All to often in a course of a day a Muslim may be asked an array of questions and the one that is the most important to discuss is “What is Islam.”  Without a true understanding of what Islam is everything else irrelevant. Therefore we won’t to discuss the actual definition of Islam according to the majority of the Muslims:

Definition of Islam:

“Islam means for you to submit yourself to Allah (One God), by making your worship sincere and pure for Him alone, by obeying Him, and by absolving yourself of Shirk (associating partners with Him) and its people.”

So we have given the definition of Islam and any person that understands this has taken the first step of understanding Islam. Now we mentioned a word (Shirk) which we’re probably sure you never heard in your life, so we would like to make clear what this word means in the Arabic language.

Shirk: to associate partners in worship (all acts i.e: Names & Attributes, asking for help, slaughtering, prayer, Lordship,etc.). This way was the creed of the Arabs before the coming of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), the last Messenger that was sent to all of humanity with the call to worship none but the One True God.

Now the next thing we should move to is the opposite of Shirk which is Tawheed. Tawheed is singling out Allah in worship of His Lordship, His Worship, and His Perfect Names and Attributes. This is the foundation of the true and pure Islam, without Tawheed there is no Islam.

Now we don’t want to bombard you all with a lot of technical terms but we just wanted to give you the basis to start from.

Once you have learned in depth about these two profound points it’s time to move on to the five pillars of Islam:

1. Shahada (to testify your belief in the Oneness of God and that Muhammad is His last and final Messenger). This statement is one that brings a person into the fold of Islam and makes him/her a Muslim.
2. 5 daily prayers
3. Zakat (a percentage of wealth given to the poor at the end of the year)
4. Fasting during the holy month of Ramadhan
5. Hajj (pilgrimage) to the Sacred House of Allah for those who are able to perform it

Now you have a basic idea of what Islam is, but of course there’s more to it. But for a general understanding this should do it and if you would like to know more on this topic feel free to submit your questions below and well make sure to get the answers.

Assyafaah Mosque Singapore

New Style of Mosque

absolutely new style of mosque

Let's pray in the milenium

Holy Mosque

i think just a few mosque like this

beautiful view

Mosque in Singapore…Not just ordinary Mosque-Masjid-Moschee-Camii

“The modern face of the mosque allows its members to ‘distance themselves from Islamic terrorism’ since modernity is the enemy of fundamentalist Muslims”. The modern design invites everyone, including non-Muslims to visit and thereby plays down the boundaries between people of all races and religions.

The Assyafah Mosque is a project that makes creative use of a contemporary interpretation of the arabesque, a universally recognizable symbol of Islamic Art and Architecture, to create an original identity for the modern mosque. The use of the positive arabesque, a double arabesque to make the notions of overlapping geometries more explicit and negative arabesques are seamlessly incorporated in the design of this mosque. The architects state that “the use of the arabesque patterns to symbolize the Quran’s attributes provides a link to the past.”

The finish of the minaret (which would develop a coat of rust over a period of time) is intended to minimize the need for maintenance as well as allude to a natural colour. The arches are intended to present a raw feel to contrast with the generally stark and well finished interiors.

source : http://www.nikiomahe.com/architecture-design/assyafaah-mosque-singapore/

Why 60...?

almost unlikely mosque

"Castle" of Dome

The Old you can't hide

Maybe its "Fort look-alike"

The Sixty Dome Mosque (Bengali: Shaṭ Gombuj Moshjid) (more commonly known as Shait Gambuj Mosque or Saith Gunbad Masjid) is the largest historical mosque in Bangladesh and one of the most impressive Muslim architectural structures on the Indian Subcontinent.

Green Jama Masjid Sunamganj

white with green motif Dome

front door

mosque sunamganj

Few information about this masjid-mosque-camii-moschee. But the awsome color of this masjid, make this mosque decent show, if I could pray there. Masjid jamee Sunamganj Bangladesh.

Rumaysa bint Milhan

Even before Islam was introduced to Yathrib, Rumaysa was known for her excellent character, the power of her intellect and  her independent attitude of mind. She was known by various names including Rumaysa and Ghumaysa, but these were  possibly nicknames. One historian says that her real name was Sahlah but later she was popularly known as Umm Sulaym.

Umm Sulaym was first married to Malik ibn an-Nadr and her son by this marriage was the famous Anas ibn Malik, one of the  great companions of the Prophet. 

Umm Sulaym was one of the first women of Yathrib to accept Islam. She was influenced by the refined, dedicated and  persuasive Mus’ab ibn ’Umayr who was sent out as the first missionary or ambassador of Islam by the noble Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). This  was after the first pledge of ‘Aqabah. Twelve men of Yathrib had gone to ‘Aqabah on the outskirts of Makkah to pledge loyalty to the Prophet. This was the first major break through for the mission of the Prophet for many years. 

Umm Sulaym’s decision to accept Islam was made without the knowledge or consent of her husband, Malik ibn an-Nadr. He  was absent from Yathrib at the time and when he returned he felt some change had come over his household and asked his  wife: “Have you been rejuvenated?” “No,” she said, “but I (now) believe in this man (meaning the Prophet Muhammad).” 

Malik was not pleased especially when his wife went on to announce her acceptance of Islam in public and instruct her son Anas in the teachings and practice of the new faith. She taught him to say laa ilaaha illia Allaah and Ash-hadu anna  Muhammada-r Rasulullaah. The young Anas repeated this simple but profound declaration of faith clearly and emphatically. 

Umm Sulaym’s husband was now furious. He shouted at her: “Don’t corrupt my son.” “I am not corrupting him,” she replied firmly. 

Her husband then left the house and it is reported that he was set upon by an enemy of his and was killed. The news  shocked but apparently did not upset Umm Sulaym greatly. She remained devoted to her son Anas and was concerned about his proper upbringing. She is even reported to have said that she would not marry again unless Anas approved. 

When it was known that Umm Sulaym had become a widow, one man, Zayd ibn Sahl, known as Abu Talha, resolved to become engaged to her before anyone else did. 

He was rather confident that Umm Sulaym would not pass him over for another. He was after all a strong and vigorous man who was quite rich and who possessed an imposing house that was much admired. He was an accomplished horseman and a skilful archer. Moreover, he belonged to the same clan as Umm Sulaym, the Banu Najjar. 

Abu Talha proceeded to Umm Sulaym’s house. On the way he recalled that she had been influenced by the preaching of Mus’ab ibn ‘Umayr and had become a Muslim. 

“So what?” he said to himself. “Was not her husband who died a firm adherent of the old religion and was he not opposed to Muhammad and his mission?” 

Abu Talha reached Umm Sulaym’s house. He asked and was given permission to enter. Her son Anas was present. Abu Talha explained why he had come and asked for her hand in marriage. 

“A man like you, Abu Talha,” she said, “is not (easily) turned away. But I shall never marry you while you are a kafir, an unbeliever.” [Allaahu Akbar!]

Abu Talha thought she was trying to put him off and that perhaps she had already preferred someone wealthier and more influential. He said to her: 

“What is it that really prevents you from accepting me, Umm Sulaym? Is it the yellow and the white metals (gold and silver)?” 

“Gold and silver?” she asked somewhat taken aback and in a slightly censuring tone. “Yes,” he said. “I swear to you, Abu Talha, and I swear to God and His Messenger that if you accept Islam, I shall be pleased to accept you as a husband,  without any gold or silver. I shall consider your acceptance of Islam as my mahr (dowry).” 

Abu Talha understood well the implications of her words. His mind turned to the idol he had made from wood and on which he lavished great attention in the same way that important men of his tribe venerated and cared for their personal idols. 

The opportunity was right for Umm Sulaym to stress the futility of such idol worship and she went on: “Don’t you know Abu Talha, that the god you worship besides Allaah grew from the earth?”

“That’s true,” he said. 

“Don’t you feel stupid while worshipping part of a tree while you use the rest of it for fuel to bake bread or warm yourself? (If  you should give up these foolish beliefs and practices) and become a Muslim, Abu Talha, I shall be pleased to accept you as a husband and I would not want from you any sadaqah apart from your acceptance of Islam.” 

“Who shall instruct me in Islam?” asked Abu Talha.

“I shall,” Umm Sulaym replied.

“How?” 

“Utter the declaration of truth and testify that there is no god but Allaah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah. Then  go to your house, destroy your idol and throw it away.” 

Abu Talha left and reflected deeply on what Umm Sulaym had said. He came back to her beaming with happiness. 

“I have taken your advice to heart. I declare that there is no god but Allaah and I declare that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allaah.”  [Allaahu Akbar!]

Umm Sulaym and Abu Talha were married. Anas, her son, was pleased and the Muslims would say: “We have never yet  heard of a mahr that was more valuable and precious than that of Umm Sulaym for she made Islam her mahr.” 

Umm Sulaym was pleased and delighted with her new husband who placed his unique energies and talents in the service of Islam. He was one of the seventy-three men who swore allegiance to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) at the second Pledge of ‘Aqabah. With him, according to one report, was his wife Umm Sulaym. Two other women, the celebrated Nusaybah bint Ka’b and Asma bint ‘Amr witnessed ‘Aqabah and took the pledge of allegiance to the Prophet. 

Abu Talha was devoted to the Prophet and took enormous delight in simply looking at him and listening to the sweetness of his speech. He participated in all the major military campaigns. He lived a very ascetic life and was known to fast for long periods at a time. It is said that he had a fantastic orchard in Madinah with date palms and grapes and running water. One  day while he was performing Salah in the shade of the trees, a beautiful bird with brightly colored plumage flew in front of him. He became engrossed in the scene and forgot how many rak’ats he had prayed. Two? Three? When he completed the Prayer he went to the Prophet and described how he had been distracted. In the end, he said: “Bear witness, Messenger of  Allaah, that I hand over this orchard as a charity for the sake of Allaah, the Exalted.” 

Abu Talha and Umm Sulaym had an exemplary Muslim family life, devoted to the Prophet and the service of Muslims and Islam. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to visit their home. Sometimes when the time of Prayer came, he would pray on a mat provided by Umm Sulaym. Sometimes also he would have a siesta in their house and, as he slept, she would wipe the perspiration from his forehead.

Once when the Prophet awoke from his siesta, he asked: “Umm Sulaym, what are you doing?” “I am taking these (drops of perspiration) as a barakah (blessing) which comes from you ,” she replied. 

At another time, the Prophet went to their house and Umm Sulaym offered him dates and butterfat but he did not have any of it because he was fasting. Occasionally, she would send her son Anas with bags of dates to his house. 

It was noticed that the Prophet, peace be on him, had a special compassion for Umm Sulaym and her family and when asked about it, he replied: “Her brother was killed beside me.” 

Umm Sulaym also had a well-known sister, Umm Haram, the wife of the imposing Ubadah ibn as-Samit. She died at sea during a naval expedition and was buried in Cyprus. Umm Sulaym’s husband, Abu Talha, also died while he was on a naval expedition during the time of the third Caliph, ‘Uthmaan, and was buried at sea. 

Umm Sulaym herself was noted for her great courage and bravery. During the Battle of Uhud, she carried a dagger in the folds of her dress. She gave water to and tended the wounded and she made attempts to defend the Prophet when the tide of battle was turning against him. At the Battle of Khandaq, the Prophet saw her carrying a dagger and he asked her what  she was doing with it. She said: “It is to fight those who desert.” [Allaahu Akbar!]

“May Allaah grant you satisfaction in that,” replied the Prophet. In the face of adversity, Umm Sulaym displayed a unique calmness and strength. One of her young sons (‘Umayr) fell sick and died while her husband was away looking after his orchards. She bathed the child and wrapped him in shrouds. She told others at her home that they should not inform Abu  Talha because she herself wanted to tell him. 

Umm Sulaym had another son whose name was ‘Abdullah. A few days after she gave birth, she sent Anas with the baby and a bag of dates to the Prophet. The Prophet placed the baby on his lap. He crushed the dates in his mouth and put some in the baby’s mouth. The baby sucked the dates with relish and the Prophet said: “The Ansar are only fond of dates.” 

‘Abdullah eventually grew up and had seven children all of whom memorized the Quran. 

Umm Sulaym was an ideal Muslimah, an outstanding wife and a successful mother. Her belief in Allaah was strong and uncompromising. She was not prepared to endanger her faith and the upbringing of her children for wealth and luxury, however abundant and tempting. 

She was devoted to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and dedicated her son Anas to his service. She took the responsibility of educating her children and she played an active part in public life, sharing with the other Muslims the hardships and the joys of building a community and living for the pleasure of Allaah.

by Laila Lalami, for the Nation:

At a literary festival in New York City some years ago, I was introduced to a French writer who, almost immediately after we shook hands, asked me where I was from. When the answer was “Morocco,” he put down his drink and stared at me with anthropological curiosity. We spoke about literature, of course, and discovered a common love for the work of the South African writer J.M. Coetzee, but before long the conversation had turned to Moroccan writers, then to Moroccan writers in France, and then, as I expected it eventually would, to Moroccan immigrants in France–at which point the French writer declared, “If they were all like you, there wouldn’t be a problem.

His tone suggested he was paying me some sort of compliment, though I found it odd that he would want the 1 million Moroccans in his country to be carbon copies of someone he had barely met and whose views on immigration–had he asked about them–he might not have found quite to his liking. It was only later, when I had returned to my hotel room, that it dawned on me that the profile of the unproblematic Moroccan immigrant he might have had in mind was based solely on conspicuous things. Some of these, like skin color, were purely accidental; others, like sartorial choices or dietary practices, were in my opinion inessential, but from his vantage point perhaps they suggested a smaller degree of “Muslimness.”

Was this man really suggesting that I was a more desirable immigrant because I did not look Muslim? We had started our conversation as two equals, two potential friends, two writers discussing literature, but we had ended it as judge and supplicant–the former telling the latter whether or not she would make a suitable immigrant. And why on earth did I not say something on the spot? Why did I not ask him what he meant? Instead, I had stared back at him with what I imagine was dumbfounded perplexity, and then changed the subject. Perhaps if I had confronted him I would have been able to remove the sting of the insult that had lain hidden inside the compliment.

In any case, the man’s assertion was a purely theoretical speculation. In practice, there is little evidence that even inconspicuous Muslims are fully accepted in France, or elsewhere in Europe. This was made abundantly clear in September, when Le Monde released video footage from an encounter between Brice Hortefeux, the interior minister of France, and Amine Benalia-Brouch, a young Algerian-French activist. Hortefeux and Benalia-Brouch, who were both attending the summer congress of the center-right party Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, were asked to pose for a photograph. A female onlooker touched Benalia-Brouch on the cheek and, in a voice ringing with approbation, said, “[Benalia-Brouch] is Catholic. He eats pork and drinks beer.” “That is true,” replied Benalia-Brouch, smiling. “He is our little Arab,” the woman continued. Hortefeux added, “Very well. We always need one. When there’s one, that’s all right. It’s when there are a lot of them that there are problems.”

However offensive Hortefeux’s statements may be, they are not particularly remarkable. In French politics, anti-immigrant posturing is something of a rite, often performed at the height of election season. When he was still mayor of Paris, and preparing to run for the presidency under the banner of the center-right party Rassemblement pour la République, Jacques Chirac bemoaned the plight of the “French worker,” who was driven “mad” by “the noise and the smell” of the immigrant family next door, “with a father, three or four wives, twenty kids, taking in 50,000 Francs in welfare payments without working.” After serving a term as president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing took to the pages of Le Figaro Magazine to argue passionately that citizenship laws needed to replace the “right of land” (jus soli, automatic citizenship for those born on French soil) with the “right of blood” (jus sanguinis, citizenship determined through French ancestry). If such a distinction were not made, he warned, France would face “an invasion.” The “right of blood” definition of citizenship, depending on how it is interpreted, could have ruled out the writer Alexandre Dumas, the footballer Michel Platini, the actress Isabelle Adjani, the physicist Marie Curie, the composer Maurice Ravel, the singer Charles Aznavour, as well as Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president of France, but perhaps Giscard d’Estaing felt his country could have done without any of them. (France eliminated the jus soli definition of citizenship in 1993 and then reinstated it in a limited form in 1997.)

In 2002 Manuel Valls, the mayor of Evry and a member of the Parti Socialiste, shot to national prominence when he tried to close down a halal supermarket because it did not carry pork or wine. He claimed the store had to “help us maintain some diversity.” Two years before his election to the presidency in 2007, Sarkozy promised he would “hose down” the “scum” of the Paris suburbs, where many of the city’s Muslims reside. Declarations such as these cut across party lines and constitute what the French press euphemistically calls dérapages, or blunders.

The reactions to the dérapages are also something of a tradition. Members of the offending politician’s party rally behind him, while members of the opposition call him a racist. Meanwhile, leaders of the far right gloat that–at long last!–the mainstream is recognizing something they have been saying for years. After Chirac’s infamous “noise and smell” comments, for instance, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the avowedly racist and anti-Semitic leader of the Front National, gleefully insisted that the French would always prefer “the original to a copy.”

So it would seem that the perfect Muslim immigrant in France is one who cleans the house, picks up the trash, attends to the infant or, increasingly, fixes the computer, heals the sick and runs the bank, and then disappears in a wisp of smoke, before his presence, his beliefs, his customs, his way of dress, his “noise and smell” offend the particular sensibilities of the general population. France is not alone in wishing that its Muslims were invisible. As anyone who has visited Western Europe in the past few years will tell you, the “Muslim question” is a matter of grave concern.

European Muslims have unintentionally revived a whole genre of nonfiction–the alarmist tract, billed as a “searing” yet “necessary” exposé on Europe’s impending demise now that it has allowed so many millions of Muslims to settle on its shores. The titles are each more ominous than the last: The Rage and the Pride, by Oriana Fallaci (2002); Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis, by Bat Ye’Or (2005); Londonistan, by Melanie Phillips (2006); Menace in Europe: Why the Continent’s Crisis Is America’s Too, by Claire Berlinski (2006); and While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within, by Bruce Bawer (2006). The authors rely mostly on tabloid or newspaper accounts; the arguments are simple, or, more accurately, simplistic, and the preferred method of inference is extrapolation.

The latest offering in this genre is Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, by Christopher Caldwell, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a regular contributor to the Financial Times, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. However, just as Chirac and Sarkozy prefer to say more carefully what Le Pen says bluntly, Caldwell articulates in polite and embellished language what Bawer and others have been saying aggressively for years: Europe is being overrun by Muslim immigrants; these immigrants show no sign of assimilating to European culture and social mores; and as a result, Europe is in danger of becoming an outpost of the Islamic empire.

According to Caldwell, European “political and commercial elites” invited immigrants to work on the continent in order to help rebuild the infrastructure that had been destroyed during World War II. These immigrants were expected to take up jobs in construction and, in later waves, jobs that were deemed too menial or too low-paying for “European natives.” Immigrants revitalized industries like car manufacturing in the 1950s, but by the 1960s they were already propping up those, like textile mills, that were failing. Deindustrialization, combined with the 1973 oil crisis, resulted in the closing of factories and the loss of thousands of jobs. By then, the immigrants had already settled in Europe indefinitely, had married or brought spouses and had children. “Decade in, decade out,” Caldwell writes, “the sentiment of Western European publics, as measured by opinion polls, has been resolutely opposed to mass immigration. But that is the beginning, not the end of our story.”

That story, in Caldwell’s telling, focuses on the Muslim communities of Europe. The plot involves the physical isolation of rapidly growing numbers of Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians, Turks, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians in suburban neighborhoods; high rates of crime and imprisonment; misogynistic practices and anti-Semitic confrontations; and general cultural tensions with mainstream society. The story’s climax is the Muslim minority’s “demands” for concessions to its religion, laws and customs. The other characters in this high drama are the “self-loathing” European elites, who are in love with the idea of a multicultural society and who close their eyes to any negativity because they feel they have to atone for centuries of colonialism.

However, Caldwell argues, “immigration is not enhancing or validating European culture; it is supplanting it.” European Muslims, he warns, are having children at a rate unmatched by the secularized natives. As of 2005, there were approximately 5 million Muslims in France; 3 million in Germany; 1.6 million in Britain; 1 million in Spain; and fewer than 1 million in the Netherlands and in Italy. All told, Muslims account for about 5 percent of the total population of Western Europe; but that may be 5 percent too many, because in Caldwell’s estimation, “if one abandons the idea that Western Europeans are rapacious and exploitative by nature, and that Africans, Asians, and other would-be immigrants are inevitably their victims, then the fundamental difference between colonization and labor migration ceases to be obvious.”

The comparison between labor migrations of the past fifty years and colonization–the most memorable example of which, in recent history, is European colonialism in Africa and Asia–leaves out such details as invasions by armed troops; the systematic expropriation of land; the exploitation of natural resources to the sole benefit of the settlers; genocide, as happened to an estimated 10 million Congolese; wars of independence that cost millions of lives; and the installation of brutal dictatorships. Unbelievably, Caldwell insists that the immigration of individuals, each one acting independently and for economic or political reasons, not in obeisance to a collective supranational policy or religious mission, is nothing short of colonization.

To continue with Caldwell’s story, the Muslims of Europe–and, naturally, the elites who enable them–have led each major European country to a national tragedy: the London underground bombing; the Madrid commuter train attacks; the Paris riots; the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands; and the cartoon crisis in Denmark. He concludes by sounding a pessimistic note on Europe’s chances of winning this existential fight for its cultural survival. “Europe finds itself in a contest with Islam for the allegiance of its newcomers,” he writes. “For now, Islam is the stronger party in that contest, in an obvious demographic way and in a less obvious philosophical way. In such circumstances, words like ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ mean little. When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctriness, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.”

The assumption here is that Europe’s culture was a rigid construct that remained unchanged until the immigrants arrived. But cultures are not static; they change all the time. Of course Europe’s culture will change as a result of its demographic shifts, but that change need not (indeed, it should not) be turned into a culture war between Islam and the West. Caldwell’s conclusion is also contradictory, coming as it does after 300 pages in which he has argued just the opposite: that Muslims are backward, unemployed, criminal and, until recently, disengaged from the political process. By the time he ends the book, they are suddenly and inexplicably strong enough to “conquer” Europe.

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is the kind of book that will reaffirm the opinions of those who already agree with its author. If you happen to think that the establishment of what is now called “Eurabia” is a matter of time, you will find plenty of support in the many statistics and anecdotes Caldwell culls from newspaper and magazine reports. If, on the other hand, you prefer a more reasoned and complex view of the issues, the simplifications, contradictions and errors in this book will fail to persuade you. Caldwell repeats the thoroughly debunked canard that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were roundly celebrated in the Muslim world: “It was a day of joy in much of the Muslim world, including parts of Muslim Europe.” On the contrary, there were demonstrations of solidarity with the families of the victims in nearly every major Muslim capital, from Rabat to Cairo to Tehran. More to the point, when the United States invaded Iraq, under the spurious claim that it possessed weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam Hussein had helped plot the 9/11 attacks, were the bombings not greeted with shouts of “U-S-A” in this country? That does not mean that the vast majority of Americans approved of the wholesale killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Simplifying the facts is expedient for Caldwell, however, as it helps bolster the argument he is trying to make, which is that Islam is locked in an inevitable and perpetual civilizational conflict with the West.

Although a large proportion of Europe’s immigrants are not Muslim, and although the continent has faced serious economic, political and social challenges at various times over the past fifty years, European Muslims are held to blame for the rise in crime, violence against women, the resurgence of anti-Semitism and homegrown terrorism. For instance, Caldwell examines rates of incarceration in Europe, finds them proportionately higher for Muslims and attributes this finding to their religion and their culture, neither of which, in his view, equip them with the necessary tools for succeeding in the West. Missing from this grim assessment is the stubborn fact that Muslims are more likely than non-Muslims to be prosecuted for minor offenses. In France, where judges and prosecutors have large discretionary powers, noncitizens are significantly more likely to be forced into pretrial detention while their case is being investigated. The sociologist Devah Pager, who teaches at Princeton, also found a strong correlation between crime-control strategies in French local jurisdictions and the ethnic heterogeneity of these jurisdictions. To put it more plainly, crime is not policed in the same way for everyone. Researchers at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands found a similar pattern; they recently published the result of a study showing that Moroccans sit in jail for lighter crimes than ethnic Dutch.

At no time was the question of crime in Muslim neighborhoods debated more hotly than in the fall of 2005, when the Parisian banlieues erupted in riots that lasted three weeks, leading then-President Chirac to declare a state of emergency. The riots were triggered by the deaths of two teenage boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, who, while fleeing the police, hid in a power station and were electrocuted. Initially, Sarkozy, at the time Chirac’s interior minister, claimed that the boys were suspected of robbery, but there was no solid evidence that they committed a crime–they had been playing soccer in a field when they saw police officers and fled to avoid a lengthy process of interrogation. In interviews after the riots, the people of the banlieues often described the teenagers’ deaths as a spark but cited as fuel discrimination, isolation and joblessness. The banlieues are ghettos, and as James Baldwin once wrote, “To smash something is the ghetto’s chronic need.” Though Pascal Mailhos, the head of the French national intelligence services, flatly stated that religious beliefs played no part in the riots, several French politicians blamed, persistently and exclusively, Islam. So does Caldwell: “Even if they did not believe in Islam, they believed in Team Islam.” The point here, I suppose, is that Muslims are acting collectively even when they tell you they’re not.

Caldwell also suggests that Muslims are far more likely to commit violence against women. Under the heading “Virginity and violence,” he writes that “there were forty-five [honor killings] in Germany alone in the first half of the decade.” Since the argument here is that Muslims are more inclined to commit homicides against women in the context of “some trespass against sexual propriety,” it would have been helpful if Caldwell had included, for the sake of contrast, the number of ethnic German women killed in incidents of domestic violence, as well as numbers for an entirely distinct and recent immigrant group, such as Eastern Europeans. Without such empirical comparisons, it is difficult to see how he can reach the conclusion he does, which is that “such acts make law. They assert sovereignty over a certain part of European territory for a different sexual regime.” The label “honor killing” makes violence against women and girls sound like an exotic import rather than the pernicious and all-too-frequent reality that it is. Caldwell doesn’t mention that domestic violence has been treated as a criminal problem in Europe thanks to the work of European feminists in the 1960s and ’70s, and that now European Muslim feminists are working to create a similar zero-tolerance level about honor killings. Encouragingly, a recent Gallup study found that Muslims in Paris, Berlin and London disapproved of honor killings and crimes of passion about as much as the general French, German and British populations.

One of Caldwell’s frequent arguments is that Europeans should be worried about the Islamization of their continent because Muslim women are having children in greater numbers than non-Muslims. As proof for this claim, he cites a working paper from the Vienna Institute of Demography. But recent studies show that birthrates among European Muslim women are declining sharply; for instance, the fertility rate in the Netherlands for Moroccan-born women fell from 4.9 to 2.9 between 1990 and 2005. Turkish-born women had 3.2 children in 1990 and 1.9 in 2005. Similar patterns have been observed in France and Germany. Martin Walker, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, points out that, “broadly speaking, birthrates among immigrants tend to rise or fall to the local statistical norm within two generations.” Moreover, the Financial Times, the newspaper for which Caldwell is a columnist, recently published an article that belied all the alarmist claims about Muslim birthrates, concluding, “in short, Islamicisation–let alone sharia law–is not a demographic prospect for Europe.”

The fundamental problem with Reflections on the Revolution in Europe is that Caldwell focuses exclusively on the problems with Muslim immigrants without stepping back to assess the general status of the European Muslim community. While he frequently denounces idleness, urban separation and crime by Muslims, he does not see fit to devote any space to the discrimination they face in employment, housing or the justice system, or the successes they have had in fields like science, sports, arts and entertainment. The French even have a term for this wave of young successful Muslims; they call it beurgeoisie. (The word beur is French slang for “North African.”)

This flaw in Caldwell’s approach is, unfortunately, entirely intentional. Reflections, he writes in his introduction, is a book about Europe, immigration and the place of Islam and Muslims in it, not “a book about the difficulties faced by immigrants and ethnic minorities.” He stresses that he will use the term “native” to refer to those of European blood and “immigrant” to refer to those who are from outside Europe, even when they have been citizens of European countries for two or three generations. But by simplifying his terminology and focusing exclusively on the problems immigrants cause, not on those they face, Caldwell has tilted the scales: he does not present a complete view of the relationship between immigrant and native. On the rare occasions (I counted two) when he does mention discrimination, it is to minimize it: “There was certainly measurable discrimination in the European job and housing markets, although it was mild alongside what one might have found in the United States four decades ago.” How easy it is to dismiss discrimination when one is not on the receiving end of it. But the statistics on job discrimination defy minimization: while 27 percent of beur university graduates are unemployed in France, the overall unemployment rate for university graduates is just 5 percent.

In effect, this lack of context mirrors the way Muslim immigrants (even those in second and third generations, or those who are probably Muslim in name only) are talked about in newspapers and magazines, on the radio and television: their religion is at the center of any discussion, as if the only thing that defines their political convictions, their votes, their relationship with their neighbors, with people of other religions or with members of the opposite sex is their ability to tell their nisab from their khums.

The thesis that only Islam is to blame for Muslims’ supposed inability to assimilate in Europe is far too simplistic to stand the test of reality. In fact, it’s just as simplistic as the argument peddled by the Muslim right wing, which is that Islam is the only cure for whatever ails Muslims. When one looks at Muslims on another continent (America, say) the pattern that Caldwell insists has been replicated throughout Europe (ghettoization, crime, violence against women, a resurgence of anti-Semitism, homegrown terrorism and demands for accommodation) does not obtain. In fact, income and education levels of Muslims in America mirror those of the general public. But save for two paragraphs, which appear ten pages before the end of the book, Caldwell avoids this comparison, presumably because it does not fit with his theory.

Caldwell does contrast Muslim immigration to Europe with Latin immigration to America. “The cultural peculiarities of Latin American immigrants,” he argues, “are generally antiquated versions of American ones. Latinos have less money, higher labor-force participation, more authoritarian family structures, lower divorce rates, more frequent church attendance…lousier diets, and higher rates of military enlistment than native-born Americans.” This, he says, makes Latino culture “perfectly intelligible to any patient American who has ever had a conversation about the past with his parents.” But intelligibility did not prevent Glenn Beck from claiming that immigrants were “trying to conquer our culture” or Lou Dobbs from suggesting that the “invasion of illegal aliens” was responsible for a huge (and undocumented) rise in leprosy cases in the United States. The scholar Anouar Majid has cataloged many similarities between the treatment of Latino immigrants in the United States and Muslim immigrants in Europe in his book We Are All Moors. Ironically, Caldwell behaves much like a new convert to a religion: having found an ideology he agrees with, he looks only for the evidence that confirms his beliefs and disregards everything else.

Not surprisingly, Caldwell’s assessment of Europe, like his assessment of European Muslims, leaves little room for nuance or complexity. He portrays the continent as a racially, culturally and politically homogenous place and its natives as extremely tolerant, respectful of human rights and largely secular. In his view, Europeans naïvely believed that Muslim workers who came after World War II would not stay. They welcomed the immigrants and muted their own concerns because they were afraid to be called racist. Caldwell makes the entire process of immigration seem like a giant hoax devious Muslims perpetrated on innocent Europeans. “European natives,” he writes, “have become steadily less forthright, or more frightened, about expressing their opposition to immigration in public.”

But the truth is that Europeans, particularly of the right-wing persuasion, have not been shy at all about opposing immigration. Anti-immigrant sentiment is as old as immigration itself, and Europe is no exception. Over the past few decades, immigration policy has repeatedly been a major theme of general elections in several European countries, including France, Italy and Spain. Still, the typical European one encounters in Reflections is ashamed of his country and unable to stand up to immigrants. Caldwell writes, rather preposterously, “The singing of national anthems and the waving of national flags became, in some countries, the province only of skinheads and soccer hooligans.” Elsewhere, he argues that European natives have become so enamored with the idea of multiculturalism that they “know more about Arabic calligraphy and kente cloth” than they know about “Montaigne and Goethe.” Of course, this is hyperbole. But strikingly, Caldwell does not wonder how much European Muslims, a great many of whom are graduates of European schools on the continent or outside it, know about these subjects.

While Caldwell blames Muslim immigrants for a range of problems, he reserves part of his scorn for “the spiritual tawdriness” of Europe–which, in his estimation, may be the “biggest liability in preserving its culture.” The increasing secularization of Europe caused it to lose its bearings and gradually become vulnerable to “colonization” by “primitive” cultures. “Along the road of European modernization,” he writes, “lie the shopping mall, the pierced navel, online gambling, a 50 percent divorce rate, and a high rate of anomie and self-loathing. What makes us so certain that that Europeanization is a road that immigrants will want to travel?” But in fact polls show that attitudes of European Muslims vary from country to country and often display the same regional differences seen among various European publics. For instance, Gallup polls show that Parisian Muslims are more likely than Muslims in Berlin or London to consider adultery “morally acceptable,” a pattern that mirrors the larger proportions of native French who find adultery acceptable when compared with Britons or Germans.

For Caldwell, there is a quality of “Europeanness” that, on the one hand, is in danger of being lost because of the mass immigration of Muslims, and, on the other hand, is so idiosyncratic that it is not easily passed to new generations of European Muslims. He appears to suggest that this quality is innate: “[EU expansion] raised hopes that Western European labor needs could be filled by people who more or less thought like Europeans (say, maids from Hungary and machinists from Bulgaria) rather than people who did not (say, maids and machinists from Pakistan and Algeria).” The emphasis is his.

Caldwell argues that intra-European immigration had a higher degree of success because the immigrants who moved within Europe shared religious and cultural beliefs with the natives. Such an optimistic view leaves out inconvenient facts of history. In the early decades of the twentieth century, France brought thousands of Polish workers to its factories and its mines; many lived in suburban ghettos and, despite being Christian, were deemed by the natives to be too attached to their culture and too religious (they were referred to as calotins, or “Holy Joes”). Some French intellectuals and politicians began speaking of “invasion.” (Similar accusations were made about Spaniards, Italians and Belgians who later migrated to France.) When the recession of the 1930s put a crunch on the French economy, the government forcibly put Polish immigrants on trains and sent them back home. So the process by which immigrants integrate in European societies has historically been a slow one, even when immigrants “think” like Europeans.

This undiscerning approach leads Caldwell to severe errors of judgment. It is exceedingly disturbing to find so many right-wing leaders receive one form or another of rehabilitation in Reflections. The British conservative politician Enoch Powell–who famously warned that if Britain didn’t stop letting in nonwhite immigrants, it would soon be “foaming with much blood”–is described as “morally” wrong but “factually” right. Elsewhere, Caldwell decries the Dutch media’s portrayal of the far-right leader Geert Wilders as a “paranoid and sinister bumpkin,” while those who speak more conciliatorily about Islam are “spared ridicule.” Wilders once compared the Koran with Mein Kampf and proposed that it be banned. This past September, he argued that a tax of 1,000 euros should be levied against Muslim women who wear a headscarf because they “pollute” the landscape.

Pim Fortuyn, the notorious Dutch far-right leader, “was not a racist,” Caldwell informs us, “and his colorful repartee about the Moroccan men he had slept with was adequate to place him above the suspicion of being one.” By the same logic, should one forget that Strom Thurmond supported racist laws just because he had a black child? Caldwell writes wistfully that “Fortuyn could well have become prime minister had he not been shot dead days before national elections in May 2002, by an animal rights activist who claimed to be acting to protect Dutch Muslims.” Even though Muslims had nothing to do with Fortuyn’s murder, this formulation suggests that, somehow, they did.

Not coincidentally, several of the loudest forecasters of European doom were previously best known for their anti-Semitic views. Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, once called the Holocaust an “extremely profitable lie.” Nowadays, he asks that Muslims be prevented from flying into or out of Britain and runs ads with the slogan Enoch Powell Was Right. Vlaams Belang, the Flemish far-right party, has also had Holocaust deniers in its leadership, though now they seem most preoccupied with preventing Muslim women who wear the headscarf from working for local councils. And Le Pen, the founder of the French National Front, once described gas chambers as “a mere detail of history” and called a political opponent named Michel Durafour “Durafour crématoire” (the pun can be loosely translated as “Michel-hard-to-cook-in-a-gas-chamber”). Now he warns that it is only a matter of time before the mayor of Marseille will no longer be Mr. Gaudin but Mr. “Ben Gaudin.” Recently it emerged that the Vlaams Belang and other far-right groups have formed a coalition called “Cities Against Islamisation.” Europe has gone down this road before, and it did not emerge the better for it.

The societies of Europe are undergoing demographic changes, which have economic, social and educational consequences. So far, the debate on these changes has focused exclusively on Islam in Europe. Yet no one in the chattering classes seems to have noticed that the voices of European Muslims are seldom heard. This is a debate about them–not with them. And indeed Reflections on the Revolution in Europe has been reviewed in the American press mostly by people who are not European, much less Muslim. Not surprisingly, the argument that Muslims are collectively trying to “conquer” Europe “street by street” in order to turn it into an outpost of Islam has been taken at face value. But this argument is not serious criticism because it is not based on thorough empirical evidence; it is racism.

When European Muslims are heard from, it is often on the topic of religion, and usually immediately after some disaster caused by one of their co-religionists. Political leaders, eager to show that they are in dialogue with the “immigrants” (large proportions of whom are second- or third-generation citizens), quote from the Koran or invite some imam to tea at the presidential palace. The conversation turns into a battle over religion, over who has the right interpretation of what verse, instead of being expanded to the issues most relevant to the integration of European Muslims–issues like jobs, housing, education and civil rights.

The current debate places far too much emphasis on Islam as a set of codes and on the Koran as a literal text, rather than on Islam as it is lived and the Koran as an experienced text. A Moroccan man may be very devout and yet work as a sommelier in a restaurant in Paris. A Turkish teenager may not be particularly faithful and yet keep Ramadan because it is the only time of year she gets to connect with her community. An Algerian elder may be the imam of his mosque and yet carry credit card debt. Islam is not just its texts; it is millions of people, each one of whom has found an idiosyncratic way of adapting faith to modern life. Our religious beliefs are not the sum total of our lives. To discuss them as if they were puts our very lives up for debate.

The challenge of immigration is not Europe’s alone. In our increasingly globalized world, immigrants are moving in all directions, across large distances and at faster rates than ever before. What Europeans–what all of us–need to face is the unavoidability of living together. Caldwell has culled two tercets from W.H. Auden’s “The Quest” as the epigraph for his book:

Could he forget a child’s ambition to be old
And institutions where it learned to wash and lie,
He’d tell the truth for which he thinks himself too young,
That everywhere on his horizon, all the sky,
Is now, as always, only waiting to be told
To be his father’s house and speak his mother tongue.

Yet when I read Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, I was reminded of another poem, one Auden had written a year earlier, at the onset of World War II; and though the poet came to look with disfavor on the line, its truth is the one I would rather cling to: “We must love one another or die.”

Palin pokes fun at herself at journalists’ dinner

Dec 5, 9:54 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) – Sarah Palin poked fun at herself in a speech to journalists Saturday night, drawing laughter when she announced she “came down from my hotel room and I could see the Russian embassy.”

The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate also joked that she had orginally thought of titling her book “How To Look Like a Million Bucks, or Only $150,000″ before settling on “Going Rogue.” In one of the controversies surrounding her candidacy, the campaign spent about $150,000 on her wardrobe.

Palin was the Republican speaker at the winter dinner of the Gridiron Club, an organization of Washington-based journalists.

Rep Barney Frank, D-Mass., represented the Democrats.

Palin targeted her hosts, Democrats and Sen. John McCain’s campaign staff, as well as herself.

If the election had turned out differently, she said, “I could be the one overseeing the signing of bailout checks and vice president Biden could be on the road selling his book, ‘Going Rogaine.’” Biden has sparse hair.

The crack about seeing the Russian embassy from her hotel referred to Palin having told an interviewer during last year’s campaign that her qualifications for high office included that “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.”

As for her hosts, she said she was glad to be appearing before an elite audience of leading intellectuals, “or as I like to call it, a death panel.”

McCain’s campaign staff also came in for a barb from the former Alaska governor when she said she is touring the country by bus as she sells her book.

“The view is so much better from inside the bus than under it,” she said, referring to the poisonous relations between her and some of the McCain campaign staff.

Focusing on criticism she has received from Steve Schmidt, a senior strategist in McCain’s presidential campaign, she said, “If I need a bald campaign manager I guess I’m left with James Carville,” a Democrat.

In her book, she wrote that Schmidt felt she wasn’t prepared enough on policy matters and even wondered if she was suffering from postpartum depression following the April 2008 birth of her son Trig, who has Down syndrome.

Palin, who resigned as governor following her vice presidential campaign, is a potential contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Time for all the liberal Demo’s to bury their heads in the sand again..

At times, as in the conquest of Greece by the Romans, military history can seem like destiny.  The Roman civilization developed and ruthlessly employed a superior fighting method to conquer a civilization whose military methodology, like its culture, had grown old.  Rome conquered Greece, and then ruled the world for half a millenium.  The rest, as they say, is history.  In this way, military history is history, and the consistent superiority of one army, one general, or one method over another becomes the superiority of a nation or people over another.

By just the same principle – that military history is history – the vicissitudes of battles, the tricks of fate, can also become history.  It is this, I think, that made the world Christian, or at least stopped it from becoming Muslim.  After the rise of Islam, which, as discussed earlier, is a pointedly militaristic religion, Muslim armies conquered much of the civilized world, rapidly moving outward from Arabia to conquer eastward to the Indus, and westward through Egypt, across the southern Mediterranean coast, and up into Spain.  The Muslim armies also moved northward, spreading with their religion into Turkish lands.  In every direction, the seemingly liquid flow of the armies was stopped only by geographical obstacles: the Pyrenees, the Sahara, the Indus, the Himalayas, the Russian steppes (and the Mongol hordes).

In one direction alone did the Muslim armies not expand: northwesterly, through Constantinople.  The city was ideally situated for defense, with only one side exposed to land, and surrounded on the other three by the waters connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.  Through Constantinople’s peninsula lay the only practical land route from the Middle East to Europe, and through the waters dominated by this peninsula, the easiest sea route.  In Durant’s telling (and Wikipedia’s), though, geography alone did not save Constantinople from the Muslim armies.  Technology, instead, was the deciding factor.

For Byzantium had Greek fire.  In an age when fighting was decided by swords, spears, and anything else blunt or sharp you could hit your enemy with, the Byzantines were among the first to pioneer the use of incendiary devices.  Greek fire, the composition of which is now unknown, was primarily used by the Byzantine navy.  Shot from pressurized jets mounted on Byzantine ships, the fire was a deadly incendiary to the wooden navies of ages past.  In many engagements over several centuries, the devastating effects of Greek fire allowed small and hastily improvised Byzantine fleets to destroy massive Muslim fleets.  The Byzantines recognized their debt to their Greek fire, and as a consequence, kept the secrets of its composition closely guarded.  They were so successful that it is to this practice that we owe our current ignorance of the nature of the incendiary.

Considering the success of the Muslim armies on every other front, and their seeming unstoppability, it staggers the mind to imagine how history might look if this tiny civilization jutting into the Sea of Marmara had not been the sole possessor of Greek fire.  After Constantinople, the Muslim invaders would have faced little organized resistance in the chaotic and poorly-developed areas to the west.  They would have run roughshod over all and sundry until reaching the Alps.  To the south, Italy was not united and in little condition to resist.  To the north, Germany was a mere collection of Gothic tribes, and to the northwest it seems doubtful that the weak Merovingian kings of France would have provided much resistance.

It is amazing the tricks that history can play.

Nasir al molk

courtyard Masjed/Masjid Nasir ol Molk Shiraz

Colorful manifestation mosque

Colourful Shadown in Nasir al Molk moschee

Masjid Nasr ol Molk colorful interior

Nasr ol Molk mosque vault ceiling

Nasir al-Mulk Mosque (Nasir ol molk) is a traditional mosque in Shiraz, Iran.

Located in Goade-e-Araban place near the famous Shah Cheragh mausoleum, it was built during the Qajar era, and is still in use, and is protected by Nasir al Mulk’s Endowment Foundation. It was built by the order of Mirza Hasan Ali Nasir al Molk, one of the lords of the Qajar Dynasty, in 1876 and was finished in 1888. The disigners were Mohhammad Hassan-e-Memar and Mohhammad Reza Kashi Paz-e-Shirazi.

Restoration, protection and maintenance of this valuable monument, observing all international standards on historical places, has duly begun and is continuing by The Nasir Al-Molk Endowment Foundation; one of the largest in Fars Province which is under administration of Mr. Mahmood Ghavam that is active and devotes most of its yearly income in feeding the poor during and after the religious ceremonies of Moharram and Safar and also on the renovation of its precious mosque.

In the name of Allah,

most gracious, most merciful.

I told myself that this break is an opportunity for me to uplift my spiritual faith. and i shall. insyaAllah. i must.

my heart’s been burning with passion and eagerness everytime i think of what my future can bring. though the timing of life and death is written, it’s the choices that we make, make us who we are now. remember that.

i would rather be in a place years of problems, that i can sit down and repent and asking for His help rather than be in time of years not having any difficulties, and forget to be thankful.

Really, this life of mine really taught myself alot of things. and being 20, sometimes i cant believe the loads of things i think about.

my colleagues and i had our staff retreat. i signed up for baking and we made cupcakes. i changed my profile picture in my facebook, vain of how i look. astarghfirullah. the devil almost caught me under its wraps of vainity and not keeping of one’s aurat. thus, changed back to my old profile picture. can you imagine if i’m like the others, who got lost in their outer beauty of themselves? //shivers.

You might think that Hamas would settle for the US peace plan, the moments 1000 terrorists are released in exchange for one Israeli Soldier. Think again.

Hamas-diplomats have almost succeded in their talks with Washington and London. 1000 terrorists released for one Israeli soldier.

The Western World has already made endless mistakes in regards to Radical Islam and Israel. To push and pressure Israel to release another battalion of Islamic terrorists, will not lead to Hamas calming down, or showing grace to the Jewish people.

To the radical opposite, such a gift and gesture, will radicalize the Hamas even more. The massive swap for Gilad Shalit, will be seen as a sign of weakness and surrender by the Zionist nation. Now, we only need to kill and slaughter a few more Jews, and we shall see their total surrender.

A prisonar of War. Gilad Shalit.

This is the views in Gaza, Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Mecca and Tehran.

The latest DEBKAfile Exclusive Report exposed the Hamas ideology to give such fruits. The more Israel give in to get «peace», the more violence she will get.

Information reached DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources Wednesday, Dec. 2, of the discovery by Egyptian intelligence and security units of a large cache of bomb vests and 15-kilo explosive devices – some with built-in detonators, others attached to timers – in the Gaza-Egyptian border town of Rafah.

They were smuggled out of the Gaza Strip and stored in Rafah for Hamas operatives and their confederates to carry through Sinai and across the Egyptian border into Israel, to be picked up by suicide bombers belonging to Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Our sources disclose Hamas has planned a wave of large-scale suicide attacks in southern Israel and its central heartland, for which five to eight operatives based in the West Bank were instructed to infiltrate Israel.

Hamas hoped this deadly terror offensive would dissipate the widespread Palestinian criticism it is facing for getting too little from Israel – nearly 1,000 jailed Palestinians – in return for releasing the Israeli soldier Sgt. Gilead Shalit.

Source: DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

«Jewish and Israeli communities are to be despised, scorned and ridiculed, thus subjecting them to ill-treatment on the basis of their religious affiliation»

The anti-Zionist elders are a part of a global movement. They prepare the way for the final antichrist.

This is a statement from Bongani Masuku, International relation spokesperson of Congress of South African Trade Unions.

A South African human rights panel last week condemned a local trade union leader for calling to exile Jewish compatriots who support Israel, in a ruling which defined his statements as «hate speech» The union had no comment on the case.

The commission – a government watchdog with some constitutional powers – also determined that the comments that Masuku made on March 5 at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand are «of an extreme nature».

The probe into Masuku’s conduct was initiated following a complaint by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies – the community’s representative body.

One of the worst anti-Jewish priest of our time being crowned by Barack Hussein Obama. Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Afraica.

Masuku said Jewish lives would be made «hell» that vigilante action would be taken against Jewish families suspected of having members serving in the Israeli military and that Jews who continued to stand up for Israel should ‘not just be encouraged but forced to leave South Africa’,” The board’s complaint read.

Source: Israeli Daily «Haaretz».

My comment:

Black racism against Jews. I guess that is not any day better than racism against black people?

The people of South Africa should be very careful in their relationship with the Jewish people. To enforce an new Apartheid state in South Africa that is ethnically cleansed for Jews, has nothing to do with Humanism. Its pure racism, and will have to be enforced on Jews with the same methods used by the Fascists in Europa before World War II.

Most of the Arab nations are already Apartheid states. Jewish people can not even get a visa to Saudi Arabia. The Israeli Airliner El Al is not even permitted to fly over the air space of the Islamic Republic.

This is in dark contrast to the Zionist state of Israel, who have two million Israeli Arabs as citizens, the large majority of them Muslims.

The World is getting more evil by the day. Extreme evil shall hit Planet Earth, before the stage is set for the final battle in Zion. The Jews are again in the epic center of the storm of evil. The people of Israel will succumb to the firewall of evil, and shall be forced into a false peace.

The Messiah will return to Earth as the Lion and Judah and will bring an end to all the evildoers who have become the sons and daughters of the devil. The eternal flames of Hell is their final destination.

Our support has worked as we have planned.

Reprensting a Lutheran Christian nation, Jonas Gahr Støre has a lot of explanation to do on the day of Judgment.

This are the words of the Norwegian Minister of Foreign affairs, Jonas Gahr Støre.  He is satisfied with the results of the monetary support to religious school in Pakistan.

Norway have been sponsoring a pilot project where 117 religious schools in Pakistan have been strengthen by opening the curriculum for secular subjects.  The project have been implemented by the Pakistani Government.

«Even though we are satisfied, the project needs to be evaluated before we can give our commitment to further support», explains Støre.

Source:  The Norwegian Christian Daily «DagenMagazinet».

My comment:

The Minister did not specify how the Government of Norway have measured the effectiveness of their support:

Thats why we need to ask for some clarifications:

1. Did some of the Pakistani youth become Christians seeing the goodness provided from Norway?

2. Did the secular education program make the Islamic youth renounce violence as a tool to persecute and kill people who are not Muslims?

3. Or, did the support from Norway better enabled the religious students to become more committed to Islam?

Well, the answer can not be both 1 and 3.  If the answer 3 mirrors the reality on the ground, than The Christian Lutheran Kingdom of Norway have a lot of explanation to do, the day Jesus of Nazareth returns to Earth.

Comment at end

7th December, 2009

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of “Liberation”) recruits Midlands youth to “liberate” British soldiers (permanently) in Afghanistan

Birmingham Brothers Fighting for Taliban

(Original source here, Sunday Mercury.)

I originally spotted this article linked from here. It might be educational to spend a few moments reading this before you get to the main article here about recruiting gullible, and then brainwashed British youth for Jihad. This is a thread from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. Note the signature at the end of the commenter who thinks HuT cannot be blamed for British Afghanistan/Taliban joiners. Is there ANY other religious grouping in Britain which is clearly so AGAINST another?

‘NO’, is the answer you were searching for. Even the hateful BNP is against other races, not religions (purportedly).  Islam seems, from all the evidence, to be a political/religious organisation, not purely a religious live-and-let-live, love-thy-neighbour setup. If you have ever been persuaded to conclude otherwise you need to do some research. None of this is to say that ALL Muslims think in this way. Far from it.

But it is to say that ALL those willing to die and kill for a (political) religion in this world today are, or purport to be, Muslim. (21 of 22 conflicts in world are Muslim. See here.)

‘The Muslim Public Affairs Committee began with a handful of individuals on an e-group back in the year 2000 when the Palestinian Intifada began and has grown into a movement with branches across the country and Britain’s biggest Muslim website.

MPACUK is driven by dedicated volunteers with an elected and accountable leadership. It is a not-for-profit organisation dependent upon donations from the public.

MPACUK VISION

Our aim is to empower Muslims to fulfil our Islamic duty to strive for justice.

Muslims will strive for freedom for the Ummah, enabling a revival of Islamic civilisation.

Muslim countries will be free from oppressive regimes, occupation and outside interference, and the rights of all citizens will be safeguarded.

Muslim minorities will be able to live as equal and valued citizens, free to practice their faith and free from discrimination or demonisation.

A secure Muslim Ummah will fulfil its Islamic responsibilities toward Allah’s creation, supporting the universal rights of humanity.

MPACUK are committed to building a movement that will make this vision a reality insh’Allah.

MPACUK CORE PRINCIPLES

MPACUK’s work is defined by 4 core principles:

Reviving the fard (obligation) of Jihad

Jihad means the struggle for justice in the way of Allah, and MPACUK aims to empower Muslims to fulfil this Islamic obligation through intelligent political action to protect the Ummah. We believe that pro-active engagement in mainstream media and politics, as active citizens, is the most effective solution to bring about an ethical foreign policy, defend civil liberties and combat Islamophobia.

Anti-Zionism …’  (read more here)

Sunday Mercury Article follows:

THE former Midland recruiting chief of radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir has revealed how he recruited hundreds of Midland students – including six who went on to fight for the Taliban.

The 29-year-old says he signed up Muslims attending Aston University, University of Birmingham and the University of Central England.

He also claimed half a dozen Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) recruits went to fight as Taliban soldiers against UK troops in Afghanistan, warning that others could still join terror groups.

Earlier this year, the Sunday Mercury reported that British troops had discovered an Aston Villa tattoo on the body of a dead Taliban fighter in the battlefields of Hellmand province.

UK soldiers also said they heard Brummie accents amongst the enemy, adding to fears that brainwashed Birmingham Muslims are fighting against our boys.

And in an exclusive interview the former HuT recruitment chief, who now opposes the extremist party, said his former recruits had become Jihadists.

“I remember one group of members from Birmingham, including two brothers from Perry Barr, who went to fight in Afghanistan,’’ he recalled.

“They were recruited by HuT and given their extremist ideology.

‘‘They believed it was their religious duty to fight against British soldiers invading Muslim lands. No one could stop them, they wanted to take part in Jihad.’’

He added: “People radicalised by HuT go on to join Jihadi organisations, I have seen it happen. There is a strong ideological connection with terror groups.

“There will still be individuals who start in HuT and go over to fight in Afghanistan and become terrorists.

‘‘HuT strongly supports the insurgency and the Taliban’s ideology.”

The former recruitment boss claims to have been beaten up, threatened and intimidated by members of HuT since leaving the group – which supports the introduction of harsh Shariah law in Britain and previously called for a holy war against Jews in Israel.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which translates as ‘party of liberation’, also believe that British Muslims must fight integration in society and aims to create a global Islamic superstate.

The group has been banned in Germany for its anti-semitic views, and the Conservatives have promised to outlaw the party if elected next year.

Khalid Mahmood, Muslim Labour MP for Perry Barr, said: “These boys going over to fight in Afghanistan is no real surprise to me. Groups like HuT have been operating like this for quite some time, recruiting people into the nexus of terrorism.

“We need greater controls on groups like HuT. Over the past decade it has changed its website and PR and the government hasn’t banned it but we need to keep a very close eye on the group.

“Because we respect human rights and civil liberties, HuT has been allowed to continue but these people do not respect those things. They are turning our youngsters into killers, either at home or overseas.

‘‘They need to be held accountable.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir held a summer conference in Birmingham, with pictures on its official website showing primary schoolchildren taking the microphone to speak to a crowd of hundreds.

Our source said that he joined HuT at the age of just 15.

“I had college lecturers who came to my school and addressed our class, they spoke about the HuT ideology,” he said.

“They made you feel like an outsider in Britain and told you that you were part of a global brotherhood of Muslims who could rule themselves according to the Quran.

‘‘It was a very attractive message for young people like me who hadn’t seen a lot of life and were vulnerable to indoctrination.

“The first roadshow I attended was in Birmingham in the mid-90s. They picked at any issue they could find to separate Muslims from British society.

“These weren’t just some guys, they were doctors, lawyers, respected people who you could look up to.”

As he progressed through the ranks of HuT, the future head of recruitment for Midlands universities says he was taught how to indoctrinate youngsters by destroying their normal values and promoting Islamic extremist views.

“Once that has been done you start to talk about homosexuality being unacceptable, imposing Shariah law, fighting for Islamic freedom in Kashmir and destroying Israel,” he said.

“I used to give Friday sermons at universities in Birmingham and recruit new members from there. The whole point was that individuals would influence other individuals and the whole thing would snowball.

“While I was looking after the Midland universities we brought in hundreds of members. They went out into society to become doctors, accountants, teachers and to pass on the HuT ideology where they could.”

But a spokesman for HuT – whose media relations are managed by Imran Waheed, a former NHS psychiatrist at Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital – dismissed allegations of violence and extremism as “nonsense”.

“It is well-known that Hizb ut-Tahrir is a political movement which only utilises intellectual and political means in its work,” he said.

“Hizb ut-Tahrir does not and has never engaged in violence or intimidation and is not linked to any other group.”

Fears over Islamic students becoming involved in terror attacks were raised in April when ten Pakistani students accused of being members of Al Qaeda were arrested in Manchester and Liverpool, accused of plotting an Easter bombing campaign.

Charges against the group were dropped, though eight were later deported as a threat to national security.

HuT has effectively been banned from speaking at UK universities by the National Union of Students’ “no platform” policy, which means it cannot take part in official debates.

But in May 2008 John Holmwood, a professor from Birmingham University’s sociology department, shared a stage with a Hizb ut-Tahrir member in a secularism debate that was advertised to students as a HuT event.

Researcher Hannah Stuart, from think tank The Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “In its own words, HuT tells its members to ‘keep your ideology in your heart’.

“They are just about avoiding being banned as an extremist group but events like the one in 2008 give them legitimacy. They need to be stopped.”

A spokesman for the University of Birmingham said that the threat of extremism was taken “very seriously” and that any incidents were dealt with at senior levels within the university.

The Home Office maintains a list of “proscribed” extremist groups which are banned in the UK but HuT is not among those organisations.

A spokeswoman said: “Decisions on proscription must be based on evidence that a group is concerned in terrorism.

‘‘Hizb ut-Tahrir is an organisation of concern and is kept under continuous review.”

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said this week that the Conservatives could outlaw organisations like HuT – and that extremist groups would not be able to hide behind “a veil of moderation”.

Ends article. Back to top.

Ed: The constituency from which two brothers were recruited into the Taliban, is that of Khalid Mahmood. Mahmood was a parliamentary private secretary, and one of those who wrote the infamous and disgusting letter to Tony Blair urging him to quit as party leader (and the country’s PRIME MINISTER!!! … the bloody gall of him/them!)  in September, 2006. Scroll down here – near to the end to read.

REMINDER

Since the article fails to remind us you need to understand that proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir is NOT that easy in Britain. No-one knows this better than Tony Blair who tried to ban it afer the 7/7/2005 bombings in London, and was advised against by various interested pressure groups, and the Police and legal sources, including those who understand the Human Rights Courts in the EU. For an earlier view of the October 2009 Tory call to ban HuT and an explanation of why Blair failed, and the Tories too will fail,  if they even TRY, read this.

SHAME of Chakrabarti says this:

“He [Tony Blair] rightly says that he’s been a great one for tough talk and tougher legislation, and yet his approach hasn’t changed at all. He seems to have learned nothing from recent events.

It seems he no longer has much truck for fundamental human rights at all and he’s talking quite actively about deporting people to face torture around the world – that is completely unacceptable and plays into the hands of terrorists.

Also the idea of criminalising those who condone, glorify or justify terrorism anywhere in the world is now on his shopping list – deeply dangerous, deeply counterproductive.

We don’t win by mimicking the profound authoritarianism of those who are plotting against this country. I think it is very worrying that the Prime Minster has jeopardised our national unity today both in terms of community relations and in terms of consensus politics.”

She is a great one for talking UTTER ROT!

The comment of this dreadful and destructive woman was in reaction to THIS (below) re Blair’s proposals after the terror bombing of our tubes and a bus in 2005 in which over 50 were killed.  (Just to clarify for you, in case you thought it was about about wearing a t-shirt with ‘B*****cks to Blair’ on it!)

Politicians, police, campaigners and community leaders give their responses to Tony Blair’s plans to deport foreign nationals who encourage terrorism and ban the Islamic organisations Hizb ut Tahrir and Al-Muhajiroun.

[Ed: This deeply dangerous and deeply counter-productive woman too should be deported, imho! SHE is a danger to British and western civilisation, and the sooner we realise it, the better.

And here Human Rights Watch calls for the Afghan government to keep its promises to Afghan women. Perhaps Chakrabarti could shift herself and her distorted views of freedom and rights to Afghanistan and help them. They are NOT living in a free, tolerant country as we are. YET.]

The head of the Crimean Interior Ministry, Gennadiy Moskal, has drafted new legislation to ban extremist groups in Ukraine (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 27). These groups include HuT who are already banned elsewhere in the region and are suspected of planning to spread into Europe through the Ukrainian back door. (Ed: HuT is heavily criticised here.)

Quote:

“Unfortunately in Ukraine we are faced with the problem that neither Hizb-ut-Tahrir al Islami (Islamic Liberation Party), al-Takfir wa al-Hijrah (Excommunication and Exile) and other terrorist, fundamentalist and extremist groups are not banned,” Moskal said (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 27). Hizb-ut-Tahrir is banned in many countries.

In the Crimea there are upwards of 100 members of Islamic fundamentalist groups who have arrived as political refugees from countries where they are outlawed.

Moskal pointed to how blasé the authorities had been in registering the Vozrozhdeniye newspaper which propagates support for an Islamic Caliphate and the ideas of Islamic fundamentalists. The SBU has blocked two websites –www.vozrojdenie.crimea.ua and www.qirim-vilayeti.org– run by Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

On July 19, Hizb-ut-Tahrir and its NGO, the Crimean Muslim Community Davet, held the Fifth Islamic conference in Simferopol entitled “From capitalist oppression and injustice to the light of the caliphate” (www.maidanua.org, July 24). 800 people took part in the conference (www.poluostrov.net, July 24).

RELATED

Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain

• October 2007:  To Islamists – Some Plain Talking
• July 2008: ISLAMISTS – Accept democracy in western lands or GO! Just GO!
• July 2008: YouGov, Students radicalised: ‘Islam on Campus’ blames Hizb ut Tahrir
• July 2008:  Hizb ut-Tahrir & the Caliphate Fantasy
• January 2009: Would YOU die, or kill for religion?
• January 2009: Lord Ahmed THREATENS to mobilise 10,000 so Wilders visit OFF!
• March 2009: How many Jihadist websites shut down in Britain? You’ll be surprised – Or maybe not
• March 2009: Pajamas TV OUTS the Sharia/Islam project: Frank Gaffney video
• March 2009:  Blair, Philippines – the ‘battle about Islam’ uppermost for peace
• March 2009: Why is the “Quiet Muslim revolution” so “Quiet”?
• March 2009: Arrest Super-Jihadist Anjem Choudary (Part 2)
• April 2009: Sharia Downing Street petition: Brown says “no but… yeah, but”
• April 2009: Hizb ut-Tahrir – The ‘Liberation’ party – on Blair’s ‘Change’ calls
• April 2009: We now have ‘12 Sharia Courts’ in Britain. Thanks Gordon.
• April 2009: Obama: We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation
• April 2009: “Born a Muslim”? NOT in MY name!  I reject it. ALL of it
• April 2009: Islamists behead little girls – graphic video
• May 2009:  Brown: Don’t say terrorists are Muslims
• May 2009: Muslims in Britain have ZERO tolerance of homosexuals
• May 2009: BBC pays out £30,000 to upset Muslim (MCB leader)!!!!!
• May 2009: Radical British Muslims Guilty of Bomb Plot on Publisher of Mohammed book
• June 2009: As we SCREAM about corrupt politicians, THIS goes on unnoticed in London
• June 2009: Court:  Self-proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Britain accused of inciting assassination of Blair and Brown
• June 2009: Calling All Men – Ban the intimidating insulting burka

Something must have really got to me this year!

• July 2009:  Hizb ut-Tahrir in Londonistan – a Cumulation of Caliphate Creeps
• July 2009: Honour? These Islamist cowards don’t know the meaning of the word. Kick ‘em out!
• July 2009: Quran & “kaffar”. Martin Bright is “speechless”. WHY? Is he stupid?
• July 2009: Videos – HuT in USA. “spread Islam or die trying”. OK, if you insist
• July 2009: 10% of European Muslims believe attacks against civilians “morally justified”
• July 2009: British NON-Muslims turning to Sharia law
• July 2009: Scotland’s Nationalists reach out to Sharia Finance
• Aug 2009:  PC Oz: Who’s afraid of mentioning Islamist terrorists?

ETCETERA

Gaddafi says on Swiss minarets decision:  It is “inviting Al Qaeda attacks” AND “we won’t build churches.” (WOW we non-Muslims will surely miss THAT freedom!)

Canada Free Press

By Doug Hagmann  Sunday, December 6, 2009

It was January 1, 2009 when passengers aboard an AirTran flight 175 departing from Reagan National Airport became alarmed by a conversation they overheard between two other passengers, dressed in Muslim attire, talking about the safest place to sit on board an aircraft in the event a bomb was aboard. The two Muslim passengers were among a party of nine traveling together from Washington DC to Orlando, Florida to attend an Islamic conference.

According to one witness report at the time, the content of the conversation not only seemed suspicious, but “deliberately” loud or at least loud enough to be over heard by a number of other passengers seated nearby. Those alarmed passengers reported their concerns to the AirTran flight crew, who subsequently caused all 104 passengers, including the 9 Muslims, to deplane while an investigation was conducted. All passengers were rescreened and permitted to re-board, except those nine-(9) Muslims at the center of controversy who were traveling together.

At that time, AirTran made a decision not to allow the Muslims back onto the aircraft. Although the FBI reportedly concluded their investigation of the Muslim passengers, the investigation into the incident itself was not yet fully complete.  Concurrent investigations were incomplete at the time, according to airline sources. To their credit, acting within their rights and in consideration to the safety of all of their passengers, AirTran denied the controversial party boarding back onto the already disrupted flight.

In the end, none of the remaining 95 passengers made it to their ultimate destinations on time, AirTran refunded some tickets and made other booking arrangements due to the incident, which cost the airline dearly in time, money, and passenger goodwill.

More…

Energy and stability have been the greatest questions in government since the ancients first developed the polis. Prior to the United States, no country made better efforts to perfect the art of separation of powers than England has made. Publius describes in Federalist 37 the need for stability and energy in the new government, while at the same time protecting the liberty of the people and the republican way of life. The Constitution of 1787 achieves these aims through a separation of powers between the three branches of the Federal government and the specific make up of the departments.

In order to understand Publius’ argument better, it would be best to take his argument in Federalist 37 first, followed by his discussion of the relationship between the three branches of government. Lastly I will view his discussion of the specific make up of the various branches of the United States Government.

Publius argues for the necessity of a separation of powers in the new government in order to provide for the necessary stability and energy in government while protecting liberty and republicanism. In order to do this he argues that there most be present a separation of powers between the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of government. Furthermore, there must be a separation of powers between that of the States and Federal governments. Publius says, “Among the difficulties encountered by the convention, a very important one must have lain in combining the requisite stability and energy in government with the inviolable attention due to liberty and to republican form.”[1] The first attempt at creating a republic with the Articles of Confederation failed due to a lack of energy and stability within the government, thus it was pertinent to create in the new government fixes for these problems. Publius then goes on to explain:

The genius of republican liberty seems to demand on one side not only that all power should be derived from the people, but that those intrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people by a short duration of their appointments; and that even this short period the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands.[2]

This is the genius of the new Constitution according to Publius, it has attained the short periods of appointment and dividing the government among many hands. In order that the liberty of the people is not offended, they must remain the source of power for the government.

Yet this is not enough, in order to understand how this present in the Constitution Publius explains further in papers 47-51. In the first of these papers, Publius addresses the allegations by opponents of the proposed plan that it lacks a separation of powers. Publius explains Montesquieu’s argument for the separation of powers by saying, “he did not mean that these departments ought to have no partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other.”[3] The magistrate must have the authority to not only enforce the laws passed by the legislative, but also to veto laws that violate the Constitution, and the judicial cannot create laws but can advise the legislative.[4] Publius then goes on to demonstrate that the various Constitutions of the states provide for more blending of the branches of government than the proposed Federal Constitution.

And then in Federalist 48 Publius describes how the Federal Constitution provides a defense through a moderate blend of the branches of government. At first he argues:

But in a representative republic where the executive magistracy is carefully limited, both in the extent and duration of his power, and where the legislative power is exercised by an assembly, which is inspired by a supposed influence over the people with an intrepid confidence in its own strength; which is sufficiently numerous to feel all the passions which actuate a multitude, yet not so numerous as to be incapable of pursuing the objects of its passions by means which reason prescribes; it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people out to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.[5]

So in order to prevent the encroachments of the legislative on the rights and liberties of the people, the executive and judicial branches must have authority to reign in the power of the legislative. The legislative is also apt to encroach on the power and freedom of the other branches through pay[6], and thus they must be limited on how they are able to alter the pay of these other branches. Publius provides examples of Virginia and Pennsylvania where the powers of the legislative were not protected against and the judicial and executive branches were usurped by the authority of the legislative. Having demonstrated the dangers of allowing unbridled power to exist within the legislative branch, Publius goes on to explain how it might be possible to prevent the encroachments of one branch on the power of another.

Federalist 49 provides for this explanation and Publius defines that the people alone are the source of charter for the Constitution and its parts. Thus the people alone should be consulted when the powers of the Constitution are in question as to demolishing them, or creating a new power.[7] Appeals to the people are necessary in order to prevent the encroachments of power by the various branches. Yet frequent appeals are insufficient in protecting the freedom of the society. Not only this but it is impossible, as Publius explains, “The members of the executive and judiciary departments are few in number, and can be personally known to a small part only of the people.”[8] Yet the legislative is many in number and can be known by a larger number of the people.[9] Thus the legislative would be most likely to take advantage of the appeals from the people and thus encroach on the various powers of the other branches. As such frequent appeals of the people could turn out to be bad for the stability, energy and liberty of the society as the legislative might take their appeals as a mandate. And so how this can be moderated is discussed next by Publius.

Publius states at the beginning of Federalist 50, “It may be contended, perhaps, that instead of occasional appeals to the people, which are liable to the objections urged against them, periodical appeals are proper…”[10] In order to achieve this, Publius argues that a fixed period for appeals to the people could be detrimental to the purpose of those appeals. If they are too close together Publius argues, “the measures to be reviewed and rectified will have been of recent date, and will be connected with all the circumstances which tend to vitiate and pervert the result of occasional revisions.”[11] Yet by the same token, if they are too far apart then the people are likely not to know each other and to be unaware of the circumstances which lead to the need for revisions. [12] To demonstrate his point, Publius once again looks to the states for an example. He tells of how in Pennsylvania there had been a meeting of censorial council to remedy the defects of their Constitution. He elucidates however that the members of the council were prominent citizens who were members of the parties within the state. Secondly, some of the members of the council had served in the legislative and executive departments. Third, the proceedings of the council were disrupted by the factionalism of the members themselves. And finally, the council either did not understand the limits placed on the legislative and executive, or the legislative completely ignored the changes made by the censorial council.[13] Publius demonstrates properly the difficulty of having occasional or frequent appeals to the people for the remedy of the defects for the Constitution.

And so Publius goes on to discuss in Federalist 51 the structure of the government in regards to checks and balances. He states, “it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others.”[14] The importance of each department having its own will is demonstrated in the preceding papers, where Publius demonstrates the likely chances of an encroachment and usurpation by the legislative. In order to achieve this, Publius also states, “It is equally evident that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others for the emoluments annexed to their offices.”[15] Thus the departments must have a will of their own and should not be made dependent on the other departments for their pay. But at the same time Publius argues that the members of the various departments must be given the constitutional means and personal motives to protect against the encroachment of another department on their own.[16] Publius argues, “The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It must be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.”[17] However, Publius also reminds the reader that the legislative must be predominant in republics. In order to properly control the legislative against usurpation Publius argues:

The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.[18]

By dividing the authority of the legislative, a republic is capable of controlling the growth of power and influence of the legislative. Yet this is not enough, as Publius points out it is important in a “compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments.”[19] By dividing the legislative, you weaken its ability to encroach on the authority of the other branches. But by dividing the government into two different governments and allotting them different powers a republic can prevent the creation of a tyranny.

However, one question still remains and that is how the different bodies of government are erected for the purposes presented in Federalist 51. The various branches must be provided with different powers so that no one branch can consolidate that power. The branches must also have varying degrees of separation from the people, so that the passions of the majority cannot rule in society. In regards to the legislative branch, the branch should be split into two distinct houses with one having more of a dependence and response to the people than the other. As the legislative branch is closest to the people, and thus lays one of legislative threats, it is proper that it be divided so as to limit this closeness with the people. The first branch of the legislative Publius discusses is thus the House of Representatives, which is designed to be the department most dependent on the people. Publius describes, “As it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people.”[20] The House of Representatives will only share in the legislative authority of the government and will be able to respond to the passions of the people while the upper house will be able to filter out the reason. This great authority constitutes a need for a shorter duration of power as Publius states, “It is a received and well-founded maxim that where no other circumstances affect the case, the greater the power is, the great out to be its duration…”[21] Further, the House of Representatives will be watched not only by the people through its direct dependence on them, but also by the collateral branch of the legislative.

Next Publius discusses the Senate, which serves as the connection between the States and the Federal government as directed by the un-amended Constitution.  On this Publius states, “It is recommended by the double advantage of favoring a select appointment, and of giving to the State governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former, and may form a convenient link between the two systems.”[22] So that the States retain some type of authority under the new Constitution, it is important that they be given the authority to appoint the members of the Senate. The advantage of this stands that now law cannot be passed without the consent of both the people and the States.[23] And it also serves as a way to prevent members of the legislative body from forgetting their constituents by requiring the laws to be passed by both distinct bodies. Publius goes on to say:

The necessity of a senate is not less indicated by the propensity of all single and numerous assemblies to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions, and to be seduced by the factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.[24]

The Senate’s mutability is important as well, so that the members restrain their passions and tyrannical nature. By having the Senate elected by the States, the States have their own elections for government offices. By changing the government representatives in the States, the Senate will be apt to change and thus opinions will be changed. Their length of office will allow the Senate the opportunity to learn the laws of the nation as well, and so that they are not constantly changing and that the opinions and measures remain some what consistent.[25] The importance of the Senate within the make up of checks and balances and separation of powers is clear. It serves as a check on the passions of the people, while balancing the representation of the States within the Federal government. Further the two branches of the legislative provide for stability and energy in the new government by removing the passions of the people and allowing for competition within the branches.

Thus next Publius discusses the executive branch, by far the most controversial of the day and most in need of defense by Publius. Publius discusses the mode of electing the President in Federalist 68. As with the legislative, the mode of electing the President must have a way of preventing the passions of the majority from ruling. Thus the Electoral College was devised as a way of preventing the encroachments of the people’s passions from entering into the election of the President. Publius describes, “It was equally desirable that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation.”[26] By doing this the Electoral College is made up of a small number of individuals so that deliberation is permitted in the election of the new President. Publius says, “This process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of the President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”[27] As for the proper place of the executive in the stability and energy of government, he is of the most importance. As Publius says, “A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory must be, in practice, a bad government.”[28] The executive must be strong and energetic in order to properly execute the laws he is charged to enforce. Publius calls “united; duration; an adequate provision for its support; and competent powers”[29] to be what constitutes an energetic executive. Energy is found in unity as in a single person the powers of the executive can be carried out quickly without delay. If the executive power were divided among more than one person, it would be subject to deliberation which will prevent an energetic executive. [30] Likewise, the President’s tenure of office is important for his energy. The duration of office is also an important element in the stability of the executive. If he stays too long, then he is apt to be too firm and possibly encroach on the powers of the legislative. Yet if he is tenure is too short then he is apt to fall prey to the legislative.[31] Shortness in the tenure of office is also likely to prevent the interest of the executive from performing his duties. This is also the argument used by Publius in Federalist 72 in regards to the reelection of an executive; by allowing him to run for reelection, he will watch how he acts in office so that the people look upon him favorably.[32] These are the aspects which allow for an energetic and stable executive, without which the government as a whole would lack stability and energy.

Lastly, Publius discusses the importance of the Judiciary in the make up of the new Constitution. Publius calls the Federal judiciary, “the best expedient which can be devised in any government to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.”[33] The purpose of the Federal judiciary he proposes is to prevent “the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body.”[34] Publius counters the fears of judicial usurpation by asserting that the Federal judiciary will be the weakest of all the branches as it lacks power over the purse and sword. Publius further argues:

Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.[35]

The Judicial branch will have no authority over the purse or over the sword, but instead only over judgment.[36] It will thus be able to prevent against legislative and executive encroachments by striking down laws which are contrary to the Constitution and the laws and treaties of the United States. The separation of the judicial from the legislative is also important so as to allow the judges to exercise their judgment without fear of reprisal by the legislative branch. Thus, the salaries of the judges cannot be lowered so as not to influence their opinions.[37] Their tenure of office also allows for freedom of judgment in judicial matters. Their appointment is for during good behavior, which prevents their judgment from being dependent on reelection, which may have a negative effect on their opinions. Thus through the judicial department is called upon to be safeguard against the encroachments of the representative and executive bodies. It will further only have the power of judgment, not the power of the purse or the sword. And it will further lack dependence on the legislative branch because their salaries cannot be lowered and their tenure of office is during good behavior, not apt to reelection.

The Federalist lays out a discussion of how energy and stability will be present in the new Constitution without violating the principles of republican government and the liberties of the people. As such, the basic necessity to ensure this requires a separation of powers. Publius describes how the various departments of the new government participate and uphold the principles of the separation of powers. He further demonstrates how the people and States partake in the controlling of the new government by their participation in the election of the houses of the legislative. Publius properly upholds his argument in Federalist 37 in his discussion of the following papers.

[2] Federalist 37, 195

[3] Federalist 47, 270

[4] Federalist 47, 271

[5] Federalist 48, 277

[6] “as the legislative department alone has access to the pockets of the people…”Federalist 48, 278

[7] “As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power…” Federalist 49, 281-282

[8] Federalist 49, 284

[9] “The members of the legislative department…” Federalist 49, 284

[10] Federalist 50, 285

[11] Federalist 50, 286

[12] “If the periods be distant from each other…” Federalist 50, 286

[13] “Pennsylvania in 1783 and 1784, was, as we have seen….” Federalist 50, 286

[14] Federalist 51, 289

[15] Federalist 51, 289

[16] “But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several…” Federalist 51, 289

[17] Federalist 51, 290

[18] Federalist 51, 290

[19] Federalist 51, 291

[20] Federalist 52, 295

[21] Federalist 52, 298

[22] Federalist 62, 345

[23] Federalist 62, 346

[24] Federalist 62, 347

[25] “The mutability in the public councils…” Federalist 62, 348

[26] Federalist 68, 380

[27] Federalist 68, 382

[28] Federalist 70, 391

[29] Federalist 70, 392

[30] Federalist 70, 392

[31] “Duration in office has been mentioned…”Federalist 71, 399

[32] “The first is necessary to give the officer himself….” Federalist 72, 404

[33] Federalist 78, 433

[34] Federalist 78, 433

[35] Federalist 78, 433

[36] Federalist 78, 433

[37] Federalist 79, 441

Bismillah remains one of my favorite Saudi words to use.  Bismillah translates very simply to ‘in the name of God’ and is a phrase one will hear very often in Saudi Arabia.  A very standard greeting or opening one will hear in Saudi Arabia among individuals and in correspondence is ‘Bismillah ir Rahman ir Rahim’ which means ‘In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Compassionate.’  Many Saudi families when saying good night to one another will choose to say “Bismillah” rather than the simple words of ‘Good Night.’

Many feel that the phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim contains the true essence of the entire Qur’an, as well as the true essence of all religions.  I know when I hear it spoken it sounds both powerful and masterful to me the way that the words roll and capture attention.  Muslims often say this phrase when embarking on any significant endeavor. This expression is so magnificent and so concise that all but one chapter of the Qur’an begins with the words Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim. This phrase is truly an ideal to be expressed from the heart and with the utmost sincerity.