Spiderman di MusliMart

Bayar selimut jepang plus bayar SPP kursus bahasa Inggris.
Inilah yang terjadi di 'warung' saya. Tentang ini sudah pernah saya singgung dalam posting terdahulu.

Yang menarik, selain membayar ada pesanan baru. Selimut Cashmere. Rupanya harga tidak bisa menipu. Kalau klop dengan kualitas, ya.... oke saja.


Kenapa selimut jepang ini begitu menarik perhatian? karena memang memiliki keunggulan dibanding selimut-selimut yang ada dipasaran, dengan harga yang hampir sama.

Berikut ini adalah beberapa keunggulan itu:

1. Anti Bakteri dan jamur (Karena dibuat dari benang Sinteteis Acrylic & Carbon high quality)

2. Anti Alergi

3. Uji “Cabut Bulu“ Sangat Rendah.

4. Non Electrostatic

5. Bulu-bulu Halus dan Lembut

6. Thermophysical Comfort (tidak Gerak ketika dipakai)

7. Warna Akan Tetap Menyala (Meski dicuci berulang kali)

8. Sangat Mudah Dicuci

9. Mutu Hotel Bintang 4 up.

Nah, tunggu apa lagi.

Jual Karpet di Tempat Kursus Bahasa Inggris

Di samping mengelola toko MusliMart, saya juga punya 'warung' lain. Yaitu kursus bahasa Inggris dan lembaga bimbel untuk anak SD dan SMP.

Jadi jangan heran jika di sebelah meja saya di tempat kursusan itu, ada setumpuk karpet tenun sumbu kerajinan asli Indonesia itu.

Suatu sore ada orang tua siswa yang mengantar anaknya tertarik. Melihat-lihat. Lalu beli. He... he... mana ada lembaga kursus lain nyambi jualan karpet.

Lalu ada yang melihat-lihat katalog selimut jepang. Eh... beli 'Spiderman' untuk anaknya yang masih TK tapi sudah kursus bahasa Inggris di 'warung' saya ini. Alhamdulillah. Meskipun, bayarnya "nanti bareng bayar SPP...."

Yang menarik ada orang tua siswa yang bilang, kurang lebih... "Wah, Pak, saya gak punya duit. Gimana kalau saya jualin aja...."

Ya... monggo saja. Dapat harga reseller pula. Syaratnya dalam 3 hari harus laku, kalau nggak ya dikembalikan. Dan syaratnya lagi... begitu laku, bayar cash ke saya.

Alhamdulillah pas hari ke 3, si Ibu datang, menyampaikan kalau karpetnya laku. Maka berdatanganlah order-order selanjutnya. Gak banyak sih, tapi lumayan ... mungkin setelah laku karpet yang keempat dia sudah bisa beli karpet untuk dirinya sendiri....

Kemarin, malam-malam dia datang lagi.... pesan 7 buah karpet! Alhamdulillah...
Sekarang dia jadi semangat mengantar anaknya belajar bahasa Inggris. Ilmu dapat, bisnis juga dapat.....

Ayo, siapa menyusul?

Muslim woman defies male is dominance

Amal Soliman, a 32-year-old Egyptian woman, has endured intimidation and ridicule in the year since she applied for a job as the Muslim world's first mazouna, or female marriage registrar, but she says her victory has been worth the fight.

In late September, Soliman, who holds a Masters degree in Islamic Sharia law, broke into what has until now been an exclusively males-only club.

However, the Committee of Egyptian Mazouns, an all-male organisation, challenged Soliman's application saying the job would be inappropriate for a woman and voiced their opinion in a statement issued by the committee.

A marriage officer presides over a wedding (or divorce) ceremony, recites verses from the Quran and signs the official certificates making the union legally binding.

Al Jazeera recently spoke with Soliman shortly after she conducted her first wedding ceremony on October 25.

Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to apply for a position that has traditionally – and for centuries – been a male vocation?

Soliman: In 2007 one of the two marriage officers of my neighbourhood passed away, leaving behind a job opportunity.

For three months everyone wondered who would be able to replace Al Hajj Abou Mesalam and right before the deadline (October 2007) for applying I rushed over to the civil court in Zagazig, the heart of rural Egypt, to give in my application.

I had been interested in pursuing a doctorate degree in Islamic studies but also maintaining a flexible job that would allow me to spend time with my three children.

Legally, there is no reason why a woman can't do the job, and the Mufti (Islamic scholar and interpreter of Islamic law) said it was religiously acceptable as it is only an administrative position.

In October 2007, my husband and I formally submitted an application to the local family court clerk for the post of marriage officer.

Was your application accepted?

Well, I took my husband with me because I was afraid I would be made fun of, which I was.

When I applied the man at the desk laughed openly at me and said that is was just not possible.

He imagined I would go home and forget about it, but instead I argued and told him that I had studied Sharia Law and I know it is an administrative job.

Though the clerk refused to accept my submission, I turned to Ibrahim Darwish, head of the local magistrate in Zagazig for his opinion.

Darwish was puzzled; he said there was no precedent for this situation so he did not know what to say. I took that as a sign that there was a small window of opportunity.

I then consulted Khaled el-Shalkamy, the head judge of Zagazig's family court.

I told him it was my right to be nominee as I was extremely qualified.

I told him just to accept me and let the other people involved in the selection process do the rest.

Were there no other applicants for the job?

Actually, I was in competition with 10 other candidates, all men, but none of them held post-graduate degrees in Sharia law like I did.

So el-Shalkamy accepted my application.

On February 25, I couldn't hold back my tears as I stood in front of the local court and was appointed as my district's new mazouna.

But the battle was half-won. I would not be able to begin work as a mazouna until Mamdouh Marei, the Egyptian minister of justice, formally signed off and authorised my appointment.

But many males did not accept the idea that a woman could hold what has been a man's job and you were targeted in the media.

The chairman of the Committee of Egyptian Mazouns, Muhammad Abou Ayeeta, said "the Ministry [of Justice] should refuse the appointment, because it is unacceptable that women would work in this occupation."

How did you deal with the backlash?

Well, at first my optimism slowly started to fade as I saw so much opposition. Some
columnists wrote that I was out to destroy tradition, that I was a threat to the religion and should be punished for pursuing the post.

But there were two main reasons for the opposition I faced. Firstly, it is simply rooted in male chauvinism. These people believe the woman's place is firmly in her house.

The other group was comprised of uneducated people who have developed an image of women's role in Islam from television; usually based on the words of a sheikh with a turban on his head.

Arguments made against me claimed that a woman couldn't perform marriages because of menstruation, as religion prevents women from praying or entering a mosque during her monthly cycle.

Others claimed that it was inappropriate for a woman to sit amongst men during the signing of the marriage certificates, which is traditionally predominately a male gathering where the marriage officer sits directly between the groom and his father-in-law.

Did no religious authority or group support you?

Well, four months after contacting the Ministry of Justice and receiving no word, I contacted the National Council for Women for a louder voice and stronger backing.

Both my opponents and proponents were beginning to wonder if I would ever receive the approval of the ministry of justice.

From the first moment that my papers where accepted as a nominee, the national press caught wind of this unusual event.

A journalist in Al Akhbar, one of Egypt's leading newspapers, heard about the situation, and helped launch my cause as a national debate.

Eventually the news went global. I think the media was a catalyst and made my appointment go through faster than it would have.

It made me happy to have so much international coverage … Sometimes when I'm sitting alone I wonder if I'm dreaming. What is going on? Did we really pull this off?

I'm happy not just for me; I had always wanted to show the world Egypt's developments with regards to women rights and gender equality.

But you did not get ministry approval until September 27; why did it take the ministry so long?

Of course I was happy and relieved, but more importantly I regained my confidence when the minister finally signed my appointment. I had slowly started to doubt myself up to that point.

However, I now believe that the minister had to be cautious, as this case was the first of its kind.

But laws are not religion. We can develop them.

On November 14, the United Arab Emirates followed in Egypt's footsteps and appointed Fatima Saeed Obeid Al Awani as a mazouna in the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department.

Source : http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2008/11/20081118103940850761.html

The Koran, Islam's holy book and treated as the literal word of God, tells Muslims - men and women - to dress modestly.

Male modesty has been interpreted to be covering the area from the navel to the knee - and for women it is generally seen as covering everything except their face, hands and feet when in the presence of men they are not related or married to.

However, there has been much debate among Islamic scholars as to whether this goes far enough.

This has led to a distinction between the hijab (literally "covering up" in Arabic) and the niqab (meaning "full veil").

Hijab is a common sight among Muslim women, a scarf that covers their hair and neck.

Niqab consists of covering up completely, including gloves and a veil for the face - leaving just a slit for the eyes, or covering them too with transparent material.

This form of dress is rarer, although it has been growing in recent years, and it is this which former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he objects to at face-to-face meetings with his constituents.

Muslim scholars have debated whether it is obligatory to don the niqab, or whether it is just recommended without being obligatory.

There have also been more liberal interpretations which say the headscarf is unnecessary, as long as women maintain the sartorial modesty stipulated in the Koran.

Scholarly dispute

The holy text addresses "the faithful women" who are told to shield their private parts and not to display their adornment "except what is apparent of it".

Scholarly disputes revolve around what this last phrase means.

Does it refer to the outer surface of a woman's garments, necessitating that she cover every part of her body - ie don the full niqab?

Or does it give an exemption referring to the face and the hands, as well as conventional female ornaments such as kohl, rings, bracelets and make-up?

The latter interpretation has been adopted by some of the most prominent scholars from Islamic history, such as Abu Jafar al-Tabari, who favour the hijab option.

There are additional Koranic instructions - seen as ambiguous and therefore much debated - for women to draw the "khimar" (or scarf) to cover the "jayb" (or bosom/upper chest), and for "the wives and daughters of the Prophet and the women of the believers to draw their "jalabib" (or cloaks) close round them".

Religious and cultural traditions vary across the Muslim world, stretching from Indonesia to Morocco.

But it may also be left to the Muslim woman to decide for herself, whether she wants to cover up fully with the niqab, as an expression of her faith and Islamic identity, or not.

In countries such as France and Turkey, where there are legal curbs on religious dress, it becomes a matter of women's human rights to wear what they want.

But at the same time the niqab is such a powerful statement that more liberal Muslims sometimes can be heard objecting to it, especially in more developed societies, where women have fought long and hard to shake off restrictions seen as outdated and imposed by men.

Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5411320.stm

Why The Muslim women wear the veil

The Koran, Islam's holy book and treated as the literal word of God, tells Muslims - men and women - to dress modestly.

Male modesty has been interpreted to be covering the area from the navel to the knee - and for women it is generally seen as covering everything except their face, hands and feet when in the presence of men they are not related or married to.

However, there has been much debate among Islamic scholars as to whether this goes far enough.

This has led to a distinction between the hijab (literally "covering up" in Arabic) and the niqab (meaning "full veil").

Hijab is a common sight among Muslim women, a scarf that covers their hair and neck.

Niqab consists of covering up completely, including gloves and a veil for the face - leaving just a slit for the eyes, or covering them too with transparent material.

This form of dress is rarer, although it has been growing in recent years, and it is this which former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says he objects to at face-to-face meetings with his constituents.

Muslim scholars have debated whether it is obligatory to don the niqab, or whether it is just recommended without being obligatory.

There have also been more liberal interpretations which say the headscarf is unnecessary, as long as women maintain the sartorial modesty stipulated in the Koran.

Scholarly dispute

The holy text addresses "the faithful women" who are told to shield their private parts and not to display their adornment "except what is apparent of it".

Scholarly disputes revolve around what this last phrase means.

Does it refer to the outer surface of a woman's garments, necessitating that she cover every part of her body - ie don the full niqab?

Or does it give an exemption referring to the face and the hands, as well as conventional female ornaments such as kohl, rings, bracelets and make-up?

The latter interpretation has been adopted by some of the most prominent scholars from Islamic history, such as Abu Jafar al-Tabari, who favour the hijab option.

There are additional Koranic instructions - seen as ambiguous and therefore much debated - for women to draw the "khimar" (or scarf) to cover the "jayb" (or bosom/upper chest), and for "the wives and daughters of the Prophet and the women of the believers to draw their "jalabib" (or cloaks) close round them".

Religious and cultural traditions vary across the Muslim world, stretching from Indonesia to Morocco.

But it may also be left to the Muslim woman to decide for herself, whether she wants to cover up fully with the niqab, as an expression of her faith and Islamic identity, or not.

In countries such as France and Turkey, where there are legal curbs on religious dress, it becomes a matter of women's human rights to wear what they want.

But at the same time the niqab is such a powerful statement that more liberal Muslims sometimes can be heard objecting to it, especially in more developed societies, where women have fought long and hard to shake off restrictions seen as outdated and imposed by men.

Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5411320.stm

Case of fully veiled woman roles in France

PARIS - The case started quietly, when a Muslim woman who sheaths herself in a head-to-toe veil was denied French citizenship because she had not assimilated enough into this society. France's highest body upheld the decision, and politicians across the spectrum agreed it was the right move.

A few dissenting voices, though, are now questioning whether the decision pushed France's secularist values too far.

"Where does it begin or end? What we are calling radical behavior?" asked Mohammed Bechari, president of the National Federation of French Muslims. "Will we see a man refused citizenship because of the length of his beard ... or a man who is dressed as a rabbi, or a priest?"
On June 27, France's highest administrative body, the Council of State, ruled that the woman, identified only as Faiza X, had "adopted a radical practice of her religion incompatible with the essential values of the French community, notably with the principle of equality of the sexes, and therefore she does not fulfill the conditions of assimilation" listed in the country's Civil Code as a requirement for gaining French citizenship.

The council said the decision to refuse her citizenship did not aim to "attack (her) freedom of religion."

Breeding fear and intolerance
But critics accuse the French justice system of breeding fear and intolerance of Islam under the guise of upholding secularism. The country is home to western Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated to be at least 5 million of the nation's 63 million people — and growing.

French officialdom has struggled to instill secular traditions in Muslim immigrant communities, passing a law in 2004 barring the Islamic headscarf and other highly visible religious symbols from public schools. Proponents of that law welcomed the decision denying citizenship to Faiza X, who wears a niqab, or full-body veil, to her meetings with immigration officials.

"The burqa, it's a prison, a straitjacket," France's minister for urban affairs, Fadela Amara, herself born to Algerian parents, was quoted as saying.

Click for related content

Vote: Did France do the right thing?

The terms burqa and niqab are often used interchangeably in France, though the former refers to a full-body covering worn largely in Afghanistan with only a mesh screen over the eyes. An official state document said the woman wore a full-body niqab, which left her eyes uncovered.

"It is not a religious sign but the visible sign of a totalitarian political project preaching inequality between the sexes, and which carries within it the total absence of democracy," Amara was quoted as saying in the daily Le Parisien.

Amara told the paper she hoped extremists would get a strong message from the Council of State's ruling, which upheld immigration officials' refusal to grant citizenship to Faiza X.

Ruling did not refer to veil
The council's ruling did not refer to Faiza's niqab, which she said she adopted after arriving in France from her native Morocco, according to a report from a government commissioner to the Council.

The woman told immigration officials that she did not know anything about secularism or her right to vote, according to the commissioner's report. All the immigration officials handling her case were women. They asked her to remove her veil to identify herself, which she did only when no men were in the room, the report said.

Later, in a letter to immigration officials, the woman defended her lifestyle by noting that other immigrants granted French citizenship also maintain "ties with their culture of origin."

The woman and her husband told immigration officials that they adhere to Salafism, a strict strain of Islam.

Click for related content

Saudi king opens interfaith conference in Spain France: Muslim too submissive for citizenship Special Report: Migration to Europe 2006 special report: Islam in Europe

Her statements to immigration officials indicate that "she leads a life almost of a recluse, cut off from French society," leaving the house only to walk with her children or visit relatives, the report said.

"She lives in total submission to the men in her family ... and the idea of contesting this submission doesn't even occur to her," the government report said.

Mixed reactions from Muslims
Politicians on talk shows this week spoke out in support of the ruling. But Muslim groups had mixed reactions.

Mohammed Moussaoui, head of the moderate French Council for Muslim Communities, issued a cautious statement that did not come out strongly for or against the ruling. He said only that his group "rejects all forms of extremism and stigmas that would keep the Muslim component of the nation's society from living its spirituality in peace."

But Fouad Alaoui, vice president of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, said, "It's a turning point in our judiciary that should make us think.

"I don't think that clothing is part of this country's values. Clothing is personal freedom."

Then he added, "On a personal level, I too am disturbed when I see a woman hide her face."

Source : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25707374/

Straw: I'd rather no one wore veils with women

The row over whether Muslim women should wear veils today intensified when Jack Straw said he would rather they were not worn at all.

Mr Straw, the leader of the Commons, insisted he did not want to be "prescriptive" of Muslim women's dress, but said the increasing trend towards covering facial features was "bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult".

The row ignited yesterday after the Blackburn MP said he had made clear to women wearing the niqab (full veil) at constituency surgeries that he would prefer them to remove the facial garment because face to face conversations were of "greater value".

But the Lancashire Council of Mosques said he had "misunderstood" the issue and it was "deeply concerned" by his "very insensitive and unwise" statement.

"For such a seasoned and astute politician to make such a comment that has shocked his Muslim constituents seems ill-judged and misconceived," a spokesman said. "Many of these women find Mr Straw's comments both offensive and disturbing."

In an article for his local paper, Mr Straw yesterday revealed that no one had refused his request, and most "seemed relieved".

Asked today whether he would rather the veils be discarded completely, he said: "Yes. It needs to be made clear I am not talking about being prescriptive but, with all the caveats, yes, I would rather."

He said he was concerned about the development of "parallel communities" in which different religious groups did not mix.

"You cannot force people ... where they live, that's a matter of choice and economics, but you can be concerned about the implications of separateness and I am," he told the BBC's Today programme.

Mr Straw later told GMTV: "It is about personal choice, and I think it's quite important that we should think about the implications, because seeing people's faces is fundamental to relationships between people.

"I've been struck by the discussions I've had with Muslim ladies - only a few, but it's an increasing, if low, trend - about why they wear the veil and about whether they've thought about implications for race or religious relations - it's their decision.

"Interestingly, the Muslim Council of Britain have made it clear there's great controversy among Muslim scholars about whether it is obligatory or not; you obviously have to respect all these schools of thought."

He said he "just thought it was quite important to put out on the table something which is there in any event".

Mr Straw insisted that he respected those who wore the veil and would never demand it was removed, but added that, in conversation, it was important to "not only hear what people say but see what they mean".

The Conservative policy director, Oliver Letwin, said it would be a "dangerous doctrine" to start telling people how to dress, while the Liberal Democrat party chairman, Simon Hughes, dubbed the remarks "insensitive and surprising".

The Islamic Human Rights Commission said Mr Straw was "selectively discriminating".

Rajnaara Akhtar, who chairs the Project Hijab organisation, said the MP had shown a "fundamental lack of understanding about why women wear the veil".

George Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, called on Mr Straw to resign, saying he was effectively asking women "to wear less".

However, Dr Daud Abdullah, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said he understood Mr Straw's views. "This [the veil] does cause some discomfort to non-Muslims. One can understand this," he said, adding that Muslim opinion was divided on the wearing of the veil.

Labour party colleagues, including the party chair, Hazel Blears, gave their backing to Mr Straw and said his request to constituents was "perfectly proper".

Downing Street said he was expressing a private opinion.

· Britain's Muslims are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than followers of other faiths and up to five times as likely to live in overcrowded housing, an Office of National Statistics survey revealed today.

It was the first time the ONS had analysed the country along its religious as well as ethnic lines.

Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/06/immigrationpolicy.religion

Islam Through The Western Eyes

The media have become obsessed with something called "Islam," which in their voguish lexicon has acquired only two meanings, both of them unacceptable and impoverishing. On the one hand, "Islam" represents the threat of a resurgent atavism, which suggests not only the menace of a return to the Middle Ages but the destruction of what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan calls the democratic order in the Western world. On the other hand, "Islam" is made to stand for a defensive counterresponse to this first image of Islam as threat, especially when, for geopolitical reasons, "good" Moslems like the Saudi Arabians or the Afghan Moslem "freedom fighters" against the Soviet Union are in question. Anything said in defense of Islam is more or less forced into the apologetic form of a plea for Islam's humanism, its contributions to civilization, development and perhaps even to democratic niceness.
Along with that kind of counterresponse there is the occasional foolishness of trying to equate Islam with the immediate situation of one or another Islamic country, which in the case of Iran during the Shah's actual removal was perhaps a reasonable tactic. But after that exuberant period and during the hostage crisis, the tactic has become a somewhat trickier business. What is the Islamic apologist to say when confronted with the daily count of people executed by the Islamic komitehs, or when--as was reported on September 19, 1979, by Reuters--Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini announces that enemies of the Islamic revolution would be destroyed? The point is that both media meanings of "Islam" depend on each other, and are equally to be rejected for perpetuating the double bind.

How fundamentally narrow and constricted is the semantic field of Islam was brought home to me after my book Orientalism appeared last year. Even though I took great pains in the book to show that current discussions of the Orient or of the Arabs and Islam are fundamentally premised upon a fiction, my book was often interpreted as a defense of the "real" Islam. Whereas what I was trying to show was that any talk about Islam was radically flawed, not only because an unwarranted assumption was being made that a large ideologically freighted generalization could cover all the rich and diverse particularity of Islamic life (a very different thing) but also because it would simply be repeating the errors of Orientalism to claim that the correct view of Islam was X or Y or Z. And still I would receive invitations from various institutions to give a lecture on the true meaning of an Islamic Republic or on the Islamic view of peace. Either one found oneself defending Islam--as if the religion needed that kind of defense--or, by keeping silent, seeming to be tacitly accepting Islam's defamation.

But rejection alone does not take one very far, since if we are to claim, as we must, that as a religion and as a civilization Islam does have a meaning very much beyond either of the two currently given it, we must first be able to provide something in the way of a space in which to speak of Islam. Those who wish either to rebut the standard anti-Islamic and anti-Arab rhetoric that dominates the media and liberal intellectual discourse, or to avoid the idealization of Islam (to say nothing of its sentimentalization), find themselves with scarcely a place to stand on, much less a place in which to move freely.

From at least the end of the eighteenth century until our own day, modern Occidental reactions to Islam have been dominated by a type of thinking that may still be called Orientalist. The general basis of Orientalist thought is an imaginative geography dividing the word into two unequal parts, the larger and "different" one called the Orient, the other, also known as our world, called the Occident or the West. Such divisions always take place when one society or culture thinks about another one, different from it, but it is interesting that even when the Orient has uniformly been considered an inferior part of the world, it has always been endowed both with far greater size and with a greater potential for power than the West. Insofar as Islam has always been seen as belonging to the Orient, its particular fate within the general structure of Orientalism has been to be looked at with a very special hostility and fear. There are, of course, many obvious religious, psychological and political reasons for this, but all of these reasons derive from a sense that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity.

I have not been able to discover any period in European or American history since the Middle Ages in which Islam was generally discussed or thought about outside a framework created by passion, prejudice and political interests. This may not seem like a surprising discovery, but included in the indictment is the entire gamut of scholarly and scientific disciplines which, since the early nineteenth century, have either called themselves Orientalism or tried systematically to deal with the Orient. No one would disagree with the statement that early commentators on Islam like Peter the Venerable and Barthelemy D'Herbelot were passionate Christian polemicists in what they they said. But it has been an unexamined assumption that since Europe advanced into the modern scientific age and freed itself of superstition and ignorance, the march must have included Orientalism. Wasn't it true that Silvestre de Sacy, Edward Lane, Ernest Renan, Hamilton Gibb and Louis Massignon were learned, objective scholars, and isn't it true that, following upon all sorts of advances in twentieth-century sociology, anthropology, linguistics and history, American scholars who teach the Middle East and Islam in places like Princeton, Harvard and Chicago are therefore unbiased and free of special pleading in what they do? The answer is no. Not that Orientalism is more biased than other social and humanistic sciences; it is as ideological and as contaminated by the world as other disciplines. The main difference is that the Orientalists use the authority of their standing as experts to deny--no, to cover--their deep-seated feelings about Islam with a carpet of jargon whose purpose is to certify their "objectivity" and "scientific impartiality."

That is one point. The other distinguishes a historical pattern in what would otherwise be an undifferentiated characterization of Orientalism. Whenever in modern times there has been an acutely political tension felt between the Occident and its Orient (or between the West and its Islam), there has been a tendency to resort in the West not to direct violence but first to the cool, relatively detached instruments of scientific, quasi-objective representation. In this way Islam is made more clear, the true nature of its threat appears, an implicit course of action against it is proposed. In such a context both science and direct violence end up by being forms of aggression against Islam.

Two strikingly similar examples illustrate my thesis. We can now see retrospectively that during the nineteenth century both France and England preceded their occupations of portions of the Islamic East with a period in which the various scholarly means of characterizing and understanding the Orient underwent remarkable technical modernization and development. The French occupation of Algeria in 1830 followed a period of about two decades during which French scholars literally transformed the study of the Orient from an antiquarian into a rational discipline. Of course there had been Napoleon Bonaparte's occupation of Egypt in 1798, and of course one should remark the fact that he had prepared for his expedition by marshaling a sophisticated group of scientists to make his enterprise more efficient. My point, however, is that Napoleon's short-lived occupation of Egypt closed a chapter. A new one began with the long period during which, under de Sacy's stewardship at French institutions of Oriental study, France became the world leader in Orientalism; this chapter climaxed a little later when French armies occupied Algiers in 1830.

I do not at all want to suggest that there is a causal relationship between one thing and the other, nor to adopt the anti-intellectual view that all scientific learning necessarily leads to violence and suffering. All I want to say is that empires are not spontaneously born, nor during the modern period have they been run by improvisation. If the development of learning involves the redefinition and the reconstitution of fields of human experience by scientists who stand above the material they study, it is not impertinent to see the same development occurring among politicians whose realm of authority is redefined to include inferior regions of the world where new "national" interests can be discovered, and later seen to be in need of close supervision. I very much doubt that England would have occupied Egypt in so long and massively institutionalized a way were it not for the durable investment in Oriental learning first cultivated by scholars like Lane and William James. Familiarly, accessibility, representability: these were what Orientalists demonstrated about the Orient. The Orient could be seen, it could be studied, it could be managed. It need not remain a distant, marvelous, incomprehensible and yet very rich place. It could be brought home--or, more simply, Europe could make itself at home there, as it subsequently did.

My second example is a contemporary one. The Islamic Orient today is important for its resources or for its geopolitical location. Neither of these, however, is interchangeable with the interests, needs or aspirations of the native Orientals. Ever since the end of World War II, the United States has been taking positions of dominance and hegemony once held in the Islamic world by Britain and France. With this replacement of one imperial system by another have gone two things: first, a remarkable burgeoning of academic and expert interest in Islam, and, second, an extraordinary revolution in the techniques available to the largely private-sector press and electronic journalism industries. Together these two phenomena, by which a huge apparatus of university, government and business experts study Islam and the Middle East and by which Islam has become a subject familiar to every consumer of news in the West, have almost entirely domesticated the Islamic world. Not only has that world become the subject of the most profound cultural and economic Western saturation in history--for no non-Western realm has been so dominated by the United States as the Arab-Islamic world is dominated today--by the exchange between Islam and the West, in this case the United States, is profoundly one-sided.

So far as the United States seems to be concerned, it is only a slight overstatement to say that Moslems and Arabs are essentially seen as either oil suppliers or potential terrorists. Very little of the detail, the human density, the passion of Arab-Moslem life has entered the awareness of even those people whose profession it is to report the Arab world. What we have instead is a series of crude, essentialized caricatures of the Islamic world presented in such a way as to make that world vulnerable to military aggression. I do not think it is an accident, therefore, that recent talk of U.S. military intervention in the Arabian Gulf (which began at least five years ago, well before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) has been preceded by a long period of Islam's rational presentation through the cool medium of television and through "objective" Orientalist study: in many ways our actual situation today bears a chilling resemblance to the nineteenth-century British and French examples previously cited.

Source : http://www.thenation.com/doc/19800426/19800426said

The Islam in the eyes of Dalai Lama

New Delhi, India -- What can be more astonishing between a saint confusing people and a rogue speaking the truth? Two such unexpected observations became media bytes recently.

The Dalai Lama, on a month-long trip to the US and South America, said at San Francisco and Chicago that Islam is a religion of compassion which is being unfairly marginalised by few extremists. Ye Xiaowen, the Director of State Administration for Religious Affairs, recently said that Buddhism can reduce social divisions in China better than Islam and Christianity, adding Buddhism can help believers cope with fast-changing society plagued by wealth gap and social unrest.

In the past, the Dalai Lama has criticised both Christianity and Islam for their evangelisation and conversion programmes. Communist China has persecuted all religions including Buddhism. But now, faced with Christian evangelisation and Islamic resurgence, China wants to promote Buddhism, which is also in sync with the ageless Chinese ethos. Intriguingly, Buddhism can help cope with psychological problems amongst people of China, the country with highest execution and suicide rate.

I hold the Dalai Lama in the highest esteem. However, his certification of Islam left me bewildered. It might be true that only a minuscule section of Muslims is indulging in suicide bombing. But why is this section not inspired to work among the sick, poor, illiterate and lepers like Christians? The answer would seem to lie in the analysis of the lives of Jesus Christ and Mohammed, which adherents of the respective religions follow. Why is there a difference between Yasser Arafat and the Dalai Lama when both Palestine and Tibet are "occupied territories"?

I was going through the schedule of the Dalai Lama's forthcoming tours on his website. After visiting the US, he is going to Latin America, then Belgium before returning to India. He then goes to France and the US. Early this year, he visited Israel where he addressed an audience at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. But does he visit Islamic countries like Syria, Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan? Will he be heard in these countries the way he is in Europe and America? Israelis visit Dharamsala in droves. But do Arabs visit him? It is the same story with Hindu monks as well, who fly from India to England, France and the US (leaving the stretch between Pakistan and Morocco).

There can be no bitter irony than a Buddhist monk defending Islam as religion of compassion. Except for mountainous pockets like Ladakh, Tibet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Buddhism disappeared from India under the sword of Islam. BR Ambedkar, who later embraced Buddhism along with his followers, writes in the essay, 'The Decline and Fall of Buddhism', "There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to the invasions of the Musalmans. Islam came out as the enemy of the 'but'. The word 'but', as everybody knows, is an Arabic word and means an idol. Not many people, however, know what the derivation of the world 'but' is. 'But' is the Arabic corruption of Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates that in Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion of Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being, Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar and Chinese Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia. In all these countries Islam destroyed Buddhism... (Writings and Speeches, Vol 3, p 230)

He continues: "The Musalman invaders sacked the Buddhist Universities of Nalanda, Vikramsila, Jagaddala, Odantipur to name a few. They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. Muslim commanders killed a very large number outright. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves...".

Seen in this light the destruction of Bamiyan Buddha by the Taliban in February 2001 does not seem out of place. Smashing the head of Brahma in Thao Maha Brahma or Phra Phrom Erawan Shrine in Bangkok on March 21, the "mentally disturbed" Muslim youth who did it, proved there is a method in this madness. It reflects the atavistic iconoclastic behaviour of Islam. The tragedy of Chakmas (Buddhists) in CHT is also on predictable lines. It will be interesting to know whether the Buddhists of Ladakh and CHT too feel Islam as a religion of compassion.

Peace Campaign Group (PCG) is a New Delhi-based organisation run by Chakmas, who are Buddhist monks as well, but who fled Bangladesh due to Islamic persecution in the early 1990s. They later obtained Indian citizenships and now actively focus on human rights violation in CHT. PCG recently demanded a Darfur-like UN intervention in CHT, which has been a victim of Islamic demographic aggression, systematically carried out by Bangladesh. Bhante Bhikkhu Prajnalankar, general secretary of PCG, travels around the world on a shoestring budget, to highlight the plight of his people in Bangladesh. A monk, he has no inclination to teach the world Zen and Nirvana. Pursuing Nirvana, he says, will not help when the ground beneath your feet is taken away.

Buddhist Thailand is more aware. It has a no-nonsense approach towards the Islamic secessioism in the south - Narathiwat, Pattani, Songhkla and Yala. Buddhists civilians are frequent targets of Muslim attacks in Narathiwat province of Thailand. But the Thai Government's approach is as decisive as it could be in a democracy. On October 26, 2004, Thailand police entered a historic mosque in Pattani where recalcitrant elements had made a stronghold, and flushed them out. Seventy-eight detained Muslims perished, many of them crushed and suffocated, after hundreds of detainees were loaded in two trucks. Thailand rejected any UN probe into the massacre of Islamist militants in southern Thailand.

Buddhism is a compassionate religion; with its stress on non-violence, it was ill-prepared to meet Islam militarily. The Dalai Lama's comments reminds me of Gandhi, whose message of compassion found no takers amongst Muslims. Speaking about Gandhi's tour of England during Second Round Table Conference, Subhas Chandra Bose said, "During his stay in England, he had to play two roles in one person, the role of a political leader and that of a world-teacher. Sometimes he conducted himself not as a political leader who had come to negotiate with the enemy, but as a master who had come to preach a new faith - that of non-violence and world-peace." (The Indian Struggle 1920-1942, p 252). The Dalai Lama is playing world teacher, more than Tibetan supreme leader, and this time he has gone overboard.

Source : http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=8,2588,0,0,1,0

Selimut Jepang di MusliMart

Lho, jualan selimut kok di Cikarang. Daerah panas?
Ya, gak apa-apa. Justru karena panas, banyak orang butuh selimut.

Lho, kok bisa?
Karena gerah, banyak orang pasang AC di kamarnya. Eh, ternyata kedinginan. Maka dicarilah selimut, untuk menghangatkan tubuhnya.

O gitu, to.....
Mana sih selimutnya?
Ini lho....


Spiderman juga ada...

Masjid al-Haram in Mecca

Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām (المسجد الحرام IPA: [ʔælmæsʤɪd ælħaram] "The Sacred Mosque"), is the largest mosque in the world. Located in the city of Mecca, it surrounds the Kaaba, the place which Muslims turn towards while offering daily prayers and is considered by Muslims as the holiest place on Earth. The mosque is also commonly known as the Grand Mosque, Haram or Haram Sharif.^[1]

The current structure covers an area of 356,800 square meters (3,840,570 square feet) including the outdoor and indoor praying spaces and can accommodate up to 4 million worshippers during the Hajj period, one of the largest annual gatherings of people in the world.

Islam tradition holds that the Mosque was first built by the angels before the creation of mankind, when God ordained a place of worship on Earth to reflect the house in heaven called al-Baytu l-Maˤmur (Arabic: البيت المعمور, "The Worship Place of Angels"). Al-Baytu l-Maˤmur is believed to be located in heaven directly above the Kaaba. The first Kaaba was built by angels and Adam was the first human to rebuild it. From time to time the Mosque was destroyed and rebuilt anew. According to Islamic belief it was built by Ibrahim (Abraham), with the help of his son Ishmael. They were ordered by Allah to build the mosque, and the Kaaba. The Black Stone is situated near the eastern corner of the Kaaba. Some believe it is to start the circumambulation around the Kaaba, while some believe it to be the only remnant of the original structure made by Abraham.^[who?] The Kaaba is the direction for all the Muslims to pray across the globe thus signifying unity among all. The Islamic teaching specifically mentions that nothing is magical about the Grand Mosque except for the oasis Zamzam which has never dried ever since it was revealed.

“	And when We assigned to Abraham the place of the House (Kaaba), saying: Do not associate with Me aught, and purify My House for those who make the circuit and stand to pray and bow and prostrate themselves.	”
—Qur'an, [Qur'an 22:26]

“	And when Abraham and Ishmael raised the foundations of the House (Kaaba): Our Lord! accept from us; surely Thou art the Hearing, the Knowing.	”
—Qur'an, [Qur'an 2:127]

Muslim belief places the story of Ishmael and his mother's search for water in the general vicinity of the mosque. In the story, Hagar runs between the hills of Safa and Marwah looking for water for her son, until God eventually reveals to her the Zamzam Well, from where water continues to flow non-stop to this day.

After the Hijra, upon Muhammed's victorious return to Mecca, the people of Mecca themselves removed all the idols in and around the Kaaba and cleansed it. This began the Islamic rule over the Kaaba, and the building of a mosque around it.

The first major renovation to the Mosque took place in 692. Before this renovation – which included the mosque’s outer walls been risen and decoration to the ceiling – the Mosque was a small open area with the Kaaba at the centre. By the end of the 700s the Mosque’s old wooden columns had been replaced with marble columns and the wings of the prayer hall had been extended on both sides along with the addition of a minaret. The spread of Islam in the Middle East and the influx of pilgrims required an almost complete rebuilding of the site which came to include more marble and three further minarets.

In 1399, the Mosque caught fire and what was not destroyed in the fire (very little) was damaged by unseasonable heavy rain. Again the mosque was rebuilt over six years using marble and wood sourced from nearby mountains in the Hejaz region of current day Saudi Arabia. When the mosque was renovated again in 1570 by Sultan Selim II’s private architect it resulted in the replacement of the flat roof with domes decorated with calligraphy internally and the placement of new support columns. These features – still present at the Mosque – are the oldest surviving parts of the building and in fact older than the Kaaba itself (discounting the black stone itself) which is currently in its fourth incarnation made in 1629. The Saudi government acknowledges 1570 as the earliest date for architectural features of the present Mosque.

Following further damaging rain in the 1620s, the Mosque was renovated yet again: a new stone arcade was added, three more minarets were built and the marble flooring was retiled. This was the unaltered state of the Mosque for nearly three centuries.

Saudi Development

The most significant architectural and structural changes came, and continue to come, from the Saudi status of ‘Guardian of the Holy Places’ and the honorific title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques (the other been the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina) been afforded to King Abdul Aziz. Many of the previously mentioned features – particularly the support columns – were destroyed in spite of their historical value. In their place came artificial stone and marble, the ceiling was refurnished and the floor was replaced. The Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, an important part of both Hajj and Umrah, came to be included in the Mosque itself during this time via roofing and enclosement. Also during this first Saudi renovation four minarets were added.

The second Saudi renovations, this time under King Fahd, added a new wing and an outdoor prayer area to the Mosque. The new wing which is also for prayers is accessed through the King Fahd Gate. This extension is considered to have been from 1982-1988.

The third Saudi extension (1988-2005) saw the building of further minarets, the erecting of a King’s residence overlooking the Mosque and further prayer area in and around the mosque itself. These developments have taken place simaltenously with those in Arafat, Mina and Muzdalifah. This third extension has also resulted in 18 more gates been built, three domes corresponding in position to each gate and the installation of nearly 500 marble columns.

Modern but essentially non-architectural developments have been the addition of heated floors, air conditioning, escalators and a drainage system.

The death of King Fahd means that the Mosque is now undergoing a fourth extension which began in 2007 and is projected to last until 2020. King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz plans to increase the capacity of the mosque by 35% from its current maximum capacity of 800,000 with 1,120,000 outside the Mosque itself.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masjid_al-Haram

Usamah Bin Mohammad Bin Laden (Osama bin-Laden)

I. Introduction

The terrorist group profile aims to inform the reader about the strengths and ideals of modern terrorist organisations. Today's special report is not about any one group, nor is it about just any regular terrorist. This special report is about an individual who is described as the world's most dangerous person.

He fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, he participated in the battles of the Jalalabad with the Arab mujahedin and now he is fighting a new battle or 'Jihad,' with the United States.

In the past three years, he has issued three fatwa's declaring war on the American forces in Saudi Arabia. In these same three years, 24 Americans have died in two vicious bombings at US installations in the cities of Riyadh and Al-Khobar.

Evidence continues to mount against the one individual, who has a worth of more than $US250 million, that he is not only the financier behind the bombings, but also personally ordered them as well. He is Usamah Bin Mohammad Bin Laden, known in the Western world as Osama bin-Laden.

II. Profile of Osama bin-Laden

Osama bin-Laden was born in the city of Riyadh in 1957 and raised in AlMadina, AlMunawwara and Hijaz. He received his education in the schools of Jedda before studying management and economics in King Abdul Aziz University in Jedda.

While growing up, he developed a strong Muslim belief of Islamic law. From this belief emerged the necessity for armed struggle preceded by Da'wa and military preparation in order to repel the greater Kufr, and to cooperate with Muslims in order to unite their word under the banner of monotheism, and to set aside divisions and differences. His great struggle began in 1973 when he started interacting with a number of Islamic groups and would continue for several years. During this time he also acquired his personal fortune running the family construction business.

A short time after Jan. 11, 1979, when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan, bin-Laden left his family's business and set about gathering together his fortune to fund recruitment, transportation and training of a volunteer force of Arab nationals to fight alongside the existing Afghan mujahedin. He felt that it was his sense of duty to do so, since the Soviets actions had deeply offended him as a Muslim. His new volunteer group was named 'The Islamic Salvation Front.'

When the Soviet Union was forced out of Afghanistan in 1989, bin-Laden returned to the family construction business. As for his, Islamic Salvation Front, its aid which had been coming from the United States to fight the Soviets ended, and was unit was disbanded. In recent years, bin-Laden has down-played the U.S. involvement in his victory against the Soviets, to ensure most of the credibility for the success rests with him and his forces.

Bin-Laden was dealt a severe blow from his homeland in 1994 when the Saudi Arabian government seized his passport after Egypt, Algeria and Yemen accused him of financing subversive activities. This forced him to flee for Sudan, where the National Islamic Front (NIF) leader Hassan al-Turabi welcomed him.

While residing in Sudan, bin-Ladin financed and help set up at least three terrorist training camps in cooperation with the NIF, and his construction company worked directly with Sudanese military officials to transport and supply terrorists training in such camps.

But in May 1996, he suffered another blow when Sudanese officials, for "harming the image" of the country, expelled him. Bin-Laden maintained in several interviews that he left out of mere courtesy to Sudanese authorities.

From May 1996 onwards, the exact whereabouts of bin-Laden remain a mystery. Rumours ranged from him living in Yemen, to him living in Saudi Arabia with a false passport, to him being captured in Afghanistan. His exact location has not often been substantiated. He is known to have given interviews at a remote, well-guarded, camp in Afghanistan on at least two occasions.

His known activities have been established during interviews, mainly with Middle-Eastern reporters and on three occasion of the release of Fatwa's in April 1996, February 1997 and February 1998. Each one threatened a Holy War (Jihad) against the U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia and the Holy Lands, each one called for Muslims to concentrate on "destroying, fighting and killing the enemy."

III. Crimes that Osama bin-Laden may have been connected to

Although bin-Laden has made numerous threats against the United States personnel in the 'Holy Land' regions he has not yet been indicted for any such crimes. However, rumours and investigations by the United States government believe that bin-Laden financed, and possibly "encouraged" some of the most devastating terrorist attacks in recent years. These include:

World Trade Center Bombing, February 26th, 1993

-- When the World Trade Center was bombed in February 1993, the United States was stunned by the ferocity and strength of that blast. Six people died in the explosion and more than 1,000 people were injured. Until then, there hadn't been a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Four people, Mohammad Salameh, Nidal Ayyad, Mahmud Abouhalima and Ahmad Mohammad Ajaj were later arrested and charged. They were convicted and each sentenced to 240 years of imprisonment without the possibility of parole on March 4th, 1994.

On February 8th, 1995, nearly two years after the bombing suspect Ramzi Ahmed Yousef was arrested in a Pakistan guesthouse by local authorities before being turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yousef had been indicted two years earlier on March 11th, 1993. The owner of the guesthouse was a member of the bin-Laden family, whether it was Osama bin-Laden himself, or as some reports indicate -- his brother-in-law -- remain to be proven.

Riyadh Bombing, November 13th, 1995

-- At 11:30am of November 13th, a car bomb exploded at around a Saudi Arabian National Guard training facility in the middle of the Saudi capital Riyadh killing five Americans and two Indians. Sixty people were injured in the blast, 34 of them Americans. Two groups claimed responsibility, including the Tigers of the Gulf who also stated, "If the Americans don't leave the Kingdom as soon as possible we will continue our actions". The other group, the Islamic Movement for Change.

Four Saudi nationals were later arrested, charged and sentenced for the bombing. Abdul Aziz Bin Fahd Bin Nasser Al-Mothem, Khalid Bin Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Al-Sa'eed, Riyadh Bin Suleiman Bin Is'haq Al-Hajeri and Muslih Bin Ayedh Al-Shemrani all pleaded guilty and were executed by beheading on May 30th 1996. They had also been involved in numerous other assassination and kidnapping plots, all of which had failed.

During the ABC interview, bin-Laden expressively praised the four who carried out the Riyadh attack. Bin-Ladin said that they had, "raised the head of the Muslim nation high, and washed away some of the dishonor we had to bear by the Saudi government's collaboration with the American government in the land of Allah," in other words, the murder of Americans made them a martyr. However, once again no firm evidence stands implicating Osama bin-Laden in this crime.

Dhahran, Al-Khobar Bombing, June 25th, 1998

-- Al-Khobar was the most destructive of the three bombings. A large explosion ripped through a U.S. Air Force housing complex at the King Abdul Aziz Airbase near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia killing 19 servicemen and injuring at least 300 others. Security guards who witnessed the explosion said that a 5,000 gallon diesel truck had backed up to a dormitory that housed U.S. personnel and two people got out. The two proceeded to then escape in a small white car at which time the security ordered an immediate evacuation of the area. Three minutes later an explosion blasted a crater 10 meters (35 feet) deep and 30 meters (85 feet) wide. Buildings as far as 5 kilometers (3 miles) away had been damaged.

Later, explosive experts determined that 4,000 lbs. of TNT had been used. Saudi defense officials at the scene were quoted as saying that it was a terrorist act directed at the foreign presence in the Kingdom. They would also reveal that three groups had claimed responsibility for the bombing, one of them again being the Islamic Movement for Change. Final determination of those responsible for the Khobar attack has been slow in coming.

Aside from those described, bin-Laden may have had some involvement in the following acts of terrorism:

- The December 1992 hotel bombings in Yemen that targeted U.S. servicemen on their way to Somalia as part of a U.N. force.

- The attempted assassination in June 1993 of Jordan's Crown Prince Abdullah.

- The attempted assassination in June 1995 of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sudan.

- Bombing of Egypt's embassy in Pakistan later in November 1996 that killed 17 people.

IV. The John Miller Interview of May 1998

John Miller of ABC television interviewed Osama bin-Laden on May 26th this year in his hideout in the mountains of Afghanistan. The 'Nightline' program aired the interview on June 6th, sending a very explicit threat to the American population, "leave Saudi Arabia or die." Osama bin-Laden is not unaccustomed to making such threats against Americans, he has been doing it for years, this time however, he was more aggressive than ever before.

The interview came after the release of his Fatwa in April, declaring a holy war or 'Jihad', against American Forces in Saudi Arabia. Responding to the threat, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued cautions suggesting 'increased attention in routine anti-terrorism planing' by security personnel. The Awareness of National Security and Response (ANSIR) program run by the FBI issued a warning about the threat. And later on June 4th following a press conference with bin-Laden in Khorst, The Department of State (DoS) issued a warning advising U.S. citizens to be alert and inconspicuous when travelling in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent.

Two day's later, ABC aired the interview.

"Thanks be to Allah..." bin-Laden begins, demonstrating a strong belief for the Muslim religion. A faith he goes on to say, calls for him to wage the holy war and kill Americans:

"Allah is the one who created us and blessed us with this religion, and orders us to carry out the holy struggle 'jihad' to raise the word of Allah above the words of the unbelievers."

Osama bin-Laden makes it clear at this point that his actions and the actions of other Muslims will be justified by 'Allah'. He is stirring a sense of duty amongst Muslims. At the same time, he also strongly dispels any western notion that his return to Islam is for financial gain:

"Allah ordered us in this region to purify the Muslim land of all non-believers, and especially in the Arabian Peninsula... We believe that the biggest thieves in the world and the terrorists are the Americans ... We do not differentiate between those dressed in military uniforms and civilians; they are all targets in this Fatwa."

The non-differentiation between civilians and soldiers makes the threat all the more explicit. Past interviews have never been so specific. However, bin-Laden never says anything without justification or a precedent, this time the killing of women and children with Atomic weapons at the end of World War II provides him with an excuse to do the same. An example he has used before when trying to defame American forces.

Although sufficient evidence for conviction isn't available, bin-Laden is thought to be connected with several bombings of recent years, one of them being the World Trade Center. During the interview when Miller asked bin-laden if he knew convicted bomber Ramzi Yousef, who was arrested in a guest house owned by the bin-Laden family, he replied, "Unfortunately I did not know him before the incident. I remember him as a Muslim who defended Islam from American aggression".

"A Muslim" in bin-Laden's eyes is his equal, there are no leaders in Islam. The Islamic religion forms a strong brotherhood and instances of Muslims helping out strangers to the point of sharing their house are not uncommon. ERRI's Senior Analyst Clark Staten said that, "There is evidence that he was associated with Yousef, including the fact that Yousef was arrested in a property allegedly owned by bin-Laden. We believe that bin-Laden supports a variety of terrorists and terrorist causes, in a number of ways, often at 'arms length'..."

Bin-Laden probably didn't know Yousef personally, before the 'incident', but which incident is bin-Laden referring too? Could he mean the arrest, or could he purposely be speaking ambiguously, inferring that he might have known him after the WTC bombing?

Answering these questions is impossible because bin-Laden, if he did contact and harbour Yousef after the bombing, is not about to implicate himself publicly for fear of retribution if ever he is arrested. Similar questions arise from the answers he gives when pressed about the Riyadh and Al-Khobar bombings. He only says that the perpetrators are heroes amongst Muslims, and did great service to Allah, but is never about his role.

Even though enough evidence does not present itself for his conviction, bin-Laden is undeniably guilty of threatening the United States:

"... Can the America government explain to its people when a SAM missile is launched against a passenger military airplane with 250 soldiers aboard? Can they justify their deaths? What the Saudi Arabian government captured is much less than what was not captured. The American government, if it has anything left to hang on to, has no choice but to pull its sons from the Holy Land..."

It may seem unbelievable that terrorists have weapons such as SAM's at their disposal, but ERRI's senior analyst Clark Staten says the possibility of bin-Laden's mujahedin possessing at least a limited number of ground-to- air missiles is very real. Stinger missiles, for example, were left with the insurgency in Afghanistan by the U.S. for the fight against the Soviets. Equivalent equipment from the former Soviet Union (SA-7, SA-9, etc.) can also be purchased fairly easily on the black-market in a number of Mid-East and S.W Asian countries. Bin-Laden is in effect biting the hand that fed him in the early 1980's.

Staten also believes that bin-Laden is belaboring a myth that he and his insurgents can actually take on the U.S. and win. "Many terrorist leaders are 'meglomanical' in their view of the world. Because they have been successful in small terrorist actions, they somehow believe that they can prevail in larger conflicts with countries like the United States," he said.

Bin-Laden has never directly said that he would stage a direct conflict between Muslims and the United States, but his constant hounding of American low-morale leads one to think that he believes the U.S. would be easy to defeat. He draws upon the example of Somalia:

"The youth [Muslim mujahedin in Somalia] were surprised at the low morale of the American soldier and realized more than before that the American soldiers are paper tigers. After a few blows, they ran in defeat..."

More like a 'sleeping grizzly bear' than a 'paper tiger', ERRI Risk Analyst Steve Macko said during an interview. He points out that the only reason the U.S. pulled out from Somalia was, "If they want to kill themselves, let them. This is not worth spilling American blood over."

"Americans complain and groan ... but if there is an event that angers the American people, there is no stopping them from achieving victory," he added. If bin-Laden had a clear view on the situation, would he be taking on the U.S.? Probably yes.

Throughout his life, bin-Laden held his faith in the religion of Islam high, at whatever cost. In the interview:

"Allah is the one who created us and blessed us with this religion, and orders us to carry out the holy struggle 'jihad' to raise the word of Allah above the words of the unbelievers."

Even though bin-Laden can't possibly win a conventional war against the U.S., he will forever be compelled to wage a 'jihad' using whatever means necessary. But some western analysts say that his driving force is less than holy, and is in fact, financial. Staten agrees to a small extent that this may be true, but like most terrorists he says bin-Laden probably has 'mixed motivations', "although most of his actions seem rooted in Muslim religious fanaticism. He is maybe receiving financing from state sponsors or others with an Islamic bent, but that is often not what drives him..."

Bin-Laden himself was also quick to dispel this judgement of him:

"...to Westerners and secularists in the Arab world who claim the reason for the awakening and the return of to Islam is financial difficulties. This is untrue. In fact, the return of the people to Islam is a blessing from Allah, and their return is a need for Allah."

V. The Latest Fatwa's

Bin-Laden's 'jihad' is not without it's supporters from other terrorist leaders. In the much talked about Fatwa's, several known terrorist group leaders signed the decree aligning themselves with him. These included Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt; Abu- Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Group and Fazlul Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh.

The first one for 1998 was released in February and was published in the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper under the title, "Kill Americans Everywhere." Largely unknown to the western world, bin-Laden told Muslims that to, "kill the Americans and their allies - civilians and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque (Mecca) from their grip..." This February Fatwa was in comparison small, to the one that followed in April 1998.

Originally sent in 1996 after the bombing of Al-Khobar, bin-Laden re-sent the, "DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST THE AMERICANS OCCUPYING THE LAND OF THE TWO HOLY PLACES," Fatwa to his "Muslim Brethern" all over the world. The 27-page document was more of a jihad manifesto than a specific threat towards the United States, filled with quotes from the Islamic Koran relating to Allah's stance on intruders in the holy-land. But again, bin-Laden was threatening to attack U.S. forces. Click here to see EmergencyNet News' previous report on Bin-Laden and "fatwas."

VI. Conclusion

Osama bin-Laden has threatened to attack the U.S., whether this eventuates remains to be seen. He hasn't formally been connected with the bombings of the World Trade Center in New York, the bombing in Riyadh or the bombing of Al-Khobar, through lack of evidence. Only rumours and hearsay exists. The reason for this is because he is well protected from the western world by his associates (whether they be terrorists or not) in Afghanistan, who are merely protecting the hand that feeds them.

The only indication of where an attack may occur next is in the ABC interview. Somewhere in the Hejaz and Najd regions of Saudi Arabia, the holy lands. Specifically where is not known, but the event will no doubt be horrendous.

Although he taunts the United States by specifically inferring the target may be an American aircraft, this could only be a scare tactic, because the interview was merely for propaganda purposes. Subversive propaganda purposes that are designed to motivate Muslim fanatics around the world into carrying out violent acts against American soldiers and civilians. This unfortunately, is how people like Osama bin-Laden operate.

Source : http://www.emergency.com/bldn0798.htm

Islam The Means Peace

Islam means peace through submission to Allah—so Muslims tell us non-Muslims. They frequently go further and say that this peace really denotes peace within a person and that this peace radiates outward to be instantiated as peace within a society, a nation, and eventually the world. What a beautiful thought, but is it the reality?

Fundamentalist Muslims inspired by their love of Islam with Qur’ans in their suitcases hijacked nonmilitary planes boarded with civilians and cowardly crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Islam means peace!

Thousands of innocent Americans who love their families and who believe that fundamentalist Muslims have the right to worship as they wish within mosques on American soil were cowardly killed by fundamentalist Muslims inspired by their love of Islam.

Islam means peace!!

Palestinian Muslims inspired by their love of Islam took to the streets in Israel cheering the murder of American children by Muslim fundamentalists inspired by their love of Islam.

Islam means peace!!!

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia—all "so-called" Muslim countries maintain relations with known Islamic terrorist groups who inspired by their love of Islam want to kill Americans.

Islam means peace!!!!

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) rhetorically denounced the cowardly terrorist acts done out of love of Islam. In the same article CAIR tactlessly used the opportunity to boast about the spread of Islam in America.

Islam means peace!!!!!

The peace of Islam preached by fundamentalist Muslims inspired by their love of Islam, the Islam of the Qur’an, is not peace. In reality this Islam is a religion that sprang from a depraved soul and the souls that embrace this Islam become depraved. This Islam degrades human souls such that they are incapable of peace—even worse, these souls confuse treachery for peace.

The rhetoric of fundamentalist Muslims to make their Islam look like the peaceful answer to life’s problems was exposed on September 11, 2001. That Islam crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That Islam butchered defenseless civilians. That Islam murdered children.

That Islam has rendered the claims of Islamic da’wah devoid of credibility or intelligibility. That Islam has been morally exposed and been found guilty.

This brand of demonic religion from the mind of a demon was exposed to the world by cowardly Islamic terrorists who acted under the inspiration of their love of Islam. They found inspiration reciting their Qur’an. They found solace for their deeds by following the Sunnah of their brand of Islam.

No longer does the world need to respond to this Islam. All that is left is to expose this Islam for the utter degradation that it is. Muslims inspired by this Islam need not respond. You have given up the moral right to be heard until you condemn this Islam.




Source : http://www.answering-islam.org/Assumptions/islam_means_peace.htm