Monday 30 January 2012

“Ballack has failed to deliver”

“From Michael Ballack we expected more on a sporting level and he surely expected more from himself,” said Holzhaeuser. -File photo

BERLIN: Bayer Leverkusen playmaker Michael Ballack has failed to deliver in his 20 months at the Bundesliga club after joining in 2010 from Chelsea, club CEO Wolfgang Holzhaeuser said on Friday.

The former Germany captain, who lost his spot in the national team last year after missing the 2010 World Cup through injury, has not always done his part for the good of the team, Holzaeuser told Cologne’s Express newspaper.

“The time has come for all of us to admit that our thoughts of 20 months ago have not been realised,” Holzhaeuser said.

Ballack returned to Leverkusen, with whom he lost in the 2002 Champions League final, with great expectations but failed to hold on to a regular spot due to a string of injuries.

Last season’s Bundesliga runners-up have qualified, however, for the Champions League round of 16 where they face Barcelona, with Ballack contributing a goal and two assists in the six group stage matches.

“From Michael Ballack we expected more on a sporting level and he surely expected more from himself,” said Holzhaeuser.

“He should think about whether his behaviour is for the good of the club. (Sports Director) Rudi Voeller and myself have talked to him this week but unfortunately without success,” Holzhaeuser said.

The 35-year-old was taken off on the hour in their 3-2 win against Mainz 05 last week, shaking his head and refusing to acknowledge coach Robin Dutt.

Ballack has said the current campaign would most likely be his last for Leverkusen but he intended to continue his career for a couple of years longer.

Asian football boss urges lifting of hijab ban

KUALA LUMPUR: Asia’s football chief on Monday urged the game’s top law-making body to lift a controversial ban on headscarves, saying new designs can prevent neck injuries to Muslim women players.

“Many women footballers in Asia wear headscarves,” Asian Football Confederation acting president Zhang Jilong said ahead of a March 3 meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to review the ruling.

“I would like to request the IFAB to favourably consider FIFA’s proposal and review the rule and allow women players to play wearing a safe headscarf that covers the neck,” Zhang said in a statement.

“My colleagues in the AFC Executive Committee strongly support the idea of reviewing the rule and I think it is in the interests of women’s football worldwide.”

IFAB, formed in 1886, discusses and decides on proposed alterations to the laws of football. The body comprises four members from FIFA and four from British associations.

FIFA banned the hijab, or headscarf, in 2007 and has extended the safety rule to include neck warmers.

Several new designs of headscarves are now available, Zhang said.

“I have personally seen the new designs with a velcro joined at the neck which releases if the headscarf is pulled, ensuring the player’s safety.”

Players must back Wenger: Walcott

Robin van Persie and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger. -File photo

LONDON: Arsenal winger Theo Walcott has urged his team-mates to ease the pressure on manager Arsene Wenger after a disappointing run of Premier League defeats.

Wenger faced an open revolt from Arsenal fans last weekend after his substitution of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in the defeat to Manchester United while captain Robin van Persie also expressed his dismay at the decision.

Yet Walcott believes Arsenal’s players must take their share of the blame for a run of results which has put the brakes on the Gunners’ hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League.

“The manager will take all the stick,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “He looks after us. He believes in us.

“As players we need to look at ourselves. We need to take responsibility. The last few games haven’t been good enough.

“The worst thing is we have a lot of regrets. There are games we could have won. When you go to Swansea and score two goals you should win.”

Walcott meanwhile praised the captaincy of van Persie during what has been a difficult season for the club following the departures of Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri last summer.

“We always like to reflect on the game in the dressing room, even at half-time, sharing our feelings on the game,” he said.

“Robin is a great captain who wants to win. He believes in the team and knows the team can do better.”

I will retire at the end of 2012: Carlos

Roberto Carlos. -Photo by AFP

MADRID: Brazilian fullback Roberto Carlos has said he will hang up his football boots at the end of 2012 but continue to work behind the scenes at Russian Premier League club Anzhi Makhachkala.

The World Cup winner with Brazil in 2002, who turns 39 in April, has played for the ambitious and wealthy club from the North Caucasus region since last February, and was their joint-caretaker manager for a spell at the end of last year.

“My contract with Anzhi finishes in June 2013 but in December I have the chance to stop playing,” he told Spanish sports daily Marca on Monday.

“After that I will continue as an assistant to the president Suleiman Kerimov because with him I have a contract for life. He has asked me to help create a structure for the club for the next 10 years.”

Asked to confirm if was going to stop playing in December, he replied: “Yes I am. It is the moment to hang up my boots.

“I have played football for many years and I don’t think my body can stand so much physical work, the travelling, the hotels any more…I have been a professional for 17 years, but have been playing for 22. This is my last year.

“I’m not stopping because I am injured, but because I see my sporting career as complete. I’ve played for Palmeiras, Real Madrid, Inter Milan. I’ve experienced everything as a player.Now I want to rest and spend a little more time with my family.”

Former spin greats heap praises on Saeed, Rehman

"The most heartening aspect of this great triumph was the bowling of Saeed Ajmal and Abdul Rehman." -Photo by Reuters

KARACHI: Former spin greats Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed while paying glowing tribute to Saeed Ajmal and Abdul Rehman on Sunday said that it was a collective team effort that earned Pakistan victory over England in the second Test against England in Abu Dhabi.

Iqbal, the former slow left-armer who captured 171 wickets in a 50-Test career from 1976 to 1988, said the series win against the top-ranked England will turnaround Pakistan cricket and usher the beginning of a new era.

“Obviously one can’t praise the Pakistan team enough after what it did to England the other day. The credit goes to the entire team, but the most heartening aspect of this great triumph was the bowling of Saeed Ajmal and Abdul Rehman,” Iqbal told Dawn.

“After a very long time, the spinners have made a major impact for Pakistan by winning the series. I thought both Saeed and Rehman were simply outstanding and tormented the English batsmen throughout the Test in Abu Dhabi.”

Tauseef, an off-spinner who played 34 Tests and took 93 wickets between 1980 and 1993, said the pre-series hype created by Saeed’s announcement of a teesra delivery played on the minds of the Englishmen and consequently disturbed them which ultimately cost them the series.

“I think it was a master stroke by Saeed Ajmal’s claims [of introducing a new type of delivery] and it clearly caused panic in the opposition camp. The hype led to confusion and when you are in that state of mind you will only invite problems,” the 53-year-old Tauseef observed while speaking to Dawn.

“England’s preparations were in disarray from the onset. Moreover, Pakistan cashed in on their shortcomings against good spin bowling.

“The way Saeed and Rehman exploited the situation was simply too much for England because historically they generally struggle on the types of pitches they play on in the subcontinent. And both Dubai and Abu Dhabi were not different as far as the pitches were concerned,” he added.

When asked to compare Pakistan’s latest win to the one against India in Bangalore in the series-deciding final of the 1987 series, both Iqbal and Tauseef, who claimed nine wickets apiece in the 16-run success, noted that the circumstances were totally different.

“You can’t really draw a comparison. The Bangalore track was like a minefield from the start since the ball spun and behaved abnormally during the entire game. Batting on that sort of pitch was extremely difficult,” Iqbal recalled.

“On top of that we were up against biased umpiring in front of hostile Indian crowd. So one can imagine what we went through then since there was such stuff like neutral umpires and DRS in those days.”

Tauseef backed Iqbal’s assessment and said that this England side doesn’t have the batsmen to match those India had in the 1987 series.

“The Indians were far more experienced and were masters of spin bowling. The likes of Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Mohinder Amarnath, Mohammad Azharuddin etc were far more superior batsmen than the current England lot. They had the technique and temperament to combat the spinners. England sadly lacked these qualities as we have all seen so far,” Tauseef said.

“However, by saying this I don’t mean to belittle the achievements of this Pakistan team which has come of age after all the problems and controversies it faced not long ago. Under Misbah-ul-Haq, the boys are playing like a unit and enjoying each other’s success,” he concluded.

Australia eager to wipe away Ashes pain

Michael Clarke, who took over as captain from Ricky Ponting last March, is at the helm of a reinvigorated team, identifying new potential Test stars, revitalizing the old stagers and working hard towards becoming number one again. -Photo by AFP

SYDNEY: Only months ago, one-time powerhouse Australia were wallowing fifth in the Test rankings but now they are nudging India for third spot after the 4-0 series annihilation of M.S. Dhoni’s men.

The pain of being humiliated at home in the Ashes 12 months ago is still deeply ingrained in the Australians and they are determined to get their act together for another tilt at number one ranked England some 500 days away.

Andrew Strauss’s England team comprehensively outplayed Australia in the 2010-11 series, inflicting an unprecedented three innings defeats on the home side to claim their second consecutive Ashes win.

That prompted a major overhaul of Australian cricket and ushered in a new captain, new coach and a revamped selection panel with a view to restoring Australia to the top of world cricket.

Michael Clarke, who took over as captain from Ricky Ponting last March, is at the helm of a reinvigorated team, identifying new potential Test stars, revitalizing the old stagers and working hard towards becoming number one again.

One-time top ranked India now shade Australia by only a decimal point in third place in the ICC Test rankings after crashing to four huge defeats in their ill-fated series Down Under.

After his team’s thumping 298-win in the fourth Test in Adelaide last weekend, Clarke was asked how he would rate Australia’s chances if they had to play England next week.

“Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about it. I wouldn’t have a clue. I look forward to playing them when we get there but right now I’m just enjoying this success against India, to be honest,” he said.

“There’s a long way to go before we have to play England and there’s a lot of hard work we have to put in as a team before we even have to worry about that.”

Australia struggled to dismiss England regularly in the Ashes, but against India the bowlers were a revelation.

Under the influence of new bowling coach Craig McDermott, Ashes flops Ben Hilfenhaus and Peter Siddle were far and away the top bowlers of the India series, with 27 and 23 wickets respectively, while youngster James Pattinson took 11 wickets in two Tests before injury.

Pattinson has been fast-tracked into the Test side along with teenage speed merchant Patrick Cummins, who put in a man-of-the-match performance on debut against world number two South Africa in November, before suffering a foot injury.

After an Ashes series where Australia struggled to build a solid platform at the top of the innings, Twenty20 specialist David Warner has exploded on to the Test scene with two thumping centuries in his first five Tests as opener.

Ed Cowan replaced the technically-flawed Philip Hughes in the other opening slot and averaged 34.33 with two half-centuries in the India series, while 162-Test veteran Ponting has enjoyed a sparkling return to form.

But there is more ahead for the recharged Australians, says Clarke, who against India became the first skipper to score a triple century and a double hundred in the same series, and was justifiably named man of the series.

“We sit fourth on the ICC rankings. Right now we’re not the number one Test team in the world so it’s about us trying to become better every single match,” Clarke said.

“We will continue like we have done my whole career to look at other teams and see their strengths and weaknesses and see where we can improve.

“That’s been no different my whole career, whether we’ve been the number one team in the world or we sit in the number four spot.

“I think we’re playing really well as a group, but we have a lot of work still to do to achieve what we want to achieve.”

Clarke, who with new coach Mickey Arthur is now part of the selection panel, said the 2010-11 debacle has fired the Australians to retrieve the Ashes in England in 2013.

“I think it (last summer’s Ashes defeat) has played a part, it certainly has for me personally,” he said.

“We said and knew we had to do a lot of work to improve our games, both personally and as a team. It’s obviously a very special feeling beating India 4-0, knowing that last summer I couldn’t buy a run. It’s a great feeling.”

Before the Ashes in 2013, Australia face the West Indies away in March-April and South Africa and Sri Lanka at home next southern summer.

The tale of civilian survival

SOMETHING astonishing has just occurred in Pakistan, in case you missed it: nothing.

The army was poised to engineer the ouster of yet another civilian government, the plot was in an advanced state of execution and yet, somehow, incredibly, unbelievably, the political government is still with us, crowing about calling elections on its own terms.

In the inscrutable world of politics here, the non-coup — soft, hard, fluffy, whatever — seems to have come down to the choices of two men: Gen K and YRG.

Let’s start with Gen K. From most angles, the chief appears to have suffered another defeat. He upped the ante and came away empty-handed. That is not supposed to be the fate of army chiefs.

Three extraordinary public interventions on memogate — the Supreme Court statement and two ISPR ripostes — meant the chief had staked his reputation on getting a result. In this game, at this level, win and you win big; lose and your defeat hangs heavy, an embarrassment known to one and all.The more difficult question: why did Gen K lose this round? Part of
the answer is YRG, but we’ll get to that in a bit. The other part appears to be the general himself.

For those with a pathological hatred of all things uniformed, the general’s reversal is barely comeuppance for an institution that is genetically programmed to refuse to share.

Arguably, no civilian government had given as much to the army as this PPP government has: pay raises, budget demands, foreign and national-security policies, extensions. And when the government had a chance to go for the jugular, after May 2 or PNS Mehran, it stood back and allowed the army to recover.

And yet this government found itself under withering attack. The army just doesn’t like to share, goes this theory. There’s a merciful corollary, though: the generals aren’t very bright. Failing to recognise that Pakistan had changed, that gone are the days a few tanks and a handful of soldiers were enough to take over, the generals used an old playbook.

They thought that if they roared, the civilians would scurry away and the army could rejig the system to suit its needs. Instead, like in a cartoon of yore, the lion roared, the ground shook, the leaves quivered but the mouse standing in front of the lion stared into its maw unruffled. And when the roar ended, the mouse poked the lion in the eye.

Vaulting ambition but not very bright — that’s one explanation for why the army tried and failed to get the government.

Another, less popular theory, is that Gen K is walking a tightrope. His commanders have been furious, demanding that a corrupt and incompetent government be sorted out and that Gen K do whatever it takes. But Gen K knows the unholy mess the army would be wading into: if it were that easy to fix Pakistan, someone would have done it by now. And maybe, just maybe, the general understands that it isn’t the business of the army to fix Pakistan.

The problem, though, according to this theory, is that Gen K’s commanders mock him privately, suggesting his hesitancy has everything to do with being a compromised chief who took an extension and has to return the favour. So when the commanders push hard, as they have in recent months, particularly over memogate, Gen K has to try and placate them.

But, in a tale of many, many twists, Gen K’s options were limited by his attempt to steer clear of the mud pit of politics during his tenure as chief. Folks like the MQM and the PML-Q have been kept at arm’s length, which meant that when it came to unravelling the government, the old dominos didn’t fall like they once would have.

So which is it: is Gen K the general who tried and failed or the general who didn’t really want to succeed? The answer, as with so much else, depends on what you feel about the army.

But there was another player, an unexpected protagonist: the prime minister.

Perhaps the army camp was so focused on AZ and breaking him, they didn’t anticipate a counter-attack from YRG. Here, after all, was a man derided for much of his tenure as a second-fiddle weakling content to pad the family nest and protect his base in Multan.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Whatever acts of defiance Gilani was known for before, nothing comes close to staring down an army high command looking to strike. The potential costs were obvious — see how Husain Haqqani has suffered — and the benefits nebulous at best — who has fought and won against the army before? And since YRG wasn’t
known for being especially close to AZ, it made little sense to put himself in the line of fire when everyone knew the real target was AZ.

But Gilani’s stunning defiance opened an unexpected front with the army, one they didn’t appear prepared for. The PM did make one mistake, which allowed the army to push back a bit: the claim that the army and ISI chiefs had acted ‘unconstitutionally and illegally’ appears to have been prompted by Gilani’s limited understanding of proper procedure. Other
than that, when the army roared, Gilani roared back louder, causing consternation and confusion in the opposing camp.

So, between the general who didn’t do what was expected of him and the prime minister who did what wasn’t expected of him, appears to lie the tale of civilian survival against army machinations.

There may yet be another round and the old order could find itself restored still. But savour for now the unexpected, if not near-miraculous. Pakistan doesn’t often produce pleasant surprises.

Smokers’ Corner: Being Misbahul Haq

Cricket is perhaps the only sport in which the captain is a lot more than a person with an armband or a ‘(C)’ scribbled in front of his or her name. In cricket not only is the captain supposed to be a fairly talented sportsman, he has to be an astute strategist, a lucid communicator, a diplomat and I dare say a shrewd politician as well.

Some of the finest skippers in the modern version of the game have all been clear examples of such qualities. Take Clive Lloyd, Ian Chappell, A K Pataudi, Steve Waugh, Arjuna Ranatunga, Steven Fleming, Graeme Smith and Imran Khan, for instance.

What’s more, sometimes a cricket captain has had to be a better strategist than a player to propel his team to multiple victories, as was the case with England’s Mike Brearley — a mediocre batsman but a masterful strategist and communicator.

In Pakistan and Indian cricket, a successful captain is required to not only be an immensely talented player and strategist, he has to be a sharp politician as well who through example and diplomacy can lead a coalition (as opposed to a unit) of players from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds (and thus vulnerable to break into self-serving groupings).

The two most successful Pakistani captains, A H Kardar and Imran Khan, had to couple their cricketing and strategising talents with a dictatorial attitude to curb the divisive volatility of their teams. They became like military generals. As captains both Kardar and Khan were products of their own times. Kardar symbolised the authoritarianism Pakistan’s early ruling elite emphasised to unite a diverse and struggling new country with an enforced (and somewhat artificial) ideological singularity, whereas Khan, though in his playing days a secular and colourful personality, rose as skipper during one of Pakistan’s longest and staunchest military dictatorships (that of Ziaul Haq).

Whereas another shrewd and successful Pakistani captain, Mushtaq Muhammad (who was made skipper during the Z A Bhutto regime), had used the localised variety of liberalism and populism of the Bhutto era to unite the team, Kardar and Khan used authoritarianism backed up by their own individual performances. Uniting a Pakistani cricket team, usually brimming with outstanding talent but always vulnerable to disintegrate along class and ethnic lines, has been one of the leading priorities of Pakistani cricket captains.

In the 2000s, another ploy in this respect was experimented with players like Waqar Yunus and Inzimamul Haq. After the controversies and divisions that plagued the captaincies of Miandad and Imran’s handpicked protege, Wasim Akram, new skipper, Waqar Yunus, began dabbling with the idea of using religion to bring the players on a common platform. Though it was Yunus who first allowed members of the conservative Tableeghi Jamat (TJ) to visit the players’ dressing room for inspirational lectures, the idea was taken many steps further by Inzimamul Haq.

A naturally gifted batsman, Inzimam came from a southern Punjab’s middle class background and didn’t have Kardar and Khan’s education or elitist authoritarian underpinnings nor Mushtaq Muhammad’s social adaptability skills. He became a stark reflection of the growing trend of religiosity that cut across society after 9/11. Joining the TJ, he moulded the team to operate like a willfully isolated TJ unit, but with corporate sponsorship and cricketing abilities.

The exhibitionistic unity-in-piety ploy did keep the team intact for a while, but it could not eliminate the many vulnerabilities that still plagued the unit. Just like Pakistani society of the last decade or so, religious piety and material greed conspired to actually (and destructively) complement one another, and thus, by the end of Inzimam’s topsy-turvy tenure, Pakistan cricket suffered from serious infighting, groupings and stumbled from one horrendous controversy to another. Until Misbahul Haq arrived.

In a short span of a little over a year, Misbah has already become an inspirational success story captain. Though educated, Misbah does not belong to Kardar’s or Khan’s elitist-authoritarian school of captaincy. Instead, he is highly diplomatic and consciously retains the perception of him being low-key, private and media-shy.

Though his shrewd, calculated and inspirational captaincy has been making headlines, he remains elusive and private. And quietly he has also dismantled the religiosity factor introduced by Inzimam, as well as the perception that only an authoritarian figure can captain the Pakistan cricket team.

So what made this most unlikely of heroes tick? Common sense and the fact that he has continued to score prolifically even at the age of 37. Also, he does not seem to have a raging ego. His neutral, selfless appeal, thoughtfulness and egalitarian posturing and largely democratic approach seems to have helped him make a renegade, volatile and diverse bunch of players unite, not behind or under, but around him.

He has learnt that he does not need to have a charismatic authoritarian stature or exhibitionist religiosity to bag the players’ and the media’s respect. He just needs to be Misbah — a contemplative selfless professional who articulates only on matters he knows best but is extremely private about his social and religious musings. Perhaps every other player needs to become a Misbah (and seems to have become); and maybe so does the Pakistani society as a whole.

Muslims and minorities

IMAGINE the following scenario: a complex housing a mosque, a madressah, a girls` school and a home for the elderly being run by a Muslim charity is broken into at dawn and bulldozed by officials. No notice is served, and no documents challenging ownership are produced. Yet, within hours, the buildings are reduced to rubble, residents are made homeless, and copies of religious texts destroyed. Supervising this operation is the top local bureaucrat who pays no heed to the protests of the ulema in charge of the complex. Think of the outcry across the entire Muslim world. Demonstrations outside the embassies of the country that allowed this injustice to happen would have broken out instantly.

But when the Punjab government recently carried out a similar operation against Gosha-i-Aman, a Christian charity in Lahore, everybody in and out of Pakistan stood by silently. The chief minister, no doubt eyeing the two acres of land his minions had so brutally seized from the Catholic church, had nothing to say.

In the wider context of our vile treatment of our minorities, I suppose this incident fades into insignificance.

The hapless residents of Gosha-i-Aman should count themselves lucky that they weren`t killed by the Punjab government goons. Had there been any bloodshed, possibly no action would have been taken against the killers: Pakistan has an appalling record of not convicting zealots who have killed so many non-Muslims in the past.

Let me declare a personal interest here: I was educated by the good priests of St Patrick`s school in Karachi, and have nothing but respect for them. I counted Christians, Hindus and Parsis among my friends. Granted, we have descended into a hell of our own making; but surely, civilised values must count for something, even with the ruling party in Punjab.

However, this is probably wishful thinking: judging by the level of religion-fuelled madness we witness everyday in Pakistan, our leaders are incapable of human feelings, except that of greed.

At the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka last week, I had the good fortune to meet a very wise old Muslim lawyer. When I asked him if the present government would ever accord the Tamils equal rights, he posed me another question: “Which majority in the world treats a minority as equals?”

I racked my brain, and tentatively suggested Canada. “Ah,” he replied. “But do the white majority treat Native Canadians fairly or equally?” On reflection, I had to concede it was the former. Frankly, I had never thought much about the distinction between `equally` and `fairly`, but clearly, there is one.

However, we treat our minorities neither equally nor fairly. Indeed, we don`t even pretend to. Almost every other day, I get some fresh evidence of our prejudiced attitudes towards non-Muslims. Even within the dominant religion, there is persecution. Shias are regularly targeted: just the other day, three Shia lawyers were gunned down in Karachi.

According to human rights organisations, Pakistan is among the most brutal countries when it comes to the treatment of minorities. Year after year, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan issues reports highlighting a wide range of crimes committed against non-Muslims by individuals and the state.

In the recent Punjab government action against Gosha-i-Aman, no functionary has explained why this extreme step was taken without warning, especially when the church has documents proving its ownership of the property since 1887. But when the state is itself a party to what comes across as a blatant land grab, there is little ordinary citizens can do to resist, especially when they belong to a minority community.

Across the Muslim world, Christians are under attack from Muslims. In Nigeria, an extremist Muslim organisation calling itself Boko Haram has killed hundreds of Christians and attacked dozens of churches. In Iraq, nearly half a million Christians have been forced to leave their homes, and scores have been killed. In Egypt, the ancient community of Christian Copts has suffered repeated attacks by Salafists.

And yet when these appalling acts of violent intolerance occur, there is scarcely any protest from either our clerics or our politicians. Nevertheless, we are constantly and deeply sensitive to all real and perceived wrongs meted out to Muslims in the West. `Islamophobia` is regularly trotted out in our criticism of foreign countries Muslims have opted to settle in.

But the reality is that Muslim immigrants in the West don`t face a fraction of the injustice and intolerance native non-Muslims have to put up with in Muslim countries. In almost every western country, laws protect minorities from open racism. In the Islamic world, even where anti-discrimination laws exist, they provide scant protection, as show our daily acts of open discrimination and violence against our minorities.

I still recall a TV programme in which a Pakistani Sikh recounted how he was sitting by a stream, cooling his feet on a hot day, when a passing Muslim insisted he pull them out of the water because he was polluting it. Similarly, for generations, Christians and Hindus have been served in separate cups and plates at roadside eating-places across the country. Sweepers in homes are always given water in glasses nobody else uses.

We don`t think twice about these nasty acts of daily discrimination, having grown up with them as part of life`s rituals. But consider for a moment how deeply insulting and wounding they must be. If Muslims were similarly treated in the West, imagine the outcry, not least among citizens of the country concerned.

The level of civilisation a country has achieved must be judged by its treatment of the most vulnerable sections of society. By this standard, we earn the reputation of barbarians incapable of living with people of different beliefs. And yet we demand more than equal status when we build our mosques and spread Islam abroad.

At a time of increased judicial activism is it too much to demand that our higher judiciary pay our hapless minorities some attention? I recall an article I wrote about the apparently forcible conversion of three Hindu sisters some years ago. As a result, the chief justice took suo moto notice of the incident and called for an investigation.

Surely the case of the wanton destruction of church property in Lahore, and the seizure of its land warrants similar action.

The writer is the author of Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West .

Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip…

THE pages of history are littered with the remains of those that failed, no small number of them martyrs to the law of unintended consequences.

Purposive action will sometimes have the desired and estimated effect, and may even occasionally yield some beneficial side effects, but quite often it will throw up a situation that spells disaster. The chain of causality is convoluted and many-stranded.

So it was that when Gen Musharraf liberalised the country’s media policy, there was no way he could have imagined that he was thus committing himself to hurtling down towards a future in which his very creation, his much-vaulted “gifts to the nation”, would play a decisive role in inducing him to vacate the seat of power.

Back at the turn of the millennium, there could have been no way of foretelling the sequence of events and regrettable decisions that, in 2007, caused people — or at least, civil society — and the media to throw in their lot with the judges and the lawyers, and the whole to snowball into something of a revolution complete with a dethronement scene at the end.

When the dust cleared, Pakistan was minus a soldier at the helm of civilian government but plus a number of institutions with a renewed sense of empowerment.

Fast forward from those days to now when in many people’s view our erstwhile heroes have turned out to have not just clay feet, but disgracefully so. Consider the legal community. A citizenry appalled by the murder of the then Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer found, to its consternation, cause to be even more appalled by the support offered by a great many lawyers to the killer, Mumtaz Qadri.

Since 2007, we have watched unpalatable instances where lawyers have used strong-arm tactics in courts, against individuals that were part of the judiciary, and watched footage of lawyers clashing with the police.

Today, the more sensible of observers watch aghast as members of the legal fraternity vilify and ridicule a senior colleague — who they themselves lionised a few years ago — because he chose to represent the prime minister of the country.

The other winner of the events of 2007, the media, finds itself in a perhaps even more unpalatable place four years on. The major topic of discussion at the moment with regards to the ethical and professional compass of the country’s media landscape is the footage aired on a morning show, the host, flanked by upper-class dames, chasing down couples
strolling innocuously in a Karachi park.

From the defenders of freedom and democracy to vigilante guardians of our morality? How far the industry would seem to have fallen. Surely this is not what was intended by the liberalisation of the media.

The show currently being talked about is not the only one, nor is this the only channel, to have violated privacy, constitutional freedoms and even the norms of civilised behaviour in the name of either ‘getting the story’ (read: ratings) or crusading on the side of what individuals consider ‘right’.

Such fare is what sections of Pakistani journalism consider defendable as something that needs to be exposed because it was in the overarching public interest — trial and punishment in the anchor and his organisation’s court of morality and that too without a search warrant that even the police are required to obtain before they can raid the
private property of any individual. Again, surely this wasn’t the intended effect of empowering the media.

One answer can be found in hypothesising that as a body, those involved in the ‘revolution’ of 2007 were given increased confidence and even lauded for seeing themselves on the side of what is ‘good’ and ‘right’. In truth, though, like every other facet of a Pakistan that is broken and breaking down, all those involved were ordinary individuals, flaws
and failings included, elevated to a position of reverence for which they weren’t prepared.

Absolute power, especially with righteousness to boot, is likely to corrupt absolutely — and if not corrupt, then at least lend a sense of infallibility and invincibility that can lead disastrously, damagingly, astray. That one’s man ‘right’ is often another’s ‘wrong’ only further complicates a problem to which the only solution lies in the adage about my
freedom ending where your nose begins.

Yet the law of unintended consequences alone does not explain the viciousness and no-holds-barred fighting that is evident across Pakistan’s landscape today, of which the media constitutes merely the loudest representative voice.

In the politicians’ vengeful avowal that Musharraf be arrested if he dares return, in the vitriol of X party’s supporter against Y party, in the demand made recently in the Punjab Assembly that those thought to practise magic at graveyards be issued the death penalty forthwith, in a body politic increasingly turning towards the violent and the simplistic —
everywhere, the eye of the imagination can see dogs, young and vicious and slavering, straining at the leash to pursue the perceived evildoer, the dissident, the other.

One way to understand this is through the Shakespearean lens of “Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war”. If ‘war’ is understood as conflict, then Pakistan has run the gauntlet over the course of its history.

Havoc has been dealt out by all parties, at every level, from the long running civil-military stand-off to the current militant-terrorist threat, from the politicians to the army to a society whose different factions are at war, from the bludgeoning dealt out by economic or employment conditions to the wretchedness dictated by illiteracy and poverty.

If there is viciousness and a sense of nothing to lose all around us today, it must logically have to equal the viciousness of the conflicts that created the dogs of Pakistan’s 65-year-old war.

These products of war constitute the young Pakistan, the mob that rules the brave new world; and if the old guard looks on in dismay, repeating aghast that this torrent of anger is not what was intended … well, so well it might.

The writer is a member of staff.

Oprah Winfrey charms “chaotic” India at book festival

Spain’s crusading judge goes on trial for Franco probe

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon arrives at Spain's Supreme Court in Madrid on January 24, 2012. — Photo by AFP

MADRID: A Spanish judge famous for pursuing Latin American dictators went on trial Tuesday accused of abuse of power for trying to prosecute atrocities under General Francisco Franco.

About 200 supporters of Judge Baltasar Garzon gathered outside Madrid’s Supreme Court as the case against him for ordering an investigation into the disappearance of 114,000 people during Spain’s 1936-39 civil war and Franco’s subsequent dictatorship started being heard.

Many held up large black and white photos of family members who were killed during the Franco regime as they chanted: “Garzon, friend, the people are with you.”

The 56-year-old judge is charged with exceeding his powers on the grounds that the alleged crimes were covered by an amnesty agreed in 1977 as Spain moved towards democracy two years after Franco’s death.

Garzon, who gained fame by pursuing former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, argues that the acts were crimes against humanity and therefore not subject to the amnesty agreed by Spain’s main political parties.

If convicted he would not go to prison but could be suspended from the legal profession for up to 20 years, putting an end to his career.

Among those due to speak at the trial are 22 witnesses called by the defence to testify for the families of victims, many of them buried in unmarked mass graves across the country.

The trial is expected to last a month or more.

Garzon’s detractors, mainly from Spain’s right, accuse him of opening old wounds with his bid to probe crimes from the Franco era and of seeking the media spotlight by repeatedly taking on high-profile cases.

His backers argue that the trial, along with a separate case heard last week at the Supreme Court over illegal wiretapping in a corruption case, are acts of revenge against the judge for daring to tackle the taboos of the Franco regime.

The Supreme Court has not yet issued its verdict in the wiretapping trial, which wrapped up on Thursday. If convicted in that case Garzon could be suspended from the legal profession for 17 years.

“I think he is a brave judge,” said 47-year-old Mercedes del Vas whose grandmother and two other relatives were killed by Franco’s forces.

“He is the only one who has dared to investigate the Franco crimes. He is in court and the assassins are in the street,” she added as she took part in the protest in defence of Garzon outside the court.

A number of human rights organisations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have criticised the trial and top Spanish artists such as Oscar-winning film director Pedro Almodovar have expressed support for Garzon.

“To open criminal proceedings for launching an investigation into human rights violations that took place in the past in this country is from the point of view of Amnesty International simply scandalous and unacceptable,” said Hugo Relvas, a legal adviser with Amnesty International, on the eve of the trial.

After the civil war the Franco regime routinely rounded up suspected opponents as it sought to consolidate power.
Many faced firing squads and were dumped in hundreds of unmarked graves.

Garzon came to international prominence in 1998 when he ordered the extradition of Pinochet from Britain to face charges of human rights abuses.

The judge has also pursued members of the former dictatorship in Argentina, indicted Osama bin Laden and probed abuses at the US prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Garzon was suspended from his duties at the National Court, Spain’s top criminal court, in May 2010 and currently works as a consultant at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

UK’s tallest building adds drama to London’s sky

LONDON: Passengers stepping out of London Bridge tube station cannot help but crane their necks to gaze at the jagged tower under construction. The Shard is the tallest building in the European Union and looks like a slice of glass balanced on the edge of the financial district.

When the tower opens next year, visitors to the observation deck will see helicopters fly by at eye level and take in the metropolis all the way to the distant north Downs Hills.

The structure designed by renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano dwarfs nearby landmarks like Tower Bridge and St Paul’s Cathedral across the Thames.

The ambitious project speaks of now faded boom times: 1.5 billion pound ($2.34 billion) price tag, fancy restaurants, corporate office space, posh hotel. But it is being completed as Britain and Europe totter on the brink of recession _ and the Shard will loom over a city in decline.

Neighbors are hoping the dramatic tower, visible from most parts of London, will bring big spenders to its south-of-the-river location, for centuries the less prosperous side of the Thames.

”I like the design, I like the promise. I think it’s going to blast this neighborhood out of the water,” said Cherille McNeil-Halward, 71, who runs a picture framing shop a few minutes away from the Shard.

”This tower will bring people with money to spend here, and that’s got to be a good thing.”

There is no question that the Shard is a riveting addition to the traditionally low-rise London skyline. But some complain it dominates the view, obscuring sights such as St Paul’s impressive dome.

The developer Irvine Sellar sees the project as a symbol of London’s status as a world city. The 72-floor, 310 meter tall building is designed by an Italian, financed by the Qatar government, and the Chinese hotel group Shangri-La were the first tenants to sign up.

”We want this building to be a building Londoners will feel ownership of,” said Sellar.

”You can eat there, you can work there, you can sleep there. And you can see the view from there.”

The building’s exterior will be finished in June but it is unlikely to open until early next year. It will open in a truly historic neighborhood, close to the Tower of London, Shakespeare’s Globe, and Borough Market.

In fact, the ultra-modern Shard sits at the edge of ancient London. The first Roman settlement Londinium was nearby on the banks of the Thames. Charles Dickens’ ”Little Dorrit” was set in the streets behind the Shard.

The developers conceived the project more than 11 years ago when there was a financial appetite for building tall. But it generated almost immediate opposition from conservation groups who didn’t want the fabric of the city changed.

English Heritage and other groups complained that the design did not fit in with the surrounding architecture, but were overruled.

Prince Charles, who has waged a passionate campaign against modern architecture, wryly referred to the Shard as ”an enormous salt cellar” shortly after it won planning permission but has not formally tried to block the project.

Last year Unesco said it is reviewing the status of the Tower of London as a World Heritage Site, partly because of the way the Shard and other buildings loom over its courtyard.

The future of the building is still not secure. Along with Shangri-La, some restaurants have signed leases, Sellar said, but most of the office space has not yet been rented at a time when many London-based businesses are striving to reduce costs.

A report by Barclays Capital published this month finds a correlation between the construction of skyscrapers and financial crises, concluding that ambitious building projects often open just as the economy declines.

It cites the economic and oil crises of the early 1970s, which coincided with the completion of the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Sears Tower in Chicago. In Malaysia the building of the Petronas Towers coincided with the Asian economic crisis on 1997. And in Dubai the Burj Khalifa _ the world’s tallest building _ went up as the emirate almost went bust.

The Shard itself was hit by the credit crunch. Sellar secured funding from investment bank Credit Suisse in 2008, but the bank pulled out after Lehman Brothers crashed in September of that year. Eventually the central bank of Qatar stepped in to finance the project.

Other tall buildings have been built in recent years as London has become a more vertical city _ including Norman Foster’s famous ”Gherkin.” But the Shard dominates them all, and is likely to become a prominent symbol of London.

”You are going to see this building from everywhere in the city,” said Jonathan Glancey, architecture critic at The Guardian newspaper.

”It is going be the building that says ‘this is London,’ and the message it is going to send is that London is brash, shiny and pretty bling.”

Twitter’s new censorship plan rouses global furor

Twitter said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the website chillingeffects.org. - Photo by AP

NEW YORK: Twitter, a tool of choice for dissidents and activists around the world, found itself the target of global outrage Friday after unveiling plans to allow country-specific censorship of tweets that might break local laws.

It was a stunning role reversal for a youthful company that prides itself in promoting unfettered expression, 140 characters at a time. Twitter insisted its commitment to free speech remains firm, and sought to explain the nuances of its policy, while critics – in a barrage of tweets – proposed a Twitter boycott and demanded that the censorship initiative be scrapped.

”This is very bad news,” tweeted Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, who operates under the name Sandmonkey. Later, he wrote, ”Is it safe to say that (hash)Twitter is selling us out?”

In China, where activists have embraced Twitter even though it’s blocked inside the country, artist and activist Ai Weiwei tweeted in response to the news: ”If Twitter censors, I’ll stop tweeting.”

One often-relayed tweet bore the headline of a Forbes magazine technology blog item: ”Twitter Commits Social Suicide”

San Francisco-based Twitter, founded in 2006, depicted the new system as a step forward. Previously, when Twitter erased a tweet, it vanished throughout the world. Under the new policy, a tweet breaking a law in one country can be taken down there and still be seen elsewhere.

Twitter said it will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed and will post the removal requests it receives from governments, companies and individuals at the website chillingeffects.org.

The critics are jumping to the wrong conclusions, said Alexander Macgilliviray, Twitter’s general counsel.

”This is a good thing for freedom of expression, transparency and accountability,” he said. ”This launch is about us keeping content up whenever we can and to be extremely transparent with the world when we don’t. I would hope people realize our philosophy hasn’t changed.”

Some defenders of Internet free expression came to Twitter’s defense.

”Twitter is being pilloried for being honest about something that all Internet platforms have to wrestle with,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ”As long as this censorship happens in a secret way, we’re all losers.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland credited Twitter with being upfront about the potential for censorship and said some other companies are not as forthright.

As for whether the new policy would be harmful, Nuland said that wouldn’t be known until after it’s implemented.

Reporters Without Borders, which advocates globally for press freedom, sent a letter to Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, urging that the censorship policy be ditched immediately.

”By finally choosing to align itself with the censors, Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization,” the letter said. ”Twitter’s position that freedom of expression is interpreted differently from country to country is unacceptable.”

Reporters Without Borders noted that Twitter was earning praise from free-speech advocates a year ago for enabling Egyptian dissidents to continue tweeting after the Internet was disconnected. ”We are very disappointed by this U-turn now,” it said.

Twitter said it has no plans to remove tweets unless it receives a request from government officials, companies or another outside party that believes the message is illegal. No message will be removed until an internal review determines there is a legal problem, according to Macgilliviray.

”It’s a thing of last resort,” he said. ”The first thing we do is we try to make sure content doesn’t get withheld anywhere. But if we feel like we have to withhold it, then we are transparent and we will withhold it narrowly.”

Macgilliviray said the new policy has nothing to do with a recent $300 million investment by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Mac or any other financial contribution.

In its brief existence, Twitter has established itself as one of the world’s most powerful megaphones. Streams of tweets have played pivotal roles in political protests throughout the world, including the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States and the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia and Syria.

Indeed, many of the tweets calling for a boycott of Twitter on Saturday – using the hashtag (hash)TwitterBlackout – came from the Middle East.

”This decision is really worrying,” said Larbi Hilali, a pro-democracy blogger and tweeter from Morocco. ”If it is applied, there will be a Twitter for democratic countries and a Twitter for the others.”

In Cuba, opposition blogger Yoani Sanchez said she would protest Saturday with a one-day personal boycott of Twitter.

”Twitter will remove messages at the request of governments,” she tweeted. ”It is we citizens who will end up losing with these new rules … .”

In the wake of the announcement, cyberspace was abuzz with suggestions for how any future country-specific censorship could be circumvented. Some Twitter users said this could be done by employing tips from Twitter’s own help center to alter one’s “Country” setting. Other Twitter users were skeptical that this would work.

While Twitter has embraced its role as a catalyst for free speech, it also wants to expand its audience from about 100 million active users now to more than 1 billion. Doing so may require it to engage with more governments and possibly to face more pressure to censor tweets; if it defies a law in a country where it has employees, those people could be arrested.

Theoretically, such arrests could occur even in democracies — for example, if a tweet violated Britain’s strict libel laws or the prohibitions in France and Germany against certain pro-Nazi expressions.

“It’s a tough problem that a company faces once they branch out beyond one set of offices in California into that big bad world out there,” said Rebecca MacKinnon of Global Voices Online, an international network of bloggers and citizen journalists. “We’ll have to see how it plays out — how it is and isn’t used.”

MacKinnon said some other major social networks already employ geo-filtering along the lines of Twitter’s new policy — blocking content in a specific jurisdiction for legal reasons while making it available elsewhere.

Many of the critics assailing the new policy suggested that it was devised as part of a long-term plan for Twitter to enter China, where its service is currently blocked.

China’s Communist Party remains highly sensitive to any organized challenge to its rule and responded sharply to the Arab Spring, cracking down last year after calls for a “Jasmine Revolution” in China. Many Chinese nonetheless find ways around the so-called Great Firewall that has blocked social networking sites such as Facebook.

Google for several years agreed to censor its search results in China to gain better access to the country’s vast population, but stopped that practice two years after engaging in a high-profile showdown with Chain’s government. Google now routes its Chinese search results through Hong Kong, where the censorship rules are less restrictive.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt declined to comment on Twitter’s action and instead limited his comments to his own company.

“I can assure you we will apply our universally tough principles against censorship on all Google products,” he told reporters in Davos, Switzerland.

Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, said it was a matter of trying to adhere to different local laws.

“I think what they (Twitter officials) are wrestling with is what all of us wrestle with — and everyone wants to focus on China, but it is actually a global issue — which is laws in these different countries vary,” Drummond said.

“Americans tend to think copyright is a real bad problem, so we have to regulate that on the Internet. In France and Germany, they care about Nazis’ issues and so forth,” he added. “In China, there are other issues that we call censorship. And so how you respect all the laws or follow all the laws to the extent you think they should be followed while still allowing people to get the content elsewhere?”

Craig Newman, a New York lawyer and former journalist who has advised Internet companies on censorship issues, said Twitter’s new policy and the subsequent backlash are both understandable, given the difficult ethical issues at stake.

On one hand, he said, Twitter could put its employees in peril if it was deemed to be breaking local laws.

“On the other hand, Twitter has become this huge social force and people view it as some sort of digital town square, where people can say whatever they want,” he said. “Twitter could have taken a stand and refused to enter any countries with the most restrictive laws against free speech.”

German computer re-pieces destroyed Stasi files

A worker in the former headquarters of the Stasi (East German communist secret police) sorts through hundreds of thousands of torn or shredded Stasi documents earmarked for destruction after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, in Berlin, January 12, 2012. — Photo by AFP

BERLIN: Germany’s “puzzle people” will soon be able to count on a new tool in their Herculean task of re-piecing together thousands of ripped-up former Stasi secret police files.

A computer system that can digitally recreate documents by scanning bits of paper that were shredded or torn by hand as the former East Germany collapsed, is nearing the end of its test phase.

While the eyes of the world were fixed on euphoric Berliners attacking with pickaxes the hated Wall that had spliced the city and country in two for 28 years, destruction of another kind was underway far from public gaze.

Stasi employees began destroying their secret files as the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, initially shredding them, but as the machines broke down under the strain, they were forced to tear documents by hand.

The waste was to be pulped or burnt but “citizen committees” stormed Stasi offices across East Germany, seizing millions of files, along with 15,500 bags of torn-up documents.

Each bag was stuffed with between 50,000 to 80,000 bits of paper — with potential insight into decades of inquiries and interrogations by the former communist regime’s feared secret police.

And in 1995, the work to re-build these archives began — by hand.

Germans are generally keen to come to terms with their past. Since the Stasi’s archives first opened to the public 20 years ago, the federal office in charge of Stasi archives has received 2.83 million requests for information.

“In 2000, the Bundestag lower house of parliament asked us to look for ways to speed up this reconstruction (work),” Joachim Haeussler, one of those in charge of the programme at the federal office, told AFP.

Bertram Nikolay, an engineer at the Fraunhofer Institute research organisation, said they decided to take up the challenge and he came up with the idea for a computer-aided virtual reconstruction.

An experimental machine was initially introduced before a pilot project was launched in early 2007, Haeussler said, from his set-up in the former headquarters of the Stasi, now an archive centre and museum in a grey district of east Berlin.

Seated next to him around large tables are six co-workers silently at work emptying the bags under a glaring neon light.

They first sort through the pieces themselves and put them into different boxes before the computer takes over, scanning the pieces, using criteria such as the colour and style of the paper, the character type or writing style to rebuild the destroyed pages.

“So far we have digitalised the contents of 70 bags,” Nikolay said, adding that when the test phase is finished in several months’ time, the contents of 400 bags are due to be pieced back together.

A total of eight million euros of public funds has been poured into testing the computer system and more will be needed to move onto the next stage, although exactly how much more is not yet known.

Nikolay predicted the digital reconstruction of Stasi documents would begin in earnest next year at the earliest, or more likely in 2014, saying he sees a real political will to see through the process.

Public demand for information concerning the archives certainly does not seem to be waning with the passing of time — in 2011 alone, 80,611 new requests were lodged.

Pakistan shutdown bites Afghan traders

Afghan workers carry sacks of peas on carts at a market in Kabul.—Reuters

KABUL: With snow piled deep in front of his small Kabul shop and a border shutdown enforced by Pakistan driving up food prices and severing a vital lifeline into Afghanistan, Asmatullah is having his own winter of discontent.

Since Pakistan closed supply routes to Nato forces in Afghanistan after the coalition killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border air attack in November, ordinary Afghans and foreigners alike are feeling the impact of soaring food costs.

“I have lost 50 per cent of my customers,” Asmatullah says, somehow managing a smile as he surveys his empty shop, surrounded by cartons of eggs and milk, boxes of cigarettes, drinks and crates of bottled water, now frozen solid on the icy pavement outside.

“Everybody has less income now, so people are just not able to buy. When the border is closed, the prices go up,” he said, huddled in a black hat and leather jacket to try and keep one of the most biting winters for years at bay.

The border shutdown, which Pakistan has promised to lift at a time still to be decided, underscores Afghanistan’s reliance on food imports through its mountainous eastern border, rather than from Iran in the west and longer, more costly, routes north through ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Most food imports come from India, Dubai and Pakistan, and are trucked into the landlocked country from Karachi, entering Afghanistan through turbulent southern Kandahar province, in Spin Boldak, and Torkham, in eastern Nangarhar province.

Since the Pakistan border closure, the cost of trucking or flying supplies into the country for US forces has soared from $17 million a month to $104 million, figures from the Pentagon in US media showed this month.

At the three-storey Finest supermarket, popular with foreigners and locals and the target of a deadly suicide bomb last year, owner Matiuddin says the cost of importing a container of food has soared from $8000 before the border closure to around $23,000.

“It’s a huge problem. Everybody is yelling. If they don’t solve it soon we are going to have to close our business,” Matiuddin said in his cramped office, slamming his hand on an ageing fax machine in frustration.

“We are just having to let food expire and keep it on the shelves in hope of selling it.”

Since the shutdown was imposed, prices for a kilo of chicken have jumped from 200 Afghani ($2) to 250 Afghani. Tomatoes have more than quadrupled and those for cheese doubled.

Housekeeper Nadira Habibi, 37, said that even with her husband and a son working, it was becoming too difficult to feed her family of seven.

“Before we spent around 20,000 Afghani a month ($400), but now it’s more than 30,000, which we’re just not able to afford,” Habibi said.

Qadhafi ‘lives on in our hearts’: Bani Walid residents

Moamer Kadhafi - File Photo.

BANI WALID: Residents of the Libyan oasis town of Bani Walid, long a bastion of Moamer Kadhafi’s regime, are resigned to the country’s new leadership but say the slain dictator lives on in their hearts.

The town, which was one of the last towns to fall to the rebels last year and was the scene of new violence earlier this week, fared well during the Kadhafi era when it was a major recruitment ground for his regime’s elite troops.

“Moamer is in our hearts. If someone here tells you otherwise, he is lying,” said Salahuddin al-Werfelli, 19.

“A revolution, what revolution? The new authorities represent (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy and some European countries, not Libyans,” he said with clear contempt for the UN-mandated Western military support the rebels received during last year’s uprising.

In public, residents insisted they were supporters of the “February 17 Revolution” that overthrew Kadhafi but in private they expressed nostalgia for his ousted regime.

“We are forced to adapt but 99 per cent of Bani Walid’s population still loves Moamer,” said Boubakr, a 24-year-old law student.

“Our house was given to my father by Moamer,” said Boubakr, who lives near the former rebel militia base which was at the centre of Monday’s fighting and which still bears the scars of the ferocious exchanges. Burnt-out cars and empty bullet cases lie all around.

The details of the clashes in the sprawling oasis, 170 kilometres (110 miles) southeast of Tripoli, which killed seven people and wounded 12, remain the subject of some dispute.

Interior Minister Fawzi Abdelali initially denied that Kadhafi supporters were involved in the violence before admitting that he did not know.

Residents said the green flag of Kadhafi’s regime was not flown during Monday’s clashes as reported by some local officials.

They said the fighting pitted the May 28 Brigade of former rebel fighters against a group of heavily armed residents who had come to the base to seek the release of a relative from custody.

Residents said the man being held may have fought with Kadhafi’s forces during the uprising and been detained by the brigade after they recognised him.

There is widespread resentment in Bani Walid towards the former rebels whose roadblocks criss-cross the town. Members of the brigade are accused of thefts and arbitrary arrests as well as other abuses.

“I was arrested at a checkpoint,” another resident, Abdelhamid al-Ghariyani, 25, told AFP at a vegetable market in the town centre.

“They searched my car and mobile phone. When they saw I had pictures of Moamer in the mobile, the confiscated it and hit me,” he said pointing to a bluish welt and scratches on his left leg and marks of handcuffs on his right wrist.

Another resident, who did not give his name, complained: “They talk about freedom and democracy, but these are only words.

“We are with the revolution of February 17, but we want justice and compensation for our damaged houses,” he added.

Efforts are now on to calm the tensions.

Defence Minister Osama Juili toured the town on Wednesday and held talks with civic leaders.

On Thursday, 30 representatives from clans of the powerful Werfelli tribe, which is spread across Libya but whose stronghold is Bani Walid, came together to discuss terms for the return of fighters of the May 28 Brigade who fled the town during the clashes.

Tribal leaders said the brigade’s members would be allowed back, but without their weapons and under strict defence ministry command and control.

They said Juili had also promised that a new city council to replace the current unpopular body could be approved by the ruling National Transitional Council “within days.”

“Bani Walid is a tribal region and social peace here is ensured by the tribal system,” one tribal leader, Abdelhamid al-Shanduli, told AFP.

“No representatives must be imposed on us. Bani Walid must choose who represents Bani Walid,” he added.

Sanctions take their toll on ordinary Iranians

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. — File Photo

TEHRAN: A raft of Western economic sanctions on Iran over its controversial nuclear program are increasingly stifling the lives of ordinary Iranians, hit by rising inflation and growing isolation.

EU and US banking sanctions put in place 18 months ago, and reinforced on Monday, have fuelled Iran’s runaway inflation and triggered a collapse in the value of the rial, with implications for the country’s residents and diaspora.

Millions of struggling Iranians have supportive relatives living abroad, especially in the United States, Canada and Europe.

“The cost of foreign products, whose value is linked to the dollar, has risen by 20 and 50 per cent in recent months,” says Ali, who runs a grocery in north Tehran.

“On the other hand, the government closely controls the price of products made in Iran,” which represent 90 per cent of consumed products. “Dairy products for example have not risen by more than five to 10 per cent.”

But with inflation officially now pegged at around 21 per cent, the real cost of numerous consumer goods is significantly higher, aggravated by the weaker rial.

Iran’s long overvalued currency, which the central bank allowed to weaken in recent months to shore up its foreign currency reserves, has almost halved in value over the past year.

The rial tumbled in black market trading to a new record low against the dollar, news agencies said earlier this week, with the unofficial rate in central Tehran at around 20,500 for one greenback.

All imports, notably electronic equipment such as computers, mobile phones, televisions and fridges, have shot up in price by more than 50 per cent.

“Luckily I bought my laptop two weeks ago. Its price has since gone from 15 million rials to 24 million rials,” said Ahmad, a retiree. The minimum monthly wage in Iran is around seven million rials.

The price of certain types of imported medicine has risen by around 30 per cent, and foreign books have become unaffordable for most Iranians.

“Before, books costing 20 euros would sell for 300,000 rials. People would buy them rather reluctantly. But now they would go for 500,000 to 600,000 rials, and no one will pay that,” said one vendor, who just cancelled his latest order of English and French books.

For all these products, importers had to buy their currency on the parallel market, now a black market where prices have soared as the government limited the official sale of foreign currency to importers of essential goods, particularly industrial ones.

Sanctions have also choked most of the banking channels for trade in dollars or euros, making it difficult for the many Iranians who have family abroad to send or receive money.

The Iranian diaspora is estimated at nearly five million people, with the majority based in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Even the most well-off are feeling the pinch of the crisis.

“It becomes really difficult,” says Alireza, a doctor who must send a monthly $10,000 stipend to his wife and two children living in the United States.

The currency crisis means this transfer now costs him 175 million rials, compared to 125 million three months ago, while the parallel market exchange offices he turned to after the West imposed sanctions in 2010 are now under pressure from the authorities.

Another area affected by the crisis is international tourism. Millions of Iranians spend their vacations outside the country each year, mainly in Turkey, Thailand, Dubai, but also in Europe, Malaysia, Indonesia and India.

“We planned to go to Bali for Nowruz (the Iranian New Year, March 21), but I told my wife that if the dollar remained at 20,000 rials, we should cancel the trip,” said Mohsen, manager at a luxury watch store.

A year later, Egyptian neighbourhood awaits justice

Samira Qilada and Makram Nazir sit below the photos of their 15-year-old daughter Mariam who was killed last year in Cairo, Egypt. - AP Photo.

CAIRO: A year later, the neighbours still speak of those killed the night they attacked the police station: The young man shot in the neck while carrying off his wounded friend; the bodybuilder who took a bullet in the hip; the 15-year-old girl shot in the face while standing on her roof.

On that day, January 28, 2011, the world was focused on Tahrir Square, the downtown center of the popular uprising that would end the 30-year rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. But in neighborhoods across Cairo, residents were targeting the local face of Mubarak’s oppressive rule: the police station.

In the poor district of al-Zawiya al-Hamra that day, 1,000 protesters rallied in the shabby park in front of the station. Some threw rocks, then gas bombs, then the police opened fire, residents said. By morning, 45 residents and one police officer were dead and smoke still rose from the torched station.

On the anniversary of those deaths, ‘martyr’ posters adorn neighbourhood walls, and the lack of justice for the dead remains an open wound. Residents complain that no police have been punished, and it is unlikely that those facing trial will be convicted.

In a wider sense, their feelings one year after the uprising reflect those in many long-neglected parts of Egypt: That the revolution was necessary but its benefits have barely reached the common person.

”We feel that we are living among free people, but we haven’t seen anything concrete yet,” said Omar Ali, 46, who struggles to pay rent on a windowless flat by fixing computers.

But like many here, he is optimistic that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political party holds nearly half the seats in the newly elected People’s Assembly, will serve the neighborhood well. The Brotherhood won heavily in al-Zawiya al-Hamra.

”They do what is right, they won’t oppress us and they fear God,” Omar said.

Al-Zawiya al-Hamra, a crowded grid of squat apartment blocks amid smoggy boulevards, typifies the decades of governmental neglect that helped fuel the uprising. It sprouted on agricultural land in northern Cairo in the 1960s when the government built blocks of drab, low-cost public housing and has since swelled to more than 300,000 people packed into just over a square mile.

Many streets are trash-strewn and unpaved, and public school classes often have 70 students. The government shuttered the local hospital for years for ”maintenance,” and even now it often turns patients away, residents said.

Unemployment rates are high. At night young men pass the time around wood fires on street corners. Crooks and drug dealers have long operated in the area.

Under Mubarak, the police station was the government’s most prominent local face, and it was often an ugly one. Officers beefed up meagre salaries by extorting locals and taking cash from drug dealers to look the other way, said Sayeed al-Sayid, a local lawyer. They often ignored poor residents’ calls for help.

”Those with money would enter the station and leave right away,” knowing they’d be helped, al-Sayid said. ”They would pay for police service.”

That frustration was common throughout Egypt, and protesters across the country attacked police stations, torching 99 in a few days. In many cases, police shot and killed protesters before fleeing.

The gunfire in al-Zawiya al-Hamra started around 7 pm and lasted until midnight, said Mohammed al-Sayid, a nearby butcher. Police fired on men near the station, but also hit people more than 200 yards away, he said, recalling residents collapsing on the sidewalk.

”It was like faucets of blood,” he said.

Bullet holes mar the walls of his shop. One bullet pierced the metal pan he uses to weigh meat. Bullets whizzed into the bedrooms of his neighbours. One bullet passed through the sleeve of a woman upstairs before lodging in her kitchen wall.

Lamie Suleiman, 63, said his son Girgis was shot in the neck while carrying a wounded man. Fathallah Ibrahim, 61, said his son Mohammed, a weightlifter, was heading to his metal workshop behind the station when he was shot in the hip. Both died soon after.

Samira Qilada was watching from her roof with her daughter Mariam, 15, when the girl collapsed.

”I went to see what happened and saw a river of blood from her face,” Qilada said. A bullet shattered the girl’s jaw. She died the next day.

Relatives of the dead have compiled a list of 45 people killed that night.

Anwar Awad, an officer in the station, said police were first told to fire in the air, then to protect the station.

”After people started attacking the station, (the police) were told that anyone getting close to the station or throwing stuff or firing at the station should be shot,” he said.

One officer, Abdullah Mahmoud, was shot dead in the chaos, he said.

Awad blamed the attack on criminals trying to settle scores with the police _ an argument police have used, sometimes successfully, in court cases.

Syria says ‘terrorists’ blow up gas pipeline

Bashar Assad's regime blames terrorist for facilitating the 10-month-old uprising which has caused damage to the country and its citizens - AP Photo.

BEIRUT: An ‘armed terrorist group’ in Syria blew up a gas pipeline at dawn Monday, the state-run media said, as activists reported gunfire and explosions in the suburbs of Damascus as the country’s conflict moves ever closer to the capital.

The pipeline carries gas from the central province of Homs to an area near the border with Lebanon. Sana news agency reported that the blast happened in Tal Hosh, which is about five miles from Talkalakh, along the border with Lebanon.

There have been several pipeline attacks since the Syrian uprising began in mid-March, but it is not clear who is behind them.

President Bashar Assad’s regime has blamed ‘terrorists’ for driving the country’s 10-month-old uprising, not protesters seeking democratic change.

On Sunday, Syrian troops in dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles stormed rebellious areas near the capital, shelling neighbourhoods that have fallen under the control of army dissidents and clashing with fighters.

Activists and residents said at least 62 people were killed in violence nationwide.

The large-scale Sunday offensive suggested the regime is worried that military defectors could close in on Damascus, the seat of Assad’s power. Early Monday, activists reported hearing gunfire and blasts in the Damascus suburbs, but there were no details.

The rising bloodshed added urgency to Arab and Western diplomatic efforts to end the 10-month conflict.

In the past two weeks, army dissidents have become more visible near the capital, seizing several suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus and setting up checkpoints where masked men wearing military attire and wielding assault rifles stop motorists and protect anti-regime protests.

Their presence so close to the capital is astonishing in tightly controlled Syria and suggests the Assad regime may either be losing control or setting up a trap for the fighters before going on the offensive.

The uprising against Assad, which began with largely peaceful demonstrations, has grown increasingly militarized recently as more frustrated protesters and army defectors have taken up arms.

In a bid to stamp out resistance in the capital’s outskirts, the military has responded with a withering assault on a string of suburbs, leading to a spike in violence that has killed at least 150 people since Thursday.

The United Nations says at least 5,400 people have been killed in the 10 months of violence.

Two found guilty of ‘terrorist plot’ in Danish cartoon case

udge Oddmund Svarteberg prepares to read the sentences of two men charged with plotting “a terrorist act” for a planned attack on the Danish newspaper that published in 2005 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH).—AFP Photo

OSLO: An Oslo court on Monday sentenced two men to prison for planning to bomb the Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), in Norway’s first-ever guilty verdict for “plotting to commit a terrorist act.”

Norwegian national Mikael Davud, a member of China’s Uighur minority considered the mastermind behind the plot against the Jyllands-Posten daily, was sentenced to seven years behind bars.

Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd residing in Norway, meanwhile received a three-and-a-half-year prison term.

According to the prosecution, the two men had in liaison with al Qaeda planned to use explosives against the offices of the Danish newspaper and to murder Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the most controversial of the 12 drawings of the Muslim Prophet published in September 2005.

Westergaard’s drawing, which has earned him numerous death threats and an assassination attempt, showed the Prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The prosecution had demanded prison sentences of 11 and five years respectively.

“There is no doubt that it was Davud who took the initiative in the preparations for a terrorist act and that he was the central character,” the three judges said in their ruling.

“The court also believes that it was he himself who would have carried out the terrorist attack since he has explained that he planned to lay out the explosives himself,” they added.

The judges also said the prosecution had proven “beyond any doubt that Davud knowingly and voluntarily plotted with al Qaeda to carry out a bomb attack against Jyllands-Posten with a bomb that was so powerful that he understood human life could be lost.” The court did not however find it proven that the men had planned to assassinate Westergaard.

According to Norway’s intelligence service PST, Davud, a short, bearded 40-year-old, received training in making and using explosives from al Qaeda members and sympathisers in Pakistan’s region of Waziristan between November 2008 and July 2010.

Jyllands-Posten’s publication of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed provoked violent and even deadly protests across much of the Muslim world.

On Monday, the Danish paper refused to comment on the verdict in Oslo.

David Jakobsen, an Uzbek arrested at the same time as Davud and Bujak in July 2010, was meanwhile acquitted Monday of the most serious charges but was sentenced to four months behind bars for helping the two others to procure the materials needed to create the explosives.

The three men had all pleaded not guilty to the charges when the trial opened and their lawyers asked for their acquittal.

Davud however did confess to planning an attack, but said it was directed at Chinese interests in Norway and not at Jyllands-Posten.

The member of the oppressed Uighur minority in China said he had been acting out of purely personal motives and that he had manipulated the two others so they would help him get hold of chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, which he needed to build a bomb.

Bujak, 39, meanwhile admitted that he had spoken with Davud about the possibility of punishing Jyllands-Posten for the cartoons, but insisted the comments were vague and did not constitute a terrorist plot.

“Bujak helped Davud with the preparations … and there is no doubt that he was very much involved,” the judges ruled, nonetheless lending credence to his insistence he had had no intention of participating in the attack itself.

As for Jakobsen, who contacted police voluntarily in November 2009 and was the only one of the three to have been released from custody until the verdict, he categorically denied any intention to participate in the plot.

Syria opposition warns of ‘massacre’ near Damascus

he rights group and activists at the scene said army deserters pulled out of Rankus as troops moved in.- File Photo

NICOSIA: The opposition Syrian National Council warned on Monday of a possible “massacre” of hundreds of young men rounded up by security forces in a town near Damascus.

It voiced “fears over a possible liquidation of hundreds of young men that Syrian security services have gathered in a public square in Rankus,” 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the capital, in a statement received in Nicosia.

The SNC called for the Arab and international media “to act quickly to follow this issue.”Security forces “raided Rankus this morning, backed by tanks and rocket-launchers … and launched a campaign of arrests,” it said.

“The authorities have cut off electricity, telephone lines and water. They have imposed a siege on Rankus, preventing food and medical aid from entering”the town of 25,000 inhabitants.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier that troops penetrated Rankus after shelling the town which had been encircled for six days.

The rights group and activists at the scene said army deserters pulled out of Rankus as troops moved in. The assault reportedly cost the lives of two deserters and left dozens of civilians wounded.

Nato sticks to 2014 Afghan pullout despite early French exit

Under the plan agreed by leaders of the 28-nation alliance in Lisbon, Nato began handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces last year with the goal of completing the transition by the end of 2014.- AFP Photo

BRUSSELS: Nato is committed to plans to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the alliance chief said Monday after France decided to end its fighting role a year earlier.

“We stick to the roadmap that was outlined at the Nato summit in Lisbon in November 2010,” Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters at Nato headquarters after talks with Romanian President Traian Basescu.

Under the plan agreed by leaders of the 28-nation alliance in Lisbon, Nato began handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces last year with the goal of completing the transition by the end of 2014.

Rasmussen did not directly address French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement on Friday that his country would bring his forces home next year after four unarmed French troops were killed by an Afghan soldier.

Sarkozy also said he would encourage Nato to consider transferring all its combat operations to Afghan forces in 2013, instead of the scheduled deadline of end-2014.

French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet is expected to explain his country’s decision at a meeting with Nato counterparts in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

Rasmussen said Nato expects the final transition of provinces and districts to Afghan lead responsibility by mid-2013.

“From that time on we can gradually change the role of our forces from combat to support,” he said.

“The pace and the scope of that transformation of our forces will, of course, very much depend on the security situation on the ground.

India defies sanctions, won’t cut Iran oil imports

India and China are ravenous energy consumers and rely heavily on imported oil. Iranian oil accounts for 9 per cent of India's oil consumption and 6 per cent of China's, according to the latest data from the IEA. -File Photo

MUMBAI: India has joined China in saying it will not cut back on oil imports from Iran, despite stiff new US and European sanctions designed to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program.

”It is not possible for India to take any decision to reduce the import from Iran drastically because, after all, the countries which can provide the requirement of the emerging economy, Iran is an important country amongst them,” India’s finance minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters Sunday in Chicago.

India and China together accounted for 34 per cent of Iran’s oil exports from January to September of 2011, slightly more than Europe, according to International Energy Agency data.

The move is likely to be seen as a political victory in Iran, but it’s unclear how Chinese and Indian companies will actually be able to pay for Iranian oil without running afoul of the sanctions, analysts said.

”It’s a blow,” said David Hartwell, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane’s, adding that Iran may have discounted prices to keep the Chinese and Indians on their side.

”If you have two major countries like India and China saying they will not abide by the sanctions, that’s going to keep a vital line open for the Iranians to continue to sidestep the sanctions and get foreign capital.”

He said India and China could just be trying to buy time to diversify their oil supplies and may steer away from Iran, especially if Saudi Arabia, India’s largest source of oil imports, were to ramp up production and offer an attractively priced alternative.

The European Union last week imposed an oil embargo against Iran and froze the assets of its central bank. In December, the US said it would bar financial institutions from the US market if they do business with Iran’s central bank.

India and China are ravenous energy consumers and rely heavily on imported oil. Iranian oil accounts for 9 percent of India’s oil consumption and 6 percent of China’s, according to the latest data from the IEA.

Iran exports 2.5 million barrels of oil per day, about 3 per cent of world supplies. About 500,000 barrels go to Europe and most of the rest goes to China, India, Japan and South Korea.

Pentagon clarifies Panetta’s remarks

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. — File Photo

WASHINGTON: The United States still believes that Pakistani officials were unaware about the presence of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, says the Pentagon while commenting on Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta’s statement that somebody “somewhere probably had that knowledge”.

Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said the interview, which quoted Mr Panetta as making this claim was old and the US was uncertain about the presence of Osama in Pakistan at the time of the interview.

“Secretary Panetta made clear his belief — which other senior US officials have also expressed — that Osama bin Laden had some kind of support network within Pakistan,” Mr Little said.

“The secretary indicated in the same interview that he had seen no evidence that Bin Laden was supported by the Pakistani government or that senior Pakistani officials knew he was hiding in the Abbottabad compound. Since the Bin Laden operation, Secretary Panetta and his colleagues in the government have been working hard to improve US-Pakistani relations.”

Diplomatic observers in Washington, however, see Mr Panetta’s interview against the backdrop of the ongoing tensions between the United States and Pakistan.

They believe that both countries are entering a decisive phase for redefining their relations after months of tensions, which started with the May 2 US raid on Bin Laden’s compound and reached unprecedented heights with the November 26 Nato strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in Mohmand.

Pakistan’s new ambassador to the United States, Sherry Rehman, also hinted at this in her first address to the Pakistani-American community this weekend.

“A comprehensive parliamentary review, now in its final phase, will establish new principles for this relationship, resetting the bilateral relationship in a transparent, consistent and predictable manner,” she said.

“The Pakistani government is involved in an internal review of its relations with the United States, and we will wait for them to complete this process,” said US State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland while stressing that Washington wanted to rebuild a strong relationship with Islamabad, “which is beneficial to both”.

Diplomatic observers in Washington believe that both sides are now spelling out various issues they want settled before a final framework for the new relationship is defined.

They point out that in the same interview in which Mr Panetta discussed the support network that Osama bin Laden might have had in Pakistan, he also emphasised that Islamabad would “ultimately” have to release Dr Shakil Afridi, a physician who helped the CIA trace the Al Qaeda chief.

“Dr Afridi’s release may be part of the demands the United States would like to be met before a new relationship is finalised,” said a diplomatic observer, “or he may be a bargaining chip for something bigger. We do not know yet”.

Ambassador Rehman, however, did not get into “details” discussed in Washington’s diplomatic circles.

Instead, she stressed an important point that she spoke as a representative of “one united government” including the country’s defence establishment.

“The elected government will stand firm in its resolve to protect our military, when our soldiers are martyred in the line of duty, as they were on the border post of Salala (on Nov 26,) which has triggered a review in our relationship,” she said.

This surprised many in the audience who were not used to seeing the Pakistani ambassador defend the country’s armed forces.

“What we are doing here is to tell our American friends that our future relationship will look after the interests of all government institutions, including the armed forces,” the diplomat said.

“We want to remain friends with the United States and we want a strong relationship that is equal, sovereign, based on mutual respect and shared values,” Ambassador Rehman explained.

She said she had not come to Washington with a grievance narrative, but to explain Pakistan’s desire to become economic and political partner of the United States and not just a battlefield ally.

Monday 23 January 2012

The problem of a wife being left alone because the husband works long hours

is it wrong to keep your wife at home, not to let her leave the house on less she is with you ?
she will get bored ,,i work 15 hours a day 7 days a week ,,i get one day off every three weeks if im lucky.

Praise be to Allaah.

Undoubtedly the temptations in this life are many, and the ways in which the Shaytaan deceives the sons of Adam are many and varied. So the husband has to take precautions. Allaah has entrusted him with an important task, which is to take care of his wife and children; He has made him responsible for educating and protecting them. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Each of you is a shepherd and each of you is responsible for his flock… a man is the shepherd of his family and is responsible for those under his care; a woman is the shepherd in her husband’s house and she is responsible for her those under her care.” (Narrated by al-Bukhaari, 893)

The wife is a human of flesh and blood, and is affected by what she sees and hears from the people of evil and fitnah (temptation). So the husband should take this into account, so he can protect her from bad influences and stop her from going to bad places.

The Muslim husband should not live only for worldly purposes and work like a dumb machine. Wealth is tempting, but that which is with Allaah is better and more lasting. He should try to find work with shorter hours, even if the pay is less, as long as it is sufficient to meet his needs. This will give him more time to take care of his family and educate his children.

It is not right to leave his wife alone for this length of time, unless there is something to compensate the wife for the absence of her husband, such as studying sharee’ah or meeting with people who fear Allaah and can teach her something good, and so on. But if she is just being left alone, or is being left with the TV and its bad shows, or with bad neighbours and evil companions, then this is neglect and is to be condemned. Those who are neglectful often get their punishment in this world, before they even meet their Lord.

With regard to a woman going out of her house, according to sharee’ah it is not conditional upon her being accompanied by her husband or mahram as long as she is trustworthy and she goes to places where there is no fear for her, and the route she takes is safe. The presence of a mahram is a condition when she is travelling, but she does not have to be accompanied by a mahram everywhere she goes in the city – unless there is some evil or fitnah (temptation, tribulation) involved in her going even a short distance, in which case a woman should not go out on her own. Then it is better to be on the safe side and not go out unless she is with her husband or someone who can protect her and take care of her.

When a Muslim lives in a kaafir country, he has to make extra efforts to protect his family, such as getting together with other Muslim families and renting an apartment building together, or moving to live next to one another, so that this will offer a kind of protection and create a good environment for families and children. At the same time, the Muslim woman should find good, righteous women with whom she can fill her time when her husband is absent.

“Our Lord! Bestow on us from our wives and our offspring the comfort of our eyes, and make us leaders of the Muttaqoon (the pious)” [al-Furqaan 25:74 – interpretation of the meaning]. May Allaah bless our Prophet Muhammad.