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Ameeratul Layl
09-27-2005, 08:41 AM
:sl:

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal address to the Baker Institute
Address by HRH Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al-Faisal to the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University in Houston, Texas, September 21, 2005. Topic: Saudi Arabia and the International Oil Market.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Allow me to convey my heartfelt condolences to the people of the United States for the suffering, death and destruction brought about by Hurricane Katrina. At the same time allow me to praise this great city of Houston for the noble generosity of its people in offering a very needed assistance in sheltering those who suffered most. Houston has always been a great city and I am very pleased to be here.



Many years ago, when I started my government career in the Ministry of Petroleum, one of your fellow Houstonians gave me advice about traveling in the oil-producing countries of the world. He was what is known in the oil industry as an “old redneck.”

We were sitting in my office in Riyadh on a very hot summer day when he volunteered this unsolicited advice: “When you get to one of them countries,” he said, “the first thing you do is to go to the nearest shop, buy some durable candy, stock up on candles, go to your hotel room, fill the bathtub with water, and wait for the revolution.” I am sure I don’t need to do that in this oil city, I hope.

Before I proceed further, I must apologize to my friend and colleague His Excellency Mr. Al-Naimi, the Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources of Saudi Arabia, for delving into his turf. He has my wholehearted blessing to discuss matters relating to our foreign policy any time he wishes.

My topic today is of vital importance to both my country and yours – namely the structural flow in the oil industry. The severe increase in oil prices which we have experienced over the past several years is only a phase of a cumulative process that has been going on for some time.

The developments in the oil industry are important and warrant our full attention. High energy costs can create long term repercussions to the economies of the world that will affect all of us – consumers as well as producers, both in the industrialized and the emerging economies of the world.

It is important, therefore, that our two countries, the largest consumer and the largest producer, make the time available to assess the situation. We must define the issues and review our options to resolve them before they become too severe to manage. This becomes a matter of urgency and priority for all of us, especially when Saudi-bashing has become fashionable, and allocating blame has become an end in itself.

Crude oil has doubled in price to over $65 per barrel since 2002. Escalating energy prices have already had some indication of a depressing effect on the global economy.

The risks are too great to leave the solution to market forces alone. Because of global interdependence, depressions create social and political instability which cannot be confined to one region of the world. If not dealt with promptly and reasonably, such instability will spread regardless of the political and economic soundness of any individual nation.

What then is going on in the oil industry?

There are three sets of variables that need to be examined: Production, consumption, and political-psychological variables.

On the crude supply side, there is currently no shortage of oil. However, and for the first time in decades, there is no sizable excess production capacity. This has understandably caused some heated debates about the long-term supply of oil.

Some pessimists, mostly geologists, contrary to their customary nature, are predicting dire shortages in the future, while some optimists, mainly economists, also contrary to their nature, are predicting higher prices would eventually reduce the growth rate of consumption while increasing the growth rate of production. However, all these predictions are at best educated guesses based on uncertain assumptions.

What is indisputable is the finite depletable nature of oil. However global proven oil reserves have increased from 550 billion barrels in 1970 to 1.2 trillion today, and there is no reason why this trend should not continue.

In addressing these uncertainties, I must emphasize Saudi Arabia’s proven record of meeting its production commitments irrespective of international crises and political turmoil or even wars. Yes, we have kept our commitment even when wars were being fought in our region, when oil tankers were being set ablaze in the Gulf and when our cities and oil facilities were being attacked by Scud missiles.

Saudi Arabia has made up for shortfalls in oil production levels by maintaining between 1.5 and 2 million barrels per day of excess capacity at great cost to our industry and economy for the last 20 years.

Saudi Arabia’s year-to-date production in 2005 has increased by 700,000 barrels per day from last year. This accounted for more than half of the increase in global demand for that period.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has declared its plan to increase its production capacity by 2.4 million barrels per day by 2009. This represents a net capacity increment of 1.5 million barrels per day while the rest will augment existing capacity. Barring any outside impediments that are beyond our control, we see no problem in achieving this ambitious target.

We have signed drilling contracts, selected project management teams, allocated funds and put the initial engineering plans on the drawing boards. And unless the international companies use up the equipment we have on order and divert contractors from our oil fields to other projects, we see no problem in achieving our objectives.

It is estimated that the total investment needed to increase OPEC production to meet demand by 2025 ranges between U.S. $258 and 382 billion. The difference of U.S. $124 billion is due to different estimates in demand projections based on different economic growth assumptions. This gives you an idea of the difficulty of planning investments by producing countries.

Yet, with an attitude of “damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” we are now – in spite of what we have done and are doing – accused, of all things, of a lack of transparency.

This truly puzzles me. How can we lack transparency when we have published our production capacity, our oil and gas reserves, and our current and future production plans? And we have done so in a manner totally consistent with international norms and standards. In fact, our known practice is to err on the side of underestimating our reserves and potential production.

Let us face it, providing additional data will not stop endless questions and challenges raised by those who get publicity and consulting fees for questioning everything we do. No amount of data and analysis can convince a truly dedicated conspiracy theorist.

The focus on tarnishing proven Saudi performance is largely a distraction from the fact that the key price and supply issues affecting you are not about volumes of production, but rather about gasoline formulations, limited refinery capacities, lack of storage capacity, and the various other restrictions that have paralyzed the energy industry in the Western hemisphere.

Without minimizing the importance of the environmental issues, a balance must be reached between the need for further oil exploration and development and the preservation of the environment. In that respect, Saudi Arabia calls for increased research in this field.

We are ready to join others in developing uniform regulations that are environmentally responsive and sustainable while offering the most effective energy utilization.

In fact, the real energy issues that we need to address today have little to do with Saudi Arabia. Consider the situation with regards to some of the major oil companies.

In recent years, we have witnessed unprecedented mergers and acquisitions on both sides of the Atlantic. Tremendous resources and capabilities have been concentrated within the hands of a few corporations. All of them have the resources and experience to invest in and manage the entire value chain of the oil industry.

The collective expectations were that the oil and gas industry would experience a tremendous revival as a result of such restructuring and integration. But this did not materialize.

It seems that over-regulation made it easy to avoid investing in the needed downstream operations, which are of marginal returns, by tempting investors to seek higher returns and safe investments. The result was a break in the value chain of investments in the industry.

At the risk of angering some of my good friends in the audience, oil companies may have forgotten that calculated risk-taking is the means to higher profit making. They may have opted for the ease of the cautious advice of corporate accountants instead of the spirit of adventure that has characterized the oil industry from its inception.

A critical shortfall in the industry’s refining sector has been created, which is totally beyond the control of oil exporters. This in turn has lead to a gap between the oil production of crude oil and consumption of refined products.

The consumers are clamoring for more fuels which cannot be supplied due to the lack of refining capacity. This gap traditionally has been bridged by the integrated operations of the oil companies.

To be fair to the oil companies, the main reason for the refinery shortages is the environmental and land use restrictions that limit the construction of domestic refineries. Refinery projects which already require years to construct have to wait for additional years for site approvals, if such approvals are forthcoming at all. In fact, not withstanding certain modifications and expansions in existing facilities, not a single refinery was built in the United States during the last three decades.

According to the Energy Information Administration, global refining capacity has only increased by 1.3 million barrels per day over the past five years. Meanwhile, oil demand has increased by over 7 million barrels per day. Today, global refinery capacities stand at 82.7 million barrels per day, over one million barrels short of global demand.

Yet in spite of these refinery bottlenecks, Saudi Arabia is called upon to increase its oil production on a daily basis. Clearly, additional oil production will do little to meet the fuel requirements of the world refined products. We, however, began adding to our refinery capacity in Yanbu and Jubail, our two industrial cities which are the major hubs for our petrochemical and refinery industries, and there is room for more expansion. We therefore invite all investors to join with us to build additional refineries and to expand existing ones, to alleviate the refined products bottlenecks.

This invitation does not require any delays in implementation that would create added cost to the consumers. All it needs is the will to contribute to relieve the pressure that is building. At the same time, we are ready to join any efforts in building facilities in the U.S.

Over-regulation does much to limit supply and raise prices. Gasoline specifications often vary on a state by state basis. Applying standardization would increase the efficiency in managing refineries and allow better utilization of fuel products storage capacities.

The imposition of boutique fuel specifications on a state by state and country by country basis only confounds efforts to formulate global solutions for overall fuel shortages.

The reality is that as oil supplies from the North Sea, Alaska and continental U.S. lag behind demand, heavier crudes with higher sulfur contents will be increasingly needed to meet increased demand. Therefore fuel specifications must be standardized in order to modify refinery processes on a timely basis. This is something which we must resolve urgently if we are to ensure fuel specifications and optimum refinery efficiencies over the next decade.

The question of stability in the Middle East is a major concern in this regard. Conflicts in the region that contains over 65% of the world’s oil reserves and 45 % of its gas reserves have been allowed to spiral out of control.

Regional turmoil and military confrontations have created a volatile atmosphere that undermines investment in the region’s oil industry.

This volatility has in turn become a fertile ground for oil price speculation. Every tragic incident in the Middle East has become a green light for oil traders to set higher premiums on oil supplies.

The need to putting a just and equitable end to the Arab-Israeli conflict is a matter of extreme urgency. This would not only end decades of human suffering, but in the process rid us from the unhealthy speculations that have been so damaging to the oil markets.

I have taken a lot of time to cover these matters because they are of vital importance and yet have no simple resolution. Identifying the problems is always easier than seeking their effective solutions.

What is certain, however, is that we need to move away from the blame game, and to recognize the simple truth that the desired solutions can only be arrived at through collective cooperation.

Facing these challenges require a joint effort by oil producers, oil consumers and the oil companies. To institutionalize a fruitful dialogue among all concerned, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the Custodian of The Two Holy Mosques, took the initiative in setting up a Secretariat for the International Energy Forum in Riyadh.

One of its primary functions has been to facilitate data exchange and transparency through the administration of the Joint Data Initiative, which involves monthly submissions from producing and consuming countries. A few months ago, while in Dallas, he called for the convening of a conference under the auspices of this International Forum.

We look forward to increased cooperative effort and stand ready to work with the United States to do our part in addressing these challenges.

Let me conclude by quoting an old Chinese proverb: “It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”

Thank you.


Yeah! Yeah!
M3 salaam
:wilted_ro
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Ameeratul Layl
10-05-2005, 11:19 AM
:sl:


2 October 2005

KUWAIT-- Jazeera Airways, the first privately owned airline in the Middle East, announced yesterday that it will start operations in October 2005, as initially scheduled.




The new national airline of Kuwait had previously opened booking for flights November 16, 2005 and beyond, and has now announced that it will take-off on October 30th with flights to Dubai, Beirut, Damascus, Amman and Bahrain, adding Egypt, India and South East Asia to its destinations in the near future.


Though a new airline, Jazeera Airways is breaking-away from aviation models known in the region, offering a brand new travel experience that gives passengers full control over their travel plans.


Marwan Boodai, Chairman and CEO of the new airline said "We do not consider ourselves in the airline business; we are in the business of empowering travelers. We have worked with the best partners in the industry and brought leading international suppliers to the Middle East - some for the first time - to achieve highest level of safety and efficiency. The higher efficiency has enabled us to focus on putting more control into the hands of people travelling to and from Kuwait."

BY A STAFF REPORTER

Allah ma3akum :love:
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Ameeratul Layl
10-05-2005, 11:22 AM
:sl:


JEDDAH, 3 October 2005 -- The National Commercial Bank's (NCB) investment services division (ISD) yesterday announced the launch of its AlAhli GCC Trading Equity Fund (GCCTEF), an open-end Saudi riyal-denominated fund, with a minimum subscription of SR5,000 and especially designed for investors seeking a Shariah-compliant long-term investment.


The fund aims to generate long-term capital growth by investing in Shariah-compliant GCC equities, Murabahas and Murabaha funds, which are approved by the NCB's Shariah board and managed according to the mutual fund regulations issued by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA).


The GCCTEF targets people keen on investing in Shariah-compliant equities and having an optimistic long-term view of the markets in the GCC, according to Ahmed Farid, head of the asset management division at the NCB. It is also designed for those who do not have the time or the experience to venture into the stock markets in the region.


On the other hand, Haithem Al-Mubarak, head of portfolio management at the NCB, recommended that investors assess the performance of the GCCTEF within a testing period that is no less than five years. "The GCCTEF will leverage the strong economic growth in the region for a longer term based on NCB's positive and pragmatic overview of the macroeconomic performance of the GCC markets," Mubarak told a press conference at the Jeddah InterContinental Hotel yesterday. "However, investors should be aware of the high risks of investing in stocks in general and stocks in the 'emerging markets' in particular. Therefore, we note the importance of diversification in the selection of the assets in this fund across the six GCC countries," said Mubarak, who was accompanied by NCB's Farouq Fouad A. Ghulam, head of product development structuring and operational risk, ISD, Abdullah Hassan Al-Khatib, head of business development, ISD, and Amr Banaja, head of marketing, asset management.


Recent research has shown that the Kingdom leads across the Arab countries in terms of attracting Arab and foreign investments.


The NCB was the first Saudi bank to introduce mutual funds in the Kingdom in 1979 and remains the leader of the industry because of its extensive experience and expertise in the field. The bank is acknowledged internationally as the pioneer and the innovator in Shariah-compliant mutual funds. This achievement was recognized when NCB was awarded the Euromoney International Award for the "Best Islamic asset management house" for two consecutive years from 2003.


Mubarak said that the NCB remained optimistic about the future of the GCC markets and therefore it had now launched the GCC fund. "However, we would like to caution potential investors to the importance of investing wisely in the equity funds in general and particularly those in emerging markets."


There are currently four funds investing in the Gulf stocks in the Kingdom. However three of them are dollar-denominated, traditional (non-Shariah compliant), and the minimum subscription is for average $10,000. Moreover, one of these funds invests in industrial companies only.


The GCCTEF, an index fund, will be actively managed to diversify the selection of stocks across the various sectors and countries in accordance with the Shariah and ensure that the fund outperforms the index when needed.


About the expected rate of returns on the new fund, Mubarak said over the last few years the GCC economies that were directly linked to oil prices had performed well between three percent to over 100 percent. "However, the past returns do not indicate future market returns on investment nor do they guarantee similar or proximate returns in the future since various political and other factors affect market movement in any country. So it is not possible to make return forecast to any fund accurately."


The fund will invest in a selection of stocks that include the Shariah-compliant GCC companies as determined by country and investment guidelines of the fund. The basket of companies will be revised periodically. "Therefore, we'll not be able to name any particular company. Moreover, the fund manager will deal with highly reliable financial institutions in various countries."


The subscription fee was put basically to reduce market timing by clients who may use this fund as a trading tool instead of a long-term investment, also to cover the cost of managing the fund in the various GCC markets, Mubarak said when asked why the bank had set a subscription fee of two percent.


Explaining the factors that the NCB considered to launch the GCC fund now, Mubarak said investors were pleasantly surprised by the sharp rise in the share prices in the past year across the six GCC markets where the benchmark stock indices had grown on average up to over 145 percent. "At the NCB, we observed the need among our customers for a Shariah-compliant fund investing in the stocks of the companies performing well in the neighboring Gulf countries," he said.

By Khalil Hanware & K.S. Ramkumar

Oh!!!! and copy, pasted by Ameeratul Layl ;D

Allham Ma3akum :coolsis:
Reply

afzalaung
10-06-2005, 07:23 AM
I just hope its cheap:P
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Ameeratul Layl
10-06-2005, 12:53 PM
:sl:




Saudi girls denounced general image of Arab woman in US media

Karen Hughes surprised and impressed by female students' outspokenness and intelligence.


By Isabel Malsang - JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia
Copy and pasted by me :coolsis:

US media are being disingenuous in portraying Arab women as unhappy and wronged, a close aide to President George W. Bush on a PR visit to Saudi Arabia was told this week.


And it came from the horse's mouth.


"We are happy. We want to show that image but the general image of the Arab woman in the American media is that she is not happy," a female student at Jeddah's private Dar al-Hekma university said during an encounter with US Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, drawing thunderous applause from colleagues.


"Your media is not really as fair as it used to be," came another voice from among the crowd of women clad in the mandatory black "abaya" who gathered in an amphitheatre on Tuesday to "exchange" views with the American visitor.


Students were given time off from classes for the event and nearly all 700 of them came to see Hughes, who was in Saudi Arabia as part of a tour also taking in Egypt and Turkey and which aimed at polishing America's battered image in the region.


As reporters accompanying Hughes on her tour listened, the girls - mostly Saudis but including some from other Arab countries -- said they had had enough of being portrayed as deprived of any rights.


"I don't want to drive, because I have my own driver," one of them defiantly told American journalists.


Women in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia are banned from driving or mixing in public with men other than relatives.


But "it is not an absolute wall" between men and women, one of the students insisted, as another grabbed the microphone to wonder why US media tar all Muslims with the terrorism brush.


Hughes was careful to tell her audience that "America should not seek to impose our will on Saudi Arabia."


She also applauded news in that day's local press that women would be allowed to work in Saudi Arabia, where only a limited number of professions are currently open to them.


Hughes overlooked the rest of the report, which referred to a new labor law allowing women to work "in all sectors compatible with their nature."


The sectors have not been specified.


The students of Dar al-Hekma were in no doubt that they would be able to work after graduating, even if they would not be able to drive to work.


"We can change, we are going to change, but not by force from outside," Leen Assassa, a 19-year-old student of interior design who holds dual Syrian and British nationality, later said.


She was covered from head to toe like her Saudi peers.


"America is trying to force its own opinion on us; the change will come from us," Assassa added.


Chamane Rahim, a French-educated social sciences professor, explained that the students don't cover their heads in class "as we're all women."


True, Saudi women still can't drive, "but it will come soon, Inshallah (God willing)," she said.


Hughes confided she had been "surprised" by what she heard but also "impressed by their (the girls') outspokenness and intelligence."


"They clearly feel much a part of the debate in the society even though they don't have the right to vote nor to drive," she said.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
10-06-2005, 01:04 PM
salam
its just the kuffars trying to cause unrest among the muslim population, mashallah the sisters in the Arab world are happy shame about the americans who thought they were unhappy
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-06-2005, 01:05 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
its just the kuffars trying to cause unrest among the muslim population, mashallah the sisters in the Arab world are happy shame about the americans who thought they were unhappy
wasalam

:sl:
I know..... ;D
Ahem....sorry, I need to calm down a little :p :p
Reply

Halima
10-06-2005, 04:08 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by afzalaung
I just hope its cheap:P

A freeway ticket to Hajj or Ummrah this year :D
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-07-2005, 01:39 PM
:sl:

Copied and pasted by YOUR reporter: Ameeratul Layl :coolsis: :p

07/10/2005

JEDDAH, 7 October 2005 — For the first time, a young Saudi security system consultant Manal Al-Sharif was awarded an "Ethical Hacking" certificate from the International Council of E-Commerce Consultants in America.

Speaking to Arab News Al-Sharif said her work was acknowledged because of its importance for business concerns. She said that when companies build up a network system and implement it, they ask "ethical hackers" to try to crack the system down. They do that in order to evaluate the system's efficiency so the company can be aware of it and make changes to prevent crackers from penetrating the system.

"That is the difference between an 'ethical hacker' and a 'cracker,' Al-Sharif added. Then, they present preventive plans to the companies.

She started working in the "Ethical Hacking" project at Aramco along with her colleagues in the security system section cooperating with special experts from outside. At the end of their project they were able to form a sample lab. Its purpose was to imitate crackers' actions.

The international certificate that Al-Sharif received did not only require passing the tests but the applicants should also have appropriate experience in the field of security systems. Aramco provided the needed training courses for Al-Sharif and six male participants at the project.

Twenty-six years old Al-Sharif has worked in the field of electronic safety at Aramco for three years after graduating from King Abdul Aziz University with a bachelor's degree in computer science.

She said that she was determined to specialize in the security systems profession that only a small percentage of women work in — not only in the Kingdom but also around the world — when she started as a student at KAAU.

"Since the Internet service was available in the Kingdom in 1997 I was very fond of the technical part of it, I did not want it to be merely a hobby I wanted to be professional in that field."



Allah ma3akum ;)
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-07-2005, 01:44 PM
:sl:

Copied and pasted by YOUR reporter: Ameeratul Layl :coolsis:

RIYADH, 3 October 2005 — Private institutions have been given two years to submit applications to the Labor Ministry to open women's sections in their ...


03/10/2005

RIYADH, 3 October 2005 — Private institutions have been given two years to submit applications to the Labor Ministry to open women's sections in their premises.

Deputy Labor Minister Dr. Ahmad Al-Zamil said at a press conference here yesterday that, according to the new law approved by the Council of Ministers last week, clearance has been given for opening female sections in all private and public institutions.

He said the ministry had given a two-year period so that as many private institutions and businessmen as possible come forward. Two years would allow them to create the necessary areas in their workplaces.

"This does not mean, however, that any private institution that comes forward before the end of the two-year period would not be given a permit if it had fulfilled the regulations," he said.

Dr. Al-Zamil said according to the new law, women are now able to work in all fields, in addition to the selling of lingerie and women's garments, as long as the occupation complied with certain regulations.

The conditions for employing women in new fields are as follows: That the job is not contrary to Islamic beliefs and there is no mixing with men; that the jobs suit the female nature; that the female's guardian approves of her working.

He said institutions that wanted to open separate branches for women with an all-female staff would have to receive permission to do so from the appropriate ministry, but an institution that wants to employ females and open a female section in its own working place would not need any permission to do so.

"If a businessman, for example, wanted to open a separate female car showroom for women he would have to get a permit from the Ministry of Commerce for its operation. But institutions that want to open a female section in the same working place need no permission to do so," he said.

Commenting on why the ministry requested the permission of a female's guardian to work in a certain field, Dr. Al-Zamil said there was a ministerial regulation on this matter and that the ministry was concerned about women's welfare.

"We want to assure all families that their daughters are working in a field which is compatible with our Islamic and cultural values," he said.

He did not find the guardian's approval of great significance since it was part of the religion. "In Islam a woman cannot even leave her house without her husband's approval so I do not find any problem in this."

Dr. Al-Zamil also called on Saudis who registered themselves as "jobless" in the ministry's branches to come forward to seek jobs, saying that if they are not serious they should withdraw their files and leave the room for others. He said of the 150,000 registered jobless at the ministry, only 50,000 had come forward for jobs.





Allah ma3akum :)
Reply

muslimrebel
10-08-2005, 04:17 PM
they shud listen to the nasheed by dawud wharnsby ali which explains wat our sistaz are really like.......may allah inshallah punish those who are tryin to corrupt the muslim ummah
Reply

muslimrebel
10-08-2005, 04:30 PM
wow a ticket to hajj wud be nice :)
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-09-2005, 12:18 PM
:sl:
Has no one reda my article yet.
You do know it takes a lot of energy to copy and paste things, dont u! :p

;D ;D

Allah ma3akum :coolsis:
Reply

Bittersteel
10-09-2005, 12:25 PM
umm...is she Muslim?

:sl:
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-09-2005, 12:30 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
umm...is she Muslim?

:sl:

:sl:
Who me? Yeah of course. :love:

Allah ma3ik :coolsis:
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-10-2005, 12:38 PM
:sl:
Copied and pasted by YOUR reporter: Ameeratul Layl


RIYADH (SPA)

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah directed Saudi officials to provide airlift relief assistance to victims of the earthquake that hit north Pakistan on Friday.

A medical team comprising a number of physicians from the Health Ministry and the Saudi Red Crescent Society will be sent to Pakistan to make a survey on the impact of the earthquake, and to determine the areas and regions that are in need of urgent medical services.

Acting president of the Saudi Red Crescent society Dr. Saleh Al-Tuweijiri said in a press meeting here today that the Saudi Red Crescent society will coordinate with the Saudi Embassy in Islamabad, the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Red Cross Organization and the Pakistani Red Crescent Society.Allah ma3akum :coolsis:
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
10-10-2005, 12:45 PM
salam
mashallah
may allah make all this efforts to ease the suffering in pakistan
wasalam
Reply

meknesi
10-10-2005, 12:46 PM
ameeeeen

meknesi
Reply

Zuko
10-10-2005, 02:57 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Ameeratul Layl
:sl:
Copied and pasted by YOUR reporter: Ameeratul Layl


RIYADH (SPA)

The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah directed Saudi officials to provide airlift relief assistance to victims of the earthquake that hit north Pakistan on Friday....
Subhanallah... Muslims helping muslims, now this is the kind of stuff I like to read... May Allaah unite the Muslims once more, and may Allah reward all those hurt in the earthquake, and all those who helped out... Ameen...
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
10-10-2005, 03:05 PM
salam
ameen
wasalam
Reply

waji
10-10-2005, 06:41 PM
Aslam u Alikum
May Allah help the rescue persons in their rescue work to help people
Walikum as Salam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-12-2005, 07:35 AM
:sl: Brothers and Sister

This is an article copied and pasted by me: YOUR reprter: Ameeratul Layl :coolsis:
JEDDAH, 10 October 2005 -- The recently approved regulations for licensing real estate investments have had an immediate effect on the real estate market and related businesses. In accordance with the new law, no real estate shares of any kind can be floated, used to collect money, advertised or approved until all regulations have been fulfilled. The regulations include getting the approval of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to float the shares for public subscription. The ministry must verify that the land for which the shares are sold is in fact owned by the company which must have a valid deed; the company or individual offering the shares must have at least a 20 percent stake in the property.


Also, the land must have been officially approved for the investment by the relevant municipality. The law also states that the real estate units offered for floatation should have a valid license from the municipality plus a study by an official consulting office showing the building costs, duration and services. After getting the ministry's approval and before advertising for investment, the company or individual must apply to the Capital Market Authority (CMA) to establish an investment fund under the name of the shareholding project in accordance with CMA regulations. Before establishing the investment fund and advertising for shareholders, the owner of the land must register the land in court in accordance with Ministry of Justice and CMA regulations which guarantee that the land will not be tampered with during the period of investment.


After an eight-month suspension by the Ministry of Commerce of licensing all real estate investments, the new regulations address the issues which led to such scams as the now infamous Venice Island venture from the Al-Duraibi Group. Real estate developers agree that with these regulations, life is returning to the real estate investment market. Already two real estate companies have submitted proposals to the ministry for floating real estate investments.


Hamdan Al-Nahar, president of Al-Nahar International Real Estate Group, one of the two companies, said that the new regulations would contribute to limiting the amount of capital going to neighboring countries especially for real estate investments. "The regulations also guarantee protecting the rights of investors and shareholders and allow big and small investors to increase their capital in safe investments," he added. All this of course will lead to the growth of the national economy and develop the construction sector, especially in line with the high demand for additional residential and tourism projects.

Allah ma3akum :coolsis:
Reply

RaihanBD
10-13-2005, 04:36 AM
:sl:

No offense but I'm not really in2 dese real estate stuff so cud da NightPrincess plz xplain 2 us in brief wats it all about and in ENGLISH plz ! :p

:confused:

Jazak Allah

:w:
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-13-2005, 07:33 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by RaihanBD
:sl:

No offense but I'm not really in2 dese real estate stuff so cud da NightPrincess plz xplain 2 us in brief wats it all about and in ENGLISH plz ! :p

:confused:

Jazak Allah

:w:
:sl:
Br, are u asking me to explain the whole of the article to you?

Allah ma3ak
Reply

RaihanBD
10-13-2005, 05:45 PM
Yes. If its not 2 much 2 ask... if u wan2 dat is. No compulsion :D And in "brief" plz.

Jazak Allah
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-14-2005, 07:28 AM
:sl:
By your reporter: Ameeratul Layl



JEDDAH, 13 October 2005 — Saudi Arabia’s new ambassador to the United States has urged people of all faiths to stand united in the fight against terrorism. Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi envoy to the UK, said Al-Qaeda’s terrorism was based on a perverted cult ideology.

He also emphasized that the uneven handling of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute by the West had played a big role in damaging Western-Islamic relations.

In a major speech to the Oxford Philosophy, Politics and Economics Society on the eve of leaving London to take up his new assignment in Washington, D.C., Prince Turki said Al-Qaeda’s terrorism had changed the world and would continue to shape the future of international relations.

A solution to the world’s problems would not bring current terrorism to an end, the prince said, adding that Al-Qaeda was not a religious or political organization, but a cult, which makes use of the suffering of others to further its vested interests.

“These cults claim that if the problems of Palestine and Iraq were solved, then they would be satisfied. I do not believe that is true,” the ambassador said. Al-Qaeda’s terrorism, he added, was not based on Islam, but on a “perverted cult ideology.”

Prince Turki claimed that the only way to fight terrorism was for all faiths to come together since creating divisions among them was what Al-Qaeda wanted. “We must also ensure that no government provides a political haven for those proselytizing extremist ideologies in the false belief that these groups are victims rather than aggressors,” he said.

In his address entitled, “Terrorism: Threats and Challenges,” Prince Turki said: “Terrorism is currently the biggest single threat to international peace and stability. It has ripped communities apart and has tried to turn friends into foes.”

He denounced allegations that Saudi Arabia supported terrorism. “In fact, we are the victims, not the supporters, of terrorism. The fact that they have sprung up within our midst is as horrifying to us as it is to you,” he told the gathering. “Extremism is the mantra of the very few, a tiny group whose minds have been twisted and turned to an evil agenda.”

Prince Turki said Osama Bin Laden had established Al-Qaeda as a guerrilla force, which would come to join him in a fight when he called. “He was intoxicated by his experiences in Afghanistan and wanted more, those who followed him were intoxicated by his passion and were searching for a cause,” he said, adding that Osama used the Internet to spread his venomous ideology.

Speaking about Western double standards pertaining to Arab and Islamic issues, he asked, “Why does the West enforce UN resolutions with untold power and might in the Arab world? Why doesn’t it enforce UN resolutions calling on Israel to move back to boundaries set more than 30 years ago? It is this cause above all others that has given lifeblood to this evil cult of hate.”

Prince Turki said Saudi Arabia, along with other Arab countries, had clearly expressed its interest in reaching a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. “The Arab peace plan initiated by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has been welcomed by all countries but rejected by Israel,” he pointed out. “I believe that until Palestinians are finally given justice and their own homeland, where they can live in peace, this will remain not just a tragedy but will provide terrorists with a ready excuse for their terrible actions,” he added.

The ambassador also spoke of Riyadh’s successful campaign against Al-Qaeda and said the Kingdom had arrested more than 500 terrorists. “We have also eliminated the leadership of Al-Qaeda, one by one. And scores of imams found preaching extremism have been dismissed.”

Prince Turki called for joint action by the international community to fight terror instead of blaming one another. “The death and destruction terrorism causes is incalculable as it drives a wedge of suspicion between communities and faiths, stirring up a poisonous diet of mistrust and hate,” he said. “We must cut off any intellectual, financial or political support that feeds these groups. We must ensure that no one twists the words of the Qur’an, or indeed any holy book, to justify their political aims and ends. This is corruption at its worst.”
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-31-2005, 12:56 PM
:sl:

News from ur very own Reporter: Ameeratul layl :giggling:

Inspector General of the mathematics subject at the Ministry of Education Mariam Al-Wutaid unified mathematics and sciences subjects would be taught in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia as of next year.

Wutaid made the statement following a meeting for the educational leaders in Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia with the Director General of the Arab Education Bureau Dr. Ali Al-Qarni and officials in the Al-Obeikan company who is in charge of translating the curricula of the Harcourt International Company to apply them on the three mentioned GCC countries by next year.

She told KUNA these subjects will be given to students in first, fourth, seventh and 10th grade in the three GCC states.

Minister of Education and Higher Education, Dr. Rasheed Al-Hamad, signed in Riyadh last March a draft plan to develop the mathematics and sciences subjects and unify them among the GCC states.

Kuwait contributed KD eight million to this educational project.(end) ay
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
10-31-2005, 01:01 PM
:sl:

Reporter: Ameeratul layl


JEDDAH — The bird flu scare is affecting investments in the poultry sector in Saudi Arabia, and insurance companies are rejecting applications by poultry farmers, according to a report in the Arabic daily Okaz.


"The transmission of the fatal virus to the birds in the region threatens kingdom's poultry industry," Ridah Al Nagmoosh, Chairman of the Agricultural Committee in the Eastern Province, was quoted as saying by the daily Okaz last week.

In the Eastern Province alone there are 120 poultry farms. Each farm has six pens — each accommodating 25,000 chickens. Each farm stocks chickens worth more than one million riyals. The value of the total investments in the poultry industry in the region is estimated at SR760 million.

"The fear of Saudi investors in poultry industry is justified because all international efforts to control the disease have not yielded positive results," Al Nagmoosh said.

Insurance companies in the region have rejected applications to insure poultry farms terming poultry as high risk project.

Zeyad Al Gassem, chairman of the Insurance Companies Forum in the Eastern Province, said the major reason for denying insurance to poultry farms was that most of the veterinary projects in the kingdom, including poultry farms, have no precise studies and statistics that would help in measuring the likelihood of the occurrence of the risk.

Al Nagmoosh said the steps taken by Saudi authorities to prevent transmission and spread of the virus were laudable — especially the ban on the import of the birds from the affected countries.

The kingdom has banned import of poultry and its products from Turkey, Romania, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.

A temporary ban has also been imposed on the import of live birds and eggs from Turkey and Romania on the basis of World Health Organisation (WHO) reports, which confirmed that the deadly strain of H5NI avian flu had appeared in the two countries.

“We have so far banned import of birds from nearly 50 countries and we are closely monitoring appearance of avian flu cases in other countries,” Muhammad Al Sheiha, deputy agriculture minister for animal resources, was quoted by Okaz as saying. "Twenty-three quarantine areas at the kingdom’s entry points have been provided with advanced facilities to deal with the disease," he added.

Moreover, the Ministry of Agriculture has intensified monitoring of some 500 poultry farms in various parts of the kingdom. Al Sheiha said the kingdom has prepared a comprehensive plan of international standard to counter the deadly disease.

Saudi authorities are taking extra precautions in view of the large numbers of pilgrims who are here for Umrah and the expected influx soon for the forthcoming Haj. The Health Ministry has allocated SR25 million to purchase anti-viral drugs.

Al Nagmoosh called upon the investors and chicken breeders to fully cooperate with the authorities in checking the disease from entering the kingdom. He said the situation in the Eastern Province was assuring and under control.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-01-2005, 10:03 AM
:sl:

News from the LI Forum's very own reporter: Ameeratul layl:giggling:
RIYADH
- Saudi King Abdullah held talks Sunday with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, one day after receiving a Syrian official touring the Gulf ahead of an anticipated UN vote threatening sanctions against Syria.


King Abdullah met Siniora in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, where he is spending the last days of the fasting month of Ramadan, the official SPA news agency reported without giving details about their discussions.

The talks came one day after Abdullah met with Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, whose country faces the threat of sanctions after a UN probe implicated top Syrian officials in last February's murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.

Speaking in Qatar Sunday, Muallem said he feared the UN Security Council would "unfairly" punish his country.

He described as "dangerous" a resolution drafted by the United States and France which the council is expected to pass on Monday threatening sanctions against Syria to force it to cooperate with the UN probe.

SPA reported that the Saudi monarch also met in Mecca Sunday with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Discussions covered "developments on the Arab, Islamic and world scenes, chiefly the Palestinian issue and the situation in Iraq, in addition to ways of boosting cooperation" between Riyadh and Amman, it said.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-01-2005, 10:09 AM
:sl:

News from LI Forum's very own reporter: Ameeratul layl:giggling:


Like many developing countries, Saudi Arabia has been targeted by the tobacco mafia with the aim of delaying and rendering ineffective all efforts to combat smoking. The simple truth is that tobacco generates profits amounting to many billions of dollars every year, and such profits go mainly to the accounts of the multinational companies that control the tobacco trade. Although many countries have their own national tobacco production, it is the multinationals that take the large profits throughout the world. Yet the world is becoming increasingly aware of the health risks that smoking causes. Efforts in many European and American countries to curb the smoking pandemic have yielded good results, with great reductions in tobacco consumption and a significant drop in the percentage of young people who pick up the habit. The multinationals were quick to see the writing on the wall and realize that the efforts of Western governments will be on the increase. Hence, for many years they have been targeting developing countries with the aim of spreading the smoking pandemic everywhere. They have benefited by the absence of effective legislation to curb their activities. Besides, where legislation is in place, tobacco companies are known to try to circumvent them. Their overall aim is to compensate the loss of five million customers smoking kills every year. Thus, they maintain their profit levels for as long as possible, knowing that the younger a person is when he picks up the smoking habit, the more difficult it is for him to quit once he begins to realize that it is adversely affecting his health.

Encouraged by the World Health Organization, many developing countries began to take measures to increase public awareness of the dangers of smoking. Thus, programs were started to publicize the facts, with radio and television shows speaking against smoking. Tobacco advertising on radio and television was banned. In some cases, no billboard advertising was allowed, but often newspapers were left free to carry adverts of tobacco companies, giving the pretext that the revenue from such advertising was absolutely necessary for the survival of the print media. But all such steps fell far short of what was required. Health officials felt that putting a health warning on cigarette packets would encourage people to quit smoking. Therefore, regulations demanded placing such a warning, and sure enough the tobacco companies complied. In some countries, you needed a magnifying lens to discover the position of the warning, let alone read it. If dark red was a color on the packet, the warning was written in light black on the red area.

But is it enough to know that health and tobacco are two opposites and cannot coexist for people to stop smoking? The tobacco companies were always a step ahead of the health authorities. They realized that with the strong addiction tobacco causes, few of their customers would heed the health warning. Tobacco consumption continued on the rise in practically all developing countries. Only the dedication of individuals caring for the welfare of people, at ministries of health and at the World Health Organization, maintained the momentum in the effort to combat tobacco.

An initiative by the World Health Organization sought a religious ruling on tobacco. The Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office, based in Alexandria at the time, submitted data and medical information to Al-Azhar, the famous seat of Islamic scholarship, requesting a fatwa on smoking. Al-Azhar asked 10 of its prominent scholars to give their own individual fatwas, and all returned a ruling of prohibition. Their rulings are published by WHO in a book carrying the title The Islamic Ruling on Smoking.

In Saudi Arabia efforts by the Ministry of Health continued, with greater dedication. Everyone realized that the problem is very difficult to solve, because of the addiction element, and the efforts of the multinational companies. These efforts used the financial power at the disposal of such companies to promote tobacco. It is not easy in our world to issue an order to curb the efforts of these companies, because promotion efforts can easily cross borders, with what is organized in one country being easily monitored in another.

Health authorities realize that combating tobacco smoking requires an integrated and sustained package of measures, with clear preventive and curative goals. Thus, it is necessary to pursue policies that will persuade young people not to try to smoke, while at the same time help smokers to quit. Much depends on fostering people’s will not to smoke. Cooperation with the Ministry of Education ensures that school children receive a few doses of health education, in which the dangers of tobacco smoking are highlighted. At the same time, programs to help smokers to quit are introduced.

In Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Health took the additional step of establishing specialized clinics throughout the country where smokers are welcome. These clinics offer wide-ranging and thorough information about tobacco, its effects on health, the dangers to which a regular smoker exposes himself and the nature of the addiction tobacco smoking forms. Different methods of help are explained, and the smoker is helped to make an informed choice of the method he thinks will work for him. The point is that quitting the smoking habit is hard and requires a great effort that can only be achieved when a person is determined to succeed. In Jeddah, some clinics offer rewards, such as free membership, for a limited period, in a sport club where the quitting smoker can train. As he does so, he will discover that quitting smoking enables him to improve his physical strength more rapidly. This provides an added incentive to keep up the effort to quit the smoking habit. The clinics work with smokers at both individual and group levels, realizing that while every smoker provides a special case that should be individually treated, people can help each other by sharing an experience of getting rid of a stubborn addiction.

Such efforts make steady progress, but the road ahead is still long. Madinah is providing the lead and its success will, God willing, provide the lead to expand the effort, putting it at the national level, with a plan to make the whole country tobacco-free.


Smoking is bad...it can kill:peace:
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-01-2005, 10:12 AM
:sl:

From ur very own news reporter: Ameeratul layl

Abu Dhabi: Yousuf Islam, former pop singer turned Islamic preacher, said globalisation is bringing people together, "hence every-body is beginning to learn about each other".
He was delivering a lecture here on Thursday on The Muslim in a Global Village.


WAM
“When we see Islam portrayed incorrectly in the media it is because we don’t have the media in our hands to show the world the truth about Islam,” said Yousuf Islam.


Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Information and Culture, and Mohammad Bin Nakhira Al Daheri, Minister of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Awqaf, attended the lecture, in addition to hundreds of people who filled the Dhafra Hall at the Cultural Foundation.

Yousuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, said: "There's a talk of conflict between Islam and the West. This is one view which is making people think there is a time coming when there will be a clash or a greater conflict when globalisation is applied.

"Actually there are Muslims living in the West and non-Muslims living in Muslim countries, therefore the idea of a clash does not exist, the clash is just political."

Islam said any conflict cannot be observed from outside. "All of us in this global village will be hurt unless we take action to establish balance and peace within the village.

"The word globalisation is not about a conflict between Islam and the West. It's not about people killing each other, reality is that the idea global village is only applied in developed nations, while most people in this world live in poverty."

Islam said some form of democracy or equilibrium is necessary if we want to talk about the village.

"It wouldn't be a proper village if you have a warlord on one side and people trying to apply democracy on the other side, in Iraq for example, people are trying to apply democracy and they are bombed at the same time.

"If the global village vision came true, then the whole world will be one community, served by an electronic-media-working force. The political system will be unified.

"The question asked by Muslims is: 'Where will the religion fit in all this? It will be impossible for Muslims to live in a world where religion is something secondary."

Islam said the Quran is the only book that names and deals with other religions. Muslims are living in a time where Islam is looked at as something annoying and disturbing.

"Today we see many Muslims shy of declaring they are Muslims due to the manner in which Islam is portrayed in the media and we see people representing Islam in a bad way and not showing the true heart of Islam," he said.

"People who believe that there is no purpose for the human existence on this earth are mistaken, but Muslims understand the real purpose of existence is to worship the Almighty," he said.

Islam finally mentioned the important role the media plays in giving information. "Media is one of the most important areas which Muslims need to master," he said.

"When we see Islam portrayed incorrectly in media it is because we don't have media in our hands to show the world the truth about Islam. Instead we see Muslims who take the lead of representing Islam in a wrong way."

Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-01-2005, 11:50 AM
salam
jazakallah sis
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-02-2005, 12:28 PM
:sl:

From ur very own reporter: Ameeratul layl
A decline in gold smuggling and a salary hike have driven up the gold market in Saudi Arabia, despite Saudisation of the trade.

Saudi Arabia now accounts for 70 per cent of the gold and jewellery market in the Arabian Gulf region and is the fifth-largest in the Middle East, said Suleiman Al Othaim, chairman of Al Othaim Jewellery Factory Group in Saudi Arabia.

The Gulf nation has also experienced the largest jump in gold consumption, which rose 18 per cent in the second quarter this year, according to the World Gold Council. The UAE followed with a rise of nine per cent, closely tailed by Egypt with eight per cent.

According to Al Othaim, whose group owns 25 branches and gem and jewellery factories in the Kingdom and in Dubai, Saudi Arabia is also the world's fifth-biggest jewellery market. He dismissed earlier media reports that strict regulations and Saudisation drove some businessmen to close their gold businesses in Saudi Arabia and move to neighbouring Gulf countries.

He said some Saudis did expand their businesses both in Saudi Arabia and in other GCC nations, shifting some investment from the Kingdom.

Part of the Saudi's success stems from the remarkable decline in gold smuggling into the Kingdom, said Usama Alwazir, Gulf manager of World Gold Council. "The Saudi gold market has done extremely well this year, despite the increased gold prices in international market." The smuggling of gold and jewellery into Saudi Arabia diminished to five tonnes so far this year as compared with 50 tonnes in 2003, he said. Alwazir attributed the fall in gold smuggling to strict implementation of customs laws and a well-secured Saudi border

Strong demand is seen boosting Dubai's gold imports to 525-540 tonnes by the end of 2005, despite the recent jump in prices, the Dubai Metals and Commodities Exchange's gold executive director said. "We expect the year-end figures to exceed last year, mainly on an increase in buying of gold from local consumers and tourists," said Colin Griffith.

Gold has been hovering within range of the totemic $500 an ounce mark for some weeks, pushed up by worries about inflation and the US economy. Gold hit a near 18-year high of $480.25 an ounce two weeks ago, before profit-taking kicked in.

The World Gold Council's Middle East Director, Moaz Barakat, said he expects demand to rise due to the Indian festival and wedding season in October, Eid Al Fitr in November and the peak tourist season and Christmas in December.

"I think 2006 will also be another good year," he said.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-03-2005, 10:37 AM
:sl:

Brothers and Sisters, During the Eid days we can only pray to Allah that those belonging to a tiny minority of individuals who chose deviation as a frame of mind and a way of life may wake up from their deep dark slumbers and save their lives before they lose everything and realize that we live in a country that is genuinely Muslim in character, law and its vision for its future.

It is only proper here, brothers and sisters, that we say a word for prayer to those souls who lost their lives protecting and in defense of our society, its peace and tranquility and against such form of extremism.

If there is a message that the Eid days crystallize, it is a message of kindness, tolerance and goodwill within ourselves, within our society and towards those who share our faith and those who share our humanity.

May Allah makes this Eid holiday a blissful one and make every Eid fully blessings and may continue his blessings to our beloved country and may peace be upon all".
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-08-2005, 09:50 AM
:sl:

Wats the world coming to????:hmm: :hmm: :grumbling :grumbling :grumbling




Riyadh, 7 Nov. (AKI) - Police in Saudi Arabia have broken up a beauty contest for gay men at al-Qatif on the east coast of the kingdom, arresting five men previously arrested less than six months ago for the same offence. The men were preparing to stage the competition on Thursday night, the first day of the Muslim festival Eid al-Fitr, when police raided the hotel they were in, forcing many contestants and guests to flee, leaving behind shoes and head scarves.

Some 80 people had been expected to attend the pageant, and police found large numbers of evaluation sheets, used to assess the contestant on attributes such as their height, weight, hip contour and skin colour, Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported this week. They also found large quantities of beauty products and make-up, lingerie, sex toys and aphrodisiacs.

Four Asians, thought to be the event's organisers, were arrested in the raid, along with a Saudi national. Police are reported to have been tipped off about the contest months ago.

Several months ago police arrested 92 people in a raid on a gay party in al-Qatif. Many were wearing women's clothes and make-up, and some wore wigs. So far none of them have been sentenced in court.



Allah ma3akum
Reply

S_87
11-08-2005, 10:58 AM
:sl:

May Allah guide us all Ameen.

>_<
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-08-2005, 11:04 AM
salam
may allah destroy those who imitate kuffars and may allah guide us all to the straight path
ameen wa akhiru da' wana anil hamdu lillahi rabbil alameen
wasalam
Reply

zaheer
11-09-2005, 10:19 AM
:sl:
what is the world coming to.:angry3: :rant: :enough!:

may Allah show them the right path.
Reply

Far7an
11-09-2005, 10:32 AM
Assalamu alaikum

You sure do love the arab news don't you? I merged all your news reports into one thread. Those threads which turned into long dicussions, I decided to leave out.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-09-2005, 10:33 AM
salam
jazakallah bro, there are some interesting articles
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-09-2005, 10:37 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Far7an
Assalamu alaikum

You sure do love the arab news don't you? I merged all your news reports into one thread. Those threads which turned into long dicussions, I decided to leave out.

:sl: Yeah I do brother far7an.:happy:

JazakAllah for merging my news reports.:smile:

Allah ma3ak
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-09-2005, 10:38 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
jazakallah bro, there are some interesting articles
wasalam

:sl: Since wen has: Ameeratul layl (thats me)....become a man!!!??:-\

Allah ma3ak
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-09-2005, 10:41 AM
salam
i was thanking bro farhan actually, for merging all the excellent reports into one thread
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-09-2005, 01:31 PM
:sl:

Al Jazeera turns nine; ranks fifth in world



Doha: Al Jazeera has plans to soon set up a centre that would conduct research and opinion polls on issues of global and regional significance, Chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani said yesterday.

He was speaking at the ninth anniversary celebrations of Al Jazeera Channel at a function here. Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer reiterated that Al Jazeera English channel was all set to be launched in the first quarter of next year. The channel, he recalled, had made progress since launch in November 1996 and today ranked fifth among the international channels in the world in terms of reach and extensive coverage.


"It is a great achievement for a channel that was set up only nine years ago." The chairman also recalled on the occasion the sacrifices of some scribes who lost their lives covering events for Al Jazeera and those who were facing prison terms for the cause of press freedom such as Teyseer Allouni and lensman Sami Al Haj.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-09-2005, 01:37 PM
salam
wow! didn't realise al jazeera was that popular and that good
i prefer abu dhabi and islam channel coz they show jummah from makkah
lol
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-11-2005, 08:33 AM
:sl:
News from LI News reporter: Ameeratul layl :statisfie

Saudi Ambassador Prince Turki Al-Faisal called for increased international cooperation to help combat extremism and terrorism worldwide in the keynote address at The Middle East Institute's 59th Annual Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Entitled “Terrorism and Radical Islam: Challenges and Misunderstandings,” the speech addressed the many issues involved in the war on terrorism and cautioned against associating the Islamic faith with extremism: “It is to our despair that terrorists claim to be faithful to Islam and faithful to God. They are not. They wrongly attempt to use Islam to bolster and proselytize their extremism. They wrongly pervert Islamic texts in order to support their political agendas. They wrongly issue politically motivated fatwas permitting suicide bombings and the taking of innocent lives."

Prince Turki highlighted the Kingdom's efforts to fight terrorism, those who support it, and those who condone it. He described Al-Qaeda as an organization that “has no one declared enemy, and no one focus. Al-Qaeda has pitted itself against the whole of humanity."

The Ambassador also remarked: “There are those who believe that the war against Al-Qaeda is a war between East and West; between Christianity and Islam. Some see it as a ‘clash of civilizations.’ We are not engaged in a clash of civilizations; we are engaged in a war ‘for civilization.’ It is a war that pits all peace-loving people, regardless of their culture or faith, against the forces of darkness.”

This year's conference, “Fractured Realities: A Middle East in Crisis”, sought to examine the issues and challenges facing the Middle East region and the U.S., including efforts to find new energy sources, reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the future of Gaza and the Peace Process following the recent Israeli pullout.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-11-2005, 08:36 AM
:sl:

News from LI 'S very own reporter: Ameeratul layl :statisfie

Saudi Arabian Airlines faces tough competition


11 November 2005


JEDDAH — The monopoly and a certain advantage that the Saudi Arabian Airlines enjoys as a national carrier "will not last long," according to an Arabic business daily.


The airline industry in the region and in the Kingdom is facing competition, which is increasing, rather than decreasing, making it tougher for the regional carriers to stay in business. Al-Eqtedsadiyah reported on Tuesday that the airline, which celebrated its 60th anniversary recently, is now one of the world's largest, with a fleet of more that 100 aircraft, and carries more than 16 million passengers a year. "These impressive numbers should not fool anyone certainly not airline officials," it stressed.

The daily explained that the airline will face strong competition in the local market where they have traditionally enjoyed a monopoly. Customers nowadays, including Saudis themselves, search for the lowest airfares and the best service. Saudia at present provides neither.

"We want our national carrier to be the best in terms of services and profits but this cannot be achieved without hard work and incentives," it said. "There is a need for considerable improvement in the airline's services. It should improve the management of its resources," it added.

The daily recounted that a few years ago, Saudia decided to restructure the company and it brought in experienced international companies to transform it into a profitable institution capable of competing with other international carriers. "Instead of improving and achieving growth, however, the service has not become better and complaints are more numerous than ever. The airline was, in fact, unable to fulfill travellers' basic needs during the last summer vacation and also during Ramadan," it said.

Al-Eqtedsadiyah said that established just 20 years ago, UAE's Emirates carried more than 12 million passengers last year, and ranks second in terms of profits and 20th in size. It began service with two rented aircraft in 1985; the aircraft flew to only three destinations Karachi, Bombay and Delhi.

"Emirates officials are planning carefully; they have a clear vision and clear goals. It would not be surprising or unexpected if Emirates exceeds Saudia in a year or two," it said, and added, "Though the UAE has a population of only two million, it supports three airlines, none of which unlike Saudia enjoy a monopoly."

Meanwhile, Dr. Khaled Ben Bakr, director general announced on Tuesday that Saudia will next month receive the first two of the15 new Embraer 170 aircraft it ordered last April. He added that the new fleet would improve the airline's services.

Saudia will receive the first two aircraft in December and another two in January. "Later on we shall receive one aircraft every month until all the 15 planes are delivered, Bakr said.

He said that the national carrier will use the Embraer to increase frequencies on existing regional and domestic flights and eventually develop mini-hubs in the northern city of Hail and the southern resort city of Abha.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-14-2005, 11:42 AM
:sl:

FROM THE LI'S VERY OWN NEWS REPORTER: Ameeratul layl:playing:

Saudi set to join trade fold but first it must convince EU



Saudi Arabia is much less famous for its liberal economy than for the rule of shariah law and its lack of many human rights. But this week, after 12 years in waiting, the birthplace of Islam may finally be allowed to enter the World Trade Organisation.
On Friday, a working party of the WTO will announce whether the kingdom can join the group of 148 nations in time for December's meeting of trade ministers in Hong Kong - a deadline the Saudis are desperate to reach. However, it is this week's fraught negotiations with one of its trading partners, the EU, that could prevent it from doing so. In order to join the WTO, Saudi Arabia must reach a bilateral agreement with the EU. Europe is attempting to tackle the Saudi insurance industry - a sensitive area for an Islamic state as it is based upon a financial gamble.

There is much at stake for the Saudis. Despite the fact that oil revenues this year are up 40 per cent and GDP is projected to grow by 8 per cent, 30 per cent of Saudi nationals are unemployed. The oil boom of the 1970s saw an enormous rise in birth rate: 60 per cent of the population is under the age of 20. Officials in the Saudi administration believe that getting the country's youth into gainful employment is crucial in the fight against terrorism.

The government hopes to create a diversified economy. In order to do so it needs more foreign investment. This has never been a popular idea with the Wahhabis, the hard-line religious leaders of the kingdom. But it is happening, slowly. In the many shopping malls of Riyadh, Western businesses such as Marks & Spencer and Pizza Hut run franchises. Deutsche Bank has set up shop and the Toyota dealership in Saudi is the largest in the world. Steffen Hertog, an Oxford University expert in Saudi Arabia's accession to the WTO, said that it would be an important psychological jump for the many businesses that have held out: 'It's a comfort for business. The government is signifying it wants to play by the rules.'

Saudi Arabia had failed to participate in the general agreement on trade and tariffs (Gatt). According to Professor Rodney Wilson at Durham University, it was confident that oil exports would remain its only concern. This meant that the kingdom did not become a WTO member when it was created in 1995. Joining late meant liberalising to a much greater extent and having to sign bilateral agreements with all its major trading partners.

The political situation surrounding 9/11 made the Saudi accession impossible in 2001 but the cogs began to move last April when President Bush held hands with Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah and pledged to help push through Saudi accession before Hong Kong. The US managed to force a number of crucial reforms that went well beyond the WTO's rule book. American businesses will be able to take up to a 75 per cent stake in Saudi companies in the services sector, 100 per cent in IT and 51 per cent in retail rising to 75 in three years. Saudi also promised to reduce almost all agricultural tariffs to 15 per cent or less and remove export subsidies. US agricultural exports to Saudi account for nearly $500 million annually.

So far, the EU has gained significant concessions for member countries but there are two sticking points in the negotiations, which must be resolved this week.

The first is the dual pricing of natural gas. Saudi companies can buy gas cheaper than foreign competitors. The Saudis argue that this is not a subsidy, and in any case, the issue could be resolved at the WTO if it were a member. But EU states such as Poland are concerned that backing down on Saudi dual-pricing now would set a dangerous precedent for when Russia, another gas-rich economy, eventually joins the WTO.

While early intelligence suggests the EU has won on this issue, the second - insurance - has deadlocked negotiations. According to Sabbir Patel, of the International Co-operative and Mutual Assurance Federation, there are three elements of shariah law that prevent insurance companies from operating. Gharar - uncertainty - is illegal and it is uncertain whether a payment will be made and how much it will be. Maisir, or gambling, is illegal. A small amount of premium is paid in the hope of gaining a large sum. And, interest - riba - also illegal, is paid in order to raise capital for insurance funds. As a result, there are co-operative insurance models that comply with shariah law, but also Saudi insurance funds based abroad but with branches in the country. Foreign insurers want to open branches in Saudi and to invest up to 60 per cent in a local co-operative. But the EU is pushing Saudi to allow European companies to do so with 100 per cent equity and hopes to lay the framework for a traditional insurance industry in the country.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-15-2005, 02:59 PM
:sl:

Three different types of Surgery saves the hand of an old Yemani man



A sixty years old Yemani man presented to the Vascular surgery department in the Saudi German hospital Jeddah, suffering of gangrene of three fingers of his left hand. Investigations proved that he has obstruction of the arteries of the forearm and obstruction of the arteries of the hand. So he had three different types of surgery to save his left hand.

The first operation was by (endovascular surgery) using arterial catheter to dilate the obstruction by a balloon and put a stent to keep the obstruction opened.

Next day the second operation was done by (Thoracoscopic surgery) doing excesion of a specific segment of the sympathetic chain of the thorax to dilate the small arteries of the hand which was done through the endoscope.

The Third type of Surgery which was done for the patient was (open surgery),
which was done at the end to excise the gangrenous parts of the fingers of the left hand. The three different operations was done in three successive days, all of these operations was done by Dr. Mahmoud Salah, Consultant and head of ascular and endovascular surgery department in the Saudi German hospital Jeddah. Patient improved much and his hand was saved. Thanks God.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-15-2005, 03:03 PM
:sl:

An Egyptian Citizen is able to Speak after 7 Years in Saudi German Hospital in Jeddah


An Egyptian citizen aged 32 has gotten hope to talk after 7 years of suffering. Through that years he made 19 operations outside the kingdom but non of them succeeded, meanwhile the patient lost his hope the patient hurt in a car accident which caused to him sever laryngeal and sub glottal stenosis. He remained in the ICU more than 1 month and half. T he repetition operations that used to open that stenosis caused a laryngeal and sub glottal fibrosis and adhesions. So the ENT surgeryzxcs team in Saudi German Hospital in Jeddah supervised by the visiting professor Warner E. with the help of Dr. Ebraheem Abdo ENT Consultant, Have made 3 surgeries on 3 stages, between each stage 2 months. In the first stage they cut the larynx to be healed without stenosis. In the second stage they used a costal cartilage graft to augment the lat wall larynx and trachea and in the third stage they close the new larynx and the trachea which took 2 hours, then, thanks God and the prince Abdulaziz Ben Fahad who held the whole operationzxcs cost, he is able to speak after 7 years.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-16-2005, 12:06 PM
:sl:

UAE: Dh16b Deira beach contract signed


DUBAI -- Real estate developer Nakheel and Van Oord, a Dutch dredging and marine contractor, yesterday signed a contract for the development of Deira beach, a project involving an investment of a Dh16 billion.




The beach development will be part of the mega project The Palm, Deira -- the third man-made island off Dubai coast.


General Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince and the UAE Defence Minister, and Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, attended the signing ceremony.


The contract with the Dutch company involves the execution of 16 digging and filling operations for the project to develop 17km of beach. The first phase of the project's infrastructure development is to begin by the end of 2006, according to Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, executive chairman of Nakheel.


Gen. Shaikh Mohammed and Balkenende discussed measures to further boost cooperation between the UAE and the Netherlands. The meeting was attended by Shaikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, president of Dubai Civil Aviation and chairman of Emirates airline, Mohammed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar Properties, and Mohammed Al Gergawi, Chairman of Dubai Holding Company.


The new Palm, Deira, is to be 18km long, 9km wide and its surface will measure 4,000 hectares. Development of the beach project will involve shifting more than one billion cubic metres of sand and 70 million tonnes of rock.


Van Oord has been operating in Dubai since 2001 and helped build Palm Jumeirah, south of Dubai, a Palm shaped island that was the first of the ambitious coastal projects.


About 50 million cubic metres of sand has been used to reclaim land for The Palm, Deira.

Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-16-2005, 12:07 PM
:sl:

Two birds infected with avian flu discovered in Kuwait

KUWAIT -- Chairman of the Public Authority for Agriculture Affairs and Fish Resources (PAAAFR) Sheikh Fahd Salem al-Sabah on Thursday said that two birds infected with avian flu were discovered in Kuwait.

Sheikh Fahd told KUNA one of the two birds was discovered while examining a shipment of birds imported from an Asian country and the second was found at a seaside chalet in southern Kuwait.

Kuwait, he added, is known for being a passage for migratory birds coming from Asia, Russia and China.

Kuwait, he said, has taken precautionary measures since the appearance of the disease last August and that "strenuous efforts deployed by the PAAAFR teams led to the discovery of two infected birds.

These teams, he pointed out, have imposed stringent precautionary measures in seaports, airports and border gates. He said that the shipment where the infected bird was found has been destroyed.

Sheikh Fahd assured nationals and expatriates that PAAAFR will inform them about any cases of bird flu, noting that the Council of Ministers will form a higher committee for combating bird flu, to group all concerned bodies, including PAAAFR, the Public Environment Authority, the ministries of Municipality, health and trade as well as the General Customs Department.

He said that he met Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Cabinet and National Assembly Affairs and Acting Foreign Minister Muhammad Dhaifalla Sharar, last Tuesday to discuss the creation of the committee.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-16-2005, 12:09 PM
:sl:

Golden Riyadh Establishment for Trading to Construct an AED 3 Billion Resort in Fujairah

Beirut (APD) - Saudi Arabia-based Golden Riyadh Establishment for Trading is teaming up with the government of the Fujairah Emirate in the UAE to establish an AED 3 billion resort in Fujairah, the Dubai-based daily, al Bayan reported Tuesday.


The resort will be called "Al Fujairah Paradise" and it will be located on a 700,000 square meters coastal plot in the al Aqah region near the Omani border in the emirate's north. An existing resort in the vicinity is the Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort.


The resort will be comprised of 1,000 five-star villas, one hotel and a shopping mall, the company claimed. The government of Fujairah will provide the land and Golden Riyadh will fund the project which is scheduled to be completed within two years.


An official from Golden Riyadh said that Fujairah is seeing an increasing number of upscale projects, with investments pouring into this emirate because of its great location between mountains and sea. He expected that a villa in the resort could sell for up to AED 3.5 million, generating large profits for the developers. [NI-TS]

Reply

mahdisoldier19
11-22-2005, 08:25 PM
salam


Idiots the USA are, do not the not see that the Sisters are among the strongest of believers and they will not shake down?
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-23-2005, 11:29 AM
:sl:

Dubai gold exchange expected to boost trade


Dubai's new gold futures exchange will boost business for jewellers and bullion dealers in the Gulf emirate's substantial physical market, gold traders said on Tuesday.

The Dubai Gold and Commodities Exchange (DGCX) began trading gold futures contracts on Tuesday. Physical traders said improved hedging opportunities offered by locally traded derivatives would let them devote more time to their main operations.

"It can't take out price risk completely, but it will help reduce it. That will allow us to concentrate on our core business, which is jewellery," said Karim Merchant, managing director of Pure Gold, one of Dubai's leading gold retailers.

DGCX opened for business at 10 a.m. local time (0600 GMT) and trading focused on the key February contract. Prices peaked at $496.00 an ounce in early trade.

The exchange has some 50 trading members, many of them established players in Dubai's physical market which is based around the renowned gold souk.

Dubai, part of the energy-rich United Arab Emirates, acts as a hub for the physical gold trade in the Middle East, Pakistan and India, the world's biggest gold consumer. In 2004, Dubai imported 503.5 tonnes of gold and is expected to import 525-540 tonnes by year end.

"There was a need for this in Dubai," said Muhammad Rafiq of Dubai-based refinery Al Ghurair Giga Gold.

"This is wonderful, this will definitely boost the physical industry because of the way it's working and where it's working," he added, referring to Dubai's proximity to major gold consumers India and Saudi Arabia.

At present, Dubai's physical gold traders use derivatives on international exchanges such as New York's COMEX or the Tokyo Commodities Exchange (TOCOM).

But they complain that time zone differences can make this cumbersome. They also cannot hedge on Saturdays and Sundays active trading days in Muslim Dubai where the weekend falls on a Friday. DGCX plans to trade seven days a week from early 2006.

"I think there are two things that set the DGCX apart. The first is the underlying physical nature of the contract. We are large suppliers of physical gold, and I can see us making delivery and taking delivery," said Jeff Rhodes, general manager of Standard Bank plc's Dubai representative office.

"The second is that once we get into Saturday and Sunday trading, this could be a global market-changing event. You just cannot ignore it."
Reply

Bittersteel
11-23-2005, 12:11 PM
Question:How many want a secular democracy in Saudi Arabia and hopw many are happy with the King's rule?
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-23-2005, 12:19 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
Question:How many want a secular democracy in Saudi Arabia and hopw many are happy with the King's rule?

:sl:

Look brother. Can you NOT bring the King into such matters. There really is no need. Saudi follows the Shariah (Islamic law), what the kings have to do with what Allah has written, I dont understand!!:-\

Allah ma3ak
Reply

~Raindrop~
11-23-2005, 12:26 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Ameeratul Layl
:sl:

Look brother. Can you NOT bring the King into such matters. There really is no need. Saudi follows the Shariah (Islamic law), what the kings have to do with what Allah has written, I dont understand!!:-\

Allah ma3ak
:sl: i agree with Ameeratul Layl. wats the King gotta do with it?
wassalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-24-2005, 11:49 AM
:sl:

Kingdom Tops Pakistan Aid List

Saudi Arabia and the United States topped the list of donors at the international donor conference held in Islamabad to raise funds for the reconstruction of Pakistan, following the October 8 earthquake. The Kingdom pledged $573 million. The Kingdom also mobilized its private sectors to raise additional funds and aid for the tens of thousands affected by the natural disaster. Saudi Arabia announced $153 million in grants and another $187 in concessional loans. A nationwide fundraising campaign underway in the Kingdom has also raised more than $120 million to date.

Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf expressed his gratitude for the generosity: “We the people and government of Pakistan again thanks to people and government of Saudi Arabia for extending every possible financial and material assistance for accelerated relief and rescue operation.”
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-25-2005, 12:08 PM
salam
mashallah, i also heard saudi offered to build free houses in the effected areas of pakistan
wasalam
Reply

Bittersteel
11-25-2005, 12:46 PM
what about human rights in Saudi Arabia?women's rights and everything?Coz we get blamed for everything that happens in Saudi Arabia.If you don't believe me see these forums.
http://whyislam.org/forum/default.asp


I know it may sound funny but what if Mecca or the Kabah gets attacked?Surely it can happen can't it?
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-25-2005, 12:48 PM
salam
Allah will always protect His House and the grand mosques in the two Holy Cities
wasalam
Reply

Bittersteel
11-25-2005, 12:50 PM
how?
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-25-2005, 12:50 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
Allah will always protect His House and the grand mosques in the two Holy Cities
wasalam

:sl:
Ameen.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-25-2005, 12:51 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
how?

:sl:
He is the AL MIGHTY...He can do anything. When hE wants something to be done...He will say:Be...and it shall Be.

Allah ma3ak
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-25-2005, 01:01 PM
salam
Allah will always protect His House, the Holy Kabah, wouldn't you protect your own house from intruders? Allah has such unlimited bounties and powers.
i gurantee you that nothing will ever harm Allah's House and the Prophet SAW's mosque
inshallah
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-25-2005, 01:02 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
allah will always protect His House, the Holy Kabah, wouldn't you protect your own house from intruders? allah has such unlimited bounties and powers.
i gurantee you that nothing will ever harm Allah's House and the Prophet SAW's mosque
inshallah
wasalam
:sl:
Ameen.
Allah ma3akum
psstt...use cap A for Allah's name.okay.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-25-2005, 01:05 PM
salam
jazkallah sis, sorry about that
wasalam
Reply

Bittersteel
11-25-2005, 01:13 PM
and if the US send some nuclear missile or something to the Kabbah?The Americans are always boasting how they can do this and do that so yeah you never know.......
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-25-2005, 01:15 PM
salam
if they do i really don't think it will work becasue we can't imagine what Allah can do to defend His House
wasalam
Reply

~Raindrop~
11-25-2005, 01:17 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
and if the US send some nuclear missile or something to the Kabbah?The Americans are always boasting how they can do this and do that so yeah you never know.......
salaam
btother you need to think about wat you are implying. Allah is Almighty. Even if the us was the most powerful organisation in the world THEY WILL NOT DESTROY THE HOUSE OF ALLAH unless Allah Wills otherwise. do you not know what happened to Abraha and his army?
wassalam
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
11-25-2005, 01:20 PM
salam
and bro why are you thinking like this? do you doubt Allah's powers? all that happens, happens with the will of Allah
wasalam
Reply

S_87
11-25-2005, 02:33 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
and if the US send some nuclear missile or something to the Kabbah?The Americans are always boasting how they can do this and do that so yeah you never know.......
:sl:

oh so you are upping US powers

us powers are nothing -zilch

Sure Fil


1. Have you (O Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم) not seen how your Lord dealt with the owners of the Elephant? [The Elephant army which came from Yemen under the command of Abrahah Al-Ashram intending to destroy the Ka‘bah at Makkah].
2. Did He not make their plot go astray?
3. And He sent against them birds, in flocks,
4. Striking them with stones of Sijj&#238;l (baked clay).
5. And He made them like (an empty field of) stalks (of which the corn has been eaten up by cattle).

While the army was marching towards Makkah, in the middle of the valley, suddenly it was overtaken by flocks of birds, flocks after flocks, air-raiding that army with small stones slightly bigger than a lentil seed. There never fell a stone on a soldier except it dissolved his flesh and burst it into pieces. So they perished with a total destruction. Abrahah Al-Ashram fled away while his flesh was bursting into pieces till he died on the way (back to Yemen). Such was the victory bestowed by All&#226;h, (the All-Majestic, All-Powerful) to the people of Makkah and such was the protection provided by Him for His House (Ka‘bah in Makkah). (See Tafs&#238;r Ibn Kathir, S&#251;rah Al-F&#238;l).
look at the power in that little stone...
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-25-2005, 02:35 PM
:sl:

JazakAllah to sis amani for doing sum research to prove the point.
BUT...cud everyone plz refrain from going off topic. Br abra...if u need any more info then plz create a seperate thread.THIS is the 'Arab News' section.

JazaAllah for your co operation.
Allah ma3akum
peace!
Reply

Bittersteel
11-25-2005, 02:46 PM
oh so you are upping US powers

us powers are nothing -zilch
no I am just sayiong what could happen.Alright I will stop ranting now.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
11-25-2005, 02:48 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
Alright I will stop ranting now.
:sl:
LOL.Yes, jazakAllah brother.
I wud appreciate it if you did.

Allah ma3ak
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-01-2005, 04:01 PM
:sl:

Two Women Elected to Posts in Saudi Arabia
Wednesday, November 30, 2005



RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Two women were elected to a chamber of commerce in Jiddah, the first to win any such post in Saudi Arabia, where women are largely barred from political life, officials said Wednesday.

Lama al-Sulaiman and Nashwa Taher won seats on the Jiddah Trade and Industry Chamber, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The chamber's elections on Saturday and Sunday were the first polls in Saudi Arabia in which women could either vote or run for office. In the kingdom's first nationwide municipal elections this year, women could not vote or seek posts. Electoral officials said women might be allowed to vote in the 2009 municipal polls.

The Jiddah Trade and Industry Chamber had initially rejected the nomination of 10 women for its board of governors, but the government ordered it to allow female voters and candidates.

King Abdullah, who ascended to the throne in August, has said he wants to promote the status of women.

The two women will become members of an 18-member board that had previously been exclusively for men

The move is a small but unprecedented step for Saudi Arabia, where women are heavily restricted. They may not drive a car, and a male guardian must give permission for women to travel abroad.


Now tell me, who says women are refrained from doing things in saudi. GO SAUDI!!!!!:loving:
Reply

solid_snake
12-01-2005, 04:05 PM
U.S. buying good press in Iraq?

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS...oll/index.html

click on the link under WATCH
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-01-2005, 04:06 PM
UAE to hold first limited elections



Sheikh Khalifa gave no date for the election to the council


The United Arab Emirates, UAE, will hold its first elections witn a vote to pick half the members of a consultative council, the president announced.


Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan said on Thursday that the Federal National Council, the closest body the country has to a parliament, will have half of its members elected and the other half appointed.

"In light of the changes and reforms our region is witnessing ... we decided to begin activating the National Assembly by electing half of its members," Sheikh Khalifa said in a speech to mark the UAE's national day.

The speech, carried on state news agency WAM, gave no date for the election to the council, whose 40 members are currently all appointed by the seven semi-autonomous emirates that make up the UAE.

UAE citizens are a small minority in the oil producing region, which has a population of 4 million.

Although there is no political dissent or Islamist violence in the UAE, it is the only country without elected bodies in the mainly conservative Gulf region after Saudi Arabia held municipal elections this year.
Reply

solid_snake
12-01-2005, 05:08 PM
Bush al-Jazeera 'plot' dismissed

Al Jazeera has broadcast messages from Osama Bin Laden
The White House has dismissed claims George Bush was talked out of bombing Arab television station al-Jazeera by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The allegations were made by an unnamed source in the Daily Mirror newspaper.

A White House official said: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response."

Ex-UK minister Peter Kilfoyle, who opposed the Iraq war, had called for a transcript of the alleged conversation to be published.

Launched in 1996, al-Jazeera is best known outside of the Arab world for carrying exclusive al-Qaeda messages.

The station is based in Qatar, a close ally of Washington's and the location of US military headquarters during the Iraq war.

'Top Secret'

According to the Mirror's source, the transcript records a conversation during Mr Blair's visit to the White House on 16 April 2004, in the wake of an attempt to root out insurgents in the Iraqi city of Falluja, in which 30 US Marines died.

If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration as events in Iraq began to spiral out of control

Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman

The memo, which the Mirror says is stamped "Top Secret", allegedly details how Mr Blair argued against what the paper calls a "plot" to attack the station's buildings in the business district of Doha, the capital city of Qatar.

A Downing Street spokesman said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents."

But Mr Kilfoyle - a former defence minister and leading Labour opponent of the Iraq war - has called for the full text to be published.

"I believe that Downing Street ought to publish this memo in the interests of transparency, given that much of the detail appears to be in the public domain.

"I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion.

"If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces."

Al-Jazeera reaction

Mr Kilfoyle said he had not seen the memo, but had learnt of its alleged contents at the time of the original leak and believed it tallied with the Mirror's report.

In a statement, al-Jazeera said it needed to be sure of the report's authenticity before reaching any conclusions and urged Downing Street to confirm its status as soon as possible.


The statement said: "If the report is correct, then this would be both shocking and worrisome not only to al-Jazeera but to media organisations across the world.

"It would cast serious doubts in regard to the US administration's version of previous incidents involving al-Jazeera's journalists and offices."

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: "If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration as events in Iraq began to spiral out of control.

"On this occasion, the prime minister may have been successful in averting political disaster, but it shows how dangerous his relationship with President Bush has been."

'Joke'

BBC News website world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds said: "An attack on al-Jazeera would also have been an attack on Qatar, where the US military has its Middle East headquarters. So the possibility has to be considered that Mr Bush was in fact making some kind of joke and that this was not a serious proposition."

According to The Mirror, the transcript is the document which allegedly turned up in the constituency office of former Labour MP Tony Clarke in May 2004.

Mr Clarke - who voted against the Iraq War and lost his Northampton South seat in this May's election - said he returned the document to the government because of fears British troops' lives could be put at risk if it became public.

Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh has been charged under the Official Secrets Act of passing it to Mr Clarke's former researcher Leo O'Connor.

Both men are bailed to appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court next week.

Mr Clarke refused to discuss the contents of the document which he received, telling the Press Association his priority was supporting Mr O'Connor, who he said did "exactly the right thing" in bringing it to his attention.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:41 PM
:sl:

Saudi Postal Development Lauded by Universal Postal Union


JEDDAH, 2 December 2005 — The regional adviser to the Universal Postal Union, which is based in Bern, Switzerland, has praised the Kingdom’s efforts to privatize and improve postal services in the country. Negib Boulares spoke to Arab News at the launch of the Saudi Postal Corporation’s “Wasel” postal distribution system in Jeddah at a press conference held at the Hilton Hotel here yesterday.

The new delivery system, which was launched earlier this year in Riyadh, will enable subscribers who pay an annual fee to receive mail at their doorstep using mailboxes in front of their homes. “After the implementation of this system every person in Saudi Arabia will be able to receive their mail as the system covers every point in the entire Kingdom,” said Boulares.

The president of SPC, Mohammed Saleh Benton, and the company’s deputy chief for information technology, Ousama Mohammed Altaf, both attended the press conference.

The SPC is hoping that the launch of the “Wasel” project will help restore people’s confidence in the postal system. In Riyadh it has already delivered one million mail “Wasel” boxes to customers, at a rate of 3,000 mail boxes per day. The SPC sweeps Saudi cities addresses to ensure their accuracy. After that SPC installs the electronic mail boxes, which have an embedded microchip that allows mailmen to easily find their location.

Boulares said that the postal sector in Saudi Arabia and SPC are facing many challenges after the long stagnation period that the sector experienced. The first major challenge is that of privatization and cooperation amongst the private and public sector on postal services.

This is vital to reform and restructure the Saudi postal sector, according to Boulares. He explained that there must be a separation between the operation and the management of the postal service in Saudi Arabia. He acknowledged that the SPC is now outsourcing most of its operations and it is forming good relations with the private sector; however, the organization of the company has to be restructured. “This is part of the Bucharest Postal Strategy which the Kingdom is trying to implement,” said Boulares.

SPC will face fierce competition after the accession of the Kingdom into the WTO due to the increase in foreign competitors, and it will be difficult for the company to continue providing services unless it improves most of its operations. The second challenge for the SPC is the introduction of new financial services in the Saudi postal system.

“Financial services (like money transfers) make up 46 percent of the international postal earnings, thus it is essential for the SPC to introduce these service to generate more profits,” the adviser said. The postal system in the Kingdom has been relying for so many years on governmental support, and the introduction of reforms will allow the SPC to become financially more independent. This step is part of the reformation and the restructuring strategies that the Kingdom should apply to its postal system.

In addition, Boulares revealed that the Kingdom is trying to implement an electronic mail tracking system that would enable the residents of Saudi Arabia to keep track of all the incoming and the outgoing mail starting from its origin until it reaches it destination.

“This is part of the universal standards that the country is trying to apply domestically,” said Boulares.

The electronic mail tracking system allows the sender to track the status of their parcels electronically through the company’s website or by phone.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:43 PM
:sl:

wats the world cuming to?:mad:

Saudi Students in the US Stray Away From Educational Goals



2 December 2005 — For many students moving to the US culture shock is often something they run into. Many may not realize or recognize it as culture shock as they feel that they are fully acquainted with the American life style. Still many who move to the US stray away from their main goal of attaining a university degree.

Saudi students who are moving to US at the young age of 18 or 19 are ill prepared for the responsibilities and freedoms they will have once they move. “I moved here when I was 17,” said Mona Al-Saleh, a student at Long Beach University “if it wasn’t for my sister who was here before me I think I would have been lost.”

Not all students feel that way, Deeb Al-Qatani, who just moved to the USA two months ago and is studying Computer Technology at Northeastern University, said that he had no problems with the move and new environment he is in. Having a cousin close by also helped him with the adjustment. Unlike other students, he has his eye on the goal a Bachelor’s degree.

“Where I am at, there are few students who are really concerned with their education,” said Mona “As long as they pass a class they don’t care. They have three things in mind: partying, partying, and more partying.”

Many students are more concerned with their abstract and unrealistic image of what the mighty United States of America will hold for them. Most of the students who move here have never taken responsibility for anything in their lives, they have weak language skills, and almost all of them are unconcerned with their education once they arrive.

Such a claim may seem far-fetched however, it is no secret that any student can apply to a community college or to certain state universities and get accepted regardless of grades, leadership qualities, volunteer work, or other qualifications most universities look for.

These colleges and universities are more concerned with getting students who can pay fees than anything else. Application are never rejected at community colleges as, they are at a college that is open to everyone and anyone who can pay.

As a result, there are a high number of students applying to these universities just to reach their abstract goal of studying in the USA.

Of course, not all students fall into these categories. Rather there are numerous Saudi students who attend prestigious universities such as Harvard, Boston University, and UCLA. Community colleges too are a great start for those families who cannot afford to pay the full university fee. The problem lies with students who come to the US without having a real vision of what life is like here, and what it is they are suppose to be doing— which is getting a university education.

One Saudi notes that while going through an interview at the American Consulate in Jeddah, the interviewer voiced concern about how many Saudi, men particularly, move to the US for a four year degree which then takes them six years to attain. The interviewer as a result is not very willing to give Saudi students who display weak grades in high school an American visa as they realize that many go abroad to do everything else but study.

“When I first came to the US all I wanted to do was stay out late, sit at home watching TV, or hang out with my friends,” said one Saudi male student who chose to remain anonymous.

“I got into all the wrong things that I never thought I would ever do. Things like clubbing and drinking. I didn’t go to most of my classes and if I did, I didn’t really understand what was going on.”

This Saudi is not the only one who fell into this cycle. Many others joined him in this meaningless pursue of nothingness. “My friends and I thought this was what life was about here,” the Saudi continued, “it was only after I was placed on academic probation that I realized I am going to be failing out of university. What would I tell my family if that happened? So I began to change my ways.”

This is a form of culture shock that many students go through. They see their Western fellow students indulging in acts they have never been fully exposed to and feel that they too need to accompany them in it.

“I don’t think it is bad to go out and have fun as long as you aren’t doing something that is completely out of line,” said Mona “Also Saudi students have to remember that we are here to study and focus on a getting a degree. For those of us on a Saudi scholarship, we are lucky so we can’t abuse that privilege.”
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:45 PM
:sl:

Silly woman...shudnt have gone aginst the law....*rolls eyes*

Saudi Woman Driver Fined SR10,000
Arab News


RIYADH, 2 December 2005 — A Saudi woman driver recently caused a major accident in Bahrain, Al-Watan reported. The Saudi woman, who was studying in Bahrain, drove at high speed without having any proper driving experience. She was involved in a significant car accident after losing control of her vehicle. After being arrested and appearing before a judge, the Saudi woman was found guilty and fined the equivalent of SR10,000 by a Bahraini court.

Serves her right!!!
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:46 PM
:sl:

Poor woman falls in shock....:playing:



Cell Phone Thief Delivers Bad News



JEDDAH, 2 December 2005 — A cell phone thief was responsible for the admission of a newly married woman to King Fahd hospital in Jeddah recently, according to Al-Watan. The new bride called her husband who was waiting for a water tank truck. A strange voice answered the phone and told her that he was her husband’s son from his first wife, and that he was at the hospital with him. The “son” said that her husband had suffered an accident and just died. She collapsed and was taken to hospital. Her husband later reappeared and rushed to the hospital to see his wife after he heard what had happened to her. He told her that his mobile phone had been stolen and that the thief had played a sick joke on her
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:47 PM
:sl:

I told you Technology is pretty....down....:playing:

Airport System Down

JEDDAH, 2 December 2005 — Hundreds of passengers were stranded at King Abdul Aziz Airport yesterday when its computer system crashed for almost an hour. The passengers for several national and international flights on Saudi Arabian Airlines scheduled to depart yesterday afternoon were stuck at the customs counter because the computer system went down triggering the delay. “It is very frustrating. I cannot believe that this problem continues to happen at this very important airport,” said a passenger to Arab News. Passengers complained as the officials scrambled to get the computers operational.

British Art Exhibition

JEDDAH, 2 December 2005 — British artist Rose Warnock will be exhibiting her paintings at the Rolls Royce showroom (BMW buildings) off Tahlia Street from Dec. 6-15. Warnock is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London and her work has been widely acclaimed by critics and public alike. Described as a “visual poetry”, her landscapes are a transformation of reality into a unique world of the imagination. This is her first exhibition in the Middle East. She will be in Jeddah until the Dec. 6 opening. The exhibition will be open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:49 PM
:sl:

A happy ending after all....awwww.....

First Pakistan Haj Flight Set to Arrive on Dec. 3S. Arshad Raza,

JEDDAH, 2 December 2005 — Relatives of people killed in the devastating earthquake that struck Pakistan Oct. 8 will be given a very warm welcome if they perform Haj this year, said Director General Haj Shahid Khan on Wednesday.

“The Pakistan Ministry of Religious Affairs is giving top priority to the kin of quake victims whose Haj applications had been accepted.” Otherwise, the ministry will include applicants whose names were left in the draw, Khan told reporters here. “All Pakistani pilgrims will be issued machine-readable passports (MRPs) so that we can save time at immigration counters. Details of each pilgrim can be obtained on a website that is linked with the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Islamabad,” he said.

A total of 150,000 Pakistani pilgrims will perform Haj this year; 90,000 are government-sponsored while the remaining 60,000 are coming with private tour operators.

Khan said that a total of 465 flights had been scheduled for this year’s Haj. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) is operating 432 flights while Saudi Arabian Airlines is operating 33.

The first Haj flight with 465 pilgrims from Islamabad will arrive at the Haj Terminal of King Abdul Aziz International Airport, Jeddah, on Dec. 3, he said.

This year, 27,000 pilgrims from Karachi and Islamabad will fly directly to Madinah on 54 flights. The first direct Haj flight from Islamabad to Madinah will arrive in the Saudi city on Dec. 5.

The year a code of conduct has been introduced so that no private tour operator can violate the law. The ministry has allowed 317 tour operators to deal with pilgrims. Each operator can carry only 190 pilgrims.

Regarding the condition of buildings, Khan explained, “All residential buildings we hired for pilgrims have been approved by the government.”

All buildings are coded with Green and White and are linked with (GIS) Geographical Information System.

The pilgrims are divided into White and Green categories, according to their distance from the Grand Mosque. Those who are within 1,300 meters of the Grand Mosque are in the White category. The buildings in the Green category are 1,100 meters from the Grand Mosque.

Buildings in Madinah have also been rented, Khan said, adding that 75 percent of those for Pakistani pilgrims are within 770 meters of the Prophet’s Mosque.

The mission has set up well-equipped medical centers in Makkah and Madinah to provide any emergency assistance during Haj. The directorate’s 40-bed main hospital has been set up near Pakistan House in Makkah and is fully equipped to serve pilgrims. Its facilities include male and female wards, death and disease areas, a dental unit, ophthalmology, ENT, an emergency ward, an operation theater, a lab and even an ultrasound unit.

The medical staff will include 260 doctors and nurses.

Speaking about the arrangements for Pakistani pilgrims, Khan said the directorate had divided the Makkah region into eight sectors, each equipped with a dispensary, ambulance service, information department and Internet facility.

A fleet of 16 ambulances to serve the Pakistani pilgrims has been arranged in Makkah and Madinah. Special counters have been set up at Madinah airport and Hijra Road to deal with pilgrims. A 20-bed hospital has been set up in Pakistan House No. 1, Madinah, which is fully equipped with all medical facilities, including an X-ray machine

An information center and a banking office have been set up at Pakistan House. Information regarding pilgrims can be accessed at the following website: www.hajjinfo.org.

Bahrullah Hazarvi, director of Haj, and Muhammad Jameel, press consul, were present.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:51 PM
:sl:

making a difference in life.....well done!!

Kingdom Marks AIDS Day With Massive Awareness Campaign


RIYADH/JEDDAH, 2 December 2005 — The Kingdom joined the member nations of the World Health Organization (WHO) in observing the World AIDS Day yesterday. The overall message of this year’s regional World AIDS Campaign’s theme and slogan matches the direction of the global campaign’s theme, which stresses on the importance of taking responsibility in the fight against AIDS and accountability.

The Regional Campaign Theme and Slogan: “HIV/AIDS: Stand up for the challenge. It’s everyone’s responsibility.”

The Ministry of Health has instructed all its health centers in different regions to observe the day in an effective manner throughout the next seven days since the day falls during the weekend. The general director of the various regions throughout the country have chalked out their own programs to suit the needs of their respective areas. The minister of health is slated to issue a statement today to the nation on the significance of the global event.

A march to raise awareness on AIDS by various representatives from the public and private medical sector will take place today afternoon at the Jeddah corniche. The march will be launched by Jeddah director of health affairs, Dr. Abdul Rahman Khayyat, taking off from the Holiday Inn and proceeding south.

This year there is a focus on educating schoolchildren and the young about the disease. “Starting Saturday and for two weeks, doctors in cooperation with the school health unit will be visiting 12 intermediate and high schools — public and private — everyday to raise awareness about AIDS,” said Dr. Sana Filimban, director of King Saud Hospital and AIDS awareness program. The doctors will distribute a questionnaire to 10,000 students to gauge their knowledge about the disease in order for the awareness team to design a program that will better inform them. Students will also be invited to participate in an art exhibition. On Dec. 13, an event will be held at the Hilton Hotel by medical professionals for the public, and the student’s artwork will be displayed there. There will also be an awareness program at sports arenas.

Dr Hussein A. Gezairy, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said the HIV epidemic is slowly and steadily advancing in the Region. He pointed out that most countries have initiated voluntary and confidential counseling and testing services, and have legislation to regulate the safety of blood and its products.

“We treat AIDS as a serious health problem in the country and were making every effort for its prevention and control ,” the Deputy Minister of Health For Preventive Medicine, Dr. Yacoub Al Mazrou said.

“In addition to the Immune Diseases Clinics in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam, the ministry of health is making arrangements to open another clinic in Jizan,” a senior official who is in charge of the AIDS program in the ministry said.

According to reports, around 1,800 Saudis have been afflicted with AIDS during the past two decades and one third of them died due to the illness. There have been 6,000 cases of AIDS patients among the expatriates since 1986.

Tomorrow, King Faisal Specialist Hospital (KFSH) will hold the Second Annual AIDS workshop with more than 350 participants. On Sunday, the General Director of the Riyadh Health Region, Dr. Abdul Aziz ibn Muhsin Al-Dhukair will inaugurate a day’s symposium on prevention of AIDS at the Al Amal Psychiatric Complex in Riyadh. An exhibition will also be opened in the morning to run concurrently with the symposium.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
12-02-2005, 12:53 PM
salam
wow!, a lot to read
gonna start reading now
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 12:54 PM
:sl:

Footy...wahooo......

Opportunity knocks for Saudi youngsters
1 December 2005
by FIFAworldcup.com




Saudi Arabia's preparations for Germany 2006 are gathering pace with coach Gabriel Calderon taking a squad of young, inexperienced players to Qatar to take part in the third edition of the West Asia football tournament between 1 and 10 December.
"This tournament will be a good chance to discover more talents who can join us for the World Cup finals in Japan," former Argentine international Calderon explained. "We need to prepare our players and make sure that they get as much experience as possible to compete in the world's football showpiece."

With these words in mind, Calderon will be more than satisfied with the arrangements made by the Saudi Arabia Football Federation as it plans ahead for Germany. The team are expected to be involved in more than 40 warm-up matches, official or otherwise, before travelling to the finals next summer.


Since they secured their fourth successive FIFA World Cup™ finals appearance, the Gulf giants have been involved in just one friendly match - at home against Ghana. They lost the game 3-1 but even in defeat, Calderon saw enough to come away with a positive feeling and the coach remains upbeat about the team's future. "We scored first but then we lost concentration. I would rather lose to Ghana in Riyadh than suffer a similar defeat at the World Cup finals," he said.
In Qatar, Saudi Arabia have been drawn in Group C of the West Asian tournament with arch-rivals Kuwait and Palestine. Calderon believes that the regional competition will not be an easy ride for his side, as they could face some tough opponents in the later stages like Bahrain, fellow FIFA World Cup finalists Iran, Iraq and also the tournament hosts. "It is always good to participate in a competition instead of only playing friendly games," the coach continued, "It is heathly experience for the players and that is just what they will need before Germany."


Calderon's squad is built around promising young players such as Zaid Al Mowalad, Ahmed Al Bahri, Mohammed Al Anbar, Walid Jahdali with key figures like goalkeeper Mabrouk Zaid, Saud Khariri, veteran striker Sami Al Jaber and Asian Player of the Year Hamad Al Montashari all rested. But the coach is confident that his experimental side can produce a few surprises against their opponents in Qatar.
Many of the players participated in the final FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Korea Republic in Seoul in August, where they managed to achieve a remarkable 1-0 victory to convince their coach that they deserve a further chance to display their abilities. Calderon is thus hoping that the tournament will prove a stepping stone for several of his brightest prospects. "I believe that there is a lot of untapped talent in Saudi football and I am sure that many of those players who will be taking part in the West Asia tournament will also be part of our side in Germany 2006," he concluded.


Go saudi!Go saudi!!Goooooooooooooooo:loving:
Reply

~Raindrop~
12-02-2005, 12:59 PM
salaam
just got through all that....
jazakillah for sharing sis. if i commented on it i'd be here all day....
wassalaam
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
12-02-2005, 01:08 PM
salam
yes, lets hope saudi can mount a serious challenge in the world cup inshallah
and yes that saudi women deserved her fine, hope she learns from her mistake now, lol
and how cruel and sick can that thief get? that is just lower than low
he is a disgrace!
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-02-2005, 02:36 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
yes, lets hope saudi can mount a serious challenge in the world cup inshallah
and yes that saudi women deserved her fine, hope she learns from her mistake now, lol
and how cruel and sick can that thief get? that is just lower than low
he is a disgrace!
wasalam

:sl:
Thats wat I like...a comment on all the events....id give u rep...but u have enough.lol.

Keep comments coming in as I keep the news and the latest coming in!!inshAllah.

Allah ma3akum
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 10:04 AM
:sl:

JEDDAH, 6 December 2005 — Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah yesterday hoped the extraordinary OIC summit, which opens in Makkah tomorrow, would strengthen Islamic unity and enable OIC countries play an effective role on world stage.

Addressing the weekly Cabinet meeting at Al-Salam Palace here, King Abdullah welcomed leaders of the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference to the two-day summit on behalf of the Saudi government and people.

“We have immense hope that the summit, which is held in the most sacred place on earth, will lead to unity of Muslims and help the Islamic Ummah regain its self- confidence and play an effective role in the world,” the king said.

King Abdullah also hoped that the conference would encourage OIC countries to work together, especially to fight disease and poverty, and enable their peoples to compete with others. He expected positive response from OIC leaders.

“The whole world is now going through a delicate phase that demands greater wisdom and futuristic vision” while dealing with vital issues, the Saudi Press Agency quoted the king as telling the Cabinet.

The Cabinet expressed its hope that the summit, which is to approve a 10-year strategic plan for Muslims, would usher in a new era of Islamic unity and solidarity, realizing the hopes and aspirations of the Ummah.

The meeting reviewed the preparations for the summit, which will be held in the vicinity of the Grand Mosque. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are among the leaders, whose attendance has been confirmed.

The summit aims to restore the true image of Islam, which has been tarnished by terrorist operations. The objective of the Dec. 7-8 summit “is to restore the image of Islam, harmed by terrorist attacks carried out in the name of this righteous religion,” Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told a news conference.

Saudia Board Restructured

The Cabinet restructured the board of directors of Saudi Arabian Airlines. The minister of defense and aviation or his deputy will be its chairman. The board members are: Assistant defense and aviation minister for civil aviation affairs, the airline’s director general, the president of the Civil Aviation Corporation, a government representative to be appointed by the chairman, and five private sector representatives.

The Cabinet approved the appointment of Abdul Rahman Al-Jeraisy, Abdul Rahman Al-Mushaiqeh, Osama Kurdi, Yousuf Al-Maimani and Abdullah Abu Milha on the board as private sector representatives.

The meeting reshuffled the National Commission in charge of implementing the international agreement that bans production, possession, storage and use of chemical weapons. Prince Turki ibn Muhammad, assistant undersecretary at the Foreign Ministry for political affairs, is the chairman of the 14-member commission.

The Cabinet also took a series of other important decisions. It authorized the finance minister or his deputy to sign an agreement with Pakistan to avoid double taxation and prevent tax evasion.

Health Service Law

It endorsed a new health service law which insists that only licensed and qualified professionals are allowed to practice. It prohibits housing patients in places that are not meant for them, and prevents using banned equipment for diagnosis.

Doctors are not allowed to perform abortion except to save the life of the mother, SPA said quoting the law. Medical practitioners who commit errors causing harm to patients must pay compensation. All doctors working in both private and public sectors must subscribe to cooperative insurance to cover medical errors, the law said.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 10:04 AM
:sl:

RIYADH, 6 December 2005 — The participants on the second day of the Riyadh Economic Forum discussed transparency and accountability in the Kingdom. They stressed that the country should take urgent steps to combat corruption in the public and private sectors in addition to releasing vital information which is currently unavailable to the public.

A paper entitled “Development of Transparency and Economic Accountability in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” prepared by Abdul Aziz Al-Owaishig was presented. In the paper, Abdul Aziz pointed out that current Saudi law did not mandate that government regulations be publicly announced and that in reality, only a few of them were ever announced in the media.

He also said that the National Center for Documents and Transcripts, established in 1989, had still not fulfilled its function of publishing the Kingdom’s laws. Concerning judicial matters, he said that the Court of Grievances had stopped announcing its regulations in 1983.

Even though the Council of Ministers issued a ruling in 2002 that the Ministry of Justice should announce the results of all its religious judicial hearings, this has not been done. The paper also said that judicial and non-judicial committees rarely announced their findings and regulations.

The paper said that many government bodies relied on unwritten regulations and directives and that there was no way that members of the public could possibly know what the regulations were or how to follow them.

One point was that all necessary information be submitted concerning public spending.

Participants said the Kingdom ranked 70th in the world out of 154 countries in terms of information blockage. It also ranked 2nd in the world in ambiguity and not revealing information.

Abdul Aziz said that implementing transparency in the Kingdom required the implementation of international standards. He also said government institutions needed to provide data to citizens and to the private sector in order to establish future strategies as well as to calculate investment risk factors. This information should be easily accessible by all citizens, he added.

Abdul Aziz emphasized the importance of establishments releasing basic economic data. He said that certain standards should apply to the release of this information and research and studies should be conducted to provide citizens with a clear idea of the institution’s contribution to the economy.

He also mentioned transparency in companies that offer their shares for public sharing. The system should guarantee the release of all information relating to its financial, accounting and administrative aspects. Any company that refuses should be fined or banned.

“The unavailability of information that could affect the interests of clients or shareholders of a public company is a clear violation of the law, even if it does not cause the company any harm,” he said.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 10:05 AM
:sl:

JEDDAH, 6 December 2005 — Neither Iraq nor Kashmir is on the draft agenda of the extraordinary summit of Islamic countries which begins in Makkah tomorrow.

“Yes Iraq is a pressing issue and (Iraqi President) Jalal Talabani is attending the summit, but Iraq is not part of the official agenda,” Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), told reporters and editors in Jeddah yesterday.

Responding to a question on whether there was any proposal to have an Islamic army replace US occupation forces in Iraq, Professor Ihsanoglu said the extraordinary summit has a single point agenda. “It will discuss the reformation of OIC as outlined in the report prepared by over 100 Muslim scholars and intellectuals who met in Makkah in August this year,” he said.

“Kashmir is also not on the agenda,” Professor Ihsanoglu went on to say. “These issues are discussed in regular summits. This is an extraordinary summit convened at the direction of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah in order to review the current state of the Islamic nation and to explore strategies for the Muslim world and enable it to face the challenges of the 21st century,” he explained.

“The summit will discuss ways and means for the Islamic nation to regain a sense of self-confidence and to enable it to face the dangers which threaten it. The Makkah summit will discuss a strategic 10-year plan to re-energize the Muslim world with concrete measures,” Professor Ihsanoglu said.

OIC officials later clarified that though Iraq is not on the draft agenda if the foreign ministers who are meeting today feel it necessary to include Iraq in the deliberations then they can do so. “It is up to the foreign ministers. They decide the agenda. Whatever we are talking about are only draft proposals. And as far as the draft agenda is concerned, Iraq and Kashmir are not on it,” they added.

Professor Ihsanoglu said the Muslim intellectuals and scholars, who were invited for the preparatory forum in Makkah in August, were given a free hand to discuss and suggest anything whatsoever that was contributing to the unfortunate situation in the Muslim world.

“The scholars came from all countries and included almost all sects,” Professor Ihsanoglu pointed out. “They included economists, journalists, writers, strategists and specialists,” he said.

“There was no rhetoric, no protocol. The discussions were open, frank and candid,” he added. Their suggestions and recommendations are part of the report entitled, “Islamic Ummah: New Vision, Solidarity in Action.” “It is this report,” he said, “that will be discussed at the summit.”

Professor Ihsanoglu said this was an unprecedented summit because for the first time it aims to do something concrete rather than indulging only in political rhetoric.

On the issue of terrorism, he said the OIC’s position was very clear. “We condemn terrorism in all its forms and that includes state terrorism. We condemn terrorism because it targets innocent people.”

Professor Ihsanoglu said King Abdullah would lay the foundation for the new headquarters of the OIC general secretariat in Jeddah. “It is located in a very symbolic location near Bab Makkah. We will soon invite architects from all over the world to submit designs.”

Atta Mannan, the OIC spokesperson, said one of the proposals at the summit concerned issuing a “Makkah Visa.” “It will be along the lines of the Schengen visa and the proposal was first floated by the Islamic Chamber of Commerce & Industry which is part of the OIC. “The businesspeople want this in order to promote trade between Muslim countries,” he said. (The Schengen visa refers to the 15 European Union nations which allow document-free travel across their borders).

The scholars meeting in August was closed to the media but a copy of their recommendations obtained by Arab News indicated that they had called for a massive effort to improve education and make sure that ordinary people had a voice throughout the Muslim world.

The scholars called for creating a knowledge fund to support and improve the quality of education, especially in the underdeveloped parts of the Muslim world. They also noted the importance of creating an environment in which people could hold differing opinions and the media could operate without interference.

The scholars’ meeting produced a series of recommendations touching upon the position of the Muslim Ummah in the contemporary world, Islamic solidarity and joint Islamic action, institutionalization of Islamic good governance, conflict prevention and confidence building, terrorism, dialogue and civilization, Islamophobia, political and human rights of Muslim minorities in non-OIC countries.

Of particular significance was the scholars’ pragmatic recommendation to focus only on those resolutions that could actually be implemented.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 10:06 AM
:sl:

RIYADH, 6 December 2005 — An expatriate worker jailed in Dammam for partially blinding a Saudi national in a fight may lose one eye by court order.

Abdul Lateef Naushad, 34, from the south Indian state of Kerala, got into a fight with a Saudi and injured the Saudi’s eye. The Saudi reportedly lost the sight in that eye several weeks later.

The incident happened in 2003. The case has now been referred to the appeals court in Riyadh for final review.

“The Indian Embassy will make an appeal for royal clemency,” said an embassy official. The embassy, which was unaware of the case until recently, has contacted the worker’s sponsor who is attempting to help the Indian worker.

According to the sentence by a court in Dammam, one of Naushad’s eyes should be gouged out as punishment for causing the Saudi to lose the sight in one eye. The case has now been transferred to the Higher Court in Riyadh following an appeal.

Saudi and Indian officials have shown sympathy for Naushad and have come forward to help.

Naushad’s wife Sulekha, 30, and their two children live in Kerala. Naushad has not seen his three-year-old daughter because he has been in jail for the last three years.

Sulekha also looks after Naushad’s parents. They are surviving on the kindness of Naushad’s friends who regularly send them money.

According to Naushad’s colleagues who are witnesses in the case, a settlement appears remote as the Saudi is adamant and refuses to accept monetary compensation and pardon the man despite concerted efforts by the defendant’s lawyer and his employer.

In a similar case recently, the same sentence was given to an Egyptian who threw acid into the eyes of a Saudi.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 10:09 AM
:sl:

DUBAI, 6 December 2005 — Highlighting the role of media in a world that is being transformed into a borderless small village, Asir Governor Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, chairman of the Arab Thought Foundation, said the media today shapes the world’s cultural and political and social orientation in the inaugural address at the fourth annual conference of the Arab Thought Foundation yesterday in Dubai.

Over a thousand participants from around the world are here to take part in the event whose theme is the “Arab and World Media: Getting it right.” The first of the two-day conference covered a wide range of topics regarding the role of the media, changes in the media and future challenges for the media. The conference had panel discussions, breakout sessions on specific issues and spotlight interviews with leading Arab personalities. The first day program left the audience asking for more.

Held under the auspices of Sheikh Mohammad ibn Rashid Al-Maktoum, crown prince of Dubai and minister of defense of United Arab Emirates, and in the presence of Jordan Queen Rania, the conference has gathered some of the highly respected and prominent Arab and international personalities and top journalists from 56 different countries. Prince Khaled said in his opening address that the issue of coverage and truth in Arab media is very important because it influences perceptions and decisions. He hoped that the Arab media would take this opportunity to build a better system of cooperation and dialogue, to learn from new technologies in the field and to ask foreign media to be more objective in its coverage.

Prince Khaled also raised some questions that were to be discussed during the conference, including whether the increasing number of Arab media outlets are doing their job in educating the Arab public and holding to Arab traditions or are they simply copying and promoting Western values and images. He also asked whether these outlets are able to introduce a new Arab message and convey it to others or are the Arabs still talking among themselves and whether they have succeeded in overcoming useless arguments and move to a more advanced stage of understanding.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said in his address that the role of Arabs is under threat of vanishing. Moussa urged that we need to think of our presence in a collective international mind, while warning against the exaggerations and lies in the media about Arabs. Moussa said we have to analyze the lies and come up with recommendations and ideas to help us face the situation with efficiency, while adding that we do have to accept ‘objective’ criticism to improve ourselves.

We face a lot of challenges — reforms, development, real democratization and religion, social and political issues and globalization. We need to understand them. We have started to address these, he said.

The first six breakout sessions of the day covered inside media coverage in Damascus, Cairo and Washington as well as such interesting topics as journalists in the line of fire, censorship and what’s next for radio. With the current situation in Syria, the Damascus session naturally brought in points about political challenges for Syria and the media. The journalists in the line of fire session was exciting, as it highlighted the dangers reporters face in Iraq and other war zones in accessing information. The session on censorship was also saw keen discussions, as it brought up points on the types of censorship and how reporters can get around censorship.

A point was made about how media does not need protection anymore; it is the people who need protection from media’s biased and self-serving coverage.

The first panel session on World Press: Power shifts and flash points was moderated by Arab News editor in chief, Khaled Almaeena. It set the tone for the conference as the panelists tried to answer some thought-provoking questions on how media influences people’s views and how it is influenced, the standards of professionalism, truth vs. respect of authority, reporting vs. analyzing, privatization vs. government subsidy and the issue of objectivity.

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, general manager of Al-Arabiya and one of the panelists, told Arab News that standards, journalistic professionalism and credibility is determined by the upper managers and editors.

This panel discussion was followed by an interesting interview of Prince Alwaleed ibn Talal, chairman of Kingdom Holdings, which owns a number of media outlets including some American channels that are perceived to be biased. The prince expressed his views on the Arab and American media and said that instead of complaining Arabs should take a more proactive role in changing things in the media regarding them.

“We can change the view of the Westerners but the effort should be made from our side. In line with this aim, two institutions have been set up at the Georgetown University and Harvard University which will focus on Arab studies and which can contribute to changing the Arab stereotype,” said Prince Alwaleed.

Questioned on the role of media in Iraq, Prince Alwaleed said that the US seems to be imposing the so called ‘democracy’ in Iraq by supporting numerous TV channels and newspapers. He said that this reflects the fact that the US does not really understand Iraq.

Prince Alwaleed said that there are too many voices quarreling in the form of more than 20 TV Channels and 100s of tabloids in Iraq. This, he said, goes against perpetuating stability in the country at the moment.

Another vibrant panel discussion came after lunch on what determines page one news. Editors of Arab and foreign newspapers exchanged views on the factors, obstacles and process of deciding on the front-page news stories and coverage. This was followed by another panel discussion on reporting on political Islam where the panelists differed on whether Islamic movements in the Middle East are receiving adequate coverage and what kind of coverage are they receiving.

Meanwhile, the panelists also pointed out to internal and external pressures in covering Islamic groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and what guarantees do reporters have on their safety in their pursuit of covering these groups.

This was followed by a very intense and moving interview of Saad Hariri, member of Lebanese Parliament, whose father’s murder turned a new page in Lebanon’s history. A full audience listened to Hariri’s vision of a peaceful and prosperous Lebanon in continuation of Rafik Hariri’s legacy. He emphasized on the need for an international tribunal in the prosecution of his father’s killers and a democratic independent Lebanon for all Lebanese.

Finally, there were breakout sessions on inside media coverage in Riyadh, Palestine and Beijing and three specific issues on youth media, the roots of prejudice and citizen journalism, a discussion on how bloggers and the Internet are changing traditional newsrooms and challenging policymakers.


Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 10:22 AM
:sl:

'Abdallah Bin Hadhban Al-Harathi interviewed Dr. Said bin Nasser Al-Ghamedi about women in the West and in Isalm during his weekly religious program on the Saudi- based channel, Iqra TV, . Following are excerpts from the discussion:


'Abdallah Bin Hadhban Al-Harathi: Why did (the West) make the woman issue into a problem and a complex? Muslim society has never suffered from the woman complex, as Western society does.

In Western society the woman is a real complex. This complex existed in ancient Europe and later Christianity carried this complex with it when the barbaric European peoples became Christian.

It was these people's custom that a man weds one wife whom he owns forever but he cheats on her whenever he wishes and fornicates as much as he likes. This has been the situation from the days of barbarism to the days of the playboy, Clinton.

This culture passes form generation to generation, from father to son. Everybody acts according to it, in the offices, theaters, stadiums, beaches, brothels, and over the pages of Playboy. Their woman complex is deeply rooted in their past and in their present. But in the name of justice, freedom, and equality, they insisted on exporting this culture to us, while we, due to our weakness, wretchedness, and subjugation to them, are forced to import it. We have imported a complicated problem along with the films, and theater, McDonald's restaurants and Coca-Cola.

Doctor, I have news for you. It is peculiar and surprising that the US is demanding of the Islamic world, which it calls the Greater Middle East, that women should hold positions in areas that even in America they are not allowed to hold. For example, as you and all the viewers know, a woman in America is not allowed to become president of the US. Is it not so? And not vice president – is it not so? While in our Muslim countries, in Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, and in Bangladesh, women have held the highest positions.

There are also statistics about female MPs. For example, in America, the House of Representatives has 435 members, of them, 51 are women, while in the Muslim world, in the Pakistani parliament, there are more than 22% women. Furthermore, here, in Saudi Arabia, the salary a woman receives is identical to a man's salary. Meaning, professional rank five – rank five. The woman receives the same salary, while in America she receives a lower salary only because she is a woman.

I will add a simple comment to this. The Nobel Prize has existed for 100 years. This is in the West. The number of women who got it is only 10, meaning one tenth.

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamedi: Western thought, which has been exporting these problems to us, and has invaded the minds of some Muslim men and women, is based on the idea of conflict. In the West, conflict is a fundamental and central element in life and even in their approach to nature. For example, we use the term "space exploration" while they call it "space invasion." For them, it is a conflict with nature, a conflict with man, and even an internal conflict.

This belligerent life has turned the nature of the relationship between man and woman in the West into struggle and conflict. While in Islam, the relationship between man and woman is integrated and balanced. The woman is one of the two halves of the human species!

A certain measure of oppression and ignorance exist in the Muslim nation, which has caused some mistaken behavior. But, Sheikh 'Abdallah, despite these phenomena, even in its sick and deteriorating state, the condition of the woman in the Muslim world is better than that of the woman living in the West.

Western women themselves have admitted this, as the wise Western men have admitted, and those who have researched the situation of the West and the woman's problem have admitted. They have all admitted that the women in the West suffer a life of human inferiority and degradation, which humiliates her humanity and inflicts upon her right. Despite the Muslim world's weakness, and despite the problems and injustice caused to women in the Muslim nation, we see that generally speaking, the Muslim woman's situation is better than that of the Western woman living in the West.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: Is this wishful thinking or facts?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: These are facts…

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: Give me something tangible…

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: I have a large group of cases proving that women in the West live in a very depressing and painful situation. In America, for example, one of five women is raped, and according to more cautious estimates, one out of every seven…

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: This is the situation in the US?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: Yes. One of five was raped.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: And in the Muslim world?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: There isn't such rate…there are no statistics.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: If there are no statistics, perhaps the rate is higher?

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: No, it is not higher, because in Muslim societies there are religious, moral, ethical, tribal, and familial deterrents. All these deterrents exist in Muslim societies. Despite the ignorance, we do not have this kind of rate of rape cases, as in the West.

'Abdallah Bin Hasban Al-Harathi: Pardon me, Doctor, I cannot accept statistics about the other while we do not have statistics about ourselves, because we have a problem…

Dr. Said Bin Nasser Al-Ghamadi: People whose source (of values) is in a Holy Book and a Sunna and have ways of true, clear and clean understanding, are nothing like others whose source (of values) is urges, philosophies, Freud or Darwin, who takes Man back to the ape and animals.

They are not like those whose sources are philosophies that view human existence as a bestial existence, only in a different form. The other source makes different…

The other issue is the avoidance of implementing the qualitative difference between male and female. There's a qualitative difference acknowledged by the wise of all nations. There is a qualitative difference that dictates differences in the type of work and a difference in the position a woman can hold.

The male is not like the female. The man has his own entity, strength, physique, mental structure, a way of looking at things and events. While a woman has a different entity, mental structure, and way of life. Even her physique is different than the man's.

There are those who call for the woman to go out and work, as you have mentioned regarding the issue of rights and such. They say rights. What do they want for the woman? They want to get the woman out of home as a hired employee who integrates into the labor market while what the woman needs is to work freely. She needs to work freely in her kingdom, her home. There is a difference between her working freely in her home and fulfilling her role in raising future generations, nations, and men upon which the future is built, and between her going out to work as an employee, under the rule of a man who will treat her as though she were hired.



Allah ma3akum
Reply

Bittersteel
12-06-2005, 10:40 AM
good good, so uh there aren't any problems of women in Saudi?I heard some stuuf like maid servants were raped or something,what about it?
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-06-2005, 02:56 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
good good, so uh there aren't any problems of women in Saudi?I heard some stuuf like maid servants were raped or something,what about it?

:sl:

Did you mention that you have heard? Ooohh, yes you have havnt you. Have you seen the maids get raped? I doubt it!!

Hearing things is not enough brother Abrar. GO!! out there and see what you INTEND to see for yourself.

Plus!! Its amazing how you seem to (on every thread relating to saudi) talk so ill of saudi and always wish to pick out the negative things. Women are being raped in Iraq, they have been raped in Afghanistan....but have you ever hated the Americans for that? I wonder!!

Saudis may rape women....but tell me this.....name ONE or as many counties you know of....in which NOT EVEN ONE woman has not been raped.

Just because saudis are living in saudi it doesnt mean that Shaitaan is not around. It doesnt mean that they are perfect. It does not mean that they do not have sexual desires!!!!!!

Anymore queries, Ill be more than happy to solve them for you!:)

Allah ma3ak
Reply

sonz
12-06-2005, 03:12 PM
salama

why u always talk abt saudi

its not like the whole islam nation is about saudis

im not hating anyone and i love every muslim but plz give coverage to other muslims who arent saudis too

there are other muslim countries u know

masalama
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-07-2005, 08:52 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by sonz
salama

why u always talk abt saudi

its not like the whole islam nation is about saudis

im not hating anyone and i love every muslim but plz give coverage to other muslims who arent saudis too

there are other muslim countries u know

masalama

:sl:
I know there are OTHER muslim countries. I dont ALWAYS talk about saudi and if I do, then its because I WISH to do so.:)
Plus! I saw the article and decided to share it with others. Nothing wrong with that!

Maybe you should check my 'Arab world news' thread. It not only has the news updates for saudi but other countries too!ENJOY.:coolsis:

Allah ma3ak
psstt....I strted loving saudi since I was 10....and its love grows day by day. You look at other 'MUSLIM' countreis and they are becoming westernised by the day.:confused: So....saudi it be!!:coolious:
Reply

Ansar Al-'Adl
12-07-2005, 02:52 PM
:sl:
Please post in the appropriate section,
JazakumAllahu khayran.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
12-07-2005, 02:54 PM
salam
jazakalah sis ameeratul layl
wasalam
Reply

Ra`eesah
12-07-2005, 11:27 PM
Assalamu'Alaykum

I have merged this thread with your original "-News From the Arab World-" thread.
Reply

hanna
12-07-2005, 11:37 PM
:sl:
jazahkallah sis...a lot ov readin bu worth it!.keep it cumin!:)
:w: :coolsis:
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:33 AM
:sl:

Arab News Headlines:

* US image in Arab countries deteriorates: poll

*In Iraq, Signs of Political Evolution

* Egypt: A test of the democratic rhetoric

* Egypt ponders the price of Islamists' gains

*Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz today called for unity and tolerance to address the challenges faced by the Muslim world.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:33 AM
:sl:

WASHINGTON - The image of the United States took a beating this year in six Arab countries due to the war in Iraq and "American treatment of Arabs and Muslims," according a poll released Wednesday.
The poll by US-based Zogby International showed that the attitude toward the United States had particularly hardened in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where 84 percent and 82 percent, respectively, said their opinion of the superpower had worsened in the past year.

Negative sentiment was less severe in Lebanon, with 21 percent saying their opinion had improved and 49 percent saying it worsened, according to Zogby.

In Jordan, a key US ally in the war on terror, 62 percent said their attitude toward the United States had worsened, while 72 percent said so in Morocco and 58 percent in the United Arab Emirates.

China wins the popularity contest against the United States, Russia and India in five of six Arab countries.

The Asian giant is seen favorably by 70 percent in Egypt, 68 percent in Jordan, 46 percent in Lebanon, 52 percent in Morocco and 40 percent in Saudi Arabia. India leads in UAE with 58 percent.

To burnish the US image in Arab countries, President George W. Bush picked his close confidante Karen Hughes this year to become the US imagemaker abroad as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

Hughes traveled to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in her first tour in October.

In each of the six Arab countries, Zogby interviewed between 500 and 800 people in October. The margin of error is between 3.5 and 4.5 percentage points, except in UAE where it is 10 percentage points.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:35 AM
:sl:

Tucked into a bunker-like former headquarters of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, a type of war room unfamiliar in this country buzzed with life Wednesday. Halfway through a 14-hour shift, campaign workers from the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group that boycotted the country's previous elections in January, munched rice and kebabs, their faces lit by computer screens.

Across town, hundreds of black-clad followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr -- who decried balloting 10 months ago as something imposed under American occupation -- beat their backs with chains and stomped across a large poster of former interim prime minister Ayad Allawi. Sadr's political wing has joined forces with the alliance of Shiite religious parties that leads Iraq's current government and opposes Allawi's secular movement.


As Iraqis nationwide prepare to go to the polls for the third time this year on Dec. 15 -- this time for a new parliament -- candidates and political parties of all stripes are embracing politics, Iraqi style, as never before and showing increasing sophistication about the electoral process, according to campaign specialists, party officials and candidates here.

"It is like night and day from 10 months ago in terms of level of participation and political awareness," said a Canadian election specialist with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a group affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party that is working to ease Iraq's transition to democracy. The institute, which has provided free campaign training to more than 100 Iraqi parties and describes its programs as nonpartisan, granted a reporter access to its employees and training sessions on the condition that no one on its staff be named.

Evidence of political evolution is plastered all over Baghdad's normally drab concrete blast walls and hung on lampposts at nearly every major intersection: large, colorful, graphically appealing posters conveying a wide variety of punchy messages.

Television and radio airwaves are replete with slick advertisements costing anywhere from $1,250 per minute on al-Sumariya, a Lebanon-based satellite station focused on Iraq, to $5,000 per minute on al-Arabiya, a network based in the United Arab Emirates that is popular across the Arab world.

In one 30-second spot, a smartly dressed and smiling Allawi -- normally known for his brusque demeanor -- is shown seated on a stool in a dimly lit studio. "My faith is in Iraq," he tells the camera, to underscore his secularism.

Even the arrival of American-style negative campaigning is evidence of a growing political sophistication, the election trainers said. In recent days posters have started to appear in Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in north Baghdad, bearing the slogan "vote for the Baathist slate," along with a composite photograph of a face -- half Allawi's and half Hussein's. Allawi was a member of Hussein's Baath Party until the mid-1970s, when he joined Iraq's opposition.

In January, most candidates outside the dominant few parties largely eschewed campaigning, fearing they could be kidnapped or assassinated. Now, even long shots are getting into the act. One day this week, National Democratic Institute instructors explained get-out-the-vote techniques to a dozen members of the Free Iraq Gathering, a new coalition that "probably won't get many more votes than you see in that room," according to an institute employee.

In another room, a Canadian taught workers from the Iraqi National Congress, the party led by Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, how to monitor polling stations on election day to prevent cheating and ensure their supporters are able to vote.

"You are the eyes of the party," he said, warning them to look out for husbands trying to cast ballots for their wives or tribal leaders seeking to vote for their members. "Your party may have the best solutions for Iraq, but it doesn't mean a thing unless people come and put a ballot in the box. You have to think, I have seen Mustafa and Mazen vote, but if someone is missing, maybe you call them up and offer them a ride to the polls."

As in January, the specter of election-related violence still hangs over Iraq. Insurgents have distributed leaflets throughout Anbar province, the center of the Sunni-led insurgency, threatening to kill anyone who attempts to vote. An Iraqi Islamic Party candidate was gunned down with two party workers on a highway west of Baghdad late last month. Allawi escaped unscathed from an attack by armed demonstrators in Najaf during a visit there Sunday, and two days later, a rocket-propelled grenade struck his party's Najaf office.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:37 AM
:sl:

In the recent Egyptian elections, the Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest and largest Islamic movement in the Arab world, has succeeded in winning approximately one third of the votes, even though the organisation, which continues to be banned in Egypt, had confined itself to contesting 144 out of the 454 parliamentary seats to avoid aggravating the government.


This result came in spite of the widespread violations that have marred the elections, ranging from the arrests of hundreds of Brotherhood activists, to the police blocking polling stations and shooting tear gas, and thugs wielding machetes, knives and guns to terrorise voters, while the police stood by.

The Egyptian case is the rule not the exception. Wherever relatively free and credible elections have been held in the region, mainstream Islamism has emerged as the principal player.

This has been the case in Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Turkey. Even in Algeria, where the army staged a coup d’etat against the Islamic Salvation Front in 1992, soon after, other Islamic parties came to occupy the seats the ousted FIS had held in parliament.

From Egypt to Syria, Iraq to Turkey, Algeria to Tunisia, the lesson has been the same: Deeply entrenched socio-political phenomena cannot be uprooted by force and coercion.



Mainstream Islamism is a fundamental and firmly- rooted factor in Arab and Islamic political life. It can be neither ignored nor cancelled.

Whether we like it or not, mainstream Islamism is an integral component of any equation of democratic transition in the region.

The claim that political Islam is in its last throes, which has gained currency in academic, political and media circles since it was first put forward by Olivier Roy in the 1990s, looks today more implausible than ever.

The problem with the failure of political Islam thesis is that it reduces the Islamic scene to its radical expressions, with no heed of the diversity of its modes of interpretation, political agendas, and order of priorities.

The trouble with Roy is that he turns his attention to the narrow violent fringes and turns a blind eye to the mainstream and its internal dynamism.



What we need is to bridge the gap between a sweet rhetoric and a gruesome, bitter reality.

The tendency to lump the great Islamist mosaic under the vague and obscure heading of Islamic fundamentalism leaves us in a conceptual vacuum, unable to decipher its complexity and make sense of its many variations.

Islamism, just like Socialism is not a uniform entity. It characterises an intensely colourful socio-political phenomenon with different strategies and discourses.

This enormously diverse movement ranges from the liberal to the conservative, from the modern to the traditional, from the moderate to the radical, from the democratic to the theocratic and from the peaceful to the violent.

What is common to these different trends is that they all derive their source of legitimacy from Islam, just as the Latin American anarchist guerrillas, the Social Democrats, Marxists, and Third way Blairites base theirs on Socialism. To view this broad canvass through the lens of Bin Laden or al-Zarqawi is nothing short of absurd.

It is equally immature to assume that the different manifestations of Islamism are all engaged in an open battle with modernity.

Whatever we may think of Islamism, whether we like it or not, we cannot change the reality on the ground. Islamists are the dominant force in much of the Muslim world.

Mainstream Islamism may in fact be described as a complex response to the challenges and deficiencies of modernity. It represents a synthesis between Islam’s historical and symbolic resources and the expressions of modernity.

It is as Islamic in its language and origins, as it is modern in its methods and instruments. Its social bases are largely drawn from the urban educated sectors of society, with a strong presence in the unions of students, teachers, lawyers, doctors and engineers.



The seeds of this phenomenon may be traced back to the dawn of the nineteenth century with the Islamic reform movement of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and his disciples Muhammad Abda and Rashid Rida.

These reformers may be credited with transmitting Islam’s symbolic capital from the traditional sectors of Muslim society to its modern institutions and adapting it the requirements of modern times.



This is not to say that the discourse of Islamists is entirely coherent, or that their historical experience is without its pitfalls. It is to recognise Islamism as a dynamic complex phenomenon, expressive of, and responsive to, the dilemmas and crises of a modern Islamic world struggling to regain its equilibrium after the painful bolts of colonialism and political fragmentation.



Whatever we may think of Islamism, whether we like it or not, we cannot change the reality on the ground. Islamists are the dominant force in much of the Muslim world.

It is equally immature to assume that the different manifestations of Islamism are all engaged in an open battle with modernity.

The campaigns of repression waged against them by the region’s dictatorships with the backing of their American and European allies have proved quite unable to halt their growth or stop the pace of Islamisation in Muslim society.



The broad trend in the Islamic political map today is one of incorporating the mechanisms of democracy, such as peaceful power alternation, power checks and balances and the separation of powers, within an Islamic framework.

Democracy is, indeed, neither a dogma, nor a doctrine. It denotes a collection of procedures and institutions which have the potential to function within different cultural contexts and various value- systems.

To break the Islamic political terrain into opposite trenches of enlightened secular democrats and fundamentalist remnants of medieval times is both simplistic and misleading.

The so-called fundamentalist threat has been, and continues to be, used as a means of obstructing real democratic transition in the region. Only if it generates the desired result is the ballot box to be accepted, only as a seal of a pre-determined outcome.



Mainstream Islamism is a fundamental and firmly- rooted factor in Arab and Islamic political life.

Those who fill the air with hymns to freedom and democracy are strangely silent today, unstirred by the scenes of police barrages encircling polling stations and machete wielding government thugs chasing voters away.

In a letter addressed to the American State Secretary in response to the Department spokesman’s denial of any knowledge of violence or irregularities in the Egyptian election.

Human Rights Watch said, such statements "make a mockery of the policies you and President Bush have articulated on numerous occasions this year regarding the importance of respect for democratic freedoms in the Middle East generally and in Egypt in particular" (2 Dec 2005).



The grand slogans of democracy and good governance in the Middle East are being tested today on the Egyptian soil.



What continues to be missing in the region, it seems, are not the forces of democracy, or the culture of democracy, but the international will to allow democratic change to take place. What we need is to bridge the gap between a sweet rhetoric and a gruesome, bitter reality.

[Soumaya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.]
The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:39 AM
:sl:

When stumping through the port city of Alexandria, whose crumbling mansions and rickety tram lines evoke long-faded glory, Sobhe Saleh of the Muslim Brotherhood vowed he had a different vision for Egypt's future.

"If Islam were applied, no one would be hungry," he roared recently to a crowd of fully veiled women ululating with joy. "Islam is a religion of construction. Islam is a religion of investment. Islam is a religion of development."

Religion, in fact, should profoundly alter both Egypt's domestic and foreign policy, said Mr. Saleh, a 52-year-old lawyer with a clipped helmet of steel-gray hair.

"If Islam were applied, the television would not show us prostitution and people lacking all decency!" he declared. "If Islam were applied, Iraq could not have been invaded, Israel could not occupy Jerusalem, and aggression could not have been used to humiliate Muslims everywhere!"

A long-expected day of reckoning is at hand in Egyptian politics now that the Brotherhood, an illegal organization with a violent past, is entering the corridors of power for the first time in significant numbers.

The outcome of the freest election in more than 50 years could determine whether political Islam will turn Egypt into a repressive, anti-American theocracy or if Islamic parties across the Arab world will themselves be transformed by participating in mainstream politics.

No sudden earthquake is expected. But initial results from the final round of voting on Wednesday showed that the Brotherhood had gained at least 11 more seats to bring its total to 87, with two races still being counted, according to a spokesman. That is five times the 17 seats the group won in 2000.

Already, those inroads have been greeted by conflict. At least eight people were killed in violence around polling places, according to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, including two felled by rubber bullets fired by the police.

As it did in the second round of voting, the Brotherhood accused the government of fomenting the violence and blocking access to the polling places to limit the ability of its supporters to vote. The government said opposition forces instigated riots.

"Reports reveal a systematic and planned campaign to prevent opposition voters from going to the polls," the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring said.

The violence is a measure of the jitteriness accompanying even the relatively modest gains the Brotherhood had made. While capturing roughly one-fifth of Parliament's 444 seats, the group does not control enough to enact laws or even override the governing National Democratic Party.

Its well-organized campaign, built around the vague slogan "Islam Is the Solution," did little to illuminate what it will do as the opposition.

The open question is whether political influence could transform the Brotherhood into a moderate political party, like the governing Justice and Development Party in Turkey, rather than an organization that uses Parliament as a platform to proselytize.

Its newfound role might also help answer the question whether Islamic parties are interested in democracy only as one person, one vote, one time.

"For the first time, they are not merely expected to be troublemakers but to gain the trust of their voters," said Mohamed Salah, the Cairo bureau chief for the London-based newspaper Al Hayat and an expert on Islamic movements. "If this time people voted for the Brothers to punish the N.D.P., they won't next time. So the Brothers face a difficult test."

Until now, religion has occupied an awkward twilight area in Egypt's mummified political life, grudgingly accepted but technically banned. Prohibited in 1954 after members carried out a string of violent attacks, the Muslim Brotherhood runs its candidates as independents, with scores of campaign workers jailed.

Deep apathy among the 70 million people of Egypt - by far the largest Arab country - meant turnout in this election officially averaged 34 percent, but many election analysts have put it at 25 percent or lower.

Parliament has neither budget oversight nor the power to remove ministers, serving mostly as a rubber stamp for presidential initiatives. But the Muslim Brotherhood vows to use the People's Assembly to lead the charge for reform, pushing for expanded civil liberties, albeit with a religious tint.

Since Hassan el-Banna, an elementary school teacher of Arabic, founded the Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928, the group has insisted that a state ruled by strict application of the Islamic law, or Shariah, and God's punishments will arrive by gradualism rather than by force.

The Government's Bogeyman

President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian government has habitually warned critics at home and abroad that his 24-year rule remains the sole bulwark against the tide of radical Islam.

Some analysts argue that the government's strategy was to let the Brotherhood win just enough seats to force critics both here and in Washington to confront the fact that the choice comes down to the governing party or the abyss.

"The Brothers are the government's bogeyman," said Ibrahim Issa, the editor of the weekly Al Dustour. "It's like you say to misbehaving children, 'The Brothers will get you, the Brothers will get you.' The government does it, so we accept political despotism."

Indeed, the Brotherhood's dismayed opponents - among them governing party officials, Egypt's 10 percent Coptic minority and most intellectuals - are warning that doom lies ahead.

"The Mullahs Are Coming!" screamed one headline in the government-controlled newspaper Al Gomhouriya, using the title reserved for Iran's tyrannical clergy.

Talk show guests on state television have outdone themselves coming up with synonyms for shifty and sinister, while the latest nationally broadcast Friday Prayer sermon sponsored by the government blasted anyone mixing religion with politics.

Adel Hamouda, the editor of the new independent daily Al Fagr, positively frothed at the very idea of a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc.

"They once relied upon secrecy, underground organizations and a militia until they decided to ride the wave of democracy to reach power," he wrote in a denunciation illustrated with a doctored picture of the Brotherhood's leader wearing a Nazi uniform. "Once they do, they will adopt dictatorship, fascism, Nazism; they will say that they are God's deputies, God's in-laws, God's friends, God's spokesmen, and whoever opposes them, differs with them or becomes their enemy will become the enemy of God."

A Disillusioned Nasserite

Mr. Saleh, the Alexandria lawyer who trounced his governing party opponent, dismisses such fears as groundless. In many ways, his path from childhood in a Nile delta village to parliamentary representative of one of the Mediterranean's biggest cities reflects the modern trajectory of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sent to Alexandria for high school, he was 13 when the Arabs lost the 1967 war against Israel, and he joined the mobs coursing through the streets to reject President Gamal Abdel Nasser's offer to step down.

The adolescent Mr. Saleh worshiped Nasser, memorizing lines from his famous speeches, which had given Arabs their first sense of pride in a postcolonial world. Indeed, Mr. Saleh's speeches echo Nasser's defiant tone.

"Leave peacefully with your own will, before you are forced to leave - go and never come back!" Mr. Saleh told the governing party in one speech, using virtually the same lines that Nasser hurled at Western colonial powers.

In 1971, a year after Nasser died, Mr. Saleh read "The Return of Consciousness" by the renowned writer Tawfik al-Hakim, which depicted the leader as a sorcerer who created a grand illusion. The most lasting shock for Mr. Saleh was the lie about Arab might.

"I thought we would never kneel, but I woke up to a bitter truth, that Israel occupied one-fifth of our land, that Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem was lost," Mr. Saleh said. "I felt like all my dignity was gone; I was miserable; I felt pain, rejection, bitterness. I was confused, shocked, reeling, looking for a solution and for something other than Abdel Nasser."

He recalled a night in 1965 when five village neighbors were arrested in a national sweep against thousands of suspected Muslim Brotherhood members. Mr. Saleh, by now in university, read their trial transcripts and heard their tales of degrading torture. He knew the arrested men as devout, sincere and hard-working.

At that point, he joined the Brotherhood, deciding that only an Islamic renaissance could rescue the Arabs from their plight.

One key reason the Muslim Brotherhood has endured is that its message combining spiritual salvation with an Islamic political renaissance captures the middle-class mood - particularly among conservative professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers.

Mr. Banna, the movement's founder, believed that social ills could be cured by a return to the basic tenets of Sunni Islam, and that Muslims would always face enemies trying to thwart their revival.

The continued repression of the Brotherhood in Egypt, not to mention many of the 30 to 40 other Muslim Brotherhood organizations worldwide, has only added to their mystique. Syria mandates the death penalty for membership, while legal parties in other Arab countries, like Morocco and Jordan, are constantly harassed and highly popular.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often seen in two ways - as the fusty great uncle of Islamic politics, content to bide his time, or as the womb of all subsequent Islamic terror movements. Both views are true.

Mr. Banna organized a paramilitary Special Apparatus, ostensibly to train volunteers to fight in Palestine. Many did, but members also plotted a series of political assassinations.

Government gunmen killed Mr. Banna in 1949, just as the organization reached its peak, with 500,000 members. A failed attempt to assassinate Nasser in 1954 led to the Brotherhood's being banned, with up to 20,000 members languishing in jail for two decades.

Among them was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote a radical treatise from death row arguing for armed revolt. Subsequent groups, notably Al Qaeda, base their doctrine partly on his writings.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician and Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, volunteered in a Muslim Brotherhood clinic before founding Islamic Jihad, whose violence included assassinating President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981.

Shying Away From Violence

The Muslim Brotherhood calls all these links tenuous at best.

"The presence of these violent groups outside the Muslim Brotherhood proves that there is no place for those who support violence inside," Mr. Saleh, said in an interview in the Brotherhood's cramped Alexandria office.

If the group retains a shadowy aura, its leaders say, it is because decades of persecution have made it wary. Mr. Saleh has been imprisoned twice, including six months in 2003 after leading demonstrations against the American invasion of Iraq.

This election underscores the risk of groups hostile to American policy emerging through reforms. The group's leader, Muhammad Mehdi Akef, 78, accuses the United States and its allies of carrying out brutal attacks on Iraqi civilians and mosques to sully the image of the resistance.

"Such dirty work is done by the Americans, the honorable resistance has a noble purpose so its means are always noble," Mr. Akef, known as the general guide, said in an interview.

Mr. Saleh, asked in an interview about what the Brotherhood would do in Parliament, echoes the national platform with its typically populist positions that derive their support from religious sentiment.

He calls Israel "an aggressor nation" and says Egypt should shun it, if not sever the peace treaty. He opposes any American aid that comes with strings attached.

On tourism, he wants foreign visitors segregated so the faithful can feel comfortable in areas that require modest clothing and a ban on alcohol.

Mr. Saleh also advocates enforcing public morality through a modified version of Saudi Arabia's religious police. Anyone who curses religion on the streets and any spouses caught kissing would be arrested.

"In Islam, a man doesn't have the right to kiss his wife in public, unless he was away and just returned, so the law needn't be applied in the airports or train stations," said Mr. Saleh, a father of four and grandfather of two.

Turning Egypt into an Islamic state is an interim goal along the way to recreating the Islamic empire, or caliphate, of 1,000 years ago, with the modern version mirroring something like the European Union.

The mere fact that the Brotherhood could hold rallies for hours and hang huge banners in the streets flaunting its symbol - two crossed swords over the Koran - is a sea change. Previous campaigns were hurried affairs of rushing around whispering "Islam is the Solution" in cafes for at most 20 minutes lest the police arrive.

This time, some of Mr. Saleh's attack lines bring guffaws from the faithful. He vows that before Muslim Brotherhood members sit in Parliament, seats formerly occupied by the governing party will be scrubbed seven times, once with sand. The listeners know this is the religious formula for purifying objects fouled by exposure to something ritually unclean, like dogs.

The Government Candidate

A rally by Mr. Saleh's governing party rival, Khalid Abu Ismael, a millionaire food exporter, seemed pallid after the revival meeting atmosphere of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some in the audience said they were government employees ordered to attend.

Mr. Abu Ismael is typical of the wealthy businessmen that Gamal Mubarak, the president's son and potential heir, has gathered into a 140-member policy council for the governing party.

The basic thrust of much of its reform program is harnessing the private sector to modernize Egypt, with the governing party running slick television campaign advertisements showing beaming Egyptians cavorting along well-scrubbed streets perhaps found in Sweden.

"We can't say anything has actually changed, but I feel like they are starting to," Mr. Abu Ismael said in an interview over chocolate cake in the neatly pruned back garden of his splendid mansion.

The genial mogul said he had received some 7,000 job requests while campaigning and had managed to place 650 people. He expressed shock at the living conditions in some of the poorer reaches of the district. He wanted to run in a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold because he resented its attitude. "I don't like their slogan 'Islam Is the Solution,' as if they are the only Muslims in this country," he said.

He and many others are convinced that if the government really tackled social ills, much of the Brotherhood's support would evaporate. The most vocal complaints from voters condemn their abysmal surroundings despite years of governing party promises to fix unpaved streets, overflowing sewage systems, undrinkable water, utter lack of garbage collection and the like.

Mr. Saleh and most Brotherhood members are often the very community members who found neighborhood collectives to treat nagging ills, indeed the only political group active on the streets.

In his neighborhood, for example, he helped establish a local health insurance system by which poorer families paid half their medical costs, with richer benefactors underwriting the difference. During Ramadan, his charitable organization distributes free food.

"Everything they do is very well organized," said Tahani Abdul Raouf, a homemaker with five children who attended the women's rally. "Anything we ask for, we get. They are very respectable people, very efficient people."

Not all fervent believers support the Brotherhood, of course. Some view democracy as a Western innovation and therefore a sin. It is the younger generation in the Brotherhood - more engaged and open-minded - who have plunged into the political process. The Brotherhood, the only significant opposition in the elections, limited itself to fielding about 150 candidates to avoid an overwhelming victory that might prompt a harsh crackdown, repeating the horrifying Algerian experience in the 1990's. There, the Islamists gained power through elections, which the government promptly annulled, setting off a civil war.

Essam el-Erian, a key strategist, thinks 75 percent of the Brotherhood's votes were from staunch supporters while the rest were protest votes against the governing party. Other analysts argue the reverse is true, but exact numbers are elusive.

In a typical interview after one of Mr. Saleh's rallies, an English-speaking engineer said he was voting for the Brotherhood as the best hope for change. Though he supports its conservative social agenda, Ashraf Omar, 40, said he feared replacing a secular dictatorship with a religious one.

"We want a system in the future where all the people can state their opinion, where they can change the government when they want to," Mr. Omar said.

The Future of Democracy

Opponents question just how committed the Brotherhood is to democracy given the civil rights disasters wrought by Islamic governments in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan under the Taliban.

At least in the short run, both opponents and supporters of the Brotherhood expect that the election results are probably healthy for political life. The People's Assembly has been a sleepy place, with members rarely showing up, and the secular parties with their aging leaders and ideas captured fewer than a dozen seats.

If the political process is more vibrant, more people will vote, which conversely might diminish the weight of the Brotherhood, analysts believe. Other parties might also emerge to erode the Brotherhood's appeal as the sole opposition force.

"We have not been able to face this dilemma for so many years," said Muhammad Kamal, a key political strategist in the governing party and a political science professor at Cairo University. "Now we have to confront it, it's in our faces. You cannot have a true democracy in Egypt without reaching some kind of accommodation between religion and politics."

Some experts believe that it is the Brotherhood that will be forced to adapt, not Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, 85 and the youngest brother of the movement's founder, has long harbored doubts that Islam in the era of Prophet Muhammad provides a viable model for a modern government.

"Their spirit is not the spirit of the age, they want to live as the prophet lived," Mr. Banna said. "The real test of the Brotherhood is to let it enter politics. They will be in a different situation when they confront the necessities of ruling, and there are only two possible outcomes. They will have to compromise or fail."

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt When stumping through the port city of Alexandria, whose crumbling mansions and rickety tram lines evoke long-faded glory, Sobhe Saleh of the Muslim Brotherhood vowed he had a different vision for Egypt's future.

"If Islam were applied, no one would be hungry," he roared recently to a crowd of fully veiled women ululating with joy. "Islam is a religion of construction. Islam is a religion of investment. Islam is a religion of development."

Religion, in fact, should profoundly alter both Egypt's domestic and foreign policy, said Mr. Saleh, a 52-year-old lawyer with a clipped helmet of steel-gray hair.

"If Islam were applied, the television would not show us prostitution and people lacking all decency!" he declared. "If Islam were applied, Iraq could not have been invaded, Israel could not occupy Jerusalem, and aggression could not have been used to humiliate Muslims everywhere!"

A long-expected day of reckoning is at hand in Egyptian politics now that the Brotherhood, an illegal organization with a violent past, is entering the corridors of power for the first time in significant numbers.

The outcome of the freest election in more than 50 years could determine whether political Islam will turn Egypt into a repressive, anti-American theocracy or if Islamic parties across the Arab world will themselves be transformed by participating in mainstream politics.

No sudden earthquake is expected. But initial results from the final round of voting on Wednesday showed that the Brotherhood had gained at least 11 more seats to bring its total to 87, with two races still being counted, according to a spokesman. That is five times the 17 seats the group won in 2000.

Already, those inroads have been greeted by conflict. At least eight people were killed in violence around polling places, according to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, including two felled by rubber bullets fired by the police.

As it did in the second round of voting, the Brotherhood accused the government of fomenting the violence and blocking access to the polling places to limit the ability of its supporters to vote. The government said opposition forces instigated riots.

"Reports reveal a systematic and planned campaign to prevent opposition voters from going to the polls," the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring said.

The violence is a measure of the jitteriness accompanying even the relatively modest gains the Brotherhood had made. While capturing roughly one-fifth of Parliament's 444 seats, the group does not control enough to enact laws or even override the governing National Democratic Party.

Its well-organized campaign, built around the vague slogan "Islam Is the Solution," did little to illuminate what it will do as the opposition.

The open question is whether political influence could transform the Brotherhood into a moderate political party, like the governing Justice and Development Party in Turkey, rather than an organization that uses Parliament as a platform to proselytize.

Its newfound role might also help answer the question whether Islamic parties are interested in democracy only as one person, one vote, one time.

"For the first time, they are not merely expected to be troublemakers but to gain the trust of their voters," said Mohamed Salah, the Cairo bureau chief for the London-based newspaper Al Hayat and an expert on Islamic movements. "If this time people voted for the Brothers to punish the N.D.P., they won't next time. So the Brothers face a difficult test."

Until now, religion has occupied an awkward twilight area in Egypt's mummified political life, grudgingly accepted but technically banned. Prohibited in 1954 after members carried out a string of violent attacks, the Muslim Brotherhood runs its candidates as independents, with scores of campaign workers jailed.

Deep apathy among the 70 million people of Egypt - by far the largest Arab country - meant turnout in this election officially averaged 34 percent, but many election analysts have put it at 25 percent or lower.

Parliament has neither budget oversight nor the power to remove ministers, serving mostly as a rubber stamp for presidential initiatives. But the Muslim Brotherhood vows to use the People's Assembly to lead the charge for reform, pushing for expanded civil liberties, albeit with a religious tint.

Since Hassan el-Banna, an elementary school teacher of Arabic, founded the Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928, the group has insisted that a state ruled by strict application of the Islamic law, or Shariah, and God's punishments will arrive by gradualism rather than by force.

The Government's Bogeyman

President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian government has habitually warned critics at home and abroad that his 24-year rule remains the sole bulwark against the tide of radical Islam.

Some analysts argue that the government's strategy was to let the Brotherhood win just enough seats to force critics both here and in Washington to confront the fact that the choice comes down to the governing party or the abyss.

"The Brothers are the government's bogeyman," said Ibrahim Issa, the editor of the weekly Al Dustour. "It's like you say to misbehaving children, 'The Brothers will get you, the Brothers will get you.' The government does it, so we accept political despotism."

Indeed, the Brotherhood's dismayed opponents - among them governing party officials, Egypt's 10 percent Coptic minority and most intellectuals - are warning that doom lies ahead.

"The Mullahs Are Coming!" screamed one headline in the government-controlled newspaper Al Gomhouriya, using the title reserved for Iran's tyrannical clergy.

Talk show guests on state television have outdone themselves coming up with synonyms for shifty and sinister, while the latest nationally broadcast Friday Prayer sermon sponsored by the government blasted anyone mixing religion with politics.

Adel Hamouda, the editor of the new independent daily Al Fagr, positively frothed at the very idea of a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc.

"They once relied upon secrecy, underground organizations and a militia until they decided to ride the wave of democracy to reach power," he wrote in a denunciation illustrated with a doctored picture of the Brotherhood's leader wearing a Nazi uniform. "Once they do, they will adopt dictatorship, fascism, Nazism; they will say that they are God's deputies, God's in-laws, God's friends, God's spokesmen, and whoever opposes them, differs with them or becomes their enemy will become the enemy of God."

A Disillusioned Nasserite

Mr. Saleh, the Alexandria lawyer who trounced his governing party opponent, dismisses such fears as groundless. In many ways, his path from childhood in a Nile delta village to parliamentary representative of one of the Mediterranean's biggest cities reflects the modern trajectory of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sent to Alexandria for high school, he was 13 when the Arabs lost the 1967 war against Israel, and he joined the mobs coursing through the streets to reject President Gamal Abdel Nasser's offer to step down.

The adolescent Mr. Saleh worshiped Nasser, memorizing lines from his famous speeches, which had given Arabs their first sense of pride in a postcolonial world. Indeed, Mr. Saleh's speeches echo Nasser's defiant tone.

"Leave peacefully with your own will, before you are forced to leave - go and never come back!" Mr. Saleh told the governing party in one speech, using virtually the same lines that Nasser hurled at Western colonial powers.

In 1971, a year after Nasser died, Mr. Saleh read "The Return of Consciousness" by the renowned writer Tawfik al-Hakim, which depicted the leader as a sorcerer who created a grand illusion. The most lasting shock for Mr. Saleh was the lie about Arab might.

"I thought we would never kneel, but I woke up to a bitter truth, that Israel occupied one-fifth of our land, that Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem was lost," Mr. Saleh said. "I felt like all my dignity was gone; I was miserable; I felt pain, rejection, bitterness. I was confused, shocked, reeling, looking for a solution and for something other than Abdel Nasser."

He recalled a night in 1965 when five village neighbors were arrested in a national sweep against thousands of suspected Muslim Brotherhood members. Mr. Saleh, by now in university, read their trial transcripts and heard their tales of degrading torture. He knew the arrested men as devout, sincere and hard-working.

At that point, he joined the Brotherhood, deciding that only an Islamic renaissance could rescue the Arabs from their plight.

One key reason the Muslim Brotherhood has endured is that its message combining spiritual salvation with an Islamic political renaissance captures the middle-class mood - particularly among conservative professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers.

Mr. Banna, the movement's founder, believed that social ills could be cured by a return to the basic tenets of Sunni Islam, and that Muslims would always face enemies trying to thwart their revival.

The continued repression of the Brotherhood in Egypt, not to mention many of the 30 to 40 other Muslim Brotherhood organizations worldwide, has only added to their mystique. Syria mandates the death penalty for membership, while legal parties in other Arab countries, like Morocco and Jordan, are constantly harassed and highly popular.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often seen in two ways - as the fusty great uncle of Islamic politics, content to bide his time, or as the womb of all subsequent Islamic terror movements. Both views are true.

Mr. Banna organized a paramilitary Special Apparatus, ostensibly to train volunteers to fight in Palestine. Many did, but members also plotted a series of political assassinations.

Government gunmen killed Mr. Banna in 1949, just as the organization reached its peak, with 500,000 members. A failed attempt to assassinate Nasser in 1954 led to the Brotherhood's being banned, with up to 20,000 members languishing in jail for two decades.

Among them was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote a radical treatise from death row arguing for armed revolt. Subsequent groups, notably Al Qaeda, base their doctrine partly on his writings.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician and Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, volunteered in a Muslim Brotherhood clinic before founding Islamic Jihad, whose violence included assassinating President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981.

Shying Away From Violence

The Muslim Brotherhood calls all these links tenuous at best.

"The presence of these violent groups outside the Muslim Brotherhood proves that there is no place for those who support violence inside," Mr. Saleh, said in an interview in the Brotherhood's cramped Alexandria office.

If the group retains a shadowy aura, its leaders say, it is because decades of persecution have made it wary. Mr. Saleh has been imprisoned twice, including six months in 2003 after leading demonstrations against the American invasion of Iraq.

This election underscores the risk of groups hostile to American policy emerging through reforms. The group's leader, Muhammad Mehdi Akef, 78, accuses the United States and its allies of carrying out brutal attacks on Iraqi civilians and mosques to sully the image of the resistance.

"Such dirty work is done by the Americans, the honorable resistance has a noble purpose so its means are always noble," Mr. Akef, known as the general guide, said in an interview.

Mr. Saleh, asked in an interview about what the Brotherhood would do in Parliament, echoes the national platform with its typically populist positions that derive their support from religious sentiment.

He calls Israel "an aggressor nation" and says Egypt should shun it, if not sever the peace treaty. He opposes any American aid that comes with strings attached.

On tourism, he wants foreign visitors segregated so the faithful can feel comfortable in areas that require modest clothing and a ban on alcohol.

Mr. Saleh also advocates enforcing public morality through a modified version of Saudi Arabia's religious police. Anyone who curses religion on the streets and any spouses caught kissing would be arrested.

"In Islam, a man doesn't have the right to kiss his wife in public, unless he was away and just returned, so the law needn't be applied in the airports or train stations," said Mr. Saleh, a father of four and grandfather of two.

Turning Egypt into an Islamic state is an interim goal along the way to recreating the Islamic empire, or caliphate, of 1,000 years ago, with the modern version mirroring something like the European Union.

The mere fact that the Brotherhood could hold rallies for hours and hang huge banners in the streets flaunting its symbol - two crossed swords over the Koran - is a sea change. Previous campaigns were hurried affairs of rushing around whispering "Islam is the Solution" in cafes for at most 20 minutes lest the police arrive.

This time, some of Mr. Saleh's attack lines bring guffaws from the faithful. He vows that before Muslim Brotherhood members sit in Parliament, seats formerly occupied by the governing party will be scrubbed seven times, once with sand. The listeners know this is the religious formula for purifying objects fouled by exposure to something ritually unclean, like dogs.

The Government Candidate

A rally by Mr. Saleh's governing party rival, Khalid Abu Ismael, a millionaire food exporter, seemed pallid after the revival meeting atmosphere of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some in the audience said they were government employees ordered to attend.

Mr. Abu Ismael is typical of the wealthy businessmen that Gamal Mubarak, the president's son and potential heir, has gathered into a 140-member policy council for the governing party.

The basic thrust of much of its reform program is harnessing the private sector to modernize Egypt, with the governing party running slick television campaign advertisements showing beaming Egyptians cavorting along well-scrubbed streets perhaps found in Sweden.

"We can't say anything has actually changed, but I feel like they are starting to," Mr. Abu Ismael said in an interview over chocolate cake in the neatly pruned back garden of his splendid mansion.

The genial mogul said he had received some 7,000 job requests while campaigning and had managed to place 650 people. He expressed shock at the living conditions in some of the poorer reaches of the district. He wanted to run in a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold because he resented its attitude. "I don't like their slogan 'Islam Is the Solution,' as if they are the only Muslims in this country," he said.

He and many others are convinced that if the government really tackled social ills, much of the Brotherhood's support would evaporate. The most vocal complaints from voters condemn their abysmal surroundings despite years of governing party promises to fix unpaved streets, overflowing sewage systems, undrinkable water, utter lack of garbage collection and the like.

Mr. Saleh and most Brotherhood members are often the very community members who found neighborhood collectives to treat nagging ills, indeed the only political group active on the streets.

In his neighborhood, for example, he helped establish a local health insurance system by which poorer families paid half their medical costs, with richer benefactors underwriting the difference. During Ramadan, his charitable organization distributes free food.

"Everything they do is very well organized," said Tahani Abdul Raouf, a homemaker with five children who attended the women's rally. "Anything we ask for, we get. They are very respectable people, very efficient people."

Not all fervent believers support the Brotherhood, of course. Some view democracy as a Western innovation and therefore a sin. It is the younger generation in the Brotherhood - more engaged and open-minded - who have plunged into the political process. The Brotherhood, the only significant opposition in the elections, limited itself to fielding about 150 candidates to avoid an overwhelming victory that might prompt a harsh crackdown, repeating the horrifying Algerian experience in the 1990's. There, the Islamists gained power through elections, which the government promptly annulled, setting off a civil war.

Essam el-Erian, a key strategist, thinks 75 percent of the Brotherhood's votes were from staunch supporters while the rest were protest votes against the governing party. Other analysts argue the reverse is true, but exact numbers are elusive.

In a typical interview after one of Mr. Saleh's rallies, an English-speaking engineer said he was voting for the Brotherhood as the best hope for change. Though he supports its conservative social agenda, Ashraf Omar, 40, said he feared replacing a secular dictatorship with a religious one.

"We want a system in the future where all the people can state their opinion, where they can change the government when they want to," Mr. Omar said.

The Future of Democracy

Opponents question just how committed the Brotherhood is to democracy given the civil rights disasters wrought by Islamic governments in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan under the Taliban.

At least in the short run, both opponents and supporters of the Brotherhood expect that the election results are probably healthy for political life. The People's Assembly has been a sleepy place, with members rarely showing up, and the secular parties with their aging leaders and ideas captured fewer than a dozen seats.

If the political process is more vibrant, more people will vote, which conversely might diminish the weight of the Brotherhood, analysts believe. Other parties might also emerge to erode the Brotherhood's appeal as the sole opposition force.

"We have not been able to face this dilemma for so many years," said Muhammad Kamal, a key political strategist in the governing party and a political science professor at Cairo University. "Now we have to confront it, it's in our faces. You cannot have a true democracy in Egypt without reaching some kind of accommodation between religion and politics."

Some experts believe that it is the Brotherhood that will be forced to adapt, not Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, 85 and the youngest brother of the movement's founder, has long harbored doubts that Islam in the era of Prophet Muhammad provides a viable model for a modern government.

"Their spirit is not the spirit of the age, they want to live as the prophet lived," Mr. Banna said. "The real test of the Brotherhood is to let it enter politics. They will be in a different situation when they confront the necessities of ruling, and there are only two possible outcomes. They will have to compromise or fail."

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt When stumping through the port city of Alexandria, whose crumbling mansions and rickety tram lines evoke long-faded glory, Sobhe Saleh of the Muslim Brotherhood vowed he had a different vision for Egypt's future.

"If Islam were applied, no one would be hungry," he roared recently to a crowd of fully veiled women ululating with joy. "Islam is a religion of construction. Islam is a religion of investment. Islam is a religion of development."

Religion, in fact, should profoundly alter both Egypt's domestic and foreign policy, said Mr. Saleh, a 52-year-old lawyer with a clipped helmet of steel-gray hair.

"If Islam were applied, the television would not show us prostitution and people lacking all decency!" he declared. "If Islam were applied, Iraq could not have been invaded, Israel could not occupy Jerusalem, and aggression could not have been used to humiliate Muslims everywhere!"

A long-expected day of reckoning is at hand in Egyptian politics now that the Brotherhood, an illegal organization with a violent past, is entering the corridors of power for the first time in significant numbers.

The outcome of the freest election in more than 50 years could determine whether political Islam will turn Egypt into a repressive, anti-American theocracy or if Islamic parties across the Arab world will themselves be transformed by participating in mainstream politics.

No sudden earthquake is expected. But initial results from the final round of voting on Wednesday showed that the Brotherhood had gained at least 11 more seats to bring its total to 87, with two races still being counted, according to a spokesman. That is five times the 17 seats the group won in 2000.

Already, those inroads have been greeted by conflict. At least eight people were killed in violence around polling places, according to the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, including two felled by rubber bullets fired by the police.

As it did in the second round of voting, the Brotherhood accused the government of fomenting the violence and blocking access to the polling places to limit the ability of its supporters to vote. The government said opposition forces instigated riots.

"Reports reveal a systematic and planned campaign to prevent opposition voters from going to the polls," the Independent Committee on Election Monitoring said.

The violence is a measure of the jitteriness accompanying even the relatively modest gains the Brotherhood had made. While capturing roughly one-fifth of Parliament's 444 seats, the group does not control enough to enact laws or even override the governing National Democratic Party.

Its well-organized campaign, built around the vague slogan "Islam Is the Solution," did little to illuminate what it will do as the opposition.

The open question is whether political influence could transform the Brotherhood into a moderate political party, like the governing Justice and Development Party in Turkey, rather than an organization that uses Parliament as a platform to proselytize.

Its newfound role might also help answer the question whether Islamic parties are interested in democracy only as one person, one vote, one time.

"For the first time, they are not merely expected to be troublemakers but to gain the trust of their voters," said Mohamed Salah, the Cairo bureau chief for the London-based newspaper Al Hayat and an expert on Islamic movements. "If this time people voted for the Brothers to punish the N.D.P., they won't next time. So the Brothers face a difficult test."

Until now, religion has occupied an awkward twilight area in Egypt's mummified political life, grudgingly accepted but technically banned. Prohibited in 1954 after members carried out a string of violent attacks, the Muslim Brotherhood runs its candidates as independents, with scores of campaign workers jailed.

Deep apathy among the 70 million people of Egypt - by far the largest Arab country - meant turnout in this election officially averaged 34 percent, but many election analysts have put it at 25 percent or lower.

Parliament has neither budget oversight nor the power to remove ministers, serving mostly as a rubber stamp for presidential initiatives. But the Muslim Brotherhood vows to use the People's Assembly to lead the charge for reform, pushing for expanded civil liberties, albeit with a religious tint.

Since Hassan el-Banna, an elementary school teacher of Arabic, founded the Society of Muslim Brothers in 1928, the group has insisted that a state ruled by strict application of the Islamic law, or Shariah, and God's punishments will arrive by gradualism rather than by force.

The Government's Bogeyman

President Hosni Mubarak's authoritarian government has habitually warned critics at home and abroad that his 24-year rule remains the sole bulwark against the tide of radical Islam.

Some analysts argue that the government's strategy was to let the Brotherhood win just enough seats to force critics both here and in Washington to confront the fact that the choice comes down to the governing party or the abyss.

"The Brothers are the government's bogeyman," said Ibrahim Issa, the editor of the weekly Al Dustour. "It's like you say to misbehaving children, 'The Brothers will get you, the Brothers will get you.' The government does it, so we accept political despotism."

Indeed, the Brotherhood's dismayed opponents - among them governing party officials, Egypt's 10 percent Coptic minority and most intellectuals - are warning that doom lies ahead.

"The Mullahs Are Coming!" screamed one headline in the government-controlled newspaper Al Gomhouriya, using the title reserved for Iran's tyrannical clergy.

Talk show guests on state television have outdone themselves coming up with synonyms for shifty and sinister, while the latest nationally broadcast Friday Prayer sermon sponsored by the government blasted anyone mixing religion with politics.

Adel Hamouda, the editor of the new independent daily Al Fagr, positively frothed at the very idea of a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc.

"They once relied upon secrecy, underground organizations and a militia until they decided to ride the wave of democracy to reach power," he wrote in a denunciation illustrated with a doctored picture of the Brotherhood's leader wearing a Nazi uniform. "Once they do, they will adopt dictatorship, fascism, Nazism; they will say that they are God's deputies, God's in-laws, God's friends, God's spokesmen, and whoever opposes them, differs with them or becomes their enemy will become the enemy of God."

A Disillusioned Nasserite

Mr. Saleh, the Alexandria lawyer who trounced his governing party opponent, dismisses such fears as groundless. In many ways, his path from childhood in a Nile delta village to parliamentary representative of one of the Mediterranean's biggest cities reflects the modern trajectory of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sent to Alexandria for high school, he was 13 when the Arabs lost the 1967 war against Israel, and he joined the mobs coursing through the streets to reject President Gamal Abdel Nasser's offer to step down.

The adolescent Mr. Saleh worshiped Nasser, memorizing lines from his famous speeches, which had given Arabs their first sense of pride in a postcolonial world. Indeed, Mr. Saleh's speeches echo Nasser's defiant tone.

"Leave peacefully with your own will, before you are forced to leave - go and never come back!" Mr. Saleh told the governing party in one speech, using virtually the same lines that Nasser hurled at Western colonial powers.

In 1971, a year after Nasser died, Mr. Saleh read "The Return of Consciousness" by the renowned writer Tawfik al-Hakim, which depicted the leader as a sorcerer who created a grand illusion. The most lasting shock for Mr. Saleh was the lie about Arab might.

"I thought we would never kneel, but I woke up to a bitter truth, that Israel occupied one-fifth of our land, that Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem was lost," Mr. Saleh said. "I felt like all my dignity was gone; I was miserable; I felt pain, rejection, bitterness. I was confused, shocked, reeling, looking for a solution and for something other than Abdel Nasser."

He recalled a night in 1965 when five village neighbors were arrested in a national sweep against thousands of suspected Muslim Brotherhood members. Mr. Saleh, by now in university, read their trial transcripts and heard their tales of degrading torture. He knew the arrested men as devout, sincere and hard-working.

At that point, he joined the Brotherhood, deciding that only an Islamic renaissance could rescue the Arabs from their plight.

One key reason the Muslim Brotherhood has endured is that its message combining spiritual salvation with an Islamic political renaissance captures the middle-class mood - particularly among conservative professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers.

Mr. Banna, the movement's founder, believed that social ills could be cured by a return to the basic tenets of Sunni Islam, and that Muslims would always face enemies trying to thwart their revival.

The continued repression of the Brotherhood in Egypt, not to mention many of the 30 to 40 other Muslim Brotherhood organizations worldwide, has only added to their mystique. Syria mandates the death penalty for membership, while legal parties in other Arab countries, like Morocco and Jordan, are constantly harassed and highly popular.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often seen in two ways - as the fusty great uncle of Islamic politics, content to bide his time, or as the womb of all subsequent Islamic terror movements. Both views are true.

Mr. Banna organized a paramilitary Special Apparatus, ostensibly to train volunteers to fight in Palestine. Many did, but members also plotted a series of political assassinations.

Government gunmen killed Mr. Banna in 1949, just as the organization reached its peak, with 500,000 members. A failed attempt to assassinate Nasser in 1954 led to the Brotherhood's being banned, with up to 20,000 members languishing in jail for two decades.

Among them was Sayyid Qutb, who wrote a radical treatise from death row arguing for armed revolt. Subsequent groups, notably Al Qaeda, base their doctrine partly on his writings.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician and Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, volunteered in a Muslim Brotherhood clinic before founding Islamic Jihad, whose violence included assassinating President Anwar el-Sadat in 1981.

Shying Away From Violence

The Muslim Brotherhood calls all these links tenuous at best.

"The presence of these violent groups outside the Muslim Brotherhood proves that there is no place for those who support violence inside," Mr. Saleh, said in an interview in the Brotherhood's cramped Alexandria office.

If the group retains a shadowy aura, its leaders say, it is because decades of persecution have made it wary. Mr. Saleh has been imprisoned twice, including six months in 2003 after leading demonstrations against the American invasion of Iraq.

This election underscores the risk of groups hostile to American policy emerging through reforms. The group's leader, Muhammad Mehdi Akef, 78, accuses the United States and its allies of carrying out brutal attacks on Iraqi civilians and mosques to sully the image of the resistance.

"Such dirty work is done by the Americans, the honorable resistance has a noble purpose so its means are always noble," Mr. Akef, known as the general guide, said in an interview.

Mr. Saleh, asked in an interview about what the Brotherhood would do in Parliament, echoes the national platform with its typically populist positions that derive their support from religious sentiment.

He calls Israel "an aggressor nation" and says Egypt should shun it, if not sever the peace treaty. He opposes any American aid that comes with strings attached.

On tourism, he wants foreign visitors segregated so the faithful can feel comfortable in areas that require modest clothing and a ban on alcohol.

Mr. Saleh also advocates enforcing public morality through a modified version of Saudi Arabia's religious police. Anyone who curses religion on the streets and any spouses caught kissing would be arrested.

"In Islam, a man doesn't have the right to kiss his wife in public, unless he was away and just returned, so the law needn't be applied in the airports or train stations," said Mr. Saleh, a father of four and grandfather of two.

Turning Egypt into an Islamic state is an interim goal along the way to recreating the Islamic empire, or caliphate, of 1,000 years ago, with the modern version mirroring something like the European Union.

The mere fact that the Brotherhood could hold rallies for hours and hang huge banners in the streets flaunting its symbol - two crossed swords over the Koran - is a sea change. Previous campaigns were hurried affairs of rushing around whispering "Islam is the Solution" in cafes for at most 20 minutes lest the police arrive.

This time, some of Mr. Saleh's attack lines bring guffaws from the faithful. He vows that before Muslim Brotherhood members sit in Parliament, seats formerly occupied by the governing party will be scrubbed seven times, once with sand. The listeners know this is the religious formula for purifying objects fouled by exposure to something ritually unclean, like dogs.

The Government Candidate

A rally by Mr. Saleh's governing party rival, Khalid Abu Ismael, a millionaire food exporter, seemed pallid after the revival meeting atmosphere of the Muslim Brotherhood. Some in the audience said they were government employees ordered to attend.

Mr. Abu Ismael is typical of the wealthy businessmen that Gamal Mubarak, the president's son and potential heir, has gathered into a 140-member policy council for the governing party.

The basic thrust of much of its reform program is harnessing the private sector to modernize Egypt, with the governing party running slick television campaign advertisements showing beaming Egyptians cavorting along well-scrubbed streets perhaps found in Sweden.

"We can't say anything has actually changed, but I feel like they are starting to," Mr. Abu Ismael said in an interview over chocolate cake in the neatly pruned back garden of his splendid mansion.

The genial mogul said he had received some 7,000 job requests while campaigning and had managed to place 650 people. He expressed shock at the living conditions in some of the poorer reaches of the district. He wanted to run in a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold because he resented its attitude. "I don't like their slogan 'Islam Is the Solution,' as if they are the only Muslims in this country," he said.

He and many others are convinced that if the government really tackled social ills, much of the Brotherhood's support would evaporate. The most vocal complaints from voters condemn their abysmal surroundings despite years of governing party promises to fix unpaved streets, overflowing sewage systems, undrinkable water, utter lack of garbage collection and the like.

Mr. Saleh and most Brotherhood members are often the very community members who found neighborhood collectives to treat nagging ills, indeed the only political group active on the streets.

In his neighborhood, for example, he helped establish a local health insurance system by which poorer families paid half their medical costs, with richer benefactors underwriting the difference. During Ramadan, his charitable organization distributes free food.

"Everything they do is very well organized," said Tahani Abdul Raouf, a homemaker with five children who attended the women's rally. "Anything we ask for, we get. They are very respectable people, very efficient people."

Not all fervent believers support the Brotherhood, of course. Some view democracy as a Western innovation and therefore a sin. It is the younger generation in the Brotherhood - more engaged and open-minded - who have plunged into the political process. The Brotherhood, the only significant opposition in the elections, limited itself to fielding about 150 candidates to avoid an overwhelming victory that might prompt a harsh crackdown, repeating the horrifying Algerian experience in the 1990's. There, the Islamists gained power through elections, which the government promptly annulled, setting off a civil war.

Essam el-Erian, a key strategist, thinks 75 percent of the Brotherhood's votes were from staunch supporters while the rest were protest votes against the governing party. Other analysts argue the reverse is true, but exact numbers are elusive.

In a typical interview after one of Mr. Saleh's rallies, an English-speaking engineer said he was voting for the Brotherhood as the best hope for change. Though he supports its conservative social agenda, Ashraf Omar, 40, said he feared replacing a secular dictatorship with a religious one.

"We want a system in the future where all the people can state their opinion, where they can change the government when they want to," Mr. Omar said.

The Future of Democracy

Opponents question just how committed the Brotherhood is to democracy given the civil rights disasters wrought by Islamic governments in Iran, Sudan and Afghanistan under the Taliban.

At least in the short run, both opponents and supporters of the Brotherhood expect that the election results are probably healthy for political life. The People's Assembly has been a sleepy place, with members rarely showing up, and the secular parties with their aging leaders and ideas captured fewer than a dozen seats.

If the political process is more vibrant, more people will vote, which conversely might diminish the weight of the Brotherhood, analysts believe. Other parties might also emerge to erode the Brotherhood's appeal as the sole opposition force.

"We have not been able to face this dilemma for so many years," said Muhammad Kamal, a key political strategist in the governing party and a political science professor at Cairo University. "Now we have to confront it, it's in our faces. You cannot have a true democracy in Egypt without reaching some kind of accommodation between religion and politics."

Some experts believe that it is the Brotherhood that will be forced to adapt, not Egypt. Gamal al-Banna, 85 and the youngest brother of the movement's founder, has long harbored doubts that Islam in the era of Prophet Muhammad provides a viable model for a modern government.

"Their spirit is not the spirit of the age, they want to live as the prophet lived," Mr. Banna said. "The real test of the Brotherhood is to let it enter politics. They will be in a different situation when they confront the necessities of ruling, and there are only two possible outcomes. They will have to compromise or fail."
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:40 AM
:sl:

The King delivered the remarks at the opening of the third extraordinary summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Makkah, Saudi Arabia.

“Let us bid farewell to the age of division and disintegration in order to usher in a new era of unity and dignity,” King Abdullah said. “I look forward to a united Muslim ummah [community] and good governance that eliminate injustice and oppression for the sake of the comprehensive Muslim development that eradicates destitution and poverty.”

The King denounced extremism and stressed that unity must be achieved through tolerance, not bloodshed.

“How painful that the ideology sprouted forth by criminal minds has unleashed wanton evil and corruption on earth,” he said. “Islamic unity will not be achieved by bloodletting as the miscreants – in their misguided waywardness – insist on claiming. Fanaticism and extremism cannot grow on an earth whose soil is embedded in the spirit of tolerance, moderation, and balance.”

The two-day summit was convened in response to a call by King Abdullah. Its goals include strengthening Islamic unity to fight common challenges, developing a plan for reforming the OIC, and addressing the issues of disaster relief, poverty and disease
Reply

~Raindrop~
12-08-2005, 10:50 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
jazakallah for that sis, i read the last one but not the one above that becasue it is too long and the colour makes my eyes go funny
wasalam
salaam
same here bro...
jazakilllah for sharing tho sis :)
wassalaam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 10:50 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
jazakallah for that sis, i read the last one but not the one above that becasue it is too long and the colour makes my eyes go funny
wasalam
:sl:
Oh okay. Ill change the colour then. Others may want to read it and may feel the colour puts them off. JazakAllah for pointing that out brother.

Allah ma3ak


:sl:

Colour has been changed.

Allah ma3akum
Reply

Bittersteel
12-08-2005, 01:19 PM
Ameera I admit I heard a lot of bad things concerning Saudi Arabia.You know there are threats to Saudi kingdom,western military agression.The last thing I want is a secular country in Arabia.

now I just wanted to know how true such allegations are and I just asked you.

thanks.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-08-2005, 01:30 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Abrar
Ameera I admit I heard a lot of bad things concerning Saudi Arabia.You know there are threats to Saudi kingdom,western military agression.The last thing I want is a secular country in Arabia.

now I just wanted to know how true such allegations are and I just asked you.

thanks.

:sl:
Firstly. the name is Ameeratul layl

Secondly, I dont understand your question.

Thirdly, this is a news thread....not debate thread. THEREFORE, make a thread of your own about ur little query, and Ill try to answer it.inshAllah.

Allah ma3ak
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-12-2005, 08:48 AM
:sl:

Iraq has a future, but cost is great




SADDAM Hussein and his secular, socialist-minded Baath Party shared Iraq's oil wealth with his people more generously than, say, Saudi Arabia. He built roads and schools and brought in electricity. Iraq had one of the highest literacy rates in the Arab world. He spent generously to help agriculture and public health. He contained the clerical power, and he promoted literature and art. He also provided citizens with subsidized homes and cheap energy. Gasoline was plentiful and cheaper than water.
Women participated in society almost on an equal level with men.

Since the Shiites form a large majority, it is their religious commitments that are now bound to dominate. For Shiites, religion and politics seem to be inseparable. This is not good news for democracy to take root. It is not good news for women, and the chances are slim that Iraq will remain a secular society.

Baghdad was known for centuries as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Baghdad was the center of an ancient Muslim civilization, famous for its architecture, arts and culture. It was known as the "City of Peace," a city of parks, gardens, mosques and marble palaces.

Baghdad has lived through years of bombing and sanctions. Today Baghdad is in decay and one of the most dangerous cities to live in. The city has been turned into a war zone, marked by burned-out buildings and barbed wire. Daily explosions can be heard while U.S. tanks are roaming the streets.

Many small cities met the same fate and were left devastated. They smell of sewage and corpses. There is no water and no electricity. Mangled cars give testimony to what were once cities throbbing with life.

Today there is little electricity, water, or gasoline. There are daily power failures, and there are long lines waiting to fill up while the richest oil fields are just down the street.

In 1991, during the years of United Nations-imposed sanctions, Saddam Hussein introduced free food rations that went to the rich and poor alike. There were monthly food rations of sugar, beans, rice, cooking oil, flour, powdered milk and tea. More than half of Iraqis live below the poverty line and depended on these monthly food baskets for sheer survival. One of the many edicts Paul Bremer, U.S. Envoy to Iraq, left behind was to stop these subsidized monthly food rations. Today hunger and the threat of starvation is part of Iraqis' daily life.

To be an Iraqi policeman is the most dangerous job today, but with a 65 percent unemployment rate and large families to feed, they have no choice but to volunteer for the Iraqi police force, even if it may cost them their lives. In spite of repeated attacks and carnage at recruitment centers, new volunteers continue to line up.

Although Saddam Hussein was responsible for his share of massacres, they were carried out against those who posed a danger to his power. He was predictable. Most average Iraqis who remained politically uninvolved lived a comparably decent life.

What makes today's situation so nerve-racking is that insurgents can strike, maim and kill anytime and anywhere. Violence has become part of daily life. Nobody is safe, not even children crowding around soldiers who are handing out candy. The government can't provide security, not even for themselves, as insurgents target and assassinate their members.

The devastating casualties of the Iraqi people (whom we are supposedly liberating) are not part of the news. Only an occasional poignant picture showing blood-drenched bandages hanging from mangled bodies, and women and men crying out in grief at the loss of a family member bear testimony to their trauma. These pictures make a mockery of the claim that the Iraqi people are better off now that Saddam Hussein is gone. American troops are now faced with the unnerving truth that their very presence motivates the insurgents they seek to crush.

Yes, Iraq has a future, but the human cost of this war that the Iraqis did not ask for will be great. Life will go on, the suffering will go on, the dying will go on. But sometime in the future this nightmare will be increasingly more remote, and eventually the war in Iraq will take its place in history books as one of the many human tragedies.

Hannah Naiditch is a freelance

writer living in Altadena.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-12-2005, 08:49 AM
:sl:

Analysis: Saudi king seeking leading role in Arab worldBy Claude Salhani
UPI International Editor
Published December 8, 2005


JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia's new king, Abdullah, is vying for a leading role in the Arab world, hoping to steer Arabs and Muslims out of troubled waters, away from terrorism and to eradicate misconceptions within Islam.

"The recent manifestation of extremism, violence and terrorism that are plaguing Muslims and non-Muslims alike has alarmed Saudi Arabia and made it clear that an endemic problem currently exists in the Islamic world," said the king in a "highly confidential" policy document made available to United Press International.


The document was drawn up as leaders of the Islamic world, responding to an invitation from Abdullah, convened in Mecca Dec. 7 and 8 for an extraordinary summit within the framework of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

"King Abdullah realizes that at no other time in history has the Islamic world been so leaderless," Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security adviser told UPI.

Abdullah recognizes Saudi Arabia's "great responsibility of moral leadership" in the Arab and Islamic world, and as such, hopes to assume a leading role in guiding the Muslim world through the multitude of problems it is facing today, said Obaid.

The Saudi king believes "a vast majority of Muslim countries today face political, economic and social underdevelopment that has evolved into a major crisis." The king is concerned by the "diminishing position of Muslims in the international arena." He made reference to the incapacity of Arabs and Muslims to prevent the invasion of Iraq war and their inability to influence peace in the aftermath of the invasion.

As king, Abdullah realizes he has the tools and the power to take over the leadership of the Arab and the Islamic world. Some of these tools come in the form of dollars earned from the rising price of oil. As the world's largest oil-producing nation, the kingdom has no shortfall of hard cash to distribute around and buy itself influence and friends, and quite possibly a seat at the head of the table.

Pakistan, for example, just saw its financial aid package from Saudi Arabia rise from $550 million to a whopping billion-dollar plus.

Calling for unity among Muslims, Abdullah lashed out at al-Qaida terrorists for "unleashing evil and corruption on earth and urged Islamic leaders meeting in Mecca to fight terrorism jointly."

In his address to the leaders of the OIC, Abdullah asked Muslim countries to open a new era of strength and unity by setting aside differences. He urged Islamic leaders to work together to bring about an end to extremism. Instead, the king asked that Muslim leaders work together to project the "beauty of Islamic tolerance."

Abdullah told his fellow Muslim leaders, most of who were in attendance, to stop "sitting as helpless observers" but to join the fight against international terrorism.

Saudi Arabia has in the past been the target of homegrown terrorism. Islamist groups said to be affiliated with Osama bin Laden, a former Saudi citizen, have carried out a wave of terror bombings, kidnappings and attacks against security forces and civilians in the kingdom. But decisive -- though initially delayed -- action by Saudi authorities has practically eradicated the dissident revolt. December will mark one year without any terrorist attack in the kingdom.

One Saudi intelligence analyst described the current status of al-Qaida in the kingdom as "destroyed but not exterminated."

In his quest for regional leadership, Abdullah, according to an adviser, will give "top priority to solving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute." Commenting on the coming elections in Israel, the Saudi king said of Israel's Labor candidate Amir Peretz, "We think he is a man of peace." A highly unusual statement from a member of the Saudi royal family regarding an Israeli politician.

The Saudi king has recognized the fact the Israeli-Palestinian dispute remains at the center of much of the Arab world's anger and that groups such as al-Qaida use the Palestinian issue as a recruiting poster.

Obaid told UPI the king will make "huge investments in the Palestinian areas in order to beef up the economy and to create jobs."

Would the king consider a peace treaty with Israel? "This will happen if all United Nations resolutions are met and if (occupied) territories are returned, including East Jerusalem, which would then become the capital of the future Palestinian state," said Obaid.

"If all conditions of the Abdullah peace initiative are met, Saudi Arabia will recognize Israel," Obaid said during a private discussion in Jeddah.

While still crown prince, Abdullah had put forward an initiative at the Beirut Arab summit in 2002 that became known as the Abdullah peace initiative.

"The king," went on Obaid, "wants to see a viable Palestinian state and he will use all his influence to achieve it." The Saudi security adviser said the king is ready to place Saudi Arabia's financial and international clout, as well as it influence with the United States to help the Palestinian territories climb out of their misery.

Noticeably absent from the summit were two Arab powerhouses -- Egypt and Syria -- who in the past have fought Saudi Arabia for leadership of the Arab world. But urgent domestic problems kept both Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad at home.

Mubarak is faced with severe violence that marred a week of voting in his country, while Assad, preoccupied by the ongoing U.N. investigation into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, feels it would be unwise to leave Damascus at this time.

At 85, Abdullah will certainly have his work cut out for him. He comes, however, with a great advantage over many of his peers. He is reputed to be extremely honest and incorruptible. "He does not own any villas in Marbella," said Obaid.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-12-2005, 08:50 AM
:sl:

Spiritual leader of Chechnya's Arab fighters killed

PARIS (AFP) - A Saudi man who is the purported spiritual leader of Arab fighters in Russia's rebel republic of Chechnya has been killed in fighting, an Internet statement said.

"Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdullah bin Saif al-Jaber al-Buaynayn al-Tamimi, also known as Abu Omar al-Saif, the spiritual guide of the mujahedeen (holy fighters) in Chechnya, was martyred during a fight with the Russians, the enemies of God," said the statement, whose authenticity could not be independently verified.

Other Islamists' sites reported the death of Saif's wife in the same fight.

Meanwhile, another statement posted Saturday on the Internet said that Jaber al-Taifi, deputy of the mujahedeen's emir, the Jordanian Abu Hafs al-Ourdoni, was also killed.

Sheikh Omar, described as the "judicial chief in the Shura (consultative) council" of the mujahedeen, left Saudi Arabia 10 years ago to fight in Chechnya, it said.

The native of Qassim province, north of Riyadh, had issued numerous fatwas (religious edicts) calling for jihad (holy war) and is the author of several video and audio messages including on the war in Iraq.

In April 2004, another Saudi Abdul Aziz al-Ghamdi, also known as Abu Walid, who was considered by Russian intelligence as the chief of Arab fighters, was killed in Chechnya.

Ghamdi succeeded Arab warlord "Khattab," who was also Saudi-born, after he was killed two years ago.

Saudi Arabia's hardline Wahhabite brand of Islam has a strong following among Chechen rebels fighting Russian authority in the Caucasus republic since 1994.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-12-2005, 08:52 AM
:sl:


UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: Red Crescent continues work in Iraq under difficult circumstances
ABU DHABI, 11 December (IRIN) - At a time when very few aid agencies are able to operate within Iraq, the United Arab Emirates' Red Crescent Association (RC) says the risks are high but that they will continue to assist the needy with a small team of workers inside the country.

"The situation is extremely dangerous and it is a challenge, but we are able to operate due to the trust and reputation we have managed to build for ourselves there," UAE Red Crescent Secretary General, Sana'a Darwish Al-Kitby, told IRIN from its Abu Dhabi headquarters.

As well as delivery of much needed relief items from the UAE, an office has also been established in Baghdad, with some four staff members supported by the UAE embassy in the Iraqi capital.

"We are assisting in all parts of the country when requested by the government. We do not discriminate against the different ethnic groups, we will assist anyone in need," she stressed.

Al-Kitby herself visited Iraq once in October 2003 and described the situation as very demanding. "The purpose of my visit was to get first hand knowledge of the humanitarian situation in Iraq and to visit the ongoing UAE Red Crescent operations in the country."

"The UAE Red Crescent needs to continue its cooperation with the Iraqi people," the dynamic secretary general added.

So far, some US $35 million has been spent on Iraq since the RC entered to assist prior to the April 2003 war.

Supplies such as medicine, vaccines, blankets, tents and food items such as dates, rice and sugar, as well as first aid kits have been delivered. In addition, generators for hospitals and water treatment plants across the country have also been provided.

Al-Kitby pointed out that the association was now assisting in more than 100 countries world-wide, with an annual budget of 10 million AED (US $ 2.7 million).

Some 70 injured Iraqis have been brought into the UAE for urgent medical treatment since the 2003 war started due to the lack of skilled doctors and medical facilities in Iraq. Another 300 Iraqis in the UAE have been assisted with shelter and voluntary repatriation to their homeland.

"We coordinated with the ICRC and made sure that we were in Iraq in time for the crisis. This was important to us as they [Iraq] are also a neighbour of ours," she added.

Speaking about ongoing collaboration with other aid agencies, she said: "The UAE Red Crescent is still exploring other means and partners to work with, to be able to deliver its humanitarian mandate not only in Iraq, but all over the world without regard to race, religion or nationality."
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-12-2005, 08:53 AM
:sl:

China enjoys good image in Arab nations



The whole image of China has surpassed that of the United States, Russia and India in the public minds of some Arab nations, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, since this year the US image has been worsened greatly, according to a poll released by US-based Zogby International on Wednesday.

Zogby International made a public-opinion poll concerning the images of the four nations, involving China, the United States, Russia and India, in the six countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Morocco in October this year.

The result shows that those who hold an favorable opinion of China are 70 per cent in Egypt, 68 per cent Jordan, 52 per cent Morocco, 46 per cent Lebanon, and 40 per cent in Saudi Arabia.

The report says that the US image has continued to turn worse due to the Iraqi War, the US attitude towards Arabians and Moslems since the begging of this year. More than 80 per cent of those surveyed in Egypt and Saudi Arabia said that the US image in their minds continued to turn worse. Sixty per cent of those surveyed in Jordan had a negative public image towards the United States. The proportions in Morocco and the United Arab Emirates were 72 and 58 per cent respectively.

A well-known public-opinion polling institution in the world, Zogby International has been tracking public opinion since 1984 in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. Its survey reports have enjoyed a wide and acknowledged international authority
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:21 AM
:sl:

We Must Sort Internal Differences First’



ABHA, 15 December 2005 — The second day of the Fifth National Dialogue Forum entitled “Us and Others” addressed whether Saudis should work out differences among themselves before moving to the question of dialogue with non-Saudis.

“How can we indulge in a dialogue with the others if we ourselves are scattered into different groups,” Sheikh Hasan Al-Nimer, a Shiite scholar from the Eastern Province, told Arab News yesterday.

Al-Nimer suggested that Saudis ought to recognize the existence of a variety of Islamic schools of thought inside the Kingdom.

But on the other hand, other participants were upset at what they believe deviations from the main theme of the forum.

“I believe raising the issue of differences among us is an exaggeration,” religious scholar Mohsen Al-Awaji told Arab News, adding that this was not a forum for addressing internal disagreements. He stressed the need for Saudis to express unity during a time of great change happening outside the country’s borders.

Al-Awaji said King Abdullah himself had requested a national debate at last week’s Makkah summit regarding the presence of different Islamic schools in the country and the Muslim world.

The forum kicked off yesterday by addressing the third topic of the agenda: The role of civil society in building relations between Saudis and outsiders.

Much of the day was devoted toward forming a national vision to regulate the way Saudis are to deal with others.

The participants debated all issues that they thought had a major role in establishing healthy relationships with the world, especially in the areas of media and education. Salman Al-Hatlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia, called for allowing foreign media to set up bureaus in the Kingdom.

“We have nothing to hide,” he said. “And I think the Western media have the right to establish main offices in cities like Jeddah and Riyadh. That would certainly benefit us greatly.”

Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Humayed, president of all courts in Tabuk region, agreed with Al-Hatlan, saying that no one should object to hosting others in our country. But he also made it clear that this must be done in accordance with Shariah regulations.

Another participant criticized the local media and blamed them for not playing a better role in delivering the true perspective of Saudis to the West.

The dean of a girls’ college in Najran, Nora Al-Mehbad, said that there were obvious holes in the performance of the media.

“Our media need to renew their methods. The Saudi media have become unable to show a more positive picture about our country,” said Al-Mehbad.

Dalal Diaa from Jeddah radio refuted this criticism of Saudi media by saying that “successful media cannot be done without sufficient financial backing, which we lack in the Kingdom.”

The forum participants also explored the issue of gender in their discussions yesterday and its relationship to how Saudis interact with outsiders.

Author Badriya Al-Bisher said that to build a healthy relationship with women on the other side, the situation inside the Kingdom has to be corrected at all levels.

“The participation of women has to expand,” said Al-Bisher. “Until recently, women were even denied pensions, and they still cannot participate in the Shoura Council or municipal elections.”

Riyadh Sheikh Mousa ibn Abdul Aziz agreed with Al-Bisher and accused extremists of excluding women from participation in civic affairs.

Regarding education, many speakers said Saudi Arabia must boost its participation in international exchange programs. Mona Al-Dameg, from the girls’ educational college in Qassim, said there should be special scholarships in our universities for Muslims who are minorities in their respective countries and that the government should participate in sending Saudis to study in foreign countries in order to benefit from different cultures.

Hussein Shobokshi, an economic consultant from Makkah, said Islamic universities in the Kingdom are in great need of support, as they failed to communicate with Muslims, let alone non-Muslims.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:22 AM
:sl:

178 Municipal Councils Are Formed Across Saudi Arabia


JEDDAH, 15 December 2005 — Saudi Arabia yesterday announced the formation of 178 municipal councils across the country as part of political reforms introduced by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, aimed at increasing participation of the public in the decision-making process.

“I have the pleasure to announce the completion of the formation of the municipal councils with the grace of God and with the instructions of King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan,” said Prince Miteb, minister of municipal and rural affairs, while announcing the names of both elected and nominated members.

The announcement came eight months after landmark municipal elections that were held to pick half the members of 178 municipal councils. A total of 592 people have been elected through the polls, which started in the Riyadh region on Feb. 10, 2005.

Saudis in the Eastern and Southern regions went to polls on March 3 in the second phase while those in the Western and Northern regions voted in the final phase on April 21.

Prince Miteb said the “free and fair” municipal elections drew world applause, including the appreciation of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “I take this opportunity to commend the maturity and understanding displayed by our citizens by exercising their right to vote,” he said.

The minister urged the elected and appointed members of the councils to work hard with responsibility for the development of their respective areas. “Not only the citizens but also the whole world are monitoring your performance,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted the prince as saying.

The ministry has created a separate department to provide a broad framework within which the municipal councils will function, according to Dr. Ibrahim Al-Quayid, an elected member of the Riyadh Municipal Council.

The following are the members of Riyadh Municipal Council: The Riyadh mayor, Dr. Ibrahim Al-Quayid, Dr. Suleiman Al-Rashoudi, Dr. Saud Al-Namir, Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Humaid, Abdullah Al-Suwailem, Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Omari, Abdullah Al-Obaikan, Abdullah Al-Suwailem, Omar Basudan, Tarek Al-Qassabi, Dr. Farhat Tashkandi, Mashari Muammar and Dr. Misfer Al-Bawaredi.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:23 AM
:sl:

Aramco’s Operating Plan for Next Year Approved



JEDDAH, 15 December 2005 — Saudi Aramco has approved its operating plan for next year, anticipating a 61 percent increase in the number of development wells drilled in 2006 to support current production and future increase in demand, an official statement said yesterday.

“Due to an unprecedented corporate push to increase oil output to help meet burgeoning global demand, Saudi Aramco’s new operating plan anticipates that the company’s drilling-rig fleet will be more than double from year-end 2004 through 2006,” the statement said. The company also plans to carry out four mega-projects and seek new business opportunities in petrochemicals and other derivative products to further develop the Kingdom’s industrial base, provide new jobs for Saudis and stimulate economic growth, the statement said.

Saudi Aramco’s executive committee, chaired by its CEO Abdallah S. Jum’ah, “approved the operating plan, net direct expenditures budget and manpower budget for 2006, all anticipating a significant surge in activities in all the company’s operations,” the statement said.

The committee expressed satisfaction with the company’s achievements in 2005, given the volatile business and energy markets. It also stressed the need to place a top priority on safety in the coming year: “There can be no compromises when it comes to the safety of our operations and our people.”

Abdullah Al-Saif, senior vice president for exploration and production, said the operating plan was based on the company’s 2006-2010 business plan, which focuses on increasing Saudi Aramco’s contribution to the Kingdom’s revenues and on actively promoting development of the local economy.

He commended the efforts of Aramco employees in strengthening the company.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:24 AM
:sl:

STC Official Blames Network Upgrades for SMS Onslaught


JEDDAH, 15 December 2005 — Due to network upgrades, Al-Jawal customers over the past week have been experiencing an onslaught of repeated incoming SMS messages. Messages sent between mobile phone subscribers were being repeated and sent up to five times per message.

“My first concern was that my friends were being charged four or five times to send the same message,” Patrick, 32, told Arab News. “When I messaged them to tell them, they told me my message was also repeated. I tried to call Al-Jawal to find out what this was costing us, but the automated system put me on hold for 15 minutes then disconnected. I wasn’t able to get through to anyone to find out.”

Shams, another customer who has been experiencing the same technical difficulty thought the problem was with his phone. “I thought my phone had a virus so I took it in to be checked. When I picked it up it was still doing the same thing,” he told Arab News.

Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, a customer service representative at Al-Jawal, told Arab News that customers need not worry about their phones as this was a network problem that is being resolved.

“What is happening is that due to network upgrades the network is not registering that the message has been delivered, so it stays bouncing around, until it is registered as being delivered. Customers are only being charged once, not three, four, or five times,” Al-Ghamdi said.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:26 AM
:sl:

Pilgrims Evacuated After Hotel Fire


MADINAH, 15 December 2005 — About 800 Indonesian pilgrims staying in the Dallah Hotel in Madinah were evacuated following a fire that broke out in a room on the third floor, said Maj. Gen. Saleh Al-Mehwas, director of civil defense in the Madinah region.

“All guests of the hotel were evacuated without causing any injuries,” Al-Mehwas said.

He commended the efforts of firefighters in quickly containing the blaze before it expanded to other floors.

Informed sources told Arab News that the fire started as a result of electricity short-circuit. The civil defense department has launched an investigation.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
12-15-2005, 11:26 AM
salam
lol, talk about bad network
sis, you got any info on sheikh ali jabir?
wasalam
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:27 AM
:sl:

Explosives Seized at Riyadh Villa


JEDDAH, 15 December 2005 — Saudi security forces have seized large quantities of explosives and chemicals at a villa in Riyadh, newspapers reported yesterday.

Home-made bombs, weapons, chemical products, computers and leaflets inciting violence were among the items seized, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported, citing an unnamed security source.

Police also found materials used for making explosives as well as computers, another report said.

The two-floor villa is located on Shakir ibn Abubakar Street in King Faisal District. Witnesses said security forces cordoned off the area from 3 to 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday.

Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman of the Interior Ministry, commended a Saudi citizen for informing police about the villa.

“It seems some of the deviants have been using the villa as their hideout for about five months,” said Al-Turki.

Earlier this month, the ministry announced the arrest of 17 militants suspected of belonging to the Al-Qaeda network during raids in Riyadh, Al-Kharj to the south and Al-Majmaa to the north.

Saudi Arabia has launched successful campaigns against Al-Qaeda militants blamed for a series of bombings and shootings across the country since May 2003. According to official figures, at least 90 civilians, 50 security personnel and 121 militants have died since the unrest began.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:28 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by metsudaistwice
salam
lol, talk about bad network
sis, you got any info on sheikh ali jabir?
wasalam

:sl:
I have checked on MSN search and google....I am going to check on Al jazeera inshAllah. 2 mins brother, allow me to post the last news bulletin.:)

Allah ma3akum
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:29 AM
:sl:
SubhanAllah, I was talking about this the other day.:)


Let the Children Choose: NSHR on Custody Disputes

JEDDAH, 15 December 2005 — The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has presented a proposal dealing with child custody to the Council of Ministers. The proposal seeks to allow children who have been victims of domestic violence to choose where they want to live.

The proposal suggests that in the case of divorced parents, a child should live with the parent who can provide a healthy environment, physically and psychologically.

“The proposal accords with the Children’s Rights Agreement which is concerned with offering the child the best living circumstances. The proposal suggests that when parents divorce, custody of the children goes to the best-qualified parent,” said Dr. Hussain Al-Sharif, a member of the Inspection and Follow-up Committee of the NSHR.

The Investigation and Prosecution Agency, in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs, decides where the child should live after studying the circumstances, he said.
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-15-2005, 11:34 AM
:sl:
Nope sorry...no news about Shaykh Ali Jabbir.

Allah ma3akum
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-16-2005, 12:53 PM
:sl:


I give permission to my dear brothers and sisters to take over my role as the 'Li Reporter'. You may enjoy 21 days of reporting about the Arab World.Dont get too happy, its only until My holidays are over -21 days.

ENJOY!!!

Allah ma3akum
P.S: Dont make a mess of things:playing: ...Ill be back (InshAllah).
Reply

Ameeratul Layl
12-26-2005, 02:38 PM
:salambox: Akh! :omg: Ya Rab!! No one has been updating my news section..*begins to sob*...after all I have done for you children!


:giggling: Im only joking...though u have all made me rather sad about my 'non updated' thread. *how could they*


Never mind, its :alright: Ill do it wen I come back :inshallah :amin:

WAllah! Mods....u are doing an :awesome: job with these adorable smilies...they are getting cute by the day.

Well, I hope that some sweet/kind person will take on my job...u beta:rant: *loooollll*

Anyway, do take care...and mods...dont edit/delete this post....i may never interact with u again.*man...I love giving the sob story:coolious:*

:salambox:
Reply

swanlake
01-05-2006, 12:07 PM
Pilgrim hostel collapses in Mecca

A building housing Muslim pilgrims in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia has collapsed.
Reports say there are dozens of dead and injured.

The four-storey building collapsed, with reports from the United Arab Emirates saying people were killed as rubble fell onto the streets.

More than a million Muslims have arrived in Mecca for the Haj, a five-day-long Islamic ritual attracting pilgrims from around the world.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4584058.stm

Innaalillaahi Wa iNa Ilaahi raajicuun.
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
01-05-2006, 12:09 PM
salam
may allah grant those who have lost thier lives the highest status in jannah and may allah reward them for thier efforts
Innaalillaahi Wa iNa Ilaahi raajioon
wasalam
Reply

S_87
01-05-2006, 12:10 PM
:sl:

inna lillahi wa inna ilayee rajioun :(

but such a blessed time and place to pass away. :wub:
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
01-05-2006, 12:12 PM
salam
at the time of hajj and in the blessed and holy city of makkah
wasalam
Reply

afriend
01-05-2006, 12:14 PM
My cousins arein Makkah.........I wonder if they are ok..........Allah please do what is best for them.........Allah please give the families of those deceased peace and blessings...Ameen.
Reply

hidaayah
01-05-2006, 12:23 PM
Assalam u Alaikum..
inna lillahi wa' inna ila'hi raj'ioon..
Ameen to all the duas..
wassalam
Reply

Khaldun
01-05-2006, 12:39 PM
:sl:

Threads merged
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
01-05-2006, 12:41 PM
salam
Dubai's ruler Maktoum is buried

Sheikh Maktoum died on Wednesday at the age of 62, while visiting Australia.
Thousands of mourners, including Arab leaders, gathered at the Zabeel mosque in Dubai, for funeral prayers. He was then interred at the city's cemetery.
Sheikh Maktoum was perhaps best known internationally for his involvement in horse-racing, was also PM and vice- president of the United Arab Emirates.
He had been Dubai's ruler since 1990 but had largely handed over day-to-day control of the emirate to his brother, Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who succeeds him as emir of Dubai.
Sheikh Mohammed has been the UAE defence minister since 1971 and heir apparent to the throne of Dubai since 1995. He has also been confirmed as prime minister and vice-president of the UAE.

Graveside
Correspondents say the normally bustling city was eerily quiet as about 4,500 white-robed Emiratis participated in the funeral prayer. In accordance with Islamic custom, Sheikh Maktoum's body was wrapped in white cloth on a plain wooden stretcher.

The mourners included King Abdullah II of Jordan, the crown princes of Qatar and Morocco, Kuwait's deputy prime minister, Sheik Nawwaf Al Ahmed Al Sabah, and the Duke of Gloucester, who represented Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.
At the graveside, Sheik Mohammed supervised relatives as they lowered the body into the grave and covered it with sand. A small plain headstone was erected.


New Amir The new Emir, Sheikh Mohammed has been largely responsible for the phenomenal growth and development of the city in recent years, but with Sheikh Maktoum's blessing.

The BBC's Julia Wheeler in Dubai says Sheikh Mohammed is one of the most formidable and impressive sheikhs within the UAE, something which has sparked envy as well as admiration by some in other emirates.
The UAE's supreme council must approve a successor to Sheikh Maktoum as vice-president and prime minister of the federation of seven emirates. This may happen as early as Thursday. There has been a long term understanding that both posts are held by Dubai, although officials say the constitution does not specify this, our correspondent says.

'Historic leader'
Sheikh Maktoum was staying at a luxury hotel on Queensland's Gold Coast when he died.
"The United Arab Emirates [has] lost a historic leader who devoted his life to establishing the United Arab Emirates and enhancing its structure and the welfare of its people," a statement from the UAE's presidency said on Wednesday.
The Ministry of Presidential Affairs from the neighbouring emirate of Abu Dhabi said Sheikh Maktoum had "placed his country's interest over any other considerations".
"He was a model of good behaviour," the statement added. Forty days of national mourning were declared on Wednesday.
wasalam
Reply

MetSudaisTwice
01-06-2006, 03:29 PM
salam

The death toll from a hostel that collapsed in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia has risen to 53.

A Saudi official confirmed the number of deaths after rescuers searched through the night hoping to find trapped survivors.
Rescuers have been using heavy-lifting equipment and sound-detecting gear.
The hostel, just outside Mecca's Great Mosque, fell down on Thursday as people prayed in the nearby streets. At least 64 people were wounded, officials said.
"We may find some more people under the rubble, but we are looking to finish our work today and reopen the road," pilgrimage civil defence force chief Maj Gen Alwani Jeddawi said at the scene.
An interior ministry spokesman said the number of dead could rise even higher. However, rescuers are still hopeful of finding survivors.
"I believe that people are trapped and I still hope to find some survivors," said Brigadier Hamad al-Ahmadi, who oversaw operations through the night.
More than three million Muslims are in the city for the Hajj.
Saudi Red Crescent officials said the dead included pilgrims from Tunisia and Algeria.
The building - on al-Ghazal Street - is only 60m from the walls of the Great Mosque - and was said to have been used by pilgrims from Egypt, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and India.
Prayers The hotel is surrounded by markets and pilgrims had been praying when the incident happened. Reports said at least 30 people were staying there.
Eyewitnesses say they heard a huge cracking sound before the four-storey building toppled onto worshippers streaming out of the eastern gates of the mosque.

The area is still cordoned off as pilgrims continue to flock to the city. Reports said an unnamed official had said the foundations of the hotel had been cracked and weak.

May Allah grant them all the highest status in jannah
wasalam
Reply

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