Archive for Clash of Civilizations

The Status of Saudi Women is Improving but Slowly

October 13, 2009 at 7:37 am · Filed under Clash of Civilizations, Islam ·Tagged ,

In Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, women normally adhere to a strict dress code in public — a black cloak called an abaya, a headscarf and a veil, the niqab, which covers everything but their eyes.

There are some establishments, however, now in Saudi Arabia where men and women are working side by side. The sight unnerves enough men who come looking for a job in such places. Some men go into a state of shock to see a woman in a position of authority and to have to ask her for a job.

Saudi men may have to start getting used to such situations. Global investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud is taking a lead in this respect.

ClipSaudi women, however, still can’t drive and legally can’t even leave the house to shop, let alone get a job, without a male family member’s permission.

Yet under the guidance of a few members of the Saudi royal family — in particular the current King, Abdullah — the kingdom is slowly changing.

Mixed-gender workplaces are becoming more common, especially in banks and good hospitals, where female doctors are not unusual. “People used to say, ‘Why is she working? Why does she need the money?’ Now they say, ‘It takes a woman to solve a problem,’” says an administrator at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh.

The government is expanding educational opportunities for women by building women’s universities (as opposed to segregated campuses at male-dominated universities); last month it even launched the kingdom’s first coeducational university.

The state is trying to encourage women’s entry into the workforce, and is sponsoring initiatives to protect women and children from domestic abuse.

And it is pushing Saudis to discuss the notion of empowerment, formerly such a taboo subject that even the word was off-limits in newspapers. “The message is that women are coming,” says Dr. Maha Almuneef, one of six women named earlier this year to the Shura council, a 156-person advisory body appointed by the King. “It’s a good first step. The King and the political system are saying that the time has come. There are small steps now. There are giant steps coming.

But most Saudis have been taught the traditional ways. You can’t just change the social order all at once.” For the country’s feminist and human-rights activists, and the many others who would like more freedom, the pace of change remains painfully slow.

Why, they wonder, doesn’t the King snap his fingers and remove some of the more obviously absurd obstacles to equality? For all the publicity about the new female members of the Shura Council, for instance, they still don’t have the voting rights of their male colleagues. “This is tokenism, it’s insulting,” says Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi, a columnist and assistant professor of women’s history at King Saud University. “We are asking for full participation. All the doors that are closed for women should be open.”

Given government restrictions on the right to assemble and discuss political issues even in private homes, al-Fassi says it’s impossible to know just how many Saudi women want change. “It’s an exaggeration to call it a women’s movement. But we are proud to say that something is going on in Saudi Arabia. We are not really free, but it is possible for women to express themselves as never before.”

Change, and Its Limits

Saudi Arabia’s western allies have been pushing it to reform its social and political arrangements since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia, where a conservative version of Islam, high unemployment, limited democratic rights and archaic attitudes to women fed a mood of unchecked radicalism among some young men.

In February 2009, Abdullah announced a sweeping reshuffle of posts in government to remove some of the more old-style figures, including a top judge who once ruled it would be legal to kill the owners of a television station that broadcast “immorality.”

Abdullah installed an Education Minister charged with ensuring that schools emphasize Islam’s tradition of tolerance, and a woman, Norah al-Faiz, to be Deputy Minister in charge of girls’ education, the first time a woman has held a Cabinet-level post.

Though al-Faiz is well known and admired, her appointment also reveals the limits to the changes under way in Saudi Arabia. Al-Faiz meets with her male colleagues only by videophone, asks her minister for permission to appear on television, declines to be photographed and vented her frustration to the press when what appeared to be an old passport-style photograph of her (without a niqab) appeared on the Internet.

Al-Faiz says that she brings no special mandate beyond improving education for girls. “I don’t like quick action,” she says. “I’ll have to decide where the needs are and to rank them. I believe in teamwork.” Al-Faiz’s caution is understandable.

She’s being watched by the whole country. “The pressure is huge, not to make a mistake,” says Dr. Hanan al-Ahmady, a friend of al-Faiz, and her successor as head of the women’s department at the Institute of Public Administration, a government school for civil servants. “You have to prove you are not giving away your religious principles. You have to prove that participating in public affairs and taking leadership positions doesn’t jeopardize Islamic values and Saudi identity.”

barage3

Leave a Comment

Marriage Becoming Less Attractive

October 3, 2009 at 6:08 pm · Filed under Clash of Civilizations ·Tagged

Conventional wisdom says that if you want to be richer, a useful thing to do is get married.

Life is cheaper when there’s only one mortgage to pay and someone else can do certain tasks — cooking, or car repair — more efficiently than you.

Research by Ohio State University shows that married baby boomers increase their wealth an average 16% a year, while those who are single increase their net worth at half that rate.

Yet the economic benefit of marriage isn’t what it used to be. In a chapter of a book newly out from the Russell Sage Foundation, Changing Poverty, Changing Policies, two social scientists show that the marriage premium has subsided since 1969.

Maria Cancian, a professor of public affairs and social work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Deborah Reed, director of research at Mathematica Policy Research, set out to study how the changing makeup of American families has affected the number of people below the poverty line.

Considering how the rate of marriage has fallen and the rate of divorce has risen, the researchers expected the number of people living below the poverty line to grow 2.6%. But when they looked at the data, poverty had increased by less than half that amount. 

Why? In a nutshell, because single women, even those with kids, have an easier time supporting themselves outside marriage than they used to. More women are working, increasingly for wages that are competitive with those of men. Women are having children later in life, and fewer of them.

On top of that, a growing percentage of women who have children but aren’t married don’t live on their own. In 1970, 62% of single mothers were the only adult in their household, but by 2006, just 55% were living without another means of support — thanks to more women cohabitating with a male partner or grandparent. 

 Now, that’s not to say marriage doesn’t coincide with significant economic benefits. As research illustrates, it does. A child in a single-parent family, for instance, is five times as likely to live below the poverty line. What Cancian and Reed try to illustrate, though, is that replicating marriage wouldn’t necessarily generate more per-person wealth.

“There are reasons some people don’t get married — they don’t have the same options,” says Cancian. Marrying someone who is chronically unemployed —or incarcerated — might very well not be an economic step up.

A better policy response, the researchers hold, is to address the variable that has partly been holding poverty at bay the past few decades: women in the workforce.

Policies designed to make it easier for a person to have a job while rearing a child — flexible work schedules, on-site day care — could be a way to let unmarried individuals recapture some of the advantage of marriage. The issue is hardly fringe: last year, some 40% of children were born outside of marriage.

We have to build a system where people can be both good workers and good parents.

Leave a Comment

Dilemma of Balancing Exercise with Islamic Modesty Codes

September 7, 2009 at 12:10 pm · Filed under Clash of Civilizations, Islam ·Tagged , ,

The first time I went jogging in Tehran, I nearly hyperventilated after four blocks, despite wearing the gauziest of head scarves and a decidedly immodest Nike capris. The fabric covering my ears and neck stoked my body temperature unbearably, and the pleasurable strain of running gave way to acute discomfort. “How am I going to stay fit here?” I wailed to my Iranian girlfriends, experts in the dilemma of balancing exercise with Islamic modesty codes. They offered me a rich store of advice, from head scarves with ear slits to calibrating outdoor exercise with the seasons to where to find women’s only gyms.

Clip_7For the pious Muslim woman, one of the greatest challenges of modern life is how to get a health-conscious work-out. In Iran, of course, the state mandates Islamic dress, so secular and faithful women alike must contend with religious codes that interfere with exercise. But the problem persists for individual Muslim women throughout the Islamic world and the West. It grabbed headlines recently week when a Paris swimming pool refused entry to a young Muslim woman wearing a “burqini,” a swim garment resembling a diving suit. In France the incident falls into a wider political debate over how to reconcile the country’s Muslim immigrants to French secular values. And while the number of Muslim women in France — indeed throughout the world — who insist on such a severe covering as the burqa is small, the challenge of staying slim and Islamically proper is not.

So what is the faithful but health-conscious Muslim woman to do? There are many schools of thought addressing this practical problem, and often the answer boils down to comfort versus one’s attachment to a particular sport.

I am a runner by nature, keenly attached to the mind-slowing demands of setting pace and the sensation of my feet first thudding and then gliding over pavement. But my discomfort threshold is ridiculously low, and while living in Iran I gave up running in favor of hiking (in mountainous seclusion, no one frets if you tie a bandana over your hair instead of a proper veil). During snowy Tehran winters, I pushed myself to go skiing, since modesty ceases to be an issue when you’re bundled in a ski-suit and hat. I did more yoga than I was accustomed to, since the Iranian middle-class is obsessed with yoga and classes are more ubiquitous than mosques in many neighborhoods.

Many Muslim women are more devoted to their favorite form of exercise. If they are runners they must run, if they are swimmers they must swim. For these women, there are only two answers: a clever outfit that breathes, or sequestration in a same-sex exercise facility. The athletic veil, know as the “hijood,” is made from high-tech fabric that’s meant to wick sweat off the skin, and debuted when the Bahraini sprinter Rogaya Al Ghasara wore it while competing at the 2008 Olympics.

While it takes a certain steely piety to wear the hijood — its slick ninja-esque style might be too assertively Muslim for some — the relative ease of sweating or swimming in something other than heavy cotton is pretty unbeatable.

In certain situations, even the burqini might prove indispensable. A decade ago, when I regularly frequented Wild Wadi, Dubai’s vast waterpark, mothers in sopping wet clothes gamely accompanied their children down spiralling slides and endless rivers. They must have been miserable to no end, but put up with it rather than refuse their kids the thrill of water rides.

For pious moms on beach holidays with families — when women-only beaches or hours at waterparks are useless, since older boy children and dads must be left behind — the burqini is useful, not the joke it seems sometimes in the West.

For some Muslim women, though, gender- segregated exercise is the preferred and discrete option. When you’ve grown up in a culture where men and women relate prudishly, not even a Coolmax barrier of high-tech lycra is going to put you at ease panting alongside men in a co-ed exercise class. Women’s-only gyms, or gyms with women’s-only hours or rooms, dot the whole of the Islamic world. Even in the United States, the idea that women are more relaxed exercising without men’s eyes on them has led to a preponderance of secular, women-only chains like Curves and Linda Evans Fitness. This non-religious attitude toward gender-segregated exercise neatly sets immigration politics aside, and has created a way for Americans from Muslims countries to retain their piety without seeming to embrace separation. I have fond memories of following my mother around her local Linda Evans center in California, watching Pakistani matrons and white soccer moms chat and stride energetically on long rows of treadmills.

For the fitness-minded faithful, the terrain varies dramatically from one country and region to another. But with some determination, it remains entirely possible for Muslim women — from the gently shy to the severely pious — to stay in shape while respecting their faith’s modesty etiquette.

Comments (1)

PEPSI: Pay Every Penny Saving to Israel

June 30, 2009 at 12:31 pm · Filed under Clash of Civilizations ·Tagged , , ,

  http://islameyat.com/video_player.php?id=2756&

Clip_42

Leave a Comment

Gaddafi Eyeing Italian Women

June 14, 2009 at 10:46 am · Filed under Clash of Civilizations ·Tagged ,

 He came as the self-styled “emancipator of women”, the world’s longest-serving leader who makes much of his all-female bodyguard squad and favourable views towards the opposite sex. 

But to hundreds of baffled Italian women gathered for a rare audience with Muammar Gaddafi, if this was the king of women’s rights then the movement still has a long way to go.

Gaddafi’s request to meet 1,000 prominent Italian women on his landmark trip to Italy in June 2009 has generated scepticism and amusement in equal measure. In Berlusconi’s Italy, an all-female guest list has taken on a certain connotation.

But this wasn’t a crowd from a party villa. An exotic assemblage filed in. There were leading figures from politics, culture and industry, ministers posed for cameras, lawyers talked earnestly in their seats and Reality TV personalities blew kisses across the aisles.

Arriving on stage in flowing robes, Gaddafi assumed his seat and placed copies of his little green book in front of him. Mara Cafagna, a former topless model turned minister of equal opportunities kicked things off by describing the event as an “important day for relations between Italy and Libya“. Cafagna, who once described her experiences as Miss Italy as “a competition that makes you as a woman”, admirably espoused her new role as a figurehead of women’s rights, addressing female mutilation and domestic violence and saying how much she hoped Gaddafi’s presence would present “a strong clear message against the abuse of women”.

Gaddafi drummed his figures on the table, lounged back in his large leather chair and perused his little green book, occasionally beckoning one of his female bodyguards, who shuffled back and forth with drinks and boxes of tissues. “I am curious to see, to understand his point of view,” said Maria Gabriella, from Rome, “but with all these women working for him as semi slaves it seems a bit of a contradiction to call himself a liberator of women.”

On stage, Luisa Todini, an entrepreneur, said: “It might be easy to ask wonder why you have made this exclusive request to meet hundreds of Italian women.” With gravelly tones, Gaddafi responded by describing the various philosophical positions that have historically elevated men as superior.

“Not my philosophy,” he was quick to add.

But the colonel’s philosophy was about as elusive as an oasis in a Libyan desert. “There is no difference between men and women on a human level,” he exclaimed. “God made men and women, we must respect the differences between the sexes.”

Then it all went a bit wrong.Using a peculiar example of a steam train driver, Gaddafi called for “two systems” in the professional forum; “one suitable for men, the other for women”. Even the interpreter seemed a little bemused. He could be seen suppressing a few smiles and at one point made a gesture by tapping the side of his head.

With growing murmurs in the auditorium and a few noisy exits, Gaddafi tried to regain some credibility by denouncing the treatment of women in Arabic and Islamic societies.

“Why should these women have to apply to the head of state for the right to drive a car?” he asked. The audience applauded politely, but swiftly laughed incredulously as he went on to add that this was a matter for “their husbands or brothers should d ecide”. Boos and hisses filled the auditorium; there were whispers in ears and Gaddafi wrapped up quickly, welcoming all the foregathered to Libya “whenever we wished”.

Exeunt, in confusion. “I’m not sure I’ll take anything away from today,” said Vera, 23, from Rome. “It was out of this world,” said Luisa, who did not give her last name. “He really is on a different planet.”

Leave a Comment

$632 billion— Annual Halal Food Market

May 19, 2009 at 6:26 pm · Filed under Clash of Civilizations, Islam, Religion ·Tagged , ,

Clip_25Khalfan Mohammed has long been buffeted by culture shock while staying in five-star hotels. As a devout Muslim he has learned to ask staff to remove the minibar’s alcohol. He loathes lobbies with loud discos and drunken guests. When traveling with his parents, it is the bikinis that rankle most. “It was quite shocking for my mother to sit in a restaurant with undressed people,” the Abu Dhabi-based businessman says. “My mom and dad are not used to seeing people in public wearing their underwear.” To avoid such embarrassment, the Mohammeds took to renting furnished apartments.

No longer. On a trip to Dubai last year, Mohammed stayed in the Villa Rotana, one of a growing number of hotels catering to Muslim travelers. In the lobby — all white leather, brick and glass, with a small waterfall — quiet reigns. Men in dishdashas and veiled women glide by Westerners who are sometimes discreetly reminded to respect local customs. Minibars are stocked not with alcohol, but with Red Bull, Pepsi and the malt drink Barbican.

image001Time was, buying Muslim meant avoiding pork and alcohol and getting your meat from a halal butcher, who slaughtered in accordance with Islamic principles. But the halal food market has exploded in the past decade and is now worth an estimated $632 billion annually, according to the Halal Journal, a Kuala Lumpur-based magazine. That’s about 16% of the entire global food industry. Throw in the fast-growing Islam-friendly finance sector and the myriad other products and services — cosmetics, real estate, hotels, fashion, insurance — that comply with Islamic law and the teachings of the Koran, and the sector is worth well over $1 trillion a year.

One reason for the rise of the halal economy is that the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are younger and, in some places at least, richer than ever. Seeking to tap that huge market, non-Muslim multinationals like Tesco, McDonald’s and Nestlé have expanded their Muslim-friendly offerings and now control an estimated 90% of the global halal market.

At the same time, governments in Asia and the Middle East are pouring millions into efforts to become regional “halal hubs,” providing tailor-made manufacturing centers and “halal logistics” — systems to maintain product purity during shipping and storage. The increased competition is changing manufacturing and supply chains in some unusual places. Most of Saudi Arabia’s chicken is raised in Brazil, which means Brazilian suppliers have built elaborate halal slaughtering facilities. Abattoirs in New Zealand, the world’s biggest exporter of halal lamb, have hosted delegations from Iran and Malaysia. And the Netherlands, keen to maximize Rotterdam’s role as Europe’s biggest port, has built halal warehouses so that imported halal goods aren’t stored next to pork or alcohol.

Such arrangements cost, of course, but since the industry’s anchor is food, business is booming, even in the economic crisis. “What downturn?” asks executive director of the Halal Journal. “You don’t need your Gucci handbag, but you do need your hamburger.”

Not just hamburgers. Drug companies such as the U.K.’s Principle Healthcare and Canada’s Duchesnay now sell halal vitamins free of the gelatins and other animal derivatives that some Islamic scholars say make mainstream products haram, or unlawful. The Malaysia-based company Granulab produces synthetic bone graft material to avoid using animal bone, while Malaysian and Cuban scientists are collaborating on a halal meningitis vaccine.

In the Gulf, the Burooj real estate company is carving out a niche, not just because it deals exclusively with Islamic banks, but because it designs spas and swimming pools that segregate the sexes. For Muslim women concerned about skin-care products containing alcohol or lipsticks that use animal fats, a few cosmetics firms are creating halal makeup lines.

The burgeoning Islamic finance industry is using the global economic crisis to win new non-Muslim customers. Investors are attracted by Islamic banking’s more conservative approach: Islamic law forbids banks from charging interest (though customers pay fees) and many scholars discourage investment in excessively leveraged companies. Though it currently accounts for just 1% of the global market, the Islamic finance industry’s value is growing at around 15% a year, and could reach $4 trillion in five years, up from $500 billion today, according to a 2008 report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Those who define the halal market in the traditional sense — as a matter of meat, and no more — see the industry stopping at Islamic food standards. But the movement’s more bullish advocates envisage Muslim cars and halal furniture built in accordance with Muslim finance, labor and ethical principles. Citing the kosher and organic industries as successful examples of doing well by doing good, some entrepreneurs even see halal products moving into the mainstream and appealing to consumers looking for high-quality, ethical products. A few firms that comply with the Shari’a code — the religious laws that observant Muslims follow — point out that already many of their customers are non-Muslim. At the Jawhara Hotels, an alcohol-free Arabian Gulf chain run by the Islam-compliant Al Lotah conglomerate, 60% of the clientele are non-Muslims, drawn by the hotels’ serenity and family-friendly atmosphere. Dutch-based company Marhaba, which sells cookies and chocolate, says a quarter of its customers are non-Muslims, mostly people concerned not about religious edicts but about food safety. “People are always looking for the next purity thing,” says Mah Hussain-Gambles, founder of Saaf Pure Skincare, which markets halal makeup.

Going Mainstream
Today, though, the big business is in working out how to serve the increasingly sophisticated Muslim consumer. “The question now for companies is: What products and services are you going to provide to help Muslims lead the lifestyle they want to lead?” asks the Halal Journal’s Abdullah. It’s a code worth cracking. A 2007 report from the global ad agency JWT describes the Muslim market thus: “It’s young, it’s big, and it’s getting bigger.” Parts of it are well-educated and wealthy. The buying power of American Muslims alone is estimated at a hefty $170 billion annually. But with few exceptions, American marketers ignore them, says  JWT. “Muslims don’t feel that brands are speaking to them,” she says. “When we did the study, it was very difficult to find mainstream companies that were making significant programs geared toward the Muslim population.”

That’s less of a problem elsewhere. Indeed, the most innovative new halal products and services often come out of Europe and Southeast Asia, places where your average food supplier or bank may know little, if anything, about halal. In Europe — the biggest growth region according to the Halal Journal — young devout Muslims are hungry for Islamic versions of mainstream pleasures such as fast food. “The second- and third-generation Muslims are fed up with having rice and lentils every day,” observes CEO of the Malaysia-based International Halal Integrity Alliance. “They’re saying, ‘We want pizzas, we want Big Macs.’ ” Domino’s now sources halal pepperoni from a Malaysian company for the pizzas it sells from Kuala Lumpur to Birmingham; KFC is testing halal-only stores in Muslim areas of the U.K., and the Subway sandwich chain has halal franchises across Britain and Ireland.

Swiss food giant Nestlé is a pioneer in the field. It set up its halal committee way back in the 1980s, and has long had facilities to keep its halal and non-halal products separated. Turnover in halal products was $3.6 billion last year, and 75 of the company’s 456 factories are geared for halal production.

For non-food companies like South Korea’s LG and Finnish cell-phone giant Nokia, targeting Muslims is also big business. LG offers an application to help users find the direction of Mecca, while Nokia has free downloadable recitations from the Koran and maps showing the locations of major mosques in the Middle East. Such offerings increase brand loyalty, according to market research by the Finland-based Muslim lifestyle portal Muxlim.com. “There’s a lot of room out there for mainstream brands to appeal to Muslims without making changes to their products,” says Muxlim.com’s CEO. “It’s just about their marketing messages, about showing that this brand is interested in them as consumers.”

It’s also about understanding the nuances. The hypermarket run by French supermarket giant Carrefour at the Mid Valley Megamall in Kuala Lumpur is overwhelmingly halal, with an elaborate system to keep halal foods separate from the haram ones. Goods that divide scholars on whether they’re halal or haram because they could have trace elements of wine — Balsamic vinegar, say, or Kikkoman Marinade — get slapped with little green stickers to alert customers. More blatantly haram items are confined to La Cave, a glassed-in room at the back of the store for goods containing alcohol, pork or tobacco. Wearing special blue gloves, La Cave’s staff handle haram goods and seal them in airtight pink plastic wrapping after purchase, so as not to contaminate the main store. “I’m so scared,” said a 23-year-old regular Carrefour shopper in a grey-and-white hijab. “It’s difficult for one to know what is halal and what is not, so I’d prefer to go to a shop with labels [to help me].”

It’s Not Just Business
The rising concerns of consumers herald not just a global economic trend, but a cultural one. During the 1980s and ’90s, many Muslims in Egypt, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries expressed their religious principles by voting Islamic. Today, a growing number are doing so by buying Islamic, connecting to their Muslim roots by what they eat, wear and play on their iPods. Rising Muslim consumerism undermines the specious argument often heard after 9/11: that Muslims hate the Western way of life, with its emphasis on choice and consumerism. The growing Muslim market is a sign of a newly confident Islamic identity — one based not on politics but on personal lifestyles. “Muslims will spend their money more readily on halal food and products than on political causes,” says European managing director of the California-based Zabihah.com, an online guide to the global halal marketplace. Like many Muslim Americans, he grew up eating Jewish kosher food in order to conform to Muslim strictures on animal slaughter. But increasingly, there’s no need for Muslims to go kosher. Zabihah offers tens of thousands of reviews of halal restaurants, from fried chicken joints in Dallas to pan-Asian restaurants in Singapore. “We can’t keep up.”

The dazzling range of new products and services also reflects the seismic social changes under way in the Muslim world. One of the reasons why halal frozen food, lunch-box treats and quick-fix dinners are growing in popularity is that many more Muslim women, from Egypt to Malaysia, have full-time jobs.

Western Muslims, whose minority status sharpens their sense of identity, are also helping refine the notion of a Muslim lifestyle. In Britain, advertisers are increasingly embracing the power of the “green” pound (that’s Islamic green, not environmental green), says Sarah Joseph, editor of Emel, a glossy lifestyle monthly for British Muslims. When Emel launched in 2003, the notion of a Muslim lifestyle barely existed. “People were confused that we could present everything from food, fashion, travel and gardening, all from a Muslim perspective,” says Joseph. But Muslims are the fastest-growing segment of the middle class in Britain; they have big families — an average of 3.4 children against the national average of 1.9 — so they buy big cars; they spend money on home decoration and twice-yearly vacations — “not just going back to Pakistan or Bangladesh, like their [immigrant] parents did,” says Joseph. Bucking the current publishing trend, Emel is hiring extra staff and planning new magazines to cater to Muslim readers. Advertisers include British Airways and banking giant HSBC.

To keep growing, halal firms know they can’t simply rely on religion. Ideology does not fit within a consumer mindset. At the end of the day, people will not buy halal simply because it’s halal. They’re going to buy quality food. Ideology doesn’t make a better-tasting burger, a better car, or a better computer.” But it sure makes a powerful marketing pitch.

By the numbers …
16% — Halal’s share of global food industry
$632 billion— Annual halal food market
1.6 billion— Worldwide Muslim population

A Halal Shopping Cart
From fast food to fashion, the sector is thriving

Food
Non-Muslim multi-nationals such as KFC and Nestlé dominate the halal food market. But Muslim-
owned manufacturers such as Dubai-based Al Islami — which sells everything 
 from chicken burgers to packaged ingredients — are growing fast.

Lifestyle
Muslims — many of them young and increasingly middle-class — are buying more magazines, such as U.K.-based Emel, and halal cosmetics made, like these Saaf products, without alcohol or animal fats, which Islam considers haram, or forbidden.

Services
Hotels run along Islamic lines, such as Dubai’s Villa Rotana, offer quieter and more family-friendly places to stay. Banks that operate according to Shari’a law 
 are doing well during 
 the global downturn because they tend to be 
 more conservative.

Leave a Comment

Jewish Control of the US Media

March 25, 2009 at 11:06 am · Filed under Clash of Civilizations ·Tagged , , ,

pic1The largest media conglomerate today is Walt Disney Company, whose chairman and CEO, Michael Eisner, is a Jew. The Disney Empire, headed by a man described by one media analyst as a “control freak”, includes several television production companies (Walt Disney Television, Touchstone Television, Buena Vista Television), its own cable network with 14 million subscribers, and two video production companies. As for feature films, the Walt Disney Picture Group, headed by Joe Roth (also a Jew), includes Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures. Disney also owns Miramax Films, run by the Weinstein brothers. When the Disney Company was run by the Gentile Disney family prior to its takeover by Eisner in 1984, it epitomized wholesome, family entertainment. While it still holds the rights to Snow White, under Eisner, the company has expanded into the production of graphic sex and violence. In addition, it has 225 affiliated stations in the United States and is part owner of several European TV companies. ABC’s cable subsidiary, ESPN, is headed by president and CEO Steven Bornstein, a Jew. This corporation also has a controlling share of Lifetime Television and the Arts & Entertainment Network cable companies.

 

ABC Radio Network owns eleven AM and ten FM stations, again in major cities such as New York, Washington, Los Angeles, and has over 3,400 affiliates. Although primarily a telecommunications company, Capital Cities/ABC earned over $1 billion in publishing in 1994. It owns seven daily newspapers, Fairchild Publications, Chilton Publications, and the Diversified Publishing Group.

 

Time Warner, Inc, is the second of the international media leviathans. The chairman of the board and CEO, Gerald Levin, is a Jew. Time Warner’s subsidiary HBO is the country’s largest pay-TV cable network. Warner Music is by far the world’s largest record company, with 50 labels, the biggest of which is Warner Brothers Records, headed by Danny Goldberg. Stuart Hersch is president of Warnervision, Warner Music’s video production unit. Goldberg and Hersch are Jews. Warner Music was an early promoter of “gangsta rap.” Through its involvement with Interscope Records, it helped popularize a genre whose graphic lyrics explicitly urge Blacks to commit acts of violence against Whites. In addition to cable and music, Time Warner is heavily involved in the production of feature films (Warner Brothers Studio) and publishing. Time Warner’s publishing division (editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine, a Jew) is the largest magazine publisher in the country (Time, Sports Illustrated, People, Fortune).

 

When Ted Turner, a Gentile, made a bid to buy CBS in 1985, there was panic in media boardrooms across the nation. Turner made a fortune in advertising and then had built a successful cable-TV news network, CNN. Although Turner employed a number of Jews in key executive positions in CNN and had never taken public positions contrary to Jewish interests, he is a man with a large ego and a strong personality and was regarded by Chairman William Paley (real name Palinsky, a Jew) and the other Jews at CBS as uncontrollable: a loose cannon who might at some time in the future turn against them. Furthermore, Jewish newsman Daniel Schorr, who had worked for Turner, publicly charged that his former boss held a personal dislike for Jews. To block Turner’s bid, CBS executives invited billionaire Jewish theater, hotel, insurance, and cigarette magnate Laurence Tisch to launch a “friendly” takeover of the company, and from 1986 till 1995 Tisch was the chairman and CEO of CBS, removing any threat of non-Jewish influence there. Subsequent efforts by Turner to acquire a major network have been obstructed by Levin’s Time Warner, which owns nearly 20 percent of CBS stock and has veto power over major deals.

 

Viacom, Inc, headed by Sumner Redstone (born Murray Rothstein), a Jew, is the third largest megamedia corporation in the country, with revenues of over $10 billion a year. Viacom, which produces and distributes TV programs for the three largest networks, owns 12 television stations and 12 radio stations. It produces feature films through Paramount Pictures, headed by Jewess Sherry Lansing. Its publishing division includes Prentice Hall, Simon & Schuster, and Pocket Books. It distributes videos through over 4,000 Blockbuster stores. Viacom’s chief claim to fame, however, is as the world’s largest provider of cable programming, through its Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, and other networks. Since 1989, MTV and Nickelodeon have acquired larger and larger shares of the younger television audience. With the top three, and by far the largest, media companies in the hand of Jews, it is difficult to believe that such an overwhelming degree of control came about without a deliberate, concerted effort on their part. What about the other big media companies? Number four on the list is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which owns Fox Television and 20th Century Fox Films. Murdoch is a Gentile, but Peter Chermin, who heads Murdoch’s film studio and also oversees his TV production, is a Jew.

 

Number five is the Japanese Sony Corporation, whose U.S. subsidiary, Sony Corporation of America, is run by Michael Schulhof, a Jew. Alan Levine, another Jew, heads the Sony Pictures division. Most of the television and movie production companies that are not owned by the largest corporations are also controlled by Jews. For example, New World Entertainment, proclaimed by one media analyst as “the premiere independent TV program producer in the United States,” is owned by Ronald Perelman, a Jew. The best known of the smaller media companies, Dreamworks SKG, is a strictly kosher affair. Dream Works was formed in 1994 amid great media hype by recording industry mogul David Geffen, former Disney Pictures chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and film director Steven Spielberg, all three of whom are Jews. The company produces movies, animated films, television programs, and recorded music. Two other large production companies, MCA and Universal Pictures, are both owned by Seagram Company, Ltd. The president and CEO of Seagram, the liquor giant, is Edgar Bronfman Jr., who is also president of the World Jewish Congress. It is well known that Jews have controlled the production and distribution of films since the inception of the movie industry in the early decades of the 20th century. This is still the case today. Films produced by just the five largest motion picture companies mentioned above-Disney, Warner Brothers, Sony, Paramount (Viacom), and Universal (Seagram)-accounted for 74 per cent of the total box-office receipts for the first eight months of 1995. The big three in television network broadcasting used to be ABC, CBS, and NBC. With the consolidation of the media empires, these three are no longer independent entities. While they were independent, however, each was controlled by a Jew since its inception: ABC by Leonard Goldenson, CBS first by William Paley and then by Lawrence Tisch, and NBC first by David Sarnoff and then by his son Robert. Over periods of several decades, these networks were staffed from top to bottom with Jews, and the essential Jewishness of network television did not change when the networks were absorbed by other corporations. The Jewish presence in television news remains particularly strong. As noted, ABC is part of Eisner’s Disney Company, and the executive producers of ABC’s news programs are all Jews: Victor Neufeld (20-20), Bob Reichbloom (Good Morning America), and Rick Kaplan (World News Tonight). CBS was recently purchased by Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Nevertheless, the man appointed by Lawrence Tisch, Eric Ober, remains president of CBS News, and Ober is a Jew. At NBC, now owned by General Electric, NBC News president Andrew Lack is a Jew, as are executive producers Jeff Zucker (Today), Jeff Gralnick (NBC Nightly News), and Neal Shapiro (Dateline).

 

The Print Media After television news, daily newspapers are the most influential information medium in America. Sixty million of them are sold (and presumably read) each day. These millions are divided among some 1,500 different publications. One might conclude that the sheer number of different newspapers across America would provide a safeguard against Jewish control and distortion. However, this is not the case. There is less independence, less competition, and much less representation of our interests than a casual observer would think. The days when most cities and even towns had several independently owned newspapers published by local people with close ties to the community are gone. Today, most “local” newspapers are owned by a rather small number of large companies controlled by executives who live and work hundreds or ever thousands of miles away. The fact is that only about 25 per cent of the country’s 1,500 papers are independently owned; the rest belong to multi-newspaper chains. Only a handful are large enough to maintain independent reporting staffs outside their own communities; the rest depend on these few for all of their national and international news. The Newhouse empire of Jewish brothers Samuel and Donald Newhouse provides an example of more than the lack of real competition among America’s daily newspapers: it also illustrates the insatiable appetite Jews have shown for all the organs of opinion control on which they could fasten their grip. The Newhouses own 26 daily newspapers, including several large and important ones, such as the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; the nation’s largest trade book publishing conglomerate, Random House, with all its subsidiaries; Newhouse Broadcasting, consisting of 12 television broadcasting stations and 87 cable-TV systems, including some of the country’s largest cable networks; the Sunday supplement Parade, with a circulation of more than 22 million copies per week; some two dozen major magazines, including the New Yorker, Vogue, Madmoiselle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Bride’s, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Self, House & Garden, and all the other magazines of the wholly owned Conde Nast group. This Jewish media empire was founded by the late Samuel Newhouse, an immigrant from Russia. The gobbling up of so many newspapers by the Newhouse family was in large degree made possible by the fact that newspapers are not supported by their subscribers, but by their advertisers. It is advertising revenue–not the small change collected from a newspaper’s readers–that largely pays the editor’s salary and yields the owner’s profit. Whenever the large advertisers in a city choose to favor one newspaper over another with their business, the favored newspaper will flourish while its competitor dies. Since the beginning of the 20th century, when Jewish mercantile power in America became a dominant economic force, there has been a steady rise in the number of American newspapers in Jewish hands, accompanied by a steady decline in the number of competing Gentile newspapers–primarily as a result of selective advertising policies by Jewish merchants. Furthermore, even those newspapers still under Gentile ownership and management are so thoroughly dependent upon Jewish advertising revenue that their editorial and news reporting policies are largely constrained by Jewish likes and dislikes. It holds true in the newspaper business as elsewhere that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Three Jewish Newspapers

 

The suppression of competition and the establishment of local monopolies on the dissemination of news and opinion have characterized the rise of Jewish control over America’s newspapers. The resulting ability of the Jews to use the press as an unopposed instrument of Jewish policy could hardly be better illustrated than by the examples of the nation’s three most prestigious and influential newspapers: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. These three, dominating America’s financial and political capitals, are the newspapers which set the trends and the guidelines for nearly all the others. They are the ones which decide what is news and what isn’t, at the national and international levels. They originate the news; the others merely copy it, and all three newspapers are in Jewish hands.

 

The New York Times was founded in 1851 by two Gentiles, Henry Raymond and George Jones. After their deaths, it was purchased in 1896 from Jones’s estate by a wealthy Jewish publisher, Adolph Ochs. His great-grandson, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., is the paper’s current publisher and CEO. The executive editor is Max Frankel, and the managing editor is Joseph Lelyveld. Both of the latter are also Jews. The Sulzberger family also owns, through the New York Times Co., 33 other newspapers, including the Boston Globe; twelve magazines, including McCall’s and Family Circle with circulations of more than 5 million each; seven radio and TV broadcasting stations; a cable-TV system; and three book publishing companies. The New York Times News Service transmits news stories, features, and photographs from the New York Times by wire to 506 other newspapers, news agencies, and magazines. Of similar national importance is the Washington Post, which, by establishing its “leaks” throughout government agencies in Washington, has an inside track on news involving the Federal government. The Washington Post, like the New York Times, had a non-Jewish origin. It was established in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins, purchased from him in 1905 by John McLean, and later inherited by Edward McLean. In June 1933, however, at the height of the Great Depression, the newspaper was forced into bankruptcy. It was purchased at a bankruptcy auction by Eugene Meyer, a Jewish financier.

 

The Washington Post is now run by Katherine Meyer Graham, Eugene Meyer’s daughter. She is the principal stockholder and the board chairman of the Washington Post Co. In 1979, she appointed her son Donald publisher of the paper. He now also holds the posts of president and CEO of the Washington Post Co. The Washington Post Co. has a number of other media holdings in newspapers, television, and magazines, most notably the nation’s number-two weekly newsmagazine, Newsweek. The Wall Street Journal, which sells 1.8 million copies each weekday, is the nation’s largest-circulation daily newspaper. It is owned by Dow Jones & Company, Inc., a New York corporation which also publishes 24 other daily newspapers and the weekly financial tabloid Barron’s, among other things.

 

The chairman and CEO of Dow Jones is Peter Kann, who is a Jew. Kann also holds the posts of chairman and publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Most of New York’s other major newspapers are in no better hands than the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The New York Daily News is owned by Jewish real-estate developer Mortimer B. Zuckerman. The Village Voice is the personal property of Leonard Stern, the billionaire Jewish owner of the Hartz Mountain pet supply firm.

 

Other Mass Media

The story is pretty much the same for other media as it is for television, radio, and newspapers. Consider, for example, newsmagazines. There are only three of any note published in the United States: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Time, with a weekly circulation of 4.1 million, is published by a susidiary of Time Warner Communications. The CEO of Time Warner Communications, as mentioned above, is Gerald Levin, a Jew. Newsweek, as mentioned above, is published by the Washington Post Company, under the Jewess Katherine Meyer Graham. Its weekly circulation is 3.2 million. U.S. News & World Report, with a weekly circulation of 2.3 million, is owned and published by Mortimer Zuckerman, a Jew. Zuckerman also owns the Atlantic Monthly and New York’s tabloid newspaper, the Daily News, which is the sixth-largest paper in the country. Among the giant book-publishing conglomerates, the situation is also Jewish. Three of the six largest book publishers in the U.S., according to Publisher’s Weekly, are owned or controlled by Jews. The three are first-place Random House (with its many subsidiaries, including Crown Publishing Group), third-place Simon & Schuster, and sixth-place Time Warner Trade Group (including Warner Books and Little, Brown). Another publisher of special significance is Western Publishing. Although it ranks only 13th in size among all U.S. publishers, it ranks first among publishers of children’s books, with more than 50 percent of the market. Its chairman and CEO is Richard Snyder, a Jew, who just replaced Richard Bernstein, also a Jew.

 

The Effect of Jewish Control of the Media

These are the facts of Jewish media control in America. Anyone willing to spend several hours in a large library can verify their accuracy. I hope that these facts are disturbing to you, to say the least. Should any minority be allowed to wield such awesome power? Certainly, not and allowing a people with beliefs such as expressed in the Talmud, to determine what we get to read or watch in effect gives this small minority the power to mold our minds to suit their own Talmudic interests, interests which as we have demonstrated are diametrically opposed to the interests of our people. By permitting the Jews to control our news and entertainment media, we are doing more than merely giving them a decisive influence on our political system and virtual control of our government; we also are giving them control of the minds and souls of our children, whose attitudes and ideas are shaped more by Jewish television and Jewish films than by their parents, their schools, or any other influence.

 

Comments (1)

Is there a Conspiracy to Force Muslims to Eat Pigs?

February 9, 2009 at 8:48 am · Filed under Clash of Civilizations ·Tagged , , ,

aye-ayeWhy Pig Fat is not mentioned but code(s) are printed??

 

PIG FAT By Dr. M. Amjad Khan

 

In nearly all the western countries including Europe , the PRIMARY
choice for meat is PIG. There are a lot of farms in these countries to
breed this animal. In France alone, Pig Farms account for more than
42,000.

 

PIGS have the highest quantity of FAT in their body than any other
animal. But Europeans and Americans try to avoid fats.

Thus, where does the FAT from these PIGS go? All pigs are cut
inslaughter houses under the control of the department of food and it
was the headache of the department of food to dispose of the fat
removed from these pigs.

 

Formally, it was burnt (about 60 years ago). Then they thought of
utilizing it. First, they experimented it in the making of SOAPS and
it worked.

 

Then, a full network was formed and this FAT was chemically Processed,
Packed and Marketed, while the other manufacturing companies bought
it. In the meantime, all European States made it a rule that every
Food, Medical and Personal Hygiene product should have the ingredients
listed on its cover. so, this ingredient was listed as PIG FAT.

Those who are living in Europe for the past 40 years know about this.
But, these products came under a ban by the ISLAMIC COUNTRIES at that
time, which resulted in a trade deficit.

 

Going back in time, if you are somehow related to South East Asia , you
might know about the provoking factors of the 1857 CIVIL WAR. At that
time, Rifle Bullets were made in Europe and transported to the
sub-continent through the Sea.It took months to reach there and the
gun powder in it was ruined due to the exposure to sea.

 

Then, they got the idea of coating the Bullets with fat, which was PIG
FAT.. The fat layer had to be scratched by teeth before using them.
When the word spread, the soldiers, mostly Muslim and some
Vegetarians, refused to fight.Which eventually lead to the Civil War.
The Europeans recognized these facts, and instead of writing PIG FAT,
they started writing ANIMAL FAT.All those living in Europe since
1970’s know this fact. When the companies were asked by authorities
from the MUSLIM COUNTRIES, what animal fat is it, they were told it
was COW and SHEEP Fat. Here again a question raised, if it was COW or
SHEEP Fat, still it is HARAAM to MUSLIMS, as these animal were not
SLAUGHTERED as per the ISLAMIC LAW. Thus, they were again banned.
Now, these multinational companies were again facing a severe drought
of money as 75% of their income comes from selling their goods to
Muslim Countries, and these earn BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of Profit from
their exports to the MUSLIM WORLD.

 

Finally they decided to start a coding language, so that only their
Departments of Food Administration should know what they are using,
and the common man is left lurking in the dark.Thus, they started
E-CODES. These E- INGREDIENTS are present in a majority of products of
multinational firms including, but not limited to -

 

TOOTH PASTE,
SHAVING CREAM
CHEWING GUM,
CHOCOLATE,
SWEETS,
BISCUITS,
CORN FLAKES, TOFFEES,
CANNED FOODS,
FRUIT TINS,

 

Some medication Multi-vitamins Since these goods are being used in all
MUSLIM Countries indiscrimately, our society is facing problems like
shamelessness, rudeness and sexual promiscuity.

So, I request all MUSLIMS or non pork eaters to check the ingredients
of the ITEMS of daily use and match it with the following list of
E-CODES. If any of the ingredients listed below is found, try to avoid
it, as it has got PIG FAT;

 

E100, E110, E120, E 140, E141, E153, E210, E213, E214, E216, E234,
E252,E270, E280, E325, E326, E327, E334, E335, E336, E337, E422, E430,
E431, E432, E433, E434, E435, E436, E440, E470, E471, E472, E473,
E474, E475,E476, E477, E478, E481, E482, E483, E491, E492, E493, E494,
E495, E542,E570, E572, E631, E635, E904.

 

Dr. M. Amjad Khan
Medical Research Institute
United States
 

 

Regards:

 

ADNAN SOHAIL (adnans@landslide.com)

 

Comments (4)

As the Arabs see the Jews

January 23, 2009 at 9:39 am · Filed under Clash of Civilizations, Islam ·Tagged , , , ,

100-0051_img“As the Arabs see the Jews”
His Majesty King Abdullah,
The American Magazine
November, 1947

 

Summary
This fascinating essay, written by King Hussein’s grandfather King Abdullah, appeared in the United States six months before the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In the article, King Abdullah disputes the mistaken view that Arab opposition to Zionism (and later the state of Israel) is because of longstanding religious or ethnic hatred. He notes that Jews and Muslims enjoyed a long history of peaceful coexistence in the Middle East, and that Jews have historically suffered far more at the hands of Christian Europe. Pointing to the tragedy of the holocaust that Jews suffered during World War II, the monarch asks why America and Europe are refusing to accept more than a token handful of Jewish immigrants and refugees. It is unfair, he argues, to make Palestine, which is innocent of anti-Semitism, pay for the crimes of Europe. King Abdullah also asks how Jews can claim a historic right to Palestine, when Arabs have been the overwhelming majority there for nearly 1300 uninterrupted years? The essay ends on an ominous note, warning of dire consequences if a peaceful solution cannot be found to protect the rights of the indigenous Arabs of Palestine.
 

I am especially delighted to address an American audience, for the tragic problem of Palestine will never be solved without American understanding, American sympathy, American support.

So many billions of words have been written about Palestine—perhaps more than on any other subject in history—that I hesitate to add to them. Yet I am compelled to do so, for I am reluctantly convinced that the world in general, and America in particular, knows almost nothing of the true case for the Arabs.   

We Arabs follow, perhaps far more than you think, the press of America. We are frankly disturbed to find that for every word printed on the Arab side, a thousand are printed on the Zionist side.   

There are many reasons for this. You have many millions of Jewish citizens interested in this question. They are highly vocal and wise in the ways of publicity. There are few Arab citizens in America, and we are as yet unskilled in the technique of modern propaganda.
The results have been alarming for us. In your press we see a horrible caricature and are told it is our true portrait. In all justice, we cannot let this pass by default.   

Our case is quite simple: For nearly 2,000 years Palestine has been almost 100 per cent Arab. It is still preponderantly Arab today, in spite of enormous Jewish immigration. But if this immigration continues we shall soon be outnumbered—a minority in our home.
Palestine is a small and very poor country, about the size of your state of Vermont. Its Arab population is only about 1,200,000. Already we have had forced on us, against our will, some 600,000 Zionist Jews. We are threatened with many hundreds of thousands more.
Our position is so simple and natural that we are amazed it should even be questioned. It is exactly the same position you in America take in regard to the unhappy European Jews. You are sorry for them, but you do not want them in your country.   

We do not want them in ours, either. Not because they are Jews, but because they are foreigners. We would not want hundreds of thousands of foreigners in our country, be they Englishmen or Norwegians or Brazilians or whatever.   

Think for a moment: In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire population forced upon us. In America that would be the equivalent of 45,000,000 complete strangers admitted to your country, over your violent protest, since 1921. How would you have reacted to that?
Because of our perfectly natural dislike of being overwhelmed in our own homeland, we are called blind nationalists and heartless anti-Semites. This charge would be ludicrous were it not so dangerous.
No people on earth have been less “anti-Semitic” than the Arabs. The persecution of the Jews has been confined almost entirely to the Christian nations of the West. Jews, themselves, will admit that never since the Great Dispersion did Jews develop so freely and reach such importance as in Spain when it was an Arab possession. With very minor exceptions, Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East, in complete peace and friendliness with their Arab neighbours.
Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and other Arab centres have always contained large and prosperous Jewish colonies. Until the Zionist invasion of Palestine began, these Jews received the most generous treatment—far, far better than in Christian Europe. Now, unhappily, for the first time in history, these Jews are beginning to feel the effects of Arab resistance to the Zionist assault. Most of them are as anxious as Arabs to stop it. Most of these Jews who have found happy homes among us resent, as we do, the coming of these strangers.  

101-0141_imgI was puzzled for a long time about the odd belief which apparently persists in America that Palestine has somehow “always been a Jewish land.” Recently an American I talked to cleared up this mystery. He pointed out that the only things most Americans know about Palestine are what they read in the Bible. It was a Jewish land in those days, they reason, and they assume it has always remained so.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is absurd to reach so far back into the mists of history to argue about who should have Palestine today, and I apologise for it. Yet the Jews do this, and I must reply to their “historic claim.” I wonder if the world has ever seen a stranger sight than a group of people seriously pretending to claim a land because their ancestors lived there some 2,000 years ago!  

If you suggest that I am biased, I invite you to read any sound history of the period and verify the facts. Such fragmentary records as we have indicate that the Jews were wandering nomads from Iraq who moved to southern Turkey, came south to Palestine, stayed there a short time, and then passed to Egypt, where they remained about 400 years. About 1300 BC (according to your calendar) they left Egypt and gradually conquered most—but not all—of the inhabitants of Palestine.  

It is significant that the Philistines—not the Jews—gave their name to the country: “Palestine” is merely the Greek form of “Philistia.”
Only once, during the empire of David and Solomon, did the Jews ever control nearly—but not all—the land which is today Palestine. This empire lasted only 70 years, ending in 926 BC. Only 250 years later the Kingdom of Judah had shrunk to a small province around Jerusalem, barely a quarter of modern Palestine.  

In 63 BC the Jews were conquered by Roman Pompey, and never again had even the vestige of independence. The Roman Emperor Hadrian finally wiped them out about 135 AD. He utterly destroyed Jerusalem, rebuilt under another name, and for hundreds of years no Jew was permitted to enter it. A handful of Jews remained in Palestine but the vast majority were killed or scattered to other countries, in the Diaspora, or the Great Dispersion. From that time Palestine ceased to be a Jewish country, in any conceivable sense.  

This was 1,815 years ago, and yet the Jews solemnly pretend they still own Palestine! If such fantasy were allowed, how the map of the world would dance about!
Italians might claim England, which the Romans held so long. England might claim France, “homeland” of the conquering Normans. And the French Normans might claim Norway, where their ancestors originated. And incidentally, we Arabs might claim Spain, which we held for 700 years.  

Many Mexicans might claim Spain, “homeland” of their forefathers. They might even claim Texas, which was Mexican until 100 years ago. And suppose the American Indians claimed the “homeland” of which they were the sole, native, and ancient occupants until only some 450 years ago!  

I am not being facetious. All these claims are just as valid—or just as fantastic—as the Jewish “historic connection” with Palestine. Most are more valid.
In any event, the great Moslem expansion about 650 AD finally settled things. It dominated Palestine completely. From that day on, Palestine was solidly Arabic in population, language, and religion. When British armies entered the country during the last war, they found 500,000 Arabs and only 65,000 Jews.  

If solid, uninterrupted Arab occupation for nearly 1,300 years does not make a country “Arab”, what does? The Jews say, and rightly, that Palestine is the home of their religion. It is likewise the birthplace of Christianity, but would any Christian nation claim it on that account? In passing, let me say that the Christian Arabs—and there are many hundreds of thousands of them in the Arab World—are in absolute agreement with all other Arabs in opposing the Zionist invasion of Palestine.  

May I also point out that Jerusalem is, after Mecca and Medina, the holiest place in Islam. In fact, in the early days of our religion, Moslems prayed toward Jerusalem instead of Mecca.

The Jewish “religious claim” to Palestine is as absurd as the “historic claim.” The Holy Places, sacred to three great religions, must be open to all, the monopoly of none. Let us not confuse religion and politics.
We are told that we are inhumane and heartless because do not accept with open arms the perhaps 200,000 Jews in Europe who suffered so frightfully under Nazi cruelty, and who even now—almost three years after war’s end—still languish in cold, depressing camps.
Let me underline several facts. The unimaginable persecution of the Jews was not done by the Arabs: it was done by a Christian nation in the West. The war which ruined Europe and made it almost impossible for these Jews to rehabilitate themselves was fought by the Christian nations of the West. The rich and empty portions of the earth belong, not to the Arabs, but to the Christian nations of the West.

 

And yet, to ease their consciences, these Christian nations of the West are asking Palestine—a poor and tiny Moslem country of the East—to accept the entire burden. “We have hurt these people terribly,” cries the West to the East. “Won’t you please take care of them for us?”
We find neither logic nor justice in this. Are we therefore “cruel and heartless nationalists”?
We are a generous people: we are proud that “Arab hospitality” is a phrase famous throughout the world. We are a humane people: no one was shocked more than we by the Hitlerite terror. No one pities the present plight of the desperate European Jews more than we.
But we say that Palestine has already sheltered 600,000 refugees. We believe that is enough to expect of us—even too much. We believe it is now the turn of the rest of the world to accept some of them.  

I will be entirely frank with you. There is one thing the Arab world simply cannot understand. Of all the nations of the earth, America is most insistent that something be done for these suffering Jews of Europe. This feeling does credit to the humanity for which America is famous, and to that glorious inscription on your Statue of Liberty.
And yet this same America—the richest, greatest, most powerful nation the world has ever known—refuses to accept more than a token handful of these same Jews herself!
I hope you will not think I am being bitter about this. I have tried hard to understand that mysterious paradox, and I confess I cannot. Nor can any other Arab.
Perhaps you have been informed that “the Jews in Europe want to go to no other place except Palestine.”   

This myth is one of the greatest propaganda triumphs of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the organisation which promotes with fanatic zeal the emigration to Palestine. It is a subtle half-truth, thus doubly dangerous. The astounding truth is that nobody on earth really knows where these unfortunate Jews really want to go!   

You would think that in so grave a problem, the American, British, and other authorities responsible for the European Jews would have made a very careful survey, probably by vote, to find out where each Jew actually wants to go. Amazingly enough this has never been done! The Jewish Agency has prevented it.   

Some time ago the American Military Governor in Germany was asked at a press conference how he was so certain that all Jews there wanted to go to Palestine. His answer was simple: “My Jewish advisors tell me so.” He admitted no poll had ever been made. Preparations were indeed begun for one, but the Jewish Agency stepped in to stop it.   

The truth is that the Jews in German camps are now subjected to a Zionist pressure campaign which learned much from the Nazi terror. It is dangerous for a Jew to say that he would rather go to some other country, not Palestine. Such dissenters have been severely beaten, and worse.
Not long ago, in Palestine, nearly 1,000 Austrian Jews informed the international refugee organisation that they would like to go back to Austria, and plans were made to repatriate them.
The Jewish Agency heard of this, and exerted enough political pressure to stop it. It would be bad propaganda for Zionism if Jews began leaving Palestine. The nearly 1,000 Austrian are still there, against their will.   

The fact is that most of the European Jews are Western in culture and outlook, entirely urban in experience and habits. They cannot really have their hearts set on becoming pioneers in the barren, arid, cramped land which is Palestine.    

One thing, however, is undoubtedly true. As matters stand now, most refugee Jews in Europe would, indeed, vote for Palestine, simply because they know no other country will have them.
If you or I were given a choice between a near-prison camp for the rest of our lives—or Palestine—we would both choose Palestine, too.   

But open up any other alternative to them—give them any other choice, and see what happens!
No poll, however, will be worth anything unless the nations of the earth are willing to open their doors—just a little—to the Jews. In other words, if in such a poll a Jew says he wants to go to Sweden, Sweden must be willing to accept him. If he votes for America, you must let him come in.   

Any other kind of poll would be a farce. For the desperate Jew, this is no idle testing of opinion: this is a grave matter of life or death. Unless he is absolutely sure that his vote means something, he will always vote for Palestine, so as not to risk his bird in the hand for one in the bush.
In any event, Palestine can accept no more. The 65,000 Jews in Palestine in 1918 have jumped to 600,000 today. We Arabs have increased, too, but not by immigration. The Jews were then a mere 11 per cent of our population. Today they are one third of it.
The rate of increase has been terrifying. In a few more years—unless stopped now—it will overwhelm us, and we shall be an important minority in our own home.
Surely the rest of the wide world is rich enough and generous enough to find a place for 200,000 Jews—about one third the number that tiny, poor Palestine has already sheltered. For the rest of the world, it is hardly a drop in the bucket. For us it means national suicide.  

We are sometimes told that since the Jews came to Palestine, the Arab standard of living has improved. This is a most complicated question. But let us even assume, for the argument, that it is true. We would rather be a bit poorer, and masters of our own home. Is this unnatural?
The sorry story of the so-called “Balfour Declaration,” which started Zionist immigration into Palestine, is too complicated to repeat here in detail. It is grounded in broken promises to the Arabs—promises made in cold print which admit no denying.   

We utterly deny its validity. We utterly deny the right of Great Britain to give away Arab land for a “national home” for an entirely foreign people. Even the League of Nations sanction does not alter this. At the time, not a single Arab state was a member of the League. We were not allowed to say a word in our own defense.
I must point out, again in friendly frankness, that America was nearly as responsible as Britain for this Balfour Declaration. President Wilson approved it before it was issued, and the American Congress adopted it word for word in a joint resolution on 30th June, 1922.   

In the 1920s, Arabs were annoyed and insulted by Zionist immigration, but not alarmed by it. It was steady, but fairly small, as even the Zionist founders thought it would remain. Indeed for some years, more Jews left Palestine than entered it—in 1927 almost twice as many.
But two new factors, entirely unforeseen by Britain or the League or America or the most fervent Zionist, arose in the early thirties to raise the immigration to undreamed heights. One was the World Depression; the second the rise of Hitler.   

In 1932, the year before Hitler came to power, only 9,500 Jews came to Palestine. We did not welcome them, but we were not afraid that, at that rate, our solid Arab majority would ever be in danger. But the next year—the year of Hitler—it jumped to 30,000! In 1934 it was 42,000! In 1935 it reached 61,000!  It was no longer the orderly arrival of idealist Zionists. Rather, all Europe was pouring its frightened Jews upon us. Then, at last, we, too, became frightened. We knew that unless this enormous influx stopped, we were, as Arabs, doomed in our Palestine homeland. And we have not changed our minds.   

I have the impression that many Americans believe the trouble in Palestine is very remote from them, that America had little to do with it, and that your only interest now is that of a humane bystander. I believe that you do not realise how directly you are, as a nation, responsible in general for the whole Zionist move and specifically for the present terrorism. I call this to your attention because I am certain that if you realise your responsibility you will act fairly to admit it and assume it.   

Quite aside from official American support for the “National Home” of the Balfour Declaration, the Zionist settlements in Palestine would have been almost impossible, on anything like the current scale, without American money. This was contributed by American Jewry in an idealistic effort to help their fellows.   

The motive was worthy: the result were disastrous. The contributions were by private individuals, but they were almost entirely Americans, and, as a nation, only America can answer for it.
The present catastrophe may be laid almost entirely at your door. Your government, almost alone in the world, is insisting on the immediate admission of 100,000 more Jews into Palestine—to be followed by countless additional ones. This will have the most frightful consequences in bloody chaos beyond anything ever hinted at in Palestine before.   

It is your press and political leadership, almost alone in the world, who press this demand. It is almost entirely American money which hires or buys the “refugee ships” that steam illegally toward Palestine: American money which pays their crews. The illegal immigration from Europe is arranged by the Jewish Agency, supported almost entirely by American funds. It is American dollars which support the terrorists, which buy the bullets and pistols that kill British soldiers—your allies—and Arab citizens—your friends. 
We in the Arab world were stunned to hear that you permit open advertisements in newspapers asking for money to finance these terrorists, to arm them openly and deliberately for murder. We could not believe this could really happen in the modern world. Now we must believe it: we have seen the advertisements with our own eyes. I point out these things because nothing less than complete frankness will be of use. The crisis is too stark for mere polite vagueness which means nothing. I have the most complete confidence in the fair-mindedness and generosity of the American public. We Arabs ask no favours. We ask only that you know the full truth, not half of it. We ask only that when you judge the Palestine question, you put yourselves in our place.   

What would your answer be if some outside agency told you that you must accept in America many millions of utter strangers in your midst—enough to dominate your country—merely because they insisted on going to America, and because their forefathers had once lived there some 2,000 years ago?   

Our answer is the same. And what would be your action if, in spite of your refusal, this outside agency began forcing them on you? Ours will be the same.

 

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

Dr Mahathir Writes to Obama

January 13, 2009 at 12:43 pm · Filed under Clash of Civilizations ·Tagged , ,

clip_14January 1, 2009

 

Dear Mr. President,

 

I did not vote for you in the Presidential Election because I am Malaysian.

 

But I consider myself one of your constituents because what you do or say will affect me and my country as well.

 

I welcome your promise for change. Certainly your country, the United States of America needs a lot of changes.

 

That is because America and Americans have become the most hated people in the world. Even Europeans dislike your arrogance. Yet you were once admired and liked because you freed a lot of countries from conquest and subjugation.

 

It is the custom on New Year’s day for people to make resolutions. You must have listed your good resolutions already. But may I politely suggest that you also resolve to do the following in pursuit of Change.

 

1) Stop killing people. The United States is too fond of killing people in order to achieve its objectives. You call it war, but today’s wars are not about professional soldiers fighting and killing each other. It is about killing people, ordinary innocent people by the hundreds of thousands. Whole countries will be devastated.

War is primitive, the cavemen’s way of dealing with a problem. Stop your arms build up and your planning for future wars.

 

2) Stop indiscriminate support of Israeli killers with your money and your weapons. The planes and the bombs killing the people of Gaza are from you.

 

3) Stop applying sanctions against countries which cannot do the same against you.

In Iraq your sanctions killed 500,000 children through depriving them of medicine and food. Others were born deformed.

What have you achieved with this cruelty? Nothing except the hatred of the victims and right-thinking people.

 

4) Stop your scientists and researchers from inventing new and more diabolical weapons to kill more people more efficiently.

 

5) Stop your arms manufacturers from producing them. Stop your sales of arms to the world. It is blood money that you earn. It is un-Christian.

 

6) Stop trying to democratize all the countries of the world. Democracy may work for the United States but it does not always work for other countries.

Don’t kill people because they are not democratic. Your crusade to democratize countries has killed more people than the authoritarian Governments which you overthrew. And you have not succeeded anyway.

 

7) Stop the casinos which you call financial institutions. Stop hedge funds, derivatives and currency trading. Stop banks from lending non-existent money by the billions.

Regulate and supervise your banks. Jail the miscreants who made profits from abusing the system.

 

8 ) Sign the Kyoto Protocol and other international agreements.

 

9) Show respect for the United Nations.

 

I have many other resolutions for change which I think you should consider and undertake.

But I think you have enough on your plate for this 2009th year of the Christian Era.

If you can do only a few of what I suggest, you will be remembered by the world as a great leader. Then the United States will again be the most admired nation. Your embassies will be able to take down the high fences and razor-wire coils that surround them.

 

May I wish you a Happy New Year and a great Presidency.

 

Yours Sincerely,

 

Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad

(Former Prime Minister of Malaysia)

 

Comments (1)

Older Posts »