Reading Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi - Masnavi

Found a great website khamush let me know in comments if you know of anyother good Rumi site. I will link it here.

Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi - Masnavi:
"Mathnawi VI: 255-260

Wealth has no permanence: it comes in the morning,
and at night it is scattered to the winds.
Physical beauty too has no importance,
for a rosy face is made pale by the scratch of a single thorn.
Noble birth also is of small account,
for many become fools of money and horses.
Many a nobleman's son has disgraced his father by his wicked deeds.
Don't court a person full of talent either,
even if he seems exquisite in that respect:
take warning from the example of Iblis1.
Iblis had knowledge, but since his love was not pure,
he saw in Adam nothing but a figure of clay.

1. Devil

Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski
'Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance'
Threshold Books, 1996"

East is so rich in this stuff that I have started missing home. I learned Persian in 1988 and now I have forgotten almost everything, completely. If today someone speaks Persian in front of me I will look at his face with blank eyes. I wish I can go back in time and read all this stuff in original. English translations deliver the essence but they do not deliver the passion you enjoy while reading Rumi in Persian. It is much more soothing to read 'Rumi' in Persian. My Father in Law has a big collection and he is good in Persian too. One day, I may go back learn Persian again and read all his collections. I will definitely do that.

Peter Jennings, ABC News Anchor, Dies at 67 - New York Times

My favorite News Caster died. He was too young at this age I would say. He always seemed healthy and lively but I was shocked to hear that he died of cancer.

Peter Jennings, ABC News Anchor, Dies at 67 - New York Times: "Peter Jennings, a high school dropout from Canada who transformed himself into one of the most urbane, well-traveled and recognizable journalists on American television, died yesterday at home. He was 67 and lived in Manhattan."

Fatawa Against Fatawa

A few days ago I stumbled upon Peter Nicholson's website. He is a fine Australian cartoonist. I have used one of his cartoons in my blog below. His Fatawa against Fatawa cartoon made me laugh out loud but at the same time invoked a deeper thought. In one of my posts I also recommended this; I mean that Muslim scholars issue Fatawa against the suicide bombing Fatawas, etc. (Now this is what actually Muslim world is doing these days). However, after London bombings I am convinced that only Fatawas against Fatawas will not resolve the problem. We are facing a much bigger problem today. I am busy these days so won't write more on this but rather recommend you to read some postings by other bloggers and an articles on this issue "Carnival of Culture" by Hanif Qureshi published in Guardian UK.




This cartoon is a copyright of Nicholson of "The Australian" newspaper: www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au used with permission

Trading Cricket for Jihad

Very insightful article by David Brooks

Trading Cricket for Jihad - New York Times: "The jihadists are modern psychologically as well as demographically because they are self-made men (in traditional societies there are no self-made men). Rather than deferring to custom, many of them have rebelled against local authority figures, rejecting their parents' bourgeois striving and moderate versions of Islam, and their comfortable lives.They have sought instead some utopian cause to give them an identity and their lives meaning. They find that cause in a brand of Salafism that is not traditional Islam but a modern fantasy version of it, an invented tradition. They give up cricket and medical school and take up jihad.In other words, the conflict between the jihadists and the West is a conflict within the modern, globalized world. The extremists are the sort of utopian rebels modern societies have long produced.In his book 'Globalized Islam,' the French scholar Olivier Roy points out that today's jihadists have a lot in common with the left-wing extremists of the 1930's and 1960's. Ideologically, Islamic neofundamentalism occupies the same militant space that was once occupied by Marxism. It draws the same sorts of recruits (educated second-generation immigrants, for example), uses some of the same symbols and vilifies some of the same enemies (imperialism and capitalism)."

I came across a cartoon here in which you can see a Mullah playing on Silly Mid-Off in the backyard. LOL

Update Aug 5,2005

Nicholson gave me permisssion to use his cartoon here. Thanks! He has some really funny cartoons.

That is fine. Actually the Mullah is just a garden gnome .....
but if people think of him as a mullah, all the better.

Gitmo II

I wrote about Gitmo earlier and there are more reports that interrogators are using home learned investigation techniques rather than approved one. This will only complicate things in the Muslim world. Even those who were complying with the interrogators were mistreated. Obivously Mowhoush would have deserved to die after proven guilty but not in extra judicial manner. It just tarnishes the image and justice the US and it's allies try to project.

Guardian Unlimited Special reports 'One of them made cuts in my penis. I was in agony': "One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. 'I told you I was going to teach you who's the man,' [one] eventually said.
They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor."

Later, when a US airplane picked me up the following January, a female MP took pictures. She was one of the few Americans who ever showed me any sympathy. When she saw the injuries I had she gasped. They treated me and took more photos when I was in Kabul. Someone told me this was "to show Washington it's healing".

And another News about torture techniques

Documents Tell of Brutal Improvisation by GIs:

Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush was being stubborn with his American captors, and a series of intense beatings and creative interrogation tactics were not enough to break his will. On the morning of Nov. 26, 2003, a U.S. Army interrogator and a military guard grabbed a green sleeping bag, stuffed Mowhoush inside, wrapped him in an electrical cord, laid him on the floor and began to go to work. Again.
"It was inside the sleeping bag that the 56-year-old detainee took his last breath through broken ribs, lying on the floor beneath a U.S. soldier in Interrogation Room 6 in the western Iraqi desert. Two days before, a secret CIA-sponsored group of Iraqi paramilitaries, working with Army interrogators, had beaten Mowhoush nearly senseless, using fists, a club and a rubber hose, according to classified documents."

Determining the details of the general's demise has been difficult because the circumstances are listed as "classified" on his official autopsy, court records have been censored to hide the CIA's involvement in his questioning, and reporters have been removed from a Fort Carson courtroom when testimony relating to the CIA has surfaced.

"Although the investigation indicates the death was directly related to the non-standard interrogation methods employed on 26 NOV, the circumstances surrounding the death are further complicated due to Mowhoush being interrogated and reportedly beaten by members of a Special Forces team and other government agency (OGA) employees two days earlier," said a secret Army memo dated May 10, 2004.

The Walk-In



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Hours after Mowhoush's death in U.S. custody on Nov. 26, 2003, military officials issued a news release stating that the prisoner had died of natural causes after complaining of feeling sick. Army psychological-operations officers quickly distributed leaflets designed to convince locals that the general had cooperated and outed key insurgents.

The U.S. military initially told reporters that Mowhoush had been captured during a raid. In reality, he had walked into the Forward Operating Base "Tiger" in Qaim on Nov. 10, 2003, hoping to speak with U.S. commanders to secure the release of his sons, who had been arrested in raids 11 days earlier.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's standard "Autopsy Examination Report" of Mowhoush's death was manipulated to avoid references to the CIA. In contrast to the other autopsy reports of suspicious detainee deaths released by the Army, Mowhoush's name is redacted and under "Circumstances of Death," the form says: "This Iraqi [redacted] died while in U.S. custody. The details surrounding the circumstances at the time of death are classified."

Westward Ho II

Just checked out of my apt and moved to a friend's place. We will leave town within two weeks.

Evil Ideology IV

Another manifestation of evil ideology (in Bold).

In Jordanian Case, Hints of Iraq Jihad Networks - New York Times: "Those images showed the toppling of a Sunni Arab-led government, ultimately in favor of the majority Shiites. Like nearly all Jordanian Arabs, Mr. Horani and his family are Sunni. 'He hates the Shiites,' Mrs. Rahman said.
But unlike so many other young men who may also be angered by such television images, Mr. Horani and his friends chose to join the fight in April 2003. It was a decision that appears to have been quickly made.
'We were in the mosque and we all said, 'Lets go do jihad,' ' recalled Abdul Kareem Saraqoush, 39, who was part of the group along with his younger brother Khalid, who remains in jail among those accused."

Another Face of Terror

It takes lot of courage to tell the ordeal. I hope she will gather enough strength and courage to tell her story and challenge the iron man of Pakistan and his gun totting military brats working in civilian installations.

Another Face of Terror - New York Times: "Dr. Shazia's Story: In Her Own Words"