Somalia Online Weekly Bulletin: Informative articles only

[Baashi]

I would like us to post here short, informative articles...articles with substance. No news clips plz.

 

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Human moral standards are universal

 

 

A moral sense is inborn in man and, through the ages, it has served, as the common man's standard of moral behavior, approving certain qualities and condemning others. While this instinctive faculty may very from person to person, human conscience has consistently declared certain moral qualities to be good and others to be bad.

 

Justice, courage and truthfulness have always found praise, and history does not record any period worth the name in which falsehood, injustice, dishonesty and breach of trust have been praised; sympathy, compassion, loyalty and generosity have always been valued, while selfishness, cruelty, meanness and bigotry have never been approved of by society; men have always appreciated perseverance, determination and courage, but never impatience, fickleness, cowardice and s t u p i d i t y. Dignity, restraint, politeness, and friendliness have throughout the ages been counted virtues, whereas snobbery and rudeness have always been looked down upon. People with a sense of responsibility and devotion to duty have always won the highest regard; those who are incompetent, lazy, and lacking in a sense of duty have never been looked upon with approval.

 

Similarly, in assessing the standards of good and bad in the collective behavior of society as a whole, only those societies have been considered worthy of honor which have possessed the virtues of organization, discipline, mutual affection and compassion and which have established a social order based on justice, freedom and equality. Disorganization, indiscipline, anarchy, disunity, injustice, and social privilege have always been considered manifestations of decay and disintegration in a society. Robbery, murder, larceny, adultery, and corruption have always been condemned. Slander and blackmail have never been considered healthy social activities, while service and care of the aged, helping one's relatives, regard for neighbors, loyalty to friends, aiding the weak, the destitute and orphans, nursing the sick are qualities which have been highly valued since the dawn of civilization.

 

Individuals who are honest, sincere and dependable, whose deeds match their words, who are content with their own rightful possessions, who are prompt in the discharge of their obligations to others, who live in peace and let others live in peace, and from whom nothing but good can be expected, have always formed the basis of any healthy human society.

 

These examples show that human moral standards are universal and have been well-known to mankind throughout the ages. Good and evil are not myths, but realities well understood by all. A sense of good and evil is inherent in the very nature of man. Hence in the terminology of the Quran good is called maruf (a well-known thing) and evil munkar (an unknown thing); that is to say, good is known to be desirable and evil is known not to commend itself in any way. As the Quran says: God has revealed to human nature the consciousness and cognition of good and evil. (al-Shams 91:8)

 

This is an excerpt from a translation of a talk given by Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi on Radio Pakistan, Lahore, on January 6, 1948.

 

[ September 02, 2003, 01:55 AM: Message edited by: Admin ]

[Baashi]

The Muslims and Copts of Egypt: Hostility or Harmony?

 

Strategically located between Asia, Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt ranks as one of the most influential Muslim countries in the world. It is the most populated Arab country and the second largest recipient of American Foreign aid (after the state of Israel). Its government is the first Arab entity to have signed a peace accord with Israel and has managed to build itself the reputation of being a major human rights violator. Nonetheless today, the Egyptian government is faced with several endemic challenges such as the constant need to create new jobs for its emerging young population entering the labor force along with the necessity to provide basic needs for its sizeable population which is increasingly dependent on foreign imports to meet them.

 

In a time when the Muslim world map is being reconstituted and political alliances are shifting, the future of the 1400-year-old Islamic-Coptic relations may play an integral part in shaping the long-term stability of Egypt. Will the Egyptian Coptic community side with its Muslim neighbors to reform the currently corrupt government as it did more than half a century ago or will external forces and short-sighted Egyptian individuals fuel hatred among the Copts and Muslim to disrupt the historically delicate harmony and peaceful coexistence? Will the Copts ask for an autonomous or independent state in Egypt like the Southern region of the Sudan or will the Muslim and Coptic leaderships carefully re-evaluate their often good but sometimes sour relationships to re-craft them for a longer lasting peace?

 

Author Sohirin Mohammad Solihin states in his book 'Copts and Muslims in Egypt: A study on Harmony and Hostility':

 

’The term Copt is used to refer to the indigenous Christian of Egypt. After the Muslim conquest at the hands of Amr bin al-As, in 639 CE, under the command of the second caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, Copts, by and large, having experienced the cruelty of the Roman Empire which opposed Christianity and massacred hundreds of thousands of the followers of St. Mark, founder of the Coptic faith, turned to Islam. Cyrus, the archbishop of Alexandria, following the fall of Babylon described Muslims in these words:

 

'We have witnessed a people to each and everyone of whom death is preferable to life, and humility to prominence, and to one of whom this world has the least attraction. They sit not except on the ground and eat not but on their knees. Their leader (Amir) is like unto one of them: the low cannot be distinguished from the high, nor the master from the slave. And when the time of prayer comes, none of them absents himself, all wash their extremities and humbly observe their prayers.'

 

In view of the position of Egypt, as the home of the Copts long before he reached Egypt, the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) had clearly warned his Companions: 'If God bestows His grace on you to conquer the country (Egypt), take mutual advice from its inhabitants as I have marital kinship with them'. As Islam guarantees free choice of religion, a number of Egyptians retained their indigenous Coptic belief.

 

The long, peaceful co-existence between the two communities, particularly prior to (Egypt) independence, deserves special attention. They jointly struggled to Liberate Egypt from foreign domination. In taking the liberation campaign to the masses, priests and Muslims Shaikhs used both religious platforms - church and mosque - in an endeavor to bring to an end the British occupation. Surprisingly, the Copts resented the entry of Western Christian mission into Egypt. The efforts of Western Christian mission to bring the Copts, before an approach was made to the Muslims, into their faith was not successful. Relations between the two communities ebbed and flowed.'

 

From Islamicity Bulletin article

[Baashi]

The Faith Triumphant

`Do not be dejected nor grieve. You shall be the uppermost if you are Believers.` (3: 139)

 

The first thought which comes to mind on reading this verse is that it relates to the form of Jihaad which is actual fighting; but the spirit of this message and its application, with its manifold implications, is greater and wider than this particular aspect. Indeed, it describes that eternal state of mind which ought to inspire the Believer`s consciousness, his thoughts, his estimates of things, events, values and persons.

 

It describes a triumphant state which should remain fixed in the Believer`s heart in the face of every thing, every condition, every standard and every person; the superiority of the Faith and its value above all values which are derived from a source other than the source of the Faith.

 

It means to be above all the powers of the earth which have deviated from the way of the Faith, above all the values of the earth not derived from the source of the Faith, above all the customs of the earth not colored with the coloring of the Faith, above all the laws of the laws of the earth not sanctioned by the Faith, and above all traditions not originating in the Faith.

 

It means to feel superior to others when weak, few and poor, as well as when strong, many and rich.

 

It means the sense of supremacy which does not give in before any rebellious force, before any social custom and erroneous tradition, before any behavior which may be popular among people but which has no authority in the Faith.

 

Steadfastness and strength on the battlefield are but one expression among many of the triumphant spirit which is included in this statement of Almighty God.

 

The superiority through faith is not a mere single act of will nor a passing euphoria nor a momentary passion, but is a sense of superiority based on the permanent truth centered in the very nature of existence. This eternal truth is above the logic of force, the concept of environment, the terminology of society, and the customs of people, as indeed it is joined with the Living God Who does not die.

 

A society has a governing logic and a common mode, its pressure is strong and its weight heavy on anyone who is not protected by some powerful member of the society or who challenges it without a strong force. Accepted concepts and current ideas have a climate of their own, and it is difficult to get rid of them without a deep sense of truth, in the light of which all these concepts and ideas shrink to nothingness, and without the help of a source which is superior, greater and stronger than the source of these concepts and ideas.

 

The person who takes a stand against the direction of the society - its governing logic, its common mode, its values and standards, its ideas and concepts, its error and deviations -will find himself a stranger, as well as helpless, unless his authority comes from a source which is more powerful than the people, more permanent than the earth, and nobler than life.

 

Indeed, God does not leave the Believer alone in the face of oppression to whimper under its weight, to suffer dejection and grief, but relieves him of all this with the message:

 

`Do not be dejected nor grieve; you shall be the uppermost if you are Believers.` (13:139)

 

This message relieves him from both dejection and grief, these two feelings being natural for a human being in this situation. It relieves him of both, not merely through patience and steadfastness, but also through a sense of superiority from whose heights the power of oppression, the dominant values, the current concepts, the standards, the rules, the customs and habits, and the people steeped in error, all seem low.

 

>From Syed Qutb`s Milestone

[Haashim]

Thanks Baashi for these beautifull ARTICLES, Keep up Bro.

[Valenteenah.]

Absorbing pieces. Can we post any subject Baashi? I was thinking of something I wrote on the International Debt Crisis.

[Xafsa]

thanks Baashi for posting those articles. Really interesting.

[Baashi]

muraad, u wlc bro.

flying still, u wlc sis.

 

Barwaaqo, yes qallanjo...looking forward to read ur take on it.

[QUANTUM LEAP]

Oil fueling conflicts

 

Oil is the most powerful industry in the world. It fuels manufacturing, agriculture and transportation. Petrodollar flows shape the global financial system.

 

Many wars have been waged out and are still being fought all over the world to ensure corporate control over oil. Oil is power and power needs to control oil. Behind the names of presidents and dictators are the names of much more powerful actors: Exxon/Mobil, Chevron/Texaco, Shell, British Petroleum, Elf.

 

A government is toppled by armed opposition in a country in the South and coverage of the story only reports on the local hatred between factions and almost never the corporations and foreign governments backing each of the sides. In many cases, the actors behind the scenes are oil companies. In Venezuela, an elected president has had to face a coup and a general strike because he is sitting on top of a sea of oil and is not perceived as being sufficiently friendly to the US oil establishment.

 

But oil is not only behind civil wars, coups d'etat and presidential campaigns. Oil is also responsible for countless "low-intensity" wars, that destroy entire communities throughout the world and particularly in the tropics. Many indigenous and other local communities have been wiped off the map or have had to face enormous hardship due to the environmental destruction resulting from oil exploration and exploitation in their territories, as well as from the widespread violation of their human rights. From Ecuador to Nigeria and from Indonesia to Chad, "black gold" has been a curse to local peoples and their environments.

 

Governments of the world have made some attempts at addressing this issue. They signed and ratified the Convention on Climate Change and its related Kyoto Protocol. Similarly to what happened recently in the United Nations Security Council in relation to Irak, one government -representing the interests of oil corporations-decided not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because it would affect its interests. This one country -the United States- happens to be the world's number one culprit in CO2 emissions and home to the most powerful oil corporations in the world. It is thus responsible for most of the past and present oil wars.

Big Oil also dominates the Bush administration. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and many other top-ranking officials in the administration have been top corporate oil executives or have longstanding ties to the industry.

[QUANTUM LEAP]

Oils fuelling Poverty and corruption and misery in oil rich regions.

 

 

Fuelling Poverty and Corruption

[Valenteenah.]

 

Orientalism, Misinformation and Islam

by Abû Imân cAbd al-Rahmân Robert Squires

 

 

Any open-minded person embarking on a study of Islam, especially if using books written in European languages, should be aware of the seemingly inherent distortions that permeate almost all non-Muslim writings on Islam. At least since the Middle Ages, Islam has been much maligned and severely misunderstood in the West. In the last years of the Twentieth Century, it does not seem that much has changed even though most Muslims would agree that progress is being made. I feel that an elegant summary of the West's ignorance of Islam and the motives of Orientalism are the following words by the Swiss journalist and author, Roger Du Pasquier:

 

 

The West, whether Christian or dechristianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it. It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind. Even today there are many Westerners for whom Islam can be reduced to three ideas: fanaticism, fatalism and polygamy. Of course, there does exist a more cultivated public whose ideas about Islam are less deformed; there are still precious few who know that the word Islam signifies nothing other than 'submission to God'. One symptom of this ignorance is the fact that in the imagination of most Europeans, Allah refers to the divinity of the Muslims, not the God of the Christians and Jews; they are all surprised to hear, when one takes the trouble to explain things to them, that 'Allah' means 'God', and that even Arab Christians know him by no other name.

 

Islam has of course been the object of studies by Western orientalists who, over the last two centuries, have published an extensive learned literature on the subject. Nevertheless, however worthy their labours may have been , particularly in the historical and and philological fields, they have contributed little to a better understanding of the Muslim religion in the Christian or post-Christian milieu, simply because they have failed to arouse much interest outside their specialised academic circles. One is forced also to concede that Oriental studies in the West have not always been inspired by the purest spirit of scholarly impartiality, and it is hard to deny that some Islamicists and Arabists have worked with the clear intention of belittling Islam and its adherents. This tendency was particularly marked for obvious reasons in the heyday of the colonial empires, but it would be an exaggeration to claim that it has vanished without trace.

 

These are some of the reasons why Islam remains even today so misjudged by the West, where curiously enough, Asiatic faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism have for more than a century generated far more visible sympathy and interest, even though Islam is so close to Judaism and Christianity, having flowed from the same Abrahamic source. Despite this, however, for several years it has seemed that external conditions, particularly the growing importance of the Arab-Islamic countries in the world's great political and economic affairs, have served to arouse a growing interest of Islam in the West, resulting for some in the discovery of new and hitherto unsuspected horizons. (From Unveiling Islam, by Roger Du Pasquier, pages 5-7)

 

 

The phenomenon which is generally known as Orientalism is but one aspect of Western misrepresentations of Islam.

 

Today, most Muslims in the West would probably agree that the majority of distortions about Islam come from the media, whether in newspapers, magazines or on television. In terms of the number of people who are reached by such information, the mass media certainly has more of a widespread impact on the West's view of Islam than do the academic publications of "Orientalists", "Arabists" or "Islamicists".

 

In recent years, the academic field of what used to be called Orientalism has been renamed "Area Studies" or "Regional Studies". These politically correct terms have taken the place of the word "Orientalism" in scholarly circles since the latter word is now tainted with a negative imperialist connotation, in a large measure due to the Orientalists themselves. However, even though the works of scholars who pursue these fields do not reach the public at large, they do often fall into the hands of students and those who are personally interested in learning more about Islam. As such, any student of Islam especially those in the West need to be aware of the historical phenomenon of Orientalism, both as an academic pursuit and as a means of cultural exploitation. When used by Muslims, the word "Orientalist" generally refers to any Western scholar who studies Islam regardless of his or her motives and thus, inevitably, distorts it.

 

As we shall see, however, the phenomenon of Orientalism is much more than an academic pursuit. Edward Said, a renowned Arab Christian scholar and author of several books exposing shortcomings of the Orientalist approach, defines "Orientalism" as follows:

 

 

. . . by Orientalism I mean several things, all of them, in my opinion, interdependent. The most readily accepted designation of for Orientalism is an academic one, and indeed, and indeed the label still serves in a number of academic institutions. Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philogist either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. (From Orientalism, by Edward W. Said, page 2)

 

 

As is the case with many things, being aware of the problem is half the battle. Once a sincere seeker of the Truth is aware of the long standing misunderstanding and hostility between Islam and the West and learns not to trust everything which they see in print authentic knowledge and information can be gained much more quickly.

 

Certainly, not all Western writings on Islam have the same degree of bias they run the range from willful distortion to simple ignorance and there are even a few that could be classified as sincere efforts by non-Muslims to portray Islam in a positive light. However, even most of these works are plagued by seemingly unintentional errors, however minor, due to the author's lack of Islamic knowledge. In the spirit of fairness, it should be said that even some contemporary books on Islam by Muslim authors suffer from these same shortcomings, usually due to a lack of knowledge, heretical ideas and or depending on non-Muslim sources.

 

Continue reading here...

[Valenteenah.]

I'm sorry if the article is too long. I left a lot out but still...

 

Shaqsii...thank you.

 

Baashi..I'll post the debt piece later, Insha'Allah.

 

Enjoy.

[QUANTUM LEAP]

Thanks ever so much Barwaaqo.

 

Fascinating episode on how the FBI are trying to combat Internet crime.

 

 

FBI agents train to be 14-year-old girls

 

The FBI has recruited three girls to teach agents how to pose as teenagers on the internet.

 

The 14-year-olds have been teaching agents how to communicate like young girls, by using written quizzes on celebrity gossip and clothing trends.

 

The training is part of the FBI's Operation Innocent Image, which aims to track down paedophiles and child porn peddlers who prey on teenagers on the internet, according to the San Fransisco Chronicle

 

Best friends, Karen, Mary and Kristin were recruited after one of their fathers - an agent involved in the paedophile investigations - watched her instant messaging a friend and couldn't understand what she was typing.

 

Gary Bald, special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore office, said: "We can teach agents how to be careful and make sure they're following the law and how to arrest people.

 

"But how to convince people they're a 13-year-old is something we need help on."

 

The first time the girls gave a quiz, all the agents that took part failed.

 

One agent insisted that he was right when he answered on a quiz that Justin Timberlake was more popular than Destiny's Child.

 

Another was upset when the girls told the class that Led Zeppelin just wasn't cool. Appraising the agents' performance, Mary said: "They, like, don't know anything."

[QUANTUM LEAP]

Banknotes and how the Somalian Currency used to look like.

 

Check this link out

 

Somali currency and signotories

[QUANTUM LEAP]

Profile of the Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Cabinet Ministers: Republic of Somalia (1960-69)

 

Can you imagine a geeljiree as president? No wonder We are in this deep deep Limbo:)

 

Profiles of the elite

[Baashi]

^^Excellent topics..thanks Shaqsii and Barwaaqo.

 

 

Blind Imperial Arrogance

By Edward Said

 

The great modern empires have never been held together only by military power. Britain ruled the vast territories of India with only a few thousand colonial officers and a few more thousand troops, many of them Indian. France did the same in North Africa and Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese and Belgians in Africa. The key element was imperial perspective, that way of looking at a distant foreign reality by subordinating it in one's gaze, constructing its history from one's own point of view, seeing its people as subjects whose fate can be decided by what distant administrators think is best for them. From such willful perspectives ideas develop, including the theory that imperialism is a benign and necessary thing.

 

For a while this worked, as many local leaders believed - mistakenly - that cooperating with the imperial authority was the only way. But because the dialectic between the imperial perspective and the local one is adversarial and impermanent, at some point the conflict between ruler and ruled becomes uncontainable and breaks out into colonial war, as happened in Algeria and India. We are still a long way from that moment in American rule over the Arab and Muslim world because, over the last century, pacification through unpopular local rulers has so far worked.

 

At least since World War II, American strategic interests in the Middle East have been, first, to ensure supplies of oil and, second, to guarantee at enormous cost the strength and domination of Israel over its neighbors.

 

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. These ideas are by no means shared by the people who inhabit that empire, but that hasn't prevented the U.S. propaganda and policy apparatus from imposing its imperial perspective on Americans, whose sources of information about Arabs and Islam are woefully inadequate.

 

Several generations of Americans have come to see the Arab world mainly as a dangerous place, where terrorism and religious fanaticism are spawned and where a gratuitous anti-Americanism is inculcated in the young by evil clerics who are anti-democratic and virulently anti-Semitic.

 

In the U.S., "Arabists" are under attack. Simply to speak Arabic or to have some sympathetic acquaintance with the vast Arab cultural tradition has been made to seem a threat to Israel. The media runs the vilest racist stereotypes about Arabs - see, for example, a piece by Cynthia Ozick in the Wall Street Journal in which she speaks of Palestinians as having "reared children unlike any other children, removed from ordinary norms and behaviors" and of Palestinian culture as "the life force traduced, cultism raised to a sinister spiritualism."

 

Americans are sufficiently blind that when a Middle Eastern leader emerges whom our leaders like - the shah of Iran or Anwar Sadat - it is assumed that he is a visionary who does things our way not because he understands the game of imperial power (which is to survive by humoring the regnant authority) but because he is moved by principles that we share.

 

Almost a quarter of a century after his assassination, Sadat is a forgotten and unpopular man in his own country because most Egyptians regard him as having served the U.S. first, not Egypt. The same is true of the shah in Iran. That Sadat and the shah were followed in power by rulers who are less palatable to the U.S. indicates not that Arabs are fanatics, but that the distortions of imperialism produce further distortions, inducing extreme forms of resistance and political self-assertion.

 

The Palestinians are considered to have reformed themselves by allowing Mahmoud Abbas, rather than the terrible Yasser Arafat, to be their leader. But "reform" is a matter of imperial interpretation. Israel and the U.S. regard Arafat as an obstacle to the settlement they wish to impose on the Palestinians, a settlement that would obliterate Palestinian demands and allow Israel to claim, falsely, that it has atoned for its "original sin."

 

Never mind that Arafat - whom I have criticized for years in the Arabic and Western media - is still universally regarded as the legitimate Palestinian leader. He was legally elected and has a level of popular support that no other Palestinian approaches, least of all Abbas, a bureaucrat and longtime Arafat subordinate. And never mind that there is now a coherent Palestinian opposition, the Independent National Initiative; it gets no attention because the U.S. and the Israeli establishment wish for a compliant interlocutor who is in no position to make trouble. As to whether the Abbas arrangement can work, that is put off to another day. This is shortsightedness indeed - the blind arrogance of the imperial gaze. The same pattern is repeated in the official U.S. view of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other Arab states.

 

Underlying this perspective is a long-standing view - the Orientalist view - that denies Arabs their right to national self-determination because they are considered incapable of logic, unable to tell the truth and fundamentally murderous.

 

Since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, there has been an uninterrupted imperial presence based on these premises throughout the Arab world, producing untold misery - and some benefits, it is true. But so accustomed have Americans become to their own ignorance and the blandishments of U.S. advisors like Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, who have directed their venom against the Arabs in every possible way, that we somehow think that what we do is correct because "that's the way the Arabs are." That this happens also to be an Israeli dogma shared uncritically by the neo-conservatives who are at the heart of the Bush administration simply adds fuel to the fire.

 

We are in for many more years of turmoil and misery in the Middle East, where one of the main problems is, to put it as plainly as possible, U.S. power. What the U.S. refuses to see clearly it can hardly hope to remedy.

 

Edward Said is a professor at Columbia University and the author of "The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After" (Pantheon, 2000).