|
Saudi Arabia
announces that Thursday is the first day of Eid al-Adha
Regional-Saudi Arabia, Religion, 1/15/2005
The Higher judiciary council in Saudi Arabia announced that Eid al-Adha
al-Mubarak falls Thursday, January 20th. The Saudi News agency quoted a
statement by the council that Zee al-Hijja month started on last Tuesday
and therefore standing of pilgrims on the Arafah mountain will be on
Wednesday 19 of the current month ( January).
Earlier several Arab and Islamic countries including Saudi Arabia announced earlier that
standing on Arafah mountain will be on Thursday January 20.
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/980407/1998040721.html
(Muslims all over the world today celebrate Eid
al-Adha after the pilgrims throng Mount Arafat in the Haj's
climax .
The pilgrimage must be made by everybody, man or woman, who can pay his own
expenses and can provide for his dependents during his absence. A woman
must be accompanied by her husband or a male relative.
On arrival at Mecca the
pilgrim sets his ordinary clothes aside and dons the special attire
prescribed for this occasion. The rituals, lasting ten days, end with the
al-Adha feast. The pilgrimage must be performed in the twelfth month of the
lunar year and is consummated on the tenth day of that month. It has drawn
together Moslems of many lands and has to that extent a unifying effect.
….. in Saudi Arabia,
the pilgrimage season is busy, with ….two million pilgrims performing
…. Haj rituals, while they were making their way slowly ………….
to Mount Arafat marking the climax of the
sacred Islamic pilgrimage.
……...
Some pilgrims made their way on foot and others on buses and cars, while
other pilgrims are due to leave Mount Arafat by
sunset to Muzdalifah where they will spend the night sleeping on rugs in
the open.
The pilgrims also collect
pebbles there for ritual of stoning the devil, which will take place this
morning in Jamraat near Mouna, marking the start of Eid al-Adha (the feast
of sacrifice). On this day, Moslems around the world slaughter sheep and
cattle to mark the feast and donate the meat to the poor.)
---------------------
http://www3.kumc.edu/diversity/ethnic_relig/eid-al-adha.html
Eid al-Adha or Feast of
Sacrifice is the most important feast of the Muslim calendar. It concludes
the Pilgrimmage to Mecca. Eid al-Adha lasts for three days and commemorates
Ibraham's (Abraham) willingness to obey God by sacrificing his son. Muslims
believe the son to be Ishmael rather than Isaac as told in the Old
Testament. Ishmael is considered the forefather of the Arabs. According to
the Koran, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven
stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead.
The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience
by sacrificing a cow or ram. The family eats about a third of
the meal and donates the rest to the poor.
-------------------------------
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=679&e=16&u=/usatoday/20050120/cm_usatoday/iseeabrightdaycomingforamerica
'I see a bright day coming for America'
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20050121/ap_on_go_pr_wh/inaugural_rdp
President Bush to Open Ambitious 2nd Term
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated
Press Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites), head bowed in
prayer, on Friday opens an ambitious second term in which he boldly
promises to reshape Social Security (news - web sites) and spark democracy
in the Middle East. His Republican allies say they're eager to begin, while
Democrats vow to resume their fight against "extreme" GOP
policies.
Four days of
celebrations surrounding Bush's inauguration were to culminate Friday with
an hourlong National Prayer Service, following a tradition set by George
Washington. The service, Bush's second visit to church in two days, was to
bring together 3,200 invited family, dignitaries, administration officials
and other guests in the majestic Gothic-style sanctuary of the Washington National
Cathedral.
On the program were
instrumental and choral music and
an interfaith lineup of Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy, all to
help celebrate through prayer the events of the
day before, when Bush placed his hand on a family Bible at the U.S. Capitol
and swore a second time to faithfully execute the office of president and
uphold the Constitution.
On Thursday the
president was on the go all day, from an early morning church appearance to
hours in the cold watching the traditional parade down Pennsylvania Avenue
to a late night dash through 10 black-tie inaugural balls. The only thing
on the president's public schedule for the first day of his second term was
the prayer service.
But there will be
little time for him to rest, with all the tasks he has named as priorities
for himself and the nation:
_Win a war on terror
against shadowy, deadly networks.
_Establish stability
and democracy in Iraq (news - web sites), a deeply divided
country where the American casualty rate has even fellow Republicans urging
Bush to say more about how he will get the United States out.
_Add private
investment accounts to Social Security, through an as-yet-undefined plan
that has many deeply skeptical.
_Simplify a tax code
bloated by thousands of provisions that special-interest patrons will be
loathe to relinquish.
_Limit medical malpractice and class-action jury awards.
_Push a "guest
worker" immigration plan that conservatives in his own party oppose.
For the immediate
future, Bush's list of most-pressing duties include naming someone to the
powerful new post of director of national intelligence, watching the Jan. 30 elections in Iraq and mending
still-frayed relations with Europe during his first overseas trip of his
second term.
"I'm looking
forward to putting my heart and soul into this job for four more
years," he said, making no mention of the legislative battles ahead
over taxes, expanding immigration laws, Social Security, the burgeoning
budget deficit, judges and more.
"We're ready to
go to work," replied Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss., chairman
of the congressional inaugural committee.
Eager to begin, the
GOP-controlled Senate convened at midafternoon Thursday and confirmed Mike Johanns
as secretary of agriculture and Margaret Spellings as secretary of
education, the first of Bush's nine new second-term Cabinet officers to win
approval.
Senate Democrats are
delaying confirmation of Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) as secretary of
state, originally expected on Thursday, until next week. The inauguration, they said, was
only a brief respite in their battle against the GOP majority.
Sen. Charles Schumer
(news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y., chairman
of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told supporters in a
fund-raising e-mail that "when the inauguration bands stop playing and
Congress comes back into session, we Democrats will be on guard and ready
to fight against the Republicans' extreme policies once again."
Bush's inaugural
address was light on specifics and heavy on high-minded symbolism. He
pledged to reform "great institutions to serve the needs of our
time."
He talked of the
spread of freedom and liberty as the oldest ideals of America, and said, "Now it is the
urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our
time."
He promised that U.S. relations with other countries
would turn on how decently they treat their own people. He used the word
"tyranny" five times, "liberty" 15 and
"freedom" 27.
"We are led, by
events and common sense, to one conclusion," Bush said. "The
survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of
liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the
expansion of freedom in all the world."
The only reference to
Iraq was indirect. "Our country has accepted
obligations that are difficult to fulfill and would be dishonorable to abandon,"
he said, mindful of impatience on Capitol Hill and in the public.
Instead, he left it
to his State of the Union address, due for delivery to the nation in less
than two weeks, and his new federal budget, due to Congress on Feb. 7, to
flesh out in more detail his second-term goals and how he intends to
achieve them.
With an approval
rating hovering around 50 percent, the president retakes office in
uncertain times. There are record federal budget deficits, fears of
violence marring Iraq's official transition to democracy, and the ongoing threat of
terrorism at home.
Iran and North Korea (news - web sites) are the source of
growing nuclear tensions. Russia's move away from democratic reforms presents a challenge.
But the economy's
recovery is on solid ground. And Bush won an expanded Republican majority
in both the House and Senate.
---------------------------------------
http://www.jordantimes.com/thu/opinion/opinion3.htm
|
The Jordan Times:
|
|
|
Attacking Iran?
By Gwynne Dyer
|
|
|
|
|
|
Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article about
American forces carrying out reconnaissance missions in Iran to locate
hidden Iranian nuclear facilities, presumably in order to be able to
destroy them all in a surprise attack, may be “riddled with
errors”, as the White House promptly alleged. It may be entirely
true. And either way, it may have been deliberately leaked by the Bush
administration to frighten Iran. But what was really revealing was the US
media response to it.
There seems to be hardly anyone in the
mainstream US media who is willing to question the assumption that
Iranian nuclear weapons would be, say, ten times more dangerous than
Chinese nuclear weapons. Yet China is a totalitarian communist dictatorship while Iran is a partially
democratic country struggling, so far unsuccessfully, to rid itself of
the clique of deeply conservative mullahs who have dominated defence and
foreign policy (together with much else) since 1979. Why is Iran seen as
such a threat?
There was never an equivalent panic at the
prospect of
Chinese nuclear weapons. And it's not just that China was too big to
think of attacking, whereas Iran is just right: 70 million Iranians in a
country three times the size of Iraq is a very big chunk to bite off
militarily, especially since the US already has Iraq on its plate.
It's not even as simple as the fact that Iran is Muslim, and that
Americans have got really twitchy about Muslims with nuclear weapons
since Sept. 11. They have, but there is no public anxiety in the United
States about Pakistan's nuclear weapons, let alone any agitation for some
sort of “preemptive attack” to destroy them — and this
despite the fact that a
senior Pakistani nuclear scientist was caught selling nuclear weapons
technology and knowledge to other Muslim countries, almost certainly with
the complicity of some official circles in Islamabad.
Iran is not a “crazy state”. In the
25 years that the mullahs have been in power, they have not attacked any
neighbouring state. When Iraq invaded Iran
in the 1980s (with American encouragement and support), they fought a
bitter eight-year war to repel the invasion but accepted a negotiated
peace that simply restored the status quo.
They backed their fellow Shiites in southern Lebanon in their long resistance to
the Israeli occupation and continue to help them today — but if
that is support for “terrorism”, it is only in the specific
context of Arab resistance to Israeli military occupation. The only
incident of international terrorism in which there was ever suspicion of
Iranian involvement was the bombing of a American airliner over Lockerbie
in Scotland in 1988, allegedly in retaliation for the shooting down of an
Iranian airliner in the Gulf by a US warship — but the Lockerbie
attack was eventually pinned on Libya instead.
As for the Iranian nuclear weapons programme,
which almost certainly does exist in some form or other, its goal is
presumably to create a deterrent to Israel's hundreds of nuclear weapons.
Since Israel has about a 40-year head-start in nuclear weapons production, Iran cannot realistically hope
to achieve a first-strike capability against it, but even a few Iranian
nuclear weapons that might survive to strike back would effectively remove a nuclear attack on
Iran from Israel's list of options.
Iran's nuclear programme is not about the United
States, and the notion that the Iranian government would give terrorists
nuclear weapons to attack American targets is just paranoid fantasy. Besides,
Iran doesn't have any nuclear weapons yet, and if it sticks to the
agreement it negotiated with the European contact group (Britain, France and
Germany) late last year, it may never have them.
So why this apparent haste in the Bush
administration to attack Iran now, and why the seeming enthusiasm for
such a hare brained project in wide sections
of the US public (or at least of the media that claim to speak in their
name)?
Edward Luttwak, the military historian and
strategic analyst who is renowned in Washington for his maverick views,
recently described US foreign policy post-Sept. 11 almost as an exercise
in emotional physics. Never mind all the elaborate strategic plans and
projects of the
neo-conservatives, he implied; what really drives all this is just
push-back.
After Sept. 11, there was an enormous need in
the US to do something big, to smash stuff up and punish people for the
hurt that had been done to Americans. Afghanistan was a logical and
legitimate target of that anger, but it fell practically without a fight and left the
national need for vengeance unassuaged. The invasion of Iraq was an
emotional necessity if the rage was to be discharged, even though Iraq
had nothing to do with Sept. 11 and posed no threat to the United States.
In this interpretation, all the talk about
attacking Iran is the last wave of this emotional binge running feebly up
the beach, and it is unlikely to sweep everything away. The talk is still
macho, but the performance is not there to back it up. What the US public
gets for all the taxes it pays on defence — currently around $2,000
a year for every American man, woman and child — is armed forces
that are barely capable of holding down one middle-sized Arab country.
There simply aren't any American troops
available to invade Iran, and air strikes will only annoy them. What
would really tip the whole area into an acute crisis is a re-radicalised
Iran that has concluded that it will never be secure until it has
expelled the United States from the region.
The writer is a London-based independent
journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Thursday, January
20, 200
|
|
---------------------------------------
The ram:
Genesis 22
"1": And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
"2": And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom
thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for
a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
"3": And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his
ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave
the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of
which God had told him.
"4": Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw
the place afar off.
"5": And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the
ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you,
"6": And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it
upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they
went both of them together.
"7": And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My
father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and
the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
"8": And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb
for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
"9": And they came to the place which God had told him of; and
Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac
his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.
"10": And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to
slay his son.
"11": And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven,
and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.
"12": And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do
thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou
hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
"13": And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold
behind him a ram
caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and
offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
"14": And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-jireh: as
it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.
"15": And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven
the second time,
"16": And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for
because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine
only son:
"17": That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I
will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is
upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
"18": And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
Daniel, chapter 8
"1": In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision
appeared unto me, even unto me Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at
the first.
"2": And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that
I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw
in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai.
"3": Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold,
there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two
horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up
last.
"4": I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward,
and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there
any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will,
and became great.
"5": And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the
west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the
goat had a notable horn between his eyes.
"6": And he came to the ram that had two
horns, which I had there seen standing before the river, and ran unto him
in the fury of his power.
"7": And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved
with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two
horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before
him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there
was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand.
"8": Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was
strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones
toward the four winds of heaven.
"9": And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed
exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the
pleasant land.
"10": And it waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast
down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon
them.
"11": Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host,
and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down.
"12": And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by
reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it
practised, and prospered.
"13": Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said
unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision
concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to
give both the sanctuary and
the host to be trodden under foot?
"14": And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred
days; then shall the sanctuary
be cleansed.
"15": And it came to pass, when I, even I Daniel, had seen the
vision, and sought for the meaning, then, behold, there stood before me as
the appearance of a man.
"16": And I heard a man's voice between the banks of Ulai, which called,
and said, Gabriel, make this man to understand the vision.
"17": So he came near where I stood: and when he came, I was
afraid, and fell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of
man: for at the time of the end shall be the vision.
"18": Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my
face toward the ground: but he touched me, and set me upright.
"19": And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in
the last end of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end shall
be.
"20": The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the
kings of Media and Persia.
"21": And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great
horn that is between his eyes is the first king.
"22": Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four
kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power.
"23": And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the
transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and
understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.
"24": And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power:
and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and
the holy people.
"25": And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper
in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall
destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he
shall be broken without hand.
"26": And the vision of the evening and the morning which was
told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many
days.
"27": And I Daniel fainted, and was sick certain days; afterward
I rose up, and did the king's business; and I was astonished at the vision,
but none understood it.
|
