William Abdullah Chappelle

I found this on MujahideenRyder’s Blog. It’s really short you should watch it:

Our Future

 

Our Future

We tend to plan for our future everyday
Desperately we try to pave the way
We save every little bit of money we can find
And to the people who help us achieve we are kind

If there is something we want enough we’re willing to fight For a future filled with happiness that is Oh so bright
It is unfortunate though, to fill one’s heart with sorrow
But remember dear Muslims – our future is not tomorrow
It is not money or fame that will get us ahead
But the number of times we worship Allah before bed
This is what will make our future unimaginably great
So let us wake up and take control of our Fate.
Tomorrow is not the future we should be planning for
But the Day we will be standing before Allah’s door
The Day when we will be reminded of every last deed
Like the day we forgot the poor because of our greed.
And what dear Muslim shall you say
When Allah asks you why you didn’t pray?
So let us pray, worship and keep the poor fed
For our Future begins once we are all dead

I have no knowledge of who wrote this poem if you do please tell me.

Subhana Rabbi yal ‘Ala

Little kids in Salah always juss make me smile…

Check Out the New Controversial Fashion

This made me laugh a bit:

 

Where Some See Fashion, Others See Politics

THREE months ago, Jay Hukahori, a 24-year-old fashion design student at Parsons, went to a party at Guesthouse, a club in Chelsea, in an outfit topped off by a kaffiyeh, a scarf with a black and white chain-link pattern and knotted tassels that is typically worn in Arab countries.

“I knew that with the doormen, it’d be easily identifiable as a hip accessory,” Ms. Hukahori said.

Once the trademark headwear of Yasir Arafat, and long associated with his Palestinian countrymen, the kaffiyeh has lately shown up on the shelves of adventurous boutiques in the United States and even mainstream retailers like Urban Outfitters.

Its newest wearers, who wrap it around the neck like a scarf, say they are less Fatah sympathizers than fashion party crashers. The kaffiyeh appears to be the dubious successor to last year’s Che Guevara T-shirts, a symbol denuded of any potent political associations by pop culture.

But not everyone finds it so simple a fashion statement. A blogger named Mobius, posting Jan. 16 on Jewschool, a Jewish blog that targets a young audience, blasted Urban Outfitters for selling kaffiyehs. Taking issue with the retailer’s decision to label the item an “anti-war woven scarf,” Mobius posted pictures of terrorists adorned in kaffiyehs.

The same day Urban Outfitters, which had offered the scarves in several color combinations for $20, pulled them from stores. Its Web site posted this explanation: “Due to the sensitive nature of this item, we will no longer offer it for sale. We apologize if we offended anyone, this was by no means our intention.” A spokeswoman for the store, which has 95 branches nationwide, declined to comment further.

Hanyi Lee, a graphic designer in New York, who had bought a kaffiyeh at Urban Outfitters and now owns three, didn’t intend anything provocative when she wore hers. “I didn’t think it was anything that heavy,” Ms. Lee said, noting that she takes fashion cues from a variety of cultures.

Ms. Hukahori thought it strange that Urban Outfitters would call the kaffiyeh (pronounced kuh-FEE-yeh) an antiwar scarf.

“That’s so cheap of Urban, a PR gambit,” she said. “But I think it’s great that this controversy will get kids to start learning about it.”

Clearly, many wearers have not considered the kaffiyeh’s political import. “I’m not too up to speed in what’s going on in the Middle East,” said Liz Chernett, a strategic consultant in branding and a youth trends expert who bought a kaffiyeh from a vendor on St. Mark’s Place three months ago. “It’s an aesthetic thing.”

Perhaps what is most telling about the mainstreaming of the kaffiyeh is what it says about the country’s political mood. The scarf’s popularity seems to have less to do with solidarity with Arabs than it has to do with the war in Iraq. Marketing it as an antiwar statement, as Urban Outfitters attempted, would probably have been even more controversial a few years ago, when the country was more divided about Iraq, said Ted Swedenburg, a professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, who blogs about pop culture, music and the Middle East.

In Britain, where voters are even more united against the war than Americans, the kaffiyeh’s fashionability has been taken a step farther. TopShop, the high-street juggernaut, is selling kaffiyehs stamped with skull prints, conflating two hot looks of the recent past.

Dr. Swedenburg said he thinks that the exotic element of the scarf becomes more important, and the political aspect less so, as it becomes mainstream. “It’s chic because it’s different,” he said. “It’s Eastern.”

According to Professor Swedenburg and others who have studied the history of the kaffiyeh, it was originally the headwear of Palestinian peasants, worn around the head and fastened in place by a band called an agal. In the insurrection against the British occupation from 1936 to 1939, the kaffiyeh became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism as well as an expression of class struggle. The insurgents forced upper-class Palestinians, who typically wore the Ottoman fez, to don the kaffiyeh to show sympathy with the fighters. The kaffiyeh rose in prominence again in the 1960s when the Palestinian resistance movement started and Arafat famously adopted it. “Above all, it’s important to remember a kaffiyeh is something to wear like a hat, to keep out the cold, keep out the sun,” said Rochelle Davis, an assistant professor of culture and society at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.

But if an older generation of Arabs still wears it as utilitarian headwear, the younger generation in the Middle East may wear it expressly to show support of the Palestinian cause, and it is also used by militants to disguise their faces. The black and white kaffiyeh is often associated with Fatah; the red and white with Hamas.

Many in the Jewish community, in particular, object to people wearing the scarf as a fashion statement. “Because there are people who wear the kaffiyeh as a sign of solidarity with Palestinians, some people view it as an endorsement of terrorism,” said Mik Moore, chairman of the board of directors for the Jewish Student Press Service, an independent nonprofit organization.

Dr. Swedenburg doesn’t think it should be viewed this way. “I think to associate it directly with terrorism is to tar all Palestinians with the brush of terrorism,” he said. “That’s a mischaracterization.”

Dr. Davis shares this opinion. “I think it diminishes its meaning and its value to just say ‘it’s been used by terrorists,’ ” he said. “I think it has a much richer history and a much richer meaning system than that.”

For those with a long memory, the current kaffiyeh craze may seem familiar. The scarves became a fashion statement in the United States at the start of the first intifada in 1987. In 1988, CBS News and Time magazine chronicled the trend. In a 1992 Michigan Quarterly Review article about the kaffiyeh’s modern history, Dr. Swedenburg wrote about how a “sign of Palestinian struggle suddenly appeared in the ensembles of ‘downtown’ U.S.A., together with black turtlenecks, ripped Levi’s, high-top sneakers and eight-zippered black leather jackets.”

In its 2007 revival, the kaffiyeh has similar sidekicks. “It’s hipster 101: I need my skinny jeans, some sort of scarf and a beat up T-shirt,” Ms. Hukahori said. “O.K., I’m a hipster now.”

Whether the scarf is seen as a political statement is usually in the eye of the beholder. “I think the meaning is given to it as much by the viewer as the wearer,” Dr. Davis said. “I see it and immediately think, ‘Is that person wearing it for a reason or just as a fashion accessory?’ ”

Ms. Chernett has not encountered any reactions to her kaffiyeh in New York but she has in cities like Philadelphia.

“I’ve gotten a lot of comments about it, like, ‘Doesn’t that support terrorists?’ ” she said. “ ‘Aren’t you Jewish?’ ” (Ms. Chernett said she is half-Jewish.)

Ms. Hukahori doesn’t have to answer any such questions; she hasn’t worn her kaffiyeh in public in months. It would never make her stand out with a club doorman today, she feels. The kaffiyeh, she said, is “dead.”

 

Source: The New York Times

Obama

Obama launches presidential bid

Democratic Senator Barack Obama has launched his presidential campaign with a speech in which he pledged to “build a more hopeful America”.

He began his official campaign with a call for the Iraq war to end, saying US troops must withdraw by March 2008.

Mr Obama, 45, is considered by many to be the first African-American candidate with a realistic chance of winning.

He, along with Senator Hillary Clinton, is leading the race for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 2008 vote.

A large crowd of supporters braved the sub-zero temperatures in Springfield, Illinois to watch Mr Obama make his announcement.

He spoke to the crowd of his working life in the state over the last 20 years, first as a community worker, then as a civil rights lawyer and finally as a US senator.

He said it was the lessons learnt watching the daily struggles many faced that had ignited in him a desire for change.

“That is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States,” Mr Obama said.

Changing politics

As he made the announcement the crowd cheered and chanted his name.

But having served just one term as a senator and with no experience of executive office, many have questioned whether Mr Obama’s skills match his ambition.

As he declared his candidacy Mr Obama acknowledged that fact saying: “I recognise that there is a certain presumptuousness in this, a certain audacity to this announcement. I know that I have not spent a long time learning the ways of Washington, but I have been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington have to change.”

Mr Obama said the first priority was ending the conflict in Iraq.

“America, it’s time to start bringing our troops home,” he said. “It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.”

Mr Obama was elected to the US Senate after Congress voted to support President George W Bush in his decision to go to war in Iraq, but in 2002 made a speech opposing the conflict.

He went on to criticise the current administration for what he called a failure of leadership to address issues like America’s dependence on oil and a failing educational system.

Race issue

Mr Obama burst on to the national scene in July 2004 when he delivered a stirring keynote speech at the Democratic party convention.

His declaration that there was no white or black America, but a United States of America helped him win a seat in the Senate that year and subsequently set him on a fast track to vie for the White House.

Time magazine has dubbed Mr Obama “America’s hottest political phenomenon” and US chat show host Oprah Winfrey urged him to announce his candidacy on her programme.

But instead he chose to launch his presidential campaign on the very spot where Abraham Lincoln once denounced the divisions caused by slavery.

However, unlike previous black presidential candidates, Mr Obama was not part of the civil rights movement, which correspondents say makes some African-Americans wary of him.

His mixed race heritage – with a white mother from Kansas, and a black father from Kenya – has led some observers to suggest that he is an African and an American, but not an African-American.

Though undoubtedly ambitious and charismatic, with relatively little national experience and formidable opponents, including Mrs Clinton, many question whether he can really secure the Democratic nomination, and whether he has the depth of policy to match.

Mr Obama has tried to answer critics in recent weeks, introducing a bill that calls for the phased redeployment of US troops from Iraq.

Source: BBC News

Obama Formally Enters Presidential Race

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Feb. 10 — Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, standing before the Old State Capitol, where Abraham Lincoln began his political career, announced his candidacy for the White House on Saturday by presenting himself as an agent of generational change who could transform a government hobbled by cynicism, petty corruption and “a smallness of our politics.”

“The time for that politics is over,” Mr. Obama said. “It is through. It’s time to turn the page.”

Wearing an overcoat but gloveless on a frigid morning, Mr. Obama invoked a speech Lincoln gave at this same spot in 1858 condemning slavery — “a house divided against itself cannot stand” — as he started his campaign to become the nation’s first black president.

Speaking smoothly and comfortably, Mr. Obama offered a generational call to arms, portraying his campaign less as a candidacy and more as a movement. “Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done,” he said. “Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call.”

It was the latest step in a journey rich with historic possibilities and symbolism. Thousands of people packed the town square to witness it, shivering in the single-digit frostiness until Mr. Obama appeared, trailed by his wife, Michelle, and two young daughters.

Still, for all the excitement on display, Mr. Obama’s speech also marked the start of a tough new phase in what until now has been a charmed introduction to national politics. Democrats and Mr. Obama’s aides said they were girding for questions about his experience in national politics, his command of policy, a past that has gone largely unexamined by rivals and the news media, and a public persona defined more by his biography and charisma than by how he would seek to use the powers of the presidency.

“He’s done impressively so far, but at some point he’s really going to have to move to the next stage,” said Walter Mondale, the former Democratic vice president who made the phrase “where’s the beef” famous in his 1984 challenge to the credentials of a rival, Gary Hart, the former senator from Colorado.

His formal entry to the race framed a challenge that would seem daunting to even the most talented politician: whether Mr. Obama, with all his strengths and limitations, can win in a field dominated by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who brings years of experience in presidential politics, a command of policy and political history, and an extraordinarily battle-tested network of fund-raisers and advisers.

Mr. Obama has told friends that he views Mrs. Clinton as his biggest obstacle, though his aides said they remained very wary as well of former Senator John Edwards, another rival for the Democratic nomination.

Mr. Obama hit the question of experience in the opening bars of his speech on Saturday, suggesting that he would seek to use his limited time in government as an asset by casting himself as an agent of change who was free from the pull of special interests and politics as usual.

“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this — a certain audacity — to this announcement,” he said. “I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

For Mr. Obama’s campaign, struggling to put this unlikely organization together in just three months, the first focus is Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama’s aides said they had spent weeks discussing how to derail what David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, described as “the dominant political organization in the Democratic Party.”

Mr. Obama’s decision to spend the first two days of his presidential campaign in Iowa, where he headed after his announcement, reflected one of the first important strategic decisions in that regard. His organization sees Iowa as a place where he could surprise Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards with an early victory. The eastern part of the state, a critical region for Democrats to win and where Mr. Obama spent the rest of Saturday, shares a media market with neighboring Illinois. Mr. Obama has been a fixture in local news since winning his Senate primary nearly three years ago.

In trying to undercut Mrs. Clinton’s claims of experience, Mr. Obama’s campaign has decided to borrow the techniques that Bill Clinton used to defeat the first President Bush in 1992. Mr. Obama, reprising the role of Mr. Clinton, on Saturday presented himself as a candidate of generational change running to oust entrenched symbols of Washington, a clear allusion to Mrs. Clinton, as he in effect tried to turn Mrs. Clinton’s experience into a burden. Mr. Obama is 45; Mrs. Clinton is 59.

But more than anything, Mr. Obama’s aides said, they believe the biggest advantage he has over Mrs. Clinton is his difference in position on the war in Iraq. Mrs. Clinton supported the war authorization four years ago. Mr. Obama has, as he points out in almost every speech he gives, opposed the war from the start, and has introduced legislation to begin withdrawing United States troops no later than May 1, with the goal of removing all combat brigades by March 31, 2008, taking a far more explicit stance than Mrs. Clinton on how to end the conflict.

“America, it’s time to start bringing our troops home,” he said Saturday. “It’s time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else’s civil war.”

Yet even on a day that pointed to Mr. Obama’s strengths — a big, excited crowd, a speech that in its composition and delivery demonstrated yet again why he is viewed as a singular talent in the Democratic Party — it seems evident that Mr. Obama’s easier days as a candidate have passed. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, or to a lesser extent Mr. Edwards, Mr. Obama has not gone through a full-scale audit that will now come from Republicans, Democrats, journalists and advocacy groups, eager to define him before he defines himself.

Some Democrats, including Mr. Obama’s opponents, seem increasingly game to challenge him, particularly when it comes to the substance of an Obama candidacy. Mr. Edwards offered a hint of what Mr. Obama faced in an interview the other day, as he discussed national health care, when he was asked his reaction to Mr. Obama’s views on providing national coverage.

“I haven’t seen a plan from him,” Mr. Edwards said. “Have you all?”

Mr. Obama has glided to his position in his party with a demeanor and series of eloquent speeches that have won him comparisons to the Kennedy brothers and put him in a position where his status as a black man with a chance to win the White House is only part of the excitement generated by his candidacy.

But with perhaps one major exception, his plan to disengage forces in Iraq, he has avoided offering the kind of specific ideas that his own advisers acknowledge could open him up to attack by opponents or alienate supporters initially drawn by his more thematic appeals.

Mr. Obama went so far as to tell Democrats in Washington last week that voters were looking for a message of hope, and disparaged the notion that a presidential campaign should be built on a foundation of position papers or details.

“There are those who don’t believe in talking about hope: they say, well, we want specifics, we want details, we want white papers, we want plans,” he said then. “We’ve had a lot of plans, Democrats. What we’ve had is a shortage of hope.”

But some Democrats were scornful. “That’s nonsense,” Mr. Hart said. “It posits that it’s either-or. Who’s saying you can’t talk about hope? I’m not talking about white papers: I’m talking about one big speech about ‘How I view the world.’ ”

In an interview before he left for Illinois, Mr. Obama said he realized his powerful appeal as a campaigner would take him only so far. Other campaigns that have relied extensively on the life story of the candidate have typically foundered.

“If a campaign is premised on personality, then no, I don’t think you can stay fresh for a year,” Mr. Obama said. “But if the campaign is built from the ground up and there is a sense of ownership among people who want to see significant change, then absolutely. It can build and grow.”

And in his speech here on Saturday, Mr. Obama, trying to offer himself as the grass-roots outsider in contrast to a member of a political family that has dominated Washington life for 15 years, presented his campaign as an effort “not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.”

“That is why this campaign can’t only be about me,” Mr. Obama said. “It must be about us. It must be about what we can do together.”

Source: The New York Times

“Where Are the Abu-Bakr’s…”

I found this article on  HAhmed.com and felt that this article addressed an important topic and had some pretty powerful statements as well:

Brothers- The Weakest Link

by Saad Omar

For too long, brothers have been considered the weakest link of the Muslim community. We hear often that the sisters are executing their duties as faithful ladies at far higher proportions than their male counterparts.

This is not a stereotype, but a fact. Ask a 23 years old sister trying to find a compatible spouse. I would estimate that good sisters outnumber good brothers at a ratio of 10:1 at the least. That means for every 10 sisters that are out there, 9 will have to settle for brothers who are not as committed to the struggle. Realize that this estimate is my most conservative estimate and when you consider that a significant portion of the brothers turn overseas to find their spouses, there are even fewer suitable future potentials for our sisters.

Lets put the topic of marriage aside for a moment. For too long have the men slept and refused to stand up. Look at our two famous Muslim American brothers, Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X and then consider our own lives. Muhammad Ali stood at the face of a nation and affirmed his beliefs and in doing so was stripped of his most prized championship belt and years of his in prison. Malcolm X stood for truth and justice and paid the dearest price, his life.

Once again, now consider our lives. We walk a cheap imitation of their lives as we attempt to follow the stereotypes of so-called alpha males imitating pimps such as Jay Z or 50 cent. If we have not fallen pray to that fake hip hop culture, we may imitate preppy idols such as Timberlake or Usher who must include one song in each album talking about cheating on their latest girlfriend just to remind us of their true character. They are not only the scum of the earth; they proudly display their pathetic nature.

We spend hours in the gym attempting to beef up our bodies as our minds and souls remain seriously neglected. Then we turn to the internet during late hours of the night for our secret lives of AIM flirtation and pornography.

We act as if we are slick. That no one knows what we are up to. We walk around Islamic conventions as we are the imitation of Prophet walking on earth but every moment that we find ourselves alone, we spit on the Prophet’s legacy.

We wear the cloak of Moses over the heart of Pharoah.

This is not a negative message but an honest one. It is time for the brothers to rise. I refuse to live my life under the stigma of being “one of the brothers,” a disgraced gender known for sloth, foul play, and ignorance.

The movement to reverse this downward swirling path that brothers find themselves in is called the Fatooha. It is a movement that will proceed under the mentorship and vision of Imam Zaid Shakir. I call you to it. It is a movement that existed during the Classical Islamic period and inculcated principles of Chivalry that later directly led to the concept of Chivalry in Medieval Europe.

The concepts found in the King Arthur series and similar literature, directly stem from the Fatooha Movement.

Brothers, it is time to rise. Where are the Abu Bakrs, Khalid bin Walid, Ali, and Bilals amongst us? Mediocrity has never been acceptable and definitely is not now.

Whether you choose to be part of the Fatooha Movement or not is secondary. My primary message is the follow, as brothers, we have done a grave injustice to the rest of the community, namely the sisters. But that is now in our past. It is time to stand up as men, not in a superficial media-defined sense, but in a profound way. And maybe, someday in the future, we will not only be worthy of our future wives but the princes that they will stand in awe of.

This is our mission

How Low Can We Go?

Out of all the things that I’ve seen and heard of, I never thought that people in our society would be able to stoop this low. It makes me wonder how they go on with themselves, how they live their lives knowing that they are responsible for killing so many people all for a profit. Watch this clip and you’ll be amazed: