Rola Awwad
Town: Wayne
Children: Adam, 10; Amana, 7; Miriam, 3
Occupation: Stay-at-home mom; Arabic teacher

Rola
Awwad wasn’t angry at first. Her son Adam’s elementary school in Wayne
had denied requests for the Muslim fifth-grader to pray in a private
room during school, citing safety concerns.

But
then Awwad learned from chatting with a woman at her mosque that the
Constitution protected the right to practice religion and that children
in nearby public schools had been praying in school for decades without
incident.

“I
never knew he had the right to pray, as long as it’s not interfering
with education and others,” said Awwad, a Palestinian raised in Jordan.

Awwad
sprung into action, pressing the school district to allow her son to
perform the obligatory afternoon prayer in a quiet, private space, such
as the library or the principal’s office. The Council on American
Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, intervened on Awwad’s
behalf and a compromise was reached in February. Adam was growing weary
of the public attention surrounding the case. Adam agreed to pray
during recess, while other children played nearby, either outdoors or
in the back of the classroom.

“This
was a lesson for my son not to give up on your rights. Be proud you are
a Muslim and to be proud you’re an American and born here,” she said on
a recent afternoon in her Wayne living room. Relenting on the issue for
now, she still worries about her son praying outside during recess when
it’s cold or rainy or when he enters middle school next year, when his
peers may be more apt to bully him.

Awwad
says she’s more outspoken than her husband, an engineering professor.
Her first foray into community activism was as a graduate student in
Jordan. She and a group of women built a social services center that
was controversial in the community. On a trip home, she brought her
kids to the site. “I wanted them to see it,” she said.

As
the clock struck 4, a recording of the afternoon call to prayer floated
from her kitchen while the children played in their rooms upstairs.
Awwad explained that she is intent on raising her kids with strong
Muslim values.

“I
want my kids to have a relationship with God,” said Awwad. “That will
protect them, and they will grow up to be good citizens,” she said.

ISLAM & FINANCE FROM MY PERSPECTIVE: ETHICAL INVESTMENT = SHARIAH COMPLIANCE

Friday, May 8, 2009
ETHICAL INVESTMENT = SHARIAH COMPLIANCE

The notion of ethical investing goes back at least to 1758, when the Quakers banned profiting from the slave trade. But the market for ethical investments has always remained a niche. The goals of maximizing profit and fulfilling a moral agenda conflict more often than they complement one another, and investors who want to put ethics first have turned out to be relatively few.

Finance that complies with Shariah, is still a niche within the ethical investing niche. In all, there are at least $500bn worth of Islamic finance assets worldwide and Islamic banking has expanded by more than 10% annually over the past decade, according to Standard & Poor’s. It’s grabbing the attention of some of the biggest banks in the world and changing how they do business.

So just what does Shariah-compliant banking entail? Some of it is simply prohibiting things seen as immoral. Investing in casinos, pornography and weapons of mass destruction is out.

The animating religious goal behind other restrictions is to achieve greater social justice by sharing risk and reward. Islamic finance bans people from selling what they don’t own, which rules out short selling, and from engaging in contracts deemed to have excessive uncertainty on either side. That rules out traditional insurance, so Islamic banks have instead developed takaful, in which a group of people pool risk.

The Shariah stipulation banning interest, though, is the one that poses the most problems for modern finance.

To be sure, from the Bible to Buddhism, most of the world’s faiths have issued warnings against usury, and theologians through the ages have debated the line between permissible and excessive interest rates. But ultimately, in the West, governments and religious authorities deemed some amount of interest permissible.

Not so in Islam, in which most scholars deem fixed-interest payments forbidden. So, for example, the sukuk issuer does not sell a debt, as a traditional bond issuer would, but rather sells a portion of an asset, on which the buyer is then entitled to receive rent. Likewise, rather than take out an interest-bearing loan, a business in need of financing might enter a musharaka, a partnership with profit-and-loss sharing.

Why the growth in Islamic finance now? After all, Islam’s rules have been around since the seventh century, and some Muslim countries have been rich since the discovery of oil.

One important factor has been the recent rise in religiosity in Muslim countries especially, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. With the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, there was a feeling in many countries that Islam was a religion under siege.

Some observers date the rise in religious observance back even further, to the 1980s, when guest workers in Saudi Arabia from across the Muslim world began returning to their own countries, re-importing with them the strict Wahhabi subsect of Islam for which the desert kingdom is known.

Whenever this burgeoning religious observance began there is now an increasing appetite for Shariah finance. In some cases, Middle Eastern governments have embraced Islamic banking to advertise their religious chops.

Some of the growth in Islamic finance has also been due to clever positioning by Malaysia. After September 11, US authorities froze the bank accounts of several prominent Saudis, which triggered other wealthy Arabs to withdraw their funds from the United States.

Ultimately, some $200bn left the US. Many of the investors were from tiny Gulf states whose economies were too small to absorb their funds, and so they looked to Malaysia, a Muslim country with a relatively sophisticated financial system. It issued the first sovereign sukuk in 2002, and made a point of appointing Shariah scholars from the Gulf to monitor compliance.

Today, Kuala Lumpur rivals traditional hubs like Dubai and Bahrain as a global centre of Islamic finance.

In the end, the maths behind the growth of Islamic banking may be pretty simple: There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world – roughly a fifth of the world’s population. Some live in quickly developing economies, some sit on vast oil wealth and some are newly middle-class Americans and Europeans.

No one can say for sure how many will seek out banking that complies with Shariah, but even a small fraction of 1.3 billion is a market no one wants to ignore.

Posted by SWEET CHILD at 11:52 AM

Poll: Brit Muslims more ‘loyal’ to Britain – UPI.com

Poll: Brit Muslims more ‘loyal’ to Britain
Published: May 8, 2009 at 7:57 PM

LONDON, May 8 (UPI) — A survey suggests 77 percent of British Muslims describe themselves as loyal to the country, compared to only 36 percent of the general public.

The survey, conducted by Gallup and the Coexist Foundation, suggests British Muslims are more likely than the general public to have high opinions of British elections, courts, media and financial bodies, The Times of London reported Friday.

“Since 9/11 and the terrorist attacks in Madrid and London, mistrust towards European Muslims has become palpable. Significant segments of European societies openly express doubt that Muslim fellow nationals are loyal citizens,” the report’s authors wrote. “The general construct of this premise rests on an oversimplified and erroneous understanding of Islam and terrorism.”

The poll involved 1,000 telephone interviews and 500 face-to-face interviews with Muslims living in areas with high Islamic populations.

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Jeremy Scahill: Al Jazeera Strikes Back at Pentagon, Releases Unedited Footage of US Soldiers’ ‘Bible Study’ in Afghanistan (Video)

Al Jazeera Strikes Back at Pentagon, Releases Unedited Footage of US Soldiers’ ‘Bible Study’ in Afghanistan (Video)
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Read More: Afghanistan, Al Jazeera, Bible Study, Breaking News, Brian Hughes, Christianity, Jesus, Pentagon, War In Afghanistan, World News

A day after the Pentagon accused Al Jazeera of being ‘irresponsible and inappropriate’ for broadcasting the ‘hunt for Jesus’ in Afghanistan footage, the network releases unedited tapes.

Hours after Al Jazeera first broadcast a video showing US soldiers in Afghanistan being instructed by the military’s top chaplain in the country to “hunt people for Jesus” as they spread Christianity to the overwhelmingly Muslim population, the Pentagon shot back. It charged that Al Jazeera had “grossly misrepresent[ed] the truth.” Col. Greg Julian, told Al Jazeera: “Most of this is taken out of context … this is irresponsible and inappropriate journalism.”

Now, Al Jazeera and the man who filmed the controversial material are striking back. The network has just released unedited and unaltered footage (see below) of US soldiers in ‘bible study’ in Afghanistan. Jazeera describes it as “Extended footage shot by Brian Hughes, a US documentary maker and former member of the US military who spent several days in Bagram near Kabul.”

In Al Jazeera’s original report, Hughes addressed the fact that soldiers had imported bibles translated into Pashto and Dari. “[US soldiers] weren’t talking about learning how to speak Dari or Pashto, by reading the Bible and using that as the tool for language lessons,” Hughes told Al Jazeera. “The only reason they would have these documents there was to distribute them to the Afghan people. And I knew it was wrong, and I knew that filming it … documenting it would be important.”

Regarding allegations that the sermon of the military’s top chaplain in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, where he instructs soldiers to “hunt people for Jesus” was taken out of context, Hughes said in a statment, “Any contention by the military that his words are purposefully taken out of context to alter the tone or meaning of his sermon is absolutely false.”

Hughes is completely standing by the accuracy of Al Jazeera’s report. Here is Hughes’s statement:

On Sunday, May 3, the Al Jazeera English network and I made an agreement to produce a broadcast segment from a rough cut of my documentary film. This opportunity came after a May 2009 Harper’s magazine cover story called “Jesus Killed Mohammed.” While he researched and prepared that article, I allowed the author Jeff Sharlet to view the work-in-progress documentary. Sharlet’s article brought the film to Al Jazeera English’s attention.

My documentary, titled The Word and the Warriors, is inspired by a personal experience I had while serving as a combat flight crew member during the first Gulf War. During a very difficult and emotional time at war, an Army chaplain provided me comfort and counsel. I will never forget the important advice or the man who – without questioning my own faith – helped me at a time of need.

For two-and-a-half years, I have been researching and producing this film. I have traveled the world, interviewing both military servicemembers and civilians about the important role of these religious leaders/military officers.

During April/May 2008, I went to Afghanistan. With the assistance and full cooperation of the U.S. Army, I was allowed to film at Bagram Air Field. During that time, I was always wearing press credentials, and I was always accompanied by a media liaison while filming. The media liaison staff knew everything I filmed and – as I was told by them – they filed reports every evening about what I had filmed. It was my primary media liaison, an Army NCO, who – on my first day – invited me to meet LTC Gary Hensley. Hensley, the ranking chaplain in Afghanistan talked to me off camera expressing a concern he had about allowing me to film his chaplains. At the conclusion of the discussion, he agreed that I would be allowed to embed with his chaplains and invited me to film several hours of religious services.

Those hours at the Enduring Faith Chapel included his own sermon at a service called Chapel Next. With the exception of a few minutes I could not film because I was reloading my camera or moving to position for another shot, I videotaped Hensley’s entire sermon.

Any contention by the military that his words are purposefully taken out of context to alter the tone or meaning of his sermon is absolutely false…

In recent press statements, the military also contends that – in the footage depicting the Afghan-language (Dari and Pashto) bibles – a cut was made before “it would have shown that the chaplain instructed that the Bibles not be distributed.” This is a false statement. The chaplain – as seen in the footage before the cut – instructs the group to be careful and reiterates the definition of General Order #1. After this cut he begins to organize the group for the evening’s bible study lessons.

Finally, and in my opinion most important, is the fact that EVERY FRAME of the rough cut from Bagram was provided to the U.S. Army Public Affairs Office in advance of this release. On Thursday, April 30 at approximately 1 pm EST, the Army took possession of a DVD with this footage by accepting a FedEx from me. Since Al Jazeera English first aired the piece Sunday, May 3 at 10pm EST, the Army had every frame of this rough cut for more than 80 hours.

See related:

US Soldiers in Afghanistan Told to “hunt people for Jesus… so we get them into the kingdom”

U.S.
Military Calls Al Jazeera ‘Irresponsible and Inappropriate’ After
Network Broadcast US Soldiers Being Told to “hunt people for Jesus” in
Afghanistan

Read more of Jeremy Scahill’s work at RebelReports.com

• Afghanistan
• Christianity

A day after the Pentagon accused Al Jazeera of being ‘irresponsible and
inappropriate’ for broadcasting the ‘hunt for Jesus’ in Afghanistan
footage, the network releases unedited tapes. Hours after …

A day
after the Pentagon accused Al Jazeera of being ‘irresponsible and
inappropriate’ for broadcasting the ‘hunt for Jesus’ in Afghanistan
footage, the network releases unedited tapes. Hours after …

Related News On Huffington Post:

Soldiers In Afghanistan Given Bibles, Told To “Hunt People For Jesus” (VIDEO) A U.S. church raised money to send Bibles, printed in the Pashtu and Dari languages, to American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, a report on Al…

 

How Hackers Can Steal Secrets from Reflections: Scientific American

From the May 2009 Scientific American Magazine | 7 comments
How Hackers Can Steal Secrets from Reflections
Information thieves can now go around encryption, networks and the operating system

By W. Wayt Gibbs

JEN CHRISTIANSEN (photoillustration of reflection); DIGITAL VISION/GETTY IMAGES (man with glasses)
e-mail print comment
Key Concepts

* Even with the best network security, your electronic data may not be safe from a
determined hacker.
* Researchers have extracted information from nothing more than the reflection of a computer monitor off an eyeball or the sounds emanating from a printer.
* These attacks are difficult to defend against and impossible to trace.

More from the Magazine

* coverMay
2009 Issue
* Feature Articles Our Planet’s Leaky Atmosphere
* Updates Updates: Whatever Happened to the Universal Flu Vaccine?
* News Scan Quiet Bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance
* Buy the Digital Edition

Through the eyepiece of Michael Backes’s small Celestron telescope, the 18-point letters on the laptop screen at the end of the hall look nearly as clear as if the notebook computer were on my lap. I do a double take. Not only is the laptop 10 meters (33 feet) down the corridor, it faces away from the telescope. The image that seems so legible is a reflection off a glass teapot on a nearby table. In experiments here at his laboratory at Saarland University in Germany, Backes has discovered that an alarmingly wide range of objects can bounce secrets right off our screens and into an eavesdropper’s camera. Spectacles work just fine, as do coffee cups, plastic bottles, metal jewelry—even, in his most recent work, the eyeballs of the computer user. The mere act of viewing information can give it away.

The reflection of screen images is only one of the many ways in which our computers may leak information through so-called side channels, security holes that bypass the normal encryption and operating-system restrictions we rely on to protect sensitive data. Researchers recently demonstrated five different ways to surreptitiously capture keystrokes, for example, without installing any software on the target computer. Technically sophisticated observers can extract private data by reading the flashing light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on network switches or by scrutinizing the faint radio-frequency waves that every monitor emits. Even certain printers make enough noise to allow for acoustic eavesdropping.

Outside of a few classified military programs, side-channel attacks have been largely ignored by computer security researchers, who have instead focused on creating ever more robust encryption schemes and network protocols. Yet that approach can secure only information that is inside the computer or network. Side-channel attacks exploit the unprotected area where the computer meets the real world: near the keyboard, monitor or printer, at a stage before the information is encrypted or after it has been translated into human-readable form. Such attacks also leave no anomalous log entries or corrupted files to signal that a theft has occurred, no traces that would allow security researchers to piece together how frequently they happen. The experts are sure of only one thing: whenever information is vulnerable and has significant monetary or intelligence value, it is only a matter of time until someone tries to steal it.

From Tempest to Teapot
The idea of stealing information through side channels is far older than the personal computer. In World War I the intelligence corps of the warring nations were able to eavesdrop on one another’s battle orders because field telephones of the day had just one wire and used the earth to carry the return current. Spies connected rods in the ground to amplifiers and picked up the conversations. In the 1960s American military scientists began studying the radio waves given off by computer monitors and launched a program, code-named “Tempest,” to develop shielding techniques that are used to this day in sensitive government and banking computer systems. Without Tempest shielding, the image being scanned line by line onto the screen of a standard cathode-ray tube monitor can be reconstructed from a nearby room—or even an adjacent building—by tuning into the monitor’s radio transmissions.

Many people assumed that the growing popularity of flat-panel displays would make Tempest problems obsolete, because flat panels use low voltages and do not scan images one line at a time. But in 2003 Markus G. Kuhn, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, demonstrated that even flat-panel monitors, including those built into laptops, radiate digital signals from their video cables, emissions that can be picked up and
decoded from many meters away. The monitor refreshes its image 60 times or more each second; averaging out the common parts of the pattern leaves just the changing pixels—and a readable copy of whatever the target display is showing.

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