Allahu Akbar [Friday in relax]

Lunch .

Gordon is explaining to his fellow citizens why he's sending other Brits to die .
It's because all the source of evil are in Afghanistan .
All the terrorist attacks around the world are planned there .
But he will send troops only if he knows that they are fighting in a safe environment .
He was there some time ago and watched their training combat and he was enthusiast [maybe it was better for him to stay home and learn something from Matthew Hoh] .

Dinner .

Hala Gorani on CNN is trying to understand in a discussion with a representative from the Council of American Islamic relations [there's one invited for each major English news television around the world ], what could be the ideological motivations for a Muslim to do what he did .
She asks him more than three times in a row : I start to suspect she thinks the Islamic card is relevant here [and flipping over the channels, something tells me she's not the only one in this world] .

Night .

There's another shooting in Florida .

Prayer of the Muslim :

God please, let him be a Finnish or a Swedish or one from Patagonia, someone who has not Arab blood in his veins .

Please let him have blond hair and blue eyes, soft white skin if possible, and a Harvard degree or Oxford as well .

Let him be a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, a Scientologist, or also an M.J. fan, why not ?

Let him be someone who has led an ordinary life til now, a man living in a nice place with a nice wife and children, an ordinary guy .

Let him be someone who just went nuts and started shooting for the sake of shooting or because he wanted to help climate change by reducing the population on earth .

And please God, send blessings on Mark Ames, one of the few Americans who's willing to use brains and refuses to play the Islamic card :

The story is still fresh and there’s a lot we don’t know, and there are still a lot of conflicting reports and confusion. Since Hasan will be tried in a military court, the American public will only learn whatever the military wants us to learn. And to a nation slipping deeper into its own amnesiac fog, the last thing we want to learn are the painful, threatening truths.

Update: It’s already happening again: a “going postal” office massacre this morning in Tampa that’s left at least 2 dead and 17 wounded. Early reports say the shooter was an employee the company. More details to come.

exiledonline

Backing

Al-Jum’ah’s remarks come only days after the head of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi, offered his full support to the university and its goals. Saudigazette

The polemics about KAUST come almost at the same time of those in Egypt on the niqab .
It seems that two regimes in dire danger of home made extremists, are trying to relax the rigid interpretation of Islam which was their utmost reason of pride and mean to keep the population under control, in order to drive back the terroristic wave .
Interesting to note how the Saudis asked for help of scholars from outside to back up the locals [and it's not a coincidence that one of these is Egyptian] :
either these are not listened to anymore or their positive opinion on the issue, would not be trusted .

The silence of the beef

After the post-Gonu chicken shortage in 2007, beef actually disappeared from all supermarkets : at least yesterday, it was impossible to find .
I am not fond of beef but meat is necessary in a balanced diet and you can't eat chicken all the time .
Moreover here, not sure for which reason, they do not sell rabbit or veal and lamb is too fat, so there's not a huge choice .
I like beef from NZ because is softer than the Australian but never tried Indian though .
Beef yesterday was completely absent from lulu desks and they answered it would be back before the end of the day .
So I bought more frozen meat than usual .
Since am not a good cook, frozen stuff is my speciality .
While googling to find a reason for this tragedy, I found a possible explanation :

In a separate decision, the Ministry of National Defense announced yesterday that all beef served to the military until the end of 2010 would be imported from either Australia or New Zealand. Taiwan News 28 Oct 2009

I hope they won't send Yankistani beef here, now .
The FTA was a great deal but I welcomed it mainly in the hope that fruits prices maybe reduced .

Moreover, he noted, a health insurance measure will be introduced to help allay pubic fears. Taiwan News 29 Oct

Beef is a pubic problem .

Of work dedicated employees and relaxed patients

Balqis : Hallo, Salam alaikum [She always gives the double language greeting on telephone because if she says only Salam, on the other side they assume she's Arab and after a long answer she must specify she's not, so they must repeat everything in English, wondering why a non Arab would say Salam which is Islamic more than Arab, but that's juat a detail], I need to take an appointment with the doctor please .

Receptionist : Walaikum salam wa rama' [ modern form used by young Omanis for Walaikumsalam wa rahmatullah wa barakatuhu] .
So you want to come today at 6pm ?

B. [shocked by the unusual availability] : Hmmm, no I need next Monday at 6.30pm if possible .

R. : Ok, call on Monday then .

B. [extrashocked ] : Can't you take it now ?

R. : Ok

B. : Ok then, next Monday, 12, at 6.30pm

R. : Monday 20 ?

B. [close to collapsing] : Nooo, Monday 12, one-two, next Monday .

R. : Ok, your file number number please ?

B. : 53 or 63 or 63 something

R. [annoyed] : 53 or 63 ?

B. : I don't know The writing is not clear Anyway the name is Balqis

R. : Ok .

B. [disappointed] : Ok bye [she gives the English greeting only or maximum a yalla, when she's upset] .

BinLaden&Zawahiri say no

Lessons of Islamic religion in schools were proposed, what do you say?

"The hour of Catholic religion in state schools, is justified under Article 9 of the Concordat, as it is an integral part of our history and our culture. Therefore, knowledge of the religious Catholic is a prerequisite for the understanding of our culture and a society more aware and responsible. It's not configured, then, like a confessional catechesis, but as a discipline within the cultural aims of the school. I do not think that the hour of religion thus planned, matches this reasonable and recognized grounds. " Corriere della sera

"Thinking that Islam is a complete bloc, exhaustive, it is a mistake. Islam has a thousand expressions, connections, ties. In short, it has nothing to do with the values of our civilization ... Enough one looks at the position of the woman in the Islamic world, we are extremely distant also on this basic point" . il Giornale

The proposal of a member of the Italian government to introduce a weekly lesson of Islam to facilitate the integration of foreign citizens, is definitely unrealistic due to the fact that Italian Muslims are still divided, there's no Mosque yet and no serious governmental commission to study all the issues related to multiculturalism, but the reaction of part of the Catholic hierarchies, was nonetheless interesting .
The statements of Card. Bagnasco, president of Italian Episcopal Conference, and Card. Tonini, his predecessor, are expression of fear to lose political power within their territory .
Saying that Islam is faraway from Italian culture is deeply wrong because they share values and the religion is historically deep rooted in Europe and the conversion of many Europeans [specially Italians] is an evidence .
I am not sure what Card. Tonini meant about the ramifications within Islam but I assume that he was concerned about the division in sects and without knowing much about the argument, as many .
I would like to remind him that unlike Christianity, Islam is a solid bloc with principles and pillars on which the community doesn't dispute .
On the other hand, other representatives of the Catholic Church expressed their positive answer to the idea, and these are the most enlightened because understood that giving space to their religion, means also to make clear for Muslim immigrants, what are the limits between religion and culture, and that the negative sides of culture must be rejected .
This is the basis to solve the problem of integration .
But actually the Catholic Church is an empire in decline and have no other choice than rejecting the enemy and fishing in foreign waters .

while the Catholic religion represents now an entity, the Catholic Church, which has its own hierarchy , clear values, well defined, that can be transmitted, Islam is an entirely different world. "
"The Imam interprets the Quran freely, there's no series of dogmas, no clear message to be transmitted...il Giornale

The declaration of the Italian Minister of Interior on Islam makes clear that he has no idea of what he's talking about, but that can be blamed on Italian Muslim representatives .
What I find amusing is his reflections on the tameability of a religion :
a belief built on dogmas, a series of concepts which can't be fully explained, just placed in the mind of the people to keep them happy, compared to a religion that requires understanding and thinking, is the ideal solution for a government that wants to exert its power through repression only .

No stop flight

Published in the form of an advertisement in a national daily, the embassy of Oman in New Delhi has clarified that a Dutch port company,which is coming up with a project in Sohar in Oman, has invited the Gujarat chief minister.
The statement was issued after human rights groups protested against Modi’s decision to visit the Gulf country, following a high-level delegation led by Oman’s commerce minister Maqbook Ali Sultan met the CM in Gandhinagar in early September. Times of India

I find amusing the ads way to clarify .
The reason why I do not have much respect for human rights activists, is that they pick and chose according to which case will give them more visibility .
Given that I believe the group of activists the Indian press is mentioning these days, must probably be outside of Oman and not part of our community as previously stated by PTI, unless they belong to some Indian circle of residents, I noticed no one protested for example, for the visit of the president of Uzbekistan, who is definitely not a person with a clean record on human rights .

“Modi will fly straight from Ahmedabad to Moscow. Earlier, there was a possibility of making a stopover in Oman, as the plane was small and needed refuelling. Now, the state government has hired a bigger plane which requires no refuelling.”

God bless technology .