Breaking News
“Israeli, Syrian representatives reach secret understandings”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/813817.html
Will we still be talking/hinting about Syria as part of the Axis of Evil?
“In a series of secret meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006, Syrians and Israelis formulated understandings for a peace agreement between Israel and Syria.
The main points of the understandings are as follows:
# An agreement of principles will be signed between the two countries, and following the fulfillment of all commitments, a peace agreement will be signed.
# As part of the agreement on principles, Israel will withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of 4 June, 1967. The timetable for the withdrawal remained open: Syria demanded the pullout be carried out over a five-year period, while Israel asked for the withdrawal to be spread out over 15 years.
# At the buffer zone, along Lake Kinneret, a park will be set up for joint use by Israelis and Syrians. The park will cover a significant portion of the Golan Heights. Israelis will be free to access the park and their presence will not be dependent on Syrian approval.
# Israel will retain control over the use of the waters of the Jordan River and Lake Kinneret.
# The border area will be demilitarized along a 1:4 ratio (in terms of territory) in Israel’s favor.
# According to the terms, Syria will also agree to end its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and will distance itself from Iran.”
An interesting article I found referenced on the ID blog, Uncommon Descent:
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history
By Dinesh DSouza
RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. – In recent months, a spate of atheist books have
argued that religion represents, as End of Faith author Sam Harris puts
it, the most potent source of human conflict, past and present.
Columnist Robert Kuttner gives the familiar litany. The Crusades
slaughtered millions in the name of Jesus. The Inquisition brought the
torture and murder of millions more. After Martin Luther, Christians did
bloody battle with other Christians for another three centuries.
In his bestseller The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins contends that most of
the worlds recent conflicts – in the Middle East, in the Balkans, in
Northern Ireland, in Kashmir, and in Sri Lanka – show the vitality
of religions murderous impulse.
The problem with this critique is that it exaggerates the crimes attributed
to religion, while ignoring the greater crimes of secular fanaticism. The
best example of religious persecution in America is the Salem witch trials.
How many people were killed in those trials? Thousands? Hundreds? Actually,
fewer than 25. Yet the event still haunts the liberal imagination.
It is strange to witness the passion with which some secular figures rail
against the misdeeds of the Crusaders and Inquisitors more than 500 years
ago. The number sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition appears to be
about 10,000. Some historians contend that an additional 100,000 died in
jail due to malnutrition or illness.
These figures are tragic, and of course population levels were much lower
at the time. But even so, they are minuscule compared with the death tolls
produced by the atheist despotisms of the 20th century. In the name of
creating their version of a religion-free utopia, Adolf Hitler, Joseph
Stalin, and Mao Zedong produced the kind of mass slaughter that no
Inquisitor could possibly match. Collectively these atheist tyrants
murdered more than 100 million people.
Moreover, many of the conflicts that are counted as religious wars were
not fought over religion. They were mainly fought over rival claims to
territory and power. Can the wars between England and France be called
religious wars because the English were Protestants and the French were
Catholics? Hardly.
The same is true today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not, at its
core, a religious one. It arises out of a dispute over self-determination
and land. Hamas and the extreme orthodox parties in Israel may
advance theological claims – God gave us this land and so forth – but the
conflict would remain essentially the same even without these religious
motives. Ethnic rivalry, not religion, is the source of the tension in
Northern Ireland and the Balkans.
Yet todays atheists insist on making religion the culprit. Consider Mr.
Harriss analysis of the conflict in Sri Lanka. While the motivations of
the Tamil Tigers are not explicitly religious, he informs us, they are
Hindus who undoubtedly believe many improbable things about the nature of
life and death. In other words, while the Tigers see themselves as
combatants in a secular political struggle, Harris detects a religious
motive because these people happen to be Hindu and surely there must be
some underlying religious craziness that explains their fanaticism.
Harris can go on forever in this vein. Seeking to exonerate secularism and
atheism from the horrors perpetrated in their name, he argues that
Stalinism and Maoism were in reality little more than a political
religion. As for Nazism, while the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed
itself in a predominantly secular way, it was a direct inheritance from
medieval Christianity. Indeed, The holocaust marked the culmination of
two thousand years of Christian fulminating against the Jews.
One finds the same inanities in Mr. Dawkinss work. Dont be fooled by this
rhetorical legerdemain. Dawkins and Harris cannot explain why, if Nazism
was directly descended from medieval Christianity, medieval Christianity
did not produce a Hitler. How can a self-proclaimed atheist ideology,
advanced by Hitler as a repudiation of Christianity, be a culmination of
2,000 years of Christianity? Dawkins and Harris are employing a transparent
sleight of hand that holds Christianity responsible for the crimes
committed in its name, while exonerating secularism and atheism for the
greater crimes committed in their name.
Religious fanatics have done things that are impossible to defend, and some
of them, mostly in the Muslim world, are still performing horrors in the
name of their creed. But if religion sometimes disposes people to
self-righteousness and absolutism, it also provides a moral code that
condemns the slaughter of innocents. In particular, the moral teachings of
Jesus provide no support for – indeed they stand as a stern rebuke to – the
historical injustices perpetrated in the name of Christianity.
Atheist hubris
The crimes of atheism have generally been perpetrated through a hubristic
ideology that sees man, not God, as the creator of values. Using the latest
techniques of science and technology, man seeks to displace God and create
a secular utopia here on earth. Of course if some people – the Jews, the
landowners, the unfit, or the handicapped – have to be eliminated in order
to achieve this utopia, this is a price the atheist tyrants and their
apologists have shown themselves quite willing to pay. Thus they confirm
the truth of Fyodor Dostoyevskys dictum, If God is not, everything is
permitted.
Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is
that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not
managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism
in the past few decades.
Its time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief
has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not
religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
* Dinesh DSouza is the Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His new
book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for
9/11, will be published in January.
SOURCE: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1121/p09s01-coop.html
Kidwai has an alternative spelling of Qidwai, you will see the two interchanged
–
GENEALOGY OF QAZI MOIZ UDDIN :
Available chronicles show that Qazi Qidwa’s lineage (henceforth, this short name, which is more popular, will be used) connects him to Hazrat Adam, and rightly so, since Muslims believe that mankind started its existence on this earth when Adam and his wife were deported from heaven. Thus the available chronicles show the lineage connecting Qazi Qidwa to Hazrat Adam. The accuracy of these Shijras is very difficult to establish. Some of them put Qazi Qidwa in the 54th generation from Hazrat Adam, some at the 57th generation. These Shijras agree with one another until the appearance of Hazrat Yaqub aleh es Salaam, grandson of Hazrat Ibrahim, whose laqab was Israel. Israel is an Arabic word made up of two syllables–’Isra’ and ‘el’. The first syllable refers to the person who travels during the night, and ‘el’ is only a consonant. How this word was coined for Hazrat Yaqub is described in the Bible in Chapter 27 of Genesis and Qasas-ul-Ambia. It has been said that one day Hazrat Ishaq, the father, asked for some food, which was served by one of his sons. Ishaq, being blind in old age, thought that Aes, his elder son, had served the food, and he therefore blessed him by saying, “You will become the next Prophet”. In reality, it was Hazrat Yaqub, the younger son, who served the food and thus received the blessing. Hazrat Aes was distrurbed when he learned of the blessing, since he, being the elder brother, should rightfully have received his father’s blessing. To diffuse the situation, Hazrat Yaqub andhis family left his father’s house and traveled through the night. This act on the part of Hazrat Yaqub gave him the laqab of Israel. Thus, Bani Israel means “a progeny of Hazrat Yaqub” and nothing more, and the notion that all Bani Israelites are Jews is not correct.
The first deviation in the available Shijras takes place when some of them show the lineage of Qazi Qidwa through Hazrat Yaqub’s elder son Yahuda and others through the younger son, Lava. Again, there are two deviations through the two sons of Yahuda, Oman and Farsam. Thus we have three Shijras: one from Lava, one from Farsam and a third from Omar. The two from Lava and Farsam show Alexander the Great at the sixth generation from Hazrat Moosa and carry on through Salim, shown as a son of Alexander. This seems to be incorrect; it is known that Alexander did not have any progeny, and consequently, his empire was distributed between his generals after his death. There is only one Shijra that is from Hazrat Ibrahim through Hazrat Yaqub, Yahuda and Omar, which probably shows Qazi Qidwa’s lineage correctly. However, w e are still not sure about this because the gap between Prophet Muhammad and Qazi Qidwa is only of six generations, while time period elapsed between the two individuals’ lives is about 6000 years. Therefore, the dynastic lineage through Malik Danishmend Ghazi, who was connected to Saiyed Battal, may be taken as the most likely true genealogy of Qazi Qidwa (See Annexure 11).
[Biographical sketch of Kidwais of Avadh : with special reference to Barabanki families pub. 1989
by Riaz-ur-Rehman Kidwai, out of print]
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Protest marches
Angry letter writing campaigns
Fundraising dinners
Conferences
After this most recent tragedy of a war involving Israel and Hezbullah, Muslims have been clamoring for action. The valve of activism has been opened as an outlet for individual hearts, lest they explode with care and concern for the fellow man. There is certainly no shortage of Muslims complaining.
This reaction is absolutely natural for modern day man. Like most things in life, society describes what is an acceptable outlet. If you love someone, court them, don’t stalk them. If you have a dispute, take it to court, don’t assault them. If you need money, get a loan, don’t steal.
Similarly, activism is the outlet that government has opened for us to show our outrage. This is clear since obviously, causing any other actual direct physical movement (let’s not even discuss action) is considered “terrorism”. Reading over the John Walker Lindh case makes that much clear.
A world of secular values frames the problem as what “they” are doing to “us” and why it must change. So mankind is left with the few socially acceptable ways that they believe can enact that change.
Fund-raise, demonstrate, vote, have meetings, write letters, fund-raise so you can demonstrate and start the cycle all over again. All in some vain attempt at removing the suffering of our world, which is, in reality made to suffer. As the non-believer has no paradise, his strongest desire is to recreate that paradise on earth.
For the believer, the aforementioned cycle is a hollow effort on it’s own. We need to first approach the problems and afflictions which are coming upon Muslims with the eye of the believer, not through the eyes of secular humanism.
A love and care for this world (or the people within it) that is so strong that it moves you to shouting in the streets is a powerful love. At the same time it is hypocritical. If it is divinely required of us to change this world, then is this form of activism the best means? Are we doing enough? Why is our humanistic love for man powerful enough to pull us into the streets screaming but not enough to house an individual refugee?
In the illusion of this world, we cannot sleep soundly without thinking we “did our part” to enact some change. At the same time, we are not willing to sacrifice it all in order to facilitate real change.
Are we, as usual, choosing the path of least resistance?
For answers to these questions where does the believer turn except to the Quran and Sunnat? There is no shortage of Quranic verses and Hadith used by activists to promote their values:
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God does not change the conditions of a people unless they first change that which is in their hearts. Qur’an 13:11]
From Abu Sa’id al-Khudri ra : Rasulullah s.a.w said : “If one of you sees (something) bad, he should change it with his his hand; and if he is not capable of that, then with his tongue; and if he is not capable of that, then (he should detest) it with his heart; and that is the weakest faith”. ( Muslim )
Mistakenly, these references are used to promote a purely activist agenda, which is in reality a form of extreme materialism and the complete opposite of Islamic thought. However a simple examination of these references, in light of others, paint a much clearer picture as to what is being asked of us.
The first verse, is actually quite clear against an activist culture, although for some reason activists seem to use it as if it meant “Allah won’t change anything unless we change it ourselves”.
Quite the contrary! The verse is quite clear that Allah is the ultimate causer of all change, and He will not enact change unless we change our hearts. Do we work on hearts when we promote block-voting or protest demonstrations? Are we working on our heart when we try to get airtime on CNN or Fox News?
The question is whether the Muslims are ready to accept the reality that has been part of their faith for centuries, the very fundamental concept that all change, no, all causality itself, is from Allah alone.
There is no doubt that activism plays a part of a larger role within a Muslims life, the hadith I quote above shows that as well. But what has been offered to us is stale, lacking in spiritual depth, and only successful in as far as how it imitates the West in preoccupying us from what is Real. Is this hadith talking about correcting the mistakes of individuals or the afflictions from God? Does the hadith dictate what is the good that needs to replace the bad? For answers we can turn to the Prophet (Sallahahu’alaiheeWassalam) for wisdom.
What is felt by these activists when they read the following hadith about the Prophet’s (Sallahu’alaiheeWassalam) prophecies?
(Sahih Bukhari) Narrated Usama bin Zaid:
Once the Prophet stood over one of the high buildings of Medina and then said (to the people), “Do you see what I see?” They said, “No.” He said, “I see afflictions falling among your houses as rain drops fall.”
MashaAllah’ I read this and I see that our Prophet(Sallalahu’alaiheeWassalam) saw that the greatest afflictions of today, in the form of missles and bombs. There should be no -doubt- for a believer that he (Sallahau’alaheeWasalam) knew how they rain upon us. How often do we reflect on the fact that the Prophet(Sallahu’alaiheeWassalam) knew of our times today?
(Sahih Bukhari)
Allah’s Apostle said to us, “You will see after me, selfishness (on the part of other people) and other matters that you will disapprove of.” They asked, “What do you order us to do, O Allah’s Apostle? (under such circumstances)?” He said, “Pay their rights to them (to the rulers) and ask your right from Allah.”
The Muslim activist heart trembles. He reads the hadith and either quickly disregards it or enters into confusion. How can we be asked to obey rulers we disapprove of? What does it mean to ask your right from Allah? “We can’t pray the bombs away!”
The Muslim activist begins to employ the power of truthiness. Ignoring what he needs to create the reality suitable for him.
(Sahih Bukhari) Narrated Az-Zubair bin ‘Adi:
We went to Anas bin Malik and complained about the wrong we were suffering at the hand of Al-Hajjaj. Anas bin Malik said, “Be patient till you meet your Lord, for no time will come upon you but the time following it will be worse than it. I heard that from the Prophet.”
The Muslim activist does not know patience, he reads this hadith and again, is dumbfounded. How can it be that every time that will pass will be worse than the time before it? For the activist, the goal is to make the world a paradise. The idea that things will only get worse is a disillusionment. Now he begins to taste the reality of the dirtiness of this world.
(Sahih Bukhari)
Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar:
Allah’s Apostle said, “Whoever takes up arms against us, is not from us.”
I leave this hadith, mentioned in the chapter of afflictions, to the Wahabi’s, to their founder, and those who approve of their actions and beliefs without realizing it. Wake up and save yourself.
(Sahih Bukhari) Narrated Ibn Abbas:
The Prophet said, “Whoever disapproves of something done by his ruler then he should be patient, for whoever disobeys the ruler even a little (little = a span) will die as those who died in the Pre-lslamic Period of Ignorance. (i.e. as rebellious Sinners).
Do we disapprove of our ruler? What is the the Prophetic response and how does that contrast with the response of others today?
(Sahih Bukhari) Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allahs Apostle said, There will be afflictions (in the near future) during which a sitting person will be better than a standing one, and the standing one will be better than the walking one, and the walking one will be better than the running one, and whoever will expose himself to these afflictions, they will destroy him. So whoever can find a place of protection or refuge from them, should take shelter in it.
Are the activists the one’s sitting or the one’s walking or the one’s running? A true Islamic activism is one which is reawakening the belief of Allah in the hearts and minds of the people. This one is quite clear, we need to realize and escape from these afflictions to where we can. Where is our shelter today? Is it in the TV airtime we seek?
It is clear that today’s Muslim activism today needs an overhaul. Like it’s secular humanist counterpart, Muslim activism is based off of complaints. Complaints with our station are literally the antithesis of what is taught by Islam.
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But it may happen that you hate a thing that is good for you, and it may happen that you love a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows, and you know not. (2:216)
Are we sure the things we are complaining about are bad for us?
If we can first move past complaints, then we can now examine activism as what my Sheykh always describes, a matter of opportunities. If Allah opens a door for us to be the means of change, then we need to take it, absolutely. Western-style activism on the other hand seeks to barge the door open with brute force. Islamic activism needs to make such concepts clear for all Muslims, the ones marching as well as the ones bombing.
Spritual degeneration at the expense of political activism is a very sad trade indeed.
We must recognize that our faith is weak if we don’t truly come to terms with what is meant by Allah being the source of all change and causality. A true Islamic activism is one which teaches Islam and changes peoples hearts, starting with a fundamental Aqidah of realizing who the source of these afflictions is and what has been asked of us in response. We need to be willing submitters of His action, taking opportunities to be instruments of change when they are provided, at the same time looking to our hearts and our spiritual leaders for guidance in such matters.
I leave you with these words from Sheykh Buti:
“… he cannot say: had I done such-and-such, this result would not have happened; had I preceded so-and-so and submitted my project two days earlier, I would have been the one to succeed instead of him. The one who believes that efficacy belongs to Allah, his core does not ever burn with the flames of such words. Rather, he finds himself face-to-face with the words of Allah’s Messenger – Allah bless and greet him – in the authentic narration of Muslim in his Sahih: “If something bad happens to you, do not say: if only I had done such and such, then such and such would have happened. Say: Allah foreordained it to take place, and whatever Allah wishes, He does (qaddara Allah wa ma sha’a Allahu fa`al). For `if only’ begins Satan’s work.”
But Satan cannot use `if’ and begin his work through it except in a heart that is devoid of such doctrine. Similarly, someone whose relative was afflicted by some illness, then he took that relative to the physicians and used all kinds of medicine and remedies, but Allah foreordained to take the patient away. Then someone might come to him and say: “You made a mistake. The physician you went to was not a specialist. You should have taken the patient to So-and-so. If you had done so, he would have known the cure. Someone ailed more than that and was healed at his hands.” If one’s doctrine is absent, one will [at those words] feel an anguish that will not let him sleep at night. He will say: “It is true, by Allah! Oh no, no, no! -” But look at him who possesses true doctrine and true belief in Allah, who has fastened his heart to Allah, and before whose eyes and insight all causes have melted away so that he no longer see anything other than the Causator. He shall sleep in all tranquility. He shall say: “Leave me alone, you and your talk! The physicians, their medicine, ailments and their remedies are all servants bound to obey Allah’s foreordained destiny, and it is not Allah’s foreordained destiny that is subservient to the knowledge of physicians and their remedies and all the rest.” His mind is at peace.”
–
Links:
Foreordained Destiny http://qa.sunnipath.com/issue_view.asp?HD=1&ID=138&CATE=24
A relevant post:
http://www.sunnisisters.com/?p=1881
Total Jewish population in Israel: 5.3 million [citation]
Total Population of Arabs in Israel: 1.4 Million[citation]
Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza Strip: 3.7 million [citation]
Total of 5.1million Palestinians according to Western sources (not including the millions in Jordan).
Interesting how this ‘democracy’ works, isn’t it? When we want the land and not the people (nor their votes and their ability to change government), we simply push them aside and treat them as the ‘other’. Even if theysharea city. Even if it means leaving them completely without a state.
Just another way of looking at the Palestinian situation.
the truth on 
m.a.kidwai,CME/IND.RLY.(retd.) on 