Monday, August 28, 2006

The Islamic Way of War

http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_09_11/cover.html
Muslims have stopped fighting on Western terms—and have started winning.

by Andrew J. Bacevich

In Iraq, the world’s only superpower finds itself mired in a conflict that it cannot win. History’s mightiest military has been unable to defeat an enemy force of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 insurgents equipped with post-World War II vintage assault rifles and anti-tank weapons.

In Gaza and southern Lebanon, the Middle East’s mightiest military also finds itself locked in combat with adversaries that it cannot defeat. Despite weeks of bitter fighting, the IDF’s Merkava tanks, F-16 fighter-bombers, and missile-launching unmanned aerial vehicles failed to suppress, much less eliminate, the armed resistance of Hamas and Hezbollah.

What are we to make of this? How is it that the seemingly weak and primitive are able to frustrate modern armies only recently viewed as all but invincible? What do the parallel tribulations—and embarrassments—of the United States and Israel have to tell us about war and politics in the 21st century? In short, what’s going on here?

The answer to that question is dismayingly simple: the sun has set on the age of unquestioned Western military dominance. Bluntly, the East has solved the riddle of the Western Way of War. In Baghdad and in Anbar Province as at various points on Israel’s troubled perimeter, the message is clear: methods that once could be counted on to deliver swift decision no longer work.

For centuries, Western military might underpinned Western political dominion everywhere from Asia to Africa to the New World. It was not virtue that created the overseas empires of Great Britain, France, Spain, and the other European colonizers; it was firepower, technology, and discipline.

Through much of the last century, nowhere was this Western military pre-eminence more in evidence than in the Middle East. During World War I, superior power enabled the British and French to topple the Ottomans, carve up the region to suit their own interests, and then rule it like a fiefdom. Until 1945, European machine guns kept restive Arabs under control in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Palestine.

The end of World War II found the Europeans without the will to operate the machine guns and short on the money to pay for them. In the Middle East, Arabs no longer willing to follow instructions issued by London or Paris demanded independence. Eager to claim prestige and respect, these nationalists, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser foremost among them, saw in the creation of large machine-age armies a shortcut to achieving their goals.

Placing an order for Soviet-bloc armaments in 1955, Nasser began an ill-fated Arab flirtation with Western-style military technique that did not fully end until Saddam Hussein’s army collapsed on the outskirts of Baghdad nearly a half-century later. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Arab leaders invested in fleets of tanks, field artillery, and other heavy armaments, which they organized into massive formations supported by costly air forces equipped with supersonic jets. On the ground, bigger meant better; in the air, speed was thought to signify superiority.

All of these pricy exertions yielded only humiliation and indignity. Israel—a Western implant in the Muslim world—also adopted Western-style military methods but with far greater success, subjecting the Arabs to repeated drubbings. Designed on the Soviet model, the new Arab armies turned out to be ponderous and predictable but with little of the Red Army’s capacity to absorb punishment and keep fighting. Taking the best of the German military tradition, the Israel Defense Forces placed a premium on daring, dash, and decentralization as they demonstrated to great effect in 1956, 1967, and 1973.

What was it that made the IDF in its heyday look so good? According to the punch line of an old joke: because they always fought Arabs. In 1991, the Americans finally had their own chance to fight Arabs, and they too looked good, making mincemeat of Saddam Hussein’s legions in Operation Desert Storm. In the spring of 2003, the Americans looked good once again, dispatching the remnant of Saddam’s army in a short and seemingly decisive campaign. In Washington many concluded that an unstoppable U.S. military machine could provide the leverage necessary to transform the entire region.

The truth is that U.S. forces and the IDF looked good fighting Arabs only as long as Arab political leaders insisted on fighting on Western terms. As long as they persisted in pitting tank against tank or fighter plane against fighter plane, Arabs were never going to get the better of either the Americans or the Israelis. His stupidity perhaps matched only by his ruthlessness, Saddam may well have been the last Arab leader to figure this out.

Well before Saddam’s final defeat, others, less stupid, began to develop alternative means of what they called “resistance.” This new Islamic Way of War evolved over a period of decades not only in the Arab world but beyond.

In Afghanistan during the 1980s, the Mujahadeen got things started by bringing to its knees a Soviet army equipped with an arsenal of modern equipment. During the so-called First Intifada, which began in 1987, stone-throwing and Molotov-cocktail-wielding Palestinians gave the IDF conniptions. In 1993, an angry Somali rabble—not an army at all—sent the United States packing. In 2000, the collapse of the Camp David talks produced a Second Intifada, this one persuading the government of Ariel Sharon that Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was becoming unsustainable. Most spectacularly, in September 2001, al-Qaeda engineered a successful assault on the American homeland, the culmination of a series of attacks that had begun a decade earlier.

First in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, the United States seemed briefly to turn the tables: Western military methods overthrew the Taliban and then made short shrift of Saddam. After the briefest of intervals, however, victory in both places gave way to renewed and protracted fighting. Most recently, in southern Lebanon an intervention that began with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowing to destroy Hezbollah has run aground and looks increasingly like an Israeli defeat.

So it turns out that Arabs—or more broadly Muslims—can fight after all. We may surmise that they now realize that fighting effectively requires that they do so on their own terms rather than mimicking the West. They don’t need and don’t want tanks and fighter-bombers. What many Westerners dismiss as “terrorism,” whether directed against Israelis, Americans, or others in the West, ought to be seen as a panoply of techniques employed to undercut the apparent advantages of high-tech conventional forces. The methods em-ployed do include terrorism—violence targeting civilians for purposes of intimidation—but they also incorporate propaganda, subversion, popular agitation, economic warfare, and hit-and-run attacks on regular forces, either to induce an overreaction or to wear them down. The common theme of those techniques, none of which are new, is this: avoid the enemy’s strengths; exploit enemy vulnerabilities.

What are the implications of this new Islamic Way of War? While substantial, they fall well short of being apocalyptic. As Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has correctly—if perhaps a trifle defensively—observed, “Our enemy knows they cannot defeat us in battle.” Neither the Muslim world nor certainly the Arab world poses what some like to refer to as “an existential threat” to the United States. Despite overheated claims that the so-called Islamic fascists pose a danger greater than Hitler ever did, the United States is not going to be overrun, even should the forces of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi insurgents, and Shi’ite militias along with Syria and Iran all combine into a unified anti-Crusader coalition. Although Israelis for historical reasons are inclined to believe otherwise, the proximate threat to Israel itself is only marginally greater. Although neither Israel nor the United States can guarantee its citizens “perfect security”—what nation can?—both enjoy ample capabilities for self-defense.

What the Islamic Way of War does mean to both Israel and to the United States is this: the Arabs now possess—and know that they possess—the capacity to deny us victory, especially in any altercation that occurs on their own turf and among their own people. To put it another way, neither Israel nor the United States today possesses anything like the military muscle needed to impose its will on the various governments, nation-states, factions, and political movements that comprise our list of enemies. For politicians in Jerusalem or Washington to persist in pretending otherwise is the sheerest folly.

It’s time for Americans to recognize that the enterprise that some neoconservatives refer to as World War IV is unwinnable in a strictly military sense. Indeed, it’s past time to re-examine the post-Cold War assumption that military power provides the preferred antidote to any and all complaints that we have with the world beyond our borders.

In the Middle East and more broadly in our relations with the Islamic world, we face difficult and dangerous problems, more than a few of them problems to which we ourselves have contributed. Those problems will become more daunting still, for us and for Israel, should a nation like Iran succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons. But as events in Iraq and now in southern Lebanon make clear, reliance on the sword alone will not provide a solution to those problems. We must be strong and we must be vigilant. But we also need to be smart, and getting smart means ending our infatuation with war and rediscovering the possibilities of politics.

_________________________________________

Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book, The New American Militarism, is just out in paperback from Oxford University Press.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Al-Quran



[3. Surah Aal-e-Imran : Ayah 92]


"By no means shall you attain to righteousness until you spend (benevolently) out of what you love; and whatever thing you spend, Allah surely knows it."
Allah has Created from Water Every Living Creature
[24. Surah An-Nur : Ayah 45]

"And Allah has created from water every living creature: so of them is that which walks upon its belly, and of them is that which walks upon two feet, and of them is that which walks upon four; Allah creates what He pleases; surely Allah has power over all things."


[21. Surah Al-Anbiyaa : Ayah 30]

"Do not those who disbelieve see that the heavens and the earth were closed up, but We have opened them; and We have made of water everything living, will they not then believe?"


[25. Surah Al-Furqan : Ayah 54]

"And He it is Who has created man from the water, then He has made for him blood relationship and marriage relationship, and your Lord is powerful."

Few Points to Ponder

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Sir faroshi ki tumunna ab humaray dil mein hay

sir faroshi ki tumunna ab humaray dil mein hay
dekhna hay zor kitna bazo-e-qatil mein hay,,,,

ae shuheed-e-mulk-o-millut mein taray ooper nisar
ab teree himut ka churcha ghair ki mehfil mein hay

weqt anay pay buta dain gay tujhe ae asman
hum abhee se kia butaein kia humaray dil mein hay

kheech ker laey hay sub ko qatl honay ki naveed
ashiqon ka aaj jumghuth koocha-e-qatil mien hay

hay liey huthyar dushmun tak mein betha udher
aur hum tyar hein seena liey apna idher
khon se khailain gay holee ger wutun mushkil mien hay
sir faroshi ki tumunna ab humray dil mien hay
dekhna hay zor kitna bazo-e-qatil mein hay

hath jin mein ho junnon kut;tay naheen tulwar se
sir jo uth jatay hain wo jhuktay naheen lulkar se
aur bhurkay ka wo shola jo humaray dil mein hay
sir faroshi ki tumunna ab humray dil mien hay
dekhna hay zor kitna bazo-e-qatil mein hay

*****************************************************************************

I am a Muslim

I am a Muslim
And God I praise
For all His blessings
My voice I raise
In one God I believe
No equal has He
Lord of the universe
Compassionate to me
Muhammad the prophet
Taught me the way
To be honest and truthful
Throughout every day
The holy Qur'an
To life is my guide
It's teachings I follow
By it I abide
Islam my religion
Preaches good deeds
Mercy and kindness
To the right path it leads
Upon all humanity
God showers His grace
Regardless of colour
Nationality or race
Through working together
Our hopes increase
To live in a world
Full of love and peace
I am a Muslim
And God I praise
For all His blessings
My voice I raise

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Last Breath

From those around I hear a cry,
a morphous sob, a hopeless sigh

I hear their foot steps leaving slow
and then I know, my soul's fly

A chilly wind begins to blow,
within my soul form Head to toe,

And then, Last Breath escapes my lips.
Its time to leave, and I must go ..

So, it is true but its too late
They said: Each soul has its given date

When it must leave its body's core
and meet with its Eternal Fate

O mark my words, wot I do say
who knows tomorrow could be ur day

at last it comes to heaven or hell
decide which now do not delay ..

come on my brothers. let us pray
decide which now do not delay

O god Oh God I can not see
My eyes are blind! Am I still me ?

or has my soul been led astray
and forced to pay a priceless Fee ?

Alas to Dust, we all return
Some shall rejoice while others burn

If only I knew that before
the line grew short and came my turn

and now, as beneath the sod
They lay me with my record flawed

They cry, not knowing. I cry worse
for they go home, and I face my God

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Allah is the Light of Heavens and Earth


Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Rajab Ki Fazeelut

Shajra-e-Mubarik

Friday, August 04, 2006

The Count of King Zulqurnain !!! (2)

Contd ... YaJooj Majooj
=================

According to a rawaya; Yajooj Majooj were born when a drop of water from Hazrat Adam (AS)'s body fell in water. Therefore, they are humans, but not like other mankind who are children of Hazrat Adam (AS) and Hazrat Hawa (AS). (This is generally considered as a myth, not a real incident).

Hazrat Naoh (AS) had three sons; Sam, Ham and Yuhus. Arabs are the decendents of Sam, Niggers from Ham and Turks are from Yuhus. ( Its authenticity is not verified). According to some Rawayats, Yajooj Majooj are Turks but the authenticity of this narration is also not proven.



Thursday, August 03, 2006

The Count of King Zulqurnain !!! (1)

About Ya-Jooj Ma-jooj
-------------------------

Zulqurnain was a king, who was blessed with a great and very vast kingdom by Almighty.
He travelled almost throughout the Earth and spread the Word of Allah to people on earth; as far as he could reach. He used to fight in way of Allah, and preach the commandments of Allah to the people. According to a Rawayah, he travelled from East to West (By East & West, it means that place on Earth where human can reach).
While travelling towards East, he found a group of people (Qaum-Nation) in a valley who were very differnt from all other nations, they used to speak very strange language, and they were quite aloof from rest of the word. They told Zulqurnain that, there is a barbarain group of people who live in a valley between two mountains and they come over them, and plunder all their belongings, destroy their farms and kill their children. These barbarians are known as "Yajooj Majooj".
They requested Zulqurnain to help them and save them from these barbarians and build up a wall to block their way, in return, they will pay him with precious gifts and wealth. Zulqurnain told them, he doesnt need any wealth, but only needs their help (for labour). He asked them to accumulate the iron bricks. He built a very high wall with those bricks with their help, the height of which was almost level to the mountains. Then he asked them to bring melted Copper and set a layer of the copper over wall; thus the wall was made very hard and unbreakable. Also, the wall was also unclimbable as it was too high. Thus, Yajooj Majooj were put into a prison from which, they can;t break out.
(Continue ....)

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

The people who love one another for God's Sake Only

The Prophet(saw) said "Some of God's Servants who are neither prophets nor martyrs shall have on the Day of Judgement a position so close to God that prophets and martyrs would love to have." His companions said: "Messenger of God, will you please tell us who these people are." He said: "They are people who love one another for God's sake only. They have no relation of kinship or business interests with one another. By God, their faces are radiant with light, and they have light. They shall have no fear or sadness when other people are overtaken by fear and sadness." [Related by Abu Dawud]

When the sun will rise from west

When the sun will rise from west" The scientists of astronomy state that the speed of planet Mars have been decreasing in its course toward the eastern direction in the few past weeks to the level we notice the "waver" between the east and the west and on Wednesday the 30th of July the plant movement stopped going toward the eastern direction. Then in the months of August and September...Mars changed its course in the opposite direction to the West- and that until the end of September which means the sun will rise now from the west on Mars!! And this weird phenomenon of the opposite movement called "Retrograde Motion". Most scientists state that all the planets will go through the same, once at least and our planet Earth is one of them. Planet Earth will move in the opposite direction some day and the sun will rise from the west!! This might occur soon and we are unaware! Our beloved messenger (SAW) said: "One of the signs of the hour the sun will rise from the west, when no longer tauba (forgiveness) will be granted" And the strange thing most of our Shariah scholars mentioned that the rise of the sun from the west occurs only once on that day the sun will rise from the west then again from the east and continues until Allah wish and this is similar to what is happening to Mars it stops, then it changes its course of direction for a short period of time then returns to way once it was. Abu Hurayra (RAA) narrated that the messenger of Allah (SAW) said:"The day of the hour will not come until the sun rises from the west, if it rises and the people saw it they will all believe, when a time where nothing will be accepted anymore of believe the truth" [Abu Bukhari,Muslim) and from Abu Hurayra (RAA) that the messenger (SAW) said: "Start with the six actions (he mentioned) the sun rising from the west) [Muslim]And Abdullah Bin Amro (RAA) said: (I memorized from the messenger (SAW)a hadith I will never forget I heard the messenger of Allah (SAW) says:The first aya to come the rise of the sun from the west) [Ahmad]And the messenger ASWA "Allah (SWT) place his hand at night to forgive his morning sinners, and places in the morning to forgive his night sinners until the sun rises from the west" [Muslim]This important piece of news is very important and with grate sign of warning of remembrance...for through it the doors of Dawah whether for Muslims, the unwary of us or the kufar. When we show this hadith that was told 1400 years ago about this miracle you will see a lot will enter this beautiful religion...And the Muslims if they see this phenomena happening in Mars who knows maybe this is the beginning of what will happen to our planet soon? After reading the above article, i searched on yahoo for "Retrograde Motion" and found many articles about this, below are couple of sites that try to explain or should I say verify what Allah has told us ... http://www.lasalle.edu/~smithsc/Astronomy/retrograd.html http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/projects/data/Retrograde/

Baby, it's all good! - A modern hijab poem

http://www.thehijabshop.com/information/article1.php

Courtesy: Paaal ...

What do you see when you look at me
Do you see someone limited, or someone free
All some people can do is just look and stare
Simply because they can't see my hair
Others think I am controlled and uneducated
They think that I am limited and un-liberated
They are so thankful that they are not me
Because they would like to remain 'free'

Well free isn't exactly the word I would've used
Describing women who are cheated on and abused
They think that I do not have opinions or voice
They think that being hooded isn't my choice
They think that the hood makes me look caged
That my husband or dad are totally outraged
All they can do is look at me in fear
And in my eye there is a tear

Not because I have been stared at or made fun of
But because people are ignoring the One up above
On the day of judgment they will be the fools
Because they were too ashamed to play by their own rules
Maybe the guys won't think I am a cutie
But at least I am filled with more inner beauty
See I have declined from being a guy's toy
Because I won't let myself be controlled by a boy

Real men are able to appreciate my mind
And aren't busy looking at my behind
Hooded girls are the ones really helping the Muslim cause
The role that we play definitely deserves applause
I will be recognized because I am smart and bright
And because some people are inspired by my sight
The smart ones are attracted by my tranquility
In the back of their mind they wish they were me

We have the strength to do what we think is right
Even if it means putting up a life long fight
You see we are not controlled by a mini skirt and tight shirt
We are given only respect, and never treated like dirt
So you see, we are the ones that are free and liberated
We are not the ones that are sexually terrorized and violated
We are the ones that are free and pure
We're free of STD's that have no cure

So when people ask you how you feel about the hood
Just sum it up by saying, 'Baby its all good'

The Veil




Courtesy: Pal
(From the Sound Vision documentary Hijab: An Act of Faith)

They say, "Oh, poor girl, you're so beautiful you know
It's a shame that you cover up your beauty so."
She just smiles and graciously responds reassuringly,
"This beauty that I have is just one simple part of me.

This body that I have, no stranger has the right to see.
These long clothes, this shawl I wear, ensure my modesty.
Faith is more essential than fashion, wouldn’t you agree?"

This hijab,
This mark of piety,
Is an act of faith, a symbol,
For all the world to see.
A simple cloth, to protect her dignity.
So lift the veil from your heart to see the heart of purity.

They tell her, "Girl, don’t you know this is the West and you are free?
You don’t need to be oppressed, ashamed of your femininity."
She just shakes her head and she speaks so assuredly,
"See the bill-boards and the magazines that line the check-out isles,

with their phony painted faces and their air-brushed smiles?
Well their sheer clothes and low cut gowns they are really not for me.
You call it freedom, I call it anarchy."

This hijab,
This mark of piety,
Is an act of faith, a symbol,
For all the world to see.
A simple cloth, to protect her dignity.
So lift the veil from your heart to see the heart of purity.
Lift the veil from your heart and seek the heart of purity.