Originally posted by M u h a m m a d: dhamaantiin idinkaa mudan! Legend, waa runtaa sxb Insha'Allah waxaan guri ka dhisan Badhan, iyo mid raaxo oo Masha'Xaleed ama Cidhbiye ah. liin madariintii iyo farsuugii baan ba u xiisay. laakiin shaqo badan buu wadanku u baahanyahay! Bal Sawirkan ila eege, wuu iga cajabiyey! loool Are you kidding me, sun fire cooking? And Mohammed that is disgusting, who the hell took that picture, yuck!

Originally posted by Sky: Only child. This may sound ackward, but you are than the only only Somali child I have encountered. You are truly a phenomenon. You have never experienced when your dad forgot your name for a brief moment, waiting for the bathroom for an hour or even finding out that one of your siblings took your favorite sweater while you were planning to wear it that day. Masha Allah you are blessed. The only thing is though, I sometimes wonder what would happen to my parents if I died, who would take care of them? Also, the pressure to succeed is even that much worse, because there is no room for failure. Man, when I get married I’m going to have as many children as possible, just incase one kid doesn’t turn out the way you want, you have others to fall back on, lol.

Oh, I almost forgot to add the movie “office space†to my list, now that was one hilarious movie.

I just became a nomad, YAY!

these are my favorites: 1. i heart huckabees 2. the documentary "what the bleep do we know?" 3. Miyazaki's "Spirited Away" 4. recreum of a dream 5. Pi

Originally posted by Femme: ^She neither had the pleasure of sticking a fist in someone's face on a daily basis, always knowing that there is a person to blame, someone to go with you places when you feel alone, someone to wrestle and 5 seconds later still be best of friends. Someone hand down the responsibilites when your tired. Were only 5 but sometimes I wish it was 10. The bigger the more fun. Really. Can't wait till my lil sis is older. I'm training her now to take care of the whole house. You know what, I love being the only kid...I got everything I have ever wanted in my life, my parents both showed me so much love that I have to say, I never needed the attention or acceptance of others (not that I’m implying that you do, or that anyone else does). However, I remember when I went to Somalia for a holiday as a kid, I had hard time with the local kids who could spot that I was a new kid in the neighborhood, and that is the only time I had wished to have siblings to defend me from the hooligans.

Wow, that is a lot of children. I'm the only child, so i guess i woudn't know the whole big family thing.

I'd say Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia Newfoundland and Labrador are the best places on earth. Nova Scotia has one of the best bike touring and coastal paddling spots in the world. And if you are a seafood lover, well then you are in heaven.

For me the best example of ‘rule by the people’ comes in the form of the Unites states Constitution. If you read the US constitution you come to realize that the Constitution focuses on limited government interference and on individual rights. It illustrates that it truly is the people who give the government the right to act. The people determine the extent of the mandate that the government is allowed to exercise. People are the source of power here. So, i guess in my own opinion the United States represents the only true democracy.

Hello Tolstoy, I did not suggest that the French revolution started the march of the European Enlightenment, but rather that the Enlightenment ideas of, confidence in the self-sufficiency of the human mind, belief that individuals possess natural rights that government should not violate and the desire to form society in accordance with rational principles inspired the march of the French Revolution. Remember that in August of 1989, the newly created national Assembly adopted the declaration of the rights of man and of citizen, which expressed the liberal and universal ideals of the Enlightenment. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the roots of the Revolution lay in the aristocratic structure of the French society. The third Estate resented the special privileges of the aristocracy, a legacy of the middle ages, and the inefficient and corrupt methods of government. To many French people influenced by the ideas of the philosophes, the French society seemed an affront to reason. Thus, reformers sought a new social order based on rationality and equality. .

greeting! The French Revolution mounted the first effective challenge to monarchical absolutism on behalf of popular sovereignty. So, the Revolution set the stage for the idea of a new form of political organization, to those who were still under a feudalist social and political structure. Also, Europe was gripped by ignorance, superstition and tyranny and religion was tainted by corrupt clergy men who solicited money from the public in return for god’s salvation. It was people like Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau who challenged the ruling class, the tyrants. The philosophes idea that the individual is free, equal, rational and good destroyed France’s three order or state political and social organization. Therefore, the basic principles of the freedoms which we enjoy today were articulated by these philosophes. So, to me the French Revolution was definitely not the beginning of the end and if I’m not mistaken, the brother maybe justifying the hobbesian idea of an absolute ruler.

Huh? :confused: How would a person stalk you over the net, you can just change your name and IP address. Btw, nice Avatar it suits you much better.

Lol, who is the "Resident western apologist", DraGon? Hihihiiii

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4318284.stm

Originally posted by tHe oNe aNd OnLy: to tell you the truth i did not understand a single sentance of that!!! :confused: Greetings! He is saying many things but, one of his main argument is that, the US is not in a war, but creates a climate of war. By doing so, the state can use it to treat the citizens as ‘Homo Sacer’ (not citizens), the same thing the Israelis do with the Palestinians. And under this pretence the state can take the civil liberties of the individual, because they are no longer a citizen, so the state gains power under the pretence of this created enemy, or for protection and even under humanitarian purposes. Anyway, i hope that made sense.

Have you guys read the essay ‘Are we in a war? Do we have an enemy?’ by Slavoj Zizek? Well, if you have not read it before I thought of perhaps sharing it with you, because Zizek presents a unique explanation to the nature of the contemporary ‘War on Terror’. Zizek, uses the famous Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s reassessment of modern sovereignty, ‘Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life’ to explain the current situation. Anyway, here it is, it's a bit long, but it's worth the read. Are we in a war? Do we have an enemy? Slavoj Zizek When Donald Rumsfeld designated the imprisoned Taliban fighters 'unlawful combatants' (as opposed to 'regular' prisoners of war), he did not simply mean that their criminal terrorist activity placed them outside the law: when an American citizen commits a crime, even one as serious as murder, he remains a 'lawful criminal'. The distinction between criminals and non-criminals has no relation to that between 'lawful' citizens and the people referred to in France as the 'Sans Papiers'. Perhaps the category of homo sacer, brought back into use by Giorgio Agamben in Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998), is more useful here. It designated, in ancient Roman law, someone who could be killed with impunity and whose death had, for the same reason, no sacrificial value. Today, as a term denoting exclusion, it can be seen to apply not only to terrorists, but also to those who are on the receiving end of humanitarian aid (Rwandans, Bosnians, Afghans), as well as to the Sans Papiers in France and the inhabitants of the favelas in Brazil or the African American ghettoes in the US. Concentration camps and humanitarian refugee camps are, paradoxically, the two faces, 'inhuman' and 'human', of one sociological matrix. Asked about the German concentration camps in occupied Poland, 'Concentration Camp' Erhardt (in Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be) snaps back: 'We do the concentrating, and the Poles do the camping.' A similar distinction applies to the Enron bankruptcy, which can be seen as an ironic comment on the notion of a risk society. Thousands of employees who lost their jobs and savings were certainly exposed to a risk, but without having any real choice: what was risk to those in the know was blind fate to them. Those who did have a sense of the risks, the top managers, also had a chance to intervene in the situation, but chose instead to minimise the risk to themselves by cashing in their stocks and options before the bankruptcy - actual risks and choices were thus nicely distributed. In the risk society, in other words, some (the Enron managers) have the choices, while others (the employees) take the risks. The logic of homo sacer is clearly discernible in the way the Western media report from the occupied West Bank: when the Israeli Army, in what Israel itself describes as a 'war' operation, attacks the Palestinian police and sets about systematically destroying the Palestinian infrastructure, Palestinian resistance is cited as proof that we are dealing with terrorists. This paradox is inscribed into the very notion of a 'war on terror' - a strange war in which the enemy is criminalised if he defends himself and returns fire with fire. Which brings me back to the 'unlawful combatant', who is neither enemy soldier nor common criminal. The al-Qaida terrorists are not enemy soldiers, nor are they simple criminals - the US rejected out of hand any notion that the WTC attacks should be treated as apolitical criminal acts. In short, what is emerging in the guise of the Terrorist on whom war is declared is the unlawful combatant, the political Enemy excluded from the political arena. This is another aspect of the new global order: we no longer have wars in the old sense of a conflict between sovereign states in which certain rules apply (to do with the treatment of prisoners, the prohibition of certain weapons etc). Two types of conflict remain: struggles between groups of homo sacer - 'ethnic-religious conflicts' which violate the rules of universal human rights, do not count as wars proper, and call for a 'humanitarian pacifist' intervention on the part of the Western powers - and direct attacks on the US or other representatives of the new global order, in which case, again, we do not have wars proper, but merely 'unlawful combatants' resisting the forces of universal order. In this second case, one cannot even imagine a neutral humanitarian organisation like the Red Cross mediating between the warring parties, organising an exchange of prisoners and so on, because one side in the conflict - the US-dominated global force - has already assumed the role of the Red Cross, in that it does not perceive itself as one of the warring sides, but as a mediating agent of peace and global order, crushing rebellion and, simultaneously, providing humanitarian aid to the 'local population'. This weird 'coincidence of opposites' reached its peak when, a few months ago, Harald Nesvik, a right-wing member of the Norwegian Parliament, proposed George W. Bush and Tony Blair as candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing their decisive role in the 'war on terror'. Thus the Orwellian motto 'War is Peace' finally becomes reality, and military action against the Taliban can be presented as a way to guarantee the safe delivery of humanitarian aid. We no longer have an opposition between war and humanitarian aid: the same intervention can function at both levels simultaneously. The toppling of the Taliban regime is presented as part of the strategy to help the Afghan people oppressed by the Taliban; as Tony Blair said, we may have to bomb the Taliban in order to secure food transportation and distribution. Perhaps the ultimate image of the 'local population' as homo sacer is that of the American war plane flying above Afghanistan: one can never be sure whether it will be dropping bombs or food parcels. This concept of homo sacer allows us to understand the numerous calls to rethink the basic elements of contemporary notions of human dignity and freedom that have been put out since 11 September. Exemplary here is Jonathan Alter's Newsweek article 'Time to Think about Torture' (5 November 2001), with the ominous subheading: 'It's a new world, and survival may well require old techniques that seemed out of the question.' After flirting with the Israeli idea of legitimising physical and psychological torture in cases of extreme urgency (when we know a terrorist prisoner possesses information which may save hundreds of lives), and 'neutral' statements like 'Some torture clearly works,' it concludes: We can't legalise torture; it's contrary to American values. But even as we continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we'll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that's hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty. The obscenity of such statements is blatant. First, why single out the WTC attack as justification? Have there not been more horrible crimes in other parts of the world in recent years? Secondly, what is new about this idea? The CIA has been instructing its Latin American and Third World military allies in the practice of torture for decades. Even the 'liberal' argument cited by Alan Dershowitz is suspect: 'I'm not in favour of torture, but if you're going to have it, it should damn well have court approval.' When, taking this line a step further, Dershowitz suggests that torture in the 'ticking clock' situation is not directed at the prisoner's rights as an accused person (the information obtained will not be used in the trial against him, and the torture itself would not formally count as punishment), the underlying premise is even more disturbing, implying as it does that one should be allowed to torture people not as part of a deserved punishment, but simply because they know something. Why not go further still and legalise the torture of prisoners of war who may have information which could save the lives of hundreds of our soldiers? If the choice is between Dershowitz's liberal 'honesty' and old-fashioned 'hypocrisy', we'd be better off sticking with 'hypocrisy'. I can well imagine that, in a particular situation, confronted with the proverbial 'prisoner who knows', whose words can save thousands, I might decide in favour of torture; however, even (or, rather, precisely) in a case such as this, it is absolutely crucial that one does not elevate this desperate choice into a universal principle: given the unavoidable and brutal urgency of the moment, one should simply do it. Only in this way, in the very prohibition against elevating what we have done into a universal principle, do we retain a sense of guilt, an awareness of the inadmissibility of what we have done. In short, every authentic liberal should see these debates, these calls to 'keep an open mind', as a sign that the terrorists are winning. And, in a way, essays like Alter's, which do not openly advocate torture, but just introduce it as a legitimate topic of debate, are even more dangerous than explicit endorsements. At this moment at least, explicitly endorsing it would be rejected as too shocking, but the mere introduction of torture as a legitimate topic allows us to court the idea while retaining a clear conscience. ('Of course I am against torture, but who is hurt if we just discuss it?') Admitting torture as a topic of debate changes the entire field, while outright advocacy remains merely idiosyncratic. The idea that, once we let the genie out of the bottle, torture can be kept within 'reasonable' bounds, is the worst liberal illusion, if only because the 'ticking clock' example is deceptive: in the vast majority of cases torture is not done in order to resolve a 'ticking clock' situation, but for quite different reasons (to punish an enemy or to break him down psychologically, to terrorise a population etc). Any consistent ethical stance has to reject such pragmatic-utilitarian reasoning. Here's a simple thought experiment: imagine an Arab newspaper arguing the case for torturing American prisoners; think of the explosion of comments about fundamentalist barbarism and disrespect for human rights that would cause. When, at the beginning of April, the Americans got hold of Abu Zubaydah, presumed to be the second-in-command of al-Qaida, the question 'Should he be tortured?' was openly discussed in the media. In a statement broadcast by NBC on 5 April, Rumsfeld himself claimed that American lives were his first priority, not the human rights of a high-ranking terrorist, and attacked journalists for displaying such concern for Zubaydah's well-being, thus openly clearing the way for torture. Alan Dershowitz presented an even sorrier spectacle. His reservations concerned two particular points: 1. Zubaydah's is not a clear case of the 'ticking bomb' situation, i.e. it is not proven that he has the details of an imminent terrorist attack which could be prevented by gaining access to his knowledge through torture; 2. torturing him would not yet be legally covered - for that to happen, one would first have to engage in a public debate and then amend the US Constitution, while publicly proclaiming the respects in which the US would no longer follow the Geneva Convention regulating the treatment of enemy prisoners. A notable precursor in this field of para-legal 'biopolitics', in which administrative measures are gradually replacing the rule of law, was Alfredo Stroessner's regime in Paraguay in the 1960s and 1970s, which took the logic of the state of exception to an absurd, still unsurpassed extreme. Under Stroessner, Paraguay was - with regard to its Constitutional order - a 'normal' parliamentary democracy with all freedoms guaranteed; however, since, as Stroessner claimed, we were all living in a state of emergency because of the worldwide struggle between freedom and Communism, the full implementation of the Constitution was forever postponed and a permanent state of emergency obtained. This state of emergency was suspended every four years for one day only, election day, to legitimise the rule of Stroessner's Colorado Party with a 90 per cent majority worthy of his Communist opponents. The paradox is that the state of emergency was the normal state, while 'normal' democratic freedom was the briefly enacted exception. This weird regime anticipated some clearly perceptible trends in our liberal-democratic societies in the aftermath of 11 September. Is today's rhetoric not that of a global emergency in the fight against terrorism, legitimising more and more suspensions of legal and other rights? The ominous aspect of John Ashcroft's recent claim that 'terrorists use America's freedom as a weapon against us' carries the obvious implication that we should limit our freedom in order to defend ourselves. Such statements from top American officials, especially Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, together with the explosive display of 'American patriotism' after 11 September, create the climate for what amounts to a state of emergency, with the occasion it supplies for a potential suspension of rule of law, and the state's assertion of its sovereignty without 'excessive' legal constraints. America is, after all, as President Bush said immediately after 11 September, in a state of war. The problem is that America is, precisely, not in a state of war, at least not in the conventional sense of the term (for the large majority, daily life goes on, and war remains the exclusive business of state agencies). With the distinction between a state of war and a state of peace thus effectively blurred, we are entering a time in which a state of peace can at the same time be a state of emergency. Such paradoxes also provide the key to the way in which the liberal-totalitarian emergency represented by the 'war on terror' relates to the authentic revolutionary state of emergency, first articulated by St Paul in his reference to the 'end of time'. When a state institution proclaims a state of emergency, it does so by definition as part of a desperate strategy to avoid the true emergency and return to the 'normal course of things'. It is, you will recall, a feature of all reactionary proclamations of a 'state of emergency' that they were directed against popular unrest ('confusion') and presented as a resolve to restore normalcy. In Argentina, in Brazil, in Greece, in Chile, in Turkey, the military who proclaimed a state of emergency did so in order to curb the 'chaos' of overall politicisation. In short, reactionary proclamations of a state of emergency are in actuality a desperate defence against the real state of emergency. There is a lesson to be learned here from Carl Schmitt. The division friend/enemy is never just a recognition of factual difference. The enemy is by definition always (up to a point) invisible: it cannot be directly recognised because it looks like one of us, which is why the big problem and task of the political struggle is to provide/construct a recognisable image of the enemy. (Jews are the enemy par excellence not because they conceal their true image or contours but because there is ultimately nothing behind their deceiving appearances. Jews lack the 'inner form' that pertains to any proper national identity: they are a non-nation among nations, their national substance resides precisely in a lack of substance, in a formless, infinite plasticity.) In short, 'enemy recognition' is always a performative procedure which brings to light/constructs the enemy's 'true face'. Schmitt refers to the Kantian category Einbildungskraft, the transcendental power of imagination: in order to recognise the enemy, one has to 'schematise' the logical figure of the Enemy, providing it with the concrete features which will make it into an appropriate target of hatred and struggle. After the collapse of the Communist states which provided the figure of the Cold War Enemy, the Western imagination entered a decade of confusion and inefficiency, looking for suitable schematisations of the Enemy, sliding from narco-cartel bosses to the succession of warlords of so-called 'rogue states' (Saddam, Noriega, Aidid, Milosevic) without stabilising itself in one central image; only with 11 September did this imagination regain its power by constructing the image of bin Laden, the Islamic fundamentalist, and al-Qaida, his 'invisible' network. What this means, furthermore, is that our pluralistic and tolerant liberal democracies remain deeply Schmittean: they continue to rely on political Einbildungskraft to provide them with the appropriate figure to render visible the invisible Enemy. Far from suspending the binary logic Friend/Enemy, the fact that the Enemy is defined as the fundamentalist opponent of pluralistic tolerance merely adds a reflexive twist to it. This 'renormalisation' has involved the figure of the Enemy undergoing a fundamental change: it is no longer the Evil Empire, i.e. another territorial entity, but an illegal, secret, almost virtual worldwide network in which lawlessness (criminality) coincides with 'fundamentalist' ethico-religious fanaticism - and since this entity has no positive legal status, the new configuration entails the end of international law which, at least from the onset of modernity, regulated relations between states. When the Enemy serves as the 'quilting point' (the Lacanian point de capiton) of our ideological space, it is in order to unify the multitude of our actual political opponents. Thus Stalinism in the 1930s constructed the agency of Imperialist Monopoly Capital to prove that Fascists and Social Democrats ('Social Fascists') are 'twin brothers', the 'left and right hand of monopoly capital'. Thus Nazism constructed the 'plutocratic-Bolshevik plot' as the common agent threatening the welfare of the German nation. Capitonnage is the operation by means of which we identify/construct a sole agency that 'pulls the strings' behind a multitude of opponents. Exactly the same holds for today's 'war on terror', in which the figure of the terrorist Enemy is also a condensation of two opposed figures, the reactionary 'fundamentalist' and the Leftist resistant. The title of Bruce Barcott's article in the New York Times Magazine on 7 April, 'From Tree-Hugger to Terrorist', says it all: the real danger isn't from the Rightist fundamentalists who were responsible for the Oklahoma bombing and, in all probability, for the anthrax scare, but the Greens, who have never killed anyone. The ominous feature underlying all these phenomena is the metaphoric universalisation of the signifier 'terror'. The message of the latest American TV campaign against drugs is: 'When you buy drugs, you provide money for the terrorists!' 'Terror' is thus elevated to become the hidden point of equivalence between all social evils. How, then, are we to break out of this predicament? An epochal event took place in Israel in January and February: hundreds of reservists refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. These refuseniks are not simply 'pacifists': in their public proclamations, they are at pains to emphasise that they have done their duty in fighting for Israel in the wars against the Arab states, in which some of them were highly decorated. What they claim is that they cannot accept to fight 'in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people'. Their claims are documented by detailed descriptions of atrocities committed by the Israel Defence Forces, from the killing of children to the destruction of Palestinian property. Here is how an IDF sergeant, Gil Nemesh, reports on the 'nightmare reality in the territories' at the protesters' website (www.seruv.org.il): My friends - forcing an elderly man to disgrace himself, hurting children, abusing people for fun, and later bragging about it, laughing about this terrible brutality. I am not sure I still want to call them my friends . . . They let themselves lose their humanity, not out of pure viciousness, but because dealing with it in any other way is too difficult. Palestinians, and even Israeli Arabs (officially full citizens of Israel), are discriminated against in the allocation of water, in the ownership of land and countless other aspects of daily life. More important is the systematic micro-politics of psychological humiliation: Palestinians are treated, essentially, as evil children who have to be brought back to an honest life by stern discipline and punishment. Arafat, holed up and isolated in three rooms in his Ramallah compound, was requested to stop the terror as if he had full power over all Palestinians. There is a pragmatic paradox in the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian Authority (attacking it militarily, while at the same time requiring it to crack down on the terrorists in its own midst) by which the explicit message (the injunction to stop the terror) is subverted by the very mode of delivery of that message. Would it not be more honest to say that what is untenable about the Palestinian situation is that the PA is being asked by the Israelis to 'resist us, so that we can crush you'? In other words, what if the true aim of the present Israeli intrusion into Palestinian territory is not to prevent future terrorist attacks, but effectively to rule out any peaceful solution for the foreseeable " future? For its part, the absurdity of the American view was perfectly rendered in a TV comment by Newt Gingrich on 1 April: 'Since Arafat effectively is the head of a terrorist organisation, we will have to depose him and replace him with a new democratic leader who will be ready to make a deal with the state of Israel.' This isn't an empty paradox. Hamid Karzai is already a 'democratic' leader externally imposed on a people. Whenever Afghanistan's 'interim leader' appears in our media, he wears clothes that cannot but appear as an attractive modernised version of traditional Afghan attire (a woollen cap and pullover beneath a more modern coat etc), his figure thus seeming to exemplify his mission, to combine modernisation with the best of Afghan traditions - no wonder, since this attire was dreamed up by a top Western designer. As such, Karzai is the best metaphor for the status of Afghanistan today. What if there simply is no 'truly democratic' (in the American sense of the term) Palestinian silent majority? What if a 'democratically elected new leader' is even more anti-Israeli, which wouldn't be surprising since Israel has systematically applied the logic of collective responsibility and punishment, destroying the houses of the entire extended family of suspected terrorists? The point is not the cruel and arbitrary treatment of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories but that they are reduced to the status of homo sacer, objects of disciplinary measures and/or even humanitarian help, but not full citizens. And what the refuseniks have achieved is a reconceptualisation of the Palestinian from homo sacer to 'neighbour': they treat Palestinians not as 'equal full citizens', but as neighbours in the strict Judeo-Christian sense. And there resides the difficult ethical test for contemporary Israelis: 'Love thy neighbour' means 'Love the Palestinian,' or it means nothing at all. This refusal, significantly downplayed by the major media, is an authentic ethical act. It is here, in such acts, that, as Paul would have put it, there effectively are no longer Jews or Palestinians, full members of the polity and homines sacri. One should be unabashedly Platonic here: this 'No!' designates the miraculous moment in which eternal Justice momentarily appears in the sphere of empirical reality. An awareness of moments like this is the best antidote to the anti-semitic temptation often clearly detectable among critics of Israeli politics. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n10/zize01_.html

Originally posted by Foxy: Listen to whatever tickles your fancy dear rock/folk be it country music......and what ever the occassion calls for.......its a matter of personal choice, so knock yourself hard with your Heavy Rock.....rock on ......personally I am sucker for Deep Funky House Music....... cheers Hi there Foxy, Greetings! Sis, the question was not about what one does or does not listen to but, whether listening to music of that kind (metal in this case) was Haram during the holy month of Ramadhan, or if listening to it would break your fast. Libaan thanks for the reply, however I have to disagree with you there, sepultura .does have songs about Satan for example, in “Bestial Devastation†they do sing about demons, the son of devil and the same goes for the song “Troops Of Doom.†To Animal Farm, wow I really didn’t know that, I don’t believe that I’ve heard anything like that before, hot lava? :eek: But, yeah I do think it’s better to keep it safe and not listen to any music for the rest of the month. Yoonis, Death metal, Black metal, Dark metal, Doom metal, Gothic metal or even Grindcore, are all genres of Heavy medal, so there is no such thing as "there is no Heavy metal". For example, the band Cradle of Filth, some call them Death metal while others call them Black metal, but they are still under the Heavy medal category.

^^Hmm...i didn't know that there was such a thing as "so yerday day" atched to the music one listens to.

Originally posted by Alle-ubaahne: Walaahi Lidia is so funny. She is as funny as her aviator! by the way, please don't listen music, make sure to remain cognizent by listening from Allah's words, which is the Quran. I hope, after practicing that, you will find great energy in keeping yourself awake and energetic. People who listen to the Quran are always focused in what they do and seem tireless in their efforts to excell at everything. Music doesn't give the person real energy, it gives headache by first reinvigorating the nervious system, which then will leave after-math effects of bad memory and slowness in brain activity. That is the truth, indeed, according to some early studies I've made on Music Effects in the behaviorial changes. But I personally appreciate your frankness for seeking brotherly advices to this issue that worried your religious and sound heart. Masha-allah. Go ahead sister, and at least experiment my take and report me if any difference takes place. Thanks Lol, yeah bro, it all kind of hit me late last night, I was studying for this class and I was listening to type o negative's song "black Sabbath" when from the noise I heard, "worship the son, worship no one, aaaaaaah Satanus", I was like, hey this is really not good specially during the holy month of Ramadan, acuudibilaah. Thought maybe even it might have broken my fasting earlier, i don't know...

Hello Socod_badne , The reason I said that, is because the loudness of the music keeps me awake and energized and therefore, more alert and focused...if I listen to classical music I’d fall asleep, I guess different people have different methods. ALexus, What harm is there in music? I figure that it's just noise and that it doesn't have any weight, but than agian i could be wrong. But, back to my general question, why would it be haram? Can you please explain more about this? Thanks!

Hi guys, I hope everyone is doing well. I would like to ask you if listening to heavy metal music during ramadhan is haram? For example the music of, Bullring Brummies, sepultura, Type o Negative, corrosion of conformity, etc. The reason I asked you this question is because, I listen to these kinds of music, it helps be focus when i study, but now I feel guilty because some of the songs are about...well darkness and Satan. Thanks, Lidia

Haahahahaha looool, war go and eat somethin, you are not allowed to drink anything while the sun is up. By the way, why would you have a glass of water by your bed side, are you diabetic?

Well, in regards to the steroid question, I would assume that they would have a mandatory testing program. That said I believe that it shows the character of the brother, to have chosen a field such as the one he is in. I mean it’s one of the most superficial and vain industries, what he is selling is after all, his body.

The free market played a crucial role in the destruction of New Orleans and the death of thousands of its residents. Armed with advanced warning that a momentous (force 5) hurricane was going to hit that city and surrounding areas, what did officials do? They played the free market. They announced that everyone should evacuate. Everyone was expected to devise their own way out of the disaster area by private means, just as the free market dictates, just like people do when disaster hits free-market Third World countries. It is a beautiful thing this free market in which every individual pursues his or her own personal interests and thereby effects an optimal outcome for the entire society. This is the way the invisible hand works its wonders. There would be none of the collectivistic regimented evacuation as occurred in Cuba. When an especially powerful hurricane hit that island last year, the Castro government, abetted by neighborhood citizen committees and local Communist party cadres, evacuated 1.3 million people, more than 10 percent of the country's population, with not a single life lost, a heartening feat that went largely unmentioned in the U.S. press. On Day One of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina, it was already clear that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American lives had been lost in New Orleans. Many people had "refused" to evacuate, media reporters explained, because they were just plain "stubborn." It was not until Day Three that the relatively affluent telecasters began to realize that tens of thousands of people had failed to flee because they had nowhere to go and no means of getting there. With hardly any cash at hand or no motor vehicle to call their own, they had to sit tight and hope for the best. In the end, the free market did not work so well for them. Many of these people were low-income African Americans, along with fewer numbers of poor whites. It should be remembered that most of them had jobs before Katrina's lethal visit. That's what most poor people do in this country: they work, usually quite hard at dismally paying jobs, sometimes more than one job at a time. They are poor not because they're lazy but because they have a hard time surviving on poverty wages while burdened by high prices, high rents, and regressive taxes. The free market played a role in other ways. Bush's agenda is to cut government services to the bone and make people rely on the private sector for the things they might need. So he sliced $71.2 million from the budget of the New Orleans Corps of Engineers, a 44 percent reduction. Plans to fortify New Orleans levees and upgrade the system of pumping out water had to be shelved. Bush took to the airways and said that no one could have foreseen this disaster. Just another lie tumbling from his lips. All sorts of people had been predicting disaster for New Orleans, pointing to the need to strengthen the levees and the pumps, and fortify the coastlands. In their campaign to starve out the public sector, the Bushite reactionaries also allowed developers to drain vast areas of wetlands. Again, that old invisible hand of the free market would take care of things. The developers, pursuing their own private profit, would devise outcomes that would benefit us all. But wetlands served as a natural absorbent and barrier between New Orleans and the storms riding in from across the sea. And for some years now, the wetlands have been disappearing at a frightening pace on the Gulf' coast. All this was of no concern to the reactionaries in the White House. As for the rescue operation, the free-marketeers like to say that relief to the more unfortunate among us should be left to private charity. It was a favorite preachment of President Ronald Reagan that "private charity can do the job." And for the first few days that indeed seemed to be the policy with the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. The federal government was nowhere in sight but the Red Cross went into action. Its message: "Don't send food or blankets; send money." Meanwhile Pat Robertson and the Christian Broadcasting Network---taking a moment off from God's work of pushing John Roberts nomination to the Supreme Court---called for donations and announced "Operation Blessing" which consisted of a highly-publicized but totally inadequate shipment of canned goods and bibles. By Day Three even the myopic media began to realize the immense failure of the rescue operation. People were dying because relief had not arrived. The authorities seemed more concerned with the looting than with rescuing people. It was property before people, just like the free marketeers always want. But questions arose that the free market did not seem capable of answering: Who was in charge of the rescue operation? Why so few helicopters and just a scattering of Coast Guard rescuers? Why did it take helicopters five hours to get six people out of one hospital? When would the rescue operation gather some steam? Where were the feds? The state troopers? The National Guard? Where were the buses and trucks? the shelters and portable toilets? The medical supplies and water? Where was Homeland Security? What has Homeland Security done with the $33.8 billions allocated to it in fiscal 2005? Even ABC-TV evening news (September 1, 2005) quoted local officials as saying that "the federal government's response has been a national disgrace." In a moment of delicious (and perhaps mischievous) irony, offers of foreign aid were tendered by France, Germany and several other nations. Russia offered to send two plane loads of food and other materials for the victims. Predictably, all these proposals were quickly refused by the White House. America the Beautiful and Powerful, America the Supreme Rescuer and World Leader, America the Purveyor of Global Prosperity could not accept foreign aid from others. That would be a most deflating and insulting role reversal. Were the French looking for another punch in the nose? Besides, to have accepted foreign aid would have been to admit the truth---that the Bushite reactionaries had neither the desire nor the decency to provide for ordinary citizens, not even those in the most extreme straits. Next thing you know, people would start thinking that George W. Bush was really nothing more than a fulltime agent of Corporate America. ------- Michael Parenti's recent books include Superpatriotism (City Lights) and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), both available in paperback. His forthcoming The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press) will be published in the fall. For more information visit: www.michaelparenti.org.

As for myself, i go to DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.