The Muslim Link - March 4, 2011

Muharram|Safar|29 RABI AL-AWAAL, 1432 l Rabi Al-Thani |Jumada Al-Awwal|Jumada Al-Akhir|Rajab|Shaban|Ramadan|Shawwal|Thul-Qedah|Thul-Hijjah

ANTI-TERRORISM AND UPRISINGS

North African leaders have worked with the West against Islamists and migrants - becoming more repressive as a result.

DINING OUT: Gourmet Shish Kebab

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Rabi-Al-Awwal 29 - Rabi-Al-Thani 12, 1432 A.H. | www.MuslimLinkPaper.com MD, VA, and DC. Metropolitan Area Bi-Weekly Newspaper | FREE

March 4th 2011 - March 17th 2011

ISB Opens Dialogue with FBI Field Office

By Muslim Link Staff The Islamic Society of Baltimore (ISB) hosted a representative from the Baltimore office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Friday prayers on February 25, 2011.

The short visit was intended to open up a dialogue between Baltimore Muslims and the FBI. The arrest of Baltimore area youth Antonio Martinez last December deepened the community’s suspicion of the FBI’s motives and tactics. Martinez was arrested

Assistant Special Agent Mark P. Colgan of the FBI’s Baltimore field office addresses the ISB community after Friday prayers. Photo by Muslim Link. after participating in a plot concocted by the FBI to bomb a Catonsville Army

recruiting center.

Assistant Special Agent

Mark P. Colgan spoke very briefly after the Friday prayers from the podium, giving attentive listeners a brief history and overview of the FBI. The agency was formed in 1908 and handles many types of investigations including violent crime, missing persons, white collar crime, and public corruption.

The FBI has 56 field offices across the nation and many offices in other nations.

“We work very diligently to build partnerships with local >> FBI Pg 6

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Al-Rahmah Spellers to Compete in Regionals | pg 3 NoVa Youth Sentenced to 25 Years for Threats | pg 4

Annual Muslimah Fashion Show Returns to DC | pg 4 Racist Behind GOP’s Anti-Sharia Crusade | pg 9

St. Louis Somalis Feel Anxiety On All Sides of Upcoming House Hearing On Radicalization of U.S. Muslims Intimidated by FBI | pg 10

By Michelle Boorstein Washington Post Staff Writer

February 27, 2011 – In some ways, Zuhdi Jasser doesn’t match the profile of the typical Muslim American.

He’s an active Republican who has supported the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is an advocate for Israel and says his faith harbors “an insidious supremacism.”

Yet the Scottsdale, Ariz., doctor will be the face of American Islam for a Capitol Hill moment. Other than members of Congress, Jasser is the only witness that Rep. Peter T. King (RN.Y.) has identified so far for his upcoming hearings on radicalization of American Muslims.

>> HEARING Pg 5

ISLAM: Tips on Developing Khushoo’ in Salah | pg 16 The Muslim Link Congressman Peter King chairs the House Homeland Security Committee and believes 80% of masajid in America are controlled by “radical” Imams. His hearings on US Muslims start next week. Photo from Faith In Public Life.

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March 4th - March 17th, 2011

COMMUNITY NEWS |

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Community News Al-Rahmah Spellers to Compete in Regional Spelling Bee

By Farha Marfani

Muslim Link Staff Writer Hypochondria. Kinesiology. Peripheral.

Can you spell these words? Twenty four Al-Rahmah elementary and middle school spelled these words and more at Al-Rahmah’s spelling bee this past Saturday, Feburary 19th. Fourth-grader Danyah Imam, and eighth-grader Sara Malik spelled their way to victory and will compete at the Baltimore regional spelling bee on March 12th. The winner from Baltimore’s Bee will go on to compete at the televised Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. Saturday’s bee featured the top three winners from each grade’s classroom spelling bee. The elementary school students competed against each other first, with Danyah and fifth-grader Mohammad Jamil coming out on top.

The middle school competition followed with Sara and fellow eighth- grader Aisha

Marfani being declared the winners from the middle school. Finally, these four students competed against each other.

The word “palpitation” got the better of Mohammad, while using the letter “a” instead of “o” in “octopod” kept Aisha from her chances of being a finalist.

Sara and Danyah won with the words “distinguishable” and “insomnia.”

Students prepared for the school bee by studying grade-appropriate word lists given to them by their teacher, and enlisted the help of family members and friends to “test” them on the words. The movie “Akeelah and the Bee” was even shown in school to help motivate the spellers.

This is the second year in a row that AlRahmah School has held a spelling bee as an enrolled school of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, and with the success of this year’s bee, hopes to continue the “buzzing” tradition next year too.

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March 4th - March 17th, 2011

COMMUNITY NEWS

N.Va. man sentenced to 25 years for threats, tr ying to join terrorist group

By Dana Hedgpeth

Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, February 24, 2011 A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a 21-year-old Northern Virginia man to 25 years in prison for trying to join an alQaeda-linked terrorist group in Somalia and making threats to the creators of TV’s “South Park” show over their depiction of the prophet Muhammad.

jumpsuit - told Alexandria U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady he was remorseful. “Your honor, I accept full responsibility,” he said.

But O’Grady called Chesser an “extraordinarily energized traitor to your country.”

Zachary Adam Chesser of Oakton pleaded guilty in October to charges of providing material support to terrorists, communicating threats and soliciting crimes of violence in his case, which is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The defense had asked for some leniency in sentencing, suggesting that Chesser was a teenager when he committed his offenses. O’Grady, however, told Chesser “it’s amazing how quickly you became a danger. If anyone had been harmed, we’d be talking about a life sentence.”

The government had asked for the maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.

As part of his plea, Chesser agreed to request no less than 20 years.

The sentencing bookends the tale of a suburban Washington man friends described as “freakishly intelligent” and who became known to the FBI as a prolific Internet propagandist for al-Qaeda.

During an hourlong hearing, Chesser - who wore a beard and a green prison

He was arrested in July, days after he and

his wife drove with their infant son to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was stopped there after he tried to board a flight to Uganda before heading to Somalia, where he planned to join al-Shabaab, an Islamic terrorist group trying to oust Somalia’s government.

Chesser also admitted to making threats from April to July over the Internet to “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, saying they would “wind up like Theo Van Gogh.” The reference was to a Dutch filmmaker gunned down in 2004 after he attacked the treatment of women in Islamic society.

Chesser said his targets included a Florida man known as “JG,” a teenager in Mississippi and a young man from Texas who participated in an “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” group on Facebook.

Chesser also confessed to posting a link to 200 books on jihad and warfare, and to encouraging “fake operations” - such as placing bags that appear to be suspicious packages in public places - to desensitize

federal agents to actual attacks.

How Chesser changed is something he and his family still seem to be grappling with, according to court filings. His father, stepmother and Chesser wrote letters to the judge in an attempt to influence his sentencing and explain his change in behavior.

As a kid, Chesser drifted from “one obsession to another,” according to court papers. At one time he was a vocal antiwar pacifist who grew his hair long and listened to heavy metal music.

His interests varied, as he later studied Japanese and Buddhism. He joined a largely ethnic Korean breakdancing team.

In a Feb. 11 letter to the court, Chesser’s father, David, an economist and contractor for the U.S. Transportation Department, described him as an “intellectual, athletic and artistic” person who was “impulsive, >> SENTENCED Pg 7

Annual Fashion Show for Muslim Women Returns to DC

By Zarinah Shakir

. ISN also intends to organize calls and visits to sick members of the local community.

The International Sisters Network (ISN) will present their 15th Annual Sisters Only Luncheon and Fashion Show on Sunday, March 13, 2011 starting at 1:00 pm. The program will return to their most frequented location, the Washington Navy Yard Catering and Conference Center , 1454 Parsons Avenue, SE , Washington , DC 20874 .

This year’s theme is “Treasures of the East” which will feature designer’s creations with a Middle Eastern flair and East Coast representation, a play on the word East.

The genesis of the program in 1996 was at Highland Park Elementary School in Landover , Maryland with very few designers. The first designer who has remained committed over the past fifteen years is Joyce Rasool of Rasool’s Fashions.

Other designers involved in the show include Ruth Jackson of Desert Dreams, Lubna Muhammad of Lubna’s Closet, Sylvia Shabazz of Sylvia’s Designs, Vernell Omar and Anju of Sanriq Styles. Younger and promising designers include Myisha Kashif who started with the show at 10 years old and Jamila Madyun joined as a 16year old. Having attended fashion school, Madyun rejoins the annual show.

Muslim Link Contributing Writer

ISN was founded in 1996 with the first intention of helping Muslim women improve their relationship with Allah and with Islam. The second intention was to assist various charities which are pillars of Islam in the community. Throughout the past fourteen years the recipient charitable organization has been Clara Muhammad School of Washington, DC. This year ISN aims to assist Muslimat An-Nisaa Muslim Women’s Shelter in Baltimore , Maryland and An-Nur Academy in Lanham , Maryland

As the audience of the Sisters Only Luncheon

and Fashion Show grew from 50-75 attendees to now over 350 devoted followers, some of the designers/seamstresses have come and gone, however, there has been a commitment of many designers over the years with an increase each year in clothing stylists and accessory artists. Also, some of the models have grown up with the show while other adult models return just for the camaraderie.

Over the years from beginning to end this event has been supported by Aisha Abdul Mateen as coordinator, and the other committee organizers: Joyce Rasool, Nia Shabazz, Sylvia Shabazz and Devonne Bilal. Former ISN members are Ruth Jackson and Endesha Rahim-Hasan.

Cristal Young-Hassan is the Mistress of Ceremony. Ruth Bilal is the photographer.

Additionally, the enormous crew and contributing volunteers include The Islamic base, Gamma Gamma Chi Sorority Inc., designers/seamstresses, models, brochure and flyer designer, financial advisors, ticket

and sales coordinators, security, caterers, performers, and commentators.

ISN says the females only show is not to be missed. The doors open at 1 PM for shopping. Vendors will be selling clothing, aromatherapy items, soaps, jewelry, home accessories, books and much more. Lunch provided by the Navy Yard will start at 2 PM. Finally the event of the day is the fashion show itself starting at 2:30 pm with an array of modest, Islamic clothing for younger sister models, the professional and business woman, full figure adults to a wedding segment. An item offered this year will be Islamic- swimwear . All the clothing modeled will be available for sale at the end of the show.

Tickets are $50.00 for women and $25.00 for children and can be purchased online at www.internationalsisters.synthasite.com.

For more information call 240-606-6122 or 202-271-7473.

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

COMMUNITY NEWS |

Anxiety On All Sides of Upcoming House Hearing On Radicalization of U.S. Muslims HEARING

>> continued from pg 1 King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has called the hearings to start March 9.

Although he initially spoke out to promote them, his decision in recent weeks to lie low (he declined to comment for this article) and to keep the witness list and precise questions quiet reflects the complexities of debating the problem, experts say.

Should the hearings focus strictly on hard data about American Muslim cooperation with law enforcement?

Should they explore whether U.S. foreign policy helps breed radicalism?

Can a congressional hearing in a secular nation explore whether Islam needs a reformation?

Although some hope that it will improve dialogue, others fear it could set off more prejudice.

National security experts “are holding their breath that it doesn’t explode.

I’ve heard that from people on all sides,” said Juan C. Zarate, a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies who was security adviser to President George W. Bush.

Muslim leaders initially lobbied for King to halt hearings but are now debating whether to try to get on the witness list. Long-standing critics of Muslim American organizations have blasted King for including “apologists” such as Ellison, one of two Muslims elected to Congress.

That final point is the core tenet for Jasser, a father of three, Navy veteran and former doctor to Congress.

Some national security experts say King’s plan could exacerbate terrorism overseas by making U.S. Muslims appear persecuted, while others say King’s reputation for criticizing Muslims makes him a problematic moderator.

Others say King has needlessly courted controversy.

Through his nonprofit group, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, he debates other Muslims and appears on mostly conservative media to press Muslim leaders to aggressively oppose a “culture of separatism.” He wants clerics to disavow scripture that belittles non-Muslims and women and to renounce a role for Islam in government.

“The U.S. government should investigate domestic Islamist radicalization,” Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Forum director who has written extensively on the threat posed by radical Islamists, said in an e-mail. “Unfortunately, Rep. Peter King has proven himself unsuited for this important task, as shown by the gratuitous controversy he has generated over the mere selection of witnesses.”

As the only non-legislator King has announced he will call, Jasser is drawing a lopsided amount of attention.

Into the void comes Jasser, who sits on the board of a nonprofit group that made two controversial films about the dangers of radical Islam. The Clarion Fund says on its Web site that the growth of the American Muslim population “is raising eyebrows from sea to shining sea. . . . And if you think that a growing Muslim population cannot threaten America, just look at Europe.”

King will have a separate panel of congressional witnesses, and he has said he will call Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). The Democrats on the committee will call Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who has disputed King’s contention that Muslims do not cooperate with law enforcement.

With a mostly top-secret list and the first hearing in a few days, anxiety is building among Muslim Americans and national security experts alike.

Jasser, a former head of the American Medical Association’s Arizona chapter, is the personal physician to some prominent Arizonan, including former congressman J.D. Hayworth. Despite

his work on conservative causes, Jasser says he has walked out of his mosque when politicians were brought in to speak.

Jasser has always been affiliated with a local mosque and briefly served as a spokesman for the Islamic Center of North East Valley in Scottsdale, where his children attend classes. He was involved in interfaith work in Phoenix, where some activists say he is an outlier among Muslims.

So what expertise or constituency justifies this medical doctor being the only non-congressman King has named?

“A lifetime of practicing my faith,” he said in a telephone interview.

To Heather Hurlburt, executive director of the National Security Network, a progressive foreign-policy think tank, Jasser’s resume lacks any community leadership roles, any policy or academic expertise.

“These aren’t people who we normally expect the policy process to produce,” she said.

King faced criticism as soon as he announced in December that he would hold hearings on the threat of homegrown terrorism from Muslims.

Faith leaders, Muslim American organizations, the ranking Democrat on the committee - Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson - and some law enforcement leaders challenged the idea that Muslims should be the focus.

The subject is fraught with sensitivities on all sides. Some are horrified at Islam being singled out, while others want to ensure the religious aspect of terrorism is not ignored.

The potential for giving offense has led to some clunky language. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), who conducted 14 hearings on everything from Internet radicalization to the Fort Hood, Tex.,

>> HEARING II Pg 11

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March 4th - March 17th, 2011

COMMUNITY NEWS

FBI

>> continued from pg 1 law enforcement and communities like you,” said Colgan.

After a three minute statement, Colgan asked the congregation if they had any questions. One community member asked what was the purpose of his visit. After being told it was for dialogue and that the FBI “works for the tax payers”, the audience member wanted to follow-up with a question but was told to give others a chance.

One Pakistani community members asked how the FBI can come professing to want dialogue while “coming from the back door” and “sending spies with Muslim names” to monitor the community. “If I was the president of the mosque I would not let you come here without strip [searching] you because you might drop something to hear what’s going on here,” he said emphatically.

The Arab brother interjected. “We are not afraid of what’s going on here, you know everything [because] we broadcast it on

the Internet.”

Several community members also said they appreciated the FBI’s work helping to prevent attacks on masajid, violent crimes, and police brutality.

The case of Antonio Martinez – who attended ISB along with other Baltimore masajid – was brought up by a representative from the Muslim Link. The representative questioned how “stringing along” a young person who was new to Islam and “enabling them to act out ideas” suggested to them by the FBI helped national security.

“The FBI cannot gamble with the hope that someone will [reform],” replied Cogan. “I can’t discuss the facts of the case. Thats your opinion. Let’s say that [he was entrapped], then that person can be found not guilty in front of a jury of ones peers. And that’s what makes our nation so unique, we have checks and balances.”

The Muslim Link representative offered to continue dialogue through the newspaper, and the agent said he would relay the community’s comments to his office.

Farooq Marfani then asked Colgan why “people are so scared of the FBI”.

“I’m not here to discuss fear, I’m here to discuss how to build stronger relationships,” replied Colgan, after which ISB board member Muhammad Jamil closed the floor from further questions and asked people to continue discussing with agent Colgan in the lobby. “He will not discuss any particular case,” said Jamil.

Outside in the lobby, about a dozen men gathered around Colgan and peppered him with mostly comments, and some questions.

“We can’t build masjids freely, we can’t travel freely just because we practice Islam.

Because you met someone you become tainted and investigated …. people get nervous because they won’t be treated freely,” commented one African-American community member.

“I get investigated every five years by the FBI,” responded Colgan, referring to his regular agency background checks. “We don’t focus on individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or religion, we focus on threats,” he explained.

One African student complained that “if you are a Muslim student studying something like chemistry, we feel like we are being looked at as a possible terrorist who might be studying to manufacture bombs.”

“Whenever the FBI is mentioned in the Islamic community, they are looked at as the people who don’t treat us fairly as equal citizens,” explained one Arab-American community member, who also cited long delays for unknown reasons in getting green cards and citizenship as something which shows mistreatment of Muslim Americans.

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COMMUNITY NEWS |

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SENTENCED

>> continued from pg 4 impractical, naive and obstinately singleminded.”

At Oakton High School in Fairfax County, Chesser joined the freshman basketball and football teams and was involved in crew. In his spare time, his stepmother said he liked to play Xbox games and watch TV, including “South Park.”

In 2008, Chesser became a Muslim and, as a student at George Mason University, isolated himself from anyone who wasn’t Muslim at the college. He spent hours each day studying Islam, according to court papers. Chesser grew a beard, donned a traditional robe and later married the daughter of a Ugandan diplomat who had been raised as a Roman Catholic but converted to Islam three days after he met her through a local mosque. In November 2009, the couple had a son.

From his small apartment in Northern Virginia, Chesser - who became known online as “Abu Talhah” - spent hours on the computer, posting on radical Islamic Web sites, forums and blogs. He wrote about “Destroying the West” with a list of ideas that included filling tanker trucks with Ricin.

His blog, titled “themujahidblog.com,” was “dedicated to those who give their blood for [Islam] and “primarily devoted to spreading knowledge regarding Jihad and the Mujahideen,” according to court documents.

In a Dec. 10 letter to the court in which he takes responsibility for the allegations, Chesser describes himself as someone who felt like he had to “do everything to the fullest extent, whether it was how I dressed, who I spoke to, or how I prayed.”

He goes on to say that after “about three months of being a practicing Muslim,” he was given a copy of lectures by the U.S.born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi.

The cleric has been linked to last year’s massacre at Fort Hood and an attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. Chesser said in his letter to the court that the “element of radicalism” in the papers “served as a gateway for me to other more extreme beliefs.” According to the FBI, Chesser exchanged e-mails with Aulaqi.

But Chesser said he’s since had a change of heart. In the Dec. 10 letter, he wrote that the jihad ideology he was drawn into “was contrary to everything I had grown up thinking and believing.” He noted that he was for a while, “both a practicing Muslim and a vegetarian.”

He reconciled his beliefs, he wrote, “by convincing myself that if I went to fight jihad, I would be saving more lives even if it meant that others died. I understand

now how preposterous that sounds, and I completely reject the idea that killing can be justified in the name of Islam or any religion.”

He said he was “ashamed and bewildered” by the allegations and described his 18 months of following a radical version of Islam as “a missing puzzle piece in my life.”

“I know that I will spend many years trying to understand why I followed the

path that has led me here,” he wrote. “I only hope that through my actions now and in the future I can make up for what I have done.”

-----------------------------------------------In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Civil Rights

CIVIL RIGHTS |

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Meet the White Supremacist Leading the GOP’s Anti-Sharia Crusade States across the country are considering far-right bills to ban Islamic law. For that, we have hate-group leader David Yerushalmi to thank.

By Tim Murphy

into law last year in Louisiana and Tennessee.

Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make “material support” for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison.

The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.

With the exception of SB 1028, much of Yerushalmi’s legislation sounds pretty innocuous: State courts are prohibited from considering any foreign law that doesn’t fully honor the rights enshrined in the US and state constitutions. Because a Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law is unheard of in the United States, the law’s impact is non-existent at best. But critics of some of the proposed bills have argued they could have far-reaching and unintended consequences, like undoing anti-kidnapping statutes, and hindering the ability of local companies to enter into contracts overseas.

Mother Jones, March 1, 2011

The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn’t come out of nowhere. Though it’s the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. (A court might refer to Sharia law in child custody or prisoner rights cases.) Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states. And while fears of an impending caliphate are myriad on the far-right, the surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a “war against Islam” and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.

Yerushalmi, a lawyer, is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has been called a “hate group” by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). His draft legislation served as the foundation for the Tennessee bill, and at least half a dozen other anti-Islam measures— including two bills that were signed

But Tennessee’s SB 1028 goes much further, defining traditional Islamic law as counter to constitutional principles, and authorizing the state’s attorney general to freeze the assets of organizations that have been determined to be promoting or supporting Sharia. On Monday, CAIR and the ACLU called for lawmakers to defeat the bill.

“Essentially the bill is trying to separate the ‘good Muslims’ from the ‘bad Muslims,’” said CAIR staff attorney Gadeir Abbas in an interview with Mother Jones. “Out of all the bills that have been introduced, this is by far the most extreme.”

Reports about the rise of the anti-Sharia movement have typically focused on Oklahoma’s voter-approved constitutional amendment, which explicitly prohibited state courts from considering Islamic law (a federal judge issued a permanent injunction against the amendment in

December). But the movement began much earlier, with a sample bill Yerushalmi drafted at the behest of the American Public Policy Alliance, a right-wing organization established with the goal of protecting American citizens from “the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law.” In a 40-minute PowerPoint that’s available on the organization’s site, Yerushalmi explained the ins and outs of the sample legislation. His bills differ from the failed Oklahoma amendment in one key way: They don’t mention Sharia. Instead, they focus more broadly on “foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines.” As Yerushalmi explained in an interview with the nativist New English Review in December, the language is “facially neutral,” thereby achieving the same result while “avoiding the sticky problems of our First Amendment jurisprudence.”

Since crafting the sample legislation, Yerushalmi’s services have been been in high demand as an expert witness. In mid-February, he flew to South Dakota to testify in support of a bill modeled on his “American Law for American Courts” plan. (He also offered to provide probono legal support for the state if the law produced any legal challenges.)

Ultimately, the bill died in committee, after the state’s attorney general testified that the bill could lead to lawsuits. “I am a little chagrined by the fact that none of the opponents of the bill have actually read it with any care,” Yerushalmi told the committee. “Something else is at work here.”

But it’s not just Muslims who draw Yerushalmi’s scorn. In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled “On Race: A Tentative Discussion”, Yerushalmi argued that whites are genetically superior to blacks.

“Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones,” he wrote.

Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that’s consistent with SANE’s mission statement, which emphasizes that “America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white.” And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews “destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite.” Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the “undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State.”

Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace. He’s been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times.

And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities >> CRUSADE Pg 11

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

10 | CIVIL RIGHTS

Suit Accuses F.B.I. of Spying at Mosques in California

By JENNIFER MEDINA New York Times February 24, 2011

At the Islamic Center of Irvine, some members look at each new person who walks into the Los Angeles-area mosque with suspicion. They worry that their conversations are being recorded or that law enforcement officers are watching, simply because they are Muslim.

The fears were stoked by charges that the Federal Bureau of Investigation paid an informant to infiltrate their mosque and others in Southern California, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-

Islamic Relations say in the suit that the informant, Craig Monteilh, violated members’ civil rights and subjected them to “indiscriminate surveillance” because of their religion.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that the case represents just one of countless complaints they hear from Muslims in Southern California, who say they are routinely singled out for questioning.

They hope the case will encourage other Muslims who believe they have been unfairly monitored to come forward.

“We hear about this kind of targeting by the F.B.I. without basis again and again from all over,” said Ameena Mirza Qazi, the deputy director and staff attorney for CAIR Los Angeles. “This is the perfect test case because we have evidence that

there was surveillance.”

F.B.I. officials said that they could not comment on the lawsuit, but that they based any investigation on allegations of criminal activity. They said that they did not single out specific religious or ethnic groups.

Mr. Monteilh, who has a criminal history that includes forgery, has said publicly that the F.B.I. told him to monitor several mosques in Orange County in 2006 and 2007, using a hidden camera and tape recorder. After he began to talk at the mosque about jihad and violence, members contacted the F.B.I. He ultimately helped the bureau build a case against one member of the mosque, but it was dismissed.

The suit also charges that F.B.I. agents “explicitly told Monteilh that Islam was a threat to America’s national security.”

Mr. Monteilh has also sued the F.B.I., saying that it failed to protect him from charges of grand theft that he says were related to his work in a drug-ring operation. The class-action lawsuit seeks a court order for the F.B.I. to destroy or return the information Mr. Monteilh obtained.

-----------------------------------------------In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

St. Louis-area Somalis Feel Intimidated by FBI

BY PHILLIP O’CONNOR St. Louis Post-Dispatch February 3, 2011

of once again overstepping bounds in investigating whether St. Louis’ Somali population of about 2,000 is a potential haven for terrorists.

On the same November day that federal authorities arrested an airport cabdriver and accused him of supporting a Somali terrorist organization, the FBI cast a wider net.

The critics say that such ‘strong-arm” tactics hinder efforts by law enforcement agencies to make inroads among Somalis and Muslims.

Agents descended on Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, where over two days 25 to 50 other cabdrivers, all refugees from Somalia, were summoned to the airport police office. One by one, they entered small rooms where FBI agents waited. A series of questions followed: Do you ever send money overseas? Whom do you send money to? What trips have you taken? What rumors are you hearing Anyone we should be worried about?

Agents sought to copy the drivers’ cell phone memory cards and examine their personal computers.

“They sounded like when they are talking to you that you are guilty,” said one cabdriver, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. Several drivers offered similar accounts but did not want to be quoted.

The actions have some accusing the FBI

“We are disappointed they acted so rashly and harshly in this situation,” said John Chasnoff of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri. “These are people who are haven’t been linked to any terrorist activity.”

A spokeswoman for the St. Louis FBI office acknowledged that outreach to Somalis “is not at the level we would like it to be.”

“Certain communities, including people from Somalia, may have a distrust of law enforcement because of their negative experiences in their homeland,” spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said. “That’s why outreach to those communities takes sensitivity and time to build relationships.

The goal of our community outreach is to help people understand what we do, so they have trust and confidence in the FBI. In order for the FBI to be effective, we

need the public’s support in our common interest to fight crime and terrorism.”

U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan declined to comment on investigative tactics but said “terrorism is a serious matter, and it’s going to be taken as seriously as anything the FBI or our office does.”

On Nov. 1, authorities arrested Mohamud Abdi Yusuf, who they allege collected and wired about $6,000 to al-Shabaab, an Islamist group that is trying to overthrow the shaky government of his impoverished east African country. The U.S. government declared al-Shabaab a

terrorist organization in 2008.

Callahan said he understood that Somalis here might feel pressured but stressed that the Yusuf case was an isolated matter and “did not represent a larger problem with the Muslim population.”

“I think it’s natural for any minority to be concerned about whether they’re going to be focused on unfairly by law enforcement,” Callahan said.

>> INTIMIDATED Pg 11

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March 4th - March 17th, 2011 INTIMIDATED

>> continued from pg 10 That’s why he said the outreach being done by his office and the FBI is so important. “It’s about communication and having trust on both sides,” he said.

But Jim Hacking III, a legal consultant to the local chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, believes that trust is fading. Hacking once worked closely with the FBI in its outreach efforts to Muslims. When the FBI put out a bulletin that warned al-Shabaab might try an attack in the U.S. timed to the presidential inauguration, Hacking helped the FBI with a request to locate several local Somalis.

As word of the airport interviews spread that day, some drivers called Hacking, an immigration attorney who had represented them in their citizenship cases or had sat in with them during previous voluntary FBI interviews.

Hacking tried to contact an FBI agent at the scene. Despite what he thought was a good relationship, his messages went unanswered.

CIVIL RIGHTS | memory) cards and personal computers,” Hacking said.

tell them you are not the person they are looking for.”

He believes the drivers’ civil rights were violated.

He worried that the attention focused on the Somali cabdrivers made them outcasts among their peers and might cost them their jobs.

“These people come from a country where you don’t have the choice to deal with law enforcement,” Hacking said. “You do it or you get thrown in jail. I don’t know how sophisticated these people were and how free they felt in responding to pretty strong-arm tactics.”

The incident left Hacking less inclined to urge cooperation.

“I take the position now, you’re a fool to talk to the FBI without an attorney,” he said. “I recognize they have a difficult job to do. I just think the way they are doing it is backwards. You can’t build bridges at the same time you’re scaring … people.”

The cabdrivers said many Somalis felt harassed by repeated interviews and perceived threats from the FBI. Many of the drivers the FBI interviewed were only recently granted or are still awaiting U.S. citizenship and felt intimidated.

At a minimum, the drivers should have had a chance to contact a lawyer, he said.

The airport interview was probably one of a half dozen the cabdriver who spoke to the Post-Dispatch said he has had with the FBI in the last seven years.

“They knew if a lawyer was there, no one would be handing over (telephone

“I feel threatened, scared,” he said. It’s just become part of my life. You try to

CRUSADE

plaudits from leading Republicans like Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra. The report was released by Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, for which Yerushalmi is general counsel.

>> continued from pg 9 and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox. More recently, Yerushalmi co-authored a report on the threats posed by Islamic law—among other things, he worries Sharia-compliant finance could spark another financial collapse—that earned

In 2007, he pushed legislation to make “adherence to Shari’a” a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. That same proposal called for the deportation of all Muslim non-citizens, and a ban on Muslim immigration. The United States, he urged,

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has made outreach to Muslims a priority but also has defended aggressive FBI tactics, including the use of sting operations orchestrated by government informers.

Since 2007, 37 defendants have been charged in federal court with terrorism violations related to al-Shabaab or other extremist groups in Somalia. Some Somalis believe informers are at work in St. Louis spreading false allegations to settle long-standing tribal grudges.

The Yusuf trial marks the first prosecution of a terrorism case in the Eastern District since the creation of the local Joint Terrorism Task Force following the alQaida terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The task force includes representatives from 40 agencies, including four attorneys from Callahan’s office who focus solely on counterterrorism. Their priority is not to prosecute but to detect, prevent and disrupt such activity.

“It’s just something where the successes are not made public,” Callahan said. “I understand that sounds a little bit like, ‘trust me,’ but that’s just the nature of this kind of work.”

must declare “a WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all Muslim faithful.”

Neither Yerushalmi nor the American Public Policy Alliance responded to a request for comment for this article.

If his racially infused writings and rhetoric are any indication, it’s Yerushalmi, not his Muslim bogeymen, who seems most determined to remake the American political system. Per its mission statement,

HEARING

>> continued from pg 5 shootings without major controversy, said it was exploring “homegrown terrorism and domestic radicalization inspired by violent Islamist extremism.”

Zarate, who calls Jasser “fantastic” because he offers an alternative, noninstitutional voice, said the hearings could do damage if they create a sense that there is a divide between Muslim organizations and mainstream America.

“It would be a shame if the hearings didn’t move the debate the country is having, both on how to combat violent extremism and also on Islamophobia.”

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section

11

At Yusuf’s Nov. 4 bail hearing, authorities disclosed they had been recording Yusuf’s telephone calls for four years.

Prosecutors have alleged Yusuf, 30, used code words in conversations and other tricks to try to avoid detection. The indictment alleges Yusuf raised money from unindicted co-conspirators around the country and chipped in some of his own cash in hopes of buying al-Shabaab a vehicle big enough to transport 25 fighters. He is being held without bail in the St. Charles County Jail. A federal public defender represented Yusuf until last week, when he hired an attorney.

The attorney could not be reached for comment.

Friends say his case is a result of a misunderstanding. They say Yusuf, who came to the United States in 2001, frequently wired money to his wife and others relatives in a refugee camp.

They described him as friendly, funny and a good family man.

“When we see what happened to him we don’t believe it,” the cabdriver said. “One of us could be next.”

----------------------------------------------In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

SANE is “dedicated to the rejection of democracy and party rule,” and Yerushalmi has likewise criticized the universal suffrage movement. As he once put it, “there’s a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.”

----------------------------------------------Source URL: http://motherjones.com/ politics/2011/02/david-yerushalmisharia-ban-tennessee

107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

12 | WORLD PRESS

World Press

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

Behind the Arab Revolt Lurks A Word We Dare Not Speak The people of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and Libya are rising up not only against their leaders, but also western economic tyranny.

John Pilger

The New Statesman February 24, 2011 Shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I interviewed Ray McGovern, one of an elite group of CIA officers who prepared the president’s daily intelligence brief.

McGovern was at the apex of the “national security” monolith that is American power and had retired with presidential plaudits. On the eve of the invasion, he and 45 other former senior officers of the CIA and other US intelligence agencies wrote to President George W Bush that the “drumbeat for war” was based not on intelligence, but lies.

“It was 95 per cent charade,” McGovern told me.

“How did they get away with it?”

“The press allowed the crazies to get away with it.”

“Who are the crazies?”

“The people running the administration have a set of beliefs a lot like those expressed in Mein Kampf . . . these are the same people who were referred to in the circles in which I moved, at the top, as ‘the crazies’.”

I said, “Norman Mailer has written that he believes America has entered a pre-fascist state. What’s your view of that?”

“Well . . . I hope he’s right, because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode.”

First blows On 22 January, McGovern emailed me

to express his disgust at the Obama administration’s treatment of the alleged whistleblower Bradley Manning and its pursuit of Julian Assange. “Way back when George and Tony decided it might be fun to attack Iraq,” he wrote, “I said something to the effect that fascism had already begun here. I have to admit I did not think it would get this bad this quickly.”

his chair and silently turned his back on Clinton. He was immediately seized by police and a security goon, beaten to the floor, dragged out and thrown into jail, bleeding. He has sent me photographs of his injuries. He is 71.

On 15 February, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, gave a speech at George Washington University in which she condemned governments that arrest protesters and crush free expression.

She lauded the liberating power of the internet but failed to mention that her government was planning to close down those parts of the internet that encourage dissent and truth-telling. It was a speech of spectacular hypocrisy. McGovern was in the audience. Outraged, he rose from

Fascism is a difficult word, because it comes with an iconography that touches the Nazi nerve and is abused as propaganda against America’s official enemies and to promote the west’s foreign adventures with a moral vocabulary written in the struggle against Hitler. And yet fascism and imperialism are twins.

In the aftermath of the Second World

During the assault, which was clearly visible to Clinton, she did not pause in making her remarks.

>> TYRANNY Pg 21

Anti-terrorism and Uprisings

North African leaders have worked with the West against Islamists and migrants becoming more repressive as a result.

By Yasmine Ryan

Al-Jazeera, February 25, 2011 The string of uprisings in North Africa have laid bare Western governments’ relationships with regimes in the region, which pro-democracy activists argue have long been fixated on anti-terrorism, immigration and oil.

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, appears to be on the brink of joining Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak - both ousted by their own people. In Algeria, meanwhile,

Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s government is holding firm, clamping down on protests and carrying out limited reforms in a bid to lull anti-regime rage.

The four men have co-operated to varying degrees with the West in the post 9/11 era, offering their services against the perceived twin menaces of political Islam and migration from the African continent to Europe.

Salima Ghezali, a well-known Algerian journalist and rights activist, says that politicians have used these supposed threats to justify state violence. Elites in

the West, she argues, have attempted to distract voters by playing up threats to security, whilst sidestepping debate on their economies. Their counterparts in the developing world have used the same arguments to draw attention away from “institutional chaos”.

“It is this chaos which is provoking and fuelling the anger of the people,” she says.

By focusing on security, leaders have found a means to legitimise state violence, withhold rights and freedoms, and neglect governance, Ghezali says. “Violence

has even become a means of social and political advancement. Murderers have become heroes and hold power in public institutions.”

Jeremy Keenan, a professorial research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, agrees that the uprisings are, in some way, related to the prevalence of anti-terrorist policy.

“I think that whole ‘war on terror’ syndrome has had a potentially significant role in >> REPRESSIVE Pg 13

vzz

March 4 - March 17th, 2011

WORLD PRESS | 13

th

>> continued from pg 12

counterterrorism laws and policies played a central part in the former government’s crushing of political opposition.

what we’re seeing today,” Keenan says.

“These states have become more repressive in the knowledge that they have the backing of the West.”

And, as Scheinin notes in an interview with Al Jazeera, this was the very language Ben Ali turned to when he responded to the Tunisian uprising.

Demographic Disconnect

“I think it is important that when the people started to revolt in Tunisia, the initial reaction by the president and by the government was to say this is terrorists,” the UN Rapporteur says.

REPRESSIVE

Many youthful protesters are no longer willing to swallow their leaders’ use of anti-colonialist ideology to justify their political power.

Far from fighting imperialism, these leaders, their opponents say, have been complicit with the West: Acting as its torturers, buying its arms and patrolling the Mediterranean Sea to stem the tides of young people desperate to flee their homelands. All were partners in the CIA’s controversial ‘extraordinary rendition programme’ and Libya has been a proactive partner in a secretive Rome-Tripoli deal, signed in 2009, to intercept boats carrying migrants. In return for the sea patrols, Italy pledged to pay Libya $7bn over 20 years.

“The young generation of Algerians, and the not-so-young, don’t have any illusions about the convictions of their leaders,” Ghezali explains.

Despite being sceptical of their leaders’ ideological leanings, Ghezali says the youth do still respect authentic symbols of the Algerian War of Independence.

Anti-government protesters in Libya have taken to waving the pre-Gaddafi, postindependence flag - a reference to the country’s struggle against colonial rule.

With the exception of Ben Ali, all of these leaders have been in government since before most of their people were born.

Bouteflika, for example, first became a minister in 1962, yet rules over a country where the average age is 27, according to the CIA World Factbook. Gaddafi took power in 1969, while the average Libyan is just 24.

Playing The ‘Islamist Card’ The region’s leaders have repeatedly tried to portray the current wave of uprisings as somehow terrorist-related.

In a recently released report, Martin Scheinin, the UN special rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, details how Tunisia’s

Ben Ali accused demonstrators in the centre of the country of “unpardonable terrorist acts” on January 10, two days after Tunisian security forces had begun deliberately killing protesters in the centre of the country. The Libyan leader’s son, Saadi Gaddafi, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that bombing in the east of Libya was necessary because “thousands” of al-Qaeda fighters were taking control of the region. His father elaborated on these allegations in a speech on Thursday night, accusing Osama bin Laden of brainwashing, and even drugging, the country’s youth.

Ghezali points to Gaddafi’s most recent threats to end his co-operation on immigration, as well as his attempts to blame protests on al-Qaeda, as a particularly “ludicrous” example of what has become a standard form of blackmail.

Tunisian activists interviewed by Al Jazeera cite ending corruption and tyranny and the right to employment, democracy and freedom of expression as the motivations that drove their uprising, while Libyans dismiss Gaddafi’s assertion that Osama bin Laden was working to incite dissent against his rule.

Keenan says that the absence of Islamist ideology in the protest movements has underlined the extent to which the “Islamist card” has been overplayed by politicians and the media. “These revolts have nothing much to do with Islamism, they are to do with young people fighting for their rights.

“All of these countries, to varying degrees, have exaggerated the menace of terrorism,” says the author of The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.

The Birth Of An Ideology While it became most pronounced post9/11, the West’s fear of the rise of political

Islam in North Africa predates the ‘war on terror’ by a decade.

When Algeria embarked on its first democratic elections in the early 1990s, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was heading towards a likely victory.

Many commentators in the West feared Algeria would become the next Iran, and that political Islam might then become an unstoppable force, spreading to neighbouring countries.

The Algerian military staged a coup d’état and embarked on a “dirty war” to purge the country of the “Green Peril”. During the decade-long civil war that followed, 200,000 Algerians were killed, many by the security forces, and approximately 15,000 were forcibly disappeared.

Western governments were largely silent.

In the case of France, in particular, support for the “eradication” campaign was explicit, with Charles Pasqua, France’s interior minister, working closely with the Algerian generals to clamp down on Algerian dissidents in France.

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and other leading intellectuals - many of whom had been outspoken opponents of Communist totalitarianism in Eastern Europe and Asia - warned of the rise of what they termed “Islamofacism” in North Africa and the Middle East.

François Gèze, head of the leftwing publishing house Éditions La Découverte, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a leading historian who has since passed away, argued there was a double standard in their compatriots’ response to the Algerian conflict: “How can famous intellectuals, who were willing to stand up when it was necessary against other barbarities, take the side so resolutely of a torturing, corrupt army which has based its power on widespread usage of blowtorches [to torture] and napalm on a scale rarely seen in the last half century. The answer, alas, is summed up in one word: Islam,” they wrote in Le Monde (‘Algeria and French Intellectuals’, February 4 1998).

By early 2001, pressure for an investigation into the role of the security forces in fostering the violence was increasing, after a series of allegations that the Algerian security establishment had deliberately falsified terrorism to justify its own violence.

Then came the 9/11 attacks, and the ‘war on terror,’ and Algerian dissidents once again found themselves sidelined.

“After twenty years of security policy - including 10 years of war - Algerian society has been seriously traumatised,” Ghezali says, adding that the lack of justice or reconciliation has prevented many from being able to move on.

In contrast, post-January 14, Tunisia has opened a commission to investigate the human rights abuses committed by the security forces during the uprising and is seeking Ben Ali’s extradition from Saudi Arabia.

Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, meanwhile, is calling for the International Criminal Court to investigate Gaddafi for war crimes, while Navi Pillay, the UN human rights chief, is urging an international investigation into the violence against protesters.

Awkward Baggage The first suggestion that Western leaders may be moving to untangle themselves from the increasingly awkward baggage of their ‘war on terror’ ties to North Africa came during William Hague’s visit to Tunisia, on February 8, as the uprising in Egypt was well underway.

In response to a question from Al Jazeera, the British foreign secretary acknowledged that it was time to move beyond the antiterrorism framework.

“I think now there is an opportunity for a much broader relationship than a security relationship,” he said.

Bolstering his comments came the announcement of an $8.1mn fund to support economic and political reform in North Africa and the Middle East.

Hague also distanced his government from Tunisia’s controversial anti-terrorism law, which has long drawn criticism from rights activists who argued that it was used to imprison political dissidents.

“We hope that legislation will comply with international laws on human rights, will respect freedom of expression, and of course we hope in any country that antiterror laws are not used to stifle legitimate political debate and activity,” Hague said. >> REPRESSIVE II Pg 14

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

14 | WORLD PRESS REPRESSIVE II

>> continued from pg 13

Yet even as the death toll in Libya continues to rise - possibly to over 1,000 - the antiterrorist ideology is far from dismantled, as Gaddafi’s attempts to bring al-Qaeda into the equation suggest.

On Tuesday, Algeria lifted its controversial state of emergency, which had been in force since 1992 and which the government had argued was necessary to facilitate its fight against “terrorists”. Activists had long criticised the law, arguing that its real goal was to quell dissent and to extinguish the political freedoms that had been won by protesters in the wake of the October 1988 anti-government riots.

But the state of emergency is being replaced by new anti-terrorist legislation, meaning little genuine change. Protest marches will remain forbidden and the military will retain its contested right to intervene in domestic security enforcement.

A spokesperson for Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth office said by telephone

on Wednesday that Hague’s comments in Tunis also applied to any anti-terrorist legislation in Algeria. The US president Barack Obama welcomed the change as a “positive sign” in a statement on Thursday.

Arming The Oppressors

However, Keenan points to Algeria’s role as an “absolutely critical ally” for the US during the ‘war on terror’. The country has strong historic ties to France and, in the past two years, has grown closer to Britain.

Michele Alliot-Marie, the French foreign minister, is still suffering the political repercussions of her offer to support Tunisian and Algerian security forces with protest-suppressing “know-how” on January 12, even as Tunisian protesters were being killed.

Algeria has the third-largest oil reserves in Africa and is the sixth-largest producer of natural gas in the world, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

“The West is desperate that Algeria, the regime, can stay in place by making the necessary reforms,” Keenan says, adding that a cabinet shuffle could be on the horizon and that Bouteflika might eventually be replaced. But such reforms would be “purely cosmetic” and would serve only to maintain the present regime, he argues, noting that the lifting of the state of emergency should be interpreted in this context.

And regardless of any change in tone, European governments seem unlikely to cut back on growing arms sales to North Africa and the Middle East.

Western arms exports to the region have drawn particular attention in the light of the killing of protesters in Libya and Bahrain in recent days, leading the UK and France to halt arms sales to the two countries. But the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), a UK-based organisation, argues that the bans are temporary and unlikely to lead to any long-term changes in some European governments’ active promotion of its arms export sector.

“As soon as public attention has moved on, they’ll be back supplying them,” Sarah Waldron, a spokesperson for CAAT, says.

Arms exports from EU member countries to Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco have risen significantly over the past five years. Arms export licences from the EU to the four countries rose from $1.3bn to $2.7bn in 2009, according to CAAT. Coming in the context of co-operation on border control and anti-terrorism, the arms sales have risen for both strategic and economic reasons, Keenan says. “The equipment that is given to these countries in export arrangements in the name of counterterrorism is the same equipment that is used by these countries in the repression of their own people.”

Realpolitik Many North African activists are conscious of years of what they consider hypocrisy from the West and are skeptical about whether the uprisings will have a transformative effective on foreign policy.

For the past decade, only two things have mattered for Europeans and the US when

>> REPRESSIVE III Pg 22

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March 4th - March 17th, 2011

16 | ISLAM

Islam

Tips On Developing Khushoo’ In Salah

By Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid

Islam-QA.com.

Salaah is the greatest of the practical pillars of Islam, and khushoo’ in prayer is required by sharee’ah. When Iblees, the enemy of Allaah, vowed to mislead and tempt the sons of Adam and said “Then I will come to them from before them and behind them, from their right and from their left…” [al-A’raaf 7:17, interpretation of the meaning], one of his most significant plots became to divert people from salaah by all possible means and to whisper to them during their prayer so as to deprive them of the joy of this worship and cause them to lose the reward for it. As khushoo’ will be the first thing to disappear from the earth, and we are living in the last times, the words of Hudhayfah (may Allaah be pleased with him) are particularly pertinent to us: “The first thing of your religion that you will lose is khushoo’, and the last thing that you will lose of your religion is salaah.

There may be a person praying who has no goodness in him, and soon you will enter the mosque and not find anyone who has khushoo’.” (al-Madaarij, 1/521).

Because of what every person knows about himself, and because of the complaints that one hears from many people about

Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “Successful indeed are the believers, those who offer their salaah (prayers) with all solemnity and full submissiveness.” [al-Mu’minoon 23:12] – i.e., fearing Allaah and in a calm manner. Khushoo’ means calmness, serenity, tranquillity, dignity and humility.

What makes a person have this khushoo’ is fear of Allaah and the sense that He is always watching. (Tafseer Ibn Katheer, Daar al-Sha’b edn., 6/414). Khushoo’ means that the heart stands before the Lord in humility and submission. (alMadaarij, 1/520).

Remembering death whilst praying The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Remember death in your prayer, for the man who remembers death during his prayer is bound to pray properly, and pray the prayer of a man who does not think that he will pray any other prayer.” (al-Silsilat al-Saheehah by al-Albaani, 1421. It was reported from al-Suyooti that al-Haafiz ibn Hajar classed this hadeeth as hasan).

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) also advised Abu Ayyoob (may Allaah be pleased with

Remember death in your prayer, for the man who remembers death during his prayer is bound to pray properly. waswaas (insinuating thoughts from Shaytaan) during the salaah and the loss of khushoo’, the need for some discussion of this matter is quite obvious. The following is a reminder to myself and to my Muslim brothers, and I ask Allaah to make it of benefit.

him): “When you stand up to pray, pray a farewell prayer.” (Reported by Ahmad, 5/412; Saheeh al-Jaami’, no. 742) – meaning the prayer of one who thinks that he will not pray another prayer. The person who is praying will no doubt die, and there is some prayer that will be his last prayer, so let him have khushoo’ in

the prayer that he is doing, for he does not know whether this will be his last prayer.

Thinking about the aayaat and adhkaar

over the meanings is to repeat aayaat, because this will help one to think deeply and look again at the meanings. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) used to do this. It was

“The first thing of your religion that you will lose is khushoo’, and the last thing that you will lose of your religion is salaah.

There may be a person praying who has no goodness in him, and soon you will enter the mosque and not find anyone who has khushoo’.” (al-Madaarij, 1/521). being recited during the prayer and interacting with them The Qur’aan was revealed to be pondered over. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “(This is) a Book (the Qur’aan) which We have sent down to you, full of blessings that they may ponder over its Verses, and that men of understanding may remember.” [Saad 38:29]. No one can ponder over its verses unless he has some knowledge of the meaning of what he is reciting, so that he can think about it and be moved to tears by it. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “And those who, when they are reminded of the aayaat (proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, signs, revelations, etc.) of their Lord, fall not deaf and blind thereat.” [alFurqaan 25:73]. Thus the importance of studying Tafseer (Qur’aanic commentary) is quite clear. Ibn Jareer (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: “I am astonished at people who read the Qur’aan and do not know what it means. How can they enjoy reading it?”

Another way of helping oneself to ponder

reported that he spent a night repeating one aayah until morning came. The aayah was (interpretation of the meaning): “If you punish them, they are Your slaves, and if You forgive them, verily You, only You are the All-Mighty, the All-Wise.” [al-Maa’idah 5:118]. (Reported by Ibn Khuzaymah, 1/271 and Ahmad, 5/149; Sifat al-Salaah, p. 102).

Another way of helping oneself ponder over the meanings is to interact with the aayaat. Hudhayfah said: “ I prayed with the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) one night… he was reciting at length.

If he recited an aayah that mentioned tasbeeh, he would say Subhaan Allaah; if it mentioned a question, he would ask a question; if it mentioned seeking refuge with Allaah, he would seek refuge with Allaah.” (Reported by Muslim, no.

772).

One of the Sahaabah – Qutaadah ibn >> SALAH Pg 17

March 4th - March 17th, 2011 SALAH

>> continued from pg 16 al-Nu’maan (may Allaah be pleased with him) – prayed qiyaam at night and did not recite anything but Qul Huwa Allaah Ahad, repeating it and not adding anything more. (Al-Bukhaari, al-Fath, 9/59; Ahmad, 3/43) A man of Qays who was known by the kunyah Abu ‘Abd-Allaah said: “We stayed with al-Hasan one night, and he got up to pray qiyaam al-layl. He prayed and did not stop repeating this aayah until just before dawn (interpretation of the meaning): ‘… and if you count the Blessings of Allaah, never will you be able to count them…’ [Ibraaheem 14:34].

When morning came, we said, ‘O Abu Sa’eed, you did not recite any more than this one aayah all night.’ He said, ‘I learn a great deal from it: I do not glance at anything but I see a blessing in it, but what we do not know about Allaah’s blessings is far greater.’” (Al-Tidhkaar li’l-Qurtubi, p. 125).

ISLAM | 17 Another way of helping oneself to ponder over the meanings is to memorize Qur’aan and various adhkaar to be recited during different parts of the prayer, so that one may recite them and think about their meanings.

There is no doubt that these actions – thinking about the meanings, repeating and interacting with the words – are among the greatest means of increasing khushoo’, as Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “And they fall down on their faces weeping and it adds to their humility [khushoo’]’” [al-Isra’ 17:109].

The following is a moving story that illustrates how the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) had khushoo’, as well as explaining how it is obligatory to think of the meaning of the aayat. ‘Ataa’ said: “ ‘Ubayd ibn ‘Umayr and I entered upon ‘Aa’ishah (may Allaah be pleased with her) and Ibn ‘Umayr said to her, ‘Tell us of the most amazing thing you saw on the part of the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).’ She wept and said, ‘He got up one night and said, “O ‘Aa’ishah,

If ever yone kept it in mind when he prays, he would attain immense khushoo’ and al-Faatihah would have a great impact on him. How could it be other wise, when he feels that his Lord is addressing him and giving him what he is asking for? leave me to worship my Lord.” I said, “By Allaah, I love to be close to you, and I love what makes you happy.” So he got up and purified himself, then he stood and prayed. He kept weeping until his lap got wet, then he wept and kept weeping until the floor got wet. Bilaal came to tell him that it was time to pray, and when he saw him weeping, he said, “O Messenger of Allaah, you are weeping when Allaah has forgiven you all your past and future sins?” He said, “Should I not be a grateful slave? Tonight some aayaat have been revealed to me; woe to the one who recites them and does not think about what is in them (interpretation of the meaning): ‘Verily! In the creation of the heavens and the earth…’” [Aal ‘Imraan 3:190… or al-Baqarah 2:164].’” (Reported by Ibn Hibaan. He said in al-Silsilat al-Saheehah, no. 68: this is a jayyid isnaad).

Knowing that Allaah responds to prayers The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Allaah, the Blessed and Exalted has said: ‘I have divided the prayer between Myself and My slave, into two halves, and My slave shall have what he has asked for.” When the slave says ‘Praise be to Allaah, Lord of the Worlds,’ Allaah says, ‘My slave has praised Me.’ When the slave says, ‘The Most Merciful, the Bestower of Mercy,’ Allaah says, ‘My slave has extolled me.’

When the slave says, ‘Master of the Day of Judgement,’ Allaah says, ‘My slave has glorified me.’ When the slave says, ‘It is You alone we worship and it is You alone we ask for help,’ Allaah says, ‘This is between Me and My slave, and My slave shall have what he asked for.’

When the slave says, ‘Guide us to the Straight Path, the path of those whom You have favoured, not the path of those who receive Your anger, nor of those who go

astray,’ Allaah says, ‘All these are for My slave, and My slave shall have what he asked for.’” (Saheeh Muslim, Kitaab alSalaah, Baab wujoob qiraa’at al-Faatihah fi kulli rak’ah). [Words in italics are the translation of the meaning of Soorat alFaatihah – Translator].

This is a great and important hadeeth. If everyone kept it in mind when he prays, he would attain immense khushoo’ and al-Faatihah would have a great impact on him. How could it be otherwise, when he feels that his Lord is addressing him and giving him what he is asking for?

This “conversation” with Allaah must be respected and accorded its proper value.

The Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “When any one of you stands to pray, he is conversing with his Lord, so let him pay attention to how he speaks to Him.” (al-Haakim, al-Mustadrak, 1/236; Saheeh al-Jaami’, 1538).

Varying the soorahs, aayaat, adhkaar and du’aa’s recited in prayer This makes the worshipper feel that he is encountering new meanings and moving between different topics mentioned in the aayaat and adhkaar. This is what a person misses out on if he only memorizes a few soorahs (especially the short ones) and adhkaar. Varying what one recites is the Sunnah and is more conducive to khushoo’.

If we study what the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah of upon him) used to recite in his prayer, we will see this variation. For example, with regard to the opening du’aa’, we find examples such as

>> SALAH II Pg 22

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

18 | FATAAWA

Fataawa

Why do we pray five times each day?

Question: I read in the Qur’aan that a man should pray three times: before sunrise, after sunset and in the middle of the day.

So why do we pray five times? I hope that you will not give me the story that 50,000 prayers were enjoined then it was reduced to five. I want a convincing answer.

-----------------------------------------------Answer: Praise be to Allaah.

1 – What is mentioned in the question about the number of prayers is mistaken.

It was 50 then it was altered to 5 prayers, a favour from the Lord of the Worlds to the Muslims.

2 – The rules of sharee’ah may be divided into two categories: those which may be understood on a rational basis; and those which are purely worship, the wisdom behind which is concealed from us and is not mentioned in either the Qur’aan or the Sunnah.

Examples of the first include: the prohibition on alcohol and gambling.

Allaah has told us the reason why they are forbidden, which is: “Shaytaan (Satan) wants only to excite enmity and hatred between you with intoxicants (alcoholic drinks) and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of Allaah and from As-Salaah (the prayer). So, will you not then abstain?” [al-Maa’idah 5:91] And there are other similar rulings.

Examples of the second kind include offering Zuhr prayer when the sun has passed its zenith, circumambulating the Ka’bah with it on one’s left (i.e., anticlockwise), the nisaab of gold being a quarter of ten percent; Maghrib prayer being three rak’ahs, and many other such rulings.

What is mentioned in the question falls into this second category, which is things for which we do not know the reason from the Qur’aan or Sunnah, so we have to

submit to the command of Allaah. This applies to all such rulings.

The Muslim has to accept the things for which Allaah has not explained the reason, and say as the believers say: “We hear and we obey.” He should not be like the Children of Israel who said: “We hear but we disobey.”

Accepting what Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): “He [Allaah] cannot be questioned as to what He does, while they will be questioned” [al-Anbiya’ 21:23] is better for the believer in his religious and worldly affairs, for he is a slave who has a Lord, and the slave has no right to ask his Lord why He enjoined something.

Rather he has to submit to His command.

If he tells us why, we should do it, and if He does not tell us why, we should still do it.

3 – In al-Mawsoo’ah al-Fiqhiyyah alKuwaitiyyah (1/49-51) there is a useful discussion which we will quote here: With regard to understanding the reasons why things have been prescribed, we may divide the issues of fiqh into two categories: 1 – Rulings whose wisdom may be understood on a rational basis, either because the reason is stated in the texts, or because it is easy to work out.

Such rulings are the majority of those that Allaah has prescribed, such as enjoining prayer, zakaah, fasting and Hajj in general, and such as enjoining the mahr (dowry) in marriage, ‘iddah (waiting period) following divorce or widowhood, spending on one’s wife, children and relatives, divorce when married life becomes unbearable, and many other such issues of fiqh.

2 – Ruling which are enjoined on us as a kind of pure worship. These are rulings in which the connection between the ruling and the action is not clear, such as the number of prayers, the number of

rak’ahs and most of the actions of Hajj.

By the mercy of Allaah, such rulings are few in relation to the rulings the wisdom behind which may be rationally understood. These rulings are prescribed as a test to demonstrate whether a person is a true believer. It should also be noted that sharee’ah – both general principles and minor details – does not prescribe anything that contradict common sense, but it may prescribe something the reason for which cannot be understood. There is a big difference between the two. If a person is rationally convinced that Allaah exists and that He is wise, and that He alone deserves to be acknowledged as Lord, and he is rationally convinced that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) is a true Prophet, then he affirms that Allaah is the Sovereign and the Lord, and that he is His slave. Then if he is commanded to do something or is forbidden to do something, and he then says, “I will not follow this ruling until I know the reason behind this command or prohibition,” then he has proven himself to be false in his claim to be a believer in Allaah and His Messenger. The human mind has a limit beyond which it cannot go.

The one who rebels against the rulings of Allaah that have to do with rituals is like a sick person who goes to a trustworthy doctor who prescribes various kinds of medicine for him, some to be taken before eating, some to be taken during the meal and some to be taken afterwards,

in various amounts, and he says to the doctor: I will not take your medicine until you explain to me the reason why this one should be taken before eating and this one afterwards, and this one during the meal, and why are they are varying amounts, some small and some big? Does this patient really trust his doctor? The same may be said of a person who claims to believe in Allaah and His Messenger, then he rebels against the rulings the wisdom behind which he does not understand.

The true believer, if he is commanded to something or forbidden to do something, says, “I hear and I obey,” especially when we have explained that there are no rulings that can be rejected on the basis of reason. Not knowing something does not indicate that it is not true. How many rulings are there, the reason for which has been concealed from us in the past, then we discovered that there is great wisdom behind them? The reason why pork is forbidden was unknown to many people, then we found out that it carries germs and disease and other bad things, and Allaah wanted to protect the Muslim society against them. The same may be said concerning the command to wash vessels that have been licked by a dog seven times, one of which should be with earth… and other rulings the wisdom behind which may be discovered one day even though it is hidden from us now.

And Allaah knows best.

-----------------------------------------------[Source: http://islam-qa.com/en/ ref/9603]

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

SALAH TIMES | 19

Salaah times for March 4th - March 17th , 2011

If a person had a stream outside his door and he bathed in it fi ve times a day, do you think he would have any fi lth left on him?”

The people said, “No filth would remain on him whatsoever.”

The Prophet (peace be upon him) then said, “That is like the fi ve daily prayers: Allah wipes away the sins by them.”

---Hadith in Sahih al Bukhari and Muslim

Day Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu

Date 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Hijri 29/3 30/3 1/4 2/4 3/4 4/4 5/4 6/4 7/4 8/4 9/4 10/4 11/4 12/4

Fajr 5:23 5:22 5:20 5:20 5:19 5:16 5:14 5:13 5:11 6:09 6:08 6:06 6:05 6:03

Sunrise 6:36 6:35 6:33 6:33 6:32 6:29 6:27 6:26 6:24 7:22 7:21 7:19 7:18 7:16

Dhuhr 12:20 12:20 12:20 12:20 12:20 12:19 12:19 12:19 12:18 1:18 1:18 1:18 1:17 1:17

Asr 3:34 3:34 3:35 3:35 3:36 3:37 3:37 3:38 3:38 4:39 4:39 4:40 4:40 4:41

Maghrib 6:04 6:05 6:06 6:06 6:07 6:09 6:10 6:11 6:12 7:13 7:14 7:15 7:16 7:17

Prayer times generated from www.islamicfinder.com for the WASHINGTON, DC area.

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Isha 7:18 7:19 7:20 7:20 7:21 7:23 7:24 7:25 7:26 8:27 8:28 8:29 8:30 8:31

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

20 | MASJID LOCATOR

MASJID LOCATOR ADAMS CENTER: 46903 Sugarland Rd, Sterling,VA 20164, Tel: 703-433-1325, www.adamscenter.org.

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March 4th - March 17th, 2011

OBITS & EVENTS | 21

Request For Dua’s

{ To Allah We B e l o n g , a n d t o H i m i s O u r R e t u r n }

“Everyone is going to taste death, and We shall make a trial of you with evil and good, and to Us you will be returned.” (Surah Al-Anbiya:35)”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2-17-11 Janaza Prayer was on February 18, 2011 in Washington, DC for Sister Margaret Ann Boddie. (Source: Masjid Muhammad) 2-24-11 The mother of Brother Ousmane Diouf passed away in Senegal early this week. May Allah(swt) give “sabr” patience to her family and bestowed his blessings and mercy on them ameen. Asking Allah(Swt) to forgive her sins and grant her Jannat al Firdaws and make her from the people of Yameen, Ameen.

(Source: ISG) TYRANNY

>> continued from pg 12 War, those in the imperial states who had made respectable the racial and cultural superiority of “western civilisation” found that Hitler and fascism had claimed the same, employing strikingly similar methods. Thereafter, the very notion of American imperialism was swept from the textbooks and popular culture of an imperial nation forged on the genocidal conquest of its native people. And a war on social justice and democracy became “US foreign policy”.

As the Washington historian William Blum has documented, since 1945, the US has destroyed or subverted more than 50 governments, many of them democracies, and used mass murderers such as Suharto, Mobutu and Pinochet to dominate by proxy. In the Middle East, America has sustained every dictatorship and pseudomonarchy. In “Operation Cyclone”, the CIA and MI6 secretly fostered and bankrolled Islamic extremism. The object was to smash or deter nationalism and democracy. Most of the victims of this western state terrorism have been Muslims. The people gunned down this past week in Bahrain and Libya - the latter a “priority market” for the UK, according to Britain’s official arms “procurers” - join those children blown to bits in Gaza by the latest US F-16 aircraft.

The revolt in the Arab world is against not merely a resident dictator, but a worldwide economic tyranny, designed by the US Treasury and imposed by the US Agency for International Development, the IMF and the World Bank, which have ensured

that rich countries such as Egypt are reduced to vast sweatshops, with 40 per cent of the population earning less than $2 a day. The people’s triumph in Cairo was the first blow against what Benito Mussolini called corporatism, a word that appears in his definition of fascism.

Enemy with a name How did such extremism take hold in the liberal west? “It is necessary to destroy hope, idealism, solidarity and concern for the poor and oppressed,” observed Noam Chomsky a generation ago, “[and] to replace these dangerous feelings by self-centred egoism, a pervasive cynicism that holds that [an order of] inequities and oppression is the best that can be achieved. In fact, a great international propaganda campaign is under way to convince people . . . that this not only is what they should feel but that it is what they do feel . . .”

Like the European revolutions of 1848 and the uprising against Stalinism in 1989, the Arab revolt has rejected fear.

An insurrection of suppressed ideas, hope and solidarity has begun.

In the US, where 45 per cent of young African Americans have no jobs and the top hedge-fund managers are paid $1bn a year on average, mass protests against cuts in services and jobs have spread to heartland states such as Wisconsin.

In Britain, the fastest-growing modern protest movement, UK Uncut, is taking direct action against tax avoiders and rapacious high-street banks. Something has changed that cannot be unchanged.

The enemy has a name now.

Upcoming Events In Your Area DC Mist Fundraising Dinner Saturday, March 05 2011, 6:30pm - 9:30pm If you are like the rest of us here at DC MIST and you can’t contain your excitement until the tournament in April, don’t worry! As a prelude to the tournament, we are proud to announce our annual Fundraising Dinner with Imam Zia. This is the chance to invest in the future of our community – our youth, and an exciting opportunity for us to Sow the Seeds of the Future. Seeds that will later, insha’Allah, grow into leaders, educators, public figures, social workers, and doctors who are devoted to their families and the community all the same. MIST strives to create an environment that fosters an Islamic awareness and identity while refining the next generation of active Muslim leaders eager to effect real Islamic change. The tournament may only last a weekend, but the experience lasts a lifetime. Get your tickets http://mistfundraiser2011.eventbrite.com/ Location: Masjid Dar al Taqwa; 10740 Route 108; Ellicott City, MD 21042 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------WhyIslam Dawah Workshop Sunday, March 06 2011, 10:00am - 4:00pm WhyIslam Dawah Workshop. As every year, spring is a time for WhyIslam team to get ready for its summer campaign.

During the summer time, WhyIslam DC participate in several local and county fairs and provide information about Islam. This workshop helps WhyIslam volunteers to learn effective way of providing information about Islam, how to answer common questions and how to avoid common pitfalls. Registration is $5 per person which includes lunch.

Sisters can join this program also. Go to http://icnadc.org/?page_id=278 to register online. Location: Fairfax County Sully Governmental Center, 4900 Stonecroft Boulevard, Chantilly, VA 20151 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dar Al-Hijrah Annual Fundraising Dinner Sunday, March 06 2011, 6:00pm - 10:00pm Dar Al-Hijrah Annual Fundraising Dinner. Speaker: Sh. Kefah Mostafa, Mosque Foundation-Chicago. Special Features: DAH Girls Youth, WIA Students, Girl Scouts. Entertainment: Ismaeil Al-Laady & Alaa Abul-Izz; One Truth Nasheed Group.

Free of Charge Children’s Entertainment, Ages 1-12. Tickets: $40/person, $70/couple. Umrah Raffle: 2 airline tickets will be drawn at the end of the program (Name will be drawn from the registration list, must be present at the end of the program). To sponsor a table or to advertise, email asra@mirzapr.com Buy tickets online @ www.daralhijrah.net.

Location: Mark Center Hilton; Alexandria, Virginia -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sixth Annual Central VA Quran Competition Saturday, March 12 2011, 9:30am - 2:00pm The Sixth Annual Central Virginia Quran Competition. The Central Virginia Quran Competition strives to foster and nurture through its events, an appreciation, love and enthusiasm for the Holy Quran in the hearts and minds of the children and youth in the Central Virginia and surrounding communities. Testing will be March 12, 2011.

Guest Speaker: Imam Safi Khan. The award ceremony will be held on March 19, 2011 from 1:30PM-5:30PM at the Islamic Center of Virginia. Halal Zabiha Meal will be served. Register online by March 8, 2011 www.cvqc.org.

Location: Islamic Center of Virginia; 1241 Buford Rd; Richmond, VA 23235 Contact: Phone : 804-638-9446 Web Site: www.cvqc.org Email: centralvaqcc@gmail.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------International Sisters Network: 15th Annual Fashion Show & Luncheon Sunday, March 13 2011 International Sisters Network presents it’s 15th Annual Sisters Only Fashion Show & Luncheon. “Treasures of the East”.

Where: Washington Navy Yard Catering & Conference Center; 1454 Parsons Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20374. Tickets: $50, $25 Children (Purchase tickets at www.internationalsisters.synthasite.com before Feb 20, 2011 for discount) The Event will start at 1:00 pm. Contact: For further information, call 240-606-6122 The Event will start at 1:00 pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------HELLO SALAAM & ADAMS Dinner-Networking Event Wednesday, March 16 2011, 6:00pm - 10:00pm HELLO SALAAM and ADAMS present a Business Dinner and Networking Event. Featured Presentation: “Innovative Management for Growing Your Business - A Guide for Every Company” by Robert Marro - Former Senior US Commercial Diplomat and Ali Naqvi. Welcome Address by Imam Mohamed Magid. A “MUST” event for anyone seeking to do - or increase - business with the Muslim Community. (Members of all Faiths are encouraged to attend). Cost: $40 (NGO’s $25) After March 14 - $50. For tickets and more information: www.AdamsCenter.org and www.hellosalaam.com. email is HelloAndSalaam@gmail.com and laherismail@gmail.com . Please call any of the following people if you experience any technical issues with the online registration process or if you want to register in person: Bob Marro 703-309-7626; Ismail Laher 703-244-8046; Abdul Rehman Latib 813-482-1437. This is a catered event and all attendees must register no later than March 14, 2011.

Location: ADAMS – All Dulles Area Muslim Society 46903 Sugarland Road Sterling, VA 20164 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ICNA Leadership Retreat Saturday, March 19 2011 ICNA Virginia will host an ICNA leadership retreat on the weekend of March 19-20 in a hotel in Northern Virginia. More than 75 participants, including regional and unit presidents, NeighborNet coordinators and other office bearers from East coast will join this program to enhance their leadership skills and discuss new ways to improve ICNA’s work in their areas. To find more about ICNA’s national activities and to sign up for our Newsletter delivered to more than 50,000 households in the US, please visit our national website www.icna.org

March 4th - March 17th, 2011

22 | Editor-in-Chief: Minhaj Hasan Office Manager: Stephanie Benmoha News Desk: Rashad Mulla Layout & Design: Fadlullah Firman Staff Writers: Farkhunda Ali Farha Marfani Rashad Mulla Yaman Shalabi Sharia Advisors: Sheikh Salah as-Sawi Imam Safi Khan The Muslim Link (TML) is published every other week on Fridays and distributed throughout the Washington, Baltimore, and Northern Virginia Metropolitan Areas. TML is a non-profit publication and is based at Dar-us-Salaam in College Park, Maryland, USA. Staff and contributors are not necessarily affiliated with Dar-us-Salaam.

The views expressed in The Muslim Link do not necessarily reflect those of Dar-us-Salaam or TML management or their underwriters. Dar-usSalaam and TML are not responsible for the accuracy of information presented by advertisers, or for the religious compliance of events, products, or services published in TML. This publication contains the names of ALLAH (Subhanahu wa ta’ala). Please keep, recycle, or share it with others The Muslim Link 5301 Edgewood Road College Park, MD 20740 Phone : (301) 982-1020 Fax: 240-209-0702 editor@muslimlinkpaper.com Advertising: 301-982-1020 or email us at ads@muslimlinkpaper.com The Muslim Link.

All Rights Reserved 2011

SALAH II

>> continued from pg 17 the following: “Allaahumma baa’id bayni wa bayna khataayaaya kamaa baa’adta bayn almashriqi wa’l-maghrib. Allaahumma naqqani min khataayaaya kamaa yunaqqaa al-thawb al-abyad min al-danas.

Allaahumma’ghsilni min khataayaaya bi’l-maa’ wa’l-thalj wa’l-barad (O Allaah, separate me (far) from my sins as You have separated (far) the East from the West. O Allaah, cleanse me of my sins as white cloth is cleansed from dirt. O Allaah, wash me of my sins with water, REPRESSIVE III

>> continued from pg 14 it comes to Tunisia, Mokhtar Trifi, the president of the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH), says.

snow and ice).”

“Wajahtu wajhi li’lladhi fatara alsamawaati wa’l-ard haneefan, wa maa ana min al-mushrikeen. Inna salaati wa nusuki wa mahyaaya wa mamaati Lillaahi Rabb il –‘aalameen, laa shareeka lahu wa bidhaalika umirtu wa ana awwal almuslimeen (I have set my face towards the Originator of the heavens and the earth sincerely and I am not among the mushrikeen. Indeed my prayer, my sacrifice, my living and my dying are for Allaah, the Lord of the Worlds: no partner has He. With this I have been commanded, and I am the first of the Muslims (those who submit to Him).” and immigration, Western countries have damaged their own interests. Whether it is the French, the Americans or the British, he argues that the preoccupation with Islamists and terrorism has undermined Western intelligence services’ ability to understand political and social dynamics in the region.

“The European Parliament and European governments were silent, and many of them were complicit. We never stopped drawing attention to the dictatorship. ‘Tunisia is good because Ben Ali was fighting terrorism and clandestine immigration.’

That was the argument [from Western governments],” Trifi says.

“If one got rid of the intelligence services, and just listened to Twitter or Facebook, we have more of an idea what’s going on.”

Jean-Philippe Chauzy, a spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which works with governments to manage international migration flows, says that Gaddafi’s threats to open the floodgates has succeeded in worrying European governments. Yet he notes that in recent days, Europeans have been facing up to the reality of the role that migration has played in relations with Libya.

“The West, as a whole, has been wrong footed. I think it’s desperately trying to play catch-up. We could be paying a very high price for the strategy of the West towards these countries,” Keenan says.

“I think there’s recognition, in Italy at least, that realpolitik really dictated Italy’s relationship with Libya,” Chauzy says.

In the wake of the regime changes in North Africa, combined with the rise in unemployment in Europe, he says that policymakers are likely to consider a new approach to migration management.

Ideally, Chauzy would like it to be one that focuses more on tackling the socioeconomic factors at the root of migration and relies less on policing the seas.

Keenan says that by focusing on terrorism

Oil supplies from Libya are already being disrupted. The same could happen in Algeria if serious unrest were to spread, he notes.

Scrambling As North Africans progressively overcome the fear factor that, until recent weeks, kept them from voicing their discontent too loudly, Western leaders are scrambling to build relationships with civil society after years of downplaying such ties at the bequest of the region’s all-powerful leaders.

Yet members of the Tunisian Democratic Women’s Association are unlikely to forget that Rama Yade, as France’s secretary of human rights, cancelled her meeting with them for unexplained reasons during her visit to Tunisia in 2008. Nor will Trifi forget the fact that France’s last ambassador shunned the Tunisian Human Rights League, never once paying a visit.

“Subhaanak Allaahumma wa bi hamdika wa tabaaraka ismuka wa ta’aala jadduka wa laa ilaaha ghayruk (Glory and praise be to You, O Allaah, blessed be Your name and exalted be Your majesty. There is no god besides You).”

And other du’aa’s and adhkaar which the worshipper can use at various times.

[Source: Excerpts from “33 Ways of developing Khushoo’ in Salaah” by Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid, available at http://islam-qa.com/en/ref/ books/21 ]

Pro-democracy opposition parties such as Algeria’s Socialist Forces Front (FFS) are commonly called upon by Western diplomats and politicians behind closed doors, but rarely do private expressions of concern for trampled political rights translate into public support.

Likewise, the diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Tunis leaked by WikiLeaks revealed that though the US authorities understood the nature of Ben Ali’s regime, they chose to stay silent.

For Abed Charef, an Algerian writer and journalist, North African countries would be more democratic if Western countries stopped interfering.

“People aspire to freedom, and they haven’t been able to enjoy that freedom, partly thanks to the support of Western countries,” Charef says. “In Algeria, we are suffocated by a political system that stifles economic growth, that stifles political opposition, that stifles everything.” “[Western countries] act out of their own interest, they support anti-democratic leaders, they support corruption. That isn’t help, it’s been destroying us.”

Source: Al Jazeera

----------------------------------------------In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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Restaurant Review

Cuisines: Middle Eastern | Address: 3493 Laurel Fort Meade Rd, Laurel, MD 20724 | Phone: 301-498-3200 | Hours: Monday-Sunday: 11:00am - 10:00pm

By Fatimah Steffanoff

Muslim Link Restaraunt Reviewer

TML SAYS: ‘Gourmet Shish Kebab’ is good for: Selection Quality

Venue

Gourmet Shish Kebab has a modest exterior but once inside you will find that there is ample seating for easy availability most any time of the day and adequate for smaller sized gatherings if you wanted to plan an event inside. There is plenty of parking in their onsite parking lot which is readily accessible immediately off of 198/Fort Meade Road between 295 and Route 1. The interior of Gourmet Shish Kebab is decorated in Mediterranean touches of various artifacts, curtains, rugs, and pictures, to include what appears to be the interior of a formal tent, draped in curtains for a feel of being someplace far from Laurel.

New on the menu one item TML ordered is the Lamb Chop platter which comes with basmati rice, fresh made naan bread, and a green salad. The chops are tipped with foil, and cut into large portions, satisfying to anyone, likely to have left overs. If you choose to order the Lamb Chops, expect to wait for 15 minutes as they are prepared to order….and so worth the wait! When ordering its up to you if you want them prepared spicy or not, and the seasoning is a fantastic blend of savory

seasonings done to tender perfection so that it pulls right off the bone, then melts in your mouth. These great chops are deserving of fine China but you will get these in the casual setting Mediterranean on Styrofoam plates just like every dish served at Gourmet Shish Kebab. You would expect to pay more than the $15.95 which they charge for this platter.

Additionally, Gourmet Shish Kebab lives up to all kebab expectations with their chicken kebab, served with rice or fresh naan and two vegetable curry sides.

Your choices include curried cabbage, eggplant, spinach, chick peas and more depending on the day. TML ordered a side of Tabulah for a fresh vegetable side as well. The Tabulah was served with Kalamata olives and a slice of lemon for you to add to taste, and it was very fresh, still crispy not soggy. Gourmet Shish Kebab has a great variety of kebab meat choices, there are three options for chicken including spicy or peppered.

These are grilled to order over flames you can see from the ordering counter, and the marinades releases the delicate flavor blends with each bite. TML got the spicy chicken kebab and was pleased with how truly spicy it was, not overpowering but truly spicy. Both the curries were great flavors, but not the same, so it was enjoyable to have two actually different curries on the side, and the warm naan bread was a perfect compliment. Mango Lassi is on the beverage menu, along with tea, coffee and standard cans of soda.

New on the menu is the Lamb Chop platter which comes with basmati rice, fresh made naan bread, and a green salad.

Gourmet Shish Kebab is a clean, welcoming space, with friendly people behind the counter and quick service.

The food tastes great, is clearly made of all fresh ingredients and prep time is reasonable for either take out or dining in.

Be sure to enjoy their freshly made naan

and maybe one of their great desserts to finish a fantastic meal, of large portions at reasonable prices. It’s so good to have this option in the Laurel area but worth driving a long distance for this quality of food.

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30 | MP - Advertisements

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Classified Ads | 31

Place a personal classified ad. Call us at 301-982-1020 We invite you to place a classified on the web FREE of charge at www.muslimlinkpaper.com. Classifieds in the print edition of the Muslim Link newspaper are only $1 for every 3 words. All classifieds run for 3 issues in the Marketplace section. Get started by emailing your exact text to office@muslimlinkpaper.com and then call in your credit card payment to 301-982-1020 or send a check or money order payable to: The Muslim Link, 5301 Edgewood Rd, College Park MD 20740.

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����������������� ���������������������� Every Muslim has read

tight. I’ve tried lotions and shampoos from Aveeno, Lubiderm, Vaseline, and others.

Alhumdulillah, I found Honeyderm’s Dermatonic-P, and it is really, really a blessing for people with Eczema or other skin illnesses. I no longer wake up sweating at night! Allahu-Akbar!.”

Its no wonder that scientists are spending more and more resources examining, testing, and developing honey-based medical treatments. As early as December 26, 2007, the Associated Press ran a story titled “Honey makes medical comeback”.

We called Abdurihman Khalil from Chicago. He did not know we were going to call. Abdurihman started losing his hair when he was about 28. He discovered the Hairback product line at a convention and decided to test its claims. “The hair loss stopped completely,” said Abdurihman.

“It’s excellent, and I’ve been using it now for 6 years as my normal shampoo ... I recommend it to my friends and family always.”

that the Prophet Sallallahu ‘alyhi wa sallam told his ummah about the wonderful nature of honey. In the Qur’an in Surah An-Nahl, Allah described honey as a “drink of varying color wherein is healing for men”.

One company that has believed in the restorative power of honey for a long time is HoneyDerm, Inc., a Lansing, Michigan based company that spent years bringing the healing power of honey to people suffering from hair loss, dandruff, and skin disease.

Their most famous product line is Hairback Lotion and Hairtonix Shampoo, that “helps stimulate new hair growth and thicken existing hair”. Honeyderm, Inc also claims the products solve dandruff and scalp psoriasis.

The Muslim Link requested access to some of Honeyderm’s customers, and Brother Mahmoud from Honeyderm gladly offered us some phone numbers.

Brother Hasan, in his late 30’s is from Maryland and suffers from the common skin disease eczema. “I’ve had eczema since high school, and it got worse as the years went on. I went to a dermatologist and he recommended a cortisone-type prescription cream. It did stop the itch, but my skin was still dry and

We also called Brother Mustafa Al-Omary in Sterling Heights, Michigan. He decided to do something about his thinning hair at age 40 and tried the Hairback treatment. Asked how long it took for him to see results, he told us “Oh gosh, less than a month. My thin spots filled in within 3 months,.” He said he would “absolutely” recommend the product to anyone. “It’s not a fly-by-night product, its awesome,” said Mustafa.

We also called Najeebudheen Appat, a 30year old living in Los Angeles, CA. He’s had a severe dandruff problem for a longtime, and had been searching for a solution.

“I tried so many different products like tonics and shampoos, I can’t even remember them all, until I found this product around 2002. My problem was solved completely, the entire thing is taken care

“Alhumdulillah, I found Honeyderm’s

Dermatonic-P, and it is really, really a blessing for people with Eczema or other skin illnesses.

I no longer wake up sweating at night!

Allahu-Akbar!.” -- Br.Hasan, Maryland of. I even called [Honeyderm] with the great feedback,” recalled Najeebudheen.

He told us that Allah creates shifa in many things, and Honeyderm’s products are a part of that. “For dandruff problems, this is the total solution,” he told us from his mobile phone.

On Honeyderm’s website, there are many more testimonials from Muslims and nonMuslims from around the nation and the world. There is also a gallery of “before and after” pictures of both hair loss treatments as well as skin treatments. And best of all, for those of us who’ve “tried it all”, there is a full money back guarantee.

BEFORE

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER

Allah said honey heals. The Prophet Sallallahu’alyhi wa sallam said honey heals. The people we called said honey heals. With a money back guarantee, there is absolutely nothing to lose, and everything to gain – your hair and skin!

These are actual photos of Honeyderm customers. Many more pictures available at www.honeyderm.com

BEFORE

AFTER

Honey-Based Healing for:

Hair Loss, Hair growth, Itching, dandruff, and Scalp Psoriasis.

Acne, Wrinkles, Psoriasis, Eczema, Dermatitis, and Rosacea.

Plus Supplements for Diabetics, Immunity, and Liver Health.

Order Risk Free Today by calling (800) 424 - 7710 or buy online at www.honeyderm.com MONEY BACK GUARANTEE

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