By B. R. Gowani

Muslim Women in the West

One cannot deny that discrimination is involved in many cases where Muslim women have been asked to shun the headdress, but there are cases where women have shown foolishness in rebelling for their so-called rights. They sometimes carry their cause too far:

1. In September 2007, Elections Canada, due to pressure from some veiled women, allowed them to vote with a photo ID and one other document, or in absence of the IDs, a registered voter in the same voting division could vouch for her under oath.

2. Five Lebanese girls between 8-13 years old were barred from the Longueuil tae kwon do tournament in the Canadian province of Quebec, because they refused to remove the hijab which could have endangered their safety. An 11-year-old Bissan Mansour said: “I won’t take it off for any reason.” “Even if I can’t go to tournaments, I can continue to practice until I become world champion.”

3. When a Muslim referee’s order to remove the hijab for safety reasons during a soccer match in Ontario, Canada, was ignored, a sixth grader was disallowed from playing. Her team members and four other teams refused to play in the tournament.

4. From 1994 to 2003, 100 Muslim girl students have been expelled from schools in France because of their refusal to discard their headdress, which the French say violates their secularism.

5. Sandra Keller became Muslim in January, 1997. Now Sultaana Freeman, she wore head scarf but by December she switched to niqab, which covers the whole face except the eyes. She got her Illinois driver’s license wearing niqab. In 2002, she sued the State of Florida which had asked her to show her face for the driver’s license picture.

Why the headscarf?

There is nothing wrong in dressing modestly and thus guarding oneself from provoking the male libido.

Nevertheless, one has to remember that the times have changed drastically. There was a time when women’s (and men’s) clothes were baggy and so the men could only gaze at the female face and hair—provided they were uncovered. But in today’s world, with different types of clothing, the female hair has to compete with other anatomical parts.

Often men are looking for an opportunity to check out the shape and size of body parts in jeans and tee shirts or other such garments. Therefore, women’s clothes must be loose in order to save them from male gaze.

And it’s not the fault of either men or women. Nature has played a cruel trick: it endowed one gender with oceans of paradise and the other gender with deserts of thirst.

In November 1976, Jimmy Carter, (a presidential candidate, later the US president), a practicing Christian, said this:
“Christ said, ‘I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.’ I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do—and I have done it—and God forgives me for it.”

(Though the Bible has death and stoning to death punishments for adultery, there is no such fine for performing that act in one’s heart.)

So even after putting on the headdress, what are you going to do if male eyes gaze at you because you are endowed with Angelina Jolie’s lips, or Katrina Kaif’s or Beyonce Knowles’ facial charm, or Shakira’s gait? Or a different kind of beauty? You’ll always find some one attracted to you.

Doesn’t it mean that you have failed in your modesty endeavor? Now what? Putting on a head-to-toe burqa?

In England, as a matter of fact, there are teachers and lawyers who wear burqas at work.

Then there are a few young women who have started wearing burqas in England as a mark of protest against the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair for joining the “war on terror.”

A 24 year-old program scheduler working in London reasoned:
“For me it is not just a piece of clothing, it’s an act of faith, it’s solidarity.” “9/11 was a wake-up call for young Muslims.”

“People ask, ‘Why do you wear that?’ A lot of people assume I’m oppressed, that I don’t speak English. I don’t care, I’ve got a brain.”

But then, men could develop fondness for your voice. Does it mean that you are going to go on a voice sabbatical, like maun-vrat or a vow of silence, which some of the devout Hindus observe for days or weeks? (Sometimes it can be beneficial. A person who owed me money was on a “maun-vrat” whenever I would go to collect, until I gave up on it.)

Or maybe men will find beauty in your naked fingers. Are you going to cover them up with hand gloves?

(In West Jerusalem, the ultra-orthodox Jewish women have started covering themselves up in niqab and burqas. Let’s hope more Jewish women don’t follow suit. Traditional Orthodox Jewish married women cover their heads with wigs, hats, or scarves. Hadassah Lieberman does not always cover her head and this has some Orthodox Jews express their concern. Men are not supposed to shake hands with women, but Senator Joe Lieberman does shake hands.)

Empowerment

One has to remember that the mullahs or the religious clerics and the imams of the mosques play a dangerous role in scaring those who don’t wear hijab.

Last year, a mosque in Montreal, Canada, warned young girls on its website that discarding their hijabs can result in their being raped and having “illegitimate children.”

Also, “By removing your hijab, you have destroyed your faith. Islam means submission to Allah in all our actions.”
They add this also creates “stresses, insecurity and suspicion in the minds of husbands” and instigates “young people to deviate towards the path of lust.” Hence, Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah are not surprised “that Canadian girls walk away from sports tournaments rather than remove their hijabs”

Then there are women apologetics that defend the donning of hijab along these lines:

I never wore a hijab before. Then I saw my daughter (or sister, or mother, or cousin, or friend, or relative, or someone) wearing it and I started donning it myself. Now I feel so empowered or liberated.

If a small piece of cloth empowers and liberates them, one wonders how would they feel if they start wearing burqas – would they feel like super-girls and super-women?

The Winners

The winners in this situation appear to be Muslim men living in the Western countries that cannot impose too many restrictions or dress codes on their female family members but would like to see their women under some kind of subservience. And when the women themselves choose the veil, it makes the men feel more in control.

… and the Losers

In the final analysis it is the Muslim women who are the ultimate losers. Some of them who stand up against the authorities for what they perceive is their right, that is, to be allowed to cover their head, may feel victorious in the short run, but one wonders what their long term feelings will be. Yes, it is their right and few can deny that if people are going half naked in Western countries then there should be room for hijab, too. But they must remember: this same hijab or headscarf for which they are so valiantly fighting, will enable the religious nuts (when they come to power) to use it to strangle all their rights.

This is not a far fetched thought.

Shariah in Canada

The efforts by the Muslim clerics to introduce some of the Shariah laws in Canada ended when the provincial governments in Quebec and Ontario were forced to reject it in the face of vehement opposition. The Muslim Canadian Congress and many others played important roles in its prevention.

It was prevented this time but that’s not a guarantee that it will not succeed in the future. The “democracy” in Western countries and especially, the US, operates through the “interest” groups or “lobbies” who contribute money to the politicians to fight elections. So when they win, they work for those constituents who gave them the money. (Look at the recent trillion dollar bailout of the thieves by the US government.)

And as the Muslim lobbies grow stronger they will have more hold on the politicians and will be able to get more things done that suit their political and religious ideology.

What If the Prophet Muhammad Were Around

Lets say Prophet Muhammad were living with us and was visiting the Muslims living in the European countries, the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand (the way Pope visits the Catholic Christians). How would he guide the Muslims living in the west regarding the veil?

The reading of the Qur’an gives an impression that there are verses which are circumstantial, that is, according to the prevalent situation. Also, during Muhammad’s time Islam was just an Arabian religion; now it’s a global one.

Either he would say that these are different times and so you don’t need to wear any kind of veil, or he would say that the niqab is not serving the purpose. In niqab, you’re a perfect example of “modesty,” however; your eyes are observing everything around you: in the parks, on the buses, and on the subway you watch PDA (public display of affection) between people of same or opposite sex and that is a sin.

Also, in the grocery stores, you pass through liquor, pork, and non-halal meat sections. Then in the cashier’s line, you see bikini clad photos of celebrities and headlines on how to satisfy each other.

In summer, you see men without shirts and women in bikinis or with skimpy skirts and tiny tank tops.

In convenience stores, sometimes you come across adult magazines.

At other times, you see the butt cleavage and the undergarments of men and women wearing low-rise jeans.

…

In order to keep yourself totally pure in this atmosphere, it would be better to stay at home. If you want to work, then work from home on the internet without surfing onto undesirable sites.

A Plea to Muslim Girls and Women

Please invest your valuable energy defending your sisters in other countries.

Just forget —to veil or not to veil— and instead think:

Somewhere your sister:

• is being killed in the name of “honor;”

• is going through genital mutilation called circumcision;

• is not allowed to be treated by a male doctor,

• is beaten because she was not wearing a burqa;

• is enduring acid thrown at her face because it was not covered;

• is raped and put in prison because she couldn’t produce four witnesses and so is charged with “zina” or adultery;

• is lashed because she didn’t measure up to the morality of the clerics or the elders;

• is stoned to death due to her extra-marital relation;

…

Also, donate the amount you are spending on veils to organizations that are fighting to save women or you can send it to your family members, friends, or relatives whom you trust to give to the charities helping these women. Even a little amount translates to a big sum in poor countries. Tell your other Muslim sisters to do the same.

http://www.rawa.org/index.php
http://www.shirkatgah.org
http://www.tehrik-e-niswan.com
are some of those organizations.

Practicing your faith, Islam, is allowed in the Western countries and you can pray by going to the mosque. Many Muslims (Hindus, Buddhists, and others) when they move to Western countries find no places of worship in their areas and so they turn within and religion survives in their hearts. Look at Judaism, in spite of so much persecution through out history, the Jewish people and their religion has survived.

Why pronounce your religion through colorful and stylish scarves and niqabs when Islam is not in danger. Or is it intentional, to draw people’s, especially men’s, attentions?

We all crave for attention and want to be different and we try to be so through clothes, hair, specs, caps, or make-up. Occasionally, a head scarf as a fashion statement is fine but don’t turn it into a permanent fixture which strengthens the hands of fanatics.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

<1> Many communities have practiced polyandry (two or more husbands), usually brothers. Until recently, the Toda people in South India and groups in Tibet and Nepal followed this custom. In the South Asian epic, Mahabharata, Draupadi married five Pandava brothers.

Qur’an permits polygamy under certain conditions:

“And if ye fear that ye will not deal fairly by the orphans, marry of the women, who seem good to you, two or three or four; and if ye fear that ye cannot do justice (to so many) then one (only) or (the captives) that your right hands possess. Thus it is more likely that ye will not do injustice.” Qur’an 4:3 <16>

No such provision exists for women.

Submitted by Asghar Vasanwala

Elizabeth Van Kampen
Introduction
In 1928, at the age of one and a half years, Elizabeth van Kampen, daughter of a Dutch plantation manager, arrived with her parents in Sumatra in the former Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia), a land which she evokes from childhood memory as “paradise on earth.” But the attack on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941, when she was fourteen, was quickly followed by Japanese invasion of the Dutch colony and the nightmare to follow.

Elizabeth and her family experienced extraordinary times between two empires, that of Holland in Asia at the end of a 400-year epoch, and that of a rising militarist Japan. The following images convey a sense of a range of experiences of plantation life through the lens of the Dutch planters.
http://www.japanfocus.org/products/topdf/3002

By John Pilger

On 13 January, George W. Bush presented “presidential freedom medals”, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is “responsible for than 90 per cent of all cases of torture”.
As satire was made redundant when Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch were honoured for their contributions to the betterment of humanity, Bush’s ceremony was, at least, telling of a system of which he and his freshly-minted successor are products. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. The continuity between the two administrations has been as seamless as the transfer of the odious Bono’s allegiance, symbolised by President Obama’s oath-taking on the steps of Congress – where, only days earlier, the House of Representatives, dominated by the new president’s party, the Democrats, voted 390-5 to back Israel’s massacres in Gaza. The supply of American weapons used in the massacres was authorised previously by such a margin. These included the Hellfire missile which sucks the air out of lungs, ruptures livers and amputates arms and legs without the necessity of shrapnel: a “major advance”, according to the specialist literature. As a senator, then president-elect, Obama raised no objection to these state-of-the-art [sic] weapons being rushed to Israel – worth $22 billion in 2008 – in time for the long-planned assault on Gaza’s fenced and helpless population. This is understandable; it how the system works. On no other issue does Congress and the president, Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, give such absolute support. By comparison, the German Reichstag in the 1930s was a treasure of democratic and principled debate.
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3751

“80 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena”
by Michael Bach
These pages demonstrate visual phenomena, and »optical« or »visual illusions«. The latter is more appropriate, because most effects have their basis in the visual pathway, not in the optics of the eye. When I find the time I will expand the explanations, to the degree that these phenomena are really understood; any nice and thoughtful comment welcome.
You may be glad to know: There are no tasteless surprises here; you know, these infantile pranks where you scrutinize a picture and suddenly an ugly face (or the opposite end) screams at you…
Don’t distress yourself if you don’t see the effect described, even if trying carefully. For many illusions, there is a small percentage of people with perfectly normal vision who just don’t see it, for reasons currently unknown.

http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

By B. R. Gowani

(I dedicate this piece to I. K. Shukla, who passed away on September 17, 2008. He was a fiery writer, a passionate egalitarian, a great humanitarian, a learned man, an honest intellectual, and a good friend. His death is a great personal loss to me.
Good bye, Shuklaji, many will miss you. May you continue your battles with gods, goddesses and God in the nether world.)

The Paradox

The hijab, burqa, chador, niqab, abaya, or whatever other names there may be for different kind of veils have become one of the most contentious subjects in many parts of the world today.

With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, militants in many countries have made lives of women unbearable, and they weren’t much bearable to begin with.

Occasionally, women try to overcome the restrictions by getting around them. A few years ago there were signs on several walls in a small Indian town warning girls not to leave their house without a burqa. The young women had to heed the warning but once they left the neighborhood, they removed their burqas.

The famous poet Attiya Dawood’s 11 year-old daughter was punished by a reputed private school in Pakistan for not putting on a piece of cloth across her chest, since she preferred jeans and T shirts. The poet writes: “When my daughter wore a dupatta (veil), I saw tears in her eyes.”

Women are also victimized by cultural and tribal traditions. Many traditions and tribal customs are gradually losing ground to modern times. But the Saudi Arabian petrodollars and their export of Sunni Wahabbism have strengthened the religious militants in many countries thus destroying the minimal secularism that had existed there. Added to it are the economic grievances of the majority, the territorial disputes with neighboring countries, the rise of minority ethnic groups demanding their rights, the rise of the Taliban, and the United States’ “war on terror.” Lastly, (certainly not least) let us not forget that monster Zia-ul-Haq who, with the help of the US and Saudi Arabia, changed the shape of the South Asian Islam forever by enforcing a more orthodox Islam. (His predecessor Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto bears some blame too.) All this has created a breed of violently fanatic Islamists who are totally out of touch with modern times. These fanatics are anti-women and are thus allied with the traditionalists and tribalists who vehemently share this trait. In many places the religious fanatics, the traditionalists, and the tribalists are one and the same.

Interestingly, many Muslim women in the West, on the other hand, want to put on a headdress or niqab and where they are asked to give these up, they are fighting back because they feel their basic rights have been denied.

This is the paradox Muslim women face today. While many Muslim women in non Western countries are fighting against religious, traditional and tribal oppression and so many other cruelties and restrictions, including the hijab; their sisters in the West are putting forward arguments in favor of the veil!

Crimes against Muslim Women

Amira El Ahl describes the circumcision of Fatima, a Somali girl, in these words:

“Two men and her mother press the delicate child against the floor and pull apart her thin little legs. An old woman crouches in front of Fatima, holding a shiny razor blade and a thick, threaded darning needle. Today is the day Fatima will become a woman, a decent woman.

“The purpose of the thick darning needle is to lift the lips of the vulva to facilitate cutting them off. The old woman moves the razor blade into position. First she slices off the small lips of the vulva and then the clitoris. There is blood everywhere. The girl arches her small, sweat-soaked body. The old woman repeatedly pours a milky liquid onto the wound to prevent infection. Then the grandmother comes into the hut, pokes at the wound and tells the old woman to make a deeper cut. The process starts all over again. Fatima’s screams become almost unbearable. If the sight of this girl under female circumcision is so difficult to bear, how can she possibly stand the pain?

“Finally the deed is done. The wound is sewn shut with thorns, leaving only a tiny opening. A straw is inserted into the small opening to prevent it from closing. Then Fatima’s legs are tied together with a rope to allow the wound to heal. She will lie in bed, her legs tied together in this fashion, for several weeks.

“The old woman completes her barbaric task with a slap on her subject’s behind. Fatima is now a woman.”

Picture
http://www.global-sisterhood-network.org/content/view/1470/59/

The World Health Organization describes FGM (female genital mutilation) thus:

• Clitoridectomy: partial or total removal of the clitoris (a small, sensitive and erectile part of the female genitals) and, rarely, the prepuce (the fold of skin surrounding the clitoris) as well.
• Excision: partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora, with or without excision of the labia majora (the labia are “the lips” that surround the vagina).
• Infibulation: narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal. The seal is formed by cutting and repositioning the inner, and sometimes outer, labia, with or without removal of the clitoris.
• Other: all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, e.g. pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterizing the genital area.

(Most of the FGM occurs in Africa and is practiced by people of various religions, including the traditional ones. The number of victims is between 100 to 140 million.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FGC_Types.jpg

Provincial Minister Zil-e-Huma Usman was murdered for her uncovered head in Pakistan. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again.” The killer had previously been accused of killing and mutilating four women sex workers.

In England, a scarf was tied around a 25 year-old businesswoman Samaira Nazir’s throat that was cut in three places by her brother and cousin. Her 2 and 4 year old daughters were commanded to witness their mother’s gruesome murder as a lesson to them. Her crime was that she wanted to marry an Afghan asylum seeker.

Two women, allegedly “prostitutes,” were executed by the Taliban in Afghanistan that is supposed to be under the US supported President Karzai’s control.

Photos
http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/07/14/taliban-execute-two-women_8350.html

The 21-year-old Hina Saleem was murdered in Italy by her father and two brothers-in-law for living with her boyfriend.

21 women and 8 children died and many were injured in a stampede in a madrassa in Pakistan. The male rescuers were blocked from helping.

Mohammad Yassin’s 10 year old daughter was raped. Tribal verdict: rapist should hand over his daughter Samia to Yassin’s son to marry!

“[7 year old] Samia … is regarded as a slave and for two long years experiences every kind of torture and discrimination. The family daily beat the innocent child and locked her down in a dark basement. They injured her body by using hot metal pieces, pulled her hair, kept her naked and force her to stay outside in the freezing weather for hours and many other such bestial punishments.”

Samia was released by some Afghans upon learning her condition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRh7YONWhGw

After the earthquake in Pakistan, the Muslim elders didn’t allow medical students to dig out wounded girls from under the rubble of their school building.

“According to eyewitnesses, a 29-year old, named only as Amina, was dragged out of her parent’s house in Urgu District, Badakshan province, [Afghanistan] by her husband and local officials before being publicly stoned to death. The man accused of committing adultery with her is alleged to have been whipped a hundred times and freed.”

Fifteen young girls died in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, because the “mutaween,” (religious police of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) beat them and prevented them from leaving the school building on fire because they were not wearing the head scarves and the abayas, the long robes.

As customary, the school was locked in order to maintain total separation of girls and boys.

The people are scared of the mutaween who stroll streets to see that males and females do not meet, are wearing proper clothes, and that prayers are offered on time. People who disobey the rules are beaten and may be imprisoned.

In 1998 in Bangladesh, the number of women acid victims were 101, in 1999: 178, and in 2000: 186 a third of which were between the ages of six and fifteen year old girls! The motives cited for throwing acid at girls were revenge, envy, and refusal to entertain sexual favors. There may have been some economic motives, too.

Tanbira Talukder says, “Bangladesh is the country with the largest number of acid victims in the whole world.”

A 16 year-old Canadian, Aksa “Axa” Parvez, was strangled to death by her father for refusing to wear a head scarf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOPPSFZ0NDU&feature=related

Few months back, three girls aged 14, 16, and 18, and two women (victim’s aunt and another’s mother), were shot and injured in Pakistan. The girls were kidnapped by the provincial minister’s brother. Two of the girls’ skulls were smashed. They were then buried alive. The women had supported the girls in their choice of their mates.

A senator from Baluchistan, Mir Israrullah Zehri, defended this heinous act: “These are centuries-old traditions, and I will continue to defend them … Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.”

When a senator from Sindh, Yasmeen Shah, raised this issue, she was told by Zehri that a death squad of 12 tribesmen was on its way to kill her.

In 1999, just ten days after his marriage to Gudiya, Mohammed Arif had to report for duty as the mini-war in Kargil between India and Pakistan had begun. On September 16, he disappeared from the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir; Pakistanis had captured him. Her hope for his return was shattered when the Indian Army declared him a “deserter.”

(Majority can screw the country but the minority has always to prove their “patriotism.” And this is true in almost every country.)

After waiting for four years Gudiya got married to Taufeeq and had gone to her parent’s home for delivery. It was then that Arif showed up on August 9, 2004. Muslim scholars and elders declared the second marriage null because it was “anti-Islamic.” Gudiya was devastated and had to be admitted to the hospital where she told reporters that “I am not a cow or a buffalo that I can be sent away just like that.”

Zee News satellite TV held a “mock panchayat” or council of elders where Gudiya, Taufeeq, Arif, relatives, and Islamic scholars were invited. Gudiya declared: “I want to go with Arif.”

The first time in the history of Indian television a personal issue had been debated and decided on television.

The headline in Indian Express conveyed the outrage aptly: “Gudiya’s personal trauma, nightmare paraded in public on TV horror show.”

She was ill and eight months pregnant then. The Zee TV’s ratings went up as Gudiya’s life sunk further down.

“My father didn’t tell me anything initially. But then everybody started telling me to go to Arif. My father also joined them. It was according to the Hadith [the Prophet’s sayings]. I had to go to Arif.” When questioned if she was joining Arif on her own, her reply was: “It was everybody’s decision.”

The child’s custody also became a matter of dispute. Arif agreed to adopt Mateen but wouldn’t give him his last name. “I cannot give my name to the child. He belongs to Taufeeq. I will tell him when he grows up. That is his fate. It is not my fault. That is what the Sharia Law says.”

Gudiya died a painful death due to multiple organ failure in January 2006.

Arif and Taufeeq both claimed they loved her. A better resolution, in my opinion, was for them to come to an arrangement whereby Arif and Taufeeq would each alternate time spent with her, or all of them living together, or any other suitable arrangement. <1> This may have prolonged her life and would have given the 15 month-old Mateen maternal love and the love of his real and step fathers.

Interestingly, they have both remarried and Mateen is living with Gudiya’s mother.

Seven men gang-raped an 18 year-old married woman known as “Qatif girl” and a man unrelated to her. The rapists were flogged and sentenced to prison terms. The victims were to get 90 lashes each for a khilwa crime, which means being caught with a person of the opposite gender who is not an immediate family. The punishment was increased to 200 lashes and a 6 month sentence because the lawyer had appealed their case. Following international pressure, King Saud pardoned the woman and the man.

What was their crime, one may ask?

These are a few cases from the hundreds of thousands of Muslim women who are victims of tradition, tribalism, and religion.

(However, violence against women is not restricted to Muslim women only. Every year thousands of Hindu women are burned to death under the euphemisms of “kitchen deaths” and “suicides” because they didn’t provide enough dowries. Once the wife is murdered, the husband can remarry and get another dowry. Hindu and Sikh women also get killed in the name of “honor.”)

To be continued tomorrow.

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

By Ingrid B Mørk

The vultures have been circling; they descended on Sharm el-Sheikh.
Was it all about the gas??

Funny, isn’t it, how no-one mentions the gas.
I have it on authority that the gas field off the coast of Gaza is worth $4 billion, that it belongs to the Palestinians, that the Israelis will steal it, by force and that this has been their agenda since the year 2000. I was told this, by the same person, who told me the same things, several years ago.

In that case, the recent carnage in Gaza and previous attempts to overthrow Hamas, had nothing at all to do with the squibs Hamas fire from Palestinian land, into Palestinian land.

All the death and destruction, the starving of the people of Gaza, the attempted coup by Fatah and the attempted emasculation of Hamas, was because Israel wants yet another resource which the Palestinians have. The gas.

John Ging talking on the BBC about the devastation in Gaza by the Zionists asked, “For what.”
The Zionists want Gaza and its natural gas field; they are doing a deal with BG.
They are paranoid and they are dangerous.
Livni has announced that they are not finished with Gaza.
The Egyptian soldiers are apparently erecting tent villages for the “refugees”. Part of the Zionist plan is to “transfer” the Palestinian “refugees” from Gaza into Egypt, and then they can concentrate on the West Bank. The plan for the “refugees” there is to transfer them into Jordan, and then they have it all. I believe they want southern Lebanon and parts of Syria and Iran as well. I hope the Arabs get their act together before it’s too late.

Yes, everything is out in the open, (well almost everything.) Naked aggression toward the Palestinians, which means that the Zionists thumb their noses at world opinion because they know, as do the rest of us, that loyalty for them is bought, with the hard-earned dollars of the US, UK and European tax-payer.
On the other hand, the love and the outpouring of grief and anger by millions of “ordinary, extraordinary,” people, in towns and cities worldwide, comes from the heart and is, therefore, priceless.
It remains to be seen which will vanquish the other. I’m rooting for the latter.
If the US tax-payers begin demanding accountability for the use, or misuse of their tax dollars, as well as tax payers in European countries, maybe then the mighty, aggressive, Zionist war machine will grind to a halt.
Ingrid B can be reached at : inbmoer@online.no

Immigration to Dubai isn’t limited to Pakistanis – it is attracting people from the West too.

By Fakhr Ahmad

Dubai real estate is red hot, not because of its desert climate of over 120°F, but because of the presence of the world’s largest companies and the hottest personalities.

Be it Britney Spears, Madonna, Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise, Tiger Woods or even Brad Pitt, nearly every top western celebrity either owns a villa or a super-luxury condo in one of the most expensive parts of the world – Marina West and Palm Islands in Dubai.

Long gone are the days when Dubai was just a favourite destination for labourers from South Asia, white-collar professionals from India and Pakistan and top businessmen of the subcontinent, who have been flocking to the tiny city-state since the early 1970s.

http://www.newsline.com.pk/NewsNov2008/cover4nov2008.htm