Friday, June 29, 2012

Spasiva mai brazia


Assalamu Alaikum

Spasiva mai brazia

It was in this beautiful Russian city sandwiched between the banks of the river Volga and the shores of the Caspian Sea that I was anointed a “scholar” by my Chechen, Tartars, Kazakhs, Dagestan and Russian Islamic Finance Course students. A reluctant ‘scholar’ I was for no less than a Mufti was amongst my participants. Fortunately the question was more finance than fiqh so I was able to satisfy the enthusiastic minds of this engaging people.

Monday, June 18, 2012

To Sir with Love


To Sir with Love

Assalamu ‘Alaikum,
                                   As I ended my second day teaching Islamic finance to a group of unemployed graduates at the Unemployed Graduates Training Programme I said to them “You may wish me happy birthday on your way out”. They spontaneously burst into a “happy birthday song” which  touched me more than I cared to show. I did say to them, “Let me teach you also about life as anything else, as you have done your studying and your motive now is to get a job.” “You mean like Sidney Poitier in “To Sir with Love” sir? said one of them. “Yes, like him” I said. My heart goes out to these individuals of whom some are hopes of parents to exit from the poverty trap. Many years of studying with the dream of getting a job dashed by the reality of life. But they were happy faces still full of the hopes of youth.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Know your enemy

May God be with Egypt
[ 16/06/2012 - 09:57 PM ]
By Khalid Amayreh


Employing legalistic chicanery, blatant deceit and contemptible conspiracies, the remnants of the Mubarak regime seem hell-bent on aborting the Egyptian revolution.
On Thursday, 14 June, the so-called Constitutional Court, an entity that was utterly silent during 30 years of corruption, tyranny and repression under the previous regime, issued a hasty decision, dissolving the People's Assembly or Parliament.
This parliament was elected only three months ago in perfectly transparent elections observed by the entire world and supervised by the Egyptian judicial system. None of the judges then questioned the legality and transparency of the elections. They all boasted about the democratic credentials of the ruling junta, saying that Egypt was entering a new era of human rights, political freedoms and civil liberties.
With the last round of parliamentary polls, it became clear that the Islamists were the winners. This infuriated the "Mubarak party" which began ranting and raving about "an Islamist takeover of Egypt" and the "monopoly of the Ikhwan" over the Egyptian scene.
Such disgusting canards and vociferous accusations were repeated so often that one would get the impression that the Islamist arrogated, not earned, their electoral victories.
Some of the small leftist and Nasserist parties went beyond the pale of decency and common sense in vilifying the Islamists for winning "more seats than they should" as if the Islamists were supposed to ask the voters to vote for them sparingly or parsimoniously.!!!
The discourse employed by the leftists and pseudo liberals in the aftermath of the parliamentary elections was so mendacious, so malicious, so repulsive and above all markedly preposterous that it portrayed the Islamists as "hijackers or stealers of the people's will." The utter depravity of these so-called "democratic forces" reached such a point that a casual listener to these hypocrites' lies and vindictive falsification of the facts would think that the real problem lies with the Ikhwan, not with Zionist Mubarak regime.
More to the point, the de facto rejection of the democratic process by these pseudo liberals and pseudo-democrats underscore their hypocrisy and despotic impulses. In the final analysis, feeling gleeful and going into a state of ecstasy over the dissolution of a democratically-elected parliament, which exhausted the poor country and cost her hundreds of millions of dollars, shows the utter falsehood of their democratic claims.
I can't understand what could justify the dissolution of a democratically-elected parliament only a few weeks after was elected? Indeed, if there were true legal gaps rendering the parliament unconstitutional as the mouthpieces of the regime keep parroting, such gaps should have been determined and tackled from the very inception, given the fact that the elections were held under the supervision of the justice system from A to Z.
However, the fact that the court said nothing and did nothing until the eve of the presidential elections suggests more than a foul play.
More to the point, one would wonder if the Constitutional court would have dissolved the parliament had secularist and liberal forces won the elections. The answer is left to each and everyone of us according to his or her honesty.
In every democratic country under the sun, the elected representatives of the people have the right to write the constitution or select a body of experts to do the job. However, according to Mubarak's shipyard dogs, this right must be withdrawn from the elected representatives and given to losers that were ejected by the masses.
There is no doubt that the dissolution of the parliament represents a blatant rape of the will the Egyptian people by the military establishment along with the remnants of the judicial establishment, a body that was always at Mubarak's beck and call.
Hence, it is imperative that the current judicial establishment be subjected to a process of thorough purification lest that establishment continues conniving and colluding with the tyrannical military establishment in order to reproduce the Mubarak regime and take Egypt back to American-Zionist bondage.
To put it simply and straightforwardly, the current judicial establishment can't be entrusted or relied upon to uphold justice in Egypt.
Two weeks ago, the Egyptian justice system acquitted nearly all the pillars of the previous regime, including hundreds of murderers, thieves, and conspirers.
True, Mubarak and his interior minister Habib al-Adly were sentenced to life imprisonment, probably under public pressure.
But what is the fate of the murderers of more than 850 Egyptian protesters? Who killed them? Did the killers come from Mars or another galaxy? And why is it that the burden of proof lies with the victims' families and lawyers, not the state.
Indeed, what is the state’s raison d'ĂȘtre if not to protect the lives of its citizens and uphold justice? The state can't just tell the families of the victims, "sorry, we don't know who killed your loved ones, and may God's mercy be bestowed on them." The state is guilty of breach of trust.
I don't know how the Egyptian scene will evolve following the presidential elections now underway. Will the notorious Constitutional Court declare these elections null and void if the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate Muhammed Mursi wins the polls?
Everything is possible and nothing can be taken for granted, because the orphans of Mubarak are alive and kicking and will not cease their treacherous and treasonous acts unless they are eliminated. But nothing other than the continuation and intensification of the revolution will guarantee their elimination.
Egypt is going through a crucial and difficult period. May God help Egypt