^architect student ey? hows the Autocad? hhmmm, certainly not a fan of stacking them high with a glass envelope. A little tradition should do the trick. But what is a somali design? or east African design? or even an african design?

NG Although i agree with you on most points, but i think the british media has won this one. The constant berating of anyone who talks any kind of sense is disregarded with the populace on too willing to do the same based upon what they read/hear/watch. The MCB nead some PR work and they also need to be more proactive in their actions both toward the media and to the muslims community. Here is a response for your NG. I yearn for a foreign policy of which we can be proud The Muslim community is asking for dialogue, not appeasement, says Muhammad Abdul Bari Thursday August 17, 2006 The Guardian Polly Toynbee was right in stating that "British foreign policy has helped foment murderous extremism" (We can't let God-blinded killers set our foreign policy, August 15). She was also right in claiming that "there are 1,001 good reasons why we should never have supported, let alone joined, the war in Iraq. The one truly bad reason would have been fear of terrorism." The open letter to the prime minister - which I signed alongside more than 40 Muslim groups, MPs and peers - has been subject to deliberate misinterpretation, suggesting a willingness among Muslim leaders to excuse violence and promote a simplified view of how extremism takes root. Toynbee's accusation - that the letter sails "perilously close to suggesting the government had it coming" - may be an unintentional misrepresentation but it is a grave one. The letter articulated the need to base foreign policy on principle. It condemned attacks on civilians wherever they take place. It also sought acknowledgement that, though the causes and motivations are complex, British foreign policy contributes to the radicalisation of Muslims here and elsewhere. The welcome debate that followed the letter illustrates that this has been widely accepted. I believe there was merit in laying this fact on the table so that a consensus could emerge. As early as May 2004, Michael Jay, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, acknowledged in a letter to the cabinet secretary that the perception of foreign policy was a "key driver behind recruitment by extremist organisations". In this context, as Toynbee asserts, government denials of this reality are absurd. But pushing for this recognition is not an argument that a priority of foreign policy should be "sparing us from threats by God-blinded killers". I do not advocate a policy of appeasement, tailoring UK foreign policy to win global popularity and insulate ourselves from threat. I yearn for a foreign policy that engenders a feeling of pride among this and future generations, and attracts respect from others. When difficult decisions are made, we must be ready to tackle the consequences that ensue. But these decisions must be principled and be seen to be so. Successive British governments' foreign policies, demonstrated recently by the refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, have left many Muslims and others feeling aggrieved and powerless. As Muslim representatives, our letter sought to engage constructively in this debate and give voice to many Muslims who feel alienated. Toynbee is right that we are not alone, nor unique in this respect yet it is important that this widespread sentiment was aired. The Muslim community is not homogeneous. Our response to the encroachment of extremism must address the diversity within the community as much as the complexity of root causes. But Muslim leaders, parents and communities will be better positioned to defuse the potency of extremists' arguments once the impact of foreign policy has been acknowledged. Without a willingness to have an honest and open debate, the government is in danger of wishing to hear only echoes of its own voice. · Muhammad Abdul Bari is secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain sg@mcb.org.uk Guardian And another about the media bais The venomous media voices who think no Muslim is worth talking to As government efforts to 'tackle' extremism flounder, it should beware the advice of armchair warriors and fantasists Madeleine Bunting Wednesday August 16, 2006 The Guardian One could almost feel sorry for them. A minister like Ruth Kelly is wrenched from her bucket-and spade holiday on a rainy British beach with the kids to launch yet another push to "engage" with Muslims and to step up efforts to "tackle" extremism. A ministerial tour of nine cities to meet Muslims is announced. It's all designed to sound energetic and purposeful. We pay fat cabinet salaries and we want our politicians to sound like they are earning them. But in truth, beneath the rhetoric - an odd verbal combination of rugby tackles and romantic engagement - is a profound confusion in government policy as to what to do about British-grown Islamist terrorism, apart from large amounts of surveillance and frequent use of detention. Beyond that, the hearts-and-minds strategy is running on empty. Article continues -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've seen government ministers do "engagement": Paul Murphy, when he had the community-cohesion brief, listened carefully, answered questions patiently and got precisely nowhere. His young, angry Muslim audience heard him out but were profoundly cynical; their views didn't change a jot. Events of the last few days will have immeasurably increased that cynicism: Muslim MPs and peers have been roundly ticked off by a succession of government ministers as if they were imperial vassals who should know their place. Yet they were simply stating the obvious - that British foreign policy is incubating (we can argue whether it's the root cause another time) Muslim extremism. Given that kind of opening salvo from her colleagues, perhaps Kelly should save herself the trouble and return to the beach for some more sandcastles and rock pools. While she's there, the best thing she can do is to get a bit of perspective on a worn-out policy. Even more importantly, she would do well to take stock of a pernicious media onslaught in danger of spiralling out of control. The ministerial tours, the meetings with selected Muslims - most of whom are as baffled by Islamic extremism as ministers - were the responses to last summer's London bombings. The danger is that as the government's "community cohesion" policy flounders, there is no shortage of media commentators pouring out a flood of venomous advice on exactly why no Muslim is worth talking to anyway. If, reader, you're short of time and need the summary, it runs thus: the government can't talk to extremists because they endorse violence and/or are nutty and irrational, and can't talk to "moderates" (warning: the word is on the point of becoming a term of abuse in the Muslim community) because they're not representative. These methods of dismissal are so frequently used by journalists that the only possible conclusion is that there are many people in this country who have no interest in listening to any Muslim unless they can chorus their own loathing and suspicion of Islam - the former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the case par excellence. Some of this armchair advice to government can be pretty briskly dismissed, such as the paranoid fantasies of the rightwing Daily Mail commentator Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan or those of the Conservative MP Michael Gove in his book Celsius 7/7. Both authors haven't troubled themselves to get much beyond revived imperial delusions of demented, violent Muslims (check out Britain's history in India, Sudan or Egypt). More insidious is the comprehensive attack on Whitehall's policy towards the Muslim community over the last decade by the New Statesman's political editor, Martin Bright. He argues that the government should have no truck with any Muslim organisation in the UK that has had any involvement with any person who has ever been influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, the political Islamist organisation. That rules out the Muslim Council of Britain, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and other mainstays of the government's "engagement" policy of the last 10 years. It would even include intellectuals such as Professor Tariq Ramadan (grandson, no less, of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), who was a member of the government taskforce set up to tackle Islamist extremism last year, and a star turn on its travelling roadshow for young Muslims. We are talking sweeping here. In fact, implement Bright's advice and you've got a pretty small tea party for your next round of engagement. The Muslim Brotherhood is a global phenomenon that has taken many different guises in different places. It has been very successful at the ballot box in a host of countries, particularly Egypt. In some countries it has developed an armed wing, in many others it has not. Many of those in this country influenced by this strand of anti-colonial political Islamism have subsequently developed their thinking in entirely different directions. Almost every thoughtful, educated Muslim in this country has been exposed to - and to varying degrees influenced by - the Muslim Brotherhood, the 20th century's most influential political Islamic movement. The obvious historical analogy to Bright is those US cold war warriors in the 50s who smeared anyone who had ever read Marx. For a story to really work you have to have good guys as well as bad, so the critics conjure up another absurdity - the "silent Sufi majority" of British Muslims. These are the gentle, peace-loving Muslims at the grassroots who have been betrayed, so the argument runs, by those who claim to represent them, such as the Muslim Council of Britain. One can argue for hours about how to define a Sufi in this country; and, leaving that aside, the characterisation of Sufism is wide of the mark: some of the most violent anti-colonial struggles have been led by Sufis, for example Chechnya and Algeria, even the Mahdi who did for General Gordon in Khartoum. Furthermore, some argue that Sufi-inclined traditions such as the Kashmiri Barelwi have failed to travel well to urban Britain and that it is precisely their youngsters who are most disorientated and likely to fail prey to extremism - as was the case of the July 7 bombers from Leeds. The main target for Bright is the Muslim Council of Britain; he loathes it with a contempt that is hard to explain. Given that the MCB is in effect a small volunteer parish council scrabbling to represent a hugely diverse - both ethnically and theologically - community, it's not surprising that it has scored own goals in its time. It's a young, underconfident institution and falls short in many ways, but the fact remains that of all the Muslim organisations to emerge in recent decades it has proved the most successful in winning affiliates. There is no comparable substitute waiting in the wings. The Sufi Muslim Council of Britain has been in existence all of a month; I wish it well, but unlike the MCB it cannot claim to represent anything like the 40% of British mosques affiliated to the MCB. Kelly has an urgent task ahead to assuage anxiety as the possibility looms of a second-class status for Muslims in this country - profiled, suspected, searched, endlessly quizzed and found wanting. As for the armchair warriors so keen to proffer advice, one has to question the motives of those intent on undermining the meagre organisational capacity the Muslim community has managed to weld together to combat just such a threat. · Madeleine Bunting will become director of the thinktank Demos next month Guardian

^^are you serious? What truth did he speak?

I often read these msg during times like these. A very interest read on people perceptions. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/default.stm

^^go back to school saxib, your running late

I think you need a break from Canada mate :rolleyes:

SB, i dont know ninyo. But what diff does it make?

Congratulation to Mo, he got Silver at the European Championships in Gottenberg, Sweden! Britain's 23-year-old Mo Farah ran the best race of his life to win silver behind Spain's Jesus Espana, with Juan Carlos Higuero third. Farah went to the front with 800m to go and burned off all but Espana, who battled past him on the home straight. Farah said: "I wanted to win and it was close. I gave it all I could and saw a gap. "I tried but it wasn't enough. I've worked hard and it is paying off slowly - hopefully we'll be back at the top like Brendan Foster and Steve Cram." Well done son! :cool:

lol, brownie fair enough. Its funny how you read a woman getting rid of her new born in an airport toilet by throwing him in the bin and then read of a baby snatcher who did this act due to her inabilty to conceive in the space of two days.

and there will be undercover taxidrivers who are Somali that will take u to hotel so don’t worry lol, i was ripped off by one. He charged me 60 Dhs for a ride that should have cost 35 Dhs, only found out later :rolleyes:

^^lol waiting for the game hoping Mohammed Sissoko does a crazy tackle on a a Haifa player.

Hospital baby snatcher is deported from UAE By Bassma Al Jandaly, Staff Reporter Sharjah: A woman who kidnapped a newborn baby from a hospital has been deported, according to sources from Sharjah Courts. The source said the woman, who worked as a gynaecologist in a private hospital in Sharjah, tried to kidnap a newborn from his mother in Al Qasimi Hospital while she was asleep. On December 2 last year the woman went to the hospital during visiting hours and stayed there until the morning when she kidnapped the baby and put him in a carrier bag. The woman searched numerous rooms before selecting an Iraqi baby, identified as Mohammad Eyad Kadhim. She was spotted by nurses at around 4am as she tried to run out of the building. When they questioned the woman as to what was moving in the bag, she broke down and the nurses called the police. Earlier, Sharjah Sharia Court sentenced the 30-year-old Indian woman to six months in jail to be followed by deportation. However in his defence the woman's lawyer asked the court to transfer her to the Al Amal hospital to evaluate her mental health because she was suffering from psychological problems. He said she was under pressure from her husband because she was sterile. However, the court rejected the request stressing that the woman was not suffering from any mental problems and that she was responsible for her actions. The court stressed that the woman was working as a doctor and it was unacceptable behaviour from a physician. The woman's advocate appealed the verdict. On June 20, the Appeal Court in Sharjah rejected the case and upheld the lower court's verdict of six months imprisonment and deportation. The woman served her jail term from the date she was arrested on December 3 last year until June 3 in Sharjah Central Jail. The child's father Eyad told Gulf News yesterday: "The incident has affected our lives and my wife Azhar is constantly worried for our son. But we are happy that our son is back with us. He is eight months old now and is growing fast." gulfnews

Sky News should be watched along with FOX News, its a learning process. Alot can be learned on there.

Very sad. The perceptions of non-muslims have changed so much in such a short space of time that he thinks its a joke!. :mad:

^^ You dont notice it when you are just passing through but there is alot of Dawa, Charity, Quran classes etc. I should'nt be surprised infact. Still in a hotel :rolleyes: , should have a place sorted tomorrow IA. Looks like the Dubai nomads are a boring bunch

Very good question that has had people thinking. The powerful Sunni states have stated their stance by simply criticising Hezbollah bt not doing the same when Hamas did the same thing a week or two earlier. It is obvious what is going on here. Hezbollah are trained in Iran, not just in milatary tactics but they also have to attend lessons on Figh. This came from a captured Hezbollah fighter. The west is fanning the flames of division, while the Arab governments are worried about Iran more than they about Isreal. Deplomatic ties with Isreal are so far advanced most people underestimate it. There is more freindship and truct with Isreal than Iran. This war and Hebullah's losses are good news to the big Arab states. Its a tough one to call but the outlook of Iran in trying to destroy Isreal and spelling it out compared to that of sitting in lavish complexes talking about Emaritisation or Saudiasation while there people are struggling to understand what work really entails are completely different types of leadership.

I dont know, we are can be the best and the worst all at the same time. But i dont think we are any different to others. If you compare Somalis with Asians, then thats a whole different issue. In 30 years time who knows how 'liberated' we will be.

Saw this programme last night. The harsh realities of trying to get into europe! Article

Saudi farmers 'kill' date palms to sell their land Habib Shaikh (From our correspondent) 6 August 2006 JEDDAH — As the real estate market booms in the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah, agricultural land is gradually disappearing from within the limits of these once-pastoral cities as farmers discover that selling the land for development is more lucrative than selling dates. The only problem is: It's illegal. The law in Saudi Arabia prevents land producing agricultural products, such as dates, from being razed to make way for building projects. So some farmers have taken to making the viable unviable by starving trees of water, or burning trees in the middle of the night. Once the crops are dead, the land can then be legally sold to developers. These landowners earn millions of riyals by selling land, putting aside the environmental impact resulting from losing the trees. In a city where average daily temperatures can sustain 45 degrees Celsius for a good part of the year, green areas offer some respite from the heat. According to a recent report in a local daily, Abdul Rahman Abdul Aal, a resident of Madinah's Gurban neighbourhood, complained recently to municipal officials about numerous cases of farms being burned. He said that the problem was raised in local newspapers. "The burning stopped for a while but it started again, albeit less than before," he said. "It is sad that the farms in the middle of Madinah which made the city unique are now disappearing because of greed." For their part, farmers dismiss the charge that they're being greedy. They claim that it's a simple matter of economics. For example, the plot of a former dates farmer near Qiblatin Mosque no longer produces that fruit. Instead, the trees are dead, ready to be cleared to make room for yet another residential unit of Madinah's current real estate boom. Instead of burning the trees, the farmer simply stopped watering them, saying it cost more to keep them alive than the money he was making from selling the dates they produced. "There were problems (with farming), like lack of water," he said, requesting not to be identified. Another farm owner admitted that he stopped tending to his crop and was preparing to sell the land. "A farm needs a lot of care and attention. That costs a lot of money," said yet another date farmer in Madinah's Al Shuhada neighbourhood. The municipal authorities are encouraging people to respect the diminishing urban green zones. No statistics are available from government officials regarding the undeveloped land in Makkah or Madinah, but a recent awareness campaign launched by the Madinah municipality indicated that officials are concerned about the depletion of urban green areas.

^^i have managed to avoid hat place so far To be honest i didnt want to leave Oman, it was very nice and calm. Its been raining there and i missed it :rolleyes:

What do you and they mean by liberated?

Just something i came across,,,, Introduction Recent news reports claim that the Saudi prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Al-Saud, a nephew of the late King Fahd, has donated $20 million each to Harvard and Georgetown universities in the US. These funds will be used to expand the Islamic studies programmes of both universities, promote the study of Islam and the Muslim world, and support interfaith understanding. The prince also gave a total of $15 million to the American universities in Cairo and Beirut for establishing centres for American studies. [1] The prince is an international businessman, listed by Forbes magazine as the fifth richest person in the world. His wealth is estimated at $14 billion and he controls a worldwide empire in investment, banking, construction and leisure. His $10 million contribution to a September 9, 2001 victims fund was rejected by then New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani after the prince suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East contributed to the terror attacks. Prince Al-Waleed has recently bought 5.46% of the voting shares of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s diversified international media and entertainment empire that includes Fox News Channel (FNC). Fox had been reporting on the Saudi role in the promotion of Islamist terror, and it is thought that the prince may hope to dampen any potential criticism by his investment. [2] [3] It is claimed that Fox News Channel recently changed its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he called the network to complain. The Dubai based Khaleej Times quotes the prince as saying: I was in America watching Fox News when I saw a news report being labelled as Muslim riots. I immediately called up Fox Murdoch and informed him that it was wrong to label any riot caused by whatever reason as Muslim. After a short while, there was a change, and the news report about Muslim riots was simply labelled as riots PATTERNS OF SAUDI SPENDING The prince’s recent financial gifts to Western academic institutions follows a pattern of Saudi funding for Western institutions that have the potential to influence Western perceptions in favour of Islam and of Saudi interests. Such funding has become an urgent Saudi project since the September 11, 2001 attacks in which the majority of the terrorists (15 out of 19) were of Saudi origin. Following the attacks, Saudi sponsorship of radical Islamism came under growing scrutiny, and Saudi relations with the US and other Western countries suffered a setback as Western media and public increasingly linked Saudi Arabia to Islamist terrorism. Many observers agreed that Saudi Arabia was the main source of funding for Islamist extremist organisations. Western intelligence services following the financial trails of terror funding found that Saudi government and private finance had for many years been funding the infrastructure of radical Islamist groups, as well as Islamic mission (Da‘wa, i.e. propagation of the faith) and the promotion of the Wahhabi brand of Islam worldwide. Saudi Arabia’s massive public-relations campaign intends to recapture its lost image in the West as a force for moderation and stability. In addition to the funding of Western institutions, it has lately developed a scholarship programme for Saudi students studying in the US, offering 5,000 students a full four-year scholarship including living allowances. This programme aims at improving the Saudi image in the US and reducing the widespread hostility to the US among the Saudi public. [5] Strong anti-West and anti-US bias is evident in Saudi mosque sermons, school textbooks, publications and media. Western governments, dependent on Saudi oil and needing Saudi Arabia as an important ally in the Middle East, continue to stress its moderating influence and opposition to terrorism. The reality is that, since the 1970s, Saudi Arabia has poured large amounts of its oil riches into the worldwide expansion of the strict and narrow Wahhabi form of Islam that is deeply hostile to any reformation and reinterpretation of Islam. It also has supported the most radical Muslim groups around the world, thus escalating their power and their slide into terrorism. Wahhabism had been a marginal extremist sect, but as a result of the oil money influx since the 1970s it has become part of mainstream Islam, redefining Muslim views worldwide. Extreme Wahhabi doctrines and attitudes – branding non-Muslims as infidels, judging other Muslims as apostates (this process of judging is called Takfir), and its emphasis on violent Jihad - helped it to forge alliances with similar-minded Islamist groups and lay the ideological basis for Islamist terrorism. [6] Saudi Arabia itself has recently come under attack from radical Islamist Salafi-Jihadi groups and is now trying hard to join the war on terrorism. Its security forces are busy fighting their erstwhile terrorist allies and it has promised to restrain extremist anti-Western rhetoric and reform its textbooks and educational curriculum. Its moderate rhetoric has undoubtedly increased in recent years and it has killed many of its home-grown terrorists in confrontations with Saudi security forces. However, its Wahhabi ideology and commitment to the worldwide spread of its version of Islam makes it very difficult to effect a clear separation between Wahhabism and Jihadi terror. The regime’s legitimacy is still based on its Wahhabi heritage which includes the Takfiri and Jihadi elements basic to Islamist terrorism. HISTORY OF SAUDI FUNDING OF DA‘WA (ISLAMIC MISSION) AND JIHAD Observers note that the rapid build-up of semi-official Saudi charities occurred after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the takeover of the main mosque in Mecca and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that same year. Many of them contend that these charities were used to spread Saudi Wahhabi Islam worldwide as a response to the perceived new threats to Saudi legitimacy. This effort was supplemented by funding from other Arab oil-rich states in the Gulf, especially the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait. The Kingdom also funded Islamist terror groups, giving both protection money to induce them not to attack targets in Saudi Arabia, and also contributions to fund the waging of Jihad against perceived enemies of Islam, especially in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia has reportedly spent over $70 billion since 1979 on overseas aid, more than two-thirds of it on its campaign to spread Wahhabism across the world. This programme included the founding of thousands of mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) as well as Islamic centres that have served as support networks for Wahhabi ideology and for Jihadi movements. Funding for the Afghan Jihad was part of this wider campaign, and Saudi charities have funded radical groups and movements as well as educational and social welfare activities across Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union and the West. [7] The Saudi drive to spread the Wahhabi form of Islam is channelled through a variety of Islamic organisations and charities controlled by the Saudi government. Among them are the Saudi Fund for Development (SFD); the Muslim World League; the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC); the International Islamic Relief Organisation (IIIRO); the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY); Al-Haramein; Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) and many other private charities operated by wealthy Saudis. The larger organisations and charities are mostly headed by leading members of the Saudi state, often members of the royal family. [8] The official Saudi newspaper in English, Ain al-Yaqeen, published an article on March 1, 2002 describing the Kingdom’s efforts at supporting Islam worldwide. It claimed that the Kingdom had spent “astronomical†sums of many billions establishing thousands of mosques, madrassas and Islamic centres in non-Muslim countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, Africa and Asia. Among the biggest projects was the King Fahd Islamic Center in Malaga, Spain. In addition, the Kingdom has established a number of academic chairs in some of the most respected universities in the developed world in order to “encourage understanding of the true nature of Islam by explaining clearly Muslim beliefs and by correcting misconceptions and misrepresentationsâ€. Especially mentioned are the King Abdul Aziz Chair in Islamic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the King Fahd Chair in Islamic Sharia Studies at the College of Law at Harvard University; the King Fahd Chair in Islamic Studies at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) at the university of London and the provision of a resident professor for the Prince Naif Department for Islamic Studies at the University of Moscow. [9] The King Fahd website claims that King Fahd’s personal efforts alone in this field of the propagation of Saudi-style Islam has resulted in the establishment of some 210 Islamic Centres, more than 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges and almost 2,000 Muslim schools worldwide. [10] Some of these funds are directed at Western academic and research institutes, in order to “challenge and expose the caricature of Islam which is widely promoted by sections of the Western mediaâ€. [11] Some specific beneficiaries of the late King’s generosity in the United States include the American University of Colorado; the American University of Washington; Duke University, North Carolina; Howard University, Washington; Johns Hopkins University, Maryland; Middle East Institute, Washington; Shaw University, North Carolina; Syracuse University, New York. CONCLUSION Saudi Arabia’s state religion is Wahhabism, a narrow form of Islam hostile to reforms in Islam and ideologically akin to radical Islamism. Generous Saudi funding of institutions in the non-Muslim world, and especially in the West, has a long history and is driven by the Saudi state and the royal family. While Saudi sources claim that the funding is given to help remove Western misunderstandings of Islam, evidence suggests that much of the motivation is founded in Islamic doctrines of mission (Da‘wa) and holy war (Jihad) and aims at the spread of Islam (especially in its Wahhabi form) and its political dominance around the world. More recently it has been apparently employed in improving the Saudi image in the West and regaining its influence there, as both were severely damaged by the impact of the 11 September 2001 attacks.

Not much to see, just lots of Somalis. Thats the main reason i want to go,,,, Dubai is surprisingly very Islamic, away from all the malls of course.

At the very least head south where the Muslims will treat you like a king and the islands are stunning. Tell them I said Sawatika. I hear there is a bit of unrest down there :confused: Well it all depends on winning the contract

^^^lool This has more to with his movie The Passion of the Christ than anything else. You dont wanna mess with the Jewish people otherwise your career is over.