Originally posted by Xoogsade: It is part pride and part knowing that the destiny of Muqdishowers is in their own hands.. Originally posted by Duke_Valantino: Xoogsade, I get you brother I agree reer Mogadishu's fate is in their own hands... Who’re the Moqdishowers that Xoogsade refers to and (General) Duke confirms, I ask? Has the Somali civil war finally changed the fabric of the capital and left its permanent marks, I wonder?

Originally posted by CAAMIR: No matter how one looks at it, the heart of the Muslim dilemma goes to a problem that the Reformation and the enlightenment movement have permanently solved for Westerners, notably the question of what should be the basis for social and economic development in the community: human reason or revealed faith? Westerners have effectively, and for good, settled that question by the well-known principle of the separation of Church and state. It took Europeans three hundred years of blood and tears to transform themselves from a faith-driven worldview to secularized, reason-driven socio-economic systems. Will Muslims undertake the painful reform of society, and even more painful re-interpretation of their faith to bring Islamic theory and practice in accordance with the dictates of the modern world? Will there ever arise a Muslim Voltaire or a Muslim Ernest Renan to declare war on the body of hidebound conservative Muslim jurists whose narrow, rigid, literalist interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith, have sunk the Muslim community into the ground? Here, the good professor indulges a bit of intellectual dishonesty. He seems to follow the line of reasoning presented by the contemporary western Orientalists as to what are the root causes of current Muslim insurgency, or backwardness for that matter. Is it out of envy and jealousy of the rise of western secularism and civilization and the failure of Muslim societies to catch up the ever-accelerating pace of change in the western world? Is Islam deficient in values necessary to attain political, economic, and technological progress parallel to that of the west, as Bernard Lewis suggests (the good Samatar seemingly agrees with him), and therefore is in a dire need to undergo ‘a painful re-interpretation to bring its theory and practice in accordance with the dictates of the modern world?’ or is the helplessness and the humiliation of the Muslim world, as Juan Cole points out, the result of 'the combination of western occupation and weak states.' To erase this fact, Juan Cole concludes, is to commit a basic error in the historical understanding. Two thumps up for Farah and NGONGE. STOIC, good question. But what does the west has to offer? Not much, I say! And I happen to agree with that true conservative of ours, Pat Buchanan that is, when he writes: A society that accepts the killing of a third of its babies as women's "emancipation," that considers homosexual marriage to be social progress, that hands out contraceptives to 13-year-old girls at junior high ought to be seeking out a confessional – better yet, an exorcist – rather than striding into a pulpit like Elmer Gantry to lecture mankind on the superiority of "American values." Jamaal11, I failed to understand your red-herring sxb. :confused: A little elaboration would do some justice to your take on the good Samatar’s analysis.

Unhappy Masses and the Challenge of Political Islam in the Horn of Africa By Prof. Said S. Samatar Wednesday, March 09, 2005 at 23:58 By Prof. Said S. Samatar I'd like to start, if I may, with a personal confession: my friend and fellow alumnus of Northwestern University , Professor Alessandro Triulzi, has, by flying me across the Atlantic , made a considerable investment in me. Although he surely will not get his money's worth out of me, that fact does not weigh heavily on my mind. More than this, thanks to Bin Laden and Co., the ghost of political Islam has lately drawn academic attention to my professional interests and, in doing so, has turned out to be my premiere meal ticket, a manna from heaven to ensure earthly prosperity. Somalia is once again, as indeed is the Sudan , the object of attention by the West. The once-neglected villages of Somalia are, as we speak, crawling with CIA agents, looking for the elusive specter of Bin Laden hideouts, presumably in the bushes and in the grazing grounds of camel herds. I am loath not to welcome this development, if only for the enormous employment opportunities it has opened up for us, the Somali elite, as well as expatriate fellow travelers. Who needs, from now on, to trouble with the teaching of complacent, overfed, gum-chewing American undergrads when the CIA pays better--and with far less exertion of the mind as of the body. As regards the subject of Islam in Somalia : it could be said that Islam may well have come to the Horn of Africa before the new religion flourished in Arabian soil. Some years before the Prophet Muhammad's (may peace be upon him) flight from Mecca in 622, a party of more than seventy Muslim converts fled fearful persecution in Mecca to seek refuge in the Christian court of the Abyssinian king in Axum(Axum is today in the province of Tigrai in Ethiopia). Astonishingly--and mysteriously--the king promptly gave sanctuary to the fleeing Muslims. The pagan chiefs of Mecca gave chase and demanded the immediate surrender of the Muslim refugees, but the king adamantly refused to hand them over. In doing so, he risked doing an irreparable damage to the cordial relations in trade and goodwill between the two Red Sea neighbors. When the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) returned to Mecca in a triumphal march eight years later, most of the Muslims came back, but the record does not make it clear whether, in fact, they all did return. Might some have remained behind to plant the seed of the new religion in the soil of the Horn? Historians still puzzle over the incredible show of humanity to the persecuted Muslims on the part of the Abyssinian sovereign. In any case, his generosity was not lost on the Prophet who laid it down in a Hadith (the Hadith contains the sayings and deeds of the prophet and, as such, constitutes the second most sacred text of Islam, after the Qur'an) that “ Abyssinia is a land of justice in which nobody is oppressed.†The point was unmistakable: no jihad against Abyssinia , a prophetic injunction that the Muslims seem to have taken to heart. It is a fact, in any case, that in the early energetic centuries of Islam when the empires of the Persians and Byzantines fell like a house of cards before the steady onslaught of victorious Muslim armies, Abyssinia was left alone unmolested. Some historians claim that the forbidding landscape of Abyssinia coupled with the martial spirit of this warrior nation saved it from Muslim invasion. In my view, the Hadithal injunction of no jihad against Abyssinia does more to explain the survival of Abyssinian Christianity in the age of Islamic eruption on the global scene. This was of course to change later, especially in the sixteenth century with the devastating invasions of Abyssinia by the Muslim Ghazi, or holy warrior, Ahmad al-Ghazi, better known by the less flattering Abyssinian appellation of Ahmad Gragne, or the Left-Handed. But even here it is worth to recall that the outbreak of hostility between Muslims and Ethiopian Christianity stemmed from the threat felt by the Muslims of an expansionist, re-energized Christian empire steadily--and inexorably--pushing eastwards towards the Muslim lowlands. Equally interesting to note is the fact that Muhammad was apparently familiar with Ge'ez, the ancient tongue of Abyssinia , and the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Church today, from the appearance in the text of the Qur'an of Ge'ez words like Neguz, or King. As well, the word for God (Waaq) in the Cushitic languages of Oromo and Somali appears in the Qur'an. Was Muhammad familiar with these Cushitic languages, too? Also–-and this Somalis would not be delighted to hear--the word “Somali†shows up, for the first time in written form, in the royal chronicles of the Abyssinian Neguz Yeshaq, as one of the peoples reduced by him in a recent campaign. Whatever the origins of the spread of Islam in the Horn, Somalia was thoroughly Islamized by the fourteenth century, as we learn from the very helpful account of the globe-trotting Muslim scholar, Ibn Battuta. To compare briefly the influence and distribution of Islam in the countries of the Horn of Africa: Professor Paulos Milkias of Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) has recently come up with some startling, if not explosive, revelations showing the Somali population of Ethiopia to constitute the third largest ethnic group in the country, after the Oromo and Amhara. The Woyane(popular name for the Tigreans in power in Ethiopia today) come fourth. If so, Islam may form a numerical majority in Ethiopia , but power and privilege being dominated by the Christians, Muslims remain a sociological minority in the land. Sudan , I take it, is both numerically and sociologically Muslim, while Somalia is almost 100% Islamic. Militant Islam is highly unlikely to cause any political mischief in Somalia , for reasons to be offered shortly. Be that as it may, the overwhelming majority of the Somalis are sunnis, adhering to the Shafi'i school of Islamic jurisprudence, and tenuously belong to Sufi brotherhoods. The religious brotherhoods in Somalia include the Qaadiriya, the earliest and the claimer of the largest number of adherents. The Qaadiriya traces its founding and spiritual efficacy to the twelfth century Baghdadi saint, Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani. Then there is the Ahmadiya, founded by the nineteenth century Moroccan mystic and teacher, Ahmad b. Idris, al-Fassi. Finally, the Saalihiya, an off-shoot of Ahmadiya, established by the Sudanese student of al-Fassi's, Muhammad Salih from Dongola on the Nile . It may be recalled that the Somali poet, mystic and warrior, who led the famous and earth-consuming insurrection against British, Italian and Ethiopian rule, the Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hasan, il Mullah Pazzo of the Italians, and the Mad Mullah of British colonial literature, was a follower of Muhammad Salih. At first glance Somalia would appear to be an ideal breeding ground for the rise of a large-scale, grassroots fundamentalist movement: For one thing, Somali Islam is a frontier Islam, hemmed in on all sides by pagan and Christian interlopers. Characteristically, frontier Islam is bellicose, xenophobic and profoundly suspicious of alien influences. This together with the fact that Somalia 's masses are perennially haunted by the specter of famine and anarchy, war, devastation, and other horrors should make it an excellent candidate for a resurgent militant Islam. But the Somalis defy the laws of political science. In spite of the presence of all the conditions that should unleash cataclysmic upheavals in Somalia , nothing of the sort has happened there, or is likely to happen. What explains this bizarre defiance of anthropological theory? Simply put, the patterns of Somali social organization, or disorganization, provide a most satisfactory if disheartening explanation. (Disheartening especially today, it may be added, in light of the terror and trepidations wrought on Somalia by the jackals gyrating back and forth between Nairobi and Mogadishu, who have grown fat on the loot of the broken body politic of this unhappy country, thus perpetuating Somalia's agony for booty.) To return to the point, the Somali polity is shaped by a single, central principle that overrides all others, namely the phenomenon that social anthropologists call “the segmentary lineage system.†Enrico Cerulli, that Olympian Italian scholar to whom all Somalists–and I might say Ethiopianists, too--are forever indebted, has first drawn attention to the salience of segmentation in Somali society. And I. M. Lewis has later constructed a definitive study of the workings of this principle in A Pastoral Democracy , still deservedly judged the classic study of Somali pastoralism. Stripped of the scientific razzle-dazzle with which it is often presented, segmentation may be expressed in the Arab Bedouin saying: “my uterine brother and I against my half brother, my brother and I against my father, my father's household against my uncle's household, our two households (my father's and uncle's) against the rest of the immediate kin, the immediate kin against non-immediate members of my clan, my clan against other clans and, finally, my nation and I against the world! In lineage segmentation one, literally, does not have a permanent enemy or a permanent friend–not even a permanent Muslim friend–but only a permanent attention to the availability of self-improving opportunities. Depending on a given context, a man–or a group of men, or a state, for that matter–may be your friend or foe. Everything is fluid and ever-changing. Moreover, sad to say, experience seems to show the Somalis as utterly lacking the notion, basic to human decency, of fixed loyalty--loyalty to anything high or low, sacred or secular, and that, on the contrary, the principle of greedy, galloping personal gain tends to over-ride all else among us Somalis. Worse still, the concept of personal responsibility or political accountability seems to be thoroughly missing from the Somali weltanschauung, or worldview; and therefore there is no social mechanism in our culture to serve as a check on an individual's—or a group's--rapacious excesses or to restrain malcontents from wreaking havoc on a helpless bovine populace. Thus, yesterday's mass murderers and the day-before-yesterday's thuggish looters of the nation's resources put themselves forward as today's leaders of the Somali people's destiny. And nobody calls them on it because they are protected on all sides by their kin. Furthermore, it is indeed a depressing thought to observe that a Somali crook's kinsmen seldom ask themselves what interest accrue to them collectively from protecting an extortionist thug who ruthlessly exploits them by killing and stealing in their name without even sharing the loot with them! I could name names and cite examples of the above but will refrain from doing so for reasons of charity, perhaps of self-interest—ergo, I, too, being a Somali must utter these remarks with an eye to self-interest! (Remember the venerable Somali aphorism: Shiikh tolkiis kama janna tego!) No wonder we have come to acquire a global reputation as a nation of victims and criminals. Segmentation, in other words, is a social system that results in, and sanctions, institutional instability as a cultural norm. Thus it may be stated as a general rule, without hesitation or heart-searching, that instability as a way of life informs the Somali world! Shaped thus by the weird quirks of lineage segmentation, the Somalis, as a society, are segmental, warlike, schismatic, and extremely addicted to self-based pragmatism, at least as they understand pragmatism. What is in it for me? a Somali is likely to ask on any given issue. In view of the rigorous exigencies of the Somali environment, a Somali is invariably predisposed to look out for numero uno. Therefore the ideology of self-sacrifice essential for the rise of a great grassroots movement is alien to his psyche. No Somali, for example, will ever blow himself up for the cause of al-Islam. A classic Somali adage holds that “ Ilaah iyo ‘Atoosh baa nego degaallamaya, dhankii ‘Atoosh baannuna u liicaynaa: once upon a time, Allah and a warrior chieftain named ‘Atoosh began to wage a terrific fight over us(Somalis), and we forthwith went with the chief against Allah, because the chief could deliver the goods faster than Allah.†That is, a Somali would promptly go against the law of Allah, if doing so turns out to be in his material interest. (I do appreciate that in making these remarks, I am painting my countrymen as a bunch of unprincipled opportunists). Well, the Somali environment does tend to produce a pragmatic worldview! And that pragmatic desert worldview militates against the growth of organized, Islamic militancy or, for that matter, large scale movement of any sort. Arguably, the Sayyid Muhammad, the George Washington of Somali nationalism and the Dante Alighieri of Somali literature, did succeed in leading a rather drawn-out, grassroots resistance against the combined powers of Britain, Italy and Ethiopia(1898-1920). And yet his movement killed an estimated one million Somalis and precious few infidels. As the Italian Consul in Aden, cavalliere Pestalozza, the only European to set eyes on the elusive mullah, reminds us, the Sayyid's movement, having miserably failed to unify Somalis against infidel rule, deteriorated into a destructive civil war. The same headache confronts the hyena-thugs fighting over the decomposed body of the Somali polity today. It is a great misconception to call these free-lance looters warlords, at least in the sense Westerners understand the term. In Western political discourse a warlord is a figure who can bring a unified horde of followers either to the battle field or to the negotiating table. To be sure, a Somali “warlord†may manage to field a hundred men into a concerted action, if the perceived interests of the clan as a whole are threatened, or the prospects of a lucrative booty look good. But as soon as the organizing emergency evaporates, each man goes his merry way, unfettered by any binding loyalty to a transcendent cause. How the Italians managed to impose a semblance of order on the Somalis for eighty years remains a matter for astonishment--no doubt by methods that would be considered extraordinary in this human-rights-sensitive age. Italians, please, do come and re-colonize us again. The long-necked Somali lasses are there, still waiting for you. (Mama mia, come dolce, Khadija!â€) On a serious note: while the British neglected British Somaliland by merely using it as Aden's “butcher shop,â€(a supplier of meat to their Aden garrison), British development energies being spent in nearby Kenya, the Italians, by contrast, made a serious attempt to develop and modernize Italian Somalia. They created the vast banana plantations and varieties of citrus fruits that in time came to constitute Somalia's leading export earner. To this day Somali bananas remain the wonder of culinary connoisseurs. Then why, one should duly ask, does Somaliland republic enjoy a semblance of peace and stability that has eluded Italian Somalia? The answer is as simple as it is discouraging: Ex-Italian Somalia is too changed to leave an effective role for the traditional institutions of elders and shirka, or assembly, debates and too unchanged to accommodate modern methods of governance. She is stuck in a limbo, between the rock of pre-industrial outlook and attitudes on the one hand and the hard place of half-baked modernization on the other. To return to the subject of political Islam in Somalia, segmentation has forbidden the emergence of a creditable Islamic fundamentalist force to make a bid for political power. There was one notable exception: in the early 1990s, the shadowy, toothless entity known as al-Itihaad attempted to seize power in Puntland, with a view to establishing a theocratic regime in that region. Warlord Abdullahi Yuusuf (today's putative president of Somalia), a leathery survivor of innumerable gun fights and therefore not particularly noted for mildness of character, unleashed his militia on the holy warriors in a fearful massacre, driving the mullahs out into the wilderness and mercilessly hunting them down in their mountain hideouts. Inexplicably, the desperate pleas of God's soldiers for divine intervention in the face of Abdullahi's fury was completely ignored by the Almighty who indifferently looked the other way as the self-styled holy men were systematically obliterated. The hapless remnants of al-Itihaad have fled westwards to the region of Luuq Ferrandi on the Somali-Ethiopian border. Their bogey-man presence in that sensitive border area has turned out to be a gift from heaven for the once-beleaguered (but now strengthened , thanks to al-Itihaad) regime of Meles Zennawi in Ethiopia. The wily Zennawi has used (and continues to use) the perceived threat of al-Itihaad as an effective weapon to milk the fundamentalist-paranoid American cash cow. Despite the fact that the Somali social fabric cuts against the growth of a fundamentalist movement, the Pentagon and State Department bureaucrats insist on a Bin Laden presence in Somalia. To settle the matter once and for all, I asked my colleague Sunni Khalid, of the Voice of America, to host an on-the-air panel to discuss the issue. The panelist who represented the American government view, whom I suspected to be a CIA spook, fiercely contended that there were Bin Laden camps in Somalia. And when pressed to name one camp, he began to fudge ambiguously. Finally, the moderator of the panel, a Senegalese journalist, apparently acting on a whisper from him, named Ras Kamboni, south of Kismayu on the Indian Ocean as a Bin Laden stronghold. After the panel ended, perplexed and embarrassed over the possibility that this panelist might know something I did not, I phoned a colleague in the field to check it out. He journeyed to Ras Kamboni and found there a single one-eyed mullah and three Bantu followers! Some stronghold! Bin Laden knows better than to trust his person or that of his lieutenants to the individualistic environment of the Somalis where everything is open and without secrecy, and where opportunism and the numero uno outlook of personal survival form the prevailing traits. Therefore, where Somalia is concerned, the West has nothing to fear with respect to the upsurge of militant Islam. The Islamic history of the Sudan tells a different story. Though I am ill-equipped to speak to Sudanese Islam, the obvious can be stated: the Sudan tends to spawn messianic characters en masse, the great Mahdi near the end of the nineteenth century being the prime example, but there also having flourished a legion of small-time mahdis, Nebbi ‘Issas , Nebbi Khadhar s, Nebbi this, Nebbi that, Nebbi the other. Now I have a theory as to why the Sudan tends to be a breeding ground for messianic figures, which I want to try out on the Sudanese scholars at this conference. My wildly speculative view holds that the Sudan represents a dramatic clash between African Ju-Ju(for those unfamiliar with this term, Ju-Ju is an all-purpose word throughout black Africa for magic, witchcraft, sorcery and related para-normal phenomena) and Semitic mysticism. When the mind of the witch doctor fuses with that of the Sufi, or Muslim mystic, the result can be a powerful mental detonation that ignites into existence a multitude of messiahs. Though Somalia per se is unlikely to serve as a fertile soil for Islamic fundamentalism, it may be caught up in a global Islamic revolutionary upheaval. Muslims are assured in the Qur'an: “you are the noblest community ever raised for mankind.†Yet sober Muslims surely must wonder whether their present-day reality-–downtrodden masses, ignorance, rigid backward looking interpretation of the tenets of their faith, a degrading defeat after defeat at the hands of Christian Westerners and Jews, complete loss of their onced-fabled lead in science and philosophy–justifies their view of themselves as a noble community. In short, Muslims are a people with a magnificent past and a humiliating present. In particular, the last two centuries have not been kind to the ummah, or the Islamic universal community of faith, as the Muslims watched helplessly the steady erosion of their position versus the dynamic, secular resurgent West. No matter how one looks at it, the heart of the Muslim dilemma goes to a problem that the Reformation and the enlightenment movement have permanently solved for Westerners, notably the question of what should be the basis for social and economic development in the community: human reason or revealed faith? Westerners have effectively, and for good, settled that question by the well-known principle of the separation of Church and state. It took Europeans three hundred years of blood and tears to transform themselves from a faith-driven worldview to secularized, reason-driven socio-economic systems. Will Muslims undertake the painful reform of society, and even more painful re-interpretation of their faith to bring Islamic theory and practice in accordance with the dictates of the modern world? Will there ever arise a Muslim Voltaire or a Muslim Ernest Renan to declare war on the body of hidebound conservative Muslim jurists whose narrow, rigid, literalist interpretation of the Qur'an and Hadith, have sunk the Muslim community into the ground? I will offer one remarkable example: everyone at this symposium, whether of Muslim or Christian heritage, takes it as a given of the Muslim's God-given right to take four wives. In fact the scriptural pronouncements on the matter are found in two references in the fourth chapter of the Qur'an entitled, the Women's chapter. In that chapter, the whole range of the rights and obligations of women in the Muslim community are spelled out. The first reference appears in verses 1, 2, and 3: it reads: that Muslim men are allowed to marry two, three or four wives. But Muslim men choose to forget the second part of the Qur'anic injunction, which reads: But if you fear that you cannot administer absolute justice among your wives, then you are commanded to take only one wife; a few paragraphs later, the same chapter lays down that “you, men, with your human short comings, will never, ever, be able to administer justice among your wives.†What inference can be drawn from this? Umistakably, monogamy. Yet, Muslims throughout history have chosen to embrace the first of the Qur'anic instructions and to ignore the second, obviously because Muslim women have never had a say about the interpretation of the Qur'an. In any case, the prophet's permission for his disciples to take four wives stemmed more from a sociological reason than religious. As a warrior community, the Muslims were perennially fighting, and too many married men were falling in battle. As a result, the prophet was confronted with the nightmare of multitudes of young widows with children clamoring for support, whereupon he sensibly cleared the way for plural marriages. In the heart of Islam in Saudi Arabia, no woman is allowed to venture out of the house without the Hijaab, or the notorious black veil. To my knowledge, nowhere do you find the imposition of veils on women in the early Muslim community. All that the Qur'an decrees is for women to dress modestly, as indeed Christian women are also commanded. In fact the practice of covering does not even figure in early Arab culture. Covering as a cultural practice originates as a Persian custom and only becomes a widespread Islamic practice centuries later, with the incorporation of Persia into the Muslim world. What about the issue of dissent based on individual conscience? Again, the Reformation has settled this matter in the West. By contrast, to my knowledge, there is no room for individual disagreement based on one's conscience in the Islamic world. The example of Sheikh M. M. Taha is sadly instructive here. Taha, a Sudanese national, a great Muslim scholar and one of the most original minds of the twentieth century in the Muslim world, was executed in 1983 by Jaafar al-Nimeiry, former dictator of the Sudan, on grounds of religious heresy. Sheikh Taha's sin: he ventured to offer the opinion that it was not necessary to pray 5 times a day, and that the love of God in the heart overrides these anachronistic daily rituals. Rituals were meant, said he, for Bedouin tribes some fourteen centuries ago. For the record, I disagree with Taha, as I firmly hold the opinion that rituals are essential for the endurance of religion. Look at the Catholics and Jews. But was this enough to hang the greatest mind in the land? When was the last Westerner to be executed for religious heresy? I bet none, since Savonarola was burned at the stake by the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI in the fifteenth century. Nimeiry asked Sheikh Taha to recant. Recant? That word vanished from European vocabulary with the Reformation. And Sheikh Taha's passion on the way to the hanging Tower still resonates, every bit as passionately, dramatically and pathetically as that of Christ on the way to Calvary. What about the humane tolerance of peoples of other faiths that was the hallmark of the classical age of Islam? Here, in Rome, the heart of Christianity, Muslims are completely at liberty to construct Mosques and other houses of worship with complete religious freedom. Would the heart of Islam, namely, Saudi Arabia, return the courtesy by allowing Christians to build churches in Mecca and Medina!? Is it not time for Muslims to engage in a painful, collective self-examination? Too often we hear the litany of exhortations calling upon the West to understand Islam. That is putting the question upside down. Westerners need no new understanding of Muslims, they already do understand Islam and Muslims exceptionally well. Every university worthy of the name in Europe and America has a department of Islamic studies. My colleague here, Alessandro, is a leading faculty member of an entire institution that does nothing but specialize in studying Islam and Muslims. Can one locate a single university offering advanced degrees on Western civilization in any Muslim country, perhaps with the possible exception of Turkey and Egypt? So, to put the issue of understanding right side up, it is of pressing urgency for Muslims to understand Europeans and their heritage. In short, blind conservatism has imprisoned the mind of Muslims. Smugly comfortable in our untroubled ignorance, we Muslims want to sleep in complacent indolence. But Westerners would not let us sleep. They keep on kicking us in the backside, in order to give us a rude awakening. Will Muslims do it-–undergo the agonizing pains of reform in order to transform their societies to a competitive level? Here a troubling question obtrudes: why isn't there a single democratic country in the Muslim world? Turkey?–well, a democracy of sorts? Why does democracy work in India, and not in Pakistan? The two countries are about the same level of technical and economic development. In fact, were it not for the religious factor, Pakistan and India would be practically indistinguishable. Then why does democracy work in the one, and not in the other? Is there something about Islamic culture, at least as it is practiced today, that is fundamentally and inherently anti-democratic? All too often Muslims do not ask these questions, and when they do, do not make them actionable. If so–-and in the absence of urgent reforms--Muslims are likely to continue to chafe under the oppressive heel of secularized, highly skilled Western barbarians. And they will fall further and further behind the West in science and technology, and therefore in economic and political well being Then the unhappy, hungry masses of Islam from Nigeria to Indonesia are likely to rise in a massive insurrection, which will no doubt result in cataclysmic social upheavals that are likely to throw up a million Bin Ladens to the forefront. Then the West will see a kind of rage and terror that is bound to make the present disturbances look like a child's play.

Though there’s no certainty as to the final destination of the latest political storm in our beloved Horn, one can very much see that the political skills of all warlords, regional leaders, and other entities are put in to a test. Somalia’s current political status is threatened! Mogadishu warlords are shaken to their core! This blustery wind is blowing to their direction. At stake are all the gains (political or other wise) that they’ve made last 14 years. For them, not-so-favorable changes seem imminent. Some of them seem to have resigned to the inevitability of coming changes. Others have promised their resolve and won’t relinquish power without fierce resistance. In the northern shores, Somaliland politicians are pre-occupied and interested in the southern politics as they have stake in it. This time though, they seem to have decided to take sides. No foreign troops necessary to solve this decade old conflict, they say. Our brothers are capable of solving their problems without foreign interventions, they add. The injection of foreign troops, they warn, will exacerbate the situation. They seem to have lost the initiative for now and appear sympathetic for Mogadishu warlords! At stake are the future of Somaliland’s statehood and its relationship with Ethiopia! The Puntland politicians are intoxicated by the unexpected victory of the presidency. They’re jubilantly celebrating and they seem, at the moment, to have exercised some political shrewdness and shifted the dynamics of the southern politics. Their perception-changing mission is bearing some fruits: Mogadishu status is on the table and deploying of foreign troops is on the agenda as well. They seem to have secured the support of regional powers. In that sense, stakes have never been higher. BUT all of that was before America voiced its objection to the proposed deployment of foreign troops! More than any thing else the timing of their statement interests me! And if they seriously mean business, all the celebratory gunshots will cease and Mr. Yusuf political advisors have to adopt another strategy. As it seems, in America’s scale, Mogadishu (politically and economically) weights more than Mr. Yusuf concedes. Why America would ever dwarf Ethiopia’s gains (assuming Mr. Yusuf is a close friend with Ethiopia’s leader)I ask? Or is it a political riddle that only few have the ability to decipher I wonder? Like the one put-forth by the great Somali poet Mohamed Dheeg of Hargiesa when he said: Shebegga iyo dabinkii la dhigay sheyna geli waaye Shuuqsigii wax loo kala wadiyo shaag is rogi waaye Inta shooladee uu baqtiyey shamici nuuraayey ee aan dib loo shidanahayn sheeg haddaad garato! Ninka nabadda shaanshaan ku maqan mara shullaa geeyey Sheekada khayaaliga raggaa shubaya ee jiifa Goortay shadaaftiyo go'iyo shaadhka sare tuuri Shaqaaqadana qaybtiisa heli sheeg haddaad garato Shafka-reenka hoosiyo nacliga uurka lagu sheelay Iyo qosolka sheeda ah ee dibnaa sheeshka laga qaaday Iyo shuqulka aabihii dhintee lala shuglaynaayo Shawahaaddu waa meel kalee sheeg haddaad garato!

SoMa_InC, I don’t fall in the Islamicly-educated category, but I googled and found this treasure, which I think answers your question. -------------------------------------------- Buying lottery tickets 3/24/2004 7:35:00 AM GMT Does buying lottery tickets fall into the category of gambling which is haram? What response would you give to people who claim to be only occassional gamblers? Answer: Lotteries and raffles are other names for gambling, which is haraam according to the Qur’aan and Sunnah, and the consensus of the scholars. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “O you who believe! Intoxicants (all kinds of alcoholic drinks), and gambling, and Al Ansaab (stone altars for sacrifices to idols, etc.), and Al Azlaam (arrows for seeking luck or decision) are an abomination of Shaytaan’s (Satan’s) handiwork. So avoid (strictly all) that (abomination) in order that you may be successful. Shaytaan (Satan) wants only to excite enmity and hatred between you with intoxicants (alcoholic drinks) and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allaah and from As Salaah (the prayer). So, will you not then abstain?†[al-Maa’idah 5:90-91] It is not permissible for the Muslims to engage in any kind of gambling at all, whether the money collected from gambling is to spent on charitable projects or otherwise, because it is evil and forbidden, as indicated by the general meaning of the evidence (daleel), and because the earnings derived from gambling are among the kinds of earnings which we must avoid and beware of. And Allaah is the Source of strength. (Fataawa Islamiyyah, 4/442) Read on (there're more discussions on this very issue)

I, for one, firmly believe that without genuine reconciliation, piece in Somalia is not attainable. How could piece ever take hold in a land where properties are criminally occupied? Where farms are illegitimately taken? Where even entire cities and towns are besieged and its habitants expelled? One can forgive ill-meant deeds that have been done against him/her like the forced expulsion, the savage bililiqo and vandalizing, the indiscriminate killing, the rape and other cruel and inhuman excesses. One shouldn’t, however, forgive the unlawful and continuing take-over of his properties. An impartial committee that can legitimately address land and property issue is a must for this TFG. It has to be priority one for this government to work. The city of Mogadishu has to be dealt sooner than later as it symbolizes the lawlessness and the chaos that befallen on us. It’s where most properties are illegally taken and illegitimately occupied! Then the regions of Shabbeelooyinka and Jubbooyinka should be next. As complex an issue as it seems I have to think as Muslims this should be very easy to resolve. I can understand clans fighting for political dominance but I can’t quite comprehend some one living in a home that he doesn’t own! What a shame!

Mareykanka oo soo dhugtay Soomaaliya Yusuf-Garaad Dowladda Mareykanka ayaa sheegtay in ay ka soo horjeeddo in ciidan ka socda dalalka deriska ah la geeyo dalka Soomaaliya. War ka soo baxay Wasaaradda Arrimaha Dibadda ee Mareykanka ayaa sheegay in Mareykanku la wadaago beesha caalamka iyo dad badan oo Soomaaliyeed walaaca ay ka qabaan ciidan shisheeye oo la geeyo Soomaaliya. Warku waxaa uu sheegay in dalalka Soomaaliya la deriska ahi ay dano iyaga muhiim u ah ay ka leeyihiin Soomaaliya, kuwaas oo sida ugu wanaagsan ee ay ku ilaashan karaan ay tahay dhismaha dowlad dhexe oo Soomaaliyeed oo waxqabad leh oo laga hirgeliyo Soomaaliya. Si kastaba ha ahaatee, Mareykanku waxaa uu sheegay in ciidan kasta oo la geynayo Soomaaliya aan laga qeyb gelin ciidan ka socda dalalka la deriska ah. Haddii ciidammo dalalka deriska ah lagu daro hawlgalka, waxay dowladda Soomaaliyeed ku noqoneysaa ayuu warku yiri caqabad aan laga tallaabsan karin oo uga gudban taageerada iyo kalsoonida ay uga baahan tahay shacabka Soomaaliyeed. Doodda ku saabsan ciidammada Soomaaliya la doonayo in la geeyo, waxaa maalmahanba ka taagnaa khilaaf sii kordhaya. Waxaa uu khilaafku u dhexeeyaa gaar ahaan Madaxweynaha, Cabdullaahi Yusuf Axmed iyo Raiisal Wasaaraha, Cali Maxamed Geeddi, oo daafacayay kana dhaadhicnayay dadweynaha in la keeno ciidan shisheeye oo aan loo kala saarin saf hore iyo mid dambe. Dhinaca kale waxaa ka soo horjeeda ra'yigaas hoggaamiyayaal hubeysan oo hadda Wasiirro ka ah dowladda oo ka soo horjeeda in ciidan laga keeno dalalka deriska ah. Hoggaamiyayaashaas oo dhammaantood ka soo jeeda magaalada Muqdisho waxaa ka mid ah, Ra'iisal Wasaare ku xigeen isla markaana ah Wasiirka Arrimaha Gudaha, Xuseen Maxamed Caydiid, oo isaga oo Baydhaba jooga BBC-da u sheegay in aanuu qabin in la keeno ciidan shisheeye. Baarlamaanka Soomaaliya ayaa lagu wadaa in uu maalmaha foodda nagu soo haya go'aan ka gaaro waxa laga yeelayo ciidan shisheeye. Rajo wanaagsan Si kastaba ha ahaatee, Mareykanka oo markii sannadkii 2000 dalka Djibouti lagu dhisay dowlad Soomaaliyeed aan sidaa u daneyn ayaa intii ka dambeysay weerarkii argagixso ee dalkiisa lagu qaaday Sebtembar 2001, waxaa uu u muuqata khatarta ka imaan karta Qaran burbura. Hadalka Mareykanku soo saaray, waxaa uu muujinayaa in Mareykanku daneynayo waxa ka socda Soomaaliya, waxaana dadka qaar u muuqan karta rajo laga qabi karo in uu gacan ka geysto dhismaha dowlad Soomaaliyeed oo ku dhisan qaabka uu warku tilmaamay oo ah wadaxaajood iyo dib u heshiin. Source: BBC

I think she is a joke!

Tolstoy, I like your hypothesis of Ethiopia gradually losing regional significance as US shrewdly understood the dynamics of ‘the ever-shifting alliance building within the horn-of-Africa.’ Remains to be seen though, if this ‘geo-strategical’ change would cause America to pursue independent regional policy towards Somalia, given Kenya and Djibouti, and Yemen for that matter, are on the same the page with Ethiopia on this!

wind.talker, If America’s interest is protected by Ethiopia and Ethiopia, as you said, is the’ eyes and ears’ of Washington, why then these two governments aren’t on the same page as far as the support of this TFG is concerned? If America is too busy reforming Middle Eastern societies, and Somalia doesn’t register in Washington’s radar when it’s thrown in to the mix of world politics, why, then, Washington is compelled to make all theses recent pronouncements? Wouldn’t it suffice for her to delegate these not-so-significant assignments to Ethiopia if there’s no tangible divergence of interest, as Tolstoy pointed?

Oh Allah, what an enlightening perspective from brother Nur! I must admit that Nur’s analysis is intellectually stimulating and religiously enriching! ‘The fun will never end as paradise is a gift for the righteous men and women,’ he says. A non-discontinuous gift, he adds. I fell in love with both the theme and the tone of this lecture. He addressed the subject in question with great articulacy and eloquence. Those who’re destined to benefit would be greatly appreciative of this. Viking, I have to conclude, got more than he bargained for!

In a bid to steer the topic to its intended path and on a genuine desire from my part to disregard this gay dog nonsense, let me address few fundamentals as it relates to relationships. From what I have read (from this thread) so far this lesbian girl of yours is planning to come to your town and pay a visit to you. Not only that, but she also informs you that she is a confirmed lesbian! Not to discount the long distance relationship of phone calling, MSN-messaging, and emailing! That, good Runaway-V, is fully developed and well enhanced friendship! As a Muslim you need to persuade her to reform her behavior. Talk to her about the cultural and religious consequences of this. Be a good a friend and try to influence her positively. If, however, all your efforts don’t bear fruit and she resists changing, as a Muslim you should promptly sever ties with her. You should distance yourself from such evil act. In Islam you’re not supposed to befriend with Fusaaq and with those who deviate from the right path. You can tolerate her existence and acknowledge her vulnerability to sin. But hosting her, as a guest to your residence, is a bit too neglectful, I would think. Giving her a tour and driving around with her would as well send the wrong signal. Preserve your integrity and uprightness. Observe her attitude and if you sense assertiveness in her approach and advocacy to her style, hey run with your life!

Since it abruptly pulled out its troops 1993, America has showed little or no interest in restoring functioning government in Somalia. It declined to support Mr. Qasim’s government and tacitly sided with Ethiopia and it’s claims (Mr. Qasim is in bed with Alqaida). When Kenya hosted the Somali piece process, America has been noticeably missing from the process and didn’t seem to appreciate the significance of resolving Somalia’s conflict. It was very slow to react to the selection of the parliament and the subsequent election of the President. The official reaction from the State Department was both ambiguous and reserved. That defied the logic of Ethiopia’s political clout: Ethiopia’s support of this government would secure Washington’s blessing. Have Somali conflict reached a point where the interest of Ethiopia diverges from that of US? Is America siding with Egypt, and not with Ethiopia, when it matters most? Where does this leave with the future of this unfortunate Somalia? Or is it another opportunity for Washington to abort the current political progress in Somalia and prolong the civil war? Perhaps I am reading too much in to this, but it seems to me that Washington’s insistence for this government to go Mogadishu and its objection against deploying foreign troops is on to some thing!

Read this report.

Xumo iyo samo ma kala jiraan? WQ: Ibraahin Yuusuf Axmed -------------------------------------------------- Dacwadda dhowaan lagu oogay Sarreeye Guud Maxamed Cali Samatar waa fal hagaagsan oo lid ku ah hab-dhaqankeenna maanta ee aan hagaagsanayn. Waxaa caado ah in qofka eed loo tirinayo aan shakhsi ahaan loola xisaabtamin ee qabiil dhan denbi looga dhigo laguna dulmiyo. Waxaa kale oo caado ah xaqa in lagu raadiyo waddo qudheedu xaqdarro ah, sida in gacan lagu aarsado ee aan la marin caddaalad iyo xeerarka ay tahay in ay dad ilbax ahi ku kala baxaan. Sida jariimada uu qof gaar ahi galo tol dhan loogu eedeeyo si la mid ah ayuu tolkuna dhagarqabaha ka dhashay u difaacaa. Dhaqankaasi aad buu u fool xun yahay, u dambeeyaa, khatar u yahay, ugana fog yahay danta wadanoolaanshaha iyo jiritaanka umadda. Nin soomaaliyeed oo aanu dhowaan doodnay ayaa si ba’an u difaacay fikradda ah in aan xaq loo lahayn in dacwad laga oogo gaboodfalkii ay Maxamed Cali Samatar iyo kuwa la midka ahi umadda soomaalida u gaysteen. Ninkaasi aragtidiisa wuxuu cuskiyey laba qodob oo ay dad badani caadaysteen. Waa ta koowaade, in soomaalida oo dhami wada denbiile tahay, suurtogalna aanay ahayn in la iswada dacweeyo, sidaas darteed ay macnodarro iyo gardarro tahay in qof gooni loo raadsado. Iyo ta labaad oo ah, cid kasta oo cid dacwaysaa in ay qabyaalad u jeeddo, haddii kale cidda wax dacwaynaysa qudheeda dad eedo noocan ah galay baa ku jira ee iyagana ha la keeno. Muranka ah â€cid walba waxaa ku jira dad denbiyo galay ee caddaalad ha la hor keeno†waxaa burinaysa weydiinta ah: oo yaa diiday in qof eed loo haysto la dacweeyo? Marka qof godob loo haysto qabiil lagu difaaco ha la arko, laakiin ma aha in dhibbane kale oo dacwoonaya xaqiisa la is-hor taago. Arrintaasi waxay ka mid tahay fawdo feker iyo anshax oo umadda soomaalida ogaan loogu dhex tuuray welina lagu wado. Waxaa la rabaa in la hirgeliyo dhaqan aan ka duwanayn ka dugaagga oo ah in aan qalad iyo sax ama xumo iyo samo kala jirin. Waxay ka bilaabatay in si isyeelyeel ah loo yidhaahdo â€mucaaradku waxay ahaayeen qarandumis, waayo haddii ay maamulka saluugeen waxay ahayd in ay dadaal nabadeed wax ku beddelaan halkii ay hubka qaateenâ€. Waa isyeelyeel, waayo waa la wada og yahay taasi in aanay suurtogal ahayn, sida aanay maanta in laga doodo qudheedu suurtogal u ahayn. Halgamaagii maraykanka madow u dhashay ee lagu magacaabi jiray Malcolm X mar la weydiiyey sababta uu u qaadan waayey halganka nabadeed ee laga bartay Mahatma Gandhi wuxuu ku jawaabay hadal macnihiisu ahaa: Gandhi wuxuu la kifaaxayey quwad ilbax ah oo nabarka akhlaaqeed ee lagu dhuftaa damqayo, laakiin annagu waxaanu gacanta ugu jirnaa Maraykan oo anshax iyo ilbaxnimo ka qaawan. Sidoo kale qofka Kooxdii Oktoobar isbeddel nabadeed kala hadlaa wuxuu la mid ahaa qof abrisyo la cayaaray. Muddo yar ka hor intii aan kooxdaas dadqalatada ah laga takhallusin duqaydii nabaddoonka ahayd ee gudbisay cabashada ku saabsan aayaha Qaranka wixii ku dhacay ama ku dhici lahaa waa tii la wada ogaa. Intii maalintaas ka horraysayna hadalkeedba daa. Haddaba doodda sidan ah ee kacdoonkii bulshada lagu dhaleecaynayo run ahaantii daacad lagama aha ee xaqa iyo xaqiiqada ayaa buuq lagu furayaa, waxaana ku hoos qarsoon: maxaa gunnimada loo qaayibi waayey ee dulmiga looga gilgishay?! Si denbiilaha iyo dulmanaha isku mid looga dhigo, sannadihii ugu dambeeyey taladii Kacaanka waxaa aad looga shaqeeyey in xaqa iyo baaddilka la isku walaaqo. Waxaa la dhiirrigeliyey ku tumashada sharciga, xadgudubka, dhaca, colaadda qabiilooyinka iyo wax walba oo xun. Waxaana la gaadhay xukuumaddu in ay hubka culculus shacbiga Muqdisho ka iibiso, taas oo ujeeddada laga lahaa ay iska caddahay. Dadka u tafoxaydan in ay yareeyaan ama xataa beeniyaan gumaadkii, burburintii iyo dullayntii uu Taliska Oktoobar umadda soomaaliyeed u gaystay had iyo goor waxay keenaan xisaab ay qaacidada iyo natiijaduba qaldan yihiin oo ah: gumaadka iyo burburka waxaa sababay mucaaradka, xukuumadduna dalka iyo dadka ayey badbaadinaysey! Dabcan taasi run ma aha, runna loogama jeedo, xataa ma aha isku day hagaagsan oo xaqiiqada lagu ambin karo, waase muran ku dhisan murtida ah â€Qaniinyo ayaa qaniinyo kaa fujisaâ€. Waxaa loogu raadgadayaa dhagarqabayaasha galay denbiyada waaweyn iyo gumaadka. Si aynu u aragno dooddaasi in ay tahay quus liidata oo aan halka ay taagan tahay hore uga dhaqaaqi karin, aynu isla xasuusanno xaqiiqooyin dhawr ah oo ay dadkii dhintay iyo kuwa aan weli dhalaniba innala og yihiin: 1) Maalintii ay taariikhdu ahayd 1 julaay 1960 umadda soomaalidu waxay ku midawday qarannimo saldhiggeedu yahay hannaanka dimuqraaddiga, kaas oo ay tiirarkiisa ugu muhiimsan yihiin in dadka qaranka hoggaaminayaa ku yimaaddaan doorasho dadweyne oo xor ah oo xeer qarameedka waafaqsan. 2) Habeenkii ay taariikhdu ahayd 21 oktoobar 1969 markii ay koox uu Maxamed Cali Samatar ka tirsanaa talada Qaranka boobtay dalka waxaa ka dhisnayd dawlad dimuqraaddi ah oo sharci ah, taas oo ku timid doorashada iyo doonista umadda, sidaas darteed waafaqsanayd xeer qarameedka. Haddaba kooxdaasi in ay maamulkii sharciga ahaa ridday, xildhibaannadii la doortay kala eriday badankoodana xabsi ku gurtay, ayna xeer qarameedkii laashay, waxay wada ahaayeen falal afduub, budhcadnimo, argaggixiso iyo cadawtinnimo ah oo Qaranka Soomaaliyeed lagula kacay. Kow iyo labaatankii sano ee habeenkaas ka dambeeyey wax alla waxii ay kooxdaasi magac dawladnimo ku gaysatay ma ahayn sharci ee waxay ahaayeen denbiyo qaran ay tahay in si kasta, goor kasta iyo meel kasta oo suurtogal ah dacwad lagaga oogo. 3) Kow iyo labaatankii sano ee ay kooxdaasi umadda xoogga iyo xaqdarrada ku haysatey waxay xaaraamaysay fikrad kasta oo teeda khilaafsan, qof kasta oo taas ku dhiirradayna waa la gawracay ama god madow baa lagu riday. Sidaasna waxaa lagu curyaamiyey horumarkii dadnimo, ilbaxnimo, dhaqaale, aqooneed iyo dhinac walba oo ay dadka isirka soomaaliga ku abtirsadaa samayn lahaayeen, waxaana laga reebay asaaggeed iyo hayaanka dunida. Bulshadii soomaaliyeed ee hanka weyn lahayd waxaa laga dhigay mid dayaysan oo aan dhan ay u socoto garanayn, fawdo ku nool oo aan madax iyo mijo kala lahayn. Sannadkii 1991 markii kooxdaas la eryey umadda soomaalida ilbaxnimadeeda, akhlaaqdeeda iyo nolosheeda oo dhami waxay yaalleen heer aad u hooseeya, taas ayaana keentay masiibooyinkii markaas ka dib la arkay, ilaa ay gaadhay in la iswada weydiiyo â€dadka sidan u dhaqmayaa miyaanay ahayn soomaalidii la yaqaanney?!†4) Burburka midnimada ku dhacay iyo nacaybka aan xadka lahayn ee bulshada wada dhalatay kala galay waxaa sababtay siyaasaddii gurracnayd ee ay kooxdaasi xukunka ku ilaashanaysey, siyaasaddaas oo ahayd in qabiillada ay umaddu ka kooban tahay la isku baabi’iyo oo la isku mashquuliyo (qaybi oo xukun). Taasi inoogama baahna caddayn waayo cidna kama qarsoona sidii qabiilooyinka marba mid loo gumaadayey iyada oo qaar kale loo adeegsanayo. 5) Mar haddii ay kooxdaasi si walba u diiddanayd feker iyo ficil kasta oo wax lagu wanaajin lahaa, khasab ayey noqotay in mucaarad hubaysani abuurmo si maafiyada la isaga xoreeyo. 6) Mucaaradku haddii ay magaalooyinka xoog ku galeen waa dalkoodii, mana jirin awood iyaga ka sharcisan oo xaq u lahayd in ay ka celiso ama kula dagaallanto. Qawlaysatada uu Maxamed Cali Samatar ka tirsanaa in ay dalka xoog ku haysteen kuma noqon karaan dawlad sharci ah. 7) Kooxdaasi intii aanay talada dalka afduubin umadda soomaalidu waa ay isku duubnayd oo isjeclayd, waxayna lahayd yool midaysan. Haddaba xaalku sida uu maanta noqday waxaa mas’uul buuxa ka ah kooxdaas. Nimankaasi sidii ay wax u wadeen waxay gaadhay in ay waxgarad badani ku tuhmaan in ay ogaan iyo si abaabulan mujtamaca soomaalida u burburinayeen. Weliba xogogaalku waxay isku raacsan yihiin Maxamed Cali Samatar in uu lahaa awood aan ka yarayn ta madaxweynihiisa. Haddaba waa wax aad looga xumaado in ay dad soomaaliyeed maanta maalkooda iyo waqtigooda ku luminayaan difaaca Maxamed Cali Samatar oo sidaas ku sifoobay….. Haddii uu dhaqankeennu noqday in siyaalo aan habboonayn loo kala aarsado, dacwad maxkamadeed waa sida keliya ee ay tahay in qof walba oo garasho iyo akhlaaq suubbani taageero raallina ku noqdo. Haddii aan sharciyada aadamigu ku kala baxo lagu qancin, ma waxaa la doonayaa in loo dhaqmo sida dugaag kayn ku jira, oo aan denbiile iyo dulmane, xumo iyo samo, la kala garan ama la danayn? Qofka jecel ee difaacaya nin shacbi soomaaliyeed gumaaday, magaalooyin soomaaliyeedna dumiyey, sidee buu isla markaas uga hadlayaa in uu jecel yahay midnimo iyo dawladnimo soomaaliyeed? Hooyada maanta Hargeysa joogta ee saddexdeedii ilmood ku wayday duqayntii sannadkii 1988 uu ciidanka Maxamed Cali Samatar ku qaaday iyaga oo Itoobbiya u sii qaxaya, haddii loo sheego in ay maanta dad soomaaliyeed diiddan yihiin in ninkaas caddaalad la hor keeno, maxay dareemaysaa? Dabcan waxay xaqiiqsanaysaa in ay jiraan dad hooggeeda ku diganaya kuna faraxsan, isla markaas Maxamed Cali Samatar falkaas ku jecel oo ku abaalmarinaya. Halkaas waxaa ka dhalanaya dareen isugu jira yaqyaqsi iyo argaggax, waxaana abuurmay jawi bani aadamnimada liddi ku ah. Waa feker iyo dhaqan mustaxiil ka dhigaya in ay dadka soomaalidu midoobaan, waayo isku dareen iyo isku dan ma aha, xumaha iyo samahana isku si uma arkaan, mana jiraan wax ka dhexeeya oo aan ahayn cadaawad. Waxaa dhicisoobaya, oo dhabarka ka jabaya, dadaalka umadda loogu shukaaminayo midnimo iyo nabad. Fadqalallada lagaga soo hor jeedo dacwadda ku oogan Maxamed Cali Samatar iyo eedaysanayaasha la midka ah run ahaantii dadka wadaa isku mid ma aha. Qaarkood waa raacdoreeb ka tirsanaa isla taliskii uu ninkaasi sarkaalka sare ka ahaa, markaas waxay diidayaan, sideedaba, in denbiyadaas la soo qodqodo. Kuwo kale waxay ka tahay qabyaalad iyo cid ku xumayn. Waxaase labadaba ka sii badan dad aan aragti iyo dan lahayn oo ay dabayshu iska sidato. Dadka noocan dambe ahi caqli iyo aqoon midna meesha kuma hayaan ee marba duruufta taagan baa dareenkooda hagta. Foolxumada dhammaan wayday ee Soomaaliya ka jirta iyo qaxootinnimada ayaa dadkan masaakiinta ah daalisay oo nuglaysay, dabadeed waxay noqdeen qalab cid waliba danteeda u adeegsan karto: mar waxaa maskaxda lagaga xadaa diin aan daacad laga ahayn, marna qabiil. Tusaale ahaan si loo jahowareeriyo waxaa la isu barbar dhigaa Soomaaliya sannadihii 1976 iyo 1996, waxaana loogu macneeyaa kala duwanaantu in ay tahay Kacaanka iyo jabhadaha, dabadeed Maxamed Siyaad Barre iyo Maxamed Cali Samatar ayaa loo tusaa halyeeyo. Si dantaas liidata loo gashado horta waxaa la damqaa nabarrada xanuunka badan ee qofka ka soo gaadhay qaxootinnimada iyo dawlad la’aanta. Sidaas ayaa lagaga qaadaa awooddii maskaxeed ee uu si hagaagsan oo xor ah ugu xisaabtami lahaa. Dadka Maxamed Cali Samatar maanta caddaaladda ka difaacayaa shaki la’aan noocan ayey u badan yihiin. Waxayse moog yihiin, ama la moogaysiiyey, dhibbanaha koowaad ee kooxda Maxamed Cali Samatar eedday in ay tahay qudhiisan qaxootinnimada iyo dawlad la’aanta la baday. Haddaba akhriste, si aad u ahaatid qof anshax suubban oo damiir fayow, si aad u ahaatid qof habboon oo garasho hagaagsan, si aad uga qayb qaadatid soo celinta jiritaankaagii ummadeed, ha u hiilin eedaysanayaasha uu ka midka yahay Sarreeyo Guud Maxamed Cali Samatar. Intii aad kuwaas u hiilin lahayd u hiili maatadii soomaaliyeed ee ay gawraceen. U hiili kumannaankii iyaga oo aan waxba galabsan la gumaaday, iyo kumannaankii la agoomeeyey ama la goblamiyey, iyo kumannaankii la naafeeyey. U hiili wixii masjid, masrax, dugsi iyo guri soomaaliyeed lagu dumiyey madfac iyo diyaarad gaalo waddo. U hiili xaqa iyo caddaaladda sida ay Ilaahay iyo dadnimaduba ku farayaan. Haddii aadan sidaas yeelayn, ka xishood in afkaaga laga maqlo soomaalinnimo, midnimo, caddaalad iyo bani aadamnimo. Ibraahin Yuusuf Axmed Ibraahinhawd@hotmail.com

from the February 25, 2005 edition Iraqi women eye Islamic law. The majority United Iraqi Alliance supports sharia. By Jill Carroll |Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor BAGHDAD – Covered in layers of flowing black fabric that extend to the tips of her gloved hands, Jenan al-Ubaedy knows her first priority as one of some 90 women who will sit in the national assembly: implementing Islamic law. She is quick to tick off what sharia will mean for married women. "[The husband] can beat his wife but not in a forceful way, leaving no mark. If he should leave a mark, he will pay," she says of a system she supports. "He can beat her when she is not obeying him in his rights. We want her to be educated enough that she will not force him to beat her, and if he beats her with no right, we want her to be strong enough to go to the police." Broadening support for sharia may not have been the anticipated outcome of the US mandate that women make up one third of the national assembly. But Dr. Ubaedy's vision is shared by many members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a list of religious Shiite candidates that won a majority of seats. She says the women on the UIA list are meeting now to coordinate their agendas and reach out to women from other parties. How their presence translates into action not only will shape women's rights in Iraq but goes to the heart of how much religion will dictate law. "When you have a fairly large number of women [in a legislature], it brings women's issues to the forefront," says Marina Ottaway, an expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "On the other hand, [in Iraq] you have a majority of women elected from religious political parties, and this process will take place in the midst of discussions of the constitution and role of Islam in the constitution." Ubaedy, a pediatrician who is married and has four daughters, offers a nuanced argument for sharia. She plans to encourage women to wear the hijab and focus on nurturing their families. At the same time, she says, she will fight for salary equity, paid maternity leave, and reduced work hours for pregnant women. But whether her voice and those of other women will be heard - especially if their views are unpopular - is uncertain. Assembly members opposed to strict Islamic views may have to rely on secular groups like the Kurds and supporters of Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to support them as lawmakers sit down to draft a new constitution. After a disappointing showing in the election, Mr. Allawi made a splash this week with an aggressive bid to remain prime minister. He has said he is trying to form a coalition that will be able to overpower the UIA. But the strategy would require a hefty chunk of UIA members to defect from their choice of Ibrahim al-Jaafari. It would also need the support of the 135 members of the assembly - including the increasingly assertive Kurds - who are not in the UIA. The push is likely to result in offers of top government positions to Allawi's cohort in exchange for backing down. In the nearly two years since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell, pressure has grown for women to conform to stricter Islamic standards. "The Baath Party, with all the things many believe they did wrong, [still ensured that Iraqi] women had the most rights in the region," says Rime Allaf, an associate fellow with the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, where she is researching women's status in Iraq. "Now, a lot of women are being very careful about how they dress. They are being told by perfect strangers, 'You need to cover your hair ... [and] your arms.' " As a result, a central concern is how Islamic law might be interpreted and implemented. "Sharia depends on the man who is giving the law, the [religious leaders] and others. No one can guarantee sharia will be applied perfectly," says Abeer Rashid, a female candidate on Allawi's list who didn't win a seat. On the ground, Iraqi women have very different ideas about what sharia means. Umm Hibba, Aseel Abid, and Umm Sermat, politely ask about each other's families and health over tiny glasses of sweet tea in a relative's house. But the three, all wearing head scarves and loose-fitting black robes, erupt over questions of their rights under the new government. Sharia is a good idea, they say, if it is mixed with civil rights to guarantee they won't become second-class citizens. But Umm Hibba, who declined to give her full name for security and because it is sometimes considered inappropriate for a married woman, believes sharia is the only option. She has been told a secular government means one run by "infidels." Ms. Abid says that, as a good Muslim, she supports sharia. But she likes a secular government and supports Allawi, who campaigned on his secularism. Umm Sermat, who also would not give her full name, thinks Islamic law is a good idea but wants the protections she had under Mr. Hussein's secular regime. "The law [then] was with the women 100 percent," she says. A man "had to get his wife's permission to take a second wife. They should share the [assets] if the wife is separated. In a divorce, they have to prepare a furnished house for her.... We don't want a sharia constitution like the Iranian model. We're not worried about [uIA] being like Iran because it also includes (Ahmed) Chalabi, a Shiite" who is secular. But Umm Hibba jumps in with concerns that Iran's theocracy is making Iraq more conservative. "They said what I am wearing is devil clothes," she says of the time she was recently turned away from the main mosque in Baghdad's Shiite Kadhimiya neighborhood. She pulls incredulously at the shapeless black robe that got her banned because openings between the fasteners revealed flashes of the long formless dress underneath. Umm Sermat dismisses her concerns, saying the women in the national assembly will stand up for them, even those in conservative rural areas. "We aren't worried because these women are there," she says. "They have to give more rights to women, especially in the south, [where] the women are treated in an unfair way." Source

Originally posted by Mutakallim: تَسعَى الوÙشَاة٠جَنَابَيْهَا وقَوْلÙÙ‡Ùم٠اÙنَّكَ يا ابنَ أبي سÙلْمَى لَمَقْتÙول٠وقالَ ÙƒÙلّ٠خَلÙيل٠كÙنْت٠آمÙÙ„Ùه٠لا Ø£ÙلْهÙيَنَّكَ إني عنك مَشغÙول٠ÙÙ‚Ùلت٠خَلّÙوا سَبيلÙÙŠ لا أبا Ù„ÙŽÙƒÙÙ… ÙÙŽÙƒÙلّ٠ما قَدَّرَ الرَّحمَن٠مَÙعÙول٠كÙلّ٠ابْن٠أÙنْثَى واÙنْ طالَتْ سَلامَتÙه٠يوماً على آلَة٠حَدْبَاءَ مَحمÙول٠Oh, what a stanzas! They describe a man who decided to divorce his past and confront with the new reality: the reality of the fall of Mecca in the hands of the Prophet. They also depict the betrayal of his friends and how they refused to host him as his poems where known to defame the Prophet and his message! Above all, they eloquently portray a man, Ka’ab that is, who is about to face a decisive moment in his life. Originally posted by Mutakallim: Ø£ÙنْبÙئْت٠أَنَّ رسÙولَ الله٠أَوْعَدَنÙÙŠ والعَÙْو٠عندَ رَسÙول٠الله٠مَأْمÙول٠وقَدْ أَتَيْت٠رَسÙولَ الله٠مÙعْتَذÙرَاً والعÙذْر٠عندَ رَسÙول٠الله٠مَقْبÙول٠مَهْلا هَدَاكَ الذي أَعْطَاكَ نَاÙÙÙ„ÙŽØ©ÙŽ ال Ù‚Ùرْآن٠Ùيها مَوَاعÙيظٌ وتَÙْصÙيل٠لا تَأْخÙذَنّÙÙŠ بأَقْوال٠الوÙشَاة٠ولَمْ أذْنÙبْ وقَد ÙƒÙŽØ«Ùرَت ÙÙيَّ الأَقاوÙيل٠لَقَد Ø£ÙŽÙ‚Ùوم٠مَقَامَاً Ù„ÙŽÙˆ ÙŠÙŽÙ‚Ùوم٠بÙه٠أرى وأَسمَع٠ما Ù„ÙŽÙ… يَسمَع٠الÙÙيل٠Ka’ab argues his case before the Messenger of Allah. Oh Prophet of Allah, he says, don’t base your judgment on me by rumors! It’s the original version of innocent until proven guilty -- حسن الظن وبرأة الذمة---! Originally posted by Mutakallim: إنَّ الرَّسÙول٠لَسَيْÙÙŒ ÙŠÙسْتَضَاء٠بÙÙ‡Ù Ù…Ùهَنَّدٌ Ù…ÙÙ† سÙيوÙ٠الله٠مَسْلÙول٠ÙÙŠ ÙÙتْيَة٠مÙÙ† Ù‚Ùرَيْش٠قالَ قائÙÙ„ÙÙ‡ÙÙ… بÙبَطْن٠مَكَّةَ لمَّا أَسلَمÙوا زÙولÙوا زالÙوا Ùما زالَ أَنْكَاسٌ ولا ÙƒÙØ´ÙÙÙŒ عÙندَ اللقاء٠ولا Ù…Ùيلٌ مَعَازÙيل٠شÙمّ٠العَرَانÙين٠أَبْطَالٌ لَبÙوسÙÙ‡ÙÙ…Ù Ù…ÙÙ† نَسْج٠دَاوÙدَ ÙÙÙŠ الهَيْجا سَرَابÙيل٠بÙيضٌ سَوَابÙغ٠قَد Ø´Ùكَّتْ لَهَا Ø­ÙŽÙ„ÙŽÙ‚ÙŒ كأنَّها حَلَق٠القَÙْعاء٠مَجدÙول٠يَمشÙونَ مَشْيَ الجÙمَال٠الزّÙهْر٠يَعصÙÙ…ÙÙ‡ÙÙ… ضَرْبٌ إذا عَرَّدَ السّÙود٠التَّنابÙيل٠لا ÙŠÙŽÙرَحÙونَ إذا نالَتْ رÙماحÙÙ‡ÙÙ… قَوْمَاً ولَيسوا مَجَازÙيعَاً إذا Ù†ÙيلÙوا لا يَقَع٠الطَّعْن٠إلا ÙÙŠ Ù†ÙØ­ÙورÙÙ‡Ùم٠وما Ù„ÙŽÙ‡ÙÙ… عن Ø­Ùيَاض٠المَوت٠تَهلÙيل٠And this does it for me! After finding the true nature of the Prophet and that Mohammad is not a man of vengeance and retribution, Ka’ab describes the Messenger as the source for illumination and enlightenment and his companions as a team of extreme bravery and courage. From that fateful moment, Ka’ab become one the distinguished Islamic poets and close companion of the Prophet.

February 25, 2005 'Anti-Islamist' Crusader Plants New Seeds by Jim Lobe Despite the apparent decision by President George W. Bush against re-nominating him to the board of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), "anti-Islamist" activist Daniel Pipes is working as diligently as ever to protect the United States and the Western world from the influence of radical Islamists.He has proposed the creation of a new Anti-Islamist Institute (AII) designed to expose legal "political activities" of "Islamists," such as "prohibiting families from sending pork or pork byproducts to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq," which nonetheless, in his view, serve the interests of radical Islam."In the long term...the legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even a greater set of challenges than the illegal ones," according to the draft of a grant proposal by Pipes' Middle East Forum (MEF) obtained by IPS. Pipes is also working with Stephen Schwartz on a new Center for Islamic Pluralism (CIP) whose aims are to "promote moderate Islam in the U.S. and globally" and "to oppose the influence of militant Islam, and, in particular, the Saudi-funded Wahhabi sect of Islam, among American Muslims, in the America media, in American education … and with U.S. governmental bodies." Schwartz, a former Trotskyite militant who became a Sufi Muslim in 1997, has received seed money from MEF, which is also accepting contributions on CIP's behalf until the government gives it tax-exempt legal status, according to another grant proposal obtained by IPS.The CIP proposal, which says it expects to receive funding from contributors in the "American Shia community" and in "Sunni mosques once liberated from Wahhabi influence," also boasts "strong links" with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and other notable neoconservatives, such as former Central Intelligence (CIA) director James Woolsey and the vice president for foreign policy programming at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Danielle Pletka, as well as with Pipes himself. Pipes, who created MEF in Philadelphia in 1994, has long campaigned against "radical" Islamists in the United States, especially the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and several other national Islamic groups. Long before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, he also raised alarms about the immigration of foreign Muslims, suggesting that they constituted a serious threat to the political clout of U.S. Jews, as well as a potential "fifth column" for radical Islamists. In addition, Pipes has been a fierce opponent of Palestinian nationalism. He told Australian television earlier this month, for example, that Israeli Prime Minister's Gaza disengagement plan and his agreement to negotiate with the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, were a "mistake" because 80 percent of the Palestinian population, including Abbas, still favor Israel's destruction. In 2002, Pipes launched Campus Watch, a group dedicated to monitoring and exposing alleged anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian, and/or Islamist bias in teachers of Middle Eastern studies at U.S. colleges and universities. The group, which invites students to report on offending professors, has been assailed as a McCarthyite tactic to stifle open discussion of Middle East issues. Pipes' nomination by Bush in 2003 to serve as a director on the board of the quasi-governmental USIP, a government-funded think tank set up in 1984 to "promote the prevention, management, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts," moved the controversy over his work from academia into the U.S. Senate where such appointments are virtually always approved without controversy. Pipes' nomination, however, offered a striking exception. Backed by major Muslim, Arab-American, and several academic groups, Democratic senators, led by Edward Kennedy, Christopher Dodd, and Tom Harkin, strongly opposed the nomination as inappropriate, particularly in light of some of his past writings, including one asserting that that Muslim immigrants were "brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene." Several Republican senators subsequently warned Bush that they would oppose the nomination if it came to a vote, and, in the end, the president made a "recess appointment" that gave him a limited term lasting only until the end of 2004. It appears now that, despite the enhanced Republican majority in the Senate, Bush does not intend to re-nominate him. Indeed, both the USIP and Bush now probably regret having nominated him in the first place. During his board tenure, Pipes blasted USIP for hosting a conference with the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy, charging that it employed Muslim "radicals" on its staff. That accusation was publicly refuted by the USIP itself, which echoed the complaints of his longtime critics, accusing him of relying on "quotes taken out of context, guilt by association, errors of fact, and innuendo." Pipes also criticized Bush for "legitimizing" various "Islamist" groups, such as CAIR and the Arab-American Institute, by permitting their representatives to take part in White House and other government ceremonies and for failing to identify "radical Islam" as "the enemy" in the war on terror. His own disillusionment with Bush is made clear in the AII draft which notes that "creative thinking in this war of ideas must be initiated outside the government, for the latter, due to the demands of political correctness, is not in a position to say what needs to be said." AII's goal, it goes on, "is the delegitimation of the Islamists. We seek to have them shunned by the government, the media, the churches, the academy and the corporate world." Pipes' complementary goal – to enhance the influence of "moderate" Muslims – is to guide the work of Schwartz's CIP, which is "headed by one born Muslim (its President) and a 'new Muslim', i.e. an American not born in the faith, as its Executive Director. This is the best combination for leading such an effort." The "extremists," according to the CIP proposal, are mainly represented by the "Wahhabi lobby," an array of organizations consisting of CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada (MSA), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), as well as "secular" groups, including the Arab-American Institute (AAI) and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). "The first goal of CIP will be the removal of CAIR and ISNA from monopoly status in representing Muslims to the American public," the proposal goes on. "o long as they retain a major foothold at the highest political level, no progress can be made for moderate American Islam." In achieving its goal, CIP cites the help it can expect from its "strong links" to Wolfowitz, Woolsey, and Pletka; as well as Senators Charles Schumer and Sen. Jon Kyl, among others, "terrorism experts" Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project, Paul Marshall of Freedom House, and Glen Howard of the Jamestown Foundation; and journalists such as Fox News anchors David Asman, Brit Hume, and Greta van Susteren, Dale Hurd of the Christian Broadcasting Network; and editors at the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Toronto Globe and Mail. Interviewed by phone, Professor Kemal Silay, "president-designate" of the CIP who teaches Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Indiana University, told IPS he was not aware that he was to be group's president, but that he had talked about the group with Schwartz and agrees with both Pipes and Schwartz about the dangers posed by Wahhabi groups in the U.S. and the world. Ali al-Ahmed, director of the Washington-based Saudi Institute and named as CIP's research director in the grant proposal, told IPS he had also talked with Schwartz about the group and strongly supported its goals, although he thought several of the groups listed as part of the Wahhabi lobby were more independent. He also said that he did not know that Pipes was involved with the group. "[Pipes] sees all Arabs and Muslims the same, because he has interest in the security of the state of Israel," said al-Ahmed, who publicizes human rights abuses committed in Saudi Arabia. Schwartz refused to speak with IPS.

February 25, 2005 World Bank and US: Palestinians Should Pay for Israeli Checkpoints by Emad Mekay WASHINGTON - The World Bank, an international development institution that says it has no political agenda, may be preparing to fund Israeli security checkpoints around a controversial separation wall under construction on occupied Palestinian territories. Israel is not eligible for World Bank lending because of its high per capita income, but Palestinians are. According to a World Bank official, the project would help the Palestinian economy by allowing Palestinian goods and workers a faster review at the checkpoints. "We had proposed a couple of crossings and Israel has more formally come back to us and asked whether we would help secure financing for these, which is why we have started to prepare a project," Markus Kostner, the Bank's country program coordinator for the West Bank and Gaza, told IPS. The crossings would be designed to speed up the movement of Palestinian people and cargo, and would be staffed by Israelis. "However, as I said, our financial contribution would be to the Palestinians. Because of its high per capita income level, Israel is not eligible for World Bank financing," Kostner said. "So the project helps enhance the efficiency of the border crossings for the benefit of Palestinians, as well as at the same time … at least maintain if not increase the security considerations of Israelis. From that perspective, it'll be a double gain," he added. Approval of the plans may come as early as June this year, he said. The funding would come either in the form of grants or soft loans. The Bank declined to give a dollar value for the project and said it was still under consideration. The Palestinians say they are following the issue closely. "Our policy is that in principle, as long as this is not cut from any funding or aid to the Palestinians, then we'll put it under discussion," Hassan Abderhman, chief of the Palestine Mission in Washington, told IPS. "However, we haven't been informed of the World Bank plan. We are still in the discussions phase." Some watchdog groups say the project would violate international law since some of the proposed checkpoints by the Israelis are on and around the separation wall, which annexes Palestinian land. "If they are going to be funding the checkpoints outside of places in the Green [Line], then it's clearly a violation of international conventions and law," said Terry Walz of the Washington-based Council for the National Interest, a group that monitors U.S. and international policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. "I must admit that making the Palestinians pay for the modernization for these checkpoints is an embarrassment, since they had nothing [to do] with the erection of the separation wall to begin with and in fact have protested it. I think the whole issue is extremely murky right now." The Israeli business publication Globes reported on Feb. 15 that World Bank Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa Region Christiaan J. Poortman and other senior figures indicated that the Bank does not rule out financing infrastructure projects inside Israel that benefit Palestinians, such as a rail link between Gaza and the Ashdod Port or water projects. Poortman also told the Jewish weekly publication The Forward two weeks ago that the World Bank is considering funding projects and security crossings around the separation wall. The Forward quoted Poortman as saying that the World Bank "has indicated that it is willing to play a role, whether financially or in technical assistance," in upgrading the border crossings. Poortman was not available for an interview. This would be the first time the World Bank had stretched its interpretation of lending to the Palestinians to permit funding Israeli security measures and projects on occupied land. Two weeks ago, an official Israeli delegation headed by former Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel briefed U.S. officials on the planned crossing points. Spiegel heads a team appointed by Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz to contain the Palestinian "humanitarian" problems emanating form the construction of the separation wall. Spiegel has reportedly also briefed officials with U.S. Jewish groups and senior World Bank officials. An action alert from the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a leading pro-Israel lobby group, said Israel is building "state of the art" checkpoint crossings "for Palestinians traveling from Gaza to Israel, modernizing five similar terminals between Israel and the West Bank and substantially reducing the number of security checkpoints and roadblocks in Palestinian areas." Israel is also building a Jerusalem bypass road that will enable Palestinians to travel between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank without moving through security checkpoints. Some U.S. aid slated for the Palestinians would also be going to fund checkpoints. The Palestinians will eventually have to pay some of those debts. President George W. Bush's public offer of $350 million in aid to the Palestine Authority actually allots some money to fund those "state of the art" checkpoint crossings. The World Bank may also be trying to cast the modernization of checkpoints between Israel and the Palestinian Territories as a "development" project to be undertaken by the either the Israelis or the Palestinians as a way of improving the Palestinian quality of life and ease of communication. The World Bank has been at the center of several controversies over the past few years, including charges that it backs international corporations at the expense of poor people in developing nations, but this is the first time it appears ready to get actively involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. James Wolfensohn had rejected this possibility last year. The controversial separation wall is not built along the Green Line, the borders before the 1967 war in which Israel annexed more Arab land, but is in the West Bank, the main part of a potential Palestinian state. The route of the barrier purposefully runs deep into Palestinian territory in order to help annex Israeli settlements and to break up Palestinian territorial contiguity. Many development groups question the involvement of the World Bank and the U.S. government in the scheme. Americans for Peace Now, a Jewish group that advocates peace with the Palestinians, says that funding the security gates and crossing points would violate U.S. policy that opposes spending U.S. tax dollars in support of Israeli settlement activity and the perpetuation of Israel's occupation of the West Bank. The United States is the largest shareholder in the World Bank. "In addition, funding such expensive crossing point structures would undermine the credibility of the argument that the security barrier is only temporary in nature, and not a permanent addition to the West Bank," the group said in a statement. The Council for the National Interest described the project as a boondoggle in which "Peter is robbed to pay Paul." -------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- P.S: The tools of oppression in a full swing!

Baashi, That’s tough one. As you know these crimes---dumping waste and fleecing resources---are not done in the daylight! The deals to secure prompt facilitation from the concern warlords tend to get finalized in dark aisles of the evil world! To unearth the evidence that’s required to secure guilty verdict is a challenging task to say the least. It’s, however, a story worthy of news and it can easily win primetime airing of 60 Minute and other popular news programs! Alisomlai, Very interesting Memo and one that illustrates how even the learned westerners think!

Baashi,I am a bit hesitant to name names, as it were, and point fingers, as I know the clannish emotions it invokes! But once and for all, I must abandon my bunker mentality and test the waters for you gave us an offer that I can't refuse! Here are some individuals and entities that I have been suspicious. This list is incomplete and controversial! Warlords 1- Cusman Caato 2- Abdullah Yusuf 3- Maxamed Dheere 4- Cali Mahdi 5- Munye Said Omar 6- Xussen Caydiid Nations 1- Italy 2- France 3- America 4- Germany 5- UK 6- Russia 7- China 8- South Africa 9- Scandinavian countries P.S. Note that most of the above individuals are ironically part of the government and the countries I listed are the powerful ones!

No wonder why the western world is not eager to see normalcy restored in Somalia! It has served as a dumping ground for their wastes. It offered them priceless resources to fleece. When you read heartbreaking reports such as this one you can’t help but speculate if prolonged civil war was shrewdly hatched and purposefully fueled by invisible enemy? مصائب قوم عند قوم Ùوائد

Originally posted by Brown: Many African countries learned from past. New leadership and civic education have made it difficult for lenders to take advantage of these poor nations................................... ..........Of course, the IMF and the World Bank dictates the lending terms(so does any lender-including your local xawala), but when you learn how to fiscally manage your money,empower your population and learn the terms,conditions and the consequences, surely they are not dictating. NO? So that immoral practice has been put to end by the emergence of prudent and smart leadership in the third world? Are you suggesting that all the Dark Continent needs to do is to read the fine print and do the paper work right? Pardon my integrating inquiries!

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Originally posted by Brown: Gone are the days when the west would dictate lending terms. This is a breaking news to me! I have to admit that I am no expert in this field and perhaps I should take few enlightening lessons from you! Tell us, good Brown, the role of IMF and World Bank institutions if not to suffocate economic progress of the third world! Inform us, would you?