The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : The banking woes of an “excluded” community

The banking woes of an “excluded” community

Vidya Subrahmaniam

Banks have designated red zones where the vast majority of Muslim clusters fall. This fact is confirmed by the rash of banking-related complaints received by the National Commission for Minorities.

A little over a year ago, Ali Arshad, a resident of Okhla in Delhi, went to a well-known private sector bank to open a bank account. He thought his case would be fast-tracked because he had a banking background, he worked with a well-known investment and brokerage company and he had the necessary documents: A passport, a pan card and a house rent agreement notorised on stamp paper.

He still has not heard from the bank. The manager of the branch informally told him that his passport showed a Patna address and the bank did not accept rent agreement as proof of residence. The Hindu checked the website of the bank and found that the bank did accept house rent agreement as proof of residence. A call placed to the bank confirmed that a passport (proof of identity) and a rent agreement (proof of residence) were enough to start a bank account.

Mr. Arshad finally opened a salary account with a bank that had his company’s corporate account. “The bank could not refuse me because I came as a package,” Mr. Arshad says. He attributes his banking difficulties to the fact that he stays in Muslim-concentrated Okhla, an unofficial red zone for banks. Indeed, in the Muslim belt of Okhla, Zakir Nagar and Batla House stories abound of residents not being able to open bank accounts and of banks turning down their loan applications. The situation, residents say, has got worse after the September 2008 killing of two alleged terrorists in Batla House. “Landlords here refuse to give residence proof documentation for fear of being tracked down,” says Hasan Shuja, editor of Urdu daily Sahafat. Mr. Shuja, who has gone from bank to bank looking for a loan to expand his business, says, “I gave them all possible documentation but to no avail. But not just Delhi, you will hear the same thing wherever Muslims are in large numbers.”

The sense of “exclusion” among Mr. Shuja and others has only heightened with recent reports that in Andhra Pradesh alone as many as 90,000 Muslims students were unable to open bank accounts to deposit their scholarship cheques. The complaints were received by the State Minorities Commission which, in turn, referred them to the National Commission for Minorities in Delhi. The Ministry of Minorities has since taken up the matter with the State’s Chief Secretary. The puzzling thing here is that banks have shown the audacity to turn away students despite a standing RBI circular instructing them to open basic, no-frills accounts for people from deprived categories.

At the NCM, officials cannot cope with Muslim complaints relating to banking. The Commission receives an average of five banking complaints a day from across the country, with most complainants recording specific details of discrimination. The NCM recently intervened to have a dismissed Muslim official of a leading private sector bank reinstated. The official was found to have been falsely accused of fraud.

Up until the Sachar Committee report, which conclusively established unacceptable levels of Muslim deprivation, there were not many takers for Muslim-specific banking complaints which were typically dismissed as an exaggeration. The other commonly held perception was that Muslims were averse to banking because of religious injunctions against receiving interest.

Several significant findings emerged in the investigations of the Sachar Committee which analysed access to Priority Sector Advances (farm sector, small-scale industries and small advances to weaker sections) across Socio Religious Communities. To start with, banks confirmed the existence of “red zones” where they offered minimal services. Says Abusaleh Shariff, who was member-secretary with the committee: “We did not use the term discrimination in the report but we did find banks to be unacceptably insensitive. They accepted that they don’t like to provide services in the red zones. Unfortunately, most of the areas where Muslims live fall in the red zones.”

The committee was also able to bust the myth that Muslims were against banking. Muslims held a 12 per cent share in PSA bank accounts which was rather low considering the high concentration of Muslims in socially and economically deprived sections. Nonetheless, as Mr. Shariff points out, the figure established that given a chance Muslims opened bank accounts.

The committee’s third major finding was that Muslims did not easily get loans. The community’s share of outstanding PSAs was pathetic — only 4.6 per cent as against a population share of 13.4 per cent. The ratio of loans to population was even worse in the Minority Concentration Districts. In 44 such districts, where the Muslim share of the population was 33 per cent, their share of PSAs was an abysmal 7.9 per cent. The share of other minorities, who together constituted two per cent of the population, was 3.7 per cent. In 11 of these districts, where the Muslim share of the population was 51.4 per cent, their share of PSAs was 12.9 per cent. With a 1.2 per cent share of the population in the same districts, other minorities received 3. 4 per cent of PSAs while Hindus, who formed 47.4 per cent of the population, got a PSA share of 63.1 per cent. Over all, other minorities fared twice as well as Muslims in the priority sector.

When the UPA government came to power in 2004, one of its early priorities was to address the “development deficit” among Muslims. It recast the old 15-point Minority Welfare Programme and established a time-frame for programme-specific interventions. It set up a Ministry of Minority Affairs (MMA), following it up with the first-ever exhaustive study of the community’s social, economic and educational status. Simultaneously, it started a programme of financial inclusion through the Reserve Bank. The RBI’s charter, reiterated through repeated circulars, included expanding access to banking through “nil balance, no frills” accounts as well as smoothening credit flow to Muslims.

Six years later, the government, and the MMA in particular, are still battling systemic resistance to minority welfare. This situation is despite the ministry’s exemplary commitment and overall vision. Ministry sources say that with each year, they are getting closer to reaching the target, exceeding it in some programmes such as the award of scholarship. And yet it has been literally a case of inching forward. Take the National Minorities Development And Finance Corporation established 17 years ago. In all this time, it has disbursed loans only to 5.39 lakh minority beneficiaries. A drop in the ocean for a Muslim population of over 130 million.

The MMA points out that as against this dismal figure, the corporation achieved a target of 1.46 beneficiaries in 2009-2010. However, the ministry had to move mountains for this, as the States, with some exceptions, simply would not cough up their share of 26 per cent to the scheme. For instance, Uttar Pradesh has so far contributed only 7 per cent (Rs. 7 crore) of its share of 26 per cent (Rs. 44 crore). The Ministry offered to set up a separate fund for strengthening the state channels for disbursal. “Not one State has responded to our offer,” said a top ministry source. In the 90 Minority Concentration Districts, too, progress has been uneven, with development plans going back and forth and the States not being quick with their feedback.

Need to black list errant banks

The MMA was patting itself on the back for its success in the scholarship scheme when reports came in of banks refusing to open scholarship
accounts for Muslim students. The ministry has swiftly moved to address the problem but the news has understandably upset the community. As politician Abdul Khaliq remarked: “This situation will not change unless Muslim representation in banking staff goes up. And government must black list errant banks and punish the guilty officers.”

Is Islamic Finance the new challenge to Wall Street?

Sunday, November 7, 2010
By Andrew Sheng

I was in Kuala Lumpur in October attending the Global Islamic Finance Forum, organized by Bank Negara Malaysia and the Malaysian International Islamic Finance Centre. The whole glitterati of the Islamic world was here, and coincidentally, the HSBC Asia Board also held their meeting here, so it was also good time to catch up with all the Hong Kong good and great, including the incoming taipans at the Bank.

In the 1990s, Islamic finance was a fledgling fringe industry. But today, its size has grown from roughly US$150 billion to about US$1 trillion in size. This is of course still small relative to some of the largest global fund managers and universal banks, who manage more than US$1 trillion each. But the double-digit growth and potential size of the market cannot be ignored. Some pundits think that the market size will reach US$2 trillion within the next five years.

There are roughly 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, with 138 million in India and roughly 30 million in China. These are growing markets in terms of income and wealth. As the Muslim community seeks to invest in interest-free banking, Islamic funds have been growing in leaps and bounds. Today, there are roughly US$800 billion in Islamic banking funds, US$100 billion in the sukuk (or Islamic bond) market and another US$100 billion in takaful (Islamic insurance) and fund management business. Hong Kong, of course, introduced the Hang Seng Shariah Compliant China Index Fund in 2008 to attract Muslim investors.

As oil prices continue to remain at high levels, the Middle East oil-producers will continue to generate surpluses that must be parked somewhere. With the Western markets and economies under pressure, some of that money has moved Eastwards.

Will Islamic finance be a serious challenge to traditional Wall Street finance? That is a question that deserves a good answer.

First of all, thanks to the good work of Bank Negara Malaysia and the Gulf central banks, the infrastructure for Islamic finance has been laid, with the establishment of the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AOFFI), the Islamic accounting standards authority, the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), the international Islamic financial regulatory standard-setting organisation and the Institute for Education in Islamic Finance (INCEIF). The International Shari’ah Research Academy for Islamic Finance (ISRA) also provides an invaluable website that is increasingly the transparent source for shari’ah interpretations on what is considered acceptable under Islamic law.

For people unfamiliar with Islamic finance, the basic principle of Islamic banking is the sharing of profit and loss and the prohibition of usury. Simply put, interest is prohibited, but profit sharing is not. A cynic can say that with zero interest rate policies adopted by advanced country central banks today, they are also practicing Islamic banking.

The distinctive elements of Islamic finance are its ethical element (the prohibition of usury and exploitation of the borrower), the preference for trading in real assets (rather than synthetic products), partnership between the investor and investee and its governance structure (requiring a Shariah council).

The point to remember in Islamic finance is that there is no Islamic global reserve currency. Although Islamic banks are growing rapidly, there is no assurance that they are not subject to the problems of non-performing loans and bank runs that are endemic in commercial banking.

What has been most innovative was the launching this week of an International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation (IILM) aimed to assist institutions offering Islamic financial services in addressing their liquidity management in an efficient and effective manner. This institution addresses one of the fundamental problems of Islamic financial institutions — the provision of adequate liquidity in times of stress. Once there is an international lender of last resort facility (to supplement and not to replace national facilities), there would be better confidence in the liquidity of the Islamic financial services industry.

The IILM is expected to issue high quality Shariah-compliant financial instruments at both the national level and across borders to enhance the soundness and stability of the Islamic financial markets.

The signatories of the IILM Articles of Agreement are the eleven central banks or monetary agencies of Indonesia, Iran, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The Islamic Development Bank and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector are the multilateral organizations participating in the initiative.

Islamic finance has come a long way, but there is still a long way to go, since US$1 trillion is still small relative to US$232 trillion in conventional financial assets (excluding derivatives).

The real test with any challenger to Wall Street finance is whether Islamic finance will be more efficient, more ethical and more stable. Islamic finance fulfills the needs of the Islamic customer. Ethics aside, there are two crucial problems in finance — information asymmetry and the principal-agent problem. Because markets are not completely transparent and information is unequal amongst market participants, we tend to rely on trusted agents, such as banks, to act on our behalf. Financial institutions are fiduciary agents on behalf of the principals, the real sector savers and borrowers.

What this Wall Street crisis has demonstrated is that complex financial engineering enabled very smart bankers to make profits at the expense of the public purse, because they have become larger (five times greater than GDP). When they fail, the public bears the losses because they are too large and too powerful to fail. This is not the level playing field that is a pre-condition of free markets.

The real question is that under information asymmetry, how do the principals know that the risks of the agents (the banks) have shifted to principals through moral hazard? Islamic finance faces exactly the same dilemma.

If Islamic finance theoreticians can solve this problem, they would be doing a great service to the rest of the world. Then we would truly have an alternative to Wall Street.

Andrew Sheng is author of the book “From Asian to Global Financial Crisis.” He is also Adjunct Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing and University of Malaya. He was formerly the Chairman of the Securities and Futures Commission, Hong Kong.

www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/the-china-post/special-to-the-china-post/2010/11/07/278933/Is-Islamic.htm

Indian corporates foray into Islamic finance – Arab News

Indian corporates foray into Islamic finance

By MUSHTAK PARKER | ARAB NEWS

Published: Nov 14, 2010 22:55 Updated: Nov 14, 2010 22:55

THE launch by India’s Tata Group of its debut Islamic equity fund two weeks ago sees the entry of another major Indian asset management company in the Islamic finance space. This follows the establishment by the rival Reliance Anil Dhirubahi Ambani Group of a dedicated Islamic asset management company in Malaysia, Reliance Asset Management Malaysia Sdn Bhd, in late 2009 to spearhead its global Islamic asset management activities.

While Reliance seems to be a bit over-cautious, Tata in October 2010 launched the Tata Indian Shariah Equity Fund (TISEF) through its Tata Asset Management (Mauritius) Private Limited (TAMM), which is also the fund manager. According to TAMM, the offering is a diversified open-ended equity fund investing in Shariah-compliant equity or equity-equivalent listed Indian companies. The minimum subscription is $5,000 and the benchmark is the Standard & Poor’s CNX Nifty Shariah Index.

The stock universe of the (TISEF) comprises such luminary corporates as Cummins India, Bharti Airtel, Reliance Industries, Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation and others, whose stocks are deemed to be Shariah-compliant and therefore satisfy the various Shariah screens relating to business activity and financial ratios. The fund asset allocation is 31 percent equities and 69 percent cash and other asset classes such as sukuk.

The choice of Mauritius as the fund domicile is not surprising. Mauritius over the last few years has been promoting itself as an offshore banking center and an Islamic capital markets hub. To underline its commitment to developing the island state as an international Islamic capital markets center, Port Louis has acceded to membership of the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) and last month in Kuala Lumpur became a founding participant together with nine other central banks and two multilateral agencies in the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corporation (IILM) with a $5 million equity subscription.

Tata’s entry into the Islamic asset management space virtually coincided with the official visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Malaysia at the end of October 2010.

India has had a strange relationship with the Islamic finance industry over the last few years. At a political level, despite the fact that Manmohan Singh since his days as finance minister has been a strong supporter of facilitating Islamic finance in India, the government has been very slow to react to the global growth of Islamic finance.

Given that India has the world’s largest Muslim minority at almost 200 million, the introduction of enabling legislation to facilitate Islamic finance would have advanced financial inclusion especially for the above minority and millions of others who are interested in ethical and socially-responsible financial services.

Whether for political or religious reasons, those opposed to the introduction of enabling legislation to allow Islamic financial products, tend to see Islamic finance as an extension of political Islam, which is both incorrect and misleading. While Islamic finance has a definitive faith-based ethos, some of whose values are also found in other faiths including Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism, it is considered especially in non-Muslim jurisdictions as an alternative system of financial management. In the UK legislation, for instance, sukuk are regarded under the Finance Act 2010 as Alternative Financial Investment Bonds. Even in Muslim countries such as Turkey, Islamic banks are called Participation Banks in the Banking Act 2007.

Another difficulty in India is at the sate level, where communist-inspired legislatures and administrations, for instance, are against the introduction of Islamic banking for ideological reasons. This does not detract from the fact that they do allow conventional banks, the very epitome of the market-based capitalism, supposedly the sworn enemy of socialism. Not surprisingly, in April this year the Kerala High Court directed the state government and its institutions not to promote and invest in the Kerala State Islamic Development Corporation, a Shariah-compliant finance company, aimed at developing infrastructure in the state and attracting inward investment from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

India’s inertia effectively is a lost opportunity cost because Islamic finance could be a valuable savings mobilization vehicle and also contribute to the country’s huge development and infrastructure needs. Of course there are those who argue that if the UK can authorize five Islamic banks, and countries such as Singapore, South Africa, Mauritius and others also have licensed Islamic banks, why can’t India do the same?

India has had some Islamic finance activity mainly through brokerage and finance companies such as Al-Falah, Parsoli and Barakat. These have largely been disappointing and ineffectual because of the lack of a serious business model and transparency. The first two were embroiled in various allegations of fraud and/or mismanagement. The Saudi-owned Dallah Al-Baraka Group was one of the first overseas groups to venture into India establishing the Al-Baraka Finance House Merchant Bank in the 1990s with participation of the local Oomer Group. The latter eventually bought out Al-Baraka’s shares and changed the name to Al-Barr Finance House, which is still operating out of Mumbai.

Over the last few years however prominent Indian Muslim businessmen, bankers and professionals have been lobbying the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the banking regulator, to consider introducing a legal and regulatory framework to facilitate the introduction of Islamic financial products in India.

“There have been from time to time demands for experimenting (with) Islamic banking. I would certainly recommend to RBI, which is looking into the question, to look at what is happening in Malaysia in this regard,” stressed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Kuala Lumpur where he had talks with his Malaysian counterpart Mohammed Najib Tun Abdul Razak, who is a very proactive supporter of the Islamic finance industry.

The global Islamic finance industry has seen steady growth over the last three decades with estimated assets under management totaling $1.2 trillion with the potential to rise to $4 trillion over the next few years.

There are signs that State Bank of India (SBI) is starting to warm to Islamic finance. According to Indian asset management industry sources, SBI circulated a White Paper earlier this year on Islamic finance inviting comments from the public on whether the RBI should open the market to Islamic financial services companies based in India to offer products in the local market. However, realistically, given the notorious bureaucracy in Indian state institutions including the government apparatus, the progress toward the introduction of Islamic financial products in India through enabling legislation will take some time. Unless, of course Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government fast tracks such legislation as a policy priority. This, however, would require a much more proactive engagement between RBI, the financial services industry and professional Muslim groups in India. Similarly, India could also seek cooperation with organizations such as the Islamic Development Bank, the IFSB and counterpart regulatory authorities such as Bank Negara Malaysia and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA).

Muslim explains faith’s Sharia law

BY BARBARA HOBEROCK – Tulsa World

The man behind a lawsuit seeking to overturn a controversial ballot measure has a passion for the law and his Islamic faith.
Muneer Awad, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter on the Council
for American-Islamic Relations, filed suit last week in federal court to
overturn State Question 755. The measure bans state courts from the use
of Sharia and international law in deciding cases. It passed Nov. 2
with slightly more than 70 percent of the vote.

http://iqsoft.co.in

Sharia law is not used in state courts, but supporters said SQ 755 was needed as a preventive measure.

U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange granted a temporary restraining
order putting implementation on hold. A hearing for an injunction is
set for Nov. 22.

Awad, who has been on the job with the council’s Oklahoma chapter since
Oct. 14, said Sharia law could never replace federal or state laws.

Adoption of a constitutional amendment referencing Sharia law voices the
state’s official disapproval and condemnation of Islam, he said.

And that raises constitutional issues on its own with respect to the
government being able to approve or disapprove of religion, Awad said.
It involves my standing as a Muslim in the political community.

When news of the lawsuit spread, his organization got a lot of hate mail, but it has also received encouragement, Awad said.

Our organization has gotten more donations from non-Muslims in the past
week than we have from Muslims, he said. This has really been a sign
of Oklahomans, I think, realizing that no matter what disagreement we
have here, there is still a need to remain rational and let the courts
consider what is being presented.

Sharia law is guidance for Muslims on how to practice and interpret their faith in daily interactions and in society, Awad said.

It touches on things that are even beyond law, he said. Simply me
refraining from eating pork is part of following Sharia. Me not drinking
alcohol is part of following Sharia. Me marrying is part of Sharia. So,
Sharia encompasses so many things beyond the law.

He said Sharia changes and is not applied the same in all countries.

One of the main aspects of Sharia is abiding by the law of the land,
Awad said. As a Muslim, I am mandated to abide by the law of the land I
live in.

He said it is disingenuous for critics to point to how Sharia is
followed in other countries. While polygamy is permissible in his faith,
it is not legal in the United States, he said.

Awad said politicians are profiting from the fear of Islam.

I know this element of hate is definitely a fringe element, he said.
So, I don’t actually live my life in fear of someone attacking me or
misunderstanding me.

Robert Lanza, M.D.

Scientist, Theoretician

Posted: November 12, 2010 08:48 AM

Why Are You Here? A New Theory May Hold the Missing Piece

Biocentrism, a new theory of everything, provides the missing piece.

Although classical evolution does an excellent job of helping us
understand the past, it fails to capture the driving force. Evolution
needs to add the observer to the equation. Indeed, Niels Bohr, the great
Nobel physicist, said, “When we measure something we are forcing an
undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are
not ‘measuring’ the world, we are creating it.” The evolutionists are
trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They think we, the
observer, are a mindless accident, debris left over from an explosion
that appeared out of nowhere one day.

Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless

collection of particles bouncing against each other. It’s presented as a
watch that somehow wound itself up, and that will unwind in a
semi-predictable way. But they’ve shunted a critical component of the
cosmos out of the way because they don’t know what to do with it. This
component, consciousness, isn’t a small item. It’s an utter mystery,
which we think has somehow arisen from molecules and goo.

How did inert, random bits of carbon ever morph into that Japanese guy who always wins the hot-dog-eating contest? In short, attempts to explain the nature of the universe, its

origins, and what’s really going on require an understanding of how the
observer, our presence, plays a role. According to the current paradigm,
the universe, and the laws of nature themselves, just popped out of
nothingness. The story goes something like this: From the Big Bang until
the present time, we’ve been incredibly lucky. This good fortune
started from the moment of creation; if the Big Bang had been
one-part-in-a-million more powerful, the cosmos would have rushed out
too fast for the galaxies and stars to have developed. If the
gravitational force were decreased by a hair, stars (including the Sun)
wouldn’t have ignited. There are over 200 physical parameters like this
that could have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be
here. Tweak any of them and you never existed.

But our luck didn’t stop with the laws, forces, and constants of the universe. Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Orrorin tugenensis, Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, A. afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, A. africanus, A. garhi, A. sediba, A. aethiopicus, A. robustus, A. boisei, Homo habilis, H. georgicus, and H. erectus

— among other hominid species — all went extinct. Even the
Neanderthals went extinct. But alas, not us! Indeed, we happen to be the
only species of Hominina that made it.

Our special luck continues in the present time. Asteroids could

strike Earth at any time, producing a surface-charring blast of heat,
followed by years of dust that would freeze and/or starve us to death.
Nearby stars could go supernova, their energy destroying the ozone layer
and sterilizing the Earth with radiation. And a supervolcano could
shroud the Earth in dust. These are just a few (out of billions) of
things that could go wrong.

The story of evolution reads just like “The Story of the Three

Bears,” In the nursery tale, a little girl named Goldilocks enters a
home occupied by three bears and tries different bowls of porridge; some
are too hot, some are too cold. She also tries different chairs and
beds, and every time, the third is “just right.” For 13.7 billion years
we, too, have had chronic good luck. Virtually everything has been “just
right.”

It’s a fascinating story to tell children, but claiming that it’s all

a “dumb” accident is no more helpful than saying “God did it.” Loren
Eiseley, the great naturalist, once said that scientists “have not
always been able to see that an old theory, given a hairsbreadth twist,
might open an entirely new vista to the human reason.” The theory of
evolution turns out to be the perfect case in hand. Amazingly, it all
makes sense if you assume that the Big Bang is the end of the chain of physical causality, not the beginning.

Indeed, according to biocentrism, it’s us, the observer, who create

space and time (which is the reason you’re here now). Consider
everything you see around you right now. Language and custom say it all
lies outside us in the external world. Yet you can’t see anything
through the vault of bone that surrounds your brain. Your eyes aren’t
just portals to the world. In fact, everything you experience, including
your body, is part of an active process occurring in your mind. Space
and time are simply the mind’s tools for putting it all together.

Theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow recently stated:There is no way to remove the observer — us — from our perceptions of the world … In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a

definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past,
like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of
possibilities.”

If we, the observer, collapse these possibilities (that is, the past

and future) then where does that leave evolutionary theory, as described
in our schoolbooks? Until the present is determined, how can there be a
past? The past begins with the observer, us, not the other way around
as we’ve been taught.

The observer is the first cause, the vital force that collapses not

only the present but the cascade of past spatio-temporal events we call
evolution. “If, instead of identifying ourselves with the work,” said
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “we feel that the soul of the workman streams
through us, we shall find the peace of the morning dwelling first in our
hearts, and the fathomless powers of gravity and chemistry, and, over
them, of life, pre-existing within us in their highest form.”

SEO Secrets

There is no greater force driving your Search Engine Position than your content. If the content on your site is unique and informative, in no time, your site ranking for keywords related to that content steadily increases to top position.

Speed of this rise is proportional to the particular search engine’s crawling rate.

• Google Bot accesses your site on the average twice per week
• Yahoo Bot accesses your site on the average twice per week
• Baidu Bot (Chinese) accesses your site on the average thrice per week
• Alexa Bot accesses your site on the average once per week
• Bing Bot (Microsoft) accesses your site on the average once per week

To allow all search bots entry to all pages in your site, create a text file named “robots.txt” using notepad.exe and upload it to your site root. (Directory “public_html” if your site is hosted on a linux server and “wwwroot” if it is on a windows server)

User-agent: *

If you would like to restrict the bot from accessing files in specific directories, add a line

Disallow: /directory full path/

Where “directory full path” gives the full path of the directory you want to hide from visitors. (Don’t forget the colon!)

You nay also allow and disallow specific bots by writing their name instead of “*” in the code line

User-agent: *

What you should do NOW!!

1. Create a robots.txt and upload it to your site.
2. Submit your site to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Gmail ID not required.
3. Visit Google Webmaster Tools at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. Gmail ID required.
4. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster Tools at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. Gmail ID required.

Sitemaps help the search bots index pages that are not otherwise visible to them. A sample sitemap for Google is given below.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″

        xmlns:image=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1″

        xmlns:video=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1″>

  <url>

    <loc>http://www.example.com/foo.html</loc>

    <image:image>

       <image:loc>http://example.com/image.jpg</image:loc>

    </image:image>

    <video:video>    

      <video:content_loc>http://www.example.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc>

      <video:player_loc allow_embed=”yes” autoplay=”ap=1″>http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>

      <video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>

      <video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title> 

      <video:description>Get perfectly done steaks every time</video:description>

    </video:video>

  </url>

And that was a single entry for a URL that includes an image and a video!!!

Don’t worry if this looks a bit complex. I can create sitemaps for your site content in a few hours and send it to you by email (if you want).

What NOT to do:

If you want to control what Google does, you’re going to have to gain a profound understanding of the algorithms they use and keep up to date as the code changes. You’re contending with some of the shrewdest computer scientists in the world.

Just for fun I’ve included links to Google’s own PageRank algorithm by Sergei Brin & Lawrence Page and the Hilltop algorithm by Krishna Bharat to get you started. Be warned that if you’re caught you’ll be black-listed by Google and will have to crate a new website. But it may be fun reading if you are a hacker.

Sun Oct 24, 2010 2:6PM

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“It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy,” Broadcaster and journalist Lauren Booth told The Mail. 

The 43-year-old half-sister of Cherie Blair now wears hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits her local mosque. 

“Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Qur’an every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,” she added. 

“The strange thing is that since I decided to convert I haven’t wanted to touch alcohol, and I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two at the end of a day.” 

Booth, who works for Iran’s English-language Press TV news network, decided to embrace Islam six weeks ago and converted immediately after she returned to Britain. 

Booth did not refuse the possibility of wearing a burqa and said, ‘Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?’ 

Before her holy experience in Iran, Booth had spent considerable time working in Palestine and was “always impressed with the strength and comfort it [Islam] gave.” 

She travelled to Gaza in August 2008 along with 46 other activists to highlight Israel’s blockade of the territory and was subsequently refused entry into both Israel and Egypt. 

In a public letter she wrote to Tony Blair during her visit to Iran last month, Booth expressed hope that the former Labor Party politician would change his presumptions about Islam. 

“Your world view is that Muslims are mad, bad, dangerous to know,” she wrote in her letter, asking Blair to acknowledge the International Quds Day, an annual event on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims express solidarity with the Palestinian people and protest Israel’s occupation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem). 

“Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine,” she said. 

“It’s kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths.” 

Booth, who had moved to France with her husband and two daughters in 2004, returned to Britain after her husband suffered a sever brain injury following a motorcycle accident in April 2009. 

TE/HGH/MMN

99 Problems But a Cape Ain’t One:

Superhero fans, especially those old enough to have opinions, are often divided by their views on the appropriateness of real-world politics in their escapist literature. While many of us regard Dennis O’Neil and Neil Adams’ socially relevant run on “Green Lantern/Green Arrow” to be a superlative example of costumed heroes confronting the hard-hitting issues of the day, just as many readers dismiss it as didactic and inappropriate given the characters’ roots in benign adolescent power fantasies. But what about when real-world issues encroach upon the mild escapism? What happens then?

These issues are being confronted again with “The 99,” a comic about a group of multi-ethnic superheroes with a basis in Islamic culture and faith. An animated series based on the comic was meant to debut last week, but it’s been pushed back to January of next year (unlike DC’s “JLA/The 99” crossover miniseries, which debuts next week with issue #1). Like New York City’s so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” itself envisioned to promote tolerance and peace between Muslims and the greater American population, “The 99” cartoon finds itself imperiled by those who’ve yet to see or even contemplate the true nature of the work.

“Cancel ‘The 99’ before it starts,” wrote the New York Post’s Andrea Peyser in an editorial this week.

Hide your face and grab the kids. Coming soon to a TV in your child’s bedroom is a posse of righteous, Sharia-com pliant Muslim superheroes — including one who fights crime hidden head-to-toe by a burqa.

These Islamic butt-kickers are ready to bring truth, justice and indoctrination to impressionable Western minds.

Conservative conspiracy website World Net Daily joined in, writing nearly 1,000 words of warning against the supposedly subversive series. Except, from all appearances, “The 99” is about as subversive as baseball and mom’s apple pie.

The superhero group was created by Muslim psychologist Naif Al-Mutawa not to promote radical Muslim values, but specifically to confront them, and challenge the xenophobia preached by radical Imams (possibly the sort of views that have resulted in an American cartoonist going into hiding after challenging Muslim extremists). In an interview with PBS, Al-Mutawa recalls his inspiration for “The 99,” which began with the familiar idea of “Pokemon,” and his desire to create something for children with that kind of potential:

My next thought was that there had been a fatwa issued against Pokemon in this region. My next thought was, “My God, who are these people, and who appointed them to be spokespeople for Islam?” My next thought was Allah, and how disappointed he must be. My next thought was that Allah had 99 attributes, and that brought me full circle back to Pokemon, which is a concept of 300 attributes.

Each of the heroes of “The 99” represents one of those virtues of Allah, such as strength, mercy and wisdom, attributes that are valued by many faiths and cultures. Praised by U.S. President Barack Obama as embodying “the teachings of the tolerance of Islam,” the young heroes also demonstrate these values in their fantastical adventures without any one character praying or even mentioning explicit Muslim scripture nor the Prophet Mohammed, according to ICv2.

Just as importantly, “The 99” are not only intended to present a moderate, tolerant face of Islam to the Western world, but also to the Islamic world itself. In the same PBS interview, Al-Mutawa recalled pitching the idea of “The 99” to investors, and describing the trading cards and stickers of suicide bombers that were sold “in the millions” to children throughout the West Bank and the Middle East. It was time for the Islamic world to find some new heroes, he said.

The inherent Middle Easternness of “The 99” does set it apart from other television cartoons; I don’t think we’ve seen this cultural context presented so obviously in children’s entertainment since Disney’s “Aladdin” in 1992 (you can count “Prince of Persia” if you like). A seven-minute preview on YouTube reveals more of “The 99’s” backstory, which has to do with Mongols plundering and burning a library in 13th century Baghdad, which contained the world’s
largest collection of knowledge and wisdom. Luckily, the contents of the books were saved within 99 magic gemstones — “Noor Stones” — which are discovered centuries later by the young heroes of “The 99.”

Such a series mythology is in keeping with the tradition of the variously “ethnic” backgrounds of some of our favorite children’s adventure stories: Indiana Jones, Johnny Quest, the Immortal Iron Fist. There are differences, obviously, like the fact that all those heroes are white men inserted into “exotic” locales and cultures to become their champions, rather than heroes actually based in those milieus, as seems to be case with “The 99.”

That one female character, Batina the Hidden, wears a burka and a few other heroes wear headscarves seem to be sticking points for opponents of “The 99,” and opponents of Islam in general. Indeed, Peyser’s critical New York Post piece is called “Trading Cape for the Burqa,” as if even gazing upon such fictional children will be enough to prompt non-Muslim American children to abandon our Western fashions and adopt all the trappings of the dreaded Sharia, or Islamic Law. It’s the next dangerous fad that will get your children into trouble, like huffing paint or drag-racing down the street at night.

Andy Sullivan, a Queens construction worker opposed to the “Ground Zero mosque,” on “The 99”:

They’re taking advantage of the fact that in every middle-class household, Mom and Dad are working their asses off. They know the kids are watching TV or on the Internet. So maybe Sharia becomes OK. It’s a game. It gradually becomes more and more in their lives.

Why shouldn’t Mr. Sullivan be scared? In the United States, Sharia is most often discussed in connection with Muslim extremists such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and other places where one imagines thieves’ hands being cut off at the wrists and women being executed for having the misfortune of being raped. Sharia has also been invoked as a boogeyman by some conservative American politicians, who say their liberal opponents intend to adopt Sharia in some official capacity. Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich recently came out firmly against Sharia being “considered as a replacement for American law” (even though no American politician is promoting anything of the kind). Sharia is coming for our courts and it’s coming for our kids!

In reality, Sharia is not a by-the-books law but more of a set of social and political beliefs practiced by Muslims around the world, who differ on the details depending on where you go and who you talk to. What’s generally true across the board is that Sharia is about being culturally conservative, behaving very modestly with respect to sex and money, and practicing a high level of courtesy and reverence for one’s neighbors.

But even by this most unspecific definition of Sharia, “The 99’s” connection to Islamic law seems tenuous at best. The reality is that Superman himself operates in a way that would be very agreeable by most mainstream interpretations of Sharia, and it is with pronounced irony that conservative Americans, particularly those in favor of living life like we’re all Boy Scouts, react so hatefully towards Muslims, who are truly their allies in this regard.

If “The 99” were truly promoting the kind of intolerant views so feared by detractors — if the super-strong Jabbar left an unmarried woman to burn in a fire because he found out she was banging her boyfriend, for example, or Betina the Hidden refused to stop some bank robbers unless the bankers agreed that “Israel should be wiped off the map,” then we would have a problem. But none of those things are going to happen, and for millions of Muslims around the world, those things are not what Sharia is about.

There are no doubt numerous empirical studies that suggest a wild conversion of non-Muslim American children to Islam or an adoption of fundamentalist Sharia is incredibly unlikely, but I can best speak to my own experiences as an American youth growing up not just in front of Islamic-themed television, but in actual Islamic countries. So as to deflect any accusations of religious bias, I should point out that my surname, Khouri, is Arabic for “priest,” and it’s a name my ancestors took on as they converted to Christianity. It is from within that Christian heritage that I first encountered Islam — not on my television, but living next door. As a child I lived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, where Islam is the official religion and Arabic is the official language. The little girls next door wore headscarves, as did all the women on our street — except for my Scottish/German mother and my half-Arabic sister, since they weren’t Muslims. The broadcasts of “Astro Boy” and “The Muppet Show” were interrupted for salah (ritual prayers), and I took a mandatory Arabic language class in school.

Strangely, over twenty years later, I remain a non-Muslim who can’t speak Arabic, and I suspect the same will be true of non-Muslim children who watch “The 99.” The worst that could happen, if you’re inclined to think of it that way, is that non-Muslim American children may actually learn that while Europe was up to its eyeballs in the Dark Ages, the Middle East was experiencing a cultural renaissance. Non-Muslim American children may actually lay their eyes upon fictional kids of perhaps unfamiliar backgrounds stepping up to become heroes themselves, rather than backwater citizens in distress waiting for Tom Cruise’s “Last Samurai” or Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves” character to come save them.

In the mythology of “The 99,” these young heroes appear to explicitly embody virtues and powers that inform all superhero stories, and with a stated mission to change the world for the better by focusing on those ethics and not on any religious dogma. It is a mission that Grant Morrison and Deepak Chopra have advocated for years.

“The 99” creator Naif Al-Mutawa, in conversation with CNN:

It is finally time that all of us became more accountable for that which our children will be hearing; tiny differences setting us apart rather than celebrating those positive things that bind all good people together. If we allow small-minded men to spout fear and hate in the name of our religion, we will enable them to brainwash another generation as they did our own. And soon, the next generation will fall into a pit of dissonance. To sit by silently makes us all complicit.

There’s nothing to disagree with there, and children could do a lot worse than watch animated series based on that outlook. Assuming any children watch “The 99” at all.

You see, having broken down the bigoted, anti-Islamic arguments against “The 99,” we’re left with the inescapable fact that it just looks like hell. As you probably saw in the preview video above, the animation is like something out of a ’90s SEGA game. The characters appear utterly without any depth or attractive edge to their personalities whatsoever. Barring any surprises — like the series even airing at all in this toxic political climate — it looks like the U.S. media has embarrassed itself again by railing ignorantly against a work of little substance, a cheap cartoon that depicts only the most basi
c concepts of good versus evil in the plainest possible language.

Indeed, “The 99” is the superhero cartoon for which conservative parents have prayed for years!

[Via ICv2]