Welcome to Hassan and Habibah's Blog

Who are we?

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:25:12 +0100

We present 'The Hassan and Habibah Show', a live social affairs program on an English language, British based international satellite channel called 'The Islam Channel'

A famous companion of prophet Muhammad (S), Salman (R) said:
“Give everyone who has a right; their full rights completely.”

Muhammad (saw) responded:
“Salman spoke the truth!”
(recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim)

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Index To Our Site

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:10:12 +0100

H&H SHOW SUMMARIES

Sexual Intimacy in Islam (new!)
Hayaa and Ghirah
Not Without Her Make-Up
Islamic View on Ethnicity, Nationality & Race
The Status of Motherhood
Forced Marriage
Backbiting
Dealing with the in-laws and women's rights
Keeping Family Ties

Coming soon:
Islamic Wedding Days
Who defines Beauty?
Why are we Muslim?
Obesity and Health
Eating Disorders, Anorexia and Bulimia
Domestic Violence
Depression
Spouses from abroad
The Practicalities of Burying the Dead in Shariah & UK Law
Were the Sahaba (ra) Jokers?
Fostering & Islam
Interracial Marriages
Infertility & Having Children
Islamic Medicine
Abusive Parents
and many more that we have done, listed soon with all the related info...

H&H ACTIVITY & ARTICLES:

DEPICTION OF PROPHET MUHAMMAD(S) AS A TERRORIST
Is this Saddam's Iraq? Or Iraq under the crusaders for 'democracy' : torture, murder and chemical weapons?
Islam Is The "Evil Ideology"
America Redefines Torture For Itself & Outsources It To Others
Severe & Prolonged Injustice Drives People Mad
"Islamic Feminism"?
A MUSLIM COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO ANTITERRORISM MEASURES
Anecdotal evidence that being sex obsessed is not "natural" to humans
Scrap Pakistan's pro-rape 'hudood' laws, & liberate women from servitude to men

ISLAM RELATED ARTICLES (updated soon)

The fiqh of Music: The opposing arguments, by Shaykh Salman Al-Oadah
Ijtihad: Applying Islam in the 21st Century
Top Islamist Sheikh Salman al-Oadah Publicly Challenges Bin Laden: FULL TEXT
The category of actions in the Shariah
Misusing at-Tabari to attack Islam
Hospitality Or Overbearingness?
How to avoid common Problems in Ramadhan

COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Channel 4 Distorted Mosque Programme - police ask for prosecution under race laws against the Channel

BBC: Muslim 'demonised' by UK media

Airline Hijack Liquid Explosives Plot 'leader' Charges dropped!

The Guardian: If this onslaught was about Jews, I would be looking for my Passport

BNP supporters found with rocket launchers, chemical weapons, and explosives, but The Mail doesn't blink an eye lid

New Labour "Muslim" MP's, and the art of Spin

London Mosque leading way on climate change

ISLAMIC HISTORY & CIVILISATION

The Idependent: Muslim Scholars cracked cracked Rosetta-stone code 800 years before the West

The Independent: Islamic Scholars used quantum mathematics 500 years before it was discovered by the west in the 20th Century

PALESTINE

BBC: Israel fears equal voting rights for Arabs; Olmert warns of 'end of Israel

Principles, Hamas and the politics of expediency

Hamas and Israel's "Right to Exist", By Virginia Tilley

The Israel Lobby in America, by Professors John Mearsheimer & Stephen Walt

Indendent Jewish Voices: A Time To Speak Out

British Medical Journal: "Palestine; the assault on health and other war crimes"

Will $1Billion be buried with Arafat?

"WAR ON TERROR" NEWS & COMMENT

BBC: US Backed Egyptian Regime "Fabricated Terror Group"

The Guardian: Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam

Benazir Bhutto: "Bin Laden was murdered"

George Monbiot: How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

What is Al Qaeda's cause and justification for killing America's and it's Allies' civilains? Professors Quintan Wiktorowicz and John Kaltner Explain

BBC Documentary: The Power of Nightmares; the making of the terror myth
The Fury of Fallujah

OTHER WORLD NEWS & COMMENT

Abu-Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, building worlds first zero-carbon eco-city

The Guardian: Is Segregation The Only Answer To Sexual Harassment?

Bhutto & Zardari Worth Billions!

Stark Warning From Imran Khan to Benazir Before Her Death

The Times: The Lie of Late Motherhood

Review of "The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to Finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with Your Man"

Not Without Her Make-Up

Children find food wrapped in McDonald's packaging 'six times tastier'

Ban Islam?

Britain's forgotten Indian holocaust: 10 million in 10 years

In Pakistan we have Selective Islam, by Imran Khan

Musharraf's Army using chemical Weapons in Wana operation?

Thai Muslim Killings Widely Resented

The Overpopulation Trick

Comments

London Mosque leading way in war on climate change

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:54:14 +0100

Mosque leading way in war on climate change

BETH CATLEY - 10 January 2008

Source Link

WARMING TO ECO ISSUES: Dr Mohammed Fahim

A MOSQUE is believed to be the first Muslim 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@tolerancein ternational. org.uk, calling 020 7427 0050 or going to www.toleranceinternational.org.uk.

Comments

BBC: Israel fears equal voting rights for Arabs; Olmert warns of 'end of Israel'

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:49:17 +0200

"If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished"
Ehud Olmert

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said failure to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians would spell the end of the State of Israel.

He warned of a "South African-style struggle" which Israel would lose if a Palestinian state was not established.

Mr Olmert was returning from the Annapolis conference in the US where he and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to launch formal peace talks.

The two leaders set a goal of reaching a peace deal with US support in 2008.

If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished
Ehud Olmert

US President George W Bush called Annapolis, the first substantive Arab-Israeli peace talks in seven years, a "hopeful beginning" for Mid-East peace.

Mr Olmert said it was not the first time he had articulated his fears about the demographic threat to Israel as a Jewish state from a faster growing Palestinian population.

He made similar comments in 2003 when justifying the failed strategy of unilateral withdrawals from Israeli-occupied land which holds large Palestinian populations.
"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Mr Olmert is quoted saying in Haaretz newspaper

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7118937.stm

[Hamas wants this solution, as do most Islamists - That's why they offered a ceasefire to Israel. The only people who want this American organised peace is some in the Israeli "left" or "centre" who realise that to maintain Jewish supremacy & a racially based state they have to carve out large bits of Palestine and turn them into bantustans or large open disjointed prison camps for Arabs, naming it the "two state solution", and a "peace deal" establishing an "independent Palestinian state".]

Comments

Sexual Intimacy in Islam

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 17:52:16 +0200

Show Plan - Show aired in September 2006

Welcome back to what we like to call Season 2 of the Hassan & Habibah Show. Jazakamullah khair for your continuing support over the last few weeks while we've been away with your emails. Remember, you can still email us at handhshow@islamchannel.tv.

Todays show is on Intimacy in Islam, this will involve discussing bedroom relations. Please be warned that we will be discussing various matters relating to this topic some of which will obviously be of an adult nature, using language and terminology which you may find inappropriate for any children watching.

Also please keep in mind we will only be speaking about halal relationships, therefore everything is related to marriage, i.e between a husband and wife. To help us discuss this topic we welcome....................

GUEST FROM RELATE (Non-Muslim)

Dr Jameel Rahmaan, Representative from Hizb ut-Tahrir

and on the phone RUQAYYAH WARIS MAQSOOD THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “THE MUSLIM MARRIAGE GUIDE”

Questions:

What is your perception of how muslim's view intimacy between husband and wife.

a) Is the whole topic a taboo

b) a necessary evil similar to the concepts of the “sins of the flesh” and something you are not supposed to enjoy, i.e. only to have children

c) something of the duniya and not related to the akhira.

d) unholy

e) austere

Where have these perceptions come from?

a) monoasticism

b) ascetism (not sufism)

c) separation of the spiritual material world

Are there parallells with other religions eg catholicism, monasticism, secularism.
Do many muslims especially Imaams, leaders etc contribute to this perception of imtimacy in Islam?
Do you think this partly because people see a separation between deen and dunya, and therefore you have to choose between one or the other (because they are mutually exclusive)
We’ve heard dawah carriers promoting this idea of separation between deen and dunya, how would you advise them to do otherwise?
Do you think the idea of secularism, encouraged this ‘separation of the “dunya”’ mentality further.
What common notions are there amongst muslims

e.g. not allowed to be naked together

e.g. not allowed to look at each others bodies

e.g. to get it over and done with quickly regardless of whether the woman is fulfilled or not

e.g. no loving contact with a woman when she is menstruating because she is “dirty” v.s ghayr muttwadhiyah?

Definitions:

Monasticism (from Greek: monachos—a solitary person) is the religious practice of renouncing all “worldly” pursuits in order to fully devote one's life to spiritual work. Primarily eastern Indian and Chinese religions and Catholic

.
Asceticism denotes a life which is characterised by refraining from worldly pleasures (austerity). Those who practice ascetic lifestyles often perceive their practices as virtuous and pursue them to achieve greater spirituality. Primarily eastern Indian and Chinese religions and Catholic.

Austere - Severe or stern in disposition or appearance; somber and grave: the austere figure of a Puritan minister; Strict or severe in discipline; ascetic; Having no adornment or ornamentation; bare: an austere style

What does Islam say?

● Islam does not frown or class as unholy any natural instinct or desire (fitrah), rather it comes to organise and satisfy it, via the Shariah.

● Wedding night

● Foreplay

● Satisfaction of a woman

● Reward

● Not shameful

● Education of the youth

● Marriage as a solution

● Despite openness, not allowed to publicise what goes on in the bedroom between husband and wife (ex advise).

Islam does not frown or class as unholy any natural instinct or desire, rather it recognises natural desire, and came to organise and satisfy it, via the Shariah.

Abu-Dawud narrates that Abdullah Ibn Abbas (ra) commented on the Qur'anic verse, "So approach your wives however you like" (surat al-baqarah: 223). That the clan of the Ansaar before Islam, lived in the company of the Jewish tribes. The Ansaar used to accept their superiority in knowledge and copied most of their actions. The Jewish tribes used to have intercourse with their women on one side alone (i.e. on their backs only). They considered this the most modest and concealing position for (the private parts of) the woman. So the Ansar copied this practice from them too. However the tribe of Quraysh used to uncover their women completely, seeking pleasure with them from every angle including laying them on their backs. When the Quraysh came to Medina as immigrants, a Qurayshi man married a woman of the Ansar. He began to do the same kind of actions with her (i.e. approach her from various angles), but she disliked it, and said to him: “We are approached only on one side (i.e. lying on the back); so do it that way, otherwise keep away from me”. The matter of theirs spread widely and it reached the Prophet (S). So in response to this incident Allah (SWT) sent down the Qur'anic verse: "Your wives are a tilth to you, so approach your wives however you like - surat al-baqarah: 223" i..e.from any position. (Abu-Dawud)

According to Abu Sa'd, the Prophet (SAW) once rebuked the wife of Sarwan ibn al-Mu'attal for being over-zealous to the detriment of her marriage. She used to read long suras during her night prayer, keeping her husband waiting, and she fasted frequently without his permission, which made her tired and prevented any opportunity for enjoying sexual relations during the day. The Prophet recommended that she limit her recitation to one surah and only fasted with her husbands permission so that they could enjoy each other. Similarly, when the Prophet heard that a zealous Companion, Abdullah ibn 'Amr, was in the habit of praying all night and fasting all day, he told him to moderate his devotions, pointing out that “your eye has a right over you, your guests have a right over you, and you wife has a right over you' (Bukhari)

Before starting intercourse, it is a Sunnah to make the following supplication, "In the name of Allah. O Allah, keep Satan away from us, and keep Shaytan away from (the offspring) that which You grant us." (Bukhari)

Allah (swt) says in the Quran:

You [believers] are permitted to lie and enjoy your wives during the nights of Ramadhan: they are like garments to you, as you are to them….……Do not lie with them during the nights of your ‘itikaaf in the mosques: these are the bounds set by God, so do not go near them (during ‘itikaf in the mosques. (Surah Al-Baqarah v187)

Wedding night

Men & women think they have to loose their virginity on the wedding night; men need to be more considerate of women's feelings and take things slowly, some scholars advised waiting at least a week, and letting things build up to it.

Foreplay

"None of you should fall upon his wife like an animal; let there first be a messenger between you." The sahaba then asked "And what is that oh messenger of Allah?" and he replied: "Kisses and loving words" (i.e. foreplay) (Daylami)

Satisfaction of a woman

"Three things are counted inadequacies in a man. Firstly, meeting someone he would like to get to know, and taking leave of him before learning his full name. Secondly, rebuffing the generosity that another shows to him. And thirdly, going to his wife and having intercourse with her before talking to her and gaining her intimacy, satisfying his need from her before she has satisfied her need from him." (Daylami)

Menstruation

It is forbidden to have vaginal intercourse while a woman is menstruating

The Prophet (SAW) has even said, "Whoever has intercourse [with his wife] during her menses, or commits sodomy with her, or comes to a diviner, then he disbelieved in what was revealed to Muhammad." (Tirmidhi)

“And they ask you about menstruation. Say: It is a discomfort; therefore keep aloof from women during the menstrual discharge and do not approach them until they are clean; then when they have done ghusl, go in to them as Allah has commanded you; surely Allah loves those who turn much (to Him), and He loves those who purify themselves” (Surah Al- Baqarah v222).

Narrated in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet (SAW) commented about the meaning of keeping aloof in the above verse by saying: “Do everything except intercourse”. (Sahih Muslim)

'A'isha (ra) said: “When anyone amongst us, (the wives of the Holy Prophet) menstruated, the Messenger of Allah (S) asked us to cover only our private parts with cloth around the waist and then approached us”. (Sahih Muslim)

Reward

Narrated in Muslim, the Prophet (SAW) said: "In the sexual act of each of you there is a sadaqa." The Companions replied: "0 Messenger of God! When one of us fulfils his sexual desire, will he really be given a reward for that?" The prophet (s) replied, "Don’t you think that were one to act upon this desire unlawfully, he would be sinning? Likewise, if he fulfils this desire lawfully he will be rewarded." (Muslim)

Having intercourse on the night before Friday is desirable as the Prophet (SAW) said, "Whoever makes ghusl on Friday to clean himself from janabah (i.e. after having intercourse), then left for salah, it is as if he offered a whole camel in sacrifice." (Bukhari)

Narrated in Muslim, the Prophet (SAW) said, "If one of you has intercourse with your wife and then wants to come to her again, it is better for you to do wudhu first, for it revives you with more vigor to go again." (Muslim)

Marriage as a solution

Allah says in the Qur’an: "And among His signs is that He created for you from amongst you, companions, with whom you dwell in peace and tranquility; He laid love and compassion between you." (Surah Luqman v21)

The prophet (s) said that "Those of you who can afford it, should marry, otherwise you should keep fasting, for it curbs the desires" (Ibn Massoud)

Despite openness, not allowed to publicise what goes on in the bedroom

The Prophet (SAW) said, "Among those who will be in the worst position in Allah's sight on the Day of Resurrection is the man who has intercourse with his wife, and she with him, and then he spreads what was private to her." (Muslim)

"Do not divulge secrets of your sex with your wife to another person, nor describe her physical feature to anyone".

In Conclusion:

Maintaining healthy intimacies, and keeping your husband or wife satisfied in bed is ibadah and sadaqah, not just material acts but spiritual acts. In Islam, there is no distinction between deen and dunya i.e. the material and spiritual actions, when the actions are halal. Islam does not suppress the natural desires and instincts nor sweep them under the carpet, but allows for them to be satisfied, via methods set out in the Shariah (law) of Allah (SWT), and encourages us to seek knowledge regarding these matters.

It is narrated in Bukhari and Muslim, that the Prophet (SAW) said, “Blessed are the women of the Ansar (citizens of Madinah), shyness did not stand in their way for seeking knowledge about their religion” (Bukhari & Muslim)

Comments

BBC: US backed Egypt 'fabricated terror group'

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:24:17 +0200

The Egyptian Military regime, just like Muhsarraf's in Pakistan, has rigged elections to ensure it's stay in power, and after Israel, is the largest recipient of US military aid, which props up the client military rule. In 1990, the US "forgave" $7.1 billion in past Egyptian military debt in return for Egypt's support of the first Iraq war. Despite this "Aid" to the military government Egypt is still poor, with an estimated annua GDP per person of $3,600. Massive U.S. military support of Egypt has just bolstered a compliant regime, and coincided with 25 years of rule under Emergency Law, this continues despite regular reports of serious human rights abuses committed by the Egyptian government. Abuses include torture, arbitrary arrest without trial, prolonged pretrial detention, extrajudicial executions, post served sentence imprisonment (i.e. you serve your sentence but still aren't released) and "disappearances," all are often committed with impunity. Years of abuse by national "anti-terrorist" "security" forces afflict common citizens; according to Human Rights Watch's 2000 Report, in 1999 “evidence continued to mount that local police forces were employing similar torture techniques against ordinary citizens that elite security forces had used systematically against suspected armed militant rebels, their families, and supporters.”

The Military, supplied and propped up by US "Aid" is designed primarily to control the internal population, not against an external threat (as Egyptian state controlled media tells us). The United States sells Egypt a large amount of military equipment, which includes a significant number of small arms; such weaponry is both likely to be used for internal security and intentionally difficult to track once sold. These two factors easily enable such weaponry to find its way into the hands of abusive government security forces. In fact, during fiscal years 1996-1999, according to the U.S. government’s own “Section 655” reports, the United States delivered $10 million worth of small arms via the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program and authorized export licenses worth more than $4.8 million through State’s Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) channel. Small arms delivered or authorized included ammunition and raw materials for ammunition, grenades, a variety of pistols and rifles, and riot control equipment." US policy on Egypt for the last 30 years has uncanny parallels with it's new policy with Pakistan.

BBC: Egypt 'fabricated terror group'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7137950.stm

A US-based human rights group has accused the Egyptian government of using torture and false confessions in a high-profile anti-terrorism case.

Twenty-two alleged members of an unknown Islamist group, the Victorious Sect, were charged for planning attacks on tourism sites and gas pipelines.

US-based Human Rights Watch says its investigation found the security forces may have fabricated the group's name.

It also reports claims the arrests were to justify renewing emergency laws.

Although the state prosecutor dismissed the charges against the suspects, 10 of them are still believed to be in detention.

The BBC's Ian Pannell in Cairo says this is just the latest in a run of accusations by human rights organisations against Egypt's police and state security.

The Egyptian government has consistently denied that torture is used routinely and rejected what it sees as foreign interference in its own affairs.

'Pattern of abuse'

The authorities' claims made headlines in April 2006 when they said they had smashed a previously unheard-of terrorist group plotting a series of attacks against soft targets including tourists and Coptic Christian clerics.

"Beyond coerced confessions, there appears to be no compelling evidence to support the government's dramatic claims," HRW says.

"Indeed, it appears that SSI (state security investigations) may have fabricated the allegations made against at least some and possibly all of the them," its report says.

Detainees quoted by HRW said they had been beaten and kicked by their interrogators, and some were given electric shocks on their bodies, including their genitals.

Most of the testimonies in the report come via third parties, as the detainees themselves were unwilling to talk directly to investigators, for fear of retribution, HRW says.

A spokesperson for the organisation said the case was not unusual, but was part of a pattern of detention and torture by the Egyptian security services in order to obtain false confessions.

The "Victorious Sect" arrests came to light shortly before Egypt renewed its enduring and controversial emergency laws, which give sweeping powers of detention to the security forces.

"State security needs to show that it's working, that it's useful, and cases like these are useful politically, around the renewal of the emergency law," lawyer Muhammad Hashim is quoted saying in the HRW report.

The group says the Egyptian authorities ignored requests for information about the case and there was no immediate response to publication of the report.
Earlier this year, another human rights group released a highly critical report on Egypt's record on torture and illegal detention.

READ THE REPORT
Anatomy of a State Security Case [431KB]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_12_07_hrw_egypt.pdf

Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader

Comments

BBC: US backed Egypt 'fabricated terror group'

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:24:17 +0200

BBC: Egypt 'fabricated terror group'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7137950.stm

A US-based human rights group has accused the Egyptian government of using torture and false confessions in a high-profile anti-terrorism case.

Twenty-two alleged members of an unknown Islamist group, the Victorious Sect, were charged for planning attacks on tourism sites and gas pipelines.

US-based Human Rights Watch says its investigation found the security forces may have fabricated the group's name.

It also reports claims the arrests were to justify renewing emergency laws.

Although the state prosecutor dismissed the charges against the suspects, 10 of them are still believed to be in detention.

The BBC's Ian Pannell in Cairo says this is just the latest in a run of accusations by human rights organisations against Egypt's police and state security.

The Egyptian government has consistently denied that torture is used routinely and rejected what it sees as foreign interference in its own affairs.

'Pattern of abuse'

"Beyond coerced confessions, there appears to be no compelling evidence to support the government's dramatic claims," HRW says.

"Indeed, it appears that SSI (state security investigations) may have fabricated the allegations made against at least some and possibly all of the them," its report says.

Detainees quoted by HRW said they had been beaten and kicked by their interrogators, and some were given electric shocks on their bodies, including their genitals.

Most of the testimonies in the report come via third parties, as the detainees themselves were unwilling to talk directly to investigators, for fear of retribution, HRW says.

A spokesperson for the organisation said the case was not unusual, but was part of a pattern of detention and torture by the Egyptian security services in order to obtain false confessions.

The "Victorious Sect" arrests came to light shortly before Egypt renewed its enduring and controversial emergency laws, which give sweeping powers of detention to the security forces.

READ THE REPORT
Anatomy of a State Security Case [431KB]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_12_07_hrw_egypt.pdf

Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader

Comments

Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:21:17 +0200

Neocon policies designed to promote liberal opinion in the Middle East have in fact played into the hands of the religious parties

By William Dalrymple
Friday September 21, 2007
The Guardian

Six years after 9/11, throughout the Muslim world political Islam is on the march; the surprise is that its rise is happening democratically - not through the bomb, but the ballot box. Democracy is not the antidote to the Islamists the neocons once fondly believed it would be. Since the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a consistent response from voters wherever Muslims have had the right to vote. In Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria they have voted en masse for religious parties in a way they have never done before. Where governments have been most closely linked to the US, political Islam's rise has been most marked.

Much western journalism in the six years since 9/11 has concentrated on terrorist groups, jihadis and suicide bombers. But while the threat of violence remains very real, those commentators who have compared what they ignorantly call "Islamofascism" to the Nazis are guilty of hysteria: the differences in relative power and military capability are too great for the comparison to be valid, and the analogies that the neocons draw with the second world war are demonstrably false. As long as the west interferes in the Muslim world, bombs will go off; and as long as Britain lines up behind George Bush's illegal wars, British innocents will die in jihadi atrocities. But that does not mean we are about to be invaded, nor is Europe about to be demographically swamped, as North American commentators such as Mark Steyn claim: Muslims will make up no more than 10% of the European population by 2020.

Yet in concentrating on the violent jihadi fringe, we may have missed the main story. For if the imminent Islamist takeover of western Europe is a myth, the same cannot be said for the Islamic world. Clumsy and brutal US policies in the Middle East have generated revolutionary changes, radicalising even the most moderate opinion, with the result that the status quo in place since the 1950s has been broken.

Egypt is typical: at the last election in 2005 members of the nominally banned Muslim Brotherhood, standing as independents, saw their representation rise from 17 seats to 88 in the 444-seat people's assembly - a five-fold increase, despite reports of vote-rigging by President Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Alliance. The Brothers, who have long abjured violence, are now the main opposition.

The figures in Pakistan are strikingly similar. Traditionally, the religious parties there have won only a fraction of the vote. That began to change after the US invasion of Afghanistan. In October 2002 a rightwing alliance of religious parties - the Muttahida Majlis Amal or MMA - won 11.6% of the vote, more than doubling its share, and sweeping the polls in the two provinces bordering Afghanistan - Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province - where it formed ultra-conservative and pro-Islamist provincial governments. If the last election turned the MMA into a serious electoral force, there are now fears that it could yet be the principle beneficiary of the current standoff in Pakistan.

The Bush administration proclaimed in 2004 that the promotion of democracy in the Middle East would be a major foreign policy theme in its second term. It has been widely perceived, not least in Washington, that this policy has failed. Yet in many ways US foreign policy has succeeded in turning Muslim opinion against the corrupt monarchies and decaying nationalist parties who have ruled the region for 50 years. The irony is that rather than turning to liberal secular parties, as the neocons assumed, Muslims have lined up behind parties most clearly seen to stand up against aggressive US intervention.

Religious parties, in other words, have come to power for reasons largely unconnected to religion. As clear and unambiguous opponents of US policy in the Middle East - in a way that, say, Musharraf, Mubarak and Mahmoud Abbas are not - religious parties have benefited from legitimate Muslim anger: anger at the thousands of lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq; at the blind eye the US turns to Israel's nuclear arsenal and colonisation of the West Bank; at the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the incarceration of thousands of Muslims without trial in the licensed network of torture centres that the US operates across the globe; and at the Islamophobic rhetoric that still flows from Bush and his circle in Washington.

Moreover, the religious parties tend to be seen by the poor, rightly or wrongly, as representing justice, integrity and equitable distribution of resources. Hence the strong showing, for example, of Hamas against the blatantly corrupt Fatah in the 2006 elections in Palestine. Equally, the dramatic rise of Hizbullah in Lebanon has not been because of a sudden fondness for sharia law, but because of the status of Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's leader, as the man who gave the Israelis a bloody nose, and who provides medical and social services for the people of South Lebanon, just as Hamas does in Gaza.

The usual US response has been to retreat from its push for democracy when the "wrong" parties win. This was the case not just with the electoral victory of Hamas, but also in Egypt: since the Brothers' strong showing in the elections, the US has stopped pressing Mubarak to make democratic reforms, and many of the Brothers' leading activists and business backers, as well as Mubarak's opponent in the presidential election, are in prison, all without a word of censure from Washington.

Yet on a recent visit to Egypt I found everywhere a strong feeling that political Islam was there to stay, and that this was something everyone was going to have to learn to live with; the US response had become almost irrelevant. Even the Copts were making overtures to the Brothers. As Youssef Sidhom, who edits the leading Coptic newspaper, put it: "They are not going away. We need to enter into dialogue, to clarify their policies, and end mutual mistrust."

The reality is that, like the Copts, we are going to have to find some modus vivendi with political Islam. Pretending that the Islamists do not exist, and that we will not talk to them, is no answer. Only by opening dialogue are we likely to find those with whom we can work, and to begin to repair the damage that self-defeating Anglo-American policies have done to the region, and to western influence there, since 9/11.

· William Dalrymple is the author of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2173919,00.html

www.williamdalrymple.com

Comments

Is segregation the only answer to sexual harassment?

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:00:17 +0200

There is a growing worldwide trend for women-only spaces on trains, beaches and in hotels. But do they make women any safer?

By Jessica Valenti

Friday August 3, 2007
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,2140903,00.html

Growing up in New York City, I took the subway to school like most of my peers. I remember not quite understanding, as a 13-year-old, the looks I received from men my father's age - or why they kept "accidentally" brushing up against me. What was all that about? As the years went by, of course, it all became clear, and now, in my late 20s, when the topic comes up, I have yet to speak to a woman who hasn't had some experience of being groped on a train.

So I wasn't surprised by a recent report that showed that two out of every three subway riders in New York has been sexually harassed (the survey was of a mixed group, with almost 70% of respondents being women). In Tokyo, the problem is just as bad - 64% of women in their 20s and 30s reported being groped on the train or in transit stations. In fact, the problem is so well recognised in Japan, that there's even a specific name for subway harassment: chikan. And the city's answer to such large-scale harassment? Establishing a woman-only train carriage aimed at protecting potential victims.

Japan isn't the only country where a separate space has been set aside for women's safety. There are women-only train carriages in Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Cairo. Italy has just established a women-only beach. And in the US a hotel recently announced that it is building a separate floor for female guests. All of which raises the question: is this the latest in "girl power" or a sexist solution to a much bigger problem?

There's no doubt the harassment women face in public spaces needs to be addressed - whether it is on the street, the train, or even the internet. We've been subjected to regular catcalls and groping for far too long. But while the idea of a safe space is compelling, this international trend - which often comes couched in paternalistic rhetoric about "protecting" women - raises questions of just how equal the sexes are if women's safety relies on us being separated. After all, shouldn't we be targeting the gropers and harassers? The onus should be on men to stop harassing women, not on women to escape them.

Betsy Eudey, director of gender studies at California State University, says that while some single-sex environments could be beneficial - locker rooms where people are expected to be naked are an obvious example - she finds that "segregated spaces only enhance division by sex, and prevent the necessary actions needed to make public spaces safe and welcoming to all".

Not all feminists are so sceptical though. American writer, Katha Pollitt, says she doesn't think that the rise of women-only spaces will excuse society from confronting harassment and violence. Instead, she believes they simply offer a small respite for women in a male-dominated world.

"Obviously, there would never be enough women-only space to accommodate all women all the time - half the subway cars or half the hotels," says Pollitt. "Women-only space is just a little breathing place for a few women every now and then." Pollitt also notes that women-only spaces aren't just about escaping harassment. "Men just take up too much space. They judge women's bodies. They flaunt their own. This is not going to change in our lifetime, or possibly ever."

For some women, single-sex areas can be a way to expand movement in public spaces, rather than limit it. A women-only taxi service in Tehran, for example, has been touted as giving women more travel options, while, around the globe, women-only gyms provide a welcome space for religious women who wouldn't otherwise be able to work out.

Religious concerns aside though, I'm wary of how the governments and companies that have created many of these spaces are promoting them. Further evidence that this isn't so much about a feminist vision of women's safety as a short-sighted solution is the reliance on sexist staples to drive home the "women-only" point. Brazil's train cars are pink striped, for instance, as is the sign declaring "No Men" on Italy's beach - which is known as the "pink beach". In fact, the only man allowed on the Italian beach is a lifeguard - beach owner Fausto Ravaglia has said, "You clearly need a man to save women in the sea. It's a question of muscles." A women-only taxi service in Mumbai, India, features larger-than-normal mirrors, a makeup kit and a magazine rack; the soon-to-be-opened US hotel will have chenille throw blankets and special bath products (you know, stuff that girls like) on its women-only floor.

Of course, there are more serious concerns than complaints about the sugar-and-spice of it all. In cities that offer women-only train carriages, what happens if a woman is groped - or worse - in a carriage that isn't women-only? Will she be blamed for not taking advantage of the "safe" space provided? After all, women are all too used to being blamed when it comes to assault, questioned as to why they were out on their own/wearing a short skirt/drinking.

Not all women-only venues are mired in paternalism. Girls' schools, for example, are touted as places where pupils have the confidence to speak more openly than they would in a mixed class. Women-only networking events - designed to build an "old girls' club" in industries where golf trips and other male-centric networking is the norm - are gaining popularity in cities from New York to London. Even my publisher, Seal Press, devotes itself solely to publishing female authors.

The difference between these spaces and designated "no harassment" zones, however, is that all-girl schools and networking are positively supporting women and their endeavours rather than hiding us behind closed (or sliding) doors.

When I take the subway now, a bit older and certainly more jaded, I do my best to avoid crowded train cars and instead of silently rolling my eyes when someone brushes up against me, I make a fuss. (Grabbing the offending hand and holding it up, declaring, "Why was this hand on my ass?" seems to do the trick.) If New York City was to create a woman-only carriage, I might use it occasionally, just for some breathing space. But I certainly wouldn't stop using the others. After all, women should have the right to be safe anywhere and everywhere.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,2140903,00.html

Comments

BBC: Muslims 'demonised' by UK media

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 15:56:14 +0200

Really Sherlock?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7093390.stm

BBC NEWS

Muslims are being "demonised" by the British media, with 91% of reports being negative, research commissioned by London's mayor has found.

Ken Livingstone said the survey, by consultancy firm Insted, studied a week's news reports and found Islam was portrayed as a "threat to the West".

Another poll published on Tuesday found that at least 35% of Londoners held Islam responsible for the 7/7 attacks.

The YouGov poll, commissioned by the Evening Standard, spoke to 701 people.

'Creates alarm'

Mr Livingstone said the research by Insted - a consultancy firm which deals with issues of diversity and equality - found the national media had a "hostile and scaremongering attitude" towards the community.

Mr Livingstone said: "The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the West.

"I think there is a demonisation of Islam going on which damages community relations and creates alarm among Muslims," he said.

Mr Livingstone urged editors to be balanced in their coverage saying out of 352 articles studied by researchers last year just 4% were positive.

The Evening Standard poll asked 701 people about issues and attitudes towards Islam, wearing the veil and faith schools.

The poll found about a third of those questioned wanted political groups "promoting fundamentalist Islamic agendas" banned.

While more than half of those interviewed said Muslims in London were "isolated" from others, about 50% thought Islam was a "generally intolerant faith".

Regarding veils, at least eight out of 10 people said neither students nor teachers should be allowed to wear the veil in school.

On faith schools, some 20% of the respondents wanted faith schools to be "encouraged", 10% wanted their numbers to be reduced and one in three wanted them banned.

Another poll, carried out by Ipsos-Mori on behalf of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and published on Monday, found 86% of Muslims in the city and 91% of other Londoners strongly felt that the police needed to work closely with the community.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/london/7093390.stm

Comments

Stark Warning From Imran Khan to Benazir Before Her Death

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:39:13 +0200

This article appeared in the Telegraph, before Benazir's death, after the last attempt on her life:

Benazir Bhutto has only herself to blame

By Imran Khan
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/10/21/do2101.xml

I'm sorry to say this, but the bombing of Benazir Bhutto's cavalcade as she paraded through Karachi on Thursday night was a tragedy almost waiting to happen. You could argue it was inevitable.

Everyone here knew there was going to be a huge crowd turning up to see her return after eight years in self-imposed exile. Everyone also knows that there has been a spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan lately, especially in the frontier region where I am campaigning at the moment.

How was it ever going to be possible to monitor such a large crowd and guarantee that no suicide bombers would infiltrate it?

This may sound equally harsh, but she has only herself to blame. By making a deal with Musharraf's government — a deal brokered by the British as well as the Americans, by the way — she was hoping to get herself off the (substantial) corruption charges that have been levelled against her. (And Already convicted by Swiss Banks)

What she hadn't taken into account was Musharraf's unpopularity. He is regarded in Pakistan as an American stooge. And the US war on terror, which he supports, is now perceived as a war against Islam.

That is why there is no shortage of recruits for the fundamentalist cause here. By siding with him, Benazir was making herself a target for assassination.

The sad thing is, she didn't need to do it. Musharraf was sinking and isolated. He was on the point of declaring a state of emergency. Just when it looked as if he had no lifelines left, Benazir came back and bailed him out.

Worse, by publicly siding with a dictator, she has deliberately sabotaged the democratic process. We have an election coming up in January. As leader of the Justice Party, I am running in it but it will not be a free and fair election if Musharraf is still in charge.

He has dismantled state institutions, such as an independent judiciary and an election commission, and has introduced a controlled assembly, a controlled prime minister and a controlled media.

The polls show he can only win this next election if he massively rigs it. That is what he did in 2002, as confirmed by the EU monitoring team.

Given the way that she has undermined democracy by siding with Musharraf, I don't know how Benazir has the nerve to say that the 130 people killed in those bomb blasts sacrificed their lives for the sake of democracy in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, you can take your pick as to who was responsible for the two bombs that went off. At least three jihad groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban were plotting suicide attacks — but one thing is for sure, there is no shortage of candidates.

The war on terror is turning everyone in the tribal border regions into potential guerrillas. Not militants necessarily but disparate groups who are becoming united by their suspicion of America. A coalition is forming, and al-Qaeda is going to be only a small part of it.

Benazir has made enemies for herself in this respect also. She alone among Pakistan's political party leaders has given public support to the massacre of women and children that Musharraf caused when he ordered his troops to attack the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

She also backed his attacks on civilians in the tribal regions. Note that Musharraf has called the civilian deaths there "collateral damage" — an American euphemism.

Benazir also gave her backing to Musharraf's plan to allow Nato troops to hunt down maybe 200 or 300 Taliban and al-Qaeda supporters in the border region, but in doing that they have merely recruited a million potential supporters for the terrorists.

No one in the West understands that the tribal regions of Pakistan have always been an independent entity. They have never been conquered. Every man is a warrior and carries a gun. Even a superpower like the British Empire could not control that terrain. It had to bribe the tribes.

I have known Benazir since we were at Oxford together, but we have drifted apart politically since then. Perhaps I could have warned her that her life would be in danger if she returned to Pakistan and had a parade, but I doubt she would have listened.

After all, there has been no shortage of warnings from other quarters. But I can tell her this: it is not going to get any easier for her. Whenever she goes out campaigning in public, her life is going to be threatened.

It is different for me campaigning in public, even in the frontier region, because I am not perceived as an America stooge, or a supporter of the war on terror.

The British do not have clean hands in this latest suicide bombing outrage. Britain is providing a safe haven for Altaf Hussain, the Musharraf-supporting MQM political party leader who currently lives in London.

He's been living in London for 15 years and from there he controls Karachi with an iron will through his mafia-like party. It was this political gangster who persuaded Benazir that he could ensure her safety if she returned.

The only positive thing that might come out of this horrific bombing is that it will force everyone in Pakistani politics to sit down together at a big table and review our strategy on terror. We have to accept that it is not working, that, in fact, it is making matters worse.

It is an idiotic policy because the Americans are pushing people who are in favour of democracy at the moment towards extremism. Pakistan is in danger of turning into Algeria, a country where you had government forces firing on their own civilians.

Once the Pakistani army started its latest operation at the behest of the US, the whole border area rose up against it. And because the US has also bombed the area, killing many tribesmen, anyone who opposes the US becomes a hero.

The tribesman's culture is a revenge culture. When one is killed another takes his place. That is where the war on terror has been so misguided. It has benefited the people who caused 9/11. And it has made Musharraf — and now his ally Benazir Bhutto — look even more like puppets of America.

Comments

Anecdotal evidence that being sex obsessed is not "natural" to humans

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:27:13 +0200

Below is anecdotal evidence that (v.s. simply having a natural desire) being sex obsessed even in secret is not universal, nor "natural" nor necessarily caused by societies that hold traditional values (which 'sexual repression' is sometimes a euphemism). Rather if you look at google search statistics it is the most sexually liberal countries that are privately most sex obsessed, (probably as a result of public bombardments of sexual imagery and innuendo). This should not negate evidence that those cultures which have monastic attitudes to sex, severely shun all talk about sex, view it as inherently "evil", or "worldly", or not praiseworthy even within any form marriage, and strictly utilitarian for breeding purposes have sexual abuse problems (Saudi/Indian/Pakistani/Bengalis take note!).
2 little articles entitled "Islam says sex is good for you" and "Sex is Sadaqa (rewarded by God)" are here: http://www.themodernreligion.com/misc/sex/sex_good.htm
http://www.zawaj.com/articles/sex_sadaqa.html

Google.cn word search results: Chinese shun sex search for a good, old-fashioned bank By Lester Haines Published Thursday 3rd January 2008

The Chinese appear to have dismally failed to grasp the primary use of Google, with searches on the word "sex" ranking way down the list of most-Googled terms in the country last year.

Leading the overall searches list was "QQ", apparently an "instant message service and a brand of car", according to Reuters. Next up was the China Merchants Bank, closely followed by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Fourth place went to "stock" (as in "and shares", etc).

What merited fifth spot is not noted, but we suspect it might have been "anti-corruption". In keeping with the locals' evident love of banking, China Construction Bank came sixth.

All of which left "sex" out in the cold with an unspecified placing, much to the delight of China Daily, which was quick to point out that it was the "most popular keyword for Google users in some other countries".

In further revelations, Google.cn said that "China's Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance and Banking Regulatory Commission ranked first, third and fifth in the 'Most Popular Departments' list", while "what is a blue chip" and "how to invest in the stock market" topped the "seeking knowledge" category.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/03/google_china_searches/

Comments

Not Without Her Make-up

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:31:12 +0200

By Tazin Abdullah

http://undercovermuslimah.blogspot.com/

I do not clearly remember the first time I was here. My earliest memories of Australia start when I was around six or seven, probably my first trip after I was born in the city of Sydney. My parents were not particularly happy with the idea of me growing up there. So, they took me out to Iran at the first opportunity.

As I grew up, my impressions of Sydney were formed from stories I heard from my parents, shows I watched on television and of course, what I saw on my trips. From my first trip at the age of seven, I vaguely remember the people I met and the places I visited. I remember more from my second trip, though, which was at the age of fourteen. I recall my parents warning me over and over again about how women were treated in a society so fundamentally Western.

While I was there, I learnt that individuality was something Australians only dreamt about. I soon discovered I had to conform to the dress code everyone else followed. I had to have my hair highlighted and defrizzed. I had to spend between fifteen ad twenty minutes every morning brushing it and putting on clips and hair ties. I had to make it into a ponytail one day, a braid the next and a bun when I went to dinner parties. I was coerced to wear short skirts and tight tops, with a push-up bra to give me cleavage. My legs had to show, smooth and unscarred, and everyone had to be able to make out my waist.

They told me I had to 'fit in'. Part of the ritual of fitting in meant that I had to paint my face with what they called make-up everyday. I discovered that Australian females liked to attract as much attention as they could to themselves, by hiding behind their make-up. They made their kohl in liquids and pencils, instead of pots like we do, and sold them in stores under a range of different names and prices. They all seemed the same to me, though. Anyhow, I bought what they told me to buy and used what they told me to use, from lipsticks to abdominizers, changing my body from head to toe to please their male gods. Such things ensured that everyone wanted to 'hang out' with me (a term denoting something to the effect of spending time and/or social acceptance).

In the five years between then and now, I had convinced myself that Australia would have joined other countries on the road to progress. But my return to Sydney both shocks and saddens me. While many parts of the world have seen development, Australia has dragged behind, especially with regards to the status of women. It seems as if it has only succeeded in digging itself deeper into a bottomless pit of regression. At this rate, I fear that Australia is a second America in the making.

Upon arrival, I have come across some typical Sydney women. I can see that they are dictated by the strict dress code imposed on them by the social system. They are not allowed to wear loose clothing, headscarves until they are old or ailing, and it is preferred that they show as much of their bodies as possible. Women who break this rule face harsh penalties. Sarah, a victim of such injustices, told me the specifics. As punishment for wearing non-revealing clothing, she is deemed unattractive and given unequal treatment by her employers. She says she is not considered 'normal'.

A day in the life of a normal woman here requires her appearance to be the focal point. Her sexuality must be available for everyone to consume. She cannot choose to whom she will disclose her intimate parts or excercise her sexuality. She does not have much choice in what she wants to do with her body. Since the fundamentalist regime insists that it must be available for display in a certain manner, she must follow these rules.

The rules are based on the Australian Holy Scriptures, two of which are Dolly and Cosmopolitan. Also known as magazines, these contain the teachings of hard-liner editors and reporters/writers who design the way in which society must view women and the way women must dress and act. Since the advent of these magazines, there have been mass conversions in the country to the faith they preach. Authority and control have been transferred onto them and they play a vital role in the life of women. They have institutionalised radical guidelines such as the 36:24:36 measurement of a woman's body. Furthermore, they propagate intolerance and hate to be internalised in all women - hate for their own bodies, natural intelligence, privacy and inherent dignity. These women are brainwashed into believing that their Creator is to blame for their deficiencies in not automatically meeting these standards.

In accordance with these oppressive impositions, the country's commerce has developed. Industry is devoted to the development of products to assist women in looking as artificial as possible. The market is filled with products for the face and every different part of it plus the hair, the hands, the legs, the nails...the list goes on. I suppose one must concede to the fact that Australia's delayed development causes it to prioritise looks over the fact that millions of people in the world go hungry.

It is interesting to look at some of the advertisements for the beauty products. I will warn you, though, that coming from an emancipated society, these will be very disturbing. For instance, an advertisement for hair colour uses the motto "L'Oreal - because I'm worth it". A model in an ad for a shampoo claims that using the shampoo gives her more confidence. These poor women must shampoo, condition and colour their hair in order to legitimise themselves. They need the perfect curl, the right bounce and the shiniest colour. Their value to society is directly linked to their hair.

Other significant practices are the prevalent marriage customs. A woman is required to perform the ceremonial 'going out', which can span any period of time from a day to ten years. This starts as early as primary school and as she grows up, she goes out with various men. Until she finds the one she wishes to marry, she does not commit to any one man. All the men she goes out with are allowed to touch her and sleep with her. All this time, her status and acceptance in society is determined by how many of these men she has accommodated in her life. The greater the quota of men, the more sufficient she is considered. Particularly in high school, young girls have little to contribute to their own identities. Their identities derive from who they go out with and how many boys they go out with. Though this kind of mental torture is less obvious in later years of their life, my conversations with many women in university and work indicate that they still suffer. Some feel they must get married in order to make a place for themselves.

Marriage, though, is subject to a bizarre rule. A woman cannot legally marry until she is eighteen years old without parental consent. It is soically expected, however, for girls under eighteen to lose their virginity. When I was listening to one of the popular radio stations, 2DayFM, I was informed that the average age that Australians lost their virginity at is between thirteen and fifteen. As a consequence of this, many girls under eighteen become pregnant. Society accepts these girls as mothers before eighteen but does not allow them to have husbands, who could also take responsibility as fathers to the children born. While women must bear the responsibility of parenthood, men can get away with it. This is one of the many contradictions that exist in Australia today.

Inequalities also exist for women who do get married. Marriage requires the woman to play multiple roles. She must be wife, mother and often a breadwinner of the family. She shoulders the responsibility of taking care of her husband and children at home while also earning money not only for herself, but also for the family. Whatever she earns is not solely her property. Unlike Islamic societies, her husband and her family have a claim to her income and she even pays for groceries!

Often, she is not given the choice of whether she wants to stay at home or work. The society she lives in enshrines materialism and money, money and more money. It is vital to their lifestyle. As a result, she must go out and work. On top of that, her position in society is judged on her ability to work outside the home. She must suffer the greatest burden in society. She really does not have the right to choose. Can you imagine a life where your identity is judged by everything you have and not everything you are?

Even more surprising is the widespread cultural practice of women changing their surnames to that of their husbands' once they are married. Amanda, a law student, who opposes this practice, tells me that, in previous times, this act symbolised the transfer of all of a woman's rights and property to her husband from her father. Though the custom of a woman becoming her husband's property has ceased to exist, women still change their names to that of their husbands'.

Seeing all this, I am aware that Australian women are denied the rights that are basic to many Muslim women. What concerns me, though, is whether or not they are aware of that fact.

I remember from my second trip to Australia that I felt I had a Western noose tied around my neck. I felt I had no space to breathe or to let myself free. The air around me cloaked my beauty, my spirit and my soul. But I was lucky. I could leave.

Most of the Australian women I spoke to do not have that alternative. They do not even know of their plight. They are pushed into a corner where they cannot see outside the boundaries of such a fundamentally Western society. Women immune to Western correctness - mostly the educated Muslims - have begun programmes to educate others around them. They are asserting themselves by breaking out of the confinement, wearing loose clothing and denying just anyone access to their sexuality. I see their efforts as a glimmer of hope. It is crucial that before women can improve their lot, they are taught the rights they have that society has taken away from them.

Nevertheless, there is still hope. I call upon all the Muslim women in the world to come to the rescue of Australian women. I urge that all of us stand up against Western oppression in different parts of the world. It is our responsibility to bring progress into these societies and it is up to us to save them.

By Tazin Abdullah

http://undercovermuslimah.blogspot.com/

Comments

Bhutto and Zardari worth Billions!

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 16:04:15 +0200

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:

Assets of MS Benazir Bhuto declared for the assessment year 1999-2000 (AS 30.06.1999)

ASSETS

COST

VALUE

Bilawal House (Self)

Rs.3000000

1/2 share in 90 Clifton Karachi (Self)

Rs.112500

Shop in Corniche (Ms Bakhtawar)

Rs.300000

Plot in Nawabshah (Ms. Asifa)

Rs.7000

Plot in Gawader-I (Self)

Rs.45000

Plot in Gawader-II (Self)

Rs.18000

Interest in Ice Factory (Self)

Rs.114459

Jewllery (Self)

Rs.315000

NIT Units (Self)

Rs.232698

Share in Zardari Group (Bilawal)

Rs.210000

Share in Zardari Group (Ms Bakhtawar)

Rs.200000

Share in Zardari Group (Ms Asifa)

Rs.165000

Bank Balance (Self)

Rs.1690696

Bank Balance (Minors)

Rs.188646

Cash in Hand (Self)

Rs.2009339

Cash in Hand (Minors)

Rs.10487074

Advance money& share in PPL & Hilal-e-Pakistan

Rs.156200

Less: Liabilities

Rs.(570000)

TEXABLE WEALTH

Rs.15525412

AGRICULTURAL ASSETS
Estimated Value 400 PIUs

PIUs

Value

Self

6129

Rs.2451600

Bilawal

3224

Rs.1289600

Bakhtawar

3209

Rs.1283600

Asifa

3199

Rs.1279600

Asifa

818

Rs.327200

TOTAL

Rs.6631600

AGRICULTURAL ASSETS CLAIMED AS EXEMPTS:

Naudera House (Bakhtawar)

Rs.700000

Mercedez Benz-I (Self)

Rs.902400

Agricultural Equipments (Self)

Rs.292078

Agricultural Equipments (Minors)

Rs.825000

TOTAL

Rs.2719478

MS BENAZIR BHUTO/ASIF ALI ZARDARI

BANK ACCOUNTS

Switzerland:

Amounts

Union Bank of Switzerland a/c # 552.343 UK

Restricted Information

Barclays Bank Geneva

-do-

Citi Bank Geneva

-do-

Bank Nationale de Paris

-do-

Cantrade Ormond Burrus,Banke Pirvee SA

-do-

Banque Financiere,Dela Citee

-do-

Swiss Bank Corporation

-do-

Credit Suisse

-do-

PICTET-ET CIE Geneva

-do-

Banque Francaisc du Commerce Extensievr(BFCE)

-do-

Banque Pasha SA

-do-

Dubai:

Citi Bank Dubai

-do-

France:

Banque La Henin, Paris

-do-

Credit Agricole (HQ) Paris

-do-

Credit Agricole Brace, II Place Brevier,76400,Forges Les Eaux

-do-

Credit Agricole Branch Hante-Normandic,76230,Boise Grillavme

-do-

Banque Nationale De Paris

-do-

United Kingdom

Barclays Bank,Knightsbridge Branch London a/c # 90991473

-do-

National Westminister Bank Aldwich Branch London a/c 96832320

-do-

Harrods Bank Ltd.London a/c # 11309063

-do-

Barclays Bank, Knightsbridge and Chelsea Branch London a/c # 90991473

-do-

Midland Bank,Pall Mall Branch London

-do-

U.S.A

Barclays Bank of New York

-do-

Citi Bank New York

-do-

Chase Manhattan Bank New York

-do-

U.B.S New York Wall Street Branch.

-do-

Properties

U.K

Rockwood Estate,Haslemere Road,Brooke ,Surrey U.K
2.5 million + 1.0 million (Renovation)=3.5 million UK Pounds

Flat 6,11, Queens Gate Terrace London SW7

26 Palace Mansion, Hammussmilch Road, London W14

27 Pont Street London SW1

20, Wilton Crescent , London SW1

France

La Manoir Della La Reine Branch Mormon Ville,Hameau, (Near Forges) France 76780,5 Acre +2 attached properties (4.8 million Frence Francs in 1990)

Property in Cannes France

U.S.A

Stud Farm in Texas

Wellington Club East, West Palm Beach , 12165 West Forest Hills, Florida

Escue Farm, 13524, India Mound , West Palm Beach , Florida 41-7 Acres

3220 Santa Barba Drive Wellington, Florida(580000 US $ )1994

13254, Polo Club Road, West Palm Beach, Florida (155000 US $)

3000, North Ocean Drive, Singer Islands, Florida (95000 US $)

525, South Flager Drive, West Palm Beach, Florida

FIRMS/CONCERNS:

Lapworth Investment Inc, 2002, Saint Martin Drive, West Jacksonville.

Intra Food Inc, 3376, Lomre Grove, Jacksonville, Florida.

Dynatel Trading Co, Florida.

A.S Reality Inc, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Bon Voyage Travel Consultancy Inc, Florida.

bomer Finance Inc, British Virgins Islands.

Mariston Secuties Inc, British Virgin Islands

Marleton Business S.A British Virgin Islands.

Capricorn Tradin S.A British Virgin Islands

10.

Dargal Associated S.A British Virgin Islands

11.

Fagarita Consulting Inc.British Virgin Islands

12.

Marvil Associated Inc,British Virgin Islands

13.

Penbury Finance Ltd, British Virgin Islands

14.

Oxton Trading Ltd.British Virgin Islands

15.

Brinslen Invest S.A British Virgin Islands

16.

Climitex Holding S.A British Virgin Islands

17.

Elkins Holding S.A British Virgin Islands

18.

Minterler Invest Ltd, British Virgin Islands

19.

Silvernut Investments Inc,British Virgin Islands

20.

Tacolen Investments Ltd.British Virgin Islands

21.

Tulerston Invest S.A British Virgin Islands

22.

Marledon Invest S.A British Virgin Islands

23.

Dustan Trading Inc, British Virgin Islands

24.

Reconstruction and Development Finance Inc,British Virgin Islands

25.

Nassam Alexander Inc.

BASED ON AVAILABLE DATA
THE TOTAL VALUE OF THE LOCATED ASSETS AMOUNT TO APPROXIMATELY $ 1.5 BILLION, AS ESTIMATED IN 1999. THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE THE RESTRICTED SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS.

Comments

Music

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 15:15:15 +0200

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.

Comments

The lie of late motherhood

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 14:46:13 +0200

The Sunday Times
December 2, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article2983659.ece

Childless women of my age, 41, talk breezily about IVF as though it were a procedure not dissimilar to Botox

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.

Comments

Mosque leading way in war on climate change

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 14:04:13 +0200

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.

"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."

He said he did not know of any other mosque or Muslim community centre that had become carbon neutral in this country.

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.

http://www.ilfordrecorder.co.uk/content/redbridge/recorder/news/story.aspx?brand=RECOnline&category=newsIlford&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsilford&itemid=WeED10%20Jan%202008%2009%3A23%3A25%3A067

BETH CATLEY - 10 January 2008

Comments

Benazir Bhutto: "Bin Laden was Murdered"

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 13:54:12 +0200

Benazir Bhutto: "Bin Laden was Murdered"

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977216849&grpId=3659174697241980&nav=Groupspace

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?

----------------------------------------------------

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.

Comments

Hayaa and Ghirah

Sun, 02 Sep 2007 13:11:13 +0200

HAYAA:

shyness....selfrespect....bashfulness....shame....honor....humility....constraint...coyness....decency....delicacy....demureness....diffidence....discreetness.... humbleness....inhibition....innocence...purity....quietness....reserve... simplicity....timidity....virtuous.

Women usually have more hayaa by nature, and what I mean here by hayaa is the same as the definition of the ‘ulama’: the noble attitude that always motivates a person to keep away from what is abhorrent or shameful. The Prophet (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) was the highest example of hayaa, as the great Sahabi Abu Sa’id al-Khudri described him:

“Allah’s Messenger (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) was more shy than the virgin hiding away in her own room. If he saw something (vulgar/rash) he disliked, we would know it only from his facial expression.” 33

The Prophet (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) praised the attitude of hayaa in a number of ahadith, and explained that it is a fundamental part of Iman.

According to a report given by Muslim, he(sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said:

“Shyness is all good.”35

Abu Hurayrah (radhiallahu anhu) said:

"The true Muslim woman is shy, polite, gentle and sensitive to the feelings of others. She never says or does anything that may harm people or offend their dignity. "

The attitude of shyness / humility / reservation that is deeply-rooted in her nature is supported by her understanding of the Islamic concept of shyness, which protects her against going wrong or deviating from Islamic teachings in her dealings with others. She does not only feel shy in front of people, but she also feels shy before Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala). She is careful not to let her faith become corrupted by wrongdoing, because shyness is one of the branches of faith. This is the highest level that may be reached by the woman who is characterized by shyness. Many women have has lost the characteristic of shyness / humility / reservation. Shy here does not mean not being emotionally or financially independent, but does include patience:

The prophet (saw) said,

“Whoever refrains from asking from people, Allah (SWT) will help him. Whoever tries to be independent, Allah (swt) will enrich him. Whoever tries to be patient, Allah (swt) will give him patience, and no-one is given a better or vaster gift than patience.”37

The Prophet (sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) said:

“Allah (Subhanahu wa ta’ala) likes three things for you and dislikes three things. He likes for you to worship Him, not to associate anything with Him, and to hold fast, all together, by the Rope which He (stretches out for you), and not to be divided among yourselves [cf. Al ‘Imran 3:103]. And He dislikes for you to pass on stories and gossip, to ask too many questions, and to waste money.”40

The divinely-guided society which has been formed by Islam has no room for gossip, extravagance, wasting money, asking too many questions, or interfering in the private affairs of others, because the members of such a society are too busy with something much more important, which is the establishing of the word of Allah (Subhanahu wa ta’ala) on earth, taking the banner of Islam to the four corners of the earth, and spreading its values among mankind. Those who are engaged in such great missions do not have the time to indulge in such sins.

What is Haya?

Haya itself is derived from the word hayat which means life. This term covers a wide number of concepts. In English, it may be translated as modesty, shyness, self-respect, bashfulness, shame, honour, humility, reservation etc. The original meaning of Haya according to a believer's nature, refers to a bad and uneasy feeling accompanied by embarrassment, caused by one's fear of feeling exposed to, or being reminded of a dishonorable action, unease at being in the company of those that have no such fear; this feeling being the first guard against sins and should always arise when reminded of sins committed and self-humiliated if you are anywhere near such an environment. It is feeling extremely uneasy about anything vulgar, brash, flippancy, indecency, and one should use softly spoken subtle words with bashfulness when referring to anything related to the opposite sex.

Islamically Haya is an attribute which pushes the believer to avoid anything that is linked to or implies anything that is distasteful or abominable. It is to be a reserved character in essence or origin, not necessarily in all actions. It keeps him/her from being neglectful in giving everyone what is due to them, and if for any reason he/she is not able to keep up with his/her commitment then they will feel extremely uncomfortable and ashamed about this. It is also the feeling of wanting to be private, not in a possessive way about material things, but in a shy humble way. It is also the desire to not show our bodies, and expose our voices in attractive ways.

When we think back to when we were young around eight or nine years old - we all remember this feeling of shyness and humility naturally occurring - for many it was when we felt we wanted to conceal our bodies from our mums or siblings. We were often told - "don't be silly" or "we have seen it all before" and the many other comments that people in the west or ignorant Muslim parents affected by the non-Islamic values say to their pure innocent children. If these natural instincts of shyness and shame are taken by the smart parent and nurtured, it will develop and affect their entire character and also most importantly lead to a conscious responsible Muslim who prioritises their life towards submission to Allah (swt).

We often find that shyness, humility and bashfulness is frowned upon by our society as a weakness or a lack of confidence when, infact these are qualities of a dignified upright human being, who is conscious of their actions and their responsibilities in life.

Imam Ibnu Al Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, stated that Haya is a part of life, and depending on how much Haya the heart possesses, actually reflects how much moral character the individual may have. The smaller the amount of Haya the individual, shows the greater the deficiency of spiritual life and ineffectiveness his ability and competence reflects. Haya may be practised between a servant and his Rabb (Lord), when the servant shows shyness for his Rabb (Lord), especially in committing a disobedience. It may also be practised between a person and other people.

Now the Haya` between the servant and his Rabb, was explained in a Hadeeth by the Prophet, Sallallaahu Alayhi Wasallam who said: #

"Be shy of Allah as you should truly be shy”.

They said: “We are shy (of Allah), O Prophet. “

He said, “It is much more than that. He who is truly shy of Allah, let him preserve his head and what it perceives, let him preserve his stomach and what it desires, let him remember death and afflictions, and he who desires the Hereafter abandons the adornments of this world. He who performs all these, is the one who is shy of Allah as he should be".

The different types of haya?

The type of haya in which the believers become shy of themselves is good haya. What this means is that if they see, anything wrong or even commit the tiniest error, they start to feel extremely bad and embarrassed or they feel extreme sorrow and practical resolve in the heart to never do it again. This builds a high degree of self-consciousness and that is what strengthens the believers commitment to Allah (swt).

The negative aspect of haya revolves around a person's shamefulness or shyness of being Muslim, shame in following Islam, shame in doing something that Allah (swt) has ordered us to do through the Qur'an or our Prophet's (saws) Sunnah. This is when someone does not follow an obligation of Islam, due the fact of being shy in front of others about it. This is totally forbidden because then one is giving the people of this dunya more respect and obedience than the One who Created this whole universe.
It also can be exemplified by someone being shy or afraid to seek knowledge of Islam for worldly reasons, because they do not want others to see them or to know of their ignorance. This once again goes contrary to what Allah (swt) has told us in the Qur'an, which is to seek knowledge and not be shy about seeking.

In this society there are many examples of this. People will go out and get degrees in law schools, or science, or engineering and they will put four to six years of their lives into studying for these certificates that will only benefit them in this world. Their motivation is for this world not for the next. They do not realise that in Islam the BEST stature of a Muslim is that of a "dai'i" or a teacher of Islam. These Islamic teachers and scholars are even higher in the eyes of Allah (swt) than one who only sits at home and does ibaadah (worship). If they want to study law, why not Islamic Shariah? If they want to study science, why not Islamic Science? So this explains how people consider the worldly careers to be of higher value and are embarrassed to even express an interest in Islamic Studies. It is usually because they will not be considered as high as the other "educated" people. This is having the bad haya or "shame" of something that is encouraged to us by Allah (swt) and His Messenger (saw).

Another proof of bad haya is that which is extremely popular amongst many sisters in this western society, that is the issue of hijab and/or general behaviour in public. One of the most important aspects of haya, for women, is that of guarding their chastity and their modesty. To do this they must follow the order from Allah (swt) telling them to keep themselves and their adornments hidden from all men lawful to them in marriage. This order involves all the aspects of haya for those who do follow it – who wear hijaab. The believing women are ashamed of disobeying Allah (swt). They are shy of the opposite gender in this society and if men look at them and lastly they have haya because they feel shy about going out in public and committing this grave sin of displaying their beauty in public. There are many women in this society who claim that they have haya but to follow the order of hijab is backwards and that women in this society shouldn't have to cover. If someone really had haya they would never contradict what Allah (swt) had ordained, even if they found it a test and a trial.

A women's haya comes from her modesty and her shyness and her fear of Allah, so how can she have haya if she walks around in public un-veiled? The proof lies in the following hadith.
Abdullah ibn Umar (ra) narrated that the Prophet (saws) said:

"Indeed haya (modesty) and Iman are Companions. When one of them is lifted, the other leaves as well." (Baihaqi)

There are many verses in the Qur'an and many ahadith explaining the attitudes that go with observing Hijab. The Islamic Shariah has not stopped at giving the commandments of Hijab, it has also clarified every such thing which directly relates to these commandments and, with the slightest carelessness, may result in vulgarity and immodesty. In other words such things such as being too extrovert, loud, vulgar, bad mouthed, over confident, all have also been forbidden in order to close the doors to indecency and lewdness, in return providing a stronger pillar for haya.

Modesty (haya) and maintaining one's honour and dignity are of primary importance in preserving the moral fibre of any society. This is why modesty has been called “the ornament of a woman”, which protects her from many sins and which hopefully prevents ill-intentioned men from daring to have bad thoughts about her. This haya has been made a part of her nature.

Narrated on the authority of Anas bin Malik, the Prophet (saws) said:

“When lewdness is a part of anything, it becomes defective; and when haya is a part of anything it becomes beautiful.” (Tirmidhi)

So it is therefore obvious that Hijab plays an extremely important role in regards to Haya, for hijab reduces lewdness and Haya then backs this up and then a person's Iman becomes even stronger. So both things work together in a partnership. At the time of our beloved Prophet (saws) as soon as the verses of Hijab were revealed, all the men of the Quraish and Ansar ran home to their wives and daughters and close female relatives to tell them to cover themselves. The ones who had veils used them and the ones who did not have veils made some right away. For instance the following hadith tells us:

Narrated by Aisha (ra):

“May Allah have mercy on the early immigrant Muslim women. When the verse of the Quran "…they should draw their headscarves over their bosoms" was revealed, they tore their thick outer garments and made scarves from them. And when the verse "That they should cast their outer garments (jilbabs) over themselves" was revealed, the women of Ansar came out as if they had crows over their heads jilbabs” (Abu Dawood)

Yet, another hadith talks about the level of modesty in Aisha (ra): Narrated Aisha (ra):

"I used to enter my house where Allah's Messenger (peace be upon him) was and take off my garment, saying that only my husband and my father were there; but when Umar was buried along with them, I swear by Allah that I did not enter it without having my clothes wrapped round me owing to modesty regarding Umar. (even though he was dead)" (at-Tirmidhi and Ahmed)

People who are ignorant of the teachings of the Prophet (saws) do not concern themselves with Haya and Honour. Haya and Iman are interdependent; therefore either they both exist together or they both will perish. Thus, the Prophet (saws) has said in one hadith,

"When there is no haya left, then you will do as you please."

Today vulgarity and all its ingredients have become a common place even among Muslims. Indulging in indecency for so long has killed the sense of modesty (haya) which Islam had commanded them to preserve. It is this natural desire of maintaining one's honour which compels men to protect the respect and honour of their women. What these men and women do not understand is that if the women do not develop Haya inside of them, they will be entertaining those who have taken the path of Sheytan. Such as the following hadith:
Malik b Uhaimir reported that he heard the Prophet (saw) saying that,

"Allah (swt) will not accept any good deeds or worship of an immodest or vulgar person."

We asked "give us an example of a vulgar or immodest person?"

He replied, "A man who lets his wife be an entertainment (of the eyes or more) for non-mahram men"

Narrated by Al-Mughira:

Sa'd bin 'Ubada said, "I will not hesitate killing my wife with a sword if I see her with another man"

People were surprised. This news reached Allah's Apostle who then said,

"You people are astonished at Sa'd's Ghira (jealousy and protectiveness). By Allah, I have more Ghira than he" (Sahih Bukhari)

"Ghirah is an Arabic word which means protectiveness or jealousy. It is a good type of jealousy, like when a man feels jealous or protective over his wife or sisters and other-womenfolk and doesn't like other men to look at them. It is a natural inbuilt feeling Allah has given men and even for women (Gheerah for themselves). The Prophet had the most Ghirah for his wives and all of the companions were well known for their Gheerah. Also all Muslim men should have a collective sense of protectiveness for Muslim women as Allah says in the Qur'an: "The Men are the protectors and maintainers of women…" (Surah An-Nisaa, Ayah 34). Men who do not care about how their women behave and appear in front of other men and don't enforce hijaab upon their wives or women-folk are called Dayyooth. Being a Dayyooth is a major sin and a detailed discription of this evil characteristic can be found in adh-Dhahabee's book of Major Sins” (Kitaab ul-Kabaa'ir).

Sometimes the situation becomes as such that people will have done wrong/sins for such a long period of time that they will not be able to differentiate between shameful and pleasant things. Another way to put this is that, a person's exceeding indulgence in indecency in the past results in the loss of wisdom and the ability to see or understand Hayaa.

As the Prophet (saw) said:

"I have a sense of Honour. Only a person with a darkened heart is deprived of Honour."

There are many merits of Haya if one wants to know. Here are some just to list a few.

Firstly Allah loves Haya. We know this by the following hadith:

"He (Allah) loves haya and people who cover each others faults."(Bukhari)

Secondly, Haya itself is a Greatness of Islam as our Prophet indicated:

"Every way of life has an innate character. The character of Islam is haya." "Every Deen has an innate character. The character of Islam is modesty (haya)." (Abu Dawood)

Thirdly, Haya only brings good and nothing else. Our Prophet (saw) said:

"Haya does not bring anything except good." (Bukhari)

Fifthly, last but not least, Haya leads us to PARADISE. As the Prophet saws) told us:

"Haya comes from Iman; Iman leads to Paradise. Obscenity comes from antipathy; and antipathy leads to the fire." (Bukhari)

As we have said the actual word Haya is derived from Hayat. This means life. It is only obvious that when someone has Haya in them, they will LIVE a life of Islam. On the other hand if they do not have Haya they are living a life that is dead "Islamically" but alive according to this dunya.

The Prophet (saws) said: "Haya and Trustworthiness will be the first to go from this world; therefore keep asking Allah for them." (Baihaqi)

The Prophet said, "Faith consists of more than sixty branches. And Haya is a branch of faith." (Bukhari)

The Prophet said: "When vulgarity or lewdness is a part of anything, it becomes defective; and when hayaa is a part of anything it becomes beautiful." (Tirmidhi)

The Prophet said: "Indeed haya (Shyness) and Iman are Companions. When one of them is lifted, the other leaves as well." (Baihaqi)

The Prophet said that, "Allah will not accept any good deeds or worship of an immodest or vulgar person."

Remember Sa'ad bin 'Ubada said, "I will not hesitate a bit in killing my wife with a sword if I see her with another man”

Allah's Apostle who then said, "You people are astonished at Sa'ad's Ghira. By Allah, I have more Ghira than he" (Sahih Bukhari)

However Aisha (ra) stated the virtues of the women of the Ansaar, and said "shyness does not keep them from seeking (or teaching) knowledge " (Recorded by al-Bukhari)

ALL PRAISE BE TO ALLAH, AND MAY HIS PEACE AND BLESSINGS BE UPON MUHAMMAD (SAW), HIS FAMILY, HIS COMPANIONS AND HIS TRUE FOLLOWERS UNTIL THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT.

Footnotes:

1 Glossary of Islamic terms

2 Safi Khan, Selections from Sahih-ul-Bukhari

3 Kashif ul-Astar un-Zuwaid-ul-Barrar, pg.187

4 Ihyaa Uloom-ud-Deen (selected texts)

5 Firdous Al-Dailmi

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How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:14:16 +0200

A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects

George Monbiot, Tuesday August 28, 2007, The Guardian

For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.

These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.

When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it.

Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.

This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. In the US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab.

So the question is this: given that the crises I have listed are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?

Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that "we are all Keynesians now". Even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines of John Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Margaret Thatcher kept telling us that "there is no alternative", and by implementing her programmes Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of what were once progressive parties appear to prove her right.

The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.

Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very different quarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greater individual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the state as their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted their language and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notions almost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different, but the consequences very similar.

Hayek's disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. An early experiment took place in New York City, which was hit by budgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city follow their prescriptions - huge cuts in public services, smashing of the unions, public subsidies for business. In the UK, stagflation, strikes and budgetary breakdown allowed Thatcher, whose ideas were framed by her neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Her programme worked, but created a new set of crises.

If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and their backers would use bribery or force. In the US, the Democrats were neutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully for funding with the Republicans, they would have to give big business what it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implemented in Chile following Pinochet's coup, with the backing of the US government and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support for the project was easy: if you disagreed, you got shot. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power over developing nations to demand the same policies.

But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multimillionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those ideas which threaten their interests are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and TV channels that the socially destructive notions of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language (for an account of how this happens, see George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!). Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, job seekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all invented or promoted by neoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.

Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.

Monbiot.com

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The Israel lobby in America

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 16:24:16 +0200

In March 2007 the London Review of Books published John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's essay 'The Israel Lobby' below. The response to the article prompted the LRB to hold a debate under the heading 'The Israel lobby: does it have too much influence on American foreign policy?'. The debate took place in New York on 28 September in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union. The panellists were Shlomo Ben-Ami, Martin Indyk, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, John Mearsheimer and Dennis Ross, and the moderator was Anne-Marie Slaughter.A video of the event, produced by ScribeMedia, is now available to view online. Click here to view the debate.
The Israel Lobby John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
John Mearsheimer is the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and the author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics.

Stephen Walt is the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. His most recent book is Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy.

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby’. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel’s nuclear arsenal on the IAEA’s agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel’s side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy ‘step-by-step’ process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: ‘Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel’s lawyer.’ Finally, the Bush administration’s ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel’s strategic situation.

This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America’s proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.

Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America’s relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel’s armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.

The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by ‘rogue states’ that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America’s enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

‘Terrorism’ is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or ‘the West’; it is largely a response to Israel’s prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.

As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire.

A final reason to question Israel’s strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from ‘targeted assassinations’ of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called ‘a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers’. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also ‘conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally’. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.

Israel’s strategic value isn’t the only issue. Its backers also argue that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel’s conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel’s existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University’s Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, ‘the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.’ If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel’s opponents.

That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today.

Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a ‘neglectful and discriminatory’ manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights.

A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country’s creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

This was well understood by Israel’s early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:

If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians’ national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that ‘there is no such thing as a Palestinian.’ Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak’s purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does.

Israel’s backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel’s record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel’s subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that ‘23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.’ Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha’aretz to declare that ‘the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.’ The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’

The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn’t surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he ‘would have joined a terrorist organisation’.

So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America’s support for Israel, how are we to explain it?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use ‘the Lobby’ as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that ‘the Lobby’ is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ emotionally attached to Israel.

Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party’s expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups – such as Jewish Voice for Peace – strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to Israel.

Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, ‘it is routine for us to say: “This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think.” We as a community do it all the time.’ There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of ‘perfidy’ when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial ‘security fence’. His critics said that ‘it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.’

Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as ‘irresponsible’: ‘There is,’ his critics said, ‘absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.’ Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that ‘the word “pressure” is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.’

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington ‘muscle rankings’.

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel’s rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God’s will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.

In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers’ unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby’s activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby’s task even easier.

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker’s own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the ‘smart’ choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby’s effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: ‘My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.’ One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel’s interests.

Another source of the Lobby’s power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, ‘there are a lot of guys at the working level up here’ – on Capitol Hill – ‘who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.’

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby’s influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had ‘displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns’. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: ‘All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.’

AIPAC’s influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, ‘it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.’ More important, he notes that AIPAC is ‘often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes’.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, ‘you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.’ Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, ‘when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: “Help AIPAC.”’

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates ‘depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money’. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.

Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.

When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more ‘even-handed role’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was ‘irresponsible’. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean’s remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that ‘anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.’

This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to ‘bring the sides together’, Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn’t tolerate even-handedness.

During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton’s closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were ‘negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag’.

The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis (‘Scooter’) Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby.

The Lobby doesn’t want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.

The Lobby’s perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is ‘dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel’. He lists 61 ‘columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without qualification’. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one.

‘Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,’ Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn.

Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his memoirs the paper’s former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: ‘I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.’

News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel’s actions on the ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.

The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a ‘balanced and realistic’ perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel’s agenda.

The Lobby’s influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.

Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings’s coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre’s director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.

Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo’s collapse and Sharon’s access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to subdue the second intifada.

The Lobby moved immediately to ‘take back the campuses’. New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put Israel’s case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to ‘vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national pro-Israel effort’.

The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report ‘anti-Israel’ activity.

Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. ‘One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him,’ Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.

A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia’s Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had ‘responded heatedly’ to a student’s question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.

A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel’s image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the ‘Arabic [sic] point of view’ that he thinks is prevalent in NYU’s Middle East programmes.

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America’s ‘Jewish Lobby’. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It’s a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.

Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. We are ‘getting to a point’, the US ambassador to the EU said in early 2004, ‘where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s’. Measuring anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-semitism filled the air in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the 1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of all classes but considered quite acceptable.

The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said that ‘France is not more anti-semitic than America.’ According to a recent article in Ha’aretz, the French police have reported that anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim’s memorial service to show their solidarity.

No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel’s conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor would anyone deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-semites in Europe (as there are in the United States) but their numbers are small and their views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans.

Israel’s advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that there is a ‘new anti-semitism’, which they equate with criticism of Israel. In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief Rabbi complained that this would ‘have the most adverse repercussions on . . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain’, while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: ‘There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist – verging on anti-semitic – attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.’ But the Church was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy.

Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human rights, to international law and to the principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds.

In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting Israel’s expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60 per cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among the ‘politically active’. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour either side.

Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel’s own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the situation: ‘Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.’ The main reason for this switch was the Lobby.

The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat’s leadership. Bush even said publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed, Sharon accused him of trying ‘to appease the Arabs at our expense’, warning that Israel ‘will not be Czechoslovakia’.

Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White House press secretary called Sharon’s remarks ‘unacceptable’. Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real difference between Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should isolate the Palestinians’ elected leader and have nothing to do with him.

The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter ‘stemmed’ from a meeting two weeks before between ‘leaders of the American Jewish community and key senators’, adding that AIPAC was ‘particularly active in providing advice on the letter’.

By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby’s efforts, but also to America’s initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush.

In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel’s actions would damage America’s image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon ‘halt the incursions and begin withdrawal’. He underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to ‘withdraw without delay’. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, told reporters: ‘“Without delay” means without delay. It means now.’ That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating.

Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the vice-president’s office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They even accused him of having ‘virtually obliterated the distinction between terrorists and those fighting terrorists’. Bush himself was being pressed by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush to back off.

The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April – a week after he told Sharon to withdraw his forces – when the White House press secretary said that the president believed Sharon was ‘a man of peace’. Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell’s return from his abortive mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing, but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue of it.

Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it overrode the administration’s objections and passed two resolutions reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the United States ‘stands in solidarity with Israel’ and that the two countries were, to quote the House resolution, ‘now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism’. The House version also condemned ‘the ongoing support and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat’, who was portrayed as a central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200 million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby backed it and Powell lost.

In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, reported that Sharon’s aides ‘could not hide their satisfaction in view of Powell’s failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush’s eyes, they bragged, and the president blinked first.’ But it was Israel’s champions in the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key role in defeating Bush.

The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on ‘disengagement’ from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian people, Sharon’s strategy contributed directly to Hamas’s electoral victory. With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate. The US administration has supported Sharon’s actions (and those of his successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson.

US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush ‘wrapped around his little finger’, the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress. Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life, which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today.

Maintaining US support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration’s policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the ‘real threat’ from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The ‘unstated threat’ was the ‘threat against Israel’, Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. ‘The American government,’ he added, ‘doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.’

On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that ‘Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.’ By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached ‘unprecedented dimensions’, and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq’s WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, ‘Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq’s non-conventional capabilities.’

Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. ‘The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,’ Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. ‘Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.’

At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that ‘the greatest risk now lies in inaction.’ His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: ‘The Case for Toppling Saddam’. ‘Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,’ he declared. ‘I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam’s regime.’ Or as Ha’aretz reported in February 2003, ‘the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.’

As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to Israel’s leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world where both politicians and public favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, ‘Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.’ In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel’s behalf.

Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby’s major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. ‘As President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,’ the Forward reported, ‘America’s most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.’ The editorial goes on to say that ‘concern for Israel’s safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.’

Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that ‘a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.’ Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on ‘Jewish influence’. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby’s influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it.

The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam’s removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with developing concrete plans for an invasion.

Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. We don’t have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff – Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration – also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.

Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government. On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and their allies published another open letter: ‘Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,’ it read, ‘any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.’ The letter also reminded Bush that ‘Israel has been and remains America’s staunchest ally against international terrorism.’ In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in the Washington Post that after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq: ‘The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad,’ when we finish off ‘the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world’.

This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to win support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if Saddam posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell’s now discredited briefing to the UN Security Council. Within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American with close ties to Perle. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans, was given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the war. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks. Both these organisations were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Douglas Feith.

Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the 1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote the famous ‘Clean Break’ report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu ‘focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right’. It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle ‘are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests’.

Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as ‘the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration’, and selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who ‘have consciously pursued Jewish activism’. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promo

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Children find food wrapped in McDonald's packaging 'six times tastier'

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:41:12 +0200

By FIONA MacRAE -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=473616&in_page_id=1770

McDonald's: 'up to six times more appetising than identical snacks in plain wrappers'

Children find food in McDonald's packaging up to six times more appetising than the identical snacks in plain wrappers, research shows.

The study, designed to gauge the power of advertising, revealed that boys and girls as young as three found food tastier when they thought it was made by a big brand.

The phenomenon is not just restricted to fast foods, with youngsters finding that milk and carrots tastier when they believed they had been bought at McDonald's.

The research, carried at Stanford University in the US, comes amid growing concern about the influence of advertising on children's health.

Child obesity rates have trebled over the last 20 years, with 10 per cent of six-year-olds and 17 per cent of 15-year-olds now obese.

By 2050, half of all primary school-age boys and a fifth of girls could be so overweight that their health is at serious risk.

Experts have warned that unless the Government acts now, an entire generation faces an old age blighted by heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases brought on by obesity, with today's children dying at a younger age than their parents.

Since April, junk food manufacturers have been banned from advertising their products during TV programmes targeted at under-16s.

However, critics claim the ban doesn't go far enough and point out that manufacturers are increasingly advertising on the internet.

Child obesity rates have trebled over the last 20 years

Now, research shows just how powerful advertising is.

During the study, the researchers asked children aged between three and five to rate five foods for tastiness.

Each child was given two samples of each food, one in McDonalds packaging and one in plain wrapping. Other than the packaging, the samples were identical.

The researchers said that if the children weren't influenced by branding, they would find both samples equally tasty.

However, this was far from the case, with the McDonald's-wrapped food judged far more appealing.

The 'McDonald's' fries were judged tastiest by six times as many children as found the plain packaged chips the most appetising.

Chips and chicken nuggets carrying fast food branding were also deemed more tasty.

Even milk and carrots, foods not traditionally associated with McDonald's, were gauged more appealing when carrying the chain's logo.

Further analysis showed that the link was strongest among children who ate fast food more often and among those with more than one TV set at home.

Writing in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, the researchers said that previous studies had shown that children as young as two are aware of brands.

They added: "These results add evidence to support recommendations to regulate or ban advertising of the marketing of high-calorie, low-nutrient foods and beverages, or all marketing that is directed to young children."

Clever branding could also be used to encourage children to eat fruit and vegetables.

The researchers said: "Our findings also suggest a need for research on marketing in general, and branding in particular, as strategies to promote more healthful taste preferences and food and beverage choices in young children."

Tam Fry, of the Child Growth Foundation said the study underlined the importance of teaching even the youngest children about healthy eating.

He added: "Gaudy, colourful packaging is tremendously attractive, and if we could do the same with broccoli, it would be wonderful."

McDonald's said it actively tries to promote healthy food to children.

Comments

C4 'distorted' mosque programme

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:07:18 +0200

Channel 4 aired the Dispatches 'Undercover Mosque' show in January

Police are reporting Channel 4 to the media regulator Ofcom over the way an undercover programme was edited.

Police asked the CPS to consider a prosecution of Channel 4 under the Public Order Act 1986 for showing material likely to stir up racial hatred

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/6936681.stm

Charges will not be brought against preachers featured in Dispatches, which tackled claims of Islamic extremism.

West Midlands Police carried out its own inquiry into three speakers in the Undercover Mosque broadcast, and then into the programme-makers themselves.

The Crown Prosecution Service said the show "completely distorted" what the trio said, a claim Channel 4 rejects.

Kevin Sutcliffe, commissioning editor for Dispatches, said West Midlands police had produced no evidence to support their claims.

"We find it extraordinary that they have gone public on these concerns without discussing them with us first," he said.

"We believe the comments made in the film speak for themselves - several speakers were clearly shown making abhorrent and extreme comments."

He said the one-hour documentary, which was made over a nine-month period and broadcast in January, allowed comment to be seen in a fuller context.

"All the speakers featured in the film were offered a right to reply and none denied making these comments, nor have any of them complained to Ofcom to our knowledge."

Bombings "justified"

The Metropolitan Police said on Wednesday that a second Dispatches programme was also being investigated.

Britain Under Attack featured a man known as "Abu Mohammed".

He disguised his face with a scarf in the programme, which was shown on Monday, and said British Muslims were in "a state of war" and the 7 July bombings were "justified".

A Met spokesman said: "We are assessing the content of a Dispatches programme broadcast on Monday 6 August to determine if any offences may have been disclosed."

The spokesman said it was too early to say whether officers were investigating the people shown in the broadcast or the programme-makers.

The January programme infiltrated a number of mosques, one of which was Green Lane Mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham.

'Moderate tradition'

It investigated mosques run by organisations claiming to be dedicated to moderation.

Abu Usamah, one of the preachers from Green Lane Mosque featured in the programme, said he was shocked when he saw himself depicted.

"It was the fact that Green Lane Mosque has a 33-year-old tradition of preaching and teaching the moderate version of Islam.

"To try and demonise the efforts of these people by taking their comments out of context was shocking."

Mr Usamah said he had been featured as saying homosexuals should be thrown from a mountain when in fact he was explaining it was an opinion featured in some books, which was not one he believed.

An undercover reporter claimed to provide evidence that certain speakers preached messages of religious bigotry and extremism.

In a piece about the programme, the Channel 4 Dispatches website said a reporter had attended talks at mosques and found preachers "condemning the idea of integration into British society, condemning British democracy as un-Islamic and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers".

Police said they acknowledged some parts of the programme may have been considered offensive, but, when analysed in full context, there was not enough evidence to bring charges.

'Completely distorted'

The police investigation was extended to include looking at issues relating to the editing of the programme.

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer Bethan David scrutinised 56 hours of media footage, only some of which was used in the broadcast.

She said: "The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying.

"The CPS has demonstrated it will not hesitate to prosecute those responsible for criminal incitement.

"But in this case we have been dealing with a heavily-edited television programme, apparently taking out of context aspects of speeches which in their totality could never provide a realistic prospect of any convictions."

Police asked the CPS to consider a prosecution of Channel 4 under the Public Order Act 1986 for showing material likely to stir up racial hatred, but they were advised there was insufficient evidence.

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Sexual Intimacy in Islam

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 17:52:17 +0200

Show Plan - Show aired in September 2006

GUEST FROM RELATE (Non-Muslim)

Dr Jameel Rahmaan, Representative from Hizb ut-Tahrir

and on the phone RUQAYYAH WARIS MAQSOOD THE AUTHOR OF THE BOOK “THE MUSLIM MARRIAGE GUIDE”

Questions:

What is your perception of how muslim's view intimacy between husband and wife.

a) Is the whole topic a taboo

b) a necessary evil similar to the concepts of the “sins of the flesh” and something you are not supposed to enjoy, i.e. only to have children

c) something of the duniya and not related to the akhira.

d) unholy

e) austere

Where have these perceptions come from?

a) monoasticism

b) ascetism (not sufism)

c) separation of the spiritual material world

Are there parallells with other religions eg catholicism, monasticism, secularism.
Do many muslims especially Imaams, leaders etc contribute to this perception of imtimacy in Islam?
Do you think this partly because people see a separation between deen and dunya, and therefore you have to choose between one or the other (because they are mutually exclusive)
We’ve heard dawah carriers promoting this idea of separation between deen and dunya, how would you advise them to do otherwise?
Do you think the idea of secularism, encouraged this ‘separation of the “dunya”’ mentality further.
What common notions are there amongst muslims

e.g. not allowed to be naked together

e.g. not allowed to look at each others bodies

e.g. to get it over and done with quickly regardless of whether the woman is fulfilled or not

e.g. no loving contact with a woman when she is menstruating because she is “dirty” v.s ghayr muttwadhiyah?

Definitions:

What does Islam say?

● Islam does not frown or class as unholy any natural instinct or desire (fitrah), rather it comes to organise and satisfy it, via the Shariah.

● Wedding night

● Foreplay

● Satisfaction of a woman

● Reward

● Not shameful

● Education of the youth

● Marriage as a solution

● Despite openness, not allowed to publicise what goes on in the bedroom between husband and wife (ex advise).

Islam does not frown or class as unholy any natural instinct or desire, rather it recognises natural desire, and came to organise and satisfy it, via the Shariah.

Allah (swt) says in the Quran:

Wedding night

Foreplay

Satisfaction of a woman

Menstruation

It is forbidden to have vaginal intercourse while a woman is menstruating

Narrated in Sahih Muslim, the Prophet (SAW) commented about the meaning of keeping aloof in the above verse by saying: “Do everything except intercourse”. (Sahih Muslim)

Reward

Marriage as a solution

The prophet (s) said that "Those of you who can afford it, should marry, otherwise you should keep fasting, for it curbs the desires" (Ibn Massoud)

Despite openness, not allowed to publicise what goes on in the bedroom

"Do not divulge secrets of your sex with your wife to another person, nor describe her physical feature to anyone".

In Conclusion:

Comments

Airline Hijack Liquid Explosives Plot 'leader' Charges dropped!

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:34:08 +0200

Where now are all the headlines about this case to reverse the extreme demonisation of our community as a result of this case and many others in the media? I have a sneaking suspicion that this man was tortured by Pakistani intelligence leading him to confess to anything they suggested to stop his pain. This is the problem with the current position of many western governments including Blair's; that evidence potentially extracted by torture can be utilised.

UK 'plot' terror charge dropped
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6175427.stm

A Pakistani judge has ruled there is not enough evidence to try a key suspect in an alleged airline bomb plot on terrorism charges.

He has moved the case of Rashid Rauf, a Briton, from an anti-terrorism court to a regular court, where he faces lesser charges such as forgery.

Pakistan has presented Mr Rauf as one of the ringleaders behind the alleged plan to blow up flights out of London.

The British authorities say they foiled it with Pakistan's help in August.

They say proceedings against suspects arrested in Britain will go ahead.

The alleged plot prompted a massive security clampdown at airports

'Explosives'

The arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan triggered arrests in the United Kingdom of a number of suspects allegedly plotting to blow up transatlantic flights.

The Pakistani authorities described him as a key figure.

But an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi found no evidence that he had been involved in terrorist activities or that he belonged to a terrorist organisation.

As well as forgery charges, Mr Rauf has also been charged with carrying explosives.

But his lawyer says police evidence amounts only to bottles of hydrogen peroxide found in his possession.

Hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant that can be used for bomb-making if other chemicals are added.

The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says the judge's decision has reinforced the already widespread scepticism there about the airliner plot.

Several commentators said the threat was deliberately exaggerated to bolster the anti-terror credentials of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and that it helped to demonise British Muslims of Pakistani origin.

The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK said the dropping of charges against Mr Rauf in Pakistan would "make no difference" to the case against the men charged in Britain.

'Suspected conspiracy'

In August, the British government requested the extradition of Mr Rauf, a Briton of Pakistani origin who returned to Pakistan four years ago, in connection with a 2002 murder.

Scotland Yard declined to discuss which murder case the request related to.

The government in Pakistan, which has no extradition treaty with the UK, said it was considering the request.

Rashid Rauf was arrested in Pakistan earlier that month over the alleged plot to blow up US-bound aircraft, Pakistan's foreign ministry said.

He has been described by Pakistan's government as a "key person" in the "suspected conspiracy".

The August arrests led to increased airport security around the world, causing major disruption.

Passengers on many flights were forbidden to take liquids aboard aircraft.

Comments

BNP supporters found with rocket launchers, chemical weapons, and explosives, but The Mail doesn't blink an eye lid

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:33:53 +0200

If the news story doesn't confirm the current anti-Muslim narrative, ignore it in the mainstream media.......

http://www.pendletoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=8&ArticleID=1806619

Chemicals Find: Two In Court

TWO Pendle men have appeared before Pennine magistrates accused of having "a master plan" after what is believed to be a record haul of chemicals used in making home-made bombs was found in Colne.

Robert Cottage (49), of Talbot Street, Colne, and David Bolus Jackson (62), of Trent Road, Nelson, made separate appearances before the court charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose. The offences are under the Explosive Substances Act 1883.

Both men were remanded in custody to appear at Burnley Crown Court on October 23rd. Cottage was arrested at his home on Thursday, while retired dentist Jackson was arrested in the Lancaster area on Friday, the same day as he left a dental practice in Grange-over-Sands.

The 22 chemical components recovered by police are believed to be the largest haul ever found at a house in this country. Cottage is an ex-BNP member who stood as a candidate in the Pendle Council elections in May. Mrs Christiana Buchanan, who appeared for the prosecution in Jackson's case, alleged the pair had "some kind of masterplan". She said a search of Jackson's home had uncovered rocket launchers, chemicals, BNP literature and a nuclear biological suit.

Police raided Cottage's Talbot Street home on Thursday of last week. The house was taped off while forensics officers searched the premises. Neighbours were told to stay in their homes for their own safety. Mr Cottage's car was also taken away for examination. Officers also made a thorough examination of Jackson's Trent Road home and, again, officers were on duty outside the house. Forensics officers examined the property.

06 October 2006

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Guardian: If this onslaught was about Jews, I would be looking for my Passport

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:31:08 +0200

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday October 18, 2006

Politicians and media have turned a debate about integration into an ugly drumbeat of hysteria against British Muslims

I've been trying to imagine what it must be like to be a Muslim in Britain. I guess there's a sense of dread about switching on the radio or television, even about walking into a newsagents. What will they be saying about us today? Will we be under assault for the way we dress? Or the schools we go to, or the mosques we build? Who will be on the front page: a terror suspect, a woman in a veil or, the best of both worlds, a veiled terror suspect.

Don't laugh. Last week the Times splashed on "Suspect in terror hunt used veil to evade arrest". That sat alongside yesterday's lead in the Daily Express: "Veil should be banned say 98%". Nearly all those who rang the Express agreed that "a restriction would help to safeguard racial harmony and improve communication". At the weekend the Sunday Telegraph led on "Tories accuse Muslims of 'creating apartheid by shutting themselves off' ".

That's how it's been almost every day since Jack Straw raised the matter of the veil nearly two weeks ago. Even before, Muslims could barely open a paper without seeing themselves on the front of it. David Cameron's speech to the Tories a week earlier was trailed in advance as an appeal for Muslims to open up their single-faith schools: "Ban Muslim ghettos" was one headline.

Taken alone, each one of these topics could be the topic of a thoughtful, nuanced debate. The veil, for example, has found feminists among both its champions and critics, proving that it's no straightforward matter. There should be nothing automatically anti-Muslim about raising the subject, not least since many Muslim women question the niqab themselves.

Similarly, Ruth Kelly was hardly out of line in suggesting, as she did last week, that the government needs to be careful about which Muslim groups it funds and with whom it engages, ensuring it leans towards those who are actively "tackling extremism". Other things being equal, that was a perfectly sensible thing to say.

Except other things are not equal. Each one of these perfectly rational subjects, taken together, has created a perfectly irrational mood: a kind of drumbeat of hysteria in which both politicians and media have turned again and again on a single, small minority, first prodding them, then pounding them as if they represented the single biggest problem in national life.

The result is turning ugly and has, predictably, spilled on to the streets. Muslim organisations report a surge in physical and verbal attacks on Muslims; women have had their head coverings removed by force. A mosque in Falkirk was firebombed while another in Preston was attacked by a gang throwing bricks and concrete blocks.

Of course, such violence would be condemned by any politician asked about it. But a climate is developing here and every time a politician raises a question that would, on its own and in the quiet of the seminar room, be legitimate for debate, they are adding to it. They should feel shame for their reckless spraying of petrol on a growing blaze. Instead they applaud themselves, and are applauded in the press, for their bravery in daring to say what needs to be said.

In fact, the courageous politician would refuse to join this open season on Muslims and seek to cool things down - beginning with an explanation of how we got here. The elements include many of those that feature in any build-up of hostility to a single, derided group, here or across the world.

The foundation is fear. Many Britons have since 9/11, and especially since July 7, come to fear their Muslim neighbours: they worry that the young man next to them on the train might have more than an extra sweater in his backpack. Next comes ignorance, a simple lack of knowledge about Muslim life which leaves non-Muslims open to all kinds of misconceptions. That feeds into a simple discomfort, personified, in its most extreme form, by a woman whose face we cannot see.

What's more, the set of issues that Islam raises for Britain are ones that do not break down on the usual ideological lines, allowing liberals and traditional anti-racists reflexively to line up alongside Muslims. The veil, and the queasiness it stirs in many feminists, is one example. Faith schools are another, prompting the ardent secularist to feel a sympathy for the government position that ordinarily would come more slowly. The result is that the Muslim community finds itself suddenly friendless. When it came to opposing the war in Iraq, British Muslims had no shortage of allies, but they face the latest bombardment virtually alone.

Muslims are not entirely passive in this drama. For one thing, the tiny handful of Islamist groups such as al-Ghurabaa or the Saviour Sect tend to confirm the wildest prejudices of those who fear Islam: they glorify those who kill civilians, they show contempt for democracy and declare that, yes, they are indeed determined to transform Britain into an Islamic state. Every time they open their mouths, life for Muslims in Britain gets harder. (Which is why the Today programme had no business giving over the prestigious 8.10am slot to Omar Brooks, whose sole qualification was his heckling of John Reid the previous day.)

The majority of British Muslims could have done themselves a favour if they had found a way to show just how unrepresentative Brooks and his ilk are. How powerful it would have been if, after 7/7, hundreds of thousands of British Muslims had taken to the streets to repudiate utterly the four bombers who had killed in the name of Islam. The model might have been the 2000 Basque march in Bilbao in protest against ETA violence. Or perhaps the 1992 funeral of an assassinated anti-mafia judge in Palermo, which turned into a rally of Sicilians against the crime organisation. The slogan for the British Muslim equivalent would have been obvious: Not in our name.

But Muslims would be right to reply that they should be under no more obligation to distance themselves from the 7/7 bombers than Britain's Irish community were expected to denounce the IRA in the 1970s and 1980s. And this, too, is a prime task for politicians and media alike - to distinguish between radical, violent Islamism and mainstream British Islam. Too often, the line between the two gets blurred, lazily and casually. Helpfully, the 1990 Trust yesterday published a survey which deserves wide dissemination. They found that the number of Muslims who believed acts of terrorism against civilians in the UK were justified was between 1% and 2%. Not good, but less than the 20% or higher found by some newspaper polls. The trust reckons those earlier polls asked a loaded question - and got a highly charged answer.

Politicians and media need to be similarly careful when discussing multiculturalism, refusing to play to those who believe it means a licence to secession and Balkanisation. It doesn't. Multiculturalism means allowing every group its own distinct identity and, at the same time, seeking an integrated Britishness we all share. Tony Blair was correct yesterday to say that the goal, never easy, is "getting the balance right".

Right now, we're getting it badly wrong - bombarding Muslims with pressure and prejudice, laying one social problem after another at their door. I try to imagine how I would feel if this rainstorm of headlines substituted the word "Jew" for "Muslim": Jews creating apartheid, Jews whose strange customs and costume should be banned. I wouldn't just feel frightened. I would be looking for my passport.

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Scrap Pakistan's pro-rape 'hudood' laws, & liberate women from servitude to men!

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:30:54 +0200

The implementation of Pakistan's hudood laws are an affront to Islam, and have blackened the name of Islam and its system of Shariah.

In the Sunni Islamic System, especially in the Sunni Hanafi school of Shariah, which is one of the four legal schools of law in Sunni Islam, all of which are very similar:

Women are not punished for zina for being raped or reporting the rape, even if the accusation is false, it does not come under the jurisdiction of Zina laws, but rather, under the laws of false testimony.

Women would not be killed or beaten for refusing to marry a husband chosen by others i.e. 'honour' crimes (see Forced Marriage), this is considered murder in Islam but has unfortunately been tacitly approved by some Pakistani senators in the past.

Women would not be wrongly lashed under false Zina laws (such as those in Pakistan) for doing an Islamic Nikah via the Qadi with a husband outside of their caste or tribe or against the wishes of parents (see Forced Marriage), and any resulting so called 'honour crimes' would be treated as murder under Shariah.

If a husband beats his wife generally or for seeking sex, she can seek redress, or divorce in the courts, provided the physical evidence exists.

Women would be allowed to independently seek a divorce or annulment of marriage via the courts.

Laws of adultery would equally apply to men and women, only if 4 eye witnesses exist to the seeing of the penetrative act itself, and if 4 witnesses do not exist it would be thrown out of court. Women would not be held incommunicado in prison until it is proven they didn't do zina like in Pakistan, where the accusers of chaste women make accusations regularly for revenge against a family or in family feuds & women are held in detention for no other reason than the accusation. Actually in Islam the accusers would be punished for accusing the women.

Default custody of children is to the mother not the father.

Making victims' families pay blood-money to execute the penalty on the convicted criminal perpetrator would be abolished. Why should victims pay blood money so that the perpetrator of the crime against them can be punished? (as happened in Iran)

As Muslims men and women do not serve each other, but we both together as brothers and sisters serve our Creator, Allah. Women were not sent on this earth to serve men, but we were both placed on this earth for Allah's purpose and act as companions in this purpose, not rivals, or subjects.

Allah (swt) says in the Quran:

"And among His Signs is this, that He created for you spouses from among yourselves, that you may dwell in peace and tranquillity with them, and he has put love and mercy between your hearts: truly in that are Signs for those who reflect intelligently." (Surat ar-Room:21)

Our Prophet Muhammad (saw) said:

"Women are twin halves of men." (Kanz)

and said:

“O people, your wives have a certain right over you and you have certain rights over them. Treat them well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.” (Tirmidhi)

Hadrat Salman (Ra) said infront of the prophet:

“Give everyone who has a right; their full rights completely.”

The Messenger of Allah (saw) said: “Salman spoke the truth,” when he heard this.
(Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim)

We are happy to furnish people with the evidences from the Quran and Sunnah for those who doubt the above points. It is a shame the so called Islamic groups in Pakistan haven’t managed to take the initiative on these issues before the secularist crusaders have.

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Ijtihad: Applying Islam in the 21st century

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 14:14:26 +0200

The subject of ijtihad occupies a recurring theme across much contemporary Islamic literature. A tool employed by Islamic jurists, it holds the key to Islam's continual relevance and to defining an Islamic approach for solving problems in a post-modern world. Akmal Asghar provides an overview of ijtihad and its role in presenting an Islamic alternative.

"Islam has long vanished from the stage of history, and has retreated into oriental ease and repose", were the words of the German philosopher George Friedrich Hegel in the middle of the nineteenth century. But as Martin Kramer, senior associate of the Moshe Dayan Centre at Tel Aviv University, remarks at Hegel's 'endist' predictions, "The persistent refusal of Islam to do just that
remains one of the principal flaws of 'endism,' from Hegel to this day…"

It's certainly true, despite emerging fifteen centuries ago, Islam features considerably in current global politics and has far from vanished. The phenomenon of movements advocating a 'revival' of seventh century Islam can be perplexing and their stated goal - an Islamic rule - lends itself to a number of possible criticisms. Among the most obvious is the question of Islam's ability to tackle issues in a world vastly different to the one that first received it. As Olivier Roy describes in his book 'The Failure of Political Islam', "The irruption of Islam into the political landscape is often perceived as an anachronism; how is it possible, late in the twentieth century, to return to the Middle Ages?" It is a genuine challenge. How does Islam deal with the rapid advances in science and technology, institutions of the post-modern world or social, economic and political trends? If Islam were unable to handle the complexities of contemporary life, it may indeed produce an outdated medieval system, causing its adherents to deny the fruits of current modernity.

Time alone, however, is not enough to render an idea invalid. The revival of ancient Greek philosophy, art and culture was termed a 'renaissance' in Europe. Many of the foundations of the West's contemporary intellectual and political tradition are associated with three millennia-old discourses still considered valid in the twenty first century. Indeed, a number of English legal statutes still in use, such as the Treason Act of 1351, date back many centuries; English common law emerged in the Middle Ages, taking from Roman law and influenced by Norman and Saxon
custom; the US Bill of Rights, passed in 1791, reflects the guarantee of due process given by the Magna Carta in1215 and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Even if only by way of example, it appears that Western scholars and jurists are willing to accept that old ideas can have a place in - indeed define - the modern world, and so comparably, the fact that Islam emerged in seventh century Arabia is not in itself cause to suggest its inapplicability.

Some propose that Islam's continual relevance can only come through its reform. However, the keyword for Islam's applicability in the twenty first century is not reform (islah), but the Islamic concept of ijtihad. While reform implicitly discounts the validity of an idea through suggesting that it is in need of alteration, ijtihad tackles contemporary problems using Islam's original principles and rules; it does not demand their alteration but their application.

Indeed, the subject of ijtihad addresses two important questions regarding Islam's continual relevance that are often thought to support reasons for its reform. Firstly, the specificity of Islam to the circumstances of seventh century Arabia and, secondly, the ability for the finite body of Islamic texts left by the Prophet of Islam (peace be upon him) to address ever changing human problems.

Regarding the first, Islam's legislative rules and principles are founded on a doctrine that views problems as extending from the needs of human beings as human beings. That is to say, not in their racial, regional or tribal context, or as a reaction to a particular social condition; or as Muslims or non-Muslims, but as human beings. It is only a specific doctrine inasmuch as it is specific to all human beings. It is a timeless conception of the human condition, for it is not man's nature that changes with the passage of time, but his material circumstances; the complexity of material and technology, which develop through continuous scientific endeavour.

Man's innate needs, whether basic organic requirements such as the need for food, clothing and shelter or basic instinctual drives such as survival, justice and security, remain consistent. Furthermore, the needs that extend from this basic constitution such as the need to regulate political, social and economic relationships individually or collectively are also seen to exist across the expanse of human history. Though their manifestations may change, it could not be said that
new needs have manifested or that the existing ones always increase, either in complexity or propensity. New world-views, thoughts and beliefs may develop over time and emerge at various points in human history, but these too do not represent a shift in man's fundamental nature, intellect or needs. Since the Islamic system addresses problems as demands extending from this consistent human nature, it is continually applicable and a consistent source of solutions for tackling human problems.

Indeed, it is not thoughts, but things that time may render obsolete. An idea is invalidated by identifying its intellectual shortcomings whereas material things are replaced and considered obsolete as scientific and engineering progress produces increasing material sophistication.

Ijtihad is a legal tool employed by jurists to extract legislation for any number of new problems from the original Islamic texts. It is a defined process established by Mohammed (peace be upon him) during his lifetime and allows the finite body of Islamic texts to address, in detail, previously unfamiliar events. The key aspects of ijtihad that make this possible relate to analogy and to a process of linking the subject matter of contemporary problems with similar occurrences in the Islamic texts and precepts. The pivotal role of analogy in the process ijtihad is such that the leading Islamic jurist Mohammed Idris al-Shafi'i, in his book al-Risalah, went as far as to equate the two: "…and ijtihad is qiyas (analogy)". More broadly, ijtihad consists of three general stages: first, to objectively understand in detail the reality of the problem, question or dilemma for which a solution is sought, which may demand specific knowledge if relating to a particular area of expertise, for example, relevant scientific competence if tackling issues relating to stem cell research, or economic and financial expertise if evaluating a complex financial product; second, to identify the Islamic texts, concepts and laws which discuss a relevant, or similar, subject matter; third, to analogise between the current issue and the relevant texts in the original Islamic sources to identify similarities and differences, and through a process of weighing these similarities and differences
extract a position on the current issue. Each element is considerably more elaborate and requires expertise and competence in Islamic jurisprudence, the sciences of Islamic sources, and of Islamic legal maxims, legal principles and specific legal definitions. The competence to apply the process of ijtihad defines an Islamic scholar (mujtahid), but the process is not reserved to a priestly class or clergy. The qualification is open to all, men and women, who wish to gain sufficient
competence in Islamic jurisprudence to practise ijtihad and to work as a judge, advocate or legal expert.

The scope of ijtihad, it is important to note, does not extend to things, including the products of scientific and technological progress; the general principle is that they are useable without restriction. They are only addressed when specific questions about their use gives rise to other human problems. For example, in developments relating to genetic engineering, the technology is not rejected, but its use may be defined to prevent human cloning due to its impact on marriage and genealogy.

The substantial progress many historians note in early Islamic history was made possible through the continuous use of Ijtihad. It allowed the Caliphate to tackle numerous political, social and economic problems that had not previously confronted the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). The expansion of its territories brought it into contact with foreign cultures and differing political structures, whether those of Greek, Persian or south Asian origin, in the second century of the Hijri calendar (ninth century CE), and with it their customs, traditions and practices, and their own models of organising and regulating society. This expansion created parallel internal challenges whether relating to the rights, distribution or productivity of land; the rights of minorities or the administration of the expanding state apparatus, with its specific questions about qualifications for rule, organisation of the judiciary, accountability, ascension and removal of people
from posts of power. Indeed, these foreign and internal challenges acted to provide a continuous demand for the use of ijtihad, to develop perspectives and provide a legislative framework with which to deal with them. It produced a rich and healthy legislative, political and intellectual atmosphere and with it generations of some of the most accomplished mujtahids, both Shiah and Sunni, in Islamic history. Among them, the Kufi (Iraqi) Imams such as Numan bin Thabit ('Abu Hanifah'), North Africans such as al-Layth ibn Sa'd, Arabs such as Malik ibn Anas and Mohammed Shafi'i, and later Andalusians, such as ibn Hazm, Central Asians and many others, whose impact has been such that much of the body of Islamic jurisprudence lies, to this day, within the framework of their endeavours.

Indeed, the absence of ijtihad would have been debilitating, positively paralysing, for the progress of the Islamic world historically. And it is exactly why when its use slowly declined from the tenth century and when, in the thirteenth century after the destruction of the seat of learning in Baghdad by the Mongols, it was suggested that its use be discontinued - an event of commonly referred to as 'the closure of the gates of Ijtihad' by Islamic historians - the Islamic world fell into a slow decline.
The loss of ijtihad amounted to a denial of oxygen to the bloodstream of the legislative and political processes in the Islamic world, rendering the Caliphate incapacitated in the face of new problems and challenges. For a while, jurists relied on annotating the conclusions of previous jurists, far removed from the primary Islamic legislative texts, a practice that promoted imitation (taqlid) (among legally qualified scholars) and stifled thinking.

But when confronted with a European mindset distinctly more ideological than the one confronted in its siege of Vienna, Europe having gone through 'enlightenment', the extent of the decline in the Islamic world became apparent. Unable to respond to the intellectual and technological challenges it now confronted, the Caliphate, due to the absence of ijtihad, failed to clearly evaluate its position on a number of fronts. This produced the bizarre situation during the nineteenth century where, on the one hand, European legislative codes were being introduced in their swathes while on the other, the Caliphate initially rejected inventions as simple as the printing press. The Islamic world, therefore, was in no position to present Islam's alternative political philosophy, and some interpreted events as highlighting deficiencies within Islam itself; indeed numerous individuals set about advocating its reform. But when evaluating reformist thought, whether that of Jamal ad-Din Afghani (1839-1897), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898), Mohammed Abduh (1849-1905), Taha Husayn (1889-1973) or others, one finds that reform did not offer an alternative but was an implicit - often explicit - call to integrate into Europe's intellectual and political culture. Indeed, some even ironically advocated a revival of 'ijtihad'. However, their definition of the word was often more secular than Islamic, using as they did the literal meaning 'jahada' or 'to exert' which was taken to mean a call to exhaust independent intellectual effort as opposed to a juristic process to derive distinctly Islamic solutions to contemporary problems based on its original texts.

Islam is no stranger to foreign or alterative ideas and cultures and the challenges they bring. Western political philosophy presents the current alternative and contemporary events, problems and dilemmas present a spectrum of challenges. The Muslim world is now in need of perspective on issues from globalisation, the free market and liberalism to genetics, stem cell research and cloning. Ijtihad provides the ability to present Islamic perspectives, indeed alternativeapproaches, for each of these, and is why, for example, Farooq Khan, in his article "Re-defining the Globalisation debate", is able to suggest, "Islam…can be argued as not only the first global political philosophy but the only political philosophy that can capture the forces of globalisation…" A revival in the use of ijtihad marks an important step in presenting a practical Islamic alternative.

By Akmal Asghar
akmal.asghar@newcivilisation.com
Source: www.newcivilisation.conm

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Hamas and Israel's "Right to Exist"

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 19:08:44 +0200

Hamas and Israel's "Right to Exist"

By VIRGINIA TILLEY

To the great consternation of most of the world, the European Union, followed now by Norway and Canada, has halted payments to the Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The stated reason is that Hamas has not recognized Israel's "right to exist" or "renounced violence," but the action so violates all common sense that its logic requires our closer scrutiny.

Let us first be clear: no conceivable good can come from this policy. It will slash the PA's capacity to govern a shattered and desperate population. It will wreck the capacity of Hamas to mediate and contain tense factional divides. It could even demoralize and destroy the Palestinians' long-standing commitment to democracy, ruining Palestinian political stability and therefore any possibility of peace negotiations. So why impose sanctions that can only result in dangerous disintegration of the political situation?

A certain withered diplomatic logic does underlie this measure. The PA itself was invented in 1995 to administer Oslo's implicit two-state solution. Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel's "right to exist" would seem to negate the diplomatic agreement that established the terms of its own authority. Until it agrees to those terms, the international community might deem that Hamas has rendered the PA's legitimacy uncertain.

Unfortunately for its proponents, this rationale has crashed on one glaring pitfall: the premise that Israel itself supports the terms of Oslo or the Road Map. Prime Minister Olmert has openly declared the "Road Map" a dead letter. His stated policy of "ingathering" settlers into the major West Bank settlement blocs is accepted by everyone as signaling Israel's intent permanently to annex major portions of the West Bank. The advancing Wall and settlement construction are ample material evidence that this plan is Israel's real program and is already half-achieved. No one disagrees that these developments signify permanent territorial dismemberment of any Palestinian "state." No one disagrees that the terms of Oslo have vanished like the morning mist.

It must therefore be evident even to the EU, Norway, and Canada that Israel has negated the diplomatic agreement that established the terms of its recognition by the Palestinians. So why pretend that Israel has not openly cast onto the trash heap of history the very peace deal that these countries now insist Hamas endorse?

The first answer is too obvious to belabor: craven capitulation to US pressure. The entire international community has been cajoled or threatened into continuing lip service to the Road Map while standing by passively as the US and Israel render the Road Map obsolete. Diplomatic nonsense always requires some political or moralistic palliative, however. The cover story is that Hamas's recognizing Israel's "right to exist" and abandoning armed struggle will somehow restore the diplomatic conditions of the Road Map, trigger comprehensive Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank, and allow peace finally to break out. Let us take this argument step by step.

First, it is simply unbelievable. All agree that Israel's withdrawal of major settlement blocs in the West Bank (especially, the major cities of Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel, and Gush Etzion) is not foreseeable. The Israeli government itself has declared them permanent. No international actor or combination of actors has the political will and/or clout to change Israeli policy. Israel will not withdraw the major settlement blocs under any circumstances short of a national emergency. Hamas's suddenly waxing nice will not constitute that emergency.

Second, the argument adopts specious Israeli claims about Arab logics that only dwindling ranks of Israel's die-hard supporters still believe. Israeli propaganda holds that Arab "hatred" for Israel is irrational, born solely of Judeophobia, religious zealotry, and cultural backwardness, and that tough measures can therefore leverage Arab capitulation to reality even while the occupation continues. In this view, Israel's hold on the West Bank is not really an "occupation," serving a program of land annexation, but only a benign "administration," forced on Israel by collective Arab and Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel's "right to exist."

The funding cut-off endorses this fantasy in holding that Hamas has rejected Israel's authentic "promise of peace" due to its rejectionist Islamic dogma and not because Hamas has graphic evidence that Israel has no intention of permitting Palestinians a viable state. In this twisted view, cutting vital funds should make Hamas rethink this "irrationality," abandon its "extremism," recognize Israel's "right to exist," and end all hostile actions toward it. Hamas and the PA will then be rewarded (it is hinted vacantly) with a return to the Road Map.

Aside from its transparent tomfoolery (full awareness the US and Israel are eliminating the conditions for the Road Map as quickly as possible), deeper problems plague this papery notion. For if we look more closely at what Hamas is being asked to do, none of it makes sense either.

What does a "right to exist" mean exactly? There is no "right to exist" for states under international law. The formula has arisen in international diplomacy uniquely regarding Israel. It does not mean simply diplomatic recognition, which is the "fact" of existence. It does not mean recognizing Israel's "right to self-determination," either, or we would be using that famous term.

Let us pretend for a moment that Hamas is being asked to recognize Israel in the normal diplomatic sense. In this case, however, the EU position is unsupportable, because diplomatic recognition of a state routinely requires one bit of vital information: "right to exist" where? Israel's borders are not set. Even its plans for those borders are not known; with impressive brashness, Mr. Olmert has announced that we will not know until 2010.

It is entirely legitimate for Hamas to require firm confirmation of Israel's borders before recognizing it. It should also be incumbent on the international community to confirm where those borders will be before insisting that Hamas recognize Israel's "right" to them. Otherwise, recognizing Israel's "right to exist" could be construed to mean that Israel has a "right to exist" within whatever borders it chooses in coming years.

As the Palestinians stand to lose most of what is left of their homeland to this fuzziness, Hamas is refusing to endorse it. Is this extremist Islamic intransigence, warranting a funding freeze? Let us run a little thought experiment: Would Canadian, or Norwegian, or English, or French governments be called on the international carpet for not recognizing the "right to exist" of a neighboring state that is, with military force, settling its own ethnically defined population within contiguous walled cities and enclaves in Canadian, Norwegian, English or French national territories, while promising to carve those nations into "cantons?"

Absent clear borders, recognizing Israel's "right to exist" must mean something else. And of course it does. Clearly implicit in the term is Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. In other words, the "right" Hamas is being required to endorse is that Israel can legitimately compose itself as a state in Palestine that is populated and run primarily by Jews, primarily for Jews. Such a state would thus be authorized by Hamas to sustain whatever laws and policies necessary to preserving its Jewish majority, even rejecting the return of Palestinian refugees mandated by international law. Or building a massive Wall on Palestinian land designed to protect the Jewish state from the "demographic threat" of mass non-Jewish citizenship-i.e., the Palestinians. Israel's would also be legitimized for past actions on the same agenda, such as expelling the Palestinians from their homes in 1948, and for its future plans, such as confining Palestine's indigenous people to cantons.

Israel's leadership has declared all these measures necessary to preserve Israel as "a Jewish and democratic state," as phrased in Israel's Basic Law (and reiterated by Mr. Sharon, Mr. Olmert, and almost every Israeli party across the political spectrum). Yet it is not the fact of this open policy of ethnic cleansing, but Israel's right to pursue it, that is expressed in the phrase, "right to exist."

Hence bitter reluctance by the PLO, the Arab states, and much of the Muslim world to do so for many decades. They abandoned that position in 1989-90, as a pragmatic gesture toward a two-state solution. Cannot the EU then insist that Hamas recognize Israel's "right to exist" if the PLO, the PA, and all other governments in the world have recognized it?

The problem is that the quid pro quo that supported this recognition, formalized in the Oslo process, is now clearly wrecked by Israel's unilateral annexations of land. Carving the West Bank into cantons has eliminated any hope of a viable Palestinian state. The two-state solution is not working. In these conditions, should Hamas recognize Israel's "right to exist" if it is recognized to be eliminating Palestinian sovereignty altogether?

The more embarrassing problem, however, is that the EU itself has not explicitly recognized Israel's "right to exist" in this sense. Nor has Canada, or Norway. The United Nations has not done so, either. They haven't, because they can't.

This may take some people by surprise, but the UN has not used the term "Jewish state" since 1947. Resolution 181 then called for a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state," with gerrymandered borders designed to craft Jewish and Arab majorities in each state. But the attempt was rendered obsolete when Zionist forces established "Israel" on a much greater swath of territory that had, in total, held a substantial Arab majority, and expelled most of the Arab residents. As refugees, according to the Geneva Conventions, those Arab residents have the right to return to their homes, villages, towns and cities. But their return would eliminate the Jewish majority in what became "Israel," so Israel hasn't allowed this.

Hence the UN cannot confirm Israel as a Jewish state (i.e., a state that can legitimately sustain a Jewish majority) without contradicting international law regarding the right of refugees. When the UN refers to "Israel" today, it does not understand Israel as the "Jewish state" in the old ethnic-majority terms of 1947, because Israel can be granted no "right" to an ethnic demography that would prevent the return of refugees.

Also, times have simply changed. In 1947, ethnic nationalism still made some belated sense, although it was already discredited by the dreadful abuses wreaked by Germany and Japan. Today, recognizing the "right" of any state to compose itself legally as an ethnic-majority state would clearly flout UN conventions on human rights and non-discrimination. The UN and EU therefore cannot openly endorse Israel's right to compose itself as one. It would make hash of international efforts in Rwanda, the Sudan, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and many other crisis spots.

So the US has lured the EU, Canada, and Norway into a trap. If they hold that Hamas must recognize Israel as a Jewish state (with a right to preserve an ethnic-Jewish majority), then they must state clearly that it endorses ethnic-majority governance. But them themselves cannot explicitly endorse Israel's right to ethnocracy, because it would contradict international law as well as its own diplomacy in a host of other conflict zones, so on what grounds does they require Hamas to do so?

Worse for them, they are adhering to international norms in insisting that the State of Palestine must comprise a stable democracy that secures equal rights for all its citizens irrespective of religion or race. But if they hold Palestine to this standard, then why are they not holding Israel to the same standard?

But if they did hold Israel to that standard, then the entire rationale for a two-state solution would evaporate. The Road Map is based on the supposition that the only peaceful solution in Palestine is to establish one state for Jews and another for everyone else. If Israel's "right to exist" does not entail sustaining a Jewish majority (which necessitates discriminatory legislation, ethnic cleansing, land grabs, and social engineering), then the ethnic logic supporting two states disappears. Why agree to compose two secular-democratic states sitting next to each other in this small land? No one can articulate an answer, because ethnic demography is their only rationale.

So what are the EU, Norway and Canada requiring Hamas to do? Recognize Israel as an ethnic state with a "right to exist" wherever it decides to set its borders-even though doing so would not only mean Palestinian national suicide but would violate principles that govern their own diplomacy as well as their own internal laws and values about nondiscrimination? Or is Hamas supposed to evade the issue by recognizing Israel's "right to exist" simply as a normal state, even though "normal" (non-ethnic) status would then obligate Israel to permit Palestinian refugees to return-thus implying that the EU, Norway and Canada do not support Israel in sustaining a Jewish majority?

This conundrum should have diplomats, parliamentarians, and foreign ministries huddled in their back rooms trying to sort out their own positions, rather than attempting to starve the Palestinians into Hamas's capitulation. For it is not only the funding freeze that has become rampant nonsense. The entire Road Map logic has become nonsense, too.

May its dutiful proponents in foreign capitals lie sleepless in their beds contemplating their own confusion and the terrible bloody consequences it is likely to wreak.

Virginia Tilley is associate professor of Political Science and International Relations, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock. She is currently at the Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg, South Africa and available at tilley@hws.edu.

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