What a bloody Id*ot. :rolleyes:

Why are there so many threads on marriage! summer is over people. Age: when the person feels ready and wants to get married and they find someone who also feels ready and wants to marry them.

^^Must be German for rubbish

^^You have HUge Respect got Rudy?? based on what??

Zenobia you sad sad lady I cannot believe you are online already lool HAHa. Glade you made it back safely. I need to move to Germany.

^^^I second that Khaina. BOB 30 is not old for a women, what world do you live in. In fact why would any women marry before hitting 30?? she needs to live life first Loool @ De nova. I agree it is a good idea kids these days cannot possible have ANY self control. :rolleyes: Shia's are big on this idea and some Arabs as well, If it was legal it would have been an idea (not sure good or bad- depends on how you use it and abuse it really) It would certainly get around the whole mahram idea that holds us women hostage when we want to go travelling. I'm think convenience marriage are hmmm (convenient..can't think of a better word), but again it is not allowed.

You should finish with the Imam in order to get your full reward, however traditionally tarawiix prayer is not how we pray, what you should do is pray two rakkah, read some Quran, do duca, then two more etc. So if you go somewhere and they race thorough 20 rakkahs, you can pray 8 by taking breaks in the middle, do some duca and read yet still finish with the imam. Allah aCalum, but that is what my teacher told me.

For anyone who has an obsession or interest in this field, check this book out! Here is a review of it. The past few years have produced an enormous trove of literature about conflict and violence in the Middle East, no doubt because there appears to be so much of both. Academics, policymakers and media pundits remain fascinated by the "nature" of terrorism and the impending threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. The superheated rhetoric of leaders in Iran and Israel has only accelerated the possibility of confrontation between the two countries, while the cumulative effect of the media echo chamber has added to the clamor of war drums and saber-rattling inside the Washington Beltway. Out of this cacophony emerges a book with the clarity and insight that so often elude US policymakers. Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States is a deft account of the back-channel relationship linking the three countries from Israel's inception in 1948 through the present. In revealing interviews with 130 decision-makers in Iran, Israel and the US, Parsi, an analyst who also heads the National Iranian American Council, crafts an alternative view of a conflict that is often couched in ideological terms. In the opening chapter, Parsi shatters several myths about the Israel-Iran rivalry, or the "800-pound gorilla", as he refers to it several times throughout the text. For example, while President Mahmud Ahmadinejad publicly condemns Israel and questions the validity of the Holocaust, the Islamic Republic is actually home to the second-largest population of Jews in the Middle East (Israel is first). Few Iranian Jews take Ahmadinejad's rhetoric seriously, writes Parsi, "and they point to the fact that little has changed for Iranian Jews under him". In fact, Iran's sole Jewish representative in the Majlis (parliament), Maurice Mohtamed, spoke out against the president's comments, and during the height of the Islamic Revolution, ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa protecting Jews as a religious minority contingent on their rejection of Zionism and the Israeli state, according to Parsi. In Israel, he complicates the notions of separate Israeli and Iranian identities through his exchanges with several Iranian Jews who left Iran not for ideological reasons as much as for economic ones. Interestingly, some of Israel's most prominent public officials are originally Persian, including scandal-tainted President Moshe Katzav and former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Dan Halutz (born to Persian immigrants). But Parsi's book is remarkable for its detailed look at the international-relations dimension of the Israel-Iran relationship. There exists, beneath the vitriolic public exchanges, a history of intelligence cooperation, arms sales, and secret dialogue between the two countries. And the dialogue continued even after Iran turned from a monarchy into an Islamic theocracy. The "alliance of necessity" initially formed out of a mutual concern over the threat of neighboring countries - purely pragmatic and practical, the epitome of realpolitik. Israel viewed Iran as a possible peripheral ally, outside the orbit of its immediate threats (Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, Syria, Jordan). Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, envisaged his country as the dominant hegemon in the Middle East, and viewed neighboring Iraq as its most immediate threat. In Parsi's narrative the shah, who ultimately fled Iran during the Islamic Revolution and died in exile in 1980, exhibited all the signs of megalomania. He was a Middle Eastern dictator with a shopping list for US-made weapons and lucrative oil rents to pay for the merchandise. But he wasn't the smartest political tactician. The shah's appetite for status as the dominant power in the region led him to sign the Algiers Accord, an agreement between Iran and Iraq that would end hostilities and settle territorial disputes, notably the Shatt al-Arab waterway. At the time, Iraq was fighting a Kurdish rebellion launched by peshmerga guerrillas (who were supported by Iranian and Israeli intelligence agencies and financed by the US). In the long term, Parsi writes, the shah's shortsighted agreement led to the unraveling of a tacit alliance with Israel, with which it was conducting intelligence operations. Furthermore, the end of hostilities gave Iraq an opportunity to crush the Kurdish rebellion and rebuild its army. It would use it against Iran five years later. The Islamic Revolution took the US by surprise, but even the rigid ideological rhetoric of the mullahs could be manipulated if the political situation demanded. While the mullahs maintained a fierce public posture condemning Israel, they approached the country for weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. Parsi writes, "The more the Islamic Republic's foreign policy was presented as different from that of the shah, the more it resembled it at its core ... the ideology had shifted astonishingly. But the end goal remained remarkably similar." The end goal was to build a stronger relationship with the United States, and if that meant theocratic Iran would have to go through Israel, it would do so. But successive US administrations complicated the relationship further. US neo-conservatives, who got their country involved in the Iran-Contra scandal at the height of Iran's war against Iraq, opposed contact with Iran 15 years later in spite of Tehran's repeated overtures. "There is a great deal of confusion as to how America got mixed up in an Israeli-Iranian rivalry that is neither about ideology nor religion," Parsi writes. Currently, Iran is a country that finds itself increasingly isolated by the West, while the US and Israel now represent a complete alignment of views on terrorism and how to deal with it. Parsi's book also analyzes the extent to which the pro-Israel lobby influenced policy and views on Iran. In the early 1990s, after the defeat of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Army in the Gulf War, Israeli politicians began describing Iran as the primary threat. "The pro-Israeli community turned strongly against Iran, influencing US policy on Iran in an almost emotional way," said former US national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. As a result, Iran, Parsi argues convincingly, created a different equation, one in which Israeli actions against Palestinian "rejectionist groups" Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as Lebanon's Hezbollah, would be met with retaliatory terrorist attacks against Jews and Israelis abroad. But even Iran's links to groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah could be negotiated, as evidenced by the 2003 overture by the Iranian regime, and approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to stop funding them in return for certain safety guarantees and a wider political opening with the United States. Then-US congressman Bob Ney delivered the message to the White House, but Iran never received a reply. Treacherous Alliance is a timely and important read for anybody who wants push back the essentialist arguments that suggest an impending clash of ideologies. In Parsi's estimation, as long as the US ignores the "800-pound gorilla" in the room, it will not be able to resolve any of its problems in the region. Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States by Trita Parsi. Yale University Press

Aallah dadkuu naacnac baadaan :rolleyes:

^^^^Loool^^ That was hilarious Ngonge! loool hehe, will comment on the topic when I have time inshallah

Loool. they might as well stay together, I'm sure there is something still there maybe they can try cyber marriage, and see if it is any better than real marriage. The world is going crazy! lool

Ms DD, as of today I too will not be working. I'm going back to the good old days of being a student! HERE I COME!. good luck with whatever you do sis. Salam

^^^I'm sorry honey, I'm depressing myself with reading all these, but I guess I cannot always hide out from the reality of this world. I am more aware of people misfortunes than ever today. It is truly sad for them to live so close and ...

Hundreds of Palestinians thronged two major West Bank checkpoints, trying to reach the Al Aksa mosque in Jerusalem on the first Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, despite Israeli restrictions. IDF troops turned back many of the West Bank faithful. Only men above the age of 45 and women above the age of 35, who had also obtained special permits, were allowed to enter the mosque, the third holiest shrine of Islam, said police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby. Later Friday, several tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them Jerusalem residents not affected by the restrictions, participated in the Al Aksa service, and the crowd dispersed peacefully. Hundreds of Israeli police were deployed in streets and alleys in and around Jerusalem`s walled Old City where the Al Aksa Mosque compound is located. Troops also took up positions at two major West Bank checkpoints, one to the south of Jerusalem and one to the north. The checkpoints are built into Israel`s West Bank separation barrier, which rings most of Jerusalem to control Palestinian movement into Israel. At the southern checkpoint, near the biblical town of Bethlehem, hundreds of Palestinians, many of them elderly, pushed up against police lines set up near the separation barrier, in this area a towering wall. At one point, the crowd pushed through the police line. One woman crawled on her hands and knees, another fell to the ground as people behind her surged forward. IDF troops shouted at people to get back. At the northern Kalandiya crossing, near the city of Ramallah, hundreds of people waited to pass. Hamdi Abu Fadi, 44, was turned back because he didn`t meet the age requirement. Abu Fadi said he`d try to sneak into Jerusalem in another area, in hopes of reaching Al Aksa. Prayers performed at the shrine are considered more powerful than worship in another mosque. Palestinians have long complained that Israel is violating their right to freedom of worship by restricting access to a major shrine. `It`s a crime against us all year long, whether during Ramadan or any other month,` said Abu Fadi. Israel says it imposes the restrictions to prevent possible attacks by terrorists. Ramadan is a time of heightened religious fervor which security officials fear could increase the motivation for carrying out attacks. source

How did my tips for ramadan turn to a discussion about nothing else BUT food! why do we exist?

^^ LayzieGirl... you are kidding right?? okay maybe not.. I'm going to ignore the rest of your message as it was just silly, but I have to point this out because it made me laugh! Neph, folks like ghanima can't handle a battle of one, much less two. you thought this was a battle?? :confused: aww you poor thing! you must live in a nice area. Ramadan Mubarak :cool:

^^^loool. I would not be suprised North or so they say.

An al-Jazeera journalist captured in Afghanistan six years ago and sent to Guantanamo Bay is close to becoming the fifth detainee at the US naval base to take his own life, according to a medical report written by a team of British and American psychiatrists Sami al-Haj, a Sudanese national, is 250 days into a hunger strike which he began in protest over his detention without charge or trial in January 2002. But British and American doctors, who have been given exclusive access to his interview notes, say there is very strong evidence that he has given up his fight for life, experiencing what doctors recognise as "passive suicide", a condition suffered by female victims of Darfur. Dr Dan Creson, a US psychiatrist who has worked with the United Nations in Darfur, said Mr Haj was suffering from severe depression and may be deteriorating to the point of imminent death. He said the detainee's condition was similar to that of Darfuri women in Sudan whose mind suddenly experiences an irreversible decline after enduring months of starvation and abuse. He said: "In the midst of rape, slow starvation, and abject humiliation, they did whatever they could to survive and save their children; then, suddenly, something happened in their psyche, and, without warning, they would just sit down with their small children beneath the first small area of available shade and with no apparent emotion wait for death." In June this year a Saudi man became the fourth prisoner to take his own life at Guantanamo Bay. Guards found him dead in his cell. Two Saudis and a Yemeni prisoner were found hanged in an apparent suicide at Guantanamo in June last year. A senior US officer caused outrage at the time by describing the suicides of three men as an act of asymmetric warfare and a good PR move on the part of terrorist suspects. Mr Haj, 38, was sent on assignment by al-Jazeera television station to cover the war in Afghanistan in October 2001. The following month, after the fall of Kabul, Mr Haj left Afghanistan for Pakistan with the rest of his crew. In early December, the crew were given visas to return to Afghanistan. But when Mr Haj tried to re-enter Afghanistan with his colleagues, he was arrested by the Pakistani authorities – apparently at the request of the US military. He was imprisoned, handed over to the US authorities in January 2002, taken to the US military compound in Bagram, Afghanisatan, then Kandahar, and finally to Guantanamo in June 2002. His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, of the human rights charity Reprieve, said his client had endured months of brutal force-feeding and lost nearly a fifth of his body weight during the hunger strike. Mr Stafford Smith said: "The US military is rightly afraid of a fifth prisoner dying in their custody. But they wrongly respond by treating prisoners worse. Blankets and clothes are removed in case they are used to commit suicide. The harshest methods of forced feeding are deployed – Sami has suffered the feeding tube being forced down into his lungs by mistake several times." The warning about the condition of Mr Haj coincided with the release of Guantanamo transcripts which describe the hostility between guards and their prisoners. The transcripts includes details of guards interrupting detainees at prayer, detainees flinging body waste at guards and interrogators withholding medicine. Dr Hugh Rickards, a British psychiatrist, warned in his report that the level of Mr Haj's mental suffering "appears so acute that it is my duty as a medical practitioner to put this in writing to ensure appropriate assessment and treatment". Dr Mamoun Mobayed, a British psychiatrist based in Northern Ireland, and a third member of the team who has also been given access to written notes of recent interviews with the prisoner, said there was also concern about the mental health of Mr Haj's wife and seven-year-old son, who was just one when his father went on assignment to Afghanistan. Source: Independent p.s. The American Committee to Free Sami Al-Haj has launched an online petition to the U.S. Congress demanding Sami’s release and an investigation of the Bush Administration’s campaign against Al Jazeera.

If the fiasco surrounding their "Undercover Mosques" programme wasn't enough, the Dispatches team is set to broadcast another attack on Muslims tomorrow evening. This time claiming that former Muslim converts to Christianity are facing "Mob Justice" from their former communities. No doubt the scale of the problem will be blown out of proportion once again. There is a strong case to attack the Dispatches team credibility especially after they were reported by West Midlands Police for misrepresentation. Dispatches investigates the violence and intimidation facing Muslims who convert to Christianity in Britain. Dispatches reporter Antony Barnett meets former Muslims who now live under the threat of reprisals from their former communities. Many are still living in fear. He interviews a family who have been driven out of their home and a convert whose brother was beaten close to death. The investigation uncovers a network of churches supporting converts from Islam who have to worship under a veil of secrecy. It is estimated there are as many as 3,000 Muslims who have converted to Christianity living in Britain. Converting to another religion for a Muslim is not just considered a taboo act by some believers. Certain Islamic texts demand converts - also known as apostates - be punished severely for deserting their faith. In several Islamic states, the death penalty is imposed. Here in Britain, Dispatches discovers a form of mob justice is taking place on our streets. A concerned Christian bishop tells Dispatches that it may not be long before a British convert is killed, and implores Muslim leaders to take action. Dispatches discovers the situation for converts from Islam in Britain is a tinderbox waiting to explode. Increasingly asylum seekers from Islamic countries are exploring different faiths in Britain while a new strand of evangelical Christianity is targeting Britain's Muslims for conversion. With radical British Islamic groups calling for apostates to be executed if they achieved their goal of a worldwide Islamic state, it's a potentially dangerous cocktail that has been exacerbated by the silence of both Muslim and Christian leaders on the subject.

That is what I meant! waab yaab, then you still get up for Suxuur! damn. bisinka iyo Yasinka as my edo would say! that is a lot of food.

You have Casho, After Iftar???? that is madness! lool

Loool, it is surprising how many people love their cereal, I cannot make up my mind if it is real food, or whoever made it was just taking the pis*s, I've never seen something that fills you so quickly and yet you are hungry 1hr after. :rolleyes: Acuudubilah @ people who eat hilib and full meals. P.s. everyone is so busy trying to avoid getting hungry all day!! people that is part of fasting, you are suppose to feel hungry and thirsty and all the other hardship that comes with not eating regularly! helllooooo

^^^Stay focus and realistic here please. It is reality not negativity. Somali’s think everyone who wants to help them wants something out of it, relative or not. Please read what I said, I wrote "most" based on my experience (as I go on to mention my own area) so No I do think there are some sincere organizations, but not enough to out weigh the corrupt. Young and negative helps me avoid wasting time and effort and disappointment by focusing on a dream that just won't be and sitting back and waiting for this so called unity and working together. I hope been older and positive keeps you going. I don't have anything else to add and I believe I made my position clear. I'm not going to argue for the sake of arguing. :cool:

For your information Kurds are dying all the time, you only have to look to north London where they have gang warfare with the Turkish and the blacks. They have the highest prison population in that area, not to mention high unemployment and educational level. Somalis are divided where ever they are, they took the problems of back home with them to where ever they went. It is not uncommon to see people (kids) fight over clans, you just have look at how they settle in areas prominent in their clan. So don't tell me about American and Canadian Somalis , I can see the ones here. As for people who set up community centers, most are just greedy people who just use their local community to get funding and then do nothing for the community, other than take few kids on field trips or pizza hut just so they can collect receipts for the audit. In my area there are 15 youth development centers for Somalis, yet the youngsters are lost and rooming the streets. I know what the problem is, I just telling you shouting "Somalis need to unite and work together" from the side line is not going to work, so save me your chanting please.

Thank you North, that is all I was trying to tell "Me" before he started freaking out. Young and growing into what? thats a racist comment Ghinima. Are you saying we are not a fully developed community. Huh?? come again my dear? how is that racist? And yes I am saying we are less rooted in the countries we live in, we have not yet developed the institutions and facilities that available to other ethnic minorities like the Pakistanis, Indians etc who firstly came from a different background (i.e. they had money, business, not necessarily fleeing war, broke etc) but also because they have been here a lot longer, and have come to realise that they are hear to stay, and for some that the countries they live in is their home more than their native countries. Somalis are only on 1st generation (maybe 2nd is some places) and most of them still believe they are going back etc. any projects that have been under taken is normally short term, show me an existent Somali organizations that is planning for the future of Somalis in 50years (where they are living) go on, I would love to see it. As usual I find your "united" rhetoric boring, and unhelpful, you must find ways to work around this problem dear, it is deeply rooted issue that won’t magically disappear no matter how much you wish for it.