Archive for April, 2010
Petra – How living rock became a home
Apr 30th
An interesting research article by Professor Dr. Mohamed Elmasry.
The Qur’an refers to many pre-Islamic peoples who rejected the divine guidance brought by those prophets and messengers who were sent among them. One of those groups, the people of Thamoud, constructed secure and mighty buildings that were literally carved into the rocky sides of mountains.
They were a skilled and abundantly productive people whose gifts and prosperity came from God, although they did not acknowledge Him. According to the Qur’an, their Prophet was Saleh, but they rejected Saleh’s message to worship only the One God and thus became corrupt. Eventually, a powerful earthquake destroyed many of their cities.
The story of Thamoud and their Prophet Saleh is mentioned in the Qur’an in three chapters; (7: 72-79), (15: 80 – 84) and (126: 141-159).
While the Qur’an does not mention Petra by name as the capital city of Thamoud, it is highly likely that the builders of Petra and the people of the Prophet Saleh were one and the same.
The ancient stone city of Petra is the most famous attraction in Jordan. It is nestled in the mountains south of the Dead Sea, about 260 kms west of Amman.
Archaeologists today know it as the capital of the Nabataean Arabs (the people of Thamoud in the Qur’an) who inhabited the area during ancient times and carved their homes, temples, tombs and other buildings out of solid rock. Petra and its early name Sela both mean “stone” in Greek.
The Anglican theologian, antiquities expert and amateur poet, Dean Burgon (1813 – 1888) was enchanted by contemporary descriptions and drawings of Petra — so much so, that he penned a prize-winning sonnet about the fabled city, despite never having seen it. The most famous couplet of his poem reads: “Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose-red city half as old as time.”
As in ancient times, visitors of today approach the centre of Petra along the Siq, a deep and winding 1.5 km cleft in the rock that varies in width from 5 to 200 metres. No motorized vehicles are permitted; one can walk the distance, ride on horseback, or be taken in a horse-drawn carriage.
As you go through the Siq, steep mountain walls tower more than 200 meters up on both sides, creating a scene like no other.
But the Siq can be as deadly as it is beautiful; in 1963 a sudden downpour sent torrents of water down the narrow gorge and 28 people were drowned in a flash flood from which there was no escape.
You can easily take hundreds of pictures of the fascinating rock formations along the way before even entering the amazing main square of the city.
When you do finally reach the end of the Siq, the cleft suddenly opens out upon the most impressive of all Petra’s monuments, called Al-Khazneh, which is Arabic for “the Treasury.”
One of the most elegant remains of any known ancient site, it is carved out of solid rock from the mountainside and its façade rises more than 40 meters high. Estimates of its age range from 100 BCE to 200 CE.
Al-Khazneh actually served as a royal tomb, but gets its financial description from a legend that pirates once hid their treasure there. Later, Bedouin raiders periodically fired guns at the building in unsuccessful attempts to find the mythical “treasure” and their bullet holes are clearly visible today.
Buildings hollowed out of “living rock” have been found in a number of places throughout the world, but Petra is unique for the size and complexity of its architecture. Almost all of its hundreds of buildings have been hewn out of solid rock; only a few are free-standing edifices.
Another unusual aspect of Petra is that it has been inhabited almost continuously. Until 1984, many of its buildings were home to local Bedouins; they were relocated to modern housing near the adjacent town of Wadi Mousa. In 1985, Petra was officially declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
For centuries, however, Petra was one of the ancient world’s “best kept secrets,” known only to local Bedouins and Arab traders. But in 1812 Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1784-1817), a Swiss-born, British-educated explorer and convert to Islam, visited the ancient city and sent copious notes on this and other explorations back to Europe for publication.
Archaeologists believe that the site of Petra has been inhabited off and on from prehistoric times. It only became a major centre, however, when the nomadic Nabataeans migrated from the western Arabian Peninsula during the sixth century BCE and settled in the area.
They successfully developed and expanded Petra as a wealthy crossroads town — a commercial centre for Arabian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman traders which connected the Red Sea, Damascus and southern Arabia. But the growing economic and political power of the Nabataeans began to worry the Romans, so in 31 BCE King Herod the Great took control of a large area of Nabataean territory, including Petra.
Nabataean society impressed the Roman scholar Strabo, who wrote that their community was governed by a royal family that leaned toward the spirit of democracy; their king was so just that he often rendered a public account of his rule to a citizens’ assembly.
With its incorporation into the Roman Empire, Petra reached the heyday of its growth and regional stature, with a population estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000. But the great rock city’s fortunes began to decline with a shift in trade routes north to Palmyra in Syria. Then in 363 CE, nature struck an even harder blow than changing human fashions: Petra was devastated by a major earthquake that destroyed its free-standing structures. Fortunately, the great rock-carved buildings were preserved.
By the time Muslims moved north to Petra during the seventh century CE, it was no longer a prosperous trading centre. In 747 CE, the city was damaged again by an earthquake and lapsed into insignificance, interrupted only by the arrival of a small Crusader community during the 12th or 13th centuries. For the next 600 years or so, it languished in forgotten obscurity until Burckhardt rediscovered it in 1812 (only five years before his death of exhaustion and disease at the young age of 33).
In honour of Petra, I recommend the book “Petra and the Holy Land” which contains copies of the beautiful lithographs made by the Scottish traveler,
David Roberts (1796-1864).
After seeing Petra, one poet wrote admiringly: “Under the arch of Life where love and death, terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe, I drew it in as simply as my breath.”
Petra still casts her magic spell of ancient grace and beauty on present-day travelers; for many, it is one of those “must-see” lifetime destinations.
South Park censored!
Apr 28th
On April 25, 2010 – Ross Bouthat in the New York Times ‘Op-Ed column’ took to task the Comedy Central for censoring the Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) image from the recent episode of its South Park serial. He wrote that the South Park which has the history of mocking religious figures like Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mormonism’s Joseph Smith, Muhammad, etc. in the past – have now gone on its knees by a statement posted on a New York-based website by a young convert to Islam by the name Zachary Adam Chesser 20 (Abu Talhah Al-Amerikee) followed by a picture of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh’s corpse – as a warning. According to Fox News (April 23, 2010), the NYPD police commissioner Raymond Kelly doesn’t consider this act as a crime – but the website is at Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) radar since its inception in 2007, for making ‘anti-semite’ statements. The said website ‘Revolution Muslim’ was established by a Jewish convert to Islam by the name Joseph Cohen from Brooklyn. Some other Jew converts to Islam who made their names in demeaning Islam, are – Daveed Gartenstein-Ross from Ashland (Oregon). Currently, he is counter-terrorism consultant with Washington-based Zionist think tank ‘Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’, which has ‘Israel-First’ Senator Joseph Lieberman among its ‘distinguished advisers’ – and of course Adam Pearlman aka Adam Yahiye Gadahn, a grandson of Dr. Carl Pearlman, director of ADL. Let us not forget the US Christian Taliban, John Walker Lindh.
One wonder, had South Park ran a mocking clip on Holocaust, what would be reaction of people like Ross Bouthat who beat their chest for the ‘freedom of press’ otherwise! After all, according to Israeli professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz the Holocaust is new Jewish religion.
The hypocracy of the western media was obvious at the brutal murder of Egyptian Muslim pregnant woman, Marwa al-Sherbini 32, who was stabbed to death, last year, inside a German court by a 28-year-old Russian-German Judeo-Christian facist.
According to Ibrahim Hooper, spokesperson for the Council on American-Islamic-Relations (CAIR) said: “There is strong suspicion that they’re merely a set-up to make Muslims and Islam look bad”.
Palestine belongs to Arabs, not to Jew settlers
Apr 24th
Jumada I, 11, 1431
President Barack Obama showed his ignorance of the world history as did Chaim Weizmann President of the World Zionist Organization in 1920s – when he asked Mahatma Gandhi President of All India National Congress for the party’s support for a Jewish homeland in the British mandated Palestine. Gandhi’s response showed his insight of the world history. He wrote back to the future First President of the Zionist entity: “France belongs to the French, England to the English and Palestine belongs to the Arabs”.
Barack Obama in his goodwill message on the Zionist entity’s sixtytwo years existence said: “Minutes after David Ben Gurion declared Israel’s “independence” (independence from whom? Until 1948, no country by the name “Israel” had existed for the last 2,500 years), realizing the dream of a state of Jewish people in their historical homeland, the United States became the first country to recognize Israel”. By saying that, Obama showed his ignorance of world and American history. Someone should have told him that President Truman’s Secretary of State, George C. Marshall was dead against the recognition of the new UN-awarded Jewish state in Palestine. It was Truman’s political adviser Clark Clifford along with the leaders of Jewish groups who convinced Truman to stand firm to the partition of a Muslim-majority Palestine by the United Nations in order to win Jewish votes which were important to Presiden Harry Truman in the coming election. Truman before signing the official letter of recognition - crossed the Zionists’ chosen name for their colony from “Jewish State of Israel” to the “State of Israel”. It was that revised name which Ben Curion used on May 14, 1948: “The name of our state shall be Israel”.
“The archeological records don’t prove the existence a Jewish kingdoms (which could not have existed as according to professor Sand ‘Jewish people were invented over a century ago’) in Palestine. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalemin 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander’s descendants, the Ptolemies ruledJerusalem until 198 when Alexander’s other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took overJerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= ‘Common Era’ or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruledJerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back. The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years,” Professor Juan Cole (University of Michigan), March 23, 2010.
Mossad in Malaysia
Apr 21st
Jumada I, 7, 1431
On April 4, 2010 – Malaysia’s internationally known politician, Anwar Ibrahim (born 1947), country’s former Deputy Prime Minister (1993-98)and Finance Minister (1991-98) and currently the Opposition leader – claimed that Israeli intelligence agents (Mossad) have infiltrated into Malaysia’s Bukit Aman (Federal Police headquarter in Kuala Lumpur). The espionage link to Israel is the company named Asiasoft Global Pte Ltd. (Singapore), which has worked as a sub-contractor to upgrade the telecommunication systems for the police. Two of the directors of the firm, Izhak David Nakar and Ido Schechter, are reportedly Israeli citizen.
However, this is not the first time the ‘Israeli connection’ is raised. In 2008, then Malasian Home Minister had told the Parliament: “Then between November and December, a police report was lodged by the responsible police officers and investigated by one ASP Sairah. Then Sairah was transferred to Taiping and there was no news after that,” The Malaysian Insider.
How reliable is Anwar Ibrahim? Well, he is known for his good connections with the Jewish Lobby in the US through personal friendship and links to CIA-funded think tanks. In 2000, Malaysian politician Lim Kit Siang had asked former prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad to declare the outcome of a three year police investigation to whether Anwar Ibrahim is a CIA operative. Anwar Ibrahim has been a good friend of former US Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton administration, William S. Cohen (1997-2001), son of a Russian Jewish immigrant Reuben Cohen.
No other Malaysian politician has forged such a relationship with individuals of the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, the former US Secretary of Defence and ex- President of the World Bank, who fervently believes that Israeli military dominance and power in the Middle East serves US interests. One of the principal advocates of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in furtherance of Israeli goals in the region, Wolfowitz was described by Anwar Ibrahim as his “great friend,” a person in whom he has “faith,” in a speech in the US on 19 June 2006.
It seems now, Anwar Ibrahim is trying to turn the table on his old Zionist friends after being betrayed by Washington-based Zionist PR firm apco Worldwide, whose several directors are not only former Israeli high officials such as Shimon Shein , former Tel Aviv ambassador in Bonn, ItamarRabinovich and former Tel Aviv ambassador in Washington. Its CEO in Israel Gad Ben-Ari was a personal adviser to former PM Rabin.
Speaking at 2003 OIC summit meeting in Malaysia in October 2003 – Malaysian prime minister Muhathir Mohamad while urged Muslim youth to abandon suicide attacks and apply their faith to strive in science and technology – he blamed Israel and its western allies for creating most of world’s crisis and wars.
Malaysia is a multicultural, multiracial and multireligion society ruled by a secular democratic government in which Muslims make a slight majority (60%). This makes easy for the Judeo-Christian foreign agents to incite communal clashes in Malaysia. Malaysia doesn’t recognize Israel. Israeli professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi in his book, The Israeli Connection, wrote about Zionists’ hatred toward the Muslim world and their support for anti-Muslim insurgencies and covert military and intelligence operations to destablize Muslim countries especially those which don’t recognize the European Jewish occupation of Palestine. The book documents Tel Aviv’s involvement in Iran-Cntra fiasco, French genocide of Algerian Muslims, aiding Idi Amin and Marcos against Moro Muslim resistance, collaborating with Chinese and Burmese genocide of Muslims in those countries. Currently Israeli Mossad is very active in India where it carried out the 2008 Mumbai terrorist false-flag operation; in Afghanistan, in Lebanon, in Pakistan, in Indonesia, in Pakistan, in Iran, in Nigeria, in Somalia, in Malaysia and many other Muslim countries.
Sarah Gillespie: Singer songwriter with a difference
Apr 7th
Rabi’ II 22, 1431
by Shabana Syed
Gillespie is a young singer songwriter who is half American, half English, who has already made an impact with her first album called ‘Stalking Juliet’. The album, which was produced and arranged by the famous anti-Zionist musician Gilad Atzmon and consists of titles like ‘Ahmed and Dangerous’ and ‘Call Me Stupid, Ungrateful, Vicious and Insatiable,’ received rave reviews.
This dark haired beauty’s style of singing and lyrics are reminiscent of a time gone by when singer songwriters like Dylan, Joan Baez, and Joni Mitchell stood out from all the hundreds of popular singers who had come and gone leaving little trace or impact.
That is not to say Gillespie is a protest singer, but rather she is singer who is unusually intelligent and reflects the fast paced global environment through her poetic lyrics. Her voice ranges from being soft and sometimes sensitive, but there is also a raw edge there that sometimes indicates anger and maybe even arrogance, which may well be a result of confidence.
The songs and music are an urban mix of different cultures and rhythms, a result of growing up in a melting pot of multiculturalism, which is present day Britain. “I grew up listening to old American blues and artistes like Fats Waller and Bessie Smith, but I am also a fan of modern jazz and classical music. You can hear many of these influences reflected in my music, as well as Middle Eastern colors, for example Oudh is featured in a couple of my recorded songs”.
The heady Middle Eastern mix can to some extent be credited to Gillespie’s producer, the Israeli born Gilad Atzmon who is also member of her band and can be heard playing accordion, clarinet and sax. Stalking Juliet also features the renowned jazz drummer and percussionist, Asaf Sirkis with Ben Bastin on double bass, Billy Adamson on guitar, Sameer Makhoul on violin and John Turville on piano.
With such a strong mixture of talent behind her, Sarah Gillespie has accumulated critical reviews and is touring solidly, playing festivals and venues across the UK and in Italy.
However it is not only on the music front she is making an impact, she loves to write poetry as well as articles on current affairs and has a MA in politics and philosophy.
The famous quote by Martin Luther King which says ‘the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people’, may be seen as applicable to Gillespie, because when she is not elevating music to a more intelligent level via lyrics that actually mean something, she is also at the forefront of creating awareness by writing political articles.
“I am very captivated by politics; I try to stay constantly aware of what is happening in our world and how it affects all of us.”
“Living in Britain, it is impossible to ignore the effects of the so called ‘war on terror.’ A Jewish man can cultivate his beard to express his faith, but when a Muslim does it he is marked as dangerous extremist harboring murderous ambitions. There is a lot of projection going on. Similarly if a Muslim woman wears a hijab, she is rarely perceived as being proud and devoted to God, she is understood as being oppressed and servile.”
For when Gillespie is not singing songs that reflect love, hope, pain or broken promises, emotions we can all relate to, she is busy writing articles exposing the supremacies she sees as being implicit in Western liberal rhetoric. She says “The mantra of the French Revolution was: ‘Freedom, Equality, Fraternity or death!’ Pragmatically this has now unfolded into its tragic meaning: ‘Be free, equal and secular — or we’ll kill you.’
She explains: “I write because I want to contribute to an awareness of the injustices many people are facing through our government’s actions. If we don’t say anything and keep quite, we remain blindly complicit in this carnage executed in the name of liberty”
Gillespie is a great supporter of the anti-war movement in Britain. However, she also believes that the Left groups, socialists and Marxists could have played a stronger role in preventing the mass onslaught of Islamophobia that is rife in the West.
“I grew up in liberal Britain and while historically the left was aligned with the struggles of oppressed peoples, this proved problematic when it came to Islam. This is because the Left is generally an atheist, feminist movement premised on the western concept of the individual. It celebrates rationality and demeans divinity. Therefore we have British liberals like Nick Cohen or Martin Amis fully endorsing curtailing the rights of Muslims because, paradoxically, they imagine their belief in equality makes them superior. You see the same hypocrisy in the way that feminism is mobilized in the interventionist agenda. Suddenly the left defends or supports the bombing of Afghani women to prevent them from being oppressed by Muslim men. The supremacy is pretty shocking”.
In another article Gillespie writes of the pain she felt after she saw the documentary called ‘Out side the Law — Tales from Guantanamo’ she writes: “The film knits together narratives so heart-wrenching I half wish I had not heard them. Yet the camaraderie between the detainees and occasional humorous anecdotes, such as Binyam Mohammed’s false confession that he tried to induce nuclear fission on April 1st, provide a glimpse into the wit, courage and normalcy of the men we are encouraged to perceive as monsters.”
In an article titled ‘David Miliband and UK complicity in torture’ she highlights Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s attempt to cover up evidence of British involvement in torture of British Muslims in Guantanamo and asks the question, where does Milliband’s loyalties lie?
She writes: “Milliband is not working for British sovereignty, his CV so far for defending the interests of Britain abroad, is not great. Since he took the job he gave Britain’s blessing to Israel’s massacre in Operation Cast Lead, he maintained Britain abstain from voting against the Goldstone Report”.
She further adds “he has stood limply in the wings giving lip service to the Mossad’s use of British passports in their assassination of a prominent Palestinian. Worryingly, it seems the concerns of British sovereignty do not feature high on Miliband’s list of priorities. If they did we could expect that, instead of pushing for a re-write of the law to enable war criminal Tzipi Livni to visit the UK without charge, Miliband might consider adhering to the law that has protected our rights for the last 800 years — and allow Shaker Aamer, who is still held in Guantanamo, to come home.”
Her new album about to be released June 2010, aptly named ‘In the Current Climate’ not only reflects the singers unique style and influences but also her solid stance on issues concerning the state of the world we all live in. Gillespie may have just arrived on the music scene, but she certainly is a ‘breath of fresh air’ to watch out for.
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