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http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/37314970/

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:27:49 -0800

A woman was waiting at the airport one night,
With several long hours before her flight.
She hunted for a book in the airport shop,
Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book, but happened to see,
That the man beside her, as bold as could be,
Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between,
Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene

She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock,
As the gustly "cookie thief" diminished her stock
She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,
Thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I'd blacken his eye!"

With each cookie she took, he took one too.
When only one was left, she wondered what he'd do.
with a smile on his face and a nervous laugh,
He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, and he ate the other.
She snatched it from him and thought, "Oh brother,
This guy has some nerve, and he's also so rude,
Why, he didn't even show any gratitude!"

She had never known when she had been so galled,
And sighed with relief when her flight was called.
She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate,
Refusing to look at the "thieving ingrate".

She boarded the plane and sank in her seat,
Then sought her book, which was almost complete.
As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise.
There were her bag of cookies in front of her eyes!

"If mine are here," she moaned with despair.
"Then the others were his and he tried to share!"
Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,
That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief!!!!

~Sabri

source: http://www.jannah.org/articles/poems.html#3

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/34672005/

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:28:21 -0700

(..continued..) Thirty years later, Qum is arguably the most important center of power in the country. The city where the leader of the revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, lived and taught is now connected to Tehran by a modern 100-mile-long highway. New streets and modern boulevards surround the narrow alleys of the old town, and the population has grown to a million--50,000 of whom are mullahs.

The institute where Shomali works is at the center of both the new and the old. Women are not allowed inside. Visitors are required to remove their shoes before entering. On the notice board in the lobby are clips from Kayhan, the newspaper of Iran's hardliners, criticizing the reformist contenders in the upcoming elections. Yet Shomali's office could belong to an academic at Harvard or Stanford. The desk and shelves are cluttered with books, some just arrived from the Oxford University Press. A computer placed prominently in one corner has a high-speed connection (still relatively rare in Iran), putting the whole wide world of the Web at Shomali's fingertips.

Some of the views of the institute's clerics would fit comfortably with those of conservative Christians and Jews. The mullahs reject the theory of evolution, for instance, favoring an Islamic version of creationism and intelligent design. But when Shomali looks at questions of bioethics--sperm and embryo donation, cloning or surrogate motherhood--his approach is very different. Roman Catholics, for instance, believe the sanctity of life begins with the fertilization of the egg, regardless of the circumstances. The mullahs, while they generally oppose abortion, believe that only after 120 days does a fetus have a soul. And that opens the door wide to stem-cell research. In every major religion there are fundamentalists who seek to refute science as a way to affirm faith. Not Shomali and his colleagues. They see their particular challenge in more practical terms: to bring the thinking of science to the great thinkers of Shiism, and through them to the masses so that Iranian scientists can operate on a par with other researchers anywhere in the world.

While Iran remains a theocracy, most senior government figures are not clerics. But, as at the Khomeini Institute, the role of religion can be felt everywhere, and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the final say in all matters. At the heart of Iran's theocratic establishment are the marjas, grand ayatollahs who interpret the teachings of the Qur'an and essentially determine whether the actions of the Islamic Republic's government are acceptably Islamic or not. Today, there are about 10 prominent marjas in Iran. Khamenei, who served as president before he became Supreme Leader after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, has long experience in the quotidian affairs of state and society. But the majority of the other marjas are octogenarians who have spent their lives in seminaries. "The main problem has always been to explain modern problems to traditional marjas," says Taha Merghati, a cleric who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the Islamic view of fertility treatments. "Modern concepts were wrongly presented to them. They misunderstood those concepts, and naturally would oppose them." (..continued..)

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/34671979/

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:28:06 -0700

(..continued..) Merghati's role is a little like that of a bright young law clerk trying to persuade an aged Supreme Court justice to accept some new interpretation of case law. One of Merghati's recent articles was about "the rights of a child born to a surrogate mother according to Islam." He drew on the Qur'an and the Hadith, that vast collection of lessons from the life and sayings of the prophet on which much Islamic scholarship depends. He also drew on personal experience as the son and grandson of mullahs to find the right language and the right tone to deliver an exegesis that takes into account modern demands. "We mention that the marjas' answer is necessary for the well-being of the society," says Merghati.

That Khamenei shares this view has been vital to the advancement of science in Iran. And the Supreme Leader has also been instrumental turning theory into practice. The Rooyan Institute, which started as a fertility clinic in Tehran almost 20 years ago, has grown to be a center of stem-cell and cloning research on a par with some of the best facilities in the world. It was Khamenei who gave the institute funding and also the land to build on, and in his role as marja he issued edicts that give Rooyan's researchers the freedom they need to work. Scientists there say Khamenei disregarded those who claimed that embryonic-stem-cell research and cloning interfered in God's creation. By that logic, he ruled, any modification of plants or animals, or, indeed, any medical treatment of human beings would be interfering in God's creation.

Today, Dr. Hamid Goorabi, the dean of the Rooyan Institute, is in constant contact with clerics about ethical and religious questions, but feels he has wide latitude to experiment. Sitting in his office with a portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei positioned high on the wall behind him, he proudly notes that Rooyan cloned a goat in its lab in the city of Isfahan. Human cloning has been ruled out, but, he said, he hopes to soon clone genetically manipulated cows that can provide milk containing substances that help human patients.

In the West, the public has learned to worry that such science might be as monstrous as it is miraculous. Witness the persistent furor over genetically modified food crops in Europe. But Iran does not carry the same cultural burdens, says Hassan Eslami, who wrote his thesis about cloning. "The problem lies in myths created by people like Mary Shelley in Frankenstein or Aldous Huxley in Brave New World," says Eslami. "And Europeans are still haunted by the memory of Nazi genetic experiments," he says. "But we started with a clean slate."

Practical science also requires practical tools, however, and because many of the more sophisticated devices needed for research could be used for military as well as civilian purposes, they've been banned by the sanctions imposed on Iran by the United Nations Security Council. If the researchers at Rooyan want to keep pace with their counterparts in the rest of the world, said Konrad Hochedlinger of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute on a visit to Tehran, "they have to build everything from scratch."

Even though the practical difficulties may be overcome, they are an affront to national and professional pride, a source of anger, a formula for defiance. Goorabi, the dean of Rooyan, sees the embargo as part of a broader Western conspiracy to isolate Iran and keep it from catching up with modern technology. "Some countries would like to have a monopoly over science," he says. The line echoes the same arguments that Iranians make about nuclear technology. While the West sees the question as one of weapons, for most Iranians the critical issues is respect. "At the height of the Islamic civilization before the Renaissance, most of the scientists were also religious scholars," says Shomali. "It is just in the past few centuries that we have been behind in scientific achievements." (..continued..)

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/34672453/

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 07:27:50 -0700

(..continued..) Just in the past few centuries. Iranians do take the long view. Like much of the Muslim world, they missed the Gutenberg revolution of the 15th century and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th that provided the foundations of Western dominance. They do not intend to miss the scientific revolutions of the 21st century as well, and in Qum they have determined that nothing in the Qur'an or the Hadith will stand in their way.

~Maziar Bahari

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/30178169/

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:59:55 -0800

Back!

Many weeks ago my health have been declining, and I was not able to do as many things as I wanted. Then I also had an appendicectomy in the hospital and stayed there for about a week. Then I came back to recover at home. I have stopped all my work and also stopped my contributions to the Free Software community, and most of my blogging. Hopefully everyone who knows me will be aware of the reasons why I have not responded (yet) to the messages/e-mails. Hope everyone is in good health and enjoying life. I sure am now.

~Muhammad

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/30178337/

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:56:03 -0800

Contemporary Darwinists have confirmed the truth of this legacy:

Niles Eldredge (Paleontologist at Harvard University):
Indeed, the sudden appearance of a varied, well-preserved array of fossils, which geologists have used to mark the beginnings of the Cambrian Period (the oldest division of the Paleozoic Era) does pose a fascinating intellectual challenge.1

Derek W. Ager (Paleontologist at University College, Swansea):
The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find - over and over again - not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another.2

Mark Czarnecki (Evolutionist paleontologist):
A major problem in proving the theory [of evolution] has been the fossil record, the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead, species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God.3

Carlton E. Brett (Professor of Geology at the University of Cincinnati):
Did life on Earth change steadily and gradually through time? The fossil record emphatically says "no."4

Dr. Colin Patterson (Evolutionist Paleontologist and Curator of London's Natural History Museum):
You say that I should at least "show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived." I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.5

David B. Kitts (Professor of the History of Science at Oklahoma University):
Evolution requires intermediate forms between species, and paleontology does not provide them.6

Mark Ridley (Zoologist at Oxford University):
In any case, no real evolutionist . . . uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation. . .7

Steven M. Stanley (Professor of Paleontology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa):
The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution [the evolution of a species' entire population into a new species] accomplishing a major morphologic [structural] transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model [of evolution] can be valid.8

Hoimar Von Ditfurth (A German Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and Evolutionist Science Writer):
When we look back, we see there is no need to have been surprised at our failure to find those transitional forms searched for almost painfully. Because the great likelihood is that such transitional stages never existed.9

Tom Kemp (Curator of The Zoological Collections at Oxford University:
In no single adequately documented case is it possible to trace a transition, species by species, from one genus to another.10

Dr. Colin Patterson (Evolutionist Paleontologist and Curator of London's Natural History Museum):
[Stephen Jay] Gould [of Harvard] and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils.11

We therefore congratulate Darwin!

From the scientific proofs of 21st century, it now appears that Darwin was very foresighted indeed! 150 years ago, he said, "There is even not one single transitional fossil." And now, millions of fossil specimens confirm that there is NOT ONE SINGLE TRANSITIONAL FORM FOSSIL WHATSOEVER! Darwin's legacy has been proven right! On the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, we congratulate Darwin on his prudence and on this important prediction.

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/30178325/

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:55:42 -0800

1 Niles Eldredge The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, Washington Square Press, New York, 1982, p.44
2 Derek A. Ager, "The Nature of the Fossil Record," Proceedings of the British Geological Association, Vol. 87, 1976, p. 133
3 Mark Czarnecki, "The Revival of the Creationist Crusade," MacLean's, 19 January 1981, p. 56
4 Carlton E. Brett, "Stasis: Life in the Balance." Geotimes, Vol. 40, Mar. 1995, p. 18
5 From a letter dated 10 April, 1979, quoted in L. D. Sunderland's Darwin's Enigma: Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, 1988
6 David B]. Kitts, "Paleontology and Evolutionary Theory," Evolution , Vol. 28, September 1974, p. 487
7 Mark Ridley, "Who Doubts Evolution?," New Scientist, Vol. 90; June 25, 1981, p. 831
8 Stanley, Stephen M., Macroevolution--Pattern and Process, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1979, p. 39
9 Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorların Sessiz Gecesi 2, ["The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs 2"] p. 22.
10 Thomas S. Kemp, Mammal-Like Reptiles and the Origin of Mammals, New York: Academic Press, 1982, p. 319
11 Colin Patterson, letter to Luther Sunderland dated April 10, 1979, quoted in L.D. Sunderland Darwin's Enigma, p. 89

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/27392764/

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 22:47:41 -0800

http://english.bayynat.org.lb/news%5Cbayan_09112008.htm

Change

From the page: "If change is an established fact in the minds of the new U.S. administration, this administration should also bear in mind that the people of this region are eager for this change, and that the subsequent US administrations sought to preserve the dictatorships in our countries by firm intelligence and security and political fences and thus obstructed this hope-for change. Hence, he who prides himself on democracy and his democratic values should not obstruct the change-seeking people from realizing their dreams with undemocratic means that contradict with human culture and heritage and with principles of freedom, glory, sovereignty and human rights that all civilized and wise nations seek..." more..

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/27160702/

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:14:58 -0800

Best hour spent of my day today was listening to chapter# 33 of the Qur'an: Surah 033.mp3

http://UnbreakableMJ.stumbleupon.com/review/26238222/

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:21:05 -0700

(..continuing from ..post above)

Fourthly: Instead of directing the efforts towards offending Islam and the Quran that embodies the values of good and justice, they should be directed against the brutal violence being actually practiced against the poor nations which include killing, destruction, plunder of wealth and confiscating the future, especially that the world is legitimizing usurpation and occupation that are based on the collective eradication of peoples, just as in Palestine where a Jewish state was instituted on the ruins of another nation under the pretence of religious historic rights.

Fifthly: as we reject the method of thinking in our Islamic society that is based on the mentality of cancelling the other who is different in religion sect, politics... etc, we believe that the method of Takifir has been adopted by many secular parties against Islam and the Muslims. And if this method produces in the Islamic sphere a violence against Muslims or others, we see in the Takifiri Western movement a means of justifying any violence against Muslims in the Western societies that embraced them as citizens or residents, especially that these calls have been accompanied by warnings made by the Israeli President a few years ago, in which he warned Europe that its states might become Muslim with the number of Muslims reaching 30 millions in a few years.

Sixthly: We should be aware that some of the campaigns that we have seen in the Western media might be instituted by a Jewish instigation movement that aims at erecting barriers in the face of any serious international Muslim Christian rapprochement, since those who sought to obtain a Christian acquittance regarding their historic aggression against Jesus Christ (a.s.) having been also working on facilitating the acceptance of the theory of a Muslim-Christian clash. We are motioning this point, because we believe, that establishing a united Islamic Christian spiritual and humanitarian front that is based on values, represents in itself a challenge to the Zionist project that is based on violence, arrogance and despise of other nations.

Seventhly: It has become known that these aggressions against the Muslim's sacred symbols could induce reactions that are in nobody's interests. It could also provide a pretence for the Takifiri movements to justify its violence among the Muslim communities in the West, and deploy the young enthusiastic Muslims by focusing on the retaliation against the aggressions that target the Muslim sacred symbols in the name of freedom of expression that falls short of accepting any criticism of any Israeli, Jewish or Zionist claim.

Thus the Dutch government, and all others, should assume its responsibility when it comes to showing this offending film or the like both in the present and the future, to safeguard the peace that we seek for the entire world.

Eighthly: We call upon all the Muslims in the world, especially the Muslim communities in the West, to haunt all movements that try to distort the image of Islam or offend its sacred symbols under any pretence. We ask their intellectuals, their elites, their religious scholars and all their popular potentials to shoulder their responsibilities on the media political, legal, artistic and literary levels, to stop these offending movements and reveal theirs goals, as well thwarting the attempts of those who want to create a rift between the Muslims and their Western societies.

They should resort to the civilized means that the laws of their countries guarantee and which increase the public opinion sympathy with our just causes.

(..continued below..)