The future belongs to Islam

[The future belongs to Islam]

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October 20, 2006

 

The future belongs to Islam

 

The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It's the end of the world as we've known it. An excerpt from 'America Alone'.

 

MARK STEYN

 

Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you'd said that whether something does or does not cause offence to Muslims would be the early 21st century's principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.

 

This is about the seven-eighths below the surface -- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.

 

 

 

 

 

Let's start with demography, because everything does:

 

If your school has 200 guys and you're playing a school with 2,000 pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage. Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business.

 

For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number:

 

The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years.

 

Once you know that, all the rest is details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation -- or pseudo-nation -- of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.

 

Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history: most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk -- in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast loving fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand a little below. Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling.

 

As I say, this isn't a projection: it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noel Coward once remarked in another context, "Funiculi, funicula, funic yourself." By mid-century, Italians will have no choice in the matter.

 

Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in.

 

Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to.

 

You might formulate it like this:

 

Age + Welfare = Disaster for you;

 

Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way.

 

By "will," I mean the metaphorical spine of a culture. Africa, to take another example, also has plenty of young people, but it's riddled with AIDS and, for the most part, Africans don't think of themselves as Africans: as we saw in Rwanda, their primary identity is tribal, and most tribes have no global ambitions. Islam, however, has serious global ambitions, and it forms the primal, core identity of most of its adherents -- in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere.

 

Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare.

 

We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim's pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism.

 

For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different world view.

 

Which brings us to the third factor -- the enervated state of the Western world, the sense of civilizational ennui, of nations too mired in cultural relativism to understand what's at stake. As it happens, that third point is closely related to the first two. To Americans, it doesn't always seem obvious that there's any connection between the "war on terror" and the so-called "pocketbook issues" of domestic politics. But there is a correlation between the structural weaknesses of the social democratic state and the rise of a globalized Islam. The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood -- health care, child care, care of the elderly -- to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal "deficit" isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a cheque to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.

 

There were two forces at play in the late 20th century: in the Eastern bloc, the collapse of Communism; in the West, the collapse of confidence. One of the most obvious refutations of Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis The End Of History -- written at the victory of liberal pluralist democracy over Soviet Communism -- is that the victors didn't see it as such. Americans -- or at least non-Democrat-voting Americans -- may talk about "winning" the Cold War but the French and the Belgians and Germans and Canadians don't. Very few British do. These are all formal NATO allies -- they were, technically, on the winning side against a horrible tyranny few would wish to live under themselves. In Europe, there was an initial moment of euphoria: it was hard not be moved by the crowds sweeping through the Berlin Wall, especially as so many of them were hot-looking Red babes eager to enjoy a Carlsberg or Stella Artois with even the nerdiest running dog of imperialism. But, when the moment faded, pace Fukuyama, there was no sense on the Continent that our Big Idea had beaten their Big Idea. With the best will in the world, it's hard to credit the citizens of France or Italy as having made any serious contribution to the defeat of Communism. Au contraire, millions of them voted for it, year in, year out. And, with the end of the Soviet existential threat, the enervation of the West only accelerated.

 

In Thomas P. M. Barnett's book Blueprint For Action, Robert D. Kaplan, a very shrewd observer of global affairs, is quoted referring to the lawless fringes of the map as "Indian territory." It's a droll joke but a misleading one. The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours.

 

Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.

 

And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons.

 

But beyond that the very phrase "Indian territory" presumes that inevitably these badlands will be brought within the bounds of the ordered world. In fact, a lot of today's "Indian territory" was relatively ordered a generation or two back -- West Africa, Pakistan, Bosnia. Though Eastern Europe and Latin America and parts of Asia are freer now than they were in the seventies, other swaths of the map have spiralled backwards. Which is more likely? That the parts of the world under pressure will turn into post-Communist Poland or post-Communist Yugoslavia? In Europe, the demographic pressures favour the latter.

 

The enemies we face in the future will look a lot like al-Qaeda: transnational, globalized, locally franchised, extensively outsourced -- but tied together through a powerful identity that leaps frontiers and continents. They won't be nation-states and they'll have no interest in becoming nation-states, though they might use the husks thereof, as they did in Afghanistan and then Somalia. The jihad may be the first, but other transnational deformities will embrace similar techniques. Sept. 10 institutions like the UN and the EU will be unlikely to provide effective responses.

 

We can argue about what consequences these demographic trends will have, but to say blithely they have none is ridiculous. The basic demography explains, for example, the critical difference between the "war on terror" for Americans and Europeans: in the U.S., the war is something to be fought in the treacherous sands of the Sunni Triangle and the caves of the Hindu Kush; you go to faraway places and kill foreigners. But, in Europe, it's a civil war. Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little." This time round, for much of western Europe it turned out the faraway country of which they knew little was their own.

 

Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower. The longer the long war gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.

 

Almost every geopolitical challenge in the years ahead has its roots in demography, but not every demographic crisis will play out the same way. That's what makes doing anything about it even more problematic -- because different countries' reactions to their own particular domestic circumstances are likely to play out in destabilizing ways on the international scene. In Japan, the demographic crisis exists virtually in laboratory conditions -- no complicating factors; in Russia, it will be determined by the country's relationship with a cramped neighbour -- China; and in Europe, the new owners are already in place -- like a tenant with a right-to-buy agreement.

 

Let's start in the most geriatric jurisdiction on the planet. In Japan, the rising sun has already passed into the next phase of its long sunset: net population loss. 2005 was the first year since records began in which the country had more deaths than births. Japan offers the chance to observe the demographic death spiral in its purest form. It's a country with no immigration, no significant minorities and no desire for any: just the Japanese, aging and dwindling.

 

At first it doesn't sound too bad: compared with the United States, most advanced societies are very crowded. If you're in a cramped apartment in a noisy congested city, losing a couple hundred thousand seems a fine trade-off. The difficulty, in a modern social democratic state, is managing which people to lose: already, according to the Japan Times, depopulation is "presenting the government with pressing challenges on the social and economic front, including ensuring provision of social security services and securing the labour force." For one thing, the shortage of children has led to a shortage of obstetricians. Why would any talented ambitious med school student want to go into a field in such precipitous decline? As a result, if you live in certain parts of Japan, childbirth is all in the timing. On Oki Island, try to time the contractions for Monday morning. That's when the maternity ward is open -- first day of the week, 10 a.m., when an obstetrician flies in to attend to any pregnant mothers who happen to be around. And at 5.30 p.m. she flies out. So, if you've been careless enough to time your childbirth for Tuesday through Sunday, you'll have to climb into a helicopter and zip off to give birth alone in a strange hospital unsurrounded by tiresome loved ones. Do Lamaze classes on Oki now teach you to time your breathing to the whirring of the chopper blades?

 

The last local obstetrician left the island in 2006 and the health service isn't expecting any more. Doubtless most of us can recall reading similar stories over the years from remote rural districts in America, Canada, Australia. After all, why would a village of a few hundred people have a great medical system? But Oki has a population of 17,000, and there are still no obstetricians: birthing is a dying business.

 

So what will happen? There are a couple of scenarios: whatever Japanese feelings on immigration, a country with great infrastructure won't empty out for long, any more than a state-of-the-art factory that goes belly up stays empty for long. At some point, someone else will move in to Japan's plant.

 

And the alternative? In The Children Of Men, P. D. James' dystopian fantasy about a barren world, there are special dolls for women whose maternal instinct has gone unfulfilled: pretend mothers take their artificial children for walks on the street or to the swings in the park. In Japan, that's no longer the stuff of dystopian fantasy. At the beginning of the century, the country's toy makers noticed they had a problem: toys are for children and Japan doesn't have many. What to do? In 2005, Tomy began marketing a new doll called Yumel -- a baby boy with a range of 1,200 phrases designed to serve as companions for the elderly. He says not just the usual things -- "I wuv you" -- but also asks the questions your grandchildren would ask if you had any: "Why do elephants have long noses?" Yumel joins his friend, the Snuggling Ifbot, a toy designed to have the conversation of a five-year old child which its makers, with the usual Japanese efficiency, have determined is just enough chit-chat to prevent the old folks going senile. It seems an appropriate final comment on the social democratic state: in a childish infantilized self-absorbed society where adults have been stripped of all responsibility, you need never stop playing with toys. We are the children we never had.

 

And why leave it at that? Is it likely an ever smaller number of young people will want to spend their active years looking after an ever greater number of old people? Or will it be simpler to put all that cutting-edge Japanese technology to good use and take a flier on Mister Roboto and the post-human future? After all, what's easier for the governing class? Weaning a pampered population off the good life and re-teaching them the lost biological impulse or giving the Sony Corporation a licence to become the Cloney Corporation? If you need to justify it to yourself, you'd grab the graphs and say, well, demographic decline is universal. It's like industrialization a couple of centuries back; everyone will get to it eventually, but the first to do so will have huge advantages: the relevant comparison is not with England's early 19th century population surge but with England's Industrial Revolution. In the industrial age, manpower was critical. In the new technological age, manpower will be optional -- and indeed, if most of the available manpower's Muslim, it's actually a disadvantage. As the most advanced society with the most advanced demographic crisis, Japan seems likely to be the first jurisdiction to embrace robots and cloning and embark on the slippery slope to transhumanism.

 

Demographic origin need not be the final word. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Joseph Priestly suggesting a mutual English friend might like to apply his mind to the conundrum the Crown faced:

 

Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150 Yankees this campaign, which is £20000 a head... During the same time, 60000 children have been born in America. From these data his mathematical head will easily calculate the time and the expense necessary to kill us all.

 

Obviously, Franklin was oversimplifying. Not every American colonist identified himself as a rebel. After the revolution, there were massive population displacements: as United Empire Loyalists well know, large numbers of New Yorkers left the colony to resettle in what's now Ontario. Some American Negroes were so anxious to remain subjects of King George III they resettled as far as Sierra Leone. For these people, their primary identity was not as American colonists but as British subjects. For others, their new identity as Americans had supplanted their formal allegiance to the Crown. The question for today's Europe is whether the primary identity of their fastest-growing demographic is Muslim or Belgian, Muslim or Dutch, Muslim or French.

 

That's where civilizational confidence comes in: if "Dutchness" or "Frenchness" seems a weak attenuated thing, then the stronger identity will prevail. One notes other similarities between revolutionary America and contemporary Europe: the United Empire Loyalists were older and wealthier; the rebels were younger and poorer. In the end, the former simply lacked the latter's strength of will.

 

Europe, like Japan, has catastrophic birth rates and a swollen pampered elderly class determined to live in defiance of economic reality. But the difference is that on the Continent the successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be.

 

If America's "allies" failed to grasp the significance of 9/11, it's because Europe's home-grown terrorism problems had all taken place among notably static populations, such as Ulster and the Basque country. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding Northern Ireland to what cynical strategists in Her Majesty's Government used to call an "acceptable level of violence." But in the same three decades as Ulster's "Troubles," the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam; previously formally un-Islamic societies such as Nigeria became semi-Islamist; and large Muslim populations settled in parts of Europe that had little or no experience of mass immigration.

 

On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory "of courses": of course, not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists -- though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the "good cop" end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality -- because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.

 

You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with -- what's the word? -- "youths." When I pointed out the media's strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting "youths," I received a ton of emails arguing there's no Islamist component, they're not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they're secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it's the lack of jobs, it's conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, "You right-wing shit-for-brains think everything's about jihad."

 

Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.

 

In June 2006, a 54-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the Number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six -- what's that word again? -- "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some 40 passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those 40 other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, 30 of the 40 scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be -- quelle surprise! -- of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those 40 passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive."

 

No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those 40 passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone. What future in "their" country do Mr. Demoor's two children have? My mother and grandparents came from Sint-Niklaas, a town I remember well from many childhood visits. When we stayed with great-aunts and other relatives, the upstairs floors of the row houses had no bathrooms, just chamber pots. My sister and I were left to mooch around cobbled streets with our little cousin for hours on end, wandering aimlessly past smoke-wreathed bars and cafes, occasionally buying frites with mayonnaise. With hindsight it seemed as parochially Flemish as could be imagined. Not anymore. The week before Mr. Demoor was murdered in plain sight, bus drivers in Sint-Niklaas walked off the job to protest the thuggery of the -- here it comes again -- "youths." In little more than a generation, a town has been transformed.

 

Of the ethnic Belgian population, some 17 per cent are under 18 years old. Of the country's Turkish and Moroccan population, 35 per cent are under 18 years old. The "youths" get ever more numerous, the non-youths get older. To avoid the ruthless arithmetic posited by Benjamin Franklin, it is necessary for those "youths" to feel more Belgian. Is that likely? Colonel Gadhafi doesn't think so:

 

There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.

 

On Sept. 11, 2001, the American mainland was attacked for the first time since the War of 1812. The perpetrators were foreign -- Saudis and Egyptians. Since 9/11, Europe has seen the London Tube bombings, the French riots, Dutch murders of nationalist politicians. The perpetrators are their own citizens -- British subjects, citoyens de la République française. In Linz, Austria, Muslims are demanding that all female teachers, believers or infidels, wear head scarves in class. The Muslim Council of Britain wants Holocaust Day abolished because it focuses "only" on the Nazis' (alleged) Holocaust of the Jews and not the Israelis' ongoing Holocaust of the Palestinians.

 

How does the state react? In Seville, King Ferdinand III is no longer patron saint of the annual fiesta because his splendid record in fighting for Spanish independence from the Moors was felt to be insensitive to Muslims. In London, a judge agreed to the removal of Jews and Hindus from a trial jury because the Muslim defendant's counsel argued he couldn't get a fair verdict from them. The Church of England is considering removing St. George as the country's patron saint on the grounds that, according to various Anglican clergy, he's too "militaristic" and "offensive to Muslims." They wish to replace him with St. Alban, and replace St. George's cross on the revamped Union Flag, which would instead show St. Alban's cross as a thin yellow streak.

 

In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?

 

"We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

 

Reprinted by permission of Regnery Publishing from America Alone © 2006 by Mark Steyn

 

To comment, email letters@macleans.ca

[BURCO CELEBRATES ITS SONS... SNM]

maanta wali 3 xaraf baa la wadwadaa

 

Illahow nahadee

Illahay uun baa cibaadiisa duween kara

[A Hargeysawi lady arrested in Bosaso for revenge purposes.]

Allways the poor people are paying the price

 

 

Puntland is wrong to discriminate people

 

Somaliland and Puntland should stop this game because it’s the ordinary people that suffering

 

How we can condemn the discrimination that Somali people are facing from south African racists, when we witnessing the discrimination that Somali people are facing from so-called clan-states like Somaliland Puntland and shabelle?

[A Busnessman arrested in Hargeysa for......being from the wrong clan?]

The actions of Somali clan-entities are regrettable.

 

 

After the civil, it’s not surprising to witness the fact that Somali people are facing discrimination in their own country because they are from “wrong clanâ€

 

All Somali regions are same whether it’s Somaliland, Puntland, shabelle, or other southern regions

 

Sheikh Mohamed Ismail’s only crime is that he is from small clan /wrong clan from far away region (Western Somalia)

 

sheikh Abshir Adan Moahmoud from Sool and Xaawa Xusen Xandule from Hergeysa are merely few examples showing the devastation of the somali civil war

[Tribalism: The cancer in our midst Part 2]

Thanks Caamir

[wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time]

Please give me a break

 

I don’t wish to revisit or to exchange your usual comments

 

It does not concern you whether I live in a cave or not

 

Your comments about the subject are welcome but not about SOO MAAL

[wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time]

Kerry: Wrong War In The Wrong Place

Associated Press

September 7, 2004

 

 

WASHINGTON - Democrat John Kerry accused President Bush on Monday of sending U.S. troops to the "wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and said he'd try to bring them all home in four years. Bush rebuked him for taking "yet another new position" on the war.

 

Iraq overshadowed the traditional Labor Day kickoff of the fall campaign and its time-honored emphasis on jobs, as Kerry delivered some of his harshest rhetoric against Bush's handling of the war and highlighted its economic costs. The Democrat set, for the first time, a tentative time frame for completing a withdrawal that Republican opponents say is too soon even to begin.

 

"We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term," Kerry said, speaking to a fellow Vietnam War veteran at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania who had asked about a timetable for withdrawal. Bush has not provided a specific timetable for withdrawal.

 

Bush, campaigning in southeast Missouri, described Kerry's attack as the product of chronic equivocation combined with a shake up of his advisers.

 

"After voting for the war, but against funding it, after saying he would have voted for the war even knowing everything we know today, my opponent woke up this morning with new campaign advisers and yet another new position," Bush told Missouri voters.

 

Kerry spoke with former President Clinton in a lengthy phone call during the weekend, hearing advice that he go hard after Bush's record. Clinton White House aides are taking a larger role in the campaign, and Kerry moved longtime adviser John Sasso into a top spot.

 

On Iraq, "suddenly he's against it again," Bush said. "No matter how many times Senator Kerry changes his mind, it was right for America and it's right for America now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power."

 

Both sides sparred over employment, too, in tours of the heartland by the presidential candidates and their running mates covering eight states in all.

 

Speaking at the Minnesota State Fair, Vice President Dick Cheney declared low taxes are the key to robust employment. Kerry asserted that an employment surge over the last year has been driven by jobs that pay poorly and offer worse benefits and less security than jobs of old.

 

The Labor Department put out a rosy report on employment, declaring "prospects for job creation remain bright," and noting gains in most sectors in recent months.

 

Bush is struggling to escape the distinction of being the first president since the Depression-era Herbert Hoover to finish a term with job losses. With 1.7 million jobs created over the last year, the economy is still down 913,000 jobs overall since he took office.

 

With the quantity of jobs rising, Kerry turned to their quality. "If you want four more years of your wages falling ... if you want four more years of losing jobs overseas and replacing them with jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs you had before, then you should go vote for George Bush," Kerry said in Pennsylvania.

 

Kerry cited a study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute from January indicating jobs in growing industries pay $8,848 less on average than jobs in fading industries. One-third of the new jobs are for janitors, fast-food workers and temporary employees, and they are less likely to offer health insurance than other work, his campaign said.

 

Polls indicate Bush and Kerry are running evenly in four of the states the candidates were visiting Monday - Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Ohio. The four offer a combined 58 electoral votes, more than 20 percent of the total needed to win.

 

Nationally, Bush led Kerry by 7 points - 52 percent to 45 percent - while independent Ralph Nader had 1 percent in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll taken over the weekend and released Monday. Bush had 11-point leads in two polls taken last week during and right after the GOP convention.

 

Kerry stopped in Racine, W.Va., to make common cause with coal miners and to answer, in blistering tones, a visit by Bush on Sunday, when the president said the Democrat's plan to raise taxes on the richest Americans would stifle job growth.

 

"It all comes down to one letter - W," Kerry said, meaning the initial in George W. Bush. "And the W stands for wrong," he said. "The W stands for wrong choices, wrong judgment, wrong priorities, wrong direction for our country."

 

Kerry said last month he would try to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq within his first six months in office, conditioning that goal on getting more assistance from other countries. But he's avoided until now laying out a possible end game.

 

He called the president's coalition in Iraq "the phoniest thing I ever heard" and played up the money spent on Iraq that could have gone to domestic needs.

 

"This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, and he's cost all of you $200 billion that could have gone to schools, could have gone to health care, could have gone to prescription drugs, could have gone to our Social Security," he said.

 

Cheney, moving on to Iowa, took issue with Kerry's remark about a phony coalition. "Demeaning our allies is an interesting approach for someone seeking the presidency," the vice president told about 500 supporters at a barbecue along the shores of Clear Lake. "They deserve our respect, not insults."

[More US Hispanics drawn to Islam]

More US Hispanics drawn to Islam

 

AT PRAYER: Melissa Matos, of the Council on American Islamic Relations, is one of a growing number of Hispanic Muslims. The population has grown 30 percent since 1999.

 

 

Marriage, post-9/11 curiosity, and a shared interest in issues such as immigration are key reasons.

By Amy Green | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

 

ORLANDO, FLA.

With her hijab and dark complexion, Catherine Garcia doesn't look like an Orlando native or a Disney tourist. When people ask where she's from, often they are surprised that it's not the Middle East but Colombia.

 

That's because Ms. Garcia, a bookstore clerk who immigrated to the US seven years ago, is Hispanic and Muslim. On this balmy afternoon at the start of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, she is at her mosque dressed in long sleeves and a long skirt in keeping with the Islamic belief in modesty. "When I was in my country I never fit in the society. Here in Islam I feel like I fit with everything they believe," she says.

 

Garcia is one of a growing number of Hispanics across the US who have found common ground in a faith and culture bearing surprising similarities to their own heritage. From professionals to students to homemakers, they are drawn to the Muslim faith through marriage, curiosity and a shared interest in issues such as immigration.

 

The population of Hispanic Muslims has increased 30 percent to some 200,000 since 1999, estimates Ali Khan, national director of the American Muslim Council in Chicago. Many attribute the trend to a growing interest in Islam since the 2001 terrorist attacks and also to a collision between two burgeoning minority groups. They note that Muslims ruled Spain centuries ago, leaving an imprint on Spanish food, music, and language.

 

"Many Hispanics ... who are becoming Muslim, would say they are embracing their heritage, a heritage that was denied to them in a sense," says Ihsan Bagby, professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky.

 

The trend has spawned Latino Islamic organizations such as the Latino American Dawah Organization, established in 1997 by Hispanic converts in New York City. Today the organization is nationwide.

 

The growth in the Hispanic Muslim population is especially prevalent in New York, Florida, California, and Texas, where Hispanic communities are largest. In Orlando, the area's largest mosque, which serves some 700 worshipers each week, is located in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood. A few years ago it was rare to hear Spanish spoken at the mosque, says Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida.

 

Today there is a growing demand for books in Spanish, including the Koran, and requests for appearances on Spanish-language radio stations, Mr. Musri says. The mosque offers a Spanish-language education program in Islam for women on Saturdays. "I could easily see in the next few years a mosque that will have Spanish services and a Hispanic imam who will be leading the service," he says.

 

The two groups tend to be family-oriented, religious, and historically conservative politically, Dr. Bagby says. Many who convert are second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans.

 

The two groups also share an interest in social issues such as immigration, poverty, and healthcare. Earlier this year Muslims joined Hispanics in marches nationwide protesting immigration-reform proposals they felt were unfair.

 

In South Central Los Angeles, a group of Muslim UCLA students a decade ago established a medical clinic in this underserved area. Today the nonreligious University Muslim Medical Association Community Clinic treats some 16,000 patients, mostly Hispanic, who see it as a safe place to seek care without fear for their illegal status, says Mansur Khan, vice chairman of the board and one of the founders.

 

Although the clinic doesn't seek Muslim converts, Dr. Khan sees Hispanics taking an interest in his faith because it focuses on family, he says. One volunteer nurse founded a Latino Islamic organization in the area. Another Hispanic woman told Khan she felt drawn to the faith because of the head covering Muslim women wear. It reminded her of the Virgin Mary.

 

The trend is a sign that Islam is becoming more Americanized and more indigenous to the country, Bagby says. As Republican positions on issues such as immigration push Muslim Hispanics and blacks in a less conservative direction, Islam could move in the same direction. Muslim Hispanic and black involvement in American politics could demonstrate to Muslims worldwide the virtues of democracy, eventually softening fundamentalists. He believes the Osama bin Ladens of the world are a small minority, and that most fundamentalists are moving toward engagement with the West.

 

"The more Hispanics and other Americans [who] become Muslim, the stronger and wider the bridge between the Muslim community and the general larger American community," Bagby says. "Their words and approach have some weight because they are a source of pride for Muslims throughout the world."

 

Garcia left Colombia to study international business in the US. Always religious, she considered becoming a nun when she was younger. But her Catholic faith raised questions for her. She wondered about eating pork when the Bible forbids it, and about praying to Mary and the saints and not directly to God.

 

In the US she befriended Muslims and eventually converted to Islam. Her family in Colombia was supportive. Today she says her prayers in English, Spanish, and Arabic, and she eats Halal food in keeping with Islamic beliefs.

 

"It's the best thing that happened to me," says Garcia in soft, broken English. "I never expected to have so many blessings and be in peace like I am now."

[Minister's remarks fuel claims of Islamophobia crisis]

Dangerous attack or fair point? Straw veil row deepens

Minister's remarks fuel claims of Islamophobia crisis

 

Martin Wainwright, Tania Branigan, Jeevan Vasagar, Matthew Taylor and Vikram Dodd

Saturday October 7, 2006

 

Guardian

 

The issue had been troubling Jack Straw, and though he must have known that it might cause offence, he decided to raise it regardless.

One of Labour's most experienced politicians, Mr Straw addressed a gathering of Muslim leaders, sharing his disquiet over women who veiled their faces, and recalling a meeting he had had at a constituency surgery in Blackburn with a woman wearing a niqab.

 

It was a strange matter to raise at talks which had been dominated by a debate over Iraq's role in swelling British extremism, and his intervention stuck in the minds of those who were there. "He said, some of my constituents who have been accepting of the hijab are greatly concerned about the niqab," said one who was there. That discussion was almost 12 months ago. Mr Straw was warned at the time that any attempt to publicise his concerns would provoke anger. But a year later, and apparently unprompted by Downing Street, he chose to do so again, this time to the media.

 

If Mr Straw had any doubt over the news value of his views, editors at his local paper did not share them.

 

When the Lancashire Telegraph received his column on Wednesday morning, they knew straight away it was in a different league from his standard offerings. The front page for the next day was cleared and staff began approaching local community leaders to get their response.

 

Taking over the news

 

By yesterday morning, there was a gathering sense of crisis at Westminster and beyond over the government's attitude to multiculturalism, coming at the end of a week in which problems seemed to coalesce.

 

Anger over a Muslim police officer who asked to be excused guard duties at the Israeli embassy combined with tensions in Windsor, where plans to build a mosque sparked three nights of violent clashes, giving British Muslims a frustrating sense of once again being the whipping boy.

 

"This Muslim police officer taken off-duty was a routine thing, but it was blown totally out of proportion," said Dr Reefat Drabu of the Muslim Council of Britain. "The same with the niqab. It is a matter of choice but it seems to have taken over the news. We seem to be all the time defending ourselves and we haven't got the opportunity to evolve within the culture we're in."

 

It was the timing of the remarks, as much as the content, that was baffling Muslim leaders yesterday. Quietly, and unnoticed, the issue of the niqab has been raised on university campuses and in schools over the last few years, without causing ripples.

 

In the wake of 7/7, a dress code drawn up by Imperial College outlawed the niqab in the interests of security, saying staff had to be able to check students' faces against the picture on their ID.

 

The ban was resisted by the Imperial's Islamic Society, but has already been supported by at least one minister.

 

In a speech made at South Bank University in May, the higher education minister Bill Rammell said: "Many teachers would feel very uncomfortable about their ability to teach students who were covering their faces. And I doubt many students would feel it was acceptable to be taught by someone who had chosen to veil their face."

 

Shift since 7/7

 

A prominent academic agreed yesterday. Jean Seaton, professor of media history at the University of Westminster, said she would be reluctant to teach a student who covered their face. "You can't teach somebody if they can't communicate, without seeing the response. Teaching is not like stuffing a goose with corn - its utterly reactive. In a social situation, everybody else's faces are giving away stuff left right and centre."

 

Professor Seaton added: "I remember the first time I saw a Saudi in Holland Park and being viscerally terrified of this image."

 

But the government's perspective on relations with the Muslim and other ethnic minority communities appears to have shifted significantly since the London bombings. Its immediate reaction to 7/7 was to reach out to community representatives to discuss how the problems of extremism might be tackled.

 

But in August, Ruth Kelly, the communities secretary, called for a "new and honest debate" on the merits of multiculturalism. At last week's Labour conference the home secretary John Reid said Britain would not be bullied by Muslim fanatics, and he would not tolerate "no-go" neighbourhoods. The government has also appointed Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality and a man who has warned that Britain is "sleepwalking towards segregation", as the chair of the new single equalities body.

 

Dr Drabu said attempts at rapprochement with Muslims were a "charade".

 

"They had these working groups, but when it came out that they would like an inquiry, that was totally ignored. When they said this was all to do with foreign policy, that was ignored."

 

It was not clear whether Mr Straw canvassed opinion within government before writing his column. He does not appear to have spoken to Tony Blair. The prime minister's official spokesperson said only: "He believes it is right that people should be able to have a discussion and express personal views on issues such as this."

 

Nor does he appear to have consulted members of the community in Blackburn. Lord Patel, a long-term supporter, said he would request a meeting to discuss the matter. Hamid Qureshi, chair of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, described it as "blatant Muslim bashing".

 

Shahid Malik, the MP for Dewsbury, said: "It's not so much about what he has said as the climate in which he has said it, in which Muslims - and non-Muslims - are getting tired of Muslim stories. The veil isn't the problem; the problem is that people are frightened of it - they've never spoken to someone with a veil. This cannot and must not be about blaming one group, but about saying, we have all got to take collective responsibility. "

 

The veil has been a lightning rod issue since Turkey banned headscarves as a rejection of Ottoman conservatism. In France, which has the biggest Muslim population in Europe, the 2004 ban on "conspicuous" religious symbols in schools was seen as a means of shielding the secular state from the perceived threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Feminists have opposed the veil as a symbol of patriarchy.

 

The niqab is a Gulf Arab tradition which has been adopted by young British Muslim women even when their traditional cultures do not prescribe it.

 

Talk in Blackburn

 

Ghulan Choudhari of Radio Ramadan Blackburn said that only a small minority of women in Blackburn wore the full veil, but numbers were growing. He said: "It's partly down to the increased interest in our religion, especially among young people. But I can see Jack's point about the veil making some people uneasy. To be honest, I get uneasy talking to people who are wearing sunglasses. I don't like not being able to see their eyes."

 

Talk in the town was linking the column to Mr Straw's possible ambition to be Labour deputy leader - or, conversely, to a theory that he was not planning to fight Blackburn again and had things to get off his chest.

 

Mr Straw's constituency party secretary Phil Riley said: "Jack always has a word with me in advance about what he'll be saying in the Telegraph and I know this subject's been on his mind for a while.

 

"The big worry here is that Blackburn is becoming a divided town. Either you stand by and watch that process, doing nothing, or you engage people in a debate about it. Jack's started a conversation. He and I have talked about it quite a bit in the last few months. I know he's worried about the number of Blackburn-born girls who are taking it up. As he says, in the context of cultural cohesion it's something which just doesn't help."

 

Muslim opinion on the streets was not unsympathetic to Mr Straw, but hardly anyone put other communities' feelings before the religious right - duty in the eyes of a sizeable minority - to wear the full veil. A self-employed electrician waiting for the end of lessons at St Nicholas and St John infant and junior school - which is overwhelmingly Asian - said that the roots of social division were much older than veil-wearing.

 

"It's all to do with the way we were treated in the Seventies - I was regularly chased along here when I was a kid by white lads. Other communities just didn't want to know about us - funny that they're all so interested now in things like veils. I was a soldier in the British Army for 11 years and I can tell you very clearly how I couldn't get anywhere because I wasn't white but brown."

 

Several other parents waiting to collect children said that an increase in wearing the veil followed much better-organised Islamic teaching locally. One mother wearing a headscarf and shalwar kameez, but not a full veil, said: "When our mums and dads came here, it was all work, work, work for them, no time to study and no mosques. Now we have lessons in English, Urdu and Arabic and women are learning what their religion really asks them to do."

 

Mounting tension

 

Tuesday British National party distributes leaflets with cartoon picture of Muhammad in south London

 

Wednesday David Cameron wants Muslim schools to ensure a quarter of their intake comes from other faiths. Confrontations between white and Muslim youths in Windsor

 

Thursday Met commission orders inquiry into decision to excuse Muslim PC Alexander Omar Basha from duty outside Israeli embassy. Jack Straw says Muslim women who wear the veil make positive inter-community relations more difficult

 

Friday Mr Straw defends his position and again urges women not to cover their face with the niqab

 

The view from Blackburn

 

Asma Mirza, 29, housewife

 

"I certainly don't agree with Jack Straw because my religion demands that I wear this I have taken the full veil for 16 years now and I am much more comfortable wearing it. It is a matter of modesty as well as religion. I hope that it will not put other people off. Once they talk to me and get to know me, I think that problem disappears."

 

Masood Rahi, owner of telecom shop

 

"I think Jack Straw is probably right, especially in these days when security matters so much. It's all very well for someone to have your photograph and a form with your details on. But what use is that if they can't glance at your face to check? People should be ready to discuss it and to read what he actually said, rather than the headlines which give a rather different impression."

 

Jahangir Hussain, 16, student

 

"I disagree with Straw. It's these women's religion. They should all be wearing the veil according to the proper teaching. Yes, maybe it puts some people off but look at nuns or people from other faiths which get people to do things with their clothes ... Nobody goes around telling them what they can and can't wear, they just get used to it."

 

Young woman in full veil. No name given

 

"OK, it's religion first but modesty comes into it a lot for me. I started using the full veil eight months ago and it's done so much for my self-respect. It's comfortable, I feel protected and I happily eat out at McDonald's in it. I've devised this special way of getting the food up behind the material."

 

Daniel Coine, 16, student

 

"I'd go further than Jack Straw and say they should all take off their veils. You need to see people face to face. It's weird not knowing who it is you're passing in the street, specially late at night when someone might jump you."

 

Rachael Ashhead, 20, business student at Manchester Metropolitan University

 

"It's their choice to wear the veil and they've an absolute right ... I've no problem with it all when I meet one - there are loads of them at uni. A more important issue is the way these things are discussed in the news, how they get simplified and people set against each other."

[More than 60,000 white Britons are Muslims.]

Survey highlights deprivation of British Muslims

 

By Gideon Long

Reuters

Friday, October 6, 2006; 8:11 AM

 

 

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Muslims are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than followers of other faiths and up to five times as likely to live in overcrowded housing, a major survey has revealed.

 

Published by the Office of National Statistics, the survey has been hailed as the most detailed snapshot taken of Britain's increasingly diverse population.

 

For the first time, it analyses the country along its religious as well as its ethnic lines.

 

Britain's Muslims have come under increasing scrutiny since July last year when four British Islamists carried out suicide bombings in London.

 

Some critics have urged Muslims to do more to integrate themselves into wider British society and to stamp out Islamist extremism in their midst.

 

Many Muslims and social commentators say the community's problems stem from poverty and discrimination rather than religious intransigence, and have urged the government to do more to address such issues.

 

Based on data from the 2001 national census, the 162-page study paints a relatively bleak picture of life for Britain's 1.8 million Muslims, most of whom are ethnic Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

 

"Of the different religious groups, unemployment rates among Muslims were more than double those in other groups," it found.

 

Some 17 percent of Muslim men and 18 percent of Muslim women were unemployed compared to just five percent of Christian men and four percent of Christian women.

 

"Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black African groups had low levels of participation in the labor market," the study found.

 

"Their high unemployment rates suggest that even when active in the labor market they experienced difficulties finding employment."

 

A third of Muslims lived in households which, according to the census definition, were overcrowded, compared to just six percent of Britain's Christians.

 

Some 44 percent of ethnic Bangladeshi and 26 percent of ethnic Pakistani households were deemed to be overcrowded, against an average for the country of seven percent.

 

In a country of nearly 59 million where home ownership is widespread and regarded as a key measure of wealth, Muslims were less likely to own their own houses than followers of other faiths.

 

Just over half of Muslim households owned their houses compared to a national average of nearly 70 percent.

[More than 60,000 white Britons are Muslims.]

Revealed: the diversity that defines a nation

 

By Maxine Frith, Social Affairs Correspondent

 

Published: 06 October 2006

 

The most detailed map of ethnic and religious diversity in Britain has been published, showing where different groups live - and how Muslim minorities in particular are at a disadvantage.

 

From a sizeable Sikh population in a Kent town to a Bradford suburb where 73 per cent of people are Pakistani; from atheist Brighton to Leicester's large Indian population, the breakdown provides a fascinating snapshot of 21st-century Britain.

 

The findings are revealed on a day when issues of race and religion are again leading the news agenda. The former foreign secretary Jack Straw said yesterday that he asks Muslim women to remove their veils when they visit his constituency surgery, because he feels "uncomfortable" about talking to someone whose face he cannot see.

 

In Windsor, extra police had to be drafted in following violent clashes between white and Asian youths. And a row broke out after an armed Muslim protection officer was excused from guarding the Israeli embassy in London, on grounds of "safety", during the recent war in Lebanon because he had relatives in the country.

 

The map marks the first time the country has been analysed not simply in terms of the ethnicity of its population, but also by its religions. It reveals diversity in some areas, and the absence of it in others.

 

New analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) of the 2001 census figures shows that the north-west London borough of Brent is the most ethnically diverse area in England and Wales. Ethnographers devised a "diversity index" - based on the probability that any two people chosen at random from a particular area would be from different ethnic groups, even if neither of them were white.

 

In Brent, the chance of doing so was 85 per cent. Just 29 per cent of residents are white British, with Indians, black Caribbeans and black Africans all heavily represented. That compares to Easington in Co Durham, where there is a 2 per cent chance, making it the least diverse place in the country. On average, two people bumping into each other in the street stand a 23 per cent chance of having different ethnic backgrounds. In some areas, more than 70 per cent of residents are from an ethnic minority.

 

For the first time in the history of the census, the 2001 survey asked people to state their religion as part of an effort to get a more detailed demographic picture of the world we live in.

 

Using the same diversity index calculations, the ONS found that the London borough of Harrow was the most religiously diverse, with a more than 60 per cent chance that someone standing next to you will not share the same faith. Mapping also showed that people from the same religions and ethnic groups moved to the same areas. Thus Indian Hindus tended to live in different regions from Indian Sikhs. In some areas, such as Leicester, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester, three-quarters of the population are non-white and non-Christian, despite the fact that this ethno-religious group accounts for 70 per cent of England and Wales as a whole.

 

Detailed analysis of ethnic minorities also shows how many are now second, third or fourth generation immigrants. More than half (57 per cent) of black Caribbeans were born in the UK, alongside 55 per cent of Pakistanis, 46 per cent of Bangladeshis and 45 per cent of Indians. The report also shows how, outside major cities, many areas remain predominantly white British.

 

Seven per cent of local authority areas are classed as being "highly ethnically diverse" - based on the idea that there is a more than 50 per cent chance that two random people will be from different backgrounds. Fewer - 3 per cent - are classed as being highly religiously diverse, on the same calculation.

 

More damning are differences in unemployment, overcrowding and other deprivation indicators. More than 40 per cent of Bangladeshi households are overcrowded, compared with 6 per cent of white British. One in three Muslim homes have dependent children but no working adults.

 

Black African Muslim men suffer most from the deprivation gap, with rates of unemployment three times higher than white British men. The new data shows that black African Muslims are also twice as likely as Indian Muslims to be unemployed. In turn, Indian Muslims are far more likely to be jobless than Sikhs or Hindus, suggesting that it is religion, rather than race, that is key.

 

Dr Jamil Sherif, secretary of the research committee of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "The issue of unemployment is extremely serious in parts of the Muslim community. There is an urgent need for bold policy initiatives in appropriate skills training and apprentice schemes.

 

"On a separate note, the ONS report highlights the ethnic and religious diversity in Brent and Harrow. Both local authority districts have good community relations and cohesion - which shows multiculturalism works."

 

England and Wales ethnicity

 

* White Britons make up 88.2 per cent of the population.

 

* 71.8 per cent describe themselves as Christian.

 

* 14 per cent of white Britons say they have no religion.

 

* Muslims make up three per cent of the population. Islam is the second biggest religion after Christianity.

 

* The Indian population is the largest non-white ethnic group, accounting for 1.8 per cent.

 

* Pakistani Muslims are the biggest non-white ethno-religious group.

 

* Black Caribbeans account for one per cent of the population.

 

* More than 60,000 white Britons are Muslims.

 

* One in three Black Africans was born in Britain.

[Exclusive: Financing Somalia’s Islamist Warlords]

Exclusive: Financing Somalia’s Islamist Warlords

 

Ninkan indhayar na bal maxuu ka yaqaan Somalia?

[Emir Receives Somali Official]

EMIR RECEIVES SOMALI OFFICIAL: HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani receiving the Somali Chairman of the Executive Council for Islamic Courts, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who is on a visit to Qatar.

 

The official briefed HH the Emir on the current situation in Somalia. HH the Emir stressed the significance of unity and stability of Somalia as well as of achieving the national interest of all Somali people so that they would enjoy security and peace in their country. The meeting at Al Wajbah Palace yesterday was attended by HE the First Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor al-Thani, HE the Chief of the Emiri Diwan Sheikh Abdulrahman bin Saud al-Thani and Foreign Ministry’s Arab Affairs Department Director Ibrahim Abdulaziz al-Sahlawi.

[''Somalia's Islamists Resume Their Momentum and Embark on a Diplomatic Path'']

''Somalia's Islamists Resume Their Momentum and Embark on a Diplomatic Path''

After appearing to stall in mid-September, the Islamic Courts Council (I.C.C.), which aims at establishing an Islamic state in Somalia, recovered its momentum, taking the key southern port city of Kismayo on September 24, resuming its program of social reconstruction and responding favorably to Washington's moves to open a "diplomatic channel."

 

By assuming control of Kismayo, the I.C.C. extended its sphere of influence into Somalia's Middle and Lower Jubba regions in the country's deep south, running up against the Kenyan border and filling out its presence to consolidate all of Somalia south of the border of the breakaway sub-state of Puntland.

 

The I.C.C.'s success in the deep south further weakened the internationally recognized, but impotent Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), which is now thoroughly isolated in the provincial town of Baidoa and dependent on external military support from Ethiopia, which reportedly rushed a convoy of troops to Baidoa on September 25 to defend the town against any move by the I.C.C. to take it.

 

Expanding its control into the deep south was in the I.C.C.'s perceived vital interest in averting the deployment of African peacekeepers in Somalia who would protect the T.F.G. In mid-September, the African Union (A.U.) had approved a peacekeeping mission that would begin in early October to function under the aegis of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (I.G.A.D.) -- a regional cooperation organization of Somalia and its immediate neighbors -- and would be staffed, in its first wave, by Sudanese and Ugandan troops.

 

There is little likelihood that the I.G.A.D. mission will deploy: the United Nations Security Council would have to lift its arms embargo on Somalia, which it has been unwilling to do; the A.U. and I.G.A.D. countries do not have the resources to support an effective mission and are unlikely to receive help from external donors; and I.G.A.D. itself is deeply split, with Eritrea and Djibouti opposed to the mission, Sudan unwilling to participate until the I.C.C. and T.F.G. reach a power-sharing agreement, and only Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya backing the mission.

 

Despite the low probability of deployment, the I.C.C. turned its major attention in mid-September to attempting to block the mission, which would enter Somalia through the south, by moving into the Jubba regions where it knew it would face opposition. The I.C.C. has now established a front line on the Kenyan border and controls Somalia's southern coast, raising a serious, if not insurmountable obstacle to the deployment of the I.G.A.D. mission.

 

Kismayo

 

Somalia's third largest city, capital of the Lower Jubba region and the commercial hub of the deep south, Kismayo has been ruled in recent years by the Jubba Valley Alliance (J.V.A.), a loose coalition of four warlords led by Col. Barre "Hirale" Adan Shire.

 

As the I.C.C. swept through central Somalia after expelling warlords from the country's official capital Mogadishu in early June, the J.V.A. split on the issue of whether to resist the Courts movement's expansion into the deep south or to receive the I.C.C. and negotiate terms for governance with it.

 

Determined to resist, Hirale succeeded in having himself named as the T.F.G.'s defense minister in the new cabinet of Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi and immediately proceeded to try to win the T.F.G.'s backing for an autonomous Jubbaland state that would include the Gedo and Middle and Lower Jubba regions. Hirale's goal was to create a governmental structure in the deep south that could block penetration of its regions by the I.C.C., as Puntland has thus far been able to do in the north.

 

As Hirale maneuvered and dispatched missions to towns in the deep south to prepare the way for the new administration, the I.C.C. found an ally in another Kismayo warlord -- Mohamed Roble Jim'ale Gobale -- who mobilized a pro-I.C.C. militia to advance on Kismayo and entered the city in mid-September to negotiate the reception of the I.C.C. Meanwhile, another column led by I.C.C. Shura Council member Sheikh Hassan Turki advanced into Middle Jubba to prepare resistance against the introduction of foreign peacekeepers, secure the Kenyan border and prevent Hirale from forming the Jubbaland state.

 

On September 18, the I.C.C.'s senior security chairman, Yusuf Indha Ade, announced that the Courts movement would take Kismayo and would not negotiate with Hirale, despite the fact that he had declared his opposition to the presence of Ethiopian forces in Somalia. On the same day, a convoy led by Hirale supporter Abdirashid Hiddig was engaged in a firefight in Lower Jubba near the Kenyan border by local militias and I.C.C. forces, reportedly commanded by Turki and led by Sheikh Aweys. Hiddig had been on a mission to promote the Jubbaland state in Lower Jubba's Doble region, which was under Hirale's control, but the armed resistance forced him to return to Kismayo.

 

Hirale responded to the I.C.C.'s pressure by announcing a mobilization to defend the Jubba regions and insisting that he opposed the introduction of foreign peacekeepers and would not allow Kismayo to be used as a debarkation point for them. Local media reported that Hirale had not yet held talks with Roble or with J.V.A. warlord Yusuf Mire Serar.

 

By September 22, I.C.C. forces had approached Kismayo and had boosted their presence on the Kenyan border. Hirale's militia entrenched itself at Kismayo's airport and prepared for battle.

 

As tensions mounted, many residents fled Kismayo to look for safety in Kenya, which hosts the largest number of Somali refugees. On September 23, the T.F.G. warned the I.C.C. against attacking Kismayo, threatening retaliation and cessation of the T.F.G.-I.C.C. peace talks in Khartoum, the next round of which is scheduled for October 30. The I.C.C. ignored the T.F.G. and accused the J.V.A. of receiving weapons from Ethiopia.

 

With its noose around Kismayo tightening, the I.C.C. consolidated its gains in the Jubba regions, taking control of the Jilib district in Middle Jubba peacefully and then moving south to the Kamasuma area in Lower Jubba. Hirale condemned the I.C.C. takeover of Jilib, vowed to defend Kismayo and said that he would work in concert with the T.F.G.

 

Kismayo fell to the I.C.C. peacefully on September 24 as its militia -- led by Turki -- entered the city in force. Hirale reportedly fled to his clan base in the Gedo region with his militia. Hirale's deputy, Yusuf Mire Mahmud, who stayed on in Kismayo and threw his support to the Courts, told local media that in the final hours Hirale had rejected appeals to negotiate with the I.C.C. and had instead sought support from Ethiopia, which Mire said was "the last straw." Roble and Serar surrendered their battlewagons to the I.C.C. and accepted its authority. Turki told pro-Courts demonstrators in the city that foreign fighters had participated in the takeover.

 

A deeply divided city, Kismayo does not fit the I.C.C.'s pattern of moving in only when it has negotiated a deal with local notables; the Courts movement abandoned its preferred strategy there because of its insistent perceived interest in warding off a peacekeeping mission. As a result of acting in the absence of an accord, the I.C.C. faced a violent anti-Islamist demonstration of several thousand people in Kismayo on September 25 that its forces broke up by firing machine guns at the crowd, leaving one person dead. In the wake of the clash, the I.C.C. banned demonstrations and took up positions throughout the city.

 

Addis Ababa responded to the I.C.C.'s takeover of Kismayo by dispatching a large force of 100 battlewagons led by T.F.G. legislator Abdirizak Isak Bihi to cut off a possible I.C.C. advance on Baidoa. The T.F.G. renewed its call for peacekeepers and international help, and denounced the takeover as a violation of the cease-fire agreed upon at the Khartoum talks. Gedi blamed Western powers for adopting a "wait and see" attitude while the I.C.C. spread violence and oppression. Indha Ade warned that "the incursion of Ethiopian troops is a declaration of war on Somalia," adding that unless the international community persuaded Addis Ababa to withdraw, "the consequences of insecurity created by Ethiopia will spread to neighboring countries and East Africa as a whole."

 

Despite the possibility that Hirale's forces will mount a counter-offensive and that it will face popular and clan resistance to its rule, the I.C.C. appears to have extended its control into the deep south and has positioned itself to follow its familiar strategy of setting up local courts administered by local clerics and protected by clan militias -- and their warlords -- who have pledged loyalty to the Courts movement. If it sustains its advance and consolidates its gains, the I.C.C. will have achieved preponderant power in the regions of Somalia south of the Puntland and Somaliland sub-states, in both of which it is gaining supporters. By taking Kismayo, the I.C.C. has left the T.F.G. with its eroding international recognition and Ethiopian military support as its only bargaining chips.

 

The I.C.C. Regains Revolutionary Momentum

 

With enhanced power on the ground, the I.C.C. has assumed the stance of affirming the Khartoum peace process, in which it has a decisive advantage over the T.F.G., and has even committed to free national elections as part of a power-sharing deal. The I.C.C.'s favorable position in the balance of power is why it has turned its attention so intensely to preventing the deployment of foreign peacekeepers, which would prop up the T.F.G. and take pressure off Ethiopia.

 

In late September, the I.C.C. stepped up its military mobilization against foreign intervention by setting up a military academy in Mogadishu where middle and high school students will be trained for resistance operations. The I.C.C. also organized demonstrations against peacekeepers throughout the areas of Somalia that it controls and opened an office for volunteers for its security forces in Mogadishu, promising regular salaries.

 

The I.C.C. also continued curbing non-Islamist sectors of Somali society, forbidding the large celebrations of World Peace Day that had been mounted in previous years by civil society organizations and banning political meetings. On September 22, the I.C.C. extended its application of Shari'a law by holding its first public execution of a man found guilty of killing a businessman while attempting to steal his cell phone.

 

The military and repressive side of the I.C.C., which had dominated mid-September, was accompanied in late September by a renewal of advances in social services. On September 29, Sheikh Muhudin Mohamed Omar, the I.C.C.'s chief health officer, announced a ban on the importation of expired foods -- most of which come from the United Arab Emirates -- and said that the Courts would set up a customs service to inspect goods entering Somalia.

 

In a revealing article on conditions in Mogadishu published on September 24 in the New York Times, Jeffrey Gettleman reported that the I.C.C. is delivering social services, has appointed university professors to key administrative positions, has allowed some movie theaters to reopen, is not enforcing its ban on business activities during prayer times, is allowing girls to be schooled, has mobilized neighborhoods in clean-up and restoration activities, and has issued "tolerance edicts," all of which indicate that the moderate and pragmatic elements of the Courts movement are asserting their influence, which is essential if the I.C.C. is to avoid a popular backlash against severe applications of Shari'a law and zealous moral policing. Gettleman quotes local human rights activist Ahmed Mohamed Ali as saying that the I.C.C. has brought clans together.

 

That there is still clan resistance to the I.C.C. in Mogadishu is evident from the call by the chair of the Courts' Shura Council, Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, for clan-based courts outside the I.C.C.'s jurisdiction to disband and join the I.C.C.'s "unified structure" that "is not based on lineage."

 

The I.C.C.'s revolutionary momentum depends on defending its gains effectively against external threats, facilitating the normalization of Somali society by providing order and social services, and pursuing its project of rule by Shari'a law incrementally with due regard for public opinion. Although the picture is mixed, developments in late September indicate that the Courts movement is restoring a balance that had appeared to be in jeopardy.

 

The I.C.C. Takes a Diplomatic Path

 

With foreign intervention the major obstacle to the I.C.C.'s ascent, the Courts movement has attempted to isolate Ethiopia and its allies Uganda and Kenya by establishing cooperative relations with Washington.

 

On September 21, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the chair of the I.C.C.'s Executive Council, said that the I.C.C. was holding indirect talks with the United States, focusing on preventing the deployment of peacekeepers. On September 22, Shura Council Chairman Aweys elaborated, saying that Washington had asked for the talks, which were being mediated by an Arab state, in order to understand the I.C.C.'s positions and how it operates. Aweys said that the I.C.C. had not requested aid from Washington and was willing to talk with any party that respects Somalia's independence and desists from interfering in its internal affairs. Meanwhile, Ahmed was in Qatar, urging Doha to tell Washington that the I.C.C. is not a "terrorist" group and remarking that the I.C.C. had achieved agreement with Washington on several unspecified issues.

 

From Washington's side, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer told Reuters that the United States had held direct talks with I.C.C. leaders in Kenya and had requested that the Courts hand over suspected terrorists to Washington. She reported that the I.C.C. had denied that there were any terrorists under its protection, adding that Washington was pursuing "normal diplomacy" with the I.C.C. and had "opened a channel," confirming Washington's tilt away from the T.F.G., Addis Ababa and the A.U.

 

Washington appears to have decided that the I.C.C.'s power advantage is, at least at present, insurmountable and that it serves its interests best to deal with the Courts movement and to back the Khartoum talks rather than the A.U. peacekeeping mission or -- as some analysts have speculated -- an Ethiopian offensive. By backing away from Addis Ababa and the T.F.G., Washington has strengthened the I.C.C.'s and come down on the side of the Arab bloc, which has brokered the Khartoum process, against the African bloc.

 

Washington's willingness to open a channel to the I.C.C., which runs against its general policy of opposing the emergence of Islamist regimes, reflects the facts on the ground, its need to win favor with Arab states on more conspicuous regional issues and its fear that an armed confrontation between the I.C.C. and foreign troops could destabilize the entire Horn of Africa.

 

Confident about the advantages that it has in peace negotiations and of its popularity in Somalia, the I.C.C. is willing to mount a charm offensive and give Washington enough cover to accept it as the major player in Somalia.

 

As Washington tilted toward the I.C.C., the interests in favor of a peacekeeping mission persisted in their efforts to carry it off. On September 27, the foreign ministers of states advocating the I.G.A.D. mission are scheduled to petition the U.N. Security Council to lift its arms embargo -- an unlikely eventuality. The I.C.C. warned Uganda on September 22 that if it sent forces into Somalia, "we will have no choice but to fight them. We will see it as an invasion." Washington and European donor states are aware of the danger that a peacekeeping mission would excite a wave of xenophobic nationalism in Somalia that would play into the hands of the I.C.C. and particularly into the hands of its hard line factions. With the deep south now coming under Courts control, the I.C.C.'s threats gain enhanced credibility.

 

Conclusion

 

During late September, the I.C.C. resumed its role as the protagonist in Somalia's conflicts. By gaining a strategic foothold in the country's deep south, appearing to moderate its Islamization program (although the signs are mixed) and taking advantage of a shift in its favor in Washington's policy, the I.C.C. has positioned itself as a potential peacemaker and has launched a charm offensive.

 

With its position substantially improved, the I.C.C. still faces the presence of Ethiopian forces in Somalia; the problem of if, when and how to move north into the sub-states of Puntland and Somaliland; pressures for accelerated Islamization from its hard line factions; and localized clan and popular opposition. Thus far, the I.C.C. has refrained from confrontation with Ethiopian and Puntland forces, and has used the Ethiopian presence effectively to fan nationalism among Somalis. The I.C.C. has also kept a public face of unity and has been able to suppress outbursts of opposition or cut deals with potential antagonists.

 

Most importantly, the I.C.C.'s model of establishing local courts administered by local officials and clerics who pledge loyalty to the Courts has proven successful as a formula for reconciling localism with nationalism.

 

On balance, the I.C.C. was politically astute and played its cards well in late September. It is likely that its recent successes will reinforce its skills and make it more confident in applying its political formula.

 

Report Drafted By:

Dr. Michael A. Weinstein

[The many meanings of Muslim]

Globe and Mail (Toronto)

 

The many meanings of Muslim

World events have placed the city's Muslims 'under a microscope.' So why are they still so misunderstood?

SARAH ELTON

 

Special to The Globe and Mail

 

It was at a Saturday afternoon Jays' game last month that it happened. During the seventh inning, Toronto teacher Riyad Khan and a few friends went to grab something to eat at a concession stand; as they made their way back to their seats, says Mr. Khan, "One guy looked at us and started screaming 'Hezbollah!' " Mr. Khan was wearing jeans, a T-shirt -- and a fez cap, which, along with his beard, visibly marks him as a Muslim.

 

This was not the first time his appearance has drawn attention. He often finds that people stop and stare at him on the street. On some occasions, he's been called Bin Laden by strangers. With the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the recent arrest in Toronto of 17 alleged terrorists and this month's breaking news of an alleged plot by British Muslims to blow up as many as 12 airplanes in mid-air, he and other Muslims living here are preparing themselves to be on the receiving end of more suspicious looks.

 

"It almost feels like the whole Muslim community is put under a microscope, and anything you do or say is scrutinized," he says. "That's frustrating."

 

But does the notion of a "Muslim community" even make sense in a city like Toronto?

 

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As it happens, the city's 250,000-strong Muslim population is one of the most diverse in the world. Toronto Muslims come from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and the Caribbean. There are Shiites and Sunnis. (The division in the religion occurred at the time of the Prophet Mohammed's death, when a dispute arose over who his successor should be -- the Shiites believe in 12 saints that the Sunnis don't recognize.)

 

There are also Shia sects such as the Bohras, Ishnashris and Ismailis, a community that made news last year with its ambitious plans to create a spiritual centre, museum of Islamic art and public park at the site of the former Bata shoe-company headquarters.

 

Mr. Khan owes his Muslim roots to his parents' background in Trinidad, about as far from the hard-line madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan as one can imagine.

 

Because there has been a huge influx of new Muslims into Toronto, particularly from India and Pakistan but also from Africa and Afghanistan, many recent immigrants bring cultural traditions that affect their interpretations of the religion.

 

This means in Toronto, you can find people practising an Islam that is moulded by Albanian culture in one mosque -- saying an additional set of prayers roughly comparable to saying Catholic rosaries, with men and women praying together -- while in mosques with a predominantly Indo-Pakistani congregation women pray separately, sequestered from the men.

 

There are also variances in the way different Muslims practice religion and interpret and follow the words of the Koran.

 

Mohammad Qadeer, a Toronto Muslim and professor emeritus of Queen's University who has studied the social geography of ethnic neighbourhoods in the GTA, explains these differences by identifying three distinct categories of Muslims.

 

The first group, spiritual Muslims, form the majority here. They believe in the fundamentals of the religion but are flexible in their interpretations -- they don't pray five times a day and they may not eat halal meat. For these people, religion involves a personal set of beliefs and behaviours.

 

The next largest group is religious Muslims, who are more observant in their dress, food and prayers. They go to mosque, yet they're not extremely involved in religious activities, unlike the third and smallest category, who are not only strictly observant but believe it is their duty to influence others to adopt a religious way of life.

 

People from all sects and all ethnicities can belong to any one of these three categories, because Muslim religious habits vary greatly, no matter one's sectarian affiliation, says Mr. Qadeer. You could be an extremely religious Sufi, subscribing to this mystical form of Islam that puts the religion of acceptance and love over all other things; or you could be a deeply committed Wahhabi, and apply the teachings of the Koran without interpreting them, in the same way a fundamentalist Christian chooses to read the Bible. Rather, it is the level of a person's religiosity that affects the day-to-day life, he says.

 

"Spiritual Muslims . . . would be more lax. They may not keep all 30 fasts in the month of Ramadan. They may dress in a very Western way, and when going out they wouldn't be strict about eating non-halal. A spiritual woman wouldn't wear a veil. A spiritual man wouldn't wear a beard," he says.

 

Religious Muslims, on the other hand, will be more regular in their prayers and strict about eating halal meat. The women will also demonstrate their religiosity through dress -- by wearing a hijab, and perhaps even a niqab, which covers everything but the face -- while the men will wear a flowing, untrimmed beard.

 

In Farideh Afshar's family alone, there exists a huge range of practices.

 

Ms. Afshar, a Shiite originally from Iran, prays everyday, but she rarely goes to mosque. Her daughter believes in God and prays as much as she can, but she doesn't go to mosque, either. Whereas Islam is so important to her one brother that every week when his daughters were young he spent hours driving them to a madrassa, her other brother doesn't even believe in any particular religion. They all identify themselves as Muslims.

 

For Ali Asaria, a 25-year-old engineering consultant and recent graduate who was born in Toronto to South Asian parents who immigrated here from Tanzania, these cultural and religious influences keep people here from discovering a way to practise a version of Islam that is both true to the religion and to the larger cultural norms of Canada.

 

"I think the overwhelming issue that hasn't been dealt with in Toronto is this notion of the split identity. Muslims in Toronto don't know how to be Muslims and Canadians at the same time," he says, adding that as a second-generation Canadian, he's searching for what it means to be Muslim here.

 

The biggest hurdle, when trying to create this new identity, he says, is that once you say you're Canadian, others often assume that you are giving up your Muslim ideals and becoming entirely "Western."

 

"There's no such thing as a Canadian Muslim," he says. "So how can you be Canadian and Muslim? We're trying to solve that."

 

TORONTO'S FIVE MOST POPULOUS MUSLIM COMMUNITIES

 

AFGHANS

 

65,000

 

Afghans are relative newcomers to Toronto, the first wave of immigrants arriving in the early 1980s after the then-Soviet Union invaded their country. Because of ongoing political turbulence, Afghans have continued to settle here.

 

Today, the community numbers approximately 65,000. Virtually all are Muslim, with the majority being Sunni.

 

"In general, Afghans are people of faith," says Adeena Niazi of the Afghan Women's Organization. However, in Toronto, she stresses, they do not practise a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam like that of the Taliban. Rather than rejecting a religion that has often been used as a tool of repression in their homeland, Afghans here often rely on Islam for support when confronted with stress, she says.

 

"They are all survivors of trauma," she notes, pointing out that almost every single Afghan here is a refugee or comes from a family of refugees.

 

In the past decade, however, the community has become fairly well established, says Jamal Kakar, executive director of the Afghan Association of Ontario. "Ten years ago, there weren't many families who owned houses. Now I'd say that seven out of 10 own them."

 

In the Greater Toronto Area, Afghans live and attend mosques near Don Mills and Overlea; in Scarborough, along Markham Road near Ellesmere; in Regent Park; and in Mississauga, as well. On Sundays in Scarborough, crowds of Afghans head to Bluffers Park and Milliken Park to fly kites.

 

Toronto's most famous Afghan is probably Nelofer Pazira, a journalist, filmmaker and human-rights activist, best known for her role in the movie Kandahar.

 

IRANIANS

 

80,000

 

Perhaps because Toronto's first wave of Iranian-Muslim immigrants were fleeing the repressive religious regime that rose to power after the fall of the relatively liberal, but politically oppressive, Shah of Iran, they have a reputation for being more culturally Muslim than religious.

 

Most are Shiites who began to immigrate in large numbers after the revolution in 1979, continued throughout the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and still arrive today. The number of Iranian-Muslim immigrants in Toronto is currently estimated to be about 80,000.

 

North on Yonge, near Finch, is the heart of the community, a.k.a. Tehranto, home to dozens of Iranian grocery stores, jewellery shops, hairdressers, real estate agents, restaurants and fast-food joints.

 

Further north, in Richmond Hill, is where wealthier, more established families have chosen to buy their homes and settle.

 

The Imam Ali Centre at Bermondsey and Eglinton is a Shia mosque where many Iranians go to celebrate weddings and high holidays and also attend funerals.

 

SOMALIS

 

70,000

 

There are more Somalis living in Toronto than anywhere else in the world outside of Africa and almost all of them are Muslim, says Ibrahim Absiye of Midaynta Community Services. The vast majority arrived in Toronto between 1993 and 1996 after being displaced by civil war.

 

The major Somali enclaves in the city are in Jamestown, Lawrence Heights, East and West Mall and Regent Park, where you'll find a mix of Somali businesses including restaurants, stores selling traditional clothes like masr and diraa for women and khamis for men, as well as mortgage brokers and real estates agents catering to the large number of people who are now buying homes. Many Somalis also live in Toronto Community Housing -- so many in fact that Somali is the number one language spoken on these properties.

 

Politically charged hip hop artist K'naan Warsame, who fled war-torn Mogadishu, is probably the most famous Somali-born Torontonian. His struggle to rise to the top of the hiphop world parallels the struggles many Somalis face as they try to join the Canadian mainstream.

 

Somali Muslims are Sunni and quite homogeneous, with one language, one sect and one religion, Mr. Absiye says. And it is religion that has become particularly important to women in the community, according to Muna Mohamud who is a Somali family violence counsellor.

 

"Most diaspora mothers are people who were not educated. . . . Religion became their escape. That's why you see so many people wearing the veil."

 

 

SOUTH ASIANS

 

130,000

 

South Asian Muslims of Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent represent the largest group of Muslims living in the GTA. This group has been moving to the Toronto area since Canada's immigration policy opened up in the 1960s.

 

It's people from this community in Britain who have experienced the greatest mistrust and animosity from non-Muslim Britons ever since the 2005 suicide bombings in London.

 

Even in Canada, South Asian Muslims are mistakenly associated with extremist madrassas, fundamentalist ideology and terrorism.

 

However, South Asian Muslims do not share one common definition, but instead hold a wide range of beliefs, from mystic Sufism to rigorous Wahhabism. Many belong to such Shia sects as the Ismailis and the Ishnashris.

 

There's a truism that newcomers start off in East Scarborough and then move to Mississauga when things get better.

 

Those who settle more centrally tend to land in Thorncliffe Park. Because the South Asian community is well established here, some of their mosques are now undergoing a process that Toronto Muslim Mohammad Qadeer refers to as Canadianization. "In the old country, the mosque was a prayer place. Here it is a community centre; it organizes picnics, it has summer schools," he says, citing the Islamic Foundation mosque in Scarborough, which caters largely to Indian and Pakistani Torontonians.

 

Testimony to the diversity of beliefs can be found in the Noor Cultural Centre in Don Mills, a progressive non-sectarian Islamic centre that welcomes gay and lesbian Muslims.

 

ARABS

 

22,000

 

About half of Toronto's Arab population is Muslim (the other half is Christian), with the majority being Sunni.

 

"The Arabs are the least religious in the sense of attending mosques," says Khaled Mouammar, national president of the Canadian Arab Federation. However, that doesn't stop them from identifying as Muslims here or supporting Muslim causes in other countries -- the war in Lebanon has demonstrated this recently, since Toronto's largest Arab groups are Lebanese and Palestinian (followed by Egyptians and Iraqis).

 

Whereas some Sunni scholars on the international scene are debating whether to support Hezbollah, which is Shia, here these distinctions between sects don't hold much weight.

 

Many Arabs here don't preoccupy themselves with the politics of the Middle East as they have lived in the GTA for decades, cultivating a vibrant cultural scene that serves to keep them connected with their heritage. The cinema at Square One sometimes shows mainstream Arabic films from Egypt.

 

There is no single mosque in the city with a primarily Arab congregation. Those who pray often do so near their place of work: for example, at the Masjid Toronto, which is attended by downtowners and government employees, on Dundas Street near University Avenue. There are also prayers at the University of Toronto, the Hydro building on University and at Ryerson University, according to Ameena Sultan, a lawyer who grew up here.

[The Muslim malaise]

Toronto Star

 

The Muslim malaise

Aug. 20, 2006. 07:03 AM

HAROON SIDDIQUI

 

 

He who wrongs a Jew or a Christian will have me as his accuser on the Day of Judgment.

 

— Prophet Muhammad

 

Contrary to the popular belief that the West is under siege from Muslim terrorists, it is Muslims who have become the biggest victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001, as inconceivable as that would have seemed in the aftermath of the murder of 2,900 Americans. Since then, between 34,000 and 100,000 Iraqis have been killed by the Americans or the insurgents. Nobody knows how many have been killed in Afghanistan. In the spots hit by terrorists — from London and Madrid to Amman, Istanbul, Riyadh and Jeddah, through Karachi to Bali and Jakarta — more Muslims have been killed and injured than non-Muslims.

 

None of this is to say that Muslims do not have problems that they must address. They do. But the problems are not quite what many in the West make them out to be.

 

One of the strangest aspects of the post-9/11 world is that, despite all the talk about Muslim terrorism, there is hardly any exploration of the complex causes of Muslim rage. Muslims are in a state of crisis, but their most daunting problems are not religious. They are geopolitical, economic and social — problems that have caused widespread Muslim despair and, in some cases, militancy, both of which are expressed in the religious terminology that Muslim masses relate to.

 

Most Muslims live in the developing world, much of it colonized by Western powers as recently as 50 years ago. Not all Muslim shortcomings emanate from colonialism and neo-imperialism, but several do.

 

As part of the spoils of the First World War, Britain and France helped themselves to much of the Ottoman Empire, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and what is now Israel, Jordan and the Palestine Authority. In later years, they and other European colonial powers created artificial states such as Kuwait and Nigeria. Or they divided peoples and nations along sectarian lines, such as bifurcating India in 1947 into Muslim Pakistan and largely Hindu India. In more recent years, the United States has maintained repressive proxy regimes in the Middle East to stifle public anti-Israeli sentiments, keep control of oil and maintain a captive market for armaments.

 

While the past casts a long shadow over Muslims, it is the present that haunts them. Hundreds of millions live in zones of conflict, precisely in the areas of European and American meddling, past and present — U.S.-occupied Iraq, U.S.-controlled Afghanistan, the Israeli Occupied Territories, and Kashmir, the disputed Muslim state on the border of India and Pakistan in the foothills of the Himalayas. Only the Russian war on Muslim Chechnya is not related to the history of Western machinations, but even that has had the tacit support of the Bush administration. These conflicts, along with the economic sanctions on Iraq, have killed an estimated 1.3 million Muslims in the last 15 years alone. Why are we surprised that Muslims are up in arms?

 

In addition, nearly 400 million Muslims live under authoritarian despots, many of them Western puppets, whose corruption and incompetence have left their people in economic and social shambles.

 

It is against this backdrop that one must look at the current malaise of Muslims and their increasing emotional reliance on their faith.

 

Economic Woes

 

The total GDP of the 56 members of the Islamic Conference, representing more than a quarter of the world's population, is less than 5 per cent of the world's economy. Their trade represents 7 per cent of global trade, even though more than two-thirds of the world's oil and gas lie under Muslim lands.

 

The standard of living in Muslim nations is abysmal even in the oil-rich regions, because of unconscionable gaps between the rulers and the ruled. A quarter of impoverished Pakistan's budget goes to the military. Most of the $2 billion a year of American aid given to Egypt as a reward for peace with Israel goes to the Egyptian military.

 

The most undemocratic Muslim states, which also happen to be the closest allies of the U.S., are the most economically backward.

 

The Arab nations, with a combined population of 280 million, muster a total GDP less than that of Spain. The rate of illiteracy among Arabs is 43 per cent, worse than that of much poorer nations. Half of Arab women are illiterate, representing two-thirds of the 65 million Arabs who cannot read or write. About 10 million Arab children are not in school. The most-educated Arabs live abroad, their talents untapped, unlike those of the Chinese and Indian diasporas, who have played significant roles in jump-starting the economies of their native lands.

 

A disproportionate percentage of the world's youth are Muslim. Half of Saudi Arabia's and a third of Iran's populations are younger than 20. There are few jobs for them. "Young and unemployed" is a phenomenon common to many Muslim nations.

 

A majority of the world's 12 million to 15 million refugees are Muslims, fleeing poverty and oppression. Europe's 20 million Muslims suffer high unemployment and poverty, especially in Germany and France. It was inevitable that many Muslims would find comfort in Islam.

 

Islamic Resurgence

 

Fundamentalism has been on the rise, and not just in Islam. There has been a parallel rise in Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism, with its inevitable political fallout — in the Israeli settler movement in the Occupied Territories, the politicization of the American conservative right (culminating in the election and re-election of George W. Bush), the rise to power of the Hindu nationalists in India, the Sikh separatist movement in the Punjab in India, and the aggressive nationalism of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka.

 

That many Muslims have become "fundamentalist" does not mean that they are all fanatic and militant. Nor is the Muslim condition fully explained by the use of petro-dollars. First, Arab financial support for Islamic institutions around the world is still no match for the resources available for Christian global missionary or Zionist political work. Second, and more to the point, the rise of Islam is not confined to areas of Arab financial influence; it is a worldwide phenomenon.

 

Mosques are full. The use of the hijab (headscarf ) is on the rise. Madrassahs (religious schools) are packed. Zakat (Islamic charity) is at record levels, especially where governments have failed to provide essential services. In Egypt, much of the health care, emergency care and education are provided by the Muslim Brotherhood, in the Occupied Territories by Hamas, in Pakistan and elsewhere by groups that may be far less political but are no less Islamic.

 

With state institutions riddled with corruption and nepotism, some of the most talented Muslims, both rich and poor, have abandoned the official arena and retreated into the non-governmental domain of Islamic civil society.

 

The empty public sphere has been filled with firebrands — ill-tutored and ill-informed clergy or populist politicians who rally the masses with calls for jihad (struggle) for sundry causes. The greater the injustices in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Israeli Occupied Territories, Chechnya or elsewhere, the greater the public support for those calling for jihad. Jihad has also proven to be good business for many a mullah (Muslim priest) who has become rich or influential, or both, preaching it. Meanwhile, unelected governments lack the legitimacy and confidence to challenge the militant clerics, and fluctuate between ruthlessly repressing them and trying to out-Islamize them.

 

To divert domestic anger abroad, many governments also allow and sometimes encourage the radicals to rant at the U.S. and rave at Israel, or just at Jews. Sometimes even the elected leaders join in, as has Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

 

In reality, most Muslim states are powerless to address the international crises that their publics want addressed. They have neither the military nor the economic and political clout to matter much to the U.S., the only power that counts these days. Or, as in the case of Egypt, Jordan, and the oil-rich Arab oligarchies, they are themselves dependent on Washington for their own survival.

 

 

`Muslims have developed a complex. They think they won't

 

be heard if they don't shout. Every statement

 

is like a war'

 

Sharifa Zuriah

 

Founder, Sisters in Islam

 

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

 

 

Feeling abandoned, the Muslim masses find comfort in religion. The Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation was a secular struggle before it became "Islamic." The same was true of the Lebanese resistance to the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, and also of the Chechen resistance to Russian repression.

 

Similarly, domestic critics of authoritarian regimes have found a hospitable home in the mosque. Islam being their last zone of comfort, most Muslims react strongly — sometimes irrationally and violently — when their faith or their Prophet is mocked or criticized, as the world witnessed during the Danish cartoon crisis. They react the way the angry disenfranchised do — hurling themselves into the streets, shouting themselves hoarse and destroying property, without much concern for the consequences, and engendering even more hostility in the West toward Muslims and Islam. But, as the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King famously said, riots are the voice of the voiceless.

 

Muslims have developed a "siege mentality, which is what the screaming, dogmatic and atavistic clerics" appeal to, says Chandra Muzaffar, Malaysian Muslim human rights activist. As he was telling me this in Kuala Lumpur in 2005, Sharifa Zuriah, a founder of Sisters in Islam, an advocacy group for Malaysian Muslim women, intervened: "Muslims have developed a complex. They think they won't be heard if they don't shout. Every statement is like a war."

 

Then there is real war, the war of terrorism.

 

Terrorism's Fallout

 

"That a majority of Al Qaeda are Muslims is not to say that a majority of Muslims are Al Qaeda, or subscribe to its tenets," Stephen Schulhofer, professor of law at New York University, told me in 2003. But it is also true that most terrorists these days are Muslims. That may only be a function of the times we live in — yesterday's terrorists came from other religions and tomorrow's may hail from some other. Still, terrorism has forced a debate among Muslims, who are divided into two camps. One side says that Muslims should no more have to apologize for their extremists than Christians, Jews or Hindus or anybody else, and that doing so only confirms the collective guilt being placed on Muslims. The other side believes that as long as some Muslims are blowing up civilians in suicide bombings, slitting the throats of hostages and committing other grisly acts, it is the duty of all Muslims to speak out and challenge the murderers' warped theology.

 

The latter view has prevailed. Terrorism — suicide bombings in particular— has been widely condemned. Just because an overwhelming majority of Muslims condemn Osama bin Laden and other extremists, however, does not mean that they feel any less for Muslims in Iraq or Palestine. Or that the internal debate that he has forced on Muslims is new. Throughout their 1,400-year history, Muslims have argued and quarrelled over various interpretations of the Qur'an and religious traditions.

 

But it is a sign of the times that the most extreme interpretation of the Qur'an appeals to Muslim masses these days, and that far too many clerics are attacking Christians and Jews and delivering fire-and-brimstone sermons full of the imagery of war and martyrdom. This is contrary to the message of the Qur'an — Do not argue with the followers of earlier revelation other than in the most kindly manner (29:46) — and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad: "Do not consider me better than Moses," and, "I am closest of all people to Jesus, son of Mary."

 

For all the emphasis that today's clerics put on the Prophet's war record, he spent a total of less than a week in actual battle in the 23 years of his prophethood. He advised his followers to "be moderate in religious matters, for excess caused the destruction of earlier communities." A moderate himself, he smiled often, spoke softly and delivered brief sermons. "The Prophet disliked ranting and raving," wrote Imam Bukhari, the ninth-century Islamic scholar of the Prophet's sayings. Ayesha, the Prophet's wife, reported that "he spoke so few words that you could count them." His most famous speech, during the Haj pilgrimage in AD 632, which laid down an entire covenant, was less than 2,800 words.

 

Muhammad was respectful of Christians and Jews. Hearing the news that the king of Ethiopia had died, he told his followers, "A righteous man has died today; so stand up and pray for your brother." When a Christian delegation came to Medina, he invited them to conduct their service in the mosque, saying, "This is a place consecrated to God." When Saffiyah, one of his wives, complained that she was taunted for her Jewish origins, he told her, "Say unto them, `my father is Aaron, and my uncle is Moses.'"

 

Yet angry Muslims, not unlike African Americans not too long ago, pay little heed to voices of moderation. This is partly a reflection of the fact that there is no central religious authority in Islam. Only the minority Shiites have a religious hierarchy of ayatollahs, who instruct followers on religious and sometimes political matters. The majority Sunnis do not have the equivalent of the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury. A central tenet of their faith is that there is no intermediary between the believer and God. This makes for great democracy — everyone is free to issue a fatwa (religious ruling) and everyone else is free to ignore it. But the "fatwa chaos" does create confusion — among non-Muslims, who are spooked by the red-hot rhetoric, and also among Muslims, who are left wondering about the "right answers" to some of the most pressing issues of the day.

 

Muslim Apologetics

 

There are two kinds of Muslim apologetics. The first is denial: there's little or nothing wrong with Muslims, when there clearly is. The second, seen among some Muslims in the West, takes the form of self-flagellation, of apologizing for their faith or distancing themselves from it. To wit:

 

"Yes, the problem is Islam, and we must fix it." (Why is Islam any more of a problem than any other faith? And how are they going to fix it?)

 

"I am a Muslim but I am not a fundamentalist Muslim." (Do Christians say, "I am Christian but not an evangelical Christian?")

 

"I am a Muslim but ashamed to call myself one." (Do all Hindus have to apologize for those few who, in 1992, went on a mosque-ravaging rampage in India?)

 

Some of these sentiments may be genuinely held. More likely, they reflect the immigrant pathology of catering to majority mores, a new twist on the past practice of immigrants to North America anglicizing their names.

 

Such defensiveness aside, Muslims do suffer from deeper problems. Many are preoccupied with the minutiae of rituals (Should one wash the bare feet before prayers or do so symbolically over the socks?) at the expense of the centrality of the faith, which is fostering peace, justice and compassion, not just for Muslims but for everyone. Many Muslims are too judgmental of each other, whereas a central tenet of their faith is that it is up to God to judge — Your Lord knows best who goes astray (53:30) (also, 6:117, 16:125, 17:94, 28:56, 68:7).

 

Some Muslims have taken to a culture of conspiracy theories. Hence the notion that Princess Diana did not die in an accident but was killed because the British royal family did not want her to marry Dodi Al Fayed, a Muslim. Or the canard that Jews working at the World Trade Center had advance notice of 9/11.

 

There is too much of a literalist reading of the Qur'an (a trait, ironically, also adopted by anti-Islamists in the West). There is too little ijtehad (religious innovation) as called for by Islam to keep believers in tune with their times. Theological rigidity and narrow-mindedness have led, among other things, to Sunni hostility toward the minority Shiites, as seen in the sectarian killings in Pakistan.

 

Muslims complain about the West's double standards, yet they have their own. While they often criticize the United States and Europe for mistreating Muslims, they rarely speak up against the persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims. They also show a high tolerance for Muslims killing fellow Muslims. The Sudanese genocide of the non-Arab Muslims of Darfur drew mostly silence. The killing of Shiites by the Sunnis in Iraq was shrugged off as part of the anti-U.S. resistance. The overt and subtle racism of the oil-rich Arab states toward the millions of their guest workers goes unmourned.

 

Muslims do not have much to be proud of in the contemporary world. So they take comfort in their burgeoning numbers. At the turn of the millennium in 2000, there were many learned papers projecting the rise in Muslim population. But if Muslims have not achieved much at 1.3 billion, they are not likely to at 1.5 billion, either.

 

To escape the present, many Muslims hark back to their glorious past: how Islam was a reform movement; how Muslims led the world in knowledge, in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, natural sciences, philosophy and physics; and how the Islamic empires were successful primarily because, with some egregious exceptions, they nurtured the local cultures and respected the religions of their non-Muslim majority populations. This is why Egypt and Syria remained non-Muslim under Muslim rule for 300 years and 600 years, respectively, and India always remained majority Hindu.

 

As true as all that history is, it is not very helpful today unless Muslims learn something from it — to value human life; accept each other's religious differences; respect other faiths; return to their historic culture of academic excellence, scientific inquiry and economic self-reliance; and learn to live with differences of opinion and the periodic rancorous debates that mark democracies.

 

It may be unfair to berate ordinary Muslims, given that too many are struggling to survive, that nearly half live under authoritarian regimes where they can speak up only on pain of being incarcerated, tortured or killed, and that they are helpless spectators to the sufferings of fellow Muslims in an unjust world order. Yet Muslims have no choice but to confront their challenges, for Allah never changes a people's state unless they change what's in themselves (13:11).

 

 

"Being Muslim" is scheduled to be released Sept. 15. For more information, visit http://www.groundwoodbooks.com

[Darwishland Of Somalia]

 

 

 

Laascaanood Oo Saaka Ku Waabariisatay Calan cusub

 

(Laascaanood}9.08-6

Qaar Katir San Wax Garadka Deegaan Kan Oo Wata Gaawadhi Ay Ka Lushaan Calamo Ay Ku Xardhan yihiin Areyo Ay Kamid Ahayeen Darwishland Of Somalia Calankan Cusub Oo Ay Doonayaan In Ay Maamul Ugu Sameeyaan Bulshada Deegaankan daraawiishta Ayay Waxay Socod Balaadhan Ku Soo Mareen inta Badan Wadooyinka Dhex Mara magaalada Laascaanood…………..

 

Liiban Jordan::::::Widhwidh Media Center:::

 

Saaka Subax Nimadii Hore Ayay Ahayd MArkii Ay Bulshada Deegaankan ku Soo Waabariisteen Gawaadhi Ay Kal lushaan calamo Isla Markaana Ay Saarnaayeen Niman Dhalin Yaro Ah Qaar koodna Kamid Masuuliyiinta Puntland

 

Kuwaas Oo Usoo Bandhigayay Bulshada Deegaankan in Ay Dhistaan Maamul Iyagu Ay Iska Leeyihiin Oo Ay Maamushaan Calamo Iyo Boodhado Ay Ku Qornaayeen Darwiishland Ayay Kor Ugu Qaadayeen Erayo Ay Ku diidanaayeen Wax Ay Ugu Yeedheen Dhulbalaadhsi Baah San Oo Lagu Hayo

 

Dhalin Yaradan Ayaa ku Dhawaqayay Erayo Ay Kamid Ahaayeenâ€Calan kii darwiishland Soo Noqoy, Dhulkeena Anagaa Xaq uleh In Aanu Maamul Usamayno, Dhulbalaadhsi Dooni Mayno, Waa Sida Ay ku Dhawaaqayeen’e

 

Waxaana horkacayay Mas’uul Katirsan Maamul goboleedka puntland oo Lagu Magacaabo Xiir Xaaji Nuux Isagoo Isla wakhtigan gudoomiye Ka’ah Degmada horufadhi ee gobol kaasi cayn..

 

Dadbadan Ayaa Fikir Kan Ay Soo Bandhigeen Dhalin Yaradan ku taageer Sanaa Saaka Iyagoo Lahaa Wakhti Hore Ayay bulshada daraawiisheed Ubaah Nayd In Au maamul Samaystaan, Walow Ay jireen Dad diidan Fikradan Ah Maamul Cusub oo Gacanta Ku Dhiga Gobolada Ssc Maadaama uu Jiro Maamul goboleedka Puntland

[THE BRUTAL OCCUPATION IN THE SOUTH: A LITMUS TEST TO THE SOMALI ISLAMIST]

THE BRUTAL OCCUPATION IN THE SOUTH: A LITMUS TEST TO THE SOMALI ISLAMIST

By Dr. Ali Said Faqi

 

ICU instituted Islamic Court in Burhakaba (above) but not in Afgoye and Wanleweyn.

 

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys "We came here by the wishes of the locals not by force"

 

In Somalia where there is no foreseeable future for millions of people because of the inexorable madness, any new change is perceived as very positive. Somalis inside and those in diaspora are debating the implication of the recent victory of the ICU in Mogadishu and in Somalia as a whole and are forming up their own mind carefully. Despite the fact that the major base for the ICU supporters is the same as the one that supported the Mogadishu warlords for the last 16 years, nevertheless; ICU has gained some genuine followers across Somali clans. To their credit, ICU will be remembered as a political group that succeeded to bring peace and security in Mogadishu, a city which most analysts would admit to have been a very dangerous place.

 

 

 

ICU instituted Islamic Court in Burhakaba (above) but not in Afgoye and Wanleweyn.

 

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On the other hand, the ICU failed miserably by deliberately sidestepping to disarm Mr. Yusuf Indha adde and his cronies, who have been illegally occupying the land and the resources of the natives of the Lower Shabelle and Jubba. As a testimony to my statement, I would like to remind the readers on a very particular episode. A couple of weeks ago when ICU militia left Mogadishu to institute an Islamic Court in Burhakaba they did not bother to disarm Mr. Hussein Cirfo, and Mr. Sharuub who illegally occupy Afgoye and Wanleweyn, respectively. For those of you who are not familiar with Somalia or who were very young to remember, let me orient you a little bit about what I am talking about. There is only one main road that connects Mogadishu to Burhakaba and that road goes through Afgoye and Wanlaweyn. These two cities and many other cities in the Lower Shabelle and Jubba are ruled by warlords who are not different in terms of brutality from the rest of the warlords recently ousted by the ICU. So the big question is why were these individuals left untouched? I will leave this to be answered by those who are calling themselves the SHURA of Islam.

 

Allah says in his Quran “ O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor:For Allah can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts); lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do. (The Noble Quran, 4:135)". This very basic principle of Islam is what a true believer would like to see implemented and practiced.

 

 

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys "We came here by the wishes of the locals not by force"

 

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In several interviews Mr. Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, the leader of ICU indicated unmistakably that ICU has no plans to remove from the power the warlords forcefully ruling the Lower Shabelle and Jubba. He emphatically insisted that there is no need for change describing these regions as peaceful. In contrary Mr. Aweys while addressing the people of Cadaado (his native region) on the occasion of the opening ceremony of an Islamic court said “ We came here by the wishes of the locals not by force ". This clearly means that he does not believe the will of the locals in Benadir, Lower Shabelle and Jubba is crucial? This is utterly ridiculous, and his contradicting statements are nothing but clan bigotry and should be fully rejected. It is this kind of rhetoric that makes people wonder whether there will ever be peace. Any decent human being would question why someone who claim to have submitted himself to the will of Allah; would discriminate against others based on a tribe affiliation? Is this ignorance or a calculated political hypocrisy? For me ICU seems to be picking and choosing its friends and foes merely on a clan basis. Unfortunately, tribal allegiance will always be stronger than the faith for Allah in Somalia, an ideology which clearly contradicts to Islam.

 

The barbaric rule in the Lower Shaballe region for example collects illegal taxes including a 40,000 Somali Shillings a month per house from residents of most districts of the Lower Shabelle who do not have jobs and sources of income. Anyone who does not pay these fees either goes to jail or loses his property. The revenue generated from illegal taxation, chopping trees for charcoal and over fishing is used as a financial source for acquiring military arsenals to maintain the illegal occupation. Let me remind you again that these are the only places in Somalia where outside clans abuse the locals and impose rigid rules. It is a religious and moral responsibility to speak out against injustice and evildoers and this is what I am doing.

 

 

ICU established Islamic courts some hundreds of kilometers north of Mogadishu empowering the natives of each city to be in charge of the administration by physically removing the warlords, while cities just thirty to seventy kilometers south of Mogadishu were left deliberately to the very same people who been abusing them over a decade to be the ICU commissioners. It appears that the criteria posed by the ICU to qualify for self-rule would not make these residents eligible as they are either considered inferiors or carrying no great weight in the eyes of the ICU leadership.

 

Islam calls for peaceful coexistence and harmony between communities. Tribalism is an enemy of Islam and civilization because it calls for the systemic killing of rival clan members. A general consensus is that tribes are unruly and thus pose a threat to the society and to peace as a whole.

 

Let us examine the current scenario that has been put in place by the ICU to some residents of Mogadishu including Hamar Weyne and to Lower Shabelle and Jubba and explore whether it makes any sense. Everyone would agree with me that the clan militia in Hamar Weyne, lower Shabelle and Jubba are now part of the official militias of the ICU. Imagine then this, an individual who have been harassing your neighborhood for years and all of a sudden you find him representing a religious authority. Also imagine the person who have looted your farm or property, molested your daughter or sister, killed your neighbors is suddenly calling your head to be chopped if you don’t show up in the mosque. These are very scary thoughts, unfortunately are real facts in Benadir, Lower Shabelle and Jubba. The natives of these areas have waked up to realize that ICU spokespersons in their respective districts are no one else, but the very same individuals who they badly wished and prayed for to be kept away from the society for years. Little knowledge and hatred against anything different, clan in this case is the basis for extremism. I am appalled and extremely saddened about the abuse of Islamic basic principles in Somalia. A raw model for our lovely religion should not be a criminal element of the society; we ought to have respect to the religion that we dearly care and worship. ICU’s tolerance on the illegal administrations in Lower Shabelle and Jubba is nothing, but clan chauvinism.

 

We must remind ourselves that Islam is the only thing that Somalis share and cherish together; everything else has been already tarnished and tossed to the trash and it wholeheartedly saddens me to see it abused.

 

Somalia is a country that went to a brutal civil war, where the only sin to cost people’s life was to belong to a rival or unarmed clan. If peace has to prevail reconciliation is the best way to proceed. Changing names and shirts will only extend the chaos and may win time for those who are not interested in peace. Rhetoric must stop and dialogue between rival communities should be honestly encouraged. True issues should be debated and the natives of Southern Somalia should be allowed their rights for self-determination.

 

The Land grabbing policy is the main issue of conflict in Somalia and neither the ICU leaders nor TFG will be willing to admit and face it and it is this issue that makes both institutions morally corrupt. The ICU will not be different from the other failed political organizations as long as they are ignoring the facts in the south. Islam is a religious that has no dual face of worshipping and I am quite sure that it does not call for a tribal loyalty. Manmade constitutions call for establishments of justice in the society, insure domestic tranquility, and promote general welfare of the communities as the basis to coexist as a nation. I believe Islam calls for more than that, therefore, let us face the Somali issues seriously and stop the hypocrisy once for all. I am for peace and justice and for the full integrity of Somalia.

 

Dr. Ali Said Faqi

E-mail: Alifaqi@yahoo.com

[Anglo-Somali Relations Re-examined]

Anglo-Somali Relations Re-examined

By Abdullahi Dool

 

 

Friends of our nation in the United Kingdom who feel affinity with our people in the North based on earlier colonial ties do acknowledge that there is now even wider affinity between Great Britain and the Somali nation. As a result of the civil war, there are currently tens of thousands of Somalis in Britain and the number is increasing. The majority currently hold British citizenship. The irony is that the growing number of British Somalis are no longer merely from the North but from all over the Horn, including Djibouti, Kenya and the Somali regions in Ethiopia. Because of this trend Britain’s relationship with the Somali nation is now more comprehensive, i.e with the whole nation.

 

 

The Anglo-Somali Society, sympathetic parliamentarian groups and other similar organisations will have a bigger role to play with any future Somali Government which knows what it is doing, not only in fostering understanding between our two nations, but also in the rebuilding of Somalia. It needs therefore to be much more than an association of ex-colonials who served in Somaliland. Its biggest role will be to pass on to the Somali nation all that is good and great in British society, and values such as human rights, fair play, democracy, a free market and enlightened press.

 

 

 

 

In the 19th century the main usefulness of British Somaliland for the empire was as a source of meat for its garrison in Aden and the shipping en route to and from India. Today Somalia can be of far greater importance for Britain and the world. On the other hand Britain and the western world, which welcomed Somali refugees, can be of great help in the rebuilding of Somalia. This way western nations will be helping their own citizens of Somali origin to restore their homeland from destitution, ignorance and under-development and even make it one of the success stories of 21st century Africa.

 

 

 

Once a Somali State deserving respect is established, Somaliland will likely be tempted to rejoin a more credible and viable union but meantime should not be criticised as a people for governing themselves when the rest of the country continues to be without any legitimate government. A proper Somali state which takes care of the entire nation is needed: one which is not built, as in the past, on the quicksand of clannism. We must recognise why we are a nation from which everyone is fleeing. Many of us reside today in the UK, a country towards which people are converging from the four corners of the world, across seas and oceans which have meantime become the graveyard for many Somali would-be migrants. It is incumbent on us to create a better Somalia, a nation which eventually people will flock to rather than flee.

 

 

 

We cannot look after our people back home or the millions now scattered in neighbouring countries and across the globe if Somalia remains under the tyranny of certain unprincipled individuals. With the help of our friends in the UK and around the world we need to effect change. The rescue of Somalia from potential oblivion requires that we cannot be neutral or remain on the sidelines. We have to make the choices and take the steps that will lead our nation towards the formation of the government it deserves to look after its people, interests and friends. To do this it is essential that we move on from the artificial animosities engendered by warlords and certain petty individuals and form a cohesive, vibrant and progressive society. We need to recognise and celebrate the many similarities that bind us as a nation rather than focus on lesser differences that are consuming our nation and its statehood.

 

 

 

It is a fact that Somaliland has special friends who will do anything for our people in the North. Those in the United Kingdom who, because of past colonial connections, feel special affinity with Somaliland are justified because Somaliland is a Somali cause. Somalis who believe in the unity of the country have no reason for concern in this. When a responsible national government is established the issue of Somaliland will be resolved by political process. That government will preside over a twin track plan emphasizing on the one hand the reconstruction of the country and the other engagement in a revived political process. We have a cause and we do not have to fight other people’s causes. So what is our cause? Our cause is:

(1) The reconstruction, redevelopment and progress of our nation

(2) To build a harmonious and a responsible society.

(3) To live in peace and harmony with our neighbours.

(4) To make friends for our nation not enemies.

(5) To care and look after our people wherever they happen to be: back home and overseas.

(6) To fight poverty and spearhead prosperity.

(7) To rebuild our nation’s image, standing and credibility in the world.

 

 

 

The majority of the Somali people are convinced that since 1993 the Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi has been determined to frustrate the re-establishment of the Somali state under credible and responsible leadership. And in truth the policy makers of Ethiopia believe that the return of a strong Somalia can only mean the eventual resumption of hostilities between the two countries. This does not however justify the fact that for over a decade Ethiopia has treated Somalia as an abandoned backyard which belongs to no one. For the past 15 years, Meles Zenawi and his officials have not meet Somalis who truly represent their nation and its interests. Instead they have lent their support to a number of individuals who represented clans and not the nation and among them who many have demeaningly begged for hotel accommodation, pocket money and free airline rides. This must have given away a dim view of our nation and given the erroneous message to the Ethiopian rulers that they may do whatever they want in and with Somalia as in their own backyard.

 

 

 

Amid the mayhem, the suffering and the pain of our nation, there have been individuals who, like comics, felt the need to entertain. We are from a broken nation: we who need to commit all our energies to the healing and uplifting of our people from squalor, deprivation and statelessness. There are those who care and harbour real concern for our nation but they are not in power. Nor are there in short supply those who oppose any solution or progress and others who take a too casual an attitude towards the whole plight of our nation. There are also those who wish to influence matters for the better and there are those who serve no one wittingly or unwittingly wasting precious time.

 

 

 

The history and destiny of the two nations -- Britain and Somalia -- are intertwined. It was the British empire which first ventured into Somaliland in the early 19th century. There was a time when four out of five Somali territories were under the British colonial rule, with the exception of Djibouti which was under the French. It was also the British colonial machinery which was instrumental in helping to create and perpetuate the division of ethnic Somalis into five parts. Equally it was Ernest Beaven, Foreign Secretary of the Labour government of Prime Minister Clement Atlee – albeit reluctantly -- who suggested that all ethnic Somalis be put together under British administration so that they might one day emerge as a united nation. In the 21st Century it won’t be long before Britons of Somali origin come to play a full part in every walk of British life including joining the establishment and becoming members of Parliament. Likewise, they will one day play a role in the reconstruction, re-development and progress of their country of origin. The developed nations such as Britain have absorbed many of our nationals yet we need them more than they need us for the redevelopment and progress of our nation. From them we require investment, technical know-how and much more. Somalia may need up to U.S $20 billion for reconstruction and redevelopment. Such a vast amount of capital can only come from the world community and the international financial institutions. We need the appropriate leaders who can re-establish credibility and who can be entrusted with such a huge responsibility.

 

 

 

The main difference between the West and the rest of the world boils down to one thing: leadership. Where there is sound leadership there is life. The West has frequently shown leadership not only in technology, monetary matters, science and many more areas but also in humanity. Where there are disasters -- man made as well as natural -- it is the western nations and their non governmental organisations that respond with swiftness as well as capacity. We have a lot to learn from Britain and the rest of the western countries. Our people in those nations must learn to make full use of their time there. There are those who hate the countries which have received them. Such individuals live with a ghetto mentality. They are physically in those countries but mentally and culturally they still reside in other places which they have left. They only follow the news and programmes of far away nations not the countries in which they dwell.

 

 

 

The ultimate aim of politics is to use power to do things. Power is essential to get things done and to transform a nation for the better. Without power no one is effective. Securing power should be for a purpose -- to make things happen for a nation – but not for personal gratification or self-enrichment. Power is a privilege with which comes great responsibility. Unfortunately power has too often been sought for the wrong reasons.

 

 

 

 

 

Within phase one of a state-building programme the government must pave the way for a multiparty system. Such is the proper role of a state-builder. Like an architect who was commissioned to construct a building, the state-builder’s main aim has to be how to build not only a state with strong foundations but one which is durable. One question arising is: why a multiparty system? The purpose of a multiparty system is optimum political ventilation to ensure the smooth flow of talent and fresh blood into politics and to ease out and get rid of deadwood. It is the best mechanism to replace leaders and politicians who have tired or overstayed their welcome. When a leader or a politician loses ideas, steam and touch and grows detached from the public he or she becomes deadwood. Such persons will seldom leave the scene and relinquish power unless there is a mechanism in place to remove them. That system can only be a multi-system one. It is prudent that national political parties should not exceed five. Ideas must be contested through the ballot box and politics must replace the gun. When the country is governed for its people rather than individuals or only the party in power, its leaders would not fear losing votes. In this case the elections are based on the motto: Let the best person win. That is in the best interest of everyone concerned and for the country.

 

 

 

We welcome the victory of the Islamic Courts over the dreaded warlords. The TFG should not collect the defeated warlords. They are antiques with no street value. We also applaud the constructive steps they have taken in establishing peace and the opening of the international air and sea ports in the capital. The liberation of the Somali people from the tyranny of the warlords is quite an achievement. What the Islamic Court have done they have achieved for the Somali people. Governance belongs to the Somali people who decide over who rules over their national affairs.

 

 

 

In diplomacy there are always bridges to build and ones to mend between peoples and nations. There are those who wish to tear the world apart along religion lines. Such individuals lack all sense. Life on earth is designed the way it is: a world inhabited by diverse peoples from different races and religions. The Almighty wants us all to appreciate and respect one another. When we Somalis achieve the government we need and deserve we shall reach out to all nation of the world in our quest to rebuild our nations and thus contribute to the harmony and peaceful coexistence of our people with our region and the world beyond.

 

 

 

Once we get the right leadership and government wounds will heal, wrongs will be righted and the nation’s interests be propelled to usher in stability and prosperity. The raison d’ etre of the new state must be the rescue of Somalia and care and concern for its own people back home and overseas. When that happens the Somali nation will proudly once again occupy its rightful position in world arena.

 

 

 

Abdullahi Dool

 

E-mail: hornheritage@aol.com

[Xildhibaan Sifir oo maanta la isugu tagay laguna garaacay Baydhabo]

Qudhac

 

Just because Red sea is from Hergeysa and disagree with your all out hate against all somali people expect your clan, you shouldn’t hate as well

 

 

Red sea has something to contribute in this forum because he speaks for he expresses his own opinions, as well Red sea uses reason and logic for expamle respects the will of his people northwest to secede if they will, respects the of north central (ssc) to stay as an integral part of Somalia

 

On the other hand Qudhac you have to much hate (cuqdad) inside you, you accusing everyone all Somali people excluding your clan “sayadist zealots†and “xaraan-ku-naaxâ€

 

If there is anyone who is sayadist(I don’t know what you mean) its your leader fomer spy of Siyaad Bare Daahir Riyoode because he was working for Siyad Bare regime during civil war of 1988, and left his spy work in 1991 when Siyad was overthrown. If there is any the first war criminal in connection with the northern Civil war of 1988 is Daahir Riyaale, although Abdulaahi Yusuf is another war criminal at least he was not involved the northern civil war of 1988.

 

Qudhac, do you know that speaker of parliament of your Somaliland was working for the embassy of Somalia (Siyaad Barre regime) up until 1996 even after Siyad Barre passed away and Somaliland was formed???

 

Do you know that Ahmed Qaybe was also working for Siyaad Barre, and was Somalia’s last foreign minister before the somali government was overthrown???

 

Do you know that Egal was also working for siyaad barre regime, Egal after he was released from prison in 1975, he became Somalia ambassador in India and number of other countries, and the end he became the director of Somalia chamber of commerce up until the siyaad bare regime collapsed???

 

Qudhac so stop calling all somali people “sayadist†when most of Somaliland leaders were ex-officials in Siyaad Barre regime? Dont the secessionists have real leaders with caliber who believed secession during socalled the war of liberation, like other insurgents across the world, instead of the fake leaders, because presently the leaders of somaliland are just same old guard of Siyaad Bare!!!

[Somaliland's very own Country Code 292]

I don't think its true, but if its true that means any city/province from any country can make its own calling code

 

All rebel/secessionist regions throughout the world can make their own calling code but its impossibla and unacceptable

 

If northwest province of Somalia create their own country code, I am sure the people of North central (Sool Sanaag and Buuhoodle/Cayn) will keep their country code of +252 (Somalia), As they kept using flag of Somalia, currency of Somalia……..

 

Secessionists have fake flag, fake constitution, fake president, fake currency, fake capital, and today fake country calling code

 

Let me say to secessionists enjoy your fake world

 

I believe its good news for the people of North central, because the world will realize once again, Somaliland is confined within tribal triangle

 

 

--------

All these countries have country code of +1

 

AMERICAN SAMOA

ANGUILLA

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA

BAHAMAS

BARBADOS

BERMUDA

CANADA

CAYMAN ISLANDS

DOMINICA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

GRENADA

GUAM

JAMAICA

MONTSERRAT

NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS

PUERTO RICO

SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS

SAINT LUCIA

SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS

UNITED STATES

VIRGIN ISLANDS, BRITISH

VIRGIN ISLANDS, U.S.

 

 

The question is does having calling code make a country? of course NOOO...

[Roda Mizan - Returning to a different homeland]

Roda Mizan - Returning to a different homeland

- July 19, 2006 - 00:38

 

 

Awdalnews Network, 19 - July - 2006=

 

Returning home after many years of absence entails mixed feelings. They include fear and expectation, nostalgia and excitement but as the famous saying goes one can never go home again, not at least the home in one's memory.

 

This is the feeling of nostalgia for the past, for childhood and for old memories that Roda Mizan had wished to find, or feared not to find on her way to the motherland and particularly to her native town of Borama . If another name for home is peace as another adage says, Roda said she found not only peace at the homeland but a homeland in peace. "Peace has made everything beautiful in Somaliland ," says Roda.

 

In an effort to find out the perspective of an expatriate returning home after many years of absence, Awdalnews Network caught up with Roda Mizan, a poet, a social activist, a founding member of the Dallas-based Amoud Foundation, a great contributor to a number of humanitarian organizations and educational projects in Borama including Amoud University and a charitable person who sponsored several orphan students to complete their studies at Amoud University.

 

Following is Roda's account of her encounter with the homeland:

 

Overpopulated and crowded city

 

The first thing that strikes you is how crowded Borama has become; vehicles everywhere, all kinds of small and four-wheel vehicles. You cannot take two steps without bumping into a car. Most of the vehicles are right handed and they come as second hand from the UAE. Taxis and buses ferry people to the various parts of the town.

 

The town is overpopulated and most of the people are either new comers who migrated from surrounding villages and remote towns and countryside or new generations that grew up in my absence.

 

There is a hygiene disaster in the town. It is the worst thing and it is thrown everywhere. Heaps of garbage dumped everywhere as well as millions of plastic bags lying, flying around; an eye sore and environmental disaster. The government ban on using plastic bags did not work. There is no garbage dumping places or ground. There is no town planning, and shanty houses pop up anywhere and anytime.

 

No roads lead to Borama

 

Borama will soon be an isolated town due to the situation of its roads. Tarmac road from Hargeisa to Kalabaydh, from Kalabaydh to Dilla has lots of potholes which is worse than a rough road. From Dilla to Borama and from there to Djibouti it is rough road with valleys and mountains. It is the worst in the country. Borama will become inaccessible. It was the biggest disappointment I found. The only good thing about the rough road was that it gave me a chance to enjoy the beautiful scenery as mountains and valleys were covered with greenery due to the rainy season.

 

The whiff of homemade pancake (loxoox)

 

People still eat the traditional Somali pancake or crepe (loxoox) for the two meals: breakfast and dinner. It was so nice to wake up with the whiff of the freshly baked morning bread. I felt like my mother would wake me up to go to school. It was like I never left home. But sometimes people eat beans, and baked bread. There are more vegetables and fruits then used to be in the old days. I saw lots of papaya, banana and mango everywhere.

 

I saw a cultural revival in several areas such as traditional folklore dances. There is a new folklore troupe that has revived the Zayili dance. The troupe, which comprises men and women, perform both the traditional genres and new forms of Zayli. They are hired for weddings and other festivals and are extremely popular. However, they need financial help to buy uniforms and instruments and to establish their own center. Young women were fashionably dressed and beautiful. Everywhere you go you see the beauty of youth. They constitute the majority of the city's population. But I also noticed many women smoking the Hubble-bubble and chewing Qat, even young women.

 

Islamism and education

 

Extremism is not conspicuous but Islam has taken root. No woman can go out without a head cover. Even young girls cover their heads. If a woman goes out without a head cover she will be subject to nasty comments from here and there. Although not visible, radical clerics often intrude into women's affairs and women’s NGOs.

 

One of the most visible things I had noticed is the sheer number of mosques and schools that have sprang up in the recent past. You will see a mosque and a school in every corner of the town. I heard that the Ministry of education was planning to apply Ministry approved curriculum to all Schools of the country, beginning with the coming academic year.

 

The education sector has made great strides. From Amoud University to primary schools, the education system has quantitatively and qualitatively improved. I don't think its standard is less than other place in the region if not better.

 

Active women and idle men

 

From my arrival at Hargeisa Airport to Borama, all I saw was men chewing qat everywhere and women carrying water and children, selling goods on roadsides, sidewalks, under trees and in open places. All that men do is to chew qat, sometimes robbing women of the little cash they earn to feed their children and keep the household running.

 

Business is booming in Borama. Small groceries are everywhere; the streets are dotted with open air African markets selling all kinds of merchandise, mostly run by women.

 

The former Mayor of Borama Abdirahman Sheikh Omar said during the foundation laying ceremony of Al Hayat hospital that a one day boycott of Qat will save the town $20,000 which will be enough to build any of the badly needed public project.

 

One positive development in the life of women was the fading away of the bad tradition of women circumcision. Thanks to the efforts made by the late Annalena Tonelli who established Women against Female Genital Mutilation and new religious attitude that branded FGM as an anti-Islamic tradition, young women of our country will soon be liberated from such a cruel practice.

 

Water everywhere and enough electricity

 

Borama has the best water supply. In Hargeisa I have experienced shortages of water but not in Borama. One can take a shower anytime of the day or night without any fear of running out of water. The electricity is also good although not as good as the water supply. The weather has become unbearably hot. May be partly due to the increased population and vehicles and partly due to the global warming, Borama is unusually hot. Without the availability of water, the summer would have been unbearable. I am sure people will soon need air-conditioning.

 

Clean and well run public hospital

 

Women suffer from lack of health care projects. There are no MCH centers, no maternity hospitals. Despite that the Borama public hospital was at its best. I have never seen Borama hospital as clean and as well managed as it is now. All the different parts of the hospital including the emergency room and the pediatric clinic were well managed and unusually clean. They even have a good x-ray facility. It was wonderful and people attributed this mostly to Nimo Haji Abubakar. She even planted trees in the hospital's courtyard. Who ever was behind this improvement, it is an effort that deserves praise. I hope they would maintain such good work.

 

With the upcoming Al Hayat hospital, which I attended its foundation laying ceremony, the Annalena TB hospital and several private hospitals, it seems the town will have a reasonable health care system in place.

 

There is a great HIV/AIDs awareness going on, focused on the religious side. They emphasize abstinence as the only way to check the spread HIV/AIDs. Talking about safe sex is a taboo and many considered it as promoting sinning. AIDs patients are treated as untouchables. Sometimes people who die of other reasons are rumored to have died of AIDs. There is a lot of education needed in this area.

 

Popular online news

 

I was amazed how popular Awdalnews Network is among Borama community. People, particularly the youth are glued to the Internet. I have attended a number of events during my stay in the town and everywhere I go people were telling me that they had read my name on Awdalnews. In the absence of cinema and theatres, the youth are heavily dependent on Awdalnews and other online journals as source of news and entertainment.

 

People go to Hargeisa for government

 

The government is in Hargeisa. People still go to Hargeisa for everything. Only the municipality and police are community-based. Everything else is in Hargeisa.

 

Tribalism is acute and in the open. People cannot distinguish between politics and tribalism. The elections have left deep divisions among the community to the extent that people from different clans don't talk to each other.

 

Admirable NGO work

 

I admired the work done by community based NGOs and have attended several meetings including the foundation laying of Al Hayat Hospital, the orphanage center, the inauguration of the recently established umbrella organization and the naming of Borama Airport. I was disappointed by the lack of women representation in all these meetings.

 

Countryside and greenery

 

I saw a beautiful countryside in all the areas I have visited. I even saw the wild life still surviving such as dik- diks, rabbits, foxes and hyenas and tortoises.

 

Roda Mizan could be reached at: rodamizan@hotmail.com

[What Somalia wants]

What Somalia wants - July 24, 2006 - 14:53

 

 

Editorial, Khaleej Times, 24 July 2006=

 

SOMALIA continues to lurch from one crisis to another. As if the unfortunate people of the African country didn’t have enough problems of their own, Ethiopia has sent in its forces. Obviously, the big neighbour has been alarmed by the onward march of the Islamists.

 

The Union of the Islamic Courts has not only driven the many warring warlords from the capital Mogadishu and now controls much of the country, it has restored a working order and peace in the country. People had been sick and tired of the long reign of lawlessness and blood-letting in the country. And the so-called national unity government had no power to talk of. In fact, this ‘government’ couldn’t even control capital Mogadishu, let alone enforcing law and order in the rest of Somalia. This is why the Islamists have been so widely welcomed by ordinary people.

 

It is strange, therefore, that the Bush administration has joined the efforts to prop up the discredited and ineffective coalition of warlords, even though it has been rejected by the people and the Islamists have received wide support from all sections of the Somalian society.

 

This is where the basic knowledge of Africa’s geography, history and complex geopolitical realities of the continent and most importantly sound political advice helps. You would expect that with all those resources and the world’s most feared intelligence agency at its disposal, the administration would do its homework and think long and hard before taking any major step — such as dismissing the new dispensation in Mogadishu as the ‘terrorists’ or encouraging neighbours like Ethiopia to add to Somalia’s woes. What Somalia needs is not interference from nosey neighbours or dangerous politics of big powers but genuine help from the international community.

 

All it needs is help with bare and basic necessities of life such as security, food, water and shelter etc. This is one of the poorest and deprived countries of the world. Life is hard. Weather conditions are harsh. Rains are rare and water is rarer still. So there’s no question of a sustained crop ensuring regular sources of food for people and their cattle. So what Somalians are looking for is bare minimum to survive, to make the two ends meet.

 

All this fuss over Somalia being hijacked by the Islamists is ridiculous. What do you expect simple people, who have been disconnected from the rest of the world, to do in desperation except turn to God for help? They have no schools. The lucky among them get to learn and read the Holy Quran. Of course, Somalia needs a proper education system and schools. But then it needs many other things too. Unfortunately, since the neocons have taken over the US establishment, everything associated with Islam or Muslims is painted with a black brush. Islam is not part of the problem in Somalia. In fact, it can be part of the solution

[The Mullah: The Bravest of the Brave]

The Mullah: The Bravest of the Brave - July 19, 2006 - 12:01

 

 

 

Awdalnews Network has the pleasure to bring to its readers an exclusive weekly column by John Drysdale* who has honoured us by agreeing to write his column from his base in Somaliland. The column will be Drysdale's reflections on his more than 60 years encounter with Somali history, culture and daily life.

 

 

The Mullah: The Bravest of the Brave

 

By John Drysdale

 

THE FIGURE OF SHEIKH MOHAMED ABDALLA HASSAN looms large in the history of Somalis, especially during the early days of European colonialism. Any study of him should not fail to ignore his historical significance as the first Somali leader to have acquired firearms in bulk and to have exercised political armed power in an attempt to unite Somalis in a Holy War against infidels.

 

The Sheikh’s partial success in uniting Somalis under his political banner had more to do with Somali tradition than to the Sheikh’s undoubted defence and prowess of his precepts of Islam. He was baulked by the tradition that no clan should have dominion over another; nor political power be vested in one man.

 

Sheikh Mohamed was seen by the British authorities as an enemy at the turn of the century. He had circumvented the arms embargo that had been imposed by the European powers on Somalis but not on King Menelik.

 

The Sheikh was dubbed by the British the misnomer Ú©Mad Mullahâ€. He was not in the least bit mad. His followers, equipped with spears, were fierce in hand to hand fighting. Supported by rifles and a cause to be won they were a formidable enemy, as the British were to learn. From 1900 until 1920 the Sheikh held at bay mainly British but also intermittently Italian and Ethiopian troops. He imported firearms from Ethiopia through his brother, Khalif, in the Oga den. As early as 1902, the Sheikh’s forces had swollen to some 12,000, of whom 10,000 were said to be mounted and not less than 1,000 carried rifles. They were provisioned by plundered livestock.

 

The Sheikh’s ire was first aroused in 1895 against a Catholic mission in Berbera for homeless Somali children whom the mission attempted to convert to Christianity. Frustrated by his failure to persuade the British administration in Berbera to expel the mission, the Sheikh sent a letter to an Isaa q clan known as the Eidagalla in July 1899. Do you not see, he wrote, that the infidels have destroyed our religion and made our children their children?

 

This was a turning point in the Sheikh’s attitude to the British occupation of Berbera which was gradually advancing into the hinterland. The Sheikh was declared a rebel. The struggle between the two belligerents began.

 

As well as being a religious leader and a poet of renown, the Sheikh was a man of action, riding to the saddle with gusto and charisma on a Somali polo pony of uncommon stamina until the Sheikh grew out of the saddle with a weight problem.

 

But he also sought political power in central Somaliland. This did not come easily to him because his father was from the Oga den clan across the southern border in Ethiopian Somali inhabited territory, and his mother was a member of the Dolbahanta clan in the southeast of Somaliland. Both clans were grouped under the banner of the D rod patriarch.

 

The Sheikh was many years ahead of his time if he really had pan-Somali political ambitions, as he claimed. To have been successful as a pan-Somali leader, he would also have needed the political support of the group of clans descended from the Isaa q patriach. They occupied central Somaliland. But they were weaned away from any allegiance, on which the Sheikh may have set his sights, by British blandishments: British protection of Isaa q trade through the port of Berbera; and the hiring of Isaa q warriors and their pack-animals and horses for military expeditions against the Sheikh’s کdervish†infantry and cavalrymen.

 

Whilst this ruse worked to the advantage of the British land forces, especially against the Sheikh’s formidable stone fortresses, the eventual coup de grace was of a different kind; it came hurtling down from the skies in the shape and size of twenty pound bombs. The first killed the Sheikh’s uncle standing beside him to greet these new and exciting messengers from Allah. The next singed the Sheikh’s robe. He made a dash for ravines below his fortress and escaped to the Oga den where he died from natural causes ten months later.

 

Douglas Jardine noted in his remarkably objective biography of the Ú©Mad Mullahâ€, that fear and awe, and not respect and affection, were the emotions he had to arouse in the hearts of his followers. But whatever views may be taken of the Mullah’s motives and methods, there can be no question of the greatness of his personal achievements: even when his fortunes were at their lowest ebb, he remained an object of veneration to his followers who invoked his name not only in the heat of battle, but also at the cold hour of execution. One must confess there is much to be said for the man who does not know when he is beaten.

 

The British General, Lord Hastings Ismay, who was then, in 1914, a Captain in the Camel Corps, wrote in his memoirs of some of these events on his retirement from the army. Among the Sheikh’s forts that the Camel Corps captured after stiff fighting was at Shimber Beris. The fort was blown up with some of the dervishes inside. Ismay wrote, “All our efforts to dig out the defenders were in vain. I was sorry they had fought well.â€

 

////

 

*John Drysdale, a former advisor to three Somali Prime Ministers in post independence Somalia and to three successive UN special envoys to Somalia during the 1992-1993, is an authority on Somali history and culture. Three of his books about Somalia and Whatever Happened to Somalia, written during or about major landmarks in the nation's history, have become standard reference works. Drysdale was a regular British army officer serving with Somali soldiers in Burma during World War II. Later he was in the British Colonial Service and the Foreign Service, with assignments in Ghana (then the Gold Coast) and in Mogadishu. He is an accomplished speaker of Somali. During his long career as diplomat, businessman, and publisher, Drysdale has been a prolific writer and analyst of political events in Africa and Southeast Asia.

 

As a publisher Drysdale founded and edited the Africa Research Bulletin in Britain and the Asia Research Bulletin in Singapore in collaboration with the Straits Times Group. He was also founder of the Asean Economic Quarterly in Singpore. His book Singapore: Struggle for Success is a recommended reading for all young Singaporeans. Returning to Somaliland in mid 1990s, Drysdlae worked as an advisor to the Somaliland government under the later President Mohammed Ibrahim Egal for sometime before pioneering the very important project of Surveying and Mapping for Rural and Urban Cadastre in Somaliland. His NGO has been surveying and mapping hitherto non-existent farm boundaries in the Gabiley and Dilla Districts of South West Somaliland over the last four years.

 

 

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[Warlords Don't Love Ethiopia Any Less But Hate Yusuf More]

Courts xal ma u noqon karaan Somalia oo dhan Garaad?