Tuesday 26 January 2021

No repentance nor apologies' for colonial abuses in Algeria, says Macron

French President Emmanuel Macron has ruled out issuing an official apology for abuses in Algeria, his office said Wednesday, ahead of a major report on how France is facing up to its colonial past in the country. There will be "no repentance nor apologies" for the occupation of Algeria or the bloody eight-year war that ended French rule, Macron's office said, adding that the French leader would instead take part in "symbolic acts" aimed at promoting reconciliation. 

The atrocities committed by both sides during the 1954-1962 Algerian war of independence continue to strain relations between the two countries six decades later. Macron, the first president born after the colonial period, has gone further than any of his predecessors in recognising French crimes in Algeria. Later Wednesday, a historian commissioned by the president with assessing "the progress made by France on the memory of the colonisation of Algeria and the Algerian war," will submit his findings.

Link.

Monday 25 January 2021

‘A Ghastly Future’? Israeli Apartheid, Biden, Starmer, Assange And Mass Extinction

 


From the excellent Media Lens:

One of the most egregious recent omissions by BBC News was last week’s groundbreaking report by leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem naming Israel as ‘an apartheid state’ and ‘a regime of Jewish supremacy’:

‘In the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, the Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.’

Apartheid in the Palestinian Territories has long been recognised. For example, in 2004, a prominent South African professor of international law, John Dugard, then UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, wrote that there is ‘an apartheid regime’ in the territories ‘worse than the one that existed in South Africa.’

Noam Chomsky concurred:

‘In the Occupied Territories, what Israel is doing is much worse than apartheid. To call it apartheid is a gift to Israel, at least if by “apartheid” you mean South African-style apartheid.

‘What is happening in the Occupied Territories is much worse. There is a crucial difference. The South African Nationalists needed the black population. That was their workforce…

‘The Israeli relationship to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is totally different. They just do not want them. They want them out, or at least in prison.’

All this was damning enough. But the publication of the new B’Tselem report was the first time that Israeli human rights and legal experts had publicly stated that apartheid exists not just in the Occupied Territories, but throughout the whole region that Israel claims for itself.

As the Israel-based British journalist Jonathan Cook observed:

‘By calling Israel an apartheid state and a “regime of Jewish supremacy”, B’Tselem has given the lie to the Israel lobby’s claim – bolstered by a new definition promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – that it is antisemitic to suggest Israel is a “racist endeavour”.

‘B’Tselem, a veteran Israeli Jewish organisation with deep expertise in human rights and international law, has now explicitly declared that Israel is a racist state. Israel’s apologists will now face the much harder task of showing that B’Tselem is antisemitic, along with the Palestinian solidarity activists who cite its work.’

As far as we are aware, there was no mention of the report on any of the flagship BBC News at 6 or 10 television programmes. Nor was there anything to be found on the BBC News website. Presumably, the BBC deemed it unworthy of the public’s attention. We challenged BBC foreign editor Andrew Roy, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and BBC digital news editor Stuart Millar for a response. Not one of them replied. It is perhaps significant that Millar moved to the BBC from the Guardian where, as deputy editor of Guardian US, he had scoffed at Julian Assange:

‘I like to think that #Assange chose the Ecuadorean embassy because it’s so convenient for Harrods’

This is the archetypal sneering ‘mainstream’ journalist’s view of anyone who seriously exposes the truth and challenges power.

As for B’Tselem’s landmark report detailing the reality of the Israeli state as an apartheid regime, it is possible that there were sporadic brief mentions in some outlying parts of the BBC. Longtime readers will recall that the BBC infamously buried revelations by Scott Ritter, a former chief UN weapons inspector, that Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed of any weapons of mass destruction, at 3am on the BBC World Service.

In response to the B’Tselem report, John Pilger pointed out via Twitter:

‘Israel is top of the league for vaccinating its own people [against coronavirus]. The accolades say Israel is the “example”. False. Israel is denying the vaccine to Palestinians whose land and lives it controls. WHO has pleaded with Israel: to no avail. Apartheid in action.’

Link

Thursday 21 January 2021

THE SUNNAH OUR UMMAH FAILS TO IMPLEMENT...




 1. It is sunnah to marry older women.
 2. It is sunnah to marry a divorced person.
 3. It is sunnah to marry a widow.
 4. It is sunnah to help women with household chores, such as cooking, cleaning, washing, etc.
 5. Put food in your wife's mouth as an expression of love.  (classified as a form of charity)
 6. It is sunnah to express your love, gratitude and respect to your wife.
 7. It is sunnah to forgive her for her mistakes.
 8. It is the sunnah to keep your wife looking good, to gift her, kiss her, foreplay with her, give her a seperate housing if you can afford it.
 9. It is a sunnah to try to know your wife's feelings and to comfort her when she needs it.
 10. It is a sunnah to have fun together.  (running, storytelling, sharing a happy occasion with her are well known examples)
 11. It is the sunnah to lie down and relax in your wife's lap, to smile at her, to compliment her, to flirt with her and let her play with your beard.
 12. It is sunnah to call your wife with beautiful names.
 13. It is a sunnah not to divulge her secrets to family or friends.
 14. It is the sunnah to love and respect the parents of one's wife.
15. It is the sunnah to protect your wife and your children from your toxic family or your mother and father if they are abusing her.
 Let us practice the sunnah in its entirety and not to measure.
🤲 May Allah bless Muslim women with Qawwam who fears Allah - Allahumma ameen!
The meaning of a Qawwam is a man who protects you financially, physically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally. Who literally takes you under the fortress of his protection.

Tuesday 12 January 2021

HADITH: Envy

 


The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "There are two (kinds of) people worth envying: Someone whom God has made rich and who spends his [or her] money righteously; and someone whom God has given wisdom and who acts according to it and teaches it to others." Sahih Al-Bukhari

Saturday 9 January 2021

Thursday 7 January 2021

Abbas Ibn Firnas: The World's First Pilot

 


Men have dreamed of flying ever since they learned to walk.

History is full of legends and fables of men trying to fly. Icarus being the most famous who flew to close to the sun which melted the wax holding his feathers and he fell into the sea and drowned. The first successful attempt at flight was done by the Chinese who flew kites around the 5th century BCE but the first successful attempt at human flight was accomplished by a Muslim, Abbas ibn Firnas in 875 CE in the city of Qutuba Al-Andalus (Cordoba, Spain).


Abbas Ibn Firnas was born in Izn-Rand Onda Al-Andalus (today Ronda Spain) but lived in the Emirate of Cordoba which was one of the major centers of learning in the Muslim world. He was a polymath: an inventor, engineer, aviator, physician, Arabic poet, and Andalusian musician.

The stories say that Ibn Firnas was influenced by the one named Armen Firman in 852 CE. This is a person who made a living by pulling stunts. He was no scientist but by observing the nature around him and based on a rudimentary understanding of the mechanics of flight, he constructed a suit of silk with wood reinforced rods. Taking his crude machine, Armen Firman climbed to the top of a minaret of the grand mosque in Qurtuba and jumped. He did not fly, he plummeted but fortunately his flying contraption inflated just enough to slow his descent so he did not fall at full speed. Hitting the ground he was mildly hurt but he was not dead or crippled. This was probably the world’s first parachute jump.

Ibn Firnas was in the crowd watching and was impressed with the results. Although the attempt was crude and not very scientific, there was a germ of an idea that needed to be studied further. This took Ibn Firnas into the realm of aeronautics.

In 875, about 23 years after Armen Firman, the 70 year old Ibn Firnas constructed his flying machine after spending the intervening years studying the nature of flight in between his other studies. He constructed a pair of wings out of silk and wood and had sewn actual feathers. From the hills of Jabal Al-'Arus he jumped off a cliff. He would glide for a considerable period of time. Many witnesses said it felt like 10 minutes.

As he came down into his final descent,  he realized there was a problem with his design. He had focused all of his energy in studying the mechanics of taking off but had neglected the mechanics of landing. As he descended back to earth, unable to control his speed, he came down at a very high speed. When he hit the ground, he hit it hard and seriously injured himself.

Ibn Firnas would live for another 12 years after this event. In these final years he would reflect on what went wrong on that faithful day and he reached the conclusion that his design did not include a mechanism to slow his descent. A bird uses its tail and wings in unison to slow its speed and stall just above the ground before touching down. Ibn Firnas realized that he forgot to design a tail!

Abbas Ibn Firnas did not make another attempt at flying in his lifetime. Centuries would pass before another attempt was made by Ahmed Celebi , an Ottoman Turk, in 1630-1632 who would glide across the Bosporus. In 1783 the Montgolfiers brothers launched a tethered hot air balloon with humans on board in Paris but it was only in 1853 that Sir George Cayley would build the first modern glider based on a basic understanding of aerodynamic theory and glide in the town of Yorkshire England, almost 1000 years after the first attempt by Abbas Ibn Firnas in 875.

Abbas Ibn Firnas is well known for his attempt at human flight but he has many other accomplishments to his name. He was an astronomer who built a mechanized planetarium with revolving planets. He studied mechanical devices and timepieces. His interest in crystals, quartz and sand would lead him to melt sand into glass allowing him to create Andalusian drinking glasses. He experimented with lenses and their magnifying qualities and anything else that came from glass.

In 1976, In recognition of the accomplishments of Abbas ibn Firnas, the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (IAU/WGPSN) named a moon crater Ibn Firnas in his honor.

Link