hajia

GEORGE BUSH’S BRAVE NEW AMERICA

Since 9/11 I have always thought that America was sliding into a cauldron of dictatorship and subtle racism based on us and them even in their country. Well I came a cross this confirmation of sorts from the web site of indefatigable Moorish girl. I gave her piece a befitting tiltle as below:

Martin Luther King Jr. And George Walker Bush Jr.

Forty one years ago Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. Call me an idealist, a romantic, a deluded fool, but I get goose bumps every time I hear it. Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if his dream had become reality, if his ideals of brotherhood and equality, freedom and justice had stopped being just that--ideals.

Here is what King actually said and hoped to come true one day:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

[1] I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

[2] I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

[3] I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

[4] I have a dream today.

In George W. Bush's America, there is no inspirational dream; there's just a nightmare for those who are not rich, straight, and white. In Bush's nightmare, you get all sorts of footnotes, addenda, and caveats, like this:

1. Equality for all, except for homosexuals. In Bush's America, marriage is a right reserved for straight citizens.
2. Brotherhood for all, except for Muslims. If racial profiling, snooping through library records, and tapping phone lines don't do it, surely special cards will do.
3. Freedom and justice for all, except for those who have oil. Those people will have to be bombed into submission, even if it means war with no end in sight.
4. No prejudice against anyone, except against women, blacks, browns, gays, the poor, liberals, and anyone whose definition of patriotism doesn't fit.

Let freedom ring (someday).

Hmmmmm. Thiose clamouring to gomton USA would do well to remember all the above.

This brand new gate is the main thoroughfare to Katsina from Kano. It was first built when the state was created back in 1987 by the first military governor, Abdullahi Sarki Muhktar. It was narrow and became outdated after a few years. The road is now known as IBB way and is the main hub of the town. It roughly divides the town into two halves. Garama to the east and Danmarna to west. And each side at one time had its own local government. Obj quashed that dream but the indigenes still hope to get back their local government sooner or later.
If you oserve the picture carefully you will notice that the gate is still narrow by some standards but it can serve the purpose for now. All the other gates seem to have this narrowness problem which speaks volumes on the competency of our Architects in the Minstry of Works. We have to make do with what they can give us hoping that later generation of architects will doa better job.
I snapped thispicture inside a friends car and the dashboard appears slightly at the bottom. This probaly says alot about my knowledge of photography. In fact I used my handset tosnap the picture.

WOMEN: TO WORK OR NOT TO WORK

A long running television discussion has been going on for sometime now on KTTV on the issue of whether husbands should allow their wives to work or not. Needless to say it is quite amusing to watch and listen to all the views. The discussants include men and women from all walks of life but the polarisation of opinion is a bit disturbing: the men are against working women while the women favour work. But the fact that this issue is still being discussed at all says a lot about how far behind we in KT are in the area of modernisation. Or shall we say zamani is leaving us behind? After all how many women are working in KT and in which organisations? The number is certainly small compared to the overall population and you find most of these women in Hospitals and in primary schools only. Yet the debate rages on with no sign of any side winning. It reminds me of the battle between the forces of light and those of darkness. Progress and backwardness.

First of all I think it is preposterous to even question the immense contribution that women are capable of giving to the society by merely going out to work. This is because by going out to work the woman gives back to society her own contribution and in the process realise her own potential. To understand it clearly imagine what will happen if all these women were to withdraw their services and stay put at home. And thus abide by the wishes of the forces of darkness. What would be the fate of all those places they work at? Won’t they all collapse due to dearth of manpower? This is not even talking about the special jobs that are best suited for women like we know them in ante natal area etc.

But the majority of the panellists hold a different view that border on negativism. The main thread of their arguments hinge on the shenanigans that working women commit at the workplace. In fact there seems to be a kind of fixation among the males on this issue but they all conveniently forget the big role that their counterparts play in these shenanigans. Research has shown that the preponderance of these shananigans occur more among men than women in all races and cultures. And biology teaches us that its all due to their overdose of testosterone. So whose fault is it here?

Of course no one denies that these shenanigans do not happen in some instances among the working women but why can’t we for once consider the good contributions that these working women give. Leave the shenanigans alone and lets for once concentrate and bring examples of the positive things associated with the work that these women are doing. Why can’t we bring to the fore the good legacy left behind by working women like our well known educationist, Hassu Iro Inko? If she had not been given the chance to go out and work, KT would have lost all the contributions she made and the other good things she did. Likewise the good work being done by hundreds of our nurses and our few female doctors scattered around our health care facilities. And the female teachers in our schools and all the other women workers in the state and elsewhere.

It is high time we understood our priorities and stopped chasing shadows.

I performed hajj about four times but have always wondered about the paucity of historical sites in the Mecca, Medina and Jedda areas. Mecca in particular ought to be full of historical homes and locations that pilgrims can visit during Hajj. A deliberate preservation of these important places should have been a key activity of past regimes of Saudi Arabia. The expansion of the grand Mosques may provide explanation but it appears several such locations have been deliberately destroyed to give way to Hotels and other high rise buildings atc. I have always thought it odd that the location of the Prophet’s house, and those of other important icons of Islam like Khadija, Abu Sufiyan, Bilal etc and even those of Abu Jahl have all been lost.

Ibn Saud seized power in 1925 and was the first modern ruler of Saudi Arabia. He succeeded in bringing the warring regions together through alliances and intermarriages to form the modern Saudi state. At the same time his alliance with the British thwarted possible reprisals from the Turks who were the bona fide colonial masters. It is instructive to note that all those important sites were in good shape during the time of Ibn Saud. I can not imagine why successive governments headed by his sons (Saud II, Faisal, Khalid, Fahd and now Abdallah) decided to demolish the sites.

Well I came across a plausible explanation that implicates the Saudi authorities and their Wahhabi sect set of beliefs. moorishgirl made a revelation as to the callous destructions of these important sites and suggests that a Fatwa be declared against the Saudi rulers. Read below:

Fatwa This

For the last few years, the Wahhabi regime of Saudi Arabia has been quietly, but systematically destroying several archeological sites of religious and cultural significance to Muslims. Among these destroyed sites are: The grave of Amina bint Wahb, the Prophet's mother, which was bulldozed in 1998; the house of Khadijah, the Prophet's wife, which was demolished and replaced with lavatories; the house of Abu Bakr, the companion of the Prophet and his political successor, was destroyed in favor of a Hilton hotel. Even the birthplace of the Prophet is under threat; the Saudi government built a library around it, and now they want to destroy even those remnants and build on them.

Now, the Wahhabis are mulling whether to bar women from praying at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the world's largest pilgrimage site. The proposal is sheer misogynistic lunacy. And of course it's potentially unenforceable. I can't imagine that women pilgrims will stop turning up at the Ka'aba. But the way in which this fundamentalist sect has co-opted what should be the religious and cultural heritage of one-fifth of humanity is truly sickening.

Lest we forget though, women in Saudi Arabia lead strict lives. They are banned from driving and need permission from a male guardian to go to school, get a job, travel or stay at a hotel. This kind of regimented life is best watched from a distance …. I mean personally I would not want to lead such a life. I want to be free to live my life the way I want but within the general guidelines of my religion or perhaps my interpretation of it.

I came across the above web site thinking perhaps I can learn something about the plurality of Islam. I was grossly disappointed. The site appears to be another Jewish attempt to hoodwink Muslims.

The site has a valid quotation from Suratul Baqra but what follows immediately begin to make your heart to race. Why should a site claiming to be Islamic recommend blog sites that have run foul with Saudi authorities? Why blog spots anyway? Have they run out of materials to recommend?

What really let the cat out is first the name of the Chief Executive of the site, one Stephen Schwarz, and then the comment he made on an article by two distinguished Harvard professors. The professors had written an article in which they criticized and described Americas foreign policy as Tel Aviv- inspired.

Here is how “Imam” Schwartz started his rebuttal along with a portion of the editorial of one pro-Jewish newspaper:

“The time has long passed when association with Harvard University conferred an imprimatur of presumed seriousness or even common sense on the output of its scholars. Still, it comes as a shock to read a polemic as vulgar as the "working paper" penned earlier this month by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Stephen M. Walt, and John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, carrying the title "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy." A shorter version of this travesty of scholarship appeared in the London Review of Books. It purports to explain President Bush's foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, as being almost entirely determined by a nefarious "Israel Lobby," which supposedly dragged this country into the Iraq war at the behest of Tel Aviv. The effort has been correctly identified as gross propaganda by the excellent reporters at the New York Sun and the Forward. The latter noted in an editorial:

"The core of the Lobby," [Mear-sheimer and Walt] write, "is comprised of American Jews who make a significant effort in their daily lives to bend U.S. foreign policy so that it advances Israel's interests." To be sure, they hasten to add, "not all Jewish-Americans are part of the Lobby." One 2004 survey found that "roughly 36 percent of Jewish-Americans said they were either 'not very' or 'not at all' emotionally attached to Israel."

"According to Mearsheimer and Walt, the Lobby (they always use a capital L) is so vast it unites not just Jews but "prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay," not to mention a group they charmingly dub "neoconservative gentiles," such as "John Bolton, the late Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, former U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and columnist George Will." The Lobby also infected the policies of the Clinton administration and dictates policy not just at magazines like this one, but also at the New York Times and most think tanks in Washington.”

Well in his attempt to discredit the two Harvard Professors, Mr. Schwartz has unmasked himself as a Jew. And there is nothing really new about the revelations in their write-up. The whole world knows that Jews had been running the show in America since the end of World War II. The war in Iraq is being fought by USA on behalf of Jews. Saddam and his arsenal was a threat to Israel and so had to be removed by no other than the errand boys in Washington.

Which brings me to what late Abubakar Imam calls Banza girman mahaukaci, karamin mai wayo ya fishi, in his classic book Magana Jari Ce.

Young and educated women in Saudi Arabia are angry at their government. These women were allowed to go to USA and Europe to study and become professionals but on coming back home are denied the chance to continue life as usual. While they accept their ninja- mode of dressing as given, the idea of banning them from driving is completely repugnant to them. And they are fighting Saudi authorities in the cyber space. And elsewhere.
The first salvo was fired by saudi-eve in her now famous blogspot. She was followed in quick succession by farahsowaleef, classic-diva, saudi-jeans, eveksa and a host of others women bloggers.

Going through their write ups, one gets the idea of a seeming saudi hypocrisy in relegating women in all affairs in the name of religion. Apart from the issue of driving, there is also the law that stops women from marrying whom they want including non- saudis. A saudi woman is only allowed to marry the right male from the approved tribe ie Al aseel or al najd. These types are scarce and therefore a big per centage of young saudi women are forced to be spinsters for the rest of their lives. How preposterous!
The males on the other hand are allowed to generally hop outside the country, unescorted to play ball. Recently two saudi nationals were caught on a temprary marriage scam in Indonesia.

Well these bloggers paint a gory picture of a saudi society that train boys to become sodomites because of the intense seperation between the sexes. Farahs in particular had an article titled, "A thought in the Kindom of Lunacy" whcih is a must read for all those interested in the topic. Unfortunately this blog site has been removed or blocked. But one can still see some of her postings in the Buzznet ie farooha.buzznet.com.

The Saudi authorities are fighting back as you might expect. They have a high tech facility in Jeddah that blocks all such blogspots that they consider offensive. All blocked sites can not be accesssed inside the Kingdom.
Trust this bloggers to come up with something akin to a sucker punch. They recently took their case to the EEC. The European Parliament is said to be currently mooting on a law that will ban Saudi males from driving within EC countries. This move is intended to make the saudi authorities to allow their women to drive lke it is allowed all over the world.

As a muslim i can understand where Saudi authorities are coming from but as a woman I can not imagine myself holed for life in a house, barred from driving my car, barred from shopping and the like. I would as soon relocate.
Driving a car and the other little freedoms we enjoy should perhaps make us to be grateful for being born in our obodo Nigeria.

The above name shot to unprecedented prominence during the recent bombings and pogroms in Lebanon by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). It is the name of the leader of the Hizbollahs resistance force. Hitherto no one had ever imagined that a ragtag militia can hold off the mighty Israeli war machine, not to talk of poking it’s under belly. But that’s exactly what the Hozbollah succeeded in doing and the Arabs are cheering the guy like he was some messiah. For example the Egyptian popular press is now comparing Nasrallah with Nesser to the chagrin of the authorities there. During the Lebanon war the Egyptian Government forcefully stopped people from demonstrating on the streets. A few months earlier though, the same government encouraged people to demonstrate against those infamous Danish cartoons. All over the Arab world and elsewhere Nasarallah is the new hero.

However Nasarallahs pronouncements as reported by western media may create problems for the man. These media sources claimed that the order to kidnap the two Israeli soldiers would not have been given if the possible consequences were known. I think it would have been better for Nasarallah to apologise to the Lebanese for all the losses suffered and leave matters as they are.A true freedom fighter should be willing to lose everything for the course. Ask Che Guevara.