Somalis with foreign names existed back in Somalia before the great escape to the West. One person that comes to mind is the famous General, Moragan. That said, I don't find it an issue if someone wants to give their kid a Western name- as long as it does not contradict Islam. I also believe that it is smart to adopt a non-Somali name, because I believe it can help further opportunities. Many Immigrants are now choosing to give their children Western names in order to assimilate into their communities. For example, the Chinese have made it a point to give their children Western names.

xaafada Hodan:

Suuqa afirirdoodka suu noqday, Naxdinbadanaa @ 5:57. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuyuXTrKkr4

Very funny young lady. I thing she has a fantastic sense of humor and seems to enjoy life. I wish her all the best.

What kind of camera did you use sis? The imaging is great.

Lol @ the last name Chippendale;)

Where is the father?

Ayaan is missing in your list.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/podcasts/fareedzakaria/site/2010/07/18/gps.podcast.0718.cnn

Thank you for all your replies. I find it hard to believe that it could cost that much money to sustain someone in kenya. The reason for my initial question was because, I saw a documentary on egypt, in which a whole family was living off of $30 a month salary their young daughter received from playing soccer.

why would anyone be it man or women wear black in heat of the desert sun? Gloves...really?

Hello Everyone, I have family in Kenya and I send them money on a regular basis. Does anyone know how much money one needs to live decently in Kenya (or Somalia for that matter)? Thanks!

Orphans in Somalia? I thought children who were orphans were adopted by their extended family or tribal families and don't forget the dumaal system for the poor widows.

The US is Just re-defining the "enemy". They probably know where this character is and can kill him. When they do, they will declare a big victory against the Taliban.

I saw him two years ago and I could swear he was on drugs, very fidgety. I thought he was an amazing, energetic speaker and even after the time was up he still kept on going.

Why she is the toast of the intelligentsia and mainstream media By Amina Mire Between 2004 and 2005, Ayaan Hirsi Ali received many prestigious national and international awards. The following are example of the awards received by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. (1) One of the Time Magazine’s 100 most Influential People of 2005; 2004 Freedom Prize by Denmark’s Liberal Party; 2005 Bellwether of the Year by the Norwegian Political Think tank, Human Rights Services (HRS); 2005 Harreit Freezerring prize for the ‘emancipation of Islamic women’ by the Dutch feminist magazine Opzij, 2006 European of the year the European editors of Readers Digest Magazine; 2006 Moral Courage Award from the American Jewish Committee. A Norwegian member of parliament, Christian Tybring-Gjedde, has even nominated Ayaan Hirsi Ali as candidate for Nobel Peace Prize for 2006! But on 16 May 2006, Dutch officially cast doubt on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s central claim that she came to the Netherlands ‘to escape from an arranged marriage.' In addition, the Dutch authorities have discovered that Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s real name is Ayaab Hirsi Magan and that she is the daughter of prominent Somali politician. I do find Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s lies to Dutch authorities understandable, for as a refugee claimant, she had to use all sort of claims in order to strengthen her chances for securing legal residence status in the Netherlands. Rather, what I find ironically delicious is how she has transformed herself from an ordinary refugee claimant to the most decorated ‘voice of reason’ and ‘the interpreter’ of ‘Islam’ for ‘the West.’ Put differently, I want to understand to what extant that the quick rise and precipitous fall of Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an exemplary of the specific ways in which unqualified praises and condemnations are often bestowed on the ‘Other’ by the Eurocentric forces of the ideological West. The Eurocentric commoditization of Ayaan as a propaganda image is evidenced by the number of highly prestigious awards which have been bestowed on her. Yet, a cursory examination of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s own written work reveal that this woman grasps neither Islam’s historical contribution to collative universal civilization nor the crucial role European global conquest has played in the racializing and dividing the world into ‘East’ and the ‘West’. The following passage from Ayaan Hirsi Ali new book ‘The Caged Virgin’ demonstrates the naïve mindedness of this woman: "The Moors, who conquered Spain and ruled there for several hundred years before 1492, were responsible for introducing basic hygiene, for preserving the great Roman and Greek classics, for introducing modern agricultural practices such as irrigation, and for a great flowering of culture." "Starting in the twelfth century, the Muslim mind-set became less tolerant, less inquisitive, and more extremist in its view. At the same time, the Judeo-Christian West realized it needed to improve, and its people began learning, traveling and exploring. As a result, the West, The West caught up with Islamic culture and overtook it in a very short time.[1]" Sadly enough, Ayaan Hirsi Ali seems to grasp neither the historical significance of ‘1492,’ which marks the conquest of the Americas by Europe, nor does she offers logical or empirical account of how Greek and Roman civilizations came to Europe via Islam, and same time Islam came to be conceptualized as ‘the natural enemy of the Enlightenment’ by Orientalist scholars such as Bernard Lewis whom she referrers to time and again in this book without proper scholarly citations. As for her supposed ‘revealing’ the horrors of Islam’s oppression of women, the salient point worth asking here is not whether or not that Islam is a patriarchal religion which suppress, regul

Have you contacted the career counseling service of your school? They can help you find a job. Most schools give their alumni students 2 years of free services.

finding a job is generally tough for a student fresh out of school with no work experience. It is import to gain as much work experience in your field as you can while you are in school. I would recommend doing student work program. Good luck!

When I was 14, I use to say I was 16/17 and once I reached 21 (hihihii) my age stopped and stayed at 21, lol. The only issue is that I was born in the West and am unable to play the January 1st game:)

CIA

Isn't it an old age thing?

My god, the women had 10 kids for the Hungarian: Samira and her older brother sandor, then the 3 that got killed and the other one who is now in dadaab and then the 4 that live with their mom...now that was one busy Hungarian.

I am not sure whether that is the case, Muslims, whether they are Sufi or not impressed many people around the world, including those in the West. They have impressed them with their Art, Science, Philosophy, among many other things.

^^ The article said that she was new to the city and it was night, so anyone would have gotten lost in an unfamiliar city during the evening.

For those of you who are interested in this topic, there is a book called "women With Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity." By Afsaneh Najmabadi. "[The author] examines the broad context of Iran's 1906 Constitutional Revolution through the lens of gender and sexuality. The author's provocative thesis holds that male homoeroticism and same-sex practices (particularly between older men and beardless adolescents known in Persian as amrad) were not only prevalent in Qajar Iran [1796-1925] but should be understood within a larger--and now disavowed--framework of premodern gender ambiguity. For Iran's nationalist reformers, modernity implied the eradication of this gender ambiguity through a process of "heteronormalization." Afsaneh Najmabadi's interpretation thus contrasts with the more commonplace explanation of Middle Eastern modernity that stresses gender segregation and homosociality. This conventional view measures social progress chiefly in terms of women's participation in public life. Homoeroticism is thus seen as a consequence of gender segregation, that is, a deflection of "normal" sexuality rather than the product of long-held cultural traditions and norms. According to Najmabadi, once Iran's fin-de-siecle reformers became conscious of contemporary European condemnations of homosexuality, they correspondingly understood the modernizing project in terms of a repudiation of homoeroticism. As a consequence, reform during the constitutional period and the early Pahlavi regime hinged on a total restructuring of Iranian gender relations, now to be understood in exclusively binary terms of male and female. (Ironically, early secular modernists and Iran's contemporary Islamist regime converge on this point.) Just as damning are the "screens" that contemporary Iranian--and particularly feminist--historiography has erected to conceal the gender ambiguity of the premodern era. "From its inception," Najmabadi asserts, "Iranian feminism has been deeply enmeshed in [the] disavowal, denial, and eradication of male homoeroticism" (235). As a result of historical amnesia, the amrad have been excised from contemporary Iranian historical imagination. Likewise, the same-sex Sufi poetry that lies at the heart of Iranian notions of romantic love has been platonized, transcendentalized, and thus effectively masked. To recapture the fluidity of gender relations in Iran in this period of transition, Najmabadi analyzes with great creativity a wide variety of visual and textual documentation. Her sources range from Qajar-era portraiture (in which lovers appear undifferentiated by gender) to Constitutional-era political cartoons (these ridicule Europeanized--i.e., clean-shaven--Iranian men) to nineteenth-century memoirs of European travel and early twentieth-century romantic novels. In a particularly striking example, Najmabadi deconstructs the iconography of Iran's "lion and sun" emblem. Over time, the lion (symbol of the state) became increasingly masculinized while the (fe)male curly-locked sun was stylized and stripped of gender altogether. In the book's final chapters, Najmabadi considers changes in marriage (from procreative contract to companionate monogamy) and the effects women's education had both within the household and the nation at large. Najmabadi's insistence on invoking her thesis at every turn is slightly repetitious, and in places the writing could have been streamlined, but these are minor complaints. This richly textured study makes an important and original contribution to the literature on Iran. It should naturally appeal to gender theorists and students of nationalism as well." http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-162576106.html