Truth Of Prophet Mohammed - حقيقة محمد رسول الله

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Virtues of Ramadan (Month of Fasting) - The Religion of Islam

Virtues of Ramadan (Month of Fasting) - The Religion of Islam

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2.5 million throng Two Holy Mosques

2.5 million throng Two Holy Mosques

By MAKKAH: ARAB NEWS | Arab News

More than 2.5 million people attended prayers at the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah on Friday, the first day of Ramadan.

The Makkah mosque received the largest number of worshippers on Friday that included thousands of pilgrims from within the Kingdom and abroad to perform Umrah during the holy month.

About 28,000 security officers have been deployed inside and outside the Grand Mosque to ensure the safety of worshippers.

Maj. Gen. Jameel Arbaeen, director of Civil Defense in Makkah, said some old pilgrims who fainted while performing circumambulation (tawaf) around the Kaaba were given first aid



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Muslims attend Friday prayers at the courtyard of a housing estate in east London

Muslims attend Friday prayers at the courtyard of a housing estate in east London on July 20. 2012
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لماذا يتحول رمضان إلى شهر ترفيهي بدلا من شهر روحاني ؟

لماذا يتحول رمضان إلى شهر ترفيهي بدلا من شهر روحاني ؟ لست شيخا ولا داعية ، ولكني أفهم الآن لماذا كانت والدتي تدير التلفاز ليواجه الحائط طوال شهر رمضان … كنت طفلا صغيرا ناقما على أمي التي منعتني وإخوتي من مشاهدة فوازير بينما يتابعها كل أصدقائي .. ولم يشف غليلي إجابة والدتي المقتضبة “رمضان شهر عبادة مش فوازير!” لم أكن أفهم منطق أمي الذي كنت كطفل أعتبره تشددا فى الدين لا فائدة منه .. فكيف سيؤثر مشاهدة طفل صغير لفوازير على شهر رمضان؟


من منكم سيدير جهاز التلفاز ليواجه الحائط في رمضان؟


مرت السنوات وأخذتني دوامة الحياة وغطى ضجيج معارك الدراسة والعمل على همسة سؤالي الطفولي حتى أراد الله أن تأتيني الإجابة على هذا السؤال من رجل مسن غير متعلم فى الركن الآخر من الكرة الأرضية ، كان ذلك الرجل هو عامل أمريكي في محطة بنزين اعتدت دخولها لشراء قهوة أثناء ملء السيارة بالوقود فى طريق عملي وفي اليوم الذي يسبق يوم الكريسماس دخلت لشراء القهوة كعادتي فإذا بي أجد ذلك الرجل منهمكا في وضع أقفال على ثلاجة الخمور ،وعندما عاد للـ (كاشير) لمحاسبتي على القهوة سألته وكنت حديث عهد بقوانين أمريكا :
”لماذا تضع أقفالا على هذه الثلاجة؟؟” فأجابني: “هذه ثلاجة الخمور وقوانين الولاية تمنع بيع الخمور في ليلة ويوم الكريسماس يوم ميلاد المسيح”
نظرت إليه مندهشا قائلا : أليست أمريكا دولة علمانية .. لماذا تتدخل الدولة فى شيء مثل ذلك؟
فقال الرجل :”الاحترام.. يجب على الجميع احترام ميلاد المسيح وعدم شرب الخمر في ذلك اليوم حتى وإن لم تكن متدينا .. إذا فقد المجتمع الاحترام فقدنا كل شيء”


الاحترام … (الاحترام) ظلت هذه الكلمة تدور فى عقلى لأيام وأيام بعد هذه الليلة … فالخمر غير محرم عند كثير من المذاهب المسيحية فى أمريكا .. ولكن المسألة ليست مسألة حلال أو حرام .. إنها مسألة احترام … فهم ينظرون للكريسماس كضيف يزورهم كل سنة ليذكرهم بميلاد المسيح عليه السلام .. وليس من الاحترام السكر فى معية ذلك الضيف … فلتسكر ولتعربد فى يوم آخر إذا كان ذلك أسلوب حياتك … أنت حر … ولكن فى هذا اليوم سيحترم الجميع هذا الضيف وستضع الدولة قانونا !


Dr. Mostafa Mahmoud
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Towards An Outstanding Ramadan - Muhammad Alshareef

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Somaliland: The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble

Somaliland: The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble

The great Hargeisa Goat bubbleYou'd be amazed at how similar an Irish recession is to Somali goats with itchy feet

colinmurphy@independent.ie

Cult singer, award-winning writer and hero of the Somaliland independence movement, Julian Gough has now come full circle. He started in Galway in the late 1980s with indie band Toasted Heretic, and returns this week for the opening of his first play, The Great Goat Bubble (details below). It's a career going alarmingly to plan.

At 15, Gough was asked by a teacher what he wanted to be. "A rock star in my 20s, a writer in my 30s, and a filmmaker in my 40s," he replied. That ambition has proven remarkably resilient.

Gough's songs -- like the subversive ballad 'Galway Bay' -- were always literary and comic, and so once he had the rock star bit out of the way, he started writing comic literature.

Various novels have emerged, to critical acclaim, and his short stories have won awards and gone viral.

The Great Goat Bubble at first appears to be a delightfully absurd piece of fiction. But it's rooted in cold fact and dismal science.

Gough, a keen observer of economics, was intrigued by the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s. Shortly after it burst, he happened to read an interview with the air traffic controller for Somalia, then -- and still -- in a collapsed state with barely any infrastructure.

The controller told of an incident where a goat had wandered on to a runway and been killed by a plane, and its owner had sought compensation from the UN, which ran the airport; under Somali tradition, the compensation would be twice the value of the goat. The controller refused.

What, Gough wondered, might have happened had he paid out? Might the herders have started to herd their goats on to the runways, in expectation of compensation? Would they have started buying goats, at whatever price, in order to herd them under the planes?

In other words, what happens when the value of something is based solely on the expectation of its price in the market instead of on its real utility?

The resulting story is a fable about economics, and it should have a bitterly familiar ring for Irish ears. "Ireland has acted out the story in real life, with houses instead of goats," Gough says.

It's not, he admits, obvious material for the theatre. "If you were thinking of writing your first stage play, you probably wouldn't put in quite that many aeroplanes, or that many millions of goats."

Gough set the story in Somaliland, an autonomous region within Somalia, and because there's nothing written about it in fiction, he was suddenly seen as a champion by the Somaliland independence movement.

But what's more surprising is that there's so little written about the much more mainstream concern of economics.

'Irish writers really understood the Catholic Church -- Joyce was saturated in it, for example. The equivalent of the church now is finance and economics, but writers don't understand it -- they don't know what bankers do -- so they can't explain the world to us. That's a disaster for the culture -- but it's a huge opportunity for me."

Gough has dabbled in film, according to his teeenage agenda, but his next "frontier" is video games. He wrote the narrative for the end of the huge hit Minecraft, and is entranced by the creative potential of digital technology.

"It's very hard to write a novel that's original, but it's easy to do something new on the iPad."

For all that, he has a new faith in the theatre. "You can't digitise a night in the theatre. You have to be there, to be mentally present: you're strapped to the story." The Great Goat Bubble should be quite a ride. (See galwayartsfestival.com The play runs until July 29 at the Druid Theatre.)

With Glengarry Glen Ross having just finished at the Gate, those seeking a further fix of David Mamet can get it in his provocative play on sexism and political correctness, Oleanna, in a production by Company D. It's at Barnstorm Theatre, Kilkenny, this weekend, and touring into September. See www.companyd.ie

Originally published in Weekend Review

The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble

The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble was originally published in the Financial Times (and was indeed the first short story they ever published). It has also appeared in New Writing 12, edited by Diran Adebayo, Blake Morrison and Jane Rogers, it's been used by the British Council to teach English in Africa, and it has been lovingly converted into a radio play by BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in the spring of 2009.

Please do feel free to print out, copy, email, or otherwise distribute The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble to your friends. Just try and keep my name, and the fact that it's part of the adventures of Jude, attached to it, so that if they enjoy it they can keep an eye out for more. Thanks! - Julian.

Read the full play via http://www.juliangough.com/the-great-hargeisa-goat-bubble/


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ATTACK ON SYRIAN VILLAGE APPEARS TARGETED AT DEFECTORS AND ACTIVISTS -- UN MISSION

ATTACK ON SYRIAN VILLAGE APPEARS TARGETED AT DEFECTORS AND ACTIVISTS -- UN MISSION
New York, Jul 15 2012  4:10PM
United Nations observers who returned to the Syrian village of Tremseh on Sunday said that, based on what they saw and on witness accounts, the attack there three days ago was targeted at army defectors and activists.

Staff from the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) observed over 50 houses that were burned and/or destroyed, according to a statement issued today that also noted that "pools of blood and brain matter were observed in a number of homes."

The "consistent account" relayed by 27 local villagers who were interviewed by the UN team indicated that the attack began in the early hours of 12 July with the shelling of the village followed by ground operations.

"According to those interviewed, the army was conducting house to house searches asking for men and their ID cards. They alleged that after checking their identification, numerous were killed. Other
 men were taken out of the village.

"On the basis of some of the destruction observed in the town and the witness accounts, the attack appears targeted at army defectors and activists," said the statement. UN observers also confirmed the use of direct and indirect weapons, including artillery, mortars and small arms.
The Mission added that the number of casualties is still unclear and that it is trying to seek further verification.

Thursday's attack, which reportedly resulted in over 200 deaths, was condemned by UN officials as well as the Joint Special Envoy for the UN and the League of Arab States for Syria, Kofi Annan, who said the attack violated the Government's commitment to the six-point peace plan.

That plan calls for an end to violence, access for humanitarian agencies to provide relief to those in need, the release of detainees, the start of inclusive political dialogue, and unrestricted access to the country for the international media.

Mr. Annan will visit Moscow on
 Monday for two days of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the crisis in Syria.

Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson met today with the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Nabil Elaraby, on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. They shared their strong concerns about the situation in Syria and expressed support for the work of Mr. Annan and the six-point plan.

The UN estimates that more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria and tens of thousands displaced since the uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad began last year.

SYRIAN PRESIDENT AND UN-ARAB LEAGUE ENVOY AGREE ON APPROACH TO ENDING VIOLENCE

SYRIAN PRESIDENT AND UN-ARAB LEAGUE ENVOY AGREE ON APPROACH TO ENDING VIOLENCE
New York, Jul  9 2012 10:10AM
In a discussion described as "very candid and constructive," Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and the Joint Special Envoy for the United Nations and the League of Arab States for the Syrian Crisis, Kofi Annan, agreed on an approach to ending the violence in the Middle Eastern country.

"We discussed the need to end the violence and ways and means of doing so. We agreed on an approach which I will share with the armed opposition. I also stressed the importance of moving ahead with a political dialogue which the President accepts," Mr. Annan told reporters in Damascus, after the meeting. The Joint Special Envoy had arrived in the Syrian capital on Sunday evening.

"President Assad reassured me of the Government's commitment to the six-point plan which, of course, we should move ahead to implement in a much better fashion than has been the situation so far," he added.

Put forw
ard by Mr. Annan earlier this year, the six-point peace plan calls for an end to violence, access for humanitarian agencies to provide relief to those in need, the release of detainees, the start of inclusive political dialogue, and unrestricted access to the country for the international media.

"So I am leaving Syria, but we will continue our dialogue and, as I said, the approach we have discussed about ending the violence will also be shared with the armed opposition," the Joint Special Envoy added at the media encounter. "I have a team here on the ground that will continue to do that. I also encourage Governments and other entities with influence to have a similar effort."

The UN estimates that more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Syria and tens of thousands displaced since the uprising against President al-Assad began 16 months ago.

WikiLeaks: The Syria Files (Press Conference)

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How to prove logically LIFE AFTER DEATH by Zakir Naik

grave

‘President Sheikh Sharif not coming to Hargeisa’ – Faisal Ali Warabe

‘President Sheikh Sharif not coming to Hargeisa’ – Faisal Ali Warabe

HARGEISA — SOMALILAND Opposition Leader Faisal Ali Warabe has rejected claims the leaders have invited Somalia’s interim President to Hargeisa for a state visit.

A week after meeting President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed in Dubai for the first formal talks in decades, the leader of UCID Party denied local media reports of a planned visit by the TFG leader.

Faisal was part of a large opposition, parliamentarian, government delegation including President Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo that met the TFG leader in UAE last Thursday. The two sides discussed ways to strengthen long-term and multifaceted cooperation.

“These reports are fabricated and baseless. Sheikh Sharif has no business in our affairs nor do we have plans to invite the administration there here,” he said during a press conference he held in Hargeisa.

He said inviting him will send the wrong signal not only to the international community but also to the Somali people. He insisted until relationships were clarified between Somaliland and Somalia — there will not be any invitation.

President Silanyo and his Somali counterpart signed the Dubai Statement to pave the way for cooperation on number of fields including combating terrorism, piracy and to hold future formal negotiations on economy, borders and legal matters. The meeting was held on the sidelines of Dubai’s second international anti-piracy conference.

Faisal Ali Warabe was part of a delegation that included the former President and other opposition leader Dahir Riyale Kahin of UDUB Party, Muse Bihi, the chairman of the ruling Kulmiye party and members of parliament and civil services.

Somalia and Somaliland have not had a relations since the collapse of the Somali Republic in 1991 but signs towards close ties is slowly emerging since talks have been initiated in Britain few weeks ago.

Somalilandpress



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Caynaba News Jabuuti Iyo south Sudan

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AID POLICY: Accountability in Islam

	humanitarian news and analysis a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

AID POLICY: Accountability in Islam DUBAI, 4 July 2012 (IRIN) - The rights-based framework may only have been formally adopted by the international humanitarian and development community in the past decade; but the concept that people in need have a right to assistance has existed in the Muslim world since the birth of Islam. "When we [in the international community] started thinking differently about relief, and talking about a rights-based approach, it was very easy to equate and put this within the Islamic perspective," said Khaled Khalifa, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the Gulf Region. "It was there, but we didn't know about it." Despite an increased focus on accountability in recent years and a growing role for aid agencies from the Muslim world in mainstream humanitarian aid operations, few analysts or academics - neither in humanitarian thought nor in Islamic jurisprudence - have asked the question: What does accountability look like in the Islamic context? The answer can be contradictory. On the one hand, the Muslim Holy book, the Koran refers to the "known right" of the petitioner and the deprived to the wealth of observant Muslims: "Give to your relatives, to the poor and to the traveller their right, and do not spend wastefully [on yourself]," it says in verse 26, surah 17. Islamic scripture requires Muslims to give 2.5 percent of their wealth in `zakat', or mandatory alms, to specific categories of people in need. "`Zakat' is not charity," says Tariq Cheema, president of the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists (WCMP). "`Zakat' is an obligation. `Zakat' is a mandatory discharge of duty. It's not your money. It belongs to the poor." As such, billions of dollars are spent each year in helping those in need. On the other hand, aid in the Muslim world is understood to have more than one purpose. Fulfilling a religious obligation Part of it is fulfilling a religious obligation, which means that Muslims should see themselves as first and foremost accountable to God. This can lead to what Marie Juul Petersen, a researcher in politics and development at the Danish Institute for International Studies, calls "the invisibility of the recipient". "The provision of aid is a way to gain religious rewards and a place in Paradise," she wrote in her PhD thesis, For humanity or for the umma?, a study of four transnational Muslim NGOs' ideologies of aid. "If the purpose of aid is to ensure rewards for the donor, the recipient easily becomes irrelevant as anything but an instrument to obtain these rewards… "What the donor gives is not important; what is important is the intention. This is perhaps most clearly expressed in the frequently mentioned saying, 'If you save one person it is as if you saved all of humankind.' It is not important whether you save one or 100 people, but that you save - in other words, it is not the result of the action, but the action itself (and the underlying intention) that matters." Some Muslim NGOs complain of the challenges of raising funds for certain activities, because some donors give based on what they believe they will be rewarded for in heaven - building mosques or sponsoring orphans - rather than what may be most needed on the ground. "Even though donors are becoming more aware of the need to donate toward sustainable development projects, a great deal of raising awareness is still required, especially amongst the first generation of immigrants in the EU and America, about the obligations Islam places on its adherence to help community and eradicating poverty," said Inlia Aziz, of MuslimAid, a UK-based international NGO. During many humanitarian crises in the Muslim world - from Somalia to Syria - some Muslim donors have simply sent whatever they have to offer, instead of assessing the true needs of people affected. "If you are doing charity simply to fulfil your own requirement, then accountability is not there," Cheema told IRIN. "Accountability is going to come when you are thinking from the perspective of the beneficiary." If you are doing charity simply to fulfil your own requirement, then accountability is not there …Accountability is going to come when you are thinking from the perspective of the beneficiary But increasingly, civil society within the Muslim world is realizing the potential of `zakat' being spent more effectively and calling for a more needs-based and sustainable approach. Strengthening the `ummah' Another perceived purpose of aid in the Muslim world, according to Juul Petersen, is strengthening the `ummah', or global Muslim community, "as a response to problems of spiritual poverty" - meaning that recipients of Muslim aid are primarily Muslim. Some see nothing wrong with this approach, pointing to other examples of the same: Australian aid focuses on the Pacific region; Belgium focuses on the Great Lakes; increasingly, other donors are targeting their aid by reducing the number of recipients and the scope of work. "A number of donors' aid allocation is based on historical, regional, religious, cultural and language ties - should Arab donors be any different?" asks Kerry Smith, programme officer with Development Initiatives, a research and advocacy organization. "Aren't they best placed to understand the needs of Muslim countries in their region?" Some Muslim aid workers believe this solidarity between the "sons of the ummah" makes them more accountable, because of their close ties to the people they are trying to help. "[Other aid workers] don't have the same feeling of family as we have, that the orphans are a part of our family, that it's about humanity, family, about making the orphans feel important. For them, it's routine, it's just a job they need to do, it's about finishing work to get home to your own family," one employee of the Saudi-based International Islamic Charitable Organization told Juul Petersen. But the approach has also garnered criticism from secular, Western NGOs, claiming that they discriminate among recipients, thus violating principles of universalism and neutrality so tied to accountability. In any case, many of the Muslim aid agencies working in the world's major emergency zones have long worked in the international system and have adopted mainstream development practices. But that too raises questions of accountability. According to a study of Islamic Relief's work in Bangladesh, religious leaders in a refugee camp complained that the NGO was not meeting their religious needs because it had not built enough religious schools, mosques and graveyards. "We can live without food but we can't live without our religion," the refugees reportedly said. For more stories on humanitarian accountability, please visit our In-Depth