Iran’s election is becoming more interesting

After they disqualified the top two contenders – Rafsanjani (Iran’s two termed ex-President and also a very seasoned politician) and Mashaei (Ahmadinejad’s father in law).

Guardian Council, a very influential political group rumored to be very close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, selects and vet each candidate. Generally they disqualify candidates who are insane, homeless, irreligious and also female gender.

The daughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic republic, has protested against the disqualification of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from next month's presidential election.

Zahra Mostafavi has written to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calling on him to reinstate Rafsanjani in order to prevent the forming of a dictatorship.

Both of the candidates seem to be very unpopular with Iran’s supreme leader so this news is not very surprising.

The following candidates have been approved as Presidential candidates

MP Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel,
Supreme National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili,
Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei,
Hassan Rohani, the director of the Strategic Research Center of the Expediency Council,
former First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref,
Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf,
former Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Gharazi, and
former Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Velayati.

ref

Dzhokhar (Jahar) Tsarnaev

Jahar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, scrawled a note at the wall of the boat while hiding at WaterTown, MA before he was captured by the authorities.

His message was

"When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims." He also penned that he was not mourning the death of his brother because he (Tamerlan) was a "martyr in paradise."

His message is pretty standard; something you would expect from someone who has been radicalized with Jihadism.

There also seems to be a new entry about Islamic terrorism on Wikipedia.

A few days ago, I was reading this interesting blog entry about Tsarnaev brothers global Jihad against what they perceive as Islam's enemy.

Tsarnaev's quote seems to be based on the idea of a global Muslim community, called the ummah, that has always been aspirational. The Tsarnaev brothers clearly felt that they were being marginalized, and the fact that they did not belong to an American Muslim community further reinforced that belief. So the brothers turned to the idea of the ummah, a historical fiction that has not existed in practice in all of Muslim history. Muslims are too varied to connect to one way of being a community.

What we are witnessing in Syria, what we saw in Egypt or in Iran during the Green Revolution, is that Muslims kill other Muslims for political gain, and the idea of the ummah is broken. There is no sense from the brothers that they would have been able to understand or choose sides in these conflicts.

Not only does the Muslim Ummah not exist in the current time, but it also has never existed in the past/historical. And then, it gets really interesting.

There is no universal, binding legal command for all Muslims to support each other at all times. Even if there were, throughout Islamic history, it has been observed in its breach rather than in practice. Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law, Ali, was assassinated while praying, and Mohammed’s favorite grandson, Husayn, was murdered after being denied food and water for days. Both of these acts were committed by people who considered themselves Muslim.

The above are just some examples. Of course you can view all the wars that Muslim fought against each other in the past and also at the establishment of unjust governments (kings or sultans via dynastic rulers/monarchy). This just goes to show how corrupt the Muslim society have been throughout the ages. Not much different than what you have now.

ShiaChat down (offline) ?

The site appears to be down at 8:30am (EST). I hope they get it back online.

EDIT: ShiaChat is still down since the last time I check, 6.5 hours ago. Well, this has been such a productive day so far for me, hopefully some of you guys get the needed break. :P

2nd EDIT: ShiaChat has been offline for two days in a row. Let's hope it gets back online soon. I'm getting lots of visitors from this post here. Enjoy your stay.

EDIT: ShiaChat is back online now after three days. Rejoice!

1127 dead factory workers in Bangladesh

I am reading and typing this from the newspaper.

USA Today newspaper (Friday April 17th, 2013) had the story of this Bangladeshi woman Ranjana who was found sobbing near the rubble of the Rana Plaza factory where her daughter Sheuli Akhter, 20, worked. She's hoping her daughter had somehow survived.



Western retailers like Sears, JCPenny, Walmart, Target and others outsource their production to third world countries like Bangladesh where workers work under inhumane condition. The average worker earns 24 cents an hour.

Sixty million people in Bangladesh are classified as very poor and per capita annual income is about $1700. (Here's per capita income for other countries, so you can imagine how poor the Bangladeshi are).

Sheuli made about $140 per month, enough to maintain her family and kept her brother, 14, in school. Sheuli's father died four years ago.

Another girl, Asma said, "The garment factory owners sell the products abroad at a high price, but we get low wages."

"We must stop the killing," said Nazmar Akter, general-secretary of the Awaj foundation of workers group. "It's a global business. Everybody has the responsibility. Workers in Bangladesh are unsafe, hungry, with bad living and working conditions. We are humans. we want respect and dignity; that's our demand." Akter say.

Syrian Rebel Eating a Human Heart

I’ve seen the video. Click to play the video at this link only if you are not weak at heart. It’s very graphic. It shows a man standing over a dead body, cutting out the heart (or lung) and consuming it while chanting derogatory statement about Bashar al-Assad and his supporters.

The BBC Middle East page has this news on its front page.

A video which appears to show a Syrian rebel taking a bite from the heart of a dead soldier has been widely condemned.

US-based Human Rights Watch identified the rebel as Abu Sakkar, a well-known insurgent from the city of Homs, and said his actions were a war crime.

"The mutilation of the bodies of enemies is a war crime. But the even more serious issue is the very rapid descent into sectarian rhetoric and violence," HRW's Peter Bouckaert told Reuters news agency.

The side note at the BBC site has this quote

This gruesome episode.... highlights - in stark terms - some of the problems facing those Western powers eager to support the opposition

I’ve never been able to figure out why the West is supporting this barbaric group of Syrian Rebels. Don’t they know you cannot spread democracy in Middle East by supporting the Muslim Jihadist/fundamentalist? Those scumbags are totally against the very idea of democracy itself. If they succeed in collapsing the Assad Regime, then they’ll bring their fundamentalists ideas and leadership who will trample the rights of people left and right.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev finally buried

The dead body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects of the Marathon bombing, was in a deep freezer at a funeral home in Boston until Wednesday. Apparently no one wanted to bury him at his hometown in Cambridge, MA. The Islamic Center of Cambridge/Boston wanted nothing to do with Tamerlan. They refused to participate or allow burial in the graveyard. Other Islamic centers in Boston have also said No. Not a single cemetery in MA (Muslim or otherwise) was willing to take his body. I can understand why most folks wouldn't want their loved ones buried close to a murderer.

There were some offers from other centers; the Colorado Islamic center and some centers from Canada. But that's not really workable. The funeral director made some inquiries about the logistic at the state and local government but found them unwilling. You can't really post a dead body to random people or places. His family has the final say on where Tamerlan may be buried, of course with the help and cooperation with the local authority. Generally, the will of the deceased is followed but as we all know, this is not a regular funeral.

Tamerlan confessed to being a Muslim when he was alive. Tamerlan's uncle Ruslan Tsarni was in Boston to arrange Tamerlan's funeral according to Islamic funeral rites. His uncle was the only members of Tsarnaev's family who had harshly condemned both of his nephews for their actions. The rest of Tsarnaev's family believed that this whole thing (the Boston Marathon bombing) is just a government setup and that the Tsarnaev brothers were merely the fall guys.

I understand people's anger and outrage at Tamerlan. His actions were inexcusable. He will be punished by God. They don't want his body buried in their backyard. Well, it's good to see Muslim communities standing up and dissociating themselves from sinful people, evil doers and the worse of the worse.

Generally, the state is obligated to provide a plot (I guess a place to dump his body) if they cannot find any takers. There was a bit of drama in regards to the actual burial of Tamerlan Tsanaev. Like always people's emotions got the best of them. They refused to let him be buried in Massachusetts. Some people wanted Tamerlan to be cremated; had his ashes thrown somewhere. Some suggested dumping his body into the sea; just like what they did with Bin Laden. There was also a suggestion to send his body back to his parents in Russia which was also not workable because the Russian authority doesn't really give dead terrorists back to the family. Russian buries them secretly in unmarked graves.


Yesterday, we found out that Tamerlan was secretly buried in a Muslim cemetery in Virginia with the help of a local woman, Martha Mullen.

Martha Mullen of Richmond played a part in the decision to bury Tsarnaev in Virginia. "I was listening to NPR and I heard the story ... that he was unable to be buried and that people are protesting him. And it made me think of Jesus' words: Love your enemies. I felt that, also, he was being maligned probably because he was Muslim."

A lot of people are not happy over this decision to bury Tamerlan in Virginia. I can understand why people are not very happy. No one was consulted or asked. They went quietly and buried him without anyone's knowledge. You can't do that.

The leadership of the Islamic center didn't consult anyone. That's not called leadership.

Martha Mullen was right to point out that Americans were really showing their ugly side by refusing to bury a dead body. Tamerlan is dead. It's over. There's no point to go overboard in punishing Tamerlan's family by denying them a funeral.

I disagree with Martha Mullen when she said we should love your enemies. Why should we like much less love our enemy. In regards to Tamerlan, we are not really talking about something minor like slaps on the right cheeks and turning the other cheeks.

Some people living in the vicinity of the cemetery are outrage. Massachusetts's problem is now theirs. They shouldn't have to deal with the infamous Boston bombers being buried in their neighbourhood.

References
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2013/05/07/colorado-muslim-society-at-odds-with-founder-over-tsarnaev-burial-offer/

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/05/10/boston-marathon-bombing-suspect-tamerlan-tsarnaev-buried-doswell-virginia-according-two-sources/WJZCb0rTWtLFZTMzKzST4L/story.html

http://www.necn.com/05/10/13/Some-members-of-Islamic-community-angere/landing_nation.html?&apID=109d58ce6f8d4259945831e6df46a08c

http://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2013/04/chechnya-backgrounder.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/report-dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-repeated-requests-for-a-lawyer-were-ignored-2013-5

Syria is a lose-lose situation

On one side you have the current secular dictator who inherited the government from his father and on the other side you have the murderers jihadist wahhabis/salafist whose are fighting for their fanatical ideas about Islam. Both sides seem to be equally bad.

Yesterday, I was listening to the Syrian refugee crisis on the radio. The situation is very bad.

Over 100,000 Syrian refugee living in cramped tents with very little water and almost no electricity.

More than half a million Syrian refugees have crossed into Jordan, and the number is expected to rise to 1 million by the end of the year.

Aid workers at Zaatari say they are overwhelmed by the job of providing services for a population that grows by more than a thousand every day, says Oxfam's Gluck.

"It's just a feeling that it's a flood that never ends. It's a deluge that you are trying to push back, and you're doing what you can," she says. "We are only providing the very basics here. They are getting the bare minimum."