Tabescent Existence

Initially RIM will release two variations of the BlackBerry 10, one a touch-screen model that resembles many other phones now on the market. The other model is a hybrid with a keyboard similar to those now found on current BlackBerrys as well as a small touch screen.

The real revolution, though, may be in the software that manages a person’s business and personal information. It is clearly designed with an eye toward retaining and, more important, luring back, corporate users.

Corporate and government information technology managers will be able to segregate business-related apps and data on BlackBerry 10 handsets from users’ personal material through a system known as BlackBerry Balance. It will enable an I.T. manager to, among other things, remotely wipe corporate data from fired employees’ phones while leaving the newly jobless workers’ personal photos, e-mails, music and apps untouched. The system can also block users from forwarding or copying information from the work side of the phone.

Messages generated by e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging and LinkedIn accounts are automatically consolidated into a single in-box that RIM calls BlackBerry Hub.

Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research, called the new phones “beautiful” and described the operating system as “a giant leap forward” from RIM’s current operating system. Ray Sharma, who followed RIM’s glory years as a financial analyst but who now runs XMG Studio, a mobile games developer in Toronto, has been similarly impressed.

But both men are among many analysts who question the ability of BlackBerry 10, whatever its merits, to revive RIM’s fallen fortunes.

State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima (Los Angeles County) said his bill, SB135, is based on recent advances in preparing the $80 million California warning system to operate and on evidence that other early warning systems are proving effective in Japan, Mexico and other earthquake-prone nations.

Padilla, an MIT-trained engineer from the San Fernando Valley and a former space systems software specialist, speaking at a news conference at the California Institute of Technology, said it could provide “critical seconds for teachers to get their pupils to duck and cover, for drivers to pull to the side of the road, for trains to stop, and for utilities to power down.”

Richard M. Allen, director of the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, and his colleagues at Caltech and the US Geological Survey, developed ShakeAlert as part of the California Integrated Seismic Network.

When the rich are born to rule, the results can be fatal

I was schooled in a system that separated me from ordinary people’s lives. The same fate has befallen the global elite

By George Monbiot

Those whom the gods love die young: are they trying to tell me something? Due to an inexplicable discontinuity in space-time, on Sunday I turned 50. I have petitioned the relevant authorities, but there’s nothing they can do.

So I will use the occasion to try to explain the alien world from which I came. To understand how and why we are now governed as we are, you need to know something of that strange place.

I was born into the third tier of the dominant class: those without land or capital, but with salaries high enough to send their children to private schools. My preparatory school, which I attended from the age of eight, was a hard place, still Victorian in tone. We boarded, and saw our parents every few weeks. We were addressed only by our surnames and caned for misdemeanours. Discipline was rigid, pastoral care almost non-existent. But it was also strangely lost.

A few decades earlier, the role of such schools was clear: they broke boys’ attachment to their families and re-attached them to the instititions – the colonial service, the government, the armed forces – through which the British ruling class projected its power. Every year they released into the world a cadre of kamikazes, young men fanatically devoted to their caste and culture.

By the time I was eight those institutions had either collapsed (in the case of colonial service), fallen into other hands (government), or were no longer a primary means by which British power was asserted (the armed forces). Such schools remained good at breaking attachments, less good at creating them.

But the old forms and the old thinking persisted. The school chaplain used to recite a prayer which began “let us now praise famous men”. Most of those he named were heroes of colonial conquest or territorial wars. Some, such as Douglas Haig and Herbert Kitchener, were by then widely regarded as war criminals. Our dormitories were named after the same people. The history we were taught revolved around topics such as Gordon of Khartoum, Stanley and Livingstone and the Black Hole of Calcutta. In geography, the maps still showed much of the globe coloured red.

My second boarding school was a kinder, more liberal place. But we remained as detached from the rest of society as Carthusian monks. The world, when we were released into it, was unrecognisable. It bore no relationship to our learning or experience. The result was cognitive dissonance: a highly uncomfortable state from which human beings will do almost anything to escape. There were two principal means. One – the more painful – was to question everything you held to be true. This process took me years: in fact it has not ended. It was, at first, highly disruptive to my peace of mind and sense of self.

The other, as US Republicans did during the Bush presidency, is to create your own reality. If the world does not fit your worldview, you either shore up your worldview with selectivity and denial, or (if you have power) you try to bend the world to fit the shape it takes in your mind. Much of the effort of conservative columnists and editors and of certain politicians and historians appears to be devoted to these tasks.

In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt explains that the nobles of pre-revolutionary France “did not regard themselves as representative of the nation, but as a separate ruling caste which might have much more in common with a foreign people of the same society and condition than with its compatriots.”(1) Last year the former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren wrote something very similar about the dominant classes of the US: “the rich elites of this country have far more in common with their counterparts in London, Paris, and Tokyo than with their fellow American citizens … the rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it.”(2)

Secession from the concerns and norms of the rest of society characterises any well-established elite. Our own ruling caste, schooled separately, brought up to believe in justifying fairytales, lives in a world of its own, from which it can project power without understanding or even noticing the consequences. A removal from the life of the rest of the nation is no barrier to the desire to dominate it. In fact it appears to be associated with a powerful sense of entitlement.

So if you have wondered how the current government can blithely engage in the wholesale transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, how its front bench can rock with laughter as it truncates the livelihoods of the poorest people of this country, why it commits troops to ever more pointless post-colonial wars, here, I think, is part of the answer. Many of those who govern us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, a different world, which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them.

References:

1. Hannah Arendt, 1951. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Chapter 6. Originally published by Schocken Books, Berlin.

2. Mike Lofgren, 27th August 2012. Revolt of the Rich. The American Conservative. http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/revolt-of-the-rich/

With a sluggish economy, unemployment teetering at around the eight per cent mark, and growing anti-Obama sentiment in some parts of the country, a second term seemed an uphill task for Obama and it was going to take an extraordinary campaign to make it happen.

Things were different in 2008. Back then he had the fortune of an electorate grown weary of the Bush presidency looking for change and with no real record to defend. His mercurial rise and the zeitgeist of the country at the time seemed to have coincided at the right time.

This time it was going to be harder, with a first term that had left some of his more ardent supporters with a tinge of disappointment given the promise of his first campaign, and the Republicans growing even more strident in their opposition.  America hadn’t been so politically polarized in a long time.

But in a presidential campaign, the incumbent enjoys a few advantages and one of them is a strong organisational setup.

From the get-go David Axelrod, the brain behind the Obama campaign, recognised the role that data and information could play in the election. The process had been initiated in 2008 but databases were scattered and it wasn’t until the 2010 midterm elections that the Democratic Party, despite heavy losses, was able to streamline the data to accurately forecast results in a meaningful way.

Enter Rayid Ghani.

At first impression Ghani comes across as an affable person, who speaks in short, clipped sentences that don’t give away any more than he intends to. Right away you get the feeling that he knows what he’s talking about. But his unassuming manner belies the fact that he is one of the leading experts in the growing field of analytics and data mining.

An alum of Karachi Grammar School, he moved to the Unites States for college where he attended a small liberal arts school in Tennessee called Sewanee: University of the South.

There he studied computer science and mathematics, but as with many undergraduate experiences, he used his time there to find his true calling.

“What I really did there was explore and figure out what I wanted to do, which ended up being a research career in some form of artificial intelligence and machine learning,” Ghani said. “I was motivated by two goals: One was to study and understand how we (humans) learn and two:  I wanted to solve large practical problems by making computers smarter though the use of data.”

That eventually led him to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh for graduate school where he studied Machine Learning and Data Mining.

It was during this period that he started working at Accenture Technology labs as chief scientist, before joining Obama For America.

At Accenture, Ghani mined mountains of private data of given corporations to find statistical patterns that could forecast consumer behavior.

“We were a small group of people who were kind of looking at the next generation of tools that would be beneficial for businesses,” he said. “We were trying to find new approaches to analysing data and see how we could apply it to businesses.”

In today’s data-centric world, the one-size-fits-all model is no longer an efficient use of a company’s resources. More and more, corporations are looking for increasingly targeted approaches to attract consumers.

Similar to how Facebook uses information from user profiles to target its advertising, Ghani helped businesses find patterns in consumer behavior so that his clients could develop different strategies that suit individual preferences. It’s what’s known as customer-relationship management or CRM in the corporate sector.

But discrimination against women is so endemic and wide-ranging in India that deaths from domestic violence account for only a fraction of the overall risk of unnecessary death. “Other aspects come into play, like female infanticide, mistreatment of young girls in terms of access to resources, maternal deaths, unequal access to health care and so forth,” said Ms. Anderson, the economics professor. “Indian women face more dangers.”

“This tragedy would not have happened if she had chanted God’s name and fallen at the feet of the attackers. The error was not committed by just one side,” he said in video footage which has been widely circulated on the internet.

The 71-year-old’s remarks — the latest in a series of gaffes by public figures blaming women for the country’s rape epidemic — drew a chorus of condemnation.

Gandhi believed Indian women who were raped lost their value as human beings. He argued that fathers could be justified in killing daughters who had been sexually assaulted for the sake of family and community honour. He moderated his views towards the end of his life. But the damage was done, and the legacy lingers in every present-day Indian press report of a rape victim who commits suicide out of “shame”. Gandhi also waged a war against contraceptives, labelling Indian women who used them as whores.

Like all men who wage a doomed war with their own sexual desires, Gandhi’s behaviour around females would eventually become very, very odd. He took to sleeping with naked young women, including his own great-niece, in order to “test” his commitment to celibacy. The habit caused shock and outrage among his supporters. God knows how his wife felt.

It was difficult to convince people to take repeated polio doses and there were some pockets of resistance, particularly in western U.P., in minority communities. This resistance mainly stemmed from false rumors about the polio vaccine.

This was overcome by involving religious leaders, local medical practitioners and huge celebrities like Amitabh Bachchan, who together highlighted the necessity for polio eradication. Where the mass marketing campaign did not reach, the door-to-door campaign by 2.3 million volunteers across the country meant that we reached children in the hardest-to-reach rural communities.

Prohibition of Dunaywe Talks in Masjid

Hazrat Moulana Mufti Abdur Rauf Sakkarwi (db)

Mecca Masjed, Hyderabad, India

Excerpts from the upcoming book ‘What comes round goes around – The True Financial Crisis’ by Mubashir Malik 

Abedi  befriended the world’s elite, namely the rising oil tycoons of the Middle East, and with their investment capital he created BCCI in 1972, incorporated in Luxembourg with Head offices in Abu Dhabi. However barely  two decades after its inception it was accused of various fraud & bankruptcy allegations, eventually being forcefully shut down by the Bank of England & authorities in 1991.

Within 10 years of birth, the growth of this Arab owned, Pakistani managed bank was phenomenal. It became the fastest growing bank, with a network of 400 branches in over 72 countries. At its peak in the late 80’s, BCCI became the 7^th largest private bank in the world in terms of assets alone. This was an enormous feat by any standards, especially by a bank that was originally set up as an institution to help bridge the gap between the Third world and the West.

Naturally, the prying eyes of the world were on BCCI. Undeniably, there were factions of the western banking elite, traditionally controlled by Wall street or regulators like the Bank of England that saw BCCI through the doctrine of suspicion. The bank’s new plush London headquarters at 100 Leadenhall Street, in the heart of the City’s financial district, became notorious amongst the traditional high street banks as they wanted to get a piece of the success cake.  To be brutally honest, I’m not at all surprised. BCCI became a victim of its own success. A former BCCI executive is quoted as saying “While other banks were sleeping & crawling, BCCI was awake and sprinting”.

Here was a bank that came literally from nowhere, had installed conspicuous branches  dotted around the most sought after prime locations in central London, attracting high net worth individuals as depositors and was growing at a rate faster than it takes Dominic Strauss Kahn to unzip his trousers.

It is said that if you walked into any BCCI branch, it would feel and look as though you have walked into the lobby of a luxurious yet classy 5* hotel.  The only ATM machines outside world famous Harrods store in Knightsbridge were those of BCCI. They had almost 4 branches alone on the small stretch of road that is called ‘Park Lane’ in London’s exclusive Mayfair district.

Abedi had transformed the meaning of consumer & personal banking in the real practical sense. Normally in high street banks, customers were used to tedious long queues, derelict shop fronts, dull interiors and gloomy carpets & lighting. In BCCI, a normal walk-in customer was treated to leather sofas, marble décor, impeccably dressed personal bankers greeting you at the door and helping you in the queue in advance to save time (a service only recently adopted by the high street banks), hot/cold drinks for free served by dedicated catering staff. In addition there were always a string of chauffeur driven Mercedes limousines parked outside main BCCI branches to transport key clients & Executives.

This was a whole new personal banking revolution and Agha Hassan Abedi was the pioneer.

So what went wrong and how did it all go pear-shaped for this promising ambitious 3^rd world bank that thousands of people entrusted with their hard earned money? Well for the Full Monty, you will have to read my book due for release next Summer. However for the eager, zealous & impatient readers I shall give you the quintessence in a nutshell.

Agha Hassan Abedi knew that his bank was the next big thing and on target to possibly being the largest bank in the world. He was forging relationships with political heavyweights and rubbing shoulders with the likes of former US president Jimmy Carter and the Pope . The more notorious clientele included Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, Bin Laden family and more notably the CIA.

Abedi’s enemies & competitors also knew this.  However in order to really get to where he wanted to be and fulfill his vision, he needed a presence in the USA. The banking federal laws within the USA are such that it was very difficult for BCCI to make a considerable impact as a foreign bank. Even in the UK, BCCI was never given full banking status, but only as a ‘licensed deposit taker’.  Therefore to create a foothold in America, BCCI became a majority shareholder and took control of First American bank (one of America’s largest banking networks) through some influential front men and investors. On paper the deal was legitimate and signed by wealthy Saudi & American investors, however the federal authorities who were already suspicious and looking for dirt on BCCI, soon realized that the bank was pulling all the strings at First American. Even though BCCI was accused of other activities like money laundering, accounts manipulation and insolvency. The main catalyst and the cherry on the cake was the acquisition of an American bank which eventually sparked BCCI’s debacle & downfall. It was unthinkable for the Americans to digest that a once unknown bank from the Middle East was replacing and overtaking the banking world, leaving the likes of Citibank, JP Morgan Chase and others behind.

The guillotine came down on BCCI in July 1991. The bank’s assets were frozen and the thousands of depositors of BCCI were in a frenzy as they feared losing their life savings amidst reports of the bank’s poor liquidity & insolvency. The Bank of England accused BCCI of being bankrupt and an apparent ‘hole’ uncovered with losses of up to £1billion apparently. The majority shareholder at the time Sheikh Zayed bin Nahayan Al Nahyan, Ruler of Abu Dhabi, warned the authorities not to close the bank and that he will personally guarantee the reported ‘losses’ and implement a cash injection of £1billion. He went on further to the extent that he will order an entire shake up and re-structuring of the bank worldwide with new staff & management. The Bank of England had already started a similar re-structuring of the bank prior to its closure but still decided to close it down instead. The conclusion being that when the head of the UAE Royal family (majority shareholder) gives you a guarantee of funds, accepting responsibility, co-operating with the restructure and re-assures the world of the financial stability of the bank with his personal backing – and then the bank STILL ends up being forced shut by the Western authorities, then we really have to question whether something else was at play here.

Now the first thing coming to all of your minds is that this a typical tale of East blaming the West, blaming the misdoings of a few corrupt Pakistani bankers on Western jealousy, Conspiracy theories galore and racism. However we only need to read the front headline newspapers of the past week to figure that one out. It doesn’t take Einstein to see the double standards and hypocrisy in the aftermath of the world economic meltdown hat started in 2008 with the Lehman Brothers failure.

Now let’s grab a hot cup of Horlicks, some MnM’s or some ‘lassi’ if you are inclined to fall asleep afterwards and go through this list of financial institutions with scandals:

Barclays Bank PLC

Barclays Bank was recently fined £290million because of its involvement in the LIBOR scandal. What does that mean? I Hear you all cry.

It’s the London interbank offer rate, an interest-rate benchmark for many other rates, from commercial loans to mortgages. Libor is also an important index for derivatives, which are complex agreements whose value derives from a benchmark.

Libor is the most widely used interest rate in the world. Estimates of how much is tied to Libor vary from $350 trillion to $800 trillion. To give you a rough estimate, $350 trillion would pay for all USA government spending for the next century. Some banks including Barclays artificially inflated or deflated their rates, depending on what would benefit them most. Some may have deflated their rates to give the impression that they were more creditworthy than they actually were.

During the financial crisis of 2008, the rate was more of an estimate, since banks weren’t lending to anyone.   Between January 2005 and June 2009, Barclays derivatives traders made a total of 257 requests to fix Libor and Euribor rates, according to a report by the FSA.

In June 2012, Barclays admitted to misconduct and the UK’s FSA imposed a £59.5m penalty. The US Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) imposed fines worth £102m and £128m respectively, forcing Barclays to pay a total of around £290m.

Two days later, chief executive Bob Diamond said he would attend a Commons Treasury Select Committee and that the bank would co-operate with authorities. However, he insisted he would not resign.

The same day, Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King called for a “cultural change, but ruled out a Leveson-style inquiry into the banks.  Sounds very flaky to me. Had this been BCCI. It would’ve been a different story. Still reading? Good.

JP Morgan & Chase

JP Morgan has had to pay fines on 3 occasions in four years to settle regulatory allegations that it mishandled customer accounts

In 2009 JPMorgan’s futures broker paid $300,000 to settle CFTC allegations it co-mingled accounts and created a $750m shortfall in customer funds. The shortfall was cleared up the next day, but the CFTC faulted the bank for its delay in notifying the regulator.

The FSA fined JP Morgan Securities £33.32m ($48.2m) in 2010 for failing to protect its clients’ money by lumping it in with its own over a period of almost seven years.

Under the FSA’s rules, firms are required to keep customers’ funds in separate accounts to protect it in case the financial firm becomes insolvent. More recently, the CFTC alleged the bank mishandled Lehman Brothers’ customer funds for almost two years before the broker filed for bankruptcy court protection in September 2008. The bank allegedly counted customer money when calculating how much credit it would extend to Lehman. So again the bank settled with the CFTC for $20million with regards to Lehman. The commission also alleged JPMorgan did not return the customer funds until it was ordered to do so almost two weeks after the bankruptcy.

Last but not least  one of JP Morgan Cazenove’s most senior bankers  Ian Hannam resigned after the FSA announced it was fining him £450,000 for market abuse. Shocked? Continue reading.

Goldman Sachs

Endless scandals! Just to name a few : 1) $60 million settlement for Massachusetts subprime mortgages, 2)involvement in European sovereign debt crisis. Goldman Sachs is reported to have systematically helped the Greek government mask the true facts concerning its national debt between the years 1998 and 2009. 3) Involvement in AIG bailout scandal plus many more. 4) Insider trading.

Morgan Stanley

1)      $125 million in order to settle its portion of a $1.4 billion settlement relating to intentionally misleading research motivated by a desire to win investment banking business with the companies covered.

2)      Morgan Stanley settled a sex discrimination suit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $54 million on July 12, 2004. In 2007, the firm agreed to pay $46 million to settle a class action lawsuit brought by eight female brokers.

3)      The New York Stock Exchange imposed a $19 million fine on January 12, 2005 for alleged regulatory and supervisory lapses.

Sexual discrimination cases and employee dissatisfaction was unheard of at BCCI where everybody treated themselves as part of the ‘BCC family’.

Standard Chartered

The New York banking regulator accused Standard Chartered of scheming with Iran to launder as much as $250bn (£161bn). Iran is listed under US sanctions and there are strict controls in place for dealing with them. However Standard Chartered broke all the rules. According to the New York court document, Standard Chartered “schemed with the government of Iran and hid from regulators roughly 60,000 secret transactions, involving at least $250bn, and reaping SCB hundreds of millions of dollars in fees. SCB’s actions left the US financial system vulnerable to terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes, and deprived law enforcement investigators of crucial information used to track all manner of criminal activity”. They became experts at ‘wire-stripping’, something that was never done at BCCI. Wire-stripping is when a bank alters bank codes to hide the origin of a transaction. This is usually done by changing the code that identifies the beneficiary’s bank.

Under normal circumstances, Standard Chartered would’ve had its New York license revoked, potentially disastrous to the bank’s existence.  However instead the punishment is limited to fines :The Federal Reserve said the bank will pay $100m to resolve claims that it provided “inadequate” responses to bank examiners and insufficient oversight of compliance to US sanctions, bank secrecy laws, and anti-money-laundering rules. Separately, the bank will forfeit $227m under deferred prosecution agreements with the US Justice Department and the New York District Attorney. The settlements are on top of the $340m paid to New York’s Department of Financial Services in August.

HSBC

Finally we head to the holy grail of scandals of recent times.

The HSBC fine for money laundering charges this week reached a record $1.92 billion(£1.2bn)  as Europe’s biggest bank settled charges in an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department.

By accepting fault and paying the settlement, HSBC avoided criminal charges. The bank agreed to deferred prosecution with the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the Justice Department.

A report by the Times newspaper said a money-laundering indictment or a guilty plea to money-laundering charges, would “essentially be a death sentence” for HSBC and cost its license to operate in the United States. The astonishing aspect is that HSBC’s dealings with Mexico were considered to be a “low risk” for money laundering, despite the fact that HSBC’s Mexico operation is said to have transferred some $7 billion from Mexico to the United States, much of it thought to have been money from drug cartels. HSBC also continued to do business with various banks in the Middle East that were said to be funding Al Qaeda groups.

Furthermore one begs to ask the question if HSBC’s $1.9bn (£1.2bn) fine is really worth all the fuss its creating? Well, it’s a world record for the offence of money laundering and breaking sanctions. However, the sum represents only about four weeks’ earnings given the bank’s pre-tax profits of $21.9bn last year.  Therefore it probably hurts HSBC’s reputation but not its pockets or bonuses.

Therefore what makes me smile with unease is the way the news of the world-record fine on HSBC gets swept under the carpet sooner than it took me to forget my first girlfriend in boarding school. The bank scandal was headline news last week and by the weekend, we see the news disappear in the newspapers and TV broadcasts.

The BCCI scandal on the other hand, took more than two decades to unravel, the accountants and liquidators looting the funds over the years with over 90% of its creditors being reimbursed. Where did all this money come from if the bank was insolvent?

The global drug money laundering market at the time when BCCI was shut in 1991 was US$200 billion and BCCI was accused of only US$14million. A mere $14m is small fish to fry in front of $200billion! Now the money laundering laws are much more stringent than two decades ago. In the light of the HSBC and Standard Chartered scandals, do you think now money laundering does not exist? Not only does it exist but, the size of the market has increased many folds. Despite more strict and stringent laws the fraudulent market is growing.

We also need to focus on the enormous philanthropic efforts of BCCI and Agha Hassan Abedi on a global scale that people worldwide are still benefitting from today.

How many people know that the world renowned, best private hospital in the UK – Cromwell Hospital was established by BCCI? The BCCI foundation, now known as the’ Infaq foundation’ helps millions of people even today with its funds. BCCI also established top class educational facilities like NUST and FAST in Pakistan. Not forgetting how it changed the lives of 14,000 employees and their families and gave them a dream & ambition to think ‘Big’. The difference between the fates of BCCI and HSBC following accusations of similar ground but the latter being more serious can be seen by all.

Furthermore it was BCCI that funded and set up the Princes Youth Business trust (now known as the Prince’s trust) that gave awards under the patronage of Prince Charles to young entrepreneurs who needed start-up loans for their small businesses. These were all funded by BCCI. The Prince of Wales himself was a great affiliate of the Bank.

The world needs to wake up and acknowledge the great tragedy and miscarriage of justice that was carried out over 20 years ago.

The world opinion on BCCI is of the’ bank of crooks & criminals International’. That was US Senator John Kerry’s opinion anyway. I must stress though that the level of regard I have for his opinion is the same regard Barack Obama has for my personal choice of porridge oats cereal for breakfast. Therefore the less said the better.

The question needs to be asked : Why are UK taxpayers bailing out banks such as RBS, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HSBC due their own fraudulent activities?  Whereas BCCI was shut down even though it was financially sound  & backed by the UAE Government and didn’t ask for a  single penny from the taxpayer!

The university textbooks, Google and Wikipedia need to be re-written to know that BCCI is no longer the ’largest financial fraud in history’.

- Excerpts from the upcoming book ‘What comes round goes around – The True Financial Crisis’ by Mubashir Malik. Sources : Financial Times, BBC World news, The Economist.

Mubashir Malik currently works in Public & Media relations at a Joint Venture of the world’s largest oil producer Saudi Aramco

Non-Muslim Rights in the Ottoman Empire

Much like previous Muslim Empires, the Ottomans showed great toleration and acceptance of non-Muslim communities in their empire. This is based on existing Muslim laws regarding the status of non-Muslims. They are protected, given religious freedoms, and free from persecution according to the Shariah. One of the first precedents of this was the Treaty of Umar ibn al-Khattab, in which he guaranteed the Christians of Jerusalem total religious freedom and safety.

The Millet System

The first instance of the Ottomans having to rule a large number of Christians was after the conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. Constantinople had historically been the center of the Orthodox Christian world, and still had a large Christian population. As the empire grew into Europe, more and more non-Muslims came under Ottoman authority. For example, in the 1530s, over 80% of the population in Ottoman Europe was not Muslim. In order to deal with these new Ottoman subjects, Mehmed instituted a new system, later called the millet system.

This portrait of Mehmed II was painted by an Italian Christian, Gentile Bellini

Under this system, each religious group was organized into a millet. Millet comes from the Arabic word for “nation”, indicating that the Ottomans considered themselves the protectors of multiple nations. Each religious group was considered its own millet, with multiple millets existing in the empire. For example, all Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire were considered as constituting a millet, while all Jews constituted another millet. 

Each millet was allowed to elect its own religious figure to lead them. In the case of the Orthodox Church (the biggest Church in the Ottoman Empire), the Orthodox Patriarch (the Archbishop of Constantinople) was the elected leader of the millet. The leaders of the millets were allowed to enforce their own religion’s rules on their people. Islamic law (Shariah) had no jurisdiction over non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.

In cases of crime, people would be punished according to the rules of their own religion, not Islamic rules or rules of other religions. For example, if a Christian were to steal, he would be punished according to the Christian laws regarding theft. If a Jew were to steal, he were to be punished according to Jewish laws, etc. The only time Islamic law would come into account was if the criminal was a Muslim, or when there was a case involving two people from different millets. In that case, a Muslim judge was to preside over the case and judge according to his best judgement and common law.

In addition to religious law, millets were given freedom to use their own language, develop their own institutions (churches, schools, etc), and collect taxes. The Ottoman sultan only exercised control over the millets through their leaders. The millet leaders ultimately reported to the sultan, and if there was a problem with a millet, the sultan would consult that millet leader. Theoretically, the Muslim population of the Ottoman Empire also constituted a millet, with the Ottoman sultan as the millet leader.

Legacy

The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1300 to 1922. Throughout most of this history, the millet system provided a system of religious harmony and belonging throughout the empire. As the empire expanded, more millets were organized. Separate millets existed for Armenian, Catholic, and Orthodox Christians, for example, with each sect being divided further into more specific regional churches.

These imperial decrees by the Ottoman sultans Mehmed II and Bayezid II granted the Greek community ownership of the church. The decrees and church remain in Istanbul today.

The millet system did not last until the end of the Ottoman Empire. As the empire weakened in the 1700s and 1800s, European intervention in the empire expanded. When the liberal Tanzimat were passed in the 1800s, the millet system was abolished, in favor of a more European-style secularist government. The Ottomans were forced to guarantee vague “rights” to religious minorities, which in fact limited their freedoms. Instead of being allowed to rule themselves according to their own rules, all religious groups were forced to follow the same set of secular laws. This actually ended up causing more religious tension in the empire, which was one of the causes of the genocide of the Armenians during World War One in the Ottoman Empire’s dying days.

The millet system was a unique and creative solution to running a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. The rights and freedoms it gave to religious minorities were far ahead of their time. While Europe struggled with religious persecution into the 1900s, the Ottomans created a harmonious and stable religious pluralistic system that guaranteed religious freedom for hundreds of years.

Bibliography:

Itzkowitz, Norman. Ottoman Empire And Islamic Tradition. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1981. Print.

Ochsenwald, William, and Sydney Fisher. The Middle East: A History. 6th. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Print.

Obama has scarcely mentioned the drone programme and has said nothing about its killing of children. The only statement I can find is a brief and vague response during a videoconference last January(12). The killings have been left to others to justify. In October the Democratic cheerleader Joe Klein claimed on MSNBC that “the bottom line in the end is whose 4 year-old get killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4 year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.”(13) As the estimable Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, killing 4 year-olds is what terrorists do(14). It doesn’t prevent retaliatory murders; it encourages them, as grief and revenge are often accomplices.

Most of the world’s media, which has rightly commemorated the children of Newtown, either ignores Obama’s murders or accepts the official version that all those killed are “militants”. The children of north-west Pakistan, it seems, are not like our children. They have no names, no pictures, no memorials of candles and flowers and teddy bears. They belong to the other: to the non-human world of bugs and grass and tissue.

“Are we,” Obama asked on Sunday, “prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?”(15) It’s a valid question. He should apply it to the violence he is visiting on the children of Pakistan.

• Children don’t start school until they are 7.
• They rarely take exams or do homework until they are in their teens.
• The children are not measured at all for the first 6 yrs of their education.
• There is only one mandatory standardized test taken when children are 16.
• All children, clever or not, are taught in the same classrooms.
• Finland spends around 30% less per student than the United States.
• 30% of children receive extra help during their first 9 years of school.
• The difference between weakest & strongest students is the smallest in the world.
• 66% of students go to college.
• Science classes are capped at 16 students so that they may perform practical experiments in every class.
• 93% of Finns graduate from high school.
• 43% of Finnish high-school students go to vocational schools.
• Elementary school students get 75 minutes of recess a day in Finnish versus an average of 27 minutes in the US.
• Teachers only spend 4 hours a day in the classroom, and take 2 hours a week for “professional development.”
• Finland has the same amount of teachers as New York City, but far fewer students. (600,000 students compared to 1.1 million in NYC.)
• The school system is 100% state funded.
• All teachers in Finland must have a masters degree, which is fully subsidized.
• The national curriculum is only broad guidelines.
• Teachers are selected from the top 10% of graduates.
• In 2010, 6,600 applicants vied for 660 primary school training slots.
• The average starting salary for a Finnish teacher was $29,000 in 2008. (Compared with $36,000 in the United States.)
• However, high school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what other college graduates make. (In the US, this figure is 62%.)
• There is no merit pay for teachers.
• Teachers are given the same status as doctors and lawyers.
• In an international standardized measurement in 2001, Finnish children came in at the top, or very close to the top, for science, reading and mathematics. It has consistently come in at the top or very near every time since. Neighbor Norway, of a similar size and featuring a similar homogeneous culture, follows the same strategies as the USA and achieves similar rankings in international studies.
• And despite the differences between Finland and the US, it easily beats countries with similar demographics.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

When Objectification Is a Choice

Posted by Juli

In other words, for people who base their self-worth on appearance (aka most of us, to some extent), self-objectification may be a double-edged sword. It feels great when you’re getting positive attention, but it can easily turn sour when attention is negative or lacking, and these ups and downs can wreak havoc on mental and physical health.

 

Even when objectification feels good, it can have negative effects, taking precious time and attention away from potentially more important tasks or goals. For example, let’s say you are a female attending a professional conference. Your central goals are presumably along the lines of learning something, networking, engaging in meaningful conversations, and presenting your best work. But in the back of your mind you’re wondering if the men you meet are admiring your poster or something else. Even if you look like a supermodel this objectifying gaze, and your chronic awareness of it, will undoubtedly interfere with your ability to get the most out of the conference. And even in situations where your goals are more romantic, preoccupation with appearance can detract from actually getting to know someone.

In a recent interview, actress Cameron Diaz controversially said “I think every woman does want to be objectified.” Given that decades of research has documented the many ways that objectification can be harmful, why would anyone voluntarily choose to objectify themselves?

The kind of objectification that Diaz is talking about is often referred to as sexual objectification. It involves viewing and treating another person’s body as an object valued based on its sexual appeal, usually to the neglect of other aspects of the person, such as their thoughts, feelings, and desires. Objectifying images and messages are widespread in American society, and they communicate not only that women’s value lies in their appearance, but they also present an ideal of attractiveness that is unattainable for most women. These unrealistic standards can lead to feelings of body shame and disgust, and to unhealthy eating and exercise behaviors.

Over time, exposure to objectifying images can lead to self-objectification, which involves taking an observer’s perspective on one’s own body and chronically monitoring one’s appearance. In a famous set of studies, female participants were randomly assigned to try on either a swimsuit or a sweater and complete a series of tasks. Women in the swimsuit condition felt more body shame, which in turn led them to engage in more restrained eating (i.e., leaving part of a cookie behind rather than finishing it off, suggesting that they liked the cookie but felt guilty eating all of it). They also performed worse on a math test, suggesting that their attentional resources may have been drained by the experience of trying on the swimsuit.

Presumably these women were not feeling good about their appearance during the study — they were not expecting or choosing to wear the swimsuit, and the lighting was most likely harsh and unflattering. No one loves swimsuit shopping, even if they’re doing it voluntarily. But what about those times when you are feeling good about your appearance? Objectification research is less concerned about those times, since unfortunately they are often few and far between, but they are also part of the reason why women actively choose to engage in self-objectification despite its downsides. Feeling attractive and sexy feels good, and it feels good for the same reason that feeling unattractive and unsexy feels so bad: our self-worth is wrapped up in it.

As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I studied self-objectification for my honors thesis research, which I conducted with Jennifer Crocker and Julie Garcia. We were interested in finding out how everyday experiences of self-objectification, in contrast to typically unpleasant lab inductions of self-objectification, might impact feelings of well-being. So we gave a group of female college students palm pilots programmed with questionnaires to carry around with them for two weeks. Surprisingly, we found that some participants seemed to benefit from their daily experiences of self-objectification. Those who were high in appearance-contingent self-worth, meaning that they based their self-worth on their appearance, and who had high self-esteem, were getting a boost because they also tended to feel more attractive in those moments when they self-objectified. But appearance-contingent participants who had low self-esteem experienced the biggest drop in well-being because they were more likely to feel unattractive in those moments.

In other words, for people who base their self-worth on appearance (aka most of us, to some extent), self-objectification may be a double-edged sword. It feels great when you’re getting positive attention, but it can easily turn sour when attention is negative or lacking, and these ups and downs can wreak havoc on mental and physical health.

Even when objectification feels good, it can have negative effects, taking precious time and attention away from potentially more important tasks or goals. For example, let’s say you are a female attending a professional conference. Your central goals are presumably along the lines of learning something, networking, engaging in meaningful conversations, and presenting your best work. But in the back of your mind, especially if you’ve seen comments like this one, by an esteemed professor of evolutionary biology, you’re wondering if the men you meet are admiring your poster or something else. Even if you look like a supermodel (the missing demographic at neuroscience conferences, according to the professor mentioned above), this objectifying gaze, and your chronic awareness of it, will undoubtedly interfere with your ability to get the most out of the conference. And even in situations where your goals are more romantic, preoccupation with appearance can detract from actually getting to know someone.

There’s another problem with using self-objectification as an opportunity for a self-esteem boost. Beauty, as our culture defines it, doesn’t last forever. It actually starts fading pretty fast, like around age 21, if you’re basing your standards on dominant cultural ideals. So unless you’re able to redefine beauty in a healthier way, self-objectification can become more and more of a liability as time goes on. As Cameron Diaz gets older, she may be especially concerned with holding on to the high of positive attention that she has been used to receiving all her life, leading her, and many others, to spend huge amounts of time and money on maintaining and perfecting physical appearance. In a world where attractiveness is held in such high regard, these choices are understandable. But wouldn’t it be so much easier to live in a different kind of world?

Reference:

Fredrickson, B., & Roberts, T. (1997). OBJECTIFICATION THEORY. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21 (2), 173-206 DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x

What have you brought, O Haaji?

Abu Muhammed

Throughout the world, as the first flights carrying the Hujaaj arrive, the airport’s ‘arrival halls’ are packed and crowded with loved ones, family members, friends and even strangers eagerly awaiting the arrival of the returning Haaji. Children anxiously begin to count the minutes of their parent’s imminent passing through the arrival gates, excitedly expecting the ‘delivery’ of ‘orders’ that they so diligently placed with Mum and Dad prior to their departure. 

As the passengers begin to exit the arrival gates eyes are glued, scanning, looking….and eventually the Haaji begins to emerge, dressed in a thowb, head clean shaven, face glowing, further enhanced by the emulation of the blessed beard of the Noble Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) pushing a trolley atop which stands the containers bearing the blessed waters of Zam Zam flanked by his spouse who’s beauty now further enhanced by the donning of the Hijab. Suddenly from nowhere children emerge shouting, ‘Ummi, Ummi (Mummy), Abi, Abi (Daddy)’ as they run into the welcoming arms of their travel weary parents. Thereafter the elders from amongst family, friends and strangers wait to greet the Haaji and to request the Dua (Supplication) of the Haaji as per the directive of the Noble Messenger of Allah (Peace  be upon him)

‘When you meet a Haaji (on his way home) then greet him, shake hands with him and ask him to beg forgiveness of Allah on your behalf before he enters his home, for his prayer for forgiveness is accepted since he is forgiven by Allah for his sins’ {as narrated by Abdullah ibne Umar (May Allah be pleased with him).

It is for this reason that it has always been the custom and habit of our predecessors to welcome the Hujaaj, to walk with them and to ask them to pray on their behalf.

For all those of us who have been to receive a returning Haaji, the picture painted above is a reflection of that experience, to which we can easily relate. Sadly though, besides this ‘cosmetic’ change that a Haaji undergoes, there is generally a lack of what the Haj of yesteryears held for a Haaji. (There are definitely exclusions)

As mentioned in our last article ‘The Journey of a lifetime’ that, in times gone by, the returning Hujjaaj were a means of spreading the Deen. Every valley, gulley and mountain path that the Haaji passed witnessed the Nur (Divine Radiance) that the Haaji carried and no town, city, village or individual that the Haaji passed through or met remained unaffected with the legacy of the blessed Haramain Sharifain. The legacy of Makkah Mukarramah being the Tauhid of Allah Jalla wa Aalaa, and that of Medina Munawwarah, being that of Nubuwah (Prophethood) and Khatme Nubuwah (the seal of Prophethood)

Indulge me as we explore the legacy of the Haramain…

In Makkah we have the Kaaba which is THE symbol of Tawhid (Monotheism) established by Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) for the sole and exclusive worship of Allah Jalla wa aala. The life of Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) was one characterised by total submission to his Creator and Sustainer and complete steadfastness in the face of great trials and tribulations like being ostracised by his own community including his father and subsequently flung in the fire for his strict belief in Tawhid and his intolerance of associating a partner/s with his Creator and Sustainer. As a manifestation of one of the greatest miracles he was Divinely protected by Allah Jalla wa aala and the fire was made a place of peace and comfort for him from which he emerged unscathed. When this miracle failed to convince those involved in associating partners with the Creator of the truth of the call of  Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace), he migrated from the lands of his forefathers  to become a stranger in the promised land of Shaam (Syria). Here he continued with his mission and call to the light of Tawhid in the ocean of darkness, ignorance and polytheism. As he grew older his desire for a child grew stronger and he prayed to Allah Jalla wa aala thus,

‘O Allah, grant me a righteous son?’ (Surah 37, Verse 100)

Against all odds and against every expectation Allah granted him a son at the ripe old age of 86 (Ibn Kathir)

Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) was then commanded by Allah Jalla wa aala to leave the blessed lands of Shaam  which represented lands of material abundance and financial well being and migrate to the barren desert land of Arabia in the valley of Makkah, devoid of any vegetation or habitation. Together with this, he was instructed by Allah Jalla wa aala to take his wife, Haajar (Upon her be peace) and his infant son, Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace) and commanded to leave them there with very little provisions and proceed onwards as per the command of Allah Jalla wa aala. Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) showed unflinching faith and allegiance to the command of his Creator and Sustainer in that he never once questioned the command of Allah Jalla wa aala. Equally impressive was the response of his wife Haajar (Upon her be peace) who, after being told that this was the Command of Allah Jalla wa aala responded, ‘If your leaving us here is on the command of Allah Jalla wa aala then He will never forsake us!’

While her words are worth marveling at, it must be said that her faith was tested. After being left in this barren valley that had no sign of any habitation or vegetation her little provisions were soon exhausted and as scorching desert sun took its toll, her infant son began to writhe in hunger and thirst. She then ascended Mount Safa hoping to see someone or something to come to her assistance. Having scanned the pitiless horizon from this vantage point she hastily and frantically descended this mount and quickly made her way up Mount Marwa having the same hope of redemption. Not seeing anything she once again descended into the valley and repeated her ascent up Safa. With every vain ascent and descent her hopes began to crumble while her desperation began to increase at the sight of her child crying uncontrollably due to hunger and thirst. When eventually, on her seventh ascent (her fourth on Safa), the pendulum of her hopes shifted totally off creation and ONLY onto her Creator, Allah Jalla wa aala, the spring of Zam Zam began bubbling beneath the feet of her infant son, Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace). The water of Zam Zam which, from that time until today, flows forth in abundance and quenches both the physical and spiritual thirst of the millions visiting the Haramain as well as those that anxiously visit the returning Hujaaj/Umaraa at their homes having hope of being honoured with the good fortune of being offered a drink of this blessed water can be said to be the product of the great sacrifice of the family of Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon them be peace). Once this water began to gush forth the valley of Makkah began its growth as a habitation with the settling of the Jurhum tribe from Yemen that would today become THE most visited and revered place in the whole world. Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace) grew up amongst the Jurhum tribe who loved him dearly and it was amongst them that he learnt the Arabic language. When Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace) reached the age of puberty, the age wherein a father begins to see the continuation of his generations, Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) was commanded by Allah Jalla wa aala, in a dream, to sacrifice his only son (at that time) – that same son granted to him at such an old age and in whom, like every father, he had great love for and as well as hopes for his future. In a sense, Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace) was his whole world. That same Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) who had spent almost a hundred years totally devoted towards the mission of Tawhid and passing test after test was now to be tested the ultimate test! As in his fulfilling of his Creator’s commands before, Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) did not for a moment pause or hesitate to fulfill the command of his Creator neither did he question the logic and reasoning behind such a command. The response of Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace) when his father communicated this command of Allah Jalla wa aala, is worthy of admiration. He told his father,

‘O my father! Do as you have been commanded! You will find me, if Allah so wills, one of the patient (steadfast) ones!’ Surah 37, Verse 102

Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) then proceeded towards Mount Arafah with Sayyiduna Ismaeel (Upon him be peace) in order to fulfill the command of Allah Jalla wa aala. On route, at Mina, the devil appeared on three occasions to thwart the commitment of Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) towards fulfilling the command of Allah Jalla wa aala. However both father and son remained steadfast and proceeded to fulfill the command of their Creator. It was when both had firmly resolved to fulfill the command of their Creator that Allah Jalla wa aala presented the ram from paradise to be sacrificed as a ransom for Ismail (Upon him be peace).

Thereafter, both father and son, were commanded by Allah Jalla wa aala to build the Baitullah, the House of Allah in Makkah and Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) was commanded to call for the pilgrimage. Until today millions visit the house of Allah Jalla wa aala on the invitation of Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) and this will continue until just before Qiyamah.

Scholars mention that the reason the hearts of men incline towards the House of Allah has little to do with the cosmetic appearance of the Baitullah. In fact as much as the Haramain has been developed and advanced in architecture and other ways the actual Kaaba has remained essentially the ‘cube’ that it has always been. The thing which literally draws the hearts of men towards it is in fact the underlying sacrifices of Sayyiduna Ebrahim (Upon him be peace) and his family as well as of the thousands of Ambiya (Upon them be peace) who underwent untold hardships and difficulties for the establishment of Tawhid and the raising of the name of Allah Jalla wa aala on the surface of this earth.

This tradition of sacrifice continued with the advent of, and anointment of the greatest human to set foot on this earth the Noble Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him). When he received Nubuwah (Prophet-hood) the first command to which he was asked to invite was towards the Tawhid (Oneness of Allah). At this time the Arabs were considered to be the most backward nations resigned to the silence and heat of the desert, plunged in ignorance and darkness, devoid of faith and engaged in polytheism. There were 360 Idols in the Kaaba itself. Yet we find that these idols were not destroyed until approximately 20 years later at the occasion of the conquest of Makkah in spite them being the physical and outward form of Polytheism. This begs the question WHY?

Scholars mention that this was because before the physical Idols had to be removed from the Kaaba the hope, dependence and reliance on anything other than Allah Jalla wa aala had to be removed from the heart and ALL HOPE, ALL DEPENDENCE and ALL RELIANCE had to be learnt to be placed on Allah Jalla wa aala ALONE….just as Haajar (Upon her be peace) had done when ascending the Mount for the seventh time.

The first twelve or so years of the Prophet’s life in Makkah was one characterised by all forms of abuse, torture, difficulty, persecution and alienation – both for him and his Companions (May Allah be pleased with them) purely for the sake of the re establishment of what the Kaaba was a symbol for – the Tawhid of Allah Jalla wa aala. It can be said that the hearts of the Companions were placed in the ‘furnace of sacrifice’ so as to emerge pure and enlightened free of the impurities and darkness of ignorance and polytheism. Each Companion emerged as the living embodiment of Tawhid ready to be the lanterns of guidance for humanity that until then had, for 600 years, been groveling in the quagmire of ignorance and idol worship.

When this purified and refined group had been prepared Allah Jalla wa aala set in motion the second part of this process that would herald the transformation of the Arabian Peninsula as well as propel this group of ‘backward desert dwellers’ to becoming the beacons of faith and justice in a world drowned in the injustice of faithlessness – the migration to Medina Munawwarah and the establishment of the Islamic state and subsequently the Islamic Khilafate.

In Medina the community of Believers began to grow in number from approximately 250 at the time of the Hijrah (Migration) to 10 000 at the time of the conquest of Makkah, some eight years later in the month of Ramadaan. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, Medina offered a stable environment for the establishment of the Islamic way of life and secondly every Muslim was prepared and made to understand that he/she was a representative of the Noble Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him) and, as such, was responsible for the establishment of Tawhid and the Islamic way of life in the whole world across all political, social and cultural divides and spectrums. It was at this juncture that the vast majority of the Arabian Peninsula came in to the fold of Islam and an it was also at this time that the Noble Messenger of Allah (May peace be upon him) destroyed the Idols that had until then remained in the Kaaba. This was symbolic of the fact that now that the ‘Idols’ that the hearts of Man concealed, were destroyed, it was time for the destruction of the physical manifestation of Idol worship in the Holy sanctuary which would never return to the Arabian peninsula. In the next two years people entered Islam in their droves and in Dhula Qa’dha of the 10^th year of the Hijrah the Noble Messenger of Allah announced his intention to perform Haj-the only obligation outstanding in his prophetic mission of 23 years. His mission had, by this time, been completed to all intents and purposes. To a people steeped in ignorance and darkness, he gave light and inspired them with belief in Allah Jalla wa aala, the sole Creator, Master and Sustainer of the Universe. To a disunited people, engaged in mutual rivalry and perpetual warfare, he gave unity of thought and action. He had revealed the love of Allah Jalla wa aala and His will to mankind and had given it a visible expression by founding a society on the basis of righteousness, piety and God-consciousness, the like of which is not to be found in the whole history of humanity. The Noble Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) had delivered to humanity the final Truth with all its necessary implications. Together with this he had prepared a group of Companions who were trained by none other than the Master himself who were prepared to spend every resource whether physical, mental or financial for the establishment of Tawhid throughout the length and breadth of the earth. The lives of the Sahabah leaves no doubt whatsoever of this fact whether it was leaving their homes, sacrificing their families, spending all their wealth even sacrificing their innermost desires for the sake of the establishment of the religion of truth in the world. It was at here at the farewell pilgrimage that the collective responsibility of more than 124 000 Prophets had culminated and now that responsibility had been placed squarely on the shoulders of his 124 000 Companions and in turn on the shoulders of every individual of this Ummah until Qiyamah in the following words,

“Let those of you who are present inform those that are absent. There will be NO PROPHET AFTER ME and no nation after you. (He then asked) Have I not conveyed (the message)? Have I not conveyed (the message)? Have I not conveyed (the message) ?

The Companions replied in unison ‘Yes you have O Messenger of Allah’ Then pointing to the sky he said (three times), ‘O Allah! You bear witness that I have conveyed the message’”

This responsibility was understood and fulfilled by that blessed gathering, the like of which the sky will never cover again neither the sun shine upon, to such an extent that, of those 124 000 present only the graves of 14 000 are found in the Arabian Peninsula (according to Imam Malik) while the rest have been spread out in different, far off lands in other countries and continents where they strove to elevate the name of Allah Jalla wa aala. In fact my writing of this article and your reading is sufficient proof of that!

As mentioned, in times gone by the returning delegations of the Haj were a means of every individual understanding his responsibility as a human being, that being to worship Allah Jalla wa aala alone as well as that of being from amongst the Ummah of the final Messenger of Allah (Peace be upon him), which meant being responsible to see how every human being understands their purpose and object of life in this world and in so doing entitle themselves to the eternal bliss that awaits them in the gardens of Paradise and protects them from eternal damnation in Hell.

 O Haaji,

‘Have you contemplated and pondered on how much of your journey was the re enactment of the sacrifices of Sayyiduna Ebrahim and his family (upon them be peace) and why?’

O Haaji, you have brought with you the dates of Medina Munawwarah and the Zam Zam of Makkah Mukarramah but the question is O Haaji,

‘Have you brought with you the legacy of these two Holy places that Allah Jalla wa aala had allowed for you to visit?’