PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION

As I wrote this book over the years I did not entertain the hope that it would elicit such a warm reception and appreciation,And when it went to the press over and over again I thanked God and felt grateful to the readers who took so much interest in the contents of this book.

I was, however, beginning to feel that in the future this book need not be republished, For, in my view, we had better no way some­ thing positive about Islam itself in the context of the various fields of life it embraces, and the positivityand the supervisory character that its law enjoys with regard to practical life, as I have attempted in the books appearing after the present one, instead of limiting our efforts to defending it against the various doubts given currency to by its enemies in order to confuse and throw us on the defensive.

But when I read the orientalistMr. Wilfred Cantwell smith’s book "Islam in Modern History", and found that the author had in three places referred to this book of mine in words so angry and disparaging that came very near to openly calling names. I decided that the book that had roused the anger of a rancorous crusader to such an extent must remain in circulation and be published over and over again.

All my thanks are due to Allah; His Grace alone brings succor.

MUHAMMAD QUTB




PREFACE

The majority of the modern "educated" people are today faced with a religious crisis. Is religion really a fact of life? It might have been one in the past, but does it still remain so in the world of today when science has changed the whole course of life, and when there is no place in it for anything save science and what scientific facts approve of? Does religion represent a genuine need of humanity? Or is it something wholly dependent upon the temperamental constitution of an individual so that one may not believe in it as there is no difference between the two states of belief and unbelief '?

Talking about Islam they betray a similar state of intellectual crisis when the missionaries of Islam tell them that Islam is not a mere creed, nor does it represent simply an edification of souls, or a refinement and training of human virtues but is rather a harmonious whole that also includes a just economic system, a well-balanced social organization, codes of civil, criminal as well as international law, & philosophical outlook upon life along with a system of physical instruction, all of these flowing from the same fundamental creed of Islam and its moral and spiritual temperament. When they hear all this, these "educated" people are greatly perplexed, for they supposed that Islam had since long ceased to exist as it has become outmoded and had exhausted all its usefulness. That is why they are surprised when they hear devout Muslims saying that Islam does not belong to a remote past, it is not obsolete or antiquated but is a living and flourishing system of life even at the present moment, as it holds within itself such elements of life as no other system known to humanity does including socialism as well as communism or any other system.

At this their surprise exceeds limits, they can no more contain themselves, so they scream at these preachers of Gods words: Do you tell us all this about the religion that approves of slavery, feudalism and capitalism-the system which holds that woman is only a half-man and imprisons her within her household; which prescribes such punishments as stoning to death, mutilation and whipping; which lets its people live on charity; which splits them up into different classes, some exploiting the other; a system which provides no security of decent living to the toiling people; and a system which is such and such, how is it possible that such a system should even hold its own today, let alone its survival in the future? Not to speak of its triumph and contending successfully, how can such a system even hold out in the ruthless ideological struggle going on at present among different modern socio-economic systems?

Before proceeding further let us, however, pause awhile and see as to who these "educated" skeptics are? Whence does their skepticism originate? Is this attitude of mind a result of their own free thinking or are they merely parroting the words of other, with­out even so much as understanding them?

The fact is that the skepticism exhibited by these gentlemen is not at all a result of their own independent thinking, nor did it originate in their own minds as such. For its true source we win have to go back a little over the history of modern times.

The Middle Ages witnessed crusades between Europe and the world of Islam. Furious battles were fought between the two after which followed a period that saw a suspension of hostilities between the two camps but their hostility towards each other never ended as is well borne out by what Lord Allenby said in clear terms on the occasion of the British occupation of Jerusalem in World War I: "Now have the crusades come to an end!'

We must also keep in mind that during the last two centuries European imperialism remained in conflict with the Islamic Orient.

The British stepped into Egypt in 1882 following Taufiq's treachery. They hatched a plot with him for the military occupation of Egyptin order to thwart the popular revolution under the leadership of Orabi. Thereafter the British policy of necessity revolved around one basic aim: strengthening their hold more and more on the Islamic world and safeguarding their interests from being swept away by the true Islamic spirit of the Orient. We would in this respect like to refer to what the British Prime Minister of the Victorian age, Mr. Gladstone said in the House of Commons. Holding up the Holy Qur'an in his hands he told the members of the House: "So long as the Egyptians have got this book with them, we will never be able to enjoy quiet or peace in that land".

Naturally the policy pursued by the British was one of deriding Islamic laws and principles, of exiling the sense of their sanctity from Muslims' hearts, and of painting Islam in the blackest of colors so as to make them look down upon it and in due course of time to discard it totally. They did all this in order to tighten up their im­perialistic grip on this country.

The educational policy they adopted in Egypt was such as left the students quite ignorant about the reality of Islam, except that it was a religion embracing worships, prayers, praising and glorifying God, and pursuing mystic practices; that the Qur'an was a book read in order to invoke God's blessings and that Islam was a theoretical invitation to pursue the noblest and most generous of moral precepts. Students were never told anything about Islam as a socio-economic system of government or as a constitution, or as a basis of internal and external policy, or as a system of education, or as a way of life and a watcher over life. What they were taught instead was the doubts cast against Islam by the orientalists and other European crusaders in order to make the Muslims forsake their religion and succumb easily to the evil machinations of imperialism.

They were taught; that the only genuine social system in existence was that which Europe possessed, the only true economic system was one that was conceived by the European philosophers, the right and most appropriate form of constitutional government was what the Europeans, thanks to their various experiments, evolved. They were taught that the rights of man were first taken cognizance of by the French Revolution, that democracy was fostered and made popular by the English people, and that it was the Roman Empire that provided any basis of civilization. In short, the British depicted Europe as a rebellious but mighty giant with none to stand in its way or check its progress whereas they presented the East as a dwarfish underling with no standing of its own save that of subordination to Europe and complete dependence upon it for its social and cultural outlook.

This political policy at last took effect. Among the Egyptians there sprang up generations who were shorn of any thought of their individuality or independent cultural existence. They were com­pletely enthralled by Europe; they worshipped it most devotedly; they could neither see with their own eyes nor were they any more left capable of thinking for themselves; they would see just what the Europeans wanted them to see; and they thought what they wished them to think.

The "educated" intelligentsia of today represents as such the culminating point of what the imperialists with their political maneuvers achieved in-this country.

These poor people know nothing about Islam but doubt. About Islam they have no information save what they received through their European masters. That is why they are seen shouting like them advocating the separation of religion from the state and of science from Islam.

But in their ignorance they pass by the fact that the religion that Europe shook off was one quite different from what the advo­cates of Islamic ideology call upon people to adopt; and that the particular circumstances that prevailed in Europe at the time and made it turn its back upon religion were confined to that region of the world only. Nothing of the sort ever happened in the Islamic orient; nor is there any likelihood of its ever happening there. Thus when they call upon their countrymen to discard Islam or declare that Islam should have no say in the management of social, political and economic affairs of community and life, they are merely express­ing and parroting the imported thoughts of their masters.

Europe was the scene of a conflict between religion and science, because the church there had arbitrarily embraced certain theories and dogmas (inheriting them from Greece) and insisted that they were sacred and a gospel truth. So when the theoretical and the empirical science demonstrated the error and fallacy of these theories, the people there had no other course but to believe in science and disbelieve in the church as well as in the religion these churchmen stood for. The war between religion and science gained in intensity and the enthusiasm to get free from the dominance of these religious men increased as the church in Europeconferred upon itself divine power and proceeded to enforce it in a most tyrannical manner. Thus for the people there religion came to signify an abominable ghoul that harassed them in their working no less than in their sleep­ing hours. It exacted from men costly extortion and reduced them to an abject state of subordination to the churchmen, besides calling upon them to swallow nonsense and superstitions in the name of God. The torturing of scientists and burning them alive because they said, for instance, that the earth was round, was the ugliest of crimes that made it a sacred duty of every sensible, free-thinking and conscientious individual there to come forward and help the forces that sought to destroy this abominable ghoul or at least put it in chains so as not to let it ever again harass and oppress the people besides harming the cause of religion by misrepresenting it and making others feel as if religion contained nothing but falsehood and untruth.

But what about us, we who live in the Islamic East? Why should we separate science from religion or hold that the two are at variance and war with each other? Is there even a single scientific fact which has been found to contradict Islam and its basic creed? Were scientists ever subjected to persecution in the domain of Islam? The whole history of Islam is before us. It testifies that there have been great doctors, astronomers, mathematicians, physicists as well as chemists but never werethey persecuted for their views. There is no trace of any conflict between science and their religious beliefs to be found in the minds of these great Muslim scientists. Nor did there exist any hostilities between them and the ruling authorities such as might have led to their suffering or burning alive.

What is it then that makes these "educated" people plead for separation of religion from science, for attacking Islam and finding faults with it without any understanding or knowledge of it? Their feverish crying is nothing but a symptom of the poison that had been administered to them by the imperialists, of course, without their knowing it.

This class of the "educated" elite was not at all in my mind when I wrote this book. They would never return to what is right until their masters in the West also do turn towards it after despairing of their Godless materialistic civilization and recognize that it can bring them no salvation, and so return to a system of life that is at once spiritual as well as practical-a system embracing belief no less than life at once and at the same time.

I had rather another class before me in writing this book-the sincere and enlightened youth, who earnestly wish to find out the reality, the truth, but the doubts and lies spread about Islam by the deceitful imperialistic powers leave them helpless to see the light, or the answer to these lies, and so they are left groping about in darkness, for the slaves of imperialism and the devils of com­munism would not let them march out to the right path-the path to freedom, honor and sublimity. It is to this enlightened andsincere group of young men that I present this book and hope that it may please God to help me dispel doubts about Islam from their minds.

http://www.duas.com/dua/442/dua-to-heal-...or-a-wound

Guys,

I just had to share this one.

Fantastic hadith:

Sunan Abi Dawud > Wages (Kitab Al-Ijarah) - كتاب الإجارة > Hadith permalink
... حَدَّثَنَا زُهَيْرُ بْنُ حَرْبٍ، وَعُثْمَانُ بْنُ أَبِي شَيْبَةَ، قَالاَ حَدَّثَنَا جَرِيرٌ، عَنْ عُمَارَةَ بْنِ الْقَعْقَاعِ، عَنْ أَبِي زُرْعَةَ بْنِ عَمْرِو بْنِ جَرِيرٍ، أَنَّ عُمَرَ بْنَ الْخَطَّابِ، قَالَ قَالَ النَّبِيُّ صلى الله عليه وسلم " إِنَّ مِنْ عِبَادِ اللَّهِ لأُنَاسًا مَا هُمْ بِأَنْبِيَاءَ وَلاَ شُهَدَاءَ يَغْبِطُهُمُ الأَنْبِيَاءُ وَالشُّهَدَاءُ يَوْمَ الْقِيَامَةِ بِمَكَانِهِمْ مِنَ اللَّهِ تَعَالَى " . قَالُوا يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ تُخْبِرُنَا مَنْ هُمْ . قَالَ " هُمْ قَوْمٌ تَحَابُّوا بِرُوحِ اللَّهِ عَلَى غَيْرِ أَرْحَامٍ بَيْنَهُمْ وَلاَ أَمْوَالٍ يَتَعَاطَوْنَهَا فَوَاللَّهِ إِنَّ وُجُوهَهُمْ لَنُورٌ وَإِنَّهُمْ عَلَى نُورٍ لاَ يَخَافُونَ إِذَا خَافَ النَّاسُ وَلاَ يَحْزَنُونَ إِذَا حَزِنَ النَّاسُ " . وَقَرَأَ هَذِهِ الآيَةَ { أَلاَ إِنَّ أَوْلِيَاءَ اللَّهِ لاَ خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلاَ هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ } . ...Narrated Umar ibn al-Khattab:

reported the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) as saying: There are people from the servants of Allah who are neither prophets nor martyrs; the prophets and martyrs will envy them on the Day of Resurrection for their rank from Allah, the Most High.

They (the people) asked: Tell us, Messenger of Allah, who are they? He replied: They are people who love one another for the spirit of Allah (i.e. the Qur'an), without having any mutual kinship and giving property to one. I swear by Allah, their faces will glow and they will be (sitting) in (pulpits of) light. They will have no fear (on the Day) when the people will have fear, and they will not grieve when the people will grieve.

He then recited the following Qur'anic verse: "Behold! Verily for the friends of Allah there is no fear, nor shall they grieve."

Muslim Academies





Academiesbill will enable a radical overhaul of England's schools, giving every school
the chance to convert to an academy and giving parents the right to create free
schools outside the control of LAs.The new schools will drive up standards and
the education would be in accordance with the needs and demands of the parents.
It will help native Brits, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities to set
up their own schools for the education of their children. It is nothing to do
with integration or segregation. Segregation already exists in British
schoolings, it is not going to widen. President Obama supports free schools in
America because they have benefitted the least well off the most. Educating
children is the priority.


It is wrong to assert that a small unrepresentative group of Muslim activists tried to Islamises a state primary
school in Woking. The silent majority of Muslim parents would like to send
their children to state funded Muslim schools. They are not extremists who want
to change of ethos of those schools where Muslim children are in majority. It
is the democratic right of every Muslim parent to see that their children receive
balanced education, so that when their children grow up, they do not find themselves
cut off from their cultural roots and linguistic skills. It is a question of
common sense, humanity and reason that bilingual Muslim children must be
educated in state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role
models during their developmental periods. The whole world believes that people
who speak more than one language is a vital economic asset. Pupils who speak
more than one language do not cause difficulties. It is the politicians and
monolingual teachers who are the problems for bilingual pupils. Muslim school
will help to cultivate the child into a healthy, fully flourishing individual
with a passion for learning. There are hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In
my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies.


Muslim schools are not only faith schools; they are more or less bilingual schools. Bilingual Muslim children need to
learn and be well versed in Standard English to follow the National Curriculum
and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. State schools with
monolingual teachers do not teach Standard English to Migrant children. Bilingual
Muslim children learn English in the playgrounds and in the streets. They speak
street language with its own grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The
teachers let them speak the same accent in the classroom. They have no courage
to stop them or correct them. This is one of the main reasons why one third of
children have difficulties with reading when they leave primary schools. Majority of such children are Muslims. In
other European countries and in the sub-continent argot and slang are not
allowed into the classroom. In Britain primary school teachers do not feel that
it’s their role to interfere with self-expression in any shape or form. They
encourage children to read poems and stories written in ethnic dialects.

Muslim faith schools are more or less bilingual schools. Priority will be given to the teaching of Standard English,
Arabic, Urdu and other community languages. All Muslim children will learn and
be well versed in Standard English and Quranic Arabic and at the same time they
will learn and be well versed in one of the community language to keep in touch
with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.
Majority of children will learn Urdu language because it is a lingua franca of
the migrants from the sub-continent. And majority of British Muslims are from
Pakistan and their national language is Urdu.

Iftikhar Ahmad

http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer107.html




August 10th, 2012
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org



The United States and its comrade-in-arms, Al Qaeda. And other tales of an empire gone mad.


Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s ... Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s ... Libya 2011 ... Syria 2012 ... In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side. ¹




What does this tell us about the United States' "War On Terrorism"?




Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists (or "communists"), Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad ... all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire.




Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments?




Why are Washington's closest Arab allies in the Middle East the Islamic governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain? Bahrain being the home of an American naval base; Saudi Arabia and Qatar being conduits to transfer arms to the Syrian rebels.




Why, if democracy means anything to the United States are these same close allies in the Middle East all monarchies?




Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States shepherd Kosovo — 90% Islamist and perhaps the most gangsterish government in the world — to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia in 2008, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world's nations still have not recognized it?




Why — since Kosovo's ruling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic) — has the United States been pushing for Kosovo's membership in NATO and the European Union? (Just what the EU needs: another economic basket case.) Between 1998 and 2002, the KLA appeared on the State Department terrorist list, remaining there until the United States decided to make them an ally, due in no small part to the existence of a major American military base in Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, well situated in relation to planned international oil and gas pipelines coming from the vast landlocked Caspian Sea area to Europe. In November 2005, following a visit to Bondsteel, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the human rights envoy of the Council of Europe, described the camp as a "smaller version of Guantánamo". ²




Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States pave the way to power for the Libyan Islamic rebels, who at this very moment are killing other Libyans in order to institute a more fundamentalist Islamic state?




Why do American officials speak endlessly about human rights, yet fully support the Libyan Islamic rebels despite the fact that Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in prisons in the Islamic-rebel city of Misurata because torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought for care only to make them fit for further interrogation? ³




Why is the United States supporting Islamic Terrorists in Libya and Syria who are persecuting Christians?




And why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice — who daily attacks the Syrian government on moral grounds — not condemn the assassination of four Syrian high officials on July 18, in all likelihood carried out by al Qaeda types? RT, the Russian television channel broadcast in various parts of the United States, noted her silence in this matter. Does anyone know of any American media that did the same?




So, if you want to understand this thing called United States foreign policy ... forget about the War on Terrorism, forget about September 11, forget about democracy, forget about freedom, forget about human rights, forget about religion, forget about the people of Libya and Syria ... keep your eyes on the prize ... Whatever advances American global domination. Whatever suits their goals at the moment. There is no moral factor built into the DNA of US foreign policy.



Bring back the guillotine


In July, the Canadian corporation Enbridge, Inc. announced that one of its pipelines had leaked and spilled an estimated 1,200 barrels of crude oil in a field in Wisconsin. Two years ago, an Enbridge pipeline spilled more than 19,000 barrels in Michigan. The Michigan spill affected more than 50 kilometers of waterways and wetlands and about 320 people reported medical symptoms from crude oil exposure. The US National Transportation Safety Board said that at $800 million it was the costliest onshore spill cleanup in the nation's history. The NTSB found that Enbridge knew of a defect in the pipeline five years before it burst. According to Enbridge's own reports, the company had 800 spills between 1999 and 2010, releasing close to 7 million gallons of crude oil. ⁴




No executive or other employee of Enbridge has been charged with any kind of crime. How many environmental murderers of modern times have been punished?




During a period of a few years beginning around 2007, several thousand employees of stock brokers, banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, credit-rating agencies, and other financial institutions, mainly in New York, had great fun getting obscenely rich while creating and playing with pieces of paper known by names like derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, index funds, credit default swaps, structured investment vehicles, subprime mortgages, and other exotic terms, for which, it must be kept in mind, there had been no public need or demand. The result has been a severe depression, seriously hurting hundreds of millions of lives in the United States and abroad.




No employee of any of these companies has seen the inside of a prison cell for playing such games with our happiness.




For more than half a century members of the United States foreign policy and military establishments have compiled a record of war crimes and crimes against humanity that the infamous beasts and butchers of history could only envy.




Not a single one of these American officials has come any closer to a proper judgment than going to see the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg".




Yet, we live in the United States of Punishment for countless other criminal types; more than two million presently rotting their lives away. No other society comes even close to this, no matter how the statistics are calculated. And many of those in American prisons are there for victimless crimes.




On the other hand, we see the Chinese sentencing their citizens to lengthy prison terms, even execution, for environmental crimes.




We have an Iranian court recently trying 39 people for a $2.6 billion bank loan embezzlement carried out by individuals close to the political elite or with their assent. Of the 39 people tried, four were sentenced to hang, two to life in prison, and others received terms of up to 25 years; in addition to prison time, some were sentenced to flogging, ordered to pay fines, and banned from government jobs. ⁵




And in Argentina in early July, in the latest of a long series of trials of former Argentine officials, former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was convicted and sentenced to 50 years for a systematic plan to steal babies from women prisoners who were kidnapped, tortured and killed during the military junta's war on leftist dissenters — the "dirty war" of 1976-83 that claimed 13,000 victims. Many of the women had "disappeared" shortly after giving birth. Argentina's last dictator, Reynaldo Bignone, was also convicted and got 15 years. Outside the courthouse a jubilant crowd watched on a big screen and cheered each sentence. ⁶




As an American, how I envy the Argentines. Get the big screen ready for The Mall in Washington. We'll have showings of the trials of the Bushes and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Obama. And Henry Kissinger, a strong supporter of the Argentine junta among his many contributions to making the world a better place. And let's not forget the executives of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Enbridge, Inc. Fining them just money is pointless. We have to fine them years, lots of them.




Without imprisoning these people, nothing will change. That's become a cliché, but we very well see what continues to happen without imprisonment. And it's steadily getting worse, financially and imperially.



Items of interest from a journal I've kept for 40 years, part VII


<ul class="">
[*]
<li>Bantustanning the aboriginals all over the world: The Indians in America, the aboriginals in Australia, the blacks in South Africa, and the Palestinians in Palestine.
[*]

[*]From 1966 tape of President Lyndon Johnson: "I know we oughtn't to be there [in Vietnam], but I can't get out." And he never did. And thousands more troops would die before Johnson left office. (Washington Post, March 12, 2006)
[*]

[*]The Germans had Lebensraum. Americans had Manifest Destiny.
[*]

[*]chinks, gooks, wogs, towelheads, ragheads — some of the charming terms used by American soldiers to describe their foes in Asia and the Middle East
[*]

[*]In June, 2005, Cong. Duncan Hunter (Rep.-CA) held a news conference concerning Guantánamo. Displaying some tasty traditional meals, he said the government spends $12 a day for food for each prisoner. "So the point is that the inmates in Guantánamo have never eaten better, they've never been treated better, and they've never been more comfortable in their lives than in this situation." (Scripps Howard News Service, June 28, 2005, Reg Henry column)
[*]

[*]Vice President Dick Cheney: Guantánamo prisoners are well treated. "They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want." (CNN.com, June 23, 2005)
[*]

[*]"[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld said Guantánamo's operations have been more open to scrutiny than any military detention facility in history." (Associated Press, June 14, 2005)
[*]

[*]"Their 'coalition of the willing' [in Iraq] meant the US, Britain, and the equivalent of a child's imaginary friends." Paul Loeb, Truthout, June 16, 2005
[*]

[*]Nobody has ever suggested that Serbia attacked or was preparing to attack a member of NATO, and that is the only event which justifies a military reaction under the NATO treaty, such as the 1999 78-day bombing of Serbia.
[*]

[*]Rumsfeld re Chinese military buildup: "Since no nation threatens China, one wonders: Why this growing investment?" (New York Times, June 6, 2005
[*]

[*]Rumsfeld re Venezuelan major weapons buildup: "I don't know of anyone threatening Venezuela, anyone in this hemisphere." (Washington Post, October 3, 2006) [is it possible that the response to both points raised is the same? A country in North America bordering on Mexico?]
[*]

[*]The failure of the United Nations — as an institution and its individual members — to unequivocally oppose and prevent the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003 can well be called "appeasement".
[*]

[*]The Iraqi Kurds generally sided with Iran during the 1981-88 Iraq-Iran war; helped the United States before and during its bombing of Iraq in 2003 and during its occupation; and most Kurds don't identify with being Iraqi according to polls.
[*]

[*]One of the military judges at Guantánamo said: "I don't care about international law. I don't want to hear the words 'international law' again. We are not concerned with international law." (Democracy Now, April 12, 2005)
[*]

[*]George W. Bush, re al Qaeda types: "Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country. And we will help them rid Iraq of these killers." (Baltimore Sun, May 6, 2004)
[*]

[*]"I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq. Those who want to come and help are welcome. Those who come to interfere and destroy are not." Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense and unindicted war criminal (Chicago Tribune, July 22, 2003)
[*]

[*]Timothy McVeigh, Gulf War veteran who bombed a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people: "What occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time ... The bombing of the Murrah building was not personal, no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against government installations and their personnel. ... Many foreign nations and peoples hate Americans for the very reasons most Americans loathe me. Think about that." (McVeigh's letter to and interview with Rita Cosby, Fox News Correspondent, April 27 2001)
[*]

[*]Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and unindicted war criminal: "Defense Department officials don't lie to the public. ... The Defense Department doesn't do covert action, period." (Washington Post, February 21, 2002)
[*]

[*]The United States will "deal promptly and properly with the terrible abuses" of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. "No country in the world upholds the Geneva Conventions on the laws of armed conflict more steadfastly than does the United States." Douglas Feith, Boston Globe, May 5, 2004
[*]

[*]"The State Department plans to delay the release of a human rights report that was due out today, partly because of sensitivities over the prison abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. officials said. One official who asked not to be identified said the release of the report, which describes actions taken by the U.S. government to encourage respect for human rights by other nations, could 'make us look hypocritical'." (Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2004)
[*]

[*]In the decades after 1945, as colonial possessions became independent states, it was widely believed that imperialism as a historical phenomenon was coming to an end. However, a new form of imperialism was in fact taking shape, an imperialism not defined by colonial rule but by the global capitalist market. From the outset, the dominant power in this imperialism without colonies was the United States.
[*]

[*]Francis Boyle re the capture and public display of Saddam Hussein: "This is the 21st century equivalent of the Roman Emperor parading the defeated barbarian king before the assembled masses so that they might all shout in unison: Hail Caesar!"
[*]

[*]The US-provided textbooks in Nicaragua after the US-instigated defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990 carefully excluded all mention of Augustino Sandino as a national hero. (Z magazine, November, 1991)
[*]

[*]"Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: 'If you want your family released, turn yourself in.' Such tactics are justified, he said, because, 'It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.' They would have been released in due course, he added later. The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered." (Washington Post, July 28, 2003) [This is illegal under international law; in ordinary parlance we'd call it a kidnapping with ransom; in war, it's the collective punishment of civilians and is forbidden under the Geneva Convention]
[*]

[*]"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

[*]

[*]"Americans, who up until now had been so valued for their pragmatism, have become ideologues, 'Bolsheviks' of the Right, as Daniel Cohn-Bendit once described them." (Jean-Marcel Bouguereau, concerning Iraq, Le Nouvel Observateur, September 8, 2003)
[*]

[*]Six months after its invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration defended its policy on the basis of schools and hospitals opening and strides made in providing water and electricity. (Washington Post, September 25, 2003) — These are all things 12 years of US bombing and sanctions had destroyed.
</ul>


Notes

1. <li>For a summary of much of this, see: Peter Dale Scott, "Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington's Ongoing Collusion With Terrorists", The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, August 7, 2011 ^↩
   
3. Camp Bondsteel entry on Wikipedia ^↩
   
5. Washington Post, January 27, 2012 ^↩
   
7. Enbridge entry on Wikipedia; Washington Post, July 29, 2012^↩
   
9. Reuters, July 31, 2012 ^↩
   
11. Associated Press, July 6, 2012 ^↩
    
    

• <li>Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
  
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
  
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
  
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
  

Bismillah

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Muslim Academies


Academies bill will enable a radical overhaul of England's schools, giving every school
the chance to convert to an academy and giving parents the right to create free
schools outside the control of LAs.The new schools will drive up standards and
the education would be in accordance with the needs and demands of the parents.
It will help native Brits, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other minorities to set
up their own schools for the education of their children. It is nothing to do
with integration or segregation. Segregation already exists in British
schoolings, it is not going to widen. President Obama supports free schools in
America because they have benefitted the least well off the most. Educating
children is the priority.


It is wrong to assert that a small
unrepresentative group of Muslim activists tried to Islamises a state primary
school in Woking. The silent majority of Muslim parents would like to send
their children to state funded Muslim schools. They are not extremists who want
to change of ethos of those schools where Muslim children are in majority. It
is the democratic right of every Muslim parent to see that their children receive
balanced education, so that when their children grow up, they do not find themselves
cut off from their cultural roots and linguistic skills. It is a question of
common sense, humanity and reason that bilingual Muslim children must be
educated in state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role
models during their developmental periods. The whole world believes that people
who speak more than one language is a vital economic asset. Pupils who speak
more than one language do not cause difficulties. It is the politicians and
monolingual teachers who are the problems for bilingual pupils. Muslim school
will help to cultivate the child into a healthy, fully flourishing individual
with a passion for learning. There are
hundreds of state and church schools where Muslim children are in majority. In
my opinion, all such schools may be opted out as Muslim Academies.


Muslim schools are not only faith schools;
they are more or less bilingual schools. Bilingual Muslim children need to
learn and be well versed in Standard English to follow the National Curriculum
and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. State schools with
monolingual teachers do not teach Standard English to Migrant children. Bilingual
Muslim children learn English in the playgrounds and in the streets. They speak
street language with its own grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The
teachers let them speak the same accent in the classroom. They have no courage
to stop them or correct them. This is one of the main reasons why one third of
children have difficulties with reading when they leave primary schools. Majority of such children are Muslims. In
other European countries and in the sub-continent argot and slang are not
allowed into the classroom. In Britain primary school teachers do not feel that
it’s their role to interfere with self-expression in any shape or form. They
encourage children to read poems and stories written in ethnic dialects.

Muslim faith schools are more or less
bilingual schools. Priority will be given to the teaching of Standard English,
Arabic, Urdu and other community languages. All Muslim children will learn and
be well versed in Standard English and Quranic Arabic and at the same time they
will learn and be well versed in one of the community language to keep in touch
with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.
Majority of children will learn Urdu language because it is a lingua franca of
the migrants from the sub-continent. And majority of British Muslims are from
Pakistan and their national language is Urdu.

Iftikhar Ahmad

Bismillah




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