Sun 21 Oct 2012
Yemen Conference at Harvard
Posted by tabsir under Anthropology/Sociology , Gender and Sexuality , Terrorism Issue , Yemen , Zaydi , Environment , Development , Conferences and Talks , "Arab Spring"
This past Friday and Saturday a conference was held on “Yemen in Transition.” While I was originally scheduled to give a presentation, I was not able to attend. But here is an overview of the conference, with complete details on the conference website.
Date: October 19, 2012 (All day) - October 20, 2012 (All day)
Speaker: various
Yemen in Transition: Challenges and Opportunities
Organized by Steven C. Caton, Harvard University, and the Yemen Working Group, this conference brings together Yemeni American professionals and academics along with some of their counterparts from Yemen, and academics from the U.S., Europe, and Yemen to discuss the future of Yemen and what might be done to help the country as it transitions into its new historical phase. It also brings together students from Harvard and the Boston area who are from Yemen. The main topics to be discussed are: women and youth, economic development, politics and political reform, and the water crisis. As an academic conference, the focus will be on theory and analysis, though concrete proposals and recommendations will also be presented.
The panels and the keynote address are open to the public. These presentations will be videotaped and made available on the website of the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies but they will not be published as part of a conference proceedings. The use of recording devices by anyone other than the organizers is strictly prohibited.
October 25th, 2012 at 9:13 pm
The destruction of the holy sites by the deviant Saudis in power,
by Ustadh Muqallid Abdul Haqq Al-Amreeki
Dear Maulana, this article I have typed based on my own feelings at seeing the structures designed in Mecca. May Allah give you the tawfiq to accomplish your goals in both this doonya and the akheera.
Bismillah hir Rahman ir Raheem,
It was with much horror that I first viewed the giant All seeing-eye horror occult megalith constructed in the holiest and most sacred site on planet earth
“A glowing green disc hovers high in the sky at night, casting an eerie glow over a forest of minarets, cranes and concrete frames that seem to stretch endlessly into the dusty distance, like a vast field of dominoes. The disc is the largest clockface in the world – and not only does it adorn the tallest clocktower in the world, it also sits atop a building boasting the biggest floor area in the world. Visible 30km away, this is the Abraj al-Bait, which rises like Big Ben on steroids to tower 600m over the holy mosque of Mecca in the spiritual heart of the Islamic world.
This thrusting pastiche palace houses an array of luxury hotels and apartments, perched above a five-storey slab of shopping malls. Completed last year at a cost of $15bn (£9bn), it stands where an Ottoman fortress once stood. A stone citadel built in 1781 to repel bandits, the Ajyad fortress’s demolition sparked an international outcry in 2002, but this was quickly rebuffed by the Saudi Islamic affairs minister. “No one has the right to interfere in what comes under the state’s authority,” he said. “This development is in the interest of all Muslims all over the world.” The fortress wasn’t just swept away – the hill it sat on went, too.
Shooting 26 searchlights 10km into the skies, and blaring its call to prayer 7km across the valley, the Abraj al-Bait is also the world’s second tallest building. Encrusted with mosaics and inlaid with gold, it is the most visible (and audible) sign of the frenzied building boom that has taken hold of Saudi Arabia’s holy city over the last 10 years. The house of the prophet’s wife, Khadijah, was razed to make way for public lavatories; the house of his companion, Abu Bakr, is now the site of a Hilton hotel; and his grandson’s house was flattened by the King’s palace. “They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment. They’ve even taken away the mountains,” says Angawi.
Geological features have proved no match for dynamite and concrete, which are being liberally deployed to make way for the burgeoning number of visitors. Three million Muslims arrived in Mecca this week for the annual hajj pilgrimage, an event that has mutated from a simple, spartan rite of passage, in which pilgrims give up their worldly goods, into a big-bucks business worthy of Las Vegas – with the overblown architecture to match.
Along the western flank of the city are the first towers of the Jabal Omar development, a sprawling complex that will eventually accommodate 100,000 people in 26 luxury hotels (notice how the number 26 is used by the Occultists on both the lights and the buildings– comments of Ustadh Abdul Haqq)– sitting on another gargantuan plinth of 4,000 shops and 500 restaurants, along with its own six-storey prayer hall. The line of blocks, which will climb to heights of up to 200 metres and terminate in a monumental gateway building, share the clocktower’s Islamic-lite language: a cliched dressing of pointed arches and filigree grillwork plastered over generic concrete shells.
The developers have somehow transformed a type of architecture that evolved from a dense urban grain of low-rise courtyards and narrow streets into meaningless wallpaper: an endlessly repeatable pattern for the decoration of standardised slab after standardised slab. Flimsy rows of concrete arches hang above swaths of blue mirror glass, punctuated by stick-on timber trellis screens. These are modelled on traditional mashrabiya panels, those beautiful latticework openings designed as ventilating veils, but here they become meaningless applique. “If we are imitating, why can’t we imitate the best?” asks Angawi, in a tone of desperation. “Why are we imitating the worst mistakes of 60 or 70 years ago from around the world – only even bigger?”
Another development of repetitive slabs, echoing Jabal Omar’s toast-rack urbanism, is slated for the northern side of the Grand Mosque, at al-Shamiya, while a $10bn plan to provide an extra 400,000 sq metres of prayer halls there is almost complete. Standing like a gigantic triangular slice of wedding cake, this building will accommodate 1.2m more worshippers each year, but it has come at a price.”
—http://muslimvillage.com/2012/10/25/30665/meccas-mega-architecture-casts-shadow-over-hajj/
the very house Nabi Ibraheem alayhee salam constructed with his own hands. The building work has inevitably changed the hajj experience for everyone. Aside from the increased pollution and heavy machinery, there is more segregation along economic and class lines. Surely, I am not alone in this assessment and every day around the world hundreds of poor Muslims from third world countries for the first time take gaze and tremble at the giant monuments of kufr and shirk, totally against the Sunnah of Rasulullah salalahu alayhee wasalam and his glorious Sahaba kareem. These giant buildings are indeed far for dark and sinister in scope than most laymen may realize. It may be that our vanguards in the field of ‘Amr bil maroof wa nahi anil munkar have underestimated the sheer size, money, and evil of the conspiracy that taken ahold of planet earth and placed its toxic corrupting european idols in the forms of buildings. These buildings are actually giant idols. Indeed, they appear to come alive striking terror into the hears of righteous men and women who fear Allah. Indeed, how would Rasulullah salalahuualayheewasalam handle the situation with the buildings? He would do the exact same thing he did in the Kabba and bring down each building of kufr and shirk with controlled demolition. Then, Rasulullah salalahu alayhee wasalam, under the fear and love of Allah, would call upon all of the Muslims of the world to meet in Mecca and he would address them as a people, in person; and the juma’aat would arrive at a much lovely and better architect plan for the holy precincts. It is indeed a great time of tribulation on planet earth, as much on the immediate horizon looks ominous, but Allah is using this conspiracy that has clutched the entire world and even the holy precincts of Islaam to prove that although the kuffaar plot and plan and conspire, so too is Allah planning a better plan and it will prevail at the end of the day in glory. Subahanaallah!! Allahuakbar our Lord is such a great Rabb. How many of us remember that all we have to do to make Allah our Wali is to lower our gaze towrads ghaiyr muhram women and instead fear Allah.
The destruction of the amazing sites of Allah by these mad-men with power operating over the 5,000 saudi prince is remarkable – in fact, it may be that Allah has placed within the 5,000 Saudi princes at least one hero. How anyone could equate respect of tradition, history, legacy and the fact that pure Tawheed actually demands pondering over the creation and the ayats of Allah, not destroying them. The house of Khadijah radiallahu anha – if Rasulullah salalahualayheewasalam were alive now how would he respond to these acts? It may be true that if needed, Rasulullah would allow the spot to be given to the poor – but to build toilets on the house of Khadijah and a Hilton hotel on the house of Hadhrat Abu Bakr radiallahuanhu, may Allah crush them down along with the arrogant Shaytoni Fraud Sauds. To even use one of the Names of Allah to describe this deviant sect, Al-Wahab, is not befitting to Allah Azza Wa Jal’s Grandeur and Sublime Sifaats. Indeed Rasulullah salalahu alayhee wasalam would undoubtedly destroy these giant monuments of kufr, dhulm, shirk, bida’a and on. It is unfortunate how this conspiracy snuck up on the Muslim vanguard so quickly. It indeed was a well organized long-term business plan set in effect in Germany and Brittain. When I was a young man in high school, a friend of mine named Chris Thompson gave me a book - “Fleshing out Skull and Bones, order 322”. Every year at Yale University 15 white college frat men would meet. The likes of all three Bush unconstitutional criminals were in this religious cult the rituals of which involved Prescott Bush digging up the bones of epic American Indian war legend Giranamo, may Allah save him. Such skullduggery is indicative of black magic occultism. A human skull was always placed on a table in front of the yearly photograph (including all three Bushs) and in that same photograph there was, in the same room – you guessed it – a giant grandfather clock, a small idol-god eerily similar to the massive Idol placed in the Haram Shareef! May Allah bring these evil monuments to a hasted destruction! Black magic has been unleashed, which in Islaam we know exists and is haraam and whosoever calls on Djinn only does so at the cost of his own soul. In Islaam we are NOT permitted to call on Djinn. However, that does not mean that people who do call on Djinn will not conjure some dark power from the wickid haram. This, however, is all a part of Allah’s plan to let the Haqq prevail on its own. Of course Allah can interfere but we are living in the single most interesting time in all of human history and Allah is going to see how it pans out before He steps in with His Divine Wrath and destroy the monuments of Kufr and Shirk found in the Holy Lands of Islaam.
My dear brothers in Islaam, PLEASE WAKE UP to what the Saudi Authoritarian Fascist New World Order tyranny has planned for the Haram Shareef! They are surrounding it with a horrible new reality! Now, from every single possible angle that only the best math expert could solve, there are eyes on the Kabba. Breathtaking in horror, the Musellai realizes that the new all seeing eye has thousands of cameras and angles staring fixatedly on the Kabba itself. My dear brothers and sisters in Islaam please I beg of you boycott the future plans for putting up 30 odd domino-looking monuments all around. Please look at this future plan and do everything in your power to prevent it from coming into being -
It is with a sad heart that I write this letter of mine only because I remember when once my beloved Teacher taught me that, “if you see something unlawful, change it with your hands. If you cannot do that, speak out against it, and if you cannot even do this much, feel bad about it in your heart”.
We should all make fervant dua’a that Allah brings these giant monolith idols of kufr and shirk to a hastened destruction. AMEEEN
Ustadh Muqallid Abdul Haqq al Amreeki
Dhul Hijjah 9th, 1433