeling techniques, attributing to him a ‘strident’ style or ‘incendiary language’. Secondly, Wright provides a socio-psychological framework for understanding contemporary elite-manipulated and motivated mass violent sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 and the initial general embrace of a military response. Wright sets out a three-stage sequence of socio-psychological ‘feelings’: (1) reverence for the sites attacked and sorrow for the victims, (2) revenge against a general ‘other’ (to be designated by the imperial rulers), (3) hatred and war against enemies and unarmed innocents alike. Drawing on historical analogies with the biblical account (Psalm 137, all nine verses) of the Israelite reverence of the Temple (of Jerusalem), its destruction (by Chaldeans) and their subsequent return and revenge (slaughter and eviction of all non-Israelite inhabitants), Wright draws a parallel with the US reverence for ‘money’, symbolized by the World Trade Center, and ‘military’ (the Pentagon); their thirst for ‘revenge’ rooted in the ‘feelings’ of pain, sorrow, anger, outrage, destruction and senseless carnage’ this leads, he reasons, to hatred and demands to attack and punish ‘someone’ (‘pay back’). In our time this means killing armed adversaries and unarmed civilians – Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers and civilians. Wright brilliantly elucidates the emotional and political link between ‘worship’ (over losses) and ‘war’, presumably to restore the ‘revered sites’ of money (financial credibility) and military power (imperial credibility). Wright’s socio-psychological framework allows us to understand the way in which the Bush Administration blended mass objects of veneration (loss of human lives) with the sacred sites of the elite (Wall Street and the Pentagon) into a powerful engine of war. Interestingly, Wright’s citation of the biblical account of Israeli indiscriminate revenge (‘happy is he who dashes their infants against the rocks’ Psalm 137) parallels the policies and practices pursued by the contemporary American Israelite policy makers in the Pentagon who pursued policies of total destruction and dismemberment of Iraq. Though Wright does not specifically refer to this parallelism, it springs to mind when he refers to the current injustices, and his specific mention of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians as part of the global injustices. Thirdly, Reverend Wright links his ‘practical’ historical and theoretical analysis to a set of moral judgments and policy prescriptions. The wars of the last 500 years have economic and racial dimensions (‘riches and color’) pitting rich white elites against poor people of color. Imperial violence begets oppressed violence; state terror based on superior arms begets individuals willing to sacrifice their lives in terrorist responses. Confronted with these historical and social conditions, he counsels the American people (not just his black parishioners) to engage in ‘self-reflection’. By emphasizing and giving priority to ‘self’ reflection he wants to undermine the effort of the political elites to focus mass attention on the asserted faults of ‘other people’, the target of military assaults. Wright emphasizes the need to create primary (family) and secondary (community) solidarity and affection (love) as opposed to bonding with the war-making elite. By emphasizing reflection, Wright is openly rejecting blind adhesion to the elite and belief in their lies for war. From the Socratic logic of critical self-reflection (‘know yourself’) and solidarity, Wright envisions a time for ‘social transformation’. Armed with a social awareness of the historical and present record of elite-driven imperial wars, Wright postulates the need for fundamental structural changes, “…in the way we have been doing things as a society, a country, as an arrogant superpower. We cannot keep messing other countries”. In other words Wright links changes in inner individual spiritual and social consciousness with collective social and political action directed at a fundamental transformation of the social structure and economic and political system, which make us an ‘arrogant superpower’. In his own words, Wright wants to convince the American people to transform imperial military wars into internal political wars against racist and class injustices. He proposes a fundamental redistribution of wealth through reallocation of the public budget. Citing the “$1.3 trillion dollar tax gift to the rich”, he counters with a policy proposal to fund universal health care and the reconstruction of the educational system to serve the poor. Reverend Wright, in speaking to the American people, not only condemns human catastrophes inflicted on working people at home and abroad by the ‘arrogant superpower’ empire-builders, but points to the great historical opportunities for changes. His is not a message of other worldly spiritual salvation; it is a call to action here and now. His is not a superficial critique of individual misbehavior or ‘failed policies’ (as his former parishioner, Obama would have it) but a deep structural analysis of systemic failure which demands a ‘social transformation, which goes to the root of the present day policies of imperial wars and state and individual terrorism. Conclusion The reason for the repeated vicious personal attacks on Reverend Wright by the mass media and the political leaders and academic apologists for empire building is abundantly clear – to prevent a powerful, reasonable, logical and relevant analysis from influencing the American public or even exercising any influence on the Presidential campaign. Equally important the political and media attacks on Reverend Wright are meant to destroy freedom of conscience, the separation of Church and State. What the critics want, is a religion and religious figures at the service of the state, which blesses war planners, honors war criminals, arouses mass hatred of state-designated target peoples. The ‘arrogant superpower’ honors the ministers, priests and rabbis who follow state policy spewing hatred against Arabs and Muslims. Nothing more and nothing less, Reverend Wright is standing in word and deed for the freedom and autonomy of individuals and institutions against the voracious spread of totalitarian state power. Clearly the irrational vituperative, sustained attack on Reverend Wright is more than a reactionary political electoral ploy in a racist electoral campaign; it is a fundamental attack on our democratic freedoms and the autonomy of our religious institutions.

Posititive bro. writes: "May we awaken to our highest and most worth need!" Amin, may Allah awaken the walking dead to realize the urgency of alligning our wishes, words and actions with the Sunnah of Allah's messenger SAWS. Afkiinna ku carfiya salliga Nabiga. Nur

Talking to Fisk Truth as a Causality of War "Just as the Wall is Called a Fence, So are the Mercenaries Called Contractors" By Dan Glazebrook 19/04/08 "PalestineChronicle" -- -Robert Fisk has a well-earned reputation as one of the most honest and hard hitting foreign correspondents in the British media. He has worked in Northern Ireland, where he exposed the presence of the SAS in the mid-1970s, as well as Bosnia, Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon. It was here, as a witness to the immediate aftermath of the Israeli-organised Sabra and Shatila massacre of 2000 Palestinian refugees, that his journalism took on its current form: angry, passionate, and as he puts it "partial on the side of the victims"--a style of journalism which, unfortunately, is not shared by many of his colleagues in the profession. In the midst of a torrent of lies and propaganda emanating from our media about British and US policy on the Middle East, Fisk's writings are a breath of fresh air--although the hellish reality he depicts does not always make for pleasant reading. When I met Fisk in Christchurch College, sandwiched between an earlier speaking engagement in Bristol, and a lecture at the Oxford Literary Festival--seemingly without a moment's rest--we began by talking about the role of journalism in times of war. Firstly, I wanted to know, does journalism, by sanitising or justifying war, also have a role in perpetuating it? There are several things. First of all, there's the inability of many journalists from the United States to actually tell the truth about the Israel-Palestine situation--hence, occupied territories are called disputed territories, the wall is called the security barrier, a colony or settlement is called a neighbourhood or an outpost. Which means that if you see a Palestinian chucking a stone, if it's about an occupation, you can understand it, but if it's about a dispute, which you can presumably settle over a cup of tea, then obviously the Palestinians are generically violent. So you demean one side in this appalling conflict. Then you have this business where television will not show what we see, for reasons of so-called "bad taste". I remember once being on the phone to a TV editor in London when Jazeera were asked to feed some tape of children killed and wounded by British shell fire in Basra, and the guy started saying, "there's no point feeding us this, we can't show this"the first excuse was, "people will be having their tea, so we can't put it on", and then it was, "this is sort of pornography, we don't show this". And it ended up--it is mesmeric to listen to this stuff - the last thing was "We have to show respect for the dead". So we don't show any respect for them when they are alive, we blow them to bits, and then we show respect for themSo because of this - and these bloodless sandpits with ex-generals pontificating - it becomes a game; you start propagating this idea that war is primarily about victory or defeat - when in fact, it's about death, and the infliction of massive pain. I was in Iraq in 1991, when the British and Americans had been bombing one of the highways. There were women and children dead and in bits, and all these dogs came out of the desert and started eating themIf you saw what I saw you would never ever think of supporting war of any kind against anyone again. But of course, the politicians--our leaders--are very happy that these pictures are not shown, because they make war more attractive, less painful. Do the British public never get to see this, more realistic, picture of war? Look, if an Iraqi soldier is obliging enough to die by the side of the road in a romantic pose, and you can get him against the skyline without any boiled flesh - you know, "the price of war: an Iraqi soldier lies dead", you know the sort of caption by now - you can do that." But that's about it. Journalistic standards are degenerating rapidly in other areas too. Watching the news two weeks ago, I was shocked to see Yassin Nassari and Abdul Patel referred to by the BBC as 'terrorists'--not "alleged" or "suspected", but straight down the line "terrorists" - when the only charges they faced related to "possession of materials" (Islamist literature and video), and they had not even been accused of planning terrorist attacks, let alone carrying any out. Has 'terrorism' become a 'catch-all' phrase? I've seen cases in the United States where the evidence of terrorism is a copy of a Lebanese newspaper. I've just had an interesting example of what's going on. I was lecturing in Ottawa to 600 Muslim Canadians, and I said to them "you are absolutely right to exercise your right to free speech to attack the United States and Israel when they kill people, commit torture, occupy other people's lands- but why don't I ever hear you condemning the regimes in Egypt, Damascus, Libya and so on?" Silence. I couldn't work it out. So what was going on? Later, I was driving across Canada with two Muslims and they told me. In Canada, if they speak out against these regimes--the Syrian regime, or the Egyptian--what happens is that these various countries have their own muhabarat people in Canada--security people--who will then pass home the message that certain people are speaking up against Mubarak, Assad, or whoever. Then, under the new friendship between intelligence services, the Syrian or Egyptian regime tells the Canadians that there is a potential terrorist--anti-regime, right?--and CSIS, the Canadian version of the FBI, starts putting taps on them. So, by exercising their freedom of speech against dictatorships, they end up being suspected of terrorism by their new country of citizenship. So the result is, at the end of the day, they are silent. As I would be too, in their position. What about the silence of the rest of us, who are not so easily excused? With ever dwindling numbers on the anti-war demonstrations, have we forgotten what is really going on in those countries suffering Western "liberation"? You keep having to say to people in London, "but it's real"--because most people don't have any experience of war in the West anymore. There isn't a single one of our political leaders with any experience of war. Bush dodged it, Cheney dodged it, Powell was in Vietnam, but he's gone. Hollywood is their experience of war. And when you send people off to war, and your experience is Hollywood, you might be a bit shocked when they start dying. At the end of the day, it isn't real to them. But it's all too real to the inhabitants of the Middle East, who have been subject to Western sponsored blitzkrieg and massacre for decades--from the ongoing nakbah against the Palestinians, through Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the US arming of Iraq in the 8 year war against Iran, the 1991 Gulf 'War', and subsequent economic genocide of UN sanctions on Iraq--not to mention the West's backing for the dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. All of this has been witnessed first hand by Fisk, who believes the Muslim world has shown incredible restraint in the face of all this oppression: I'm surprised 9-11 didn't happen before, that it took that long. Now, whether that is because it took a lot of planning, I don't know, but I am amazed that you can knock on a front door in the West Bank and not have them slap you in the face--instead of that, they offer you in for coffee and a meal. Can you imagine putting it the other way around--if we were being bombed and occupied by Arab armies and a friendly Arab reporter turned to chat, I don't know if I would open the door; would you? The true extent of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan has been masked by the massive use of mercenaries--hidden from the troop figures. Estimates suggest 1000 have been killed in Iraq alone. Fisk is one of very few journalists to call them by their name, as opposed to the "contractor" euphemism: "Just as the wall is called a fence instead of a wall, and it's a neighbourhood not a settlement, so these are now contractors rather than mercenaries. I've always called them mercenaries. When they say two 'contractors' have been murdered, the idea that they are going around in an armoured humvee loaded with weapons doesn't come into the brain pod immediately does it?" What is your experience with these mercenaries? I noticed that in 2003, they were popping up with belts loaded with machine gun bullets in the hotel I was in. It was obvious they were going to attract attacks like honey. So I went to some of them and said "look, for god's sakes, can't you just keep your weapons in your room?" - in those days, you weren't being attacked in the street - "you're making this out to be a barracks--you're endangering yourselves and you're endangering us" And this guy walked up to me with two rifles--he'd overheard the conversation--and he said, "well when you're in trouble mate, don't come asking me for help". I said, "I don't want your ******* help, I want you to leave." But they didn't leave. And the big excuse for staying now is, of course, the looming spectre of civil war. Is there, then, a functional value to the occupation of the "civil war theory"? The first man I ever heard mention the danger of civil war in Iraq was Dan Semor, spokesman for the occupying power in the Green Zone in August 2003. No one had ever heard about the danger of civil war before, no Iraqi ever mentioned it. I remember thinking, what are they trying to do, frighten the Iraqis into obedience? I'm not suggesting that the American military are trying to stir up sectarian strife, but it's not impossible that there are certain institutions operating either at one remove--i.e. with Iraqis or not - in order to get militias to fight each other rather than fight the Americans. The French did that in Algeria--it's a fact. I don't know if the same thing is happening in Iraq, but given everything else that's gone on--murder, torture, etc--who knows? But you don't actually have to set off car bombs to do this. Look at the way we as journalists publish all these maps, you know--Shi'ites at the bottom, Sunnis in the middle, Kurds at the top. The British did the same in Belfast - green for Catholics, Orange for protestants, medium sherry colour for mixed areas, for people who are inconsiderate enough to marry across the religious divide. But we don't, obviously, do these ethnic maps about Birmingham or Bradford or Washington. I could draw you an ethnic map of Toronto, with the suburb of Mississauga green for Muslim. But they wouldn't print it. Because in our superior, civilised Western society, we don't acknowledge it. In their society, we spend our time pointing it out to them. I was in New York some months ago, and on the front cover of Time was "How to tell a Sunni from a Shia." Can you imagine it? And one of the ways was look at the licence plate of the car. So, you know, we contribute to civil strife, by constantly saying, "look at the guy in the next village". So you don't need to set up car bombs to divide people, you can do it quite successfully just by constant repetition - civil war, Shiites, militias, Sunnis, power. You create the narrative. And then in due course, people fall into line because it is the only one they get. I once asked the brother of s Sunni dentist who had been shot dead, "So, will there be civil war?" He replied, "Why do you people want us to have a civil war? I'm married to a Shi'ite--do you want me to kill my wife?" He said, "We're not a sectarian society, we're a tribal society--the Duleimis have got lots of Sunnis and Shias." And that was a response, you see, to an idea that had been set off by Dan Senor, the official spokesman for the occupying power. Unfortunately, the sectarian lines are becoming clearer in Iraq by the day, with the US army building walls to create separate ghettoes in Baghdad, and with the Kurdish north now negotiating its own oil deals. The Western imposed solution for Bosnia was full-scale ethnic partition. Will this be the future of Iraq? Bosnia was in Europe, so eventually, we wanted to switch the war off. Iraq is a different matter--we're in Iraq for oil. If the national product of Iraq was asparagus, we would not be there, I promise. There are parallels with Bosnia, not least indifference towards the Muslim victims--we did nothing for them until the war had consumed a quarter of a million of them--and we don't care about the Iraqis. But I think there are big differences with Bosnia. There are more parallels, I think, between the NATO-Serb Kosovo war, because that is where we got people used to the idea that bombing civilian trains on railway bridges, bombing hospitals, bombing TV stations was OK. So when we hit lots of civilians in Iraq, it was "well, we were doing that back in Serbia, weren't we?". We bombed Al-Jazeera in Kabul, they bombed Al-Jazeera in Baghdad, which was not even an Iraqi station. So I think the Kosovo war started off the acceptability of doing these things. Whatever the occupier's plans for Iraq, and whatever barbarities it imposes, one thing is for sure--the future of that country is not entirely in their hands. Even with their full scale promotion of sectarian violence in 1950s Algeria, the French were still forced to leave. The dilemma for the US in Iraq, as Fisk puts it, is that "they must leave, they will leave, but they can't leave--that is the equation that turns sand into blood". For those who want to understand this process, and what it means in human terms, rather than simply be lied to about it, Robert Fisk's reporting is a good place to start. Dan Glazebrook writes for the Morning Star newspaper and is one of the co-ordinators for the British branch of the International Union of Parliamentarians for Palestine. This article was contributed to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact the author at: danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk.

The Collapse of American Power By Paul Craig Roberts 18/03/08 "ICH" -- -- In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war. Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power. From their inception, America’s 21st century wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been red ink wars financed by foreigners, principally the Chinese and Japanese, who purchase the US Treasury bonds that the US government issues to finance its red ink budgets. The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government’s domestic expenditures. Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the President himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country. The Bush administration’s $410 billion deficit forecast is based on the unrealistic assumption of 2.7% GDP growth in 2008, whereas in actual fact the US economy has fallen into a recession that could be severe. There will be no 2.7% growth, and the actual deficit will be substantially larger than $410 billion. Just as the government’s budget is in disarray, so is the US dollar which continues to decline in value in relation to other currencies. The dollar is under pressure not only from budget deficits, but also from very large trade deficits and from inflation expectations resulting from the Federal Reserve’s effort to stabilize the very troubled financial system with large injections of liquidity. A troubled currency and financial system and large budget and trade deficits do not present an attractive face to creditors. Yet Washington in its hubris seems to believe that the US can forever rely on the Chinese, Japanese and Saudis to finance America’s life beyond its means. Imagine the shock when the day arrives that a US Treasury auction of new debt instruments is not fully subscribed. The US has squandered $500 billion dollars on a war that serves no American purpose. Moreover, the $500 billion is only the out-of-pocket costs. It does not include the replacement cost of the destroyed equipment, the future costs of care for veterans, the cost of the interests on the loans that have financed the war, or the lost US GDP from diverting scarce resources to war. Experts who are not part of the government’s spin machine estimate the cost of the Iraq war to be as much as $3 trillion. The Republican candidate for President said he would be content to continue the war for 100 years. With what resources? When America’s creditors consider our behavior they see total fiscal irresponsibility. They see a deluded country that acts as if it is a privilege for foreigners to lend to it, and a deluded country that believes that foreigners will continue to accumulate US debt until the end of time. The fact of the matter is that the US is bankrupt. David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the US and head of the Government Accountability Office, in his December 17, 2007, report to the US Congress on the financial statements of the US government noted that “the federal government did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting (including safeguarding assets) and compliance with significant laws and regulations as of September 30, 2007.” In everyday language, the US government cannot pass an audit. Moreover, the GAO report pointed out that the accrued liabilities of the federal government “totaled approximately $53 trillion as of September 30, 2007.” No funds have been set aside against this mind boggling liability. Just so the reader understands, $53 trillion is $53,000 billion. Frustrated by speaking to deaf ears, Walker recently resigned as head of the Government Accountability Office. As of March 17, 2008, one Swiss franc is worth more than $1 dollar. In 1970, the exchange rate was 4.2 Swiss francs to the dollar. In 1970, $1 purchased 360 Japanese yen. Today $1 dollar purchases less than 100 yen. If you were a creditor, would you want to hold debt in a currency that has such a poor record against the currency of a small island country that was nuked and defeated in WW II, or against a small landlocked European country that clings to its independence and is not a member of the EU? Would you want to hold the debt of a country whose imports exceed its industrial production? According to the latest US statistics as reported in the February 28 issue of Manufacturing and Technology News, in 2007 imports were 14 percent of US GDP and US manufacturing comprised 12% of US GDP. A country whose imports exceed its industrial production cannot close its trade deficit by exporting more. The dollar has even collapsed in value against the euro, the currency of a make-believe country that does not exist: the European Union. France, Germany, Italy, England and the other members of the EU still exist as sovereign nations. England even retains its own currency. Yet the euro hits new highs daily against the dollar. Noam Chomsky recently wrote that America thinks that it owns the world. That is definitely the view of the neoconized Bush administration. But the fact of the matter is that the US owes the world. The US “superpower” cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid. The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned. When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners. I sometimes wonder if the bankrupt “superpower” will be able to scrape together the resources to bring home the troops stationed in its hundreds of bases overseas, or whether they will just be abandoned. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand.

Nomads in America Let us welcome the pope with this message! Nur

Well, the first thing is to findout if she is looking or not, if she is looking, the next step is to have your family do the due diligence and based on their findings, if all is well, they propose on your behalf ( in Somali, waa laguu doonay) if her family accepted ( waa lagu siiyey) in such a meeting elders of rer Qansax tribe will do the rituals, after which a meeting will be held bewteen the two of you, in the presence of her family, if the chemistry is right, the Nikaax date is set and preparations begin. From here follow the thread above. Nur

Fatboy bro. eNuri suggested you seek help way before getting married to a Xalimo, specially if she is raised in Kurtunwaarrey and you are from Missouri. The Marriage journey starts with a duaa, a sincere supplication to Allah SWT in which you pray for the right Xalimo who will be the mother of your offspring, so that after two centuries you make a difference in Somalia by the way you have raised your kids, and in turn theirs and so on. There are many aspects of a Marriage that you need to master to be certified before getting an eNuri " Fit For Marriage Certifice" From Somaliaonline, below are key areas to be mastered. 1. Ibadah ( Worship): Dont Get In Bed With A Halimo Without It. 2. Family Background Research and selection; ( selecting your kids future grannies, aunties and uncles). 3. Marriage Proposal and Courtship Etiquette(Khutbah) 4. Wedding Cerimony and Requirements ( Meher etc.)( Aqd Al Nikah). 5. Wedding Party ( Waleemah). 6. First Night. 7. The day After. 8. Honey Moon. 9. Real Life After Honey Moon. 10. Husband/ Wife Role in a marriage. Coming back to your question, how to approach the Xalimo, I assume that you have already crossed many traffic lights, so lets salvage some love and affection from this point on. Here is the list for the first night for a Sunnah Compliant APPROACH topics. Let me know at which level you are on. 1. Duaa and Adhkaar to be invoked. 2. Greeting. 3. The Gift, what, how and when. 4. Eye and soul Contact. 5. Smile ( The unspoken language of intimacy). 6. Kind Words 7. Soft Touching and holding hands. 8. Kissing 9. Art of Listening 10. Message of a Massage, how she likes it. 11. Humor Power ( follows above) 12. The ....................................... Now, each of the above areas has a Sunnah compliant methodology to follow, and can be a tipic on its own. To illustrate potential cultural diferences between a western rasied Xaliimo and a rer baadiye Faarax On the Kissing subject! A Somali man fom the Baadiye was once asked if he kisses his wife, here was his answer: " Agah! Ma Musxaf baa?" In Surprise he wondered: " Kiss a wife? Is she a copy of Holy Quraan?" Nur

Salam Nomads Abu Geeljire reminded me to repost this thread, I find it useful to answer some questions. Nur

First rule: Dont fall asleep! Yes There is Sunnah procedure, I am in hury now, but inshAllah will post soon. Nur

Now I know what gets you to visit, Cara you have been missed sis, the excitemet is back at SOL Islam boards! No, it does not explain everything, just your connection to Johnny and Jesuphus Flavius! Nur

JB Are you Jewish? Nur

Nomads Onother three year old uncompleted task of mine like many of my posts on this forum, I pray Allah SWT to give me the the blessing of time to complete all of my unfinished works, please pray for me , amen. Nur

Evidence Grows of U.S. Use Of Drug On Prisoners By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor 06/04/08 "CQ" -- - There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation. All that’s missing is the syringes and videotapes. Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s instantly infamous 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. Yoo advised top Bush administration officials that interrogators could employ mind-altering drugs if they did not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.” Yoo had first rationalized the use of drugs in a 2002 memo for top Bush administration officials. But this latest revelation shows Yoo reiterating conditions on the use of drugs a year later, despite the rising resistance to harsh interrogation techniques by military lawyers and the FBI. “The new Yoo memo, along with other White House legal memoranda, shows clearly that the policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs was being laid,” says Stephen Miles, a University of Minnesota bioethicist and author of “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror.” “The recent memo on mood-altering drugs does not extend previous work on this area,” he said. “The use of these drugs was anticipated and discussed in the memos of January and February 2002 by DoD, DoJ, and White House counsel using the same language and rationale. The executive branch memos laid a comprehensive and reiterated policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs.” “Yes, I believe they have been used,” Jeffrey S. Kaye, a clinical psychologist who works with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco, told me. “I came across some evidence that they were using mind-altering drugs, to regress the prisoners, to ascertain if they were using deception techniques, to break them down,” said Kaye. Yet the situation remains unclear. No ‘Truth Serums’ The Pentagon’s use of sedatives to help calm shackled and hooded prisoners during long “rendition” flights from the Middle East to Guantanamo has been widely reported, But hard evidence that U.S. interrogators today are employing hallucinogens, like the LSD the CIA tested on unwitting subjects for at least 20 years beginning in the 1940s, has yet to surface. Michael Caruso, the chief federal defender appointed to represent al Qaeda suspect Jose Padilla, asserted in a motion last year that his client “was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.” Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees But he could offer no proof. It could have been a placebo. A 1963 CIA interrogation manual, code-named KUBARK, advocated the use of placebos, as well as the real thing, on prisoners. But Michael Gellers, a psychologist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Guantanamo, who had objected to harsh interrogation methods, told me “he never saw anything related to drugs.” “I never saw that raised as an issue,” he said. In any case, hallucinogens don’t make subjects “tell the truth.” “Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation,” the KUBARK manual explains. Yet there is tantalizing evidence that the use of such drugs since 9/11 has been, at a minimum, seriously contemplated, if not implemented. On July 17-18, 2003, for example, the CIA, the RAND Corp. and the American Psychological Association hosted a workshop entitled the “Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory.” One session focused on the question, “What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?” Desperados In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, top Bush administration officials pushed military commanders for intelligence about any other impending attacks, as Philippe Sands, an international lawyer at the firm Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London, details in a forthcoming piece in Vanity Fair. Sands demonstrates that the offending interrogations weren’t conducted by a few bad apples, as the White House and Pentagon have long maintained. They were reacting to pressure from above, to go to “the dark side” and “take the gloves off,” as Vice President Cheney put it. Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees But they didn’t know how, a December 2006 study by the Intelligence Science Board, a wing of the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C., suggested. Under pressure, interrogators started to “‘make it up’ on the fly,” the study said. “This shortfall in advanced, research-based interrogation methods,” it said, “at a time of intense pressure from operational commanders to produce actionable intelligence from high-value targets may have contributed significantly to the unfortunate cases of abuse that have recently come to light.” U.S. Army Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate at Guantanamo, who tried to throttle the excesses, told Vanity Fair that prison officials and interrogation managers drew inspiration from Jack Bauer, the fictional action-hero of FOX’s counterterror drama, “24,” who uses torture and drugs on terrorists. “It was hugely popular,” Beaver said. Jack Bauer “gave people lots of ideas.” Beaver makes no mention of drugs in the piece. She may not have seen or heard about their use, says Ewe Jacobs, the director of Survivors International, which specializes in the psychological and medical treatment of torture survivors. “The Guantanamo camps were isolated from one another,” he says. FBI interrogators and naval investigators, fearing involvement in illegal acts, were told to leave the island. Professor Miles says, “I suspect that most of the use of interrogational drugs was by CIA and Special Ops interrogators, and thus still remains classified.” We just don’t know — yet. The CIA kept its MKULTRA, a mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, and other drug-testing programs secret for more than 20 years. In the early 1970s, when then-CIA Director Richard Helms got wind of congressional investigators sniffing around, he ordered its records destroyed — a precursor of the agency’s recent destruction of interrogation videotapes. Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees But it turned out that Helms missed a box. A disenchanted State Department official, John D. Marks, who had resigned over Vietnam, got hold of the remaining files and produced an astonishing book, “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.” Many more books, some by persons who said they were victims of the mind-altering experiments, were produced. Few believed them. Their tales sounded looney absent patient records (which Helms had ordered destroyed) of the drug experiments (many carried out in a secret wing of Georgetown University Hospital). Likewise, few believe Padilla. Even fewer will believe the other prisoners, a number of whom are deranged from prolonged interrogation — if they ever get out.

The Myth of U.S. Cultural, Religious, Political, and Social Superiority By Kristina M. Gronquist 04/25/05 "ICH" - - The concept of Manifest Destiny describes the 19th century conviction that God intended the continent of North America to be under the control of Christian, European Americans. The ideology of Manifest Destiny was the backbone of U.S. government efforts to colonize land inhabited by indigenous people in North America and expand the United States into Mexican territory. Believers in Manifest Destiny asserted that U.S. rulers were predestined to spread their proclaimed superior values near and far. Propaganda, armed interventions, occupations, and terror were used in various insidious combinations. Indigenous people whose country we reside in can best attest to the results of Manifest Destiny policy, as they survived centuries of unspeakable injustices and lost millions, but courageously, have survived. Ulysses S. Grant, that era’s most prominent military man, and himself a participant in the Mexican-American War, wrote in his memoirs, “I do not think there ever was a more wicked war than that waged by the United States in Mexico. I thought so at the time, when I was a youngster, only I had not moral courage enough to resign.” Although the shameful concept of Manifest Destiny should be confined to history books, it has reared its ugly head, as reflected in our government’s 21st century mission to reshape the Middle East. Of course, the psychology of Manifest Destiny – the projection of Anglo-Saxon supremacy - never really went away, it has always been used to justify America’s expansionist adventures. Losing the Vietnam War drove it toward covert action, i.e., U.S. attempts in the 1980’s to undo the Nicaraguan revolution and support for death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala. But U.S. foreign policy has consistently been based on an arrogant and racist view that “America knows best.” For most Americans, the myth of U.S. cultural, religious, political, and social superiority has been so strongly reinforced over the years that it is taken a given, it is assumed. In the language of political science, this is called “reification,” when myths become accepted as reality. Public debate is often vacuous, because we are unable to question 1) whether or not the U.S. system of governance is desired by non-Americans, or 2) whether or not the “one size fits all” U.S. model will offer people in other lands true solutions. Without such debate, the reification process becomes frightening: If it is a given that our system and values are superior, it follows that remaking others in our image will always be the worthy “end.” Any means can be used to reach the agreed-upon (but unquestioned) worthy end. This is why the U.S. invaded and devastated Iraq, and why our leaders and a majority of Americans can ignore 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties. If it is a given that a Western-style, capitalist Iraq is the proper end, then the means by which that is achieved can be illegal, ruthless, bloody, inhumane, or whatever. The means are open-ended. We see that glazed, slightly out-of-reality look constantly in this administration’s eyes as they talk about “democracy” in Iraq. Their fixed eyes look up towards the ends, but they are never cast seriously downward to look over and evaluate the terrible means by which they are trying to reach those ends. Of course, this “remaking Iraq” project isn’t genuinely guided by the true lofty goal of implementing democracy. Instead, its focus is synchronizing Middle Eastern social and cultural values with Western capitalist values, because that will better facilitate a global world order that revolves around the U.S. economic interests of elites. We all recall and recoil when we remember the days shortly after the invading troops reached Baghdad, when widespread looting destroyed Iraq’s museums and libraries. The U.S. troops stood idly by as Iraq’s cultural history was being erased. There are Iraqis who now say that this was deliberate, an attempt to erase the records of Iraq’s cultural and historical achievements, to wipe the slate clean, so that Western values could be more easily imposed. Hundreds of Iraqi youth recently came out into the streets to protest a new government order that makes Saturday an official holiday in Iraq, officially aligning Iraq’s weekend with the Western weekend. The holy day for Muslims is Friday, and most Muslim countries take off Thursday and Friday or just Friday. At Baghdad’s University of Mustansariyah, a statement read, “We declare a general strike in the University of Mustansariyah to reject this decision and any decision aimed at depriving Iraqis of their identity.” Since the invasion, there have been scores of such changes. The CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) under L. Paul Bremer, and the interim government that followed, both gutted and reworked Iraqi legislation in many areas. The CPA’s meddling with Iraq law violates the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, governing the treatment of the inhabitants of militarily occupied territories. Occupiers are prohibited from making major alterations to the character of the occupied society. The press hasn’t covered the extent of the many changes. We only hear about them occasionally, as in this (2/27/05) Associated Press article that pokes fun at the protesters, portraying the Iraq students as silly for not wanting Saturday off. This patronizing and condescending tone is prevalent throughout U.S. reporting on Iraq society. The Western press resurrects and reinforces the colonialist idea that dark-skinned people in foreign lands are unable to do anything right. Their customs, religion, and culture are not properly “modern” or advanced enough, like ours, and, by God, they have to get with the program! But many Muslims in the Middle East don’t want to get with “the program” because they have been subject to this colonial program before. Like indigenous people, who also reject attempts to assimilate them and dismantle their identity, Muslims in the Middle East don’t want to be shoved on to reservations either, left to watch the rich cities of their countries gleam and hum with U.S. oil money. Fast food joints on every corner, hotel chains, and big box stores offering lousy wages and products may be the American dream, but they are many a Muslim’s nightmare. On February 25, a Qatar-hosted conference called for disseminating the culture of peaceful resistance to aggressive policies adopted by world powers towards Muslim countries. It was attended by a cohort of senior Muslim scientists, intellectuals, and dignitaries. Dr. Abdael Rahman al-Nuaimi, the chairman of the Arab Center for Studies and Research, said that Muslims are facing fierce campaigns from world parties attempting to impose their hegemony over Muslim people and destroy their social systems. He told the opening session of the three-day conference that the goal of such campaigns is to tarnish the image of Islam and mock Islamic values. “In response to such aggressive campaigns, the conference calls for the adoption of all peaceful means as well as the economic, media, and legal tools, to stand up to these aggressions.” There were scant, if any, reports of this conference in the Western press. Why? Because it calls into question the “end” of making other people adapt to the assumed perfect U.S. model of governance, and it speaks to the failed psychology of Manifest Destiny that still guides U.S. thinking - that the U.S. government has a right to spread its values by any means. We cannot hear news that Muslim people en masse reject and plan to resist Western values, which are part and parcel of a specific economic system. That reality (gosh, they don’t want to be like us?) uncomfortably clashes with the reified language of Manifest Destiny, which U.S. leaders again spit forth, to convince citizens that their self-serving violent Middle East policies are worthy.

Strangelove's Wet Dream A Nuclear Free Fire Zone By Peter Chamberlin "You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. You are a slave..., like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind." – Morpheus - The Matrix 02/04/08 "ICH" --- - Never before have so few invested so much, for such long a time, to confuse so many people, about so many things. Never before have so many free people willingly betrayed their own country, their own religion, even their own family, in order to gamble for the opportunity to serve the interests of the powerful few, who are known to reward loyalty so extravagantly. This is typical behavior for a country that gambles enough to support its public school system with proceeds from lottery ticket sales. Our government, with the help of the psychos and sycophants who worship at its feet, has created a police state, which the people allow to masquerade as a democracy. The various wars against this or that problem in America, but more specifically, the "war on drugs," have been used successfully by our overlords as an excuse to create a police state apparatus, and with it, new omnipresent agencies which made illegal searches and the invasion of privacy in America commonplace, long before the Patriot Act applied it to every facet of our lives. The American government, in bed with the magnates of big business (the dictionary definition of "fascism"), have been at war with the American people for a very long time. Fat cat Republicans, who regularly bankroll both parties, have long plotted to replace democracy with a fascist dictatorship. (SEE: THE PLOT TO SEIZE THE WHITE HOUSE) Corporations have invested billions in foundations to study the people, in order to make more efficient war upon their minds. America has the largest prison population in the world, not by accident, but by design. Many years ago it became apparent to the masters of our government that the American people would never submit to the involuntary slavery that awaited them. One day, when the people realized what was being done to them, circumstances would devolve into a military confrontation between Washington and the people. When that day comes, it would be better for government mercenary forces if most young men of fighting age were either overseas, or in jail. Like the revolutionary movie "Matrix," every totalitarian state will eventually produce an underground resistance, which will find its own charismatic leaders, who can convince enough fellow slaves to rise-up into an irresistible critical mass. It will be the same way here in America, once Internet researchers finally manage to blow the lid off the 911 cover-up, or one of the other pressure cooker political cover-ups that are now being brought to a boil on the stove. When the people can finally get a clear glimpse of the totalitarian state rising around them, they will throw off all pretense of self-serving self-restraint. The nature of the overthrow will depend upon the length of time required to alert the masses to the dangerous truth. If the people can be aroused to perform their patriotic duty to restrain their government from destroying the world, before it crosses the nuclear threshold, then peaceful change is still possible. The lunatic-in-chief and his supporters in both the political parties are prepared to use nuclear weapons against vast civilian populations, if We the People are unwilling to stop them. This new phase in the war that is allegedly being fought in America's defense will represent the final transmutation of that war into a totally new war, fought to prevent alleged nuclear weapons construction, by unleashing actual nuclear destruction. Strangelove's "wet dream," a nuclear free fire zone. The disaster unfolding in Washington is like nothing the earth has ever seen. The highest form of government ever produced by man is putting the final stages of planning on freedom's demise, and yet the freest people in the history of the world believe that they are powerless to change anything, as they watch excitedly from the sidelines, screaming patriotic hymns to Clinton and McCain. The planners and their stooges ultimately believe in their own ability to carry forward the grand "success" stories of Iraq and Afghanistan into the rest of the Muslim world. The illusion that they can destroy select areas of the rest of the world without destroying us, helps to calm the delirious worry-free psyches of an immoral society, ready to kill the world to save their own sorry asses. The war on terrorism uses our beliefs against us. It has been exposed as a holy war between Christianity and Islam, at least that is evidently what the Jewish neocon authors of the war want it to be. It is only a matter of time before it becomes obvious to everyone that the war of the new world order is a war against all religion. Religious belief and basic human morality must be allowed to serve as the basis for the fight against this war, because it is a war on life itself. The inherent evil of the whole operation must become the rallying point for the people to oppose the war. It is nothing less than an egotistical human attempt to overthrow the moral basis of international law, replacing it with the inhumane law of parasitic capitalist Darwinism. Kill everyone who refuses to be made into a slave! Religious extremists are primary tools for manipulating religious populations into embracing false violent beliefs, in direct contradictions to the peaceful books they were taught from. In both politics and religion, it is the extremists who stand-out, commanding attention, if not respect. It is through the various targeted extremists that the false religious and political beliefs are introduced into the mainstream of ideas. It is within this flow of ideas that we must wade, to fight the false ideas of a war of civilizations and its counterpart a "holy war" between Christianity and Islam. It is time that extremists in the cause of religious truth and freedom took the fight to our corporate government. We do not have to bow before a form of Zionist-sanctioned political correctness, which leaves no room for truth in an entertainment/indoctrination bureau which masquerades as a free press. Our "free press" has allowed itself to become the greatest threat to freedom our nation has ever faced. It is impossible for a free people to defend itself against an administration of deadly lies when the truth is so easily buried. The American people must become their own press, in order to get around the main obstacle to freedom. The revolution must be a national rejection of a political system based on lies and cover-ups. Our national resistance movement must take the form of a fight for truth, and it must take place in the national arena. The truth we have learned from the rest of the world, through the alternative media, must become common knowledge. You would think that the way Americans love ironic, sarcastic humor, the majority would eagerly join us over here in the alternative media, to share our fascination with the hypocritical stage theater now being performed for our national amusement, which masquerades as politics and foreign policy. The national debate has been strangled because of the news blackout over American/Israeli relations and American duplication of Israeli tactics in the war. Criticism of Israel or its tactics which are used by American forces will not be found anywhere in the "legitimate" American press. This news "dead zone," which is geographically centered on Israel, is certain to be where the planned conflict against Iran and everyone associated with Iran will break-out. We have to overcome this news blackout over the selected zone of conflict. The Zionist censorship of American debate relies upon the accusation of "anti-Semitism" as their primary weapon, to silence fair-minded Americans, who would normally refuse to remain silent in the face of such massive cold-blooded murder on this scale. This instantly has the effect of elevating whatever position they are defending from debate to an (so far) unassailable position beyond debate from the "racist" rabble, otherwise known as "anti-Zionists." By openly making Israel's war America's war, the magical talisman of "anti-Semitism" insulates the Israeli roots of the war on Islam from criticism. Israel must be exposed as the progenitor of this war and the even bigger battle about to be let loose upon the innocent Muslims of the world. The real racists are the Zionists. It is impossible to fight the racist basis of the war, without exposing this cold hard fact. Ideas of Jewish superiority based on Biblical accounts of ancient Israel are embraced by "Christian" leaders, who ignore the obvious ethnic cleansing and state policies of today's "Israel" that easily match the accepted international definition of "genocide." The ongoing "Shoah" (holocaust) being inflicted upon the Palestians is ignored by the loyal press, while the most cynical Zionists seek to derail true debate by mislabeling feeble homemade rockets as genocidal weapons. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1206632348924&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Once again, the Zionists turn truth on its head, with its genocidal weapons claim, while denying that the truly horrific thermobaric, phosphorus and uranium-based weapons it has used in Gaza and Lebanon were used in contravention of international law. http://uruknet.info/?p=m42553&hd=&size=1&l=e If the indigenous people of Palestine are not made to seem inferior, as somewhat less human than the citizens of the "Jewish state," then it becomes much harder to rationalize a "Shoah" upon them, or to "broom them" from their land, like an infestation of vermin. The war against Islam is based on this false position of superiority over all the Muslim people, just as it has been in previous American wars against other non-white populations, who had land or lives available for the taking. The would-be tyrants of the world have always looked at the American genocide of Native Americans as the ultimate example to follow. For those of you still on the sidelines, who have never been baptized by the fires of vitriol and accusations of "anti-Semitism" that always come from criticizing our government for fighting catastrophic wars to enshrine Israel's security above our own, I invite you to wade into the political waters and be baptized in organized hatred, for daring to speak-out. For I guarantee that the first comments you will hear for breaking the taboo and telling the truth will be very abusive in a special mad dog sort of way. The Jewish extremists (who call themselves Zionists) have manipulated Christians, (who also call themselves Zionists) into fighting a genocidal war against Muslims (whom the Zionists call Islamists), so that the Jewish extremists in Israel could safely, openly, remove all Muslims from "Greater Israel," the land coveted by "the chosen people." It is wrong to allow a new holocaust of one people to fulfill the territorial ambitions of the descendents of the survivors of the last holocaust.

Johny boy I thinks we have enough dough on the table to last for a long time on this issue, I really appreciate that you have taken the time for a very useful discussion, something that is rarity at SOL Islam board fo late ( since 911). Some of your responses were on the mechanics of the discussion like the Scottsman fallacy for which you have reminded me what I have forgotten (In my philosophy class, years ago) " TRUE SCOTSMAN" but again, the ball was on your court to show were did I uses such logic. You have not shown were I used such a statement after your lengthy discourse, so let us leave it at there, its not worth more sweat, so we can get into the real issues of this dialogue about Islam and Democracy, on which your poistion is that they are not comparable, rather, you suggest Theocracy and Democracy, so let us stay on this track as much as possible. You write: "To answer your fantastic question of Who is in greater ERROR then, someone who follows a GOD, or someone who claims to Be GOD? i'd say someone who claims to Be GOD is in greater ERROR, but wait a minute , does people who live under Democracies claim to BE GOD? exactly my thoughts . Could demanding a little more cincerity regarding this be much to ask? Johnny Bro. I am glad that you ask, and this is precisely what I expected you to question. You see saaxib, we have a system called Islam, which we both know gives Sovereignty to Allah, and by virtue of that Sovereignty, Allah reserves the right to pass laws for His slaves. In Medieval Europe, the Church ( Found on concepts that are pagan in nature plus some remnants of the old testament ) which initially ceded power to Pagan Roman Kings, just to reclaim it back later in the form of established Churches like the Catholic Church and the Kings who strengthend their Power by claiming to represent the Devine by way of the Pope who ordained them, the Public had to follow and be loyal to the King if they wanted salvation, hence the birth of what you call THEOCRACY in Medieval Europe. Which does not apply to the emergence of ISLAM. Now, many Principalities and Kingdoms in Europe claimed Sovereignty, and to make it short, the French Revolution took away that Sovereignty and gave it to the people, so the public under Democracy become THE Sovereign. RE ( means KING) PUBLIC ( means PEOPLE) so people are the SOVERIGN KINGS collectively that is. So what is Sovereignty: In this discussion my goal is to answer your question, so dont lose sight if I take a long winding road, at the end, I want to show that Democracy is a new form of religion, and those who adhere to it claim to be members of multiple Gods, Dieties, on one hand and its slaves at the other. To show this, I will first explain Sovereignty, which is the other face of Democracy that legitimizes its power. I will then Explain what Diety means from Islamic perespective and the Arabic language ( Ilaah) and then examine if my claim was a far fetched or reasonable. SOVEREIGNTY" Sovereignty is defined as "supreme authority within a territory" Its attributes/qualities: 1. Authority with Absolute Power ( No other power is greater than it) 2. Self dependent Authority, not by virtue of others 3. Irresistible Authority whose wishes must be obeyed by force. 4. Authority whose power controls its Domain. Some of the attributes of Sovereignty: 1.( Absoluteness), Immune to any law, above law, no one escapes its law. 2. Supremacy, no other authority is higher than it. 3. Unity, the only authority to reckon with. 4. Originality, its orginal in its existence, has not borrowed its exisitence from another Sovereign, nor is continuation of another. 5. Non Transferable Authority, no one can take it away, it will never become legitimate if anyone else claims it. 6. An Authority that is always right, since it sets the criteria of what is right and what is wrong. Now what is Deity is Islam:? Allah in Surah Ikhlas desribed Himself as: 1. SINGULAR ( AXAD), single 2. SAMAD , Everything Absolutely depend on Him, He Absolutely Depends on Himself ALONE. SAMAD has the Follwing Variations: 3. PROVIDER OF PROTECTION 4. RESCUER ( in times of distress) 5. Highest authority, no one scapes from His Jurisdiction and Sovreighnty. 6. Leadership. ( ZACIIM UL QOWM) 7. Anything one follows, even desires are called ilaah in Quraan. Thus SOVEREGNTY aka (SAMAD) is a Devine trait and those who excercise it unwittingly claim Deity like Pharoah of Egypt. So, Sovereignty and Democracy are two faces of the same coin, Sovereignty being the legal face while Democracy is the political face. So following Democracy is following someone who claims to be a GOD. While following Allah is following the TRUE GOD. Allah teaches us to say to people of the Book ( Jews and Christians who adopted polytheism : "let us strive to agree to converge to a common ground : That we do not worship other than Allah in any form, that we do not make associate with him other Sovereigns, and further that some of us should not take others for Lords (vested with Sovereignty)." If they turn away, then say: Be witness that we are MUSLIMS, (those who have willingly surrerndered to Allah's sovereignty)" Therefore man should not worhsip man, by giving im a Devine Character, instead man should follow His creator, because a " A problem is not solved at the level it was created" Albert Einstein. You write: "The obvious problem that fails theocracy and all you advocate for here is since your merciful God "Allah", for a reason or another does not or cant come down to earth and lead those he chooses to the right path and lead those he dislikes to the helfire, he must be represented by human beeings like you and me and that contradics the credibility of such almighty." Johnny saxib. You are 1430 years late on this suggestion, Qureish the tribe that rejected Islam before you had the same suggestion, but they are no longer here, and Islam is here and kicking ( The Undisputed Fastest Growing Faith On Planet Earth). Here is the verse Allah SWT is narrating some of Qureish's requests: "Or that you make the heaven fall upon us in pieces as you claimed, or that you bring God and the Angels before us." Nur

Juwairiyah sis. This issue is mildly controversial, ( Khilaafi) scholars have differed on it, although the heavy weight scholars are all leaning for its permission, here is what Sheikh Ibnu Taimiya has to say in His Fataawa: 1. Its permissible for the Xaa'idh ( woman in her periods) to read Quraan without touching: This opinion is held by the school of Abu Hanifa and most known fatwas of Imama Shaafici, and Imaam Axmad ibn Xambal. 2. Its said that reading Quraan is NOT permissible for the JUNUB ( After intercourse) but permissible for the Xaa'idh ( periods), either absolutely, or in case she is afraid forgetting the memorization of Quran (which in forbidden), According to Imaam Malik's opinion and some aspect of Axmed Ibn Xambal's opinion. 3. The Only well known Hadeeth that restricts the reading of the Quraan for the Xaa'idh (woman in her periods) was reported by Ismaaciil bin Cayaah is weak category (Daciiful Jaamic # 6364). 4. During the Prophets time there is incident that the Prophet SAWS prohibited them to read the Quraan during their periods. Neither did he prohibit them from the other religious rituals like the Dhiker and Duaa or, were ordered to go join the public in Eid to celebrate Takbeer of Eid and all pilgrimmage rituals except the Tawaf at the Holy Kaaba, all the while making duaa and dhiker of Allah and His praise from memory. Thuus its concluded that an impurity due a women's periods is not in the same category of the impurity after a session of intercourse, (the latter being by choice and short, while the first is natural occurance and takes a longer period) so the Shaaric ( Allah ) did not prohibit ( worhsip rituals ) for the woman in periods, likewise, the reading of Quraan. ( Majmuuc al Fataawaa Sheikh Ibn Taymiyah, Vol 21 Page 459) 2008 eNuri SOL Fiqh Service Courtesy of eNuri Transemantics

Jazakallahu kheiran brother Positive for your advice, ret assured that I will heed it well. Allow me to put together an in depth topic that answers your valuable and timely question of the Definition of a Muslim in these turbulent times, I assure you it will not take me another two years lol. Nur