Reform of Islam is Not Bush’s or the Pope’s business – The Pope Rejects Muslim Outreach

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Reform of Islam is Not Bush’s or the Pope’s business

Interfaith Dialogue Should Focus on Man not God

The Pope Rejects Muslim Outreach

(Speech given at Northeastern University, Chicago, Nov 13,2007)

By: Ali Baghdadi

I was invited to talk to you about Islam. After serious consideration I declined. I am the wrong person. My views about
Islam are not the norm. They are controversial. A few weeks ago I received an email, an assassination threat, from an Indian Muslim who will be traveling to the United States to accomplish his “holy” mission. My co-religionist, who works for the Arab American oil company in Saudi Arabia, accused me of being a “murtad”, a renegade. He was angered by an article in which I stated that Moses, according to archeology, a science, is a myth. He actually never existed. Muslims respect Moses as a prophet. My Indian Muslim “friend”, Z. T. Minhas, an insane and a coward, has not arrived yet. The U.S. intelligence, which intercepts our electronic, particularly international mail, has not reacted. Muslims, killing one another, is consistent with U.S. policy.

I was born in Islam. Documents of old torn up paper that I inherited claim that my family descends from Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life in the shadow of al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, which according to the Quran, Islam’s holy book, Prophet Muhammad had journeyed to, and then ascended to heaven, and returned home to Medina in Arabia, all in one night. Some influential Muslim scholars say that the journey was only a dream. Others, with the Dark Ages mentality, insist that it was physical.

For twenty-three years, without any interruption, I listened to al-Azan, the Muslim call for prayer, five times a day. Prior to starting public school at age 7, I attended a kuttab, a madrasa, a private religious school, at age 4. The elderly teacher, a sheikh, a former officer in the Ottoman army, dressed in a long black robe and a white turban, was occasionally paid with a few loaves of bread, or eggs, or a live chicken. My family couldn’t afford it. I rewarded
my sheikh with a daily kiss of his hand, and a prayer, asking God to give him a comfortable and everlasting life in heaven. At age nine or ten I was able to recite most of the chapters of the Quran from memory. I studied the Quran, Islamic thought, Islamic history, Islamic culture and Arabic as language at all educational levels. I also attended lectures on political Islam given underground by some controversial scholars.

Things, however, have changed. My association with Islam throughout my adulthood has become political and not religious. I don’t go to a mosque. As you can tell, I don’t fast. I have no intention of ever performing the pilgrimage to Mecca. I suspended giving al-Zakat, charity, when Bush has designated almost all Muslim charitable organizations that aided the orphans and widows in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, as terrorists, and forced them to close.

I am not concerned about Islam. Islam has survived all foreign invasions. Bush’s crusade will be no exception. I am, however, concerned about Muslims, as well as Christians, in the Muslim World, who are targeted by the West, particularly the United States government, which possesses the most savage and destructive war machinery in human history.

Usually, I don’t defend religion, but people. Religion is faith not science. I insist that every individual has the right to believe or not to believe. Each man or woman has the right to accept a religion or to reject it. A person has the right also to choose to be an atheist. People must be judged by their deeds, and contributions, not their faith. I stand for justice, freedom, equality, peace, and prosperity for all. I support women and gay and lesbian rights.

The question that you may ask is why I am here? What changed my mind? The answer is the Pope. Yes, the Pope.

I was greatly disturbed by the Pope, who, citing the Quran as an obstacle, rebuffed a massive outreach effort by Muslims. Coming at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, three weeks ago, a 29-page letter was sent to leaders of major Christian dominations by 138 high-level Muslim leaders and scholars, representing 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide. The letter appeals to religious tolerance, dialogue and understanding. It calls on Christian and Muslim religious leaders to work in unison for world peace, cooperation and prosperity. It emphasizes the similarities between Christianity and Islam as monotheistic religions. It speaks of the affinity between the Bible and the Quran. Both religions worship one God and call for the love of one’s neighbor.

Fortunately, the letter titled “a Common Word between Us and You”, was welcomed by various Christian leaders and institutions. It was well received by the Baptist World Alliance and the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Britain.

However, Pope Benedictine’s reaction was negative, and arrogant. It is also insulting to Christian Arabs, who are culturally Muslims. He chose to close the door to an idea which was very dear to his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, who, when the Quran was presented to him, bowed and kissed it.

Benedictine’s hostility to Muslims is nothing new. In his speech in Germany, last year, he spoke of Islam as a violent and irrational religion. He quoted Emperor Manuel II of the Byzantine Empire, who said that Muhammad had brought only “evil and inhuman” things.

The office of interfaith dialogue established by John Paul II, was shut down, but later, under pressure, was reinstated.

Dr. Karen Armstrong of Oxford, a former nun, who is amongst the most renowned theologians and has written numerous bestsellers on the great religions and their founders, disagrees:

“Certainly not. There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur’an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. The Qur’an forbids aggressive warfare and permits war only in self-defense; the moment the enemy sues for peace, the Qur’an insists that Muslims must lay down their arms and accept whatever terms are offered, even if they are disadvantageous. Later, Muslim law forbade Muslims to attack a country where Muslims were permitted to practice their faith freely; the killing of civilians was prohibited, as were the destruction of property and the use of fire in warfare.”

The Vatican says: “Muslims do not accept that one can discuss the Quran in depth, because they say it was written by dictation from God. With such an absolute interpretation, it is difficult to discuss the contents of faith.”

As a precondition for a dialogue, the Vatican demands that Muslims change their belief that the Quran is the word of God.

I say with a great certainty that the Pope’s action and conduct are not inspired by God, on whose behalf, “his holiness” speaks. It is dictated by politics, racism, ignorance and hatred. It is a part of the cruel crusade that George W. Bush, has declared against Muslims. Since his ascension to the papal throne, Benedictine, a former Hitler youth, has been putting the papacy, as well as Christianity, in the service of the U.S. empire.

Muslims are not asking for a theological dialogue. They are not trying to convince anyone that the Quran was dictated by God himself. Unlike Christians who are asking Jews to come to the Church, Muslims are not calling on Christians to come to the Mosque. Muslims are not demanding that Christians abandon the trinity and recognize Jesus only as a prophet. Though they don’t believe in the crucifixion and vindicate Jews from murdering Jesus, Muslims don’t see any reason for Christians to bring down the cross and raise up the crescent.

Muslims and non-Muslims ought to focus attention on common goals that are more important to humanity than theology, such as world peace, justice, freedom, equality, love, understanding, respect for one another, tolerance, cooperation, as well as mother earth and the environment.

In Muslim lands, Muslims, Christians and Jews have lived as neighbors for almost fifteen hundred years. They didn’t dialogue. They didn’t debate. They lived in peace and tranquility. The fact that Christianity and Judaism continued to exist alongside Muslims, who were and still are the majority, speaks of Muslim tolerance. The fact that Jews throughout the centuries fled Christian lands and took refuge in Muslim countries, demonstrates, beyond a doubt, Muslims’ respect of non-Muslims’ beliefs.

I do admit that the reform of Islam is urgently needed. But this is not the business of Jews or Christians. It is a Muslim problem. It requires a Muslim solution. It must be addressed and dealt with as a Muslim concern. Christians and Jews have their own enormous problems to acknowledge and resolve.

George W. Bush has been pushing for a new Islam that welcomes occupiers as liberators and labels oppression as democracy. He is promoting an Islam that requires his adherents to turn the other cheek to U.S. and Israeli soldiers, who are ordered to kill, maim, torture, burn, and destroy. He has been working hard to restrict Islam to spirituality, only to issues that deal with God but not man. No jihad! Jihad is not suicide, which is a great sin in Islam, but a struggle against injustice, oppression, occupation and aggression. Jihad is a legitimate resistance to daily murder of men, women and children. Bush’s Islam calls on Muslims to capitulate, kneel down in submission, not the Lord of the Universe, but to the
satanic” god” who resides in the White House. Muslims’ answer came clear, brief and swift, “hell, no.”

Hitler, who proclaimed himself a “Christian” and a fighter for “his Lord and Savior”, didn’t claim to have spoken to God. George W. Bush did.

“God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”

However, God warned Bush, “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile.” Here, Bush’s destructive god is right. “The mother of all battles” will continue until all foreign troops return home.

His “obedience” to his killer god has resulted in the murder of over a million Iraqis. Iraqi death due to war and economic sanctions are three and a half million. Iraqi orphans number five million and widows are three million. Six million people fled Iraq or were displaced. Museums, libraries and educational institutions were bombed and ransacked. Their contents were stolen or burned. Thousands of scholars and scientists were assassinated. Seven thousand years of human civilization is leveled to the ground. The only ministry building that was left standing is the Ministry of Oil. What a coincidence!

What about Western achievements the Pope attempts to protect? The Church cannot take credit for the awakening, enlightenment, progress, and freedoms men and women enjoy in the West today. On the contrary, the Church resisted and continues to resist reform and change until this very moment.

Muslim leaders who enjoy the support and blessing of the United States are the obstacle for social change and development. The Saudi dynasty continues to forbid women from driving, and deny Saudi citizens the right to vote.

However, Islamic reform is taking place slowly but steadily. Polygamy was outlawed in Tunisia. Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, a former head of the Sudanese National Assembly, one of the most influential thinkers that I had the honor to meet several times, issued a fatwa, a religious ruling, which gives the right to Muslim females to marry non-Muslims, and for women to lead Muslim prayers.

Revolutionary change is taking place in Iran, U.S. enemy number one. A divorced woman has the property right to a half of the wealth her husband amassed while being married. Sex change is legal. The surgery is paid for by the state.

I must remind you that four Muslim countries, Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia had women as heads of state.

I regret that the Pope’s stand has forced me to end my public silence on issues pertaining to religion, and make comparison between faiths.

The Pope wants Muslims to tailor Islam to fit Judeo-Christians values. However, in terms of peace, universal brotherhood, equality, freedom, logic and simplicity, Islam is far more rational and progressive than Christianity and Judaism. No Vatican. No sainthood. No priesthood. No present day miracles. No spiritual healing of the sick. Those who may claim to have the power of healing, end in a mental institution of a jail. The Old Testament, an integral part of the Bible, as described by Christian and Jewish researchers and historians, is blood and sex. The God of Israel, Jehovah, orders his “Chosen People”, to destroy burn, kill, enslave, and rape virgins of the goyem, non-Jews.

Furthermore, Islam’s religious affairs are not a hierarchy for clerics. Islamic affairs are not confined to graduates from al-Azhar University or other Islamic institutions. As a matter of fact, the greatest Muslim scholars are intellectuals, such as writers, physicians, engineers, lawyers, and other professionals.

According to an interpretation the Old Testament, Noah’s three sons were the founders of the populations of the three known continents, Japheth/Europe, Shem/Asia, and Ham/Africa. Ham’s children had been “blackened” by sin and a curse. Ham made fun of his lying down, drunk and naked father. Noah’s two other sons who covered him were blessed. Their descendents were not black.

In Islam black is not a curse, but a beautiful color in the rainbow of the human race. Muhammad declared that all men are equal. The Quran says, “O mankind! We (God) created ye from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made ye into nations and tribes, that ye may know one another, (not that ye may despise each other). Verily, the most honored of you in the sight of God is he who is the most Righteous of you.” Chapter 49, verse 13.

Islam has no confession and no intermediary. A man or a woman has direct and private line of communication with God, free of charge, anytime and anywhere. In the Quran, God stresses that He is close to all. He responds if he is called.

In Islam, no one represents God on earth. No one is infallible. Muhammad, Jesus, Moses and all prophets are not divine, but humans.

All efforts and promises for a better life made by the Vatican and other Christian groups to convince Muslims throughout the world to convert have failed. What disturbs Christian missionaries is the fact that Islam today is the fastest growing religion. According to the Seattle Times, Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group. Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim.

To multiply the number of his constituents, Benedictine, in his visit to Latin America, last year, demanded from its poverty stricken natives not to use condoms. When it comes to sex, what or how, in the privacy of their bedroom, has always been the job of a married couple, not Muslim clergy.

The Quran reveres Bible prophets, not insults them. The Old Testament presents Abraham as a pimp. He gave his wife Sarah to the Pharaoh to sleep with and enjoy. In return, the Pharaoh granted him slaves, cattle, silver and gold. Abraham repeated the same trade with one of the kings of Jordan. What a bargain.

Read the Bible. I can go on and on and on.

Religion, particularly Judaism and Christianity which were written with fire and blood, have brought more evil and less good to humanity throughout history. Interfaith dialogue should not debate theology. It should work to end death, destruction and misery. Dialogue should concentrate on building bridges of good will and coexistence. It should put less emphasis on God and more on fellow man.

Muslims are condemned for their rejection to Western values. The question is why should they? They have their own values that were developed over seven thousand years of civilization. The decision to drop the two atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki took, according to President Truman, a snap of a finger. Non-whites’ life is worthless. A couple of weeks ago, in Israel, actually occupied Palestine, a young woman was savagely beaten by five of her fellow students of the Torah, because she refused to move to the back of the bus. Muslim men promptly evacuate their seats for women, anytime and anywhere. Muhammad assured his followers that Paradise is underneath the feet of mothers and entry is allowed only by their blessings and approval. Those values should remain.

Islamofascism, a new word coined by Norman Podhoretz, a former editor of Commentary Jewish magazine, the home of the neoconservatives. Bush loves the new word and sings it like a puppet, to drum up American support against Muslims, and to wage a new Zionist-white supremacist war against Iran, which insists on using nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. The October 22nd to 26th Islamofascism Awareness Week organized by the Jewish lobby and the neo conservatives, on 100 campuses, turned out to be a great disaster. Students protested and heckled the speakers. David
Horowitz, author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left), Jump to: navigation, search

Who received more than $15 million in handouts from ultra conservative foundations, was forced to flee. In the sixties, he was a Marxist and a member of the new left. His Jewish parents were long-standing members of the Communist Party. Horowitz later discovered that leftism doesn’t pay. The Zionist propagandist describes so-called Islam as the moral and historical equivalent of Nazism. Margaret Kimberley, a writer and a senior columnist, together with a group of influential anti-fascist activists, are calling for a counter-event: “Christian/Jewish Fascism Awareness Week.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has replaced communism as an imaginary enemy, and thus justified the astronomical military spending in service of big business. It does not take a nuclear or a space scientist to conclude that the 911 tragedy was a home-made conspiracy. It is naïve to believe that a man with a turban on his head and a cane in his hand hiding eleven thousand miles away in the caves of Tora Boro is responsible for such an almost impossible mission. 51% of the American people question the official story. Evidence points a finger at Bush, Cheney, their lieutenants, the Israeli Mossad and certain segments in U.S. intelligence. We must demand the creation of an independent commission of scholars, scientists, engineers, and experts on demolition and intelligence to find the truth and bring the criminals to justice

The watch list of suspected terrorists, compiled by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has swelled to over 755,000. Certainly, if you oppose war and stand against genocide, regardless of your religion, or nationality, you can be sure that you are on this list. Ironically, it mainly contains scholars, academics, writers, journalists, artists, and anti-war activists.

What about Islamic “radicalism”?

Fifty years ago, in most Arab countries, one could seldom see a Muslim girl or a woman covering her hair. Today, one can rarely encounter a Muslim female without a headscarf. I must admit, all are beautiful, with or without a cover. However, I do hate the burqa, a veil, which covers the face. It is not a religious requirement. Those who impose it, as well as the women who accept it, bring shame and disgrace to the overwhelming majority of Muslims.

Muslims females wear the scarf mostly by choice. It is mainly a sign of political protest. It is a rejection to Western values, Western culture, Western domination, Western hypocrisy and Western occupation. It is a stand against theft of resources, ethnic cleansing, and genocide to which Muslims are subjected.

Muhammad said, “If you see evil, your duty is to stop it by your hand. If you cannot, you must oppose it by your mouth. But if you cannot, you should undo it in your heart.” In Muslim lands, Muslim fighters oppose U.S. and Israeli tanks and bombers with gun, and sometimes by an explosive belt. In the Quran, God says, “Think not that those who fall while resisting aggression will ever die. They are alive, in the company of their Lord.” Muslims believe that that is the highest form of martyrdom and the greatest honor.

Finally, I have been a U.S. citizen for over forty years. My country of origin, Palestine, is occupied, and my country men, women and children are killed daily. The United States has become my second home. I am grateful. Two of my children served in the U.S. military. Both took the oath to defend their country. Both were honorably discharged.

Regardless of my convictions and beliefs, Islam has formed my identity. It remains a source of my personal behavior and conduct. I will not abandon my heritage, my culture, my roots, or my people. The F.B.I. visited me twice, a year ago. I refuse to be intimidated. As long as the crusade against Muslims continues, as long as there is war on earth, and as long as there is hunger and disease, the least I must do is to not be in the silent majority.

Professor Bernard Lewis, the “orientalist” historian who supported US intervention in Iraq, went so far as to warn, quite seriously, that Tehran might drop a nuclear bomb (which it does not have) on Israel on 22 August 2006, because that is the day the Muslim calendar commemorates the prophet Muhammad’s flight to Jerusalem and thence to heaven

The evangelical Christian political and economical support for Israel is motivated by their desire to convert all Jews to Christianity. The will accelerate the second coming of Jesus and the birth of a perfect world.

(arabjournl@aol.com or arabjournl@hotmail.com)

The full story in
www.montrealmuslimnews.net

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Proof Of The Brilliance Of Islam Number 1001 Found In New Statesman Article : Wash your hands

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Proof Of The Brilliance Of Islam Number 1001 Found In New Statesman Article : Wash your hands

Barbara Gunnell

 

Every day, 5,000 children die because of poor sanitation. Villagers in Madagascar tell Barbara Gunnell how cheap interventions can transform their chances

“What did we tell you last time we were here?” shouts the man with the microphone.

“Wash Your Hands!” yell back 200 children aged around 5-11. They are seated on the grass verges of the crossroads at Amparatanana, a village on Madagascar’s east coast, the audience for a travelling marionette show spreading the word about hygienic use of latrines, keeping water uncontaminated and, above all, hand-washing.

As Mr Clean upbraids Mr Dirty for his bad habits, the children scold along; as Mr Dirty goes home to his wife clutching his stomach with diarrhoea pains, they giggle uncontrollably.

The puppets are part of this region’s response to the international rural water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) project that got under way in Madagascar soon after the country suffered a severe cholera outbreak early in 2000. Water Aid, the key international NGO in this field in the country, is working here with local partners, the Frères Saint-Gabriel.

Yvon, one of the FSG hygiene educators, regularly updates the puppet-show scripts to keep the children hooked on the message. His aim, he told me, is to use storylines as close to the children’s home lives as possible, so that hand-washing becomes second nature. This sounds easy until you consider that, in the middle of our own culture of abundant soap and hot water, medical staff still manage to spread MRSA because they fail to wash their hands between patients.

In fact, educators like Yvon have to work miracles. The wood and thatch huts of these east-coast villages are tightly packed in to small compounds without running water. Soap is a luxury and such latrines as exist are poorly designed, badly sited and almost always a health hazard.

Yet the children do absorb the hand-washing message and the impact of the singing, dancing, 12-foot-high marionettes has been rapid in the schools. Albertine-Rosalie Clode, a teacher for 37 years, whom we met fetching water at the new water kiosk, told us that her school of 1,686 pupils aged 6-17 was already seeing improvements.

“Awareness has changed in just one year [since WaterAid and FSG came to this village], particularly among the children. When the ice-cream seller comes by, they ask him, ‘What water did you use to make it?’ The puppets show families as they know them. In the past we could have 20 children off sick out of a class of 44-60, particularly in the rainy season,” says Mme Clode, who lives alongside the families of her pupils, and whose many grandchildren are as vulnerable to the debilitating water-borne diseases of the area as the children of poorer neighbours.

The hand-washing message – enormously effective in its own right – also underscores the urgent need to speed up provision of clean water and appropriate sanitation. The poorest villagers here still depend on river collection for some water and still manage without toilets. The few existing wells, some provided only in the past few years, are uncovered and vulnerable to impurities from the buckets of different users. And, as the area has an unusually high water table, there is considerable risk of groundwater contamination from badly designed and sited latrines.

The proportion of people with safe water and adequate sanitation in the villages of the Analanjirofo district (to which New Statesman subscri bers’ contributions are directed) is estimated to be as low as 9 per cent, inflicting a heavy penalty on the local economy in hours lost to education and productive work.

Persuading officialdom of the economic good sense of developing a national sanitation strategy has been an important part of WaterAid’s work in Madagascar. In 2003, its research showed that the country was losing five million working days and 3.5 million schooldays each year as a result of ill-health caused by dirty water and inadequate sanitation. To this must be added the human cost. Every day around the globe, 5,000 children die from the diarrhoeal diseases associated with contaminated water; it is the second-biggest childhood killer after tuberculosis and respiratory disease.

“Sanitation is the invisible sector,” says Lucky Lowe, WaterAid’s representative in Madagascar. She confirms that it is far easier to get politicians to talk about water and to promise pumps and new mains supplies than it is to get a constructive debate going about pit latrines. Clean water is a good election promise. Talking about building latrines that help make that possible isn’t.

On top of the hard statistics must be added less tangible human costs: the drudgery of walking miles each day to collect contaminated water for the family, or the sheer unpleasantness and indignity of using a foul-smelling, poorly draining communal latrine day in and day out. Or, for those who have nowhere else, a patch of land that has become accepted as the local open-air toilet. We should not suppose that force of habit appreciably lessens the disgust.

Disgust was certainly written on the face of eight-year-old Sidonie when we talked to her mother before the puppet show about the field “toilet” in her village. We had gone there with Claudia Lemalade, FSG’s hygiene educator for Amparatanana, to talk to a family due to receive one of the project’s new latrines. We stood on a pathway that led down to a small river with the typical wooden huts on one side and lush vegetation – banana plants, coconut palms and vivid, flowering shrubs – on the other.

The path, even before the rainy season, was wet in patches and drained into the small river below, as, inevitably, would the open-air defecation site a few yards from the path.

Claudia chatted with three generations of one family: Toto Suzanne, her daughter Marceline and Sidonie, Marceline’s daughter. Finally the family was to get a latrine – paying around 10 per cent of the cost price (approximately £30). They had been able to pay their £3 contribution as and when they liked, in whatever instalments suited them, but the contribution had to be paid upfront before work could begin on the structure. The family had been targeted because of financial need; FSG has set families’ contributions low enough to put latrines within reach of most of the poorest.

It is not hard to understand why Marceline wanted to divert her family’s limited budget to pay for a latrine. “Down there is where we have to go. After dark it is really horrible for the children.” Sidonie refused to discuss the matter though she had been lively enough before. As we talked, a young woman came up the hill from the river carrying a bucket. “This is to wash my baby’s feet,” she told us, as if to assure us that the murky water would not be used for drinking or cooking. For household use, she explained, she had limited access to a neighbour’s well (itself also contaminated, according to Claudia). She understood clearly the WASH message that the puppets would later be blasting out across the village, but what, she asked us, could she do?

There is a standard image of hopeless poverty that we see on television and in poster campaigns, images usually connected with appeals for emergency aid. Yet life in these villages is far from miserable or hopeless. Men and women are visibly industrious – most have family members in work as fishermen or farmers; good-quality food is available and at this time of year the trees are laden with coconuts, lychees and jackfruit. The literacy rate of 71 per cent is reasonably high and, despite a high poverty rate of 70 per cent, when news spreads of a visit from the WaterAid people, the women come out to meet us in well-kept best clothes.

Quite small investments in sanitation could turn around that high poverty rate. But at the moment, for the vast majority of Madagascar’s people, energy that could be put into education and wealth creation is being dissipated by avoidable ill-health. The Madagascan economy loses to illness around 300 times the amount the government has allocated to sanitation in its national budget, according to WaterAid.

WaterAid estimates that if Madagascar is to achieve its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the country has to increase the number of rural households being newly supplied with adequate sanitation, from roughly 485 households per month now to more than 12,000.

More and carefully focused international aid is, as always, one solution. Determined local politicians unafraid to champion an unpopular cause is another. Mme Clode said she intends to run as a local councillor next year and wants politicians to speak up for the Cinderella sector of sanitation.

Of Madagascar’s local MDG targets, she said: “I expected things to move faster. Many things need doing. For example, there is no water in the market in Fenerive Est [the nearby town]. And we need more latrines.” Against current orthodoxy, Mme Clode believes in communal latrines as a way of speeding things up, while government and international policy very much favours and directs finance towards family-based facilities, on the grounds that only families will keep them clean enough to prevent water-borne disease.

But her concern about the slippage in local millennium targets exactly mirrors WaterAid’s concern about the big picture. The millennium goals included halving the proportion of those living without water and sanitation by 2015. Of all the targets (including poverty, education, health and environmental concerns), sanitation is most off-track. At the present rate of progress, the goal would be reached 61 years late. Yet hopes of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger depend more on sorting out safe sanitation than on any other intervention.

A report commissioned by WaterAid and released in October spelled out that, for every dollar spent on sanitation, the return on investment is roughly $9. Worldwide, the need is enormous, but tiny interventions and local ingenuity can still have a big impact. In Madagascar, a puppet show costing just £31 can make 200 children laugh. And possibly save their lives.

Sanitation by numbers

• £15 Cost per head of hygiene education and good sanitation
• £31 Cost of puppet show promoting hand-washing
• £31.25 Cost of effective latrine with simple concrete pit lining
• $23.4m Most expensive toilet in the world (for space shuttle)
• $10bn Annual cost of achieving Millennium Goals
• $20bn Global annual spending on bottled mineral water
• 1.1bn People worldwide without access to clean water
• 2.6bn People worldwide without an adequate toilet

The full story in
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711290026

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD ~~ HOW THE WORLD VIEWS THE PALESTINIANS

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Lies from Annapolis

From Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

That is the concept the world has of the Palestinian people. For 60 years a people without a land that was taken from them with the approval of most of that world.

For 40 years whatever hopes remained of starting over were crushed, again, with the world standing by silently….

Then we come to the Annapolis Conference…. the world saw an option to end this all…. but in reality all that ended was the Conference itself… with no changes and a new barrage of lies instead.

The ‘players’ are satisfied, ‘mission accomplished’ as far as they are concerned… but the reality is far from that as can be seen in the following piece sent to me this morning by the author, A Palestinian living in the Occupied West Bank. To get a feel of what the ‘children of a lesser God’ think about this you must read it….

The peoples of the world are being subjected to a fresh dose of lies, this time coming from Annapolis, Maryland, in the United States.

George Bush, the Fuehrer of the White House, who has destroyed two nation-states and killed a million human beings, and then had the chutzpa to claim that the Almighty told him to do so, displayed some of his characteristically morbid magic this week.

He invited delegates from 50 nations to watch Israel, a state whose modus operandi consists of murder, theft and mendacity, and the miserable Palestinian Authority, which claims to represent the most uninterruptedly oppressed people on the face of earth, to pledge peace and reconciliation that would end decades of violence and bloodshed.

Speaking from a prepared text, Bush re-asserted his proverbial vision of seeing two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. He didn’t forget to warn that the would-be Palestinian state “must govern justly and dismantle the infrastructure of terror.”

Bush tried to create an artificial aura of optimism by claiming that he was convinced that the leaders of both sides, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, were finally willing and ready to make peace.

Well, Bush’s convictions are many, but are evidently mostly silly.

There is no doubt that Abbas earnestly wants peace for his nearly decimated people, constantly coerced, bullied and raped by an imperialistic Israel that very much resembles Nazi Germany during the heydays of its insolence and arrogance of power.

After all, the Palestinians, who have almost miraculously survived in spite of history, are the main victim of this sinister lingering outrage which allows Israel to constantly steal more Palestinian land for the purpose of creating more lebensraum for Jewish settlement expansion.

But Palestinian national survival can’t really be take for granted no matter how many “peace” conferences are organized and how many foreign dignitaries are invited and how many nice-sounding speeches are given.

Zionism’s aggressive blitz of ethnic cleaning against non-Jews west of the River Jordan is more than alarming for the starved and blockaded Palestinians. It is nothing short of a slow-motion genocide that no amount of verbal assurances can mitigate, let alone stop.

Of course, Bush doesn’t and wouldn’t pay attention to these real issues. He is too ignorant, too biased toward Israel and, yes, too unchristian, to call the spade a spade, especially when it is in the hands of Zionist imperialists.

This is why his claim that Israel wants peace and that Ehud Olmert is sincere about the quest for peace has no iota of truth.

Let us be frank and honest about this. Israel is not about to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel has not made a strategic decision to make peace with the Palestinians. Israel is not about to give up the spoils of the 1967 war. Israel is not about to give up occupied East Jerusalem.

Indeed, Israel is not about to come to terms with the paramount right of return for Palestinian refugees, unjustly uprooted from their homes and villages when the Zionist state was created nearly sixty years ago.

And above all of this, Israel is insisting that it be recognized as an exclusively Jewish state whereby Israel’s non-Jewish citizens (25% of the population) would be treated not only as lesser citizens with more or less transient and uncertain status, but actually as children of a lesser God.

So, how can we possibly expect peace with attitudes like these, and with the outrageous willingness on the part of the West to entertain Israel’s racist whims?

Moreover, it is amply clear that George Bush is not an honest broker. Needless to say, a dishonest broker can’t be a true peace maker, even if he invokes all the deceptive theatrics he can muster.

Real peace requires true commitment and above all honesty, characteristics that Bush and his nefarious administration obviously lack.

In truth, the last thing Israel would want to see in the Middle East is a true peace settlement based on justice, even a semblance of justice. Such an equitable settlement would be anathema for Zionism, a fascist-minded movement that is antithetical to peace and calm and stability and human decency.

This is why Israel insists on “bilateral negotiations” with the weak Palestinian Authority not out of good will toward its Palestinian neighbors but rather in order to further bully and blackmail the vulnerable Palestinian leadership to give more and more and more concessions. Israel simply wants to be left alone with the Palestinians, its enduring helpless victims. And all that Bush is doing is to tell the rapist and the victim to sort it out without any external interference.

In fact, Israel becomes almost spasmodic and gets very angry whenever the rule of international law and human rights are invoked as a basis of any prospective resolution of the conflict.

Israel wants any prospective settlement with the Palestinians to reflect Israeli military supremacy, political hegemony and Jewish predominance over American politics and policies.

Israel pretends to accept UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the guiding principles for the peace process. However, Israel has its own skewed and twisted interpretation of these resolutions, which really render them void of substance.

And when Israeli leaders are offered the choice of international arbitration, e.g. by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, to rule on the matter, they vehemently reject any third party interference, probably save the US, claiming that the world out there is anti-Semitic and that it can’t be entrusted to do justice to Jews.

For these reasons, I am certain that this endeavor will meet the same failure that previous endeavors ultimately met. And then, another American administration might invite the “sides,” along with another multitude of false witnesses, to a new peace conference.

But then, it might be too late for a Palestinian state, or even for peace.

The full story in
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2007/11/children-of-lesser-god-how-world-views.html

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Youngest Palestinian prisoner leaves Israeli detention camp

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Youngest Palestinian prisoner leaves Israeli detention camp

A must read story. I could not find words to comment on this inhumanity

by Hadeel Wahdan – BBC

Translated by Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News

November 22, 2007

They say life is just stories someone did not have the chance to tell yet. With this in mind, I tried to manage the boredom I felt while waiting in front of the Israeli detention camp of Telmond for the release of Aisha Eliyan, the youngest Palestinian political detainee to be released by the Israeli army this week.

3-years-old Aisha

Aisha was born three years ago in Telmond Detention Camp. For three years she was unable to see the blue sky or play freely, her crime was that she was the daughter of a Palestinian woman, Itaf Eliyan, who is detained for being a member of a political group that Israeli considers hostile.

Aisha walking out of the detention camp with the attorney
Um Waleed, the grandmother of Aisha sat waiting on a stone installed by the army in front of the main gate of the detention camp; Um Waleed is Aisha’s only remaining family member, since the army kidnapped her father several days before.

Aisha’s father has never held her; he used to see her during a visit just once a week and he was unable to hold her.

Aisha’s grandmother asked me to ask the soldiers guarding the gate when the release was going to take place, and before I even had the chance to reply to her request, the loud noise of the gate filled the area, and there she was; Aisha, holding the hand of the family lawyer. Um Waleed rushed to her granddaughter to hold her and kiss her.

To begin with, Aisha did not accept Um Waleed and started to pull the lawyer back toward the detention center gate while shouting and screaming for her mother, who in addition was crying because of being separated from her child.

Eventually, with fear and hesitant steps, Aisha made her first steps out of the jail. The lawyer said that Aisha should have been released a year ago, as Israeli law says children of prisoners should not stay with their parents above the age of two years old.

Aisha meeting her grandmother for the first time

There were five Palestinian babies in Israeli detention centers, three were released directly after being born due to health complications, one died at birth and Aisha stayed with her mother because her mother wanted to breastfeed her.

Quickly my cell phone caught Aisha’s attention because of its constant ringing and this led her to the car that took her home. When in her new home she was jumping everywhere and looking around, exploring the place. Um Waleed looked at Aisha and said, “How I am going to take care of her, I am old and sick; they did not leave anyone from the family to take care of Aisha except me.”

Aisha misses her mother
Aisha disappeared for some time and when she returned she was holding a photo of her parents on their wedding day. She did not recognize her father but of course she recognized her mother. I asked if I could speak to her and said “who are they?”, she gave me an angry look because of my ignorance, and just cried “Mom, where is mom? I want go to mommy” all the while looking at the photo.

Aisha playing with the BBC reporter

Just as I was leaving, Aisha grabbed onto my bag and said in her baby language, “I go with you, to bring mommy”. At three years old, she knew a lot, including that this detention center would not allow her to see her mother.

The full story in
http://hussamayloush.blogspot.com/2007/11/youngest-palestinian-prisoner-leaves.html

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Video of zionist soldier killing unarmed man in cold blood

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Video of zionist soldier killing unarmed man in cold blood

http://chiwulltun.blogspot.com/2007/11/video-tres-soldados-israelies-asesinan.html

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Ariel Sharon – A Terror master

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

A Powerpoint Presentastion PPS File About Ariel Sharon ‘A Man of Peace’, That You Won’t Find in A Newspaper

Ariel Sharon – A Terror Master

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW