Its Ramadan! Time to pray for the dead, sick, maimed, raped and unjustly imprisoned Somalis! Thats is the lowest Level Of Iman! Nur

Walaalayaal Waa Ramadaankii shanaad ee ka soo wareegay qoraalkan, Bishani waa bishii Allah uunkiisa u gaaryeelay inuu u naxariisto, qaar baadan ka xoreeyo naarta, jannooyinkii firdowsna geliyo. Hadaba, Ducada Ha Ka Daalina! Nur

Nomads Ramadaan Kariim, dahmmantiin, waa bishii Sabarka, iyo bishoorooyinka Saabiriinta, Allaha naga yeelo kuwii ku sabray hoggansanaanta Allah, ka sabray wuxuu naga reebay, la sabray Saalixiinta iyo kuwa ku mittida waddooyinka nabadda ( Subul Al Salaam, ayagoo ogsoon oo huba inay Allah awgii u sabrayaan. Yaana ka wanaagson Allah oo loo Sabraa? Nur

Why Liberals Fear Islam The Only Good Muslim is the Anti-Muslim By M. JUNAID LEVESQUE-ALAM 28/08/08 "Counterpunch" - -- For some, Barack Obama’s stature as a man of the left has fallen precipitously, like late autumn leaves shed by branches bowing to the will of winter. Disappointment has often been self-inflicted. Supporters have dipped their pens deeply into the inkwell of Obama’s inspiring story and written their own lines on Afghanistan, oil drilling, or the death penalty - only to see these wishful words unceremoniously erased by presidential politics or the senator’s own views. But for American Muslims and progressive allies, both eager to see an end to the vilification of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, Obama’s mantra of hope and change barely set in before it expired. First we witnessed the embarrassing spectacle of micro-level ethnic cleansing when two Arab women with headscarves were whisked offstage ahead of a campaign photo-op in Detroit. Then we heard Obama call false claims about his purportedly Muslim identity “smears” – as if he was accused not of belonging to an Abrahamic faith observed by more than 1.2 billion people, but of slinking out of Congress to visit a brothel. Soon after we saw the senator genuflect before AIPAC and call for a permanently Israeli Jerusalem - a vision the Jewish state has assiduously tried to realize by macro-level ethnic cleansing, purging its Arab residents. A more recent political maneuver also turned out to be a purge: the Obama campaign’s Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi, “resigned” this month after a brief stint of several days. The event went almost unnoticed. But two sharply different responses to this episode - and the standing afforded to the authors of these responses - reveal that the senator is not alone in failing to stanch America’s anti-Islamic miasma. Rather, the shortcoming is a collective one, shared by many liberals whose prejudice against Muslims and Arab-Americans is surpassed only by an apparent disinterest in correcting it. One response to the resignation came from James Zogby. An Arab-American Christian, Zogby’s credentials as a man rooted in his community are matchless. He helped found the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He led non-sectarian campaigns to assist war victims in Palestine and Lebanon. And he serves as president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank. Yet despite 30 years of community advocacy and experience, his views on Arab and Muslim issues appear in just two popular non-ethnic publications. One is The Huffington Post. The other is in Egypt. Commenting on Asbahi’s short tenure, Zogby writes, “In the brief time he held his position we spoke almost daily. He learned so much and did so much to make Arab Americans and American Muslims feel included in the campaign.” “Then,” Zogby observes, “it happened.” One of the many websites “monitoring” Muslims in America discovered that eight years ago Asbahi served on a board which included a controversial imam. Asbahi resigned from the board after two weeks. Like vultures eyeing a wounded gazelle, the usual assortment of right-wing bloggers descended on Asbahi. They vilified him as a closet fundamentalist for once belonging to the Muslim Student Association, a well-established mainstream group with branches on dozens of college campuses across the U.S. and Canada. Not to be outdone, the Wall Street Journal threatened to amplify the echo chamber, the walls of which reverberate with the hysterics of its associates in the right-wing “blogosphere.” Faced with mounting pressure and bereft of support from any quarter, Asbahi and the campaign “agreed” he would relinquish his post. This sequence of events comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with neoconservative methods. It is but a reenactment of previous attacks: the mendacious 2005 campaign to oust Columbia University professors who used Israel’s own archives to dismantle pleasant fictions about its history; the dissemination of e-mails containing crude anti-Semitic nonsense sent out in professors’ names to destroy their credibility; and the ongoing efforts to publicly intimidate universities into denying academics employment or tenure. But amid the past few years of attacks, outrages, and, yes, smears, hurled at Muslims and Arabs in this country, one Muslim figure stands curiously unsullied: Irshad Manji. She, too, wrote about Asbahi’s dismissal, though we would do well to acquaint ourselves with the author first. Unlike most of her coreligionists, Manji has been lavished with attention and awards by mainstream and liberal America. She garnered Oprah Winfrey’s first “Chutzpah” award, Ms. Magazine’s “Feminist for the 21st Century” seal of approval, New York University’s Wagner School “Moral Courage Project,” a column in The Huffington Post, production of a PBS documentary, and the list goes on. In an era when Muslims find themselves boxed in by political attacks here and military assaults abroad, one wonders: what is Manji’s secret to success? She wrote a book - and not just any book. Titled The Trouble With Islam Today, hers won applause not only from liberals but other, more interesting quarters. The Wall Street Journal praised it as “refreshingly provocative” and “deserv[ing] of the attention it is receiving.” Daniel Pipes declared, “Manji - a practicing Muslim - brings real insight to her subject.” Phyillis Chesler beamed, “Manji has written a bold, sane, passionate, compelling book.” And Alan Dershowitz announced, “Manji is a fresh, new and intriguing voice of Islamic reform.” A fine example of damning with loud praise. What could a Muslim have written that would delight supporters of bombing and torturing Muslims? What sweet words could have moved Daniel Pipes - who specializes in hyping anti-Islamic hysteria on Fox News and elsewhere - to welcome into his generous bosom the ideas of a “practicing Muslim?” What might motivate Alan Dershowitz, better known for backing the torture of Muslims than for reading their books, to plug Manji’s effort? The answer lies in the content. The Trouble With Islam Today is an unhinged polemic that derides Muslims and demeans their faith. Examining a few of the book’s points should reveal what has caught the fancy of neoconservatives and liberals alike. The author devotes two pages to comparing Osama bin Laden to Prophet Muhammad. “Is it mere happenstance,” Manji rhetorically asks, “that bin Laden spends so much time in caves, like the meditating [Prophet] did?” With penetrating and piercing logic - in the sense that one must penetrate one’s skull and pierce the cortex to succumb to it - she goes on in this vein, declaring “camel saddles” and “online transactions” twin evils. The “parallels” between Osama, the man who blesses the murder of innocent people, and Muhammad, the man who forgave the murderers of his closest companions, “continue to proliferate,” Manji insists, much to the delight of the Muslim-haters behind the curtains. A good portion of the book is also dedicated to attacking the Quran (and the Quran alone), which the intrepid author does without any background in religious studies or a single footnote. But no matter. This book, Manji intones, is “profoundly at war with itself.” Religious texts should apparently read like do-it-yourself plumbing guides, bereft of subtlety or layers of meaning, particularly if you are trying to flush the whole thing down the toilet to boost your celebrity status among Islamophobes. Manji’s fans must especially enjoy her excoriation of Muslims as fake victims. Muslims wallow in their “screaming self-pity,” she snickers, as though one ought to see the fuselage of cruise missiles as half-full rather than half-empty as they fly en route to the nearest wedding celebration or apartment building. Manji’s attacks on Muslims appear almost kind next to the beating she doles out to logic itself. She surmises that since Muslims have been more harmed by Muslims than non-Muslims (based on what data or criteria, we dare not guess), there is little reason to complain about atrocities authored under the “war on terror.” She does not add whether she also ordered families of Sept. 11th victims to get over themselves when the casualties were surpassed by that year’s domestic homicides - a case of “Americans having been more harmed by Americans than non-Americans.” Finally, Manji enjoys ridiculing dispossessed Palestinians. Ignoring over two decades of work by Jewish scholars and human rights groups on Israeli ethnic cleansing and massacres, she neatly eliminates the Palestinians altogether by dubbing them Jordanians and hails Israel for its “compassion.” It must have been precisely this “compassion” that moved 23 ANC veterans, several of them Jewish, to compare the Israeli occupation with South African apartheid during a recent visit. Now well-acquainted with America’s favorite Muslim, let us turn to her article on the departure of Obama’s former coordinator, Mazen Asbahi. In a Huffington Post piece, she demonstrates no concern about the vilification enabled Asbahi’s dismissal. Indeed, she fails to mention it even once. Is this because Manji is too busy contributing to the problem to pause and reflect? Or is it because this would upset her core base - the neoconservatives who mount these smear campaigns? Whatever the case, Manji performs her predictable pre-programmed attack routine, observing contemptuously, “…Mazen Asbahi has just resigned. I can't say I'm disheartened. He'd been embraced by groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Society of North America, renowned for their conservative politics and ‘moderate’ double-speak.” Writing a piece occasioned by attacks on one Muslim, Manji manages to magnify the insult by attacking thousands of other Muslims. According to her politics, anyone who does not dance to the detonation of cluster bombs is already suspect. So her invective aimed at groups representing thousands of American Muslims, which she never bothers to back up with arguments, is understandable. Not yet satisfied with herself, she goes on to pant about “most” American Muslims being stuck in a 7th century - or perhaps 10th century, depending on her mood - “time warp.” Serving as 21st century America’s doctors, teachers, engineers, shopkeepers, and plant workers, Muslims have been too busy to notice this worrisome defect. Concluding with a few shopworn words about “moral courage” and “revolutionary ethos,” Manji polishes off her attacks on the community by invoking vague platitudes about Muslim “reform.” This is Manji’s sole gimmick: disingenuous calls for Muslims to move forward belied by support for those pulling America backward. What does the liberal adulation of a professional Islamophobe - one openly adored by neoconservatives, no less - say about the state of American liberalism? Will liberals come to respect and support genuine Muslim and Arab voices, like Zogby and countless unrecognized figures? Or will they continue to lazily rely on self-professed stand-ins like Irshad Manji? If liberalism persists on its present path, it will not only alienate a targeted community in America but pave the way for further persecution. Perfectly illustrating this point is The New York Times’ fawning characterization of Manji as “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” This is very far from the truth. For years, many Muslim and non-Muslim voices have said bin Laden’s ideology is a freak phenomenon, fashioned in the ghoulish laboratory of Cold War politics and fed on a steady diet of American –Israeli assaults in the Middle East. At odds with more than 1,300 years of Muslim thought and history, these voices have insisted, bin Laden is a perversion of genuine Islam. But Manji argues the opposite: bin Laden is a genuine product of Islam, which is itself perverted. Osama, we will recall, is for Manji the new Muhammad. In showering attention and accolades on Manji, many liberals thus validate and promote the idea that extremist Islam is Islam itself. Could bin Laden dream of a greater gift? Could the neoconservatives? Perhaps liberals find Manji’s message appealing because ascribing extremism to some innate feature of Islam “disappears” from view the consequences of American foreign policy. Invasion and occupation disappear. Torture and abuse disappear. Corpses of slaughtered civilians and carrions of neutralized nations disappear. The desire to own a clear conscience, even one obtained through the muddiest logic, should never be underestimated. There may be other answers: a fear of questioning the dominant narrative; of criticizing Israel; of discovering Islamic perspectives; of engaging the Other, who is often harangued but rarely heard. Whatever the reason, American liberals would do well to stop glorifying anti-Muslim celebrities and start building relationships with honest Arab and Muslim voices. We are waiting.

Nomads Globalization (Business), New World Order (Political), and The Internet (Infomtion Flow) are bringing cultures and faiths much closer, at times too close for comfort, which is causing the current birthing pains, as Islam and the West come closer, each side will come face to face with the good aspect of the other and the bad, as such, like two gasses or liquids in a container, the diffusion will change the final form of both, and depending on their respective concentration and resilience, their mixure will produce the final phase for an equilllibrium, also known as PEACE! Until then, it should be expected some form of political and cultural turmoil to take place, the prelude of which we are living today. Nur

Nomads Ramadan will be here soon, time to think of getting most out of this Month, share your ideas. Nur

Great topic Sis My thouhts on this great surah. This Surah is the key of attaining absolute success in this life and next. It begins with the attention getter, " Qad Aflaxa" , Success is the " Baadi", as we say in Somali that we are all after. We seek success in school, success at work, success with our extended family and success in our marriage relationships, success with freinds, success in this life and success in the next. As we all see, this great Surah lays down the foundations with the right success toward the right direction. It begins with the first key of success of our relationships, the success in our prayers, which Allah emphasizes that we need to perform it with (Khushuuc), meaning standing in front of Allah's Majesty with awe in a state of being subdued with humility. As the verses begin the description of the quality of the successful prayers, it also ends with description of another quality of the successful prayers, (DAA'IMOON) meaning constant practice and timeliness, never skipping a prayer nor delaying it to watch the Olympics. Allah tells us that success in this lifetime begins with success in our prayers, and it also ends with success in our prayers. Come to think of it, why Allah places so much emphasis on prayers? The answer to this question is embedded in the secrets of prayers. Of all the secrets, the most important is the secret of being grateful to Allah. The form of this ritual is known as XAMD ( Praising Allah). The Creation of the heavens and the earth began with (XAMD), the end of the creation is also with Xamd, lets see. In Surah Al Ancaam Allah SWT says: " All praises and thanks be to Allah, Who (Alone) created the heavens and the earth, and originated the darkness and the light, yet those who disbelieve hold others as equal with their Lord." In Surah Zumar Allah Says: "And those who kept their duty to their Lord will be led to Paradise in groups, till, when they reach it, and its gates will be opened (before their arrival for their reception) and its keepers will say: Salamun 'Alaikum (peace be upon you)! You have done well, so enter here to abide therein." 74 And they will say: "All the praises and thanks be to Allah Who has fulfilled His Promise to us and has made us inherit (this) land. We can dwell in Paradise where we will; how excellent a reward for the (pious good) workers!" 75 And you will see the angels surrounding the Throne (of Allah) from all round, glorifying the praises of their Lord (Allah). And they (all the creatures) will be judged with truth, and it will be said. All the praises and thanks be to Allah, the Lord of the 'Alamin (mankind, jinns and all that exists)." The importance of prayers is also evident in Surah Al Macaarij, which begins to describe the quality of successful prayers where the Surah Muminoon left which was DAAIMOON, until it comes to the Quality of YUXAAFIDOON which means carefulness and diligence in its fulfillment. The Moral of envoloping all of our good deeds with prayers is that performance of the right quality prayers is conditional to all of other deliverables to Allah, if our Prayers are bad, the envelope of good deeds is not opened, thats why in the day of judgement, the first deed to be audited after Shahaadateyn is our Prayers. Nur

Xiin The following verses form Surah Aal Cimraan may put things in perspesctive. First it was Victory as you have noted. Allah says: "Allah verily made good His promise unto you when ye routed them by His leave" Then, as you have noted, unproportional force was exerted on the resistance which caused loss of heart for the Fadhi-Ku-Dirir believers reason being disagreemnt on strategy, Allah says: "until (the moment) when your courage failed you, and ye disagreed about the order " Allah tells us the cause of this disagreement Allah says: " and ye disobeyed, after He had shown you that for which ye long" Which was victory agianst Warlords. Allah then tells us how we disobeyed:, "Some of you desired the world, and some of you desired the Hereafter. Therefore He made you flee from them, that He might try you" The culprit here is love of this world. What a shame! but Allah is still kind to us, he says. " Yet now He hath forgiven you. Allah is a Lord of Kindness to believers." Xiin walaal The blame game is born out of frustration. Allah also puts them in perspective. Allah says: " Then, after grief, He sent down security for you. As slumber did it overcome a party of you, while (the other) party, who were anxious on their own account, thought wrongly of Allah, they thought of ignorance. They said: Have we any part in the cause ? Say (O Muhammad): The cause belongeth wholly to Allah. They hide within themselves (a thought) which they reveal not unto thee, saying: Had we had any part in the cause we should not have been slain here. Say: Even though ye had been in your houses, those appointed to be slain would have gone forth to the places where they were to lie. (All this hath been) in order that Allah might try what is in your breasts and prove what is in your hearts. Allah is Aware of what is hidden in the breasts (of men)" Brother, Mafaasid and Masaalix are considered when you have the Deen in place, when the very Deen is the issue, the most important maslaxa is the preservation of the Deen. Allah Says: " 172 As for those who heard the call of Allah and His messenger after the harm befell them (in the fight); for such of them as do right and ward off (evil), there is great reward. 173 Those unto whom men said: Lo! the people have gathered against you, therefor fear them. (The threat of danger) but increased the faith of them and they cried: Allah is Sufficient for us! Most Excellent is He in Whom we trust! 174 So they returned with grace and favour from Allah, and no harm touched them. They followed the good pleasure of Allah, and Allah is of Infinite Bounty. 175 It is only the devil who would make (men) fear his partisans. Fear them not; fear Me, if ye are true believers" Allah concludes: " Every soul will taste of death. And ye will be paid on the Day of Resurrection only that which ye have fairly earned. Whoso is removed from the Fire and is made to enter paradise, he indeed is triumphant. The life of this world is but comfort of illusion" Nur

Norf bro. The purpose of our creation is the worship of Allah SWT ALONE according to the verse: " I have not created mankind and Jinn except for my Worship" As such, no human activity is exempted from the boundaries of this purpose. Allah SWT also says in Surah Al Hadid : " We have sent our Messengers with clear instructions, we have also revealed to them the scriptures and the Mizaan ( Criterion to differentiate between good and evil) to enable mankind to uphold ( QIST) JUSTICE " ( Qist) Justice, therefore is the reason behind the revelations. If we combine thw two verses, we find that the reason for creation is the unconditional submission and surrender to Allah's dominion which is the essence of Justice. Any other option is a form of challenge and rebellion, a Satanic influence on mankind. There are two types of Justice: 1. Justice with our Maker ( Allah) 2. Justice with fellow mankind. The first type of justice is a prerequisite and neccessary for the second type to be upheld. Why? Because, Justice with Allah is to assign and to Allah his domain of influence, which is EVERYTHING! in Islam. If That is done, justice with fellow man follows naturally. Now, based on that train of thought, reconciliation between those who assign to Allah his due influence in his dominion and those who reject Allah's influnece in his dominion, is short lived at best. The verses of brotherhood are addressing the faithful believers. In Somalia, we have a new breed of Somalis, who have in practice parted ways with Islam, actively opposing the Islamic solution to Somalia's problems, while claiming to be in the fold of Islam. This is our dilemma . Nur

Ngonge bro. Good post, just finished reading, its "generic politically correct Fatwa" The rulings above do hold for the mainstream Islamic schools of thought (Four Schools). As for the Shia theology in practice, and in their literature in circulation, its an all new territory, it calls for an examination. Nur

Christians United for Israel and Attacking Iran By Dedrick Muhammad and Farrah Hassen Editor: Emily Schwartz Greco 18/08/08 "Foreign Policy In Focus" -- - Though the national sentiment favors wrapping up the Iraq War, there exists a small but powerful movement for starting a new military conflict with Iran. The bipartisan drumbeats for aggression reverberate throughout the corridors of Congress. House Resolution 362 and Senate Resolution 580, for example, call on the United States to prevent Iran from "acquiring a nuclear weapons capability through all appropriate economic, political, and diplomatic means. The House's Iran resolution, sponsored by Representative Gary Ackerman (D-NY), demands the president impose "stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran." This legislation effectively requires a blockade on Iran which is considered by international law as an act of war. The Senate's Iran resolution, sponsored by Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN), would require a ban on "the importation of refined petroleum products to Iran." Neither resolution offers evidence on Iran's alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Both neglect to mention any sanctions against the only country known to actually have developed nuclear weapons in the Middle East: Israel. Evoking Orwellian 2+2=5 logic, both Congressmen have offered sanctions as the means to avoid war by applying economic pressure on Iran. Yet sanctions rarely achieve their intended objective. For instance, unilateral U.S. sanctions failed to topple the Cuban, Iraqi and Libyan governments. They punished (and in Cuba's case, continue to punish) civilians instead. Washington-Israel Summit The "squeeze Iran" and "confront Iran" positions are strongly encouraged by the increasingly powerful Zionist Christian Fundamentalist community. About 5,000 people from across the United States attended the third annual Washington-Israel Summit, organized by Christians United for Israel (CUFI). There, the "Iranian threat" loomed as a pervasive theme. "What do you do with a maniac like Ahmadinejad? I'm not sure diplomacy works," Gary Bauer, President of American Values and a CUFI executive board member, told the crowd during the July 22 "Middle East Intelligence Briefing." Another panelist, Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), urged the attendees to make their support for HR 362 known to their members of Congress. We attended this "the Rapture" meets "Clash of Civilizations" session – on the only day open to the press. We listened to the never-ending chorus from Bauer, Pence, Representative Elliot Engel (D-NY), and The Weekly Standard editor William Kristol who kept telling the assembled crowd why Americans must fear "Islamo-fascists"/"Islamo-radicals"/"death worshippers," and their other scary names for Muslims. Panels curiously closed to the press at the three-day conference included "Iran: Eye of the Storm," "Radical Islam: In Their Own Words" and "How to Stop Funding the Enemy: Divestment, Sanctions and Boycotts." As Muslims, we attended the summit to learn more about CUFI. What we found was disturbing. Being well-received and courteously treated by the pleasant staff of a conference that talks of Muslims as "death worshippers" was a truly paradoxical experience. We also found it ironic that the organization's acronym, CUFI, is pronounced like kufi, an Arabic word for the short, rounded prayer cap worn by devout Muslim men. John Hagee John Hagee (whose name was recently in the news for ties to John McCain, who subsequently distanced himself from the Texas megachurch pastor), founded CUFI in 2006. According to its statement of purpose, the group seeks to "provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, parachurch organization, ministry, or individual in American can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues." Christian Zionists believe that support for Israel is not only mandated by God but is required in order to hasten the second coming of Christ (the End Times). They predicate their support for Israel on a desire to bring on Armageddon, and therefore push for policies that they believe will make this happen faster. Their "support" for Jews comes with a major and ironic caveat: after the second coming of Christ, Jews are required to convert to Christianity or else be left behind with the other "non-believers," like Muslims. Prior to starting CUFI, Hagee published a related, and equally disturbing, book called Jerusalem Countdown. Those who don't subscribe to this religious interpretation too often dismiss Hagee and CUFI as "kooky." It's even kookier to ignore Christian Zionists' influence on U.S.-Middle East policy. In fact, Hagee, who also leads the 18,000-strong Cornerstone Church in Texas, would like to see CUFI become "the Christian version of AIPAC," (Read Max Blumenthal's article "Birth Pangs of a New Christian Zionism," published in The Nation's August 8, 2006 issue, for more about this.) According to the Nation article, White House officials met with CUFI leaders in 2006 in a series of off-the-record meetings to discuss its policies in the Middle East. "CUFI's Washington lobbyist, David Brog, told me that during the meetings, CUFI representatives pressed White House officials to adopt a more confrontational posture toward Iran, refuse aid to the Palestinians and give Israel a free hand as it ramped up its military conflict with Hezbollah," Blumenthal wrote. Brog, who serves as CUFI's Executive Director, couldn't disclose who CUFI leaders met with at the White House. CUFI's unequivocal "support for Israel" means the United States should stand against Zion's "enemies" – Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and any serious Arab-Israeli peace agreement. This parallels policies advocated by prominent neoconservatives who have served in George W. Bush's administration, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, Douglas Feith, and Elliott Abrams. CUFI's 'Middle East Intelligence Briefing' Just so readers don't think speakers at the "Middle East Intelligence Briefing" pandered to the audience, compare CUFI's positions to what supposedly reasonable members of Congress declared on the same issue. Being "committed to Israel" has come to mean passing congressional resolutions that vitiate rational, constructive policy towards Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors. For example, Engel received a rousing standing ovation when he declared: "I don't think the U.S. needs to be even-handed in the Middle East – it needs to stand with and behind our only ally, Israel." Demonstrating the Congressman's resolve to support legislation targeting Israel's "enemies," Engel sponsored the 2003 Syria Accountability Act in the House, which led to the imposition of U.S. trade sanctions against Damascus. Parroting Engel, Pence reiterated, "As the election approaches it will be a time of choosing. America's role is not to be an honest broker in the Middle East. It begins with standing for the security and interests of Israel." What kind of message does that send to Arabs, Persians, and Muslims in the region – the majority of whom would like to see peace and political, social, and economic development reign supreme over lingering war, occupation, and enmity? "Iran reminds me of Adolf Hitler," Engel told the crowd of young, middle-aged, and old folks. "When Ahmadinejad says he wants to wipe Israel off the map, he means it. He'd do it to the U.S. and Europe if he could." Engel then added, "We need to look at the world as it is – there's no way we can sit idly by and allow Iran to build a bomb. Iran is not doing this for peaceful reasons...Iran is the largest sponsor of terror in the world – in Lebanon, Syria..." Even worse, according to the Congressman, "We find Iranians making inroads in South America with Bolivia and Venezuela. Iranians have no business in the Western Hemisphere." The paranoia around Iran is so great that relatively small trade deals between South American countries and Iran is viewed as a threat. Not to be outdone, Pence offered this nightmare scenario on Iran: "This is a perilous time with the menacing pronouncements of Ahmadinejad. God forbid the next Holocaust will not require camps but one missile and one bomb and 17 minutes of flight. Americans, Democrats and Republicans, are coming together to place more pressure on Iran until it abandons nuclear weapons." Thunderous applause ensued. Some in the crowd even raised their hands in the air, presumably to pay homage to an Iran-hating God. Hearing these hostile pronouncements on Iran, without context, history or mention of the 70 million Iranian people, we both wondered if the Congressmen or expert speakers had actually read the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon or program to build a nuclear weapon? In another instance of dubious credibility, Kristol praised the U.S. surge in Iraq, exclaiming, "We're on the verge of winning the war on Iraq!" He warned that the consequences of an early U.S. withdrawal would be "catastrophic," without explaining how the U.S. occupation of Iraq has brought any modicum of stability in the first place. He didn't mention the catastrophe for more than 4 million displaced Iraqis, whose destinies, alongside other Iraqis, have been altered by the war and occupation, or the wounded and broken U.S. veterans, who too often lack adequate medical care upon returning home. "We understand our enemies and we will win this war," Kristol concluded. "We can win this war against jihadists who worship war, kill Israelis, and Americans." After the two-hour briefing, we headed toward the exit of the Convention Center. Later that evening, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) would address the "Night to Honor Israel Banquet," alongside Hagee and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Sallai Meridor. We walked past the "Daughters for Zion" booth and another booth selling "Treasures of the Holy Land" – shiny, golden menorahs and ornate ceramic plates with the image of Old Jerusalem. (A sign assured that all those tchochkes were made in Israel, not a Chinese factory.) One would never have known that Muslims also share and inhabit the Holy Land, after spending a day at the conference. United Against Muslims Ultimately, what we found most disturbing about the Summit is how this group of Jews and Christians, Democrats and Republicans, managed to get past their differences to unite against their Muslim enemy. As Muslims, we never felt any hostility toward us personally, but rather a hostility towards the entire Muslim world for being a threat to the Western civilization shared by Christian and Jews (at least white Christians and Jews). We never heard any of the panelists explicitly say, "Muslims are evil." However, the same message was finessed with the excessive use of the trendier, post 9/11 term, "Islamo-facists," and its equivalents, "Islamo-radicals," "jihadists" and "death-worshippers." William Kristol did mention that more Muslims have died fighting against terror than any other people. But he never managed to follow up with how Christians and Jews, if truly interested in promoting democracy and human rights around the world, could or should partner with those of the third faith of the Abrahamic religions, Muslims. Instead, it felt as though we were witnessing the manifestation of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis inside the convention center's halls. Pence assured the audience "We're not beating the drum for war. Peace for Israel is through strength alone." Yet can there truly be peace for Israel alone in the small part of the world we call the Middle East? We think not. Christians United for Israel isn't the type of organization that will help advance a Middle East peace process. Nor can it help facilitate a constructive peace making role for the United States. What's needed is a movement of all people united for a peaceful and just Middle East. Dedrick Muhammad is the senior organizer and research associate for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good and Farrah Hassen is the 2008 Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. They are contributors to Foreign Policy In Focus

Nomads This topic is a classic of SOL Islam. It may useful for new Nomads to go through as an education journey or to quench their curioisity, any way, the topic is an original eNuri. Nur

Johny boy Some of your responses were on the mechanics of the discussion like the Scottsman fallacy for which you have reminded me what I have forgotten (In my philosophy class, years ago) " TRUE SCOTSMAN" but again, the ball was on your court to show were did I uses such logic. You have not shown were I used such a statement after your lengthy discourse, so let us leave it at there, its not worth more sweat, so we can get into the real issues of this dialogue about Islam and Democracy, on which your poistion is that they are not comparable, rather, you suggest Theocracy and Democracy, so let us stay on this track as much as possible. You write: "To answer your fantastic question of Who is in greater ERROR then, someone who follows a GOD, or someone who claims to Be GOD? i'd say someone who claims to Be GOD is in greater ERROR, but wait a minute , does people who live under Democracies claim to BE GOD? exactly my thoughts . Could demanding a little more cincerity regarding this be much to ask? Johnny Bro. I am glad you asked, and this is precisely what I expected you to question. You see saaxib, we have a system called Islam, which we both know gives Sovereignty to Allah, and by virtue of that Sovereignty, Allah reserves the right to pass laws for His slaves. In Medieval Europe, the Church ( Found on concepts that are pagan in nature plus some remnants of the old testament ) which initially ceded power to Pagan Roman Kings, just to reclaim it back later in the form of established Churches like the Catholic Church and the Kings who strengthend their Power by claiming to represent the Devine by way of the Pope who ordained them, the Public had to follow and be loyal to the King if they wanted salvation, hence the birth of what you call THEOCRACY in Medieval Europe. Which does not apply to the emergence of ISLAM. Now, many Principalities and Kingdoms in Europe claimed Sovereignty, and to make it short, the French Revolution took away that Sovereignty and gave it to the people, so the public under Democracy become THE Sovereign. RE ( means KING) PUBLIC ( means PEOPLE) so people are the SOVERIGN KINGS collectively that is. So what is Sovereignty: In this discussion my goal is to answer your question, so dont lose sight if I take a long winding road, at the end, I want to show that Democracy is a new form of religion, and those who adhere to it claim to be members of multiple Gods, Dieties, on one hand and its slaves at the other. To show this, I will first explain Sovereignty, which is the other face of Democracy that legitimizes its power. I will then Explain what Diety means from Islamic perespective and the Arabic language ( Ilaah) and then examine if my claim was a far fetched or reasonable. SOVEREIGNTY" Sovereignty is defined as "supreme authority within a territory" Its attributes/qualities: 1. Authority with Absolute Power ( No other power is greater than it) 2. Self dependent Authority, not by virtue of others 3. Irresistible Authority whose wishes must be obeyed by force. 4. Authority whose power controls its Domain. Some of the attributes of Sovereignty: 1.( Absoluteness), Immune to any law, above law, no one escapes its law. 2. Supremacy, no other authority is higher than it. 3. Unity, the only authority to reckon with. 4. Originality, its orginal in its existence, has not borrowed its exisitence from another Sovereign, nor is continuation of another. 5. Non Transferable Authority, no one can take it away, it will never become legitimate if anyone else claims it. 6. An Authority that is always right, since it sets the criteria of what is right and what is wrong. Now what is Deity is Islam:? Allah in Surah Ikhlas desribed Himself as: 1. SINGULAR ( AXAD), single 2. SAMAD , Everything Absolutely depend on Him, He Absolutely Depends on Himself ALONE. SAMAD has the Follwing Variations: 3. PROVIDER OF PROTECTION 4. RESCUER ( in times of distress) 5. Highest authority, no one scapes from His Jurisdiction and Sovreighnty. 6. Leadership. ( ZACIIM UL QOWM) 7. Anything one follows, even desires are called ilaah in Quraan. Thus SOVEREGNTY aka (SAMAD) is a Devine trait and those who excercise it unwittingly claim Deity like Pharoah of Egypt. So, Sovereignty and Democracy are two faces of the same coin, Sovereignty being the legal face while Democracy is the political face. So following Democracy is following someone who claims to be a GOD. While following Allah is following the TRUE GOD. Allah teaches us to say to people of the Book ( Jews and Christians who adopted polytheism : "let us strive to agree to converge to a common ground : That we do not worship other than Allah in any form, that we do not make associate with him other Sovereigns, and further that some of us should not take others for Lords (vested with Sovereignty)." If they turn away, then say: Be witness that we are MUSLIMS, (those who have willingly surrerndered to Allah's sovereignty)" Therefore man should not worhsip man, by giving im a Devine Character, instead man should follow His creator, because a " A problem is not solved at the level it was created" Albert Einstein. You write: "The obvious problem that fails theocracy and all you advocate for here is since your merciful God "Allah", for a reason or another does not or cant come down to earth and lead those he chooses to the right path and lead those he dislikes to the helfire, he must be represented by human beeings like you and me and that contradics the credibility of such almighty." Johnny saxib. You are 1430 years late on this suggestion, Qureish the tribe that rejected Islam before you had the same suggestion, but they are no longer here, and Islam is here and kicking ( The Undisputed Fastest Growing Faith On Planet Earth). Here is the verse Allah SWT is narrating some of Qureish's requests: "Or that you make the heaven fall upon us in pieces as you claimed, or that you bring God and the Angels before us." Nur

The Following Discussion is on the Aqeedah Principles of Tawheed al Haakimiyah, ( That Allah's Sovereign Law ( Shariah ) is The Only Legitimate Law In Allah's Sight. I post selections of the the discussion between me and Sister Naden Titled: "Islam and Democracy, Which one is More Modern?" Naden sis Sorry for not having time on my hands these days, I am overwhelmed with work. You write: "Nur, how did you come to explain shura as a consultation of best interpretation of the Devine Commandments? Verse 42:38 references shura in relation to the matters common to people. The consultation in this context is not about the divine commandments alone but all their worldly affairs also. These affairs could span the common good affecting a group that lives together in a geographical territory under their control. " Walaalo Allah SWT says in Quraan : "Innal Amra kulluh lillah" Meaning, judgement of all affairs that matters to people rightfully belongs to Allah SWT. Based on above, the Sharia is composed of Revelations ( Quran and Sunnah), Qiyaas and Ijmaac. Which gives ownership of the legislation to Allah SWT, and makes man an executor of the law even if its his his best attempt to interpret what Allah would have legislated in light of precedents (Qiyas) or consensus ( Ijmaac). Malika sis you write: "Dont you think,Islam and democracy have some principles in common,the respect for individual rights, liberty, equality, rejection of absolute power, limiting the role of state, and supremacy of the law?" Answer: Democracy means Demo ( People) and Cracy(Rule). Other attributes are not Democracy but ideals that existed way before Democracy exisited. You write: "It is just that after the influx of westerners in the lands of the Muslims they have been able to influence,changes in our juridistial systems hence the confusion...of what is democracy and how does it operate in an Islamic country without the secular influence.." Answer: Demcracy can not operate properly in a genuine Islamic country, the application of Democracy deinies the Sovreignty of God ( Allah) over His dominion, Democracy is the epitome of human rejection of God's authority and Sovereignty over their collective affairs. The confusion you see is when the system is rigged, imagine a cat walking on duck's feet? Nur Naden Walaalo, You write: " The verse (3:154, I presume) in its entirety does not refer to the common shura as you had discussed in your essay or sharia as you are now alluding" Answer: The verse in Surah Al Imran discussed a spectacular example of the connection between the requirement of following a devine command by way of His prophet in a death and life situation, on one hand and the input some of the companion wanted to have in such a situation which is more dire than any other social situation that can arise in a community, which were the decisive events of the Battle of Badr, they asked " do we have any say in this matter? " they added, " If we had a say, we would not have been killed here" Allah decreed, " O Muhammad tell them, The matter in its entirety belongs to Allah" Amr in Quraanic Arabic language has the following meanings: 1. Issue, matter, agenda to be discussed, 2. Event, accident 3. Command, order, instruction. The context of above verse in Surah Aal Cimraan encompasses all three meanings which is rare, how you may ask. a. The events were driven by Allah, it was not their choice to begin with, ( Li yaqdiya Allahu AMRAN, Kaana Mafcuulaa), AMRAN here means EVENT, as a small number of believers dared to confront a larger army of Quraish, Allah says that even if they have planned " Tawaacdtum", to meet at a certain place and time, they would have differed. b. The Issue was not the mere interception of Qureish's caravan, but it was a Devine prelude to the establishment of the Muslim State, an issue some of the companions did not buy into nor understood it totally, as they tried to interfere with a Devine instruction. c. The Command was to follow the instruction of the Prophet SAWS that was revealed to him by Allah. Now, is the above relevant in the Shura? Wel, sis, you asked me : "how did you come to explain shura as a consultation of best interpretation of the Devine Commandments? Verse 42:38 references shura in relation to the matters common to people" For which I referred to the above verse as an example that all matters and issues in Islam are not left to a Muslim, the Sharia which means the "WAY" in Arabic, includes the guidlines of what is permitted and what is prohibited. When we discuss what is permitted, we are in fact following the Sharia ( the way of Allah) even if Allah did not speak about it explicitly or its an open issue ( Mubaax). Now, let us shed some light on the origins of the Sharia. Sharia or "The Way" and "Shaaric" which means the endorser of ways and means, Allah, by way of his revelations and prophets, and books, has a purpose. 1. Protection of Faith, so any discussion on matters of faith is legitimate if its constructive of the faith , not destructive, shuraa can not be justified to undo the faith that gave it the legitimacy. 2. Protection of Life, so any discussion on matters of life and death must be based on Sharia which is based on the usool al sharia. Control System: Sanctity of Life, Capital Punishment for abusers. 3. Protection of Property, so any discussion on matters that will affect or lead to loss of property or its unjust transfer to others must be based on the Sharia. Control System: Sanctity of Ownership, Prohibition of Ribaa Usury, " Do not consume wealth in your community unjustly" , Punishment for abusers 4. Protection of the Mind, any substance that will render the mind to compromise its full capacity is thus against the Sharia. Control System: Sanctity of the Mind, Prohibition of Alcohol and drugs. Punishment 5. Protection of the procreation, which regualtes relationship of the sexes. Control System: Sanctity of procreation, Prohibition of Sex outside of marriage. Punishment for abusers. With the above background, let us visit your question: "How did you come to define shura as consultation of best interpretation of the Devine Commandments? " I have shown that: 1. All of human activities that needs regualtion fall in one of the above categories, directly or implied. 2. That, Allah is the Sovereign in His Dominion, thus the Only rightful owner of what " Matters" in His Dominion as per the Verse " He is the God at heavens and He is ( also) God on Earth". which demarcates the absolute reach of His absolute authority and rule. 3. That (Shuraa) is the right way to realize Allah's wishes ( Sharia, the Way) which has priority over human wishes and desires aka ( Ahwaa) when they conflict. Nur Naden sis You wrote: "Consensus on the best interpretation of religious text/commandments as you have written in your initial essay and subsequent writings is NOT the definition of shura. That is too narrow of a scope. Such an interpretation is left to the religious class of society. It is a closed door process. That is the opposite of shura" Answer: Please read what I wrote once more critically: "The role of a Muslim in the institution of Islam is a SUBJECT, A SLAVE who has to fulfil his Masters commandments. So in Islam, the power is NOT FOR THE PEOPLE. All Power is RESERVED FOR ALLAH ONLY, NOT for those competing to sharing power with him known as ANDAAD ( .......Innal Quwata lillahi Jamiican) The role of the slaves in this institution is consultation of best interpretation of the Devine Commandments, aka (Shuuraa)" Sister: Allah SWT says: If you disagree on an issue (Shey-in) ( any issue), then (to solve) refer to Allah ( Quran) and His Messenger ( Prophet's teachings , Sunnah). Hence Shuraa in Islam is the problem solving process in which we refer to the above guides for a solution for any matter. Your perspective of discussing this topic is alien to Islam, you are separating issues to religious issues and public concern issues, while in Isalm, every aspect of A Muslims life is " Religious", while in the western worldview, there are two distinct aspects to a persons life, thus, the role of democracy in discussing issues common to people who have no shared religious values but have shared interest. Infact, contrary to your assertion, my view is more broad and inclussive of all activities of a Muslim in Shuraa. Yours is the narrow interpretation of Shura, by confining Shura to only the high level scholars Fiqh issues. Your difficulty in grasping the Islamic system of Shura as related to Democracy arises from your attempt to mold Islam in a western package, in Shuraa, regular Joe with no understanding or acceptance of supremacy of Sharia is not qualified to cast his opinion in Shuraa unlike Democracy which gives the right to cast vote to any citizen regardless of the judicial basis of their opinion. Because in Islam the Law ( Sharia) supersedes any Conusltation not in line with it, whereas in Democracy, the consultation supersedes any past Law. In Islam, before we qualify for Shuraa on any issue or concern, we: 1. Unconditionally accept Allah's supremacy, his Sovreignty, his law ( Sharia) as the basis of all of our lives. 2. The Place of Quraan and Sunnah in the interpretation process, 3. Based on the above two, we begin to discuss ( Shuraa) any issue within those constraints. Shuraa means consultation, sharia means the law or the way to live. So a Muslim is not free to have a consultative meeting that conflicts with the Sharia as Sharia is the broad ball park in which shuraa takes place. Qiyaas and Ijmaac are again the fruit of Shuraa on clarification of applicability ambiguities in the Quran and Sunnah to a paticular situation. Nur Naden: You write: " Shura by definition, is a heavily man-influenced set of legislation through the influence of qiyaas and igmaac. " Naden: That Definition is erroneous on many counts: 1.Shuraa is not LEGISLATION, its the deliberation that can lead to interpret the moral of the Sharia law ( Maqaasidul Shariica) as applied to a particular issue at hand. 2. Shuraa is A Devine Initiated (Allah ordered His Messenger: Wa shaawirhum fil amr) 3. Shuraa is Heavily Devine influenced (Wa maa kaana li muninin wa laa miminatin idaa qadaa Allahu wa rasuuluhu amran an an yakuuna lahumul khiyaratu min amrihim". 4. Shuraa ( Shaaral Casalu) is Human Extracted procedure from Quraan and Sunnah (Honey), and when ambiguous, like a collection of data points in statsitics, the best-fit-line to the Sharia ( MAIN HIGHWAY) is sought and discussed, the opinions pertaining to this discussion are prioritised according to their proximaty to the STANDARD ( QURAN AND SUNNAH) and then the best opinion becomes a defacto SHARIA adding to the ever increasing body of Dynamic Islamic sharia law. So let us build together a better Definition of Shuuraa than yours, since you seem to have fun with definitions and logical premises that lead to a reasonable conclusion. Sharia in Arabic language is composed of three letters: Sheen, Raa, and Cayn. It has a single root, which illustrates something that is unfolding ahead of an observer. A. From that root, the following Linguistic meanings are derived: Verbs: 1. Sharaca Nur sharcan: meaning; Nur Drank water direct with mouth ( without cup). 2. Sharacat Naden Al Madrasa: meaning; Naden approached school. 3. Sharacat Naden taktub: meaning: She started writing. 4. Sharaca Nur al calama: Nur raised the banner. 5. Sharaca al muqaawilu al tariiqa: meaning, The contractor levelled and spread the road ahead. Nouns: 1. Shaaric: means INITIATOR, SETTER OF AGENDA. 2. Shaaric: means MODEL of NEW METHOD ( SUNNAH). 3. Shaaric: Main Avenue of a Town. 4. Shaarica: Water Supply, continuous without disruption. B. Legal Meanings: 1. Sharc: Clear WAY, METHOD OF DOING THINGS. 2. SHARC: All that Allah and His Messenger ORDAINED to be FOLLOWED. 3. SHAARIC: LAWMAKER ( SOVEREIGN), who delegated His Messenger to deliver the law in writing ( Quraan), sayings ( Hadeeth) action or implied approva. 4. Mashruuc: An Ordinance, An Action driven by a law. Now let us Define Shuraa: The orgin of Shuraa: A. Language: 1. Shaara al casal: meaning, purified and extracted honey from comb. 2. Shirtul casala, ishtartuh: I got net of honey (minus wax) or got the honey after paying money. 3. Ashaara: Pointed out, showed something with finger, words or body language. 4. Istashaara: Seek counsel 5. Shuuraa/mushaawara/tashaawur: Consultation. So Based on above analyses, Shuuraa means, Defintion of Shuraa: "Activity of Extrating the best feasible opinion among many competing opinions submitted by those who are competent by virtue of their specific knowledge to set controls for the upholding of the Moral of Sharia on a given subject". I have previously shown that all matters of concern to a Muslim community falls within the sphere of Allah's Sovereignty, thus, they are under His dominion and hence Muslims are naturally expected to surrender to His Law (Sharia) willingly. Which neccessitates that all issues discussed by a comunity are in line with the wishes of the lawmaker ( Shaaric), in the letter of the law, the Sunnah, and when ambiguous, Qiyas and Ijmaac, both in the moral of such law and method of application. Now let us go back to what I have written "First premise: Shura is Consultation. This is true, based on the verse " Wa amruhum shuuraa beynahum" "matters of concern to them, (are disposed by way of ) Consultation" Second Premise: "Sharia means the law or the way to live." Allah SWT says in Quraan: "He hath ordained for you that DEEN ( CODE of LIFE) which He commended unto Noah, and that which We inspire in thee (Muhammad), and that which We commended unto Abraham and Moses and Jesus, saying: Establish the DEEN ( THE ONLY CODE OF LIFE ALLAH WISHES PEOPLE TO LIVE BY), and be not divided therein. Dreadful for the idolaters is that unto which thou callest them." Allah also says in the same Suraa Shuuraa: "Or have they partners (of Allah, a.k.a Secular Lawmakers) who have made lawful for them in DEEN (CODE OF LIFE) that which Allah allowed not ? And if it was not for a decisive DECREE (gone forth already), it would have been judged between them. Lo! for wrong-doers is a painful doom" based on the above verses and definitions, my Conclusion is also true. Conclusion: So a Muslim is not free to have a consultative meeting that conflicts with the Sharia as Sharia is the broad ball park shuraa takes place Secondly you write: "Your comment that a muslim is not free to have a consultative meeting at odds with Sharia, though that very Sharia is being developed by other muslims, is very strange." Answer: Walaalo, Let us agree that we are discussing Shuraa concept from an Islamic Perspective, not from the Athenian " COMMUNE" concept that influenced emergence of Democracy, because as I warned you before there lies your confusion. Because Democracy is the other side of Sovereignty which belongs to the people who have the right to legislate anything they see fit with majority of votes, while Shuraa is quite the opposite, it begins with acceptance of the Sovereignty of a Devine Law Maker, therefore it does not legislate, Shuraa is just the Devine inspired venue to get a consensus on any matter that causes difference of opinions on the Maqaasidul Shariica ( Moral of the Devine Law) Shuraa in Islam is a deliberation, in which the OBJECTIVE is to reach CONSENSUS ON a MATTER OF CONCERN to A STAKEHOLDERS, with full awareness that there is no matter of real value to humans without a Devine directive ( Quraan and Sunnah) that serves as a broad outline for tackling any propblem. These stakeholders are SUBJECTS of a SOVEREIGN, whose Revelation is the STANDARD GUIDELINE and thus SUBJECTS ARE NOT FREE to DEVISE NEW STAND-ALONE LAWS that CONFLICT with the MORAL or the LETTER of SHARIA LAW. Their role is to argue best interpretation of an AMBIGUOUS ordinance in the SHARIA to tackle a problem faced by the STAKEHOLDERS. In Islam, the first thing we need to make a judgement on any issue is KNOWLEDGE, the more complex an issue the more knowledge is required, since it would be ( darbun minal junuun)( Insantity is trying to get different result by doing the same thing) to try to solve a problem with the exact set of knowledge/information that lead us to that situation in the first place. The purpose of the Devine Revelations, on which we Muslims base our actions, is to satisfy Allah SWT, a.k.a (Cibaada) which is the objective our exisitence on planet earth. Our comfort in this life and the next is what satisfies Allah (...wa in tashkuruu Yardahu lakum), Allah does not want hardship for us, but expediency, haste and cutting corners can be tempting at times with unbearable price tag to pay, both in this life and next, and here is where the concept of Shuraa and Sharia play an important role to make sure that we adhere to the Sharia as close as possible, thus Shuuraa it is a DEVINE INFLUENCED DELIBERATION ( Two angels on our shoulders. Shuraa is a deliberation activity, and like any activity, it has requirements. 1. Particpants in Shuraa must have done their homework, they should have a cerfication in the area of their expertise to offer an expert advice. 2. Participants pledge allegiance to Supremacy of the Sharia which is Allah's law, not a man made law, man's contribution being only its detailing, structuring, clarifying and getting it close to the Moral of the Devine Law Framework which we have discussed previously ( Protection of the Faith, Life, Property, Offspring, mind) 3. Participants base their opinion first on Quraan, secondly on Hadeeth, and then on Qiyaas, Ijtihaad and Ijmaac, each of these stages has requirements to be fulfilled. 4. Proofs to any argument in a Shuraa session can be one of four combinations. A. First the SOURCE of Proof can be: i. THUBUUT: AUTHENTICITY ii.DALALAH: MEANING B. Second, the meaning of Proof can be: i. QADCI: EXACT PRECISE MEANING ii. DHANNI: AMBIGUOUS/BASED ON GUESS WORK. So any issue on the Shuraa table can be one of the above four outcome. 1. Qadciyu Thubuut, Qadciyu Dalaalah. ( Authentic Source, Single meaning) 2. Qadciyu Thubuut, Dhanniyu Dalaalah ( Authentic Source, Ambibuous meaning). 3. Dhanniyu Thubuut, Qadciyu Dalaalah (Ambiguous source, Single meaning). 4. Dhanniyu Thubuut Dhanniyu Dalaalah (Ambiguous Source, Ambiguous meaning). Quraan and Hadeeth ( Saheeh category) are Genuine Sources, and when they have a single linguistic meaning, This is the primary sphere of the Sharia which has no room for discussion, followed by the second case which has a room for Shuraa, and the last two have no judicial significance at all. Wa Allahu Aclam Nur Naden sis The full paragraph of the Quote is: "Your conclusion does not follow your 2 premises. Sharia, by definition, is a heavily man-influenced set of legislation through the influence of qiyaas and igmaac." Answer: Please clarify how I misquoted, I cant see it? On your second point, we have no disagreement, I agree with you that there is a general framework and detail work for shuuraa which leaves a lot of room for interpretation, which in turn gave birth to the science of Fiqh as we know it today and the four schools of thought ( Madhaahib). You write: "My main disagreement remains to be your narrow definition of shura as a process operating within an interpretation of Quran and Sunnah in developing sharica." Yaa ghaliya; it was reported that the Prophet SAWS said, "I have left for you two sources if you abide by them, you will never get lost again ( Like people of the book, Christians and Jews, who took freedom to follow conflicting human ideas, when clear Devine instruction was at hand, as a result we got lost just like they have lost the way) The Two sources are Quraan and Sunnah. You write: " Shura is much broader than that, may not necessarily refer to the Quran & Sunnah, and is open to everyone in society and not just people who should have a cerfication in the area of their expertise to offer an expert advice, though I agree with you that they should do their homework" Yaa Ghaaliya, Shuraa has many levels of application, the higher level of shuraa is Strategic, it sets vision and mission (Purpose for which we exisit), second level is Tactical, which translates the mission to actionable goals, third level is Operational, processes and procedures and the last level is Executive. Mixing between these levels spells confusion. At the highest level, the Strategic level ( Maqaasidul Sharica), here is the equivalent of the Constitution, its similar to Constitutional Scholars in a Democracy, in Islam we need scholars well versed in Quraan and Sunnah ( our Constitution) to set the general scope of the Sharia, as it trickles down, more detailed requirements are debated in Shuuraa, the Tactical Scholars are those who can translate the broad direction of the strategies ( Maqaasidul Sharica) to current questions in theory, again they are expected to know two main issues, the current affairs that calls for the Shuraa and the output from the (Maqasidul Sharica) in the form of fatwas and supporting verses and hadeeths, the next level down is the Operational level, which bridges between the Strategic/Tactical and the Executive, their role is like the committee of ways and means, and their output is passed to the executive branch who discuss ( Shuraa)how to best execute the sharia on specific daily affairs of the public from traffic ligt, social issues to Business law. And finally you can have a neigborhood shuraa, PTA (parent Teacher Association) sport commitee shuuraa, etc. which are equivalent to the last level (the executive level), in this last level, professionals are needed not Jurists, no need to know the higher level stuff, just accept to always work within the framework of the Maqasidul Sharia wich validates all actionable activities, examples of Suraa here for example are how to control crime, waste management and recycling, and domestic violence among many other issues in any community. Yaa Ghaalya, The concept of Shuuraa as we know it was introduced by Islam, in the pages of the Quraan " Wa amruhum shuuraa beynahum" As I have written before, the (ishkaal) confusion from your point of view is due to an imbedded perception of western christian origin that people lead two lives, as a result, they are categorised as: Religious people and lay people. After which Religious people are expected to follow religious procedures to resolve religious conflicts , while lay people are not bound by any religious rulings in leading their lives, be it economical, political or social. As I have said before, in a secular society, religious beliefs are personal, thus not accepted to govern the public life, while in Islam, Muslim community is governed by the Sharia law to reflect their collective surrender to their maker as well as their personal surender, hence the importance of the Suraa instrument to align dynamic legislations with the conservative revelations. This problem ( Separation of Church and Satate) is rooted in the Roman domination of Christendom, when the King of Rome decreed that Gods dominion is the Church and Sundays, while the Roman king's dominion is all the rest. In Islam, All Dominion belongs to Allah, not to Roman Kings, nor to Public Kings ( REPUBLIC), the Deen (State of surreder and acceptance of Allah's absolute Dominion) is not equal to RELIGION as in Judeo-Christanity context) Deen is not an isolated ritual we perform on a weekend, its an integral part of our life, every aspect of our lives is in surrender to Allah, willingly or unwillingly, thus, we are in constant state of worship even when we sleep or have intimacy with our spouse and anything in between. To show where your "ishkaal" began let us re-read your past responses" " This means that shura is limited to the religious class in most societies because who else is involved in understanding Maqaasidul Shariica or providing new legislation and fatwas to respond to modern concerns. Deferring to this class creates the high priests of Islam (a religion that does not recognize it)." For which I replied: " Yaa Ghaaliya, Shuraa has many levels of application, the higher level of shuraa is Strategic, it sets vision and mission (Purpose for which we exist), second level is Tactical, which translates the mission to actionable goals, third level is Operational, processes and procedures and the last level is Executive. Mixing between these levels spells confusion. At the highest level, the Strategic level ( Maqaasidul Sharica), here is the equivalent of the Constitution, its similar to Constitutional Scholars in a Democracy, in Islam we need scholars well versed in Quraan and Sunnah ( our Constitution) to set the general scope of the Sharia, as it trickles down, more detailed requirements are debated in Shuuraa, the Tactical Scholars are those who can translate the broad direction of the strategies ( Maqaasidul Sharica) to current questions in theory, again they are expected to know two main issues, the current affairs that calls for the Shuraa and the output from the (Maqasidul Sharica) in the form of fatwas and supporting verses and hadeeths, the next level down is the Operational level, which bridges between the Strategic/Tactical and the Executive, their role is like the committee of ways and means, and their output is passed to the executive branch who discuss ( Shuraa)how to best execute the sharia on specific daily affairs of the public from traffic ligt, social issues to Business law. And finally you can have a neigborhood shuraa, PTA (parent Teacher Association) sport commitee shuuraa, etc. which are equivalent to the last level (the executive level), in this last level, professionals are needed not Jurists, no need to know the higher level stuff, just accept to always work within the framework of the Maqasidul Sharia wich validates all actionable activities, examples of Suraa here for example are how to control crime, waste management and recycling, and domestic violence among many other issues in any community. " Moral of the write up: There is no emerging matter of concern to Muslims that falls outside of shuraa, and shuraa is a devine mandated instrument to resolve opposing viewpoints on issues that arise in a Muslim community. Nur

Pacifist sis Here is what I found on Lunar Eclipse in English: 1. The Sun and Moon Eclipse as a Sign from Allah (SWT). Narrated Abu Bakra (RA): We were with Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) when the sun eclipsed. Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) stood up dragging his cloak till he entered the Mosque. He led us in a two-Rakat prayer till the sun (eclipse) had cleared. Then the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) said, "The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of someone's death. So whenever you see these eclipses pray and invoke (Allah) till the eclipse is over." [bukhari] 2. Solar or Lunar eclipse has nothing to do with someone’s birth or death. Narrated Al-Mughira bin Shu'ba: "The sun eclipsed in the life-time of Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) on the day when (his son) Ibrahim died. So the people said that the sun had eclipsed because of the death of Ibrahim. Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) said, "The sun and the moon do not eclipse because of the death or life (i.e. birth) of some-one. When you see the eclipse pray and invoke Allah." [bukhari] 3. In the event of Solar or Lunar eclipse the believers should be mindful of Akhira & turn towards Allah (SWT) and pray. Narrated Abu Bakra (RA) In the life-time of the Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) the sun eclipsed and he went out dragging his clothes till he reached the Mosque. The people gathered around him and he led them and offered two Rakat. When the sun (eclipse) cleared, he said, "The sun and the moon are two signs amongst the signs of Allah; they do not eclipse because of the death of someone, and so when an eclipse occurs, pray and invoke Allah till the eclipse is over." It happened that a son of the Prophet called Ibrahim died on that day and the people were talking about that (saying that the eclipse was caused by his death). [bukhari] 4. The prayer for Solar Eclipse is with congregation . Narrated Abu Bakra (RA) In the life-time of the Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) the sun eclipsed and he went out dragging his clothes till he reached the Mosque. The people gathered around him and he led them and offered two Rakat. When the sun (eclipse) cleared, he said, "The sun and the moon are two signs amongst the signs of Allah; they do not eclipse because of the death of someone, and so when an eclipse occurs, pray and invoke Allah till the eclipse is over." It happened that a son of the Prophet called Ibrahim died on that day and the people were talking about that (saying that the eclipse was caused by his death). [bukhari] 5. Ulama have stated that only eclipse occurred in the lifetime of Rasul-ullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) and it was Solar. 6. This congregational Solar eclipse is Two Rakaah similar to any other Two Rakaah Salah in the Madhab of Imam Abu Haneefa (RA). Nauman Ibn Bashir (RA) said that the Prophet (Sallaho Alaihe Wassallam) prayed the Salatul-Khusoof with us like one of your Salahs. He went into Ruku and performed the Sajdah, praying two Rakaats two Rakaats with two Rukuhs and supplicated to Allah (SWT) until the sun clearly reappeared. [Abi Dawud] Note: As previously stated that there was only one Solar Eclipse (i.e. one congregational Salah) during the lifetime of Prophet (Sallaho Alaihe Wassallam), however many narrations are found and in some Two Ruku are mentioned (per Rakaah), however according to Scholars in the Hanafi Madhab the most Authentic way is to have one Ruku per Rakaah. Imam Shaf’ae (RA) and others have differed on the matter. 6. Imam can do the recitation loudly or silently. Note: The opinion of Imam Abu Haneefa is to recite silently but Imam Abu Yusuf (RA) says that the recitation should be done loudly and Imam Muhammad (RA) has recorded both opinions. [Tuhfatul-Fuqaha] 7. Salah should be lengthened until the eclipse is finished. Note: There is no disagreement on the matter, however if Imam finishes the Salah early then Muslims should still remain engaged in the remembrance of Allah (SWT). 8. Salah for Lunar Eclipse should be prayed individually and not with congregation. Note: This is the Madhab of Imam Abu Haneefa (RA) and there are many reasons for this position: 1) There is no evidence from Prophet (Sallaho Alaihe Wassallam) of congregational Lunar Eclipse Salah. 2) The Hadeeth of Saheeh Bukhari (step 1) mentions praying but doesn’t stipulate prayer with congregation. 3) Imposing congregational Salah of Lunar Eclipse on people will be undue hardship as it occurs in the Night. Imam Shaf’ae (RA) has however differed on the matter and his given the evidence from the Sahaba (RA) as follows: Imam Hasan Al-Basari (RA) narrates that when Abdullah Ibn Abbas (RA) was the Ameer of Basrah the moon was eclipsed. Therefore he came into the Masjid and lead people in two Rakaat Salah and in each Salah he performed two Rukuhs and said, “I have performed it the same way as I saw Prophet (Sallaho Alaihe Wassallam) perform his prayer” [Musnad Imam Shaf’ae (RA)] 9. Khutbah is neither obligatory nor part of Salah. Note: Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali Ulama agree that Khutbah given on this occasion by Allah's Apostle (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) was to eradicate the thought in people's mind that the sun had eclipsed due to the death (of Rasul-ullah (Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam) 's son) and to establish that Eclipse is a sign of Allah (SWT) and does not occur due to someone's birth or death, therefore Khutbah is neither an obligation nor part of Salah (like Jummuah Salah, Eid Salah) etc. Imam Shaf'ae (RA) however differs on the matter. [Fiqh Alal- Madhahib Arb'a] Site: http://www.ummah.com/forum/showthread.php?t=162588 Baaraka Allahu Feeki Nur

Awakener Brother Can we revist the definition of Islam by tackling your question : Who Is Muslim? Can you clarify the context of the question? this will help us focus on that perspective, otherwise I may just say, "A Kafir is a person who is not a Muslim", a circular logic, which is the shortset answer. Nur

Akhi Xiin Why not enlighten Nomads with your wisdom by selecting one or two of topics above. Pick one, am sure that Castro and Kashafa will follow suit. Nur

Nomads Month of Quran is upon us, lets take dust iff our MAHJOOR Quraan, and begin connecting with Allah. Q: What is mahjoor? Yaa Nur? A: Its in Quraan! Nur

Was 9/11 an Inside Job? By Mark H. Gaffney The following is an excerpt from Mark H. Gaffney's forthcoming book, THE 911 MYSTERY PLANE AND THE VANISHING OF AMERICA, to be released in September 2008. 15/08/08 "ICH" -- - - Regrettably, there is considerable evidence that elements of the Bush administration were complicit in the 9/11 attack, and may even have helped stage it. Let us now examine some of what I regard as the most compelling evidence. However, the following discussion makes no claim to be comprehensive. We know that within minutes of the “worst terrorist attack” in US history, even before the collapse of WTC-2 at 9:59 am, US officials knew the names of several of the alleged hijackers. CBS reported that a flight attendant on AA Flight 11, Amy Sweeney, had the presence of mind to call her office and reveal the seat numbers of the hijackers who had seized the plane.[1] FBI Director Robert Mueller later said, “This was the first piece of hard evidence.”[2] In his memoirs CIA Director George Tenet emphasizes the importance of the passenger manifests, as does counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke.[3] All of which is very strange because the manifests later released by the airlines do not include the names of any of the alleged hijackers. Nor has this discrepancy ever been explained. According to MSNBC, the plan to invade Afghanistan and “remove Al Qaeda from the face of he earth” was already sitting on G.W. Bush’s desk on the morning of 9/11 awaiting his signature.[4] The plan, in the form of a presidential directive, had been developed by the CIA and according to Richard Clarke called for “arming the Northern Alliance...to go on the offensive against the Taliban [and] pressing the CIA to...go after bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership.”[5] A former Pakistani diplomat, Niaz Naik, tells virtually the same story. During a BBC interview, three days after 9/11, Niak claimed that senior American officials had informed him in mid-July 2001 that the US would attack the Taliban “before the snows start falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.”[6] Niak said he received this information in Berlin at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan. He also predicted, correctly, that the US attack would be launched from bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. But how could US officials know in mid-July that American forces would invade Afghanistan in October unless they had foreknowledge of the attack? Foreknowledge probably also explains why General Richard Myers, the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on 9/11, announced at the first post-9/11 meeting of Bush’s National Security Council, held on video-conference the afternoon of the attack, that “there are forty-two major Taliban bombing targets.”[7] But how did Myers come to have such detailed information about military targets in Afghanistan, so soon after the 9/11 attack? This important detail belies oft-repeated claims that the US military was not prepared to attack Afghanistan, and points to extensive war planning before 9/11. Journalist Steve Coll arrived at a similar conclusion while researching his 2004 book, Ghost Wars, an excellent history of the period leading up to the 9/11 attack. Coll interviewed two Clinton administration officials who informed him that ”the Pentagon had been studying possible targets in the same spring [i.e., 1998] that the CIA had been drawing up its secret plan to raid Tarnack Farm,” located near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where bin Laden had taken up quarters at the invitation of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.[8] According to Clarke, at the same meeting on the afternoon of 9/11, CIA Director George Tenet informed the president that “Al Qaeda had committed these atrocities.”[9] But, again, how did Tenet know this so soon after the attack, especially given that “security failures” had occurred, unless he had foreknowledge? No Hard Evidence On September 20, 2001, the Bush administration officially declared that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attack. Three days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced on Meet the Press that the government would soon release “a white paper” detailing the evidence against bin Laden.[10] Later the same day, Bush faced questions from the press about Powell’s remark and backed away from releasing any additional information. Bush explained that the government had a lot of evidence but that most of it was classified and could not be made public. Bush emphasized, however, that the evidence “leads to one person, as well as one global terrorist organization.”[11] National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made a similar statement during an interview on FOX News. Said Rice: “We have very good evidence of links between Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda operatives, and what happened on September 11.”[12] Rice refused to release any particulars, however, and, like Bush, claimed that the evidence was “classified.” As we know, the US government never got around to releasing the promised white paper. Why not? Was it because the evidence against bin Laden was too weak to hold up in court? Such was the view of journalist Seymour Hersh, who cited CIA and Justice Department sources to this effect in his regular column in the New Yorker magazine.[13] Foreign intelligence agencies were also busily investigating the case, but fared no better. For instance, Germany’s Chief Federal Prosecutor, Kay Nehm, admitted that there was no hard evidence linking bin Laden with the crime.[14] The lack of evidence prompted former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to speak out against President Bush’s decision to invoke Article V of the NATO Treaty, mobilizing NATO’s involvement in the war on terrorism. In Schmidt’s own words: “Proof had to be delivered that the September 11 terror attack came from abroad. [Yet,] that proof still has not been provided.”[15] Osama did not cooperate by acknowledging his role in the attack; on the contrary. In a statement on September 16, 2001 carried by Al-Jazeera, bin Laden categorically denied any involvement. Days later, he repeated this denial during an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Ummaut.[16] On November 3, 2001 Al-Jazeera released a third statement, in which bin Laden not only denied involvement but also accused the Bush administration of waging a “crusader war” against the Muslim world. To the best of my knowledge, none of these denials were reported in the US media. Why not? On October 1, 2001 British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons that the case against bin Laden was proved beyond a shadow of doubt. Said Blair: "I have seen absolutely powerful and incontrovertible evidence of his [Osama Bin Laden’s] link to the events of the 11th of September.”[17] Several days later (on October 4), Blair’s government went public with the evidence to which Blair had alluded: a “Bin Laden Dossier.”[18] But the evidence turned out to be short of “incontrovertible,” and in fact was shockingly thin. The Independent described it as “little more than conjecture,”[19] and an editorial in the Guardian concluded that the dossier was “almost worthless from a legal point of view.”[20] The (London) Times agreed, observing that “There is no evidence presented [in the dossier] that directly links bin Laden to September 11.”[21] The Bin Laden Video and the personification of evil Confronted with US demands to hand over bin Laden unconditionally, the Taliban was initially defiant, and refused. However, in early October 2001 two Pakistani Islamic parties persuaded the Taliban leadership to extradite bin Laden to Peshawar, Pakistan, where he would be held under house arrest and tried by an international tribunal.[22] The deal even included the extradition of bin Laden to the US in the event of a conviction. However, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf vetoed the arrangement, no doubt, under heavy pressure from the Bush administration. But why would the US turn down an opportunity to bring the arch villain of 9/11 to justice for the crime of the century? Was it because, as I have already suggested, the US had insufficient evidence to convict and faced the embarrassing likelihood of an acquittal? In fact, the only evidence the US government released linking bin Laden to 9/11 was a video-tape which supposedly turned up by chance in Afghanistan. According to the State Department, US military forces found the hour-long video in Jalalabad on December 9, 2001, shortly after the US invasion.[23] It purportedly shows bin Laden and several of his al Qaeda comrades ghoulishly celebrating their successful attack upon America. The US government released the tape on December 13, 2001 along with an English translation and a Department of Defense (DoD) press release. The latter included the following statement by Rumsfeld: "There was no doubt of bin Laden's responsibility for the September 11 attacks before the tape was discovered."[24] The US media made much of this confessional tape, as did political luminaries like New York City Mayor (and presidential hopeful) Rudy Giuliani, who told CNN that the tape confirmed that the US military campaign against bin Laden was “more than justified.” Giuliani added: "Obviously, this man [i.e., bin Laden] is the personification of evil. He seems delighted at having killed more people than he anticipated, which leaves you wondering just how deep his evil heart and soul really is."[25] In the video bin Laden brags about al Qaeda’s role in staging the attack. But is the footage bona fide? Anyone who has seen the film knows that the main character bears only the most superficial resemblance to bin Laden, judging from well-known photos. In addition, there are major discrepancies. For example, the video shows bin Laden writing with his right hand when according to the FBI he is a southpaw.[26] Two independent translators and a third expert on oriental studies also took issue with the English translation of the Arabic released by the DoD. During the program "Monitor,” which aired on the German TV channel “Das Erste,” the three experts stated that "at the most important places where it [i.e, the video] is held to prove the guilt of bin Laden, it [i.e., the translation] is not identical with the Arabic."[27] The experts also disputed the US claim that the tape proved foreknowledge. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the University of Hamburg, stated that "The American translators who listened to the tapes and transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of things in that they wanted to hear but that cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it." While this does not necessarily exonerate bin Laden, it does raise questions. If, as Bush claimed, the US had solid evidence of bin Laden’s guilt, then why make false claims? Evidently, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agrees with the skeptics. The FBI’s on-line web listing of “Most Wanted Terrorists” includes a page devoted to Osama bin Laden. According to this official post, which may be viewed by anyone with access to cyberspace, bin Laden is wanted by the FBI for the August 1998 attacks upon US Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed over 200 people.[28] However, the page makes no reference to the events of September 11, 2001. Nor is there any mention of the video discussed above. In June 2006, when blogger Ed Haas learned about this, he was understandably puzzled and contacted FBI headquarters by phone seeking an explanation. Haas talked with Rex Tomb, the FBI’s Chief of Investigative Publicity, who informed him that “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.”[29] Haas was dumbfounded, and said: “But how is this possible?” Tomb replied that “bin Laden has not been formally charged in connection with 9/11.” He then explained why not: “The FBI gathers evidence. Once evidence is gathered, it is turned over to the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice then decides whether it has enough evidence to present to a federal grand jury. In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” [my emphasis][30] This admission by the FBI is astonishing and raises fundamental questions about the war on terrorism, as well as the role of the US media. Was Osama bin Laden convicted for the cold-blooded murder of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans in the US court of public opinion by means of a media circus? Did the US government and the corporate media collude to deceive the American people? If so, then a colossal miscarriage of justice has occurred. Consider also the strange statement made by President Bush at a press conference on March 13, 2002. When asked about the progress being made to catch bin Laden, Bush replied that “we haven’t heard much from him. [i.e., bin Laden] And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I, I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.” [31] [my emphasis] But why this almost lackadaisical attitude about the arch-villain whom Bush had promised to track down to the ends of the earth? What had become of the president’s laser-like determination? Bush explained that bin Laden had ceased to be a terrorist threat due to the US occupation of Afghanistan. Yet, by at least one account, the US forces at Tora Bora displayed almost unbelievable incompetence during the pursuit of bin Laden, as a result of which the accused and most of his entourage escaped.[32] Was this the plan, all along? A no less strange remark made a few weeks later (April 6, 2002) by General Richard Myers, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, suggests that bin Laden’s getaway had been approved at the highest level. Myers told CNN that “the goal has never been to get bin Laden.”[33] I personally found his statement incomprehensible, since at the time Osama was public enemy number one. Did the US allow bin Laden to escape because the Bush administration judged he was more valuable at-large? We can’t be certain, because by this time there were also numerous reports that bin Laden was dead.[34] Did President Bush know when he made the above statement that bin Laden was already deceased? This would explain Bush’s casual demeanor. Yet, either way, from the standpoint of propaganda it hardly mattered whether bin Laden was dead or alive. His larger-than-life reputation could be sustained simply by neglecting to confirm his death, and the legend is what counted. His persona could also be “spun” in various ways and made to serve political expedience. Indeed, by this logic bin Laden was even more valuable dead because a living breathing bin Laden might at some point be apprehended, in which case the Bush administration faced the unwelcome prospect of a very public trial at which the terrorist would have an opportunity to tell his side of the story to a listening world. And this, of course, had to be avoided. If we can believe the 9/11 Commission Report, the case against bin Laden was greatly bolstered by the capture and subsequent confession in 2003 of the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). The problem, of course, is that the official story about the plot against America is wholly based on secret CIA interrogations that have never been independently confirmed, and must therefor be viewed as suspect. But even if we accept the testimony of KSM in 2003, this does not explain the rush to war in 2001. Nor does it explain President Bush’s decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein, a decision reportedly made in July 2002.[35] Previous cases of terrorism had already demonstrated the wisdom of proceeding with caution, since knee-jerk responses can (and do) misfire. For example, after the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, US investigators at first suspected a Mideast connection. But this was proved false, and similar errors were made after the 1988 downing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Although initial evidence pointed to Syria or Iran, a thorough forensic investigation ruled these out and eventually implicated Libya. The 9/11 Commission Report itself describes the latter case as “a cautionary tale about rushing to judgement in attributing responsibility for a terrorist act.”[36] So, why the rush to war after the September 11 attack? If the Bush administration had conclusive evidence that al Qaeda was responsible, why not release it? Was the Bush White House tight-lipped because the actual evidence would have exposed the complicity of the US military and intelligence community? A stunning story that broke in the US press in 2005 points to such a conclusion. Able Danger As it happened, a legitimate US military counter-terrorist operation known as Able Danger was tracking Mohamed Atta and his cohorts as early as January-February 2000. The operation, based at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia, was small but extremely high-tech, as it employed advanced computers to sweep the internet, a methodology known as as data-mining. In May 2000, however, when Able Danger’s success became known throughout the Defense Department, the officers who ran it were ordered to shut it down and destroy their data.[37] One officer reportedly was threatened with prison if he refused. Later, the Pentagon attempted to block Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Able Danger, and in 2005, when this failed, the Pentagon refused Able Danger staffers permission to testify before the committee.[38] One intelligence officer who later testified anyway, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, was targeted for harassment. The question is why? Of course, the standard explanation is that the military bureaucracy made gross blunders and later sought to cover up their incompetence. But there is another possibility. Was Able Danger shut down because this honest operation threatened to unmask the covert planning for the September 11 “attack”? What is clear is that the Pentagon’s self-serving attempts to gag and discredit Lt. Col. Shaffer are not to be believed. In February 2006 Shaffer told the House Armed Services Committee that during the summer of 2000 he and other officers involved in Able Danger attempted on three separate occasions to warn the FBI about the terrorist threat posed by Mohamed Atta. But the meetings never happened. Each time they were canceled at the last minute by high-level Pentagon attorneys.[39] Nor has the Pentagon ever provided a satisfactory explanation as to why.[40] Some time after the dissolution of Able Danger Shaffer was reassigned to Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan, where in October 2003 he succeeded in bringing the existence of Able Danger to the attention of the 9/11 Commission. This apparently happened due to a chance encounter with Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the commission, and several commission staffers who were then on tour, gathering firsthand information about the US war on terrorism. Lt. Col. Shaffer told the House committee that after he briefed the commission staff about Able Danger’s success in identifying Mohamed Atta and other alleged 9/11 hijackers, Zelikow came up, handed him his card, and asked him to “please contact me upon your return to the states so we can continue this dialogue.”[41] However, three months later when Shaffer did just that he was surprised to discover that Zelikow was no longer interested in Able Danger. But why wouldn’t he be? Then, all hell broke loose when Shaffer dutifully informed his commanding officer about the contact. From that point on Lt. Col. Shaffer was subjected to the sort of military hazing that is usually reserved for green recruits. His security clearance was cancelled. He lost access to his office computer and all of his classified materials about Able Danger, which, he later learned, were destroyed. Subsequently, the Pentagon dismissed his testimony, claiming it was unsupported by hard evidence, an obvious example of Catch-22. Shaffer also learned that he was under investigation, although no formal charges were ever filed against him. He was told “off the record” that he had “pissed off” one or more high-ranking officers. Several of Shaffer’s colleagues from Able Danger corroborated his story, but it didn’t matter. His military career was over, destroyed.[42] Shaffer’s testimony before Congress is riveting and is essential reading for anyone interested in 9/11 truth. In their 2006 book Without Precedent, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, deny that Able Danger had ever identified Mohamed Atta before 9/11.[43] But their assertion, much belated, is just not credible. Their own final report on 9/11 makes no mention of Able Danger. It is abundantly clear that even though Lt. Col. Shaffer notified the panel about this important counter-terrorism operation the commissioners made no attempt to investigate it, and since Kean and Hamilton failed to do so how can they now credibly claim to know? Obviously, their denial is based on information they received, much later, from the Pentagon. Kean and Hamilton write that their staff “received all of the Department of Defense documents on Able Danger and had found no mention of Atta.”[44] But their claim is not persuasive, since we know that 2.5 terabytes of intelligence data about Able Danger had already been destroyed (in 2000), not to mention the information on Shaffer’s hard drive (in 2004). The question for the co-chairs is simple: What assurance could they possibly have that the documents they received from the DoD about Able Danger tell the full story? Obviously, they do not. More to the point, why would Kean and Hamilton believe the Pentagon over the testimony of Lt. Col. Shaffer? By this time the co-chairs already had good reason to suspect that the Pentagon, not Shaffer, had deceived them in the hearings.[45] Eavesdropping on bin Laden The fact that Able Danger was shut down in May 2000, long before Bush entered office, raises disturbing questions. Was covert planning for 9/11 already underway during the Clinton administration? It is curious that in 2002 CIA Director George Tenet told a closed session of a joint House-Senate panel investigating the 9/11 “security failure” that al Qaeda‘s planning of the September 11, 2001 attack started as early as 1998.[46] But how could Tenet know this unless the CIA had been tracking bin Laden, all along? As a matter of fact, we know they were! According to several UPI reports, the National Security Administration (NSA) acknowledged in February 2001 that the use of advanced Echelon software enabled the US intelligence community to eavesdrop on thousands of bin Laden’s cell phone calls over a period of years. US officials disclosed that even after bin Laden began to encrypt certain calls in 1995, his “codes were broken.”[47] The date 1998 is doubly curious. That same year Tenet informed the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA’s strategy to defeat al Qaeda included the recruiting of al Qaeda operatives.[48] In his memoirs Tenet goes even further with an assertion that is remarkable for its candor. He writes: “the [9/11] commission failed to recognize the sustained comprehensive efforts conducted by the intelligence community prior to 9/11 to penetrate the al Qaeda organization.”[49] I had to re-read this passage several times just to believe my own eyes. Did the CIA recruit terrorists who were then used as patsies on 9/11? Bush officials, of course, have steadfastly denied that the US successfully penetrated al Qaeda before 9/11. But their denials are less than persuasive in light of Lt. Col. Shaffer’s testimony about Able Danger, and also because there is no doubt: we know that the monitoring of phone calls continued. After al Qaeda bombed two US embassies in East Africa in August 1998, FBI investigators got lucky and stumbled upon an al Qaeda communications hub in Yemen. According to writer Lawrence Wright, this proved to be “one of the most important pieces of evidence the FBI would ever discover, allowing investigators to map the links of the al Qaeda network all across the globe.”[50] The hub was a private telephone, anything but high tech. The switchboard operator turned out to be the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Midhar, one of the nineteen alleged hijackers. His job in Yemen was simply to relay messages to-and-from various al Qaeda operatives, including bin Laden.[51] From phone records US investigators confirmed a flurry of calls through the hub before the embassy bombings, and this pattern was repeated before the attack on the USS Cole in October 2000.[52] Indeed, it is unclear why US intelligence agencies failed to prevent the attack on the Cole because, by this time, they were listening. The al Qaeda hub was allowed to operate right up until September 11, 2001, and even after. Incredibly, US and Yemeni authorities did not finally move in and close it down until 2002.[53] Based on this evidence, gleaned from open sources in the US media, we must conclude that the US intelligence community was tracking al Qaeda’s nearly every move before 9/11, and had been for years, probably including the entry of the alleged hijackers into the US, their “flight training” and subsequent movements. The phone intercepts certainly continued. In June 2002 both the Miami Herald and the Dallas Star-Telegram reported that in the summer of 2001 the NSA even monitored phone conversations between alleged 9/11 lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM).[54] The papers reported that the NSA “did not recognize the significance of what they had.” Evidently, we are supposed to believe that the NSA did not pass along this important intelligence to the CIA. But this is absurd. After all, the NSA is a part of the US Department of Defense and exists for the purpose of providing intelligence to the CIA and the US military. The story in the Miami Herald even acknowledges this, citing an NSA official who stated under condition of anonymity that it was “simply not true” that the NSA failed to share the information with other intelligence agencies.[55] Of course they shared it. Incidentally, a google search failed to locate the full text of either of these articles, which apparently have long since been scrubbed from the internet. To the best of my knowledge they survive in cyberspace only as thumbnails. What are we to make of all of this? Did elements of the US intelligence community know about al Qaeda’s multiple hijacking operation, all along? Did they, then, covertly piggy-back their own planning on top of it, thereby insuring the attack’s “success” while also manipulating it for their own ignoble ends? If true, this would easily explain why the Pentagon shut down Able Danger in May 2000. It would explain the Pentagon’s gag order imposed upon the Able Danger staffers, which blunted a Congressional inquiry. It would also explain the carefully orchestrated smear campaign aimed at Lt Col. Shaffer, who did his patriotic duty and was made to pay a terrible price. It would explain why the DoD fed phony or incomplete information about Able Danger to co-chairs Kean and Hamilton, and other members of the commission, to persuade them that the data-mining effort was “insignificant.” It would also explain why, time and again, during the period before 9/11, the CIA withheld critical information from the FBI, information, which, had it become known, would have enabled the FBI to foil the 9/11 attack. The FBI was always just one or two critical pieces of information short of putting together the plot. Nor has the CIA disconnect ever been adequately explained.[56] The standard excuses, bureaucratic bungling and interagency rivalry, are simply not persuasive. This interpretation would also explain why George Tenet lied during the 9/11 Commission hearings when he denied his meetings with President Bush in August 2001. Indeed, it might even explain why President-elect G.W. Bush retained Tenet, a Clinton appointee, as his CIA chief. The move was one of Bush’s first decisions as president and was most unusual, especially given the neocons’ scarcely concealed scorn for the Clinton administration. However, it makes perfect sense, assuming that when Bush took office elements of the CIA and US military were already deeply involved in the covert planning for the 9/11 attack. Continuity at the CIA would have been essential. As far as I know, writer Ian Henshall was the first to make this connection.[57] And let us not forget: during the period before 9/11 the CIA Director visited the White House on a daily basis. Tenet personally briefed Bush on intelligence issues, an unusual chore for a CIA Director.[58] But, again, this becomes understandable, assuming that a major covert operation was in the works, one that entailed extreme compartmentalization. Only a very few individuals at the top would have been fully briefed. bin Laden in Dubai? A no less shocking story that appeared in the prestigious French paper Le Figaro on October 11, 2001 points to the same conclusion. The story claimed that bin Laden was actually under the protection of US security agencies prior to the 9/11 attack. According to Le Figaro, bin Laden checked in to the American Hospital in Dubai on July 4, 2001, just two months before 9/11, where he received medical treatment over a ten-day period for a serious kidney ailment.[59] Dubai is one of the Arab Emirates located in the Persian Gulf. The story cannot be based on just rumor or hearsay because it includes many details: Bin Laden was reportedly accompanied by his personal physician, a nurse, four body guards, and at least one of his lieutenants. It also states that the local CIA station chief, evidently a well known figure in the tiny country, was seen entering bin Laden’s hospital suite during his stay, and immediately after the meeting caught a flight back to the US. If the story is accurate, bin Laden held court from his hospital room, welcoming various members of his extended family, as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. It is no secret that bin Laden suffered from kidney disease. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had informed the Clinton administration about bin Laden’s deteriorating health as early as 1998, during a state visit to Washington.[60] A follow-up report in the Guardian (UK) on November 1, 2001 confirmed the above story and added further details, noting that bin Laden’s Saudi guests included Prince Turki al Faisal, who was then head of Saudi intelligence. The article in the Guardian names French intelligence as the source of the story in Le Figaro. It also claims the information was leaked because the French were “keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.” Given that bin Laden was already wanted at the time for the US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, why did the US not arrange to have local authorities snatch the terrorist in Dubai, in order to bring him to justice? Of course, it goes without saying that bin Laden would never have visited the US hospital in the first place had he not been confident of his protected status. Do we dare to connect these dots? Surely the story in Le Figaro suggests that elements of the US intelligence establishment knew about the coming 9/11 attack and allowed bin Laden to remain free to play his assigned role. As shocking as this sounds, if the story is correct there is no other plausible explanation. Such a conclusion is further supported by powerful evidence that first came to light on November 6, 2001, when the BBC program Newsnight produced FBI documents on British television proving that soon after G.W. Bush entered office the White House ordered the FBI to “back off” from ongoing investigations of Osama bin Laden and other members of his family, some of whom were living in the US at the time.[61] To the best of my knowledge, none of these stories from European and UK press were ever reported in the US media. Again, why not? Were elements of the US government and intelligence community complicit in the events of September 11, 2001? Did they allow the attack to happen, or even help to stage it, in order to generate the pretext for a much more aggressive US foreign policy which the American people would not otherwise support? Either way, the implications are shocking, indeed, so shocking that many of our fellow countrymen (and women) cannot bring themselves to think such thoughts. Yet, it is a matter of record that the neoconservatives openly advocated an imperial shift in US foreign policy before the November 2000 election.[62] Moreover, Clinton was already moving in this direction. These are grave questions for our nation and we must not fail to address them. If there is any truth in them we face a Constitutional crisis unlike anything in our history. Mark's forthcoming book, THE 9/11 MYSTERY PLANE will feature, among other disclosures, the first published discussion and analysis of the NORAD/FAA radar data from 9/11, released last October thanks to a FOIA request. Mark Can be reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net Mark's book can be pre-ordered at amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/11-Mystery-Plane-Vanishing-America/dp/0979988608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qi d=1216184222&sr=1-1 1 According to another account the stewardess was Betty Ong. Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/11, Free Press, New York, 2008, p.18. 2 “The President’s Story,” CBS News, September 10, 2003. 3 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, pp.xix and 167; Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, Free Press, New York, 2004. pp. 13-14. 4 Jim Miklaszewski and Alex Johnson, “US planned for attack on al-qaida,” MSNBC and NBC, May 16, 2002, 5 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, Free Press, New York, 2004, p. 26. Evidently the name of the plan was “Blue Sky.” George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, pp. 171 and 130-131. 6 The three US officials were Tom Simmons, a former US Ambassador to Pakistan, Karl Inderfurth, former Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, and Lee Coldren, a former State Department expert on south Asia. George Arney, “US ‘planned attack on Taliban’,” BBC news, September 18, 2001. 7 At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, pp.. 23. 8 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin Press, New York, 2004, p. 409, also see note 21, p. 628. 9 Ibid. 10 “White House Wavers on Publicizing bin Laden Case,” UPI, September 24, 2001. 11 Transcript: President Freezes Terrorists' Assets: Remarks by the President, Secretary of the Treasury O'Neill and Secretary of State Powell on Executive Order, The Rose Garden, September 24, 2001, posted at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010924-4.html 12 News Sunday, FOX News, September 23, 2001. 13 Seymour Hersh, “What Went Wrong: The C.I.A. and the failure of American intelligence, New Yorker, October 1, 2001 14 The Guardian, September 17, 2001, p. 11; also see The (London) Times, September 28, 2001, p. 5. 15 Schmidt reportedly made the statement on German television on December 10, 2001. See the Webster Tarpley segment in the video by Barrie Zwicker, “The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw,” 2004. 16 Ummaut, September 22, 2001. The pertinent text reads, as follows: “I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks....The American system is totally in the control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States ... I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom.” 17 The (London) Daily Telegraph, October 1, 2001. 18 The full transcript may be viewed at http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2001/10/05 19 The Independent (UK), October 7, 2001, p. 7. 20 The Guardian, October 5, 2001, p. 23 21 The (London) Times, October 5, 2001, p. 8. 22 The (London) Daily Telegraph, October 4, 2001, p. 9; also see Milan Rai, “Afghanistan: The Unnecessary War,” Znet, October 13, 2004. 23 The full video is posted at http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/2001/12/14 24 As of this writing the press release is still posted and may be viewed at http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=3184 25 “Bin Laden on tape: Attacks ‘benefited Islam greatly’,” CNN, December 14, 2001, posted at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/12/13/ret.bin.laden.videotape/ 26 http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm 27 Georg Restle, Ekkehard Sieker, “Bin-Laden-Video: Falschübersetzung als Beweismittel?”, MONITOR Nr. 485 am, December 20, 2001. posted at http://web.archive.org/web/20021218105636/www.wdr.de/tv/monitor/beitraege.phtml?id=379 28 The page is posted at http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm 29 “FBI says, “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” Muckraker Report, June 6, 2006, posted at http://www.teamliberty.net/id267.html 30 Ibid. 31 President Bush Holds Press Conference, The James S. Brady Briefing Room, March 13, 2002. Posted at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020313-8.html 32 John F. Burns,”10-Month Afghan Mystery: Is bin Laden Dead or Alive?,” New York Times, September 30, 2002. 33 Evans, Novak, Hunt and Shields, “Interview with General Richard Myers,” CNN, April 6, 2002. 34 Giles Tremlett (in Madrid), “Al-Qaeda leaders say nuclear power stations were original targets,” The Guardian, September 9, 2002; also see “Report: Bin Laden Already Dead,” FOX News, December 26, 2001; “Israeli Intelligence: Bin Laden is dead, heir has been chosen,” Special to World Tribune.com, October 16, 2002; “Musharraf: bin Laden likely dead,” CNN, January 19, 2002. 35 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, My Years at the CIA, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, p. 309. 36 The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Norton & Co., New York, 2004, pp. 75-76. 37 Army Major Eric Kleinsmith destroyed 2.5 terabytes of intelligence data about al Qaeda in May and June 2000, at the order of Tony Gentry, general counsel of the Army Intelligence and Security Command. This is an enormous amount of data. To get an idea just how large the number is, wrap your mind around this: It is the equivalent of 25% of the Library of Congress. Patience Wait, “Data-mining offensive in the works,” Government Computer News, October 10, 2005, posted at http://www.gcn.com/print/24_30/37242-1.html?topic=news 38 Philip Shenon, “Pentagon Blocks Testimony at Senate Hearings n Terrorism,” New York Times, September 20, 2005; also see Philip Shenon, “Second Officer Says 9/11 Leader was Named Before Attacks,” New York Times, August 23, 2005. 39 Prepared statement of Anthony A. Shaffer, Lt Col., US Army Reserve, Senior Intelligence Officer, before the House Armed Services Committee, Wednesday February 15, 2006, full transcript posted at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_hr/021506shaffer.pdf 40 The official explanations are so ridiculous they do not even deserve comment. 41 Ibid. 42 Will Dunham, “Three more assert Pentagon knew of 9/11 ringleader,” Reuters, September 1, 2005; “Navy Captain Backs Able Danger Claims,” FOX News, August 23, 2005; also see Thom Shanker, “Terrorist Known Before 9/11, More Say.” New York Times, September 2, 2005. 43 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/1 Commission, Alfred A, Knopf, New York, 2006, pp. 294-295. 44 Ibid. 45 Dan Eggen, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon,” The Washington Post, August 2, 2006. 46 John Diamond and Kathy Kiely, “Officials: Sept. 11 attacks were planned since 1998,” USA Today, June 18, 2002. 47 Richard Sale, “NSA Listens to bin Laden,” UPI, February 13, 2001; also see John C.K. Daly, “Analysis: US Combs Airwaves for bin Laden,” UPI, February 21, 2001; also see “US Makes Cyberwar on bin Laden,” UPI, February 9, 2001. 48 See the final report of the Joint Inquiry Committee, Appendix, p. 21, cited in Coll, Ghost Wars, p. 413., also see note 30, p. 629. 49 George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, HarperCollins, New York, 2007, p.121. 50 Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006, pp.277-278. 51 By Lisa Myers, “Hindsight and the attacks on America,” NBC News, July 21, 2004, posted at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5479799/ 52 David Enser, Chris Plante and Peter Bergen, “USS Cole plot began after embassy attacks, investigator says, CNN News, December 20, 2002, posted at http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/12/20/terrorism.threat.02/ 53 “US links Yemen clan to Sept. 11 and East Africa attacks,” MSNBC, February 14, 2002. archived at http://www.bouwman.com/911/Operation/Yemen/Feb-15.html 54 Dallas Star-Telegram, June 7, 2002; also see Miami Herald, June 6, 2002. 55 Miami Herald, June 6, 2002. 56 For an excellent discussion of the many cases where the CIA withheld information, see Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2006. See chapters 16-20. 57 Ian Henshall, 9/11 Revealed: The New Evidence, Carroll and Graf, New York, 2007, p.64. 58 Tenet mentions this in his memoirs. At the Center of the Storm, p. 137. 59 Alexandra Richard, “The CIA met bin Laden while undergoing treatment at an American Hospital last July in Dubai, Le Figaro, October 11, 2001. (translated by Tiphaine Dickson) 60 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Penguin Press, New York, 2004, p. 442, also see note 14, p. 633. 61 Greg Palast and David Pallister, “FBI claims Bin aden Inquiry was frustrated: Officials told to ‘back off’ on Saudis before September 11,” Guardian (UK), November 7, 2001. 62 The neocon strategy for global US empire was outlined in a 2000 briefing paper, “Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century.” It may still be viewed

Tape: Top CIA official confesses order to forge Iraq-9/11 letter came on White House stationery In damning transcript, ex-CIA official says Cheney likely ordered letter linking Hussein to 9/11 attacks By John Byrne 09/08/08 "Raw Story" -- - A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency's former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer. The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico's Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday. On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer's behalf. In it, Richer declared, "I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book." The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer's own remarks in the transcript. "Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?" Suskind asked. "No, no, no," Richer replied, according to the transcript. "What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'" "Which is the White House?" Suskind asked. "Yes," Richer said. "But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president." "But he didn't say that specifically," Richer added. "I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president." "But there wasn't anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president," Suskind continued. "Nope," Richer said. "It just had the White House stationery." "Exactly right." Later, Richer added, "You know, if you've ever seen the vice president's stationery, it's on the White House letterhead. It may have said OVP (Office of the Vice President). I don't remember that, so I don't want to mislead you." Suskind says decision to post transcript unusual Suskind posted the transcript at his blog, saying, "This posting is contrary to my practice across 25 years as a journalist. But the issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way." It was first picked up by ThinkProgress and Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein. Suskind's new book asserts that senior Bush officials ordered the CIA to forge a document "proving" that Saddam Hussein had been trying to manufacture nuclear weapons and was collaborating with al Qaeda. The alleged result was a faked memorandum from then chief of Saddam's intelligence service Tahir Jalil Habbush dated July 1, 2001, and written to Hussein. The bogus memo claimed that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had received training in Baghdad but also discussed the arrival of a "shipment" from Niger, which the Administration claimed had supplied Iraq with yellowcake uranium -- based on yet another forged document whose source remains uncertain. The memo subsequently was treated as fact by the British Sunday Telegraph, and cited by William Safire in his New York Times column, providing fodder for Bush's efforts to take the US to war. The Sunday Telegraph cited the main source for its story on Iraq's 9/11 involvement as Ayad Allawi, a former Baathist who rebelled against Saddam and was appointed a government position after the US occupation. Nothing in the story explains how an Iraqi politician was privy to the fake memo, but the New York Times column alluded to Allawi and described him as "an Iraqi leader long considered reliable by intelligence agencies." "To characterize it right," Richer also declares in the transcript, "I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on--it was to--and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: 'Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.' To be honest with you, I don't want to make it sound--I for sure don't want to portray this as George jumping: 'Okay, this has gotta happen.' As I remember it--and, again, it's still vague, so I'll be very straight with you on this--is it wasn't that important. It was: 'This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about . . . I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. 'Rob,' you know, 'do something with this.' I think it was more like that than: 'Get this done.'" Magazine asserts Feith created bogus document Today, The American Conservative also published a report saying that the forgery was actually produced by then-Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans, citing an unnamed intelligence source. The source reportedly added that Suskind’s overall claim “is correct." "My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment," the magazine wrote. "Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity."

The mask of altruism disguising a colonial war Oil will be the driving factor for military intervention in Sudan By John Laughland 09/08/07 "The Guardian" -- - If proof were needed that Tony Blair is off the hook over Iraq, it came not during the Commons debate on the Butler report on July 21, but rather at his monthly press conference the following morning. Asked about the crisis in Sudan, Mr Blair replied: "I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can." This last phrase means that troops might be sent - as General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the general staff, immediately confirmed - and yet the reaction from the usual anti-war campaigners was silence. Mr Blair has invoked moral necessity for every one of the five wars he has fought in this, surely one of the most bellicose premierships in history. The bombing campaign against Iraq in December 1998, the 74-day bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999, the intervention in Sierra Leone in the spring of 2000, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001, and the Iraq war last March were all justified with the bright certainties which shone from the prime minister's eyes. Blair even defended Bill Clinton's attack on the al-Shifa pharmaceuticals factory in Sudan in August 1998, on the entirely bogus grounds that it was really manufacturing anthrax instead of aspirin. Although in each case the pretext for war has been proved false or the war aims have been unfulfilled, a stubborn belief persists in the morality and the effectiveness of attacking other countries. The Milosevic trial has shown that genocide never occurred in Kosovo - although Blair told us that the events there were worse than anything that had happened since the second world war, even the political activists who staff the prosecutor's office at the international criminal tribunal in The Hague never included genocide in their Kosovo indictment. And two years of prosecution have failed to produce one single witness to testify that the former Yugoslav president ordered any attacks on Albanian civilians in the province. Indeed, army documents produced from Belgrade show the contrary. Like the Kosovo genocide, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as we now know, existed only in the fevered imaginings of spooks and politicians in London and Washington. But Downing Street was also recently forced to admit that even Blair's claims about mass graves in Iraq were false. The prime minister has repeatedly said that 300,000 or 400,000 bodies have been found there, but the truth is that almost no bodies have been exhumed in Iraq, and consequently the total number of such bodies, still less the cause of their deaths, is simply unknown. In 2001, we attacked Afghanistan to capture Osama bin Laden and to prevent the Taliban from allegedly flooding the world with heroin. Yet Bin Laden remains free, while the heroin ban imposed by the Taliban has been replaced by its very opposite, a surge in opium production, fostered by the warlords who rule the country. As for Sierra Leone, the United Nations human development report for 2004, published on July 15, which measures overall living standards around the world, puts that beneficiary of western intervention in 177th place out of 177, an august position it has continued to occupy ever since our boys went in: Sierra Leone is literally the most miserable place on earth. So much for Blair's promise of a "new era for Africa". The absence of anti-war scepticism about the prospect of sending troops into Sudan is especially odd in view of the fact that Darfur has oil. For two years, campaigners have chanted that there should be "no blood for oil" in Iraq, yet they seem not to have noticed that there are huge untapped reserves in both southern Sudan and southern Darfur. As oil pipelines continue to be blown up in Iraq, the west not only has a clear motive for establishing control over alternative sources of energy, it has also officially adopted the policy that our armies should be used to do precisely this. Oddly enough, the oil concession in southern Darfur is currently in the hands of the China National Petroleum Company. China is Sudan's biggest foreign investor. We ought, therefore, to treat with scepticism the US Congress declaration of genocide in the region. No one, not even the government of Sudan, questions that there is a civil war in Darfur, or that it has caused an immense number of refugees. Even the government admits that nearly a million people have left for camps outside Darfur's main towns to escape marauding paramilitary groups. The country is awash with guns, thanks to the various wars going on in Sudan's neighbouring countries. Tensions have risen between nomads and herders, as the former are forced south in search of new pastures by the expansion of the Sahara desert. Paramilitary groups have practised widespread highway robbery, and each tribe has its own private army. That is why the government of Sudan imposed a state of emergency in 1999. But our media have taken this complex picture and projected on to it a simple morality tale of ethnic cleansing and genocide. They gloss over the fact that the Janjaweed militia come from the same ethnic group and religion as the people they are allegedly persecuting - everyone in Darfur is black, African, Arabic-speaking and Muslim. Campaigners for intervention have accused the Sudanese government of supporting this group, without mentioning that the Sudanese defence minister condemned the Janjaweed as "bandits" in a speech to the country's parliament in March. On July 19, moreover, a court in Khartoum sentenced six Janjaweed soldiers to horrible punishments, including the amputation of their hands and legs. And why do we never hear about the rebel groups which the Janjaweed are fighting, or about any atrocities that they may have committed? It is far from clear that the sudden media attention devoted to Sudan has been provoked by any real escalation of the crisis - a peace agreement was signed with the rebels in April, and it is holding. The pictures on our TV screens could have been shown last year. And we should treat with scepticism the claims made for the numbers of deaths - 30,000 or 50,000 are the figures being bandied about - when we know that similar statistics proved very wrong in Kosovo and Iraq. The Sudanese government says that the death toll in Darfur, since the beginning of the conflict in 2003, is not greater than 1,200 on all sides. And why is such attention devoted to Sudan when, in neighbouring Congo, the death rate from the war there is estimated to be some 2 or 3 million, a tragedy equalled only by the silence with which it is treated in our media? We are shown starving babies now, but no TV station will show the limbless or the dead that we cause if we attack Sudan. Humanitarian aid should be what the Red Cross always said it must be - politically neutral. Anything else is just an old-fashioned colonial war - the reality of killing, and the escalation of violence, disguised with the hypocritical mask of altruism. If Iraq has not taught us that, then we are incapable of ever learning anything. · John Laughland is an associate of Sanders Research Associates

As we approach the Holy Month of Ramadan, let us all think about the plight of the disadvantaged segments of out society, the disabled, the orphans, widows, the mentally challenged. The thousands of civilians the American and their Ethiopian merceneries have killed, the hundreds of thousands that were made homeless, maimed, raped or tortured for the collective punishment of a false crime they have never committed. Attending the needs of these poor people, is a sure uplifter of ones faith, try it, as this season had been the favorite time of our Beloved Messenger Muhammad SAWS to give and share. The Prophet was as generous as the wind to help the disadvantaged. Think Kindness in Ramadan! Nur

Nehanda sis I do understand your concern, but not all divorcees come with the same set of problems, nor do they all have a trail of unresolved disputes with their ex. spouse that may spill over to the next marriage. You see sis, you have to look way deep under the hood of any candidate, because, if we run away from problems of others, we may not be able to solve ours, because problems are like beasts, they always exist, we have to learn how to face them and solve them, and view them as challenges to make it fun, sometime, doing an extra diligence can unearth treasures in a candidate. You have to read the whole book, not just the title. This is not meant for this case, its just a good philosophy of life. Nur

This is a translation of my Somali Language Post dated back in 2002 at the request of our Veteran Nomad and past Moderator Dr. WOL. Pardon my typos , punctuations and grammar. Khaatimada Wanaagsan The Successful Final Chapter Of Life Success at the end of this temporal life is attained when a person finds comfort in doing all the right actions and accomplishes results valued by our maker, repenting from all evil and developing a new love for the obedience of Allah and to engage in all good endeavors, securing a dignified departure from life on earth. The above fact is substantiated by a Hadeeth narrated by Anas Ibn Malik RAA, : The Messenger of Allah SAWS said " When Allah wants to guide His servant to do the GOOD, ( Kheyr), Allah uses that servant to serve Him by doing good deeds before the servants death" ; Reported by imam Ahmed, Tirmidhi, verified by the Mustadrak Collection of Al Hakim. These signs can either be signs a dying person can experience or signs that others, such as family or friends can witness, dream about, or experience regarding the dying person. 1. Signs that the dying person experiences as mentioned in the Quraan Surah Fussilat Verse 30: " As for those (who've given their true Allegiance to Allah) saying ( Rabbunaa Allah), Allah is our Sovereign Lord, ( Following-up that statement with) steadfastness ( on Allah's path), (at the moment of death) upon them descend the angels, assuring them " Not to to worry, nor feel sorry, and to expect the good news of the Paradise your were promised before" That assurance and the good news above is given to believers who've earned good deeds with their iman up to the moment of death, and upon final placement in the their grave, and the day of resurrection and judgment. In addition to the above verse, Bukhaari and Muslim have also narrated Hadeeths reported from Aisha, mother of Believers, that the Messenger of Allah SAWS said: " The person who is happy to meet Allah, Allah is also happy to meet that person" The meaning of the Hadeeth according to Imam Ubeidallah Al Qassim Ibn Salam is that the above Hadeeth (contrary to wrong understanding), does not imply the hatred of death and its agony, because that aspect goes naturally with every death. Instead, the Hadeeth means that this brief worldly life shouldn't be preferred over the eternal life after death when one is confronted with conflicting personal desires on one hand, and divine commandments on the other. Because the wrong preference of this life over the eternal life causes a person to hate the final audience with His maker to be held accountable for his/her deliverables to Allah against resources received from Him in this worldly life for a purpose . ( i.e. in the form of Intelligence, wealth, children, education, health etc.) The Imam had further supported that meaning by saying that those who have committed so much evil on earth wish that they never meet Allah for fear to be held responsible for their past evil actions (since no one on earth dared to judge them). This picture is illustrated by verse 7 of Surah Younis, Allah says about the evidl doers " Those who are not anticipating our eventual meeting and audience, being tranquil and intimately loving life on earth ....." Imam Nawawi explained the above Hadeeth by saying that the love and hate of Allah's audience in the day of judgement according to the Sharia is defined at the moment before Gharghara ( fast breathing just before death), after which repentance is no longer an acceptable option. At that crucial time, a person can vividly see her/his place after death. 2. The dying person proclaims the Shahaada according to the Hadeeth reported by Al Haakim, and others that the Messenger of Allah SAWS said: " A (dying person) whose last words are the (proclamation of faith) Laa ilaah illaa Allah,( No one is worthy to be held as Sovereign other than Allah), enters Jannah ( Paradise)" Once, an Emergency Medical Doctor in the gulf shared with me (in a lecture) that " More than 24 patients, both men and women, have died in my hands. I have reminded all of them to say the Shahaada (proclamation of faith), I succeeded with a single patient to say the words of (laa ilaaha illaa Allah) after me" A dying teenage girl was once asked to say the words of (laa ilaaha ilaa Allah), the dying girl responded to the woman who was reminding her the Shahaada : " Wallahi, I see from here my place in Hell" 3. Another sign is heavy sweat on the dying Muslims face according to a Hadeeth by Bureida ibn Huseib that the Messenger of Allah SAWS said " The death of a Believer is accompanied by a sweaty face" 4. The death to take place on a Friday Night and day( nighttime of Thursday's day and Friday's daytime), according to hadeeth " There is no one who dies on a Friday day or night who Allah leaves unprotected from the punishment of the grave" 5. Another sign is to die as a martyr in Allah's cause, in Jihaad, or while getting ready for Jihaad. 6. Another sign is death caused by epidemic, such as Cholera, cancer or infectious liver deseases accodring to Hadeeths of Sahih Muslim , The Messenger of Allah asked: " How many (of terminally dying do you count as) Shaheed (Martyrs)?, They said " anyone who is killed in the cause of Allah is a (martyr)Shaheed" The prophet SAWS said, " In that case the martyrs in my Ummah ( Nation) are few" the Prphet went on to say, " a. A person who is killed in Allah's cause is a Shaheed (Martyr) b. A Person who dies while steadfast on Allah's Path is a Martyr ( Shaheed) c. A Person who is killed by infectious desease outbreaks or epidemic i.e. (daacuun/cholera etc ) is a shaheed ( Martyr). d. A person who drowns in water/lake/river/ sea, dies as a Shaheed" End of Hadeeth. 7. A person who dies in a fire accident or (any violent death, by deduction) The above are for General, as for specific signs of Martyrdom of women. 8. A woman who dies in labor pains or upon delivery of a baby dies a Martyr. It was reported that Ubada ibnul Saamit said that the Messenger of Allah classified the Martyrs and added the class of a woman who dies for bleeding during her labor or when delivering a baby. Her infant will drag her to Jannah (paradise) by the (same) placenta of (that connected them at death)" I ask Allah for me and for all my readers, of all faiths, a successful journey back to our maker by NOT DYING WITHOUT SURRENDERING ABSOLUTELY TO THE WILL OF ALLAH"S SOVEREIGNTY. Aamiin Nur 2002 e-Nuri Softwaano Series Dunyaa: Xalaasheeda waxaa ka dambeeya Xisaab, Xaareenteeda waxaa ka dambeeya Cadaab!

Dr. WOL Here is my quick attempt to translate my own Somali language post, pardon my typos , punctuations and grammar. (Khaatimada Wanaagsan) The Successful Final Chapter Of Life. Success at the end of this temporal life is attained when a person finds comfort in doing all the right actions and accomplishes results valued by our maker, repenting from all evil and developing a new love for the obedience of Allah and to engage in all good endeavors, securing a dignified departure from life on earth. The above fact is substantiated by a Hadeeth narrated by Anas Ibn Malik RAA, : The Messenger of Allah SAWS said " When Allah wants to guide His servant to do the GOOD, ( Kheyr), Allah uses that servant to serve Him by doing good deeds before the servants death" Reported by imam Ahmed, Tirmidhi, verified by the Mustadrak Collection of Al Hakim. A Successful Final Chapter of Life has its signs: These signs can either be signs a dying person can experience or signs that others, such as family or friends can witness, dream about, or experience regarding the dying person. 1. Signs that the dying person experiences as mentioned in the Quraan Surah Fussilat Verse 30: " As for those (who've given their true Allegiance to Allah) saying ( Rabbunaa Allah), Allah is our Sovereign Lord, ( Following-up that statement with) steadfastness ( on Allah's path), (at the moment of death) upon them descend the angels, assuring them " Not to to worry, nor feel sorry, and to expect the good news of the Paradise your were promised before" That assurance and the good news above is given to believers who've earned good deeds with their iman up to the moment of death, and upon final placement in the their grave, and the day of resurrection and judgement. In addition to the above verse, Bukhaari and Muslim have also narrated Hadeeths reported from Aisha, mothers of Believers, that the Messneger of Allah SAWS said: " The person who is happy to meet Allah, Allah is also happy to meet that person" The meaning of the Hadeeth according to Imam Ubeidallah Al Qassim Ibn Salam is that the above Hadeeth (contrary to wrong understanding), does not imply the hatred of death and its agony, because that aspect goes naturally with every death. Instead, the Hadeeth means that this brief worldly life shoudn't be preferred over the eternal life after death when one is confronted with conflicting personal desires on one hand, and devine commandments on the other. Because the wrong preference of this life over the eternal life causes a person to hate the final audience with His maker to account for the deliverables to Allah against resources recieved from Him in this worldly life. ( i.e. in the form of Intelligence, wealth, children, education, health etc.) The Imam had further supported that meaning by saying that those who have committed so much evil on earth wish that they never meet Allah to hold them responsible for their past evil actions. This picture is illustrated by verse 7 of Surah Younis " Those who are not anticipating our audience, being tranquil and intimately loving life on earth ....." Imam Nawawi explained the above Hadeeth by saying that the love and hate of Allah's audience in the day of judgement according to the Sharia is defined at the moment before Gharghara( just before ) death, after which repentance is no longer an acceptable option. At that crucial time, a person can vividly see her/his place after death. 2. The dying person proclaims the Shahaada according to the Hadeeth reported by Al Haakim, and others that the Messenger of Allah SAWS said: " A (dying person) whose last words are the (proclamation of faith) Laa ilaah illaa Allah,( No one is worthy to be held as Sovereign other than Allah), enters Jannah ( Paradise)" From my personal experience, an Emergency Medical Doctor in the gulf told me (in a lecture) " More than 24 patients, both men and women, have died in my hands. I have reminded all of them to say the Shahaada (proclamation of faith), I succeeded with a single patient to say the words of (laa ilaaha illaa Allah) after me" A dying teenage girl was once asked to say the words of (laa ilaaha ilaa Allah), the dying girl responded to the woman who was reminding her the Shahaada : " Wallahi, I see from here my place in Hell" 3. Another sign is heavy sweat on the dying Muslims face according to a Hadeeth by Bureida ibn Huseib that the Messenger of Allah SAWS said " The death of a Believer is accompanied by a sweaty face" 4. The death to take place on a Friday Night and day( nighttime of Thursday's day and Friday's daytime), according to hadeeth " There is no one who dies on a Friday day or night who Allah leaves unprotected from the punishment of the grave" 5. Another sign is to die as a martyr in Allah's cause, in Jihaad, or while getting ready for Jihaad. 6. Another sign is death caused by epidemic, such as Cholera, cancer or infectious liver deseases accodring to Hadeeths of Sahih Muslim , The Messenger of Allah asked: " How many (of terminally dying do you count as) Shaheed (Martyrs)?, They said " anyone who is killed in the cause of Allah is a (martyr)Shaheed" The prophet SAWS said, " In that case the martyrs in my Ummah ( Nation) are few" the Prphet went on to say, " a. A person who is killed in Allah's cause is a Shaheed (Martyr) b. A Person who dies while steadfast on Allah's Path is a Martyr ( Shaheed) c. A Person who is killed by infectious desease outbreaks or epidemic i.e. (daacuun/cholera etc ) is a shaheed ( Martyr). d. A person who drowns in water/lake/river/ sea, dies as a Shaheed" End of Hadeeth. 7. A person who dies in a fire accident or (any violent death, by deduction) The above are for General, as for specific signs of Martyrdom of women. 8. A woman who dies in labor pains or upon delivery of a baby dies a Martyr. It was reported that Ubada ibnul Saamit said that the Messenger of Allah classified the Martyrs and added the class of a woman who dies for bleeding in labor or when delivering a baby. Her infant will drag her to Jannah (paradise) by the (same) placenta of (that connected them at death)" I ask Allah for me and for all my readers, of all faiths, a successful journey back to our maker by NOT DYING WITHOUT SURRENDERING ABSOLUTELY TO THE SOVEREIGN ALLAH. Aamiin Nur 2002 e-Nuri Softwaano Series Life's goodness is audited, its evil punished by A True Sovereign. .