The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle
By Patrick Cockburn
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Saturday, 17 July 2010
My New Best Friend
My new - human, alive now, other than family, not Muslim yet (May Allah guide Him), best friend is...
Wednesday, 14 July 2010
How not to liberate women
Restrictions on women wearing the veil in public life are as much a violation of their rights as is forcing them to wear a veil
Judith Sunderland
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 24 April 2010 11.00 BST
Muslim veiling is once again at the top of the news in Europe. Bans on full-face veils being considered or already in place, whether nationwide, at the municipal level, or applied in public buildings and transportation, undermine Muslim women's autonomy and religious freedom. Arguments put forward to support these bans fall into four categories, none of which stand up to serious scrutiny.
Banning the veil will liberate women.
Generalisations about women's oppression under the veil do a tremendous disservice to one of the basic tenets of gender equality: a woman's right to self-determination and autonomy. Restrictions on women wearing the veil in public life are as much a violation of the rights of women as is forcing them to wear a veil. Muslim teachers in Germany we interviewed said they wore the headscarf out of choice. Bans on headscarves in some German states have led many teachers to abandon their chosen profession, leading to loss of independence, social standing and financial wellbeing. It is clear that many Muslim women in Europe who cover themselves do so out of choice. For those who are coerced, general bans would limit, if not eliminate, their ability to seek advice and support. It may leave them trapped at home, further isolated from society. European governments need to support these women, with better access to education, justice and employment, rather than put them under more pressure.
The veil should be banned for security reasons.
A wholesale ban on the full Muslim veil is a disproportionate response to the legitimate need in a variety of situations to ascertain someone's identity. Airport cheques, school pick-ups, administrative dealings with state officers, cashing a cheque – these are all obvious examples. Appropriate, sensitive measures can be adopted to satisfy both the individual's right to manifest her religious beliefs and her duty to identify herself. In all the situations mentioned above, a woman wearing the full veil can be asked to take off her veil in private.
Bans on religious dress preserve secularism.
The principle of state neutrality requires state institutions to refrain from imposing any particular set of religious views, while at the same time allowing for free expression of religious beliefs within society. Bans that deny people the right to wear in public places a style of clothing linked to a particular religious faith undermine, rather than protect, this principle, by defining the public space as a zone in which no-one is permitted to manifest his or her religion.
Banning the veil is necessary for integration.
The fact that the children of immigrants and converts, as well as newer immigrants, wear the full-face veil in Europe undermines the argument that a ban is necessary for the purposes of integration. Integration policies that require newcomers to shed fundamental aspects of their identity are unlikely to succeed. Banning full-face veils is likely to restrict rather than enhance opportunities for these women to engage with society as a whole.
The divisive debate about full Muslim veiling reflects the complex issues – and passions – involved. International human rights law cannot answer all of the issues involved, but it can help frame a constructive conversation. It requires that any interference with rights must have a legitimate reason and be the least restrictive possible. It's fundamentally about the role of the state in matters relating to personal autonomy and religion, thought and conscience. Victims of coercion and abuse deserve assistance – but a ban is more likely to harm than help them. And the convictions of those who choose to wear the veil deserve consideration.
Judith Sunderland
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 24 April 2010 11.00 BST
Muslim veiling is once again at the top of the news in Europe. Bans on full-face veils being considered or already in place, whether nationwide, at the municipal level, or applied in public buildings and transportation, undermine Muslim women's autonomy and religious freedom. Arguments put forward to support these bans fall into four categories, none of which stand up to serious scrutiny.
Banning the veil will liberate women.
Generalisations about women's oppression under the veil do a tremendous disservice to one of the basic tenets of gender equality: a woman's right to self-determination and autonomy. Restrictions on women wearing the veil in public life are as much a violation of the rights of women as is forcing them to wear a veil. Muslim teachers in Germany we interviewed said they wore the headscarf out of choice. Bans on headscarves in some German states have led many teachers to abandon their chosen profession, leading to loss of independence, social standing and financial wellbeing. It is clear that many Muslim women in Europe who cover themselves do so out of choice. For those who are coerced, general bans would limit, if not eliminate, their ability to seek advice and support. It may leave them trapped at home, further isolated from society. European governments need to support these women, with better access to education, justice and employment, rather than put them under more pressure.
The veil should be banned for security reasons.
A wholesale ban on the full Muslim veil is a disproportionate response to the legitimate need in a variety of situations to ascertain someone's identity. Airport cheques, school pick-ups, administrative dealings with state officers, cashing a cheque – these are all obvious examples. Appropriate, sensitive measures can be adopted to satisfy both the individual's right to manifest her religious beliefs and her duty to identify herself. In all the situations mentioned above, a woman wearing the full veil can be asked to take off her veil in private.
Bans on religious dress preserve secularism.
The principle of state neutrality requires state institutions to refrain from imposing any particular set of religious views, while at the same time allowing for free expression of religious beliefs within society. Bans that deny people the right to wear in public places a style of clothing linked to a particular religious faith undermine, rather than protect, this principle, by defining the public space as a zone in which no-one is permitted to manifest his or her religion.
Banning the veil is necessary for integration.
The fact that the children of immigrants and converts, as well as newer immigrants, wear the full-face veil in Europe undermines the argument that a ban is necessary for the purposes of integration. Integration policies that require newcomers to shed fundamental aspects of their identity are unlikely to succeed. Banning full-face veils is likely to restrict rather than enhance opportunities for these women to engage with society as a whole.
The divisive debate about full Muslim veiling reflects the complex issues – and passions – involved. International human rights law cannot answer all of the issues involved, but it can help frame a constructive conversation. It requires that any interference with rights must have a legitimate reason and be the least restrictive possible. It's fundamentally about the role of the state in matters relating to personal autonomy and religion, thought and conscience. Victims of coercion and abuse deserve assistance – but a ban is more likely to harm than help them. And the convictions of those who choose to wear the veil deserve consideration.
Thursday, 8 July 2010
A new light on the harms of porn
Yusuf Smith
A few months ago I read a book called Living Dolls by Natasha Walter, who argued that the “new feminism” she thought was emerging in the 1990s had given way to a culture in which girls were being pressurised to be sexualised at younger and younger ages, with anyone resisting being seen as a prude, and that this culture is seen as liberating when it’s actually degrading. A new book is released this month entitled Pornland, by long-standing anti-porn activist Gail Dines, which argues that people’s sexuality is being changed forever by a culture of commercial porn in which acts which are extreme and unusual are promoted as normal, and which ruins intimacy and people’s relationships.
Dines was interviewed in the Guardian by Julie Bindel last Thursday; there is another interview with her here and you can find excerpts from it here.
I’m kind of lucky in that porn has never really interested me. I took one look at the pictures in a top-shelf magazine in the UK when I was a teenager, I think, and I found it so revolting that I just put it back and put it out of my mind. But it seems that what I saw was probably tame by today’s standards, with boys getting access to the stuff younger and younger, and expecting real women to replicate the sexual acts they find in it, and being shocked that they do not want to. The material depicts stuff which is not only degrading but stressful and painful for women’s bodies, and the video (rather than still) stuff often shows the man showering the woman with insults as he carries out his bizarre acts (really, I’m not describing them — you can follow any of the links above if you want to know).
The two biggest problems with it is that it removes elements such as tenderness and intimacy from sexual relationships, and that it forms an addiction that causes men to lie and to neglect their duties to their families so as to pursue their addiction. As with so many chemical addictions, they often find that what they start out on loses its thrill, so they move onto harder stuff, often involving children. Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania related, in a speech at Capitol Hill last month, that she had known a man who had worked for years to build a career in a given field, and then secured an interview for a “dream job”, but in the even didn’t attend because he was too busy surfing porn sites on the Internet. Another was a police officer who was jailed for viewing child porn on his work computer; he lost his marriage and could no longer see his children.
A few years ago Muslim Matters had some posts on Muslim men’s addiction to this stuff. Of course, viewing this stuff is completely against Islam, but one supposes that these same men married their wives on the basis that they were chaste and not the sort of women they’d find in these videos. As is so often the case, the brothers expect the women to be utterly pure and devoted while they are anything but. I don’t want to imply that all Muslim women are super-pure and other women are sluts, and most non-Muslim women wouldn’t want to be seen dead in these productions either, but when an ostensibly religious Muslim man, married to a woman of a similar stripe, expects her to perform similarly to the females he sees in porn videos, there is likely to be conflict, to say the least.
Dines herself is not anti-sex or, I suspect, against erotic material being available — Bindel compares her to Andrea Dworkin, commonly accused of being a militant man-hating prude when she was in fact married to a man and, in her writings on porn, distinguished between genuinely erotic and “thanatic”, or destructive, pornography which depicted the degradation of women. After all, porn depicting children is already illegal in most places, and many men have been prosecuted for downloading the material, which is footage of child abuse. The material discussed here depicts adults, but it is often readily available to younger and younger boys, who themselves learn about sex through it and end up thinking what they see there is normal when it isn’t. The things depicted are acted out and the females are being paid, but the acts are meant to look like assaults.
There are a couple of aspects of Dines’s critique of porn culture I don’t agree with. One is her emphasis on hair removal as a product of this culture; she claims that none of the female students she meets keep their pubic hair, as its removal is now the norm, thanks to porn culture. That all of them remove their hair I don’t quite believe anyway, but they were introduced to America through a salon run by several Brazilian sisters and were known of in Brazil before that on account of the skimpy bikinis worn on beaches there. Even so, it’s a fashion and surely not all the women who do it are directly influenced by porn. It was the norm in the Muslim world long before it became popular here. There is quite a generational difference here, with the older generation considering that hair is what distinguishes women from little girls, while a lot of younger women disagree.
A second issue is the use of the term “patriarchy” as a lazy synonym for male domination, as in:
“To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”
Patriarchy actually connotes a society in which men protect women, not simply allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to exploit them. Most fathers would be outraged, or at least profoundly sad, at the thought of their daughters performing in this way, even if they were getting paid for it and when the family and parental authority in this country was stronger, pornography was less readily available and much less extreme than it is now. A society in which men are free to abuse and exploit women and girls may be many things, but this does not make it patriarchal.
I had heard of the problems with widely-available porn before, but reading these interviews with Dines really shocked me in terms of what these things consisted of and the fact that people who view it come to consider the things depicted as normal. Unfortunately, attempts to curb this material in the USA have been struck down under the First Amendment, and there is only so much we can do when such a big population has decided that it cannot control such material, but we can pass legislation against such material here and should not be afraid to. Of course, education is an important tool here as well — for young people, so that boys know that this is harmful and unreal, and that parents know that they should keep tabs on what their children are seeing online, and know how to. Dines’ is a welcome voice on this issue, calm and measured and less influenced by personal trauma than Dworkin was, and one hopes that her book opens people’s eyes to how damaging this trend is.
A few months ago I read a book called Living Dolls by Natasha Walter, who argued that the “new feminism” she thought was emerging in the 1990s had given way to a culture in which girls were being pressurised to be sexualised at younger and younger ages, with anyone resisting being seen as a prude, and that this culture is seen as liberating when it’s actually degrading. A new book is released this month entitled Pornland, by long-standing anti-porn activist Gail Dines, which argues that people’s sexuality is being changed forever by a culture of commercial porn in which acts which are extreme and unusual are promoted as normal, and which ruins intimacy and people’s relationships.
Dines was interviewed in the Guardian by Julie Bindel last Thursday; there is another interview with her here and you can find excerpts from it here.
I’m kind of lucky in that porn has never really interested me. I took one look at the pictures in a top-shelf magazine in the UK when I was a teenager, I think, and I found it so revolting that I just put it back and put it out of my mind. But it seems that what I saw was probably tame by today’s standards, with boys getting access to the stuff younger and younger, and expecting real women to replicate the sexual acts they find in it, and being shocked that they do not want to. The material depicts stuff which is not only degrading but stressful and painful for women’s bodies, and the video (rather than still) stuff often shows the man showering the woman with insults as he carries out his bizarre acts (really, I’m not describing them — you can follow any of the links above if you want to know).
The two biggest problems with it is that it removes elements such as tenderness and intimacy from sexual relationships, and that it forms an addiction that causes men to lie and to neglect their duties to their families so as to pursue their addiction. As with so many chemical addictions, they often find that what they start out on loses its thrill, so they move onto harder stuff, often involving children. Mary Ann Layden of the University of Pennsylvania related, in a speech at Capitol Hill last month, that she had known a man who had worked for years to build a career in a given field, and then secured an interview for a “dream job”, but in the even didn’t attend because he was too busy surfing porn sites on the Internet. Another was a police officer who was jailed for viewing child porn on his work computer; he lost his marriage and could no longer see his children.
A few years ago Muslim Matters had some posts on Muslim men’s addiction to this stuff. Of course, viewing this stuff is completely against Islam, but one supposes that these same men married their wives on the basis that they were chaste and not the sort of women they’d find in these videos. As is so often the case, the brothers expect the women to be utterly pure and devoted while they are anything but. I don’t want to imply that all Muslim women are super-pure and other women are sluts, and most non-Muslim women wouldn’t want to be seen dead in these productions either, but when an ostensibly religious Muslim man, married to a woman of a similar stripe, expects her to perform similarly to the females he sees in porn videos, there is likely to be conflict, to say the least.
Dines herself is not anti-sex or, I suspect, against erotic material being available — Bindel compares her to Andrea Dworkin, commonly accused of being a militant man-hating prude when she was in fact married to a man and, in her writings on porn, distinguished between genuinely erotic and “thanatic”, or destructive, pornography which depicted the degradation of women. After all, porn depicting children is already illegal in most places, and many men have been prosecuted for downloading the material, which is footage of child abuse. The material discussed here depicts adults, but it is often readily available to younger and younger boys, who themselves learn about sex through it and end up thinking what they see there is normal when it isn’t. The things depicted are acted out and the females are being paid, but the acts are meant to look like assaults.
There are a couple of aspects of Dines’s critique of porn culture I don’t agree with. One is her emphasis on hair removal as a product of this culture; she claims that none of the female students she meets keep their pubic hair, as its removal is now the norm, thanks to porn culture. That all of them remove their hair I don’t quite believe anyway, but they were introduced to America through a salon run by several Brazilian sisters and were known of in Brazil before that on account of the skimpy bikinis worn on beaches there. Even so, it’s a fashion and surely not all the women who do it are directly influenced by porn. It was the norm in the Muslim world long before it became popular here. There is quite a generational difference here, with the older generation considering that hair is what distinguishes women from little girls, while a lot of younger women disagree.
A second issue is the use of the term “patriarchy” as a lazy synonym for male domination, as in:
“To think that so many men hate women to the degree that they can get aroused by such vile images is quite profound,” says Dines. “Pornography is the perfect propaganda piece for patriarchy. In nothing else is their hatred of us quite as clear.”
Patriarchy actually connotes a society in which men protect women, not simply allow any Tom, Dick or Harry to exploit them. Most fathers would be outraged, or at least profoundly sad, at the thought of their daughters performing in this way, even if they were getting paid for it and when the family and parental authority in this country was stronger, pornography was less readily available and much less extreme than it is now. A society in which men are free to abuse and exploit women and girls may be many things, but this does not make it patriarchal.
I had heard of the problems with widely-available porn before, but reading these interviews with Dines really shocked me in terms of what these things consisted of and the fact that people who view it come to consider the things depicted as normal. Unfortunately, attempts to curb this material in the USA have been struck down under the First Amendment, and there is only so much we can do when such a big population has decided that it cannot control such material, but we can pass legislation against such material here and should not be afraid to. Of course, education is an important tool here as well — for young people, so that boys know that this is harmful and unreal, and that parents know that they should keep tabs on what their children are seeing online, and know how to. Dines’ is a welcome voice on this issue, calm and measured and less influenced by personal trauma than Dworkin was, and one hopes that her book opens people’s eyes to how damaging this trend is.
Tuesday, 1 June 2010
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Monday, 24 May 2010
It's not about the age...
My mum beat me in Badminton today. It just goes to show it's not about how old you are it's about how well you've looked after yourself.
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Thoughtfull Quotes...
On Children
Imam al-Ghazali said: "A child is a trust given to the parents. His pure heart is a simple jewel, without any pattern or design, ready to be engraved as you wish...
... So if you taught him well and made him accustomed to good; that is what he will grow up to do, causing pleasure for the parents in this life and the next. But if you accustomed him to evil, and neglected him as you neglect a wild beast he will be the cause of your unhappiness and destruction."
On Mothers
"The mother is a school; if you prepare her properly, you will prepare an entire people of good character. The mother is the first teacher, foremost among them, and the best of teachers."
Diwan Hafidh Ibrahim
Imam al-Ghazali said: "A child is a trust given to the parents. His pure heart is a simple jewel, without any pattern or design, ready to be engraved as you wish...
... So if you taught him well and made him accustomed to good; that is what he will grow up to do, causing pleasure for the parents in this life and the next. But if you accustomed him to evil, and neglected him as you neglect a wild beast he will be the cause of your unhappiness and destruction."
On Mothers
"The mother is a school; if you prepare her properly, you will prepare an entire people of good character. The mother is the first teacher, foremost among them, and the best of teachers."
Diwan Hafidh Ibrahim
Friday, 16 April 2010
Re-charged Mum of 3 - All praise is due to Allah!
Alhamdulillah my 3rd daughter was born almost 3 weeks ago by the Grace and Mercy of Allah. Alhamdulillah another difficult pregnancy is over and now I'm trying to make the most of my energy and good health that Allah has blessed me with (I hardly spend any quality time with my girls since I was so sick,) as well as trying to make the most of the lovely weather at the moment. I've been doing various gardening activities with them and hope to post up some activity/ lesson plans soon.
There are so many benefits to gardening and getting the children to attempt to grow some of their own food. Most importantly though I feel it helps them to become more aware of Allah as as the Creator of all things and controller of all affairs since a seed may not even germinate.
They also learn to be responsible as they have to remember to water the soil each day, they acquire patience - as they wait for the seedlings to appear and learn to make du'aa - as they really want the seedlings to appear soon!
I hope the du'aas are answered soon though as I'm also having to acquire my own patience... :-)
There are so many benefits to gardening and getting the children to attempt to grow some of their own food. Most importantly though I feel it helps them to become more aware of Allah as as the Creator of all things and controller of all affairs since a seed may not even germinate.They also learn to be responsible as they have to remember to water the soil each day, they acquire patience - as they wait for the seedlings to appear and learn to make du'aa - as they really want the seedlings to appear soon!
I hope the du'aas are answered soon though as I'm also having to acquire my own patience... :-)
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Open Letter: Supporting Aafia Siddiqui
Written by Haitham Al-Haddad
Friday, 19 March 2010
It is well known that the War on Terror waged by the United States and its allies led to aggression and injustice against countries, organizations, groups and individuals. Perhaps the worst example of this brutality against individuals was that meted out to our Muslim sister in Islam, Aafia Siddiqui and her three small children.
Aafia is a hafidhah of the Qur’an, a devoted mother and practising Muslim, who dedicated her life to spreading the religion of God and assisting fellow Muslims. It is believed that she was abducted at the behest of American intelligence from Pakistan, her home country along with her children in 2003, the youngest of whom was just six months old at that time. Aafia Siddiqui and her lawyers maintain that she was held in secret US detention and tortured and abused in this time, along with her children - a claim that is corroborated by former prisoners at Bagram. After five years of denying knowledge of her whereabouts, the US claims that she allegedly emerged in Afghanistan. She was shot by US soldiers and then tried and convicted despite the absence of any physical evidence against her and the conflicting testimonies presented during the trial. She now faces life in prison. Only one of her children has been released, while the whereabouts of the two youngest remain unknown. From the time she was transferred to the US to date she has been subject to humiliating and degrading strip and cavity searches in prison and is now being denied jail visits and communication with the outside world, including her immediate family.
Allah has enjoined upon the believers, in innumerable commandments, to support the believers who are being oppressed, irrespective of where they may be. Allah says in the Qur’an,
“The believers, men and women, are auliya (helpers, supporters, friends, protectors) of one another; they enjoin good and forbid from evil; they establish prayers, and give the zakat, and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah will have His Mercy on them. Surely Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise.”[1]
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said,
“A Muslim is a brother of another Muslim, so he should not oppress him, nor should he hand him over to an oppressor. Whoever fulfilled the needs of his brother, Allah will fulfil his needs; whoever brought his (Muslim) brother out of a discomfort, Allah will bring him out of the discomforts of the Day of Resurrection.”[2]
He (peace be upon him) also said,
"Whoever is present while a Muslim is humiliated before him, and is able to assist him [and yet does not], Allah will humiliate him before all of creation on the Day of Judgment." And in another narration, “No man forsakes a Muslim when his rights are being violated or his honour is being belittled except that Allah will forsake him at a place in which he would love to have His help. And no man helps a Muslim at a time when his honour is being belittled or his rights violated except that Allah will help him at a place in which he loves to have His help.”
When we merely hear the plight of our sister, we should feel restless and tormented as the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “The similitude of believers in regard to mutual love and affection is that of one body; when any limb of it aches, the whole body aches, because of sleeplessness and fever.”
In spite of this, the Muslim ummah, whose followers surpass that of any other world religion, have shamefully failed in our duty to defend this Muslim woman.
Obligation to aid in the emancipation of Muslim captives
Allah has admonished and reproached the believers for allowing the weak to remain under the clutches of the enemy and their torture. Allah says,
“And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allah, and for those weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help."”[3]
Explaining this verse, Imam Al-Qurtubi said, “Freeing the prisoners is obligatory on the Muslim, whether by war or wealth.” Imam Malik said, “It is obligatory on (Muslim) people to ransom the prisoners with all their wealth.” There is no difference of opinion among the scholars over this, since the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “Free the prisoners.”[4] Our scholars say that ransoming prisoners is obligatory, even if not a single penny is left. Ibn Khuwaizimandad said, “This verse contains the obligations to free prisoners. There are reports from the Prophet (peace be upon him) to this effect: he freed prisoners and ordered them to be freed. This was practiced by Muslims throughout the ages and the scholars are unanimous about it. It is obligatory to free (Muslim) prisoners from the state’s treasury, and if the amount does not suffice, then it is obligatory upon all the Muslims to contribute. If one Muslim frees him, the others are absolved of this duty.”
An incident that shows the great concern for freeing Muslim captives is when the Caliph ‘Umar bin ‘Abdul Aziz (may Allah be pleased with him) sent ‘Abdul Rahman bin ‘Amrah to free some Muslim captives. He said, “Give them whatever they ask for every Muslim! By Allah, a Muslim is dearer to me than all the polytheists in my state! Indeed, you win any Muslim you pay the ransom for. Indeed you are buying Islam (by ensuring their release from prison and torture).”[5]
Ibn Taymiyyah said, “Freeing Muslim prisoners is one of the greatest obligations. Spending money from endowments (waqf) and other sources is one of the best deeds.”
Ibn Qudamah, may Allah have Mercy on him, said: “It is permissible for a Muslim to use his zakat to buy back a Muslim prisoner from the captivity of polytheists. This is because the emancipation of a Muslim captive is similar to emancipating someone from slavery, as well as it bringing glory to Islam. Spending zakah in this cause is like spending it to soften people’s hearts towards Islam, and since it is given to the prisoner to free himself from captivity it is like giving money to an indebted person for ridding himself of the debt.”
Our Obligation
Therefore, it is obligatory upon every single Muslim, wherever they reside, to work, directly or indirectly, towards the release of the Muslim captives irrespective of wherever they may be. Any Muslim with the capability to aid others yet fails to do so will be sinful. Everyone is responsible according to their ability; the greatest responsibility lies with those in authority, followed by the scholars, and so on – although the failure of those who bear greater responsibility to act does not absolve individuals of their own individual responsibilities.
If the captive is a Muslim woman, like our sister Aafia, the obligation becomes even greater, given the elevated status of women in Islam. The scholars of Islam are unanimous that a Muslim woman cannot be handed over to non-Muslims in any case. This Ummah has a glorious heritage of protecting Muslim women that we must endeavour to restore. Amongst the incidents narrated to this effect, is that of the honour of a believing woman attacked by members of the tribe of Quraydhah, and so, a believer fought to defend her until he was killed and an army was dispatched against the perpetrators.
As a nation, we have not fulfilled our obligation towards our sister, Aafia Siddiqui, as well as her children. We must exhaust every lawful means for her release and for the recovery of her children without fearing anyone but Allah. This may include, but is not limited to, direct involvement with organisations that work for this cause, donating money for it, raising awareness and actively speaking about her plight, writing in support of her and her family, and pressuring those governments complicit in her ordeal to end this injustice.
The least that is enjoined upon us is to supplicate to Allah for her as well other Muslim prisoners, as supplication is the weapon of a Muslim; it is incumbent upon every believer to supplicate for them as if we were supplicating on behalf of ourselves and our families.
“O Allah, deliver our sister and her children from this humiliation and torture at the hands of those who do not believe in You.”
May Allah ease the affairs of our sister Aafia and hasten her release from captivity. May He break free her shackles and the shackles of all of our oppressed prisoners. May Allah give them the strength to deal with their ordeal.
May Allah punish those who have oppressed our sister Aafia and continue to oppress her, may He defeat them and smite them, and may Allah forgive us for being negligent towards our Muslim brothers and sisters.
May Allah unite the hearts of the Muslims and grant us victory over our oppressors.
Notes:
Source: www.islam21c.com editorial
[1] Surah Taubah 9:71
[2] Sahih Al-Bukhari
[3] Surah Al-Nisa’ 4:75
[4] Sahih Al-Bukhari
[5] Narrated by Sa’eed Bin Mansur in his Sunan
Friday, 19 March 2010
It is well known that the War on Terror waged by the United States and its allies led to aggression and injustice against countries, organizations, groups and individuals. Perhaps the worst example of this brutality against individuals was that meted out to our Muslim sister in Islam, Aafia Siddiqui and her three small children.
Aafia is a hafidhah of the Qur’an, a devoted mother and practising Muslim, who dedicated her life to spreading the religion of God and assisting fellow Muslims. It is believed that she was abducted at the behest of American intelligence from Pakistan, her home country along with her children in 2003, the youngest of whom was just six months old at that time. Aafia Siddiqui and her lawyers maintain that she was held in secret US detention and tortured and abused in this time, along with her children - a claim that is corroborated by former prisoners at Bagram. After five years of denying knowledge of her whereabouts, the US claims that she allegedly emerged in Afghanistan. She was shot by US soldiers and then tried and convicted despite the absence of any physical evidence against her and the conflicting testimonies presented during the trial. She now faces life in prison. Only one of her children has been released, while the whereabouts of the two youngest remain unknown. From the time she was transferred to the US to date she has been subject to humiliating and degrading strip and cavity searches in prison and is now being denied jail visits and communication with the outside world, including her immediate family.
Allah has enjoined upon the believers, in innumerable commandments, to support the believers who are being oppressed, irrespective of where they may be. Allah says in the Qur’an,
“The believers, men and women, are auliya (helpers, supporters, friends, protectors) of one another; they enjoin good and forbid from evil; they establish prayers, and give the zakat, and obey Allah and His Messenger. Allah will have His Mercy on them. Surely Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise.”[1]
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said,
“A Muslim is a brother of another Muslim, so he should not oppress him, nor should he hand him over to an oppressor. Whoever fulfilled the needs of his brother, Allah will fulfil his needs; whoever brought his (Muslim) brother out of a discomfort, Allah will bring him out of the discomforts of the Day of Resurrection.”[2]
He (peace be upon him) also said,
"Whoever is present while a Muslim is humiliated before him, and is able to assist him [and yet does not], Allah will humiliate him before all of creation on the Day of Judgment." And in another narration, “No man forsakes a Muslim when his rights are being violated or his honour is being belittled except that Allah will forsake him at a place in which he would love to have His help. And no man helps a Muslim at a time when his honour is being belittled or his rights violated except that Allah will help him at a place in which he loves to have His help.”
When we merely hear the plight of our sister, we should feel restless and tormented as the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “The similitude of believers in regard to mutual love and affection is that of one body; when any limb of it aches, the whole body aches, because of sleeplessness and fever.”
In spite of this, the Muslim ummah, whose followers surpass that of any other world religion, have shamefully failed in our duty to defend this Muslim woman.
Obligation to aid in the emancipation of Muslim captives
Allah has admonished and reproached the believers for allowing the weak to remain under the clutches of the enemy and their torture. Allah says,
“And what is wrong with you that you fight not in the Cause of Allah, and for those weak, ill-treated and oppressed among men, women, and children, whose cry is: "Our Lord! Rescue us from this town whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from You one who will protect, and raise for us from You one who will help."”[3]
Explaining this verse, Imam Al-Qurtubi said, “Freeing the prisoners is obligatory on the Muslim, whether by war or wealth.” Imam Malik said, “It is obligatory on (Muslim) people to ransom the prisoners with all their wealth.” There is no difference of opinion among the scholars over this, since the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “Free the prisoners.”[4] Our scholars say that ransoming prisoners is obligatory, even if not a single penny is left. Ibn Khuwaizimandad said, “This verse contains the obligations to free prisoners. There are reports from the Prophet (peace be upon him) to this effect: he freed prisoners and ordered them to be freed. This was practiced by Muslims throughout the ages and the scholars are unanimous about it. It is obligatory to free (Muslim) prisoners from the state’s treasury, and if the amount does not suffice, then it is obligatory upon all the Muslims to contribute. If one Muslim frees him, the others are absolved of this duty.”
An incident that shows the great concern for freeing Muslim captives is when the Caliph ‘Umar bin ‘Abdul Aziz (may Allah be pleased with him) sent ‘Abdul Rahman bin ‘Amrah to free some Muslim captives. He said, “Give them whatever they ask for every Muslim! By Allah, a Muslim is dearer to me than all the polytheists in my state! Indeed, you win any Muslim you pay the ransom for. Indeed you are buying Islam (by ensuring their release from prison and torture).”[5]
Ibn Taymiyyah said, “Freeing Muslim prisoners is one of the greatest obligations. Spending money from endowments (waqf) and other sources is one of the best deeds.”
Ibn Qudamah, may Allah have Mercy on him, said: “It is permissible for a Muslim to use his zakat to buy back a Muslim prisoner from the captivity of polytheists. This is because the emancipation of a Muslim captive is similar to emancipating someone from slavery, as well as it bringing glory to Islam. Spending zakah in this cause is like spending it to soften people’s hearts towards Islam, and since it is given to the prisoner to free himself from captivity it is like giving money to an indebted person for ridding himself of the debt.”
Our Obligation
Therefore, it is obligatory upon every single Muslim, wherever they reside, to work, directly or indirectly, towards the release of the Muslim captives irrespective of wherever they may be. Any Muslim with the capability to aid others yet fails to do so will be sinful. Everyone is responsible according to their ability; the greatest responsibility lies with those in authority, followed by the scholars, and so on – although the failure of those who bear greater responsibility to act does not absolve individuals of their own individual responsibilities.
If the captive is a Muslim woman, like our sister Aafia, the obligation becomes even greater, given the elevated status of women in Islam. The scholars of Islam are unanimous that a Muslim woman cannot be handed over to non-Muslims in any case. This Ummah has a glorious heritage of protecting Muslim women that we must endeavour to restore. Amongst the incidents narrated to this effect, is that of the honour of a believing woman attacked by members of the tribe of Quraydhah, and so, a believer fought to defend her until he was killed and an army was dispatched against the perpetrators.
As a nation, we have not fulfilled our obligation towards our sister, Aafia Siddiqui, as well as her children. We must exhaust every lawful means for her release and for the recovery of her children without fearing anyone but Allah. This may include, but is not limited to, direct involvement with organisations that work for this cause, donating money for it, raising awareness and actively speaking about her plight, writing in support of her and her family, and pressuring those governments complicit in her ordeal to end this injustice.
The least that is enjoined upon us is to supplicate to Allah for her as well other Muslim prisoners, as supplication is the weapon of a Muslim; it is incumbent upon every believer to supplicate for them as if we were supplicating on behalf of ourselves and our families.
“O Allah, deliver our sister and her children from this humiliation and torture at the hands of those who do not believe in You.”
May Allah ease the affairs of our sister Aafia and hasten her release from captivity. May He break free her shackles and the shackles of all of our oppressed prisoners. May Allah give them the strength to deal with their ordeal.
May Allah punish those who have oppressed our sister Aafia and continue to oppress her, may He defeat them and smite them, and may Allah forgive us for being negligent towards our Muslim brothers and sisters.
May Allah unite the hearts of the Muslims and grant us victory over our oppressors.
Notes:
Source: www.islam21c.com editorial
[1] Surah Taubah 9:71
[2] Sahih Al-Bukhari
[3] Surah Al-Nisa’ 4:75
[4] Sahih Al-Bukhari
[5] Narrated by Sa’eed Bin Mansur in his Sunan
Monday, 22 March 2010
Friday, 15 January 2010
Grateful for Regulations and Standards
They say that shoddy construction contributed to the level of destruction in Haiti following Tuesday's earthquake. Inna lillaahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oon.
Has anyone noticed the building works in Egypt? It's one thing I couldn't help but notice each day as I walked past buildings being built - especially in Nasr City. A few slaps of cement here and there, add the bricks and cover all the gaps with the plaster - voila, you've got yourselves a block of flats for foreign students or richer Egyptians, oh and the bawab in the basement of course. I used to wonder everyday what would happen in case of a natural disaster.
That, along with the mad drivers - for the first time in my life I was extremely grateful for some of the Laws and regulations we have in the UK! That's not to say these things will protect us when death approaches us, but grateful nonetheless.
Has anyone noticed the building works in Egypt? It's one thing I couldn't help but notice each day as I walked past buildings being built - especially in Nasr City. A few slaps of cement here and there, add the bricks and cover all the gaps with the plaster - voila, you've got yourselves a block of flats for foreign students or richer Egyptians, oh and the bawab in the basement of course. I used to wonder everyday what would happen in case of a natural disaster.
That, along with the mad drivers - for the first time in my life I was extremely grateful for some of the Laws and regulations we have in the UK! That's not to say these things will protect us when death approaches us, but grateful nonetheless.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Children Learn What They Live
By Dorothy Law Nolte, Ph.D.
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
Copyright © 1972 by Dorothy Law Nolte
If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.
If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.
If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.
If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.
If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.
If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.
If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.
If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.
If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.
Copyright © 1972 by Dorothy Law Nolte
Friday, 20 November 2009
URGENT APPEAL FOR FUNDS - HHUGS IN DIRE NEED
HHUGS urgently requires funds as our financial situation is currently very dire and if we are to continue providing the vital support that we do to the HHUGS families we need YOU to donate.“Whoever relieves a believer in distress, Allah will relieve his distress in this world and the next" Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)
Over the last year HHUGS has continued to provide vital services which include:
Family day trips out
Prison visits
Children’s activities
Eid parties
Eid presents
Food rotas
Help with school fees
Help with household costs
HHUGS has started many projects over the last year to empower the women to look after themselves, these include:
Development courses
Driving lessons
We hope to introduce many new projects in the near future, these include:
English classes
Skills courses like sewing classes
Financial management courses and support
Life in the UK courses
Here is what two families we help have to say about us:
"We didn't get any support from anyone else, the support is fantastic. They are very considerate and listen to me, I don't find that support anywhere else. What you are doing for the families is unbelievable, I don't know how the people survive without you." West London family
"When he was not allowed to go out, for example, to do paperwork and shopping - they helped me a lot. We don't have family here. Until now the only help we've had is from HHUGS." East London family
To donate:
Regular donations
Standing orders are the most important source of income for HHUGS. You can set up a standing order by filling in our standing order form which can be found here, http://www.hhugs.org.uk/downloads/hhugs-standing-order-form.pdf please fill it in and send to:
HHUGS
PO Box 415
New Malden
KT3 9AF
One off payments
Online
http://www.hhugs.org.uk/index.php?state=10&cat=3
By post
Please print this form http://www.hhugs.org.uk/downloads/hhugs-donation-form.pdf fill it in and send to the address above.
Sunday, 15 November 2009
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Tuesday, 20 October 2009
A Letter From Afghanistan: Bagram, Afghan suffering and the futility of war
Andy Worthington
12.10.09
Last year, I received one of those special emails out of the blue, from someone wise and compassionate, who, to my great delight, wished to thank me for the courage of my writing. This woman, who has worked in rural development and post-disaster rehabilitation for 20 years, mostly in Africa, has spent the last few years in Afghanistan, and last week I unexpectedly received the following letter by email, which was so perceptive and so informative that I asked for her permission to reproduce it here, and was delighted when she said yes.
A letter from Afghanistan
I’m making a valiant attempt at watching your al-Jazeera interview on YouTube, but at this pace (about three minutes in two hours) it’ll take all night. Since our last correspondence I have, via your website, also started following the ACLU. Together, you’re making one of my dearest hopes come true: international attention and lawsuits for the Bagram victims. I do hope that not only the foreigners will benefit, but also, and maybe mostly, the perfectly innocent random Afghans, stopped at checkpoints and too poor to bail themselves out, denounced by a neighbor who has an eye on their land or their daughter, sold for a “reward,” or others who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to the ACLU, there are some 50,000 persons, who, over the past years, have been arrested in Afghanistan by the foreign armies. Their fingerprints were taken on those occasions and transmitted to US security forces as “potential terrorists.” How many of them were released, how many have been imprisoned in some black hole, how many have died there?
Below, a “delation box”* (for whatever else can it be? After all, army field posts must have gone out with the First World War). It is placed just outside Aliabad, on the road to Kunduz, close to where some mental case from ISAF [NATO’s International Security Assistance Force] recently dropped bombs on two fuel tankers, a crime his conscience will have to live with for the rest of his life. It’s placed along the road, but in between two big announcement boards (with unrelated contents), which would conveniently shelter from public view whoever would be slipping a sheet of paper into it. The slot is too narrow for anything else:
How many poor buggers will have disappeared through that slot into Bagram or other such places? And whenever I pass by it, I realize that there are some advantages to having a high illiteracy rate … Later I saw another one in Kunduz bazaar, but did not have time for a picture and won’t have anymore; the area is out of bounds now, too dangerous.
Most of the local detainees are NOT persons caught red-handed at the scene of the crime, who need to be “held off the street” after “bombing poor women and children.” If the bloody ISAF and US armies would stop moving around at rush hour, when scores of innocent civilians are going to school or to work, then the “Taliban” would have no reason to detonate bombs there!
The prime targets are army targets; UN or other ex-pats are rarely targeted and usually by mistake, although that is unfortunately changing, thanks to our own aggressive attitude. As for Afghans, some schools for girls are targeted in remote areas, but mostly those who supposedly (delations work both ways) or truly (though not necessarily voluntarily) are collaborating with the foreign armies. So yes, its the “terrorists” who ignite the bomb, but the armies are co-responsible for provoking it in densely populated areas, at rush hours in the cities, going in their Rambo outfits to bazaars in country towns, etc. Sometimes I wonder whether they do that on purpose, as the civilian “collateral damage” gives them excuses to further incriminate the “Taliban.” If they traveled by night and were attacked, they would be the only victims; no women and children, because they are not out in the street at night.
Incidentally, the Turks who left their armored vehicles so carelessly parked on one of Kabul’s main thoroughfares at rush hour, are in fact probably the most decent of all the foreign armies, as they walk around in shirtsleeves with just a handgun on their hip: no helmet, bulletproof vest or machine gun, as the other nationalities do. And, sure enough, they have fewer victims than the other nations … Aggression invites aggression. Trust invites trust.
As for the situation in Bagram now, we are TOLD that there’s no more torturing, but who’s to check that? Only the ICRC has (scarce) access, and what guarantee do we have that they have access to ALL prisoners? If there never had been any abuse there, I might agree that there probably is not any now either, but there is hard evidence that there was torture, even lethal, so now it is up to the torturers and their superiors to prove to us that these practices have stopped. They can not claim to be “presumed innocent,” as we know they are not.
And one way of showing improvement is by opening the prison(s), at least letting in UN human rights representatives, providing regular admission for the ICRC, a full list of all the prisoners, how long they’ve been there, what they are accused of, etc.
So far, the procedure apparently is that every six months a prisoner’s file is opened and they either let him go or add another six months. He himself is not heard. In the last year or so, some of them have had contact with their families, who can communicate with them through telephone and video located in ICRC HQ in Kabul. And that already is huge progress.
Even the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, who was here a year ago, was not able to ascertain who some of the uniformed Rambos were who raided houses at night, etc. No army would acknowledge them as theirs. Yet their – surviving — victims are among the prisoners. And surely Bagram is not the only lawless foreign prison here.
Tragically, even semantics are a basic problem here, for traditionally a war is either between two or more countries/states, or a civil war within one given country. This is neither. Actually it is not a war at all. Afghanistan, apart from being the more or less random victim of Bush’s need to show that he was avenging 9/11, is a live training camp for NATO and the US, as well as a huge source of income for some. Some governments with little experience of democracy and the diplomacy that goes with it, candidly say that they send their armies here in order for them to gain hands-on experience in warfare, and to gain more importance within NATO. It is cheaper and more effective than organizing training camps at home.
So there is no real war, rather an oversized militarized secret service operation, with the civil population as a hostage between the armies and the ever-increasing number of militants. And depending on our needs, we either tell them that we are here to protect them, to increase security, to stabilize the country, to introduce democracy, to rid the world of al-Qaeda (whom they thoroughly loathe) and other politically correct bullshit. However, when we are accused of prisoner abuse, then suddenly this is a country at war, which allows us to play it dirty.
But who’s the adversary? Surely not the “average Afghan” whose most ardent dream is to finally have peace, rebuild his house, plant some fruit trees, send his kids to school, enjoy something called a “normal life.” This is seemingly an extremely modest wish, but here it is more and more Utopian. Yet scores of such “average Afghans” are detained without accusation let alone a trial, and their wives and kids are literally in danger. This is not a good place for abandoned women.
Stating that you cannot have it both ways — increased security as well as humane treatment of prisoners — is too cynical for words, for in spite of the increased numbers of soldiers, sophisticated equipment etc., security is steadily decreasing, and the downward curve is getting steeper and steeper. And it is decreasing precisely because of our boundless stupidity and arrogance, because for each of the local prisoners in Bagram or elsewhere, particularly the many innocent ones, scores of new insurgents rise, often nolens volens, but if your brother has already spent long years in one of those black holes, I dare anyone to suggest what argument you could use to refuse to support the insurgents, when one night they come to claim you. They’re all over the country, they have been quietly infiltrating over the years, while our generals and politicians were holding success speeches about battles won, hearts and minds conquered.
And McChrystal is dead right when he says that our armies, by sacrificing civilians in order to save their own skins, will never win the war (provided we assume that there is a war to win, see above). However, he is tragically wrong when he thinks that victory can be achieved by pumping billions of dollars of “development” funds into those armies and to let them pretend to be Santa Claus, here to rebuild the country. If that was ever possible at all, it is certainly way too late for that now. Afghans are all but stupid, and they see through all those fairy-tales (this apart from the impossibility of having the same army killing and distributing candies).
McChrystal thinks it’s possible because he can distinguish between the different units, but the villagers cannot, as both categories appear out of the same camp gate every day. Schizophrenia must be heaven compared to that. It is true that this country desperately needs development, foremost employment (I remember in 1999 in Kosovo watching a silent march in Pristina — hundreds of young men evidently desperate for action, any action, a potential time-bomb) to fill the stomachs of their extended families and to keep them too busy to think about fighting.
At the same time this military “development” surge (absurd to start with, of course, because development is a profession, and just like I could not become a military professional after a one-week crash course, the average soldier — who, in addition, never stays longer than a maximum of six months — will still not have a clue about development even after his three or six months here) even further blurs the line between civil assistance and military interference and will make civilian work very soon completely impossible, to be replaced by military pseudo-development specialists or a handful of civilians who, for a fortune, will let themselves be hired by the armies, and won’t be able to achieve anything, as they will not be allowed to go anywhere without a bullet-proof vest, helmet and armed escort, which does not exactly facilitate functional communication with the development beneficiaries. Not to mention the fact that their “civilian” candidates will mostly be those who cannot find a decent “normal” job, and go for the outrageous income and/or CV credits, not for professional and ethical quality. The field work will be carried out by Afghans, who will be sitting ducks for the insurgents but will have no choice, as they usually need to feed extended families of some 25 persons.
Add to this the fact that, no matter what exactly the outcome of the “elections,” Karzai comes out of them as a wounded lion, with little credit from his countrymen, and publicly abandoned by his foreign supporters. And when the lion king is wounded, the hyenas, which laid low when he had strong backing, will come out. They have already started. And that’s how a beautiful country, with beautiful people, is mangled, over and over again. The only real hope left is not McChrystal’s sweet talk, but the fact that the Afghans are so utterly fed-up with war. However, will that be enough to stop them, when their stomachs are empty and someone offers “employment” in yet another war?
I’ve only been in Bagram once and swore never to set foot there again. It was for the presidential elections in 2005, when we did not yet have an embassy in Kabul.
A sprawling “village” (some 14,000 troops), with barracks, streets with regular names, a stubby female soldier in shorts walking down one of them with a machine gun over her shoulder and licking an ice-cream, McDonalds, 7-Eleven, Afghan souvenir shops: an outlandish place, completely cut-off from the reality of Afghanistan.
In those times Poland did not have a real army here, and the 50-odd Polish de-miners (only for the enlargement of the base, not for civilian territory) would invite the handful of Polish civilians for Christmas Eve. I never went. The mere idea that I would sit there stuffing myself with imported goodies and singing Christmas carols, while at that very moment somewhere on the same compound severe suffering or outright torture was inflicted on other people, made my stomach turn. Many of them will have children like these hard working kids: courageous, smiling, with great dignity, never asking for hand-outs.
It’s such kids that you are working for. They say thank you, for caring for their fathers or uncles, forgotten by the rest of the world.
* Delation: An accusation by an informer (Webster’s Dictionary).
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon
12.10.09
Last year, I received one of those special emails out of the blue, from someone wise and compassionate, who, to my great delight, wished to thank me for the courage of my writing. This woman, who has worked in rural development and post-disaster rehabilitation for 20 years, mostly in Africa, has spent the last few years in Afghanistan, and last week I unexpectedly received the following letter by email, which was so perceptive and so informative that I asked for her permission to reproduce it here, and was delighted when she said yes.
A letter from Afghanistan
I’m making a valiant attempt at watching your al-Jazeera interview on YouTube, but at this pace (about three minutes in two hours) it’ll take all night. Since our last correspondence I have, via your website, also started following the ACLU. Together, you’re making one of my dearest hopes come true: international attention and lawsuits for the Bagram victims. I do hope that not only the foreigners will benefit, but also, and maybe mostly, the perfectly innocent random Afghans, stopped at checkpoints and too poor to bail themselves out, denounced by a neighbor who has an eye on their land or their daughter, sold for a “reward,” or others who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to the ACLU, there are some 50,000 persons, who, over the past years, have been arrested in Afghanistan by the foreign armies. Their fingerprints were taken on those occasions and transmitted to US security forces as “potential terrorists.” How many of them were released, how many have been imprisoned in some black hole, how many have died there?
Below, a “delation box”* (for whatever else can it be? After all, army field posts must have gone out with the First World War). It is placed just outside Aliabad, on the road to Kunduz, close to where some mental case from ISAF [NATO’s International Security Assistance Force] recently dropped bombs on two fuel tankers, a crime his conscience will have to live with for the rest of his life. It’s placed along the road, but in between two big announcement boards (with unrelated contents), which would conveniently shelter from public view whoever would be slipping a sheet of paper into it. The slot is too narrow for anything else:
How many poor buggers will have disappeared through that slot into Bagram or other such places? And whenever I pass by it, I realize that there are some advantages to having a high illiteracy rate … Later I saw another one in Kunduz bazaar, but did not have time for a picture and won’t have anymore; the area is out of bounds now, too dangerous.
Most of the local detainees are NOT persons caught red-handed at the scene of the crime, who need to be “held off the street” after “bombing poor women and children.” If the bloody ISAF and US armies would stop moving around at rush hour, when scores of innocent civilians are going to school or to work, then the “Taliban” would have no reason to detonate bombs there!
The prime targets are army targets; UN or other ex-pats are rarely targeted and usually by mistake, although that is unfortunately changing, thanks to our own aggressive attitude. As for Afghans, some schools for girls are targeted in remote areas, but mostly those who supposedly (delations work both ways) or truly (though not necessarily voluntarily) are collaborating with the foreign armies. So yes, its the “terrorists” who ignite the bomb, but the armies are co-responsible for provoking it in densely populated areas, at rush hours in the cities, going in their Rambo outfits to bazaars in country towns, etc. Sometimes I wonder whether they do that on purpose, as the civilian “collateral damage” gives them excuses to further incriminate the “Taliban.” If they traveled by night and were attacked, they would be the only victims; no women and children, because they are not out in the street at night.
Incidentally, the Turks who left their armored vehicles so carelessly parked on one of Kabul’s main thoroughfares at rush hour, are in fact probably the most decent of all the foreign armies, as they walk around in shirtsleeves with just a handgun on their hip: no helmet, bulletproof vest or machine gun, as the other nationalities do. And, sure enough, they have fewer victims than the other nations … Aggression invites aggression. Trust invites trust.
As for the situation in Bagram now, we are TOLD that there’s no more torturing, but who’s to check that? Only the ICRC has (scarce) access, and what guarantee do we have that they have access to ALL prisoners? If there never had been any abuse there, I might agree that there probably is not any now either, but there is hard evidence that there was torture, even lethal, so now it is up to the torturers and their superiors to prove to us that these practices have stopped. They can not claim to be “presumed innocent,” as we know they are not.
And one way of showing improvement is by opening the prison(s), at least letting in UN human rights representatives, providing regular admission for the ICRC, a full list of all the prisoners, how long they’ve been there, what they are accused of, etc.
So far, the procedure apparently is that every six months a prisoner’s file is opened and they either let him go or add another six months. He himself is not heard. In the last year or so, some of them have had contact with their families, who can communicate with them through telephone and video located in ICRC HQ in Kabul. And that already is huge progress.
Even the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, who was here a year ago, was not able to ascertain who some of the uniformed Rambos were who raided houses at night, etc. No army would acknowledge them as theirs. Yet their – surviving — victims are among the prisoners. And surely Bagram is not the only lawless foreign prison here.
Tragically, even semantics are a basic problem here, for traditionally a war is either between two or more countries/states, or a civil war within one given country. This is neither. Actually it is not a war at all. Afghanistan, apart from being the more or less random victim of Bush’s need to show that he was avenging 9/11, is a live training camp for NATO and the US, as well as a huge source of income for some. Some governments with little experience of democracy and the diplomacy that goes with it, candidly say that they send their armies here in order for them to gain hands-on experience in warfare, and to gain more importance within NATO. It is cheaper and more effective than organizing training camps at home.
So there is no real war, rather an oversized militarized secret service operation, with the civil population as a hostage between the armies and the ever-increasing number of militants. And depending on our needs, we either tell them that we are here to protect them, to increase security, to stabilize the country, to introduce democracy, to rid the world of al-Qaeda (whom they thoroughly loathe) and other politically correct bullshit. However, when we are accused of prisoner abuse, then suddenly this is a country at war, which allows us to play it dirty.
But who’s the adversary? Surely not the “average Afghan” whose most ardent dream is to finally have peace, rebuild his house, plant some fruit trees, send his kids to school, enjoy something called a “normal life.” This is seemingly an extremely modest wish, but here it is more and more Utopian. Yet scores of such “average Afghans” are detained without accusation let alone a trial, and their wives and kids are literally in danger. This is not a good place for abandoned women.
Stating that you cannot have it both ways — increased security as well as humane treatment of prisoners — is too cynical for words, for in spite of the increased numbers of soldiers, sophisticated equipment etc., security is steadily decreasing, and the downward curve is getting steeper and steeper. And it is decreasing precisely because of our boundless stupidity and arrogance, because for each of the local prisoners in Bagram or elsewhere, particularly the many innocent ones, scores of new insurgents rise, often nolens volens, but if your brother has already spent long years in one of those black holes, I dare anyone to suggest what argument you could use to refuse to support the insurgents, when one night they come to claim you. They’re all over the country, they have been quietly infiltrating over the years, while our generals and politicians were holding success speeches about battles won, hearts and minds conquered.
And McChrystal is dead right when he says that our armies, by sacrificing civilians in order to save their own skins, will never win the war (provided we assume that there is a war to win, see above). However, he is tragically wrong when he thinks that victory can be achieved by pumping billions of dollars of “development” funds into those armies and to let them pretend to be Santa Claus, here to rebuild the country. If that was ever possible at all, it is certainly way too late for that now. Afghans are all but stupid, and they see through all those fairy-tales (this apart from the impossibility of having the same army killing and distributing candies).
McChrystal thinks it’s possible because he can distinguish between the different units, but the villagers cannot, as both categories appear out of the same camp gate every day. Schizophrenia must be heaven compared to that. It is true that this country desperately needs development, foremost employment (I remember in 1999 in Kosovo watching a silent march in Pristina — hundreds of young men evidently desperate for action, any action, a potential time-bomb) to fill the stomachs of their extended families and to keep them too busy to think about fighting.
At the same time this military “development” surge (absurd to start with, of course, because development is a profession, and just like I could not become a military professional after a one-week crash course, the average soldier — who, in addition, never stays longer than a maximum of six months — will still not have a clue about development even after his three or six months here) even further blurs the line between civil assistance and military interference and will make civilian work very soon completely impossible, to be replaced by military pseudo-development specialists or a handful of civilians who, for a fortune, will let themselves be hired by the armies, and won’t be able to achieve anything, as they will not be allowed to go anywhere without a bullet-proof vest, helmet and armed escort, which does not exactly facilitate functional communication with the development beneficiaries. Not to mention the fact that their “civilian” candidates will mostly be those who cannot find a decent “normal” job, and go for the outrageous income and/or CV credits, not for professional and ethical quality. The field work will be carried out by Afghans, who will be sitting ducks for the insurgents but will have no choice, as they usually need to feed extended families of some 25 persons.
Add to this the fact that, no matter what exactly the outcome of the “elections,” Karzai comes out of them as a wounded lion, with little credit from his countrymen, and publicly abandoned by his foreign supporters. And when the lion king is wounded, the hyenas, which laid low when he had strong backing, will come out. They have already started. And that’s how a beautiful country, with beautiful people, is mangled, over and over again. The only real hope left is not McChrystal’s sweet talk, but the fact that the Afghans are so utterly fed-up with war. However, will that be enough to stop them, when their stomachs are empty and someone offers “employment” in yet another war?
I’ve only been in Bagram once and swore never to set foot there again. It was for the presidential elections in 2005, when we did not yet have an embassy in Kabul.
A sprawling “village” (some 14,000 troops), with barracks, streets with regular names, a stubby female soldier in shorts walking down one of them with a machine gun over her shoulder and licking an ice-cream, McDonalds, 7-Eleven, Afghan souvenir shops: an outlandish place, completely cut-off from the reality of Afghanistan.
In those times Poland did not have a real army here, and the 50-odd Polish de-miners (only for the enlargement of the base, not for civilian territory) would invite the handful of Polish civilians for Christmas Eve. I never went. The mere idea that I would sit there stuffing myself with imported goodies and singing Christmas carols, while at that very moment somewhere on the same compound severe suffering or outright torture was inflicted on other people, made my stomach turn. Many of them will have children like these hard working kids: courageous, smiling, with great dignity, never asking for hand-outs.
It’s such kids that you are working for. They say thank you, for caring for their fathers or uncles, forgotten by the rest of the world.
* Delation: An accusation by an informer (Webster’s Dictionary).
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon
Saturday, 10 October 2009
10 Pressing World Issues?
Not necessarily in order of importance to people apart from Number 1 it seems...
10... Racism.
Number 9.... Environment Issues Including Food and Agriculture.
Number 8.... World Wide Rape and Abuse of Women and Children
Number 7.... Domestic Violence.
Number 6.... Secret Prisons, Rendition, Ghost Prisoners, Extradition, Unlawful Detention without Trial.
Number 5... TORTURE, Interrogation, Forced Evidence.
Number 4... Global Child and Human Sex and Labor Trafficking.
Number 3... War, Occupation, Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing.
At Number 2... World Hunger, Poverty, Famine, Infectious Diseases.
Number 1?
The Number one most important Issue affecting the International Community, the thing affecting peoples hearts and minds the most seems to be....
We choose to cover our Faces?(!)
Bizarre isn't it? So much pain and suffering in the dying world and all the people can think about is how I choose to dress and what's in my wardrobe?
Perhaps we all need a priority check...
10... Racism.
Number 9.... Environment Issues Including Food and Agriculture.
Number 8.... World Wide Rape and Abuse of Women and Children
Number 7.... Domestic Violence.
Number 6.... Secret Prisons, Rendition, Ghost Prisoners, Extradition, Unlawful Detention without Trial.
Number 5... TORTURE, Interrogation, Forced Evidence.
Number 4... Global Child and Human Sex and Labor Trafficking.
Number 3... War, Occupation, Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing.
At Number 2... World Hunger, Poverty, Famine, Infectious Diseases.
Number 1?
The Number one most important Issue affecting the International Community, the thing affecting peoples hearts and minds the most seems to be....
We choose to cover our Faces?(!)
Bizarre isn't it? So much pain and suffering in the dying world and all the people can think about is how I choose to dress and what's in my wardrobe?
Perhaps we all need a priority check...
Friday, 18 September 2009
Rumaysa Rahma Mustafa
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah
I would like to take this opportunity to announce the birth of my second princess, Rumaysa Rahma Mustafa Alhamdulillah. After having an emergency c-section with Zaidah I made plenty of duaa for a natural birth and Alhamdulillah by the mercy of Allah I did have a normal birth. I went into hospital at 5.30am and she was born at 7.45am. Her birth weight was six and a half pounds Alhamdulillah. Her middle name is Rahma because she was born in the month of ramadhan (the month of mercy). please make duaa for us inshaAllah.
Umm Zaidah Nusaybah
I would like to take this opportunity to announce the birth of my second princess, Rumaysa Rahma Mustafa Alhamdulillah. After having an emergency c-section with Zaidah I made plenty of duaa for a natural birth and Alhamdulillah by the mercy of Allah I did have a normal birth. I went into hospital at 5.30am and she was born at 7.45am. Her birth weight was six and a half pounds Alhamdulillah. Her middle name is Rahma because she was born in the month of ramadhan (the month of mercy). please make duaa for us inshaAllah.
Umm Zaidah Nusaybah
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
Update: Abeer Hamza
Life for US soldier's Iraq crimes
Mahmudiyah killings
I know Wikipedia isn't exactly the best authority to cite but the entry details how the crime would have easily been blamed on 'insurgents' and the rape and the murders only came to light when soilder - Justin Watt (of the same platoon) revealed them during a psychological health counseling session he received consequent to the killings of two other soldiers.
My previous post on Abeer
Mahmudiyah killings
I know Wikipedia isn't exactly the best authority to cite but the entry details how the crime would have easily been blamed on 'insurgents' and the rape and the murders only came to light when soilder - Justin Watt (of the same platoon) revealed them during a psychological health counseling session he received consequent to the killings of two other soldiers.
My previous post on Abeer
Friday, 21 August 2009
Quiet times...
The blog will probably be quite for awhile, even after Ramadan - although there may be some good news shared by somebody in a few weeks... In-sha-Allah.
In the meantime here's an article very much worth reading by Fatima in The Times:
Living Ramadan: a 30-day spiritual detox
By Fatima Barkatulla
Also don't forget the Cageprisoners Fundraising dinner on the 30th of August in London. My husband and I decided to attend pretty much last minute to last years dinner, we booked our train tickets and hotel and I packed for a night for myself and the 2 babies within half an hour and we went. We didn't regret it.
Here's my post on last years event.
Eid Gifts!
I'm also giving out 5 copies of Enemy Combatant, A British Muslim's Journey To Guantanamo And Back.
By Moazzam Begg (Author), Victoria Brittain (Contributor), posted straight to your door in time for Eid (!) to the first 5 people who request a copy. Just email me or leave a comment (will not be published) with your name and postal address. If you've already read it you can request it for somebody else who's very likely to read it, (UK only).
In the meantime here's an article very much worth reading by Fatima in The Times:
Living Ramadan: a 30-day spiritual detox
By Fatima Barkatulla
Also don't forget the Cageprisoners Fundraising dinner on the 30th of August in London. My husband and I decided to attend pretty much last minute to last years dinner, we booked our train tickets and hotel and I packed for a night for myself and the 2 babies within half an hour and we went. We didn't regret it.
Here's my post on last years event.
Eid Gifts!
I'm also giving out 5 copies of Enemy Combatant, A British Muslim's Journey To Guantanamo And Back.
By Moazzam Begg (Author), Victoria Brittain (Contributor), posted straight to your door in time for Eid (!) to the first 5 people who request a copy. Just email me or leave a comment (will not be published) with your name and postal address. If you've already read it you can request it for somebody else who's very likely to read it, (UK only).
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