@ 03/09/07 – 16.04:15
Please note that the British Queen in 2007 is worth £300 million, ranked 229th richest person in one of the richest countries in the world. The below valuation of Benazir Bhutto, is from almost 10 years ago, just before the property & economic booms. Her worth would have been multiplied many times now:
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Assets of MS Benazir Bhuto declared for the assessment year 1999-2000 (AS 30.06.1999) |
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@ 03/09/07 – 15.15:15
Music – Opposing Arguments
IslamToday.com, The Website of Shaykh Salman al-Oadah
Abû Mâlik al-Ash`arî relates: “I heard the Prophet (peace be upon him) say: “There will be a group of my people who will make permissible for themselves adultery, pure silk, intoxicants and musical instruments.”
This is an authentic hadîth. It is narrated in Sahîh al-Bukhârî as a hanging narration (mu`allaq).
Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalânî has researched this narration and demonstrated it to have nine fully connected lines of transmission.
With respect to the ruling on music, all Islamic scholars agree that music which is associated with drinking, vice, impropriety, and un-Islamic conduct is unlawful. Scholars differ regarding music that is free from all such negative associations.
The majority of Muslim scholars prohibit music and musical instruments in their own right, even in the absence of any negative connotations. There are number of hadîth that are negative towards music, including the hadîth narrated by Abû Mâlik al-Ash`arî in Sahîh al-Bukhâri: “I heard the Prophet (peace be upon him) say: “There will be a group of my people who will make permissible for themselves adultery, pure silk, intoxicants and musical instruments.”
Most scholars interpret this inarguably authentic hadîth to mean that music is unlawful. This is an obvious implication from reading the hadîth. The idea of “making permissible” suggests an initial impermissibility. Also there is the fact that instrumental music is mentioned in conjunction with other things being “made permissible” that are inarguably unlawful, and this gives an indication that musical instruments share the same ruling.
The scholars who prohibit music – and they are the great majority of scholars of all four schools of law – take these hadîth as the basis for a general ruling prohibiting music.
As for other hadîth that refer to women playing the daff on various occasions, these hadîth are seen as providing an exception to the general rule. The exceptions found in the Sunnah always refer to nothing other than the voice and the daff (a tambourine without bells).
The scholars who prohibit music acknowledge this exception. However, they disagree as to how far the exception should be taken. Some scholars regard the exception as general, and they allow the daff for men and women under all occasions. Some restrict the exceptions to women. Some restrict it to festive occasions. Some restrict the exception to women on festive occasions.
With respect to the instrument itself, some scholars restrict the concession to the daff, while others extend it to allow a tambourine with bells or other types of drum.
There are a few scholars who have permitted music that is free from negative associations. These scholars include Ibn Hazm and to some extent Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî.
Most of the scholars who permit music (that is free from negative associations) interpret the same set of texts differently. They argue that the prohibition of music is contextual. Basically, they do not see in the various hadîth a general prohibition against music, but only a prohibition of music when is associated with other questionable activities. As a consequence, they take it as a general ruling that music is lawful in and of itself.
Those who wish to assert the lawfulness of music often go further and take the hadîth about singing and the daff on special occasions as supporting this basic permissibility of music and musical instruments in general. They see the various hadîth that disfavor music as providing an exception to this basic permissibility, prohibiting music only in circumstances where music is used in a sinful context.
Each of us, on an individual basis, needs to compare these two contrasting arguments, objectively, and determine which of these two interpretations of the evidence seems more likely to be the safer and most correct one, and which of these interpretations is closer to wishful thinking.
And Allah knows best.
@ 03/09/07 – 14.46:13
The number of women having babies in their forties has doubled in the past decade. I'm reluctant even to write about it, because it is precisely this kind of media coverage that encourages younger women to think, insanely in my view, that delaying motherhood until you’re middle-aged is a reasonable and straightforward thing to do.
They flick through magazines and look at pictures of Madonna, whose second child was born when she was 41, or Emma Thompson, whose daughter was conceived by IVF when she was 40, and conclude that anyone can put motherhood on ice until they’re “ready” – until their house/car/job is impressive enough, until they’ve met The One, until they’re mentally prepared for having a child.
On paper, this approach looks as though it might have some merit. But real life isn’t paper. We all know enough biology to know that the best time to have a child, as in the time when you are most likely to conceive with no complications and have a healthy baby, is when you are young, which means late teens or early twenties. We also all know that women’s fertility declines sharply, and then goes into freefall, past the age of 35.
These are facts. And it’s facts we should be sticking to, rather than semi-delusional fantasies based on what we read in trashy magazines about some super-rich middle-aged celeb who can afford the kind of exorbitant fertility treatment that would finish most of us off, both emotionally and financially, because you don’t get IVF on the National Health Service if you’re 20 years away from being pensionable.
I am put out by the way childless women of my age (41) have started talking breezily about IVF as though it were a procedure not dissimilar to Botox. IVF involves artificially inducing the menopause and then reversing it. It’s hardcore. You don’t just go and have it done in your lunch hour and then forget about it, and from what I observe it puts incredible stress on relationships (and sex lives).
Yet I meet otherwise intelligent women who talk about it as though it were simply a matter of signing up to the programme and bingo, a baby. Aside from anything else, IVF doesn’t meet with much success with the middle-aged; ordinary mortals are more likely to be turned down for treatment on grounds of age than provided with instant triplets.
I really love babies and I’d love to have another three, but the simple fact is that I’ve left it too late. When it comes to pregnancy and fertility, women of my generation have been fed a complete lie by the feminist movement, which is that you really can have it all – a career, success, money, status – and, when you’re done with those, when you've reached the top of your particular greasy pole, as many children as you like – no hurry at all.
The truth is there is a hurry and, like it or not, biology does discriminate. Sure we can try to do something about it and put ourselves through traumatic medical procedures to try to claw back a scrap or two of youth, a nice plump load of eggs to replace our withered ones, but I’m tired of hearing this spoken of as if it were both the norm and perfectly natural. It isn’t.
Lots of women get pregnant naturally in their forties and good luck to them; I’m not saying no one should have a child past the age of 35. Nor am I opposed to IVF (although I do have questions about what the long-term impact is on women’s health).
What I do oppose is the line that being an older mother is a really marvellous ambition and easily achievable. I know lots of older first-time mothers and they’re absolutely knackered. They stagger around, broken with lack of sleep – because getting up three times in the night when you’re 43 is not the same as doing it when you’re 25 – with huge rings under their eyes and husbands who notice the latter and wonder what happened to the minx they married.
These women are madly in love with their babies of course, and that’s lovely, but they are bewildered by everything else, as you would be if you’d had an extra 20 years of “me time” and were suddenly asked to become the acme of selflessness. If they’re on maternity leave, they find hanging out with the teenage mothers at the One O’Clock Club faintly disheartening, to say nothing of mind-bendingly boring. They’re the oldest person there by miles. One of my friends is older than another child’s granny, who is a mere 39.
Making “mummy friends” is bad enough when you’re young – it’s why most people go to NCT classes – but at least some of your contemporaries are likely to be pregnant too. That doesn’t happen if you’re pregnant for the first time at 42: your friends with older children have their own preoccupations, your childless friends resent you and you’re left on your own, pushing your buggy around the park in the rain and having to force yourself to make new friends in order not to die of loneliness. You may be more patient than the younger mums, but you’ll need to be.
What amazes me most of all, though, is the sweetly retro notion of mooching around pining for Mr Right, as the clock ticks away and you want a baby so badly that you start eyeing newborns up in supermarkets and finding yourself filled with a strange sense of rage when your pregnant girlfriends discuss breastfeeding. My advice to all my girlfriends, and to you, should this ring a bell is: just do it. Get pregnant. Don’t wait. Mr Right can turn into Mr Wrong overnight: there are no certainties.
Besides, if he’s really Mr Right and he comes along a few years down the line, he’ll love your children because he loves you and you love them. Careers can wait: nothing terrible is going to happen if you take a couple of years off. As for houses – and this is another one I hear all the time: “We don’t have the room” – a baby is a very small creature. My first one lived in a basket in the kitchen for months, happy as a clam. The idea that the optimum condition for motherhood involves a five-storey house is nonsense.
Another story last week showed that women who have the foresight to freeze their eggs are leaving it too late, too. A fertility expert from the University of Aberdeen said: “Increasing numbers of women are coming to us in their thirties and forties for IVF whose outcomes are poor. Egg freezing has to be carried out when women are much younger; if you’re in your late thirties it defeats the whole purpose.”
Harsh, but true. If you really want a baby, there’s no time like the present.
@ 03/09/07 – 14.04:13
WARMING TO ECO ISSUES: Dr Mohammed Fahim
A MOSQUE is believed to be the first Mosque (local religious) institution in England to commit to becoming carbon neutral.
The South Woodford mosque and community centre, Mulberry Way, South Woodford, has decided to do its part in the fight against global warming and claim a green first.
Charity Tolerance International is carrying out an environmental audit of the organisation to work out its annual carbon emissions.
It will then help the mosque to reduce its energy usage, and offset the rest by planting trees in the Peruvian rainforest.
Dr Mohammed Fahim, mosque chairman and head imam, said: "In Islam we are obliged to respect the environment we live in and we have to contribute to natural resources. We cannot just use them without protecting or preserving them, or trying to add to them.
"When a tree provides fruit it does not provide fruit for itself, for its own use. It provides fruit for humanity.
"I want every Muslim to be like a tree, which provides fruit not for himself, but for other people to benefit from it."
Hamid Bayazi, chief executive of Tolerance International, said the mosque would be able to offset its emissions by paying £5.70 per tonne towards re-planting trees, and training agricultural and forestry management skills to impoverished communities in Peru so they had sustainable employment.
He said he did not know of any other mosque or Muslim community centre that had become carbon neutral in this country.
He said: "We feel it's up to religious institutions to take a stand on the whole subject of climate change, because it's something that basically businesses talk about, something that the government talks about, but it's seldom that religious institutions get involved in it."
Mr Bayazi said businesses, religious organisations and educational institutions can take advantage of a free environmental audit by Tolerance International, by emailing carbon0@toleranceinternational.org.uk, calling 020 7427 0050 or going to www.toleranceinternational.org.uk.
BETH CATLEY - 10 January 2008
@ 03/09/07 – 13.54:12
Benazir Bhutto: "Bin Laden was Murdered"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLItJMVNleY
by Steve Bachman
December 31, 2007 06:26 PM EST
On November 2, 2007, news anchorman David Frost of Al Jazeera's international English language network, interviewed the now-deceased former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto.
If anyone reading this has never heard of this interview, you may probably find the fact that you haven't just as striking as I did when I first saw this video this morning.
The reason why this is striking is because at 3:57 into the video, David Frost asks Mrs. Bhutto to elaborate on a claim she had made earlier in the interview, pertaining to her having specific knowledge about certain individuals whom she suspected may have been invloved in a previous attempt on her life.
During her response to that question, beginning at 4:22 into the video, Mrs. Bhutto says:
"...and he also had dealings with Omar Sheikh, who murdered Usama bin Laden."
View the footage from the interview here on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLItJMVNleY
For some strange reason, the response one might expect from a Western news anchorman giving this interview -- something like: "Hold up, hold up, hold up... WHAT?! Murdered WHO?!" -- was conspicuously absent.
Even stranger still, the fact that on the BBC version of this interview, available on their website (view here), the only part of the interview that is edited out is the approx. 20 seconds where Bhutto makes the mention of Osama bin Laden having been murdered by a man named Omar Sheikh.
And, as anyone who is cognizant of the Twilight Zone-esque quality of the whole government/mainstream media Establishment state of affairs throughout the contrived, foisted "Global War on Terror" might expect; there has thus far not been so much as a single solitary peep about this on the American "mainstream" media -- despite the hours upon hours of coverage her recent asassination has received on all of the major national cable news networks.
It seems to me that this is Bigtime News and ought to be splattered all over newspaper headlines throughout the Western Hemisphere, and should have been the main topic of major media network newscasts since the day the interview was aired.
This interview happened way back on November 2nd!!!
One might want to ask themselves why hasn't this been all over the media? Why is this being covered up by the media networks, and presumably our government? What else might they be hiding from us?
And, in light of the fact that our government/media establishment has in the past tried to pawn off obvious fraudulent videos with Osama bin Laden look-alikes -- including the most obvious one in November 2001 with a 40 lbs. overweight, right-handed "bin Laden" wearing jewelry and claiming responsibility for 9/11 -- I for one would like to know; what the hell is going on?
Is there anyone in our entire federal behemoth who knows and is willing to tell the people the truth for a change? Is there anyone in the entire "mainstream media" apparatus with the guts and the integrity to tell the people just what in the hell is up?
And does this perhaps shed a different light on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto? Did her apparent tendency to let cats out of the bag prove to make her too much of a risk to keep around?
And of course, the one question that I would love most to have answered; How long has the real Osama been dead?
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Bin Laden is Dead
Written by Jane Blunt
Thursday, 03 January 2008
After eight years in exile in Dubai and London, Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi on October 18, 2007, to prepare for the national elections. Now she is dead.
The events leading up to her death are now the source of much speculation. But it's now the events leading up to this interview with Sir David Frost on the Al Jazeera network on November 2nd, which are causing most tongues to wag. In the video, Benazir Bhutto clearly states that "Omar Sheikh" is the man who killed Osama Bin Laden. (watch the Video)
So what is the background to this recent interview and who is "Omar Sheikh"?
En route to a rally in Karachi on October 18, 2007, two explosions occurred shortly after Bhutto had landed and left Jinnah International Airport. She was not injured but the explosions, later found to be a suicide-bomb attack, killed 136 people and injured at least 450. The dead included at least 50 of the security guards from her PPP party who had formed a human chain around her truck to keep potential bombers away, as well as 6 police officers. A number of senior officials were injured. Bhutto was escorted unharmed from the scene.
Bhutto later claimed that she had warned the Pakistani government that suicide bomb squads would target her upon her return to Pakistan and that the government had failed to act. She was careful not to blame Pervez Musharraf for the attacks, accusing instead "certain individuals [within the government] who abuse their positions, who abuse their powers" to advance the cause of Islamic militants.
Shortly after the attempt on her life, Bhutto wrote a letter to Musharraf naming four persons whom she suspected of carrying out the attack. Those named included Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, a rival PML-Q politician and chief minister of Pakistan's Punjab province, Hamid Gul, former director of the Inter-Services Intelligence, and Ijaz Shah, the director general of the Intelligence Bureau, another of Pakistan's intelligence agencies. All those named are close associates of General Musharraf.
Bhutto has a long history of accusing parts of the government, particularly Pakistan's premier military intelligence agencies, of working against her and her party because they oppose her liberal, secular agenda. Bhutto claimed that the ISI has for decades backed militant Islamic groups in Kashmir and in Afghanistan.
In the Frost interview, Bhutto is clear about who Osama Bin Laden is. Before she mentions his name in relation to "Omar Sheikh" she mentions Osama Bin Laden and his son Hamza. Professional politician that she is - a wordsmith by trade - she is not making an elementary error here.
So, who is Omar Sheikh?
The Omar Sheikh Bhutto is talking about is none other than Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh - a British-born militant of Pakistani descent with alleged links to various Islamist terrorist organizations, including Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Qaeda, and >Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Sheikh was arrested and served time in prison for the 1994 abduction of several British nationals in India. He was released from captivity in 1999 and provided safe passage into Pakistan, apparently with the support of Pakistan and the Taliban (the hijackers were Pakistanis) in an Indian Airlines plane hijacking. He is most well-known for his alleged role in the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
On October 6, 2001, a senior-level U.S. government official told CNN that U.S. investigators had discovered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (Sheik Syed), using the alias " Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad" had sent about $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to 911 chief hijacker Mohammed Atta. Investigators said Atta then distributed the funds to conspirators in Florida in the weeks before the deadliest acts of terrorism on U.S. soil that destroyed the World Trade Center, heavily damaged the Pentagon and left thousands dead. In addition, sources have said Atta sent thousands of dollars -- believed to be excess funds from the operation -- back to Saeed in the United Arab Emirates in the days before September 11. CNN later confirmed this.
Sheikh Omar Saeed was arrested by Pakistani police on February 12, 2002, in Lahore, in conjunction with the Pearl kidnapping and was sentenced to death on July 15, 2002 for killing Pearl. His judicial appeal has not yet been heard. The delay has been alleged to be due to his reported links with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. His complicity in the Pearl execution and the reasons behind it are in dispute. At his initial court appearance, he stated, "I don't want to defend this case. I did this...right or wrong, I had my reasons. I think that our country (Pakistan) shouldn't be catering to America's needs".
Pakistani President, Pervez Musharraf, in his book In the Line of Fire stated that Sheikh was originally recruited by British intelligence agency, MI6, while studying at the London School of Economics. He alleges Omar Sheikh was sent to the Balkans by MI6 to engage in jihadi operations. Musharraf later went on to state "At some point, he probably became a rogue or double agent".
Whatever the truth of Benazir Bhutto's claims (and many in the past have claimed the death of the Al Qaeda's leader) Ms. Bhutto's assiduousness in promulgating the benefits of democracy in Pakistan and potentially across the Muslim world is contacting us as if from beyond the grave. These claims should be looked into by intelligence services and if Bin Laden is dead, we should all be told, so we can hold a massive party to celebrate.
Jane Blunt is a British lawyer specializing in counter terrorism.
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