SAMOTALIS: INTERNATIONAL HOLY QURAN AWARD...DUBAI 2008
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Monday, September 29, 2008
Paying zakaat al-fitr on behalf of the dead
My grandmother wanted to know if fitra of Eid can be given in the name of a dead, for e.g. her parents.
Praise be to Allaah.
Zakaat al-fitr is obligatory for all Muslims, males and females, old and young, as stated by the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).
It is only required from the living who are present at the time when it becomes due.
The time when zakaat al-fitr becomes due is when the sun sets on the last day of Ramadaan, because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) called it sadaqat al-fitr, and fitr or breaking the fast of Ramadaan comes when the sun sets on the night of Eid (i.e., the night before Eid). It is a purification for the fasting person from any idle or obscene speech, and the fast ends when the sun sets.
If a person dies before the time it become obligatory, he does not have to pay this zakaah. If a person lives until the time when it becomes obligatory, then dies before paying it, then it should be paid on his behalf from his wealth because it is still a duty that he owes and becomes a debt that must be paid on his behalf.
See: al-Majmoo’, 6/84; al-Mugni, 2/358; al-Mawsoo’ah al-Fiqhiyyah, 23/341
Shaykh Ibn ‘Uthaymeen (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:
If a person dies before the sun sets on the night before Eid, he does not have to pay zakaat al-fitr, because he died before it became obligatory. End quote.
Fiqh al-‘Ibaadaat, p. 211
In conclusion: The deceased person is responsible for this if he died after the time when it became obligatory, which is sunset on the night before Eid. In that case it must be paid on his behalf. If he died before the time when it became obligatory – which appears to be the case in the question asked here – then this zakaah is not obligatory.
If your grandmother gave charity such as food, money, etc on his behalf, then it is charity given on his behalf and is not zakaat al-fitr.
It is proven in more than one hadeeth from the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) that charity given on behalf of the dead benefits them and the reward reaches them.
See question no. 42384.
And Allaah knows best.
Islam Q&A
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
4 killed, 20 injured in eastern Ethiopia explosion
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: An explosion outside a hotel in Ethiopia’s volatile eastern region killed four people Sunday and injured 20 others, a federal police spokesman said.
The explosion occurred at 10:20 a.m. (0720GMT) outside a hotel in the eastern Ethiopia town of Jijiga, some 430 miles (700 kilometers) east of the capital, Addis Ababa, said spokesman Demsash Hailu.
The explosion occurred at 10:20 a.m. (0720GMT) outside a hotel in the eastern Ethiopia town of Jijiga, some 430 miles (700 kilometers) east of the capital, Addis Ababa, said spokesman Demsash Hailu.
“It is a criminal act. It’s not an accident. It was a terrorist action,” he said.
The explosion killed or injured people in front of the hotel and on the street but did not damage the hotel itself, he said, declining to say what caused the explosion or who may have caused it.
Jijiga is the capital of Ethiopia’s Somali region, where separatist rebels have been fighting for autonomy for decades.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front has been fighting for the independence of a large part of Ethiopia’s southeastern region, officially called the Somali region but also known as the Ogaden.
The conflict intensified in May 2007 when the government launched an offensive against the rebels after a rebel attack on a Chinese-run oil exploration field that killed
74 workers.
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Sunday, September 28, 2008
Ruling on praying tahajjud on Laylat al-Qadr only
What is the ruling on praying tahajjud on Laylat al-Qadr and not on other nights?.
Praise be to Allaah.
Firstly:
There are reports which speak of the great virtue of doing acts of worship on Laylat al-Qadr. Our Lord, may He be blessed and exalted, has told us that it is better than a thousand nights, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said that whoever spends this night in prayer out of faith and in the hope of reward will be forgiven his previous sins.
Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“Verily, We have sent it (this Qur’aan) down in the Night of Al‑Qadr (Decree).
2. And what will make you know what the Night of Al‑Qadr (Decree) is?
3. The Night of Al‑Qadr (Decree) is better than a thousand months (i.e. worshipping Allaah in that night is better than worshipping Him a thousand months, i.e. 83 years and 4 months).
4. Therein descend the angels and the Rooh [Jibreel (Gabriel)] by Allaah’s Permission with all Decrees,
5. (All that night), there is peace (and goodness from Allaah to His believing slaves) until the appearance of dawn”
[al-Qadr 97:1-5]
And it was narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever spends this night in prayer out of faith and in the hope of reward will be forgiven his previous sins.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 1901; Muslim, 760.
Out of faith means believing in its virtue and in the reward for that.
In the hope of reward means by seeking the pleasure of Allaah.
Secondly:
The scholars differed as to the definition of Laylat al-Qadr, and there are many opinions, more than forty as it says in Fath al-Baari. The most likely to be correct is the view that it is one of the odd-numbered nights among the last ten nights of Ramadaan.
It was narrated from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Seek Laylat al-Qadr among the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights of Ramadaan.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2017; Muslim, 1169.
Al-Bukhaari included this hadeeth in a chapter entitled: “Seeking Laylat al-Qadr among the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights (of Ramadaan).”
The reason why it is hidden is to encourage the Muslim to strive hard in worship and du’aa’ and dhikr during all the last ten nights of Ramadaan. This is the same reason why the time when du’aa’ is answered on Friday has not been defined, and why the ninety-names of Allaah have not been defined, concerning which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever learns them by heart will enter Paradise.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2736; Muslim, 2677.
Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:
The words of Imam al-Bukhaari (may Allaah have mercy on him) – “Seeking Laylat al-Qadr among the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights (of Ramadaan)” – indicate that it is most likely that Laylat al-Qadar cannot be in any month other than Ramadaan, and is in the last ten nights thereof, and is one of the odd-numbered nights, but not on any particular night. This is what is indicated by a number of the reports that have been narrated concerning it.
Fath al-Baari, 4/260.
And he said:
The scholars said: The reason why Laylat al-Qadar has been concealed is so that people will strive to seek it, because if its timing was known, they would limit their efforts to that night only, as we have explained previously about the time on Friday (when du’aa’s are answered).
Fath al-Baari, 4/266.
Thirdly:
Based on this, it is not possible for anyone to be certain that a particular night is Laylat al-Qadr, especially since we know that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) wanted to tell his ummah when it was, then he told them that Allaah had taken away that knowledge.
It was narrated from ‘Ubaadah ibn al-Saamit (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came out with the news of Laylat al-Qadr, but two men among the Muslims started arguing. He said: “I came out to tell you about Laylat al-Qadr, but So and so and So and so started arguing, so (that knowledge) was taken away. Perhaps that will be better for you. So seek it on the (twenty-) seventh and the (twenty-) ninth and the (twenty-) fifth.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 49.
The scholars of the Standing Committee said:
With regard to singling out one night of Ramadaan as Laylat al-Qadr, this requires evidence to show that it is this night and not any other. But the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights of Ramadaan are more likely than others (to be Laylat al-Qadr) and the twenty-seventh night is the most likely night to be Laylat al-Qadr, because of the ahaadeeth to that effect.
Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa’imah li’l-Buhooth al-‘Ilmiyyah wa’l-Ifta’, 10/413
Hence the Muslim should not assume that any particular night is Laylat al-Qadr, because that would mean that he is being certain about something concerning which we cannot be certain, and because it means that he is missing out on something that is good for him. It may be the night of the twenty-first, or the twenty-third, or the twenty-ninth. If he spends the night of the twenty-seventh only in prayer, then he will have missed out on a lot of goodness, and he may have missed that blessed night.
T
he Muslim should strive his hardest to do acts of obedience and worship throughout Ramadaan, and more so in the last ten days. This is the teaching of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).
It was narrated that ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) said: When the last ten days of Ramadaan began, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) would tighten his waist-wrapper, spend his nights in prayer, and wake his family.
Narrated by Muslim, 2024; Muslim, 1174.
And Allaah knows best.
Islam Q&A
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Praise be to Allaah.
Firstly:
There are reports which speak of the great virtue of doing acts of worship on Laylat al-Qadr. Our Lord, may He be blessed and exalted, has told us that it is better than a thousand nights, and the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said that whoever spends this night in prayer out of faith and in the hope of reward will be forgiven his previous sins.
Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“Verily, We have sent it (this Qur’aan) down in the Night of Al‑Qadr (Decree).
2. And what will make you know what the Night of Al‑Qadr (Decree) is?
3. The Night of Al‑Qadr (Decree) is better than a thousand months (i.e. worshipping Allaah in that night is better than worshipping Him a thousand months, i.e. 83 years and 4 months).
4. Therein descend the angels and the Rooh [Jibreel (Gabriel)] by Allaah’s Permission with all Decrees,
5. (All that night), there is peace (and goodness from Allaah to His believing slaves) until the appearance of dawn”
[al-Qadr 97:1-5]
And it was narrated from Abu Hurayrah (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever spends this night in prayer out of faith and in the hope of reward will be forgiven his previous sins.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 1901; Muslim, 760.
Out of faith means believing in its virtue and in the reward for that.
In the hope of reward means by seeking the pleasure of Allaah.
Secondly:
The scholars differed as to the definition of Laylat al-Qadr, and there are many opinions, more than forty as it says in Fath al-Baari. The most likely to be correct is the view that it is one of the odd-numbered nights among the last ten nights of Ramadaan.
It was narrated from ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Seek Laylat al-Qadr among the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights of Ramadaan.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2017; Muslim, 1169.
Al-Bukhaari included this hadeeth in a chapter entitled: “Seeking Laylat al-Qadr among the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights (of Ramadaan).”
The reason why it is hidden is to encourage the Muslim to strive hard in worship and du’aa’ and dhikr during all the last ten nights of Ramadaan. This is the same reason why the time when du’aa’ is answered on Friday has not been defined, and why the ninety-names of Allaah have not been defined, concerning which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever learns them by heart will enter Paradise.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 2736; Muslim, 2677.
Al-Haafiz Ibn Hajar (may Allaah have mercy on him) said:
The words of Imam al-Bukhaari (may Allaah have mercy on him) – “Seeking Laylat al-Qadr among the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights (of Ramadaan)” – indicate that it is most likely that Laylat al-Qadar cannot be in any month other than Ramadaan, and is in the last ten nights thereof, and is one of the odd-numbered nights, but not on any particular night. This is what is indicated by a number of the reports that have been narrated concerning it.
Fath al-Baari, 4/260.
And he said:
The scholars said: The reason why Laylat al-Qadar has been concealed is so that people will strive to seek it, because if its timing was known, they would limit their efforts to that night only, as we have explained previously about the time on Friday (when du’aa’s are answered).
Fath al-Baari, 4/266.
Thirdly:
Based on this, it is not possible for anyone to be certain that a particular night is Laylat al-Qadr, especially since we know that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) wanted to tell his ummah when it was, then he told them that Allaah had taken away that knowledge.
It was narrated from ‘Ubaadah ibn al-Saamit (may Allaah be pleased with him) that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) came out with the news of Laylat al-Qadr, but two men among the Muslims started arguing. He said: “I came out to tell you about Laylat al-Qadr, but So and so and So and so started arguing, so (that knowledge) was taken away. Perhaps that will be better for you. So seek it on the (twenty-) seventh and the (twenty-) ninth and the (twenty-) fifth.” Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 49.
The scholars of the Standing Committee said:
With regard to singling out one night of Ramadaan as Laylat al-Qadr, this requires evidence to show that it is this night and not any other. But the odd numbered nights of the last ten nights of Ramadaan are more likely than others (to be Laylat al-Qadr) and the twenty-seventh night is the most likely night to be Laylat al-Qadr, because of the ahaadeeth to that effect.
Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa’imah li’l-Buhooth al-‘Ilmiyyah wa’l-Ifta’, 10/413
Hence the Muslim should not assume that any particular night is Laylat al-Qadr, because that would mean that he is being certain about something concerning which we cannot be certain, and because it means that he is missing out on something that is good for him. It may be the night of the twenty-first, or the twenty-third, or the twenty-ninth. If he spends the night of the twenty-seventh only in prayer, then he will have missed out on a lot of goodness, and he may have missed that blessed night.
T
he Muslim should strive his hardest to do acts of obedience and worship throughout Ramadaan, and more so in the last ten days. This is the teaching of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).
It was narrated that ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) said: When the last ten days of Ramadaan began, the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) would tighten his waist-wrapper, spend his nights in prayer, and wake his family.
Narrated by Muslim, 2024; Muslim, 1174.
And Allaah knows best.
Islam Q&A
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
INDONESIA CALLS FOR MUSLIM REPRESENTATION ON SECURITY COUNCIL
The world’s estimated 1.1 billion Muslims deserve specific representation on an expanded Security Council, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister <"http://www.un.org/ga/63/generaldebate/pdf/indonesia_en.pdf">said today, calling for any reform of the 15-member body United Nations body to consider the need for a variety of constituencies as well as greater geographic distribution.
Hassan Wirajuda told the General Assembly’s annual General Debate that the Council was in urgent need of reform, saying that in a series of recent conflicts and tensions – over Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Iraq and Afghanistan, among others – the panel “should have been more decisive.”
Mr. Wirajuda said it was clear that the Council’s inability to deal adequately with these challenges was due mainly to what he described as its lack of democracy.
“To make the Council more democratic, the application of veto power of the permanent five [members] must be regulated,” he said, referring to China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. “The misuse of the veto by any one permanent member should no longer be allowed to paralyze the entire Council.”
He said that true democratization of the Council “also means an equitable distribution of its membership – not only in terms of geographical representation, where we already have imbalances – but also in terms of constituencies. Hence, the world’s major civilizations should be proportionately represented. The world’s community of 1.1 billion Muslims must be represented on the Council if it is to be truly democratic.”
Uruguay’s External Relations Minister, Gonzalo Fernández, told the Assembly that his country would not support reform of the Council if it meant the creation of new members with veto rights.
Mr. Fernández <"http://www.un.org/ga/63/generaldebate/pdf/uruguay_es.pdf">said the veto right “constitutes a privilege that goes against the democratization of our Organization” and would in any case not be allowed under any intergovernmental negotiations package.
Earlier this month the General Assembly adopted a decision to begin intergovernmental negotiations on Council reform in informal plenary by February next year.
However, Mr. Fernandez said he was disappointed that countries have not yet reached consensus on reform, and taken on “timid steps forward” on changes to the UN Secretariat and the General Assembly.
Paula Gopee-Scoon, Foreign Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, <"http://www.un.org/ga/63/generaldebate/pdf/trinidadandtobago_en.pdf">said reform of Council was indispensable to the wider transformation of the UN.
“Failure to reform the Security Council could serve to undermine that organ’s authority as the agency with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,” she said.
Mrs. Gopee-Scoon said small States such as her own deserved “equity of access” on any expanded Council and she added that there was a need for all the world’s regions to be represented in the permanent membership.
For his part, Pham Gia Khiem, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Viet Nam, <"http://www.un.org/ga/63/generaldebate/pdf/vietnam_en.pdf">said reform of the UN should not be confined to just the Security Council, but include the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and specialized agencies as well.
Such reforms “will make this Organization more effective and efficient in the areas of work mandated by the [UN] Charter,” he said.
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Russian ship may help fight pirates off Somalia's coast – military source
Russian ship may help fight pirates off Somalia's coast – military source
The patrol ship Neustrashimy, which belongs to Russia's Baltic Fleet, may help crack down on pirates operating off the coast of Somalia, a source in the Baltic Fleet's headquarters told Interfax-AVN on Friday.
"The crew of the Neustrashimy, which embarked on a long-distance voyage last Wednesday, prepared to carry out combat tasks off Somalia's coast recently," the source said.
The category of the ship allows it to successfully travel from the Baltic Sea into the Gulf of Aden and to carry out tasks in this region, he said.
Russia plans to send its combat ships to the Somali coast in the near future to help fight piracy in the area, Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said.
"We have such plans for the near future. However, Russian ships will not be involved in any international operations. They will do this job on their own," Vysotsky said.
The number of attacks by Somali pirates on civilian vessels belonging to different countries has increased recently. Pirates hijacked Ukraine's vessel Faina under Belize's flag en route to Kenya in neutral waters not far from Kenya's coast on Thursday. Some reports indicate that the Ukrainian ship was carrying military hardware, including nearly 30 T-72 tanks and spare parts for armoured hardware.
The patrol ship Neustrashimy, which belongs to Russia's Baltic Fleet, may help crack down on pirates operating off the coast of Somalia, a source in the Baltic Fleet's headquarters told Interfax-AVN on Friday.
"The crew of the Neustrashimy, which embarked on a long-distance voyage last Wednesday, prepared to carry out combat tasks off Somalia's coast recently," the source said.
The category of the ship allows it to successfully travel from the Baltic Sea into the Gulf of Aden and to carry out tasks in this region, he said.
Russia plans to send its combat ships to the Somali coast in the near future to help fight piracy in the area, Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said.
"We have such plans for the near future. However, Russian ships will not be involved in any international operations. They will do this job on their own," Vysotsky said.
The number of attacks by Somali pirates on civilian vessels belonging to different countries has increased recently. Pirates hijacked Ukraine's vessel Faina under Belize's flag en route to Kenya in neutral waters not far from Kenya's coast on Thursday. Some reports indicate that the Ukrainian ship was carrying military hardware, including nearly 30 T-72 tanks and spare parts for armoured hardware.
The patrol ship Neustrashimy is equipped with anti-submarine and air defense missile systems, a 100-millimeter artillery gun, torpedo systems, and rocket-assisted bomb launchers. It also has a Kamov Ka-27
ship-based helicopter on board.
Source: Interfax-AVN
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Six years in Guantanamo
Sami al-Haj, an Al Jazeera cameraman, was beaten, abused and humiliated in the name of the war on terror. He tells our correspondent about his struggle to rebuild a shattered life Sami al-Haj walks with pain on his steel crutch; almost six years in the nightmare of Guantanamo have taken their toll on the Al Jazeera journalist and, now in the safety of a hotel in the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, he is a figure of both dignity and shame.
The Americans told him they were sorry when they eventually freed him this year – after the beatings he says he suffered, and the force-feeding, the humiliations and interrogations by British, American and Canadian intelligence officers – and now he hopes one day he'll be able to walk without his stick.The TV cameraman, 38, was never charged with any crime, nor was he put on trial; his testimony makes it clear that he was held in three prisons for six-and-a-half years – repeatedly beaten and force-fed – not because he was a suspected "terrorist" but because he refused to become an American spy.
From the moment Sami al-Haj arrived at Guantanamo, flown there from the brutal US prison camp at Kandahar, his captors demanded that he work for them. The cruelty visited upon him – constantly interrupted by American admissions of his innocence – seemed designed to turnal-Haj into a US intelligence "asset".
"We know you are innocent, you are here by mistake," he says he was told in more than 200 interrogations. "All they wanted was for me to be a spy for them. They said they would give me US citizenship, that my wife and child could live in America, that they would protect me. But I said: 'I will not do this – first of all because I'm a journalist and this is not my job and because I fear for myself and my family.
In war, I can be wounded and I can die or survive. But if I work with you, al-Qa'ida will eliminate me. And if I don't work with you, you will kill me'."The grotesque saga began for al-Haj on 15 December, 2001, when he was on his way from the Pakistani capital Islamabad to Kandahar in Afghanistan with Sadah al-Haq, a fellow correspondent from the Arab satellite TV channel, to cover the new regional government.
At least 70 other journalists were on their way through the Pakistani border post at Chaman, but an officer stopped al-Haj. "He told me there was a paper from the Pakistani intelligence service for my arrest. My name was misspelled, my passport number was incorrect, it said I was born in 1964 – the right date is 1969. I said I had renewed my visa in Islamabad and asked why, if I was wanted, they had not arrested me there?"Sami al-Haj speaks slowly and with care, each detail of his suffering and of others' suffering of equal importance to him.
He still cannot believe that he is free, able to attend a conference in Norway, to return to his new job as news producer at Al Jazeera, to live once more with his Azeri wife Asma and their eight-year old son Mohamed; when Sami al-Haj disappeared down the black hole of America's secret prisons the boy was only 14 months' old.Al-Haj's story has a familiar ring to anyone who has investigated the rendition of prisoners from Pakistan to US bases in Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
His aircraft flew for an hour and a half and then landed to collect more captives – this may have been in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital – before flying on to the big American base at Bagram."We arrived in the early hours of the morning and they took the shackles off our feet and pushed us out of the plane. They hit me and pushed me down on the asphalt. We heard screams and dogs barking. I collapsed with my right leg under me, and I felt the ligaments tearing. When I fell, the soldiers started treading on me. First, they walked on my back, then – when they saw me looking at my leg – they started kicking my leg. One soldier shouted at me: 'Why did you come to fight Americans?' I had a number – I was No 35 and this is how they addressed me, as a number – and the first American shouted at me: 'You filmed Bin Laden.' I said I did not film Bin Laden but that I was a journalist. I again gave my name, my age, my nationality.
"After 16 days at Bagram, another aircraft took him to the US base at Kandahar where on arrival the prisoners were again made to lie on the ground. "We were cursed – they said '**** your mother' – and again the Americans walked on our backs. Why? Why did they do this? I was taken to a tent and stripped and they pulled hairs out of my beard.
They photographed the pupils of my eyes. A doctor found blood on my back and asked me why it was there. I asked him how he thought it was there?"The same dreary round of interrogations recommenced – he was now "Prisoner No 448" – and yet again, al-Haj says he was told he was being held by mistake.
"Then another man – he was in civilian clothes and I think he was from Egyptian intelligence – wanted to know who was the "leader" of the detainees who was with me. The Americans asked: 'Who is the most respected of the prisoners? Who killed [Ahmed Shah] Massoud ([the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Afghan militia]?' I said this was not my business and an American soldier said: 'Co-operate with us, and you will be released.' They meant I had to work for them. There was another man who spoke perfect English. I thought he was British. He was young, good-looking, about 35-years-old, no moustache, blond hair, very polite in a white shirt, no tie. He brought me chocolate – it was Kit Kat—and I was so hungry I could have eaten the wrapping."On 13 June, al-Haj was put on board a jet aircraft.
He was given yet another prison number – No 345 – and once more his head was covered with a black bag. He was forced to take two tablets before he was gagged and his bag replaced by goggles with the eye-pieces painted black. The flight to Guantanamo took 12 to 14 hours."They took us on a boat from the Guantanamo runways to the prison, a journey that took an hour." Al-Haj was escorted to a medical clinic and then at once to another interrogation. "They said they'd compared my answers with my original statement and one of them said: 'You are here by mistake. You will be released.
You will be the first to be released.' They gave me a picture of my son, which had been taken from my wallet. They asked me if I needed anything. I asked for books. One said he had a copy of One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic. He copied it for me. During this interview, they asked me: 'Why did you talk to the British intelligence man so much in Kandahar?' I said I didn't know if he was from British intelligence. They said he was."Then after two months, two more British men came to see me.
They said they were from UK intelligence. They wanted to know who I knew, who I'd met. I said I couldn't help them." The Americans later referred to one of them as "Martin" and they did not impress al-Haj's senior interrogator at Guantanamo, Stephen Rodriguez, who wanted again to seek al-Haj's help. "He said to me: 'Our job is to prevent "things" happening. I'll give you a chance to think about this.
You can have US citizenship, your family will be looked after, you'll have a villa in the US, we'll look after your son's education, you'll have a bank account'. He had brought with him some Arabic magazines and told me I could read them. In those 10 minutes, I felt I had gone back to being a human being again. Then soldiers came to take me back to my cell – and the magazines were taken away."By the summer of 2003, al-Haj was receiving other strange visitors. "Two Canadian intelligence officers came and they showed me lots of photos of people and wanted to know if I recognised them. I knew none of them."In more than 200 interrogations, al-Haj was asked about his employers the Al Jazeera television channel in Qatar. In one session, he says another American said to him: "After you get out of here, al-Qa'ida will recruit you and we want to know who you meet.
You could become an analyst, we can train you to store information, to sketch people. There is a link between Al Jazeera and al-Qa'ida. How much does al-Qa'ida pay Al Jazeera?""I said: 'I will not do this – first of all because I'm a journalist and this is not my job. Also because I fear for my life and my family.'"Many beatings followed – not from the interrogators but from other US guards. "They would slam my head into the ground, cut off all my hair. They put me into the isolation block – we called it the 'November Block' – for two years. They made my life torture. I wanted to bring it to an end. There were continual punishments without reason. In interrogations, they would tighten the shackles so it hurt. They hadn't allowed me to receive letters for 10 months – even then, they erased words in them, even from my son. Again, Rodriguez demanded I work for the Americans."In January of last year, Sami al-Haj started a hunger strike – and began the worst months of his imprisonment. "I wanted my rights in the civil courts. The US Supreme Court said I should have my rights.
I wanted the right to worship properly. They let me go 30 days without food – then I was tied to a chair with metal shackles and they force-fed me. They would insert a tube through my nose into my stomach. They chose large tubes so that it hurt and sometimes it went into the lung. They used the same tube they had used on other prisoners with muck still on it and then they pumped more food into me than it was possible to absorb. They told us the people administering this were doctors – but they were torturers, not doctors. They forced 24 cans of food into us so we threw up and then gave us laxatives to defecate. My pancreas was affected and I had stomach problems.
Then they would forbid us from drinking water."Al-Haj says he completed 480 days of hunger strike by which time his medical condition had deteriorated and he was bleeding from his anus. That was the moment his interrogators decided to release him."There were new interrogators now, but they tried once more with me. 'Will you work with us?' they asked me again. I said 'no' again – but I thanked them for their years of hospitality and for giving me the chance to live among them as a journalist.
I said this way I could get the truth to the outside world, that I was not in a hurry to get out because there were a lot more reporters' stories in there." They said: 'You think we did you a favour?' I said: 'You turned me from zero into a hero.' They said: 'We are 100 per cent sure that Bin Laden will be in touch with you...' That night, I was taken to the plane. The interrogators were watching me, hiding behind a tennis net. I waved at them, those four pairs of eyes."The British authorities have never admitted talking to Sami al-Haj. Nor have the Canadians.
Al Jazeera, whose headquarters George Bush wanted to bomb after the invasion of Iraq, kept a job open for Sami al-Haj. But Prisoner No 345 never received an official apology from the Americans. He says he does not expect one.
Source Independent.co.uk
Robert Fisk: Six years in Guantanamo
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
The Americans told him they were sorry when they eventually freed him this year – after the beatings he says he suffered, and the force-feeding, the humiliations and interrogations by British, American and Canadian intelligence officers – and now he hopes one day he'll be able to walk without his stick.The TV cameraman, 38, was never charged with any crime, nor was he put on trial; his testimony makes it clear that he was held in three prisons for six-and-a-half years – repeatedly beaten and force-fed – not because he was a suspected "terrorist" but because he refused to become an American spy.
From the moment Sami al-Haj arrived at Guantanamo, flown there from the brutal US prison camp at Kandahar, his captors demanded that he work for them. The cruelty visited upon him – constantly interrupted by American admissions of his innocence – seemed designed to turnal-Haj into a US intelligence "asset".
"We know you are innocent, you are here by mistake," he says he was told in more than 200 interrogations. "All they wanted was for me to be a spy for them. They said they would give me US citizenship, that my wife and child could live in America, that they would protect me. But I said: 'I will not do this – first of all because I'm a journalist and this is not my job and because I fear for myself and my family.
In war, I can be wounded and I can die or survive. But if I work with you, al-Qa'ida will eliminate me. And if I don't work with you, you will kill me'."The grotesque saga began for al-Haj on 15 December, 2001, when he was on his way from the Pakistani capital Islamabad to Kandahar in Afghanistan with Sadah al-Haq, a fellow correspondent from the Arab satellite TV channel, to cover the new regional government.
At least 70 other journalists were on their way through the Pakistani border post at Chaman, but an officer stopped al-Haj. "He told me there was a paper from the Pakistani intelligence service for my arrest. My name was misspelled, my passport number was incorrect, it said I was born in 1964 – the right date is 1969. I said I had renewed my visa in Islamabad and asked why, if I was wanted, they had not arrested me there?"Sami al-Haj speaks slowly and with care, each detail of his suffering and of others' suffering of equal importance to him.
He still cannot believe that he is free, able to attend a conference in Norway, to return to his new job as news producer at Al Jazeera, to live once more with his Azeri wife Asma and their eight-year old son Mohamed; when Sami al-Haj disappeared down the black hole of America's secret prisons the boy was only 14 months' old.Al-Haj's story has a familiar ring to anyone who has investigated the rendition of prisoners from Pakistan to US bases in Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
His aircraft flew for an hour and a half and then landed to collect more captives – this may have been in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital – before flying on to the big American base at Bagram."We arrived in the early hours of the morning and they took the shackles off our feet and pushed us out of the plane. They hit me and pushed me down on the asphalt. We heard screams and dogs barking. I collapsed with my right leg under me, and I felt the ligaments tearing. When I fell, the soldiers started treading on me. First, they walked on my back, then – when they saw me looking at my leg – they started kicking my leg. One soldier shouted at me: 'Why did you come to fight Americans?' I had a number – I was No 35 and this is how they addressed me, as a number – and the first American shouted at me: 'You filmed Bin Laden.' I said I did not film Bin Laden but that I was a journalist. I again gave my name, my age, my nationality.
"After 16 days at Bagram, another aircraft took him to the US base at Kandahar where on arrival the prisoners were again made to lie on the ground. "We were cursed – they said '**** your mother' – and again the Americans walked on our backs. Why? Why did they do this? I was taken to a tent and stripped and they pulled hairs out of my beard.
They photographed the pupils of my eyes. A doctor found blood on my back and asked me why it was there. I asked him how he thought it was there?"The same dreary round of interrogations recommenced – he was now "Prisoner No 448" – and yet again, al-Haj says he was told he was being held by mistake.
"Then another man – he was in civilian clothes and I think he was from Egyptian intelligence – wanted to know who was the "leader" of the detainees who was with me. The Americans asked: 'Who is the most respected of the prisoners? Who killed [Ahmed Shah] Massoud ([the leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance Afghan militia]?' I said this was not my business and an American soldier said: 'Co-operate with us, and you will be released.' They meant I had to work for them. There was another man who spoke perfect English. I thought he was British. He was young, good-looking, about 35-years-old, no moustache, blond hair, very polite in a white shirt, no tie. He brought me chocolate – it was Kit Kat—and I was so hungry I could have eaten the wrapping."On 13 June, al-Haj was put on board a jet aircraft.
He was given yet another prison number – No 345 – and once more his head was covered with a black bag. He was forced to take two tablets before he was gagged and his bag replaced by goggles with the eye-pieces painted black. The flight to Guantanamo took 12 to 14 hours."They took us on a boat from the Guantanamo runways to the prison, a journey that took an hour." Al-Haj was escorted to a medical clinic and then at once to another interrogation. "They said they'd compared my answers with my original statement and one of them said: 'You are here by mistake. You will be released.
You will be the first to be released.' They gave me a picture of my son, which had been taken from my wallet. They asked me if I needed anything. I asked for books. One said he had a copy of One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic. He copied it for me. During this interview, they asked me: 'Why did you talk to the British intelligence man so much in Kandahar?' I said I didn't know if he was from British intelligence. They said he was."Then after two months, two more British men came to see me.
They said they were from UK intelligence. They wanted to know who I knew, who I'd met. I said I couldn't help them." The Americans later referred to one of them as "Martin" and they did not impress al-Haj's senior interrogator at Guantanamo, Stephen Rodriguez, who wanted again to seek al-Haj's help. "He said to me: 'Our job is to prevent "things" happening. I'll give you a chance to think about this.
You can have US citizenship, your family will be looked after, you'll have a villa in the US, we'll look after your son's education, you'll have a bank account'. He had brought with him some Arabic magazines and told me I could read them. In those 10 minutes, I felt I had gone back to being a human being again. Then soldiers came to take me back to my cell – and the magazines were taken away."By the summer of 2003, al-Haj was receiving other strange visitors. "Two Canadian intelligence officers came and they showed me lots of photos of people and wanted to know if I recognised them. I knew none of them."In more than 200 interrogations, al-Haj was asked about his employers the Al Jazeera television channel in Qatar. In one session, he says another American said to him: "After you get out of here, al-Qa'ida will recruit you and we want to know who you meet.
You could become an analyst, we can train you to store information, to sketch people. There is a link between Al Jazeera and al-Qa'ida. How much does al-Qa'ida pay Al Jazeera?""I said: 'I will not do this – first of all because I'm a journalist and this is not my job. Also because I fear for my life and my family.'"Many beatings followed – not from the interrogators but from other US guards. "They would slam my head into the ground, cut off all my hair. They put me into the isolation block – we called it the 'November Block' – for two years. They made my life torture. I wanted to bring it to an end. There were continual punishments without reason. In interrogations, they would tighten the shackles so it hurt. They hadn't allowed me to receive letters for 10 months – even then, they erased words in them, even from my son. Again, Rodriguez demanded I work for the Americans."In January of last year, Sami al-Haj started a hunger strike – and began the worst months of his imprisonment. "I wanted my rights in the civil courts. The US Supreme Court said I should have my rights.
I wanted the right to worship properly. They let me go 30 days without food – then I was tied to a chair with metal shackles and they force-fed me. They would insert a tube through my nose into my stomach. They chose large tubes so that it hurt and sometimes it went into the lung. They used the same tube they had used on other prisoners with muck still on it and then they pumped more food into me than it was possible to absorb. They told us the people administering this were doctors – but they were torturers, not doctors. They forced 24 cans of food into us so we threw up and then gave us laxatives to defecate. My pancreas was affected and I had stomach problems.
Then they would forbid us from drinking water."Al-Haj says he completed 480 days of hunger strike by which time his medical condition had deteriorated and he was bleeding from his anus. That was the moment his interrogators decided to release him."There were new interrogators now, but they tried once more with me. 'Will you work with us?' they asked me again. I said 'no' again – but I thanked them for their years of hospitality and for giving me the chance to live among them as a journalist.
I said this way I could get the truth to the outside world, that I was not in a hurry to get out because there were a lot more reporters' stories in there." They said: 'You think we did you a favour?' I said: 'You turned me from zero into a hero.' They said: 'We are 100 per cent sure that Bin Laden will be in touch with you...' That night, I was taken to the plane. The interrogators were watching me, hiding behind a tennis net. I waved at them, those four pairs of eyes."The British authorities have never admitted talking to Sami al-Haj. Nor have the Canadians.
Al Jazeera, whose headquarters George Bush wanted to bomb after the invasion of Iraq, kept a job open for Sami al-Haj. But Prisoner No 345 never received an official apology from the Americans. He says he does not expect one.
Source Independent.co.uk
Robert Fisk: Six years in Guantanamo
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Friday, September 26, 2008
Ramadan & Women Issues
The Da`iyah, Zienab Mostafa
Profession
A prominent Muslim Scholar and Da`iyah
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Brothers and sisters, the session has already started. You can submit your questions. Please, make your questions short and clear so as to help us answer all your questions.
Yours, Islam Online Fatwa Editing Desk.
Name
Sister - United States
Profession
Question
Does my husband have a duty to the physical care of our two daughters? My husband works long hours, about 10 hours a day. He feels that is enough for him and does not help much with the raising of our two daughters. I dress them, I feed them, I teach them, I take them to the bathroom, I do everything for them. He doesn't even help me with their Islamic teachings. Is this right? Does he have a duty to the physical care of his kids? I understand that he brings in all the money, but I'm not asking him to clean the house, just to help with the kids. On top of all that, my mother in law is living with us. I feel really that I will go mad. Please help. Note: In terms of love and affection for them, he gives that.
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. I ask Allah to reward you for all the efforts you put towards raising your kids and looking after them. Even though it is not a wajib upon you that you do all what you mentioned, but if you are doing them with the sincere intention to please Allah and fulfill the objectives of marriage in Islam, I hope Allah will reward you abundantly for such great work. As for your husband, it is very important to appreciate how he works hard for earning livelihood, spending many hours for the sake of his family. It is also important to appreciate the sympathy, compassion and kindness he gives his children. It would be greatly appreciated on his part to contribute towards some of the other household duties to the best of his ability, but usually physical care is taken care by mothers as they are presumed to be looking after this part. However, any contribution is greatly rewarded. Gentleness and affection could be the key to your husband’s heart, so try to express your appreciation for what he is doing so he can be motivated to contribute more. Regarding your in-law, you’re supposed to be patient with her, treat her well, and encourage your husband to be dutiful and kind to her. Kindness to one’s parents is an obligation, especially when they reach an old age, and you are supposed to conquer any satanic whispers that tell you to get mad at her or show less care. Accept her with patience and treat her as if she is your own mother.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Anonymous -
Profession
Question
As-Salamu `alaikum. My wife is pregnant in her 5th month. Sometimes when I ask her for sexual intercourse, she refuses, saying that she is tired. However, this reflects on me and affects my sexual emotions, especially when we are in a western country and surrounded by sexual motives. My question is what should I do, knowing that I do not ask her for sex everyday, but every 3-5 days, and I get angry inside me, if she refuses to have sex. Please tell me what to do. Jazakum Allah khair.
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. You should first understand the psyche of pregnant women. Certain biological changes affect their psychological status and ruin their appetite especially in the beginning. She may refuse intimacy not because she hates you or that she does not want to, but because she does not feel normal from inside. You need to be patient and affectionate at this time, rather than angry and annoyed. Try to tolerate this refusal and help her overcome this situation.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Hind -
Profession
Question
I have a question I just converted to Islam but I'm married to someone who don't want to be Muslim, is that okay for me to be still married to him? We been married for 8 years; what should I do?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Let me first congratulate you on accepting Islam as a way of life. May Allah make your steps firm on His right Path and grant you wisdom and understanding of Islam. It is not allowed for a Muslim lady to marry a non-Muslim. If you converted to Islam, and tried to convince your husband to Islam but it looks like he is not willing to embrace Islam, then I believe you have only one option and that is to put a deadline for you to try another time to win his heart over to Islam. If he still does not want to convert, then it is very important to know that faith comes first and that it is not allowed for you to stay in such a marriage.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Shai -
Profession
Question
Dear Scholar, I am not married and I am nearing my late twenties. InshAllah Allah blesses me with a good spouse in the near future - amen. I have a problem. I always feel something. No matter what I do, every time I watch something, or talk to anyone, I feel something. I know this sounds dumb but it's true, I always have ghusl- and it is getting quite annoying. Even when I am reading the Qur'an and Allah (Swt) talks about Zina, I feel something. It's getting very difficult, and I am constantly having showers and repeating my wudu. Please tell me is this just waswasa? Please advise me on what to do? Please pray for me!
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. May Allah increase your knowledge and awareness. It seems to me that you’re suffering form a high level of waswasa that keeps you in great confusions. It would be advised that you consult a psychiatric about this issue, looking for ways to overcome such a problem.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Taqwa -
Profession
Question
Dear Scholar, I am trying my best to make this Ramadan a special one. I am very strict about eating halal food and so far so good. It is just when we are invited for Iftar (breaking one's fasting) or invite someone over to our place - they buy sweets and sometimes those sweets contain gelatin or some kind of emulsifier (that may or may not be from some animal) I find it rude to refuse it, even though I have told them over and over again how strict I am about this issue. But when they arrive with the sweets, I feel its rude to ask them to show me the ingredients on their ice cream or sweet packets. I know one of the conditions for du'a to be answered is that our Rizq (provision) be halal, and I am in need of so many things. Will this affect Allah accepting me this Ramadan?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. I think you’re taking making things hard on yourself. Take it easy, sister and don’t be rigid or try to complicate things for yourself. Besides, when you choose to avoid something that is controversial, you should know that you are not supposed to impose it upon other people. Rigidity is highly condemned in Islam, and one way of being rigid is to be meticulous about every tiny detail. If you don’t wish to eat a certain food, you may gently apologize for not consuming it, and you don’t have to embarrass people by asking them so many questions about ingredients and the like. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Mumina -
Profession
Question
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to ask our questions. This Ramadan I have put in all efforts to stop gossip or back biting, and so far alhumdulilah it is a lot better. There is just one thing. My mother is very hard to deal with and she favors my brothers over my sisters and I. So my younger sister and I always complain to each other about her and my father. I just wanted to know is it haram to talk about ones own parents and brothers and sisters. Nothing evil or wicked, just complaining to each other. In the end we all love each other and we do not do fitnah(sedition). please advise me dear scholar.
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Gossiping and backbiting are serious sins, and so is favoring one’s boys over daughters. However, you cannot correct one mistake by committing another mistake. When you speak ill about your parents, it counts as backbiting. You need to seek other lawful means to solve your problems. You can gently and politely approach them and express your concerns. Try several times, while maintaining ethics and good behavior especially the manners of speaking to them. If you continue to try without any positive results, try to take it as a test in life and pray for your parents that they may be guided to the right way. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Lara - United Kingdom
Profession
Question
My Husband fasts in Ramadan but he does not pray or read Qur'an (in or out with Ramadan). I try to gently to encourage him but he gets angry at me, so I left it and only making Du'a' , Is there any thing more I can do? Is there any specific Du'a'I can say?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Jazakum Allahu khairan for being aware of your role in advising and encouraging your husband to be more practicing of his faith. Continue to do the same, use proper approach and best times. Avoid lecturing or harsh approach. Continue to make du’a’, any general one. There is no specific du’a’, so pray with anything you see suitable to your case. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
sam -
Profession
Question
Salam, I have 2 questions I hope you can answer both Insha Allah. my first question is I am overweight and I am taking a pill that is time released threw out the day I take it once in the morning it is a chemical blocker and appetite blocker Is this hahram to take during Ramadan? the second question is I take a high form of vitamin because I am anemic I hear that you cant take vitamins during Ramadan is this true as well? Thank you for your reply.
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. It is allowed to seek ways to reduce weight provided that they are not harmful to the body. It seems to me that you are using wrong pills that you are anemic, so I strongly advise you to see a nutritionist for that purpose and seek the best and safest method suitable for you. As for vitamins, if they are taken after iftar, i.e. during the night till fajr, they are allowed. If they are taken during the day, i.e. from dawn till sunset, the fast will be broken. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Arash -
Profession
Question
Assalamu 'alaykum. I have a question about fasting with migraine. In the last days I had a very strong migraine and it is very hard for me to fast. But on the other side I think it is a big sin not to fast, because it is one of the pillars of Islam. So it is a struggle with my conscience and I don't know what to do about it. (PS: More than 4 weeks ago, I asked a very important question in the cyber counselor and there is no answer yet, although they told me, there would be an answer within 3 weeks. Here is the question number:XgH9nT)
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Sickness is one of the valid reasons to break one’s fast. If you are fast and you got a migraine, you are allowed to break your fast. Through my personal experience with migraine in the past, I have been advised to delay the suhur, eat something sweet, preferably natural such as honey, and avoid hard work and exhaustion during the daytime in Ramadan. You may try the same or consult a doctor to prescribe the best medication for your case. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
samira - Denmark
Profession
Question
Assalamu 'alaikum.. My husband and I are trying to have a baby Insha Allah and I have been give hormone pills to take that will help me ovulate along with a pill that helps me to get more eggs then normal so the possibility of us getting pregnant is more likely I take them at night after we break fast the problem is they are in my system for 20 hours during fast is this bad? someone told me that I shouldn't take them now but I thought it was only if its nutritional that it is hahram I hear different answers can you please help Inhsa Allah....Thanks
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. It is so strange how this brother/sister told you it is bad because it stays 20 hours in your body. How about the food tat we eat in the suhur that takes hours to digest? If you are taking those pills after iftar, then you should not be worried at all. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Editor -
Profession
Question
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Brothers and sisters, we are so sorry for not answering all your questions because the time is over. We apologize for any inconvenience. Do keep in touch. Join us in coming sessions. Yours, Islam Online Fatwa Editing Desk.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Profession
A prominent Muslim Scholar and Da`iyah
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Brothers and sisters, the session has already started. You can submit your questions. Please, make your questions short and clear so as to help us answer all your questions.
Yours, Islam Online Fatwa Editing Desk.
Name
Sister - United States
Profession
Question
Does my husband have a duty to the physical care of our two daughters? My husband works long hours, about 10 hours a day. He feels that is enough for him and does not help much with the raising of our two daughters. I dress them, I feed them, I teach them, I take them to the bathroom, I do everything for them. He doesn't even help me with their Islamic teachings. Is this right? Does he have a duty to the physical care of his kids? I understand that he brings in all the money, but I'm not asking him to clean the house, just to help with the kids. On top of all that, my mother in law is living with us. I feel really that I will go mad. Please help. Note: In terms of love and affection for them, he gives that.
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. I ask Allah to reward you for all the efforts you put towards raising your kids and looking after them. Even though it is not a wajib upon you that you do all what you mentioned, but if you are doing them with the sincere intention to please Allah and fulfill the objectives of marriage in Islam, I hope Allah will reward you abundantly for such great work. As for your husband, it is very important to appreciate how he works hard for earning livelihood, spending many hours for the sake of his family. It is also important to appreciate the sympathy, compassion and kindness he gives his children. It would be greatly appreciated on his part to contribute towards some of the other household duties to the best of his ability, but usually physical care is taken care by mothers as they are presumed to be looking after this part. However, any contribution is greatly rewarded. Gentleness and affection could be the key to your husband’s heart, so try to express your appreciation for what he is doing so he can be motivated to contribute more. Regarding your in-law, you’re supposed to be patient with her, treat her well, and encourage your husband to be dutiful and kind to her. Kindness to one’s parents is an obligation, especially when they reach an old age, and you are supposed to conquer any satanic whispers that tell you to get mad at her or show less care. Accept her with patience and treat her as if she is your own mother.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Anonymous -
Profession
Question
As-Salamu `alaikum. My wife is pregnant in her 5th month. Sometimes when I ask her for sexual intercourse, she refuses, saying that she is tired. However, this reflects on me and affects my sexual emotions, especially when we are in a western country and surrounded by sexual motives. My question is what should I do, knowing that I do not ask her for sex everyday, but every 3-5 days, and I get angry inside me, if she refuses to have sex. Please tell me what to do. Jazakum Allah khair.
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. You should first understand the psyche of pregnant women. Certain biological changes affect their psychological status and ruin their appetite especially in the beginning. She may refuse intimacy not because she hates you or that she does not want to, but because she does not feel normal from inside. You need to be patient and affectionate at this time, rather than angry and annoyed. Try to tolerate this refusal and help her overcome this situation.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Hind -
Profession
Question
I have a question I just converted to Islam but I'm married to someone who don't want to be Muslim, is that okay for me to be still married to him? We been married for 8 years; what should I do?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Let me first congratulate you on accepting Islam as a way of life. May Allah make your steps firm on His right Path and grant you wisdom and understanding of Islam. It is not allowed for a Muslim lady to marry a non-Muslim. If you converted to Islam, and tried to convince your husband to Islam but it looks like he is not willing to embrace Islam, then I believe you have only one option and that is to put a deadline for you to try another time to win his heart over to Islam. If he still does not want to convert, then it is very important to know that faith comes first and that it is not allowed for you to stay in such a marriage.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Shai -
Profession
Question
Dear Scholar, I am not married and I am nearing my late twenties. InshAllah Allah blesses me with a good spouse in the near future - amen. I have a problem. I always feel something. No matter what I do, every time I watch something, or talk to anyone, I feel something. I know this sounds dumb but it's true, I always have ghusl- and it is getting quite annoying. Even when I am reading the Qur'an and Allah (Swt) talks about Zina, I feel something. It's getting very difficult, and I am constantly having showers and repeating my wudu. Please tell me is this just waswasa? Please advise me on what to do? Please pray for me!
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. May Allah increase your knowledge and awareness. It seems to me that you’re suffering form a high level of waswasa that keeps you in great confusions. It would be advised that you consult a psychiatric about this issue, looking for ways to overcome such a problem.
Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Taqwa -
Profession
Question
Dear Scholar, I am trying my best to make this Ramadan a special one. I am very strict about eating halal food and so far so good. It is just when we are invited for Iftar (breaking one's fasting) or invite someone over to our place - they buy sweets and sometimes those sweets contain gelatin or some kind of emulsifier (that may or may not be from some animal) I find it rude to refuse it, even though I have told them over and over again how strict I am about this issue. But when they arrive with the sweets, I feel its rude to ask them to show me the ingredients on their ice cream or sweet packets. I know one of the conditions for du'a to be answered is that our Rizq (provision) be halal, and I am in need of so many things. Will this affect Allah accepting me this Ramadan?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. I think you’re taking making things hard on yourself. Take it easy, sister and don’t be rigid or try to complicate things for yourself. Besides, when you choose to avoid something that is controversial, you should know that you are not supposed to impose it upon other people. Rigidity is highly condemned in Islam, and one way of being rigid is to be meticulous about every tiny detail. If you don’t wish to eat a certain food, you may gently apologize for not consuming it, and you don’t have to embarrass people by asking them so many questions about ingredients and the like. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Mumina -
Profession
Question
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to ask our questions. This Ramadan I have put in all efforts to stop gossip or back biting, and so far alhumdulilah it is a lot better. There is just one thing. My mother is very hard to deal with and she favors my brothers over my sisters and I. So my younger sister and I always complain to each other about her and my father. I just wanted to know is it haram to talk about ones own parents and brothers and sisters. Nothing evil or wicked, just complaining to each other. In the end we all love each other and we do not do fitnah(sedition). please advise me dear scholar.
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Gossiping and backbiting are serious sins, and so is favoring one’s boys over daughters. However, you cannot correct one mistake by committing another mistake. When you speak ill about your parents, it counts as backbiting. You need to seek other lawful means to solve your problems. You can gently and politely approach them and express your concerns. Try several times, while maintaining ethics and good behavior especially the manners of speaking to them. If you continue to try without any positive results, try to take it as a test in life and pray for your parents that they may be guided to the right way. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Lara - United Kingdom
Profession
Question
My Husband fasts in Ramadan but he does not pray or read Qur'an (in or out with Ramadan). I try to gently to encourage him but he gets angry at me, so I left it and only making Du'a' , Is there any thing more I can do? Is there any specific Du'a'I can say?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Jazakum Allahu khairan for being aware of your role in advising and encouraging your husband to be more practicing of his faith. Continue to do the same, use proper approach and best times. Avoid lecturing or harsh approach. Continue to make du’a’, any general one. There is no specific du’a’, so pray with anything you see suitable to your case. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
sam -
Profession
Question
Salam, I have 2 questions I hope you can answer both Insha Allah. my first question is I am overweight and I am taking a pill that is time released threw out the day I take it once in the morning it is a chemical blocker and appetite blocker Is this hahram to take during Ramadan? the second question is I take a high form of vitamin because I am anemic I hear that you cant take vitamins during Ramadan is this true as well? Thank you for your reply.
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. It is allowed to seek ways to reduce weight provided that they are not harmful to the body. It seems to me that you are using wrong pills that you are anemic, so I strongly advise you to see a nutritionist for that purpose and seek the best and safest method suitable for you. As for vitamins, if they are taken after iftar, i.e. during the night till fajr, they are allowed. If they are taken during the day, i.e. from dawn till sunset, the fast will be broken. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Arash -
Profession
Question
Assalamu 'alaykum. I have a question about fasting with migraine. In the last days I had a very strong migraine and it is very hard for me to fast. But on the other side I think it is a big sin not to fast, because it is one of the pillars of Islam. So it is a struggle with my conscience and I don't know what to do about it. (PS: More than 4 weeks ago, I asked a very important question in the cyber counselor and there is no answer yet, although they told me, there would be an answer within 3 weeks. Here is the question number:XgH9nT)
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. Sickness is one of the valid reasons to break one’s fast. If you are fast and you got a migraine, you are allowed to break your fast. Through my personal experience with migraine in the past, I have been advised to delay the suhur, eat something sweet, preferably natural such as honey, and avoid hard work and exhaustion during the daytime in Ramadan. You may try the same or consult a doctor to prescribe the best medication for your case. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
samira - Denmark
Profession
Question
Assalamu 'alaikum.. My husband and I are trying to have a baby Insha Allah and I have been give hormone pills to take that will help me ovulate along with a pill that helps me to get more eggs then normal so the possibility of us getting pregnant is more likely I take them at night after we break fast the problem is they are in my system for 20 hours during fast is this bad? someone told me that I shouldn't take them now but I thought it was only if its nutritional that it is hahram I hear different answers can you please help Inhsa Allah....Thanks
Answer
Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger. It is so strange how this brother/sister told you it is bad because it stays 20 hours in your body. How about the food tat we eat in the suhur that takes hours to digest? If you are taking those pills after iftar, then you should not be worried at all. Allah Almighty knows best.
Name
Editor -
Profession
Question
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
Brothers and sisters, we are so sorry for not answering all your questions because the time is over. We apologize for any inconvenience. Do keep in touch. Join us in coming sessions. Yours, Islam Online Fatwa Editing Desk.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Ruling on one who does not pay zakaat al-fitr although he is able to
What is the ruling on one who can afford to pay zakaat al-fitr but does not pay it?.
Praise be to Allaah.
The one who does not pay zakaat al-fitr has to repent to Allaah and seek His forgiveness, because he is sinning by withholding it. He also has to pay it to those who are entitled to it, but after Eid prayer it is simply regarded as ordinary charity.
And Allaah is the Source of strength.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Praise be to Allaah.
The one who does not pay zakaat al-fitr has to repent to Allaah and seek His forgiveness, because he is sinning by withholding it. He also has to pay it to those who are entitled to it, but after Eid prayer it is simply regarded as ordinary charity.
And Allaah is the Source of strength.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Ruling on one who does not pay zakaat al-fitr although he is able to
What is the ruling on one who can afford to pay zakaat al-fitr but does not pay it?.
Praise be to Allaah.
The one who does not pay zakaat al-fitr has to repent to Allaah and seek His forgiveness, because he is sinning by withholding it. He also has to pay it to those who are entitled to it, but after Eid prayer it is simply regarded as ordinary charity.
And Allaah is the Source of strength.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Praise be to Allaah.
The one who does not pay zakaat al-fitr has to repent to Allaah and seek His forgiveness, because he is sinning by withholding it. He also has to pay it to those who are entitled to it, but after Eid prayer it is simply regarded as ordinary charity.
And Allaah is the Source of strength.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
To whom should zakaat al-fitr be paid?
Men are asking for zakaat al-fitr in the marketplace, and we do not know whether they are religiously committed or not. There are others whose situation is comfortable, and whatever they get of the zakaah they spend on their children. Some of them receive a salary but they are weak in religious commitment. Is it permissible to give them zakaat al-fitr or not?.
Praise be to Allaah.
Zakaat al-fitr should be given to poor Muslims even if they are sinners so long as their sin is not something that puts them beyond the pale of Islam. What is meant by poor is those who appear to be poor, even if they are in fact rich. The one who is paying the zakaah should seek out good poor people as much as possible. If he finds out later that the one who took it was actually rich, that does not affect the one who gave it, rather he has discharged his duty, praise be to Allaah.
And Allaah is the Source of strength.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Praise be to Allaah.
Zakaat al-fitr should be given to poor Muslims even if they are sinners so long as their sin is not something that puts them beyond the pale of Islam. What is meant by poor is those who appear to be poor, even if they are in fact rich. The one who is paying the zakaah should seek out good poor people as much as possible. If he finds out later that the one who took it was actually rich, that does not affect the one who gave it, rather he has discharged his duty, praise be to Allaah.
And Allaah is the Source of strength.
Standing Committee for Academic Research and Issuing Fatwas.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Somali pirates 'seize 30 tanks'
Medeshi 26 Sept, 2008Somali pirates 'seize 30 tanks'
Pirates off the coast of Somalia have seized a Ukrainian ship carrying T-72 tanks, an official has said.
Ukraine's foreign ministry said the ship had a crew of 21 and was sailing under a Belize flag to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
Pirates off the coast of Somalia have seized a Ukrainian ship carrying T-72 tanks, an official has said.
Ukraine's foreign ministry said the ship had a crew of 21 and was sailing under a Belize flag to the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
(Photo: T-72 tanks)
A report from Russia's Interfax news agency said earlier that the ship had a cargo of about 30 tanks, as well as spare parts for armoured vehicles.
There has been a recent surge in piracy off the coast of Somalia.
The country has not had an effective national government for 17 years, leading to a collapse of law and order both on land and at sea.
Somali pirates are currently holding more than a dozen hijacked ships in the base in Eyl, a town in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.
It was not immediately clear where the Ukrainian ship had been taken.
Speed boats
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the captain of the Faina cargo ship had reported being surrounded by three boats of armed men on Thursday afternoon.
Andrew Mwangura, who runs the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Programme, confirmed to the BBC that the ship was carrying a cargo of tanks.
The tanks were due to be transported by road from Kenya to South Sudan.
Insurgents in Somalia, not known to have links to the pirates, are currently battling a combination of government troops, their Ethiopian allies and African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu and other parts of southern Somalia.
The US has an anti-terror task force based in neighbouring Djibouti and has carried out several air strikes against the Islamist insurgents, accusing them of sheltering al-Qaeda operatives.
Flourishing industry
Pirates have seized dozens of ships from the major shipping routes near Somalia's coast in recent months.
Pirate "mother ships" travel far out to sea and launch smaller boats to attack passing vessels, sometimes using rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
Authorities in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland say they are powerless to confront the pirates, who have been growing in strength.
In Eyl, where ships are held for ransom, a flourishing local industry has developed.
Last week France circulated a draft resolution urging states to deploy naval vessels and aircraft to combat piracy in the area.
France has intervened twice to free French sailors kidnapped by pirates, with commandos freeing two people whose boat had been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden earlier this month.
After an earlier raid in April, six arrested pirates were handed over to French authorities for trial.
International navies have been escorting humanitarian deliveries to Somalia, where a third of the population needs food aid.
A report from Russia's Interfax news agency said earlier that the ship had a cargo of about 30 tanks, as well as spare parts for armoured vehicles.
There has been a recent surge in piracy off the coast of Somalia.
The country has not had an effective national government for 17 years, leading to a collapse of law and order both on land and at sea.
Somali pirates are currently holding more than a dozen hijacked ships in the base in Eyl, a town in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.
It was not immediately clear where the Ukrainian ship had been taken.
Speed boats
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said the captain of the Faina cargo ship had reported being surrounded by three boats of armed men on Thursday afternoon.
Andrew Mwangura, who runs the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Programme, confirmed to the BBC that the ship was carrying a cargo of tanks.
The tanks were due to be transported by road from Kenya to South Sudan.
Insurgents in Somalia, not known to have links to the pirates, are currently battling a combination of government troops, their Ethiopian allies and African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu and other parts of southern Somalia.
The US has an anti-terror task force based in neighbouring Djibouti and has carried out several air strikes against the Islamist insurgents, accusing them of sheltering al-Qaeda operatives.
Flourishing industry
Pirates have seized dozens of ships from the major shipping routes near Somalia's coast in recent months.
Pirate "mother ships" travel far out to sea and launch smaller boats to attack passing vessels, sometimes using rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
Authorities in Somalia's semi-autonomous region of Puntland say they are powerless to confront the pirates, who have been growing in strength.
In Eyl, where ships are held for ransom, a flourishing local industry has developed.
Last week France circulated a draft resolution urging states to deploy naval vessels and aircraft to combat piracy in the area.
France has intervened twice to free French sailors kidnapped by pirates, with commandos freeing two people whose boat had been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden earlier this month.
After an earlier raid in April, six arrested pirates were handed over to French authorities for trial.
International navies have been escorting humanitarian deliveries to Somalia, where a third of the population needs food aid.
Story from BBC NEWS:
SAMOTALIS: German commandos arrest two terror suspects on aircraft: police
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
http://samotalis.blogspot.com/
Workshops for Ethics in Business
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Previous workshops include: |
The Carnegie Council's 
The goal is to provide examples of best practices that help address stubborn ethical problems that organizations face. The world's best companies have enjoyed success partly because their competitive management systems deal with these problems globally, while their less successful competitors have been dealing with them on an ad hoc basis. Meanwhile, internal change agents have expressed the need for outside pressure for corporate reform. 
Each workshop produces Time to Hunt Somali Pirates
September 25, 2008
Late last Monday evening, for the second time this year, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy dispatched special operations forces into the territory of the defunct Somali Democratic Republic to free French citizens who had been hijacked by pirates off the dangerous waters off the Horn of Africa. The next morning, in a pre-dawn operation lasting just ten minutes, a team from the Commando Hubert of the berets verts, the elite naval commandos, freed a French couple, Jean-Yves and Bernadette Delanne, who had been kidnapped two weeks earlier when their yacht, the Carré d’As IV, was seized by pirates as it was passing through the Gulf of Aden en route to France from Australia. The pirates holding the Delannes had been demanding a $1.4 million ransom.Instead one pirate ended up dead and another half dozen received a free trip to one of holding cells belonging to the France’s special counterterrorism court where they will join six other Somalis captured by French commandos in April after they hijacked the luxury sailboat Le Ponant and held its thirty crew members hostage. The berets verts suffered no casualties.
Several hours after the commando raid, in a speech from the Élysée Palace in Paris, President Sarkozy noted that he ordered the rescue when it became clear the pirates planned to take the hostages to Eyl, a pirate base in the semi-autonomous northeastern Somali region of Puntland, where “their captivity could have lasted months.” According to the French chief of state, “The world cannot accept this. Today, these are no longer isolated cases but a genuine industry of crime. This industry threatens a fundamental freedom, that of movement and of international commerce.”Citing the fact that piracy in the Gulf of Aden had “literally exploded” this year with more than fifty attacks so far this year and Somali pirates still holding an estimated 150 hostages and more than a dozen ships, mainly around Eyl, the president called the international community to action against “this plague.”
Yet barely 24 hours later, a Hong Kong-registered ship, the 25,000-ton Stolt Valor, which had been chartered by the Norwegian-Luxembourgish Stolt-Nielsen Transportation Group and bound for Mumbai, India, with a chemical cargo, was seized with its crew of twenty-two, including 18 Indians, two Filipinos, one Bangladeshi, and one Russian. The next day, Somali pirates hijacked the Greek-owned, Maltese registered bulk carrier Centauri, which was carrying 26 Filipino seamen and a load of 17,000 tons of salt to the Kenyan port of Mombasa; the vessel was taken to southern Somalia which, as I reported late last month, had come under the control of Islamist forces with al Qaeda links. In a separate attack that same day, the Hong Kong-registered Great Creation, which was traveling to India from Tunisia, was also seized with its crew of 24 Chinese and one Sri Lankan. On Sunday, another Greek-owned freighter, the Bahamian-registered Captain Stephanos, was hijacked 250 nautical miles off the Somali coast. As of the time this column is being filed, there is no word on the fate of ship’s crew of seventeen Filipinos, one Chinese, and one Ukrainian.
That the attacks are increasing should come as little surprise. In an interview with Der Spiegel last week, Germany ship owner Niels Stolberg admitted that his Bremen-based firm, Beluga Shipping GmbH, paid $1.1 million earlier this month to recover its $23 milllion freighter, the Antigua and Barbuda-registered BBC Trinidad, which had been hijacked while carrying pipes and other oil equipment from Houston, Texas, to Muscat, Oman. With ship owners willing to pay ransoms of more than $1 million for the release of their hijacked vessels, Somali piracy in increasing in both frequency and sophistication. Not only are the attacks the most lucrative economic activity in Somalia these days, but the pirates are using at least part of the ransoms they have collecting to upgrade their arsenals in the hopes of landing even larger maritime prizes. The authoritative shipping paper of record, Lloyd’s List, warned last week that “ransom paid to pirate raiders off Somalia could spiral to $50 million this year, fueling copy cat attacks.”
From being the occasional nuisance whose deadly potential I warned about more than two years ago in the inaugural column of this series when I reported on an incident of some pirates foolishly taking Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Cape St. George and the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Gonzalez 25 nautical miles off the Somali coast, Somali piracy has, alas, burgeoned into an international problem affecting literally dozens of countries around the globe. Hijacked vessels currently being held in Somali ports include ships flying the flags of China, Egypt, Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Panama, South Korea, and Thailand. Captured seamen presently being held for ransom by the pirates come from fifteen countries, including Croatia, India, Italy, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Russia. Insurance premiums for commercial shipping which must pass through the Gulf of Aden have soared tenfold over the course of the past year, adding yet another drag to the sluggish global economy. Yet shippers have few options: the adverse impact on international commerce of having to navigate all around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds at least 4,500 miles to a voyage, could be even more severe than the increased insurance costs.
Late last week the Round Table of International Shipping Associations – an umbrella group that brings together the Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), the International Association of Dry Cargo Ship-owners (Intercargo), the International Chamber of Shipping/International Shipping Federation, and the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko) – jointed the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) in a joint appeal calling on the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) to use its influence with the world body to secure “real and immediate action against brazen acts of piracy, kidnapping and armed robbery, carried out with increasing frequency against ships in the Gulf of Aden, by pirates based in Somalia,” a challenge which the statement described as “in danger of spiraling completely and irretrievably out of control.” It should be recalled that the shipping industry and union were hardly exaggerating the potential risks: in addition to other commerce, some 11 percent of world’s seaborne petroleum – some 3.3 million barrels – must pass through the very waters currently infested with the Somali pirates.
From the international security perspective, even more grave than the danger to global maritime commerce, there is increasing evidence that at least part of the proceeds from the piracy has gone to fund the Islamist insurgency against the internationally-recognized, but otherwise utterly ineffective, “Transitional Federal Government” (TFG) of Somalia. The insurgent “Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia” (ARS) is spearheaded by al-Shabaab (“the Youth”), a group with ties to al-Qaeda which was formally designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier this year (see my March 27th report). The latest confirmation of what is at the very least tacit cooperation between the Somali pirates and their terrorist counterparts were the reports over the weekend that the Centauri was headed toward the Islamist-controlled southern Somali coast, rather than to one of the usual pirate havens in Puntland. Moreover, should the link between Somali piracy and Somali Islamist terrorism ever mature beyond the current marriage of convenience to achieve operational and strategic synergies, then the real consequences of the maritime economic warfare which I sketched out in concept two years ago will be truly catastrophic.
And while the pirate gangs and, however indirectly, the ARS insurgents have benefited from the attacks on shipping, the already marginal existence of ordinary Somalis has deteriorated. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) currently feeds some 2.4 million of the approximately 6 million inhabitants of Somalia proper; by the end of the year, the number of those totally dependent upon food assistance is expected to grow by about 50 percent to more than 3.6 million as the region faces what WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran characterized Monday as “the worst humanitarian crisis since 1984,” when over one million died in the Ethiopian famine. With approximately 90% of that food aid moved by sea, the pirate attacks threaten to cut off that vital lifeline. While the pirates have not targeted WFP food shipments recently because of escort protection provided by the Canadian Halifax-class frigate HMCS Ville de Québec, the vessel is scheduled to end its three-month deployment and sail home this coming weekend. As yet, no country has stepped forward to take over the mission. The dire humanitarian situation is further aggravated by al-Shabaab’s warning last week against any aircraft landing at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde Airport, a threat backed by intelligence that the terrorist group had taken delivery of a new consignment surface-to-air missiles. As a result of the Islamists’ ban on flights, the only plane to come in all week was a Ugandan military flight that slipped in last Friday to deliver supplies to the Ugandan People’s Defense Force contingent which makes up the bulk of the woefully undermanned African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) peacekeeping force. In response, ARS forces pounded Mogadishu over the weekend, shelling two AMISOM bases, the airport, and the city’s Bakara market; at least two dozen civilians were killed on Monday alone.
What then, might be done to deal with the growing challenge of Somali piracy?
First, commercial vessels need to be better prepared to protect themselves. For now, commercial shipping should limit their risk by navigating within the limits of Maritime Security Patrol Area (MSPA) proclaimed late last month by the Commander, United States Naval Central Command, and entrusted to the Combined Task Force 150 multinational effort originally set up to stop suspect shipping in support of the war on terrorism. In the event they come under pirate attack, vessels transiting through the Gulf of Aden via the MSPA corridor stand a greater chance of receiving assistance from coalition ships maintaining a continual presence in the vicinity. Some ship owners have also invested in alarm systems, close-circuit television, electric fences, and even armed guards as measures to counter the threat of being boarded, many have not. Nonetheless, even if all ships deployed countermeasures, the merchant marine cannot be turned into an armed fleet. Furthermore, with some attacks being mounted more than 200 nautical miles from the Somali coast by heavily armed pirates in ocean going vessels equipped with satellite technology, there is a limit to the effectiveness of the standard advice given to commercial shipping to avoid the coastline, keep alert, and maintain speed. (See point six below.)
Second, given the large area within which the pirates now apparently operate as well as their improved armaments and tactics necessitates a strong naval response to sweep the international sea lanes clear of the pirates. Since early this month the Royal Danish Navy has had a combat support ship, HDMS Absalon in the Gulf of Aden as part of the Combined Task Force 150 (the rotating command of the task force handed over to a Danish officer, Commodore Per Bigum Christensen, last Monday). The Absalon, however, has been spending more of its deployment chasing pirates away from commercial shipping in the MSPA than interdicting terrorist movements of men and materiel: this past week, the frigate-type vessel was answering at least one distress call a day. European Union (EU) foreign ministers meeting in Brussels last Monday expressed their “serious concern about the acts of piracy and armed robbery off the Somali coast” and decided to establish a coordination unit tasked with supporting surveillance and protection activities undertaken by individual member states. The ministers also approved “a strategic military option for a possible European Union naval operation.” On Saturday, a press release from the Spanish Defense Ministry announced that, in support of the EU coordination unit, Madrid had dispatched a P-3 Orion maritime reconnaissance plane and a Hercules helicopter, as well as a Boeing 727 carrying support personnel, on a three-month deployment to Djibouti, from where the aircraft will patrol the Somali coast. Also over the weekend, the French Permanent Mission to the United Nations was circulating a draft Security Council resolution calling on “all states interested in the safety of maritime activities” to “actively take part in the fight against piracy against vessels off the coast of Somalia, in particular by deploying naval vessels and military aircraft.”
Third, while an international anti-piracy coalition as advocated by the French is well and fine, it is effective; and it can only be as effective as its components. While the unanimously passed UN Security Council Resolution 1816 authorizes for a period of six months beginning in June the naval forces of other countries to enter Somali waters in pursuit of the pirates, that document predicated the legal authority to do so on cooperation with the TFG. The problem is that not only is the TFG no government, but it is part and parcel of the problem. Last Friday, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, accused the rulers of Puntland of complicity in the piracy, telling a press conference in Djibouti that “the Puntland leadership has made it easy for pirates to establish a base there” and alleging that some of ransom money collected would “be used to fund the 2009 presidential elections in Puntland.” What the Mauritanian diplomat discretely omitted was that Puntland is the stronghold of TFG “President” Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmad’s Darod clan and the Majeerteen subclansmen who are his most loyal supporters enjoy a disproportionately high representation in the ranks of the pirates. One can only guess how many of the consumer purchases which TFG chieftain is wont to make during frequent sojourns abroad are paid for with misappropriated international funds that are supposed to aid Somali civilians and how many are funded by the tribute payments received by the old warlord from his pirate kinsmen (see this photo posted on a Somali website – the very week it was taken in London earlier this year, dozens of Somalis died in attacks in Mogadishu). The TFG is likelier to be a hindrance than a help in taking the type of strong action, both on land as well as in the water, which will be needed if the pirate havens are to be destroyed once and for all – statements like last week’s declaration of support by the International Contact Group on Somalia for the TFG’s constantly proliferating array of do-nothing committees to dialogue with the toothless rump of the ARS that, having lost the internal power struggle to more extremist elements, signed the so-called Djibouti Agreement last month are little more than wishful thinking.
Fourth, in addition to eschewing entanglements with obstacles like the TFG, it is imperative that ties be forged with effective authorities capable of helping in the fight against piracy. While pirates operate openly along most of the 2,285 kilometers of the coastline in Somalia proper, none ply the 740 kilometers of Gulf of Aden coastline belonging to the as-yet unrecognized Republic of Somaliland. According to information first disclosed last Wednesday by my friend Professor Iqbal Jhazbhay of the University of South Africa in an interview with Nairobi, Kenya-based Voice of America (VOA) correspondent Alisha Ryu, despite having a base in neighboring Djibouti, France obtained permission from Somaliland authorities to use the abandoned U.S. base at Berbera in the northwestern region of the republic as the staging area for last week’s successful rescue. According to other sources, the operation also involved the La Fayette-class light stealth frigate Courbet and two ATL-2 maritime patrol aircraft. After the raid, the base was used again to transfer the six captured pirates to an airplane bound for France. The French appear to have decided to avail themselves of Somaliland President Dahir Riyale Kahin’s coincidental presence in their capital for consultations to secure the use of a staging ground that was less likely to jeopardize operational secrecy than Djibouti, where the one runway at Ambouli International Airport is shared by commercial traffic, the French military mission, and Camp Lemonier, home of the America’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). As I have previously advocated and must repeat again:
The international community needs to formally acknowledge de jure what is already de facto: the desuetude of “Somalia” as a sovereign subject of international law. Unitary Somalia is not only dead, but the carcass of that state has been putrefied; reanimation is no longer in the realm of possible. To apply Max Weber’s thesis, a government like the TFG that does not even enjoy the monopoly on the legitimate use of force in its own capital –much less elsewhere in the territory it claims as its own – is no government at all. Instead of constantly trying to put the best face on a bad situation,…the emphasis should be shifted to local Somali entities which have taken responsibility for governance in their respective regions.
Fifth, while naval operations can be undertaken to clear the sea lanes of the pirate menace and commando raids launched to rescue hostages, the long term security of the waters around the Horn of Africa requires the development of maritime capacity on the part of states neighboring the anarchic regions of Somalia. As I suggested in last week’s column, there is a need to for engagement initiatives like the United States Navy-led Africa Partnership Station (APS), which strengthens the capacity of partner countries to deal with a variety of challenges, including piracy, criminal enterprises, and poaching. However, for most African nations, the scope of their maritime ambitions and interests is far more modest than those of the blue-water navies of middle-tier powers, much less those of the U.S. Navy. In America, functions like maritime safety and law enforcement, littoral escort, and port security have traditionally been the primary responsibility of the U.S. Coast Guard. Given that, in terms of mission as well as vessel size, this service is a much closer match to almost all of Africa’s naval forces than most of the assets of Naval Forces Central Command or the Pacific Fleet which operate nearby, it would behoove military strategists to consider how to incorporate the Coast Guard more into their planning for security in East Africa.
Sixth, even with short-term kinetic operations and long-term capacity enhancement initiatives, one has to acknowledge that in the waters off the Horn, there would still remain a not insignificant gap in maritime security between what assistance the international community can or will provide and such capacities as African states (and Yemen) might possess. Might it not be the case that, as I argued in The National Interest Online last year with respect to lack of deployable peacekeeping, the international community as a whole, interested states, or even those with stakes in maritime transportation ought to at least consider leveraging non-traditional security resources available within the private sector to fill, at least provisionally, the security vacuum?
It is bad enough that, Somaliland aside, the lack of an effective, much less legitimate, government in the territory of the former Somalia since 1991 has occasioned virtually endless conflict among the Somali. It is intolerable that the lawlessness should spill over and threaten the security of neighboring states like Ethiopia, Kenya, and Yemen, as well as global commerce as a whole, much less that it should augment the already considerable terrorist challenge. The time has come for responsible powers in the international community to develop an integrated strategy to cope with the worsening piracy, one that begins with declaring open season on the seaborne marauders whom admiralty law has long branded hostes humani generis, enemies of mankind.
In addition to serving on the boards of several international and national think tanks and journals, FamilySecurityMatters.orgContributing Editor Dr. J. Peter Pham has testified before the U.S.Congress. Feedback:editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Charity - Saudi Style
As Wall Street imploded last Wednesday, one of its biggest investors was 6,500 miles away — and what seemed to be several centuries in the past — giving away some of his vast wealth. In a lavish desert camp outside Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal sat on a thick carpet while hundreds of men gathered to seek his charity.
They lined up to kiss his shoulder and hand him pieces of paper with requests for money — to buy a home or a car, to educate a child, pay off a debt or repair a mosque. Some brought him modest gifts, to thank him for past favors. Others offered poems and songs in praise. "Everybody knows that nobody who comes to you leaves disappointed," one Bedouin tribesman sang in a high lilt. "I ask for nothing more than that." (See photos of Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal at his desert camp here.)
Alwaleed is a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, and he's also the richest man in the Arab world, with a personal fortune estimated at $21 billion at the end of last year, and holdings that include big pieces of Citicorp, Apple, Motorola, Disney, News Corp and Time Warner, to name just a few.
Many of his stocks were taking a battering as Alwaleed held court in Camp Rumah, but the Prince seemed unperturbed. The previous day, responding to news of Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy, he'd told me that while his U.S. holdings had been affected by Wall Street's slump, his investments elsewhere were doing fine. "All in all, we're withstanding it well," he said.
All the same, Alwaleed kept an eye on his investments: His camp is equipped with several large-screen TVs, many of them tuned to CNBC, Bloomberg TV and other news channels. The Prince constantly sent and received text messages on his cellphone, and took calls on two satellite phones. "I'm never cut off from news," he said. "News is one constant in my life." These Wednesday night gatherings in the desert at which he disburses instant charity are another — he's done them for nearly 25 years. "If I'm in the country on Wednesday, I'll come here and do this, no matter what."
The prospect of instant charity had brought nearly 350 Saudi men from across the kingdom to Camp Rumah on this night. The Prince and his wife host female supplicants at their palatial Riyadh home on Saturdays. Being Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, the men had waited for several hours without food or water. They were divided into two groups — around 30 sheikhs, or tribal elders, greeted Alwaleed on his arrival at the camp, around 6 p.m., while the rest waited a few hundred yards away. The Prince joined the sheikhs for "iftar" — the meal that breaks the day's fast. After a light meal of dates and yoghurt, they knelt for prayers.
Afterward, they sat in silence as Alwaleed chatted with a couple of journalists and tracked the unremittingly grim news from New York. Pretty much every financial stock was heading south, quick. Alwaleed shook his head and smiled. He appeared fascinated, even enthralled by the unfolding disaster, like a young boy watching a slow-motion trainwreck. "Unbelievable," he said, over and over again. He took a call on his cellphone. "It's a meltdown, no?" he told his caller, still smiling.
When CNBC's Maria Bartiromo appeared on the screen, the Prince was suddenly animated. "I know her very well," he said. "Look, I'll send her a message now, and she will write back." He punched an SMS message on his Motorola, and sure enough, 10 minutes later, Bartiromo replied. Alwaleed chuckled and settled back on his cushions. He showed the journalists some photographs stored in his cellphone. "This is me with Bashar Assad," he said. "And me with Steve Balmer and Bill Gates."
Dinner was announced at nearly 8 p.m., and everybody trooped off to an open-air dining area, to sit down on carpets for a feast of Roman proportions — giant trays of lamb, chicken, fish, rice, bread and pasta, and a dozen desserts. The guests are not restricted by the Prince's own no-meat diet, but on his orders all the desserts were made with Splenda.
After dinner, it was time for the Prince to finally receive the supplicants. The sheikhs went first, then the rest of the men, each handing him their request in writing. Alwaleed scarcely glanced at the notes before handing them to an aide, who stuffed them into a suitcase. His brusque manner didn't seem to offend any of the men; they knew not to expect any sort of conversation with the Prince. "If I stop to talk to everybody, then it would take hours and hours — not fair to those who are at the back of the line," he said. "The important thing is that I get to shake hands with everyone, and they can leave knowing that their request will be answered."
It would take over an hour for the Prince to shake hands with every one of the supplicants. They then slipped into the night, leaving Alwaleed with a small coterie of retainers — and the TV sets, blaring out the bad tidings from New York.
The written requests will eventually be read by Alwaleed's staffers, who will consider the merits of each application and recommend appropriate donations for the Prince's approval. An aide told me that in five years of working for Alwaleed, he'd never known an applicant to get nothing. "The smallest sum we pay out is 2,000 Saudi Riyals (around $560)," he said. The largest payouts exceed 100 times that sum. Although the Prince rarely handed out cash on the spot, the aide explained, he sometimes gave away cars — and on one occasion, a prized falcon worth $50,000.
Alwaleed figured the requests he received Wednesday night would cost him around $1.5 million. It's a safe bet he lost many times that sum the same day on Wall Street.
Aid workers kidnapped in Ethiopia
Two aid workers working for Medecins du Monde in Ethiopia have been abducted from the Ogaden region that borders Somalia, the French aid agency says.Eyewitnesses say the man and woman, whose nationalities are not known, have been taken to Somalia's central region of Galguduud by well-armed gun men.
Kidnapping of foreigners is common in Somalia. Correspondents say most are released after ransoms are paid.On Monday, a kidnapped German and his Somali wife were freed. They were released by police in the Somali semi-autonomous north-eastern region of Puntland.The aid workers in Ogaden, Ethiopia's Somali region which is suffering from a severe drought, were kidnapped on Monday."The organisation is in permanent contact with the authorities, its team on the ground as well as other actors on the field," AFP news agency quotes Medecins du Monde as saying in a statement.Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 and ethnic Somali rebels have been fighting an insurgency for years in Ogaden
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INTERNATIONAL CRISIS GROUP - NEW REPORT Chad: A New Conflict Resolution
Chad will face continuing security threats and political crises unless Chadians adopt a new and inclusive approach toward national reconciliation, supported by the international community.
“The single-minded emphasis on this process, by the European Union and France in particular, must be reconsidered”.Since the return to a multi-party system in 1990, power has been monopolised by a Zaghawa military clan headed by President Idriss Déby.
Neither enhanced government revenues from newly exploited oil reserves, nor elections backed by Chad’s Western allies have brought democracy or improved governance.Sudan’s repeated attacks against refugee camps and Darfur rebels in Chad have exacerbated the crisis but did not cause it. Déby’s decision to back Darfur’s Sudanese rebels became a central element to his political survival strategy. He found a new lease on life in portraying himself as a key asset to the West’s containment strategy against Khartoum and was emboldened by the deployment of two international peacekeeping operations in eastern Chad to protect 250,000 Darfuri refugees.A three-track process of dialogue and substantive action is needed. The first should build on the 2007 agreement by launching new political negotiations with broadened participation, including civil society. A second track should focus on the armed rebellion with the goal of establishing a genuine, permanent ceasefire and integrating rebel forces with the army.
Under the supervision of the African Union, a third track should address longstanding disputes between Chad and Sudan, and seek to eliminate a pattern of proxy war and support for each other’s rebels.“Without real administrative, economic and security sector reform, Chad will continue to face alienation and recurring threats of violent political takeovers that have haunted the country for decades”, says Francois Grignon, Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Ahmadinejad and the Mahdi by Mohebat Ahdiyyih Middle East Quarterly Fall
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad surprised not only many Westerners but also many Iranians when, during his first speech at the United Nations, he prayed for the hasty return of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, Shi‘i Islam's messianic figure.[1] Demonstrating his priorities, he repeated the prayer in December 2007 when addressing Arab leaders at the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Doha[2] but did not object when they described the Persian Gulf as Arab, a diplomatic swipe at Iran's place in the region. Ahmadinejad's messianism is no ploy; it is very serious indeed.[3] Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chairman of the Guardian Council, credits Ahmadinejad with "being inspired by God."[4]The Mahdi and the Islamic RepublicThe inspiration for Ahmadinejad's thinking can be found in traditional Shi‘ism.
As with other monotheistic religions, Shi‘i teachings promise the return of a messiah. For Twelver Shi‘a, the messiah will be Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, who went into occultation in 874 CE and is expected to return before the Day of Judgment to lead the righteous against the forces of evil.[5] Such ideas pervade Iranian culture, even beyond the Islamic context. The idea of the Mahdi has historical precedence, for example, in ancient Zoroastrian beliefs.[6] Persian literature and poetry are awash with the notion of a promised savior. Abol-Ghasem Ferdowsi (935-1020), the author of Shahnameh (The book of kings), Iran's national epic, wrote that a "noble man" would appear in Iran from "whom will spread the religion of God to the four corners of the world."[7]After the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic incorporated the idea of Mahdism into its complex system of governance. Under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's concept of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurisprudent), Khomeini became the "guardian of Muslims" and representative of the Mahdi in the "first government of God" on earth. He allowed the election of a parliament, the Majlis, but then commanded the elected deputies in May 1980 to offer their "services to Lord of the Age [the Mahdi], may God speed his blessed appearance."[8]Khomeini and the framers of the Islamic Republic's constitution established an important precedent: Both rationality and irrationality can be employed in the governance of a nation.
This approach explains how the Islamic Republic has survived in the modern world even as it pursues a millennium-old philosophy in the face of a skeptical international community and despite a largely progressive and enlightened Iranian population.Paying lip service to the Hidden Imam has been, since the time of Khomeini, a standard practice for Iranian officials. For example, shortly after leaving office, former president Mohammad Khatami delivered a philosophical and relatively rational speech about civilizations intended to lessen the adverse international reaction to Ahmadinejad's messianic statements. Nevertheless, during the course of his speech, Khatami asserted that the "Lord of the Age will bring about a world government" even as he claimed that "we have no mission to change the world."[9]If past Iranian presidents have mentioned Mahdism, Ahmadinejad has made it a focal point of his rhetoric. In September 2005, he sponsored the first annual International Conference of Mahdism Doctrine in Tehran. The conference presented Mahdism as an ideology that could form the basis for world peace and unity across religions.
Addressing the conference, Ahmadinejad said that the "Islamic Republic and the system of velayat-e faqih have no other mission but to prepare for the establishment of a world government . . . as the Imam [Mahdi] runs and manages the universe." He repeated the same idea but modified his language at the second conference in 2006, saying the "Mahdavi perception [Mahdism] and view are the perfect method for the administration and direction of the world." In follow-up seminars, speakers defined Mahdism as the "defining strategy of the Islamic Republic," a "comprehensive plan and strategic policy," and a "political regime and world view." Within that context, the conference determined not only that the Mahdi's advent is "inevitable" but also that it can be "accelerated" through human action. Discussants spoke about the Iran-Iraq war as a practical example of the application of Mahdism since "combatants were moved by the love of the Mahdi's representative, Khomeini, to sacrifice their lives." Attendees also spoke of Iran as the "Umm al-Qura" (mother of villages), suggesting that the Islamic Republic had replaced Mecca—which uses that same title—as the rightful center of Islam. [10]Ahmadinejad's View of the MahdiAhmadinejad's concept of Mahdism derives from the same sources that have inspired other Iranian leaders across the Islamic Republic's political spectrum. Aside from Khomeini's teachings on the subject[11] and the writings of Ayatollah Morteza Mottahari[12] (1920-79), a prominent ideologue of the Islamic Republic, a number of other Iranian authors have been influential. In the nineteenth century, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97) sought to unite the Islamic world and demonstrate the utility of Islamic teachings in the modern world.
He hid his true identity as a Shi‘i believer under the rubric of taqiyya (dissimulation) and pretended to be a Sunni from Afghanistan. Indeed, he contributed not only to Islamist reform inside Iran but also helped lay the groundwork for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.[13]Ahmadinejad may also have derived inspiration from Navvab Safavi (1924-55), founder of Fadayan-e Islam, a group that assassinated a number of more liberal Iranian politicians and intellectuals. The writings of both Jalal Al-e Ahmad[14] (1923-69) and Ahmad Fardid[15][16][17]; and he may even have been influenced by such anticlerical writers as Fereydun Adamiyat (1920-2008), the most popular modern historian of Iran and a senior diplomat in the late shah's government, whose decades of work[18] have vastly influenced generations of Iranian intellectuals but are now being scrutinized after the exposure of a number of falsifications,[19] such as his intentional misrepresentation of facts about nineteenth-century religious and political movements and the early twentieth-century Iranian constitutional revolution.[20] Although he was prevented from writing or engaging in political activity after the 1979 revolution, major organs of the Islamic Republic—the Kayhan and Jam-e Jam dailies, for example—continue to amplify parts of Adamiyat's work that support their positions often without citing his name.
So, too, does the Majlis Research Center and the Islamic Revolution Documentation Center, whose director is an advisor to Ahmadinejad, as well as major political and religious websites such as Tebyan. (1909-94), popular anti-American writers, may have influenced Ahmadinejad in his formative years, as would have ‘Ali Shariati (1933-77), an Iranian sociologist who helped meld leftist thought with political Islam and popularized the notion of Islamic revolution in the years before Khomeini's return. Ahmadinejad may also have drawn upon Ehsan Tabari (1916-89), the theoretician of Tudeh, the Iranian communist party, who after a lifetime of indoctrinating Iranian leftists confessed to "erroneous" ideas after the 1979 revolutionFurther coloring Ahmadinejad's world-view, even if not his Mahdism, has been German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
Iranian intellectuals react favorably to Heidegger's real or perceived anti-American sentiments, anti-Semitism, and his criticism of traditional Western thought. His grand theory of existence and his objection to attaching great significance to logical reasoning and intelligibility, as well as his theories of the value of nothingness, are concepts that have made him the darling of many Iranian intellectuals.The HojjatiehBut what surely has had the greatest influence on Ahmadinejad and his peers is systematic indoctrination by the Hojjatieh Society. The name Hojjatieh derives from Hojjat (proof), one of the titles of the Mahdi; the society was founded in the mid-twentieth century by clerics to combat the Baha'i faith, founded in the nineteenth century by a prophet whom Muslim clerics have labeled and opposed as a false mahdi. The Hojjatieh grew with the help of prominent clerics and assistance from the late shah, who sought to curry favor with the clerics. It soon became a powerful nationwide organization of fundamentalists trained in Mahdism and proved a menace to the late shah.The Hojjatieh played an important role in radicalizing Ahmadinejad and other secular Muslim youth, students, teachers, government bureaucrats, and even some members of the armed forces prior to the 1979 revolution. Many Hojjatieh activists participated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But in the early 1980s, Khomeini moved against the society, both because it challenged his velayat-e faqih doctrine of leadership and because it was poised to take the reins of power in Iran.
The ensuing purge of its members from the Islamic regime forced numerous aspiring advocates of the new Islamic regime, such as Ahmadinejad, to renounce or hide their membership in or sympathy for the Hojjatieh.[21]As a result, the Hojjatieh went underground. Accusations of membership were enough to taint aspiring politicians with disloyalty to the supreme leader. In recent years, several critics of Ahmadinejad's tenure have suggested that his administration is Hojjatieh-inspired and bent on settling scores with Khomeini's allies.[22] Such charges may not be baseless, as some Ahmadinejad supporters have publicly called for rehabilitation of the Hojjatieh and resumption of its activities against the Baha'i faith. For example, the head of the powerful Islamic Propagation Organization (IPO) in East Azerbaijan called for the "revival and strengthening of Hojjatieh Society."[23]Here, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi's role is notable as Iranians believe he leads the new Hojjatieh.[24] A member of the Assembly of Experts and director of the Imam Khomeini Institute, Mesbah-Yazdi is a leading proponent of Mahdism and a powerful senior cleric with great influence over Ahmadinejad, his government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and security forces.[25] He is also allegedly a trainer of hard-line clerics at the Haqqani theological college in Qom, some of whom have joined Ahmadinejad's cabinet.Outspoken, Mesbah-Yazdi opens a window into Ahmadinejad's beliefs.
He advocates the use of violence to promote the interests of Islam and seeks to purge the republican aspect of the Islamic Republic system in favor of a pure Islamic system, which his publications refer to as the nucleus of a Mahdi-led world. The October 2005 issue of his monthly publication Ma'refat, for example, argued that the "superiority of Islam over other religions is stressed in Qur'an, which calls on believers to wage war against unbelievers and prepare the way for the advent of the Mahdi and conquering the world." According to Pasdare Islam, the monthly publication of the powerful Islamic Propagation Organization, an institution in tune with Mesbah-Yazdi's ideas, Khomeini himself elucidated this idea by saying that the "Mahdi will fill the earth with justice" and that "all institutions in our country and their extensions worldwide must prepare the way to receive the Mahdi upon his advent."[26] Mesbah-Yazdi even attributes Ahmadinejad's election to the presidency to the will of the Mahdi.[27] Mesbah-Yazdi is not the only senior cleric who endorses Ahmadinejad's messianism. Jannati and Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the secretary-general of the Qom Seminary Lecturers' Association, both members of Assembly of Experts, have also endorsed the president's beliefs.[28] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself characterized Ahmadinejad's election to the presidency as the fulfillment of the "prayers of the Lord of the Age."[29]A close examination of the statements and activities of Ahmadinejad and his supporters point to their intimate knowledge of Shi‘i traditions about the Mahdi's expected appearance in Iran and the fierce opposition and violence against him and his followers by clerics, issues that have been closely guarded and rarely mentioned by the ecclesiastics for obvious reasons.
For example, following the establishment of the Islamic Republic, clerics directed the purging and editing of statements in books of the sayings and traditions attributed to Prophet Muhammad and his Shi‘i successors about the circumstances surrounding the future advent of the Mahdi. Media coverage of such statements was also tailored in the same manner. In one case, the redactors did not even exempt the most famous 110-volume book called Biharu'l-Anwar (Oceans of light), a standard textbook compiled by the Safavid-era scholar Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (1616-89). Major portions and traditions were stripped of materials deemed detrimental to the Islamic Republic's interests.Ahmadinejad's InterpretationNo matter how unorthodox Ahmadinejad's interpretation of Islamic theology and prophecies are, he appears sincere in his beliefs. Ahmadinejad's motto of "justice-nurturing government," together with the often-cited promise of the Qur'an about the righteous inheriting the earth, is meant to evoke the idea of a savior in the name of the Mahdi as Iranians are well-versed in the tradition promising the Mahdi will "fill the earth with justice after it has been filled with oppression." As minority Shi‘i Muslims, Iranians also expect vindication of their beliefs against the "false" Sunni majority belief.[30] Furthermore, Ahmadinejad's characterization of his government as "jihadist" and "basiji" (militia), further inflames emotions in more radical believers about the militancy of his administration in pursuing Mahdism.Ahmadinejad seeks an Islamic government in Iran that is free from democratic pretenses and devoid of modern concepts of human rights and the equality of the sexes; that seeks the acquisition of nuclear weapons, the elimination of Israel, the destruction of liberal democratic states and Western capitalism, and an end to the United States as a superpower, which is perceived as the greatest threat to the Islamic Republic's survival and the main obstacle to the accomplishment of its objectives. The achievement of these preconditions, Ahmadinejad believes, will enable Shi‘i domination and the establishment of a world government.[31] When Ahmadinejad declares frequently that his government represents a return to Khomeini's revolutionary ideals from which previous governments have allegedly deviated, he is suggesting that he believes it is time to return Mahdism—and the achievement of its precursor steps—to its rightful place among the Islamic Republic's priorities.[32]It is an attractive idea for the masses, nurtured on more than two decades of state-sponsored incitement. Khomeini, after all, called for the Islamic world to "rise up and destroy Israel,"[33] and said of the United States, "We will fight them with all our might until the last drop of our blood."[34]Ahmadinejad's acolytes find his lack of inhibition in speech and his fiery populism a fresh breeze of honesty compared to the deceptive discourse of Rafsanjani and the philosophizing of Khatami.
While both Rafsanjani and Khatami might pay rhetorical heed to the goal of eliminating Israel or countering U.S. influence,[35] both prefer to finesse their rhetoric not to antagonize outside powers.Mesbah-Yazdi's role as a central figure in promoting Mahdism is important because both he and at least one influential disciple, Hojjatu'l-Islam Mohsen Gharavian, openly endorse the Islamic Republic's acquisition of nuclear weapons. In September 2005, for example, Ma'refat declared that "deterrence does not belong just to a few superpowers but also to other countries," and argued that "The Qur'an calls on the faithful and the Muslim nation to acquire maximum power to be able to deter the enemies of religion and humanity: ‘Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of enemies of God and your enemies.'"[36] In February 2006, Gharavian reiterated this position, as reported by the international media and a number of news agencies in Iran, by stressing the "necessity of using nuclear weapons as a means to retaliate," adding that "there is no religious constraint in using nuclear weapons to retaliate."[37] Although he later denied his statement, his original argument is consistent with those made by others.[38]
For example, Hojjat ul-Islam Saidi, Khamenei's representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful supporter of Mesbah-Yazdi, is often cited in the Revolutionary Guards' Sobh-e Sadegh weekly arguing that the nuclear program "transforms Iran into the dominant regional power."[39]Mesbah-Yazdi's views and influence over Ahmadinejad and other spiritual pupils grows in importance because his religious edicts are obligatory for his followers. Even if Khamenei has indeed issued a fatwa (as some have argued despite its lack of publication) declaring that making nuclear weapons are contrary to Islamic teachings, Mesbah-Yazdi is theologically permitted to issue a contrary fatwa binding on his followers. As for the Mahdism context of these developments, Khamenei's own words as commander in chief as cited on his website are a sufficient guide: "Becoming equipped with power is a lesson derived from belief in Mahdi. The expected justice, justice of Mahdi for the whole world, is not attained through admonition and preaching … achieving justice requires that just and righteous people have the power to confront the bullies … messengers of God preach to the people, but they are also equipped with weapons."[40] An editorial in Hemayat, a daily publication close to Iran's judiciary, went further and declared that "we need to prepare for ruling the world" and "carrying the flag of Islam to the hands of the Mahdi."[41] Such statements are often repeated in the government-sponsored press. Referring to a "great event leading to mankind's salvation," Ahmadinejad presented his vision again in November 2005 by saying, "Iran must become the platform for the appearance of the Lord of the Age."[42]Can Ahmadinejad Win a Second Term?Ahmadinejad's comprehensive and literal application of Mahdism has led him to call openly for the "elimination of Israel"[43] and otherwise assume a posture of intense confrontation toward Israel and the United States.
Domestic opponents argue that Ahmadinejad has committed the cardinal sin of revealing the Islamic Republic's intentions, that he has broken with Iran's traditional enigmatic approach and Shi‘i dissimulation (taqiyya). The influential Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, former member of the Expediency Discernment Council and a chief of staff of Khomeini's office, for example, censured Ahmadinejad for openly calling for the destruction of Israel and added that "we all believe in that but there is no need to reveal it." Khatami admonished Ahmadinejad not to "speak of matters that cause economic and political problems for us."[44]The Islamic Republic has survived because the elected branches of government live alongside those institutions that are not popularly elected and fall under the supervision of the supreme leader—bodies such as the Supreme National Security Council, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, armed forces, security forces, judiciary, Council of Guardians, Expediency Council, state media, and economic foundations (bonyads). The supreme leader may technically claim divine power incumbent in his representation of the Mahdi, but, in practice, he governs by balancing institutional interests and ever shifting alliances with other powerful personalities and factional interests.Ahmadinejad has upset that balance by exceeding the limits allowed for a transient, elected official. His exclusion of some powerful figures from government, recourse to outright Mahdism, and reliance on a band of like-minded advisers have cracked the semblance of unity that had emerged among the "principle-ists," as pro-theocracy Iranian fundamentalists prefer to call themselves.Some former supporters of Ahmadinejad have now turned on him. For example, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the deputy speaker in the last parliament and long one of Ahmadinejad's staunchest defenders, criticized the president for suggesting that the Islamic Republic is "bent upon destroying the prevailing global management"[45] Others, such as former parliamentary speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, himself a hard-line fundamentalist and someone who often praises the Mahdi, expressed anxiety that Ahmadinejad's "promotion of such superstitions in recent years" might endanger the nation.[46] Hassan Rowhani, a member of the Supreme National Security Council and former chief nuclear negotiator, characterized Ahmadinejad's views on the Hidden Imam as "superstitious" and "charlatanistic" and called his circle of close allies a "bunch of misguided children."[47] Rumors abound that Ahmadinejad has even dismissed Khamenei's legitimacy. On July 1, 2008, Etemad-e Melli cited Ahmadinejad as having said at the start of his presidency that Khamenei chastised him for claiming that the "Lord of the Age will appear in two years." Ahmadinejad responded by chiding Khamenei: "[He] thinks I am appointed president by him while I am the president appointed by the Lord of the Age."[48]This has left Ahmadinejad only the support of the Islamic Republic's most hard-line factions—a core group of supporters calling themselves the Pleasant Scent of Servitude (Rayehe-ye Khosh-e Khedmat), followers of Mesbah-Yazdi, and some IRGC elements[49]—a position not conducive to long-term political survival in Iran.For that reason, Ahmadinejad's tenure beyond the 2009 presidential election is in doubt, as it is opposed not only by longtime rival and newly-elected parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani but also by Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran and presidential aspirant, and an emerging alliance between Rafsanjani, who represents traditional clerics and technocrats, and Khatami, who represents the business community and reformists. Galvanized by Ahmadinejad's excesses, this pragmatist-reformist alliance made gains in 2007 city council and Assembly of Experts elections. They will face challenges, however, should the Guardian Council and Interior Ministry manipulate candidacies and balloting in the 2009 presidential election.But elections may not even be necessary to oust Ahmadinejad: By implicitly challenging the supreme leader's authority by channeling the Hidden Imam, Ahmadinejad may have sealed his fate. In theory, Iranians elect their president, but in reality, the supreme leader uses his control over the Islamic Republic's various institutions to manipulate results. The Guardian Council, for example, vets candidates, sometimes disqualifying more than 90 percent of challengers before a single vote is cast. Ahmadinejad's election surprised Iranians almost as much as it surprised the international community. After all, when Mehdi Karrubi went to sleep on election night, he was well ahead in the vote count. When he awoke, he had lost. He openly accused authorities of fraud.[50] Such incidents should not surprise observers.
The supreme leader calculates the domestic and international needs of the Islamic Republic and plans the general composition of factional representations in elected offices accordingly.Alternatively, Ahmadinejad's allies among hard-line fundamentalists may try to retain power, a tactic that could risk the existence of the Islamic Republic's system. Ahmadinejad and his allies showed their intolerance for any dissent when they forced the replacement of ‘Ali Larijani, at the time Iran's relatively pragmatic though still hard-line nuclear negotiator and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, with Said Jalili, a devout believer in Mahdism whose lifetime interest has been the application of principles derived from millennium-old Islamic traditions to Iran's foreign policy.[51]Ahmadinejad versus the Clergy?While Ahmadinejad enjoys the support of Mesbah-Yazdi and his circle, the president's Mahdism has severe repercussions for the clerical basis of the Islamic Republic. Incumbent in the belief in the Mahdi's return is the notion that he will be opposed by the clergy. Says one such prophesy, the "religious leaders of that day will be the most evil religious leaders under the heavens as sedition and dissension will go out from them and to them will it return."[52]Ahmadinejad may see competitors such as Rafsanjani as among these "most evil religious leaders" who must be neutralized. Another prophecy characterizes the clerics as "faithless" and points to the great suffering of the Mahdi at their hands.[53] Referring to such traditions, one Ahmadinejad adviser asserted that the Mahdi would slaughter such clerics, who are destined to rise against him. The issue is serious enough that some critics accuse Ahmadinejad of trying to eliminate the clergy.[54] A number of prominent clerics have expressed dismay and anger at Ahmadinejad's treatment of them. Former prime minister Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani, secretary general of the Militant Clergy Association, for example, has "warned the president not to take the clergy for granted" as "we have been combatants for the revolution and against corruption."[55] Many Iranians suspect that the traditional clergy's decline after Ahmadinejad's election and the rise of an extremist faction was deliberate IRGC strategy.
Statements such as those of Joint Chiefs Commander Hasan Firuzabadi, who warned Ahmadinejad's critics to cease their opposition lest the "enemy … take advantage of them,"[56] underscore suspicions of the IRGC role.Already, a conflict is occurring. Ahmadinejad has encouraged a class of lay clerics (maddah) much more in tune with his folk belief than formal Shi‘i theology. They staunchly support Ahmadinejad and promote Mahdism, recalling dreams about and sightings of the Mahdi.[57][58] Such developments have fueled widespread rumors of Ahmadinejad's campaign against "corrupt" official clerics and his attempt to strengthen the hand of non-clerical hard-liners. The most conspicuous example of such attempts were the May 3, 2008 revelations by Abbas Palizdar, an Ahmadinejad supporter, who, while addressing students at the University of Hamadan, listed corrupt clerics by name, raising suspicion in one newspaper's assessment that "Ahmadinejad and his military base are bent on eliminating, or at least weakening, the clergy."The proliferation of hundreds of websites and weblogs that support Ahmadinejad's Mahdism doctrine has become a Pandora's box for the traditional clerics and the Islamic Republic as an increasing number of people learn about the issue.
For example, among the traditions repeatedly cited on the web in Persian is the story of Prophet Muhammad's sobbing grief at the fate of the Mahdi and his followers. According to accounts on such sites, Muhammad identified the Mahdi's future followers as "brothers"[59] and differentiated them from his disciples whom he only labeled "companions." Asked by his disciples from among which people the Mahdi's followers will appear, he pointed to his only Iranian disciple, Salman, the Persian (Salman al-Farsi).[60]Ahmadinejad's opposition to traditional clerics, who are circumscribed in their statements about the Mahdi with a view to concealing from the public the implications of such beliefs, fits perfectly with the tenets of Mahdism that identify Iran as the battleground where the Mahdi appears.The Iranian nation's fascination with its glorious ancient civilization was the subject of exploitation by the Pahlavi monarchs preceding the Islamic Republic. They sought to project Iran's glorious past into the present and future. Ahmadinejad has perfected the shah's art by relying on a religious version of the same concept. The path is fraught with risks, though. Ahmadinejad has integrated practically all the revolutionary ideals of the regime, open and secret, and their supposed Islamic and historical roots, real and imaginary, into one school of thought and strategy for action; it is inspired by his messianic zeal, and he has proudly and publicly revealed its details. For the Islamic Republic of Iran, the genie is out of the bottle.Mohebat Ahdiyyih is the senior Iran analyst at the Open Source Center, a U.S. government agency, where he focuses on Iran and the implications of Shi‘i doctrine.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
http://www.meforum.org/article/1985
As with other monotheistic religions, Shi‘i teachings promise the return of a messiah. For Twelver Shi‘a, the messiah will be Muhammad al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam, who went into occultation in 874 CE and is expected to return before the Day of Judgment to lead the righteous against the forces of evil.[5] Such ideas pervade Iranian culture, even beyond the Islamic context. The idea of the Mahdi has historical precedence, for example, in ancient Zoroastrian beliefs.[6] Persian literature and poetry are awash with the notion of a promised savior. Abol-Ghasem Ferdowsi (935-1020), the author of Shahnameh (The book of kings), Iran's national epic, wrote that a "noble man" would appear in Iran from "whom will spread the religion of God to the four corners of the world."[7]After the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic incorporated the idea of Mahdism into its complex system of governance. Under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's concept of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurisprudent), Khomeini became the "guardian of Muslims" and representative of the Mahdi in the "first government of God" on earth. He allowed the election of a parliament, the Majlis, but then commanded the elected deputies in May 1980 to offer their "services to Lord of the Age [the Mahdi], may God speed his blessed appearance."[8]Khomeini and the framers of the Islamic Republic's constitution established an important precedent: Both rationality and irrationality can be employed in the governance of a nation.
This approach explains how the Islamic Republic has survived in the modern world even as it pursues a millennium-old philosophy in the face of a skeptical international community and despite a largely progressive and enlightened Iranian population.Paying lip service to the Hidden Imam has been, since the time of Khomeini, a standard practice for Iranian officials. For example, shortly after leaving office, former president Mohammad Khatami delivered a philosophical and relatively rational speech about civilizations intended to lessen the adverse international reaction to Ahmadinejad's messianic statements. Nevertheless, during the course of his speech, Khatami asserted that the "Lord of the Age will bring about a world government" even as he claimed that "we have no mission to change the world."[9]If past Iranian presidents have mentioned Mahdism, Ahmadinejad has made it a focal point of his rhetoric. In September 2005, he sponsored the first annual International Conference of Mahdism Doctrine in Tehran. The conference presented Mahdism as an ideology that could form the basis for world peace and unity across religions.
Addressing the conference, Ahmadinejad said that the "Islamic Republic and the system of velayat-e faqih have no other mission but to prepare for the establishment of a world government . . . as the Imam [Mahdi] runs and manages the universe." He repeated the same idea but modified his language at the second conference in 2006, saying the "Mahdavi perception [Mahdism] and view are the perfect method for the administration and direction of the world." In follow-up seminars, speakers defined Mahdism as the "defining strategy of the Islamic Republic," a "comprehensive plan and strategic policy," and a "political regime and world view." Within that context, the conference determined not only that the Mahdi's advent is "inevitable" but also that it can be "accelerated" through human action. Discussants spoke about the Iran-Iraq war as a practical example of the application of Mahdism since "combatants were moved by the love of the Mahdi's representative, Khomeini, to sacrifice their lives." Attendees also spoke of Iran as the "Umm al-Qura" (mother of villages), suggesting that the Islamic Republic had replaced Mecca—which uses that same title—as the rightful center of Islam. [10]Ahmadinejad's View of the MahdiAhmadinejad's concept of Mahdism derives from the same sources that have inspired other Iranian leaders across the Islamic Republic's political spectrum. Aside from Khomeini's teachings on the subject[11] and the writings of Ayatollah Morteza Mottahari[12] (1920-79), a prominent ideologue of the Islamic Republic, a number of other Iranian authors have been influential. In the nineteenth century, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-97) sought to unite the Islamic world and demonstrate the utility of Islamic teachings in the modern world.
He hid his true identity as a Shi‘i believer under the rubric of taqiyya (dissimulation) and pretended to be a Sunni from Afghanistan. Indeed, he contributed not only to Islamist reform inside Iran but also helped lay the groundwork for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.[13]Ahmadinejad may also have derived inspiration from Navvab Safavi (1924-55), founder of Fadayan-e Islam, a group that assassinated a number of more liberal Iranian politicians and intellectuals. The writings of both Jalal Al-e Ahmad[14] (1923-69) and Ahmad Fardid[15][16][17]; and he may even have been influenced by such anticlerical writers as Fereydun Adamiyat (1920-2008), the most popular modern historian of Iran and a senior diplomat in the late shah's government, whose decades of work[18] have vastly influenced generations of Iranian intellectuals but are now being scrutinized after the exposure of a number of falsifications,[19] such as his intentional misrepresentation of facts about nineteenth-century religious and political movements and the early twentieth-century Iranian constitutional revolution.[20] Although he was prevented from writing or engaging in political activity after the 1979 revolution, major organs of the Islamic Republic—the Kayhan and Jam-e Jam dailies, for example—continue to amplify parts of Adamiyat's work that support their positions often without citing his name.
So, too, does the Majlis Research Center and the Islamic Revolution Documentation Center, whose director is an advisor to Ahmadinejad, as well as major political and religious websites such as Tebyan. (1909-94), popular anti-American writers, may have influenced Ahmadinejad in his formative years, as would have ‘Ali Shariati (1933-77), an Iranian sociologist who helped meld leftist thought with political Islam and popularized the notion of Islamic revolution in the years before Khomeini's return. Ahmadinejad may also have drawn upon Ehsan Tabari (1916-89), the theoretician of Tudeh, the Iranian communist party, who after a lifetime of indoctrinating Iranian leftists confessed to "erroneous" ideas after the 1979 revolutionFurther coloring Ahmadinejad's world-view, even if not his Mahdism, has been German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
Iranian intellectuals react favorably to Heidegger's real or perceived anti-American sentiments, anti-Semitism, and his criticism of traditional Western thought. His grand theory of existence and his objection to attaching great significance to logical reasoning and intelligibility, as well as his theories of the value of nothingness, are concepts that have made him the darling of many Iranian intellectuals.The HojjatiehBut what surely has had the greatest influence on Ahmadinejad and his peers is systematic indoctrination by the Hojjatieh Society. The name Hojjatieh derives from Hojjat (proof), one of the titles of the Mahdi; the society was founded in the mid-twentieth century by clerics to combat the Baha'i faith, founded in the nineteenth century by a prophet whom Muslim clerics have labeled and opposed as a false mahdi. The Hojjatieh grew with the help of prominent clerics and assistance from the late shah, who sought to curry favor with the clerics. It soon became a powerful nationwide organization of fundamentalists trained in Mahdism and proved a menace to the late shah.The Hojjatieh played an important role in radicalizing Ahmadinejad and other secular Muslim youth, students, teachers, government bureaucrats, and even some members of the armed forces prior to the 1979 revolution. Many Hojjatieh activists participated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But in the early 1980s, Khomeini moved against the society, both because it challenged his velayat-e faqih doctrine of leadership and because it was poised to take the reins of power in Iran.
The ensuing purge of its members from the Islamic regime forced numerous aspiring advocates of the new Islamic regime, such as Ahmadinejad, to renounce or hide their membership in or sympathy for the Hojjatieh.[21]As a result, the Hojjatieh went underground. Accusations of membership were enough to taint aspiring politicians with disloyalty to the supreme leader. In recent years, several critics of Ahmadinejad's tenure have suggested that his administration is Hojjatieh-inspired and bent on settling scores with Khomeini's allies.[22] Such charges may not be baseless, as some Ahmadinejad supporters have publicly called for rehabilitation of the Hojjatieh and resumption of its activities against the Baha'i faith. For example, the head of the powerful Islamic Propagation Organization (IPO) in East Azerbaijan called for the "revival and strengthening of Hojjatieh Society."[23]Here, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi's role is notable as Iranians believe he leads the new Hojjatieh.[24] A member of the Assembly of Experts and director of the Imam Khomeini Institute, Mesbah-Yazdi is a leading proponent of Mahdism and a powerful senior cleric with great influence over Ahmadinejad, his government, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and security forces.[25] He is also allegedly a trainer of hard-line clerics at the Haqqani theological college in Qom, some of whom have joined Ahmadinejad's cabinet.Outspoken, Mesbah-Yazdi opens a window into Ahmadinejad's beliefs.
He advocates the use of violence to promote the interests of Islam and seeks to purge the republican aspect of the Islamic Republic system in favor of a pure Islamic system, which his publications refer to as the nucleus of a Mahdi-led world. The October 2005 issue of his monthly publication Ma'refat, for example, argued that the "superiority of Islam over other religions is stressed in Qur'an, which calls on believers to wage war against unbelievers and prepare the way for the advent of the Mahdi and conquering the world." According to Pasdare Islam, the monthly publication of the powerful Islamic Propagation Organization, an institution in tune with Mesbah-Yazdi's ideas, Khomeini himself elucidated this idea by saying that the "Mahdi will fill the earth with justice" and that "all institutions in our country and their extensions worldwide must prepare the way to receive the Mahdi upon his advent."[26] Mesbah-Yazdi even attributes Ahmadinejad's election to the presidency to the will of the Mahdi.[27] Mesbah-Yazdi is not the only senior cleric who endorses Ahmadinejad's messianism. Jannati and Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, the secretary-general of the Qom Seminary Lecturers' Association, both members of Assembly of Experts, have also endorsed the president's beliefs.[28] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself characterized Ahmadinejad's election to the presidency as the fulfillment of the "prayers of the Lord of the Age."[29]A close examination of the statements and activities of Ahmadinejad and his supporters point to their intimate knowledge of Shi‘i traditions about the Mahdi's expected appearance in Iran and the fierce opposition and violence against him and his followers by clerics, issues that have been closely guarded and rarely mentioned by the ecclesiastics for obvious reasons.
For example, following the establishment of the Islamic Republic, clerics directed the purging and editing of statements in books of the sayings and traditions attributed to Prophet Muhammad and his Shi‘i successors about the circumstances surrounding the future advent of the Mahdi. Media coverage of such statements was also tailored in the same manner. In one case, the redactors did not even exempt the most famous 110-volume book called Biharu'l-Anwar (Oceans of light), a standard textbook compiled by the Safavid-era scholar Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (1616-89). Major portions and traditions were stripped of materials deemed detrimental to the Islamic Republic's interests.Ahmadinejad's InterpretationNo matter how unorthodox Ahmadinejad's interpretation of Islamic theology and prophecies are, he appears sincere in his beliefs. Ahmadinejad's motto of "justice-nurturing government," together with the often-cited promise of the Qur'an about the righteous inheriting the earth, is meant to evoke the idea of a savior in the name of the Mahdi as Iranians are well-versed in the tradition promising the Mahdi will "fill the earth with justice after it has been filled with oppression." As minority Shi‘i Muslims, Iranians also expect vindication of their beliefs against the "false" Sunni majority belief.[30] Furthermore, Ahmadinejad's characterization of his government as "jihadist" and "basiji" (militia), further inflames emotions in more radical believers about the militancy of his administration in pursuing Mahdism.Ahmadinejad seeks an Islamic government in Iran that is free from democratic pretenses and devoid of modern concepts of human rights and the equality of the sexes; that seeks the acquisition of nuclear weapons, the elimination of Israel, the destruction of liberal democratic states and Western capitalism, and an end to the United States as a superpower, which is perceived as the greatest threat to the Islamic Republic's survival and the main obstacle to the accomplishment of its objectives. The achievement of these preconditions, Ahmadinejad believes, will enable Shi‘i domination and the establishment of a world government.[31] When Ahmadinejad declares frequently that his government represents a return to Khomeini's revolutionary ideals from which previous governments have allegedly deviated, he is suggesting that he believes it is time to return Mahdism—and the achievement of its precursor steps—to its rightful place among the Islamic Republic's priorities.[32]It is an attractive idea for the masses, nurtured on more than two decades of state-sponsored incitement. Khomeini, after all, called for the Islamic world to "rise up and destroy Israel,"[33] and said of the United States, "We will fight them with all our might until the last drop of our blood."[34]Ahmadinejad's acolytes find his lack of inhibition in speech and his fiery populism a fresh breeze of honesty compared to the deceptive discourse of Rafsanjani and the philosophizing of Khatami.
While both Rafsanjani and Khatami might pay rhetorical heed to the goal of eliminating Israel or countering U.S. influence,[35] both prefer to finesse their rhetoric not to antagonize outside powers.Mesbah-Yazdi's role as a central figure in promoting Mahdism is important because both he and at least one influential disciple, Hojjatu'l-Islam Mohsen Gharavian, openly endorse the Islamic Republic's acquisition of nuclear weapons. In September 2005, for example, Ma'refat declared that "deterrence does not belong just to a few superpowers but also to other countries," and argued that "The Qur'an calls on the faithful and the Muslim nation to acquire maximum power to be able to deter the enemies of religion and humanity: ‘Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the hearts of enemies of God and your enemies.'"[36] In February 2006, Gharavian reiterated this position, as reported by the international media and a number of news agencies in Iran, by stressing the "necessity of using nuclear weapons as a means to retaliate," adding that "there is no religious constraint in using nuclear weapons to retaliate."[37] Although he later denied his statement, his original argument is consistent with those made by others.[38]
For example, Hojjat ul-Islam Saidi, Khamenei's representative to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful supporter of Mesbah-Yazdi, is often cited in the Revolutionary Guards' Sobh-e Sadegh weekly arguing that the nuclear program "transforms Iran into the dominant regional power."[39]Mesbah-Yazdi's views and influence over Ahmadinejad and other spiritual pupils grows in importance because his religious edicts are obligatory for his followers. Even if Khamenei has indeed issued a fatwa (as some have argued despite its lack of publication) declaring that making nuclear weapons are contrary to Islamic teachings, Mesbah-Yazdi is theologically permitted to issue a contrary fatwa binding on his followers. As for the Mahdism context of these developments, Khamenei's own words as commander in chief as cited on his website are a sufficient guide: "Becoming equipped with power is a lesson derived from belief in Mahdi. The expected justice, justice of Mahdi for the whole world, is not attained through admonition and preaching … achieving justice requires that just and righteous people have the power to confront the bullies … messengers of God preach to the people, but they are also equipped with weapons."[40] An editorial in Hemayat, a daily publication close to Iran's judiciary, went further and declared that "we need to prepare for ruling the world" and "carrying the flag of Islam to the hands of the Mahdi."[41] Such statements are often repeated in the government-sponsored press. Referring to a "great event leading to mankind's salvation," Ahmadinejad presented his vision again in November 2005 by saying, "Iran must become the platform for the appearance of the Lord of the Age."[42]Can Ahmadinejad Win a Second Term?Ahmadinejad's comprehensive and literal application of Mahdism has led him to call openly for the "elimination of Israel"[43] and otherwise assume a posture of intense confrontation toward Israel and the United States.
Domestic opponents argue that Ahmadinejad has committed the cardinal sin of revealing the Islamic Republic's intentions, that he has broken with Iran's traditional enigmatic approach and Shi‘i dissimulation (taqiyya). The influential Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Tavassoli, former member of the Expediency Discernment Council and a chief of staff of Khomeini's office, for example, censured Ahmadinejad for openly calling for the destruction of Israel and added that "we all believe in that but there is no need to reveal it." Khatami admonished Ahmadinejad not to "speak of matters that cause economic and political problems for us."[44]The Islamic Republic has survived because the elected branches of government live alongside those institutions that are not popularly elected and fall under the supervision of the supreme leader—bodies such as the Supreme National Security Council, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, armed forces, security forces, judiciary, Council of Guardians, Expediency Council, state media, and economic foundations (bonyads). The supreme leader may technically claim divine power incumbent in his representation of the Mahdi, but, in practice, he governs by balancing institutional interests and ever shifting alliances with other powerful personalities and factional interests.Ahmadinejad has upset that balance by exceeding the limits allowed for a transient, elected official. His exclusion of some powerful figures from government, recourse to outright Mahdism, and reliance on a band of like-minded advisers have cracked the semblance of unity that had emerged among the "principle-ists," as pro-theocracy Iranian fundamentalists prefer to call themselves.Some former supporters of Ahmadinejad have now turned on him. For example, Mohammad Reza Bahonar, the deputy speaker in the last parliament and long one of Ahmadinejad's staunchest defenders, criticized the president for suggesting that the Islamic Republic is "bent upon destroying the prevailing global management"[45] Others, such as former parliamentary speaker Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, himself a hard-line fundamentalist and someone who often praises the Mahdi, expressed anxiety that Ahmadinejad's "promotion of such superstitions in recent years" might endanger the nation.[46] Hassan Rowhani, a member of the Supreme National Security Council and former chief nuclear negotiator, characterized Ahmadinejad's views on the Hidden Imam as "superstitious" and "charlatanistic" and called his circle of close allies a "bunch of misguided children."[47] Rumors abound that Ahmadinejad has even dismissed Khamenei's legitimacy. On July 1, 2008, Etemad-e Melli cited Ahmadinejad as having said at the start of his presidency that Khamenei chastised him for claiming that the "Lord of the Age will appear in two years." Ahmadinejad responded by chiding Khamenei: "[He] thinks I am appointed president by him while I am the president appointed by the Lord of the Age."[48]This has left Ahmadinejad only the support of the Islamic Republic's most hard-line factions—a core group of supporters calling themselves the Pleasant Scent of Servitude (Rayehe-ye Khosh-e Khedmat), followers of Mesbah-Yazdi, and some IRGC elements[49]—a position not conducive to long-term political survival in Iran.For that reason, Ahmadinejad's tenure beyond the 2009 presidential election is in doubt, as it is opposed not only by longtime rival and newly-elected parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani but also by Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the mayor of Tehran and presidential aspirant, and an emerging alliance between Rafsanjani, who represents traditional clerics and technocrats, and Khatami, who represents the business community and reformists. Galvanized by Ahmadinejad's excesses, this pragmatist-reformist alliance made gains in 2007 city council and Assembly of Experts elections. They will face challenges, however, should the Guardian Council and Interior Ministry manipulate candidacies and balloting in the 2009 presidential election.But elections may not even be necessary to oust Ahmadinejad: By implicitly challenging the supreme leader's authority by channeling the Hidden Imam, Ahmadinejad may have sealed his fate. In theory, Iranians elect their president, but in reality, the supreme leader uses his control over the Islamic Republic's various institutions to manipulate results. The Guardian Council, for example, vets candidates, sometimes disqualifying more than 90 percent of challengers before a single vote is cast. Ahmadinejad's election surprised Iranians almost as much as it surprised the international community. After all, when Mehdi Karrubi went to sleep on election night, he was well ahead in the vote count. When he awoke, he had lost. He openly accused authorities of fraud.[50] Such incidents should not surprise observers.
The supreme leader calculates the domestic and international needs of the Islamic Republic and plans the general composition of factional representations in elected offices accordingly.Alternatively, Ahmadinejad's allies among hard-line fundamentalists may try to retain power, a tactic that could risk the existence of the Islamic Republic's system. Ahmadinejad and his allies showed their intolerance for any dissent when they forced the replacement of ‘Ali Larijani, at the time Iran's relatively pragmatic though still hard-line nuclear negotiator and secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, with Said Jalili, a devout believer in Mahdism whose lifetime interest has been the application of principles derived from millennium-old Islamic traditions to Iran's foreign policy.[51]Ahmadinejad versus the Clergy?While Ahmadinejad enjoys the support of Mesbah-Yazdi and his circle, the president's Mahdism has severe repercussions for the clerical basis of the Islamic Republic. Incumbent in the belief in the Mahdi's return is the notion that he will be opposed by the clergy. Says one such prophesy, the "religious leaders of that day will be the most evil religious leaders under the heavens as sedition and dissension will go out from them and to them will it return."[52]Ahmadinejad may see competitors such as Rafsanjani as among these "most evil religious leaders" who must be neutralized. Another prophecy characterizes the clerics as "faithless" and points to the great suffering of the Mahdi at their hands.[53] Referring to such traditions, one Ahmadinejad adviser asserted that the Mahdi would slaughter such clerics, who are destined to rise against him. The issue is serious enough that some critics accuse Ahmadinejad of trying to eliminate the clergy.[54] A number of prominent clerics have expressed dismay and anger at Ahmadinejad's treatment of them. Former prime minister Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi-Kani, secretary general of the Militant Clergy Association, for example, has "warned the president not to take the clergy for granted" as "we have been combatants for the revolution and against corruption."[55] Many Iranians suspect that the traditional clergy's decline after Ahmadinejad's election and the rise of an extremist faction was deliberate IRGC strategy.
Statements such as those of Joint Chiefs Commander Hasan Firuzabadi, who warned Ahmadinejad's critics to cease their opposition lest the "enemy … take advantage of them,"[56] underscore suspicions of the IRGC role.Already, a conflict is occurring. Ahmadinejad has encouraged a class of lay clerics (maddah) much more in tune with his folk belief than formal Shi‘i theology. They staunchly support Ahmadinejad and promote Mahdism, recalling dreams about and sightings of the Mahdi.[57][58] Such developments have fueled widespread rumors of Ahmadinejad's campaign against "corrupt" official clerics and his attempt to strengthen the hand of non-clerical hard-liners. The most conspicuous example of such attempts were the May 3, 2008 revelations by Abbas Palizdar, an Ahmadinejad supporter, who, while addressing students at the University of Hamadan, listed corrupt clerics by name, raising suspicion in one newspaper's assessment that "Ahmadinejad and his military base are bent on eliminating, or at least weakening, the clergy."The proliferation of hundreds of websites and weblogs that support Ahmadinejad's Mahdism doctrine has become a Pandora's box for the traditional clerics and the Islamic Republic as an increasing number of people learn about the issue.
For example, among the traditions repeatedly cited on the web in Persian is the story of Prophet Muhammad's sobbing grief at the fate of the Mahdi and his followers. According to accounts on such sites, Muhammad identified the Mahdi's future followers as "brothers"[59] and differentiated them from his disciples whom he only labeled "companions." Asked by his disciples from among which people the Mahdi's followers will appear, he pointed to his only Iranian disciple, Salman, the Persian (Salman al-Farsi).[60]Ahmadinejad's opposition to traditional clerics, who are circumscribed in their statements about the Mahdi with a view to concealing from the public the implications of such beliefs, fits perfectly with the tenets of Mahdism that identify Iran as the battleground where the Mahdi appears.The Iranian nation's fascination with its glorious ancient civilization was the subject of exploitation by the Pahlavi monarchs preceding the Islamic Republic. They sought to project Iran's glorious past into the present and future. Ahmadinejad has perfected the shah's art by relying on a religious version of the same concept. The path is fraught with risks, though. Ahmadinejad has integrated practically all the revolutionary ideals of the regime, open and secret, and their supposed Islamic and historical roots, real and imaginary, into one school of thought and strategy for action; it is inspired by his messianic zeal, and he has proudly and publicly revealed its details. For the Islamic Republic of Iran, the genie is out of the bottle.Mohebat Ahdiyyih is the senior Iran analyst at the Open Source Center, a U.S. government agency, where he focuses on Iran and the implications of Shi‘i doctrine.
http://islaamdoon.blogspot.com/
http://www.meforum.org/article/1985
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