Ground Zero's Slave Graves

By Jen Phillips

Wed 18th August 2010:- Muslims in Trinidad held a three hour telethon on Islamic Broadcast Network’s  last Sunday in which more than $1.2 million has been raised  to aid in disaster relief efforts in flood-ravaged Pakistan. The flooding in Pakistan is the worst ever experienced by the country, as 20 million people have been displaced. Millions more are expected to be affected by flood-related diseases.

ASJA is also in the process of raising funds for Pakistan with contributions from its mosques. First vice president of ASJA Kamal Hosein said the group was raising money because they believe Pakistan is experiencing a national disaster.  

Reports are that the Government of Trinidad & Tobago may also be considering to provide assistance to Pakistan in this unprecedented natural disaster.

Governments around the world pledged more than US$200 million during a debate in the UN General Assembly convened to show solidarity with flood-ravaged Pakistan, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.  The new funds will add to an estimated $250 million already raised as part of a $460 million appeal launched by the UN last week to meet emergency needs by flood victims in the next three months.  Ban said countries around the world have come out "strongly in solidarity and support for the people of Pakistan".  "I want to thank governments for pledging more than $200 million to boost relief efforts," he said. "The generosity of countries and individuals will make a real difference in the daily lives of millions of people."  "We must keep it up," he said. "This is not just Pakistan's hour of need - Pakistan is facing weeks, months and years of need."

Eid ul Fitr the national holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, the month of fasting has been  set for Friday, September 10, 2010 in the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago.

The State raised $5,212,000 at yesterday's auction. The auction came as a result of a ruling by Justice Rajendra Narine on September 11 last year.

It is now up to the State to determine how to recover the $37 million shortfall, supervising Auctioneer Peter Soon said. The family of  Yasin Abu Bakr was able to buy back two of ten properties which the State had seized and publicly auctioned yesterday. The total price of the two properties purchased by the Yasin's wife and son was $2.4 million.

"We anticipated a better turnout. I believe if there were more people present the competition would have pushed the prices higher," Soon said of the procedure.

There have been no confirmed sightings of the new crescent in the parameters of CaribbeanMuslims.com, therefore Sha'ban will complete 30 days and Ramadan will start Thursday 12th August, 2010.

 

RAMADAN KAREEM TO ONE AND ALL.

 

First day of Fasting is on Thursday 12 August, 2010

 

We have received numerous reports from Bolivia, Brazil, Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, and Suriname all indicating that the moon has not been seen. Moonsighting.com which ironically declares the beginning and end of Islamic months based on calculation, has a banner declaring that "Saudi Arabia announced in mosques that the moon has been sighted; Wednesday is the first of Ramadan".  Clearly these countries west of Saudi Arabia must see it as well.  The same website shows a visibility map that demonstrates the impossibility of anyone located in Saudi Arabia to be able to see the moon.   Here is the chart

There has been so much corruption of the teachings of the faith coming out of Saudi, it is no wonder they now also wish to corrupt everything in the heavens as well.  We are awaiting further reports from Chile and other key parts of the Americas. We will update this site as more reports come in.  CaribbeanMuslims.com  adheres to the traditional principle that Islamic lunar months begin and end based on the confirmed, verifiable sighting of the new crescent moon.

by Yoginder Sikand

Much has been written about conflicts involving religious communities across the world by journalists, academics and security ‘experts’. Although these conflicts have local roots, and owe to a host of causes, some locally-specific, others regional and even global, a common factor that links all of them are supremacist notions of the religious ‘self’ and, associated with these, negative images of the religious ‘other’ that are deeply-rooted in dominant understandings of religion. Efforts to resolve these conflicts must, some time or the other, necessarily address head-on the notion of the ‘other’ in religious thought, to critique understandings that brand all non-believers as ‘enemies’ and dismiss their faiths as of no worth at all. This critique needs to go hand-in-hand with efforts to promote more positive understandings of the religious ‘other’ and of other faith traditions and belief systems. In short, while most conflicts involving people of different religious communities are rooted in political and economic factors, they cannot be reduced entirely to them. The crucial role that negative, exclusivist, intolerant and supremacist understandings of religion and the religious ‘other’ play in creating and in fanning these conflicts cannot be denied.

That, in short, was what I learnt at a conference in Singapore that I recently participated in. Organised by the official Islamic Council of Singapore, the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapore (MUIS), the conference brought together several dozen academics and activists, Muslims as well as others, from across the world to deliberate on the vexed issue of Islam, Muslims and multiculturalism in our globalised world.