Photos from Hajj 1952

Found these photos from a friend of mine and thought they were mesmerizing to see how Hajj was 55 years ago. Photos courtesy of National Geographic:

Jeddah Airport



Sea route



Self-explanatory



Don't know who they are, but I like the fez



Arafah Plain





Day of Arafah



Coca-Cola, way before the boycott started



Jumratul



Shopping





I'm surprised they smoked the sheesha there at the time



Security



This is truly surreal, hard to believe this was just 54 years ago









From the source

Apologies for the light blogging

I have been a bit busy with other things in my life which have disabled my ability to update this blog on a regular basis. I will do my best to blog as much as possible despite the current situation I am experiencing.

In the meantime, I was saddened to hear of the verdict involved embattled Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem being sentenced to life for the mere crime of criticizing the Islamic faith. Now as a Muslim, I should theoretically be hostile towards those who are critical, but I should also exercise tact and respect towards the other. It's not like Kareem was some LGF idiot who advocated nuking Muslims or what not. According to Esra'a at MidEastYouth, he was relatively harmless and respectful towards others. It's no surprise to me that a majority of the supporters are practicing Muslims, who are also friends with him. I can't help but to respect the individual for putting up with his actions. Like him or hate him, you have to respect the fact that he is willing to take responsbility for his own actions and stand up for what he believes in.

I just hope that the state of democracy and freedom will not be given the back burner due to this setback.

May Allah swt help Abdel Kareem in his quest for freedom.

Very colorful portrait of Iranian society

What you will never get to see if Salafists take power:













I'm speechless of these photos. The idiots who talk about bombing Iran back to the Stone Age due to the idiocy of the regime should seriously reconsider.

H/T Sepantra

Hypocrisy by the Right (LGF, JW, FoxNews, etc.)

When word broke out that the shooter of the Trolly Square Mall in Salt Lake City was a Bosnian Muslim, the usual suspects from the right, such as Rush Limbaugh, Robert Spencer, and Charles Johnson, were marked with anger and tried foolishly to pin this shooting on an alleged wave of "Islamoterror". They also had the dubious distinction of complaining about how the MSM "intentionally" left out that he was a Muslim out of PC-ness they claim. Since when did identifying his religion become a factor? Only when it is a Muslim in question, apparently. When a BNP member assaults a Pakistani or black man in the UK, you won't ever see these fools ever campaign for the release of the suspect's religion.

That being said, the right is unusually silent when it comes to a white ex member of a notorious racist party that would make Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh look like a bunch of Jane Fonda liberals, the BNP, who was recently arrested in a plot to assasinate the Prime Minister and stockpile weapons in anticipation for civil war.

According to The Telegraph, a few things I would like to note about this individual in question:

An entry in Cottage's diary read: "Thought for the Day. The easiest way to save the country is to assassinate Tony Blair and when Prescott takes over shoot that f***** as well."

In addition to targeting Mr Blair, he spoke of wanting to shoot Lord Greaves, the Liberal Democrat peer

So they advocate murdering British PM Tony Blair, yet the right stay unusually silent about this.

Another interesting tidbit:

Police searched the couple's terrace home last September and found 21 chemicals that in various combinations could be turned into explosives. They also found large amounts of rice and sugar, both of which can be used in the manufacture of explosives, as well as crossbows, air pistols, ball-bearings and canisters filled with petrol

I remember when the Canadian Muslims who were caught in a plot to commit the worst attack in Toronto, the media was nonstop in their coverage when the weapons and fertilizer were discovered, yet again, where is the non-stop coverage when a huge stash of weapons is discovered by a white Christian male?

And finally:

"He is very religious and has become more and more so. He doesn't attend church. He prays to God all the time, he says, in his head."

God forbid! He was very religious with a stash of weapons, so it could mean one thing: he must be one of them "Mohammadans"! Only in this case, he was a zealous Christian who had some apocalyptic dreams of a civil war in Britain.

Yet the Bosnian teen shooter never prayed and been to a mosque, and you have reactionary fools from LGF, JW, and MPJ jumping on the news of him being a Muslim.

So you have someone who had potential to do some deadly damage on the scale of the July 7th attacks in 2005, yet the media turns a blind eye towards it, and the right do not utter a word about this.

Yet the far right bitch and moan about the supposed PC efforts in the Trolley Square murders.

Now how's that for hypocrisy?

The right should put their money where their mouth is and stop being such hypocrites when it comes to press honesty, because last I checked, they only choose what suits them for their agenda and discard it when it doesn't.

Jeremy Clarkson exposes American hypocrisies on sensitivity

The fine lads at BBC Two's Top Gear (which is only aired in the UK, but easily available via Bittorrent) came out with a new episode where they make it to America. From their journey in FL to Alabama and then to the shithole known as New Orleans, they document their activities in the American heartland where Bush, the Bible, and homophobia runs dominant in those neck of the woods.

This clip from the recent episode has got to be the funniest stuff I have ever seen in ages. Words can't describe the awesomeness of what they have done.

So before you go criticize the Muslims for having their sensitivities hurt, keep this video clip in mind and realize that even Bible-thumping right-wing incest-loving Christians in the Deep South also respond with violent force when their views are being contradicted by "outsiders".

I swear to God, the Deep South would be a perfect place for conservative Muslims ironically, since it is very religious and homophobia runs rampant there. Personally I wouldn't give a shit if the South was carpet bombed a thousand times, but that's just me. They are the biggest disgrace to America, bar none.

Australian PM's comments about Barack Obama

Australian Prime Minister John Howard made a comment about hopeful Democratic candidate Barack Obama and the consequences of what his win would entail on the war on terrorism. Howard argues that Obama's plan to withdraw American troops by March 2008 would inspire al-Qaeda in Iraq to breed more recruits. I couldn't help but to note the absurdity of his comment towards him.

First of all, Howard is wrong that a withdrawal from Iraq would breed more terrorists than what it is currently. The Iraq quagmire has already influenced al-Qaeda to recruit more impressionable people into its fold moreso than prior to the Iraq war. Many intelligence reports, such as this one by BBC News support the assertion that the war on Iraq continues to fuel terror around the world. The 7/7 attacks in London a year and a half ago further attest to the increased terror, especially so since the perpretrators of the atrocity cited the war in Iraq as their motivation for the action.

Second, al-Qaeda has actually endorsed Bush in the 04 elections by stating:

"We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections."
The statement said Abu Hafs al-Masri needs what it called Bush's "idiocy and religious fanaticism" because they would "wake up" the Islamic world."We are very keen that Bush does not lose the upcoming elections."

This is quite ironic since it is coming from a pro-Bush news source as so the pro-war camp cannot accuse Fox News of holding a liberal bias now.

And third, Mr. Howard would be furious if a Democrat were to comment about the elections in Australia, so perhaps he should keep his opinions to himself about the Democratic candidates in America.

Finally, Obama said it best about Mr. Howard:

“If he’s ginned up to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and send them to Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. “Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of empty rhetoric.”

More Iraqis dead in the latest carnage

More Iraqis continue to die from the hands of suicide bombers

Words absolutely cannot describe my anger towards the bastards that perpretrated this act, but I must attempt it to convey my feelings towards these barbarians. Day after day, night after night, deranged suicide bomberz continues to murder innocent Iraqis, and I am sick and outraged at the lack of outrage towards these cowards by the Arab and Muslim world. We all know how the Muslim world engages in an uproar over the stupid Danish cartoons, the dumb Pope's opinion on Islam, or a group of non-Muslims insulting the Qu'ran, yet when these animals twist God's words into a gospel of hatred and violence to murder innocent people, Muslims around the world are conspicously silent. Many Muslims are too busy cursing the U.S. and the rest of the non-Muslim world for its abuses against other Muslims, yet not giving a shit about the rise of extremism in Muslim societies, from Casablanca to Cairo to Karachi to Jakarta. They start protesting in droves when the Danish cartoonists insult our Prophet, but when a group of piece of crap extremists from England distort the message of our Prophet for their own ends, no fatwas are apparent, nor the massive amount of protests against these people. When a thousand year old Islamic shrine is bombed, again, there is a lack of outrage in comparison to the Newsweek Qu'ran article, the Danish cartoons, or even the Pope's comments about Islam(which should've been ignored instead of whining like little bitches about it). Does there have to be another attack on their home countries to get the message to their heads, as was the case in Amman, Jordan in November 11, 2005? I am just simply ashamed and disgusted at the lack of attention and disgust displayed towards these animals by the Arab/Muslim world.

When will al-Jazeera start displaying the brutality espoused by the terrorists in Iraq, instead of glorifying them? When will Muslim leaders such as Sheikh Tantawi of al-Azhar in Egypt or Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar come out and excommunicate these demonic savages for twisting the name of Islam for their own personal ends? When will the Arab and Muslim world take a good look at themselves and see what cultural suicide they are engaging in? Instead of teaching their children to be educated and succeed in the modern world, and never to promote mischief, instead they are being brainwashed by impressionable imams to declare takfir and murder anyone who disagrees with their twisted ideology.

Tell me, what is the crime of these Iraqis who were murdered savagely in Hilla the other day? What is the crime of the Iraqis who continously are victims of gross slaughter by the evil terroristic scum in Sadr City? What did they do to deserve this? Is it because they are Shi'a, a sect that most Muslims believe is heretical and deviant because they are different? Is being a Shi'a a crime far worse than anyone could conceive in Iraq? Not just Iraq, but this sectarian disease is spreading to other Muslim countries, such as Bahrain, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, to a lesser extent.


The news in Iraq continues to break my heart as each day passes by, as more Iraqis are maimed by these evil forces. I feel utterly helpless as children and women continue to suffer by these opportunistic devils. They claim to care about liberating the Iraqi nation (and the Ummah), but instead dwelve into their carnal lust of slaughtering innocents.
I don't know what else to say about Iraq, other than being a lost cause, because it is extremely difficult to be optimistic about Iraq when news such as this breaks out every single day. To those who believe Iraq is not in a civil war, open your eyes and see it for yourself.
Until the Arab and Muslim world come to their senses and stop displaying selective outrage towards incidents that suit them, they will continue to engage in intellectual, cultural, and unfortunately, religious suicide because while they claim to be devout Muslims, they are in fact running astray from Islam. I guess a 30 Year War is indeed possible in the near future.

God help us all.