How Different Is Obama from Bush on Terrorism? - By Noah Feldman | Foreign Policy

How Different Is Obama from Bush on Terrorism? - By Noah Feldman | Foreign Policy: “The U.S. president has found himself caught in some old legal traps — while creating new ones of his own.”

After five years of waiting, Omar Khadr was finally slated to go on trial in Guantánamo Bay this summer — and then suddenly, the gears ground to a halt. The problem was not that Khadr was just 15 years old when, according to the charges, he threw a grenade in a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan and killed a U.S. soldier. Nor was Barack Obama’s administration having second thoughts about restarting the military tribunals that had been stopped when he took office. Instead, the problem lay in the criminal charge against Khadr: fighting without a uniform. According to news reports, Harold Koh, the legal advisor to the State Department, pointed out that CIA agents and private contractors who fire missiles from U.S. drones are civilians too. By charging Khadr with a war crime, the United States might be opening its own operators to the same charge.

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Help OffroadPakistan’s Flood Relief - Blog - 4×4 Offroaders Club Karachi

Help OffroadPakistan’s Flood Relief - Blog - 4×4 Offroaders Club Karachi

OffroadPakistan and friends have put together an effort to help people effected by the floods in Pakistan. We are providing relief ourselves (delivery and distribution) in Sindh area. Right now it’s food and essentials and temporary shelter. Next we would support run a refugee camp (our choosing of location) providing food, water, medicines/medical camps, clothing etc. Later help some really needful families to rebuilt their homes etc.

Since we are not an NGO, we have got the help of Behbood Association (local NGO) working far last 35 years - they have set up a separate account for us, they will manage, supervise and audit for us.

If any one wants to help contribution can be sent to this account (details here)

Please pass it on to friends!

Hamid Omar

Fahad Faruqui: Sufi Islam: Reclaiming Muslim Spirituality - Huffington Post

Fahad Faruqui: Sufi Islam: Reclaiming Muslim Spirituality

After two bombs recently claimed dozens of innocent lives at the shrine of esteemed Sufi Ali Hajviri, fingers were pointed at the al-Qaeda-linked militants who see Sufism as the work of heretics. The New York Sufi Music Festival was brought to U.S. to showcase the spiritual dimension of Islam and the rich heritage of Pakistan, counteracting a view that Pakistan is predominantly a country known for its terror factories. Sadly, the image of militants waging war is overwhelming and hard to supersede.

Hearing Abida Parveen sing Bulleh Shah’s ecstatic poetry, which enriched the centuries-old Sufi tradition of the Indus valley, made me realize how the Islamists have stripped away spirituality from the religion and left believers with rituals, sketchy interpretations of the divine laws and fear of God’s wrath. Sufi Muslims of the subcontinent, who converted to Islam in the pre-partition era, were drawn to the Sufi path of knowledge that has been hijacked by the al-Qaeda ideology of violence.

The rapturous quality of Sufi poetry continues to fascinate me, but the very idea of loving and seeking God while listening to radical mullahs (like the clerics of Red Mosque) is deeply troubling. Prostration to God devoid of spirituality is no different from doing sit-ups. Surely, the label Sufi is not necessary. What’s important is the sentiment. It helps the cause of clarity to call those on the path “Sufis” rather than “mystics,” which will more likely conjure images of Aladdin on his flying carpet.

Islam is the fastest-growing religion but has too few religious scholars with requisite understanding to link rituals and divine laws to creative spiritual ascension. I reached a level of comfort with my faith through good guidance from prominent Muslim thinkers such as Hamza Yusuf, Faraz Rabbani and Zaid Shakir, who drink deeply of the Quran’s spring of wisdom.

Faith is ineffable; so is our search for God. Ecstatic poetry and Sufi treatises speaking of “annihilation of self” and “Oneness with the Creator” are merely tools to evoke the Sufi sentiment, which is not peculiar to Islam. Teresa of Avila’s “Libro de la Vida,” Bulleh Shah’s ecstatic poetry, Allama Iqbal’s intimate conversation with God in “Shikwa” (complaint) and Mansoor Al-Hallaj’s proclamation “Anal-Haq” (I am the Truth) are all expressions of the acquired wisdom gleaned from deep introspection.

Though unsuccessful, Iqbal tried to revive the true spirit of Islam. He was quick in identifying that the hardline mullah was a hopeless case. But the Sufis were either consumed in “other worldliness” or digressing from the core of Sufism. For Iqbal, a profound religious experience is one that benefits humanity, which is most unlikely if the seeker retreats to constant seclusion.

Saudi Arabia’s government is often accused of demolishing tombs of the companions of the prophet, fearing veneration of graves, and of discouraging Muslims from praying at prominent sites like the Cave of Hira (where Muhammed received his first revelation). Why they discourage is another column, but one thing is certain: visiting graves and sites mentioned in the Quran will not miraculously lead to divine illumination. The essence of Sufism is to dig into the depths of your soul to seek the One. In the shrines of Sufi masters in the subcontinent, one can expect to find numerous vagabonds pretending to be Sufis, who earn a living by giving false hopes to troubled wives, jobless men and childless couples. This defeats the premise of Sufism — absolute reliance on Almighty.

In a phone conversation, a prominent Sufi scholar, William Chittick, said, “The core of Sufism is to strive for nearness to God.” Even though God is absolutely Other, he presupposes a direct relationship with the seeker. No doubt. Allah says in the Quran (50:16): “I am closer to you than your jugular vein.”

It is our egos that have created boundaries between sects within Islam and ensuring rivalries with non-Muslims. Reviving the spiritual dimension of Islam may be the only way to fight intolerant radical elements internally.

Surveillance cameras in Birmingham track Muslims’ every move | UK news | The Guardian

Surveillance cameras in Birmingham track Muslims’ every move | UK news | The Guardian: “About 150 car numberplate recognition cameras installed in two Muslim areas, paid for by government anti-terrorism fund “

Counterterrorism police have targeted hundreds of surveillance cameras on two Muslim areas of Birmingham, enabling them to track the precise movements of people entering and leaving the neighbourhoods.

The project has principally been sold to locals as an attempt to combat antisocial behaviour, vehicle crime and drug dealing in the area. But the cameras have been paid for by a £3m grant from a government fund, the Terrorism and Allied Matters Fund, which is administered by the Association of Chief Police Officers.

 

About 150 automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) cameras have been installed in Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook in recent months. Birmingham’s two predominantly Muslim suburbs will be covered by three times more ANPR cameras than are used to monitor the entire city centre. They include about 40 cameras classed as “covert”, meaning they have been concealed from public view.

 

The funding arrangement was not made clear to the handful of councillors who were briefed that the cameras would appear in their area. Instead, they were told only that the money had come from the Home Office. “I raised my concern then: is this really about spying?” said Salma Yaqoob, a member of the Respect party and councillor for Sparkbrook.

 

“The terrorism aspect was certainly not emphasised in that meeting. In fact it was me having to be portrayed as the awkward squad, or even paranoid, for even raising the issue of whether this was really about counterterrorism. They were very much saying, ‘No, this is about burglary and crime.’”

 

The criteria for TAM funds state clearly that a police force must prove a project will “deter or prevent terrorism or help to prosecute those responsible”.

 

Police sources said the initiative, code-named Project Champion, is the first of its kind in the UK that seeks to monitor a population seen as “at risk” of extremism.

 

When the cameras become operative, residents will not be able to drive into or leave the two neighbourhoods without their movements being tracked.

 

Officials maintain the cameras will prove useful for tackling a whole range crime. The areas were ringfenced for intense surveillance in 2007 after a police investigation into a suspected plot to kidnap and kill a British soldier in the area.

 

The Safer Birmingham Partnership, a joint initiative between police and the local authority which will run the cameras, expressed “regret” there had not been fuller consultation. Senior SBP officials said they only became aware that the cameras were paid for by counterterrorism funds as a result of Guardian inquiries.

 

Jackie Russell, the director of the partnership, said: “Just because the funding has an interest in counterterrorism doesn’t mean that for us, that is our focus. For us, it is about community safety.”

 

Steve Jolly, a local activist leading a campaign to have the cameras removed, called on the deputy prime minister to intervene: “Nick Clegg has made a real point of emphatically drawing attention to the surveillance society and promising to stop unnecessary infringements of privacy,” he said. “I think we should hold him to his word, and say, ‘Look at what is happening in Birmingham – are you going to allow it to go ahead?’”

Pirates of the Mediterranean - Imam Afroz Ali on the Gaza Flotilla Seige

Governance « Imam Afroz Ali: “The raid on MV Mavi Marmara at the crack of the dawn of 31st May, 2010 in the Mediterranean Seas by Israel’s naval forces has significant consequences under international law. Amidst propagated confusion, clarity on which laws would apply and what exactly are the consequences is paramount if the global citizens of the world are to be made aware of the facts surrounding the flotilla siege. This essay deals with that issue, aiming to offer some clarity amidst the confusion and propaganda.

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Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad - The Pursuit of Happiness - cambridge khutbas etc.

cambridge khutbas etc.: The Pursuit of Happiness (Friday sermon (jum’ah khutba) by Sheikh Abdal Hakim Murad - Cambridge - 21st May 2010 - 25 mins 46 secs)

In this sermon, the Sheikh explores how the Glorious Names of Al-Qabid (The Constrictor) and Al-Basit (The Expander) reflect states that human beings naturally pass through and how these are spiritual extensions of the concepts of fear (khawf) and hope (rajaa’) . The

 

Believer is one in whom these 2 states are in constant balance. Happiness and joy, thus, can only be fully appreciated after one has known fear and sadness and it is Allah (swt) who bestows the sakinah into the hearts of whomsoever He wishes.

Listen to this sermon

Download this sermon (MP3, 23.6 MB)

Cambridge Muslims Need Your Help!

Kicking the Addiction to Multitasking - AJ Jacobs: My colossal task burden - The Guaridan

AJ Jacobs: My colossal task burden | Life and style | The Guardian

When AJ Jacobs learned multitasking was bad for you, he decided to kick his chronic addiction to mental juggling. Get ready for Operation Focus…

‘This is awful. I feel as if my brain has entered a school zone and has to slow down to 25mph.’ Photograph: Christopher Lane

The stereo is silent. The TV black. The room dark. I am focused on nothing but a glowing computer screen. I’m doing this because I have a problem focusing. My brain is all over the place. Unless I’m doing at least two things at once, I feel like I’m wasting my time. Phone and email. Watching TV, checking Facebook and reading the news online. Texting and peeing.

In one sense, task-juggling makes me feel great: busy, energised, fulfilled, as if I’m living three lives in the space of one. But I also know I’m scattered. I’m overloading my circuits. This overstimulated, underfocused world is driving us all batty. My mother – who complains when I click through my emails while talking to her on the phone (and by talking, I mean I toss out an occasional “uh-huh” or “sounds good”) – recently sent me an article about how multitasking is actually inefficient.

Hence Operation Focus. I’m going to recapture my attention span. I pledge to go cold turkey from multitasking for a month. Only single tasks. Uni-tasking. And, just as important, I’ll stick with each task for more than my average 30 seconds. I’ll be the most focused man in the world.

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Journalism and ‘the words of power’ - Robert Fisk

Al Jazeera English - Focus - Journalism and ‘the words of power’

Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper’s Middle East correspondent, gave the following address to the fifth Al Jazeera annual forum on May 23.

Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defence. In the western context, power and the media is about words - and the use of words.

It is about semantics.

It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history; and about our ignorance of history.

More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops ‘correct’ our spelling, ‘trim’ our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?

Let me show you what I mean. Read more

Naomi Klein: Enough. It’s time for a boycott of Israel | Comment is free | The Guardian

Naomi Klein: Enough. It’s time for a boycott of Israel |
Comment is free |
The Guardian

It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on ‘people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era’. The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.

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Spirit Of Islam: ReliefWorks, the Swat Valley Crisis, and the Importance of Service - Nader Khan - YouTube

YouTube - Nader Khan - Spirit Of Islam

Part 1 & 2 of Nader’s recent interview with Spirit Of Islam’s host Br. Ashraf Zaghloul, where he discussed ReliefWorks, and our current campaign to raise funds for the people of Swat.

Goldman Sachs - A story of influence and power - CBC Radio - The Current

CBC Radio | The Current | The Best of The Current Podcast

Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter David Cay Johnston has the story of
Wall-Street banking giant Goldman Sachs … its remarkable ability to
survive in tough economic times and its curiously consistent ability to
shape a nation’s economic policy.

Listen or Download:  18/05/09: Goldman Sachs [mp3]

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Akbar Ahmed on the Swat Crisis - “What’s The Appeal Of The Taliban?” : NPR

What’s The Appeal Of The Taliban? : NPR

The Taliban brutally flogged a teenage girl, burned schools to the ground and advanced to within 60 miles of Pakistan’s capital. Despite the stern rules and intolerant attitude, many Pakistanis support the Taliban insurgency. Why? Who are the Taliban, and what’s their appeal? Neal Conan explores those questions with authors and experts on the region.

Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, worked as an administrator in Waziristan and Baluchistan, and was Pakistani ambassador to the United Kingdom. His latest book is Journey Into Islam.

Gizmodo - A Tour of McDonald’s Horrifying Mechanized Meat Factories - Mcdonald’s meat factory

Gizmodo - A Tour of McDonald’s Horrifying Mechanized Meat Factories - Mcdonald’s meat factory

If you’re curious about large-scale meat-processing machinery and sanitation procedures, definitely watch this video. If you ever, ever want to eat at McDonald’s (or for that matter, beef) again, don’t.

Made to reassure the public about the safety and quality of McDonald’s meat, this tour of one of their meat providers’ factories is interesting, partly because of the complex, bewildering preparations that the beef patties go through and the amazing machines that do the work, but mostly because of how much the procedure resembles that child-grinding scene from The Wall.

The video has it all: masked employees earnestly voicing the virtues their “USDA-inspected” product while behind them, a torrent of beef spews out of a giant mechanical meat-hole onto a speeding conveyor belt; tubs, pipes and boxes of various sizes and shapes carrying a roiling mass of beef slurry; countless, mysterious processing chambers, each of which does who knows what else to the patties.

The final step of the process: after all the processing, grinding, forming and freezing, the last device the patties pass through before packaging is a metal detector. In other words, go to McDonald’s, because your Big Mac is practically guaranteed not to have a lug nut in it.

It’s not that this is necessarily surprising, it’s just that we’re used to companies keeping this kind of thing as out of view as possible. So some credit is due to McD’s, I guess? Witness all the mechanical wonder/horror here. [McDonald's—Thanks, Albert!]

One of my teachers, when asked about ingredients in particular processed cheeses said, “Why would you eat THAT? Be wary of any food ‘produced’ in factories. Eat real food.” The scholar wasn’t someone whom we’d consider particularly familiar with modern society as a participant–but was certainly someone real and whole.

And Allah alone gives success.

The link between autism and extraordinary ability - The Economist

The link between autism and extraordinary ability | Genius locus | The Economist

There is strong evidence for a link between genius and autism. In the first of three articles about the brain this week, we ask how that link works, and whether “neurotypicals” can benefit from the knowledge

THAT genius is unusual goes without saying. But is it so unusual that it requires the brains of those that possess it to be unusual in others ways, too? A link between artistic genius on the one hand and schizophrenia and manic-depression on the other, is widely debated. However another link, between savant syndrome and autism, is well established. It is, for example, the subject of films such as “Rain Man”…

A study published this week by Patricia Howlin of King’s College, London, reinforces this point. It suggests that as many as 30% of autistic people have some sort of savant-like capability in areas such as calculation or music. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that some of the symptoms associated with autism, including poor communication skills and an obsession with detail, are also exhibited by many creative types, particularly in the fields of science, engineering, music, drawing and painting. Indeed, there is now a cottage industry in re-interpreting the lives of geniuses in the context of suggestions that they might belong, or have belonged, on the “autistic spectrum”, as the range of syndromes that include autistic symptoms is now dubbed.

So what is the link? And can an understanding of it be used to release flashes of genius in those whose brains are, in the delightfully condescending term used by researchers in the area, “neurotypical”? Those were the questions addressed by papers (one of them Dr Howlin’s) published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The society, Britain’s premier scientific club and the oldest scientific body in the world, produces such transactions from time to time, to allow investigators in particular fields to chew over the state of the art. The latest edition is the outcome of a conference held jointly with the British Academy (a similar, though younger, organisation for the humanities and social sciences) last September.

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Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary shake-up in the UK - Guardian Education Education | The Guardian

Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary shake-up -The Guardian

Children will no longer have to study the Victorians or the second world war under proposals to overhaul the primary school curriculum, the Guardian has learned.

However, the draft plans will require children to master Twitter and Wikipedia and give teachers far more freedom to decide what youngsters should be concentrating on in classes.

The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.

It emphasises traditional areas of learning - including phonics, the chronology of history and mental arithmetic - but includes more modern media and web-based skills as well as a greater focus on environmental education.

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Is Obama an object lesson in bad grammar? - The Grammarphobia Blog

The Grammarphobia Blog: Grammar, Usage, Etymology, and More: Is Obama an object lesson in bad grammar?: ”
WHEN President Obama speaks before Congress and the nation tonight, he will be facing some of his toughest critics.

Grammar junkies.

Since his election, the president has been roundly criticized by bloggers for using ‘I’ instead of ‘me’ in phrases like ‘a very personal decision for Michelle and I’ or ‘the main disagreement with John and I’ or ‘graciously invited Michelle and I.’

The rule here, according to conventional wisdom, is that we use ‘I’ as a subject and ‘me’ as an object, whether the pronoun appears by itself or in a twosome. Thus every ‘I’ in those quotes ought to be a ‘me.’

So should the president go stand in a corner of the Oval Office (if he can find one) and contemplate the error of his ways? Not so fast….
“

Pakistani Novelists & Writers Winning International Recognition as Nation Crumbles

As their country descends into chaos, Pakistani writers are winning acclaim | The Guardian: “Pakistani novelists writing in English - long overshadowed by literary giants from neighbouring India - are now winning attention and acclaim as their country sinks into violence and chaos.

Tales of religious extremism, class divides, dictators, war and love have come from writers who grew up largely in Pakistan and now move easily between London, Karachi, New York and Lahore. Since the publication of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist two years ago, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, a new wave of Pakistani fiction is earning critical acclaim at home and around the world.

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SeekersGuidance has launched a free Islamic Knowledge Podcast

Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah,

SeekersGuidance has launched a free Islamic Knowledge Podcast. Check it out, insha’Allah, and share with others. “Whoever points to the good has the reward of those who act on it,” said the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace).

wassalam,

Faraz Rabbani
Educational Director, SeekersGuidance
(www.SeekersGuidance.com)

SeekersGuidance Islamic Knowledge Podcast SeekersGuidance Genre: Islam

TVO.ORG | Video | Big Ideas - Lewis Lapham

Drawing from his online essay, “Playing with Fire”, Lewis Lapham laments the state of the American education system wherein schools are producing a generation of young people incapable of asking questions or assuming the basic obligations of citizenship.

TVO.ORG | Video | Big Ideas - Lewis Lapham

Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13 - Series - NYTimes.com

Sidebar - Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13 - Series - NYTimes.com

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