MANA - Muslim Alliance in North America

News and Views FBI Bust in New York: Is it counter terrorism or entrapment?- Anisa Abd el Fattah
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MANA Raises Money for Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin- by Hodari Abdul-Ali, Chair, MANA Social Justice Task Force
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SHARE Essex Invigorates New Jersey County- Rutrell Yasin
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In US, Giving Mideast Charity Could Lead You to Prison- by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now
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Where Has MANA Come From and Where Is It Going?
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Case Management Training Held in Indianapolis- by Ismail Abdul-Aleem
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Event: Imam Siraj Wahhaj Benefit Show - June 20th - Native Deen & Allah Made Me Funny
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Imam Abdur-Rashid: "Oh no, not again"- Mike Figliola
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An Imam’s Perspective on Muslims in Prison- WNYC News Blog
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Patience and Throwing off the Ideology of Defeat « Caravan of the Muwahideen

Patience and Throwing off the Ideology of Defeat « Caravan of the Muwahideen: "Patience and Throwing off the Ideology of Defeat"

Wake Up To The NWO Documentary PART 1 - Video

Why We Fight
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9219858826421983682&ei=6cwrScbkPISargKNrpisBQ&q=why+we+fight

Loose Change Final Cut
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3719259008768610598&ei=vswrSc2NGYmwrQLG9qm5BQ&q=loose+change+final+cut

Freedom to Fascism
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173&ei=FM0rSfjxJpHuqALjodC7BQ&q=Freedom+to+Fascism

Meet the Bush Family
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5447834375998393826&ei=PM0rSbW4F5OwqwL306zQCA&q=Meet+the+Bush+Family

>From Beyond the Shadows http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3753411785235077976&ei=-s8rSZ7EEJLAqAKq4-i4BQ&q=from+the+shadows+freemasons

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2004/nov/video/dnB20041109a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=45:02

100 years of Regime Change....from Hawaii to Iraq
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2006/april/video/dnB20060421a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=28:34
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2006/may/video/dnB20060508a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=36:59

Bay of Pigs Declassified
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5612593921731677898&ei=OVgsSYC6MoigqgKqioWsBQ&q=bay+of+pigs

http://oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

Dining with Terrorists

Dining with Terrorists

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-2kp6ziVWqig/dining_with_terrorists_global_jihad_10_feb_09_part_1/

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-6dTqirFbzAY/dining_with_terrorists_global_jihad_10_feb_09_part_2/

Why is it hard to let go? - Ummah.com - Muslim Forum

Why is it hard to let go?

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The cheerful girl with bouncy golden curls was almost five Waiting with her mother at the checkout stand, she saw them: a circle of
glistening white pearls in a pink foil box.

"Oh please, Mommy. Can I have them? Please, Mommy, please?"

Quickly the mother checked the back of the little foil box and
Then looked back into the pleading blue eyes of her little girl's
upturned face .

"One rand ninety-five. That's almost $2.00. If you really want
them, I'll think of some extra chores for you and in no time you can
save enough money to buy them for yourself. Your birthday's only a week away and you might get some money from Grandma."

As soon as Aysha got home, she emptied her penny bank and counted
Out 17 cents. After dinner, she did more than her share of chores
and she went to the neighbor and asked Mrs. Kamaa if she could pick
Dandelions for ten cents.

On her birthday, Grandma did give her another rand and at last she Had
enough money to buy the necklace.

Aysha loved her pearls. They made her feel dressed up and grown up. She wore them everywhere - Madrassa, kindergarten, even to bed.

The only time she took them off was when she went swimming or had
a bubble bath. Mother said if they got wet, they might turn her neck
green.

Aysha had a very loving daddy and every night when she was ready
for bed, he would stop whatever he was doing and come upstairs to read
her a story.

One night when he finished the story, he asked Aysha, "Do you
love me?"

"Oh yes, Daddy. You know that I love you."

"Then give me your pearls."

"Oh, Daddy, not my pearls. But you can have Princess - the white
Horse from my collection. The one with the pink tail. Remember,
Daddy? The one you gave me. She's my favourite."

"That's okay, Honey. Daddy loves you. And he brushed her cheek with a kiss.

About a week later, after the story time, Aysha's daddy asked again, "Do you love me?"

"Daddy, you know I love you."

"Then give me your pearls."

"Oh Daddy, not my pearls. But you can have my baby doll. The brand New
one I got for my birthday. She is so beautiful and you can have the yellow blanket that matches her sleeper."

"That's okay. Sleep well little one. Daddy loves you"

And as always, he brushed her cheek with a gentle kiss.

A few nights later when her daddy came in, Aysha was sitting on her bed with her legs crossed Indian-style. As he came close, he noticed her chin was trembling and one silent tear rolled down her cheek.

"What is it, Aysha? What's the matter?" Aysha didn't say anything
But lifted her little hand up to her daddy. And when she opened it,
there was her little pearl necklace. With a little quiver, she finally said,

"Here, Daddy. It's for you."

With tears gathering in his own eyes, Aysha's kind daddy reached
Out with one hand to take the cheap store necklace, and with the
other hand he reached into his pocket and pulled out a blue velvet case with a strand of genuine pearls and gave them to Aysha.

He had them all the time. He was just waiting for her to give up
The cheap store stuff so he could give her the genuine treasure.

So as it is with Allah. Allah is waiting for us to give up the cheap
Things in our lives so that Allah can give us beautiful treasures.

Are you holding onto things which Allah wants you to let go of?

Are you holding on to harmful or unnecessary partners, relationships, habits and activities which you have come so attached to that it seems impossible to let go of?

Sometimes it is so hard to see what is in the other hand, but do believe this one thing..................

Allah will never take away something without giving you something better to take its place.

The greatest gifts happens when you share love and touch others
hearts!

The Return to Darkness: 2000 Days of Guantanamo - Ummah.com - Muslim Forum

The Return to Darkness: 2000 Days of Guantanamo

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The Return to Darkness: 2000 Days of Guantanamo
Fahad Ansari



Every year on July 4 Americans celebrate the US Declaration of Independence. This date is portrayed by the West as the beginning of civilisation, the move from darkness into light, the dawn of a new era of rights and freedoms. The now-infamous lines of the preamble to that historic document read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This year, July 4 marks another historic occasion: a day on which the US and the West returned to darkness. July 4, 2007 is the 2,000th day since the opening of the detention centre in Guantanamo Bay. It has been 2,000 days of illegal imprisonment; 2,000 days of captivity; 2,000 days of torture; 2,000 days of humiliation; 2,000 days of injustice. It has been 2,000 days in which “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, those “inalienable rights” endowed upon man by their Creator, have been denied to hundreds of men who are held without charge in cages on an island off the coast of Cuba where they are subjected to physical and psychological torture daily.

While the US is guilty of establishing and operating of this facility, other countries are stained with the blood of the four men who have died there in these 2,000 days; that this detention-camp has been tolerated and facilitated by the rest of the world allows the injustices and abuses to continue unabated. As Carmen de Monteflores put it, “Oppression can only survive through silence”.

Anyone familiar with American foreign policy and the US's history of intervention around the world will realise that it actually returned to the darkness long ago, long before the opening of Guantanamo Bay; indeed it is true to say that the US was even made in darkness and has been in it since. But despite its numerous unlawful covert operations around the world and its use of a forked tongue in its role as an “honest peace-broker”, the US had nevertheless portrayed itself as a bastion of freedom, of human rights, and as an upholder of international law. What little was true of that changed on 11 January 2002.

On that day, the US made a deliberate decision that not only would it no longer be bound by international laws and conventions protecting human rights, but that it would defy them openly and unashamedly. The myth which it has propounded to justify its arrogant behaviour has been that these laws are not adequate, nor designed to protect mankind from the unprecedented threat it faces today from “jihadi terrorism”. By opening the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and allowing the world's press to photograph detainees in orange jumpsuits, hooded, shackled and gagged, on their knees in wire-mesh cages, the US was sending a message out to the watching world that, as Tony Blair put it so eloquently after the London bombings, “the rules of the game have changed.” These images have become the shameful antithesis of what the Declaration of Independence symbolised to the world.

The problem does not end there. Guantanamo Bay is only one symptom of a much greater problem: that more than 14,000 people are being held in ‘ghost prisons' (not officially admitted to exist) around the world. One can only speculate about the abuses they endure, but former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg has testified that the worst place he was held in was Bagram airbase, where he saw two detainees killed in custody.

The torture, ill-treatment and inhuman punishment being meted out to Muslim detainees in American custody have also increased within prisons on US soil. Take the case of John “Humza” Walker Lindh, for example. Despite no evidence having been procured of his ever taking up arms against American troops in Afghanistan, this American revert to Islam is currently serving a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment after pleading guilty of providing aid to the Taliban between May and November 2001 (in May 2001 the Bush administration itself provided $43 million in aid to the Taliban). Lindh was initially held in a medium-security prison in Victorville, where he was prohibited from speaking Arabic, in which he had become fluent in Yemen. The prohibition was so severe that Lindh could not exchange the greeting of salaam with other Muslim inmates; nor could he recite Qur'an or pray aloud. Following each incident of terrorism around the world, and whenever he breached rules (which seemed only to apply to him), Lindh was thrown into solitary confinement or “the hole.” After years of petitioning by his lawyers, the restrictions were lifted. Before he had a chance to open his mouth to say shukran, Lindh was whisked away to his new home at ADMAX in Florence, Colorado, the federal Supermax facility, where he is kept in a private cell 23 hours a day, with just one hour daily alone in a prison yard.

Even more disturbing, and indicative of an element of institutional Islamophobia and anti-Muslim persecution, has been the opening of what some have described as a “Muslim-only prison” in Terre Haute, Indiana. On 11 December 2006, 17 federal prisoners across the US were taken out of their cells, held in isolation for two days, and then taken by bus to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Terre Haute, Indiana. US-based journalist Katherine Hughes is one of the few journalists who has had the courage to report on a new unit at the institution, the Communications Management Unit (CMU): a completely self-contained unit housing almost exclusively Arab and/or Muslim inmates, many of whom have never been convicted of ‘terrorism' but are merely active political dissidents.

Among other things, severe restrictions have been placed on prisoner communication within the CMU. Instead of 300 minutes of phone-time a month, prisoners may receive only one 15-minute call a week, which the warden has the power to reduce to just three minutes a month. In stark contrast to the usual weekly all-day contact-visits in other prisons, visits in the CMU are for two hours, twice a month, and are restricted to non-contact only. All conversations must be conducted in English unless otherwise negotiated. In addition, Islamophobic policies are slowly being implemented whereby detainees are prevented from praying five times a day and from calling the adhaan. Most worrying has been the lack of adequate healthcare, which recently lead to the death of one inmate. The lack of access to medical care seems to be part of a pattern set in Guantanamo Bay, where ex-detainees have testified that medical care was directly linked to cooperation with interrogators.

The CMU currently holds only Muslim prisoners leading to accusations of “religious profiling”. The unit was set up in secret, with no public notice of its formation, although such notice is required under Federal law. Furthermore, there is a severe lack of clarity about how it is decided who will be sent there. It is very worrying that the US has taken it upon itself to establish a unit specially for Muslims considered a threat to national security. It is even more worrying that the American and global press and media have refused to cover this story (except for one article in the Washington Post). We all know the tragic consequences that history has shown can flow from such discriminatory policies.

Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers of the US would shudder today at the thought of the existence of institutions such as Guantanamo Bay and the CMU. The kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention without charge and brutal torture of men, women and even children cannot have been what they imagined the US would be notorious for more than 200 years after their dawn of civilisation. It could be argued that they would, if alive today, even argue for the replacement of the current US government with another. For it was they who said in their Declaration that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”


Liberating the hundreds of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the thousands of prisoners in American custody around the world would be more in line with the spirit and sentiment of July 4: not only because it is the official American Independence Day, but also because on that day in 1187 the great Muslim general Salahuddeen Ayubi defeated the armies of the Crusaders at Hittin and liberated the people and the land of Jerusalem.

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There is rest only in the aakhira.
Man will rest in the aakhira according to how hard he strives in dunya.
-Khaalid Ibn Al Waleed