Bismillah
As salam alykom
Sobhan Allah, he died in Ramadan during the last ten days in which Allah promised salavation from Hell fire for those who die. Sobhan Allah one really should never make any judgements about any human being. May Allah grant us all salvation from Hell fire ameen
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6402008/?GT1=5809
Arafat's body begins long journey home
Egypt prepares for 75-year-old Palestinian leader's funeral
Nov. 11: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died early Thursday at a Paris military hospital. NBC's Brian Williams reports on the reaction from Ramallah.
Today show
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 1:12 p.m. ET Nov. 11, 2004CAIRO - Egypt put its security forces on maximum alert Thursday and prepared a modest mosque at Cairo’s international airport for the funeral of Yasser Arafat, the guerrilla leader turned Nobel Peace Prize winner who died earlier in the day at a French military hospital outside Paris at the age of 75.
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A French military helicopter took his flag-draped casket to a nearby military airfield, where crowds of supporters gathered outside, waving flags and pictures of Arafat.
In a brief ceremony attended by French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, Arafat’s widow, Suha, wept with her head bowed as eight soldiers walked down the airfield tarmac bearing the coffin, draped in a large Palestinian flag. She then followed her husband’s coffin onto a waiting French jet, which departed minutes later for Cairo, where Arafat's funeral on Friday was to be attended by leaders from around the world.
After the service, Arafat’s body will be flown to his Ramallah compound in the West Bank for burial.
The death of the man both revered as a champion of Palestinian statehood and reviled as a terrorist spread spasms of grief among Palestinians and rekindled calls for new peace talks with Israel.
It also left the Palestinians without a strong leader for the first time in four decades and aroused fears of a chaotic power struggle that could lead to fighting in the streets.
Arafat died at 3:30 a.m. local time at the Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart.
‘His big heart stopped’
“He closed his eyes and his big heart stopped. He left for God but he is still among this great people,” said senior Arafat aide Tayeb Abdel Rahim, who broke into tears as he announced Arafat’s death.
• NBC: Tenacious
• NBC: What's next?
• NBC: Arab views
• Phares: Failings
• Newsweek's obituary
• Palestinian grief
• World reaction
• Video: Reactions
• Timeline: Slide show
• Possible successors
A wave of grief quickly swept across the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Thousands ran into the streets, clutching his photograph, crying and wondering how they would survive without the man who embodied their struggle for statehood.
“He is our father,” Namia Abu-Safia, 48, said sobbing in the Jebaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. “He is Palestine.”
Black smoke from burning tires rose across the Gaza Strip and gunmen fired into the air in grief. Palestinian flags at Arafat’s battered compound here were lowered to half-staff. Somber music played on the radio, church bells rang out and Quranic verses were played for hours over mosque loudspeakers.
As Palestinians mourned, many Israelis heaped bitterness on the man they branded a “master terrorist,” blaming him for the 4-year-old “intifada,” or uprising, and for attacks that have killed hundreds of their people.
President Bush and some other world leaders expressed the hope that Arafat’s death will clear the way for successful Mideast peace negotiations with new Palestinian leaders.
But the impediments to peace were quickly visible.
Within hours of Arafat’s death, militants from his Fatah movement attacked a Jewish settlement in Gaza in what they said signaled the start of a new round of clashes with Israel. Soldiers killed three Palestinians, at least two of them gunmen.